Just to update

I'm relatively alright. I'll post again when I feel a bit more tip-top.

I went to a clinic on Monday, and I'm going to a chiropractor on Wednesday to try to deal with some of my physical problems.

yuck

Hey everyone. I'm not feeling so hot today, physically and emotionally. It's hard for me to breathe, and I'm exhausted and nauseated. I'm also really emotionally spent and I've been crying off and on all day.

Please pray or meditate for me just a little. Maybe some good vibes my way.

capturing shakti, part 3

Part 3

When you switch your heart focus away from consumption, it is immediately apparent that the dominant culture is set up and perpetuated to advocate a life that is driven by selfish consumption and as such it is opposed to a life that is motivated by love.

As it says in the Permaculture Designers Manual, meaning in life is derived from taking action toward a common ideal. Loving one another is the essential precept of multitudes of religions and philosophies. Enlightenment, salvation, being born again, reincarnation, living, dying: the path of life is one characterized by constant change. Homeostasis is not infinite, therefore it is a misnomer. If there is one essential life principal that is blatantly evident in the natural world, it is that energy is always changing from one form to another, or that existence is “not always so”, in the words of the late great Shunryu Suzuki.

I think that enlightenment or salvation could be realized by many of us if these simple principles were better understood, mainly that life is; 1. Not always so, and that to create peace; 2. Love is all we need, and to find meaning 3. You must take action toward a common ideal.

But once you start to systemize your code of ethics, or moral opinion, you start to create dogma, and your compassionate intentions toward humanity turn sour and become yet another aspect and tool of the destroyer. In this context, even as I write this I understand that my main intention is to share my experience of life and my thesis of the mass societal repression of Shakti, but some might interpret my intent negatively. To those people I would simply say, if you find my words not to your liking, then you may choose to not read them, and you may choose to debate them, and you may choose to forget them or to try to understand them. Whatever you choose, remember that your mind may have one opinion, and your heart another. Your mind wishes to defend the ego, and your heart wishes to free the spirit. Whatever you choose, remember that your small mind may be fearful of dissolving into big mind, or rigpa, the primordial luminescence of reality. Of course it is afraid, because to change from one form of energy to another is to die in some way, shape, or form. And isn’t death the most scary thing of all?

Maybe not. Maybe it is a real irony that in this Shiva the destroyer-oriented world, death is the most feared and hated change of all. In a Shakti oriented world life itself is sacred, and life itself is most revered. In the abstract, this Shivacentric world proclaims its reverence for life, but in practice, war has been declared on all forms of life, and Shakti in her many guises are under constant attack.

We have created Hell on this planet. If Hell has been experienced by one life, it exists for us all. We can be separated by language and custom, or the boundaries of nations, but at our core we are all simply an expression of life.

Shiva creates hell as Shakti tends her gardens.

At this point you may wonder if I am an extreme feminist, and if I hate men. But my intention is to look at all of the myriad patterns in which energy flows, and it is easier to illustrate energetic patterns utilizing archetypical concepts then it is using pseudoscientific psychological profiles. The patterns that myths have drawn in the sand are as old as humanity, and wisdom grows with time. I believe that it is impossible to circumnavigate time in order to reach Samadhi or enlightenment faster, as much as technology would like us to believe that this is possible.
We are taught that we should act in such-and-such a way when we are born into this world. It seems counterintuitive to question this constant education, because it purports to follow the will of God via the Holy Bible. But my thesis is that this is an arbitrary education in regards to who you are as an individual life. You are a life that can teach and be taught as soon as you exist, and you can think, feel, and understand on your own. Propaganda leads you away from your true self. What is taught as something you should emulate has nothing to do with your life essence. There are a certain number of stereotypes you should fit into, and if you don’t, you’re one of those persons who doesn’t fit in to any one stereotype, the last ditch catchall stereotype. This Shivacentric society does not allow societal behaviors at random, only the stereotypical behaviors are allowed, and encouraged to perpetuate in order to cast those-who-do-not-fit-in out as far as they will go, or as far as they will stay.

Thesis: A human being would not fit into any stereotypes if allowed to freely express themselves at birth and throughout life. Gender would be flexible, love would be expressed in many ways.

We are trapped in this dark box of society designed and manufactured by the destroyers. We are trapped in a dark box of ourselves, immediately put on the production line of stereotypes. We can look in someone else’s eyes and see ourselves, but then we may be called crazy. We can look at the highways choked with cars and exhaust and call it crazy, but then be reassured that it is completely sane by the destroyers.

capturing shakti, part 2

Part 2

Where is the feminine in today’s society? Where is Shakti?

