It feels like forever since I’ve been here. Writing “Spiritual Survival” has served to put this site on hold and maybe that’s not a good thing because too much Visible Origami has started to leak into Smoking Mirrors of late. Then again, the whole point was to start with Smoking Mirrors from a wider perspective and then narrow it down over time as the audience grew. This wasn’t something I knew was going to happen. It just happened. Maybe it wasn’t my intent either but I seldom know what my intention is before I experience the results of my reaching around in the darkness of my mind for obstructing furniture on my way to the door.
I suppose that in a number of ways I am as deceived as anyone out there. I am always expecting that the bad guys will get wiped out by some superior race from outer space that finally took pity on us, or die off like the invaders in War of the Worlds. Sometimes I imagine that some critical lever trips and everyone wakes up and the bad guys slink away in shame. Sometimes, waiting for sleep, I travel the world in my saucer and eliminate the bad guys; make their money disappear, make them all purple or lurid green and under two feet tall. I turn all their war planes and munitions into chocolate. Sometimes I just extract them all and resettle them into one of those plastic domes that you buy in souvenir shops. You turn them upside down and then snow falls on New York City or The Eiffel Tower. Then I put this on a shelf where I can go look at it now and then and shake it up and set it back down. I can speak into it and sometimes I do. No one knows what happened to these people and I never tell anyone.
Each day when I wake up they’re still there however. Evidence of their presence can be seen in the events of the preceding day, having passed through the state of the art media filters so that their victims are now officially the bad guys.
Yesterday I saw a series of pictures of some of the babies born since depleted uranium has been spread across Iraq and other locations. I won’t provide a link because you really don’t want to see them.
Today I saw where some of Obama’s chief money sources were Archer, Daniels Midland, several of the big Wall Street firms and a number of munitions manufacturers. I don’t see much ‘hope’ and ‘change’ in that but... how can you become the president without the backing of the people whom real awareness would demand that you shut down?
Given that my nightly journeys in imagination are not altering the landscape, I am left wondering just what anyone can do. It always comes back to seeking the peace within and working to widen the channel through which divine love flows.
Everyone that I admire changed the world through things like love, conviction and wisdom. Thinking about it, I realize that they didn’t actually change the world. They just changed some of the people in the world. If that’s all you can manage then it’s better than working for Archer, Daniels and Midland. I guess that’s what it comes to; something to do with ‘right livelihood’ as the Buddha declared.
I’ve pondered the world through many an hour and putting aside my wishing and hoping it appears... it really appears to be a lot like a watch with many gears working in synchronicity. Some of the gears are larger and some are smaller. They all turn at different rates according to size and placement because of some mysterious power that makes it all work. In the natural world it’s a given that everything is eating everything else. Many times the things eaten wind up eating the things that ate them later on (Once rampaging and ravenous forms are devoured by worms and beetles and turn to plants eaten by grazing deer). Should I be surprised that this carries over into our world? You could say we are not animals and should expect better of ourselves. Sometimes we get that too. It’s unfortunate that it has to come as such a surprise because of the rarity of the occasion but... when you read about the Gods you come across so much of the same things we experience here. The Bhagavad-Gita lays it out clear enough.
I believe there is a place where Krishna says to Arjuna that there is nothing better for a warrior than a righteous war. I know there are people who have found peace here and who have even managed a contagion or two of the higher virtues shared. When I look at their lives I often see that they achieved something within themselves that eventually spilled over into the world.
Given that the physical body is composed of elements at war with one another, things like yoga, meditation and ‘prayer without ceasing’; practicing the presence of God become wonderful dynamics by which something good can be realized from a world of suffering and perpetual loss. That seems to be the answer. Everything that surrounds you and attracts you is hollow and empty; mere specters that form beneath moonlight and then evaporate like mist and dew upon the rising of the sun. All of it is there to drive you within to where the real world resides. Everything that happens to you happens with this intention. We can continue in torment and regret or we can accept the truth that we can never possess anything that lasts except for the things that last.
We’ve heard some version of the phrase, “Change yourself and you can change the world.” We hear this like we hear so many things. We nod our heads, “Yes... that must be so.” ...and then we go right on as if we had never heard it at all. Now there is a real mystery.
Any fool could see that if you aren’t experiencing internal harmony that nothing is going to feel right as you move through the world. No matter how much money or fame or power you have, it will taste like ashes in your mouth. You’ll be worse off than those who have nothing at all or very little because you will know that nothing you acquired or attained meant anything at all. The only thing you will have is the illusion of doing well and the envy of others. For some that seems to be enough. I don’t know if it compensates for the disappointments but... some of us are different that way.
They don’t tell you that when you change yourself that the world you change is your own. Still, somehow it seems that it does change the world around you; just not the whole world but... why should your world be the only world? It looks like there is a world for every virtue and perversion on the planet. It’s like an enormous department store or apartment building with millions of rooms and you can find any condition you can imagine in one or the other of them.
Interestingly, you can do this in your head as well. Very few people are able to exercise their imaginations at anywhere near their potential. Some with no apparent and socially acceptable control over their imaginations are declared mad. It’s a given that the sanest among us, according to what has been revealed over time, were often considered to be dangerously insane. That may be why one of the most important things you can learn is to keep your mouth shut in circumstances where discretion proves to be the better part of valor. I’m guessing that if you are one of those whose job it is to speak that you’ve been blessed with a harder road.
Well... it’s all there if you want it. The same way that everything here is not anything you really want. Maybe things go well for you here and maybe they don’t. Maybe you can do something about that over time and maybe it can transform in an instant. It’s certain that you won’t find lasting joy, beauty, peace or any of those other desirable states and things on the outside for any length of time. It seems as if you have to find them in yourself for them to appear anywhere else so, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way within.
'Imaginary Queen' is track no. 10 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)
