Gaia Community: Twisted Mystic's Blog

Casting Call...

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:00:06 GMT

Have you ever pretended? Pretended to feel something you didn't? Pretended to be someone you aren't? Have you ever opportunistically seized a moment to enact a bit of subterfuge? Are you fascinated with the effects of your affectations? Was your portrayal so believable that those around you went on with matters, none the wiser? Or perhaps your performance was exposed, and your integrity was called into question. Have unsophisticated minds called you a liar? A deceitful con? Maybe you're an actor! If you are, and you live in the Colorado area (specifcially Denver / Boulder), we need you. Beginning in November, we begin shooting a full season of The Stuart Davis Show, a spiritual comedy with a rock 'n roll twist. (I may re-name this show The Stuart Davises in order to distinguish it from the previous format of The Stuart Davis Show which is all over YouTube, and is not indicative of what this show will be...) The entire season will be shot and edited in high-def, with broadcast-quality production at every step. I (stuart) will write, direct, and play three different versions of myself in the show. Each episode will clock in at between 20 and 30 minutes. It's based on real events in my life, flushed out with great liberty. Think Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Flight Of The Concords, but with a lot more spiritual content (the clashing and kissing of Buddhism, Christianity, Voodoo, and more) and a lot more sexual humor (if Tell Me You Love Me were funny...) and a lot of Rock 'N Roll (every episode features a video of an original Stu song within it, woven into the plot line. It's about trying to become more human, the clumsy integration of family, spiritual practice, sexuality, entertainment business, and the contradictory aspects inside each person. But why am I telling YOU? I need actors. Dozens of GOOD actors. You won't get paid much and it will be hard work. But it will be a LOT of FUN making this show, and it has a very promising future. The intention is to sell the show, but regardless of its fate with networks, our commitment is to have it seen by hundreds of thousands of people. There will be a full advertising campaign behind its launch. I am, by choice, circumventing a lengthy development process. Simply put, I saw two approaches available to me at this time; Option #1: Come up with a concept, write it out. Go to meetings with innumerable executives, pitch your show over and over. Hope somebody buys a pilot. Hope if they buy the pilot they even air it. Pray if they ever air it, they buy some episodes based on its ratings on one night (also hope market-demographic research supports you as a solid bet with their corporate situation). And cross your fingers that through this whole process your concept and vision remain remotely recognizable by the time it's broadcast. Option #2: Make the show. Make it great, put out everywhere in the World for FREE (YouTube, home site, plus dozens of other outlets), promote the shit out of it, and let the fan base find the show and express their support for it. Let the public TELL the networks they love the show. The work is done. You sell the show to a suitable network partner. I LOVE creating. I don't like spending years in development trying to persuade executives to let me make a show. I want to see a vision come to fruition, to give it feet in the real World. I don't want to wait for a 'green light'. Majeski Media has given this show the green light. So, Stuart Davis Brand and Majeski Media are doing something that we feel is unique and timely. We are launching our own series. We are making 12 broadcast-quality episodes (a full season) of The Stuart Davis Show. The show will air, one episode a week, for three full months, beginning this spring (at about the same time my new album comes out). I am attempting a slightly more integral approach to my comedy with this show. First, the three Stuarts occupy three basic altitudes, or developmental perspectives. The "Black" Stuart clone is at a pre-conventional center of gravity (Narcissistic, impulse-oriented, base-drives). The "White" Stuart clone is at a Conventional center of gravity (rule, order, mythic-membership). "Normal" Stuart has a tenuous hold on Post-Conventional (he can see all perspectives, but can also pick the pebbles from the rice, so to speak). Other characters represent left / right hemispheres of the brain. There is lots of play with states / stages, masculine / feminine, and types of intelligences, etc. However, my primary loyalty is just to make something funny, entertaining, and unique. Let's face it. How many spiritual comedies have there been? Isn't it time for one? Isn't it time for one that doesn't just make fun 'OF' spirituality? Why not celebrate the Kosmic Punch Line that is Awakening? On the one hand, all comedy is spiritual. On the other hand, where is the spiritual comedy? If you'd be interested in being involved in the show, send me a head shot and a one-page bio / point sheet about yourself. From these, I will get back to individuals I think may work for roles in the show. We will hold a reading the first week of November in Boulder to make sure the casting fits. I will send scripts out to anyone I think is a candidate for a role. You need Final Draft in order to read the scripts. Let's make funny! Stuart Davis

Tags: casting call, spiritual, comedy, rock 'n roll, stuart davis, stuart davis show, zen, integral, pop, sex, humor

