A confession and a warning: I no longer live in solidarity with the global neediest. For years I have been, in my soul, and to a large degree in material reality. I realized today that in recent weeks that has stopped being true for me spiritually, and to a degree in material reality. What caused me to be alert to this realization is the psychic pain that I have been in for the last week. I have felt depressed and adrift. Without bearings, without points of reference. Deliberately living each breath in solidarity with my neediest sisters and brothers has been my point of reference, my mooring, my bearings for years now. Feelings of guilt are in no way associated with this, nowhere in me. I'm doing the best I know from moment to moment. Because I walk my path alone, not in community, what I do is a metal high-wire act although it is one that generally I am unconsciously competent at and unaware of the extreme difficulty of staying on The Wire. Recent external opportunities and factors have caused me to lose my focus and fall off the wire. The pain of that has gotten my attention and caused me to wake up. Can I get back on The Wire? I hope so. We'll see. This was my third long trip on the free Palestine vehicle. This was my third and fourth long trip on the elf, the third going up last Thursday a week ago and the 4th coming back the last two days. Going up and coming back for the first time I stayed in the lowest cost possible Motel. The other times to conserve what limited dollars I have for donations to the global neediest I stayed in Walmart or Home Depot parking lots. I was aware of this new Choice, unsettled about it, but I went with it. In no way at the time did I understand it as a manifestation of having left full saladarity lived with the neediest. Again, guilt plays no role in this for me. Greed for total peace of heart, meaning, sense of moral clarity, Joy, is what I'm concerned with. The Quest for comfort crowded out these Within Me. Will be interesting to see what happens now. James
8.02.2016
5.21.2016
***** I am alone, isolated, fighting alone, ( and every breath filled with joy and peace ) because 15 years ago I did what terrifies Americans, what terrifies westerners, what terrifies we over-privileged, what terrifies liberals, what terrifies activist-inos... more than anything else in the world. I gave up. I surrendered. I refused to......
***** I am alone, isolated, fighting alone, ( and every breath filled with joy and peace ) because 15 years ago I did what terrifies Americans, what terrifies westerners, what terrifies we over-privileged, what terrifies liberals, what terrifies activist-inos... more than anything else in the world. I gave up. I surrendered. I refused to fight anymore... I refused any longer to fight my heart. I refused any longer to fight my conscience. They had been nagging at me my entire disgustingly over privileged life. I at long last caved, I gave in. I found within me a vow that I have adhered to ever since. I didn't make a vow, as I find doing such things terribly counterproductive. I found the vow in my heart and I surrender to it for the greedy Joy of it. That vow that I found there and surrender to was that I would give my life to my human and nonhuman family on Earth as best I could with every breath. That I would never again prostitute myself to the values, machines, organizations, systems of Our Sick culture for one second, not for 1 cent, regardless of the personal consequences, that I would give my life and not divert one second to earning a life for myself. If my sisters and brothers were happy to let me expire, that wasn't my business, that wasn't my concern, and I would not divert a second to that. And with never a second thought because of the overwhelming peace and joy of that path, and because of the singular hope that that path gives, I have never looked back, only forward to the absolute joy and peace and hope of that decision, that direction, of that path. That is, I finally said yes to what we westerners have been taught to avoid with our last breath, I said yes to heart in charge ( not to be confused with self-indulgent sentimentality ) and thereby I allowed the material world that I had been taught to Crave as a Westerner to totally disintegrate, to totally turn against me because of the path that I walk. Again, never for one breath have I looked back because of the overwhelming joy and peace, every breath, and extreme pain of the suffering world that is my fuel, of that path. I gave into truth Force. I gave in to soulforce. I surrendered to my heart. I have worked assiduously to keep my heart in charge ever since and with very very very few moments of error, I have succeeded. It is heaven, the heaven that has always been written of, and the heaven not one in a million find. But it is the heaven that every true activist lives in by whatever words, or no words at all. The one in a Million. Obviously I use every neuron in my head, infinitely more than most. Obviously I find physical strength despite my stage 4 cancer and age that many people can't imagine. That's what the heart in charge does. I use my head. I use my flesh. More particularly my heart, that I deliberately and scrupulously keep in charge, uses both my head and my flesh to the fullest. But I never make the mistake of letting them, my head or flesh, be in charge, only my heart, with no credit to me. Finally, after 45 years of having my head and flesh in charge, I surrendered, I gave up, to my heart, my soul, my conscience. My heart has been my loving, immensely harsh, unimaginably wise master ever since. And so I am physically alone, and certainly will remain physically alone, and relatively materially impoverished, as a consequence, a price that I pay every day without a shred of regret, for the greedy, infinite, joy and peace of Heart of it.
