No leavesies!

Halden is a 75 acre complex consisting of many buildings. It opened in 2010 and received the Arnstein Arneberg Award for its interior design. It facilitates around 250 guests.

Each 110 square foot living unit contains a private bathroom, TV, desk, mini-fridge and a tall window for plenty of natural light.

There are more than a dozen common areas each with fully-equipped kitchen, dining area, couches and a video game system.

The site also offers such amenities as sports and gym facilities, jogging trails, a library (books, films and music), chapel, English lessons and other education programs, counselling and even a music studio with broadcast functions.

There is also a fully-featured chalet guesthouse where a tenant can entertain their entire family for a 24-hour visit.

Staff areas are small and spartan because staff spend most of their time forming a community with the residents. It’s like a small village with a balanced focus on living, working and recreation.

Hmm... Are you wondering if this might be… the world’s most liberal prison or something! Well, I assure you there are no weapons here. No watchtowers, barbed wire or electric fences, and the only surveillance cameras are outdoors.

There is however a very big wall around the place and guests are confined to their rooms at certain hours.

Yes, it is a prison, widely considered the most liberal. It’s in Norway, and it houses inmates of the most serious and dangerous kind as well as a bevy of drug offenders. And yes Norway is in Scandinavia, that magical land where they are always decades ahead of the rest of the messed-up world in terms of social intelligence.

I was first exposed to Halden Prison in a Michael Moore film. It has the feel of a Canadian half-way house (I have visited such places in volunteer roles), as if the convicted have skipped prison and gone straight to a parole circumstance but without unescorted leave privileges. Halden Prison shocks a lot of people because a lot of people really have little clue how to think critically, quite frankly. Some people assume that they are somehow innately superior to convicted criminals as opposed to privileged benefactors of advantageous environment, circumstance and/or mental health. And some people assume that criminals deserve all the punishment they can get without realizing quite how bad they actually have it or how badly it aggravates and harms society when we bend more toward revenge as opposed to rehabilitation. The revenge model, rarely so determinedly celebrated than in the United states of America where incarceration has become a self-propelling Big Fucking Profitable Business, creates such a chasm between the convicted and the non-convicted and such barriers to re-normalization, that the so-called “released” have almost no choice but to seek the aid of their criminal associates whom the justice system has so eagerly afforded them, thus increasing crime rates.

But my god, how dreary I am of explaining this shit. I once worked in a Community Corrections Centre (a step between prison and half-way houses) and I can absolutely assure you that a slight majority of guards at this particular shit-hole were far more despicable human scum than most of the tenants. I would sometimes stare at certain coworkers in awe thinking I can’t believe you’re on this side of the glass.

To be fair there were some most-excellent human beings among the guards as well, and they have remained good friends.

The last time I checked: In a list of 223 nations Canada ranked around 85th best in terms of incarceration rate at around .107%. That’s about 32,000 inmates. Nothing to celebrate.

At all.

I think the nation of Liechtenstein had two at the time. Two whole inmates! I mean, it’s a tiny nation, sure. But two! Perhaps they’re simply the nicest people ever or maybe all their convicts are quietly murdered after a couple nights. I don’t know.

India was ranked about 12th best with around .03%

Norway, you ask? Around 30th best at .06%

The USA ranks a distant dead last with a staggering .655% or more than two million inmates. I’m pretty sure they are going about things the Wrongest Way Possible.

I saw how badly the Community Corrections Centre residents were treated in subtle terms; the environment, the policies, the vampiric management style (not so much the way they were spoken to in normal moments necessarily) and I started to understand how challenging it was for convicts to embrace rehabilitation efforts with sincerity. I could see how easy it would be to fall back on the criminal community for support; the community which gave them more respect quite frankly. The community which was pushed together by society’s determination to marginalize them. When I saw this I knew I had to volunteer. I knew how much better our helping hands had to be, than the alternative, in order to win them over to our side, and to the long hard road to attain a normalized life again despite all the barriers, many of them permanent.

A co-volunteer (and self-starting organizer) in this community, who once started out a brief inmate himself for frankly preposterous reasons, is one of my favourite people ever. I call him the Noble Punster. His life is now deeply dedicated to helping ex-convicts reach their potential in every way possible including spiritually, where applicable.

I had hardly known him on the occasion he asked me what I needed in order to get out of the very difficult circumstances life had squeezed me into at the time.

“Honestly,” I said. “I need seven hundred dollars for car repairs. I don’t know where I can get it.”

He wrote me the cheque on the spot, and was eternally gracious while it took me a year and a half to pay it off.

And today, for N day he requested:

Norwegian prisons

Together

I’m noticing, over the last few days, how increased mindfulness (or wakefulness etc.) doesn’t only avail wisdom but also the simplest intelligence. I have had many meetings and social engagements lately and have been a little more on the ball and have noticed how much clearer I see the relationship dynamics without the nigglings - the wisps - of pride and paranoia twisting my perception. All these relationships look so much more joyful, beautiful and worthwhile and full of possibility through detached observation.

The word detachment seems to scare people off though. I’m talking about perception that is without these false filters of need; dependency; expectation. I find this hard to describe. For me it comes through organic trust in the lessons I have learned, first-hand, about the illusions spun by instinctive mind. For me detachment has no negative connotations. It is not about lack of love, for instance. In fact it avails so much more love.

I’m sure that Tolle or Buddhist literature would describe a different path for finding this detachment; a path or paths which I seem to have forgotten precisely. I recall these readings too dimly at the moment. For me it came through the habit of creative solitude and a bottomless fascination for truth; or more accurately it turned out, the absence of truth and the forensic study of its displacement. It is why, in my more powerful state of former years, I was strong in leveraging influence; nudging people more toward creativity, before I began faltering and eventually withdrawing, more intentionally of late.

