tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-203126802024-03-13T23:45:24.822-07:00New LeafsET's AnonymousJasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.comBlogger260125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-46909795172764263422012-10-27T16:33:00.000-07:002013-06-04T18:05:43.994-07:00This Blog Has Now Moved<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;">The action is now at:</span> <a href="http://auticulture.wordpress.com/">http://auticulture.com/</a></h3>
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<a href="http://auticulture.wordpress.com/">http://auticulture.wordpress.com/</a></h3>
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<a href="http://crucialfictions.com/">http://crucialfictions.com</a> (shhh) </h3>
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<span style="color: #990000;">You can also follow me on</span> <a href="https://twitter.com/JaKephas">https://twitter.com/JaKephas</a></h3>
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Thank you and good night!</h2>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xGytDsqkQY8" width="560"></iframe> Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-41012381471999990032012-07-30T16:20:00.002-07:002012-07-30T16:20:27.669-07:00DOing the ET Dream<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I am breaking my silence to share two new releases which I hope will herald a new beginning for me: An article at Reality Sandwich on </span><a href="http://www.realitysandwich.com/disillusionist_new_spirituality_sciencefiction" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Dave Oshana & the Transmission</a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">. And an interview with Doug Lain, recorded two months ago, on matrix living and </span><a href="http://sittingnow.co.uk/2012/07/28/diet-soap-podcast-153-the-dream-of-enlightment/" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">the dream of enlightenment. </a></div>
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Peace OutJasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-68926548609002945692012-06-14T10:43:00.001-07:002012-06-14T11:34:20.448-07:00Why Do I Maintain This Blog?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I ask myself this question from time to time. The last time was this morning, after receiving the following anonymous comment:<br />
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Such a disappointment.. I fully agree with William. Since being introduced to your writing, you have brought many insights into my life that synchronistically spoke to some very trying personal experiences. Aeolus always struck me as someone who was cracking open in the best sense, and hitting on pertinent truths in a way that would help many others embarking on the very same journey. Having said that, this "Dave" business is such a crock of shit that it shocks me to see you falling into it. I trust you still haven't handed the man A SINGLE DOLLAR of yours. You say you aren't "trying to copy him, be more like him" yet several sentences later you say you "represent" him. You seem to be a very discerning fellow and though I gather you've had a very challenging several years (I am Sebastian as well), I will trust that you won't fall too far down this pit before you catch yourself. Fancy semantics and clever touchettes aside, I trust your innermost knows what the fuck it's doing... Good "luck" Jason.</blockquote>
Apparently some of my blog readers want to “save” me from my latest “folly.”<br />
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I cite this anonymous comment as an example of the most annoying sort of feedback I get. It seems like it is friendly and supportive, but the professed concern is patronizing and insulting, and its function is more to soften me up for the blows than anything. It's based on the premise that I have been suckered and that I need someone who knows nothing about it to tell me how I have been suckered. <br />
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What does this person want? It’s a complex question, but it’s a question that ties into the main one: why do I keep up this blog when it’s generating this sort of passive aggressive, uninformed “concern.” First he describes how he has benefited from my insights, after which he accuses me sharply of falling for a “crock of shit.” He doesn’t say why it’s a crock of shit. Apparently stating his opinion strongly enough is supposed to deter all arguments. (That’s called bullying.) His actual intent, however unconscious (and when someone is this angry they usually aren’t very conscious) is to belittle me and put me in an inferior position to himself. <br />
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What is he so angry about? Why does he mention that he shares a name with my brother? What is his superiority (combined with a presumptuous sort of intimacy) based on? None of this is revealed. All that is clear is that this person is angry, which means he is afraid, and that his show of concern is just that: a show. It does not extend as far granting me the space and freedom to find myself, but is only an attempt to intimidate me (or others observing) into backing him up in his unintrospected and unproven fears—whatever they may be. (Something to do with being tricked into trusting an untrustworthy teacher/father/brother figure, perhaps?)<br />
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This blog offers a service, a free one, and for whatever it’s worth. For someone to benefit from this free service and then to complain about it—to profess to know more than I do about my own “product” (insights)—isn’t just rude—it’s ridiculous. It reminds me of Dylan fans (I was never one) calling him a sell-out for going electric. It’s so illogical, in fact, that there can only be some deeper emotional reaction underneath it. Apparently this person believes, like those angry Dylan fans, that I and my insights belong to him, and is threatened by any extraneous influences jeopardizing his “supply.”<br />
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Moving on to the other end of the spectrum, I also receive kind and supportive comments, such as this one:<br />
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It's a noble endeavour. As Ray Menezes says, there is no other task more important than getting to the bottom of the this [sic] conundrum. Bravo Jason, if we were sane we'd all be following your lead.</blockquote>
Naturally, I agree with the sentiments expressed here 100%. I very much doubt if this person knows any more about Dave Oshana than the other commentator, but then he doesn’t need to. He's not casting judgment on Oshana, he’s responding to what I wrote. He perhaps goes a bit too far with his encouragement, since I don’t want anyone to follow my lead, exactly, although I do want people to think about what I write and apply it to their own lives. (And I am very happy if I hear someone has checked out Dave’s “product”—why, because I think it’s a damn fine product! I wonder if I would get the same sort of flack if I was recommending a friend’s music or art work?) <br />
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In a sense, the first comment quoted here, annoying as it may be, is more useful to me, because it underscores the sort of blind prejudice and emotional resistance that exists out there to the idea of enlightenment, and/or the possibility that it might be a real goal—one which we can be guided and supported towards by others (even at a price—shock, horror!).<br />
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I don’t want to make this about Dave Oshana. Really. But anyone who reads this blog who then comes to me with allegations, accusations, or simply voicing their skepticism about him is wasting their time. Why? Because if they want to find out about Dave, they can go directly to his site, online classes, or book a one-to-one with him, and find out for themselves. And if they already know it’s a crock, because it’s so obvious, then instead of trying to save me from my naiveté, hey man, just go back to your early Dylan records, and enjoy the memory of better days.<br />
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The person you thought I was, and any the insights you thought I had for you, never existed. There is only this moment. And right now—Aeolus is going electric! (Not literally; I left my guitar in Guatemala.)<br />
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<br />Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-14727801147999649872012-06-09T12:48:00.001-07:002012-06-09T12:48:46.991-07:00The Red Herring of EnlightenmentThe whole question of whether a teacher is enlightened is a red herring. No one but the supposed enlightened person can know the answer, and all we can judge are the effects of being with them, and of being open to their teaching and guidance. We can only know where they are at by going there. Enlightenment doesn’t actually mean anything to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. <br /><br />In the same way, love, soul, God, etc. don’t mean anything without the experience of them. For most of us, they are just words for concepts that are beyond our understanding or even experience, which is at best partial, at worst non-existent. And since we can’t know if someone else is enlightened or not, all we can do is believe it or disbelieve it. Since neither of these is useful, that leaves the third option: allowing it to remain unknown. <br /><br />The proof of the pudding is in the eating and nowhere else. The recipe, the cultural history, the chef’s credentials or recommendation, the reviews in The Good Food Guide and The Guardian, can help us decide if we want to order it or not. But until we take that first bite, it’s all just second-hand information and it has nothing to do with the experience of eating. <br /><br />For me it comes down to a very basic question: Is there a way out? Is there a state of awareness, an experience, that is free from conditioning, delusion, and unnecessary suffering? If I come upon someone who claims to have found a way out, in such a way that seems plausible, I am going to investigate as closely as I can. If I find enough evidence to support their claim, I throw caution to the wind and (without relinquishing my critical faculties or capacity for discernment) put my trust in that person’s greater insight and wisdom. There’s really no other way to test it. <br /><br />I know that I risk making a fool of myself, being disappointed, disillusioned, even deceived; but the risk is minor compared to the possible gain. Whatever the ego says about having to go it alone, stand on my own two feet, and not depend on anyone else to show me the way, experience indicates the opposite is the case. The only really significant steps I have taken in my life are the result of being pushed, inspired, or challenged by outside agencies. <br /><br />It is massively significant step, however, to allow for the possibility that the outside agency belongs to entirely different level of being, as different from me as I am from a chimpanzee, maybe more so. The ego is honor-bound to find a hundred reasons to reject this point of view as “unsound.” The question of how to enter into such a relationship without giving up entirely one’s independence of thought is the riddle I am faced with. Perhaps the answer is that it can’t be done because it doesn’t need to be done, because there is no such thing as “independence of thought”?<br /><br />My body may know the answer, but my mind can still doubt the body. It is what the mind does best. And in the absence of knowing, all that is left is belief. Believing that the transmission is real is useless: it is just an opinion. I have to know. But the only way to know is to proceed as if it were real, in order to find out. That means to proceed without believing, which leaves only trust: trust in the teacher, to a degree, but mostly trust in myself and above all, trust in life. Trust that this is the path that I am meant to be taking. The funny thing is, I really don’t doubt it. But I doubt all the rest, the details, the moment to moment decisions, decisions which always come down to the one decision: to surrender or not to surrender. My self-doubt is projected outward, onto all the things that are stirring the doubt within me. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the doubt. The more real I see and feel transmission to be, the greater my self-doubt becomes, the more I doubt the reality of the transmission!<br /><br />I seem to be running out of options, as well as time. The more I think about this, question it, or pay attention to my doubts and criticism, the more it feels like I am simply making excuses, complaining, or indulging in denial and avoidance. Sometimes I just want to yell at the top of my lungs that none of this makes sense and that I cannot possibly be expected to live my life according to such a preposterous premise. Yet through it all, there is never, for even a moment, any real or meaningful doubt that this is the only possible way forward for me. Or, I suspect, for any of us.<br />Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-27643529884775540482012-06-02T02:22:00.001-07:002012-06-02T02:22:25.680-07:00Gnosis & Agnosis, Open-Minded Skepticism, & "The Transmission"<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
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Why am I here in the Baltics, where the wind blows cold in June? </div>
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The easy answer is that I am here to make a fresh new start in life, in a place with no previous associations. Beyond that, simple practical reasons for being here are few, and all secondary to this first one:
I am here to investigate more deeply into a phenomenon which has perhaps always been under the surface of my awareness, but which only recently came all the way into view, a phenomenon which, for whatever reason, seems to be emanating from this part of the world.
