More Than Me

Back in the 60s, there was a truly pointless TeeVee series called Bewitched.  I say it was pointless, like it was unique in that catagory, but in fact all TeeVee shows are pointless - except for Star Trek and Kung Fu.

Anyway, this Bewitched show featured a neighbor named Gladys Kravitz.  Gladys had a fuddy-duddy husband and a vanilla lifestyle that was so empty and meaningless that she spent all of her time watching the neighbors.  She was convinced that everyone else was having more fun than she was, and was determined to put a stop to it.

The whole world has turned into a bunch of Gladys Kravitzes.  For the most part, people are so bored, so empty and so unable to entertain themselves, that they have turned to watching everyone else.  Reality shows on TeeVee are just a form of legalized voyeurism.  Most entertainment - movies, TeeVee, even the internet for the most part - are completely passive activities that generally involve spying on other people's lives.

On top of that, we are all saddled with governments that have nothing better to do than to catalog, categorize and investigate every last minute detail of our lives, down to the size of our toilet tanks, which light bulbs we use and what we say to whom and when.

Is life really so empty and devoid of interesting things to do that the only form of entertainment left is to watch each other for signs of having fun?  If so, then let me off this merry-go-round from Hell.

Once upon a time, you could put a child in a room alone with a stick, a rock and a book and they would entertain themselves for days at a time.  Now they go hyperbolic if they don't have something that plugs in, lights up and makes a thousand nerve-jangling sounds.  And that's just the first five minutes, then they get bored and need new stimulation.

We've become a world of people incapable of introspection and self-occupation.  We can no longer carry on inner dialogues and generate extended mental exercises.  We have lost our imaginations.  If it isn't manufactured for us, it doesn't exist.  And we are suspicious of anyone who can think and act independently.

When you think about it, the whole War on the Noun Terror is about demonizing independence.  All of the All-Star terrorists are non-state actors who live transnationaly and off the grid.  The message is consistent and undeniable.

If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about, right?  In other words, you should not think or carry on internal dialogues because those things are hidden.  You should turn in anyone who looks suspicious - in other words, they enjoy being alone sometimes and pursuing hobbies that are self-enriching.

To ensure that you never have a moment alone with yourself, you are now surrounded with cameras, microphones, drones, online surveillance, and people who have been brainwashed into turning in anyone who deviates even slightly from the proscribed social life.

Go to a modern church.  They are nothing but non-stop noise, preaching, music, and distractions.  There is no time or desire (apparently) for quiet meditation.

Go to a school.  There is no reading or thinking, just constant activities and stimulation.  God forbid a child should have a moment to digest the blazing onslaught of information.

Go to a typical home.  There is no social interaction or conversation, just people frantically gestering and punching at their iFads and SmackBerries.

Lurking over all this are the electronic snoops, the infrared scans and the unceasing obsession with identification.  By the time a person is 18 years old, they have been carded, papered, stamped, and numbered.  And God help you if you venture outside your door without the approved ID documents.

All of this because we have become a world of Gladys Kravitzes.  We can stand the thought that someone else might be having more fun than us.  We have to quantify everyone's possessions and make sure that each individual has the opportunity to buy the same goods.  If your kid is smarter than mine, or your dreams more vivid, then by God there'll be Hell to pay!

Why do so many people feel compelled to climb all up in everyone else's business?  I suspect it's because those people are deathly afraid that you and I might have something they don't.  It's a game of 'keeping up with the Jones' gone completely awry.  It's me-too-ism taken to psychopathic degrees.  If you are exceptional in any way, then you are a terrorist and must be destroyed.

It used to be that everything was geared toward the lowest common denominator.  Now we have the greatest surveillance culture ever devised to ensure that everyone gets pounded into LCD compliance.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and there was the really annoying brat that checked everyone's stuff and if you had just a tad more, he would whine and complain until he got the same amount.  It's kids like that who have taken over the world.

Gladys would be proud.

Big Wheel Keep On Turnin'

A significant amount of the email I get through this blog questions my antagonism against religion in general, and evangelical christianity [sic] in particular.  The simple answer is it is just plain wrong, even evil.  But that requires an extended answer to justify the blanket statement.  As usual, I am always up to the task of long-winded responses.

My journey to liberation from religion ironically began with a man and a book, both having to do with Christian monasticism.  At the age of 21, having completed a world tour by backpack, I felt the need to contemplate my experience and assimilate what I had learned.  It was at that point I found myself living in New Mexico, where I joined the Monaster of Christ in the Desert as a postulant in the Benedictine order.

