Archive
prose poem with lots of unatributed quotes
The Kingdom of heaven is like writing in the margins. For all of the writing in the book there is always room for more words. The kingdom of heaven is within you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away, in the beginning was the word and the word was god and was with god and everyone who loves is a child of god because god is love. Solomon says truly there is nothing new under the sun and yet i am a new creation. i sing a new song, i love the truth, i fall short of the glory of god and write obscenities in the book of life, i fall short, but the wind rocks me, i lay each night in the cradle and feel at home, i fall short, i am selfish and self centered but mostly lazy and yet i am rocked by the winds of change. i feel at home on the dusty plains, i feel at home in the snowy mountains, i feel at home in the winter’s rain. god loves a cheerful giver a forthright spirit and an upright heart. Plato says rightly that we are in a cave looking at flickering lights cast upon the darkness of our cave all these things that will Pass away. How many walls that limited Plato’s walks still stand? How many bowls from which he supped his soups or knives that carved his bread? hath not moth & rust destroyed? yet the idea of Knife guides every hand that makes to cut anything anywhere ever. heaven and earth shall pass away but my words will never die. this world is illusion only in the eye of the eternity and for now walls still stand the cave still surrounds us with darkness. but it is only contrast on the page of the limitless light of the now. dare to read your life as a book, your experiences as words on a page in the book of life. store up treasures in heaven, someday all there will be is communication, isn’t that what communion really means? but now there are walls and roads and knives and bowls and soup and bread and the stuff that Stories are made of. tales to be told when the weather just doesn’t matter anymore. heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall never die. time is a fire that burns away all the things that in the end are dust, but star dust nothing less, “its the cosmos that gave us life its from stardust that we’re made of”. “we are all stars”. “every woman and every man is a star” because of the truth. not the idea of truth but the truth itself, the known and the unknown, the beginning and the end. just as our bodies, molded clay of life stuff, for a time, a temple of finite properties but infinite possibilities. we are born into a world in which we are a part and we live and we die like the birds in the field. but our fallible material shells generate consciousness. a self. an entity capable of knowing and being known. remembering and being remembered. the kingdom of heaven is within you. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, to be grasped. to be known to love and be loved for god is love and what is love but a knowing a being known. [the book of wisdom says the great build up walls of lies, great houses and lands and things that twinkle and gleam, that block out the light of eternity, (an experience of both truth & love) and leave them huddled alone in darkness. a land of dark despair] just as every hand that cuts is guided by the same perfect knife every heart that loves is guided by the same perfect love. God and heaven and all the saints and angels are an “a priori” assumption, a self evident fact by anyone who has ever been lost in the moment of love, the sharing, the knowing of another soul be it our neighbor or the god who made the universe its really all the same eternity, if you do it right. do you want to know if you are going to live forever? are you living forever right now? my home is the planet earth and my family has six billion children and i yearn to know their names and know their stories. i have a name, i have asked to be remembered and promised to remember. i have loved and am loved, i sing songs to the angels, i love everyone i have ever loved and that love lives inside of me. moments of eternity when we shined brighter together, lost in the moment, timeless and so eternal. heavenly treasures, stories to tell when the weather just doesn’t matter anymore because heaven and hell have passed away and there is only the word. the word is truth. the word is love. the word is beauty. the word is.
curriculum vita (a prose poem found in my paint by # calendar Dec. 06)
What is my story, what is the essence of my being? From where does come this hunger to know, to be known? Why mar the blank page? in what hubris it must lay, lie, die.
Oh to be of one and now, but what cost history, even to gain eternity, oh blessed now, the razor’s edge of existence that i can only pretend exists as by the time the light has hit my eyes its history, pure history. And oh, memory, the purest form of imagination. When the brain is eaten through with plaquey-tentacles and the mind from which is sprung is thin and patchy, the mind holds onto childhood. the earliest stories, the purest, the best, the core. oh history i sing your praise and yearn to never forget, even at the cost of the now.
My life a taut quivering string of ambivilance. the cost of a vivid imagination. There’s good reason to believe in everything. any damn thing.
