Shell Shock

We twist and twirl like a binary star system. The rhythm a constant force of motion, directs our repeating foot motions. Count 1, left foot place . All your weight planted into the floor. Count 2, begin to rotate on your right foot. Remember to keep your right hand away from you. Create a corridor. Count 3, four is a ghost that follows, open the door. Count 5, step back on your right to create momentum and begin to pull her across. Count 6, she makes it through the chasm. Count 7, return to basic.

If you look at her eyes for too long, you might be lost in them. Her rosy cheeks, and iridescent smile welcome you every time you look up from your mangled feet.

Apply a force, see the tangential movement. Stuck in a pose, use the kinetics to flow with your partner. A connection, a bond that sees communication with my hands , feet, hips. Your hands, feet, hips, lips. The right placement of my hand on the small of your back, with a wave like motion amplifies in the roll of your belly. Feel her hips sway side to side like a quick moving pendulum teaching you how her heart beats. Working in union to create a constant conversation. Understanding your desires, and telling you mine without a spoken word.

When you start paying attention to the world around you, and feel with the same amount of attention and sensitivity, it opens it. Every being broad casting in FM it’s thoughts, desires, needs, aspirations, decisions, knowledge, fear, anger, hatred, misery, ect. A world teeming with life, intricately narrating autobiographies to anyone that will listen.

Listening takes practice. Movement takes practice. Mastery take practice. Megaphones know what we are thinking and what we want, but someone else already has what you want. That is why everything is a give and take. Nothing is constant, but rather a flow, an emanation, a cycle, a gradation of diffusion.

You may succeed by brute force, chain saws, and bull dozers, but complexity has a way of creating new problems and obstacles. The ocean pounds across the tide pools of the rocky coast, but as the tiny streams narrow into the infinite crevices it loses it’s power. Riverlets meander through each peak, valley and obstruction. A river constantly changes the shape of it’s delta, it’s curves, and river banks. Everything works in an ever changing symphony. Look closely and see how land and water coalesce and concede.

In a land seeded with mines or predators roaming the skies, it might be necessary to tread carefully. Aerodynamically shaped bombs fall all around us. The land looks like mole hills, concussions meet and break like the tide on a full moon, the sky a blaze in a blinding beauty. Hell has found Earth. The apocalypse is a great backdrop to let lips do what hands do.

Look a little bit more intently. Her hand in mine, we synchronously swing, dip, weave, rotate, break , and roll through the invisible barriers. Our movements reminiscent of the Nataraja. In a complex world, we must be keen and adaptable to the world around us. When we see, and really hear the many layers unfold. There were there all along. Perhaps we were never taught to see, or we forgot that sight.

Broken and disparate, scar tissue removed some of that agility, numbed some of that intuition, made that brightness a little bit more anxious.

We twist and twirl like a binary star system. The rhythm a constant force of motion, directs our repeating foot motions. Count 1, left foot place . All your weight planted into the floor. Count 2, begin to rotate on your right foot. Remember to keep your right hand away from you. Create a corridor. Count 3, four is a ghost that follows, open the door. Count 5, step back on your right and create momentum and begin to pull her across. Count 6, she makes it through the chasm. Count 7, return to basic.

Destined me

Time traces like a river meandering through an idyllic forest. The sound of babbling, lush vegetation and a tranquil deer sipping from the spring. Gushing water, frothing down step by step. The journey is long, and there are countless stories absorbed and rising to the amorphous surface. Pools gather in the margins of gravity. Here moss and lichen find a home, and cause the swirls to impede the flow. The space time continuum: a system of locks and channels deciding where you will go and what you will do. Nothing is pure, nothing is simple. The universe is complex and emergent.

Trace back every moment back to the big bang, till now and it’s all been laid out. Is there a purpose or a reason , no ? It just is. A rain drop has a piece of dust or ash at it’s center. Slowly it gathers molecule by molecule, drop by drop until the winds can no longer hold it up. It falls to meet the ground. Surface tension gives it’s aerodynamic shape. Contact between the pummeled lake surface, the drop depresses and rebounds to eject another drop . The undulation creates ripples in every direction. The drop didn’t ask to gather, it didn’t conspire to fall, the ripples had no directive. In this way, every atom and particle in the universe has a role to play. Every drop makes a ripple no matter how small, how big, or how short lived.

So many times we wonder if we can go back to a moment, an era, an idealized time. Only if I did this , rather than that. Imagine where I would be now? Those what ifs nag at the present. Take a second and split it apart it like a follicle of hair. The maelstrom suspended like you clicked pause on the remote control. The conversations, the antics, beer pong balls lodged in mid trajectory, a dropped cup about to hit the floor sedentary in a stand still. Walking down the stairs and you see her. You think to yourself, how can a person be so beautiful? The first time or the last, who knows? Let’s stay in this moment for a bit longer. In a slow steady world, silence dominates. Entropy is held against the ropes. Take a closer look at the world, the minute details unnoticed in the daily frenzy. A world on pause is your prison and your playground.

Press play, the beer pong ball lands in the cup with resounding victory. A cup hits the floor with a thud and beer splatters up in a crown to soak someone’s cotton skirt. The eternity that lasts in a second has escaped to fill the world. Fireflies light up the night, but for a moment, and a light drizzle saturates the air.

Destiny is not something chosen by you that you find, fall into, or that is written. It is complexity churning to cause a trillion enzymes to interact with the molecules with the right form. No one knows what a decision or step will take you. Meeting a friend may lead you to meeting your wife. A stray dog could bring you to your next job. A misspoken word can give you the best friends that you ever had. So why fret about this and that? What if I did that, what is I said this?

In the 7th grade, I took French with Mr. Lynn. All the other years prior and past were Spanish. That following summer I went to London and Paris. The first stop was to visit my oldest sister in London because she was studying abroad. After that we all went to Paris. Did the whole Paris thing. Up to the café in the Eiffel tower. Back at the base, I have one of those old disposable kodak cameras. I can’t fit the picture in my frame. How many times will you be at the tower? So, I start running backwards. I run as hard as could, with no eyes on the back of my head. My only focus is to fit the frame. One wrong step bound to happen, and I disturb a couple. My ass brought to the ground, my leg splayed over a stranger’s. I look up and start apologizing profusely. Then I realize, “ Mr. Lynn what are you doing here?”

Nothing is pure, nothing is simple. The universe is complex and emergent. Every drop makes a ripple no matter how small, how big, or how short lived. Take a closer look at the world, the minute details unnoticed in the daily frenzy. A world on pause is your prison and your playground. It is complexity churning to cause a trillion enzymes to interact with the molecules with the right form. No one knows what a decision or step will take you.

All you need is the courage is to make ripples, the rest will follow.

Bournvita

The internet is a zombieland. We pursue our victims, enmasse, thoughtlessly and viciously. Never sated and always hungry for more brains. No matter the severity of the crime or if it even happened at all. All Punisher and no Batman. Justice now, due process later.

The Boston Bombing was one of the most heinous acts committed in recent times. And even before the suspects were apprehended, the internet decided that they found the bomber. They thought it was Sunil Tripathi, an Indian student. And so the onslaught against him and family began.

Only...

Only, Sunil Tripathi had committed suicide a few days before the actual bombing. As such, the parents of a grieving son were dealt the double blow of a grievous loss and the destruction our their son's memory before the world.

Endless stories can be written about the victims of Zombieland. World War Z? We're already fighting it. Witch hunt? It started long before.

Look into the, Texas, immigrant bodega clerk that had his face filled with buckshot days after the attacks on 9/11.

No one is immune from attracting the gaze of the tsunami. Your sin is inescapable. A scarlet letter is visible, even if you don't deserve it.

And prejudices are of course the first to flare it’s diseased head. Before the internet, scapegoating was always in fashion.

Here is a story that goes back all the way back to the Deccan Plateau. Written in Sanskrit and retold a billion times over is the story of Kali.

Without going into the dept of Hindu philosophy and the pantheon of avatars, Gods, and Goddess; let me just start in the middle. Because life always starts in the middle.

There was this rampaging Buffalo headed demon named Mahisa. He had a vast army, and had a super power that could not be stopped. Every time a drop of blood hit the ground, another clone of him appeared.