It was in the monastery that I encountered Thomas Merton and the Philokalia, not for the first time, but in far greater depth than I had done in the past.

Monasticism has always appealed to me, even from my youngest recollections.  I refer you to my essay on solitude back in December 2012.  I love being alone, not all the time, but for extended periods for recentering my mind and spirit.

The Buddhists have a symbol for this recentering.  It is a wagon wheel.  The first layer of meaning is that the spokes are paths to Enlightenment (the hub), and there are many of them.  The important part of the metaphor is that all paths are connected to the hub.  There is no one path that is more important than another, and the hub is the same for all of them.  Furthermore, they are all connected at the outside, as well as the inside, because they all begin with the same questions.

Back to Merton.  In Merton's later life, he spent a great deal of time in dialogue with Buddhists trying to reconcile Christianity (with a big 'C') to Buddhism.  In front of Merton's hermitage in Kentucky is a simple sculpture he made with a wagon wheel at the base of a cross.  It is a profound meditation for something so simple, and it calls to mind the Celtic crosses of my ancestors, which is what first caught my eye.

Reading Merton led me to delve into Buddhism.  It is there that I came to the inescapable conclusion that true Christianity and Buddhism are inextricably linked.  There are so many parallels between the Christ and the Buddha that it begs the question, "Are they the same philosophy?"

I say "philosophy" because the two paths are, in their purest forms, more systems of thought and action, rather than 'faiths', as we commonly call them now.  Both are paths to achieve personal godhood.  Buddha clearly stated that if one follows the path, one will achieve Nirvana, or a god-like state of being.  Jesus plainly said the same thing, telling his followers that they could do everything he did and more if they follow the path.

I could go on and on about how both the Buddha and the Christ journeyed into the wilderness, met three temptations, chose 12 apostles, and preached nearly identical sermons, but I don't want to ruin your own journey into liberation.

This does, however, lead us to the Philokalia, which is a book(s).  The title means "love of beauty".  It is a collection of writings by Eastern Orthodox monks dating from AD300 to AD1400, and later assembled into a single collection in the 1700s.  Most Christians have not read these writings, since they are primarily encountered in the contemplative life of monasteries.  Many of the writings are very similar to Zen koans, short stories designed to give the student a 'eureka' moment after due reflection.  Others are long dissertations on various aspects of the Christ and what it means to be Christian.

A thorough reading of the Philokalia will leave the student with the firm conviction that christianity [sic] is a horrible bastardization of the true teachings, at best, and a vicious apostasy designed to destroy Truth, at worst.

You see, in real Christianity, there are no 'saved' and 'unsaved' souls.  The Christ came to redeem all Humanity in all places at all times.  All humans are now saved and have been for the last 2,000 years.  What we are left with are adepts and students.  There is no need to be 'reborn', that was done for all time at the point the Christ died.  The Old Testament and Original Sin were all abolished at that moment.  There is no need for a place called "Israel" because now the entire Earth IS Israel.  There is no single chosen people.  Now all Humanity is the Chosen.  The Second Coming is not some event that will happen at the end of the world, but rather the awakening of the Christ within each human on their journey to Enlightenment.

All the arguments over virgin births, resurrections and transfigurations are completely pointless.  They have nothing to do with the true message.  They are, in fact, add-ons from old mystery religions and so-called pagan faiths.  They serve no purpose but to obscure and mislead.

In fact, there is no need for 'faith' because there is no illogical non-sequitur to overcome.  Like Buddhism, Christianity is a clear path to a real outcome that uses reason and hard work to achieve.  Everyone can do it if they apply themselves and seek true teachings.  No hocus-pocus about it.  Any one of several paths will lead the student to the hub, just as the wagon wheel and Celtic cross imply.

Into this very long history of Truth, dating from 500BC to present, comes a convicted felon and roust-about by the name of Cyrus Scoffield.  Among his various money-making schemes was tent revivals, where he would fleece unsophisticated folk of their hard-earned money while preaching about Jay-zus.  At one point, he was approached by a shadowy group of lawyers and banksters to write a version of the Bible that linked Old and New Testaments in highly questionable ways using translations and interpretations that were, at best, misguided.