I am reminded the advantages of clarity when one is not so self-interested in the dynamics of relationships. It is enough that we are all alive, human and imperfect together, and taking on this great drama together, as witnesses to the universe, and to our own potential as a creature of harmony; both internal and collectively.

The Ark

Fifty-four years ago a Frenchman named Vanier turned heads pulling two developmentally challenged adults out of a standard institution and bringing them to live with him in a small house. There they improved their lives, demonstrated their worth, and grew the community they called the Ark, building a workshop and art studio along the way.

Today there are Ark communities in forty countries including two hundred - significantly larger - homes in Canada; some forming the Scooterville chapter, where core members live under the same roof as the staff who are dedicated to helping them live productive lives.

To me, this represents harmony; the most laudable goal of humanity.

“Would you ever consider returning to the traditional workforce if the employer had goals compatible with your own?” World Citizen asked me a couple years ago.

“Of course,” I said, “If I were convinced it were true.”

Days ago I applied for a temporary part-time Admin Assistant position - not at an Ark home but at the Scooterville community office: two days a week for a year or so; a perfect arrangement to commit to in order to test a possibly integral component of my life-goals/income solution.

And given I am well-acquainted with the Scooterville community director - we volunteer together at Circles - I figured myself a shoo-in for an interview at least. I thus went light on the successes portion of the resume, preferring all that to come from my own mouth, and concentrated on a list of forty significant and relevant job skills which just about runs the gamut of the admin environment, and a bold, perfectly truthful mission statement:

To help manifest harmony wherever possible, through ongoing self-directed and charitable projects and if applicable: by working within a like-motivated organization.

I was surprised when they declined an interview, citing “many qualified applicants” and stating that “…sadly we will not be continuing at this time with your application…”

Well darn. I didn’t intend to make anyone sad! I’m certainly not. My goal was to help the Ark land the best new member for their team; myself if applicable. I did not want the job for myself regardless. There is no harmony in that. I just hope they haven’t made a mistake, passing me up prematurely.

I responded that I was actually happy that they had garnered excellent candidates (my word, not theirs, but the logical assumption).

At circles events I appropriately dress down in order to fit in with the membership and I do not go out of my way to shave. Does the director assume I would not groom appropriately for an office gig? Am I not the traditional shape or gender for such a role? I would assume a more forward thinking mindset here.

Was my objective perceived contrived? I am aware that my truthful circumstances are very unlikely. But the director has glimpsed many insights into my past when I’ve spoke at functions. Though I also wonder if she had nothing to do with my resume’s appraisal and too if our connection was not even known by the appraisers.

As I release more resumes must I dumb myself down a bit and produce something more normal?

Early Dawn

More than a week ago I found myself sprawled on my bed in the late evening, having worked my last night shift of the run and remaining dopily awake all day, half-engaged in all my main addictions including a massive multi-player video game which I accidentally fell into on Christmas Eve, not understanding what it was.

I’d eaten a ridiculously large, skanky meal from a ridiculously large skanky restaurant chain who charges far too much money for grotesquely cheap food in order to stuff corporate pockets. I used a gift card which Mom gave me for Christmas.

I lay there feeling ridiculous. I could have slept on this day and then risen and did some writing or any other productive endeavor on my massive list of joyful to-do’s. I might even have dusted my room or had a shower.

At this moment as I drained the last of the cheap wine and made a half-assed clearing of my bed so that I could finally go to sleep, I thought of Neo and Aqualad and even young Master Prism; people in my life with such bright qualities and strengths and so much potential but yet such burdensome apparent problems weighing them down; problems which to me should not be daunting.

Why!

Why have I not helped them through? Why have I not been more effective? Why have my strengths not been leveraged enough to the people around me that they would be more fully ahead of the game and not seemingly behind in some areas!

Why have I not been more helpful?

Looking at the stained wine glass, the twinkling coins on the lap top screen. Dusty bookshelf. The day’s clothes slung over the bedposts. My own ridiculous belly. Plastic containers (really?) of smelly bacon carbonara remnants; the crappiest goddam pasta in all of Scooterville; a half step up from Kraft Dinner, and also the most popular in all of Scooterville thanks to the unending plague of human insanity and the disease of corporate worship.

What in the fuck has become of me? How can I help other people when I have betrayed myself?

I felt a long cool wave of clarity as I prepared for sleep. I felt a deep, still sense of love. I felt a new certainty that changes were coming. I started making plans and then eased up. There was no great excitement here. No great hurry after all. Just a shift in the atmosphere.

And things have indeed been changing since then. Some small steps toward better health and weight loss. Small improvements in discipline. An exit strategy from this bewitching video game which has suddenly lost some luster.

Of greater impact: A wholesale change in online habits. Greater thoughtfulness and patience. Gentleness. My innate reactions have now been to pause; to deny the provocations of emotion; to trust in presence. And the presence has been coming and confirming the choices not to act out. Clarity hasn’t generally come quickly or perfectly, but it comes in its various forms.

I find myself pausing in parking lots to examine the sky and feeling really joyful at the miracle of this biosphere; this incredible privilege; these highly improbable tiny brilliant moments!

At work I have been watching the squirrels, talking to the rabbits. Pausing on the early morning patrol to stand and stare into the striking orange neon strip over the lake. What a heavenly planet this is!

I feel a renewed confidence with regard to writing craft, and a willingness; a keenness even - to jump back into projects without those former reservations.

On our hike the next morning The Healer nodded to all of this. “You have to have your own life in balance in order to help others achieve balance!” So the woo-woo tribe is on board.

It occurs to me that various figures – generally it’s hard to say to what degree they were real and to what degree fictional – who are credited with experiences similar to some of mine, have experienced a pattern it seems: progress, a fall backward, and then finally a greater progress.