The Transmission. </div>
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What is the Transmission?
A Homing Signal?
A form of conscious energy that may take up residence in and find expression through human beings, but which is not restricted to human beings? </div>
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A living agent of awakening that issues from beyond the material realm and that calls us back to its source, which is the source of everything? That wishes to land in and emerge through material form while turning material forms back towards their own true nature, which is that of conscious energy?</div>
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I am here to scout for and collaborate with individuals who are able to receive, recognize, and embody the Transmission and thereby increase the strength and clarity of that Homing Signal. </div>
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From what my feeling-sense tells me, the Transmission wants to take over my life;
but it has always been running the show, so maybe what is changing is my wanting to have a dialogue with what is running the show -
to be a conscious puppet instead of an unconscious one. </div>
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It's an infinity loop: I am here to investigate what brought me here.
Clearly, the Transmission does not originate from the Baltics or anywhere in the material realm. There may be areas of greater or lesser concentration, that's part of the investigation. </div>
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I expect to meet with skepticism. Why wouldn't you be skeptical?
What's the alternative to skepticism? Belief, or credulousness? </div>
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For most people, "open-minded" and skeptical seem like opposites, but can an investigation proceed on any other basis besides one of skepticism <i>and </i>open-mindedness? I'd say a little of both are required.
I am skeptical about Transmission - if I weren't I would have to be satisfied with only partial knowledge and fill in the gaps with belief.
Perhaps the reason skepticism often takes on negative connotations is because we are taught that we must believe in something? It is bad manners not to believe another person's claims, for example, because non-belief is equated with disbelief, so we end up seeming like we are calling them a liar just because we question their claims. </div>
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We can't even conceive that a state of non-believing different from dis-belief could be possible. Belief is like the ground we stand on. Having an opinion, and a "position," is mandatory, unless we simply plead ignorance.
Ignorance also has a bad name - as if saying I don't know is somehow less honorable than having an unformed opinion about something.</div>
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But <i>gnosis </i>can only occur in/from a state of <i>agnosis</i>. Knowledge can never come from belief, only from an acknowledgment of ignorance. Investigation comes from admitting ignorance combined with an intent to find out the truth, and to suspend all belief until knowledge has been gained. Detectives have hunches, it's true, but that's more like intuition than belief, which is a product of mind. The trick is to act on a hunch without believing in it. Because of our need to believe or disbelieve, a hunch often leads to a belief, but it doesn't need to. Why do we choose to
believe one thing over another? There are many reasons, but intuition
may be among the better, more "organic" ones. Then again, it could also
be a subtler less surface sort of self-deception.<br />
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The purpose of following a hunch is to test a belief. Then the belief is either confirmed and becomes knowledge, or is discarded as a faulty intuition.<br />
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<br /></div>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-25612752865303056372012-05-30T04:26:00.003-07:002012-05-30T04:26:40.101-07:00The Answer<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
Is there a meaning to life?</div>
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Answer: if there is no meaning to life, then the question "Is there meaning?" can have no meaning. </div>
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If the question does have meaning, however, then clearly, there is meaning to life, since there is meaning in the question, "Is there meaning?" </div>
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The answer is in the question: it is that the question "Is there a meaning to life?" is either meaningless, or it answers itself. </div>
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In either case, the question is 100% redundant.</div>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-2980714921536689132012-05-29T03:48:00.001-07:002012-05-29T03:48:34.140-07:00The Disillusionist<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b>Dave Oshana, Enlightenment Coach or Popcorn Chef?</b></div>
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<a href="http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/65/0e9c929cfe7a430ba52a768d80c85585/l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/65/0e9c929cfe7a430ba52a768d80c85585/l.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">It feels like time for full disclosure so far as what I am doing in Estonia/Finland and what all this enlightenment talk is about. So here's a piece I wrote last year which I shared at a couple of forums but spared my regular readers until now, partly so as to spare myself their/your ire, skepticism, and so forth. Several months have gone by since I wrote it, and I've gone a ways deeper down the Rabbit Hole of Transmission, but I think this piece still accurately describes my point of view, at this time.</span></div>
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<span> </span>“The most impressive
thing about you is how unimpressive you are,” I once said to Dave Oshana. He
laughed and told his wife, who nodded her head (or so he said, we were on Skype
at the time). Recently, I was reading the (somewhat out of date) testimonials
at one of his websites, and I was struck by how many people had had
life-changing experiences around him. These experiences—of “no mind,” oneness,
transcendental bliss or swirling lights and colors—often occurred within days,
hours, even minutes of meeting him. In one incident, it happened during a
woman’s first phone conversation with him—a Canadian journalist entered into a
non-ordinary state of awareness and “came to” lying on the grass, wondering why
she had a phone in her hand. It took her nine months to write about her
experience. </div>
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After four years of knowing Dave, I still don’t have any cool
stories about no-mind states, bliss-tsunamis, energy balls, halos or Ufos
hovering over his head. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nada</i>. Dave Oshana
crept up on me so slowly that it’s hard for me to even say exactly what it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> that drew me to him. Why I am so sure
that he’s an authentic agent of enlightenment? What is it that impressed me so
much? I come back to that one thing: he never tried to impress me. Now that’s
impressive!</div>
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I was not even remotely interested in finding a guru until I
turned 40. Coincidentally that was when I met Dave Oshana. Unlike other
spiritual teachers I’ve seen, before and since meeting Dave (admittedly most of
them on YouTube or TV), Dave stands out most of all for his complete lack of
airs. People often say that their gurus aren’t putting on airs, and that they
just “naturally” emanate holiness, or whatever else they emanate. But to my
mind, now that I’ve met Dave Oshana, “naturally emanating holiness” comes under
“putting on airs.” With Dave there is no soulful gazing, no pregnant
silences,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>no beatific smiles, no disarmingly
childish giggling, and no crypto-mystic turns of phrase. Not that these things
don’t happen, exactly—they can be part of the Oshana experience (mine at least).
It’s only that they don’t call attention to themselves and they don’t ever
create the impression of holiness, or of anything else. They are just parts of Dave,
and with Dave, what you see is what you get—except for the bit you don’t see.
There is no mystery, no magic tricks, no melodrama. Just Dave. </div>
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Dave isn’t simply ordinary in the way that lots of
guru-types are “ordinary”—humble and sweet and self-effacing and whathaveyou.
He is all that, but he's also just a regular bloke. It’s easy to imagine him
passing through the world without people suspecting that there’s anything
remotely unusual about him (except for his cheeky sense of humor and his firm
but gentle refusal to shake hands). If he doesn’t get mistaken for an ordinary
guy, it’s because he’s an “enlightenment teacher” with a neon sign over his
head, and most of what he does, as far as I know, entails spreading the divine
virus of “Transmission.” But miraculously, he makes being an enlightenment
teacher seem ordinary, a bit like any other job. He’s like a plumber who comes
to check your pipes and makes lively chit-chat while he does it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dave’s chit-chat was so engaging that it
actually took me three years to “get” what he was doing with my pipes (so to
speak). That was probably why I never quite believed that he was really an
enlightenment teacher. He has the gift of making what he does seem effortless,
like he's not actually doing anything, which Dave would probably say is the
case: he isn’t. </div>
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Dave and I first met in London in December 2007. I was
living in Hampstead at the time. I happened to hear about him from someone who
had recently experienced a spontaneous “awakening,” who contacted me because of
a book I’d written called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matrix Warrior</i>.
