On the Sunny Side of your Mind.

There are these construction puzzles, games, whatever they are... where you pull away pieces of the structure and the object is not to be the one who pulls away the piece that causes what’s left to tumble to the surface on which the game is played. There are other games where pieces are piled on to pieces and you try not to be the player who puts on the piece that causes everything to crumble. It’s the same game.

Basic social systems are built around the collective urges of a similar people. Larger systems contain sub-systems. All the sub-systems have their unique colorations, dances and languages but the urges are the same. Some languages like music transcend the common barriers of understanding; barriers like language and color and creed.

The urges for expression and acquisition of goods and family and friends; property, protection... the list isn’t very large... back and forth, up and down, loop de loop; child dance, self-definition dance, sex dance, acquisitions dance, death dance... fini ...Game over... new game.

Ten years ago you knew these people. Ten years before that you knew these people. Fifty years from now you won’t know any of these people. You had a special toy that you liked better than anything else and now you can’t remember what it was. You were deeply in love with someone and now you don’t know why. You believed a number of things deeply and you found out they were not true. You hurt people and you don’t know why you did that. People hurt you and you can’t figure that out either.

There’s an entire world inside your head but you only spend your time in a few rooms on the second floor. There’s another world outside your head, even though according to the way your eyes work that is also in your head. You spend your time in a few rooms with the occasional two week variations on a theme. You’ve got the sensation of some personal force and you use that to carry out your business. There are these much larger forces impacting on you and your personal force is in a continuous state of adjustment to them.

It seems like there’s nothing you can do about a great many things. You’re resigned to that. You try to stabilize conditions as best you can manage. You want to get through it. You don’t know what’s on the other side of what you’re going through but you know you have to go through it. Sometimes you knew who you were and sometimes you didn’t.

Someone said this to me yesterday at Smoking Mirrors;

“I want to start off by saying I am on your side about all the crazy shit going on these days. I ask you as a former sheep, I took my wool off about 8 years ago, what are we supposed to do.

1. know about the issues - check
2. talk to others about it - check
3. write every politician and bitch - check
4. vote - check
5. get on/make a website and bitch - check
6. donate to Ron Paul - check
7. talk to relatives and they hate you - check
8. lose all your friends talking about issues - check
9. get depression - check
10. get in a protest that the media doesn’t cover, so its a non event - check

now that I have nothing left, someone tell me what to do, something real, maybe I missed something. I am not shitting neither someone has to tell me.”

I suspect this in not an uncommon state for many to be in at this time. I have not been in the United States for awhile and there’s no telling when it will be safe to do so again. For those in the cauldron of darkness it can’t be easy if you see what’s going on. If you don’t see what’s going on it doesn’t matter I suppose. You’ll just go on rooting through the underbrush satisfying needs. For others it’s like a cold wind across the Kansas plains; sitting in a swing chair on the Clutter Family porch.

I imagine it as being like a changing line in one of the less attractive hexagrams. On the other hand there are people swelling with the signs of new found hope. They believe they’ve found their man and that the world will be right again. Others believe that they too have found their man or woman. For others their man isn’t around any more.

I’m going to try to answer this fellow’s plea. It’s heartfelt and I can understand the situation. First let me say, “I don’t know.” I can tell you what I would do, what I do.

Let’s put aside the appearance of the world and just how dark it has become over the last seven years. You have to do that. It’s too big for you or me or anyone. It is said that there is another who carries this weight. He is known by several names depending on the way he needed to present himself according to the culture and the languages in a given place and time. If you think you have to carry it, it will crush you.

Get small. Realize what a tiny thing you are in an incomprehensible vastness and just let go. Attend to the small matters before you. Go about your business as if everything were perfect. Realize that you didn’t get here by yourself and that you have no idea how all of these things happened but that you’re still here. Just because lunatics have been loosed for a time does not mean you are riding in the same car. Shit happens... for a reason. Hold to that.

It is hard to accept one’s impotence in the face of grave wrongs which they cannot address. But you do address them by acting in all ways contrary to them. Within every life is ample opportunity for profound impact. It exists in every moment you meet each situation. Your smile and reassurance of unshakeable good offered to everyone you meet will ripple across the world on unseen winds. Your eyes opened to the injury in every heart you encounter will fill your life with chances to say the right thing and to help as you go and you will soon forget about yourself in the realization that you can move like the sun through every situation.

Meditate... there isn’t anything that has more magic and well being in it and you can’t exhaust it. The more you take, the more there is. Don’t look at the fright screen of goblin dancers with no more real substance than mist. The only life they have is your attention. Don’t give them any. Everyone you know is on their way beyond your sight. Everything you have is returning into the substance it was formed out of. Nothing you can see is permanent. It’s all going. Let it go gladly. Wave goodbye. Bon voyage. Dance and sing. Better to look like a fool than to be a fool.

You are on a fantastic journey. Welcome it. Your job is to shine. The job of the world is to wipe that smile off your face. Keep smiling. You have more power in your heart than all the wickedness of the world put together. It isn’t easy to do this right away. This is why so few are about this work. You want to have an impact and do something special, be someone special? Do this. It’s not easy but it does get easier. You really have to want to. After that it seems to have a mind of its own.

It could be that the point of this world and its darkness it for the sole purpose of letting you shine. It could be that all the evil is there so that you can provide the contrast. Pretend you are the sun. You don’t have to say anything. There’s something about shining that bleeds into everything. It sneaks into locked hearts and it mends lives. You could do worse and frankly, I don’t know anything better.

Visible sings: ♫ When I Lose You ♫