At some point in the not-too-distant past women were the healers of their communities and together with shamanic men comprised a safety net of spirit and earth based healing and wisdom, as it were. Perhaps the shaman or priest began to wonder if there were a way he could somehow call the wise woman’s earth-based knowledge into question, thus securing for himself the communities connection to the spiritual and earth based wisdom and power. Perhaps he wondered about this, but the community would have none of it. None of it, that is, until the monotheistic religions were conceived of and created by men who saw the light.

Monotheistic religions say; Hey everyone, there is but one God and only we, the disciples, know the way to Him. We are the converted, the saved, and you are the sinners, the damned. God is a man, and man has dominion over the earth and all that lies thereon.

You can see how this belief would benefit men.

Monotheistic religions captured the imagination of men across the land. With the power of God on their side, they built societies completely focused around their sex. Ever since then, nothing has dramatically altered in this Godly grab for power. Political systems are set up primarily to give a few men ultimate power over all the earth, a terrestrial mirror of the monotheistic cosmic order. And in this mirror, we see the complete fallacy of the monotheistic idea, the “One God” theory failing time after time, sometimes in horrific ways, yet we pretend that this is the mere failings of mortal man.

And so ultimately the shaman/priest gained control over all the powers of the spirit and earth, his societal role gradually morphing into the pastors, businessmen, lawyers, and leaders of our modern times. In some indigenous societies, the shaman/priest exists still, but the wise woman labors in the background; women who have passed down the wisdom of generations time after time, sometimes amidst adversarial conditions in order to save the community from itself, to save men from their power hungry ways. In order to keep control over all the earth, men have had to keep her on a tight leash, and rape her repeatedly until she appears to be giving up the ghost. Men have always understood the games of power they have to play in order to stay at the top, because with just one tiny slip, their game could be over, unless, of course, they declare war. If, for instance, one wise woman were to become as powerful as the pope, the people of the world would have to feel again, and the floodgates of remembrance would be opened, letting the waters of peace out, which would wash away the military/industrial/banking complex that exists only to gain power over the Mother of us all.

What women are taught today in a monotheistic society is that they have been created by a male God to be the humble servants of men. They are to do all the chores of the house and they are to raise the children. Their entire earthly role as a human is defined by their relationship to the men in their lives, and the men that control their lives. It is the prerogative of men to control the earth, and thus women and children. Within this framework of female existence it is obviously in man’s best interest to begin the propaganda and brainwashing of young boys and girls as early as possible. To be programmed from the beginning is the ideal, but if an individual’s programming doesn’t take hold, then the tactics of shame, fear, pain, and terror are utilized.

It is my belief that almost every aspect of our modern day society is designed by and for men, and unimaginative men at that. Our society is imbued with the essence of Shiva the destroyer, and without Shakti only death can be the ultimate result of man’s design.

capturing shakti, part 1

Capturing Shakti

Part 1

In a previous post I had mentioned that I wanted to capture shakti and a friend wrote a comment that suggested that I express shakti rather then try to capture it. A simple suggestion, but it sent my mind whirling off into a strong tangent, one that incorporated thoughts about my previous post on being a mystic and musings I had on finishing the book A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. This post will be my attempt at sharing this thread of thinking with you, and it may need to be posted in parts, as I do have to cook dinner at some point here, as well as perform other household tasks.

The propaganda (and by propaganda I simply mean the spreading of ideas or information for the purpose of hurting or helping an institution, a cause, or person) that has been drilled into our brains since day one on this planet is that men and women are diametric opposites, that each of the sexes has a very definite sex role that should be played out in a very definitive way, and wavering from this rule will result in catastrophe of the very highest magnitude. To begin to understand this reality you need only to think of the deluge of blue or pink crap that is handed out on the occasion of birth, but you may as well reflect on all the other obviously sexist and strongly encouraged items that are parceled out to the unlucky newborn as they grow older in this world, such as toy trucks if you are a boy, and toy kitchens if you are a girl. Dolls if you are a girl, and cars if you are a boy, and on and on ad nauseum. Of course there are exceptions, but by simple casual observance it is obviously the general case that newborn humans are programmed to think that they have definitive rules of sex behavior as soon as they exit the womb. My thesis is that this early dogmatic education is the primary cause of the majority of the suffering that is perpetuated on this planet.

