And From the Many We Learn as one

                                                     Intimacy is the final frontier.                                                                                     

                 As we get closer to intimacy, our sense of boundaries change. Learning is an intimacy, and intimacy is learning. Unity and empathy are mutually unexplored territories in everyone & everything.

My apology. Dreams are just creative imaginary projections. In Zazen, dreams, just like thoughts, are simply considered deviations of awareness away from the moment now. {Blah, blah? Neti, neti?} When it comes to creative fantasy and imagination, I guess I didn't have much choice. Transcendent dreams lived in me. That Nada is the dream chakra, and is also known for the Raja Path to enlightenment. I am no more than an other centered person with very few goals or ambitions. And yet I have lived fully, despite personal solitude. Dreams are like our karma, personal and/or collective. I myself may be petty and judgemental, but our emotions are merely those responsive waves on the surface of that momentary summation, now. Feelings and awareness ebb and flow like that momentary being, ours is one into another. My dreams are now public property. Come drink, there are dreams enough to nourish and inspire all, carrying us across the great waters into our collective eternity.

The Witness of Attention: Disillusion is the Key to Truthfulness {EDITED FOR REPOST}

                                                                             

              This chapter is on the utility of language as social currency. Social currency, emotional currency, cultural currency, all of these things have shared meanings. We are all defined by nature, reality, and the limitations of the languages we share. These unifying principles behind objective values are; time, resources, and energy. Wealth is merely a mundane spiritual currency, good or bad, it's purely material in form, even when it's virtual or fiat. The real power is in our Witness of Attention.

              Caution: Waking memories can be distorted by persuasion, narrative drift, and the constant retellings of our minds voices. If we want to remember a forgotten experience faithfully, we must be disillusioned. Currencies of language must become subordinate to the flow of actual conscious attention. This mindful reexamination of perceptions are not a word for word translation. But, we still report non verbal awareness through verbally framed filters.

                I often have to ask myself hard questions like, "Am I deluding myself with distorted implanted memories, repeated so often as to become my false memory?" My internal life can be cluttered. My spiritual life may be unimportant. The issue of implanted or false memories is exploited and abused by confused social issues. Who do we believe? Belief systems often reflect very low levels of fidelity. But, by having faith in soul healing, I recommend learning to find proof for our convictions. How the mind reels?

I tend to be the Houdini of the New Age, Boutique ParaPsychology, and Alternative Medicine Industries. I'm busting the charlatans and rebuking snake oil vendors at my expense. Being studied has made me an authority on hard answers everywhere. Businesses have already staked their religious market shares on preaching both the pro and con artistry. Many fringe sciences are fantasy, but some of the therapies are proving themselves to be surprisingly effective, even though the language of faithful social currencies are still wanting.

My work on the viability of ethical honesty has come through proving the "Styles of Evasion."

1.) Lies and Bullshit,

2.) Spacing out and Unconscious Forgetting,

3.) Condescension and Put-Downs.

4.) Compartmentalization and Burnout.

5.) And of course, the Evasions of Apathy.

{Based on the Realms of attachment from "The Tibetan Book of the Dead"}

All of these can be pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention from the outside, watching for our denials coming from evasive people, ourselves included. My mom once said to me, "There are times when you will have to lie, but never lie to yourself." When we see ourselves in each other's evasions, consider the source and when possible always be tactful. When a liar is just being evil, that's the subject of another discussion in the next chapter on Spiritual abuse. Self deception is always a narrative drift. Disillusion is the Key to Truthfulness.

On the subject of whether truth has a durable life of its own, I've had to clarify why we need to train for developing accurate memory. "Adversarial (Incendiary) Religion is Spiritual Abuse." The misdirection is very deep now.

Baruch "Benedict" Spinoza was excommunicated from his Synagogue for teaching Non-Dualism. That a Personal God doesn't exist. But does truth vote with its genes? Truth is not an intentional or intelligent self awareness, of and by itself. (Data in, data out; Very predictable but not intelligent.) Omniscience is that notion of a personal god. But were there an actual personal god, "What need would we have for faith?" (Joseph Campbell)

Neuroscience is entirely backing up Spinoza's assertion that the mind and the body are the same and not separate. (Spirit consciousness lives within the body.) Now for those of us who are comfortable with the idea of no afterlife, death doesn't give us much problem. But, what survives after we've been forgotten, that is the beauty of the human soul. The Mother of all things is good and bad, young and old, great and small. And I believe, awareness like truth, has a cohesiveness which transcends all pretenses of objectivity, coalescing to produce our perfect universe. And yes, it is sacred. I should probably stop here because the human soul has many dangerous hidden shallows. And these things need to be handled delicately. Peace.