It occurs to me that I might be on that type of path or I may not. I’m not excited about it at all. I’m not hopeful. I’m making no presumptions. It is only a curiosity. And academically I must admit that that in itself is a positive sign.

The beauty in brevity

Earth Writer pointed me at an article which I found very engrossing, about a mature couple who are confirmed… collapseniks, you might say. They do a lot of canning. They run a personal rabbit farm – for practical reasons. Their meals are becoming more and more of a domestically sustainable nature. They are learning to live in a manner that is rich in spirit and texture and which can be maintained, if necessary (only a matter of when, they would say) come a time devoid of electricity, commerce or infrastructure. You might immediately comfort yourself by thinking them freaks who can’t possibly be right. And you’d be unwise. They’ve had dignified careers which have well prepared them for such forecasting. And the article demonstrates their enlightenment, and their noble approach; their aplomb. 

I want to share my response to Earth Writer, and then add something:

Wow. That's a great article. Honestly, none of the ideas there are new to me but it was put together so well, bringing so many relevant aspects together in a concise effective manner - and with much grace.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the young people I know, some as young as [Aqualad], who do not believe they have a future. It makes me cry. But I've been thinking about our impermanence - whether we maybe squeeze out a few more generations or not - or whether by great fortune some semblance of humanity survives for a couple billion years on Earth or even migrates beyond and survives long eons throughout the galaxy or universe - regardless - our kind will exist for a limited time, however long or short, and then be done. And sometimes I think, Well so what? The beauty in anything is magnified by its brevity. I learned that a long time ago; one of many lessons I sometimes forget. Planet Earth is still a paradise for now. It is still a heaven for now and now is what matters most. I'm grateful I can see it that way and would rather see it that way for a moment then to live forever and never have that sight.

My praise for the article was understated. It actually delivered a couple rather complex conclusions in such an elegant way as to make them more swiftly understood than in the more clunky ways that I have handled the same material. So I am grateful to have learned how to express myself a little differently on these topics going forward.

What I wanted to add to my response but chose to save for later discussion is this:

In a very real sense, life is eternal, for the simple reason that we do not remember our birth nor experience our death. We have no opportunity to reflect on our lost life. We are gone before we know it. To paraphrase Eckart Tolle, It is always the now, and the now is always experienced by the living. In that sense, we are eternal. 

I have long looked at the death of individuals in this light: Death is no tragedy. It is inevitable. We tend to treat it as a tragedy largely because a functioning assumption of personal immortality gives us a marvelous excuse to live without any urgency to accomplish anything real; to instead live with an absence of meaning or with only the asinine double-think "meaning" perpetrated by today’s sad withered remnants of religious guidance. Death is not the tragedy. Failure to live with presence is the tragedy. Death only documents that sad conclusion. For most people (around here anyway), the tragedy was their shallow living experience; not their death.

When I’ve cried at funerals it has not been for the demised but for empathy of those around me.

Am I digressing? The point is that all life is rare and short. Lately I have looked at it this way:

With the understanding that humanity is temporary, as are all things, its duration is not very relevant. All known life has been brief; so fleeting, and yet at the same time eternal.

As individuals, the universe, life, the human race: these things are not ours to control. At this stage of evolution we can’t even control our own individual minds! Our minds are prisoners of external causality. No, we are primarily here as a witness. That is the power of our beautiful and tragic consciousness. And as a witness, consider this:

If we had had some pre-birth awareness and choice; if we had been told, “You shall be born a human being on planet Minerva!* In what time period of the human experience would you like to exist?” One might look at the chart, and note the beginning, the middle and the end, and say, “I would like to be born here, near the end. That is what I think would be interesting to experience. That is where times might be tough. That is where I might have much opportunity to be useful to my fellow humans.”

That the human experience should end is no tragedy. That we might perhaps be living near that end-time is no tragedy.

That is not to say that we should invite destruction. That is not to say that we should not be wise and seek survival and harmony by seeking wisdom and to embrace change.

There just need not be despair. 

*(Earth)

Victimhood

I worked, by contract, in the criminal justice system for a few years and now I work, by contract, for a corporation which commits terrible crimes daily but they are crimes that are not detailed in the criminal justice system of this nation because they are crimes which injure everyone and everything – BUT – those of the injuries which are inflicted on you and me and the rest of Western society are delayed enough that in our collective insanity we can easily ignore them – or – for most people I suspect, remain consciously unaware of them.

I still do volunteer work in the criminal justice community and I don’t think of myself as being any better than the murderers and child rapists I have worked with, And I don’t mean that in the bullshit phony way that many others might delight in saying. I am in fact no better. I’ve never directly killed a human being nor had sexual contact with a child and I’m pretty damn confident that I will never do either of those things. These are not my areas of weakness. There is no appeal.

However I regularly inflict death and violence upon the Earth and its mammals and even upon human beings who don’t live around here. I do it all the time. Daily. I do it when I eat many of the things I eat. I do it when I buy a new laptop. I do it when I fill the tank with gas. I am an extremely harmful person. I know this with perfect clarity on my best days and on those best days I also reflect upon my total insanity of the previous days wherein my instincts had been duping my consciousness or when I’d been rationalizing my way to a benign self image which is bullshit.

I am no saint. I was not made “in His own image” and neither was anyone else. Humans are beasts the same as wolves and trees and mosquitoes and precisely like wolves and trees and mosquitoes, just about everything we do satisfies our instinctive survival instincts which, besides food and sex and protection, has evolved very largely to manifest as survival within the society which equals REPUTATION, which often includes MONEY (for money is simply a ledger of reputation). Just like the wolf, tree or mosquito, nearly everything we do is bent on our own needs at the expense of any other species. Wolves, trees and mosquitoes – and bunny rabbits and petunias are all, if you open your eyes and pay attention – entirely evil. They kill in order to live. Just like us. And just like the peacock’s tail and many other phenomena of evolution, we have our own unlikely elaborate errant evolutionary feature. It is in the human mind and it encompasses our cleverness, our perversely social infatuation and our illusion of consciousness.

