Limits of an Infinite Self

Bill Hicks, ladies and gentlemen. One of the most offensive comedians of all time. He also happens to have been one of the very, very best. How is that? Well... the fact that he saw through the manufactured bullshit that masquerades as “reality” and called it out for what it was. The fact that he was totally unafraid to be seen for what he was: nobody special, just a guy with a taste for vulgar jokes and a gift for telling them. He was more than that, of course. He was a man of uncompromising integrity, brutal honesty, deep humility... and he did what he did because he loved to do it. No other reason could have driven him.

Today I listened to a couple of songs by Rage Against the Machine (Wake Up and Calm Like a Bomb, from the Matrix soundtracks). I listened in a way that I'm just discovering how to do (although I've probably been doing it all along): such that my internal state of mind is at its own place of repose, while the music plays out around me. I could appreciate the soundwaves, the thoughts and emotions without getting attached to them myself. I don't know if or how this is a productive way to listen, but it appeals to me. It's a way that I can apply to any genre of music, even (and especially) music that is full of angst and rage and darkness. I don't have to go to the place where the music is coming from in my totality, just enough to appreciate it. It's enough to have been there myself at some point in the past. You might ask why I would do this. Why listen to music that's not in line with where I'm at in my innermost? That's a good question.

Part of the answer is that the world is not in line with where I'm at or where I'd like it to be at. That's something that I just have to make my peace with. Appreciating music that comes from a human being's experience of this tortured reality while also holding peace and unconditional love in my heart... it feels real. It feels like healing, somehow.

Bill Hicks had a lot to say about music and the music industry. He made no bones about his distaste for empty, mass-produced, ego-driven dreck. He ranted against banality and mediocrity. He also praised those artists who he saw as having done humanity a service through their music, who played from their hearts.

I listen to a lot of different genres of music. I've never become an expert or a connoisseur of any particular one. Rather, I simply listen to whatever I find that appeals to me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this artist. Here is someone who plays a genre so apparently full of garbage (in my uneducated opinion) and yet comes across as a true artist with a genuine message. Ana Free is (to me) a diamond in the rough. Her music comes from her heart. And what a heart it is! Beautiful. Generous. True. - And she's pretty, to boot! (grin) Anyway, lest I sound like I'm advertising (ahem), she is what she is, her music is what it is. You may like it or you may not, it doesn't matter.

“Play from your heart.” That's all well and good for those with a talent for making music... what about the rest of us, like me? I think the answer is obvious enough: whatever your talents happen to be, use them to express what you feel, the things that matter, the things that inspire you. Don't be afraid of what people are going to think. Don't worry about whether it's got market value. Those things are distractions! They don't matter! What matters is that you believe in what you're doing. If you can find something you would do for free, without any hope of recognition from the world, just because it gives you joy and fulfillment... do it. Whatever you feel is your purpose for being here now, do it. You will know what that is, because it will come from deep inside you and the mere thought of doing it will fill you with energy.

Play well, yes... but more important than that is to play from your heart. And it's more than likely that it'll come to the same thing anyway.

Ana Free - Try (Live)

It is the middle of the night and I have been thinking. I thought of many questions I would have liked to dowse with my pendulum, to have my thoughts receive their just judgment, be they correct or off the mark. Since breaking out that device would have disturbed a person's sleep, I have flipped a coin instead, asking whether my line of thinking has been basically correct and whether I should write it out. The answer came in the affirmative, so here I am once again, working in Linux without my Internet connection. (I always write this way, and then I restart and publish in Windows.)

The Dog Poet has just come out with a very heavy piece of writing. Dangerous, even. But dangerous to whom?

I could remain aloof from this suggestion he is making. I could reason that I am aligned with peace and love and joy and bliss and coconuts, and have nothing to do with what he is suggesting. But another part of me, a part whose voice I cannot deny, says that that would be contemptible and cowardly. Knowing what I know, I cannot stand by and let others take this action without doing my own part together with them.

The “action” of which I speak is very simple: a moment of unified, focused intent upon a single outcome. I would characterize that outcome as a restoration of balance. Intent and Balance: two of the four spiritual laws described in the Handbook to the New Paradigm, as I recall. The others are Allowance and Attraction.

