On Which Side Do You Stand?

I grew up in the Sixties and Seventies, a time of considerable civil unrest with young long hairs rising up in protest over the United States' involvement in the conflict in Viet Nam, women's rights, and civil rights for African-Americans. As a stereotype hippie, I vividly recall sitting in the streets of downtown Morgantown, West Virginia, blocking traffic to get attention and raise awareness, risking arrest, among hundreds of other sign-toting young people who shared a belief and conviction that they were making a difference by actively protesting government policy in Viet Nam and the inequitable treatment of blacks in our country. While I soon thereafter enlisted in the United States Marine Corps to serve my country in time of war and also to better understand that which I was protesting, I would later find myself peacefully protesting, once again, along with the Berrigan brothers south of Boulder, Colorado, with strong conviction to raise awareness about the need to clean up the Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal, a dire safety concern for everyone living along Colorado's Front Range. While the Berrigans spent more time in jail than not, I never experienced anything worse than being hosed back and threatened by police and federal authorities.

There is still a revolutionary streak running through me, with some dissenting view always ready to be expressed, but it is always approached with reason and intelligence as to how any dissent is to be communicated, always guarding against involving emotion with any contrary opinion. If something makes me angry, the anger within must first be resolved before any action is taken or I raise my voice.

There was most always a profound respect displayed during the hippie movement for the passive resistance approach of Mahatma Gandhi, and of course for the peaceful marches of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Violence was a non-starter among any protest I joined at that time. It was the "Peace, Love, Dope" generation, but there was most always a certain respectful morality behind any defiance of authority and efforts to raise public awareness. There were some few that acted through violence and performed bombings resulting in the death of innocent bystanders, but they consisted of small factions of sadistic ideologues with less noble objectives. Unfortunately, while the civil disobedience of the hippie movement came and went, after making a definitively positive social contribution to ending the war and improving the rights of women and blacks, a certain element of revolutionaries that exercised violence without moral boundary has continued to this day behind increasing support for the terrorist ideology of the likes of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

We live in a time, once again, of huge civil unrest. But unlike the time when hippies protested in the streets, today's protests are angry, violent, largely unreasonable, and seem to hold to no standards of behavior. The rabid demonstrations we are witnessing appear unprecedented in their anger, unlike anything in American history, and a true disconnect from reality. The aftermath of the recent inauguration of the new administration saw protesters assaulting Trump supporters, setting fire to structures and a limousine (which happened to be owned by a Muslim businessman), shouting profanities, and stoning authorities. These were riots, not peaceful protests, with verbal threats made openly to assassinate the President and burn the White House.

Protests we see today show much greater organization and a level of funding support never seen before. There is a high level force of insurrection at work that wants to destroy the United States as we have known it through violent acts of anarchy. One of the nastier recent protests was the Occupy movement. (and by the way, the Soros money behind Occupy is the same money behind the anti-Trump movement today) The Occupy protests were marked by widespread rapes, assaults, robberies and holdups. Protesters publicly defecated and urinated on police cars, leaving behind a swath of destroyed private and public property and a pigsty of waste in their wake, left for public workers to clean up.

A large part of the problem is that liberal Democrat protests are not held to any civilized standard of behavior by Democrat leadership and the liberal fourth estate. Neither the press, nor Democrat officials, nor our former Democrat President admonish such menacing behavior as assault, rape, verbal threats, and defecating on police cars. Democrats and liberals accuse Republicans of conducting a war on women. Assault, rape and murder are the worst things that can be done to a woman. Yet a significant majority of the assaults, rapes and murders of women are done by people who identify as liberals, and if they voted or had a party affiliation, it would be Democrat. In fact, if we examine criminality in America – whether murderers, muggers or prisoners – it would be dominated by people who would be described as liberals, Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton supporters. And virtually all of the violence against police – whether it’s throwing stones, ambushing or murdering – is committed by liberals or people who’d identify as Democrats.