It is from this so-called Scoffield Bible that we get the ideas of 'dispensation' and 'rapture'.  These two ideas are completely antithetical to the thousands of years of thought and scholarship that preceded Scoffield.  How can a select group of 'believers' be saved while the rest of humanity is doomed, when the Christ sacrifice saved all Humankind for all times and in all places?

Nevertheless, these egregious heresies caught on because they appealed to that distinctly American idea of 'exceptionalism'.    This idea that America and Americans are somehow special and given of God to show the world how things are done mixed rather well with the idea of being part of a select group of 'saved' individuals.  It appealed to the ego and made adherents feel as if they were part of an exclusive club ordained by God and sent to change the world.

And change it they have.  The history of the world since the introduction of 'dispensationalism' and 'rapture' has been one of slaughter, mayhem and the destruction of civil society.  The christians who bought into this heresy felt relieved of their responsibility to act Christian.  They could now wreak havoc on the world with the idea that they would be pulled up into the sky with Jay-zus to watch the results of their handiwork from a safe distance.

The Scoffield interpretation also meant that a political state called Israel had to be called into existence and a third temple be built in order to foster in the Age of the Antichrist and the End of the World.

Stop for a minute and consider just how sick and horrifying this is.  Here you have millions of people deluded into thinking the Second Coming is an event at the end of the world, that the timing of this event can be forced by meeting certain criteria, and that no amount of bloodshed and horror should be spared to achieve it because, Hey! We're saved and will be raptured out without having to suffer the horrors we created to get here.

Sick.  Horrifying.  Disgusting.

So, what does all this have to do with why I dislike and distrust religion?  Glad you asked.

All religions everywhere are nothing more than institutions of control in which some elite, based on private revelations that can never be confirmed objectively, tell their followers what to think and how to act.  When it is benign, religion can be positive and a good thing, but throughout human history, we have seen that any time an organization gains sufficient power over enough people, in steps a nefarious group of elites willing to exploit the unquestioning 'faith' of the followers.

This sort of blind faith is dangerous in any case and at all times.  Demagoguery appeals to emotions, not reason.  It is the antithesis of the Christ and the Buddha.  It is, in point of fact, the Antichrist.

What truly amazes me is that the followers of this State Religion are warned constantly against being fooled by the Antichrist who will set up a world religion and deceive millions of believers, and yet they are the millions who have been deceived.  And they fail to see the very thing for which they are to be ever-watchful.  It is the ultimate slight-of-hand.

The purpose for all this is very simple.  A group of lawyers and banksters chose a particularly charismatic con man, dictated the appropriate translations and interpretations they wanted to him.  Then they supported, bia generous donations, any preacher and institution that promoted this heresy in order to spread it far and wide.

The goal was to establish a secular state called Israel that could be used to commit the most heinous acts of barbarism, and do it all with impunity with the full faith and support of millions of people.  All of it was simply a means to take over the world behind the curtain of religion using an army of true believers who would do anything to achieve the goal while believing that they would be immune both from harm and Final Judgement because they were doing the work of Jay-zus.

Truly diabolical in its simplicity.

The remedy is equally as simple: go back and read the ancient practitioners who founded the Christian philosophy.  Reading the Philokalia and early Church fathers awakens one to the truth of what the student must learn and understand.  Following the example of thinkers such as Thomas Merton, who saw the link between the Buddha and the Christ, opens one's eyes to just how far off the True Path we have wandered.

What separates humans from lower animals is our facility for abstract reasoning and our ability to rise above mindless emotion.  Once we have learned to think and control our emotions, we are ready to leave the outside of the wheel and journey inward to the hub.  Where we embark on this journey does not matter.  There are a thousand ports.  What matters is the destination - the triumph of the Mind over Matter.

If the results of our beliefs are death, destruction and the lack of guilt due to feelings of superiority, then we are most certainly on the wrong path.  Any religion that preaches immorality as a means to an end, and absolution from guilt because the ends will justify the means, is a vicious and diabolical system appealing to the emotions rather than the intellect.

Morality is absolute and does not need a vengeful and judgmental god to enforce.  We know instinctively what is right and wrong, but we derail that instinct when we follow elitist leaders who preach that our immorality will be justified in the end by the triumph of doctrine over simple, pure Truth.  This is nothing more than arguing that immorality is the path to true morality.  In fact, they are mutually exclusive and can never be reconciled under any amount of 'faith'.

The hub of the wheel is the source of Life.  A religion that promotes bloodlust, destruction and Death cannot lead to that place.  Furthermore, any belief that requires the death and suffering of billions of people in order to prove its validity is, by definition, wrong.

