A fool to believe...

I recently posted a rambling rant on truth...

Maha Maya (with thanks)

But... what do I know about truth? I'd rather look on my beloved Maya. Isn't she beautiful?
p.s. I sent the other post back to Draft where it can stare at itself forever.

What is?

Listening to Jed McKenna again, again, and here's the pressing statement that seems to pop up continuously in my life like a slap in the face to remind me I waste my days in Maya.

The darling and beautiful Maya... Who would ever want to look the other way? (with thanks)

 Here's the words from the beginning of tape 3 (Spiritual Enlightenment the damnedest thing)

“Truth exists my mind was shrieking, it doesn’t matter what it is or where it is. Somewhere somehow there is truth. I don’t care if it’s in Christianity or Judaism or Islam or the most despised cult in the deepest bowels of depravity. It exists and I will not spend another minute of my life flailing blindly around in the filth or miasma of the universe for any other reason than to find it.

The universe isn’t vague and ignorant, I am vague and ignorant.

Something is true and it doesn’t matter what it is. I am not going to be false any more. I have not even the slightest trace of the slightest reservation about the fact that I would rather suffer and die figuring out what is true than continue this life as a slave to lies and ignorance” 

Whew! Oh Yeh! What got this ball rolling again? Surrounded by lies, myth, deluded rationalization if only I could shut my eyes and enjoy the luxury of being white and living in a wealthy comfortable country. Damn!

What got me listening to that damned fool... so called Jed McKenna (a myth himself) Oh yeh that's right! I had to go and watch Apocalypse Now, again, again! 

Frustrated by dealings with politicians, hypocritical religios, business magnates, sellout, money grubbers and wasters of life and limb I felt compelled to watch that film again!

And 

Captain Willard said:

 "...It's a way we had over here of living with ourselves. We cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies."

And Walter E. Kurtz said:

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene."

"...And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything. Everything I did, everything you saw, because there's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me." 

And I got a glimpse, through a crack in the curtains, of truth; and Maya whispered in my ear... "Don't look there dear there's nothing for you in that, come back to me, be comfortable and in peace, don't trouble yourself with the lines that flicker across the screen, enjoy the show and relax."....


 But still the babies are crying and imprisoned in gulags on sinking islands in the pacific

Painting of " Ghulam Sakhi Hazara " Hazara artist .

Still the ancient burial grounds and remnant sanctuaries of green are bulldozed while politicians announce "Oh the cleverness of ME!"

The destruction of land preserved for conservation back in the 70s. Who knows what fate the graves

Hard fought for but easily lost (Land set aside for conservation and recognized site of a burial ground)

And still the oil companies fracture and poison the sacred ground under our feet

http://www.ecnt.org/campaigns/dont-frack-territory

Oh Maya darling... Morpheus if you were to offer me the blue pill now how tempted I would be!

...an unflinching gaze on the world...

The book Sam is currently reading 'We all fall down' by Peter Barry has an interesting blurb on the front cover.

'A novel that speaks to the heart of our culture, and a gripping account of one man's fight for his soul. Both honest and compassionate it turns an unflinching gaze on the world in which we try to find meaning, at work and in love.' This post is not about the book... or even the blurb really. It's just a bit of a rant about an idea and nothing much came of it. (Oh and she said the book is pretty good if you're interested)

When Sam read the blurb to me my first response was to dismiss it as cliche' New-agey rubbish. Overloading a statement about work and love with overly heavy focus of finding meaning in the world... (I think I cringed most because sometimes when I think I've written something OK I read it and it sounds like that)

I thought about it a bit more and the first part played on my mind. Then I started to wonder...

The bit that caught my imagination was this. 'An unflinching gaze...', '...on the world in which we try to find meaning...'

I just started thinking about sight, seeing, vision, perception, reality, truth and illusions, beliefs, religion and lies.