At what cost freedom? At what cost power, even unsought, unutilized, unspent this currency weighs heavy in my pocket. Makes me want to walk all cockeyed, or spend it. or just fucking lay down, rest, forget, dream perhaps, not without struggle but how’s it going to drag you down, when your laying on the bottom?
intelligent design
Intelligent Design is a feeble attempt by Creationists to hide the fact they are trying to bring religion into the public schools. Their argument is that life is complex it had to have a designer. Its not science because where is your testable hypothesis? Nonetheless it has something about it that intrigues me. I am a big believer in evolution. It is a neat theory with a lot of supporting evidence. I remember in highschool biology when a student told the teacher he didn’t believe in it and the teacher scoffed and said he’d seen it in the lab. Mostly the anti-evolutionists don’t like evolution because it takes away our specialness. There is seemless and corroborating evidence from genetics, linguistics, and archeology that humanity left Africa 50,000 years ago and spread across the globe. I like the idea of the big bang happening 18 billion years ago and all the scientific evidence points to that. The fact that we are on one middling planet, circling a middling sun, in the backwaters of a middling galaxy is pretty cool and far weirder than any creation myth folks came up. But life is complex as is the universe. Complexity lends itself to intelligence. Even cities organize themselves intelligently, more user friendly than those developed by central planners. Bees do it, ants do it without any centralized authority. We call this process emergence, when intelligence naturally arises out of random simple processes. I do believe there is intelligence in our design but that does not necessarily mean there is a designer. I believe the design itself is intelligent and in that sense i do believe in intelligent design.
WET Zero
Since i got a compliment on my post on the Western Esoteric Tradition i decided to post another. The core of wet is numbers as fundamental bases on which everything else is built on. The WET built their system on the Hebrew Tree of Life. It is fairly complex to explain and i can’t claim to know all of its intricacies but i pretty much know how it works. Everything begins with what is normally depicted as three arcs representing nothingness, the nothingness of nothingness, and the nothingness of nothingness of nothingness. There are prettier names for it the light, the limitless light, and the mirror of limitless light, i believe. We might want to think of say a gas tank, it could be empty – containing nothingness, or non-existent and not just non-present, or it could even be impossible a deeper state of empty. I put this in for the sake of completion not claiming to be able to fully appreciate it in any practical way.
You can also think about things starting with zero. An interesting number mathematically and philosophically having more in common with infinity than any number imaginable. It helps us to imagine the infinite. It is the nothingness of freedom from desire, akin with Nirvana. In Tarot, or The Book of Thoth which i prefer, it is represented by The Fool. Traditionally depicted as a hermaphroditic youth dressed as a jester preparing to step off a clif with a little dog barking in the background. In Haiku form:
Fool walks towards the cliff
not hearing the warning cry
Fool does not need to
We think of nothingness as the potentiality of everything. This works on a practical level as a point of meditation. There is an emptiness that comes with meditation. If you have ever felt it, it is akin to being one with everything. An experience i can’t hope to describe. Which is why archetypes have power. Recognizing the Fool as Parsifal from the Grail legend helps us see the zero as innocence rather than ignorance and a lack of self consciousness to freely do the next right thing naturally and without effort.
Poetry Archive #1 (behavior mod. notebook 03-04)
unfinished novel page 25
(circa 2003)
don’t want to lose people
in unimportant details
but must establish
an understandable framework
to launch new memes.
as the only way to get
over the sun
enter Archetype Heaven
Unique Universal Knowledge
constructs contain ego-energy
we walk long swordblades
immutable in their truth
infinitely cruel
a tool of severity
excising kindness blob
of easy indifference to cancer
###############
selection from unpublished novel
Mitch is cold and dissatisfied with winter. a defuse chill that has begun to ache in its familiarity begetting contempt for himself and consequently the universe. He’s thinking about mirror shots and what they mean in movies, television, mitch’s mind. Watching from the outside not in a peeping tom kind of way but a stolen glance of a private place, in a public space. He has to watch to know. data collection. focus group testing, personal science. grist for the mill of mitch’s mind. working not the subconscious calculus of the thrown ball but its close kin….applied
yawning dogs
Within the last month or so i heard a story on NPR about dogs. It covered a study proving what i had already observed that yawning, which is known to be contagious, is so between dogs and our own naked primates. It also pointed out that yawning is not contagious with folks with autism, theorized to be a lack of empathy. Therefore dogs have empathy. I already knew all of the facts of the story but had not put those things together, though i am not surprised. Dogs are very emotion based. We know from other studies that dogs are more able to identify human emotions than even our close cousins the chimpanzee. To the extent that dogs have consciousness, not being able to pass the Mirror Test they presumably lack self-consciousness, i believe it is built emergently out of emotional processes unlike our forebrain centered consciousness that is presumably built out of administrative functions. Consciousness is an information process and is not to be confused with the biological processes that support it. “When the finger points to the stars the dog looks at the finger”. Self consciousness is more heavily clustered in mammals with fore brains, us, the great apes and elephants(?). But dolphins, and presumably whales though yet to be tested, pass the mirror test and demonstrate other traits of personhood (tool use for ex.- wild-dolphins put sponges on the tips of their noses to root for food in corral). A self-consciouss built out of the mammalian brain is possible. And what of bird self-consiousness? some can pass the mirror test. Consciousness built out of reptilian survival drive. Our consciousnesses, information processes, than probably carry theses subustructures of emotion and drive information systems that have the potential to achieve self consciousness. I welcome any correction on my musings on neruo-science, socio-biology, and philosophy.
am i a christian?