The Gods alone could not stop the destruction of the demon, so they combined their powers much like the wonder twins or captain planet, and manifested an avatar of Shiva’s wife, Parvathi. This form was Durga Devi, which translates to unstoppable or fortress.

“ This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.”- The Joker

Basically Durga Devi is the OG Batman with a ton of weapons and few extra arms. Although, she does reach a stalemate with the Demon.

“They know it not, yet I reside in the essence of the Universe. Hear, one and all, the truth as I declare it. I, verily, myself announce and utter the word that gods and men alike shall welcome.”- Shakti

The great mother goddess gets so angry that she transforms into her Super Saiyan ascended form, or other wise known as Kali.

Kali, promptly rips off the demons head and drinks all the blood.

Crisis averted, the day is saved.

Except, Kali is still pure rage and power and won’t power down. So, she continues to rage across the universe and kills everything in sight. (Moral of the story, hint hint, cough cough.)

And so, everyone prays to Shiva to try to bring Kali/Durga/Parvathi back to her senses.

Shiva cannot stop her, nor reason with her. So he does the one thing he can do. He offers his own body as a sacrifice. Kali, begins to trample on her own husband. And soon the realization begins to sink in that that Shiva is her husband and her other half. Finally, she powers down. And the universe regains equanimity.

Why did I just tell you this abridged myth from Hinduism? It is because it is a story about how unification can bring justice against true evil, when one cannot alone. Simultaneously, it explains how a unison forged by good intentions and collective effort can grow to lose all self control and began to run amok. Those things that you love and seek to protect are the very ones that become vulnerable to destruction and ruin.

Shiva and Parvathi, always together dancing in a harmonious cosmic unison. Out of uncontrollable imbalance, she attacks the man that she loves. And in the end it is only love that reminds you who you are.

In the beginning and the end, the answer is always love.

Avatarum

The Hindu Pantheon is vast and enormous, just is the universe. Every being, every formation, every entity works together to create this ineffable reality. The planet Earth a balance between life and the elements. Creation and destruction. Communication and disruption. Complexity and simplicity. Majesty and the vile. Every single part vital to the whole. No drop or insect lacking insignificance. Our ancestors knew this. They lived in the forests, that worked with the soil and with other life. They knew the names, stories, faces, places, languages of the spirits, they understood the forces. They knew the invisible web that spins us altogether. They understood creation, transformation, collaboration, and impermanence. Life was always tough and brutal, but there was connection to the spiritual and divine. There was reverence and respect for the mighty forces of nature and the wonder of life. They saw, that there was no separation in the world, and no separation within us. The gods were anthropomorphic manifestations of the beauty and wisdom of this living planet.

Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth.
For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil,
and for the establishment of righteousness,
I come into being age after age.

— Bhagavad Gita 4.7–8

Avatars were formed when the world was in crisis due to imbalance and destruction. Their multifarious forms showed the unity and connection of all things. Each face, each form was only a singular manifestation of the whole. All things were one. Krishna, Rama, Bala Krishna, Mtsya(fish), Kurma (turtle), Varaha(Boar),Narasimha (lion),Vamana(dwarf),Parashurama(sage), Kalki(the end of an era) are the avatar of Vishnu. Each manifestation the solution to a specific problem, yet sharing the same innate nature. Just as all things are. Every creature has it’s niche and it’s part to the grander scheme of things.

When we see each other, life, the planets, the stars, the cosmos as connected and one of the same our ego is drained away. The separation between you and me are gone. Western civilization is the cultivation of the ego and the I. It is a belief system that cuts, separates, dissolves, and fences away you from I.

In the Bhagavadha Gita, Arjuna is amid a massive battle, and seized with uncertainty. Krishna is by his side, and reveals to him his endless form. Arjuna sees the entire universe before him. A million voices speak out to him as one. A billion life times fold out in front of him. He sees the unity and vastness of existence. As such, he realizes there is no separation between himself and the divine. Maya is the illusion of disconnection. Every form and facet a momentary glance at eternity.

There is power in these stories and realizations. There is awe and respect for this existence. There is dignity in the self, the community, and the ecosystem. We learn, that everyone has the worthiness and ability to do good in the world. We remember, that we are never alone in this world. As these invisible nets bind us together, and shape collisions and complexity.

It is up to us to defend life. It is up to us to defend the good. It is up to us to defend balance, beauty, and harmony.

Bold

When did bold become a bad thing? “ That is a bold move.” Rather than praise or excitement, it is met with fear, apprehension, tension, anxiety. Is boldness only acceptable in set about standards and boundaries? A level of bumpers and cushions that say boldness is only this much? The English word bold, in my book means a thing that takes courage, risk, and action regardless of circumstance, boundary, or prescription.

We say that we are in a re-enlightenment by the acceptance of many groups into the fold, and granting them many of the same privileges and rights as others. And it is said that the battles these groups have fought is bold. Yet, the definitions of these groups and the rules that define them have become ever more narrow. The boldness of these groups, is now embraced to such a level that they no longer achieve that level of boldness. The fear, the risk, the apprehension, the impact of standing out no longer is there. They will always be different, yet simultaneously and vigorously protected. So what is bold, is no longer bold but rather becomes security and established.

One example is the boldness of harboring and smoking marijuana, or any other mind altering substances for that matter. When marijuana was criminalized those that partook were thought to be the rebels, with a secret knowledge that was not known to the greater society. They were risk takers, they were bold individuals. Yet, as the decriminalization occurs, these once unique characteristics no longer say or require boldness. A group once prosecuted no longer needs to stay in the shadows. And the aspects of their subculture is subsumed into the larger culture and is commodified. There is a mirage of the prior boldness and rebellious attitude that now has a very profitable and direct price tag.

The truth is boldness is the willingness to differ from what ever a society deems acceptable at the time for a given set of scenarios or social interactions. Bold may to do great harm or great benefit to others. Bold may be to disagree or agree when no one else will back you. Bold may to fight for what you think is right, even when the battle may be already lost. Bold to have hope and courage, when the light fades in others. Bold may be to chase your dreams, after failure after failure.

The rules, edicts, and laws of society do have value and change through time and place. Bold may not always take the right direction, have the moral high ground, or even succeed. Bold may be blasphemy, bold may require empathy.

Time and time again, you must strive for your convictions and desires no matter the cost and attempt to realize the world that you wish to see. Nothing in the history of the world was achieved without a level of boldness and personal risk. Life is long and life is short.

When is comes to friendship, love, relationships, business, empire, trade, faith, ect it is all a risk. It’s always a gamble. And to each one, there’s always a gamble that we think is worth it. We will risk life and limb to achieve the impossible.

Physics and biology set limits on this reality, but boldness bares that find those limits and strive to push past those liminal lines.

Do not be bold in one sense and mild in another because the society at the time expects such things. Listen, and listen well to your heart. And let that lead you to wade in unexpected waters.

The greatest boldness there is to be yourself , without regard of the regime or the religion of the time. That is to be unabashed and unashamed of your vulnerable and lovely heart.

Fear and lonesomeness may bother you and attempt to break your boldness. But, you already knew that it came with new territory. They are indicators to sharpen your senses and bolster your resolve.

Success is never certain, yet failure will arrive in certain surety. Thus, we fight the good fight. And that spark of boldness eventually breaks onto the shores of the masses, lighting each mind asunder.

What may have been a dream in the past, may exist as the status quo in the present. What may be been revolutionary at one point may have become rigid and stale in the current tense.

We lose our way, we become estranged from our own hearts. When we become estranged from each other, and the rest of the natural world.

We may be bold to begin with, but balance is where we must centered. When there is a complete sense of self, a deeper reflection of one’s owns thoughts, and a complex and receptive understanding of the world your being begins to emanate boldness without a second thought. Anchored in the depts of your deep and far reaching roots, you have the strength to step forward and bring others along.

No jail, no accusation, no slight, no obstacle, no insult, no punishment, no attack, no prescribed boundary holds you down.

You are bold.

Happy

Frozen ice pops fresh from the freezer on a molten hot day. Stop signs are sliding into puddles, but frenzied fire hydrants sputter their guts onto the side walks. Drops aerosolizing and plummet with a plop on glistening skin sweat. It slides along the face and down the chin. The lips and teeth are busy running away from each and into a crescent contraption.