This person wanted to enlist my help writing their own book, about Kundalini
and enlightenment, and he happened to mention this teacher who was coming to
London. He gave me a link to Oshana’s “Enlightenment Now” website and I read a
short article in which Dave used <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matrix</i> movie as a metaphor. That got my
attention. Since I was into sorcery and the occult back then and not
spirituality and gurus, I rarely if ever went to see spiritual teachers. If
Dave hadn’t been coming to my neighborhood—the meeting was a ten minute walk
away—and if we hadn’t had <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matrix</i> in common, I probably wouldn’t
have shown up. But those two factors combined made it impossible to resist. Kismet
is what it used to be called. Destiny.</div>
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I emailed Dave and told him about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matrix Warrior</i> and took a copy along with me, as well as my mother,
who lived locally too. By chance, one of my copies of the book was already
inscribed to “Dave,” another Dave who hadn’t read it and had forfeited his
copy. I gave Dave the book and told him it had been meant for a different Dave—a
fact he reminded me of four years later. The meeting was enjoyable but I was
less than bowled over by it. One thing struck me during the meet besides Dave’s
ordinariness: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>during a momentary pause
in his free-associative monologue (he talked <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a lot</i>), his eyes became unfocused and he seemed to be somewhere
else. It was similar to what I’d seen in people’s eyes when they were on LSD. Since
I was reasonably sure Dave wasn’t on hallucinogens, the strange look in his
eyes convinced me that, whatever else he was, he wasn’t faking. There was definitely
something different about him.</div>
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I went to a second meeting two days later, on a Sunday, this
time for energy work. Soon after, possibly that same day, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I received an unexpected call from one of his assistants
saying that Dave would like to meet me that evening, at the Hilton on Edgware Road.
I think I was only given a couple of hours’ notice, if that. I didn’t hesitate,
jumped on my bike and sped to the meet. I arrived around nine in the evening
(if memory serves) and found Dave in the reception area. We sat in a quiet
corner at a small table and talked for about three hours. Typically enough for
me (though not for Dave), I did most of the talking. </div>
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Dave had speed-read my book and he was curious to find out
if I really knew as much as the book suggested or if I’d just got lucky. For my
part, I was curious to know what he meant by enlightenment, why he called
himself that (even if he was), and why he used the word “spiritual” so much (I considered
the word to be facile and vague). When I told him that I didn’t think he was
enlightened, he seemed only mildly curious. Back then, I had very specific
ideas about what enlightenment was. To me it meant the ultimate and final goal
of consciousness and of human existence. I equated it with God-consciousness
and Total Oneness with the Universe (or Multiverse). In my mind, that entailed
becoming a Cosmic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Übermensch</i>, simultaneously
aware of everything that was happening—and everything that ever did or would
happen—in all of Creation. It included not only being able to access memories
of past lives but of everyone else’s lives too—past, present and maybe even
future. My extravagant picture of enlightened <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">übermensch</i> had been formed, over the years, with the help of
authors like Carlos Castaneda—with his Toltec sorcerer don Juan—and Whitley
Strieber’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Key</i> (Strieber
allegedly met a God-man whom he called “the Master of the Key” in a Toronto
hotel room one night, in June of 1998). Dave Oshana was a brash and bawdy—though
oddly unassuming—Cockney “wide boy” in his late thirties, and clearly he did
not meet the necessary requirements. I was fairly sure he had not attained the
ultimate goal of human consciousness, and I told him as much. Perhaps he had only
“lost the human form,” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ventured. (Losing
the human form was another concept I’d got from Castaneda, who described it as a
step on the way to total freedom but far from the final one.) I suggested to
Dave that, like so many other wanna-be’s, he might have misunderstood his
experience and fallen into “the guru trap” (something else I had read about).
Perhaps Dave was amused by my line of questioning and apparent “concern,” I
don’t know, but he said nothing to convince me otherwise, and by the end of the
meeting I was no less skeptical. I had grown to like him, however, and I was flattered
that he’d been willing to spend so much time<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>with me, ad hoc and free of charge.</div>
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We stayed in touch on and off by email for the next three
years. During that time (2008-2010), I met another spiritual teacher and for
the first time ever I took on a guru. In retrospect, the guru I chose was the
polar opposite of Dave: somber, imposing, and a profoundly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">impressive</i>, even regal<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i>
presence. This was my idea of what a “man of knowledge” ought to look, sound
and act like, so I accepted him as an Enlightened Master and assumed the
submissive position. Compared to such a “Master,” Dave was obviously a mere lightweight.
Yet ironically enough, it was Dave’s “lightness” that would eventually convince
me of his authenticity, and also what helped me to see past my own guru’s airs
and graces. But that’s another story, for another place. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the start, Dave Oshana was too seemingly ordinary and approachable
for me to ever see him as a Master. There was none of the distance, the feeling
of inequality, that characterizes a standard relationship between disciple and
guru. There are plenty of enlightenment teachers who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">say</i> that enlightenment is ordinary. They talk about how it’s available
to everyone, just for the asking. But Dave didn’t just say it, he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demonstrated</i> it. How exactly he did so
is difficult to describe. Despite his personable, affable, and totally accessible
personality, he didn’t reveal much about himself and he wasn’t really
interested in my personal life, even if I continued to kid myself that he was. The
more time I spent talking with him (on Skype, and emailing back and forth), the
more apparent it was that he was fundamentally different than anyone I’d ever
met. Since I have an intellectual bias, it was probably the speed of his
thoughts and verbal expression, his precision and the depth of his insights, that
gradually convinced me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other thing
that struck me about him was his looseness and flexibility. Over months of
informal conversations, I never once detected tension or rigidity, discomfort
or effort in him. There was a lack of attachment, of points to defend, that I had
never seen before. He seemed to be constantly at ease, yet always totally
present. Behind the playful exterior was a fierce and unwavering attention.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By Dave’s account, his liberation simply happened,
spontaneously and out of the blue, when he woke up one morning in June of 2000
and slowly realized that his old self was gone. That was what he meant by
enlightenment, and it seemed like something that could happen to anyone, at any
time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little by little, through knowing
Dave, I adjusted my idea of enlightenment and scaled it down to something real,
something tangible, human, and attainable. What Dave described was similar to
what happened to Thomas Anderson in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Matrix</i>: he woke up and realized that his life and his former self was just
a dream. He didn’t become Neo overnight, however. All that really happened when
he was unplugged was that a fundamental delusion ended. Like Morpheus and the
rest, Dave was operating at another level of being<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which I couldn’t understand because, outside
of some deranging psychedelic journeys and deep dreaming states, I didn’t have
direct experience of it. But somehow, despite the growing awareness of the
enormous distance between us—the distance between one reality and another,
between waking and dreaming—I didn’t feel intimidated by Dave or in awe of him.
His particular way of relating was so open and easy that it kept me at ease. It
also prevented me from focusing or obsessing on the apparent gulf between us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Looking back, I now think that all of his ingenuity,
dexterity, wisdom and wit, was little more than a magician’s sleight of hand to
divert my attention from what he was really doing. A bit like a kindly doctor
who distracts a child with jokes and funny faces while the nurse gives him a
painful shot in the backside. Dave’s surface chatter kept my mind engaged<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>while he, or something (he calls it the Enlightenment
Transmission, E.T. for short),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>did its
work—secretly, behind the scenes, at a subtler, energetic level. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>
happening around Dave Oshana at that subtler level? I still don’t know, or at
least, I can’t really say, and not because I don’t want to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recently, I asked Dave how his becoming
enlightened affected his family relationships, the one with his mother for
example. (My head was filled with traditional tales of awakened beings severing
ties with family and friends, and suchlike.) Dave’s answer was that they hadn’t
really noticed. I’m tempted to leave it at that, because in a way that says it
all, and because this task (testifying to Transmission) is proving even more difficult
than I thought it would be. A writer needs to be able to write about anything
he puts his mind to, but I don’t seem able to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">find my mind</i> when it comes to writing about Dave! <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D’oh!</i> The more I try to put my finger on
what he is, and on what he has done for, to, or with me, the more it, or he,
eludes my writer’s grasp.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like most enlightenment teachers, Dave describes
enlightenment as our natural state. Unlike most teachers that I know of, he
manages to somehow demonstrate it too. He’s the most natural person I’ve ever
met, and it’s this, more than anything else, that draws me to him. He’s the
first person I've met who seems wholly and fully himself, and his presence stirs
in me a heartfelt desire, a soul-deep longing, to be what I am, as naturally, effortlessly
and joyfully as he is himself. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
According to Dave, to get the Transmission a person only
needs the courage to show up. In my experience, it goes the other way too: for
Dave to give the Transmission he only needs to show up, which is all he ever
really seems to DO: show up and be himself. Invariably, surprisingly, things
happen. Sometimes it’s delightful, sometimes disturbing; it’s always unexpected
and usually perplexing; at times it’s plain maddening. Dave is a disllusionist.