The Secret. The Spirituality of Narcissism

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:29:35 GMT

Submitted by stuart davis on March 12, 2007 - 1:52pm. "Let me know Your enormity, and my tininess Help me see Your infinity and my finite-ness" -Mike Doughty, His Truth Is Marching On The Spirituality of Narcissism. Song of The Day: Hyper-Ballad / Bjork Word of the Day: Lygophilia / Love of Darkness The Secret. It's all the rage. The book and movie have garnered the enthusiasm of millions. Everyone from Oprah to Montel is extolling Rhonda Byrne's spiritual juggernaut. The premise of The Secret is simple; The power of attraction. Like attracts like. What we think, what we feel, acts as a magnetic signal, attracting its correlate from the Universe. The Secret says our thoughts and feelings manifest that which we desire. In fact, according to the teachers of the Secret, this works 100% of the time, for 100% of the people who use it. The Universe responds to our wishes, providing whatever we desire. This is because "we create our own reality", and The Secret says science confirms this. As with most things, The Secret is a Good news / Bad news scenario. First, the good news. The secret is (partly) true. Our thoughts and feelings are of consequence, and positive thinking and feeling can significantly characterize our experience of reality, even influence the way reality unfolds. The Secret cites everyone from Martin Luther King to Einstein as examples of people who knew -and employed- The Secret. Martin Luther King had a dream. Einstein said God doesn't play dice. And so on. The Secret uses valid (but partial) suppositions such as: Our thoughts and feelings are powerful and inflates them to a Kosmic (and false) scale, giving us: Our thoughts are the most powerful things on Earth. The secret takes a statement like Thought can influence reality and amplifies it to "Thoughts create reality." Not just any thoughts, but YOUR thoughts. (By the way, are you a rape victim? I guess you created that reality with your thoughts. Was your family member killed in Iraq? I guessed you created that experience for yourself so you could learn from it. Wow. You are one sadistic cat.) The Secret takes a truth like The Self is one with the Universe, and then immediately inserts the wrong self; The Ego. Throughout, The Secret conflates ego (the frontal structure, personality) with Self (an unbounded, unlimited reality which transcends but includes all qualities). In doing so it engineers an unabashed Spiritual Narcissism. Ego is God. The vicissitudes of your ego, its preferences, its unresolved cravings, become the vestments in a regressive ritual. See? It's MAGIC. You caste a spell, voila', the Universe responds. Cuz you're God. Why exactly an entity that IS everything would need more is not clear, why a Divine Being that is all powerful would need to appeal to another power is perplexing, but.. To cement this Kosmic Delusion, The Secret hypnotically repeats "The Universe" and "Your thoughts, your feelings" until the two are braided into a phantasm that places your Ego squarely in the Center of Reality, in control of all that comes in and out of being. What do you want to do with your Divine Power? Free all sentient beings? Awaken every sister and brother from the Dream? Dissolve the source of suffering? No. You want cars. And girlfriends, and boyfriends, and a new red bike and a big new house. The Secret snags the self by flattering it into masquerading as the Self. As an egomaniac, I can attest to the efficacy of that strategy. And also to its disastrous results. Allow me to pause for a confessional tangent. Before you think I am positioning myself as some spiritual fundamentalist who thinks materialism is bad and "spirituality" is good, let me set things straight. Me, Stuart Davis? I LOVE money. I LOVE sex. I want a new house. I'll take a shiny red bike. I want to be rich, powerful, and successful. And I do not apologize to anyone for that. I think the ego is good, I think it's games are legitimate and should be engaged. You know what else? I want YOU to be rich. I want YOU to be successful, powerful, and have every wish in the circus of your imagination brought into reality. As long as we're not hurting anyone else, I say let's go to town. I am the first to stand up and shout "THE EGO IS NOT EVIL!! THE EGO IS NOT BAD!! IT HAS GOTTEN A RAW DEAL FROM SPIRITUALITY! LET THE EGO BE WHAT IT ITS!!!" In fact, the ego is quite literally one of the most astonishing miracles to occur in the history of Universe. No joke. Celebrate it. It's time we ended the spiritual war with the ego, include it as another facet of the Beauty in our Being. Why would we leave anything out? The self counts. The ego matters. I also have to say: The ego is not the Self. The Secret is selling tools that supposedly fulfill wishes, dreams, desires. But WHOSE wishes? What LEVEL of desire? What DEPTH of dream? Well, here's what sucks about The Secret: There are many levels of self, but only one which THINKS, and that's the Ego. Thinking, feeling, thinking, feeling, these two conductors are the hub for all The Secret espouses, and sadly thoughts and feelings (while important and valid) come from an extremely shallow dimension of the self. Because of this, the Secret deeply, sadly, entangles us further into suffering instead of liberating us from it. The source of suffering is delusion -the illusion of separateness. It gives rise to craving, longing, desire. It's the illusion that we lack something that sends us on the Odyssey of Acquisition. The Secret gives us a cure that's worse than the disease. The cure for craving is controlling craving. The solution to hunger is famine. The Secret speaks to materialism, narcissism, and other afflictions of self by sanctifying them, exalting them. Rather than liberate us from the Source of Suffering, The Secret reenforces it. It anchors us in the shallowest level of our self (the Ego) and consecrates its preferences, its fantasies. When someone asks you what you want, before you answer, ask yourself What level of me are they asking? What level of me am I going to respond from? If I had all the power to wish for anything in the Universe, what would I wish for? Who am "I" anyway? It is dangerous to insert the ego in the place of the Self -the highest Self, the deepest Self, the one that is without a beginning or end. The ego -the subject- is a boundary. It identifies itself by what is inside or outside of it. Whatever is outside of the subject is an object. The small self is a dynamic aggregate of qualities and preferences, locating itself anew in each moment through a calculus of these subject / object distinctions ( I am this, I'm not that, I like this, I don't like that, I want this, I don't want that, this is me, that is not). The self depends entirely on boundaries. Self, on the other hand, has no boundary. Self has no "other". It cannot be reduced to any particular qualities or characteristics, but all qualities and characteristics rise and fall within it. Self includes vertical and horizontal coordinates that stretch as deep and wide as the Universe itself. It is true that all Reality arises from and dissolves into the Self. Not the ego, not the personality, not an individual, but the Self -the Groundless Ground of all Reality. The ego is defined by preferences, identified by desires, determined by boundary. The Self has no preferences, no desires, no lack, no inside, no outside. It includes all preferences, but is not defined by them. Desire arises within it, but it is not identified by it. Every imaginable boundary forms and dissolves within the Self, but never parses its not-two not-one Nature. This Self -entire seen and unseen Kosmos- is the native endowment of every human being. Our greatest depth is without bottom. The good news: You can have your cake and eat it too. You don't have to disown your self to be your Self. You have an ego. You are the Universe. But don't confuse the two, and don't let anyone else confuse them for you. I have an ego, and it has desires, and it's healthy and appropriate for that level of my being to seek fulfillment. My thoughts are powerful, and my feelings matter. But the Universe does not reconfigure reality to accomodate the personal preferences of my ego, my frontal structure, every time an impulse comes through my reptilian brain stem. That is not just narcissism, its KOSMIC narcissism, and that is what the Secret is selling. Kosmic narcissism, spiritual materialism of the WORST kind. First, by ensnaring me in my own ego with the promise of release, liberation from desire (while addicting me to it) and second by getting me to forfeit my Self for my self. Since my ego is now Divine, since my frontal structure is now Infinite -Stuart Davis is God- why on Earth would I ever bother with finding my Self? Actual awakening requires real development, years, decades of practice and evolution. Continually moving my Subject through ever-expanding, ever-inclusive transformations takes TIME and TROUBLE. Of course there is no such thing as time, but authentically realizing that takes time. Of course there is no such thing as suffering, but profound recognition of that Fact is exquisitely painful. Authentic spirituality is not a vending machine that spits out cars, lovers, and shiny red bikes. It is not a wand we can wave to avert discomfort, or acquire power. Actual awakening increases intimacy with all suffering (and bliss), everywhere, without exception. It does not remove struggle, but increases our devotion to and stewardship of all Reality. Again, to be