We are What we Are Not Until We are What we Are.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

What a difference a day makes (cue Dinah Washington). I had a very good day yesterday, mostly because it involved all kinds of situations, including driving about 200 miles and it all went down without a glitch. As a reward, last night, I enjoyed a spinach salad and a wonderful Chianti, followed by some wonderful reflections, overlaid with passable entertainments. It is a wonderful thing when your own statements come back upon you as verifications in the realm of experience. Personally, I seldom talk about the specifics of my struggles or their level of intensity. What is intense for one can break another and it is difficult to measure degrees of impact in any comprehensive or general way because it is all subjective. In recovery groups they talk about hitting your bottom and you hear about high and low bottoms. Some of us get more profoundly hammered (double entendre alert) than others but the one constant is that we are all affected.

Life affects us and what is less recognized is that we affect life and what might be even less recognized is how these two conditions affect each other. I was with an acquaintance during my travels yesterday and it was a pretty enjoyable interplay. The next to the last stop was a large commercial enterprise. It was filled with employees and shoppers and it is one of the big success stories in the area it operates in. This is because the man who founded it treats his employees well and provides a wide selection of high end products that I have never seen the like of anywhere else and does so at very fair prices that you often don't see anywhere else. This results in a pretty happy and bustling environment. I spend a good portion of my time seeking to catch the opportunities that come to all of us in every life situation and seizing the moment as it were. The point of all of this is that I consider myself a good will ambassador for the human race and I would like to point out that we are all ambassadors, whether we understand this or not. We all affect the dynamics of life in everything we think and say and do. So why not do it to the best of what we are able to? So I took every occasion to interact with people and it went well.

Since my acquaintance, who is also a blossoming friend was there, we wound up discussing this and I got a chance to explain how I see the moments of each day as a chance to affect life in a positive way. I will be the first to admit that I am not 100% in this regard and that is because when life impacts on me in a negative fashion, I am not always able to remain consistent as a positive force. I would say this happens at the blogs more than it does in life and I suspect we are all better in person than we are at a distance. Maybe we feel more secure taking liberties then, or we are less concerned about reactions. Whatever the reason, it is something I have noticed. Why I am mentioning this is to share an awareness of our responsibilities in life and to emphasize how critical it is for us to remember that we affect life.

One of the things this fellow and I discussed were public protests and any number of countless reactions that people and groups of people have to social and cultural situations that arise; like when corporations do what corporations do and when governments and government agencies do what they do and when any one of so many situations come up that pits the interests of the public against special interests of which there are many. He was telling me about how he had been involved in some of these things and how other people that we both know have also been engaged in these things and... I told him how I am almost never involved in any of these causes and concerns because the big money and the big influences always win, even when it looks like they have lost. They don't give up. They keep coming around from another angle. They corrupt or frighten whomever they can and sometimes they frame people. Sometimes they set them up. Sometimes they even kill them.

It isn't out of fear that I eschew. I'm not afraid of these people but I am afraid of wasting my time in fruitless and unproductive efforts. Afraid is probably not the right word. People can get together and cause positive change. I won't argue against that but I prefer to work from the positive side that affects the general consciousness of everyone I come into contact with, rather than to confront the forces that are always coming after humanity and working contrary to the best interests of us all. My feeling is that they are in the process of destroying themselves and I depend on Mr. Apocalypse for the heavy lifting.

Yes, I do go after some of the most powerful negative influences on the planet and I do it nearly every day and I do it in print that proliferates across much wider margins than any street protest but... I always seek to come out of it with a positive spin. In other words... I think some actions are more effective than others. I take note of how successful people and groups of people are in their struggles against the dark forces. I've watched Monsanto win time and time again, while engaging in all kinds of illegal and unethical behavior. I have seen them outright bribe and threaten the decision makers. Meanwhile, I have seen them take it in the neck with public opinion. I have watched them, like McDonalds and others, get hit in the wallet. I am watching them go down. All of this is the work of Mr. Apocalypse.

