Benblog

Impeach impeachment

There was a handwritten sign on Alfred and Tower Grove, the house with the frogs in summer, the biology teacher's house, "Impeach Bush." I was momentarily emoldened, thinking I too should have a sign in my yard.

But Bush is just a man.

We need to impeach greed.

Impeach injustice.

Impeach fear.

Impeach hatred.

That's the piece the left is so missing right now. That politics is a spiritual battle, and it requires recognizing the power spirit has to raise people up. And to use it.

The way we can help guide friends along better paths, simply by holding a beacon out to them in our thoughts. Keeping them held in mind as the mind enters meditation. Praying for them. These are not items that are unreal, just presently immeasurable positivistically. Which is why they should always remain articles of faith, not of government.

While politics is spiritual battle, in as much as it is a struggle over how resources of all sorts are distributed to future generations, including spiritual ideas, the church itself needs to remain separate from state. In fact, articles of faith expressly need to blossom in a free society, supported by the canons of constitutional rights. Once we allow one article of faith to supercede all others, we have locked ourselves into an intractable misery. Faith is a journey that must exist outside the boundaries of civic power, reflected in civil society in values, but with the discussion of which sect gets those values an ongoing, and protected, debate.

It's almost as if cathode rays have blinded us, in this information age for some of us, most of us, to one degree or another, that we are locked into the idea that change stops here. That we are the ultimate, that we are not servants of God, or made in God's image, but that we have set ourselves up as graven images, that we are God ourselves. This is the hypnotic faith that the teleevangelists profess, that keeps us locked in fear. That we hear from the Robertsons, the Popes, the Falwells, the prophets of a return to yester year.

Media evolution

We are in the midst of the birth of new media and its ability to manipulate powers and mind. And powers of mind. Imagine how powerful it was when humans first began recording their thoughts in some written form. They would have wielded such concentrated power, from generation to generation passing us information. I meant to write "passing on"  of information. But I thought that slip up might be part of the message. Oral traditions cannot transmit as much "technical" information, blue prints for technological innovation, or formalization of any trade or social compact in documented, enforceable ways.

Unforunately, we are in the age when the first wielders of this power are those motivated by greed and power. They had access to a technology impossibly expensive for the people to wield, like the difference between a class that could afford the latest guns versus those who could not. Now, frankly, the power in arms has become almost impossible, permanently, to ever bring back into reasonable use on any level. A single government can bomb a whole people without nuclear weapons. A country with nuclear weapons obliterates another country with nuclear weapons. They both end up being zero sum games.

So now, the playing field ends up being transmission of values. Especially in this age of abundance.

It's amazing to think of how delusional our lives now, how impossible to have so much prosperity unshared in our world. We have achieved a level of production where everyone in the planet, at a relatively maintained population, that would in some ways regulate itself over time, if people were simply educated about our role in keeping stasis, could have access to food, shelter, art, communication, travel, as long as people stopped putting so much emphasis on stuff as a sign of prestige and power, and try to protect those trappings. One of the ways I know the vision is delusional is because outside our world, our little enclaves, most people are living much more closely to the ways of some of the impovershed periods in those cultures, the famines spoken of in the scriptural traditions of many, the suffering.

The key difference is that there is no need. There is no need for suffering in today's world. No need for misery. The power we attach to the world is all an illusion.

Watching the ways people are learning how to work with media, use some of the same communication tools that have so dominated our evolution as a drugged and numbed population, is encouraging. People of conscience, who have grown up surfing that world, are beginning to use their voices powerfully to reshape the principles of the debate. We are not doomed to a life of unsustainable consumption, a sustained, fearful adolescence.

It's still important for us bridge generation folks to keep up the faith, keep up the message, but we will defeat the forces that would strip us of our humanity, the ideas and instituations which enslave us. The dream must be kept alive, of an escape from suffering, a freeing of soul from the misery of humanity, regardless of your belief in deity or not. It's just a plain good thing to try to make a world free of misery for the next generation, who are in fact the most basic way we retain immortality, especially in the world of ideas.

