Who's Fault Is It?

Blaming seems, if you watch the news — or, if you have family — a central stance in our public discourse. Then, there's my ex-wife; but, never mind. 

Who wants to be wrong? Who wants to admit being wrong? I will. Try it yourself.

But, the plain fact is that you are wrong! Admit it! To yourself. Voila! The heavens part. If I'm wrong, then I can make a change. Making you wrong ... I'm stuck on that position. Same old, same old. I refer you to the news ... on any given day.

To Be Educated

 

"We have come to this world to accept it, not merely to know it. We may become powerful by knowledge, but we attain fullness by sympathy. The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. But we find that this education of sympathy is not only systematically ignored in schools, but it is severely repressed. From our very childhood habits are formed and knowledge is imparted in such a manner that our life is weaned away from nature and our mind and the world are set in opposition from the beginning of our days. Thus the greatest of educations for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead. We rob the child of his earth to teach him geography, of language to teach him grammar. His hunger is for the Epic, but he is supplied with chronicles of facts and dates ... Child-nature protests against such calamity with all its power of suffering, subdued at last into silence by punishment."

(Rabindranath Tagore, Personality,1917: 116-17)

 

Where the mind is without fear

and the head is held high,

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken

up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving 

stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason

has not lost its way into the

dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward

by thee into ever-widening

thought and action ─

into that heaven of freedom,

my Father,

Let my country awake.

Rabindranath Tagore

Could "RIGHT" be Wrong?

 

We sure do like to be right! Noticing a fair amount of righteousness around now. When are you so right that by definition another opinion is wrong? I think that’s called intolerance.

“VOTE MY WAY! ... Or, move to dictatorship. [Sounds dictatorial to me.] Side with me or go to the devil! Be cancelled. [And you know how dictators do their cancelling. Heavens to Joseph Stalin!]

The world, if it's anything, is a mirror. What do you see? And, who put it there? 

This idea may be new to you. Or, you might reject it out of hand. Hogwash! 

Maybe, though, just put that lens on for a while and imagine it is so. Now, what do you see? Okay. Not nice. Well, that's what in you! 

Good news! When you admit you don't know, and that you're full of shit ... that's a place for taking a fresh look. Getting at that solution to the world's ills that we all would like to see come to pass. But you can't hold on to the solution you have in hand. We're talking a fresh start. Give it a try. You can always pick up the same-old, same-old familiar firmly held cherished beliefs. 

Blaming is for the ignorant. By “ignorant” we’re not meaning “stupid”. One could be the smartest ever ... and, still be ignorant. Ignorant of what? Just that! What’s so in front of the nose it’s may not be seen, as such. Ignored. Because it is ignored. Ignored watching the flux and fold of the world. And, maybe more than a little, buying in to what the powers that be put in front of you for whatever narrative they want you to believe.

Do you get my point? We're being played. And, willingly. Righteously.

The pols have moved the needle on political discourse into the do-or-die, life-or-death extreme end of the dial. Are we entering a possible [probable?] time when power is the rule. ["40%" ... damn close to 50/50.]

What difference who's to blame. There a higher, more effective game to play! Don't we want results? How about a result we can ALL enjoy?

Honestly, sometimes I think the world could be a wasteland and all some would busy themselves with is who to blame. There's a reasonable choice.

Vote it!

Here's the skinny ...

RENEWAL 2024

This is the 3rd party option for 2024.

Good news! You can vote it now. Choose it! Own it! Be it!

The platform: peace, love, understanding, tolerance, choiceless awareness, inner peace ... To name a few.

Do this: vote the party/candidates of your choice. For sure. And, also, vote for RENEWAL too. Regardless of party choice, RENEWAL is a vote also on the ballot. The human ballot.

Whos the candidate? You are. I am.

Or, don't ... Don't vote RENEWAL, that is. Stay with the same old, same old and vote for going down the dead end of endlessly waring over who's right, and who's wrong. Ignore the middle way. Please ... Don't.

The platform stands* neither for or against having whatever is your opinion, and voicing it as loudly as you want.

That notwithstanding, the platform encourages also including cultivating peace, love and understanding in one's own heart and soul. Not some platitudinous "it's god's plan" semantic bullshit. God has no plans. People have plans. God has laws.

Plans ... And, look! How we doin'? With all those smart plans?

Here's the plan: vote RENEWAL! Now!

See THE RENEWAL PARTY Platform here!

A Crack in Time

A Crack in Time

One evening riding the D Train from Manhattan to Brooklyn we were crossing on the Manhattan Bridge. It was twilight. Just like in that photo. [That's the Brooklyn Bridge.] Gorgeous.

Some time well before, sitting at a local dive bar on Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope with a short glass of tap beer ... this large, imposing man sits down next to me and starts singing a classic Russian song. "Ochi chyornye" / "Dark Eyes" [A recorded version with lyrics are appended below.]

I took it he knew [how?] I was descended from people from that part of the world [Polish ancestry]. I forget what he said. I'm not much for starting conversations with strangers in bars. Anyhow, it struck me. This fellow was something extra. A time traveller from some other dimension? An Angel? Just some crazy mofo? A drunk?

Later, now here I am on the D Train, he shows up again. He sidles next to me in a way suggesting he knows me. We're looking out the window at the harbor view. It's twilight. Like the photo.

He tells me that there [at twilight] is a crack between the worlds. That's pretty much all I remember about our exchange. It stays with me. Is what he described true? On some rarified other level of perception?

Consider this ...

