Mighty Nitrogen; Tell Me What I Want to Hear.

I do a lot of traveling on the internet. I never know where I’m going to wind up. I visit the main news sites and I visit various organs of information and disinformation. The main news sites fall into the latter category. I guess I always knew that people whose real business was selling advertising, as opposed to providing information, would lie. Their sponsors lie. Compromising your sponsor’s needs will soon leave you without a sponsor. That seems understandable if not globally helpful. The lies I see today are much greater and more cynical than the lies of the past. There’s more money involved, even if it is mostly ‘ghost money’- not real money- and the fever for acquisition and control is very highly pitched.

One of the things I notice quite often is the presence of religiously influenced minds and atheistically tuned minds. A much smaller portion is spiritually inclined and generally has gleaned the more ageless understandings from universal teachings. The first two have at each other regularly and are the source of much of the world’s troubles. Perhaps ‘source’ is an ill chosen term. Let’s call them ‘channels’ instead. The sources of good and evil in the world are more timeless and enduring than any human life. Defining good and evil is a hopeless effort. One thing can be said though, Evil is often resistance to change. It is that crystallizing process that can eventually turn you into a lump of coal.

In Astrology the planet Saturn is often seen as evil. Consider the similarities between the name Saturn and Satan. Saturn is an employee of the universal mind. It has to do with holding forms in place. Thus the ideas of limitation, constriction and confinement arise. It could be said that most people define evil as that which limits their freedom. That is why avatars and teachers of humanity are often called ‘liberators’. How could liberators free us if we weren’t confined? How could we have a world for the expression of life without forms? Are houses and bodies evil? Religious folk will tell you that the latter is true via Original Sin. Original Sin is a guilt trip collection agency, devoted to control and confinement.

Atheists come in two general categories, those who see religion as a rat’s nest of lies and hypocrisy and those who demand the right to live and do as they wish without any moral constraints or arbiters. The first group is not wrong up to a point. The second group prefers to play God rather than to discover God; the biker archetype, the libertine, the materialist and the demagogue. In the process of their press for freedom they quite often enslave their fellows. After another fashion the same could be said of the religious clerk-mind; the Cromwell headset, the Inquisitor disposition and the witch burners.

In both of these groups you can find very intelligent, very clever, very subtle minds; minds as subtle as the serpent who orchestrates it. Within the human mind there are atavistic realms. Science defines them in one way and religion in another. Both agree that many dark mysteries and dangers lie therein.

The problem with and for religious and atheistic minds is that, though they may define things perfectly according to their understanding, the jury is still out as to whether their conclusions are true. Somebody once said, “What is truth?” that was not merely a question. Another man once said, “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” The whole world and every heart were unmasked before the eyes of the first. The whole world of the time trembled before the other, commoners and rulers alike. He could strike anyone anywhere and held great sway over his followers; well, they both did.

Religious folk would have no argument with atheists if they accepted evolution as the outworking of the will of God. Atheists would have no problem with religious folk if they understood the intent of evolution. Intelligence is not the result of evolution, it is the origin of it; intelligent design. The problem with both groups is that they do not go far enough in their inquiries. To comprehend, inasmuch as it is possible, one must give up any idea of knowing. The luminous light out of which everything is formed dwells in a cloud of unknowing. For most people, the pressing business of life is their greatest concern. Appearances force it upon them and the press and acceptance of the crowd confines them but; no pain, no gain. No risk, no reward.

So it is that clever minds tell people what they want to hear. Telling people the truth compromises the agenda of appetites. It’s sort of like taking a bone from a dog. If you put a plate of honey out it will attract flies. If you put a plate of shit next to the honey all the flies will leave the shit. The objective view of anal sex is one of grotesquery which is why we are obliged to put the sheen of romance upon your beckoning ass; “Excuse me, what do you think I am?”, “Sir, we have already established that, now we’re just quibbling about the price.” So tell people what they want to hear, there’s less chance of being torn apart by the crowd. Then there’s that nagging tale of Orpheus. It do get complex.

Truth is there to be found but truth is not a whore. If you have to ask you can’t afford it. And why is it that what is priceless so often turns out to be free; except for the part of yourself you have to spend in obtaining it? They scrabble for painted turds here in this Grand Guignol. Paracelsus once proclaimed that he was going to reveal The First Matter to an assemblage of the powerful thinkers of his day. At the appointed time and place he lifted the top off of a silver salver and revealed a turd to the shock of his audience. Yet he told the truth though none could see. Everybody was used to listening to people telling them what they wanted to hear. Everybody was used to telling people what they wanted to hear. Most importantly they were doing it to present themselves as the oracle of what they did not actually know when in fact they were blocking it in the process.

In many parts of the world, people of all ages pore over ancient texts and seek literal guidelines for behavior. The Old Testament is a book of gematria. So you wind up with absurd codes and practices; a real time Canticle for Leibowitz. Jesus spoke one truth to the masses and another to his disciples. Most people never press far enough to get close enough to the truth. They only go so far as to develop enough of an argument to explain and justify their world view and their behavior in it.

You are very lucky if you are traumatized and lose all that you have. From this point you can make a start upon hot-housing the process of your personal evolution. Without such loss you are like the man who walked away shaking his head when he was told that all he had to do was give away what he had in order to possess that which he was inquiring after.

Life is long when seen across the span of lifetimes. The work of a single lifetime may serve to alter only a portion of a single characteristic, unless you put your back into it. “Lay on with a will boys!” What is certain however is that for all your high moments and occasionally greased slides into one honey-pot of a sequence or another, all you are going to do is lose here. You may lose small and you may lose big but lose you will. Losing consciously is an art form. It’s a different sensation to remove your coat as opposed to having it ripped from your back.

I expect the usual hue and cry over a single sentence here and there as the cherry pickers go about their business. I have, in fact, planted specific imagery to that end. Still, it’s not about judgments as every role will be played by all in the process of evolution. Some will be more attached to their persona, less inclined to let it go and suffer more greatly on their way to liberation; the specific and certain conclusion to the journey of every single soul. I’d pour the Balm of Gilead this moment if it were mine to do but a wiser mind has determined the course and the scenery along the way. It must be that a greater joy is contained within this schematic than any immediate solutions that I might imagine.

I would not make you uneasy and so I remind you that there are many who will tell you what you want to hear. I hope that is some comfort. It just isn’t my job.

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?"
Kahlil Gibran