clear: I, Stuart Davis, want to be rich. I want to be comfortable. I want lots of Prada shoes. Hell, as long as my cravings are satisfied, I want that for everyone. That's not bad. I do not apologize for that, and this is not hyperbole. But call a spade a spade. I work with my ego, but I don't presume the Universe is reinventing itself moment to moment in order to comply with the minutia of my needy personality. There is the self, and then there is the Self. I go to my therapist for one, I go to the Point of All Places for the other. I, the Self, which also includes Stuart but is not defined by him, was here before Stuart was born, and will be here after he dies. The Self is the end of Suffering, and operates through all discrete agents as a means to Awakening to Reality as it Is. I am that Self. I am radical, absolute freedom. Incorruptible. Immutable. Every imaginable thing is that Self, equally without exception. But not all things equally realize that. Not all beings are equally awake. There is development. There evolution toward what already Is. The Self is absolute freedom. The self is relative delusion. The Secret is appealing to the relative self and pretending its the absolute Self. The Secret crowns the Ego as God (I mean, YOU create Reality, isn't that amazing? YOUR THOUGHTS are INFINITELY influential), then makes two disastrous leaps. #1, Now that you know YOU create your own reality through the spiritual enterprise that is "thinking, feeling", what do you, the Creator, want to create with your thoughts? Wealth. Money, power, influence, status, and the luxury afforded the elite who amass fortunes. The Secret will teach you how. Odd, isn't it, that your self is so spiritual and powerful, but what it chooses to Attract with its Law is money, houses, lovers. Not the liberation of all sentient beings, not relief for every creature, not the cessation of that which is the Source of Suffering (clutching, desire, greed arising from the illusion that there is an "other"), but a refinement of the Source of Suffering. A manipulation of it. The Secret turns Desire and Clutching into a technology you can wield, AND its Spiritual! The cure is worse than the disease. #2, Since YOU create your own Reality (Oprah went to pains to stress and emphasize this point, and had Rhonda explicitly confirm precisely that phrase "we create our own reality") you are responsible as the Source of whatever arises in your Reality. Every thing in your experience, you created (merely using thoughts and feelings! Wow). Many of you reading this right now may be astonished to finally understand you gave yourself cancer. You caused yourself to be raped, robbed, murdered, stricken with every malady in the canon of illness, beset with each kind of strife imaginable. The Holocaust? Just something Jews brought on themselves, as they each apparently created their own Reality. The Rape of Nanking? Bad Chinese, with their bad thoughts and feelings, simply created their own reality and thus caused the unspeakable murder of 350,000 innocent children, women, and men. Weird, the Reality people create for themselves, ain't it? Of course, it's hard to overstate how cruel and insulting such a notion is. The impossibly sick premise that people in such situations create their own Reality is so obviously wrong, so self-evidently false to our basic intuition, that we can almost laugh it off. I mean, we could if Oprah -perhaps the most influential woman in the Western World- hadn't gone to pains to repeatedly emphasize and confirm it with Rhonda Bynre to an audience of tens of millions. Tens of millions of people who literally orient their lives according to these sorts of "discoveries". There are not just many levels of smaller self (the ego is but one), but different spheres, or dimensions. The Secret is not only selling a shallow dimension of self, but it is also only acknowledges one aspect of self. The Secret is working in one realm (interior individual). And it actually does a useful thing in that realm. Positive thought is important. We can change the way in which our thoughts and feelings symbiotically produce healthier behavior. That's good. But there is so much more to the story. We have an inside, and an outside. We are individuals, and we are also social beings. These realms are all part of who we are. All four realms come together at once, they tetra-arise as Reality. No one domain "creates" the others. Each is indispensible. The interior of an individual (where thought occurs) does have correlates in the exterior of the individual (manifest as measurable biological change). We are beings with an inner and an outer worlds. But Reality is not composed of individuals. We are also collective beings, with shared interiors, or inter-subjective domains. Such as culture, collective consciousness, and all that goes with the inner Word of We. That shared inner world is complemented by the outer world, the inter-objective domain of Nature, the biosphere, and all that can be seen and observed in corporeal form. These FOUR domains: *The Interior of an Individual (where thought occurs, for instance) *The Exterior of an Individual (the body, what can be measured and seen objectively) *The Interior of the Collective (Culture, invisible features of mutuality, inter-subjective social) *The Exterior of The Collective (Biosphere, planet, infrastructure, the inter-objective realm) While The Secret promotes itself as the magic wand for everything, it actually deals with one part of one realm, and misrepresents itself while doing it (by substituting self for Self). To claim any one of them "creates" the other is a disaster, and unfortunately fairly common occurance. Any time you find a discipline which FOCUSES on a particular domain (which is good) you find it is tempted or seduced into claiming that ONE quadrant is the only "real" one, or the only "true" one, or the only important one (which is bad). That is another of The Secret's defects.. It takes one realm, one perspective (The Interior of an Individual) and claims it creates all the others. Wow. YOU, your thoughts, create your body. And the biosphere, and the entire culture, and history of the planet, origin of species, all the cities you could visit, all the planets in the Galaxy, all the Galaxies, all the... and so on. And its wrong. Sorry. Your thoughts, your feelings, while being important and valuable, are but two coordinates in one Quadrant. Your thoughts and feelings are not the Source of Reality, but two of its features. You do not "create" your reality, you participate in it, and in certain circumstances, under particular conditions, you can influence it. And it is good and useful to cultivate that influence, to positively nurture those portions as much as possible, in the interest of love. Rhonda Byrne's Secret is bad Self-Help masquerading as mysticism. Broadly, "spirituality" can mean anything. So when we say spirituality, what level of spirituality are we talking about? What altitude of awareness are we coming from, what level of "spirit" are we referring to? I'm not saying The Secret is not spiritual. I'm saying it's a very low-level of spirituality masquerading as a high one. What it uses as enticements (become wealthy, get a better job, get a lover) are very telling. It is appealing to a person's desire to attain, acheive, and better their personal station. It is promising you a better STORY. And that is indeed one altitude of spirituality. But it's the bottom, and inflating it can end up keeping people stuck in the cycle of suffering even longer. Because the self is addicted to its STORY. The Self is the end of all stories. Now contrast The Secret with The Mystery. The Mystery, to me, includes all four domains (inner, outer, individual, collective) and does not privilege one over the other. It engages them as tetra-arising. It includes them as inextricably inter-woven, yet distinct in important ways. The Mystery includes every altitude in every domain, and values each of them, but also understand their differences. The Mystery includes every methodology, every ontology or Way of Knowing, but at also understands what they do, and what they don't do. The Secret is but a method, and it will not set you free from The Story. In fact, it will probably suck you deeper into it. It promises money, power, increased attraction, and tells you it is "spiritual" practice. Your story could become so comfortable, why would you ever forfeit it? Here is an important question: What level of YOU wants to get rich? What altitude of YOU wants a new house, a better lover, an improved Story? Here's what I feel is a healthier approach. Use the right tool for the right job. The right decoy for the right level. I think it is GOOD to improve our financial station. I think it is GOOD to have an exciting love life. That's why I have a financial advisor. That's why I see a therapist. I need to work on my self. I want to improve my relative reality. But I don't need to invoke "the Universe" or quantum mechanics or magical-narcissistic mysticism to do so. It's misguided as it gets. Darn it. Want to find your Self? See Swami Sally. Want to get a new house? A better blow job? See Suzy Ormand and Sue Johansen. Stop it with this Secret stuff. It's offensive and detrimental to our work in the Mystery. Perhaps worst of all, until we are truly FREE -free from the Source of Suffering, free from desire, clutching, the assault of our false identities and all their Stories- until we are that FREE, we cannot really be available to help others become FREE. And that my friends, is the hokey pokey.