There’s a time at twilight when there’s a crack between the two worlds. Two worlds. Dark, and Light. Past, and Future. At that moment, there you are. Now ... where there’s nothing to hold on to. 

My takeaway: Go into that future empty handed. Without the burden of judgemental meanings you've placed on things; they persist in coloring the view ahead. This is nothing new. Ancient wisdom, really. 

Now, just to put it in practice.

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn [change] and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Dark eyes, passionate eyes.

Burning and splendid eyes.

How I love you, how I fear you.

Verily, I espied you in an ill-starred moment.

Oh, not for nothing are you darker than the deep!

I see mourning for my soul in you,

I see a triumphant flame in you.

A poor heart immolated in it.

But I am not sad, I am not sorrowful,

My fate is soothing to me.

All that is best in life, God gave us.

In sacrifice I returned to the fiery eyes!

We May Live in Interesting Times ...

 We May Live in Interesting Times ...

In these time we may be living under the spell of an assumption that science and technology give us all there is to know. You tell me! God? Not a shred of scientific evidence. You gotta prove it!

[As if God needed proof!]

More. And — Danke Mein Gott im Himmel — science and technology will always be smart and capable enough to solve problems we create as they may show up. Even the unintended lousy consequences of actions undertaken with little forethought. In other words, “No need to be too careful on policy, we can fix it on the back end”. Only, it better take well to a good spin with the Hoi Polloi. [So we elect likeable dummies.]

Going a step further ... Perhaps the powers that be [READ: Those prominent in the public eye attempting to enlist the Populusque Romanus in their narrative frame.] they are just doing some good old-fashioned "Magical Thinking". That is, the kind of thinking that lives in its own exclusive self-created frame that is based on the idea that if a sufficient majority of people buy into it [the narrative], well, that's what reality will be. Of course, we know about that; it’s called political propaganda.

No, but I'm referring the kind of "Magical Thinking" that has it that reality for us is what someone we are conditioned to believe in decides it should be. Who for all we know most likely will be in full-blown egohood mode, and believing that they can manipulate the public consciousness so completely that they can wield the power of manifestation through the collective supportive energy. Like, reality is what you not only say it is, but things show up just the way you want. Literally. [A Ferrari in the garage in the morning. If not sooner.]

BTW. I believe such power of manifestation is in fact possible for us Humans. But, only on the Creator-instilled proviso that what we want to show up in our reality is in line with the Way of Things. There is such a thing as the Word of God. One who hears it acts accordingly. Acts well. “Well” being for the good of all.

What’s really interesting about these times perhaps is that we’re becoming aware of all this going on. Not just playing the game, seeing the game for what it is. A game. 

Now we can change the rules.

Some Very Good Advice ... Necessary

“Examine your conscience well, and access your worthiness to receive the Bridegroom. If you don’t do it voluntarily, the passages and cleansing of your own energies will come upon you like punishments.”

— Padrinho Sebastião quoted in Forest of Visions by Alex Polari De Alverga

Translate: Don't let the dawning Light fry your brains!

In a Word: REPENT!

Vajrayogini - The Trauma Goddess

Vajrayogini - The Trauma Goddess

I am the diamond maiden, the player of games

The yogini is one of my forms

Showing that I am beyond earthly attachment

I am the shining revelation to the ascetic

The women in silk and roses

I am the harlot in black net and leather,

who gives enjoyable punishment

I am the glass bead master,

creating universes of form

And a spark of me is in each bead,

for I dwell in karma.

I am the Trauma Goddess,

the Lady of Pain

In return for devotion

I pull thorns from the heart

In return for obedience

I untie the knots in the belly and the head

I hold the vajra,

which gives and receives

I reshape family karma.

The Trauma Goddess is called for people in painful situations

Where anger and hatred block the path of the soul

I evaluate the benefits of revenge

And give better suggestions for spiritual growth.

I am not suited to polite society

To social striving, upward mobility, and making good impressions

I am radically honest, sensitive, brilliant, and blunt

I hold up a mirror to the best and worst facets of human life.

The Lady of Trauma is the mirror of pain

I reflect the disastrous ways that human beings interact

Then the reflections are stretched and distorted

With irony, and humour, and sadness

Loosening their grip on the heart

So that the person who seeks freedom

Can get a taste of being free.

My devotees pray:

"Lady of Trauma, Lady of Pain

Ascetic and bhairavi and sannyasini and mistress

Pull me from the disaster I have made of my life

Save me from the evil machinations of others."

This is their prayer and I hear it in their hearts

As they chant my mantra.

"Savior, Lady, Mother Goddess, bodhisattva,

Love me as I love you

I am desperate and bound

Free me by your grace."

I will give freedom,

but not without realization

Those who have been bound, bind others

Those who have suffered, cause suffering

I let them know how they have been affected

But also how they have affected others.

I do not wear bones because of death

I wear them because they represent what is beneath the surface

The blood that I drink is the evil karma of those that I save

And the karma is then halted and does not pass to others

I appear wrathful as I take on anger, hatred, fury, 

and the desire to destroy

Which are destroyed within me.

I am a dancer upon the pain of all mankind

I destroy the dark and corrupt

My compassionate side is hidden

But for those whom I love

Who have taken on my dark grace

I open a path of shining light

With pain and sorrow left behind.

Source: Dakini Translations and Publications

Kim's Big Ole Ass

Kims' Big Ole Ass

That one big ole ass!

How big?

Not to put a number on it ... just to say that for a bidet ... she got a car wash!