All this struggle to keep up with the Joneses, strife, strife, strife.
And by backstabbing, by scapegoating, by blaming someone, by taking someone down, by looting pensions, why?
What for?
What is all the luxury?
A few years of obscene indulgence.
Ridiculous.
How alluring is it really?
Why add to it?
Screw it.
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Mad human diseaseWaxing poetic upon the waning of enchantments
by Carl Pwccaman, Unknown News
Jan. 12, 2004
Thus though above the Harmony, within the Harmony he hath become a slave. ...and though he's sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].
—Poemandres [Shepherd of Men] v15, from the Hermetic Corpus Though distracted, confused, thrown this way and that, eventually I was able to steer myself more into my right mind, letting the fleeting thoughts be fleeting, letting them go, I can deal with them later, stepping past confusion of obsessive anxious wondering, resisting the push and pull all around me at least enough to see a little more clearly. I don't know how many times I'd tried relaxation or de-stressing techniques, or attempted to focus my mind, but finally I was able to get relaxed but focused, achieving a good balance. Getting better. Feeling adventuresome about paying better attention going about my day.
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 | Did you ever try to pay attention while driving? I mean, not getting sidetracked by anything else but the road conditions, other drivers, speed, steering, the feel of the car seat and the wheel in your hands, the sounds of the road. Try it sometime. I'm not talking about self-hypnosis or relaxation techniques here, or New Age visualization, but simple mindfulness on what you are doing.
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It occurred to me, that when I drive, it is, what, a thousand some pound vehicle, going very very fast, and force times acceleration is scary to think about at anything over 40 miles per hour. I tried to pay attention to driving on the beltway going 70. Seemed like a good idea. But it was strange. It wasn't scary in a panic sort of way, but it was disturbing in an enlightening kind of way, how much my mind wavered on this or that, something totally irrelevant to driving, pictures in my mind, sounds and conversations that BLOCKED by view of the road, KEPT me from being aware at all, consciously, of cars around me or my speed or steering, like blanking out or something, going someplace else... in a car speeding on the beltway with oh so many cars.
I was astonished at the danger and the safety all at once. Here I was, automatically and unconsciously driving, most of the time, relying on my unconscious or automatic responses to pull my conscious awareness back, when required because of someone swerving into my lane, people merging from a ramp, trucks looming close, keeping track of exits, watching speed because I just spotted a police car or a 'regular' car with too many antennas for it to be just a CB buff, if you know what I mean... Any how, I had no clue how much was accomplished under such scattered conditions. Perfect mindfulness can wait, apparently unconscious automation is very effective, but I had no idea just how much I relied upon it, under such dangerous conditions, when you think about it, and when I was alert (relatively speaking, at least for me, anyhow), and trying to be 'good' about being focused and responsible at driving. It seemed more focus would be a good thing, more mindfulness. It also seemed that straining to be perfect was doomed to frustration. So oddly enough, I felt relaxed and more awake, at the same time, more aware of the fleeting nature of my consciousness... and even when it was more focused than usual!!
The body shifts, always a discomfort some times, like when trying to get some sleep, trying to relax, trying to ignore pain, hungry, dealing with hormones. Or snoring. My partner had bronchitis or something, snored up a storm. Irritated the hell out of me. But you know it only gets worse when you know you'd be a real jerk to make an issue out of it because the offending party is sick and could use some sympathy. The first couple minutes, despite a struggle, didn't seem bad, but then it started up again, so I nudged gently. You know those sorts of whines that are so pathetic, weak, sick, mingled with a miserable groan, that make you feel like an asshole? Yeah, I decided not to nudge; I decided to just deal with it. I wasn't going to add to the humiliation of being sick, or the confusion of someone who just started to get comfortable and go to sleep thanks to codeine. Besides, the doctor said coughing that hard put hairline fractures in some ribs.
So a couple minutes later, the straw broke the camel's back, and I wanted to run out of the room screaming. You know, because it just wasn't right to suggest a different sleeping position. The sort of empathy mixed with frustration that makes you want to pull hair out, or start eating your own hair. Don't know why it was so infuriating, but it was MY problem, that I was sure of. I made a game out of it, and focused on each of my breaths, making them in sync with her, and seeing my own breathing from the point of view of her snoring, as if I was the one snoring. It still irritated the hell out of me a couple times, but after a while I actually went to sleep. Amazing! It was so much better than the last night. So the next night I did it again, and it worked again. It even worked more quickly. It was like a glimpse of change with acceptance, seeing the snoring in and out, noting the differences in tone of each snore, feeling my own breaths in sync, I could easily be the snoring one, the irritant, any day in the future. What was one form or another, one lung or snore or breath or another? One body or another?