9.23.2015
***** If I know anything of value, if I have anything of value to share, it all boils down to this.....
***** If I know anything of value, if I have anything of value to share, it all boils down to this:
1. We are virtually all born in what I will refer to as the Holy Spirit, the spirit of universal, unconditional Loving, what I think Schweitzer referred to as the reverence for life. I understand this as nothing more or less than one of the psychological states that is available to us.
2. Further, I perceive that six thousand years or so ago we moved out of the tiny tribes we were designed to be in, where all the stimulation was of the notion of universal family, and have since developed huge cultures that strip away from us virtually all of the natural stimulation of the Holy Spirit, that sense of universal Loving, reverence for life.
3. As a consequence, now, in 2015, in the United States and the Western world, within months or a few years we strip away from our children the Holy Spirit, unconditional Loving, reverence for life... and replace it with a religiously conditional Loving, a religious lusting for self, for me and mine.
4. What miniscule hope there is now for life worth living depends upon the individual and collective return to every breath submission to that spirit of reverence for life that I believe we were all born into, and that we can still, if we so choose, if we devote the immense time and effort, that we can find within ourselves and return reign over ourselves individually, to. We must find it within ourselves and bring it back to the rule of ourselves individually, and thereby, only thereby, provide encouragement to others to do the same.
5. My life is devoted, every breath, to this task, within myself and to foster it within others.
9.10.2015
nd. Insanely we view ourselves as primarily material beings rather than spiritual.
Insanely we view ourselves as primarily material beings rather than spiritual.
8.30.2015
When the love of loving overtakes the love of everything else the world will know peace. Not one second before.
When the love of loving overtakes the love of everything else the world will know peace. Not one second before.
5.07.2015
vid. 4 min. Gorillaz, released to the wild years earlier, reunite with their humans
4.18.2015
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” - Albert Einstein
11.29.2013
***** Depression Update: "My Heart has been broken, overwhelmed, by the near total cruelty and inhumanity I now 'see' as the world we've made. Why isn't yours? I'm certain this explains Jesus, too.' Loving
11.25.2013
nd. EWOP (Experimenting Without Pleasure): It may be that each second I'm not pursuing pleasure, all that is left to me is to Be Loving. Hmmmm. So it is seeming. But it is early.
11.22.2013
***** Cancer Update vlog: WOW. WOW. WOW. I'M ALIVE, AGAIN.....
10.24.2013
Loving - That which will not, cannot rest, until it is Loving, Caring of, everything in creation. All else is Lusting.
10.15.2013
***** Life based on doing stuff for money, my God, how Insane. HOW JOYLESS!!! We are ALL SISTERS AND BROTHERS, FOR GOD'S SAKE. STOP THIS INSANITY!!!! IT IS IN THE FINAL STAGES OF DESTROYING ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. YOU KNOW THIS!!! WAKE UP. LEAD US OUT OF THIS!!!!
10.10.2013
Einstein: "Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living."
Einstein: "Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living."
10.08.2013
Albert Einstein: "A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Albert Einstein: "A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
***** pic. THE RIGHT, * Creatures of the Flesh - I Hate, therefore I am. THE LEFT, * Creatures of the Head - I Think, therefore I am. THE LIVING, * Creatures of the Heart - I am Unconditionally Loving, therefore I am.
10.04.2013
***** link, pic. Everything we have beyond what is needed for bare survival is the near exact measure of what we are stealing out of the mouths, and from over the heads, of today and tomorrow's destitute. Earth became a zero sum game in the 70's, objectively - that's when we passed the threashold where earth created more than we consumed each year. Now, all that we have beyond base human needs is literally out of the mouths of the destitute - present and future. I'd actually rather die, in a heartbeat, than do that. And, like those in that Economy of Happiness, I feel so aLive having largely separated myself from it.
