Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Variations on a Theme

Theme: Responsibility. You always hear that we should be responsible for our actions. Actions are easy. The subtler point may be that it is our attitudes, our intentions which we must be responsible for as well.

I keep telling myself: Be responsible for your own mind! But it happens to be a damn hard thing to do. Here's some excerpts from a person calling himself 'Proteus'. The comment (good luck finding it) is about 1/3 of the way down the whole page (look for 10:03 am--the time is listed at the bottom of each comment).

It is one of the few meditations--dense as it may be--on authority and power(of which I have always had a problem with)--that struck me in the same way that many Zen writings have: like a good shot of ice-cold water to the face. On the other hand, it does seem a bit 'Adbuster-ish' in its all-inclusive cynicism and implication of depression or mental illness. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the author is a contributor to Adbusters.

"Authority exists only in the vacuum of our lack of awareness."

" The solution lies within, yet we opine and swim in our own excrement and ponder why we are becoming ill. It seems that we are manifesting a reality so grim that we are making our complacency impossible to ignore."

" The journey is inwards. So you don't like the tactics of the State? Guess what? We reconstruct it every day. This is where the false dichotomies presented through politics and religion reflect the underlying truth to us."


-Cover Art from Pink Floyd's Animals


I am becoming more and more convinced that reality demands one thing from us. Recognition.

I am also becoming more and more convinced that the older I get the more and more reality demands to be faced. But still I don't want to face it. In fact I have gotten quite good at not facing it. Or, in other words, I have gotten quite good at suffering.

Being convinced generally leads to convictions… of which I am convinced are quite dangerous unless they can be dropped quickly and easily when the time comes to drop them.

4 comments:

gniz said...

I like your style, Muddy.

Good post, keep bloggin brotha!

muddy elephant said...

Thanks gniz. Hopefully I'll get another post up soon.

Your blog has been kicking ass lately.

Sounder said...

Hey muddy, good pickup on the proteus comments.

People are doing good by blogs when they extend the life of these passing ephemeral elements.

The following is also from Proteus..
Great stuff, Jeff.
It seems that we are willing to eviscerate ourselves every nanosecond in the guise of avoiding suffering. Yet without the absurdities of geopolitics and warfare, how would we be collectively compelled to turn inwards? I have come to see material causation as illusory as the sermons given by today's Freemasonic cultists (Hello, Mr. Robertson). We are face-to-face with our shadow. Do we externalize and feign ignorance, pointing outward at those poor souls who are poisoned by Self and watch "helplessly" as the whole mess is flown into the sea? Or do we stop playing the X-Box, stop fucking away the pain, stop being so willfully ignorant of our own destiny, and calmly remember that we have always been the pilots? Our Gods are dying. Let them go or die with them. Only the servile and selfish will continue to piss on their birthright of creative expression made manifest.

Each and every one of us is capable of enlightenment. I like Michael Tsarion's take on enlightenment having more to do with weight than light. When we are troubled and then relieved of the perceived cause, do we not feel like the weight has been taken off our shoulders? Taking on the role of Atlas is a choice. Swimming in externalized shadow projections is a choice. There will always be someone from central casting ready to feed on our cowardice as a means of our unconscious confronting us.

I have witnessed the battle between Ego and the unconscious through ritual a few times. One is presented with the option to journey inwards or to remain in servitude to the Ego. The first time one goes through the ritual, they almost never let go completely, leaving their dreams to reveal things at a later date. But the beauty lies in the fact that for the first time, one actually has a frame of reference for their shadow. I have learned that if I am not in communication with my shadow, it will pass through all of the layers of consciousness to make itself known. This gives the illusion of gravity to the walking, breathing, smoldering archetypes we are facing today. Behind the face we see in the mirror lies a grinning skull.


[ Complimentary paragraph removed. It references my tip to visit Paul Levy's site (www.awakeninthedream.com). The following is from Levy.]

"What is happening within us, the microcosm, is a reflection of the same process that is happening collectively, in the macrocosm. Just like the dark other within ourselves is the very figure that can awaken us to a greater and more comprehensive state of being, the darkness that is playing out on the world stage can potentially activate the light of consciousness in our species, thus serving as a catalyst for collective evolution. Jung said, “And so we can draw a parallel: just as in me, a single individual, the darkness calls forth a helpful light, so it does in the psychic life of a people.”

Becoming intimately acquainted with the dark other within us empowers us to relate with and effectively deal with the darkness in the outer world. The inner experience of getting into conscious relationship with and integrating the other within ourselves is reflected in the outside world, as the more we embrace the other within us, the more we are able to re-connect with others in the outside world, and vise-versa.

Any one person integrating the darkness within themselves could be, as Jung said, “the makeweight that tips the scales,” precipitating a realization in the collective psyche of all humanity. Because we are all interconnected, we can co-relate, inter-act and hook up with each other to become the instruments through which our lucidity becomes collectively made real (materialized) in space and time. We are then able to intervene en masse and change the dynamics and direction of the waking dream we are sharing. We are being invited by the universe to be the engines of our own, as well as the universes’, evolution. It is an invitation we should not decline. Let us assent and say “yes” to what is being freely offered to us."

- Paul Levy from his article "Meeting The Other Within"

Namaste, dear friends. It is time for us to go to work.
12:24 AM


I am looking forward to future distillations, so thanks.

muddy elephant said...

Sounder this is great stuff. It is inspiring to say the least. If I wasn't so detached haha it would've brought a tear to my eye.

"Because we are all interconnected, we can co-relate, inter-act and hook up with each other to become the instruments through which our lucidity becomes collectively made real (materialized) in space and time."

Amazing to think that we have now--literally at our fingertips the 'instruments' (though any actual lucidity on my part is completely accidental and probably nowhere to be found). The sparks are finally flying from our collective forge of ideas...

" Behind the face we see in the mirror lies a grinning skull."

Thanks.