Freedom

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?" ~DFW This Is Water

Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing. ~DFW This Is Water

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." - Hamlet.

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: A fellow of Infinite Jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!" --Shakespeare Hamlet

The King & The Tyrant (Father's Day)

5/25/2010:

Every month a speck of dust rubs my clammy insides and around this central point, I try and build my newsletter blog posts. My hope is that upon the conclusion of my writing, a pearl is formed. This month has been the most difficult to write of all the newsletter entries I've done. Many things have come together all at once leaving me both confused and exhausted.

--Why is this difficult, aren't you just trying to sell produce?

Sure. But I hope you realize that it is more than this. The [redacted] is not just business as usual, or that is what I strive to communicate and hope to believe. I don't do this for money. I want to believe that I stand for something. . .

--So, what do you stand for?

Each month, I invoke some sort of muse or God toward the beginning of these experiments in advertising. The aim of the invocation is "authenticity", serving something to which to be true.--Wait. Perhaps that's it. Maybe, I just answered the above question indirectly. What do I stand for? I stand for the authentic. That is, a true experience of being alive. This month we celebrate the solstice, and the father. If I'm invoking anything to be true to this month, it is myself. . .

As a member of the produce team, it would be difficult not to be a goddess lover. As one begins to consider the Earth that supports us, it isn't much of a stretch to then personify our home as mother and to take on the cause of protecting her. I recently saw a special on PBS called Born Wild: The First Days Of Life. It showed mothers and babies and how various animals care for their young--and they are all different. Of course the most striking to me was how the Amaurobius spider mother offers her own body for her newborns to feast upon. She willing gives her entire self for her offspring. Beautiful, right? Wait, what if we don't have to kill her. I feel like the spider baby screaming, Wait! Sop! We don't have to eat her! She can give us all milk almost forever!

A week ago, the Idaho chapter of The Friends of Jung presented a sneak peak at The Flicks of an unreleased film called, Call Of Life. The film unflinchingly looks upon our civilization's impact upon the world and life. Talk about spiders eating their mother. It kind of messed me up. And here is the interesting part of being a father. The father wants to control the situation to arrive at the desired results. But by holding on so tightly, the father becomes the tyrant, the monster of the story. The Mother has a natural system and order that supports life. The Father's control of the environment enabled civilization, but he now thinks that it is actually he that is in charge--that civilization is above the natural order, not part of the web of life. The father needs to learn how yield, submit, to let go. . .

I might be the monster in the story, the ogre. Life is such a struggle for me. I'm aware of the harm that our lifestyle causes, yet then create harm in trying to get my house to also be aware. I've become a tyrant trying and teach my children to value the "things" in our life, but not to worship them. I don't want them to waste anything. I want them to know that they aren't the only people in this world, and that their actions effect others and can harm them. We should be conscious of how we live. Of course, I'm trying to control them. . .

Did you know that one can quantify the life of a honey bee? One honey bee produces about 1/12th of a tablespoon of honey (.028 oz). Honey is true gold. To waste any honey at all is to take for granted the life a of a bee. Of course that is the case with everything. The laughter and joy of children is also precious. An ogre trying to impose controls upon his tiny subjects also diminishes the joy in this world.

I wish there was an outside "bad guy" we could point to for this tale. But, like in Gilgamesh the hero is our problem. If there is any evil at all, it is the king turned tyrant. Is Walmart our enemy? What about BP? These corporations are serving us and our needs. They are only giving us exactly what we want, and this is why they are successful. The darkness we fear is ourselves. The so called "others" are us. For a few years now I've been throwing myself against the wall of global consumer capitalism, being ground into nothing from the daily grind against a tyrant of a system. Thankfully there is another way. I recently stumbled upon a wonderful quote from Richard Buckminster Fuller:

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Let me tell you what is authentic. It is Boise, Idaho here and now. There are people doing things here that they love to do, and if we support them, we can create our own vibrant, sustainable local web strong enough to sustain ourselves through any national or global crisis. We can lead the country through our example to a new paradigm and to paradise. Our local farms are beginning to produce right now. Do take advantage of this moment. The old model of everything the same for everyone everywhere is killing us, and it doesn't give us any sense of place. We've lost our sense of home. Let's create a new model. One that ties us to the land that supports us. Let's live in Boise, and all that that entails.