In contrast, have you ever seen Republicans/conservatives rioting, turning over police cars, looting, setting places of business on fire and shouting obscenities while marching. Have you ever seen conservatives marching with chants calling for the murder of police officers? Tea Partiers didn’t set fires, stone police or engage in the other kinds of despicable behavior like the liberal Democrats are doing. Tea Partiers were not arrested for assault, rape, robbery, and rioting. And when their protests were over, they left the areas where they protested cleaner than when they arrived.

The sides are drawn. On which side do you stand? Which group best represents your character and the interests of your family and community? While each one of us would like to see improvement in some regard in our lives, I somehow continue to have faith that the vast majority of Americans would prefer to conserve what is good about our country while engaging in civilized discourse over our objections, and protest when necessary, rather than destroy it all through violence and anarchy. Gandhi and Dr. King would both agree that the only way to help things improve is through a non-violent approach to dissent. Violence and anger are never the right course of action. May the hippie in me never fade away.

Fuzzy Truth and Strange Fiction

Quantum reality is the world of the very small, made up of objects that defy the imagination. The elementary objects that make up atoms are not things in actuality, but events or happenings in a world of ever-changing dynamic interactive psycho-physical processes. One cannot separate what these subatomic entities are from what they do. Instead, what they are can only be inferred from what they do. Instead of an elementary world of "being", the foundation of our reality is built upon a world of "doing". In other words, all of the material world that we perceive is built upon actions, processes, and events outside any sense of time or space in some abstract realm that is very strange even to the very brightest of quantum physicists.

With Einstein's theory of relativity, the more one comes to understand it with study and application, the less strange it becomes. With quantum theory, in contrast, the more deeply we entangle ourselves in an understanding of it, the stranger it becomes. Newton's world was built upon solid particles with measurable mass, but with the advances of quantum physics we have come to understand that the solidity of the world is entirely illusion - there are no elementary particles, no fundamental building blocks of reality, nothing solid to measure, really. In fact, there really is not even a quantum world - only an abstract quantum description. The quantum entities behind everything are not real in the sense that we define "real". They don't have any sort of independent, intrinsic existence in which they exist apart from those observing them.

Without boundaries, elementary particles exist in somewhat of a state of open-ended potentiality. If one wants to pinpoint a locality of their existence it can only be concluded that they exist in every possible universe outside of time. So the atoms that make up everything and whatever comprises them are not real, existing only withing a framework of a world of potentialities, rather than as facts or things. Elementary particles don’t “exist” as a thing in its own right, but if physicists treat them “as if”’ they exist, then they manifest “as if” they really do exist, and the physicists then get the right results in their equations. Everyone is happy, as long as no one asks what it all means.

So the entire world we live in is no more than a construct, a heuristic way of talking about something that is nothing more than a set of mathematical relations concerning different observations. Because atoms don't have any kind of independent, per-existing reality, it is meaningless to even ask what an atom really is. Atoms are only concepts physicists use to describe the behavior of their measuring instruments and the outcomes of their experiments. Atoms emerge out of the interaction between an observer and what is being observed as mediated through some measuring device to make sense of the observation. Properties are inferred from whatever measuring device is being used and are treated "as if" they are real. In the end, all that one can conclude to is a model of what is observed, and not something intrinsically real in and of itself.

An energy waveform that we perceive does not exist apart from our perception of it. It is an event within a universe of probabilities. It takes an observer to chose which probability she or he wishes to call real to bring it into existence. Something has to stand in the middle of a quantum event and what is termed "real". That is us. We make it "real". A waveform is passive and cannot stimulate action on its own without an intervening agent to make a conscious choice between probabilities to cause it to manifest in three dimensional "reality". A waveform is purely abstraction, as is every atom. They are ideas that do not exist outside of the ideas themselves. The primal stuff of the quantum realm is all dreamlike, born only of our own ideas. Quantum physics informs us that the great mystery of the universe and how is all works is more mind-like than matter-like. Its wonderful revelation is that it lifts the veil of our understanding of how our minds and the world of matter around us are connected, and how we, in "reality", are the only creators of all that we perceive as real through our own mysterious consciousness.

