The Truth Is. . . .

Tags

being, Enlightenment, life, musings, non-duality

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to know.

As a kid I remember trying to figure out how Santa could visit every house in our subdivision let alone the city, state, country, WORLD.

I puzzled over a child’s book about the moon and various theories about how we got it. My favorite was the one where it was like a giant pimple that got bigger and puffier, and then like taffy stretched until it tore loose.

On and on it went. The search for what was true.

I figure that search if taken seriously (most don’t of course, and live out their lives in normal day-to-day fluff until one day they cease breathing), it leads to one of two outcomes.

If it’s undertaken in some desperation and fear of annihilation, then I figure it leads to fundamentalism. Such folk breathe a sigh of relief, life is survivable!, and close up shop and live out the remaining time in normal day-to-day fluff until one day they cease breathing. Since the journey was taken in desperation, the conclusion that “I am saved, no more need be said or thought” becomes the black box of all black boxes, survivable by the onslaught of all  FACTS to the contrary. It thus becomes not a search for truth, but an easy fix to my anxiety issues.

The other outcome is never really an outcome at all for most, but entails a life spent in searching. Unwilling to accept the first “pretty” truth offered and thereafter to sit with the

fundamentalist mentality, we accept what appears true, only to discard it as we learn more and realize that truth is but an appearance, and the search proceeds.

Ultimately we end up with a lot of possibilities but few sureties.

We leave a trail of discarded theories and books behind, encompassing the fields of philosophy, theology, particle physics, neuroscience,  and cosmological models. (Am I the only one who bemoaned the loss of a pet theory such as the “steady-state universe as the damnable “facts” insisted I must?)

We read about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Confucius, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zen, New Age, Old Age, Wiccan, and every conceivable “science” of the mind.

And it all comes down to partial answers and belief.

Every so-called guru has his/her answer, but as Jed McKenna asks, where do they roll out their “graduates”, i.e. fully enlightened beings, meaning people who KNOW?  Every teacher has those who claim he/she has “changed their lives forever” and an equal number who cry charlatan. And they are probably both right.

 

I’m told to seek what is true. What is unalterably, perfectly, demonstrably true. And I am asked to ask again and again, “who am I?” Those operating in delusional dreams will answer, wife, mother, seamstress, student and other rot. Those semi-conscious, like myself, will respond smartly with a great deal of egotistical holier-than-thou-ism, “a spiritual being having a human experience”. We are both equally wrong I suspect, or both right. I doesn’t matter.

We have no proof we are either. We only think. René’s famous quote “I think, therefore I am” or  cogito ergo sum to those who want to appear smarter than the average dog, is trite, and quite possibly wrong. For we must recall the Matrix and it’s consciousness in the circuit board which is merely an update on Plato’s cave.

We are left in the end, as I see it at least with nothing more than the statement that “a mind exists”. It may be mine, but that is just the beginning. There may be others, and perhaps one great one, or we may be all parts of one great one, or we may only be a created computer “mind” inhabiting a stage, playing out scripts or doing inprov at the behest of “a” mind.

I can only operate from this mind that I appear to have. The rest is all supposition and appearances.

That may be the only truth, this thinking thing,  and I might well be wrong in that too.

If you have ever had the experience of sitting in a group of people at any social occasion or otherwise, and felt suddenly “pulled back” and aloof from all going on around you, observing even yourself from a “corner” of the room, then you know what  I mean here. Is this reality or have we slipped in these moments into an open doorway we mostly fail to see? Do we glimpse the Matrix as it were, in such moments?

Are we like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, or like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day? How can we tell?

We are told we must wake up! And we do this by asking questions and being relentless in stripping away the rot and retaining only the kernel of truth at the center.

Is there a center? Is there anything beyond the peelings?

I can reach the point that tells me that I am not what others think I am, nor even what I think I am. I am the product of what others have thought of what I have said, thought, and done, and how I have responded and molded myself to that. Where did I conform, retreat, stand my ground, or ignore what others said? How strong was my “self” or non-self as the truth seekers would say? When I peel away the layers of this false me is there a me at all in the end?

Does it matter?