Tags: the secret, rhonda byrne, spirituality, law of attraction

The Fountain

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:19:21 GMT

Song of the Day: Halfway / Hammel On Trial Word of the Day: Gravidate / Impregnate This week on Integral Naked, Stuart Davis has an exclusive dialogue with Darren Aronofsky, director of The Fountian. This review is an addendum to that talk. The Cure For Altitude Sickness... Let's imagine we administered salvia divinorum an entheogenic drug, to three different people. Same drug, same dose, same exact conditions, but given to three different people, each one coming from a different developmental station, or altitude of awareness. The first person, a fundamentalist Christian, reports seeing Jesus Christ. Jesus speaks directly to this person, and the vision confirms the ultimate and literal truth of the Bible. The second person, a brain surgeon, takes the drug and spontaneously acquires the capacity to see the circuitry and systems of the body on a microbiotic scale. Suddenly, biological life is revealed to her in stunning detail, magnified a hundred fold. But the third person takes the drug and reports the strangest experience of all: Theirs is a Kosmic Paradox. They experience the Reality behind the appearances. Their own nature is unbounded, ineffable. They are at a loss to communicate it, but pressed to describe it, they say Reality... has no opposite. Same drug, same setting, same circumstances, three different altitudes of awareness. Each one of them is right, for their particular altitude. But they are not equal. Some interpretations are deeper than others. And this is why The Fountain is not getting a fair shake in the media. It's being reviewed by critics who are out of their altitude in judging it. Like many great films with deeper, enigmatic dimensions (Mulholland Drive, Thin Red Line, Dancer In The Dark, I Heart Huckabees, The Matrix), The Fountain's trans-rational features have been mistaken by some as merely ir-rational fodder. This phenomenon, in which symbols from higher altitudes of awareness are filtered through lower (more limited) perspectives, induces what I will call "altitude sickness". In such instances, a viewer anchored in a rational center of gravity gets interpretive vertigo when they encounter something from beyond or above their register. The subject often dismisses the U.F.O (or unidentifiable freaky ontology) as extraneous non-sense. We know better. Each altitude has its own epistemologies, or ways of knowing. A movie like The Fountain is not just a flat, monochromatic "it" with a right or wrong interpretation to be had. There are varying depths of perspective it can be viewed from, and indeed a film feels very different depending upon the altitude of the subject interpreting it. A brief survey of reviews of The Fountain from major papers illustrates the point. Take for example, this jaded bit of bile from Ray Bennett of the Hollywood Reporter. And I quote: " Early in "The Fountain," writer-director Darren Aronofsky's flatulent dissertation on the benefits of dying, someone says, "Death is the path to awe." Aw, shucks, isn't that what suicide bombers are led to believe? Aronofsky wants us to believe in a story about seeking the fountain of youth that covers three incarnations from the days of Spanish conquistadors to the present day and forward to the 26th century..." End quote. I said earlier that no perspective is wrong, just partial. But Ray Bennett comes as close to getting it wrong as you can. Aronofsky doesn't want us to "believe" anything. The Fountain is not dogma, it's a painting, a poem, a prismatic reflection of Mystery, and our opportunity is to engage it, dialogue with it. In the scheme of things, what's more outrageous, The Fountain's triune narrative, or the fact that a Mr. Yuck Face like Ray Bennett gets to critique it? Ray. You're not qualified. Here's some thoughts from Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times, quote: "As pretentious as it is silly, "The Fountain" is just the type of impenetrable indulgence that gives the concept of personal artistic visions a bad name." How about this review from Meredith Brody of the Chicago Reader, who calls the Fountain, quote: "A pretentious, unfocused, and fussy mess, in which director Darren Aronofsky manages to make Hugh Jackman unattractive and unsympathetic... Even fans of Aronofsky's incoherent, flashy Pi and somewhat more coherent, flashy Requiem for a Dream will be scratching their heads." Really Meredith? Are you sure? Because I AM that fan you speak of, I loved Pi, and Requiem For A Dream, and I was not scratching my head while I watched The Fountain, I was drying my eyes. I have found all three of Aronofsky's films moving and enigmatic in the best sense. It's crude and lazy readings like yours, Meredith, that have me scratching my head. In the toxic climate of these reviewers cynicism, even the critics who love the film have to apologize for it, as is the case with Richard Corliss of Time Magazine, who's headline reads: "I Admit it: I Liked The Fountain." A few critics demonstrate some insight and openness though, as with William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who writes: "In an era in which even the so-called independent cinema chases formulas and is ruled by a cowardly herd instinct, you really have to admire Aronofsky's guts for making such a risky, uncompromising, spiritual-minded film." Too few and far between are the reviewers like Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle whose review deserves to be cited at length: QUOTE "Before contemplating the sublime metaphysical head trip called The Fountain, it's best to remove your shoes and socks. Shave your head. Assume the lotus position. Exhale slowly. Ommmm. The Fountain, is a film that defies description, summation, expectation or any other -tion. Exquisitely beautiful and almost unbearably sad, it is also — no way around this — truly strange. The Fountain is cinema as poetry; romance as revelation; science fiction as prayer. It ponders death, and not as some pale Bergman chess master, but death as a form of ecstasy. As a writer and director, Darren Aronofsky has never been one to shy from either the morbid or the ecstatic, and he's yet to make a conventional film of any kind. In Aronofsky's movies, the path to enlightenment — that "road to awe" — isn't lined with wildflowers, unless they're sprouting violently from someone's midriff. Here I'm compelled to say two things. First: This is one outlandish film, and many viewers will hate it. Hate. It. Second: It's nevertheless a transcendent work of art, a vision of undying love that finds hope in grief, epiphany in death and life in the loss of Eden. I, for one, was transfixed: eyes wide open, awed." END QUOTE Bravo, Amy! The cure for Altitude sickness is moving our base camp higher up the mountain. Passively opening to Agape is only half the story. We also have to enact our own Eros. We rarely consider the possibility that just maybe when a film perplexes us, WE have not sufficiently accessed our own depths. I guess that's why I have to suffer a person like Roeper maligning The Fountain, because it's easier for someone like him to roll his eyes in the presence of a kaleidoscopic wonder than it is to DIE INTO IT. That's what The Fountain asks of us. Aronofsky dares to make this invitation with utter sincerity. He assumes the best in us, that we will expand into bigger ways of knowing. We won't get The Fountain if we insist that it come together like the soothing analgesics we've stupidly conflated with story-telling. The greatest story-telling is the kind that undoes our story, dissolves the decoy of our small identity. The Fountain wants us to use senses we may not believe we have. Are we up it? Aronofsky is. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz are. They conspire to put us at the Point of All Places. It's up to us not to freak out and flee at the first sign of the Absolute. Admittedly, just because a film is trans-rational doesn't mean it's engaging. Just because it's fluent in perspectives, doesn't mean it will come together and detonate our Deity. But for me, The Fountain delivers big. As with Thin Red Line, Magnolia, Mullholland Drive, Dancer In The Dark, The Matrix, The Founatin ushers inner Revelation through a masterful dance of dimensions (imagery, cinematography, visual poetry). Some of us may not instantly recognize it, because we are estranged to our own higher Self. As the film says, Death is the road to awe. And there is much to be in awe of here. Let's not shrink away from it.