I've personally dropped the ball, and have been selfish with my time. My own "wants" and desires have taken away from the real, authentic work I should be doing. I'm sorry. I haven't been writing about our local growers as I said I would. I will continue. I want to introduce them all to you. I myself want to meet them, and see what it is that they do. I will not struggle anymore. I will try and submit my own greedy wants for the good of the mother, and for the good of our family. You know we are all one family, right?

I will try and be a better father. I promise.

9/25/2010:

I hope to offer some explanation of this tonight after work. I just finished J. Franzen's latest work, and have begun again to consider the question "how should one live?" I can see maybe a local nonlocal sync whole post on the horizon, and well anyway, maybe we'll talk tonight.

db

mobil ave (intro)

. . . it's worth recalling that the Greek word psyche meant both soul and butterfly, and that the character Psyche travels down into the Land of the Dead to prove herself worthy of Love. ~Rachel Pollack

"Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

~Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

Mal: "You're waiting for a train; a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't be sure. But it doesn't matter - because we'll be together."

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1895

locomotive |ˌlōkəˈmōtiv|

noun

a powered rail vehicle used for pulling trains

adjective

of, relating to, or effecting locomotion

• archaic (of a machine, vehicle, or animal) having the power of progressive motion

ORIGIN early 17th cent.(as an adjective): from modern Latin locomotivus, from Latin loco (ablative of locus ‘place’ ) + late Latin motivus ‘motive,’ suggested by medieval Latin in loco moveri ‘move by change of position.’

Loco-Motive

loco

adjective informal

crazy.

ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Spanish, ‘insane.’

motive

noun

1 a reason for doing something, esp. one that is hidden or not obvious

2 (in art, literature, or music) a motif

adjective [ attrib. ]

1 producing physical or mechanical motion

2 causing or being the reason for something

There is an urban myth that when the Lumiére brothers premiered one of their earliest films, The Train Arriving, 1895, the crowd rushed out of the theater--you see, the film was nothing more than a train arriving, but the story was, that those watching this new dream-like technology feared for their lives, expecting this oncoming train to overtake them. . .

I'm being overtaken by this symbol as well. Yet, recall "The Beginning Of Something Big"

I got something coming, and I really wanted to add to this today, but my train didn't arrive. I might need some help getting out of this limbo, out of this belly of the whale . . .

someone get me a train. . .

. . . I'm beginning to make sense of the pattern,

to see an exit from the Labyrinth, to understand the Corn Maze,

(that or I've gone crazy in a lighthouse)

Inception is describing something to me, that much is sure, but what, I don't know. [I think I do today.] There are a lot of sync elements in this film bringing together many strands of thread that I've looked at in the past. The film is presenting these strands together though, perhaps--no definitely--as one piece of thread, but knotted so tightly that to finally see the rainbow connections, one must realize the unity of the previously perceived separate strands while demystifying the paradoxes and untying the knots. That task complete, I believe we can then follow this one thread, Ariadne's gift to us out, of the labyrinth. . . maybe.

Easy right?

Of course, that fucking train . . .

. . . such a potent symbol too. Like the very internet itself, uniting and dividing--an unbroken line of connections, forming patterns, and relationships, but destroying something else in the process too.

Before I get to the sync knots, I want to mention the butterfly I invoked at the beginning. On the final night of The Ti♋er, the fatal 4, became The Furious 5 by way of a ceremony at Strange Eye's place (lovely chap!).

Of course I was wearing my ridiculous blue, 1970's western JackET. During my blessing, Jim sang a beautiful Icaro about a blue butterfly. At that moment I knew that this was my icaro, that he wrote it for me and for this moment. (And that was true for that moment.) It was a very moving evening. Jim literally transformed into my uncle, my father's older brother, and I naturally became my father. In that moment, Jim and I truly were brothers.

Jim's ceremonial gear in the late 50's

Jim on drums, me clowning on the uke.

sync walk 7/27

(more soon!)