Is it better to live in the illusion rather than be no-self?

It’s all about fuzzy concepts of non-duality in which mind and the universe are seen as the same. It’s a thoroughly Asian concept prominent in most Eastern religions, but finding purchase in the West among neo-Platonists. Mostly the West interprets it as a mind/body oneness.

Somehow this is seen as preferable, this non-dualism, but why that is so is not yet apparent to me. It’s also considered de rigueur to claim that the universe is a friendly place ready to do our bidding. Again, I’m not sure why.

So, if you see me, and I seem to be gazing into the sky, and I seem to be standing there, doing nothing, well I’m not. Doing nothing that is. I’m thinking. That’s the only thing I know to do.

If I come up with something I’ll be sure to let you know. But I’ve been told that we each have our own row to hoe and the universe will deliver us what and who we need exactly as we are ready to receive it, and in that uniquely unique fashion, we are all in this on our own.

There is peace in the truth.

(PS. If all this sounded slightly black, then I definitely set the wrong tone. It’s quite E N L I G H T E N I N G. )

 

If I Ruled the Olympics

Tags

editorial, Olympics, opinion, Sports

Let’s assume.

Since the very title is a presumption, it seems right and logical that we do.

So bear with me.

Let’s assume some things:

1. The Olympics as in “ancient” games were a serious quest to determine the best of athleticism.
2. That athletes from say Thrace or Carthage stood an equal chance as those of Athens and Sparta.
3. That judging was fair.

Okay, so perhaps we are not so sure of those things, but the ideals are what we are after here, and those are certainly the ideals of Olympic competition, along with brotherhood, the international symbol for ma and apple pie, and the general touting of human excellence, there having  been no Nobel’s or Oscar’s or Pulitzer’s at that time.

So of course we realize that all has gone terribly wrong in the ensuing millennia.

Today the Games are a nationalistic entertainment extravaganza wherein somehow one country is judged better than another by virtue of how it schemes to “help” its athletes win while still not getting caught for cheating. All kinds of political points are scored, lost, won, and wasted in the pursuit. Of increasing concern is the degree to which polluters, human rights violators, and countries unable to feed their own masses somehow manage to sweep, cover-up, board-up, or wall-off, these embarrassments  while “hosting” these circuses.

Everyone waits with bated breath, (whatever that actually means) to see what Vlad Putin and his “nipples on display” ego has in store for gays and other dissidents once all the lovely people have gone and Russia returns to its cold, stark realities. We politely have looked the other way “for the sake of the athletes” and most of us will sanctimoniously report that his “opening and closing” paled in comparison with Beijing’s and even London’s.

Meanwhile a half-dozen impoverished countries will bid for the right to use dwindling resources to build venues which often go unused once the games are over, while poverty haunts the senses within blocks of these palaces of extreme waste.

So if I were handling things, this is what I’d do:

1. Select permanent sites for both winter and summer games. The choice would be weather/sea level appropriate, but would attempt to locate in smaller, poorer countries if possible. They would receive “rent” on the space and a bit of the profits in return for their lease of the land.
2. The permanent facilities would be funded by say a 25-year average of all countries athlete count to the respective games. Meaning that countries like the US, Russia, Britain, and so forth would pay the greatest share. All countries would contribute to the maintenance of a security force both during and between games and to reasonable maintenance of the venues.
3. There would be no flag carrying and no flag raising at events or at medal presentations. Athletes would not wear uniforms defining them as representing countries but rather as Olympians. Every country will undoubtedly keep their viewers firmly educated in these matters without the formal Olympic committee being involved.
4. All athletes will use the SAME equipment. We are here to determine the best athlete not which country developed the best racing suit/bike/sled/goggles/skis/javelin. Developers of equipment will submit their designs and research to the committee who will maintain experts in all these matters who will choose the best for usage in the next games.
5. All athletes will have access to venues six months before the opening to practice on the track/field/course if they wish. A small fee for housing will be paid and for food. The rest is free.
6. For sports that are not subject to objective standards for “judging”, i.e., a stopwatch and verifiable goals, i.e., proper completion of the circuit, other rules will apply:

                   a. If you want to be a “sport” no bowing  is allowed. Conclude your effort and wave to the audience and depart.