His job, he says, isn’t to get anyone enlightened but only to break apart the
false assumptions and mistaken beliefs that come between us and IT—our natural
state. So that’s what he does, and his art isn’t so much the illusion-busting,
but how gently, tenderly, and playfully he does it (most of the time, at
least).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
If Dave is just like you and me,
he's also heralding, embodying, beckoning, and inviting us into a new form of
awareness and a new way of being, one that a lot of people talk about, these
days, but that in my opinion almost no one has actually experienced. It’s a way
of being that includes the ordinary, human, everyday experience but that isn’t contained,
limited, or defined by it. Whenever I am with Dave, he drives home to me—like a
splinter into my brain—the difference between him and me. It’s the difference
between the dull existence of a cold, dry kernel and the bouncing,
butter-soaked life of a hot and puffy piece of popcorn. Since I've known him,
I’ve become painfully aware of what a hard and unappetizing husk I am; but also
of how, under the right conditions, that brittle shell of false identity can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pop</i>, inside out, and turn me in an
instant into the tasty morsel which God and Nature intended me to be. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what does “under the right conditions” mean? Being
willing to climb inside the Oshana pot and endure the heat. That’s a massive
step, no doubt about it. But if I am willing, the more I begin to trust to that
inevitable process of being popped, the more Transmission will do the rest.
Eventually, the kernel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i> pop. Oshana
retreats, meetings, one-to-ones and even online classes, all require active
engagement, not passive devotion or studious attention. Dave doesn’t want
followers or students but participants, and eventually team-mates. There’s a
sense of urgency and of pressure about everything he does, and his invitation to
participate is a bit like a trumpet blast. He is calling us to step up and meet
him where he is, on the battlefield, instead of obliging him to come down into
the simulator program and do more shadow puppets for us. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dave has said that he just happens to be one of the ones who
awakened first, and that it could have been any one of us. Since it was him,
he’s obliged to assume the role of teacher, coach, captain, and team leader. But
it’s only a role, dictated and maintained not by Dave but by our own ego-generated
delusions about the nature of reality, and of ourselves. We are like husks in
the pot, looking hopefully over at the first one to pop, thinking, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">He</i> must have the secret!” Meanwhile,
he’s looking back at us, wondering what’s taking us so long.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hold on! What’s Up? Using words to communicate truth is like
trying to put the Sun in your backpack or stop the river from flowing with your
hands. Why bother? It <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a bother
too, but something compels me to try. I don’t know who or what Dave Oshana is,
only what he is to me. That’s all I’m trying to describe—or failing to
describe. Dave suggested recently that I only write positive, uplifting words. Ironically,
in the absence of bliss-outs or no-mind epiphanies, the best way I can think of
to describe what Dave means to me is negatively. Here it is: Nothing else in my
life seems as real, as meaningful, or as essential as Dave does to me right now.
I won’t say that everything pales in comparison to Dave—I don’t want to hurt
anyone’s feelings—but rather (stay positive) that, on the horizon of my
existence, he stands tall and shines brighter than all the other features in my
view, so much so that what he is, represents, or offers—in my mind at least—has
begun to define everything else. It’s a bit like how the Sun makes everything
warm and bright and alive. Without the Sun, there’s just a wasteland, a desert
of the real. I know it’s not Dave I’m talking about here, only the authentic
quick of life which is so visible and tangible to me when I am with him. It’s
in everything because it’s the only thing that’s real, finally, which is what
makes it so good, so beautiful, so inspiring and so <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">attractive</i> to me. It’s like being in love: everything around Dave takes
on a new hue and becomes rich with meaning, color, and promise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Five days at the Winter retreat in 2011 (five days of
concentrated Transmission and being in the company not only of Dave and family
but of the other participants) was a little bit like being in a different
reality tunnel. As if I had managed at long last to budge the tuning dial on my
mind-body and pick up a whole new, hitherto only dimly imagined signal. The
signal was weak and shaky and distant but it was there: a signal from
elsewhere. A signal from Reality. Like Thomas Anderson, I was beginning to
glimpse what life was like outside the pod. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dave had found a handful of potentials and gathered us
together, and now he was projecting his simulated self into our shared dream
state, slowly, patiently, playfully, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">persuasively</i>
explaining—demonstrating—to us the ways in which we were asleep, what was
keeping us that way, and what to expect if and when we were ready to awaken.
Compared to that promise, that possibility, everything else in my life was
unimportant. It was like the residual imagery of a dream, trying to lure me
back to sleep. I didn’t and I don’t know if the Reality Dave is heralding—enlightenment
and service to the Transmission—is going to be as wonderful as Dave makes it
seem. It might be as stark and grueling as Neo’s life was once he joined the
crew on the Nebuchadnezzar. But so what? I don’t really care. Reality is
reality and it’s not open to negotiation. It’s a take it or leave it
proposition. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do I want to become real, or do I want to carry on trying to
rearrange the elements of the dream to get things <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">just right,</i> so I can carry on sleeping indefinitely? Fortunately,
based on several decades of trying to arrange those elements, that option isn’t
really an option anymore. To keep on trying and expect different results would
make me clinically insane. And at this point, I would be insane to turn away
from what Dave is offering. I have about as much chance of finding true meaning
or purpose or fulfillment without the Transmission as a dry kernel has of
popping inside a deep freeze.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what’s that leave? Nothing except to push my courage to
the sticking place, put on my bravest smile—hoping it doesn’t look too much
like a grimace—and jump into the pot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-61448421832745231982012-05-24T11:40:00.001-07:002012-05-24T11:43:46.496-07:00I Will Always Be the One I Never Was<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlyXa-q2cUz9W8QcvbCTXVG3_s98Fmj1yQ6QZHnN6eMhMxOwWM7kKIdW7TJVOZdf85SENKSQ_IZXmt6UI1YtbTTmtym_cvWiK5OfDi2mXNu0b-tqyZiV4k6pfDhTM16PenfgE/s1600/samantha-hyde-Beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlyXa-q2cUz9W8QcvbCTXVG3_s98Fmj1yQ6QZHnN6eMhMxOwWM7kKIdW7TJVOZdf85SENKSQ_IZXmt6UI1YtbTTmtym_cvWiK5OfDi2mXNu0b-tqyZiV4k6pfDhTM16PenfgE/s320/samantha-hyde-Beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When life seems to be going well and full of promise, identification
with the imaginary self that is living his life increases, he gets swept away
on a tide of optimism and forgets to pay attention to what is actually
happening. Within no time, the chemicals released in the body by (or as)
positive feelings have caused the body to burn out. And so the comedown is
inevitable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every time his mind wandered into fantasy, he brought it
back by looking at the people and things around him and taking in the moment as
best he could. Life was a living movie of infinite variation. How absurd it was to want anything besides
whatever was happening in that moment, when the moment was so infinitely rich that he could only ever observe the smallest
fraction of it. Every time
his eye fell on something, he recognized how he could have missed that sight if
he had been following his pointless thoughts instead. How much he did miss,
every single second!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If we got enlightened tomorrow, how much would our plans change? Would we drop everything, or would we continue just as we had been? Maybe it was time to simply act, boldly, to make decisions, and not be
continuously questioning, doubting, and wondering what was best? Weren't we forever waiting for something better to come along, like prima donnas turning down all the offers just in case a better one comes in. And prima donnas wind
up sad and lonely has-beens, or worse, never-have-beens.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What made him timid and cautious was when he believed in his story: the story he was busy spinning with his mind with every fantasy, fond memory, and hope for the future. It was only when he invested in that bright future which
he was inventing out of the handpicked fragments of the present moment that he lost the treasure that was always before him. In fact,
it didn’t matter, because he wasn't really choosing anything anyway. All his mental
gymnastics were after the fact. They were a narrative overlay to sustain the illusion of
the artificial intelligence of the self, the illusion that he was running the system, rather than being run by it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was no future.