∞ (Holy Fool)

Sahasrara (Ymirsday)

U R AN US

vii˚

Thousand Petalled

Leading Tone

If we remove that glasslike barrier of which Ramakrishna spoke, ['It is like the light of a lamp inside a glass case. One feels as if one could touch the light, but the glass intervenes and prevents it.' ] both our God and ourselves will explode then into light, sheer light, one light , beyond names and forms, beyond thought and experience, beyond even the concepts "being" and "non-being." "The soul in God," Eckhart has said, "has naught in common with naught and is naught to aught." And again: "There is something in the soul so nearly kin to God that it is one and not united."

The Sanskrit term Nirguna Brahman, "The Unqualified Absolute," refers to the realization of this chakra. Its lotus, Sahasrara, "Thousand Petalled," hangs head downward, shedding nectarous rays more lustrous than the moon; while at its center, brilliant as a lighting flash, is the ultimate yoni-triangle, within which, well concealed and very difficult to approach, is the great shining void in secret served by all gods. "Any flea as it is in God," declared Eckhart, "is nobler than the highest of the angels in himself."

"Glowing Sun"

Ajna (Odinsday)

Saturn

vi

Command

Submediant

When the tasks of the fifth chakra have been accomplished, two degrees of illumination become available to the perfected saint, that at the sixth, known as savikalpa samadhi, "conditioned rapture," and finally, supremely, at the seventh chakra, nirvikalpa samadhi, "unconditioned rapture." Ramakrishna used to ask those approaching him for instruction: "Do you like to speak of God with form or without?" And we have words of the great doctor ecstaticus Meister Eckhart, referring to the passage from six to seven: "Man's last and highest leave-taking is the leaving of God for God."

The center of the the first of these ecstasies, know as the lotus of "Command," Ajna, is above and between the brows. The uraeus serpent in Egyptian portraits of the pharaohs appears exactly as though from this point of the forehead. The center is described as a lotus of two pure white petals, bearing the syllables ham and ksham. Seated on a white lotus near its heart is the radiant six-headed goddess Hakini, holding in four of her six hands a book, a drum, a rosary, and a skull, while the remaining two make the "fear-dispelling" and "boon-bestowing" signs. Within the yoni triangle is a Shiva Lingam, shining "like a chain of lighting flashes," supporting the sign of the syllable OM, of which the sound is here fully heard. And here, too, the form is seen of one's ultimate vision of God, which is called in Sanskrit Saguna Brahman, "The Qualified Absolute."

When the mind reaches this plane, one witnesses divine revelations day and night. Yet even then there remains a slight consciousness of "I." Having seen the unique manifestation man becomes mad with joy as it were and wishes to be one with the all-pervading Divine, but cannot do so. It is like the light of a lamp inside a glass case. One feels as if one could touch the light, but the glass intervenes and prevents it.

For where there is a "Thou" there is an "I," whereas the ultimate aim of the mystic, as Eckhart has declared, is identity: "God is love, and he who is in love is in God and God in Him."

Vishuddha (Thorsday)

Jupiter

V

Purified

Dominant

Once the great mystery-sound has been heard, the whole desire of the heart will be to learn to know it more fully, to hear it, not through things and within during certain fortunate moments only, but immediately and forever. And the attainment of this end will be the project of the next chakra, the fifth, which is at the level of larynx and is called Vishuddha, "Purified." "When the Kundalini reaches this plane," said Ramakrishna, "the devotee longs to talk and to hear only of God."

The lotus has sixteen petals of a smoky purple hue, on each of which is engraved one of the sixteen Sanskrit vowels. In the middle of its pure white central triangle is a white disk, the full moon, wherein the syllable ham, of the element space of ether, rests on the back of a pure white elephant. The patron of this center is Shiva in his hermaproditic form know as Ardhanareshvara, "Half-Woman Lord," five-faced, clothed in a tiger's skin, and with ten radiant arms. One hand makes a "fear-dispelling" gesture and the rest are exhibiting his trident, battle-ax, sword, and thunderbolt, a fire, a snake-ring, a bell, a goad, and a noose, while beside him his goddess, here called Sakini, holds in her own four hands a bow, an arrow, a noose, and a goad. "This region," we are told in a Tantric text, "is the gateway of the Great Liberation." It is the place variously respresented in the myths and legends of the world as a threshold where the frightening Gate Guardians stand, the Sirens sing, the Clashing Rocks come together, and a ferry sets forth to the Land of No Return, the Land Below Waves, the Land of Eternal Yourth. However, as told in the Katha Upanishad: "It is the sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse." ~The Mythic Image Joseph Campbell

Shiva Ardhanari, "Half-Woman Lord."

