Monday, November 13, 2017

Visceral Completeness

There is an ethereal presence in the trees.

As the wind complements their consciousness.

Trees speak a language that moves the wind in

An well-orchestrated silent sonata.

A leafonic symphony dripping in esoteric wisdom

bends in visceral completeness.

While their roots

begin their journey inward.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

The Admirals Of Our Disturbing Political Epitaph

“Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes; what a satire this is on government.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson didn’t mince words when he wrote his essay series from 1841 to 1844. Emerson was a writer’s, writer. He dressed his words in expensive thoughts and sensible metaphors. His thoughts about politics and taxes are on point today, but we still don’t get it. America’s government is the Titanic of the 21st century. It suffers from foolish executive legislation and laws that stripe to the bone, the character of every citizen.

We elect representatives to find a cure for our character flaws, but those well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning folks, don’t represent us in Washington. They flow with their party’s tide and dine with the sharks that tug at the ordinary issues till they are out-of-date and out-of-order. Representation spoils under the rug of power, greed, and envy. These voting state champions wake up every morning with a capitalistic hangover, but they can’t wait to do the same thing over and over again. This addicted group of economic supremacists reveal in their historic failures. And they lie and then converge in ego-serving political warfare with the grace and pride of first-class felons. Political lies and the ego-serving political warriors that serve them to us in a neatly wrapped legal package give nothing and take all by proxy. These slightly aware political warriors are the captains of our corrupt form of capitalism and the admirals of our disturbing epitaph.

Emerson said, “the boundaries of personal influence is impossible to fix.” People are the dysfunctional organs of our Democracy. This form of Democracy uses the mind of a select group and creates a form of civil freedom and religious sentiment that fuel our addictive idiosyncracies. And then we justify our addictions by transferring blame. Blame negates our political validity. And fear fuels our anguish and sense of injustice.

But Emerson found a way to deal with our self-inflicted conundrum in 1841:

“Hence, the less government we have, the better. The fewer laws and the less confided power the better. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy. He loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance.

To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him and looks from his eyes.”

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

The Silent Church

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water from the urns of men. We must go alone. Isolation precedes true society. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter the world. Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay, Self-Reliance, is a wonderland of creative thought. Emerson would kneel to express his thoughts about the lack of integrity that exists in the top floor as well as the cellar of capitalism. Society is a joint-stock company where substantial benefits are always elusive. There’s a sense of irrelevance and expendability in the capitalistic air. And that air is overflowing with an awareness that the system is a complicated mess of decay and impermanence. Frustration is the spread on the cracker of dissension, and the crumbs are simultaneously building other realities in different locations and on different social levels.

This is the era of nonconformists. This is the era when mortal plans are not vibrating in a field of goodness. And this is the era when nothing is more sacred than the integrity of our own minds. No law is as sacred as the connection within the framework of consciousness. We plow through life in the presence of opposition. We bow to names and badges. And we participate in a distorted form of capitalism that harbors dead institutions, and fuels a new sense of vanity that worships and follows angry bigots. We hide behind a college of political fools, and we give alms to sots who control the temperature of saneness in order to stroke their own vanity.

So it’s time to speak with hard words or with gestures that awaken the misunderstood aspect of our immortal consciousness. It is the time to be great and misunderstood at the same time without violating our harmonious freedom. Our internal ocean is our silent church. And it is the free-flowing expression of our character.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Alternative Possibilities

The Principle of Alternative Possibilities, in the minds of some philosophers, is the belief that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he is able to do something else. Other philosophers say that belief is false. A person is morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not do something else. So the debate continues. The debate is about freedom as well as determination. We have the freedom to choose what is morally responsible in every possibility we create in order to experience life in our reality. We are always able to choose otherwise, but that choice may have associations attached to it that makes us believe we cannot choose otherwise. The belief in those associations makes us think we are morally responsible to those associations, not to ourselves, and that gives us the freedom to not be morally responsible.

There’s not much moral responsibility in our capitalistic market. Moral responsibility rolls between the sheets of legal manipulation and alternative facts. The determination to be morally responsible is a puff of smoke in a system that feeds the wealthy with lawful pandering that reeks with legal injustice, and the stench of a modern day Nobel Lie. Lawmakers become the noblemen and the keepers of their version of moral responsibility, and the people ferment in pools of distortions and fabrications. People shiver in the ice of the morally inept and they burn in the fires of the morally just. Our moral responsibility is drowning in a sea of capitalistic greed, so we excuse ourselves from any kind of alternative possibility principle.

Our political leaders set traps and conjure fancy concepts and call them laws so their moral responsibility becomes the universal truth and the undeniable choice. We are naked and afraid to accept what we create, so we give political and religious leaders the right to create for us. The choice to follow or to lose form the boundaries of capitalistic and political traps.