In the end, I cannot follow or advocate any religion that requires blind obedience to self-appointed elite whose only authority is unverifiable personal revelations.  On top of that, the True Path is the one that leads to Life, and the student cannot follow those who justify death and destruction to get there.  Therefore, I have no use for 'religion' and 'faith'.  The Path is self-evident and self-guiding.  It does not need elite leaders and preachers.  It does not require 'faith' in non-sequiturs and illogical assumptions as a means of achieving Enlightenment.

Great minds, such as the Buddha and the Christ, have shown us what we can achieve, and dared us to go even farther.  They achieved their greatness without churches and preachers and elite of any kind.  In fact, they shunned those things every chance they got.  Both advocated solitude and quiet, not loud music and lots of halleluiahs.  They rejected political states and secular organizations.  They taught that the Path was not blind obedience, but self-actualization.

Most importantly, they told us that the Path was already inside each of us.  We need only find it and start down it.  To do that, we had to be quiet and listen.

How many 'religions' do you know that promote silence and solitude?  And 'religion' that keeps you whipped up in a frenzy of emotional turmoil is leading you the wrong way.

Fortress Of Solitude

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

I love solitude.

I'm a bit of a recluse and perhaps a little misanthropic, at that.  Had I stayed in the monastery all those years ago, I would most likely be a hermit by now.  I went into the entertainment industry because I loved movies and plays, but I hated being in the audience.  I really don't like crowds, though one-on-one, I can tolerate people.

That sounds worse than it is.  I have good social skills and can work a room with the best of them.  All my years of stage training gave me the ability to develop personae to deal with situations I don't like.  But if I had my druthers, I'd rather be here at the mountain house alone.

I think people have lost the art of solitude.  They don't know how to be alone, sans media.  They've lost the desire for solitude as a means of re-creation and re-habilitation.  Have you ever noticed that superheroes, writers and artists all seek solitude?  They always have a place to be alone - to think, to pray, to just blank out.

I have my mountain house.  I come here to be alone whenever I can, to drink single-malt scotch, smoke Cuban cigars and write.

One of the ways I write/think was taught to me by my high school English teacher.  It's called free writing.  I just sit in front of the computer and start typing.  Doesn't matter about grammar and punctuation.  Just write everything that passes through my brain on its way to Universe.  It's amazing the ideas and thoughts that come when you do it, but it requires solitude.

I practice a form of meditation that Lao Tzu called, "quieting the tree of chattering monkeys" in my mind.

I light a cigarette and stare at the smoke.  It rises completely uniform for two or three inches, then erupts into chaos.  It's as if it was very quiet, then it had a thought, and that led to a thousand other thoughts.  And that reminds me of my own mind.

I like to watch a column of miniscule red ants emerge from a tiny hole in the cement on the porch rail.  As they do, a hornet the size of a hummingbird swoops down and grabs them one at a time and eats them.  I think of a line of cars on a highway with a 747 swooping down and eating them one by one.

I watch the butterflies, of which there are millions here - from lacewings the size of my thumbnail to giant black ones the size of a saucer.  They always seem to go in a single direction, though they loop and swirl around in a fanciful dance on the breeze.

I have a plant in the garden that grows so fast that I can watch a leaf unfurl, if I sit still for two hours or so.  I also line up the Moon at night with some fixed point and watch it move across the sky.  When you consider how big the Moon is, and how far away, you realize that you are hauling ass around this planet without feeling it...unless you are alone and quiet.

Then I think about the fact that I live on the equator, which means that I am hauling ass around the planet standing perpendicular to the orbital axis.  That's a weird feeling.

We humans don't get enough solitude.  We are so inundated and mesmerized by our society that we forget to just stop, turn it all off and watch.  It's like shooting some class IV rapids.  When you're in them, your mind is extremely focused on the next rock or wave, pausing just barely enough to look slightly beyond.  At the same time, sitting on the bank watching someone go through the rapids is a completely different experience.  Most of us choose to shoot the rapids without ever sitting on the bank to watch.  It is two perspectives of the same event, but one lets you appreciate the Big Picture, while the other gives you hardly enough time to look beyond your nose.

I really hate large groups of people.  More than 10 means that if one panics, you're likely to be killed in the stampede.  I don't like that feeling.  I don't like that large groups of people act irrationally.