Tags: The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky, Integral Naked, Stuart Davis, Pi, Requiem For A Dream

Crows

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:16:00 GMT

Song of the Day: Long December / Counting Crows Word of the Day: Corvid I haven't been much of a blogger lately. I still just want to paint crows. What can I tell you? I'm reluctant to be honest about how deeply crows have become woven into the fabric of my being, because it's going to seem weird. I feel them, I would say, 80% of my waking and dreaming life now. I dream of them nearly every night, for weeks now. They are intense, beautiful, simple dreams. I cannot explain why, one day at the age of 35 I woke up and felt possessed by crows, and began painting them. I wasn't even a painter. But they did not want music, or poetry, or phototgraphy. They demanded to be painted. Hundreds of them. For days, then weeks. I feel disjointed when I have to do something besides paint or study crows. If I am taking out the trash, I am painting crows in my head. Making coffee? Painting crows. Running errands at the bank? Painting crows. Crows on paper, wood, canvas, in watercolor, ink, oil, pencil, acrylic, marker, pen, blood, tears, piss. Crows on copper (my next series). Sitting, flying, scavenging. I thought it would pass, but it has morphed and deepened. Driving, I look for them in the sky. Walking I search trees. At home I google them. When I see them, a rush of adrenaline. Then, I wait and want to see them again. I am slightly embarrassed, in fact, to admit what incredible exhileration I feel every time I see a crow now. They take my breath away. When I first saw the murder in my back yard -after the first three days of painting them- it scared Light into me. It was such a stunning, unmistakable synchronicity that it shocked my soul into a bizarre recognition. And that is the puzzle. I cannot relate verbally what transpired. It doesn't slide into signifiers. I mean, I try, but... Like for starters, just what the FUCK is going on when you don't see crows, or think about crows for years (since that one, five years ago, in a blizzard), and then one morning you wake up and have to paint them, exorcise them, respire their enigmatic ¿Whatness, with no idea why? Painted and painted, twelve, thirteen hours a day. Then, on the third day I walk out of my studio, and there is a murder of them in my tree, right over the studio? CROWS? At THAT moment? I have never seen a crow in my yard, or in my town. That moment cracked a mirror I had mistaken for a window. Since then, they've been back -never as a murder- only in singles. I have followed one around my town for a half hour in my pajamas. Now I see them often. They are stalking me, I swear to God. Wherever I go, they're around. I have read dozens of sources, poetic, scientific. I asked my Zen teacher to explain to me just what is going on with these crows, I mean they're an old central Zen symbol, so a Zen Master must know... "I don't know shit about that." That's a quote. If I am really honest I would tell you I am pregnant. Or possessed. Enveloped, subsumed, hypnotized in a recognition I can't articulate. It has a hold on my heart, it hurts to turn away from it, emotionally or spiritually. I'm not *thinking* about them. They have nested in my belly, not my head. They're in me, I'm in them, and when they look at me (in dreams they often now get very close to my face and just look in my eyes, and it is ELECTRIC and vulnerable and exposing) I think I can say this much: The murder that first came into my yard, the dozen on that third day of painting, they are my guides, my family. I mean that literally, somehow THOSE crows, on THAT day, were messengers of a sort. The Family Secret. Agents of Communion. See, I don't like writing this, cuz I it sounds ridiculous, and "purple" and deluded. But listen, I painted those fucking things for three days, for no reason out of nothing. My wife thought I was going crow-crazy. Then they SHOWED UP, in my yard, where they'd never been before. The recognition shook me. Those crows screamed THIS IS NO COINCIDENCE, SEE? WE ARE HERE! I still can't believe it. But I can't deny it. Now all I want to do is be present to them, as one of them, and delve the Family Secret. What do these guides usher? I'm almost embarrassed to admit how open my Heart is to them, how deeply and sincerely I love them, without knowing why or even what it is. But not as embarrassed as I am when they look into me, and show me how I idolize decoys, exalt delusions. Black eyes blink, silken hoods tilt quizzically. Later my Zen teacher Genpo Roshi admitted he did know something about them. "They are part of your Shiho ceremony. But it hasn't happened. And I don't know when it will happen, but they were there when it happened, spiritually." I know they are my family. They know me, and found me, and came at a time when I was broken. They are here now, and will be with me when I die, and without them I would be lost and listless. Biding the black, inscrutable Mystery. In both worlds at once, straddling cycles of birth and death without effort or sense of attainment. Wise, inventive, Paradoxical sense of humor. *********** Update (11.7.06, next morning). A Zen teacher from the UK (thanks!!) sent me this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H84SQyZtQ5c and asked "Maybe you are being reminded of this place?" Which is so funny. I almost ended this blog last night with "These crows come from Japan." First thought, best thought.

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Women In Power

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 21:40:29 GMT

Song of the Day: Middle of Nowhere / Hot Hot Heat Word of the Day: Xyresic / Being as sharp as a razor 2008. Is it safe to hope? Can we dream? Our first chance in eight years to move beyond the Historical Embarrassment that is George Bush Jr.? If I were to have one wish for the presidential election, one thing that could possibly salvage my depressed American identity, it would be if we could for once, FINALLY elect a fucking woman to the office. It is, without exaggeration, too much to stomach that we have never had a female (save Carter) hold the highest office in the land. If we were to elect a woman, it would be such a milestone, such a first. We would take the lead again at the cutting edge of Global politics, just a few generations behind the likes of... United Kingdom's Margaret Thatcher" (wouldn't do her), Ukraine's Yulia Tymoshenko (did her), Phillipines' Gloria Arroyo (might do her), Bangladesh's Khaleda Zia (wouldn't do her), Finland's Tarja Halosen (wouldn't do her), Latvia's Vaira Vike-Freiberga (I'd... do her?), Mozambique's Luisa Doigo (only if drunk), Argentina's Peron (would SO do her, and DO her, and DO her...), Bolivia's Tejada(nah), Iceland's Finnbogadottir(pass), Ireland's Mary Robinson AND Mary McAlasee (yes, in a three way), Nicaragua's de Chamorro(undecided pending more recent photos), Panama's Mireya Moscoso(no), Georgia's Burdzhanadze,(OK, in the name of cross-cultural exchange), Liberia's Johnson-Sirleaf(depends on time of day, blood-alcohol content, and number of witnesses), Chile's Bachalet-Jeria(she looks like Martina Navratilova but whatever, I'm in...), India's Indira Ghandi (just for the name-dropping rights, yes), Israel's Golda Meir (she scares me), Sri Lanka's Bandaranaike (i'm gonna say yes), Portugal's de Lourdes Pintasilgo (negative), Norway's Harlem Brundtland (she looks like my uncle), Yugoslavia's Milka Planinc (no, no, NO), Pakistan's Bhutto (in the dark, on holiday), France's Cresson (with the right wine...), Poland's Suchocka (decline), Canada's Cambpell (just oral), Turkey's Ciller, Burundi's Kinigi, Rwanda's Uwilingiyimana (affirmative), Bulgaria's Indzhova (anal), Guyana had Jagan (unthinkable), New Zealand had Shipley AND Elizabeth Clark (still no), Lithuania's Degutiene (what can I tell you? I'm a sucker for a gap tooth...), Mongolia's Osoriyn Tuyaa (whatever), Senegal's Madior Boye (can't), South Korea's Myung Sook (*grits teeth, exhales through them*... ok. one time), Finland's Tuulikki Jäätteenmäki (mmm... not feeling it), Peru's Merino Lucero (apparently she was in the girl scouts, that's weird and I'm pretty sure disqualifies her), Macedonia's Radmila Sekerinska ( any time zone, any embassy, any position, Germany had Merkel (bang! bang!), and... by the way, two women who lost elections but lifted erections, Temperence Alesha Lance-Council from here in the States (I think it's good she didn't win, because FUCK she is hot, and a hypnotized nation is a vulnerable nation...) and Ivonne Juez de Abdel of Brazil (hurting. it hurts.) how long do I have to go on with this? Islamic nations, communist nations, democratic nations, socialist nations, every kind of country you can think of has put a women in highest position of power, but not us. don't even get me started on minorities. if we don't make an African American Woman President soon, I'm moving to Monrovia.