When I keep that in mind I look around at all the nice things we are doing on the surface and it’s very easy to realize that these nice things do not make us angels; do not make us benevolent; do not make us innocent and certainly don’t make us better than murderers and rapists except within a childish viewpoint. Because all the nice things we do reward our vicious survival instincts. They improve our reputation. Nice deeds that we do, feed our own greed.

Now – does every single nice thing we do necessarily come solely from selfish desire or from the master instinctive mind’s need to fool our own consciousness (for we have to fool ourselves in order to effectively fool others)? I won’t suggest that. I like to imagine otherwise but the fact is, it is very simple to map all our good deeds to greedy beastly motives and pretty much impossible to prove otherwise…

BUT…!

So what?

I’m not trying to say that we are all terrible. Oh, I felt that way for a while, years ago. I thought we were all devils. All Satan. Satans in drag as gods. And for the record I suspect that the God mythology stems from that idea; that originally this personification of the source of the universe was set up like that: that Satan is the creator and God is his disguise. But that doesn’t matter. And I’m not here to slag religion today, even though it has perpetrated two of the primary nails in the coffin of humanity – the twin omnipresent fatal ideas – and I mean fatal to our species, literally: one, that we were made in his own image and two, that Earth is not heaven, that some improved heaven resides somewhere else. This is why humans do not understand that we are killers – we are killing machines above all else and why we don’t understand that Earth is the paradise and that we are mercilessly killing it and there is very little time remaining. By Earth I really mean the biosphere, not the crust, mantle, core and all the other bits and pieces. I mean the forests, wetlands and top soil and water systems and air and underground filtration – all of which we have massively crippled or destroyed in a tiny infinitesimal blip of time by any real (universal) perspective or context outside the illusion of our puny lifespans.

Look – all of this is natural. This is the natural state of humanity. It’s nothing to cry or rage about.

And it is okay to wake up from our insanity. It is okay to face up to the beasts that we are. We have every opportunity to evolve. We can close the gap between instinct and consciousness; between the devil and angel if you prefer. I have reliably witnessed this functionality. We humans did not ask for this circumstance. We were born into it without choice. We did not ask for this illusion of consciousness which is – in a sense – an evolutionary precursor to genuine consciousness. We learned to kill to survive because we had to. We are beautiful for this opportunity to become the first species of harmony. We are beautiful for this terrible struggle that we must endure. We are beautiful for our potential and for the suffering we inflict upon our selves.

I am human and I am okay with that. I am not a single entity. I know that. There is a beast in me and there is a weak pitiful beautiful consciousness as well. And when I look around I don’t see single human creatures. When I look at you I see two of you. It has become my normal everyday perception. Unfortunately when I talk to you I must talk to both of you at the same time and that makes things tricky and I confess, I don’t often treat that challenge with utmost diligence. Generally I am not keeping track of what I want each of you to hear; you and your evil twin! Creeped out? Still want to do lunch?

So this piece (if anyone is still reading it) was not planned in any way. It’s strictly a stream-of-consciousness ramble which was intended for one reason only:

I have many associates who open up to me and there is one who is trying to get together with me, largely to express something which they find terrible to contemplate; a suffering. A couple hints have been dropped and I am going out on a limb and I am suspecting that some kind of molestation has been brought to light. I am going to guess a child molestation which has severed – or potentially severed – close relationships. And while it can be very difficult for me to express certain ideas to someone who is looking to me for comfort, because they may not want to accept them and may be looking for other comforts which I regard as artificial comforts, and I may not play the blame game to their liking, I am safe in ruminating here in this anonymous space.

And to anyone who is watching their family break apart because someone they loved has been revealed a victim and another revealed a monster and just can’t wrap their head around it and just doesn’t know what to do or who to support in what way…

The answer, by my accounting, is not difficult to conceive:

You forgive because forgiveness is the only sane option. To forgive is to confess that what has happened was inevitable. All of causality is connected. All happenings are inevitable. There is no logic with which to escape this certainty.

You forgive the conscious entity in the perpetrator. It was the beast which was compelled to act, not the conscious person whom you loved and whom you can still love if you are strong enough; if you understand enough; if you are on board with these understandings enough.

You forgive but that forgiveness is not with impunity. You forgive but you do not forget. You accept that there must be consequences for the instinctive presence whose survival mechanisms dictated the act (probably multiple acts) while fooling the consciousness or rationalizing. For the sake of community safety and the victim’s well-being, there must be consequences. Those consequences could ideally take many forms but for most of us we don’t have the opportunity to manufacture ideal justice and we must trust the police and courts and prison system – as horrifically flawed as they are – to do the best they can.

You love and support the conscious perpetrator if you are strong enough – perhaps after a required hiatus from them – or else you tell them honestly, “I wish I could support you but I am not strong enough. I am only strong enough to try to support the victim if I can. If I grow in strength in the future, then I will return to you. For now I must abandon you for my own well being.”

You also have to support yourself by understanding the above ideas and remembering that we are all molesters; we are all killers; we all leave victims in our wake: the Earth (our only conduit to the survival of our children and descendants), the animals, the people of poor countries whom our masters have brutally exploited through the Western imperialism which gives us our impossible cars and furnaces and iPhones which we gladly accept; blindly or deviously or otherwise.

You support yourself by suppressing the urge to see yourself as a collateral victim.