I need to break in here and point out how special and exiting this post is for me. For a quick recap of what I've been doing, I've begun making an association built upon our primary sevens, such as the seven lotus centers (chakras), the days of the week, the seven notes in the western diatonic music scale, & the important heavenly bodies/western deities. With that in mind, I started climbing the chakras combining the associations with the help of Joseph Campbell's explanations of the lotus centers. So then, why is the post exciting?

In the west, Zeus, Jupiter, and Thor are most definitely Male powers. This lotus center being at the throat originally illustrated to me the patriarchy's vocal power for verbally stating the law. However, when viewed from the Indian, as J.C. related--this center is balance. The representative deity is Ardhanari, "Half-Woman Lord". Amazing! So in this post we find all the recent sync whole themes coming home to roost. Here is the purple. Here are the two faces of Janus. Here is the tiger, the trident, the thunder bolt. Here is Avatar as the new religion, which is plant consciousness. Here is the west relearning how to live. Here is a feminine counterpart to the western patriarchy. Here is the moon and Jupiter together. Here is a union of the dualities. Here is the way. . .

And this is also the threshold of adventure. Indeed. Here you go between the guardians, and through the moon. This is the jumping off place, The cantina on Tatooine, "the gateway of the Great Liberation." Sorry I ever doubted your faith in Jupiter, Jim and Jake. This is so exciting. This is wholeness. . .

Anahata (Heartsday)

Earth

IV

Not Struck

Subdominant

And so we ascend to chakra four, at the level of the heart, where what Dante called La Vita Nuova, "The New Life," begins. And the name of this center is Anahata, "Not Struck"; for it is the place where the sound is heard "that is not made by any two things striking together."

Every sound normally heard is of two things striking together; that of the voice for example, being the sound of the breath striking our vocal cords. The only sound not so made is that of the creative energy of the universe, the hum, so to speak, of the void, which is antecedent to things, and of which things are precipitations. this, they say, is heard as from within, within oneself and simultaneously within space. It is the sound beyond silence, heard as OM (very deeply intoned, I am told, somewhere about C below low C ). "The word OM," said Ramakrishna to his friends, "is Brahman. Following the trail of OM, one attains to Brahman."

In the Sanskrit Devanagari script OM is written either as ॐ or as ओ , and in the posture of the dancing Shiva image the pose of the head, hands, and lifted foot suggests the outline of this sign--which makes the point that in the appearance of this god the sound resounds of the wonder of existence.

The sound AUM, the, "not made by any two things striking together," and floating as it were in a setting of silence, is the seed sound of creation heard when the rising Kundalini reaches the level of the heart. For there, as they say, the Great Self abides and portals open to the void. The lotus of twelve red petals, marked with the syllables kam, kham, gam gham, ngam, cham, chham, jam, jham, nyam , tam, and tham, is of the element air. In its bright red center is an interlocking double triangle, the color of smoke, signifying "juncture" and containing its seed syllable yam displayed over an antelope, which is the beast, swift as wind, of the Vedic wind-god Vayu. The female triangle within this letter holds a lingam like shining gold, and the patron Hindu deity is Shiva in a gentle, boon-bestowing aspect. His shakti, known here as Kakini, lifts a noose and skull in two hands, while exhibiting with her other two the "boon-bestowing" and "fear-dispelling" gestures. ~Joseph Campbell The Mythic Image

Wish-Fulfilling Tree

The Hatch

Just below this lotus of the heart there is pictured a lesser [octagonal], uninscribed lotus, at about the level of the solar plexus, supporting on a jeweled altar an image of the Wish-Fulfilling Tree. For it is here that the first intimations are heard of the sound OM in the Silence, and that sound itself is the Wish-Fulfilling Tree. Once heard, it can be rediscovered everywhere and no longer do we have to seek our good. It is here-within-and through all things, all space. We can now give up our struggle for achievement, for love and power and the good, and may rest in peace.~Joseph Campbell The Mythic Image