                   b. Everyone will complete the same exact “routine”.

                   c. Athletes will wear appropriate clothing and not appear to be characters in a story.

                   d. Standards will be developed for each “part” of a routine, and graded on a scale of (1)completed satisfactorily (2)

                       completed but not cleanly so (3) partially completed (4) failed to complete.

                    e. If all parts are completed “satisfactorily” 1-3 additional points may be given for “extreme merit”.

                    f. No points will be given for “style”.

                   g. All judges will be publicly known, and are required  to turn in signed voting sheets which are also public.

                   h. No judge can participate who has a family/business associate/or other close relationship with a coach or other intimately

                        connected person to the athlete.

 

No doubt there are  a hundred things wrong with what I have devised. But seriously this stuff is getting to be a joke and something must be done.

And is it time to devise a definition of eligibility? Are we going to have professionals or amateurs or some of each? Since we cannot stop the corruption of countries paying and supporting athletes to give them a hand up, we need to figure this out too. I have no salient opinion on this at this time. It’s fraught with landmines I fear.

On to MARCH MADNESS!

 

A Serious Case of the Ass

Tags

teabaggers, women's rights

And you thought she would go quietly into the still dark night, returning to her lair, climbing into her sarcophagus, bidding adieu to Marcus, after relinquishing her role as beard to his hetero pretensions.

Nah.

Bat shit crazy don’t play that way.

She continues to play the game of stupid queen of the mountain better than such noteworthy rivals as Sarah, Phyllis, and Marsha, all rolled into one. Michele Crazy Eyes Bachmann once again wins the gold metal for craziest damn woman to ever have a vagina.

But then she doesn’t. See that’s the really fine thing about this new pronouncement by the bible in one hand, gun in the other, reparative theory is your friend, nut job, is that it truly is shocking. See, while Marcus has always been firmly wedged into his closet of gayness, his beard, was really a man all along.

Yes, Michele, nobodies, Belle, is a guy. It’s a fact.

Here’s how we came to know.

She spilled the beans…or shall we say she spilled the gonads for all to see.

She ‘splained it this way: See, your Barack…being all Black and all, now he was elected because there was all this guilt floatin’ around, and him being only “half” ya know, black, it was like getting rid of that black angst thing, without technically ya know, havin’ to actually elect one of them. (I had this explained to me by a couple of Christianist ladies, one of whom howled that Obama isn’t black, he’s only half-black, having a white mother. Another explained that  questioning his citizenship was not racist, because she had taken in a black girl to care for during her pregnancy’ and she was WAY darker than Obama, which proves I guess, in the mind of a racist, that well, only shades of color matter, but somehow that has nothing to do with RACE-ism)

But, Michele, intoned in her cutie little voice, tis not the same when it comes to women. Nah, America is not yet “ready for a woman President”, and for a coupla reasons. One, there ain’t no guilt in America over women, and two well, there is just no “pent-up desire” which is Michele’s way of saying there ain’t no stinkin’ hard-on for a woman.

And she oughta know, since she RAN FOR PRESIDENT. And since she did, and since she appears to believe her own slimy brain farts, well, it can only be that Michele is really Michael and no woman at all.

That’s the logic of it as far as I can see.

It all just was the “last straw” if you get my drift.

I’ve been reading an essay on a critical examination of the phrase “Sarah laughed” in Genesis. Done from a feminist point of view and gathering the linguistic evidence and the EARLIEST manuscripts, we learn that Sarah was actually laughing at the possibility that her old and dried up vagina might become that moist Eden once again and her old and flaccid husband might actually be able to get it up at his age. As such, it violated the shame/honor society of the Egyptian Jews who were translating the Septuagint into Koine Greek–the same version that would be used by the likes of Jesus and Paul as they read Torah in the synagogue of Jerusalem in the early years of the Common Era.

And if it were not for a long line of women starting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who just oddly enough thought that maybe God and the baby Jesus thought as highly of them as it did about all the men it focused on, well, we’d still be in the kitchen, barefoot no doubt and with a child at each elbow and one on the hip as we prepared a feast for the menfolk who were out and about “important” business.