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Crow

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:12:51 GMT

Dying into that which is beyond birth or death (through) being born into that which is locked in the cycles of birthing and dying (rough translation of the text on this painting which is in IS)

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Crows

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:07:54 GMT

Song of the Day: Omaha / Counting Crows Word of the Day: It's been all crows lately. I woke up one day a few weeks ago full of crows. Not "thinking" about them, more like being impregnated by them. Inhabited. Possessed. I went out into my studio and began to look them up on google. A few hours later I had sifted through hundreds of them. Photos and paintings, many articles. I had known that crows are incredibly smart (how intelligent? They will modify available objects, turning them into task-specific tools in order to access food. They have a sophisticated language. They recognize individual humans and develop unique relationships with them accordingly. They are incredibly familial, they play for pure enjoyment, and the list goes on and on...), but that was not why I was suddenly obsessed with them. Frankly, I had no idea what it was I found so magnetic about them. But there was a quality to this fixation which I recognized. It had all the markings of a creative episode. I had known this kind of altered state for decades. It most often accompanied sustained, intense musical creativity. But it also came with things like working on my constructed language, writing my book, and making some video artwork. On the more general end, it signals creativity. On the more rare side, it augers insight, revelation, or even development (one of my most intense episodes with this kind of altered state was when I knew I was going to become a father, and I wrote over a dozen songs about my daughter -who was not only not born, she was not even conceived. I had merely kissed her mother-to-be, and instantly knew with utter certitude I would have a daughter named Ara, and began to communicate with her through music and lyrics.). I began to paint crows. Hundreds and hundreds of crows. I found it incredibly frustrating. I felt like Richard Dreyfus's character in Close Encounters, furiously sculpting mud and earth and household items trying to create this sculpture of some potent symbol on the periphery of Awareness. I went through a ridiculous amount of rice paper and paint. Slow, delicate strokes in miniauture detail, huge broad strokes of minimalist calligraphy, violent smacks of exploding paint. I smeared, brushed, splatted, dripped, and dotted paint over hundreds and hundres of feet of material. As I do with most things I paint, I burned them as well, burning off the edges, and letting fire take parts of the painting, adding to the surprise and discovery in the process. And as a reminder that every "thing" burns. Sooner or later, it's all ash. BUT... nothing worked. And it made me mad, insane, berzerk. I literally spent twelve hours painting the first day, and instead of feeling purged, relieved by the engrossing study of BLACK FUCKING BIRDS IN INFINITE PERMUTATION, at the end of the day it was WORSE. Much, much WORSE. I climbed into bed at 2am with my wife, smelling horribly of smoke and soot, having held lighters and candles to dozens of paintings- to no end. I had black paint in ever crevice of my hands, face, feet (I paint barefoot, often with my feet). My jeans and shirt were ruined, and when I lay down naked, I woke up in a dark outline of paint stains on the bed. Like a chalk line, but in black calligraphy paint. That night I dreamed of crows. More accurately, I dreamed I was painting crows. And it drove me fucking crazy in my dreams too. Because my mind did not miss a bit. Even though my gross body had dropped out of the frenzy for a well-earned break, my soul never paused. My subtle body was even more intensely engaged. All night, me, the crows. Painting, painting. And the problem was simple, but impenetrable. I am not a great representational painter, but even if I were, it wouldn't have helped. Because whatever crows were trying to manifest through me, it wasn't about depicting some photographic portrayal of crows through precision paintings. But I was also damned in the other direction. Try as I might to conjure the "essence" of crows, or the extemporaneous exuberance of crows, the enigmatic fuckers would not YIELD to form. Not in the most abstract and minimal, not in the most sophisticated and detailed. I woke up the next morning INSANE. I literally opened my eyes and felt them -their energy, their depth, they're being- in my BODY. Those bastards had nested in my soul. My wife looked at me like "oh no..." she recognized the obsession. The absorbtion. I grabbed a gallon of coffee, and ran out to the studio for day two of the fury. I spent another day in a tornado of black and white. Little crows, big crows. Abstract, representational. I went to bed late again. I dreamed of crows again. I woke up and went out to the studio again. The third day, I got closer to knowing them, to finding them, when I painted a series called "Sheho" between two crows in a very weird conversation. Sheho is a ceremony in Zen whereby transmission of lineage mind between teacher and student in conducted. When that came out, I understood I was painting my family, that the two crows were my teacher Genpo Roshi and his successor, Musho Hamilton. I understood the crows in general were my lineage, were actually Zen monks. Living, dead, incarnated, excarnated. They were the counsel of my Zen guides (how the fuck could I be so dense, so slow, so dumb? It's all the fumes. Paint fumes, smoke fumes, burning plastic fumes. That's how.). At that point -which came fairly late in the day on day two- a little vista opened. When I finished that scroll, I had a major sigh. The first opening internally and externally, and when I set the brushes down and looked at it, I thought, "Good. Now I can get started." As in good, now I know what I'm supposed to be painting (from the inside, the interior animating Presence which is supposed to be coming forth), and so I can begin. I walked outside my studio to get more coffee back in the house, and I SHIT YOU FUCKING NOT, the tree in my back yard was full of CROWS!!! I almost fell down when I saw them. To be honest, it scared the life out of me. My heart raced in shock and disbelief. Then, I started laughing. I jumped up and down, laughing, and the crows squawked at me. Are those REALLY crows, I wanted to be sure. Not black birds, but crows. After looking at hundreds and hundreds of pictures and paintings on google all week, I was somewhat an authority. And they were indeed crows. And I simply could NOT believe my FUCKING EYES. It was quintessential spooky. When I told Ken Wilber about this, he said it was the exact, true definition of synchronicity. I spun around, looking for someone -a nieghbor, a passer by- to share the moment with. There was no one. Just me and crows. I didn't want to leave them either. But I could not contain my excitement, and went inside to tell my wife. "Honey, there are CROWS in our back YARD!!" She looked up at me like 'what the fuck is going ON with you? Are you into witchcraft now or some shit?' but instead looked at me from the corner of her eyes, and eight months pregnant lying flat on the couch, moaned "that's greaaaaat... honey....". But she knew as well as I did that we had NEVER, not once, seen crows in our yard. I cannot recall seeing crows in our town, period. In fact, the last crow I had seen was when I was staying up at Ken's big house in the mountains, by myself. He had moved out of it, so had Marci, and I was there alone when a blizzard hit. Several feet of snow fell in no time at all, and I was stranded on top of a mountain with one of the best panoramic views in the World. I sat alone in the hot tub room in the back of the house, which was made of three walls of glass, perched above an enormous chasm of trees. Enormous, white flakes, impossibly pure and soft, wafted to the ground. I gazed for a long while, the hypnotic peace of ineffable beauty caste its spell of spooky silence, muted in White. Then, a single enormous crow flew by in slow motion, maybe twenty feet in front of me, and the entire snow-covered Mountain became a canvas to it Mystery. It stunned me life few things ever have. When it was out of site, my stomach tingled. My chest vibrated. It sounds ridiculous, but I really felt that crow was somehow linked to me, personally. That its presence was not an accident. Moments later, I wrote the song glass in that hot tub room, my body and soul still reverberating with that crow... Falling snow, on the back of a gliding crow Of a crow... Of a crow... And on this day, having told my wife about the crows, and shared it with at least one person, I ran back outside, excited as a school girl to see them again, play with them, tell them I know who they are, I know where they're from. When I got outside, they were gone. They were fucking GONE. It had been, maybe two minutes I had been in the house. I was dumbfounded. Crestfallen. I painted crows all day again. Then, went to hang out with Ken. A minute or so into my crow stories, he said "Well, have you BECOME THE CROW yet?" And then, another major "aha". I went home, and painted my self-portrait. And then, a murder of crows sparked, and took flight inside me. They've been flying out since then, and the electrid energy of them possessing my body, mind, and soul began to relax at last into a communion. Since I had finally recognized them, and myself, they began to tell me their secrets. I started doing Big Mind with the crows I am painting. The first one told me... Those seeking comfort cannot be free Those not free cannot offer comfort and so it begins...