There never would be or could be. The future was only the futile attempt of the
past to assert itself and make things come out differently. And since the past
was dead, the future was forever unborn.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To separate purpose from circumstance was
impossible. To try and create perfect circumstances and then to use them as a
platform to act with purpose and meaning from — was impossible. It was
impossible because he wasn’t some intelligence acting on or in his life. He was
nothing but life, one individual expression of it among an unimaginable multitude
of individual expressions. And all circumstances were the right ones. That was the problem
with all his fantasies. They were irrelevant. If he was lucky, if his circumstances were improving,
it could only be because life had a purpose for him. It was up to him to become
that, to allow his improved circumstances to generate a corresponding new purpose
and meaning to inhabit them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There were so many things happening all the time. He was
witness to them all, yet he noticed only an infinitesimal fragment. He was truly
deranged, with his endless immersion in an internally generated dialogue that told him absolutely nothing about what was going on. NOTHING! He could STOP that nonsense
any time, and his suffering would die with it. But time was running out, and his impoverishment became more nakedly apparent to him with every passing moment,
every dying breath.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
DIE DIE DIE!!!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do it now, while there is still time! After you are dead it
will be too late.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Who? Me? I am already dead, dead, dead. Don’t you see? This has
to end now! Right now! What? It already ended? Every second it ends. Why? Because,
because, because: it never never never started.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This post is my swan song. Nothing will change. I cannot
write my way to enlightenment. I will always be the one I never was—an image
projected by the desire to be admired. So bye bye. While you are looking and
pointing, what is behind the shadowy cloud of this mind slips through the
needle’s eye, and Infinity wins again, like it always will.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bye bye.</div>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-47601184153748131782012-05-17T06:59:00.000-07:002012-05-17T06:59:02.959-07:00Reload, reload, reload! (The Shaman is a Schizo After All?)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://andyinoman.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/21st-century-schizoid-man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://andyinoman.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/21st-century-schizoid-man.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<![endif]--> with an interest in these subjects knows that there is an overlap between “shamanic” or “spiritual” perceptions and so-called “schizophrenic”
ones. I have always assumed, without question, that (as I think RD Laing said),
the shaman is able to swim in waters which the schizophrenic is drowning in. In other words, that schizophrenia was a mishandled or distorted experience
of deeper, “shamanic” reality.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>But what if the reverse is the case? </i>What if shamans and
gurus and spiritual people are simply those who have so fully adapted to - learned
to navigate and communicate - their schizoid delusions that they are able to
create (or connect with) believers in it, leading to sub-communities and counter-cultures in
which delusional thought-forms became experiential reality?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Uhhhhh….</div>
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<br /></div>
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I’m not saying this is what I think. I have known a least a couple
of shaman-guru types who do seem a lot more balanced and sane than, say, Richard
Dawkins. All I’m saying is—how can we be sure?</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s a bit of a paradox, because if delusional belief is
powerful enough to “create” false realities, then that idea itself confirms the schizoid/shamanic
view of reality. In Dawkins’ view of things, the belief in God isn’t enough to
create strong evidence for the existence of God, and so Dawkins looks like a chump and a poor scientist because he dismisses anything that challenges his argument, like those zealots who refused to look into Galilleo's telescope because they already knew he was insane. What I am positing would not please Dawkins and his ilk any more than it would your average New Ager: that belief is strong enough to create mental projections which will confirm that belief,
but which are not sourced in anything objectively real.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This would have to allow the fundamental premise of both shamanic
and schizophrenic experience: that everything is consciousness and that physical
reality is therefore subject to change in accord with changes in (our)
consciousness. However, if the assumption of a separate self, soul, or entity (including
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">a C</span>reator God) from which consciousness arises
is erroneous, or at least unnecessary to the fundamental premise, then every
subsequent perception that’s predicated on that idea (of a creator or experiencer) would also be false. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
God,
spirits, angels, devils, the psyche, archetypes, shamans, gurus—anything in
short that has any sort of empirical authority or meaning within the larger
context of a living consciousness system—would all just be elaborate thought forms generated
by that fundamental schizophrenia which underlies all “spiritual” and “shamanic”
belief systems whatsoever.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Holy false reality models, Batman! Is it time to go back to the scrying
mirror!?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-58838753022014949962012-05-16T12:49:00.000-07:002012-05-16T12:51:10.590-07:00It's All in the Head<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/quadbip.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/quadbip.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-family: Verdana,Arial; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana,Arial; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span><br />
It occurred to me last night that whole notion of a self separate from the body may arise from the basic fact that four of our five senses are located in the head. This creates a "perceptual bias" in which the organism becomes "top-heavy" so to speak and we begin to experience a perceiving self (head) that is separate from the body.<br />
<br />
I wonder if this imbalance really kicked in when man learned to walk upright? (Norman O. Brown suggested something of the sort.) Maybe that coincided with the inception of thought, which arose out of necessity when instincts became insufficiently nuanced to navigate the spectrum of possibilities. (Eg when self-preservation instinct was equally opposed by procreative instinct and the organism had to "decide" between the two.)Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-84827376137357063062012-05-15T03:46:00.001-07:002012-05-15T03:46:03.196-07:00The Body's Silent Intelligence Vs Free Will And you may ask yourself - "How did I get here?"<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsiqnv1l351qesmvqo1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsiqnv1l351qesmvqo1_500.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="http://spiritualteachers.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=misc&action=display&thread=2168&page=1#1337078240">What does the body know?</a><br />
<br />
<br />Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-13473398491163691822012-05-14T06:56:00.000-07:002012-05-14T06:56:11.119-07:00Homo Serpiens Disclaimer & Apologia<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
To a reader of <i>Homo Serpiens</i> who had some very specific questions about the content: </div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
You did send this email to the right place BUT I am no longer the person who wrote that book. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
Here's what I would say about it now: relatively little of what is in there can be called 'knowledge' in any real sense, because it is largely filtered through or leavened by belief. Of that little there is that can be called real knowledge, even less could be called practical knowledge. </div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
At most, as I suggest in the preface, the book is a sort of dream-autobiography, an account of my own inner creative/fantasy life which happens to use factual and semi-factual and mythical "information" (narratives) as raw material. It's like a movie that uses real-life people for characters to tell a fictional story (Nic Roeg's <i>Eureka </i>comes to mind). It's really a novel disguised as non-fiction. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
To whatever degree I believed the things I wrote in that book, I have been hampered and even imprisoned by those beliefs, beliefs which have next to no practical function in my day to day existence. I feel somewhat embarrassed to read your questions, and to realize how seriously people are taking the book (I receive next to no "fan mail" for it, so at least I can deduce the book isn't reaching that many people). However, it may be that part of the function of the book is to cause a satiation in occult knowledge in the reader and so to drive home just how useless this sort of knowledge really is. Actually, it is worse than useless, because we believe that it is not useless and try to apply it. We try to interpret existence through the lens of belief, whether it's occult, religious, or spiritual (or for that matter any kind of belief), instead of basing our interpretations exclusively on the evidence of our senses (by which I would include logical thought and intuition). </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
Another, simpler but more poetic way to say this is that none of what is described in the book is true because it is based on the false premise that we, as human beings, exist as separate individual identities. <i>Homo Serpiens</i> is a book about ideas, not facts, but to some degree this is true of any historical account, since people do not exist, only the idea of people exists, and so on. That's all that matters, waking up from the personal and collective nightmare of history which tells you that you exist, and that's the only thing to gain from staring at the details of the dream state. If you become fascinated by the content rather than tracing it back to the source, that will only take you deeper into the dream state. </div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
And what is the source? Where do these dreams come from? The same place thought comes from, which is the same place the idea of "you" comes from. Nowhere. </div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
There is thought without thinker, dreams without a dreamer, and a story without a storyteller. All that is happening is life and all there is to life is this present moment. Knowledge refers to the past, and so unless it has some immediate practical application (how to open a can of beans), then it cannot help us to navigate the present. </div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
Therefore I suggest that you forget all your questions and forget all about the ideas in <i>Homo Serpiens</i>, and ask yourself the only question that really matters. </div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
What am I?
</div>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-19633673928583546592012-05-11T04:05:00.004-07:002012-05-14T14:37:30.485-07:00Cesar Teruel's Laughter of Not-Knowing<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XX2GevUfNzc" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
See here for <a href="http://spiritualteachers.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=discussion&thread=1300&page=1#58103">my impressions of Cesar</a>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-29464230789400017122012-05-03T06:38:00.000-07:002012-05-04T03:35:15.495-07:00You Too Can Be An Enlightening Transmitter!<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K_Gq_l1Yi1Q?fs=1" width="480"></iframe><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As the new look and title of this blog suggests, it’s time for
something completely different. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
above video was made by Sanna, a Finnish friend whom I met on a recent </span><a href="http://daveoshana.com/" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Dave Oshana</a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
retreat in Finland called “Ego Death.” I haven’t talked about Dave or the Enlightenment
Transmission at this blog until now. (I wrote an account of my relationship with
Dave a few months back; I may post it here in a little while.) Partly I kept my
silence because I wasn’t sure how people would react to my finding another spiritual
teacher so soon after the last (you might start calling me a spiritual slut).