Delirious from lack of sleep, yet again, my mind tripped across what it might mean to have an 'unflinching gaze' at anything... Recently most of my interactions with people I know regarding matters of spirituality, community, truth and the abundance of flimsy facades in their likeness etc... have lead me to consider that most people, nearly all that I have spoken with, are incapable of seeing the world in any other way than through the filters they have chosen to view it. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, actually I think that's how reality is created.

Stupidly I recently made the enormous social error of holding people to account for the ideals they espouse. What a stupid thing to do! (A bad idea considering I may be the worlds greatest hypocrite!) Of course I have discovered that there is a big difference between seeking truth and claiming to know it. I should have known that challenging the position of people who believe themselves to be right would only anger them. Rule ONE... Don't ruin people's illusions! After all reality is subjective but nobody wants to have their reality deconstructed in the vain and useless search for Truth, which may only be someone elses illusion anyway! 

If we are expected to live our lives grounded in reality, and reality hinges entirely on our perception, then it only makes sense that regardless of the falseness of our beliefs we would defend these illusions with all our might! So it's no wonder my dear righteous friends would rather I left their company without explanation than have their virtuous philosophy questioned. (And I did)

Seeing is believing.

When it comes to human vision I've heard there is a phenomenon of the human mind which prioritizes and sorts the information received from the eye in terms of relevance to the needs of the viewer. Gestalt theory explains how our minds are programed to sort visual information. The kind of programing that allows us to spot friends out of a crowd or identify potential dangers at a glance, while the mind sees, assesses and then ignores other information that it deems insignificant or predictable. Another trick I've heard our minds tend to do is fill in the blanks... i.e. at a glance we may build a mental image based only on glancing part of an object like the front of a car protruding from a corner. Peripheral vision is fairly limited but I've heard that the brain fills in the edges. Cool eh.

"The hand is quicker than the eye". Magicians have learned how to exploit our selective vision and have created many tricks that still baffle their audiences, even tricks that have been used for many years continue to confound. Even though we are able to admit that a magician got one over us, most of us would prefer to believe that what we perceive is the world as it is, rather than as we choose to see it. I know I do. I can't help it! When I studied to be a Park Ranger I had to learn scientific names of a book full of local plants. Pretty soon I was seeing the world through the eyes of a botanist (I've since forgotten most of them). I exchanged my naive romantic concepts of trees shrubs and flowers for a more scientific view... But was that Truth? I like to ride my bicycle to and from work. I travel along the same roads as 100s of drivers every morning and afternoon but my experience of the journey is very different to theirs. I see the road differently and I view other cyclists differently. When I read the abusive comments made about cyclists in the newspaper I read them from my perspective as a cyclist. People will often claim to know what is real and I guess they are all correct, at least until they change their mind.

I've always liked Bruce Springsteen's twist on an Edgar Alan Poe quote. In his song Magic Springsteen wrote the lyrics:   "...Trust none of what you hear

                            And less of what you see..."

(Now that's Magic!)

What is so interesting about this 'unflinching gaze'?  Well as I thought about just the two layers of interference between the eye and the consciousness it's likely we rarely see the vaguest outline of Truth in our lives. We are so convinced by what our brain has conjured, filling in the gaps and selectively ignoring what our own eyes see that we are unable to recognize Truth when it stares us in the face! It's possible that we simply just can't do it! So as I pondered this inability to perceive without judgement or prejudice I wondered what it would be like to 'Gaze Unflinching' at the world without trying to 'find meaning'. Then it sunk in. HOLY SHIT!

Who would willingly have their heart burned out through their eye balls for the sake of finding the Truth? Better to live comfortably in our reality, complete with doubt and confusion, fed on flimsy constructions of false promises and half arsed rationalizations; clinging to the barest bones of hope and trusting our superior intellect than to face Truth. Sorry guys I should never have questioned you. Please go back to cut and pasting all the meaning you can stick together and float peacefully over the horizon into paradise... There's nothing wrong with that after all.

But I have to say as far as honesty, truth, love, beauty go I'd rather spend a week looking at a 4 year old's finger painting than listen to 5 minutes of your rationalization.

Peace.