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Vajra Sword Two

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:45:08 GMT

Song Of The Day: Constant Craving / K.D. Lang Word Of The Day: Scortation / Fornication The Vajra Sword blog I posted a few days ago has evoked a lot of reactions. I got a lot of email on it, and I would like to underline a couple points. #1, In doing Big Mind, it's critical to LET THE VOICE SPEAK. Allow it to completely, totally come through as it is. Not as we wish it to be, not as we would like it to sound, not as we want it to reflect on us as personalities. #2, In that spirit, I'm going to let the voice respond to the reactions. I give you, Vajra Sword. Stuart: You upset some people, you know. I got emails, people felt your harshness was sort of crazy. What about love? What about compassion? What about the community of shared intention, the spiritual directive to serve the awakening of all beings? Vajra Sword: My allegience is to ¿What. My home is Reality. I invite you in, because you knocked. You knock and knock and knock, but when push comes to shove you won't step over the threshold. You refuse entry because the door only opens when you insert that collostamy bag you call a skull into the key hole and receive the instant decapitation which is Recognition. But your kind abides in delusion and blathers about Reality. You worship a mirage and bemoan its symptoms. Especially the "spiritual" ones, you sanctimonious, precious fucking POSEURS. It is staggering, simply stunning the depth of your duplicity. Thanks to you fucking Kosmic Frauds, the word "spiritual" is meaningless. As inviscerated as "God" or "Love" or "Awake". Your prayers and mantras are echolalia. Spirituality. The Reality I invite you into is nothing less than your own Native Endowment, your conditionless Condition. The inevitability of that eventless Event escapes you. You still think you're going to get something through the door. Your identity. Your loved ones. A concept, a quality, a story, your history, your acheivements, something, some fucking ridiculous phantasm in the treasury of shit-biscuits you guard and covet. NOTHING -not your "love" for you daughter, not your artwork, not your family and its storied history, not your culture, your country, your species, your World, or any single fucking FEATURE of the hallucination you regard as reality- NOTHING is coming through MY DOOR. Except you. You are coming through this door. Now or later, I don't care. This is the placeless place, the stateless state. There is no such thing as two times, no such thing as two places. So take your time. Stay in your place. Your number is marked. I will literally dismantle, detonate, and demolish every fucking thing you hold sacred. Not because I hate you, not because I love you (you prisoner to polarities). It is not so you will evolve, grow, or "realize" something, you selfish miserly FUCK. It is because Reality IS. That's all. Every anthropomorphic perspective you clutch and cling to, desperately scrambling to scrutinize and decipher this riddle, will fall short. You're still looking out of your head. You still think you're going to figure it out, that there's a meaning, a purpose, a plan, a POINT- because you are too busy sucking the cock of Ambition, too busy prostrating yourself before Desire, Attainment, to stand -FOR ONE FUCKING MOMENT- stand at the Point of All Places. You sad, pathetic fuck. Shut your poisonous mouth. You make me sick. Because you are sick, and it is my lot to KNOW YOU absolutely, to possess your heart, to feel the very depths of your Being that you refuse to. It is my gift to know the secrets, shadows, and promise of your Essence which you refuse and deny, becuase you need to spend another moment bathing in the Fraud that is your spiritual seeking. You are the real Judas, you fucking coward. The historical Judas? A co-conspirator with Christ. But you? You're the worst sort of traitor. You employ the trappings of spirituality in order to forestall its possibility. You undermine Humanity. And we -the Agents of ¿What, Constitutents of Mystery- usually do not care that you're so fucking lost. Humans are but one ephemeral typology in an infinite Matrice of beings. Even on your one tiny planet, endless variation is in play. Many forms of bipeds came before Homo-homo Sapiens, and countless others will follow. Hear that? FOLLOW. Subsequent species in your line. What little distinction you possess comes from the fact that you (fraudulently) claim to be interested in Reality. In Awakening. In God. But you want manageable reality, which is delusion. You want a digestable awakening, which is slumber. You want a God that not only conforms to your preferences, but elevates them, sanctifies them. And that is putrid, to say the least. As I said, normally I wouldn't care. We'd let it slide. We have let it slide with numerous species, on countless occassions. But since you said ¿What, you invoked the Mystery. You KNOCKED ON MY FUCKING DOOR, you made it my business. You have conscripted my service. So, I am here. Spirit's envoy, sent to murder all you fucking pretenders in "spirituality". Everything you hold dear, every single thing you know and love, and all that you abhor and detest, all of it is Marked. I will annihilate every quality and coordinate you relied upon to orient the Lie of your existence. No thing survives, nothing endures. That's as close as I can get to telling you anything about spirituality in your present condition. You and your kind are blasphemy. Not one feature or facet you cherish will make it through my door. You have one choice, and that is to participate, or to resist. When I come for you, lean into me. Contradict your fear, and fall into me.