Every day, I would get off the bus and squat down so I can reach my shoes. I would engage the ignition buttons on each shoe and get ready for lift off. A burst of energy, so powerful that light couldn’t catch up. How else would you explore the universe?

One of those hot days, stuck in the third story apartment house, I sat in the wicker swing, wrapped in the cradle of the wicker cocoon. Hanging from a bronze linked chain, I would push back with my feet until the chain would began to creek in tension. I’d let go. The rockets were ignited and were ready for lift off. With each swing, the ship would continue to gain momentum. 1000 miles per hours, 56000 miles per hour, 1,000,000 miles per hour, time started to stand still in my space ship.

Now, I feel so self-righteous that I carry around my black rain coat in my backpack and always have an umbrella when it rains. Those poor fools have to get soaked, while I’m mostly dry. Only if they thought ahead, like I did.

Snap back to reality, when a real monsoon started the assault on that same sun soaked veranda at my great aunt’s house. Barricaded by boredom, I broke out of the monotony as soon as I heard the pummeling puddles and cracks of thunder. I tore open my suitcase, and threw everything on the ground. Shed my tee shirt, and clad myself in my swim suit armor. When I ran outside, the tiled floor was so submerged that it resembled an aquarium. I splashed around in the waist deep water that had formed instantly. I turned my gazed and found that an impromptu waterfall had formed from the stairs running from the roof. With so much water funneling through, I knew I had to feel it’s force. Emerged from the frothing water that consumed my torso, I began to fight the current that had conquered the steps. My little body, made it’s way up the very top. Here there was no protection from the full might of monsoon. The clouds, dark and puffy , and dense blankets of rain engulfing everything in sight. I got to the center of the roof, opened my mouth, and started to spin as fast as I can. Agape to let the torrent wash over my eyes, my nose, and my mouth, and my chest. Arms out wide, while angular momentum kept my feet sloshing in circles. I was there, and that was it. I was there to witness the mighty forces of nature, and I succumbed to it because I was a part of it.

Joy is when we are our authentic self, free from all constraints and limitations. Allowing yourself to surrender for a second. To unleash the wild, infinity that lurks within you. Colorful, delicious, textured, powerful, fragrant, fast, warm, friendly, fragile experience that you will go after without a care. We will chase butterflies on our bikes and climb trees because we want to.

Amorphous rainbows swirl around in the delicate transparent spheres for a few seconds. I can balance one, and look even two! Blow harder, and a spurious number flare out in a straight line and are swept away by the wind. It’s fun to pop them with your mighty hands, and see them implode into oblivion.

Look, I made a crown for you. “ Mama had a daughter, and the head popped off.” It’s simple, just wrap the green end around the fluffy head and tie it into a knot.

Happy is simple, radiant, brave, and fearless. We are open, and inflate in all directions like a beach ball without end. Tenuous from learned tenderness, we forget that carry we sparks. A gentle reminder that the world is a place to play, explore, and connect.

We Live For These Moments

Knobby knees knocking together waiting on the phone until a boy appears. We were the last people at the greenhouse restaurant. An uneaten plate of sautéed hunks of broccoli. She teaches me a variation of rock paper scissors that gets your whole body involved. It was a beautiful day for this. We thought about sitting down among the wedding guests and hearing the harpist play too. I held her hand, and found the bravery to give her a kiss in the hideaway between the two gardens. Before we left, she grabbed my face and stared me dead in the eye. Had to see to what was lurking deep down.

On July 4th, we were all supposed to be on a yacht sailing around the Brooklyn harbor with the best view of the fireworks. That didn’t go as planned. She and me were still in touch, but she was in Chicago with her mom. On that Saturday, I was having a good time with my friends when I inadvertently stepped into trouble. I talked to the wrong girl, and I was attacked by two guys. A bloody tailored shirt, a fractured faced, a 10 stitch scar that is healing really well. They’re going to jail. I’m healing well.

I told her the news, and she stayed. She came over, we watched a classic Indian romance movie. I thought that we had a chance. Despite my grotesque face and barely open right eye, she was there and singing along to the music, at her hearts content. She brought me flowers and chamomile tea. I threw those out after she left, along with the Venus fly trap that she bought me. I would give back the sponge bob icecream pop too if I can. Then again, it was good. That could stay. But, she didn’t , and it was over.

Long before, I had planned out the majority of a birthday week with a number of friends. Most of it is was intact , but plans could always fail. I know that they have before. The three of us got in the old Sienna and made our way up the stair master with heavy laden backpacks and tortoise shell crash pads. The conglomerate definitely cut up my hands and my arms. But, I climbed much further that I thought possible. I was definitely making gains. Dan threw up, but he climbed pretty well. Made a few shortwhile friends with good jokes and friendly shit talking. A cute girl showed me how to tackle the V0 crack climb. We stood back to back , shoulder to shoulder. That’s the only way to measure an ape index. Looked like I had the upper hand, literally. She was so soft and so sweet.

On some days, some days. I think about those days, those days. Some days, some days
Reminisce about those days, those days. Up on the beautiful, high end roof top I did expect, but didn’t expect that it would be full of so many rich, polished, yuppies. I had come to a reggae concert, not a clam bake. Regardless with my good friend ,Catherine, and some strong drinks that music was undeniable. Deep in the crowd, I noticed the earrings of one girl passing by. Not totally unique, but natural and unique enough, cowry shells. I told her that I liked them, and she was ready to keep walking. But, her friend gave her a pause. Her eyes light up and took hold of my bright speckled deep blue stone necklace. She said that she loved it and asked where I got it from. I wish that I told her to stay or gently held her hands. I let her just vanish without a trace.

On my actual birthday, I was glad to be surrounded by everything that I loved. Lush green walls, mazes, endless alcohol, good friends, beautiful women, the best music you could hear, an aerialist, and top notch dumplings. It rained the night prior, so it wasn’t such a surprise that it rained today too. We were dancing, and we didn’t care. We embraced what the sky had bestowed upon us. In fact, it liberated us from our fragile facades. We danced and sung, as those masks melted away in puddles of rain.

There was a face that I kept seeing. Beautiful, happy, lovely, and intelligent. She said she got why I wanted to get out the rain, so that I don’t ruin all of my hair. We rocked, created tension with back steps, and spun with the rain covering everything. Her friend also caught me in her eye. Feet inside and out, hips side to side, torso undulating. Some how I’m a good dancer and terrible one at the same time. But, it sufficed. The two ladies sat down and gave me a look. I gave Marcella a kiss on the check. I went to do the same for her friend, and pow right in the kisser. She stole a kiss from me.

Where did you learn to dream so small?

Our imaginations run wild through fields of wheat and cotton candy clouds. Keep the dreams. Realism, the people around you, your immediate needs teach you to think small. Sometimes it’s a hustle, a perpetual treadmill, or you’re living someone else’s dream. You left your dreams on the night stand.

Sunken by callous stones. Fear holds you back, when you’ve gone much further before. Anchors to moor you. Small minded people, want to keep you in a box, hold you down. But, you know that Mt. Olympus calls your name. Your name written in the stars with Rama and Hercules. To go places, do things, create and envision something better. These are the dreams that many fear to dream.

We’re told what to think, how to act, what is appropriate, what is proper, what is acceptable. They’ll keep you line. A paragon of morality, to cut out your tongue and police your thoughts. Wrapped in security, paranoia, and fed platitudes to live up to. Where are your own thoughts? You’ve been conditioned to live in a snow globe.

Like the flakes of snow that swirls around, White supremacy and Eurocentrism tells who you need to be. And what they deem acceptable. Their rules, their way of life, their belief systems, their ideologies. And we’re just pawns their in game. In a world that conspires to rule you, look through the veil Neo. Find enlightenment young Buddha. Feel the force Padawan.

These tangled messes are woven to say who you are, what you have to be, and what you can do. It’s all a lie. There is no inherent right or wrong. You come into the world, and it is up to you: how you want to live, who you are, and what you want to do with that precious life. The most precious currency in the world. A mint of a kind.