I think that this dualistic thinking mode, or meme (DTM) can be found throughout most large civilizations and so-called advanced cultures. The patterns that DTM produce in a society can vary wildly, as evidenced when you ponder the Ying and Yang principles of the East, or the God and the Devil principles of the West. But suffice it to say that in many cultures a spiritual binary system has evolved to explain how everything works. There is an on and there is an off, and somehow with this knowledge we can explain all things, or we can take the extension of this knowledge and create more complex spiritual systems of explanation, like the I-Ching or the Kabbalah. Math arises out of the sea of abstraction and gives meaning to the essential meaninglessness of the world on the wings of science. Art and Religion stay entrenched in their more esoteric interpretations of DTM. All attempts at understanding life rely on the mystical nature of being alive. The more mystical your attempt at understanding, the less you inhabit DTM, and ultimately the DTM can resolve into oneness with all, or nonethingness. When the object begins to wonder if it really is separated from the subject, then the mystical experience begins and our dualistic perceptions of reality seem to be an illusion.

In the book A Handmaiden’s Tale, the Commander and Handmaiden have an exchange in which the Commander comments that women can’t do math. The Handmaiden takes him to task for this, and he replies that if a woman counted 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1, she wouldn’t arrive at the sum of 4, she would just count 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1. I believe this is essentially a commentary on women’s innate earth knowledge, in the sense that theory and abstraction and thus science and math exist only in the mind and not necessarily in the earth, and women, who share the energy of nurturing the seed with the Mother Earth, can see that four separate “ones" does not necessarily produce the sum of four. The burden of caring for new life begins with the mother. Once born, fathers and the community can share in the raising of the new life, but during pregnancy the mother is essentially the whole earth for the new life growing inside her. Men have the energy of pollen or sperm to fertilize the egg in the ovary, and I believe that we share in the energy of the Father Sun, and the Moon is what brings us, female and male, together to begin the cycle of life over and over. But now, you see, I begin to dabble in dualisms, and I must stress that I believe that the male organism can experience the energies of the earth and manifest them, and the female organism can experience the energies of the sun and manifest them as well. I certainly don’t believe that any one person has one elemental aspect based on their sexual gender, but I know that in terms of procreation, what I have written rings true to me. Shakti cannot be captured by force of will, she can only be expressed by letting her flow naturally, observing her through the cycles and patterns of the universe.

In Zen there is the idea of Little Mind and Big Mind. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Little Mind is 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 4, and Big Mind is 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1. Even that is extremely erroneous in that in Big Mind there are no 1s or even the concept of Big Mind.

Earth-based wisdom is not abstract knowledge, and the abstraction paradigm produces the subject object imperative which results in the dualistic thinking meme.

holy sticky thinking

There is one thing and then there is another thing. This thing is separated from that thing. So there is two things, not one thing. But how can this be? How can one thing be separated from another thing? There is no one thing and no two things, just thingness. A subject and an object, subjectivitiness and objectivitiness. Or the whole kaboodle, subjectivitiobjectivitithingness. But who is counting?

There is a scientifitiness that says that this action has this cause or this result, and this may be a useful way to look at it, in terms of practical result-oriented activity. But as time passes I can't see what the use is of all of this. "You over there, stop doing such and such! Why am I so stupid? Where are my car keys?" Many things happening, nothing happening.

Maybe I need to start working.

100% Free Range Minnesota Mystic

I have come to the realization that my primary internal identity is a mystic. To be more precise I am a 100% Free Range Minnesotan Mystic. I was reading an interview with a yoga teacher when this epiphany came upon me all in rush of peaceful understanding.

I am always looking for the ultimate truth behind the facade of consensual reality, but I do not subscribe wholeheartedly to one religion, or even three. I am a natural born mystic raised on the fertile prairies and immense shores of the Midwest. The land calls out to me, even as I struggle with the hardships of being human.

So many traditions and crafts whisper their enticements, so many ideas and emotions rush me along this river of samsara, but yoga brings me back into myself, and back out, into the world that reflects everything. I invent the path of freedom that surges through me and try to capture bits of shakti in words and sounds.

I don't need to define things. I don't want to.

Life trapped inside the self isn't worth living.

I would like to bring all the organic gardening, permaculture practicing poets and potter, singers and dancers, all the chefs and magicians and neighbors and midwives and cats, all the hurting and sexy and poor and mistreated together to practice our mystical ways in peace.