Right Living

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.” ~ Edward Abbey

The Origin of Being

Living in Divine Nonchalance

Suicide, and Hope for Our Future Selves

I was thinking about my dear friend Jim while running in the woods yesterday. Jim was my wife's only son who ended his life eight years ago after wrestling with his inner demons for a long time. I miss his company and think about him often, still. Like probably everyone, I have had occasional encounters with the suicide of friends and acquaintances and celebrities known to all and strangers. The ones that stand out most in my memory were the three attempted suicides that I prevented when I was a high school teacher. I sometimes wonder if those three students are still with us; I wonder if showing them that someone cared at just the right time made a lasting difference; I wonder whether they grew to become fulfilled, happy adults.

Young people may be the most vulnerable among us, and the most precious when we lose them to suicide. I have read that suicide claims more young lives than accidents and that suicide is a greater cause of death among soldiers than battlefield mortality. It seems a sad waste, yet I think most of us can probably identify with the desire to end it all at some point in life. I have suffered occasional bouts of depression and have become despondent at times, wishing I was anywhere else but where I was. The thought of returning to that peaceful mystery from whence I have come has occurred to me on several desperate occasions, but a general fighting lust for living has always stood in the way of entertaining such thoughts seriously. I love life, but I also relish the struggle, the suffering, and the pure sensations that shower me daily through my mind and senses in this abundant incarnation. I think the thing that would stop me from exiting this life prematurely, more than any other, would be an understanding of how suicide would hurt the people that love me, and others that I know as well. Suicide seems selfish in that regard, so I choose to stick around and live through every challenge, no matter how difficult, for myself and for the other people in my life.

What can we say about helping others achieve this same perspective? I sense that there are people in my circle today that entertain the notion of suicide. Just today I read where a young girl hung herself live on Facebook. But just what can one do or say to help those in a moment of personal crisis to live through their overwhelming dificulties and not abruptly and tragically end it all?

A great many people who think about suicide claim that it is because they think they are a burden; they've been depressed for awhile, maybe they've had a humiliating blow in life - a breakup in a relationship, trouble at work, some embarrassing legal challenge. They think very poorly of themselves at the moment. What anyone contemplating suicide needs to understand is that suicide is an exponentially greater burden to those left behind. The person thinking about suicide is not thinking about the effect on those left behind - not just family and friends that get hit the hardest, but people at a distance that may only have some vague connection. It's not just grief and the sense of irreversible loss; people are left empty, often feeling guilty thinking about what they might have done to make a difference. Then there is the anger at those who left you without saying goodbye, the selfishness of it, followed by guilt over that anger. A whole cycle of emotion may carry forward for years, even a lifetime, in the wake of a suicide. That is the unforeseen legacy that suicide leaves.

The message we must convey to anyone we know who may be lurking in the shadow of suicide is: Your staying alive means so much more than you may be aware of at this moment. We are all in this together in some unfathomably profound way. Take strength from that. Suicide may seem like an individual matter right now, but because of our interwoven, enmeshed personal connections, not a one of us in apart from the rest. When you die, a part of each of us dies. You owe it to other people and to your own future self to stay. We all have ups and downs; we fall in love and we lose love; why let the lowest of moments cut you off from experiencing the happy times your future self will have? Remind your down mood that the happy mood is still there within, waiting to return. Suicide is always impulsive, and if you can just get past it with some sort of conceptual rationalization in your head you will be able to continue through the worst of personal challenges. None of us can know just how much we mean to other people and none of us can know what wonderful things our future self will experience. To continue to live is an act of courage. Be brave. For now, just stay.