But I guess now is the time to let the secret out, especially since I am currently
living in Estonia, which is next to Finland, having attended the Easter E.T retreat (which Sanna also attended), and planning to go to the Summer one in
July.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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When I saw Sanna’s video I liked it enough to want to share
it with other people, which gave me the idea to post it here. That then gave me
the idea of changing this blog into something different. Funnily enough, the
last re-name I gave the blog (in a seemingly endless series of re-names) was “Exquisite Corpse,” which comes from a Surrealist
game of group-creativity. I liked the phrase, even though it didn’t accurately
describe a one-person blog. Now, “coincidentally,” I am thinking about using
this space to host creative work and personal expressions besides my own, starting
with Sanna (and I hope other members of the secret “E.T” team). </div>
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After however many years it’s been of banging my own drum, tooting
my own horn, and grinding my axe, I feel ready to place whatever skills I have learned
in service of a more collective endeavor. Team work. </div>
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It’s pretty hard to teach a dog new tricks or to get a leopard
to change his spots. Even writing this post is proving pretty difficult. But I aim
to follow through as best I can with this intention. So — if anyone has any
work they’d like to see at this blog, that they think would be well placed here,
let me know. </div>
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Of course, everyone has their own blogs now, and it’s not as
though you’d be getting into <i>Rolling Stone</i> magazine or anything. So why would
you want to put your stuff here rather than at your own space? Well for one
thing, I have lots of followers (mostly silent ones). But more importantly, there’s the potential for blogs to become more
community-oriented spaces, which might meet the demands which are currently being
“served” (i.e., exploited) by sites like Facebook and Twitter. Maybe, instead
of getting sucked into one great corporate space and fleeced and fattened by Mammon, we can start creating our own specialized communities, inside
of which we can co-create, communicate, and interrelate?</div>
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That’s my idea anyway, loosely improvised as a way to introduce
and give context to Sanna’s lovely video above. I encourage you all to go and
make your own version of personal expression, and, while I can’t promise to put it at this site, I can
promise to watch it. Some of it anyway. In Sanna's video, in my opinion, there’s
nothing superfluous, so be sure and watch it all the way through,
especially since otherwise you may miss seeing <i>Black Superman</i>!! & I assure you, that's
an experience you would not want to miss.</div>
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And if you think you qualify for active participation at ET Anonymous, send me an email, or post at the comments section below, and tell us why!</div>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-15164671575576799672012-04-24T10:10:00.001-07:002012-04-24T10:10:39.604-07:00The Key to Writing & Writers"I perceive a necessary gap between seeing and being. I would not be able to have said certain things if I had been under the obligation to unify the word and the deed. As it is I can let my words reach out and net impossible things - things that are impossible for me to do. And this is a way to pay the price for saying or seeing things.<br /><br />"I've been impressed by the extent to which one gets sentenced by one's own sentences. One explores certain things in play and then in a strange way they become commitments which one has to live. I have gained a deep respect for the demonic power of the word. Words are not idle. They have consequences."<br /><br />Norman O. BrownJasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-21207401235163459062012-04-23T08:04:00.003-07:002012-04-23T08:15:15.573-07:00What Am I?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGrkGlWqu5-EWrpx5MjAHy5hd-IS1_bUcOIC4Gp9K139SqJSKE0COr358lHmYFb_ZYVyla-lBX6cHa-sujLpUh1l2G9S_8gwMLxHTeoa1VZF8EcDEtG1zDghTGYSg5J3MPkSaixg/s1600/090715131449-large.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 288px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGrkGlWqu5-EWrpx5MjAHy5hd-IS1_bUcOIC4Gp9K139SqJSKE0COr358lHmYFb_ZYVyla-lBX6cHa-sujLpUh1l2G9S_8gwMLxHTeoa1VZF8EcDEtG1zDghTGYSg5J3MPkSaixg/s400/090715131449-large.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5734614915002626802" border="0" /></a><br />Now the body is a point of reference unto itself - albeit surrounded by infinite time and space, which even as children we know are inevitable realities, or perhaps the edges of a reality too vast to ever be grasped, or contained by the illusory, self-generated "reality" in which we perceive ourselves to be.<br /><br />Sorry, that came out a bit garbled, but I will press on.<br /><br />Logically, or even mathematically, speaking, if we are able to experience ourselves as having existence within the context of the infinite and eternal, we must also be infinite and eternal, since there is no other quantity that can withstand division by the infinite and eternal and still give the value of "one."<br /><br />Yet we do not experience ourselves as infinite or eternal, but only as "one" indivisible entity with likes and dislikes, fears and hopes and points to both protect and defend. The sense of a separate, unified existence seems to be sourced in the primary experience of ourselves as a body - specifically, a body surface "inside" a larger physical environment that knows itself through sensation (pleasure, pain, loss and gain) and other sensory/sensual interface with that environment - starting with the womb, then mother, breast (if we are lucky - I wasn't!) and so on. This superficial/sensory experience may be the foundation of the original illusion (sin) of a separate individual ego-self, because of course as bodies we are much more than merely surface: in fact, the really good stuff - the life giving organs, blood and bone of us - is all on the inside, hidden away. We do not have a sensory relationship with, or through, these organs, however, or at least most of us do not. This is perhaps more a symptom than a cause of the creation of the illusory or "ego" self. In other words, our inability to place our awareness on the interior of the body is probably a result, not a cause, of having created a "mind" self that requires only minimum input from the body to maintain its "reality." It may be a bit of both, however.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb8dw2RLvPaUbp14sQKapJvqBDpITqdllDBkHwLtwuLrvNSqv_Vqmj-Nprsxd_6_y-fvM-8FezZPmGE0jfrkVCDAj15BsoRzJYs4S7pUrR62_y1u9lLyHuX7D4FTNTzI0Xzeh05Q/s1600/images.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 225px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb8dw2RLvPaUbp14sQKapJvqBDpITqdllDBkHwLtwuLrvNSqv_Vqmj-Nprsxd_6_y-fvM-8FezZPmGE0jfrkVCDAj15BsoRzJYs4S7pUrR62_y1u9lLyHuX7D4FTNTzI0Xzeh05Q/s400/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5734614108703344850" border="0" /></a><br />I am aiming to arrive at some "point" with this, but who knows if I will get there. I may die first.<br /><br />Cells in the body are separated from their environment by a membrane, known as a <span style="font-style: italic;">plasma </span>membrane (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_membrane" class="postlink">here</a>). That is to say, their interior regions are separated from the greater body by the membrane - which is what makes them individual cells - while at the same time, it could be said that the plasma membrane is also what unites the cells with the body, being as it is the substance that comes between inner and outer, without which cells could not function as co-operative parts of the body. So it is with the physical body of humans and other animals inside of Nature: the very thing that gives us an illusory sense of separate existence is what unites us with a greater existence, being that of the Universe and, so it might be supposed, beyond even the Universe, the Infinite and Eternal.<br /><br />Moving on. Not only cells but even electrons and protons are now said, in some scientific circles, to have some modicum of self-awareness, and therefore to exist as "discreet" entities. The difference in individual awareness between a Van Gogh and an atom, then, is one of degree, but not of kind. Holy Moses! This can be useful to remember whenever we start getting too big for our britches and thinking that our better "qualities" make us entitled to certain things - to anything at all, in fact.<br /><br />There is a self-ness to all things in existence. Merely existing designate a "self," whether of star, man, mouse, atom, or snowflake. It's probably for this reason that the idea of an individual self is said in mystical circles to be illusory. If everything is made of snow, there is nothing that is not snow, so what meaning does the word "snow" have anymore? None at all. In religious terminology, this is simply stated as ""everything is equally God" - the Supreme Self of existence being equally present in all of the parts as it is the whole. For the human being, this is known psychologically as the Id (in Freudian terms) or the Self (in Jungian ones), as the Daemon, the Double, the Higher Self or Holy Guardian Angel, and so on. In my own, all-too-paltry, experience, this Id-Entity is unknown - and for the most part unknowable - to the false self. Yet like the Sun and stars, it is an Ego and exists as a localized point of view, or organ of perception, for which a relative sense of separate existence is essential to its function as a component in the greater body of consciousness that is the Universe, and possibly also the Infinite.<br /><br />Or something. Yeah, I veered into highfalutin mystic mumbo jumbo at the end a bit. It's hard to resist joining the dots even when they go off the page. Let my example serve as warning to ye.<br /><br />Our function as incarnate id-entities in continuous crysis is not to speculate, but to receive the signal which comes to and through the body from the Universe, and to transmit that signal <span style="font-style: italic;">back </span>to the body in a new, individualized form. I am no biologist, but my guess is that this is equivalent to the function of cells in the human (animal) body, which receive information from the various organs, via the blood perhaps, and then pass on that information in new ways to other cells, and so forth. Another parallel might be the bees, which receive pollen from one flower and then "transmit" it (pass it on) to other flowers while going about their merry, individual (but hive-directed) business.<br /><br />To the Universe, all business is pleasure, and vice versa.Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-51541824423639260232012-04-17T11:26:00.004-07:002012-04-19T10:18:13.421-07:00The Gospel Blues<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirXUTS_eKUlj_-_ac869DdZ5ROHc91l59KEqACN-P80vk5dvMwsxHvVMt1sX0xa-rDAGYTNXofsq-qhpvUQjRPwymk5RvWMBGFb82xUYGyYOfnU-N35hxlF054wamnNJFqTVRfLw/s1600/jesus-finger.