You support yourself by looking at the victim and remembering that we are all victims and we all create victims and that what has happened to your beloved is not outside the normal mode of life. We all live by creating victims and for all of us our time comes when we are victimized; eventually to the extent of our death.

You support yourself by looking beyond the instinctive desire to see the victim as a tragic aberration though your instincts push you to see it that way. What has happened is essentially normal. (Do not think that this means that I suggest throwing in the towel. It can be our purpose in life to improve; to seek harmony, to reduce victimization of all sorts. We must endeavor to improve; of course.)

Unfortunately it is hard for me to suggest how to support the victim. The victim will have heightened instinctive survival forces working on her – or him. The ideal support is to absorb the above understandings but every victim will be in a different place psychologically and not ready for most of the above material. But ideally I would want to work toward those concepts as gently and patiently and slowly as required. Unfortunately it might be often best in the short term to trust the psychology community for help though that is far from ideal in terms of getting at the one true comfort in life; the comfort of truth; of genuine reality. Psychology will not rescue anyone from the Matrix but often they can do a decent job of navigating the Matrix.

The most valuable thing probably, for a victim to understand is that the victimization happened in the past and the past does not exist. The acts happened to a person who existed in the past who is no longer “you.” The only reason we seem eternally harmed by victimization is because we internally choose to. Our instinctive ego chooses not to let go of it because the pain of victimization becomes our identity and we cannot conceive of letting go of our identity – because we are all in the business of manufacturing identity instead of being real; a bi-product of the survival-by-reputation-and-denial game which the instinct forces upon the consciousness.

I suppose it is probably in actions that we can most-accessibly help victims: simply doing the things that demonstrate they are loved and without condition. But other than the pursuit of true consciousness and the resulting enlightenment which dispels the spectres of lasting pain and victimhood, which is evidently rare to achieve, the area of victim recovery is not my area of privilege; of strongest insight.

This may be the most important thing I ever say, in my whole life:

So I get an email from the JazzLion, dropping his phone number, asking me to call. His words are brief but intimate. I take notice.

I last saw him in December 2014, right before he split to BC for a series of adventures which attempted to bridge the natural world which he tries to hang on to, and the sleazy commercial world we humans have insisted on letting dominate ourselves. Early reports were promising. I began to think he would not be returning. Apparently so did he, at least for a while. I telephoned.

In his words, he hit rock bottom in Calgary, knocked out of employment by the third boss in a row to con him with false promises, at least according to his perception. With no home or money and a head full of destructive thoughts, aimed at himself and others, he called on Mom for a loan for a coach ticket back to Ontario where his greater support system lies.

His considerable intelligence never seems to match up to his emotions. His goals never seem to match up to both his perceived purpose and circumstances simultaneously. The gifts he offers never seem to match up to the wants of his neighbors.

We seem to meet up on a little better than annual basis. He will spend the next few days on a bus and then we’ll get together. I know he is feeling lost and hurting and questioning his purpose in life. I know where I want to start in terms of trying to help him find his way toward life pursuits that might work for him, and I shall write it here and now, for his benefit (review) and mine (reminder) and hopefully others (something to think about):

Purpose

If you want to get at the truth of anything you have to start by identifying the appropriate context which is always the largest relevant context. In this case, the universe.

The universe is mind-bogglingly huge and relatively empty of life; to what degree we are not sure, but we can be almost certain of one thing: There is no species in existence in the universe quite like us. That is a logical near-certainty. Because in order to be wrong about that, the other humanoids would have had to come into existence at right about the same time we did, so close to the same time that this would represent a wildly unlikely coincidence when mapped on the scale of the universe’s immense duration. We can observe enough of the universe and of earth to know that life occurs in the universe in extremely unlikely circumstances and intelligent conscious life in staggeringly unlikely circumstances; a staggeringly rare event. But given the immensity of opportunities in the universe: trillions of trillions of trillions of worlds (we can predict); such unlikelihood may happen more than once. But given the humanoid passion (and rate) for exploration and expansion (no doubt a primary factor in what we’ve become; what we are), any similar humanoid species not of Minerva (or Earth as you might say) has to either have killed itself off by now (as we have proven to be fully capable of and are currently forecasted to do) or else has simply not yet evolved anywhere else in the universe. We know this is a mathematical near-certainty because otherwise we could not have avoided this race because to be anything like us and thus with a similar rate of expansion capacity, it would have flooded the universe by now. And we have not run into them.

So trusting we occupy a rare supervisory role in the universe, what does that mean for us?

It means that something brand spanking new is happening in the universe which is well beyond its previously normal scope: that of swirling matter snowballing according to gravity and densities and explosiveness with one or more isolated oases of death-life where cellular organization takes rapidly altering compositions as different forms rapidly consume the prior forms and are rapidly consumed in turn: evolution as we know it. The brand-spanking new thing is consciousness and it has the ability to utterly transform the nature of the universe but might tragically decline to. Consciousness is subject to evolution of an intentional form without need of countless generations and has proven to me, and (I interpret) to others, to be capable of very rapid evolution.

Consciousness enables a web of intelligence, love, empathy (much more love and empathy than most people even begin to realize), communication and cooperation; the kind of cooperation which can put a man on the moon, set its sites on Mars, and soon beyond, with startling growth of reach (technological advancement).

Consciousness, though infantile at this early stage, in the care of humankind, has the capacity to perhaps sadly disappear, or else evolve and flood the universe with harmony and benign intent instead of this cold physical circular causality with rare blips of death-life.