Historically, society has both demonized suicide and celebrated it as a moral freedom. Rather than look it it from the perspectives of morality or as a right, perhaps we should combat it from the standpoint that we all have an essential need for each other. When I was in college I read a lot of existential philosphers, many of whom took their own lives as a measure of total control. Among those writers was Albert Camus. In his book, The Myth of Sisyphus, he postulated that there is really only one philosophical problem we each need to address in life: the question of suicide. Camus said that life is absurd, there is no outer reason to keep on living, but he also said that suicide is the wrong choice. Life is worth living and just when you think that now is time to exit, it is worth sticking around to see just how it is all going to play out. He argued that we all need to have some respect for our future self who is going to know things that we don't know right now. We CAN embrace the weird side of life; we don't have to make everything right and reasonable. We need to stop trying to dot all the i's and stop expecting everything to be fair. Camus' advice was to embrace the absurd and be interested in the unseen future. When people read The Myth of Sisyphus, what most get out of it is an inevitable identification with the character of Sisyphus, imagining him being happy. It has been of remarkable help to many people in helping them find an alternative to suicide. I'll always wish Jim could have found the happiness of Sisyphus.

from "No Hemlock Rock" by Jennifer Michael Hecht:

Poison yourself, it poisons the well;

shoot yourself, it cracks the bio-dome.

I will give badges to everyone who's figured

this out about suicide, and hence

refused it. I am grateful. Stay. Thank

you for staying. Please stay. You

are my hero for staying. I know

about it, and am grateful you stay.

Eat a donut. Rhyme opus with lotus.

Rope is bogus, psychosis. Stay.

Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus.

Dare not to kill yourself. I won't either.

The End of War

The battle lines have been drawn with the new administration of Donald Trump now firmly installed. Surrounded by the formidable leadership of Marine Generals Kelly, Mattis, and Dunford, Army General Flynn, and a cadre of other disciplined military commanders and corporate heavyweights, Mr. Trump has pulled together a military-industrial team to take on the longstanding foe of humanity variously referred to as the cabal or ancient bloodline families, largely controlled by the Rothschild family. The two sides may be best distinguished by those who control the guns versus those who control the butter (money supply).

In terms of nation-states, the United States are aligned with Russia, Japan, and Korea against China and Germany, still controlled by the Rothschilds at this point. The gauntlet was recently laid down in the inaugural address by Donald Trump on January 20 on the one side, and in a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Davos bloodline love fest on January 17 on the other. Trump attacked globalism as the underlying cause of decline in the United States while Xi supported the globalist agenda which gives greater voice to developing nations and climate change. As the greatest beneficiary of globalism, China now offers protection to the bloodlines against the backlash from assault from the West.

A global war or any sort of existential struggle between civilizations in no longer likely to occur. Instead we are likely to see reasonable bargaining positions laid out by both sides in advance of final negotiations for setting up a new, improved system of running the planet. With war being taken off the table, the world is moving to a better place. The Asians want a bigger voice in the non-European world, while the West wants their industry and middle class to be rebuilt in exchange for the release of technology hidden from the rest of the world by the bloodlines. A win-win solution can likely be reached without too much table pounding and shouting.

The shouting that will occur will be within the United States itself as the new administration quickly moves to purge its institutions of bloodline influence. The enemy within is being exposed and brought to accountability under the direction of the new CIA director Pompeo. The Trump presidency is only days old but already 13 million pages of documents have been disclosed by the CIA in an initial effort to accelerate full disclosure. The CIA knows that the military is behind Trump. It has been served an ultimatum to cease and desist all affairs related to drug and arms running, child trafficking, droning, lies, dirty tricks, political corruption, and subversion, and to direct its complete focus on human and open source intelligence for the benefit of the U.S. government, and to provide counter-intelligence on rivals and Israel, or else. There is no wiggle room on this directive. The Trump military government also plans to force military contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin to cut fraud, waste and abuse with a real possibility that these companies could be nationalized like in Russia to protect and preserve proprietary and sensitive knowledge affecting national security.

The apprehension of cartel kingpin and the CIA’s Mexican henchman Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, coinciding with Trump's rise to power, is a clear signal that there is a new sheriff in town and things are going to change. It has been reported that Guzman is spilling the beans about where all the secret Nazi faction drug money is flowing. Such aggressive measures are not going unnoticed by the cabal as it is upping the ante by financing and organizing anti-Trump demonstrations around the world as a counter-measure. Their use of the mass media to wage psychological warfare against Trump has increased, but will likely be short-lived.