If we choose to swim against the political and capitalistic current and use our own alternative possibilities, waves of innate responsibility give us a mental lift and a serious dose of inner vision. We are able to feel the lesson within the phony principles of alternative possibilities and use them to keep our focus on our innate responsibility. Our innate responsibility lives in the ocean of personal possibilities that become real.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Those Lost Inside Love

The immortal Sufi poet, Rumi, had a lot to say about his reality. One of his sayings was: “Don’t try to figure what those lost inside love will do next.” There it is. Thanks, Rumi. We are lost inside love. We want to find out who we are and who is best. The essence of consciousness is calling us. We don’t answer. Or we answer with our version of love. You know that version. Love that judges. The love that covets. The love that is selective and self-serving. We keep looking around this world and we blame. We never see the inside from the outside. And outside, we are told, is our life.

Life is a pleasure and we dip it in experiences. We compare experiences and try to adjust them to conform. Yes. There is comfort in the mass not knowing. Not knowing we are knowing is a tiring adventure. There is comfort in pushing our self into a prefix that turns words into other words. We try to be happy, but being a prefix we turn that word into unhappy. That is the rub, isn’t it?

Those lost inside love forget various levels where existence flows in a canal overflowing with vibrations. Soothing vibrations. These energetic aspects of consciousness tune us to the nearest station, and we create individual realities.

Here’s the secret we don’t try to figure out: We exist in multiple realities. We focus on one, then another. And we continue to experience the thrill of those realities. We are the black holes of physical existence. And we suck everything in around us. We use that everything, and create an individual reality within a mass reality, and then we change our focus.

We are lost inside the love of one reality until we change our focus to another reality. And in those other realities, we become the essence within them. Yep. But we are the essence of our own earthy reality too, and in a way, we will continue to experience that reality using a different vibration. We do it now in dreams. We are the almighty, vibrating, creative mirror, and the faces we see in it.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

The Bowels Of Ignorance

Democratic government will work to the full advantage only if all the interests that matter are practically unanimous in their allegiance to the country and the structural principles of the existing society.

When these principles come into question, issues surface. Those issues divide the nation into two hostile camps. When that happens, democracy works at a disadvantage. And it will cease to work when interests and ideals refuse to compromise.


Joseph Schumpeter, the 1925 chair of the University of Bonn's Department of Economics, wrote those thoughts in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Schumpeter goes into great detail describing different forms of government. He describes Marxist socialism, American capitalism, and others. Schumpeter describes democracy in simple as well as complicated terms.

Schumpeter said all capitalistic societies will adopt some form of socialism to survive. Capitalism is a self-destructive force. Capitalism always has to reinvent itself to grow. American greed capitalism reinvents itself at such a fast rate it is almost impossible for it to maintain balance and produce economic and social stability.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was more than a break in the established rules of politics. There was a lack of concern for repairing the current system in an orderly and agreeable way. That sketchy election confirmed greedy capitalism's ability to erode the structural principles of democracy. Destruction from that erosion may surpass all other periods in American history. The world is watching greedy capitalism destroy any allegiance it has to democracy and any allegiance it has to social and religious equality.

The inability of the American two-party system to agree on anything is a symptom of the self-induced illness that weakens democracy. American democracy is on life support, and greedy capitalism is on the critically ill list.

The 21st century is the dawn of social enlightenment. America will sit at the center of a new world order when greedy capitalism follows slavery into the bowels of ignorance.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Capitalism Is A Destructive Living Thing

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian-born American economist, political scientist and Harvard professor wrote those words in his book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Professor Schumpeter was the Finance Minister of Austria before he became a Harvard professor.

Capitalism is a living thing. Capitalism is constantly in motion and the system continually reinvents itself in order to survive. In the process of reinventing itself, Capitalism creates social unrest. As Schumpeter mentions, there is an element of creative destruction in a capitalistic society. Entrepreneurs are, by design, the destructive force that supports economic growth. Entrepreneurs destroy long-established companies, and they undermine the institutional boundaries of Capitalism. They keep investors happy while they look for difficult developments and unsustainable growth. Capitalism inevitably leads to some type of socialism.

We often wonder why the world acts and reacts the way it does. The global economy is the grandchild of basic Capitalism. It is capitalism on steroids, and those steroids are causing a great deal of negativity in the world. The negativity surfacing from Capitalism is manifested in political elections, social programs, religious teachings, and economic decisions. Capitalism rules politicians, educators, healthcare professionals, and even social workers. In order to get anything accomplished, people must think and act in a capitalistic way.

The eventual demise of Capitalism is not upon us, but it is imminent. An element of self-responsibility is boring holes in the walls of Capitalism. A spark of socialism is in the air, and eventually, that spark will become a flame. The flame of socialism, as Schumpeter said, is the product of Capitalism, and socialism is not all bad. Socialism of some kind will light the way and create a sense of social calm in future generations.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Neurotic Events

Private beliefs can distort the events that connect an individual with other people. We all interpret events in a personal manner, but there is a psychological meeting ground where shared events become personal events. Private symbols are thrust over sense data, and the result is a physical world that impacts the framework for experience and human relationships. The conscious mind interprets sense events, and freedom of action for physical and psychological mobility occurs. Our imagination colors and charges this mobility, but the power behind this action is our emotions.