This is a drama of utterly epic proportions which affects the entire universe and makes all other dramas, especially the contrived human societal ones, completely irrelevant, as much as we pretend otherwise. And we are at the centre of it. We are the universe’s witnesses to this event, as well as in the starring role. And the thrilling thing is that we participate in that role at every moment, no matter what we do, and we are able to witness this drama at every waking moment (and arguably when dreaming, perhaps) if we choose to! Because everything we do, if you break down the components fine enough (not a lot of work in most cases) either propagates our normal beastliness or else propagates the evolution. Everything.

At every moment we can be slave to our instincts or else be mindful. (Speaking from a variety of established perspectives:) We can be spiritually asleep or spiritually awake. We can be animal or truly human; a grown child or a true adult. We can experience living death or be poetically alive, serve our internal devil or internal godliness. And every choice, every moment, is huge! Every one of our actions, in adherence with the laws of causality, are potentially eternal – or awfully damn close to eternal; eternal for all intents and purposes.

Eckhart Tolle, who has earned my immense trust, would tell JazzLion that being this witness is his internal purpose, with an outer purpose being his duty to design. I would add that choosing a side in this cosmic fork in the road, must form a basis for his purpose, whether you call it inner or outer.

Tolle says that some people who recognize the human purpose will involve this spiritual reality as a core component of their outer purpose. I know that that has to be true of me; that I must make it true, and given JazzLion’s capacity for intelligence and empathy and wakefulness, I would suggest the same of him.

Frankly, I would say this of quite a few of the special people I know. And I know that some of you read this blog. I really hope you are listening!

Love you.

abnegate /ˈabniˌɡāt/

I do not respect any law, imagining that it is right. I regard the law for the sake of the comfort of those who mistake it for right.

This is no kind of anarchy. I respect harmony instead, which the law often flirts with and rarely champions.

New Day Rising: The Goals

Stemming from the mandate, in essence the manifestation of harmony, prioritized by leveragability, the top-line goals look like this and they all break down further into sub-goals and strategies:

1.    Investigate, assess and support noble organizations which may include businesses for profit, or not; charities, spiritual, environmental, social justice etc.

2.    Build/support communities, live or online, of evolutionary/harmonic natures.

3.    Nurture relationships and take on leadership roles where they are needed with the strategy to pass on said leadership roles.

4.    Set positive transparent examples in terms of harmonic behaviour.

5.    Spread harmonic ideas through blog, books, songs, social media and volunteer work.

6.    Continue to learn, evolve, re-learn and re-evolve through courageous exploration of ideas, experiences, dialogue and the arts.

I’ve started breaking this down into actual to-do lists which are maddeningly voluminous and begin at the top with defeating all the barriers to the above directives: health, sleep and financial issues, and the generation of inspiration, discipline and productivity. And all of that alone looks like a full-time job. Well, if that’s how it is, that’s how it is. There is time in a week for two full time jobs when both jobs are a joy and a security company is willing to pay you to do one of your jobs on their dime. The uniform may be all wrong but I can look past that.

Image gratefully borrowed from http://www.travisfavretto.com/

New Day Rising: The Mandate

Mandate:

To champion the evolution of harmony in the universe through action, awareness, education, personal example, the creation of new - or support of existing - harmonic organizations, and/or through opposition to entities which promote disharmony. These activities shall be prioritized according to greater capacity for leverage and effectiveness.

Next step: goals.

New Day Rising: The Vision

As much as I hate corporations, I must respect their ruthless efficiency. And so I take a page from their playbook in another attempt to prioritize my life and generate productivity:

Vision:

In a universe where death is the rule, the dominant natural state of all things, and life is so rare a miracle, only sustainable for the briefest duration and only by killing or maligning other life, true harmony; the absence of suffering, has not been possible – until this very recent mutation: consciousness, a very limited self-awareness which has made possible a new breed of evolution, one both strengthened and leveraged by its susceptibility to intent, an evolution which bears the capacity to turn a cold and deadly universe into a place of joyful, peaceful, harmonious life.

This is the one true drama in the universe, and the one true drama in human existence. All humans have, in whole or in part, the capacity to become champions of harmony, and all humans play a vital role in this great drama every moment of their lives, whether they realize it or not.

With every waking thought and action, whether they know it or not, each human either works in favour of this evolution, and thus celebrates humanity, or else works against it, and thus espouses death. There is no neutrality, nor is there escape from consequences. Humans suffer constantly for their celebration of death, with little capacity to account for their suffrage nor to recognize it for what it is.

Next step: a mandate.

Happiness

Happiness is a neat idea. In a society where reputation is everything - even money is just a ledger of reputation if you think about it - and people are conditioned to judge themselves through the eye of the other instead of looking inward, I think a lot of people are playing a game. They believe themselves happy as long as they are succeeding in selling the image that they are happy.

I think a lot of people who kind of know they're not happy are at least content to interpret they're on a path to happiness or are at least fighting to get on that path. Of course the joke's on them if the things this society holds dear turn out to be charades.

I know I feel happy when I put my arms around someone beautiful - whether beautiful (by my appraisal) inwardly or outwardly or both. I know I'm happy with a steak on my plate and red wine in my glass; happier still when they get in my mouth - as long as I manage not to think of the cow, that is, otherwise I feel the guilt I deserve. And that's not bragging. The sinner who knows better is the worst sinner.

But there are things that trump happiness and here it gets hard to explain. Because when I start talking about freedom, harmony, peace and joy - that's where I imagine people stop listening. Because it sounds like religion or it sounds like people selling snake oil or it sounds like I'm deluded. But there are things I know well and I really wish more people would know more of them along with me.