George Soros seems to have been resurrected by the Rothschilds as their point man, but sources in high places continue to confirm that Soros was assassinated prior to the election and that the cabal's threats are little more than the saber rattling of ghosts. The technology to make a person appear real in a video is well established. Several prominent world leaders and personalities have continued to live on through their doubles long after their demise. The layers of lies behind the lies should make all of us suspicious about anything presented as real with everything from JFK through 9-11 and beyond.

War is being forced to an end on planet Earth. Donald Trump is a far larger player in our progress toward peace on this planet than his detractors can imagine. There are various timelines converging right now, and when that convergence is complete we will have full disclosure, or at least partial disclosure initially. Disclosure of what, you ask? How about everything that has been concealed or suppressed by the powers that be and the cabal in its efforts to control the advancement and happiness of the human population. In a short take - more than the average person can conceive!

A Little Revolution Solves a Great Many Things

Every four years we head to the polls to vote for a president with the aim in mind that whoever wins has the best interests of the country in mind. It seems that no matter who is elected, however, regardless of party affiliation, someone soon after cries foul or initiates some conspiracy theory. But whoever we elect is exactly who we deserve because we are the ones who elected him. After the new president takes over, no matter the outcome, people inevitably resort to denial and claim that they are not the ones responsible for the resulting morass of stupidity that comes out of Washington.

Donald Trump was elected by the same rules we used for the last president, as well as the presidents before him. The rules are clear and understood by anyone who wants to examine them. It has always been known that you can win the presidency through the Electoral College without a majority of the popular vote. The system was established the way it is to avoid mob rule by a majority, currently residing along both coasts, which could run roughshod over the balance of people living in the smaller interior states. We the People have never directly elected the President of the United States, and until the Constitution says otherwise that's the way it is.

Donald Trump is perfectly representative of the people, however, a perfect symbol of what America has become. He says what he thinks and changes his mind regularly, so some call him a liar. But we all do the same thing and might as well admit to being a part of a culture of liars, so why is it so repulsive that we have elected someone just like the rest of us? His predecessor was a liar, as was the president before him. If you are outraged at this behavior, you haven't been paying attention. Bad behavior should not make anyone outraged these days. We are overwhelmed by it daily with the endless flow of real and so-called "fake" news on the Internet. In a culture that has been losing its moral and ethical compass for quite some time, there is no longer any limit to what can be said or done. If we are troubled by this, it is because we have lost our own connection to an actual vision or overall meaning of what it means to be American.

So we should all take a moment and thank Donald Trump. He is no more than a reflection of who we are right now as Americans. His election should make us all begin to become more aware that we need to be more than a nation of political parties, more than just messengers of a short-term tweet, more than liars, more than cheats. We need to wake up and see ourselves for who we really are as a nation and for who we can be. We get the government that reflects who we are; we get the government that we deserve. The revolution must start within each of us. We cannot demand more of our leaders than we demand of ourselves. Go take a look in the mirror the next time you complain; that is where the revolution must begin.

The End Game

There is an entirely new kind of political movement coming that is not political party based. It is led by a renegade outsider, Donald Trump, an independent operator who is not a part of the problem. Despite his many character faults he’s probably the most free and independent-thinking man to reach this high office since John Kennedy. Hillary Clinton was the blow horn of the multi-corporate cabal behind the collapsing systems and values in America. She was the face of Fascism's latest wave since World War II and her election would have meant World War III, which we now seem likely to have averted.

All of this yelling and screaming in a day-to-day drumbeat of unsourced stories about Russian hacks, golden showers, pussy groping, all single-pointed and negative litanies against Trump, is meant to condition and prepare the American people for his destruction. As a serious threat to end the US corporate perpetual war market, if they can’t get him to play by their rules they will try to destroy him. But the truth is that if there is going to be a dramatic turn to the high side it will be because of this man holding his ground. You may be against him, but try to love him. He may be this country's last best hope to return to the values that made this country the beacon of light that it is. Confront him with issues but deal with your negativity in private.