Follow your heart. What does it beat for? It calls your name. It always has. Follow that voice in the cacophony of phoniness. Don’t live a life of tip-toe trip wires and unsettled land mines. A knowledge of self and inner strength will allow you to determine your own path. A berlin wall, screeds, and creeds pave a path already taken. Blinders on a horse, binders on your feet, shackles on your wrists. Here’s one more worn metaphor; go against the grain.

The issue is when the radical goes mainstream, and is watered down in the curves and rapids. Ideas and -ology brought to the masses to repeat in robocall recordings. It might not bother you, but it does me. A mirage of what it meant and what it used to be. A strawman resides where I used to be.

In a world where billions are connected, and everyone you know is the media, everything is brought up a notch. Icons are made and broken over night. A race to collect followers, attention, likes, and reacts. I admit it. I want them too. An easy trap to fall into. Don’t go against the grain because doing so will bring you attention, or because you think that people will like it. Choose your own grain, be it rice or quinoa, because your values lead you. Your dreams call you. Justice compels to you. Adventure beckons. Boredom breaks you. Ordinary annoys you.

Be your best self. Don’t do it for anyone else in the world. Do it for you. Do it for you. Dream the wildest dreams that were once thought unthinkable. Don’t be in the box or out of the box. If you want, just be the best damn boxer the world has ever seen.

“Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”~ Alice

The Great Divide

Morality, savagery, hate, love, sex, marriage, dignity, disparity. In our ordinary lives, we are faced with stresses. Taking care of the children. Making money. Paying for a car. Being stylish. Having fame. Having fortune. Being liked. Being cared about. Being paid attention to. Being seen. Having the power and influence over others. The craven lust and desire of sex , devotion, and satisfaction. We live moment by moment. Wishing it could be better. Sacred of what’s it going to be. We lose ourselves in the things that we are after. We begin on journeys, and become people that we barely recognize, and do things that we thought we would never do. We mill around the world, with a practiced demeanor and act the way that you think are supposed to. Within an endless turmoil of decisions, memories, feelings of failure and satisfaction, self-loathing, jealously, and fear. We strive to remove that fear. We strive to receive satisfaction. Time progresses forward, but the mind has its own time. The past married to the present. The present determining the future. Every experience has an impact, however subtle or obvious. Yet, in it all, we move too fast.

We move adrift in an ocean, while neglecting to recognize the ocean that buoys your ship. The winds blow, and the waves bow. Tossed a tumult and always unfamiliar seas. Is it because we are afraid of what remains bellow? So vast, so mysterious, and seemingly unknowable. We rather battle the surface without knowing the depths of existence. In concrete and glass, we are disconnected to the plants, animals, flora, fauna, fungus, and detritus that squishes bellow your feet. A venture into a tamed forest, a hit of relaxation and crystallized memories. Go back to the job. Go back to the cubicle we call a room. Where is the rumination?

Beyond the chapel, yoga mat, crystals around your neck, the small pony tail on your head. What is this story, this tapestry that we weave? Each of us a story that is seeded to believe. Feeling left out, feeling without devotion and appetite, we feel as if we are utterly alone in the world. An island drifting into that unknowable sea. We want to be a part of it. I want that joy. Give it to me. I want that connection to another. There’s a being in me. What do they see? What am I missing in what is to be seen? There’s the feeling to enjoy and explore another. Will it give us peace? Will it quite it, the unwavering mind? Consumer products and polo tees, a world of finesse and prosperity. How do we regard each other? Beyond quaint pleasantries, narrow gazes, and conversations in which no words are spoken. It is fixed. There are expectations.

We desire the connection, in an unconnected world. Mixed up in a global diaspora, no one is found. We seek to finally find ourselves in another, that’s where I’ll be. An escape of the unfulfilling and vengeful deity, we still cling to the supernatural in some amorphous form. There has to be more out there, I know it to be true. There’s a void within me, and I require magic and rigidity. Cordoned off gyres, we create our own gods, our own beliefs, our own catechisms to recite and preach. A competition of zealotry takes sound reasoning and the cries of the oppressed to lose all grounds in between. My god demands these commandments, or face vengeance. Dedicated to the unspoken rules, the justice that we seek is ruled out. We aim to protect. We aim to amplify. We aim to deconstruct. We have fury and pain. We seek refuge and acclaim in each other. I will be the most rigid in the phrases that we were fed to me as the truth, as it will provide the change that I seek.

In the end, my ego is full, but not the mouths that need to be fed.

Such an imbalance, wrought out as an imbalance in the world. The things that we have always craved, and will continue to crave is that resonance with the cosmos, and the life that inhabits this planet. Trees, leaves, frogs, and marmosets are not important because of what they serve, what they give, what they provide. It is that we are life forms on a living planet. Mushrooms, thc, ayahuasca, tobacco were the keys of the shaman to give us sight. Now we take them on our own delight, because the old shamans have been eradicated and forgotten. We forget our communion and communication with the natural world. And list around unaware of the cosmic energy, that pervades and connects everything. Those gods, religions, deities were only place holders, figure heads, wrapped metaphors, to give semblance to what we feel deep inside. Somewhere in between religion and disparity, where are we in relation to the cosmic energy.

The machines continue the paths that we set them on. Profit is what they seek. They think power and influence will buy them everything they need. Old and weary, the machines are required to keep churning. Damage, devastation, and oppression are traded for luxury. “Weather rich or poor we all arrive at the gates of heaven.” There are no gates. There is no heaven. It is a deep understanding of reality.

Liberation

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Billion and millions of people surround you in every corner. Everyone wants something, needs something, will take something, redeem something, call for something. You don’t know their past, you couldn’t predict their future. Sown up in stitches and seething with hidden scars. Each mind carries the luggage of careless pain and the suffering of loss.

Trapped in the tower, you lurk somewhere deep inside. The water tells you nada, no you’re not going anywhere. Circumstance and devastation brought you to where you are. No matter how many fields of wheat you have, there is a cap on the sky. Iron bars can be felt without a metallic shimmer.

Like a creeping wine we reach towards the light, inching slowly but surely up the torso of the giants amongst us. We latch and gather strength with each leaf that is unfurled. The journey will be long and the light is so dim down here. Bird song and primates chatter in the unseen canopy to tell us that it might be real. Sliver by sliver columns of light penetrate through the gaps in the leaves and branches. The insurmountable summit beckons it’s clarity. We were lost in the dark under forest for too long to remember the heights of the bright light. Show your face to the cloudless sky and unleash all that you have kept down in your roots. It might be terrifying to be somewhere so unsure and without brush to burden you.

Stand up tall like an oak. Chain saws gnaw their bristling teeth are you base, biting bit by bit away from your stolid sap. Your head is in the clouds, your roots mixed with the mycorrhizal fungi. Yet, you remain exposed to those that cannot conceive of our grandeur. A commodity to be stripped down and carefully marketed. Your branches buckle, your leaves are shaken, your roots are unmoored.

You feel like you’re ready to break, when the storm begins to blow in. The bird song has come to a halt, the pounding sun is no where to be seen, a light mist conveniently coats every leaf. Rain is meant to quench my thirst. But, these winds will never be sated. They dare to toss back your appendages, strip you naked, and find your weaknesses. A torrent runs ruts around your roots and seeps into the unnourished soil. You see others crack in half as a lighting strike goes for the jugular. You’ll survive this one, as you’ve survived so many more before this. My rings hold my history and every wildfire.

Others will fall and perish, yet we maintain our composure. Bones and tree rings keep a record of every calamity that we faced. Some may be thinner and uneven, but recovery brings resilient growth. Shaped by these stories we seek our eventual release and redemption.

Despite the weariness, we stand tall and greet each day and each person with a grin. When beauty comes to grace your senses, you are ready to accept it with open arms. The mighty blows might whisper danger and apprehension. They’re there to keep you safe when all you have known is shanty shelter.

To find something greater, you must be exposed to the elements. Walk into the blaze of desire. Drench yourself in the depts of romance. Be frozen by stunning eyes and a sun set dress.

Love is a cocoon. You started as mere caterpillar, hungry and jovial, preparing for your transformation. Here you are exposed and poised against the entire world. But, the time comes and you began to produce your refuge. Strand by strand, you cobble together a place where you can grow and change.