Earth is a paradise and humans are magnificent with the rare (or unique) ability to evolve beyond the natural death-state of the universe. That alone gives us incredible joy which I experience regularly. But that miraculous evolution depends on the power of a healthy consciousness; one not fooled by the instinctive mind, and that is so very hard to find. Because consciousness is a new evolution. It's in its infancy by universal standards. It's power is a baby-power but we don't realize that. Because our conscious self is the only self we know, it feels like everything to us. It is our totality, and this illusion - of our baby consciousness being a master brain - is the chief illusion which stems all others. And all these illusions separate us from the joy of our existence. They hold us prisoner. We don't know ourselves. Our master brain is a stranger to us and we barely know it exists. Our master brain can not trust our baby consciousness by handing over the steering wheel. Our master brain can not trust our baby consciousness to adhere to our all-powerful survival instincts which almost all normal human activity can be easily logically mapped to.

I had to be courageous and patient and strong (qualities not easy for me to access) for a long time in order to decipher the truth of myself and to grow comfortable with it, and the rewards are magnificent. My master brain has witnessed the intentional (far from perfect or complete) evolution of my consciousness and has surrendered some degree of control.  Those things we call sins - the simple manifestations of survival (domination) instinct have been diminished to varying degrees. One of them obviously remains strong unfortunately (gluttony - its no secret) and another remains somewhat relevant though diminished (lust if you must know) and I have little doubt I might defeat them if I were to dedicate enough effort to it but... I'm not ready and may never be. That's a subject for another time.

As killer instincts are diminished, beautiful things happen. Illusions fall apart and reality is much more graspable and this reality - lo and behold - is the paradise. And it's so transparent how some religions refer to it and it really is a lovely joke how these religions over the centuries have misguidedly strayed from whatever beautiful poetic enlightenment either inspired them or was manipulated by them to their ends (the former I hope) and painted this paradise of reality as some place in the clouds you go to after you die. It is such a sad insanity really. To think you must die to find paradise when in fact  it is a mental journey you must take, one which in fact feels like a rebirth. The memory of my former self is growing more alien to me all the time.

When illusions fall the societal ills that are born of illusions fall with them:

depression
lonesomeness
embarrassment
jealousy
anger
guilt
anxiety
sadness
insult
suspicion (not skepticism)
betrayal
impatience...

I know there are many more on the list though they don't come immediately to mind - probably because I haven't experienced them, at all or but in small measure, for a long time now.

The result is freedom in many forms: freedom from so many ills and from circumstances dictating one's feelings. The result is joy. The result is clarity and strength of mind and desire for (and easy access to) integrity, honesty and generosity. The result is death to the eye of the other; falling out of the reputation game and being motivated only by your own courageous examination of yourself.

The result for me is lovingness; loving motivation instead of selfish motivation. The hitch is - will lovingness be the result for anyone who follows a similar path? That I can't be sure of just now. I don't even have a theory currently - how to figure that out. It isn't really on my to-do list.

There was a time in my life - years - where I suffered so much of these usual societal ills, which people sadly pass off as the normal (okay), unavoidable (wrong) side-effects of living, that I would routinely feel unease; a mild foreboding during solitary moments - usually when driving, and sometimes this unease would come over me in a vague way and I would have to poke around in my head for a moment to remember what thing or things were going on to feel bad about. And sometimes there was nothing bad going on and I would realize that I was only feeling vaguely bad out of habit: sad but a relief.

In more recent times I would find myself driving and forgetting why I felt so happy; an anticipation, and searching my brain, I would realize that there was nothing special going on to be delighted about; that it was just my habit to feel good. A very happy realization each occasion and not a disappointment!

These days I'm much accustomed to feeling good. It never surprises me anymore. I do still feel a full range of emotions but many of them are confined to moments of empathy. I will feel your sadness or your anger or your anxiety because my empathy touches you at your state of perception; not my own.

And I know that there are opportunities for me to feel better still. If I could rectify my self-inflicted health issues, sleep issues, energy level issues and thus productivity issues, I could accomplish more usefulness.

And maybe even evolve a little more: knock those remaining "sins" down a little.

Cause Number One and the Number One Cause

Once upon a time there occurred an event;
A singularity; the biggest bang for the buck
Or the snap of fingers if you prefer, of a great creator;
For it all works out the very same!

And this event would be Cause #1
For billions of billions of billions of billions
Of effects
Over billions of years;
Every effect born of millions of causes combined;
Every effect also a cause
For billions of billions more effects;
Causes and effects uncountable.
Every element of reality an effect-cause;
Every one of them natural;
Every one inevitable;
Every one of them owing to Cause #1 at its root.
Every one connected.

Effect-causes spelled unstoppable change.
Effect-causes organized a sea of chaos
Into sets and subsets; formatted a universe
Made of super clusters
Made of clusters
Made of galaxies
Made of systems
Made of spheres
Made of elements
Made of molecules
Made of atoms.

A world of binding attractions great and small
Revolving; everything revolving,
Expanding, contracting.
Dust to dust.
Cause and effect.

Somewhere a sphere
Bearing critical ratio of elements,
A phenomenal collision of molecules,
At a critical distance from a vast hot central sphere,
Through inevitable cause and effect,
Became a blue and white place.

And there it happened.
A miracle of life
At the meeting of layers;
Rock and air,
Pooling water.
A splitting cell.
Cause and effect.

Cellular organization.
Random mutation.
A cause-effect process of natural selection.
A diversity of species; lives of kind.
DNA and sub-code.

Survival instinct knowing no bounds.
Those with domination instinct the great winners,
Those without it, dead, strangled, swallowed.
Survival of the vicious; the parasitic.
Vines creeping; Roots warring,
Fish eating fish; bugs eating bugs,
Herbivores; Carnivores; Dog eat dog.
Viruses and bacteria eating from within.
Thus life: The process of ultimate thievery.
Cause and effect.

Evolution.
Mammals; Brain cells; Intelligence.
Automatons with limited awareness.
Instinctive response.
Cause and effect.