And then, just then, before that I have to contend with a Neanderthal male who,without a single modicum of biblical training purports to bolster his ill-conceived notion that it was solely the “Jews what kilt our Lord,” by suggesting that I was not the least bit attractive from his arrogant pig-oinking position, well, I’m getting the feminist juices all fired up again.

So Michele, pseudo-woman, and Phyllis Schafley and her idiotic “be a good wife” while I make millions writing books and speaking for large fees, and Marsha Blackburn, with her “I’ll say whatever you tell me to if I can just be on camera” drivel, you can all go take a massive flying leap cause ladies, and I do use that term most advisedly, you are FUCKING NOT HELPING HERE as some of us are trying to make a world where girls can grow up to be anything they want and make as much as any man, and that child rearing is EVERY BODY’S business and responsibility, and that women’s ideas about compromise, caring, and compassion just might, JUST MIGHT add a segment to the conversation that MIGHT, JUST MIGHT result in fewer wars and less death, and more freakin’ happiness for all.

So THAT’S what I’m thinking about today.

How ’bout you?

Black Women Writers Can Jump (or Shadow Mentors)

Tags

Alice Walker, autobiographical shit, life, women's rights

We watched American Master’s Beauty in Truth last night. The life of Alice Walker, best known for writing The Color Purple. She goes to the top of my list of people I’d love to spend an evening with. She joins a list that includes Kathryn Hepburn, Carl Sagan, Woody Guthrie, Malcolm X,  Dorothy Parker, Hypatia, Da Vinci, Socrates.

At the same time she makes me feel shame. More of that in a moment. The Contrarian said ditto for him in the shame department for much different reasons. He’s neglected women writers over the years. We talked a while of all the issues she raised.

How she said that “activism is the rent one pays for being alive”, or how she noted that “even the monk who meditates in a cave contributes to the world.” How she was puzzled that anyone would marry anyone “forever” since people come into your life to teach you something, and if we are growing, we grow out of relationships and we move on. As she moved from marriage to a white lawyer to a “partnering” with another man, to relationships with three women. How she birthed a girl and now doesn’t know who she is any more as that daughter streaked the tabloids with “why my mother no longer cares about me.”

How she traveled the world, dipping her hand into causes that fought for women’s and people’s rights, never caring what apple carts were upset. How she suffered the agony of aloneness when her own ripped her apart for  seemingly forever over her depiction of Black men in The Color Purple.

How she writes, and how she lives, and loves, and continues to smile gently and get on with the messy business of life.

And how she writes! How the voices of the characters chatter in her head and she seeks the quiet of aloneness and busily writes down “their story”. She upsets me whole idea of writing novels. She makes me rethink  my writing.

Such a powerful presence in our world. And she  makes me feel shame.

Shame that it took me so very long to begin to be who I am, and not who I was supposed to be, and desperately wanted to be for far too long.

I mentioned recently that I never saw myself in the house with the white picket fence, standing at the door with lunch boxes, apron, and a lipsticked mouth, waiting on three or four passing blazes of pre-teen energy bodies, to run by with a grab at the lunch as they tumbled forth to school, with a man in a suit and briefcase bringing up the rear, jutting his head to one side to peck me on the cheek as he sauntered off to enter the male world of “business”.

I kept this all to myself, feared that I was strange, and did my damnedest  to act like everyone else. Being a bit on the chubby side and wearing glasses put me at a distinct disadvantage which meant I had to try even harder. Add in the fact that I went to a small county school where cliques were EVERYTHING and not being “in” was definitely out, and you can understand that graduation was met with a sigh of relief and the ever-present optimism that college would be better.

Indeed I did not ever see myself as mommy stuff. I was way more comfortable in those young years even seeing myself as Captain Kirk’s First Officer than I was being Donna Reed or The Beav’s mother, June. I mean no disrespect to mothers everyone and anywhere, but having charge of squalling smelly babies was not my idea of a good thing, and I gritted my teeth through a handful of babysitting jobs just to prove that I could.