In the arms of your chrysalises you ascend to your highest potential, that was only waiting to emerge. The pain, the misgivings, the illusions know they were never apart of you to began with. They are washed away in the vibrant cradle of love.

When you look into her eyes, feel her heart beat against your chest, the world becomes as small as a pupae.

There were no lines to recite, no signs posts to point the way, yet you found your way into this bed. You showed me that I was a butterfly. And when I shared my breathe with you, you reminded me that I always knew how to fly.

Chaos Theory

A butterfly flaps it’s wings and we fall flat on our face. A disgrace to your parents, your grandparents, their grandparents, your ancestors. I have to do better than my parents. I have do better than my friends. Have do better than my classmates or get eaten alive. The pressure is rising, while the competition is sizing up the weaknesses and strengths of others. Swords to sell and throats to cut. That’s a scary world to live in. It always has been. There are stakes on the line. Fortunes to be made, divorces to unwind. The decisions that we make shake or make us.

It is how we deal with them that matters, a wise man once said. That wise man might have been me. Tendons stretch and recoil, a billion cycles. A misstep with a pair of scissors while you’re trying to open some boxes, and your finger starts to bleed. If it’s not too deep the sanguine rush will eventually abade and your skin will start to heal. The skin that grows back may not necessary be stronger, elastic or blend with the rest of your skin; but your loss wasn’t permanent. Also, you might have gained sometime else. Think of it as a trade. And your injury wouldn’t hinder you in your life. Imagine all the other things that you will do with those fingers and toes. Probably more than you can count.

The body and the mind work the same way, it is hurt, and it regrows sometimes to capacity; sometimes beyond it. Everything has a spring constant. But, you aren’t. You’re an adaptability machine. What doesn’t kill you, won’t necessarily make you stronger. But there are lessons in damage and disrepair. There are so many strategies out there to confront the situations and problems that you are dealt with in life. You can run, hide, attack, go unprepared, go overprepared.

To the clueless mind, clueless words and behaviors are perceived as arrows and spears. We can panic and retaliate. In a hot second that is all that we might have. But, true adaptability and mastery comes from failure and pain. Those masters can only teach about success. Just as death may teach you more about life than the living. The universe exists in a duality, a yin a yang. Pairs of dancers, orbiting harmonious synchronicity. An ineffable amount of particles simultaneously creating order and disorder. Tumult and triviality. Triumph and trickery. A hearty laugh and a trailing tear finding its way to the dimple of your chin. Existence is diffusion. That means that eventually you’ll get to where you need.

As failure and death as your guide you’ll learn your art and learn how to follow your heart. Failure can bring us to doubt, misery, mistrust, looking for space for security. There is pain in the fall. And sometimes we just can’t manage to get back up again. Maybe sometimes your bones are too weary, your heart can’t take another blow. Sometimes we need help, are too proud, unsure, or afraid to ask for a helping hand.

Of course, it’s terrifying to make a request of yourself and others. You ask as your being has a desire to fulfill, for one cause or another. A low energy vacuum that can’t manage to reach equilibrium. The fear of failure and rejection does not come from being denied your desire, but rather that you will suffer without it. I am hungry because my body is starving. I beg for a loaf of bread, and can’t find a single crumb. The rejection is a judgement on your life. Without food to fill your belly, you will suffer the anguish of starvation. This is the worst scenario. And of course, there are many unfilled bellies in the world, but we will try to have a modicum of nourishment; and may sleep well this night.

As such we must go after what we want. The world will not always give to us. And it takes practice and mastery to get it. We start with what we have, and we build, we build, and we build. Cuts may heal, but calluses grow tougher each time they are peeled off. It is tempting to give in to the pain. It is tempting to succumb to the stress and the void. We may turn to anything to stop the pain, but for a moment. The nagging doubts, regrets, and feelings of dissatisfaction. They don’t really go away. They may be your constant companions. Although, they may not be your enemies. But, rather the voices than help to sharpen your knifes and your wits.

In victory, we radiate with joy and splendor. And in setbacks, the vigor is drained. Battles are lost. But, the war might not be. We readjust our tactics, change our perspective, form new alliances. And when the war is worth fighting, there might be a way to win. Every inch gained will have losses and the battles will be bludgeoning and grueling. With a north star, ahead, our gaze is focused on the horizon. The light at the end of the tunnel.

The only way to gain endurance is by enduring it. Every time you slide down the waterfall, that you are trying to climb, the better climber you will be the next time that you inevitably fall. And that immense pressure will shape you to the exact task that you need to achieve. You will get to the top of the waterfall, and finally see the river delta bellow in all of its glory. You become worthy of that glory. You paid your cost, and reaped your reward.

People will deny you a helping hand sometimes. They may even hold you back and attempt to stop you. They may tell you that you are doing it the wrong way. That you can only do it their way. That you must take the route that they did. There is only one path. They may be doubtful or your abilities or just concerned for your safety; and just ask you to stop. That drive exists only in you. That fire burns in your hearth, and knows what you really want. Figure it out if it’s what you really want, and what lengths you are willing to go for it. And we don’t have to hurt others, just because we were hurt too often. Violence has a cascading effect.

On the journey of life, we will always be surprised by our own abilities and the things that life has in store for us. There are no guarantees, no evitabilities, or fixed destinations. Every day is an ebb and flow. A rushing river or tranquil brook. Yin and yang, a surfer’s flow. Every morning we get up, and face the day. Carpe Diem, right? Let it be it your aim, and let failure teach you how.

In Pursuit of What?

We dream of better dreams, to prevent us from seeing the eyesore that we couldn’t have dreamed upon, that we couldn’t improvise.  To be here, and live this life without a wife or some strife tucked away in your cavernous quandaries.  Moving mountains to submission but without surrender.  Rendered and carefully devastated to the hands of crippling joy. Should we allow for devastation to take the back room of eyes when you know that space was reserved far before you starting to pay condolences? Recoil in irony found in oil and a bitter coil. Soiled it in desperation, without a first thought for respiration. Some kind of respite to breathe at all when faced with the challenge to breathe large breathes with stolen lungs.  It was brung and bitten into a 1000 deprecated pieces to be pinned to the heart.  Don’t move. Red streams are meant to flow before change sets that river on fire. It’s up to the buyer to make the choice between crier and trier. Top tier is an elephant walking on bamboo ready to follow the caravan into gleaming riches that seem to be sun rays at this juncture.  Punctured under pressure, to maintain that apex of ineffable.  To experience boundless connection, we blind ourselves and expect of our desserts without paying attention to the high tide deserts.

Connected without intention, a dangling leg operating upon kinesthetic impulses.  In pursuit of what we aspire to we accidently let the slate plates shift under our hands and feet.  March forward even if every foot in progress is an act of self-mutilation. To love our skins is an act of mutation now by the DSM.  Why should any act require the prerequisite of harm?  Is it written in our holy texts that to progress forward that we must kill the thing we love, to make sure that it is alive?  How long have we been operating with this untold assumption?  Sight is the natural state. It is the first state.  Pieces are torn away, poorly splintered, sequester, and given a jagged edge.  Cover up that eye sore to avoid the eyes altogether. 

See without seeing, and see the world that will end up sightless. With faulty apparitions the veil remains intact, but the skeleton has disintegrated without a fair goodbye. It is the remnants of understanding. It is the surface of the subsurface. The dream state is the real state, and the real is thought to depend on unreal circumstance. The illusion, the prestidigitation evokes our core responses, without consultation of the prefrontal cortex.  The lights are shut off, and paid to remain dim.  The sunlight is smeared into a shame that does not belong to it.  Casting away the specters that retrace the ridges our mind.  Under the sunlight, masks hold no voice.  They lose their protection to be disposed of.  Under the sunlight, repose can be restrung into the likeness of musical composure.  Film that was stored away for chemical decomposition refrain from forgetting what real joy once looked like. Each sun is a twinkle of the universe lit by transformation.  A constant conversation and convulsion is the raw beauty of existence.  This is where every story begins.  This is where energy is born.   The true essence of life is a proper extension of our progenitor.  Made of sunlight and stardust we are the children of the universe in these temporal catalysts. 