Perhaps what I am talking about here is simply differences in technique and I have no inclination to criticize people who have an approach different than mine. I simply think that changing yourself and working to shine your love and attention on others is far more productive than what is otherwise done. I think an informed and aware public is much more successful at everything than an ignorant, angry and confused public. I think internal change is far more productive at causing external change than are external efforts in times of opposition and conflict.

I also like to pick my causes. I am not motivated to protest on behalf of things like Hawaiian Sovereignty. Of course I support it but I am not Hawaiian so I do it invisibly. I consider cellphone using and texting drivers to be a major concern. I consider stupidity an even bigger concern and the other comes out of it. All kinds of bad things come out of stupid and greedy and selfish. If these were fixed then none of the other things that people protest against or dislike would even be happening. Fix stupidity and you fix everything else. However, there is no cure for stupid or... is there? I've looked into music and prayer and plants. There is a science at work there, or a system, or a law; call it what you will and I have looked into all kinds of similar things. I have looked at how a smile can be like the sun shining and I have seen what the sun can do. I read that old story about a bet between the sun and the wind as to which of them could make a traveler remove his cloak.

I believe in things that aren't generally in practice and I have noticed what successful people do and what unsuccessful people do and how these things work to cause the results that they do, regardless of whether the people are to be defined as good or bad people and that is all based on what anyone considers good and bad. They vary widely. Sometimes good is what gets you what you want and sometimes good is getting what you want but not at the expense of others. I think you can raise the consciousness of others around you and at a distance simply by raising your own and I believe you can make people better if you make yourself better. I believe that we are like planets of influence in a solar system of existence and I believe there is an interpenetrating awareness that commands it all and the more you come into line with that awareness, the more you reflect its will in everything you do.

I am not 100% at all of this and maybe not at any of it but I am trying to be. I am not focusing on mistakes I made getting here, or hearts I have broken or those who have broken my heart. I consider that a broken heart can be a good thing because those are the places where the love can leak out; the places where it is broken. I believe if life has broken you in many places and you are put back together by understanding and that whatever got you broken has manifested some degree of wisdom then you become like a piece of art that is done in a way that it works with light the way Rembrandt did, or a stained glass window.

I do not approve of Monsanto or our government and its branches and the way it goes about its business here and abroad. I don't approve of the way the marketplace behaves and many another thing but I pick my battles and I believe that everything I do not care much for comes out of ignorance; greed, overweening ambition and other similar things and that all of these, the named and unnamed, come out of bad character development, which are all the offspring of bad parenting, whether that involved a mother and or father, or a government, or religion, or educational system or whatever acts as a parental force at any particular point and we are all parents of the moments that follow the moment we are in; regardless of whether that whole concept is an illusion given that the sense of time is an artificial construct.

This is in no way a criticism of others and their preferences toward thought and speech and action. This is a critique of myself and people like me and as Lao Tzu said;

Be utterly humble

And you shall hold to the foundation of peace.

Be at one with all these living things which, having arisen and flourished,

Return to the quiet whence they came,

Like a healthy growth of vegetation

Falling back upon the root.

Acceptance of this return to the root has been called 'quietism,'

Acceptance of quietism has been condemned as 'fatalism.'

But fatalism is acceptance of destiny

And to accept destiny is to face life with open eyes,

Whereas not to accept destiny is to face death blindfold.

He who is open-eyed is open-minded-

He who is open-minded is open-hearted,

He who is open-hearted is kingly,

He who is kingly is godly,

He who is godly is useful,

He who is useful is infinite,

He who is infinite is immune,

He who is immune is immortal.

So it can seem that one is not socially committed enough. It can seem that one is indifferent in many ways that are not the normal way. It can seem that one does not care when one deeply cares and that one lacks something that they have an abundance of but are not showy about. All kinds of things can seem to be and not be because of the way people project on to others the deficiencies that exist within themselves, the way that a thief sees everyone else as a thief and so on and so on and so on. Insert whatever type you wish in place of the thief. I hate that I am such a slow learner but I am trying.

End Transmission.......

Sunday's radio broadcast.

The Robert Phoenix interview.