Speaking of the acquisition of good things (in the opaque way that I delightfully did before!) I would like expound particularly on one of them: serenity.

What is serenity? you might ask. I’ll answer that prayer with an example.

Serenity is being able to extend unconditional love to the religious. This serenity comes through realization that you can’t change them. This serenity comes through acceptance of said unchangeability. You can’t change them because they earnestly believe — (or have convinced themselves to believe be it through *authority* of pedantic others or through the powerful drug of group-think and inherently assumed ‘strength in numbers’ phenomenon) — that they are doing right and best regardless of the intense harm they may cause themselves and others. Having acquired the serenity of accepting a fundamental thing you can’t change, you experience the liberally liberating freedom of not feeling compelled (or responsible) to correct them. You can love them as they are!

It is quite possible to acquire serenity I say! In all serenity, one can take delight that the willfully ignorant can somehow seem to have flourished. [For the things of this world are all about seeming]. Through acquisition of serenity one can love and one is able accept what one can’t change!

And I will carry on with my serenity. Thank you very much. I, myself, am very thankful, thank you.

You go on and do you.

1. Ask
2. Be thankful
   

*For best results one must find a way to train one’s mind into sustained and concentrated stillness and quiet within a context of unfathomable emptiness

“It all comes down to what you wish to believe”

Indeed. Someone pretty intelligent must have once said that.

However, all that taken as a given yet, still, despite what all wish there is something truly real underneath.

There is the unchangeable ever-now cosmic Radiant Reality that plays out as destiny of creation. Nothing we all think can change that reality.

That said, though, it is real i.e. “reality” that the greatest committee of all, human-kind, has been endowed with creative powers [in the image of the creator, if you will] to create all manner of “reality” that we all must live with and in in the meantime. This “reality” constantly puts our endurance ability to the test in a very hard way.

But with this tremendous creative ability we’ve created some wondrous things and some truly negative doozies haven’t we? We’ve created some impossibly formidable institutionalized cruelties and – despite all our imagined ‘sacrifices’ — we continue at it and get more and more adept at it. Why are people so self-defeating and negative? This is a question some of the masters of literature were keen and perceptive at asking. (Check Faulkner for some of the best). But we’ve never gotten a sufficient answer – and that is the nature of things.

Anyway, keep in mind our awesome tremendous ability to create “reality”. Learn to use your power of assumption for the good. Throw away all this negative rote-filled narrative continuation and all this persistent individually-sliced negative expectation. Become positive, even if it feels fake. For despite what you wish to believe – absolutely no amount of negativity and darkness can change the Radiant Reality of the Light!

Be positive! Change all our meantimes for the better!!!
That’s what I have to say about that.

I just came to the realization that what I’ve been attempting in my spiritual quest is that I become anal amnemonic about my life here on earth.

I am quite a ways down the journey and I am quite an adept (but not in a braggadocio manner – that would be spiritually self-defeating).

In retrospect I can certainly recognize that once I learned to do it freely out and about in the world — (in the provided sanctuary spaces and not literally in the agorá, of course) — I had turned a corner to recovery and was a balanced entity entirely opposite and different (in an extremely good way!) to the person I was before,

In fact it is literally a pleasure now and I so look in all positive anticipation for each moment of now that constitutes a so-called ‘future’!

I had some thoughts this afternoon that crisply gave answer to something spiritual. I thought to post it. However, like all I share, I felt it would be misunderstood.

Hence, my crisp, poignant thoughts take the essay form and certain ones who could benefit might well not follow.

This is a story-line of my life and I don’t necessarily feel bad about it. Therefore I will post as I feel needed and let chips fall and bygones be bygone far away. My original thoughts will bury themselves somewhere in the body of this “essay” which leads and follows and I can only give clues for you to identify them ahead of time: it is based on a common stupid question and the typical stock answer. You who have intelligence can figure this out for yourself.

I did think on this crisp idea more at the time and after the time, right away, and, of course, I mentally created some more needed additions. Then, I was stricken with the compulsive need to explain myself, which is what will follow this and precede that. Time elapsed too, and time changed even the course of the explanation itself.

You see, I have this reputation as a cynic – a sarcastic cynic if you will. There are people who seem troubled by my supposed cynicism, especially as it pertains to matters of faith. I would like this record corrected, if possible.

For I am the opposite of cynical. I am of a very high vibrational cosmic spiritual level and I am always taking measures to transcend the common material human essence some call “existence”, however feelings-based and chemically-constituted and chemically-reacted that physical/material “real world” may be. Spirituality and spiritual development are very, very important to me. This is no cynical ploy. Helping others is also a key part of my nature. To put it short: I care. To put it lengthier shorter: I am what I am.

So, some would say – and maybe not say – but I can hear the silence say – that if I’m so spiritually “evolved” and high-vibrational (whatever that means) why do I feel and act so superior? Why am I so dismissive? Why am I so preachy? Why am I so sarcastic? Why am I so cynical? Why am I so mean? (Especially to nice people)?