Passing the mantle

In this day and age, as much as I understand the urge to solve our problems militarily, we exist in an age of abundance where it would be possible to facilitate sharing and communication among all people. We would still have money and other institutions, but we would all recognize that we can live better together than apart. I believe this possibility has been present for some time, but that we have had varying degrees of fear guiding our reactions. Now is the time to step beyond fear into abundance, and share what we have to offer to one another. Global love and community is much easier to achieve when everyone has enough food in her or his belly. Providing that is not a weakness but an advance.

Power of mind

It's amazing thinking about how much of our experience is mitigated, not even by our mind, but just the ideas of what our mind is and isn't, and where the connection between mind and body exists. I can understand the ascetics, sadhus and bagas, and those who demonstrate the singular abjection of all things material (which, of course, is impossible to do completely, unraveling the notion that you are separate from the body - instead, in some ways, and in some cases, your are removing yourself from accountability for taking care of your body, rejecting the flesh in a most inhumane way), showing how much an illusion comfort or discomfort it. But the fact is that mitigating, controlling the brain's innards to such a large degree does require energy and time that could be tapped into other efforts that have a greater liberating effect on the whole of humanity, to ones own benefit as well, especially if you understand your ultimate contribution as an idea, not your own being, nor the being of any being, but a transcendent thought, and idea, a rabbit into the looking glass for ages to come. That is the ultimate ego trip, to remain timeless, to eventually remain so ingrained in the fabric of a collective conciousness that you become the very idea of God, beyond any named prophets or saviours or demons or saints. Of course, that ultimate ego trip also requires the surrender of all ego, understanding that our role here in this lifetime is to be beyond ourselves, to surrender to the very fabric of time, where our significance here transcends a naming, even a memory. In that way, named or unnamed, we help shape the very tapestry, each of us, of what future generations know as God.

Comfortable Extremes

I mentioned to Laura today that I did not experience strong reactions to temperature. It seems as if I'm always comforting people trying to comfort me, when they see that I'm wearing a t-shirt in cold weather, or sweating when it's hot. With the exception of too much wool, or cat hair (catgora?), I am at peace in most temperature settings. I told her I'd noticed even more of a difference since I started meditating.

In thinking about that tonight, as I was feeling my back strain after a night of typing, I realized that part of the beauty of meditation is trying to bring it into your daily conciousness, so that we react in the moment, embracing that moment of sensation we experience, granted us out of endless time and space. It is better to have a full belly, and roof overhead, with minimal bodily fear. So that each of us can live in each of our moments, without feeling the need to run to the next experience, out of fear conditioning or fear itself. The latter is normal. The former is an idea in our own heads.

I wonder if Gamaliel may be the way to lighten the Gentiles, and bring glory to her people. I had the Nunc Dimittis in my head during many of the sessions, tapping at my brain. It seems such an appropriate song to end the night to. I think perhaps the Episcopal Church could be like the Elves at Gondor, bringing the sublime to the party at the end of world, meeting at Gondor for one last stand.

I fear that giving into the fullness of being is a giving unto death, in a way that is a true threat to the humanity so many faith based traditions clinge to and cringe from, in an endless death match between sinner and saint. And I understand why they are fearful, which is why I think Danforth has it right in acknowledging that we can't simply craft an agenda designed to "enlighten" us without recognizing the huge gap in world view between Americans themselves, let alone the rest of the world.

To impose enlightment, or an age of enlightenment, without acknowledging the different worlds on this planet, is itself a form of imperialism, of the cultural variety. This does not excuse the flailings of the radical right, or conservative Islam or Judaism or Hindu, or even some of the Robert Fulgumisms proclaimed by the Dalai Llama (not to compare him in the same breath, but sometimes, amidst the sayings of boddhisatva's throughout the years, he just sounds like the George W. of the peace movement, probably because he is dumbing the message down.), but it gives me some empathy for how scared people are. Because I'm scared too, that their beliefs are going to simply cause life to expire, in very unholy and damaging ways.

The Machinated Human

Someone actually had an air conditioning unit running tonight. Maybe for the heat.

It was shocking to me the number of elderly people riding around in scooters or using walkers on the cruise. These are people who have the resources to cruise, who have had access to the best health care, the best knowledge, and, as a result, their bodies have wasted away in the miasma of cospicuous consumption.