Don’t get me wrong, I think kids are great, also necessary, delightful at times, undeniably wise sometimes, funny, and all that stuff. As long as they as they belong to someone else.

But I was raised in the time and place that I was and so even though I saw the world from a “liberated” perch long before I heard the word, I did my best to want what I was told I was supposed to want. I scoured the countryside and cities and located the men I was supposed to, and had all the relationships one would expect. Some loved me to death, others enough, some not at all. And I returned that favor. Some were dear friends, some sweet encounters, some were frantic matings between two who just got the instant hots the minute they laid eyes on each other. (I even did it in the police station once.)

They tell me that during her last sickness, my mother was told that I had married. She smiled.

I’m not surprised. She never thought much of my lawyering. Marriage was and would always be the defining feature of womanhood to her. My appellation switched from failure to success with a ring on the left hand, third finger.

I bought into that stuff for so much longer than I care to admit.

I got lucky. Found a great man. One who loved me madly. One who, as the months and years went by and I peeled off the scabs of long- ago received wounds, and showed him all the sore spots, uncovering the ugly scars of things I’d said and done that I’d kept hidden in that secret organ we all have inside that almost no one knows about, one, who, still loved me even then. The flawed me, he loved. And I loved him back a thousand times a thousand for that.

This is all to say that I was not the child, not even the adult who gives less than half a shit what you or anyone thinks and does what they want. I was not the Alice Walker kid who declared at age 13 that she was through with “formal religion” and made it stick. Such people have some hidden lake of self-esteem that they can run to and drink deeply from whenever needed. I knew it not, and so I tried to be as I was “supposed to be” because being liked meant everything, being normal was everything.

I’ve gratefully moved off that stuck spot. I’m me and glorious. I admit I like to play a few games of bingo every day, and I’m reading about feminist criticism as a methodology of biblical scholarship. I care passionately about a host of issues am a true bleeding-heart liberal, feminist (with the facts to back it up),  and tell people what I believe and argue with them when they don’t agree with me. I cook, don’t clean, and engage in more crafts that is sane. I was bored with law about the time I figured out I was doing it right. I’m smarter than most, but no genius by far. I know that education opened me up to a world that my provincial little auto town never would have.

I consider myself better than no one. My choices are mine, meant to make me right with me. Your choices might well horrify me, but I make no judgement about why you chose them. That I truly mean. Until your choices impinge on mine or others right to make their choices. Then, Houston, we got a problem.

And I love Alice Walker, and somewhere in the shadows of my soul she’s been mentoring me from afar, and somehow I heard her, albeit it took a long time to get through.

She makes me proud to be a woman. Hell she makes me proud to be human.

 

 

Everyday is Valentine’s Day

Tags

Diego, life in the foothills, The Contrarian

The phrases always seem a bit trite. I love you. I am blessed. I’m the luckiest woman. I hear them all the time.  They seem to fall off the lips of so many people so easily, as raindrops sliding down the window glass.

They smile, and assure me that their husband or wife or love is simply the best, the most thoughtful, the truest. And for some it is no doubt true, but the divorce rates suggest otherwise.

I was a child of merely sixteen and I thought that I was “different from the other girls I knew. The whole idea of children and housewifery seemed so alien to me. I dreamed of my own apartment, a view of some wonderful city and smart suits and soft black pumps and broad mahogany desks with my own secretary.

And here I find myself, all these years later, married, and fully enmeshed in wifery at least. And I have never known such joy.

We met under strange circumstances some would say. The Internet is no place to “find” someone. But we did, and it stuck.

After twelve years of “roughing” it in the meadow, (how many times did you signal to pull, while I slowly gave  gas to pedal and pulled out Alice? or Alice pulled me out of the muck of spring rains?) I expressed that I had had enough. Your shock was apparent, but you made your peace with it. You told me to find the place I wanted to be. By the screwiest of methods, I found Las Cruces and we stuffed our belongings into a POD and sold the farm, and drove south.

And here we are, nearly two years later with a house we both love, in a small city we adore, with a dog that has replaced the irreplaceable Bear and Brandy in our hearts. And you do your woodworking and I do my crafts, and pretend to believe that my incessant writing means something to somebody.