Emotions are in overdrive right now. Our mobility is interrupted by our distorted beliefs. We believe the world is in trouble, so our focus is on trouble. The troublemaker is an emotional individual who colors his world using sense data that borders on paranoia. His paranoia is hidden under nationalistic banners. The paranoid organizes his psychological world around his obsessions, and he disregards everything that does not apply until all things around him conform to his beliefs. Unprejudiced sense data would bring relief, but the fine balance between mind and matter is compromised and rules in one direction.

People have followed paranoid people for years. There is a certain attraction between people who disregard the beliefs of others. Paranoid champions turn into fanatics sooner than later. Some have already crossed the border into the world of fanaticism. Fanaticism has a strong hold on the human aspect of the psyche. Religion is deeply immersed in fanaticism, and so are political and social institutions. The trick is to recognize the distortions before they become habit forming. Jumping from one fanatical idea to another is addictive. Individuals are swayed by the sizzle more than the taste of the fanatical belief. Fanatics ignore the psyche’s grandeur, and their connection to nature is eroded, when fanatical behavior becomes the norm. Life becomes a grand imbalance wrapped in neurotic events.

Friday, February 3, 2017

The Challenges Of A Self-Righteous Leader

No one is as fanatical as the self-righteous. America has its fair share of self-righteousness. One high-profile new political leader is a stern idealist. He believes in an idealized good while simultaneously believing man is fatally flawed. In his mind, man is filled with evil, and man is naturally prone to bad rather than good intentions. He believes in the absolute necessity of power, and he believes that individuals are powerless. Individuals can’t alter the march of evil, and the corruption he sees in the country, and in all other countries. No matter how much power he achieves, other groups and other countries have more power. But their power is evil. Even though he believes in the existence of an idealized good, he feels the wicked are more powerful. The good are weak, and they lack the energy to overcome his concept of evil.

This leader sees himself as just. Those that don’t agree with him are his moral enemies. He believes he is surrounded by the corrupt, and he will use any means at his disposal to bring down anyone that threatens the presidency or the state. He will use an idealistic tone to make people believe in him. But our impulses don’t lie. This leader is a fanatic that wants to rule instead of lead.

When does an idealist turn into a fanatic? If someone tells us, we must follow this decision or that one blindly, and in complete obedience, there is room for concern. And, if that decision is the only right way toward an idealistic good, then we are dealing with a fanatic. If he tells us to kill for the sake of peace, he does not understand peace or justice. And if he tells us to give up our free will, and follow his decision, he is a hopeless fanatic.

Through our mundane choices, we affect the events in our world. The mass world is the result of multitudinous individual choices. Our choices are rooted in impulses, and impulses are energy geared toward action. Some impulses are conscious, some are not. Even our private impulses are based on the greater good of the species and the planet. The fulfillment of the individual will automatically lead to the betterment of the species. Our impulses will override the power of this fanatic, just like they have through the centuries.

Fanatics create diversity to feed their self-righteous ego. At some point, the diversity becomes a type of unity. Through our inner desire to experience the challenges of a delusional leader, we become what our impulses tell us we are.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

A History Of Denials

The greater life of every individual exists in the framework that originally gave it birth. What that framework is, and how it functions, is a mystery. Seeing the self in physical form is a major accomplishment. No amount of information or the accumulation of a vast amount of facts gives us the inner knowledge we use to grow from an infant into an adult. That journey is one of the most difficult journeys in physical life, but it is also one of the easiest thanks to the connection we have with our inner nature. We intuitively realize we are immersed in and a part of our physical growth, and it seems to happen on its own. Growth happens through the framework we lose contact with, while we focus on the world we live in.

Religion has been the vehicle we use to connect to our inner nature. But the messages within religious thought have been distorted by eliminating knowledge that does not conform to accepted beliefs during certain time periods. People often leave religions searching for that eliminated knowledge, and some people never find it. Churches have altered many of the old records that explain our inner framework, and we accept the distorted beliefs. Those beliefs hinder us from relying on the natural growth and learning process within our inner framework.

The attainment of adulthood means a lack of purpose for many people. Their only purpose is to rely on religion to give them guidance, and that often means denying the physical body or procreating for the sole purpose of keeping the human species alive. We interpret the private events in our life through these powerful myths. We create a history of denials in order to conform to our filtered assumptions and perceptions about our individual reality.

If our greater life exists in this unknown framework, then death is not an affront to life. It is a continuation inside the framework of our own nature. Going back to that framework is an individual accomplishment and the beginning of a life that explains why we accept the history of denials in this physical life.