We are missing out on the opportunity to become more comfortable in our fragile skins, now that fewer and fewer of us in the world need worry about predators and bandits, and we are squandering that legacy, fearful that others might take away the illusory safety we enjoy, huddled in our closed communities.

When you have less, you have less to steal, less need to lay up security systems and armies around your treasures.

And we give up our humanity, little by little, the more we rely on technology for our survival. That desire is unsustainable at some point, regardless, I suspect, of advances in technology - there is some mathematical proof that we can only exist at a certain level of comfort without jeopardizing life for the whole of the planet. If we had an economics based on exploring the true wealth of nations, we would be better for it.

Dr. Roberts, the ship's physician, said something interesting during his consultation in response to my comment that we live in the age of bacteria. He said that we are just hosts. One element of the increased global temperature and the melting of the ice caps that frightens me in particular is how hospitable that may make earth for even more bacteria, some of which is bound to find its way into the atmosphere after millions of years frozen. Stupid intelligent design proponents are simply anarchist anachronists, bent on armageddon - how did we let them even win one seat in one county on one school board, let alone run our country into the ground?

My God, one thing is for sure - the Jews may have killed Christ according to some beliefs, and the moral decay of society caused by abortion and homosexuality may indeed be garnering your enmity, as expressed by your most fanatical followers, but it is those followers who will ultimately bring us all to our doom, whether the ayatollah's of Islam or our own Western extremists. Thank goodness we are all loved enough that we can choose our salvation.

The Stillness of the One

As much as I'm beginning to grasp the concept of God and the requisite sifting through of thought that comprises self and prevents us from realizing the fullness of our being, the struggle to make that understanding manifest, in as much as it requires getting some buy in from the self first, knowing that fully engaging in the search, let alone actually achieving some enlightenment, requires abandonment of that very self. I think I understand the idea of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge - that knowledge is the idea of the individuated self that makes us invest in fear and protection of that imposter identity, literally hiding from God, running away from the voice that calls us into fullness, again and again, individual after individual, generation after generation, epoch after epoch.

It also makes it clearer how easily the Church itself has been co-opted by the notion of radical invidualism identified with so many religious traditions today.

I've been reading more about the Bruderhof lately, and it makes me think that they may be a model for an "Urbanhof," comprising a values-based community within the context of a modern, urban community.

The exorcism

I dreamt Wednesday night of Tracy and I having a baby girl. She almost instantly began talking, actively observing her world, asking for Mommy, indicating that she was hungry. I asked with wonder whether she was just a really, really smart baby or if she was possessed. And she answered that she was possessed. I remember her also talking about having a brother, and something about there being another entity of herself in Japan, that might create some difficulty for her if they were together at the same time.

I was more captivated and curious than fearful, though somewhat horrified at the idea that our daughter was not getting the opportunity to grow into her own body. I thought I might spend some time on release, but even that is tricky when a body so young hosts an entity.

Later, in waking thought, I began to wonder what it would be like to gain a complete awareness of inhabiting flesh, if we came into the knowledge that we are all simply spirits inhabitating these bags of flesh. I have become too attached to the comforts of mine, such that even cold showers are almost too much to bear when I know I have the hot water a turn away. I do not know what the path to a unified awareness is, especially since just watching the nurse dig around in my arm today for a vein almost made me shudder. Perhaps the first step comes from a complete awareness of the pain, the same way that overcoming fear requires first embracing the fear, rather than numbing myself to it.

Coach Lawless talked about the importance, in a race situation, of experiencing every moment of pain, and I think I understand what he meant. Experiencing the body on that level allows you to pour even more spirit into the doing. I wonder what it would be like to know that sense of existence, completely present in the moment, beyond the muscular level, beyond the cellular, beyond the mathematics and physics even of quarks and isospin. I wonder, in that context, what it will be like to experience life as a human once we understand string theory as a commonly taught physics. Maybe, by the time that comes around, everyone will understand ourselves at least as quantum beings, probabalistic by nature, in this probablistic universe, all the while, in the physics, better understanding the divine.