I got that question recently and as i often do i gave a rather bungled answer. For one i’ve put some thought into and answered regularly you’d think i’d have an answer. I do but i have lots of them, talking points depending on who asks. Sometimes none of them really seem to fit and i sputter around trying to answer the question. As with perhaps all binary questions the real answer is yes, no, neither yes nor no, both yes and no, and the question is meaningless. Its a big universe.
What i would have liked to have said might be something like this. I believe in the universe for lots of good reason. I believe in my own existance for many more. I have looked to see what i am and have some preliminary conclusions at least. I am consciousness with volition, the ability to process sensory information, remember the past, imagine almost anything, and i have some degree of self awareness. I know my consciousness arises in a process of emergence, self organization of simple routines. I believe the universe is likewise. Like my brain and body spinning off mind stuff that has achieved self awarenss it is conceivable to me that the universe has done likewise. The physical universe is perhaps 18 billion years old. I am fascinated by science and believe it is telling a largely self consistent narrative of how things came to be and see no serious reason to doubt the universe began with a Big Bang some time ago. As the first stars formed planets coalesced as well, perhaps 17 1/2 billion years ago. On one of those planets life arose which achieved self consciousness for the first time. On that planet one being had to be the first, allowing the first conversation and the creation of the information universe. Before this the universe consciousness had no one to talk to and without another there is no self consciousness. We are created through conversation. Words are the component of the internal dialogue the matrix of the self. In the beginning was the word and the word was god and the word was with god. Information has no particular location nor time. It just is. This first being achieved self consciousness and created the information universe and for all practical purposes invented god as they reflected each other. I have no reason not to think this first being incarnated on this planet as Jesus. I have had religious experiences that lend this idea credence, I don’t ask you to believe on my word but i challenge you to have your own experiences in whatever way is meaningful to you. Spirituality to me is less about what you believe and more about what you experience, though of course our experiences are mediated by our beliefs. the 2 forces that shape our higher consciousness are love and meaning. Deny a newborn love and it will die. Once we exist we can live without it, i have seen evidence of this but there is no evidence a self consciousness can develop without love. Nor can it exist without meaning. Meaninglessness would prohibit communication and we are created in a social context. No man is an island but every man and every woman is a star. A luminous being of the light of consciousness. We shine in this world and another, though it be just a story that is alright. Thats all anything is, anything real. Until its a story its existance is only as potential. probability. Reality breaks down into probability without an observer. Why is heaven referred to as the Book of Life? Jesus said both i have made many mansions and ye shall do far greater things. He quotes Psalm 82:6, ye are gods but shall die like men. Each of us creates our part in the universe of ideas. Mediated by our experiences in the material world we create a self and equip it with tools; ideas, language, stories, memories, the capacity for imagination and conversation. These are the treasures of heaven that moth and rust cannot destroy. The ideas of things are more real than the things themselves. So i am a christian in that i am a co-heir with christ. I am a child of the god that made the universe, if not by creation than observation, as i suspect the universe made god as much as the other way around. The god i tip my head to is the sum total of all things, the emergent organization of all mind in the universe, all that is and all that has ever been, and all that anyone could ever imagine anywhere and anywhen, and probably more as well. Its too big for words. All words lie in that they create necessary assumptions that obscure the total truth.
QUALITIES OF A GOOD GOAL
The difference between successful people and people who struggle is the successful individual can picture where they want their life to be and break down the steps towards getting their into achievable pieces. People who struggle simply respond to the daily crisis or the daily grind if their a bit more stable. Heres the common wisdom on setting goals.