Truth does create. And it's predictable. Witness the Attention.

XENOCULTURE and the Unifying Principles of Healthy Spiritual Fictions

                                                                                     

                       "Heal" "Love" "Win" This was from the end of the 5 hour movie, "The Justice League." Another morality play, these DC movie Comic Book Heroes are humorless and take themselves seriously. Whereas the Marvel Universe of Graphics Novels are cinematic action comedy. But, universally all Spiritual Fictions are morality plays. ( See: Sci Fi) And Like the Aristotelian constant of a "Dramaturgy", there is always a Beginning, a Middle, and an End, often with epilog, a moral a.k.a, the "Author's Message." But history is not supposed to be fiction and therefore is continuously narrative and unending. The literary artifacts of fiction always transcend the closed cultural identities of popular separatist history. Our Antagonists and Protagonists roles are sometimes ambiguous and morphing. But almost always there is either comedy or tragedy, unity or defeat. This is what makes Spiritual fictions universal in appeal and potentially propaganda. A Spiritual Fiction can be based on someones History, Legend or Speculation. But, the expectation is in an over riding good.

The SuperHeroes in these movies remind me of the "SEFER ZOHAR or Book of Splendor". Jewish mysticism was a rational response to the Pogroms. When God's Love and God's Justice are in conflict, we get morality play. (Complementarity, is the inevitability of contrasting elements creating productive outcomes.) From the Pale (Ukraine) has come many of these obscure traditions for challenging oppression with pure fantasy. Even the expression "Beyond the Pale" refers to the physical and spiritual abuses inflicted on innocent people that rival the imagination. I've always studied History intentionally avoiding fantasy. I feel Fantasy can cause alienation and schizoid dissociation. But, "The medium is not the message? I've found in my maturity, however, I'm coming to grips with the need for healthy diversions. So I'll juice up my SoulCraft And cruise the Galaxy for stories of love, liberty and release from suffering. Brought to you by your experimental entertainment medium, Jesus, Buddha, and the Cheshire Cat. Meow.

The Stages of Deprograming: How to know we're doing it right

                                                                                     

    "The Temptation of St. Anthony" was copied by Michelangelo from Martin Schongauer's engraving. 

                          My next book; "The Mutual Human Game" comes with instructions. 

                          I joyfully embrace my disillusionment. I'm fortunate to be gullible, and to know that I can be totally wrong. I too often need occasional correction. Update: Reassimilation is forgiveness of ourselves and others as we learn to trust again.

                         So, I "Engage the critique." {Authors Message} Admitting gullibility is only way I can get through to intelligent misinformed friends. If I didn't speak for myself,  by "engaging the critique," why would my friends listen to me. I too have been misinformed and even a little brainwashed. Admitting to a common human frailty is much faster than finger pointing, when it comes to talking straight.

                         We people, as humans, have many healthy moral principles, of both selfish and selfless mutual solidarity. But we rarely ever talk about that delicate balance between conflicting moral virtues and our  feeling sensibilities. We're forced by politically corrupted values into believing ridiculous absolutes. Fortunately, our Moral Ethics are not without practical sensibilities. But yet, our fragile minds have had our shared moralities corrupted. Spiritual abuse is that unfair fantasy of the powerfully elite, exploiting everything and everyone else, exclusively. This is the very mechanism of delusion. But fortunately, there may be a solution, and it is in our capacity for understanding. And there is nothing exclusive about it.

                         These skills of readaptation involve admitting what we require of ourselves, and that's why I try to avoid judging anyone else. (Some people are so judgemental, I can always tell by just looking at them. Lol.) Most of us have had problems with self correction, and thus we all need a little guidance from time to time. Ironically however, that's when we get led astray. We get punished for thinking for ourselves, right or wrong. And then, we frequently harden our resolve to never be wrong again. This is a terrible mistake. When we need to be most forgiving of ourselves, is when we're most easily brainwashed. When we are the most suggestable, we are vulnerable to mental attack. Most of the time misinformation isn't intentional. But when we're attacked for having an opinion, that healthy vulnerability can become injured and we shut down. When we need to consider "Deprogramming" (Psychic Recovery) it helps to know what your talking about.