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Vajra Sword

http://twistedmystic.gaia.com — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:12:52 GMT

Song of The Day: Supreme People / Blackalicious Word of The Day: Cruciation / torment or torture While on tour in Europe the last few weeks i encountered what feels like a new "voice" in the Big Mind process (new to me, anyway). Big Mind, for those of you who aren't familiar, is a method used by my teacher Genpo Roshi in which the practitioner dialogues with various aspects of self. The Protector, Controller, Skeptic, Vulnerable Child, Seeker, Master, Big Mind, Big Heart, etc. There are an endless number of possible voices, but there tend to be a few dozen which are nearly universal, standard features in the landscape of the human condition. While on tour in the UK, I started to feel lonely on the train from Totnes to London. Mainly because I knew my daughter's third birthday was coming up soon, and I would be away on tour on that special day. Without a doubt the hardest part of touring is being away from Ara. I can take -even celebrate- everything else. I love to travel, love my job. Its just brutal being away from my daughter. So, I was feeling the ache that always arises in my belly when I'm away from her for more than a day or two, and I was very surprised to hear from a new voice in response to it. Voice: Stop being such a fucking PUSSY. Me: What? Stop being such an enfeebled victimized loser. Are we an Agent in the Mystery or not? What sort of question is that? Thanks for the comfort and compassion. You don't need anymore comfort and compassion. You need to suck it up and fucking do whatever it takes to push through. You've gotten soft, you know that? Who am I speaking to? Vajra Sword. What is your role? To cut through all this pathetic luxuriating in self-pity. Fucking get over it. The Mystery does not owe you anything, OK? Your job is to shut the fuck up and show up, make yourself available. You are not here to be comforted, consoled, taken care of. You are not ENTITLED to ANYTHING. Period. So stop fucking whining like a little baby about how you miss your daughter, about how lonely you get, about how hard it is in one way or another. The Mystery does not give a shit. It is not relevent. A functional agent in the Mystery does not get distracted by the inevitable, all-pervasive White Noise that abides in all locations at all times. It is a noisy, painful Kosmos, OK? All agents are aware of that. It is the ambient climate which we operate in. It is not personal. It is not a problem. Your reaction, your interpretation of pain, of struggle, your insistance on creating a narrative that personalizes and appropriates the pain, THAT is a problem. You sound kind of like Masculine Compassion. Yes and no. I'm not here to comfort you, I'm not here to show you compassion. I cut through, that's all. And frankly I'm more interested in increasing your ability to function in Pain that I am in diminishing your pain, or relieving your suffering. And I don't need to feel your pain, to know your suffering. So, I'm not really compassionate, and as an Agent, you need to be able to be in more pain, more suffering, than you do need to relieve it. Start by understanding this: There is NEVER going to be a time when you will be free of pain. Even when though you're Free, Awake, whwatever you want to call it, that will actually increase your experience of pain. Because it will increase your intimacy with all beings. You think you miss your daughter? That's hard for you? How about when you're in constant contact with the broken heart of every sentient being in the World? How about when ever stranger, each anonymous person's pain becomes your own? But let's skip past that. Cut to the chase. The "point" of spirituality -a word i have to come to fucking hate- has nothing to do with you. Spirituality is not about you getting above anything, beyond anything. It's not about you acquiring some new fancy set of skills, some relief, or even being able to relieve other's pain. You Anthropomorphic FUCK. Spirituality is not a human possession, and by that i mean it is not merely a HUMAN province. The human condition? Waking up, compassion? Anthropomorphic. If you were to stop for a fucking second and grasp the crushing brevity, the fleeting vapor that is the entire "human condition", you would have a tiny, tiny taste of awakening, which is UNRECOGNIZABLE from any merely human or anthropomorphic perspective. And i TIRE, i lament the persistent, habituated reflex of all you fucking bipeds continually appropriating ¿What as though you can conceive it, apprehend it, meld with it, from any fucking point in the ape-man odyssey that you so mistakenly extol. You -humans- are a whispy experiment. Do you have any clue how many -the variety, the depth, the myriad forms- of sentient beings there are in the Kosmos? No, because you are LITERALLY constitutionally incapable of such imagination, much less engagement. You are lucky we let you play with us at all, you are lucky to be in the Game of Being (The Mystery) in any capacity. You have no idea how easily and quickly you will be dispensed with in the scheme of ¿What unfolds. And yet, I hear you -and your types, the "spiritual" crowd of supposed practitioners- whine, bitch, and moan like the spoiled fucking snots you are and have always been. Whenever the slightest disturbance arises in the field of your diminutive, compressed awareness arises, it's "STOP THE FUCKING TRAIN, i wanna get OFF, this is HARD" wah wah wah!!!! There are two categories. #1, the Somnambulant Berzerkers. They're asleep, they're walking around in a stupor, creating lots of messes, but they can't help it. They are basically deaf, dumb, and blind, and they are not possessed of the consciosness to take the Vow, to assume the responsibility of a Bodhisattva, or Mystic, or any such. Most humans, most spiritual seekers and practitioners fall into this category. Unteachable. But also, not culpable. They're not "here" yet, and are absolved until they are. #2, Agents in the Mystery. Don't get excited. #2 Group just means you're possessed of the modicum of awareness whereby you can at least, of full volition, take the vow, and participate in the Game of Being, the Mystery. However, if you do so, YOU FORFEIT all rights to bitch, whine, complain, and grieve the attendant bruises and wounds. You fucking pussy. Shut the fuck up. You miss your daughter? Someone you love died? Are you poor, are you lonely, are you hungry, have you been used, tricked, abused, disenchanted, manipulated? GOOD. You're in the Game of Being. It's SUPPOSED to be that way. See, the Game is not here to accomodate you. It is not here to provide you with ANYTHING, period. "You" -the relative self- will play for a while, then be deleted, unceremoniously, and without delay, and the Game (which the Real You created, sustains, and adores) will continue without a hitch. And it will continue to be brutal, blissful, cruel, redeeming, ineffable, paradoxical, and Perfectly Fucked Up Beyond All Conceivable Measure. You have no idea what is going on. You never will. Which is fine, you don't need to. You are BARELY participating. You are SCARCELY even in the Game. That's fine, nothing more is expected of a Homo Homo Sapiens (the most ironic name in the canon of sentient beings, you arrogant fucking monkeys). But listen, SHUT THE FUCK UP with your whiny shit. We are not here for YOU. Your precious little story is of no consequence. You RISE UP and GROW OUT in every direction to accomodate the Mystery, it does not SHRINK into you, it does not compress itself in order to fit into that thimble you call a soul. Not once you're in category #2. No more excuses, no more complaints. Shut up and stop being such a fucking pussy. The Mystery will rape you, bless you, and do whatever it needs to with you, and you will take it, or not, but either way you are a blip, and if you have any intention ¿Whating with IS, you will willlingly, readily enter into every moment, every chamber in the labyrinth without a thought that things should be any other way. The Mystery is not here to accomodate you. Wake up and die right (now).

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