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 318px;" 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0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> </a><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:10.5pt;" >Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:10.5pt;" ><br /></span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Truth exists, delusion does not.” So why is it so hard to get past the one and all the way into the other? If the only “badness” of ego—and all the dark conspiratorial forces that stem from it—is due to its illusory nature, how is it that the spell is so tough to break? Isn’t the beauty, reality, and supremacy of truth self-evident? A no-brainer?<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The idea of falseness may exist, but that's not the same as falseness existing. There is no Moon made of blue cheese in reality, only the recognition that there is no such thing as a blue cheese Moon. (Assuming there isn't such a thing - if we dare!). If the idea of a separate ego-self is false, then all that is true is the recognition of that falseness.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is often said that enlightenment a) doesn't happen <i style="">to</i> a person, and b) when it does happen, it is recognized as always having been the case. Presumably this is because the recognition of the falseness of the idea of an ego-self—which only takes an instant—allows for the erasure of a lifelong (mistaken) perception of living through and as that self. In other words, once enlightened, always was enlightened—because with the false self goes the illusion (all those false memory implants) of ever having been anything else.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Does that even make sense?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The idea that "only truth exists" is a tautology. Beliefs about the Moon do not change or in any way affect the nature of the Moon. Belief does not interface with reality. It only create false realities that come between ourselves and Truth. If the only purpose of false realities and the illusion of a separate ego self is to keep out the Truth, then surely there is no great need to dispel that illusion? All the harm that comes about from an allegiance to an illusory self is itself also illusory. Truth—our true nature—cannot in any way be affected, much less harmed, by that false allegiance.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I can see no other destination for the quest for enlightenment than one of utter futility and despair. However, this is the correct and necessary destination, because once we have begun to glimpse the total futility of our existence—and beyond even futility, the fundamental falsity of it—it is no longer possible to return to the sort of activity that once upheld the illusion of meaning and purpose—of validity—to our individual life-paths.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When the cell recognizes that its choice of a volitional path has turned it into a cancerous cell that, if allowed to continue, would destroy the whole body, the cell has only one honest recourse: suicide, or self-sacrifice. Did Jesus die to save humanity because he recognized his cancerous nature as “King of the Jews”—and to undo the Mess he had created by accepting the role of Mess-I-Ah?? Thereby setting the only honest and true example for the rest of us—who are all wanna-be-messiahs, following not Christ but Lucifer, trying to squeeze our egos through the eye of the needle and reign in Heaven, but winding up by refurbishing Hell one more time and hoping we won’t notice the difference?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Holy, holy, holy. The mind is its own place. Surrender to the divine comes on the heels of seeing the futility of everything else. There are a billion seeds we get to sort through, but only one is going to give fruit. Abandon hope then before entering, because if you are still hoping to find it, you haven’t faced the facts. The facts of life and death.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Jesus said, you have to lose your life to save it. You have to <i style="">lose your life</i> to save it. And if you love your life, you aren’t going to want to lose it. “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">So Jesus says, Hate your life. Not too many bumper stickers with that on, is there? </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-67394122878625490512012-04-11T05:12:00.002-07:002012-04-11T05:20:17.120-07:00365 More Words into the Void<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://ts3.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=4803603601752346&id=62ce4235a7d6c16bb37c818275e7cc48"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 255px; height: 191px;" src="http://ts3.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=4803603601752346&id=62ce4235a7d6c16bb37c818275e7cc48" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Tired of words and the knowledge that words only forge lies out of truth.<br /><br />Reading more Jed McKenna. Though I resist some of what I read at the time, I come away thinking that anyone who is serious about getting to the truth needs to read McKenna, and then decide if they are really serious or not.<br /><br />I am no longer so sure about myself – except for the fact that I don’t feel serious about anything else. Even so, I am a slave to my habits. Habits provide continuity which provides security. So what I am trying to get free of is the same as what I will not let go of. Habit. Beneath everything I do is one thing. Fear.<br /><br />Everything I do is dictated by a preference for comfort over discomfort. It is absurdly meaningless. The ego’s program is so pathetically base – what makes it pathetic is not the baseness but how it covers up that baseness with lofty ideals and blatant lies that anything we ever do is motivated by anything else besides a preference for comfort over discomfort. It is sickening in the extreme. The hypocrisy of it.<br /><br />Perhaps this is why we think of children as more “pure” – because their egotism is nakedly revealed in everything they do.<br /><br />Nihilism and spirituality are not opposed but complementary. True spirituality must include nihilism, because the ego’s interpretation of reality demands that everything be recognized as utterly meaningless. That is the first step to truth.<br /><br />That is why spirituality is the trap, ruse and snare that it is, the 2nd matrix. Because the news is all bad before it starts getting good.<br /><br />Why the hell am I even saying all this?<br /><br />Apparently the only way to get free of the ego is to face full-on the total unreality and therefore devoid-of-meaning that is our current existence. Everything we do is a way to avoid facing that truth. So what do we do when we have reached a place in which we can no longer avoid it, but cannot go back to the old ways of avoidance?<br /><br />What?<br /><br />Nihilistic despair has become the bass line of my existence. I feel oddly optimistic about it.Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-3461477722555434352012-04-04T23:38:00.002-07:002012-04-04T23:39:02.969-07:00Whitley's Onion<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.realitysandwich.com/part_two_whitleys_onion#comment-129836"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-4PF6UA6XuuJBXsFtdmC_Gjs-uFfvM6bCjo6RZjL30quoK1LOteluxEo7O0NnfD4IJLBXV9jeD3__MiPONe7rBNyz_DOXbxkKIW0ts7UhYL_5ZvwCM1ZmVNkKzRwcaJG7F9-aw/s400/whitley.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727802395397039538" border="0" /></a>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-19917059438132244372012-04-01T21:41:00.003-07:002012-04-01T21:54:52.881-07:00Sneaking Past the Facekeepers<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg/220px-RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 132px; height: 225px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg/220px-RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />I am now a man without a face.<br /><br /><img src="file:///C:/Users/Jason/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.png" alt="" />From three days ago:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);">Jasun Kephas:</span><br />I predict that, 72 hours from now, April 1st 2012, this Fool will sneak past the Facekeepers and scale the book-walls to freedom - leaving nothing but a few loose ends behind, and perhaps not even that.<br /><br />I will be sad to go, yes. BUT, at the end of the day, the price is too high, the gains too few, to justify being in-corporated by an increasingly sinister and unethical commercial, espionage, and maybe even sorcerous agenda.<br /><br />We are being harvested. Our faces and all our other vital data is being collected for the great Psychic Stew of AI's Body of Evidence. And in the final masterstroke of irony, none of this is being stolen: we are offering up our body parts (and our baby pics) for the dark, satanic broth.<br /><br />I'd like to think I could set an example by leaving, but I doubt anyone will follow me over those prison walls, so it's more about not wanting to set a bad one. To those of you who I have only come to know, or reconnect with, via this devious domain, PM me in the next 3 days so we can trade data with an eye to meeting later, outside the Belly of the Beast, on less mine-infested ground.<br /><br />A word to the wise while I still "exist" - FB's days are numbered, and who knows, if Id-Anonymous has anything to say about it the number may be smaller than we think (I am an optimist at heart). Would you rather leave the party of your own free will, or be unceremoniously spewed out with the seething mass, when the fire alarm gets pulled?<br /><br />OK that's all for today. I can't say it hasn't been fun, or that I won't be jonesing for my FB fix for a while, coz I will. If anyone wants to help set up an alternative space for social networking that would be privately owned, let me know. I am still up for collaborating on that project provided someone with some know-how is on board.<br /><br />Meanwhile, I'll continue dialoguing here til the final hour, if anyone wants to discuss the escape plan.<br /><br />Here's some useful data to get you started: <a href="http://society.oshana.org/true-friends-leave-facebook/">http://society.oshana.org/true-friends-leave-facebook/</a><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);">Jasun Kephas:</span><br /><br />• Awake at 3 am - is it a FB microwave attack?! Here is where I ended up, at any rate. Since Steve Willner's comments, below, have indicated that EVERYONE finds my (poetically phrased) reasons for leaving FB "ridiculous," I'm going to reiterate the reasons I gave the last time I left FB, since they hold good today:<br /><br />FACT ONE: FB is at least partially established as an intelligence-gathering program for corporate and governmental interests.<br /><br />FACT TWO: By participating at FB, I am not only tacitly endorsing that agenda but also adding both my data-flow and my own particular creative input to the mix. I am thereby increasing not only FB's data bank but also its credibility and appeal (if I may be so immodest).<br /><br />FACT THREE: The combinations of facts 1 & 2 inescapably lead to the fact that I am, like it or not, serving the afore-mentioned corporate-governmental interests, and on zero payroll to boot.<br /><br />All this has real-world consequences that NO ONE here can fully account for - yet all the same, we are all accountable for them. The only rationale for ignoring the consequences and our accountability - besides a cynical rejection of ethics or individual responsibility - is that "the end justifies the means." This reasoning would be based on a belief that the good I can accomplish by being at FB outweighs those unknown negative consequences, both for myself and others. FB does allow me to direct traffic to my blog, it's true, but to what extent is unknown and the actual results are so far negligible (there's been no increase in comments at my blog over the past year or so). So what does that leave?