Focused Intent makes things happen. I have made some unlikely things happen in my life through my own focused intent. The focused intent of a group of people is far, far more powerful than that of any individual. It has the power to affect our shared reality. The ones who have been making negative things happen on this Earth are well aware of this law and have made exceedingly effective use of it. They have used it to dominate others and to shape the world in the image of their own twisted thinking. They have succeeded in this to a considerable degree. But they will not succeed much longer. They are few, and the tide has already turned sorely against them.

Balance is a law that these darkened ones do not comprehend in full. If they did, they would have turned from their path before now. As it is, that path has brought forth an imbalance of great magnitude that is soon to be rectified, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. It is not an if, but a when. Grace has long been extended and rejected, and so comes the time when grace is withdrawn and the unrepentant criminals face consequences. My prayer is only that it happen quickly, so that the healing on all levels might begin as soon as possible.

Allowance. This is a free-will universe. All things are allowed as long as free will allows them. The majority of us, through ignorance, silence, and inaction, have allowed bad things to be done, not only to our countrymen, but to those in faraway places who never had a chance. The victimization of the people of Gaza is the most extreme example today. They are denied basic levels of food, water, and medicine. They have had their lands taken away, their homes destroyed, and their family members murdered in cold blood. Now we hear of organ harvesting and other grievous crimes being perpetrated against them. If this does not move a person's heart, I don't know what will. I choose to join with those who exercise their free will to not allow these things to happen anymore. Enough is enough.

[break for sleep]

Attraction: like attracts like. This is why the parasites, the predators, the vampires, the ones who get a thrill out of shedding the blood of innocents and committing all manner of abominable acts, now live in a reality that is completely divorced from sanity and decency. At the same time, the numbers and strength of those who are attracting love, light, and harmony onto this Earth have grown. The two divergent realities cannot coexist forever, because the Earth herself has chosen to ascend. Those who have committed to a descending path must perforce ship out so that they can have what they deserve and so that the rest of us can have what we deserve. Some of them may shove off physically and leave this plane entirely, others may remain but be reduced to irrelevance. I don't know how, exactly, it's set to go down.

I do know that if Israel attacks Iran, as it looks ever more likely to do, that final act of arrogance and aggression will seal the fate of the Zio-vampires and their machinery, leading to their ultimate downfall and the chain-reaction downfall and/or transformation of all that is in alignment with their power. They will have brought it upon themselves. If this is indeed now the only possibility we have of becoming free of their negative influence, then it is my joyless duty to do my small part to help hasten it. I do not ask anyone to join in this moment of unified, focused intent. Whoever feels called in their heart to do so will take part, and that will suffice.

Some may read this and think blasphemy and black magic. That I am as lost a soul as any of the dark ones of whom I speak. Quite honestly, I have nothing to say to that. This initiative may be a detour and a trap... but it might also be something I need to go through on my way to wherever I'm going. Either way, I am compelled. I just attempted to dowse some answers with my pendulum, but it refuses to give any. I take that as a sign that I need to go deeper and stop abdicating my responsibility to an external thing. It appears my Higher Self is teaching me self-reliance of a higher order, the need to listen better and more directly. And so I shall.

I suspect this is a task I shall need to do from a place of shanti, inner peace. To succumb to the energy of conflict and duality (anger) may nullify the value of this exercise to my spiritual growth. A problem cannot be solved by the level of thinking that caused the problem, n'est-ce pas? And so I return to the principle I invoked in the beginning: Balance. To intend that Balance be restored, in order to allow us all to experience that which we have attracted to ourselves: this is what I think I shall do. Will it make a difference? God only knows. But I have faith nonetheless that all will work out as it must, for the best.

UPDATE: Having now read through the comment section of Les' post, I have a better idea of what this is about: in a word, exorcism. When you put it that way, I can't think of a single reason not to join in. "Out, demons, out!" So simple. I had go make it all complicated, didn't I? Well, I guess it's in my nature to analyze stuff and try to understand it. (grin)