A God Draped In The Flesh of Humanity

Think of each organism as a point on an infinite web of ours.  The actions of the tiniest to the largest of these will reverberate through the entirety of the web, with or without our cognizance. Thus, the planet Earth is a living organism in its entirety.  There’s a Telugu word for the Goddess Earth; it’s Bhumi. Or there is Gia. Regardless of what we call this meta organism, it is alive. And humans are also a part of it. We actually influence it quite greatly.

The interesting thing is the human species may exist as its own super organism with a meta consciousness.  Each human brain acts as a generator and receiver of ideas.  Each brain is born with its own innate qualities dictated by inherited DNA. The rest is subject to influence of other brains.  Identity is formed from the identities and knowledge that surrounds a human being.  And identity continues to constantly change as influences change and knowledge is accrued. Thus, no single identity could remain absolutely consistent with its own past.

Memories of one person will be stored and distributed among the brains of everyone that he has ever met. Thus, identity exists in this broad way.  And every human interaction will fundamentally change the brains of the humans involved.

With the death of an individual, pieces of that person remain in the people that he had influenced during his lifetime.  Thus, ideas change brain structure, and brain structure is transmitted to other brains via ideas. And, once again ideas change brain structure.

In this way, once knowledge is gained, it becomes diffused through the entirety of humanity.  Ideas, attitudes, good, and evil fight it out in this way. A market place of this mind? And winning ideas don’t always mean that majority of society will benefit from them.

We can use this collective capacity to do both good and evil. These capacities are personified in the deities of good and evil. And definitions and models of good and evil also clash. Thus, there are cases of ad hoc reasoning to justify evil ideas as good; and good ideas as evil ones.

Yet, somehow with increased connectivity, the layman has become less conscious of his connectivity with humanity, life, and the entirety of the universe.  It is as if we are constantly and overwhelming exposed to ideas from all directions. Our species is suffering from an overload of information. Thus our super-receptive brains are being forced to blind ourselves.  This kind of information overload is a kind of information oppression.  Presented with so many stimuli, we rather go with it and expend less energy than verifying each and every claim.  Thus, it becomes a challenge to sift through the wreckage and find the truth. 

It’s possible to forget why something is done at all: as in why we propose with diamond rings or dress up for Halloween?

This obedience and unquestioning authority has always been a part of the conservative inertia of human thought. We become mired in dogma, without great changes or questions. And there are always the revolutionaries with their elegant, reasonable, and liberating ideas. Science is the legacy of these revolutionaries.  It is the very basis on which the modern era has been built upon.

Yet, it must be remembered that it is within all of us to revolutionize the world, to change it, to expand our vision, and extend our compassion. 

As such we are living and constantly changing human beings. Our abilities are immense and our minds are infinite.  There are thoughts racing and blood pulsing to remind us that we are Gods in human skin. We are incarnations of this vast and mysterious universe that we define as existence.

Homo Duplex

What is the most powerful thing of humanity?  That rush, that acceleration, that thumping of the heart, the sweat of terror and exhilaration, eyes wide open, mouth agape open to the stimulus of bombardment.  Learning a new truth, seeing it wash all over you.  It descends it spreads, it uplifts, it regenerates, it evanesces.  We lose our old understandings of self and not self.  Where do I stand and where do I end?  We all have this mechanism of release.  We become unhinged from rusted moorings, so easily, just waiting for a gust of wind powerful enough to encompass us, and catalyze an upward flight.  One flight does not exist independent of another.  See one lift off the ground, and you know that another could be inspired to break the moorings of certainty and stagnation. Any and every human being is related by every action, thought, dream, song, and belief. The very act of existence drives change. It is the knowledge of this truth, which makes one powerful. It is the knowledge that we have the ability to enter a state that expands our sense of ego, destroy our limits of sensation. This is where we belong, it feels most natural and everything appears wearing that veil of sacredness. Because your sense of self has been extended to the other things around you.  Your attention becomes shifted and your vision expands.  You begin to notice the connections between things that once appeared disparate and unrelated. Once you start drawing the connections, pulling, plucking, torqueing, playing with those invisible strings; they begin to manifest everywhere.  And they all lead back to you. Where you once felt alone in this world, you now understand that it was not a truth but merely a mindset.

We all know that this capacity exists, and it’s something that we constantly strive for. There’s religion, there’s family, there are friends, there are lovers, there is occupation, there is money, there is exploration and all of these avenues that give us a taste of that feeling of extraordinary. Sometimes we crave this release so greatly, that we would do anything possible to achieve it.  We can be utilized or converted to suit the ego or agenda of another. When we chase after transcendence without the use of doubt, reasoning, and passion we truly limit the extent of mental transcendence. When we separate without cognizance of the bonds between elements, we sever the very ties that we know to be true.  We sever away a part of ourselves to become disparate and buried.  We continue on our paths, attempting to find that final release, not realizing that the further along we get on this journey, the more of ourselves we leave behind. And then when we get to the place where we expected to find transcendence; although, we are further from it than when we started on our initial attempt.  A person that has severed his ties descends upon himself in the form of a black hole.  It is a conception of existence that has lost all of its value, and must live off the value that another throws off, in his own course of transcendence.

And so the noble paths that we take on in attempts of transcendence and happiness become the catalyst for the makings of our own unhappiness and the unhappiness of others. This is the result of a blinded, molded, limited, conditioned approach to transcendence. Opulence is but a transitory and insatiable campaign for transcendence, which renders one forever craving.  And this is the nature of suffering. It is a blinded man being lead to his own destruction.  Yet, this very same man has the propensity for creation, devotion, compassion, reclamation, conservation, and namely love.

The question then becomes, how does one man choose the sustainable path of transcendence, rather than searching in the dark?

Doubt, critical thinking, open discussion, freedom of choice, communication, honesty with self and others, knowledge, exploration, interaction with many diverse people, traveling even a little bit, learning from history, learning, teaching, questioning, wondering, feelings, trying, risking, listening before speaking, watching, paying attention, playing hooky, wandering through forests, and truly loving yourself. Only when one can love himself, can he love another or anything for that matter.

Finally, when confronted by those that are unwilling to compromise their model of the world, grant them tolerance, as it is them that suffer the most in a prison of their own creation. More so, an act of tolerance is the most powerful thing possible as it has the ability to shatter perceptions. Some believe that hate should always be met with hate, but when one confronts hatred with love and tolerance, one’s expectations are not lived up to. It causes a confabulation of how the world is supposed to work, and how reality is actually playing out. This destruction of certainty can have many results. Two possibilities could be acceptance of the reality or dejection and further self-destruction. The aim of tolerance is to inspire this acceptance.

Are you on the path of transcending your ego? Or are you a slave of it?

The Roman Catholic Church and The Conquistadors

Most of the world was colonized by the European powers. And with the Conquistadors came the Roman Catholic missionaries. And both causes supported one another. In this way, the European powers and Roman Catholic missionaries were able to suppress, oppress, and convert thousands, millions, and finally the billion or so alive today. Catholicism first took over Europe first with the conversion of the first Christian, Roman Emperor, Constantine.

It was through capturing the populations of Europe first did Catholicism extend its reach to every corner of the planet. In this way, the Catholic religion acted much like a virus: most likely converting people by force or by baptism, overriding their free will, commanding them to live by the rule of the Church by threat of death or alienation, and using them to convert others. In this light, it seems very clear that Catholicism worked much like the bubonic plaque, wiping out much 2/3s of the European population; until an immunity was able to mutate and resist the virus. In terms of religion, the enlightenment was the mutation that was able to resist Catholicism. Yet, even in the 21st century the model of the missionary exists. And, it is fundamentally perverse and contradictory.

The Catholic church and other Christian churches that host missionary trips claim that they are helping the marginalized and impoverished; yet, it was Christianity and Colonialism that caused this situation in the first place. Young people are recruited to volunteer on these trips, and this kind of mentality is also pervasive in the rest of Western Civilization; and it still carries the connotations of the " White Savior Complex." It is great to visit cultures and civilizations that are much different than your own, share knowledge, and help the voiceless. If you are English speaker, and you are teaching English, that is helpful because English has become a universal language due to colonialism.