<br /><br />The most obvious benefit of being at FB is that it allows me to connect to people I wouldn't otherwise connect to - either for the first time or on further, random occasions, as with my recent exchange with Steve Willner, an exchange that would not have occurred anywhere but here. A glance at said exchange clearly brings into question the value of such "connecting." It's fun, sure, but what's actually accomplished?<br /><br />Connecting for its own sake is of no inherent value - if it were we would email each other all day long, but we don't do that (we text each other, I guess, but I don't have a cellphone so I cant speak for the pros of that ritual). We do have exchanges at FB however, where others can read them, since we are in a public domain. So the appeal of this sort of connecting - this is true for me at least - has to do with there being a performance element to it. Idle banter with an audience or in a group - or even at times creative discussions that, nonetheless, rarely lead to any real-time action. For all the talk of social networking, how many people use FB to implement any sort of social engagement? It's 99% fluff (even when intellectually stimulating fluff), and we know it.<br /><br />My effort has been to counteract that with some more (intellectually) meaningful content - as many of my "friends" also try to do here (an obvious example for me would be Christopher Knowles). But the net result, I believe, is that we only help to increase the spell of the delusion that we are doing anything besides squandering our time and energy, working for a mostly hidden corporate body that intends to assimilate us, body and soul, in the due course of time, into its dark & secret agenda.<br /><br />This post took 30 minutes to write! It was a alternative to lying awake in the dark thinking about why I was leaving FB, that's all. Next time that happens, I will have something else to think about.<br /><br />Peace be to all.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);">Jasun Kephas:</span><br />Paranoia is the beginning of awareness...?<br /><br />As some have suggested, I may be overstating, exaggerating, or overreacting in my Case Against FB; but intuition tells me that FB and other corporate Net giants are the Thin End of a Wedge currently being driven - slowly and carefully - into the innermost recesses of our lives. I think we are being subtly seduced into a series of incremental agreements that are leading to a final result which none of us would agree to if we could see it coming. Because of that, now may be a critical time that will determine, if not the future of the species, at least our own place in that future. It's a time in which it is increasingly necessary to say "No" while we still can, instead of, "What's in it for me?" Just Say No to a future of psychic enslavement! - because the answer is that there's nothing in it for you, because none of it was designed for you, though of course it's "custom-made."<br /><br />We've been told that we are the consumer, but what if it turns out that we are being consumed?<br /><br />My leaving FB is a sort of ritual, a symbolic enactment that I hope, like FB itself, will have real-world repercussions and consequences, at least for me. I guess you could say that it represents a stance, a line drawn in the sand, representing my turning away from something which I know in my bones is false, so I can begin to face in a new direction, and to live a new, more authentic, kind of life.<br /><br />Not to end on a bum note, but I suspect, based on some of the comments here, that some of you are overestimating your powers of discernment. In the long run, that can prove fatal. If there WERE a psychic conquest of the collective soul that was currently nearing its very final stages (just suppose!), the naive assumption that we would be able to recognize all the signs and that there was no need to worry about it, would be exactly what would allow for you to be "bagged."<br /><br />But yes, I *could* just be paranoid. Time will tell, but YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, and so my responsibility here is now (almost) over.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);">Account now deactivated, in process of deletion.</span><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 10.5pt; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; vertical-align: top;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg/220px-RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 53px; height: 91px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg/220px-RWS_Tarot_16_Tower.jpg" alt="" border="0" /><br /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-58482773847389587982012-03-30T08:43:00.002-07:002012-03-30T08:45:15.950-07:00The Infamous Strieber Article, Part One<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.realitysandwich.com/strange_case_whitley_strieber_1"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 381px;" src="http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/illustrations/strieber_whitley-19980625014R.2_gif_300x381_q85.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-16364883752962844122012-03-25T21:58:00.001-07:002012-03-25T22:00:33.495-07:00What the UFO Wants From YOU!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://hiddenexperience.blogspot.com/2012/03/audio-conversation-with-jason-horsley.html"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 367px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PLC9mRg0zr6-vJyaOBk5mg25DbMAPPfrvZg2aLAGEUJOl24oiHaDcNNLHFsPTEZjoOJ6bceaRXtbS47GUpAotkOBytT6NVmFHgC37JLgFk7i7jRqom7ia_09RcBH2I-M4iWk8A/s400/aliendoodles.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724066094894893410" border="0" /></a>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-1316760231626381672012-03-19T13:59:00.007-07:002012-03-19T18:14:45.171-07:00The Joke<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i54.tinypic.com/2u4oqc9.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 326px; height: 559px;" src="http://i54.tinypic.com/2u4oqc9.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />i begin to see why<br /><br />words beg for play<br /><br />seriously trying to express truth with words<br /><br />has to be a joke<br /><br />so far as we can satisfy our minds <br /><br />by describing truth with words<br /><br />we only become that much more attached <br /><br />to words<br /><br />and that much further from truth<br /><br />the better the menu looks<br /><br />the more likely we are<br /><br />to eat it <br /><br />seriously!<br /><br />aaargghJasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-72606560466958319242012-02-28T08:48:00.002-08:002012-02-28T08:53:35.518-08:00Language as Disease & Language as Play"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. . . . My aim is to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense. . . He who understands me finally recognizes [my propositions] as senseless." 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priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="19" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="21" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="31" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">from Norman Brown's <span style="font-style: italic;">Life Against Death</span>:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> "Language as disease and language as play - the two meet in the concept of neurotic play, that is to say, magic. . . . Now if we can say that language is diseased in so far as it contains magical qualities, in so far as it reflects a belief in the reality of thoughts and wishes, we are able to trace the magical quality of language to its organic connection with the narcissistic phase of infantile sexual development, the phase in which the child develops the pure pleasure-ego. For the world of the pure pleasure-ego is a dream world, a world constructed out of 'neurotic currency' in which wishes are true - though for the child this currency is not neurotic, since he knows nothing of the conflict of the pleasure-principle and the reality-principle and his unreal world is his real world. And by the same token it is a world of play, in which the representation of the gratified wish is accepted as real. And in effect . . . it IS real. . . Language as play and language as disease are the two sides of language as wish-fulfillment thinking, and wish-fulfillment thinking is a legacy of childhood indelible in our minds, carrying the secret project of the pure pleasure-ego, the search for an erotic sense of reality."<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">"Mankind today is still making history without having any conscious idea of what it really wants or under what conditions it would stop being unhappy; in fact what it is doing seems to be making itself more unhappy and calling that progress.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">"Christian theology, or at least Agustinian theology, recognizes human restlessness and discontent, the cor irrequietum, as the psychological source of the historical process. But Christian theology, to account for the origin of human discontent and to indicate a solution, has to take man out of this real world, out of the animal kingdom, and inculcate him into delusions of grandeur. And this Christian theology commits its own worst sin, the sin of pride.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">..."the proof that human needs are not what they seem to be lies precisely in the fact of human history. The Faustian restlessness of man in history shows that men are not satisfied by the satisfaction of their conscious desires; men are unconscious of their real desires. Thus a psychology of history must be psychoanalytical.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">"Lacking the doctrine of repression - or rather not being able to see man as a psychological riddle - Marx ... turns to biology and postulates an absolute law of human biology that the satisfaction of human needs always generates new needs. If human discontent is thus biologically driven, it is incurable. . . But Marx's assumption of a biological basis for "progress" in history really amounts to a confession that he is unable to explain it psychologically.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">"Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of "progress," but only by viewing history as a neurosis. . . . By the same token, psychoanalysis offers a theoretical framework for exploring the possibility of a way out of the nightmare of endless "progress" and endless Faustian discontent, a way out of human neurosis, a way out of history. . . . If historical consciousness is finally transformed into psychoanalytical consciousness, the grip of the dead hand of the past on life in the present would be loosened, and man would be ready to live instead of making history, to enjoy instead of paying back old scores and debts, and to enter that state of Being which was the goal of his Becoming."</p>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20312680.post-35678742335365846352012-02-22T19:23:00.000-08:002012-02-22T19:24:43.456-08:00Aeolus Wake Up<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-QgIYVTVPwU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>Jasunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06645623536130682696noreply@blogger.com2