Evolution.
These beasts emerging;
Bipedal; clever.
With greater awareness,
Though still far from complete;
Still so very far.
Perceiving in their limited awareness
That their limited awareness
Is all there is; some full awareness;
Some ultimate evolution or design.

They’re the greatest pretenders.
The great labelers,
Grouping and labeling everything;
The fantasy of generalization making everything seem easy;
The reality of uniqueness dismissed.
Cooperation; strength in numbers;
Ghastly overwhelming strength in numbers!
Victory through cooperation.
Dominance; the ultimate prize
For their kind, they label human.

And then what?
In the face of victory,
Privileged exclusion from the realities
Of the domination quest;
Exclusion from the hunt;
Exclusion from the fight and the flight;
Food and shelter handed down.
The paradox of isolation.
What oh what then does survival mean?
The forces born of instincts need to know!

Instincts turning inward.
Cause and effect.
Individual survival.
Survival within the society.
Ledgers of contribution;
Money the new survival;
Food and shelter a privilege.
Man eat man.

The paradox of cooperation/competition;
However to do both?
Instinctive forces perverting.
Cause and effect.
Necessary duplicity.
Puppets born of reputation and ego;
Pure charade.

The rise of the matrix;
The superstructures that overwhelm
And tell them what things to pretend.
Labels labels labels!
Tribes tribes tribes!
Nations,
Corporations,
Races,
Ideologies,
Religions;
Arbitrary categories
Pretended to be real,
Make everyone a friend;
Make everyone an enemy.

Such pure fantasy can only be pretended
When the reality of uniqueness is dismissed.
Oh the confusion;
Now to navigate?
The domination instincts still thrive,
Looking for victims.
They label them sins,
Pretend the sins are not to thank for their existence,
Pretend the sins do not dominate their living moments,
They ascribe them to a scapegoat and call him the Devil.
They teach this to their children and let the children
Suffer, ever suffer for they each think they are each the devil.
The survival instincts have it covered.
Fight to disallow such crippling despair
Duplicity solves all.
Cause and effect.

Confine it to the greater brain;
The non-awareness.
But oh the self-loathing!
They must ignore those terrifying glimpses;
Suppress the confusion.
For they must navigate the matrix
One way or another
And win their bread;
Oh but not just bread,
But win their almighty material trophies,
For survival instinct knows no mercy;
Only domination.

The structures all demand from them
The appearance of subscription to the rules
And hidden contrariety,
Because in the matrix angels are trodden on
And cheaters prosper.

The dual duplicities:
The lies they tell on purpose
And the lies of the sub-awareness
Tragically mistaken for golden truth.
They think it a matrix of lies and truth,
This matrix of lies and more lies.
Cause and effect.
Puppets tricking puppets.
The matrix weaving layers and layers of illusion
So tightly woven, the pinpricks of truth
Sparkle so rarely just as the tiny volume of light
Out of all stars in the universe
To penetrate a smoggy Toronto night sky.
When finally the young have aged;
Developed sufficient senses,
It is too late; the matrix has snatched them
Through the TV’s and the institutions
And the things you will not hear said;
The endless bullshit eaten and eaten;
The investment in illusions signed and sealed.
Cause and effect.
There’s no turning back.

But wait, there is a second miracle!
Not intelligence but the boon of it;
Imagination! Creativity!
The regard for unvarnished truth.
The capacity to evolve beyond the domination instinct
Simply because they dreamed of it!

Such a phenomenal departure from the nature of life.
A celebration of that idea called love;
That Bordeaux blend of attractions and addictions
Just another label,
But so useful when applied:
Loving kindness; generosity; harmony.

They each participate to some degree; great or small
In living without harming and for that
Every human is beautiful; Hear this, you human!
For that, you are beautiful in this universe!
So fascinating, this evolution, to some.
Some of them scientists; some of them poets, musicians, artists,
Those who engage in true learning; an act of solitude,
Some are the sufferers; forced to bear reality,
Some of them the ancient champions
Of beautifully intentioned religions
Before the inevitable corruptions.
Cause and effect.

They are those who escape the unmerciful web
Of the matrix’ mighty structures
Through rare unexpected circumstance;
Rare causes; rare effects.
Those who embrace the reality of cause and effect,
The reality of uniqueness,
The reality of nature; of inevitability,
The reality that all of one’s frustration is one’s own cause;
All hate, all stress, all fear, all rage,
All intolerance;
All of it the result of one’s own flawed expectations
And flawed perceptions;
The result of all the blaming when in truth
There is no one to blame but the blamer.

For those who fully escape the matrix
There is no confusion but only peace,
No illusion but only freedom,
No sadness but only joy,
No rage but only love; real love;
Not addictive, not of lust,
Not directional but all-directional;
The love that is a state of being;
So awesome; so shockingly euphoric
It is at first devastating
In all but the smallest doses.

And above all there is desire for harmony;
That everyone would give care for all others
And mercy for the less evolved,
Not in the hopes that what goes around comes around
But damn it, for the sheer joy of it!
For that is the ultimate destiny.
All evidence points there; scripture; poetry; science.
Cause and effect.

But where is the road map to that complete evolution;
That ultimate humanity for all?
This imperfect author; flawed poet does not know.
This is the quest; the number one cause.
Flawed versions are written here and there
In the works of poets long dead or just,
In the temples, mosques and churches
So vulgarly and inexpertly taught
By the pawns of old cold organizations.
But while poets survive on the fringe of welfare society
Outside the matrix but privy to its comforts,
Not with false nobility!
Knowing they are cheaters!
But looking to be useful,
Looking to nurture harmony,
Looking for the rare candidate for escape; the next Neo,
They leave their calling cards;
Their hints in these places
Because if just one more can be freed,
By god, It’s all worth it.