Yet, the model of the missionary is a broken one. Young, educated people are carefully handled, and they believe that peoples in the developing world need them, and can't survive without them. Going across the world to build a school, a library, install a toilet, help at an orphanage is still aligned with the missionary model. It's the belief and that thought, " I'm going to go there and help them; they need MY help because I am intrinsically better than them." This mentality is self-aggrandizing, oppressive, and narcissistic. The truly effective and self-less model to help others would be contributing a valuable skill set to local organizations that are doing the work day in and day out, and engage local communities in a fundamental way.

Break the system of the Catholic missionary that says," You are fortunate for whatever I give you." Instead, work with the organizations that help the people to empower themselves, and find their voices again! Your job of a volunteer or a consultant should not be to be pedantic or authoritarian. Your job is to help restore the dignity of the people that you are trying to help, by allowing them to see their over power and potential for self-determination. This is the most important part because colonization and its neocolonialism counter parts have systematically worked to undermine and oppress the populations of the world. The populations of the world must be reminded that they too have knowledge, ability, power, and potential. It is this acknowledgement that will bring world peace, dignity, and a balance of power.

Strange Things Have Happened

This humanity of ours is so odd and complex.

The world we are born into shapes the internal model of how things are, and how they are supposed to work. This construction is the lens in which the world is viewed. How one views the world operates consciously and unconsciously. Our experiences condition us; what we will believe the world is. And we work to preserve what we hold to know true. When it is all that you know, one clings to the construction that gives them safety and comfort.

Expanding this circle of knowledge is an arduous task. Expanding empathy is an arduous task. Expanding vision is an arduous task. And as this ever growing frontier is brought in and explored, people react to it a myriad of ways: some allow the new truth to revolutionize their world, some create an interpretation of the truth to justify their prior world view, and some reject it all together. In order to push the narrow windows of our world view, it takes tremendous energy to overcome the natural state of conservative inertia. The destruction of the world view that you were born in to, and conditioned into is a painful process. And sometimes people will do anything to avoid pain, including inflicting pain. There is always a lurking fear that this conceptualization of the world will fall apart if infecting ideas invade. The fear of the other, the different is conditioned into us by conflict and fear.

Every battle is a clash of realities, models of the world in the minds of humans.

In this clash, the other is thought to be the enemy, the threat. Attempting to match conflicting world views is no simple task, and easily creates walls. People jump upon conclusions and assumptions. Stories are retold again and again, until the self-soothing gesture becomes the only truth that one knows.

Finding and accepting the truth is the grand challenge of humanity. And the greatest hindrance to truth is prior representations and convictions, an intuition or sense of what the world is, what it should be. Yet, many times truth varies very far away from what feels to be true and what is actually true. When one is confronted with what one perceives to be an attack to their belief system, he or she may be quick to reject it.

The question is should all internal representations be accepted or respected? Or does belief require prodding and careful examination?

I chose the latter. Merely having a belief does not garnish it with the right to respecting it. But, varying belief systems have the possibility to try on another view of the world. Different belief systems give opportunities for empathy and tolerance. Sometimes when a belief system is destructive it is necessary to deconstruct it. Perhaps respect for a belief system comes from its implications and how the believer treats others. Yet, regardless of what one believes, the truth should trump every world view. The truth should not be dismissed. More so, a whole and full truth is necessary to avoid miring ourselves in partial truths that sometimes serve our beliefs, agendas, and egos.

A broad, complex, and linked conception of reality must be used to get to the full truth. When one takes the mindset of unity, connections emerge and walls quickly begun to tumble.

Let’s look for the truth, and put away our fears. A wide view of the world is possible.

How Fear Evolves And How To Confront It

A peaceful silence. A deafening blow to the chest. We tremor in fear. Our hearts are pounding, the sweat is seeding, the mind is on fire. We await a threat, our sensations become immobilized. We seek out protection, vengeance, destruction, invasion, reduction, and liquidation. We act out in devastation to comfort our fears. To know that my child can sleep undisturbed. A sweet innocence, until corrupted, is the love that keeps me alive.

This fear is a poison, that bends its servants to extreme. It cripples the mind until every sensation is replaced by rage. The senses sedated, our empathy cringes to any remaining humanity. The eyes go numb; the brain is conformed.

In this state we leave ourselves behind. We become voice boxes to the effected, and amplify the fear. Dedicated to decimation and oppression, we beat back the world to keep what is ourselves and take what we please.

We cordon off our empathy. Its reach limited to those that are like us, and withheld from those that are different. A threat to our fragile facades, we edit out the one’s that we think don’t belong. Stolen of humanity, it becomes easy to oppress and kill. We want to forget the misdeeds that we have done, and shift the blame on to those that have received the misdeed and act as a constant reminder. A woman is raped, and the shame that we possess we attach to her.

How the human mind becomes so shrouded in a labyrinth of illusion. We lie somewhere within, waiting to re-emerge when we feel safe again. Fearful of each other, we construct elaborate armor, itching to disrobe. We believe that if we build our walls high enough, one day I will be happy, I will re-emerge. Yet, that day never comes unless another human being comes along to revolutionize our world.

Locked in by eye sight, the eyes brighten like a rising sun. The blood starts pulsing to remember that you’re alive. The brain is a fireworks display, and the heart recalls who you are. The mazes began to tumble, the walls decay, and the armor melts away. It is love that awakens us from our long slumbers. It is love that shatters our illusions. It is love that makes us whole.

Sometimes it comes like an electric shock, sometimes like a silent tsunami. Yet, your world becomes changed forever. If but a moment: your fears suspend, the haze of your mind is lifted, and your consciousness becomes connected.  As such, love is the counter virus to the grip of fear. Love, unshackles the mind and teaches others to do the same. Once, one is ignited, the chain reaction is impossible to control or impede.

In the heat of battle or acquaintance with a stranger, an electric shock can have unpredictable results. While, a silent tsunami could easily disarm anyone. When the other approaches with fear, he or she can be set to a hair trigger. When you move smoothly and silently, you penetrate their eyes and rest their fears. A child afraid, calmed by the settled storm in our eyes. With the fear dispersed, the body begins to rest. Fear is an onerous burden, that forces the mind awake while weakening the body. Once the weight is shifted, the shackles become lifted, and freedom calls for a restful sleep.

While, love on the other hand, empowers us and keeps fear at bay. In this way, when love is the cause, nothing can stand in its way.

Thump, thump, thump. The heart beats of humanity cry out for sanity in unison. We reawaken from long slumbers. The eyes glow. The core within us is ignited. The bitter walls decay. Hand in hand, we forget our fears

Colorized

The words: "Colored”, "People of Color".

I am not alright with these words. Humans are infinitely far more than skin color alone. Colored started as a way to segregate and describe African peoples as a part of the colonial system. The Jim Crow laws and culture segregated African Americans and Europeans by the words " Colored" and " White". And by using the words of the oppressor class, Black activists challenged the system of oppression. But, we must go beyond definitions based on skin color. The world is not separated between " White People" and " Colored People."

There are thousands upon thousands of ethnic, cultural groups of people in this world with their own unique culture, national, religious, and ethnic histories. People are not a skin color they are full sentient beings, with different genetic, environmental, cultural, religious, dietary, ect circumstances.

To merely say that we are all people, and a small portion of the global population is White while the rest are " colored" is so Eurocentric, skewed, and apparent of European colonialism.

Youth from around the world are currently feeling the pull between their own traditional culture and the Western world. This of course has good and bad consequences. This phenomenon is not exactly new, but part of an ever accelerating trend that had begun since the age of exploration and European colonization.

European colonization has been both cultural and economic. It's been about robbing other peoples of their own indigenous culture and supplanting it with " Western culture". Its economic policies went hand in hand with this as market liberalism called to break all barriers. And this global " trade" took the form of stealing from the colonized, and selling it to the colonizers.

Dispossessed indigenous peoples of the world, lost a tremendous amount of cultural tradition and personal identity when they were colonized or sold and stolen into the global European slave trade.

Colonization destroyed so many things. It separated millions of people from their home lands, and from their own people. People were separated from hundreds and thousands years of cultural, environmental, and ethnic history.