Trump is already engaged in a serious confrontation with the deeply entrenched cabal pursuing a New World Order behind the mask of “Republican” or “Democrat” aimed at fooling all of us into thinking there’s a democracy in this country. The cabal still in large part controls the major organs of power of our country, including the fourth estate news media whose aim is to make we the people misinformed-stupid, make us uncritical thinkers, running on irrational emotions bouncing off the walls like the people seen on the streets during the past weekend's Women's March. The shadow powers behind it all just love seeing such negativity and manifest fear. That’s how they’re taking our power and our Republic away from us - because so many of us feed at the trough of the fake mainstream news outlets.

One by one the American citizen is losing the last channels on mainstream television where critical or alternative views can be expressed. The source of this dumbing down and numbing out of objective inquiry is a long-term process meant to reduce people into intellectual “serfs” of a new kind of Neo-Feudalism. A small, incredibly wealthy minority want to rule over all sovereign nations and elected leaders who are meant to be more blow horns of business interests than representatives of we the people. Donald Trump has thrown a major wrench into their ambitions in the United States. Along with other contrary political victories across the globe a solid front of populist nationalism has ratcheted globalist momentum to a grinding halt. There is danger ahead. The future political battles will not be fought between parties that differ in name only, but between the elite of the cabal and we the people they seek to control and dominate.

The first battle between the cabal's media shamelessly and openly biasing their news against Trump and completely for Hillary, with such venom as to totally obliterate Trump, is over, and Donald Trump has prevailed against all odds. Looking at their attack on him was like watching wild dogs attack a lone warrior. His coup over the media dogs has turned back the globalist tide of the New World Order for the time being, but it is a long way from being beaten into submission. The war is far from over. While Trump is an obstinate strong man, perhaps even divinely inspired, he will need the support of all of we the people to empower him in this movement to finally deliver a victory for all of us in this nasty engagement.

Fear and Loathing Across the Fruited Plain

I have friends that voted for Hillary Clinton and I make no bones about the fact that I wanted Donald Trump to win, largely out of a revulsion for the arrogance and criminal disregard of Hillary Clinton. With some of these friends I can have a reasonable ideological discussion of differences; with others I question whether they've ever had an original thought in their lives. I am astonished at the capacity for hate that some people have, especially those leaning progressively liberal  in their thoughts. It seems their poor jumbled up, nonsensical thoughts all seem organized by hatred. Some of these "friends" have mysteriously disappeared from my life, shunning me, apparently for being responsible for the outcome of this election. I concede to the allegation wholeheartedly, but regret the loss of these friends. When the topic arises among other Trump voters I find that many of them are having the same experience. It is like a line has been drawn and you are either on one side or the other. I've never witnessed this level of animosity before - brother against brother, husband against wife, and children against parents - like during the Civil War.

I cannot begin to understand the gleeful fury on the faces of women demanding that no one interfere with their “right” to murder their own unborn child, like we witnessed during the Women's March after the inauguration. Why is this hate and rage the standard response from those on the left? Why don't we see riots of a bunch of white guys demanding that hands be kept off their guns? Why are there no mass marches of people who have worked and paid taxes all of their lives demanding an end to subsidizing the willful idleness of people on public assistance and recent illegal immigrants? Decent, life-loving people will march for life, but they don’t riot for life.

So I must question why Trump is evoking such an emotional, angry response in such a large portion of the population. I don't think it is his policies, so it must be his personality. Or is it? There is something about the man, apparently, that frightens some people. Trump is a tough guy and does not take to being bullied. He is a strong and dominant father figure, with a reputation for having a big heart, very generous, thoughtful, and giving to those in need, when he doesn't have to. The hungry media couldn't find anyone that has known him to legitimately come forward and say anything bad about the guy. His words are not frightening - they are more like cliches - emptying the swamp, restoring power to the people, make America great again. I see a lot of playful humor in his oratory and verbal attacks on the status quo. He is very serious about bringing about positive change in this country, but he is mostly amusing in his presentation, so what is everyone so fearful of?