                          Let me start with outlining the possible Stages of Disillusionment: {Deprogramming} I'm Using Elisabeth Kubler Ross's "5 stages of Grieving" to describe the process of detachment.  (I'll continue updating onto this page as I finish collating my notes. It could be all wrong. But I'll keep testing out the results to see where we are.  Emile Durkheim was the French Sociologist who had done some of the first work on the mechanisms of the Cults to exact what he called the "Rapid Conversion" of new cult members. We now are looking at whole societies of cult members.)

Defensive Posturing.   

Hostility/Paranoia

Reevaluation/or the Impasse {false & real}

Regret {the moral inventory}

Reassimilation Acceptance

In an "Age of Pandering" anyone can become a narcissist.

          The "High Trust Model" of teaching involves addressing the false narratives that becomes the lies people live. There are many of us who hide behind false pride to mask our scripts of failure. You might want to say to people, "I know exactly what you are doing, and so do you. I know you are capable of doing better." 

          Distinguishing between real evil and the mere habit of dysfunction is the best defense we can share. In this "Age of the Pandering Bourgeoisie" people try to wear masks of narcissism like emotional scar tissue, even when we're just broken. Engage the critique for ourselves personally. We can help break the cycle of learned narcissism by confronting our own traumas and false arrogance. 

          I worked in the new age alternative health community and I saw the endless soul injuries of well meaning people obsessed with their own misery. This is low grade narcissism, and it is treatable. Forgive the mistakes of others and understand misdeeds. People will thank you for confronting them in a non judgemental way. And of course, in those situations where you are dealing with real monsters, corrupt gurus, and unrepentant criminals, confront them from a polite safe distance, and be prepared to run. 

         
Narcissism is emotional poverty. Pity no one. Acrid empathy is love in action.

Achievement and Accomplishment ?

  This exercise is hard for me to get behind. I don't do things just for payoffs or rewards. Overachievement does more harm to the world than good. Sobriety isn't just an achieved accomplishment. It's a slow natural change, for which no one needs to take credit. People call me a survivor. But, is that really about me?

Incentives are important. But, I don't like bribing my ego? It's a trap to expect rewards for anything, even for a sense of completion. That's not satisfying. I find it hard to expect much of anything at all. I'm rarely disappointed, and change is often just what happens. We don't always need to be taking credit for success. It's easier to want little to nothing, enjoying each and every day. Reward systems and payoffs are often a real problem. I only want to do things for their own sake. And I don't want to look back with satisfaction on my accomplishments. The work of survival is it's own reward. And accomplishments for their own sake are uninteresting compared to the joy of living, which just happens.

Everyone has probably had those childish moments where we say, "WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO BE SO HARD?" And afterwards we often say, "That wasn't so bad, why did I think it would be so difficult?" But now, satiety demands that we walk away from our achievements and start over fresh, without any illusions of progress having achieved something.

Case in point: the last thing I want is from this wellness program is self satisfaction. It's merely another point of departure for which I will be grateful. But I will owe nothing to myself or anyone else for what nature demands of me relentlessly. That's not why I'm here. Sobriety can be its own reward and no accomplishments have to clutter up the timeline. This to me seems a little like busy work. I hope I'm wrong. Occasionally, I am going to have to go back to the beginning and say, "I don't understand what I'm being asked to do here." I get better results if I don't play the game of scoring accomplishments. I never ask, "Why is this happening to me." Bad things happen to good people all the time. Rather, credit for good things in my life goes to sweet providence. That way I don't get bogged down in a bloated sense of achievement, nor do I blame the universe for life's hardships.

"Language is a virus from outer space?" William Burroughs

                                                                                    

 Unproductive thought is the pollution of a corrupted imagination. Not all thought is narrative. Animals think and wonder, they just don't rationalize. Contemplation is a state of perspective, by which the body has its own mind always in a state of wonder. The irony of language, and of the otherwise healthy ego, is that language has been perverted into becoming a weapon by which the mind and it's capacity to wonder have been obliterated. If we want to understand the limitations of language, logic, and the narrative ego, we can say "Neti, Neti. Neither This, nor that." The Truth lies in between reality and the alert imagination. This is the only freedom of the mind.