But happy?

You bet. I have never known such joy.

You are still smarter than I am, and that is no mean feat. Whenever an idea captures me and I’m not quite sure, I can get a hold on it merely by running it by you. That is priceless to a person who lives on ideas.

You invented the Think-a-Thon and spend a lot of time at it. I tease you incessantly about that, but I admire your ease of sinking into the couch and never feeling the least pang of guilt at “wasting” a day “thinking”.

You are wiser and better than I am in so many ways that I’m tempted sometimes to feel small in comparison, except that you never make me feel the lesser, and that means everything.

And I have never known such joy.

We have fallen into that easy comfort zone with each other. We tease and poke each other throughout the day. I call you “idiot” and you call me “the woman”. We laugh more in one day than most do in a week.

Your sense of humor is infectious. It’s staggering at times. You can turn a phrase without pausing, in the midst of a conversation that leaves me giggling and interrupts my train of thought. You win more arguments than I do, because it’s your nature to argue even when you don’t disagree, for the sheer joy of playing with words. No matter my argument, you will come up with the most outrageous example possible to “prove” my points in error. All with a twinkle in your eye, that if missed, lead one to think you actually believe what you are saying.

You are a mass of craziness with your addiction to expiration dates on milk cartons and your terror of knives not properly carried. You have a thing about turn signals, and an inflated sense of Packer power. You leave the kitchen in a horror, always with a “I’ll clean that up later,” that I chuckle over as I throw away empty egg cartons and place pans in the dishwasher.

You treat Diego better than most people treat other people. And you are unfailingly kind to everyone. While I’m busy being “short” with the cashier, you’re standing there quietly unruffled. You give people more leeway than I for sure, and perhaps I have learned to be a little more gentle because of you.

And I have never known such joy.

I am not worthy of you, and yet I know I deserve you, for you are the ying to my yang to be about as nauseatingly trite as it’s possible to be.

This greeted me this morning:

BE MY VALENTINE

We both know dad’s a putts. (it’s putz dear “doggie”) He doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body, and I know a thing or two about bones.

I wanted him to find us some candy we could share, but he told me it was all of that poison chocolate stuff. He said these sharp things might help you while you are cooking my dinners.

You are one of the top two belly rubbers; you share your footstool with me even when you don’t want to. You’re pretty good at throwing  balls (for a girl anyway). But most of all you are a champion walking companion. I know you take me even when you are tired and it’s cold and dark.  You are my hero and I love you for that.

XOXO

I’m a lucky woman. I’m blessed.

And I have never known such joy.

God’s Owner’s Manual

Tags

God, Humor

There are some in this world of ours that think this  bible is such a thing, a owner’s manual. Written by the Almighty, it is purported to contain all the instructions for being a “good” believer and doer of God’s will. For some, any question is met with a rifling of pages until just the perfect passage is found, whether it be when to plant crops or what to do with a teenager in heat.

It has always confounded me this claim that the bible is the “word of God”, in that it is written in such a way that it could not be the work of a superior being. The “word of God” folks are quick to point out that God “used” humans to write it, and allowed them to use their own idioms and ethnic phrasing, putting the concepts in terms understandable by their own people.

Several things strike me as odd in that respect. First, this God whom they say created the earth and all within it, seems stymied by a lack of arms, hands or fingers to manipulate the pen. Second, it suggests that the all-knowing (omniscient) one doesn’t know the language of the people in question  well enough to construct simple sentences that they can understand.

So, it just seems like a convenient excuse to avoid the problem of why this collection of books is so confusing, convoluted, contradictory, and repetitive–why do we need FOUR gospels after all, why not three or thirty? This makes no sense as you can see.

Not that I deny that God cannot write a manual telling us how to act. But it seems to me that it might go something more like this:

DEAR CHILDREN:

I’m your father, . . . and mother for that matter. I know that doesn’t sound right, but trust me, in time you will understand.

You can call me God.

I created everything you see and hear and smell and taste. It’s all quite complicated, the actual how it all happened bit, but again, you will understand in time.