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| There's that Tantric meditation where someone goes to a charnel ground and meditates at midnight upon the corpses. I think I understood some of that, just then. I mean the body just is what it is, does what it does. Why add to misery by wanting something that isn't going to happen, wanting to stay fixed at a certain state, when everything changes? Shoot, once when I was physically anxious, jittery, irritated, I just thought about the body shifting from one form to another, from this body to rotting corpse to mushrooms, to digested food in an animal, to shit, to a new plant, and told my body, “hey, the irritation will be gone soon enough, then there will be something nice, then something not so nice, and so on, it won't last forever. Just explore the next state and the next one, it's cool. Wow, one day you can be mushrooms, even. Chill” and I have to admit I felt less anxious, it passed, at least I struggled less against the anxiety, and engaged it enough to see past it to something else, a better state of mind, and I wasn't too upset when the next irritation came. I'll take minor miracles. |
All the advertising, all the addictions, all the desires, why get so pressured, why feed it, why believe the lies? What do I really need? And why do I even need that? How can I be free if I always need and want and get seduced by sweet nothings?
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But for now, the reality of Mad Cow disease, is pressing on my mind. It was brought to my attention how calves are fed blood and scrapings off the slaughterhouse floor, and how cows, really all animal food, is treated in some manner with oils that come from road-kills that have had the oils/fats extracted/rendered.
Herbivores have been fed blood and animal fats? I don't know about you, but the terms perversion and abomination come to my mind. Cows eat grass. Corn husks. Come on, now. What ignorant greed leads to this sort of thinking? How can anyone think this type of cost-cutting is sane?
I'm not a vegetarian, I don't think it's our fault that humans are omnivores, we have to eat, and eating vegetables destroys plants, too, and taking antibiotics destroys bacteria. I'd just prefer not to subject baby cows to what they go through to get veal on the plate, so I stopped eating veal about a little more than a decade ago. But now I reacted quickly, all steak and ground beef is out of my diet. A couple days ago, with the Mad Cow news, I decided free-range and organic stores were the best place to go, at least for sausage, beef, etc. But I'm not all that motivated anymore to bother at all with beef, or processed foods/sausages with beef. If someone offers it to me, I'll probably eat it, I don't want to turn down a generous meal. But in general, I feel like I did after I got sick of the Atkins diet, only it's more pronounced and focused on beef. I mean, on Atkins after almost two months, I was so sick of meat meat meat, it was like, overdone, so excessive, they say you need to have more variety with meal planning, well it just wasn't for me. I still don't eat all the damn carbs and sugar, but I eat more veggies and fruit and much less meat than I ever did, thanks to Atkins. It's like Tantra again. I got sick of meat. I went meatless for a couple days, without bingeing on carbohydrates, when I stopped Atkins. Maybe I found some balance. Well, now I'm looking at all that advice that white meats and fish were healthier, and saying, yeah, and at least fish aren't fed animal carcasses and blood, other than what they swallow normally plus the pesticides and mercury.
You know, I'm glad that I don't value my way of life, or really have “a” way of life to feel like I'm going to miss it. Because the more I think about it, the more I realize how much energy I used to put into being this way or that way, doing things one way or another, having this opinion or that, and how changing things was more drastic, felt more traumatic. Shoot, I'm going to die one day, and it isn't all about me. I prefer integrity to my current way of coping with the world, if there should be a conflict. And I might cry like a baby if I have to change, but really, did you ever quit a job because your boss was doing a website for a mail-order-bride company? Ever radically change jobs? Ever accept defeat? It all tore me up, but since those things, I'm not going to beat myself up or get stuck on some company or boss or career or something, and get all rigid. If my lifestyle is not sane, is just awful in its impact on others and I can do something else, well then I'm doing it. I don't feel at all compromised by eating meat, like I said before, if we can be respectful and do things mercifully, well that's the world we live in and you gotta eat, but this Mad Cow thing, and the fact that it is caused by some of these bad practices, just re-affirms my conviction that beef has nothing for me anymore.
And as a society, I found out that much of Europe is following the international standards for food handling to prevent Mad Cow, but the US is not!! Our society has to wake up. Europe needs to wake up about some things too, but our selfishness and perversity is astounding. Spinal meat isn't the only issue here. Rendered oils in animal foods, including the ones that go to our pets, are not right. When humans eat human brains, they get diseases. Well, brains get rendered from road kill at the rendering plant too, so a lot of animals are getting brain proteins/fats, and some are getting way too much for their body to handle it, and we eat their meat, and we give some of the same food to our pets. I know not all of them get sick, but eventually some of the animals get sick, and eventually some of us can get sick, and some people wonder if that is how Alzheimer's got started. Or at least, that it contributes... like a mini Mad Human. And to add insult to injury, it seems that bones with Mad Cow in them have been sent to six restaurants, but regulations prohibit the government from releasing the names of the restaurants that it was shipped to; the names of two markets were released, but not restaurants; for the record I wonder if any franchises with a clown, king, or talking dog mascot were involved.