The dream for so many people now is to enter " middle class" Western civilization. The dream is to " make it rich”, to find opportunity. Of course, everyone wants a better life. But the legacy of colonialist dispossession continues. And this holds true for everyone, even those of the colonist class. Native Americans, African Americans, European immigrants, Indian people, Asian peoples, ect, ect.

This ongoing process and phenomena is producing a global culture, but is also isolating and separating people. And this shock to cultures and traditions has had so many different types of reactions. But all in all, dispossession of cultural identity is one of the most painful things that a person or group of people can go through; a cultural and physical diaspora.

For ABCD, me haha, (American Born Confused Desi) and other immigrant peoples, connecting with a homeland, a people, a culture, traditions, and histories is so important in crafting an identity, making sense of the world, belonging, confidence, and understanding who you are.

For millions, whose ancestors were slaves, they don't have the opportunity, ability, knowledge, or any remaining connection to their own peoples. Their cultural identities have either been eradicated by generations of slavery and domination, or subverted to fit the criteria of the dominant European class.

This is one of the true sorrows of slavery and colonization; cultural eradication. But of course, pieces of dismantled cultures persist and continue to exist in various forms. The worst fate is " cultural appropriation" which is evident everywhere.

Humanity can certainly progress forward, and universal love and brotherhood could be things to aspire to, but the work needed is tremendous. Dispossession, extreme conservatism, ultra-secularism, hyperinvidualism, ect, ect disconnect us, deprive us, oppress us, and blind us.

There must be a middle way; between progress and tradition, between personal identity and group identity.

Above all else, there must be deep self-reflection in every human being. Dispossession has made us all crave to find our people again, or at least a group of people to unite with. This is both good and bad consequences. This has arisen to all types of subcultures and movements.

European colonialism broke down, altered, and eradicated the traditions and cultures of the world. Now is the time to break down the colonized classifications of humanity based on skin color alone.

Find out who you are and the history of your people. Find your own his/her/our story.

Decolonize yourself. I see the good things coming.

No Need for a Divine Being

" Being born is like waking up without falling asleep, and dying is like falling asleep without every waking up."

I just watched a TED talk from 2007, one of the original talks that first day-viewed on the TED website. It was an Oxford Christian Preacher, that was baffled by the Tsunami that hit South East Asia in 2004. The question was, " How can God allow this to happen?" And the preacher struggled to come up with a "logical" answer according to Christian theology. So in the end, still within in the confides of Christianity, he had to make an allusion to a Hindu/Buddhist non-dualist type of God that does not control, but is one with the universe. I think this compatibilist conclusion that he comes to avoids the confides in which he's thinking. He must resort to a non-Christian theology/philosophy to explain a Christian God. His commitment to a Christian God, or a divinely intelligent being named " God”, doesn't allow to him to dispense with the entire theology and narrative of Christianity.

I myself have gone through phases trying to have a metaphysical explanation of existence involving a divine being, presence, or force. Most lately, I have been exploring pantheism and non-duelist schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, like Adia Vedanta. And they speak of the idea of "Brahman" being one and the same all matter and existence.

But after watching this talk, and trying to understand existence, I have come to the conclusion that there is no divine being or force. The idea that something had to cause a beginning and an end to existence is moot. It is the wrong thinking and the wrong question. Lawrence Krauss wrote the book " A Universe from Nothing" and supports the premise within some of the latest findings from quantum mechanics. And this gives an explanation for how an universe could have emerged from "space".

The fundamental problem with finding an origin to existence or even a creator, is that there is an infinite regression. The compatibilist will have to say that a divine being is the "alpha and the omega”, " unmoved mover", "causeless causer." An infinite regression of questioning, plows right through the idea of a first agent. The need for a first agent is necessary for the religious to affirm their religious doctrine.

Can a singularity in a big bang, a black hole, or the existence of nuclei really be understood or have meaning in a visceral way? Why would such phenomena in existence even require a creator?

Living things, human beings, or consciousness, matter, or anything else that is existence doesn't need an initial explanation or prime mover to exist.

They just do.

And what is human " you-ness”, human consciousness? It is like everything else that exists right now. It does not exist at one point, and exists the next.

Before we are conscious, what are we? After we die, what is our consciousness? These things pass in and out of existence. And so too, can all of existence.

All in all, there wasn't, and now there is.

And everything is, and are manifestations of what is. lol

In Buddhism there is a desire to break free from the cycle of reincarnation, achieve transcendence or in Sanskrit, Moksha. This could be understood in number of ways.

It can also have the understanding of a soul that seeks the end of death and rebirth. It could also be understood as removing all attachments to mental structures, meanings, differentiations. In truth, the idea of a soul or a creator are totally irrelevant in the Buddha's teaching.

In conclusion, there is an existence and a non-existence. There can be no explanation and no creator.

Things just occur. A series of events caused a Tsunami, but there was no reason or plan.

Living things try to live and in the process evolve because molecules arranged.

These things have physical laws and patterns, but those " behaviors" have no reason or design.

There is no presupposition, motive, or reason or end to existence.

It exists. It does not exist.

But, even with this "truth" life is not diminished in anyway, as life will always continue. An ice cream still tastes good. Compassion and empathy continue to exist, ect. No need for Nihilism.

The Nature of Fear and Warefare

Where delusion and fear reside, so does suffering.  Delusion for the purpose of benefit and expansion is called imagination.  Delusion for the purpose of destruction is called death.  We are such fragile creatures.  So full of fear.  Fear of death, fear of shame, fear of indolence.  Perfection as we define it is the master of will.  To gain the respect of all, to get the control of all men and women.  To receive every comfort and desire in existence.  To be praised and worshipped.  The expansion of self, and the extinguishing of all others in subservience.  Our minds structured for the function of this purpose with no regard to self or others.  To be trained to endorse one set of emotions and suppress the other, to live in a constant hell one’s own creation.  When one suppresses another he suppresses his own facilities. This is the megalomaniac.  What are the benefits of this torture of self and the extinguishing of others?  Slaves to provide you with your subsistence, and women to bare and raise your children.  To spare your race, and subjugate another to take on these tasks.  This is done when one over takes their own carrying capacity. So, they take another’s.  The cycle is no different than the grey goo scenario.  We pillage, consume, suppress, and repeat.  This way has been called war since the very beginning of human civilization.  Called different names: royalty, feudalism, emperors, lords, kings, imperialism, capitalism, industrialism, thieves, murders, rapists. When the state kills for its nation it’s called war. When an individual kills another it is called murder.  I see no difference in these clever semantics. We cannot heap together in a pyramid; selectively stifling ourselves in subjection.  Each one us must be a fully enlightened purpose, and know that we are powerful not by a sword or gun, but by the mind that creates our reality. 

The imagination is infinite.  Carrying capacity is not. Balance is will always be restored, regardless of the winners and losers.  When we plunder, we destroy this balance and hang on by a thin a string.  We disturb this enough, and we receive the karma that we have brought upon ourselves.  Nothing is forever yours, only borrowed.  The study of life must be taken from the classroom and be among life; and allow it to be the teacher.  This is where the study of biology and ecology must be done.  This is where the land will speak, and minds will be connected.  Away from life, we forget what we ourselves are and how it works.  Insolation only leads to ignorance and destruction.  Insolation leads to indoctrination and self-delusion.  Rather than isolation, the net must be widened greater. The “inter-net”. The connection of minds and realities. 

How to raise a child?  Raise them where life in all of its diversity exists.  Introduce them to life in all of its manifestations, and how that he or she is just another life form.  And that the medium and composition are the same, yet the structure is all that differs.  Indulge and involve them in the complexity of reality; that which we blind ourselves from reality to pursue our pleasure and escape our fears.

And how do we take the blinders away from the adults? How do we relieve them of their fears? We give them mercy, understanding, empathy, sympathy, listening, a hand to hold, a hug to give, a place to rest, a stronghold of weakness.  We be compassionate to the nature of all suffering. 

What is objective reality? It is replicable reality. Yet, even this reality is the simple result of overwhelming complexity.  Objective reality is the acceptance and understanding of complex systems, not independent parts.  When one rests on the simple reality of subjectivity, there will always be fear and megalomania in quest for the peace that one will never receive.  Embracing complexity means embracing peace.  The picture turns from several forces contrived to fighting one another, to a single coherence.