I created you too, all of you.

Now before you get all thankful and start bowing and making offerings of all sorts of stuff to make me happy, just stop and take a deep breath. Okay.

Let’s get this straight. I am not interested in being worshiped. I’m a God after all. Such things are nice, but unnecessary. I do like to spend time with you, just talking. I talk to you all the time, but mostly you don’t hear me. You have to be very quiet, especially in your mind before you can hear.

I know it sounds mysterious.

It’s really not, and as I’ve said already, you will understand in time.

No don’t pack a lunch. It’s going to take a good deal longer than that.

I suppose you want to know why you are here.

Quite simply, to be like me.

You are on a marvelous journey of discovering who you are. Each one of you is destined to attain perfection. It won’t all happen at once, or it may. You are each unique and you will create your own perfect path to me.

Do not worry if you are getting up there in human age. Enlightenment can happen in an instant. But it may not. As I said, don’t worry, there are unlimited do-overs.

It is part of your sentience that you are never without a question, so it stands to reason that people everywhere, throughout time, attempt to define me and describe what I want. In some places these written treatises have come to be called “sacred”. They are not really, just human ideas. Some are pretty close approximations and some are way off the mark. None is really close to the truth. But there is much wisdom  in all, and feel free to study them for that.

There is no judgment here. It would be like judging the relative strength of ant to an elephant if you get the analogy. You’re all so deeply flawed to one degree or another. It’s just a matter of degree compared to what you will become. So there are no grades. You will all pass eventually.

A couple of things you humans have hit upon are rather close to the truth, so you might be mindful of them as you live this particular life:

1. I never promised you a rose garden. Shit happens. I didn’t cause it, but I am here to kiss the boo boo. You’ll find that most of the bad stuff that happens is your or other human’s creation. There are consequences to your actions. I said most remember. Some bad stuff is just chance. Everything that happens, good or bad is something you can learn from.
2. If you meet the buddha on the road of life, kill him. Not literally. But if anyone tries to tell you they know who I am and what I like or don’t like, they’re wrong. Probably more wrong than you. The people who are truly enlightened try to give you the tools to find your own enlightenment, they don’t batter your head and threaten you. NOBODY FAILS. Ignore people who claim they are sure.
3. Don’t worry, be happy. Your biggest enemy is fear. There is nothing to fear, but you guys will continue to do most everything out of fear until you get that. Fear leads to mistakes, and mistakes lead to pain. If you don’t want pain, stop worrying. Half of it will happen anyway, the other half never was going to happen. Life is in this moment. That’s what you can effect.

A couple of rules of the road that will make this easier for you:

1. Don’t hurt others. Period. One day you will understand that hurting anyone will hurt you worse in the end, and ironically help the one you attack. Don’t do it. It’s not nice.
2. Nobody goes it alone successfully. You are EVERYONE’S keeper.
3. Don’t steal other peoples stuff, it leads to the problem of #1.
4. It’s actually true that things work best when you treat others as you would like them to treat you. Almost all of your silly divisions have already said this. It’s really true.
5. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Have more fun. You could be a salamander you know and I can tell you they are capable of way less fun than you can have. Enjoy your body and all the amazing things it can do, just be mindful of #1 again.

There is only one guiding principle. IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE. THE UNIVERSE IS ALL ABOUT LOVE. YOU ARE LOVE. YOU ARE LOVED. BE LOVE.

Get it now?

We’re all rooting for you every moment to wake up. We have no doubt you will.

All my love,

Mom/Dad/God

 

Can We Talk on the D/L?

Tags

boycotts, corporate overreach, unions, workers rights

I consider myself about as decent as the next person. No more no less. Some, usually those of the Rightish persuasion suggest that I’m a bleeding-heart, commie sympathizing, swine of a Jesus hater, but hey, I consider myself just as human as the next woman.

The mind is endlessly fascinating and what motivates us will for some time to come dance between nature and nurture and bad drugs I suspect. We all wish (except for the truly a-social among us) to be thought reasonably well of, and we all succeed at least to enough people that we aren’t pariahs.