I don't know enough of the science, but it is plain to me that herbivores shouldn't be getting any blood, animal protein, or animal fat, period. The cattle lobby, and the department of Agriculture, and the Bush Administration, can't be ignoring this issue. But they might succeed. In any case, I know that I'm not eating beef, even if they pay me. It isn't just politics, it is a stand against REAL perversity, against REAL abomination.
So anyhow, our way of life can blow, it's going to change and modify anyhow, why not accept that and in some cases look forward to it. In any case, if change is so bad I'm just going to be frustrated. Change happens.
And as things change, in that flux, I can see vitality. Raw experience, raw sensation, a clearer picture of reality, of sensation before the assumption of perception. Just as the raw physical sensations of anxiety, without the brain adding to it all its speculations and reactions, is easier to deal with, easier to see the reality of it, sometimes the word 'steak' becomes a mere sound, a set of phonetic utterances, that point to something we sometimes do in our weird lifestyle, and the ways we raise that portion of meat, and it all disappears, dissolves into something besides my food, something besides a meal, something there, with all its reality before me, but with the nonsensical unnecessary perversity of this world glaring up at me, and the fact that all of us will die, impressing itself upon me. Something like the snoring episodes. When sound becomes raw phenomenon, when sight is seen as raw color and shape, when words are seen as exhaled breath shaped by the mouth, when touch and smell are understood just as they are experienced, it's like that point before recognition is highlighted. All sorts of possibilities of patience, of change of lifestyle, of freedom from irritation, of clearer experience of reality, of peeling away assumptions and programmed reactions, and true vitality, are now possible. All this energy is available for better things.
The true self, my core reality, the ground-of-consciousness that experiences, deep within, can speed along and cut through all the obstacles to my integrity, all the barriers to my development of conscience, all the distortions of my relationships, all the things that prevent me from relating in compassion and wisdom.
We get energy from gaining what we want, we are oppressed by energy when we get what we want to get rid of, we expend energy to acquire and to avoid, all this increase and decrease, all this slavery, what is it to us? I don't want it, I can give back what is offered... thank you know, I don't need to get all enthused or afraid or angry about it. I don't want this gift, I don't fear that gift, whatever. I get sick, I get healthy, sure I want to promote healing, but I can get obsessive with these cycles of nature, cycles of social trends, and all that. Enough!
Plotting, plotting, plotting. All this machination and treachery. What a waste. Enough!! I don't have to feed it, what if we all stopped feeding it. Maybe we'd see solutions more clearly. Maybe we'd just stop reacting to being so controlled. Maybe our moral high ground would shine.
All the advertising, all the addictions, all the desires, why get so pressured, why feed it, why believe the lies? What do I really need? And why do I even need that? How can I be free if I always need and want and get seduced by sweet nothings?
What difference does anyone's opinion matter, that I should dominate or be arrogant? Why fuel my own self-importance? Does it really get something done, to play that way? It gets people to react against me, it puffs me up, it makes me blind, it give people something to lure me with flattery, that's all. It has not hold over me.
Rashness, audacity, why? Why not take it or leave it? Why be swayed by my ire and rage, or even rebellion? Why be controlled by reaction? What does it get me? Look at it, my gosh, it just afflicts me, demands action of me, makes me full of confusion, so I can't think straight! Who needs it?
All this struggle to keep up with the Joneses, strife, strife, strife. And by backstabbing, by scapegoating, by blaming someone, by taking someone down, by looting pensions, why? What for? What is all the luxury? A few years of obscene indulgence. Ridiculous. How alluring is it really? Why add to it? Screw it.
And the seductive lies that trap, the illusions, the delusion of self-importance, self-centeredness, as if our domination or delusions or greed amounted to anything in the scheme of infinite time and space, as if the outcome was so important, as if getting our way was more important than integrity, character, one's ability to look in the mirror and see a living spark of consciousness and compassion that is glorious? 24. Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now, pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for me].
To this Man-Shepherd said: When the material body is to be dissolved, first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of life, void of its energy, unto the Daimon. The body's senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.
25. And thus it is that man doth speed his way thereafter upwards through the Harmony.
To the first zone he gives the Energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second [zone], Device of Evils [now] de-energized; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arrogance, [also] de-energized; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity, de-energized; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means, deprived of its aggrandizement; and to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood, de-energized.
26. And then, with all the energisings of the harmony stript from him, clothed in his proper Power [...] They who are there welcome his coming there with joy; and he, made like to them that sojourn there, doth further hear the Powers who are above [...] Why shouldst thou then delay? Must it not be, since thou hast all received, that thou shouldst to the worthy point the way [...]
—Poemandres [Shepherd of Men] v 24-25, from the Hermetic Corpus
© 2003, by the author.
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