This is one of the aspects of religion that frightens me most - how malleable it is to the most depraved and selfish needs of men, especially those who issue fatwahs, whether Khomeini or Pat Robertson, or create a culture of greed for power and authority, as the Roman tradition, or wealth, as in Jerry Falwell's or other materially focused modern Pharisees. And how much, in keeping a hold on the tenuous and fearful reality those men (and women, because I would be wont to leave Ramtha out of the picture here) use to manipulate others, we are prevented from realizing our present mythology. Here, I give some kudos to "Ramtha" but wish the knowledge were propogated for knowledge sake, not material gain or some theater of the mind.

Bat man returns

Last Sunday night, I got home late, and worried when I did not see Loki waiting for me at the door. As I walked up the stairs, I worried that he might somehow be gone, and considered, as an exercise, what might be the worst possible thing that could happen. Flipping through the rolodex of my fears, I thought the worse possible thing that could happen would be walking down into the basement and finding him being eaten by some grotesque vampire. I pleaded with the voice in my head I ascribe generally to God, claiming that I had not been properly prepared to confront this fear, that I had had no training. My God voice explained that the only way to overcome those worst fears was to confront them, to experience them. I did not know how I might react, faced with this, but knew that I must simply go inside and see.

Loki was outside on the back deck. I remembered at some point during the day leaving the door open for Snack to go out, and I did not see that Loki was out when I closed the door.

As I let him in, I saw something move through my periphery - what I thought at first was a bird, until it arched slowly and headed my way, a large bat, blinded, confused by the lights in the house. Loki and Snack observed but seemed uninterested. I was panicked for a moment, until I realized the irony of this, my ram, spared the sacrifice and horror of Loki's sacrifice.

I closed the bedroom door, opened the back window and back door and began turning on the lights in the front of the house, doing corner sweeps as I entered each room, stepping out of the way of the bat, clapping my hands to make myself more visible to the bat's navigation gear.

Experiencing and owning that fear humbled me, but I learned not to be ruled by fear. I set boundaries for how prepared I was - not allowing it in the bedroom, for example, and channeled the release, by first understanding where the fear was coming from, and how disoriented and afraid my fear was of me. Batting the bat away, or simply waiting for it to magically disappear, would have done nothing to alleviate the situation for either of us. The bat would have suffered needlessly, and I would have continued my shameful avoidance. Even after taking the dogs for a walk, I realized that I could have my room to sleep in, even if the bat were still in the house when I returned.

I don't believe I will ever surround myself with bats, as some complete recuperation, a Hollywood psychodynamism, but I am at greater peace with bats, and with fear. Most importantly, I know that the first step towards overcoming fear is understanding the motives of the object of my horror. Sometimes the object of fear will have me as a target, in which case my options are more clearly defined, but with no less empathy. Most times, that object is operating from an even more raw instictive fear than I. In those cases, I can demonstrate compassion. The trick of achieving true ahisma, agape is to demonstrate compassion even in channeling the fear-inspiring energy of that which does wish to do me harm, either physically or emotionally, removing the weapon from both of us simultaneously.

The spaceship

Once you being intentionally exploring the mind body connection, I think you begin to realize what a marvelous set of feedback mechanisms are already equipped, almost as if you've stumbled upon the fact that you are actually riding in a meticulously and beautifully crafted spaceship, which is, in effect, riding on this planet, a satellite of the sun, which is a satellite of another, not even necessarily bigger, solar system, or the quark inside my left thumb. That poetic journey is reason enough to breathe deeply of the air here, to walk amidst the fields here, and be cared for as the lilies, so that others may pass through and see the world in wonder, until their dance, their dust cloud, takes them into being yonder, perhaps into the void.

I wonder if the whole struggle between good and evil, visions of libido and thanatos, played out through the ages are ultimately struggle between form and void - that there is some evolutionary urge to try to pursue the light, the transcendence of death through ultimate manifestations into an infinity of being, and an evolutionary urge that suggests that only entering the void, complete blackness and destruction, can one lose the self. The truth, I think, is that form and void are an infinite one, tied into streams of being that are beyond our binary means of considering the divine. And to breath in that place, where there is no light nor darkness nor nothing in between, but simply a wave, a string running through a multiplicity of dimension, a quantum mechanics of the soul.