That being said, I’m fully aware that what I am about to discuss amounts in some minor or major respect a plea for permission to do what I wish to do, rather than the elegant highly flowered philosophical discourse that I am dribbling forth from my fingertips. (Wasn’t it ever so much more grand to say tip of my pen or even quill? Alas we all type now.)

I speak of the issue of boycotting companies. Not just any companies mind you, but all those whose policies for one reason or fifty offend our individual sensibilities. I speak of Wal-Mart and Hobby Lobby and Exxon-Mobile, and McDonald’s, and Papa Johns, and Pfizer, and General Mills and Monsanto and well, you can fill in five hundred more at your leisure.

We (collectively or singly) have our “issues” with some or all or and entirely different list of corporate monsters whom we claim our vision or version of human/American/women’s/children’s/animals/status/ethnicity rights. And most, perhaps all are laudable no doubt to those who hold them. I know, since I hold many. Anyone whose eager fingertips tremble in anticipation as they seek out my latest verbage knows I rail regularly about any number of corporate entities for their failures/limited visions/or omissions.

So. What the hell am I talking about?

What are our moral responsibilities in making known our opinions of the practices of businesses we disagree with? What should we be doing?

In other words, is boycotting the answer.

I for a long time avoided Wal-Mart for instance. That was easy in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the local Hi-VEE offered up proper food at comparable prices. Not so here in Las Cruces. The local Albertson’s is a great store, but it’s wildly over priced on most everything. I mean seriously so. Such that I can save nearly $300 a month by doing the bulk of my shopping at Wal-Mart. I leave Albertson’s to do what it does best–provide me with the premium foods that Wal-Mart neglects in its one-size fits most everyone most of the time philosophy, or “tough, take it or leave it”.

I’m moreover well aware of the gimmicks Wal-Mart’s uses to get me to buy more of X which ends up costing me similar to what I would pay for the amount I really want. (Whatever you do Wal-Mart, I’m not buying twelve pre-packaged habaneros when I only need one!) Still, as I said, I’m saving a fair piece of change.

Say that I can afford this, which I can, but should I?

What of those who have not the financial luxury to do this? Are they to suffer their need to shop Wal-Mart in shame at betraying the cause?

Can I use the $300 more effectively in actually funding other things that matter in the world? Are my bigger checks to the local mission and to animal welfare, or to help a local family with expenses a better use of the money than wasting it on over-priced cabbage?

Is there some hierarchy of complaint that should guide me? Surely apartheid practices in South Africa was a serious motivation. Surely the use of chemical warfare on one’s own population should deter us singularly and collectively from contributing to the GNP of any country engaging in such things.

But lets take it down a notch.

Let’s speak of living wages and the attempt to impose personal religious beliefs on employees. Let’s speak of creating products that may turn out in decades to come to be hazardous to health. Let us talk of entire industries devoted to death–whether it be innocent animals or humans in large or small quantity. Let us speak of dangers to our planet, which impact the survival of generations long after we have turned to dust.

Is there some hierarchy where boycotting is essential for some, but convenience and finances may dictate a different choice for others?

I fully support the efforts of Wal-Mart employees to unionize. But does my boycott help that? Or is it, in the end, the responsibility of employees to get their act together? Wal-Mart will never give them permission, and like other industries in other times, will be as tough as it can be in order to stop their efforts. But in the end it is only the employees who can do this, the same way I made my decision some years ago and voted as I saw fit, and knew there would be consequences for that decision. Or does my boycott encourage and bolster their efforts? Do I change corporate minds?

We know that boycotting can work in some instances. Some companies have seen their fortunes fall for challenging the ACA, by threatening to up prices and lay-off workers. Hint: you don’t lay off workers if you have customers, and it helps to have a product worth buying. Did the boycotts cause the reversal or was it the lousy pizza?

The Right of course is spared these deeply troubling mental ponderings. They conveniently find all answers in a book and are thereby let off the hook–“hey, I don’t have a problem with gays, God does!” I rather suspect that our spiritual growth is directly tied to how willing we are to wrestle with these “no easy answer” questions.

So, I’m asking you.

What do you think?

Just what’s floating through my head these days.