Put another way, imagine that you are in a large swimming pool with a few dozen people all jumping and swimming and splashing.  Try to stand perfectly still.  You can't.  All those people are creating turbulence that buffets you and moves you around, even though you are making an effort to be still.  Then they all get out.  After a time, the water calms and eventually you can stand perfectly still and make hardly a ripple in the water.  Now stretch out your arms to the side and bring your hand together as fast as you can.  Look at the eddies and waves you make with one single movement.  Now imagine what you and all those around you are doing to the Universe around you.

I've been in solitude for 24 hours now.  I haven't spoken a single word in that time and have made as few movements as I can.  I laid out in the grass and watched the sky.  I went out in the rain and felt it hit me like icy needles.  I sat on the porch for hours and watched and listened.  I made a loud noise and listened to the guitar across the room resonate in harmony without touching it.  I isolated some vibrations that I really like and grokked them as fully as I could.

And I sought out the vibrations of people I love and harmonized with them.

I love solitude.

There's a reason that aesthetics have sought the most barren and isolated places on Earth for millennia.  They are trying to limit the number of vibrations around them so that they can first understand them fully, and then learn to control them.

There's a reason why thinkers and artists seek solitude.  They need to limit the amount of information coming at them as much as possible in order to focus on particular ones.  superman had the fortress of solitude.  Batman had the Batcave.  Every real writer has a writing shack.  Every inventor has a lab or workshop.  Every person who actively participates in the creative process needs solitude.

Some people are terrified of it.  I don't know why, but they are afraid to be alone.  The idea of doing nothing scares the hell out of them.  I've seen people go nuts with it.  I've witnessed them lose their identify because no one was there to witness it.  I know people for whom a day without speaking is a nightmare.  I don't understand it.

I love solitude.

The monastery where I lived is located in the Chama river canyon in northwest New Mexico.  Just south of the monastery, the Paloma river canyon forms a nearly 90-degree angle from the west.  At the confluence of the rivers, there is an island covered in aspen trees and wild asparagus.  On one precise September evening, the Chama canyon is already dark by 5pm.  By 6pm, the Sun sets precisely down the Paloma canyon, causing an amazing shaft of light to beam out of the canyon and light up a the aspens with their gold leaves and silver bark.  There, in the middle of the inky darkness, is a fire that does not consume its host.  And on the opposite wall of the canyon were the shadows of trees a thousand feet tall.  It is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed, and it lasts precisely 10 minutes...and then it's gone until next year.  And I have only seen it once over 30 years ago.

If I had not been in solitude, sitting and waiting for nothing, facing just the right direction, I would not have seen this amazing thing.  And being in solitude, and in the right frame of mind, I was able to burn that scene into my mind so that even now, in the quiet of the mountains, I can close my eyes and see it perfectly, reliving every single sencond of it as if I were sitting in that canyon so long ago and far away.

Solitude is a gift and it should never be wasted or reviled.  It is a time when the most beautiful things happen and we have the time to sit and absorb them.  It is the time when the mud settles and the water becomes perfectly clear for a moment.  It is a time when you can actually feel other life.

And that reminds me of one other story.  While I was at the monastery, I made a retreat to do a 'spirit circle'.  A spirit circle was practiced by certain native American people.  It involves going out into the wilderness and clearing a circle about 10 feet across.  You strip naked and enter the circle with nothing...no clothes, no food, no water.  You sit in the center as still as you can.  When you have to move around, you can not step outside the circle.

The amazing thing?  After about half a day, you can feel things enter your circle.  I could feel insects moving around me.  The second night, I was nearly asleep when a bob cat entered.  I felt it like a slap on my right shoulder, and when I turned, we were eye to eye, not moving.  He eventurally walked away.  Deer came up and rubbed their heads on me without fear.  I could sense the dew and turned my head up to drink it.  It was the most amazing sense of oneness I have ever had, and one I have longed for ever since.

Every human being should practice solitude.  In fact, I'm convinced that most of what's wrong with society is the lack of solitude, or even desire for it.  One is never so connected to humanity than when one is truly alone.  The creative force explodes with energy when we limit the outside influences and dive into solitude like a vast pool of clear, still water.

I love solitude.

Just now, I took a break to go out in the back garden and play with the plants.  By chance, I rubbed the tomato and rosemary bushes with the same hand, then paused to smell my hand.  It's intoxicating.

I love solitude...until the neighbor shows up with off-key karaoke at the crack of dawn.