And yes, I understand that this “dialogue” is largely in my imagination. I am aware how highly sensitive I am. But, I tell you verily, I am very adept at picking up the unsaid things. Occasionally these things come back as sharp “helpful” criticism from “nice” people. Occasionally you can actually see the “advice” that underlies the unsaid. I was raised in a very “helpful” and “nice” community environment, you see. It’s in my training, my very ‘heritage’, to pick up on the unsaid – for my own “wellbeing” and for my own “good”. Believe it or not. Or else don’t believe me.So I can only say in response or in imagined response that I am open. I am spiritual. I like openness. I like spirituality.

I’m not out to create minions. I don’t want to tell anyone what to think. I’m not out to “save” you. I do want people to cast off the narrow-minded physical-world littleness of binding heaven by binding so tightly things on earth. I do want general (and spiritual) openness to a looser freer cosmic earnestness to prevail. I am keen on the cosmic Realm of Wisdom/Kingdom of Heaven! I believe it’s the eventual destiny – over the very long unfathomable term – of creation. I could just have this all for myself and keep it all to myself and think “screw everyone”, but this will be cynical. I’d rather just be myself, share myself, and promote open spirituality and point out the narrow-minded hurtful stuff when and where I see it. If that’s too political for you to take then I’m very sorry for your aching head but like you heard me said I’m not guilty. (That last 16-word bit being a direct George Harrison song reference).

This brings me [unexpectedly, for I was free-lancing again!] to what I originally wanted to say.

I need people to understand my views on religion because I think they are grossly misunderstood (I was thinking just before the launch hour).

It’s simple to understand. It goes like this:
To me religion is one stupid question asked over and over again. It is one stock answer that is even stupider than the stupid question ever was.

I’m seen how this has been institutionalized. I recognize the dark power involved. You are free to see the opposite.

The question: “Why is there evil?”The answer: “Free will.”

This gets you nowhere spiritual. This makes you dependent. This keeps you down. That’s how I understand it. And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again (for thousands of years, in this case) and expecting a different result.

That’s what I think about religion.

And then topping this off and adding further unfathomability is to explain the spiritual in human material form so that “people” can “understand”. Institutions formed by committee explain the freely given (good news!) as a “bargain” a materialistic exchange in very existential human terms “explained” for “understanding” purposes like some sort of Sicilian exchange. (Bad news for most. Good news for the ‘insiders’ only). And people buy this hook, line, and sinkhole. That only makes it worse. What’s the point, then, of transcending the material? Why would Jesus ever, then, say something like “do not love the world or anything in the world”? These explanations are so much “of the world and in the world.” These explanations should not be loved much less bought into. But this is what ended up being loved by hurtful people who wrest the mantle of “good” from earnest spiritual ones. Hoodwink, bamboozle and sinker. Religion is a Catch-22. Religion is cynical. Religion is hurtful. Religion excludes. Religion creates “heretics” (i.e. the earnestly spiritual). Many mystics have been killed as heretics. I’m a mystic too. You don’t have to believe me and if you plead the 2nd on me and kill me it won’t mean a thing and it won’t help advance spirituality by an iota.

P.S. Love is the answer and you know that for sure.

Everybody wants something. I have always wanted to want independently, free and clear of others’ unreasonable expectations and judgmental perceptions. On top of this I have wished for certain wants to be reciprocated unconditionally. But none of that is possible. Hence I have been happiest with patiently developed experience in the theory and practice of transcending wants. I am not in want of happiness! That is riches in itself, in case I ever wanted to be rich.

To do that which we are all on the path (of no escape) to doing that which we must and will do – no matter what resistance is put forth or expended – is as simple as it it inevitable.

There is no one way. The ways are varied and beyond our ability to label or to track. There is a way that is different and unique for each individual as there is unique experiential “reality” that belongs to each.

More importantly, there is only this one way.

Given that, the instructions are simple. It is a two-step plan:

1. Seek
2. Ask

You could just as well interrogate a baby under threat of subpoena

In the minutes following aftermath of birth, placenta still fresh

To get to the bottom of what he feels and experiences

In that first glorious intimate encounter with his mother;

Such is the joy in meditation: utterly unspeakable, non-amenable to articulation, Beyond understanding.

It can seem that it takes a lot of investment in time to live life right,

Until one learns to experience the now

You may think that there are some, perhaps many, in this ‘reality’ of life, who are not to be trusted, who will betray you, like Iagos of the imago or like Judas. But I tell you verily, that absolutely everything (and every one) in this physical world is created and bound to betray you eventually. This includes all you think prestigious, pleasurable, enjoyable, reliable or good. This includes (especially) that which you are proud of and it certainly includes that which you consider steady or steadfast and rely upon, however intimately, or however much in an impersonal or taken-for-granted way, known and acknowledged or hidden/denied/unawares and/or unknown, deliberate or accidental or coincidental.

Furthermore, it is my observation and experience that indicates and/or ‘tells’ me that one can’t be at all spiritual until such point as one gets this and approaches the physical world in such a fitting manner: not ‘hating’ mind you, for it is impossible to turn one’s back on everything and everyone in the physical world, but with loving: by ceasing to make discrimination and distinction and with coming to the realization that all the physical world (and all “in” the physical world) is an eventual betrayal and a design – a feature not a bug, so to speak – a sort of cosmic entrapment.
In this context, why not think of that whole ‘what is loosed, what is bound’ concept. There is deep spiritual wisdom being taught right before your eyes.