1. Significant – A goal should be about something that is important.
2. Achievable – A goal should be something that is possible.
3. Positively Stated – It is easier to do something positive then stop something negative.
4. Measurable – You have to know whether it happened or not to achieve goals.
5. Time Limited – Deadlines make things happen.
6. Sets Up the Next Goal – Living a successful life is a never ending process of setting and achieving goals.
sense of self
Once again I am going to try to attempt to explain my most basic philosophies. I am heartened of the body of work on this blog because it will hopefully allow me to assume you may know largely where I’m coming from. I believe it is important to know what we are fundamentally, deeply and honestly, with diligent effort, and act on that knowledge to fulfill our life purpose. I believe the fundamentals of the universe are ideas; so-called physical realities are really only probabilities without an observer. Consciousness is important as it is fundamental to who we are. Consciousness is a framework of ideas built over a will built out of necessity. Self-consciousness is created through interaction with other consciousnesses in a milieu of culture, its fundamental building block is meaning. Self-conscious individuals create their own meaning both singly and in interaction with culture(s) and physical reality. Because ideas are shared and passed on and exist out of necessity (ex. “Food” is such a good idea it is eaten everywhere) they have the potential for immortality our physical selves lack. That is why we are fundamentally story. The question becomes what do we want our story to be? This is who we are; we are built out of the truth. Knowing who we are we can choose to be unaroused by any apparently negative circumstance through our control of meaning. We can give meaning to anyone or anything without limit but meaning is mediated through the truth, which thankfully is infinite. Meaning is built out of ideas and organizations of ideas, memes if you will. The more memic material you have to self-organize in an emergent process the greater your personal memic universe. Memic universes can be shared through communication, consciously and unconsciously as well as exist in culture. Memic universes are not bound by time or space but access is subject to decay and apparently termination. The deeper understanding of your own memetic existence allows you to understand others and larger patterns on interactions. By exercising our self narrative function we can enlarge and enhance our storyline within a culture, our place in the shared memic universe. We cannot force our entry onto the universal stage of known ideas without risk of unintended negative consequences obscuring the purity of the story we would have told of who we are. We need volition, but passive volition, to the greater story arc to be in balance with who-what-where-when-how we are. We allow ourselves to be part of a greater story and participate in its unfolding as it is meant to be. Knowing ourselves to be many and self-contradictory we should try to look to our highest self for direction and self-identity (internal narration). Knowing our existence to be a story we do not just look back to who we were what we were a part of but who we will be at the end of the story and what do we have to learn from that character who has finally figured it all out. What is it going to be what do I decide to do today to see this story means something.
I did not vote today
Good morning, i am afraid i lost the brilliant essay i have spent two long sessions working on and planned on finishing off and posting today. Apparently I didn’t turn the computer off and lost it to a dead battery. Its weird because i distinctly rememeber saving it when i took the break i never got back from. Also i had opened up a previous saved version to work on it so that should still be there right? But its not. So since i have had a fairly difficult week already i don’t feel like coming up with something original i stumbled across an essay i wrote last year for the election and with the presidential hoopla nonsense gearing up i thought it was kind of relevant for now, so enjoy. I’d like to hear your comments on this piece and on where i should go with this blog. What do you want to read, dear readers, poetry, essays, stories, something else?
I did not vote today. I chose not to get my hands soiled in a dirty irrelevancy that frightens me to be forced to live in and observe its operations, let alone meaningfully engage it in any voluntary way that is not destroying it, setting it back, limiting its scope. Fundamentally law is unjust. Law inherently lacks the necessary understanding and compassion to account for every possible condition, circumstance, and type of individual to be anything more than a “bull in a china shop” when provided with any ability to coerce, imprison, or deprive of liberty. I have no need of laws. I engage the world in a just and equitable manner whether the law tells me too or not. I pursue pleasure and avoid pain in a safe and reasonable way determined by my own reason and conscience in any way I see fit regardless of the law. Not only do I prefer not to choose someone to invest with power to abrogate my potential freedoms, I would consider it wrong to appoint someone to abrogate yours. I would prefer to live in a world where both you and I are free to determine the entire nature of our lives without coercion; the only limitation being our love and respect for the other occupants of our shared planet and a commitment to sustainability for future generations. I am grateful to live under the rule of law. It is a more graceful and accommodating form of institutionalized-potential-slavery than the previous power structures of enforced hierarchies of times past, but not one capable of real justice and equity, even in ideal circumstances, let alone in our actual world dominated by historic oppression. If I lived in a land without at least the semblance of the rule of law such that we struggle under I might not be an anarchist. I might be a republican, a democrat, a revolutionary constitutionalist trying to enshrine a rule of law. There are warlords, bandits and dictators I know but I live here, now. I dream of living in a better world in a society where we care about each other and voluntarily organize to solve problems and see our needs met in a totally non coercive manner. I believe we can only reach that world by building it now. The system only inflicts its harms and injustices through the participation of not only its law wielders and gun bearers but all of its contributors of energy and resources that we could be contributing toward a world of mutual respect and cooperation. I believe for me, right now, that world is more likely to come about through my not voting than by my voting. Not because I don’t care, but because I care so much. Not because I feel powerless, but because I feel powerful. Not because I have no hope, but because I believe a world of gentle sustainability built upon cooperation is inevitable. The only alternative is complete destruction. I, at least, refuse to participate in anything less than what is good, which is after all, ultimately, all that will last.
Multiconstruct 
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