I really do not think that any fear of what Donald Trump may do or who he is or what he may say are the driving forces behind the anger. Donald Trump serves no more than a taunting catalyst for angry response that lies in wait, ready to spring. I am more inclined to believe that the left is by and large a group of angry people, mostly angry at themselves, angry about life, ready to show rage at the smallest of affronts. Their preferred candidate losing the election may have been the largest shared affront to this group ever perpetrated, considering that the world has been tilting in their favor for the past thirty years since Reagan. Such an event must have absolutely shattered the worldview of those with such an angry outlook. Their anger and intolerance are far more destructive than anything that will result from the Trump presidency. My advice to anyone on the left: Don't take yourself so damn seriously.

Returning to the Emptiness of Truth

The modern world has become obsessed with accumulating stuff. It should come as no surprise that we are this way. Evolving through long periods of not having enough, early humans would hoard food and other resources as a matter of continued survival as they wandered day after day across sparse environments. In a modern world of abundance and managed resources most of us no longer need to lay away stores against a possible future of want, but we still do. Today we go far beyond merely saving food and firewood, however. We accumulate an endless variety of stuff.

Stuff originated with the creation of idols created from wood, earth, and metals that held great spiritual significance for their owners and the community. In time these revered objects became more important than the energy they represented. Dreaming took on a morbid obsession with creating. Whatever we dreamed, we demanded to create by our own ingenuity to enjoy in our everyday reality. Great cities arose out of dreams. Magnificent structures, alters, and temples were dreamed up and constructed to honor the gods. Before this obsession with manifesting our dreams into physical reality the ancients understood the mystery and that which is unknown without a need for words or structures of idolatry. Instead of humbly honoring the creator as the mother of all life, the builders of dreams became obsessed with the technology of spirit and representations of the unknown instead of the mystery itself. The creative energy behind it all was there before the first holy edifice or church was ever built in its honor, and remains ever there to celebrate without words or sacraments.

The infinite mystery of our ancestors was replaced by the hero, the gods and goddesses, and the creative representations that came to be idolized. The greater the number of statues and idols, the greater the need to defend them against outsiders. As the need for defense grew, so did the increased need for defenders and a power structure to lead and direct the armies. As power structures grew in their influence, more demand was placed upon the people to support the few in power with increased wealth. Ultimately, the power mongers became associated with the gods our ancestors had only ever seen in dreams before.

Laws became the only way to control tyrannical despots. While tyrants have always been among us, the limits of law have afforded the people certain freedoms to create on their own and possess the things of their dreams. And so innovation and technology blossomed and proliferated. Petty tyranny spread down through society in the form of mercantilism. What a man could create he could own, but he could sell or trade his creation to another man if he chose, under the terms of the petty tyrant. "Mine" became the new mantra as tyranny spread throughout society from the corporate gods to the home owner behind locked doors. Whether a bank mogul or a small business owner, all began to act out of the same obsession with the original model of eternal control over the most sacred of things - stuff.

We have forgotten the distant sacred past, hidden under a pile of objects we convince ourselves that we really need. Our ancient connection to and celebration of the infinite has become lost in our reverence for the gods of stuff that leave us with a wondering emptiness. Consider what we would be and we could do without all the stuff. What could we really do, create, and be?

 Look at a favorite cup that you drink your coffee from. You probably have a whole kitchen cabinet full of cups - some hand crafted, most probably mass manufactured. Cups line the shelves at the thrift store, from beautiful to ugly, and may be had for pennies. Once pottery was a very sacred act of creation, at the level of the gods. So much so that to place anything into a cup and smash the cup was a gift to spirit itself because the creation of it was alignment with the very gods themselves. Smashing is no longer sacred, and now we hold onto our favorite cups with a obsessive possessiveness. Cups are but one thing we accumulate. Consider all the rest of the stuff we collect.

Art, like any creativity, is a dance with the sacred. We have become obsessed with the production of our stuff, over our perception of what is behind all of creation. Art can point the way to the wordless truth. Even words themselves, when aligned with silence, can hint at the mystery behind it all. But we must be willing to destroy before we can create, empty the cup before we can fill it again, point to the moon without getting lost in the finger, leave the temple and seek out the emptiness of truth.