4:35 Brother, I’m no Adyashanti but I am Brian and I hear what you’re saying and doing with such painful clarity that my I can see Uranus. What in the hell does getting on with life mean? I’ve got a BA and a MA and if I get another degree, I’ll run a temperature. I have been in the Air Force and then Army ONLY to prove to my dad that I could be a commisioned Officer. I got it and became more depressed than when I had the freaking rank. I could be wrong, but I KNOW after years of torture and moments of grand clarity that what you want is what we all want. And it has little to do with inward wanting but outward expectations. If you are not good enough without a fucking degree, you’ll never be good enough with a fucking degree. I normally don’t curse but perhaps I’m now abnormal and I’m good with that. You are creating confusion by being everyone but YOU. Who are you? Are you living life and is there a LIFE that is living you -- accepting EVERYTHING about you regardless of accomplishments or externals? The Life living you, is the Life that refuses to go along with the societal game and feel good enough by getting a God damned degree. You are a wonderfully loving and caring, tender and compassionate person and anyone who listens to this can tell that. I recall a family session I had before I was FIRED as a therapist because I helped people but not quickly enough. I was wrong nonetheless for being slow with paper work. This boy’s mother who had beaten the boy and who the boy had gotten in to conflicts with his mom and dad over some pretty bad sexual abuse within the whole family was speaking and out of nowhere the mom said: “Fuck, all I want for Justin is to come back home and find an apartment and be a productive member of society.” A Productive Member of Society. PMS regardless of gender. What I posed as a question was NOT me but a part of me that was fearless and compassionate towards the boy whom I was charged and WANTED to help. I said: “Okay, I understand I think. Let’s say that I give you all 15 minutes to be alone on this pretty day at this picnic bench and talk while I run up to Taco Bell and get me a Burrito real quick and come back to finish this session so your mom can get back to Florence. And as you talk and see me drive off towards the entrance to the group home’s exit onto the highway, you hear a horrible SMASH and know immediately that I was T-Boned by a car and likely either dead or in very bad conditon. And let’s say that Jerry, you’re still here 6 months from now and your mother comes for yet another family session and you both wait to finally see me in a wheelchair I operate with my mouth as I arduously make my way to the picnic table we met at when I was healthy. And what you notice is that I am still a paid and productive member of society (either from pity or some lingering potential to help) as I near the table. I paused and asked them both: ‘Would you all still want me to be your therapist in spite of my being paralyzed from the neck down much like Christopher Reed?” The boy immediately and even enthusiasctically replied: “Of course! You’s still be Mr. Brian who I love and who had helped me over the past 16 months!” The young man and I looked at his mother and she shifted and looked down and her face turned pale as she remained silent as she got up and walked away up towards the parking lot. But what I still cry over was the boy’s loyalty not only to me but the love he had within himself and what compelled him as he looked almost defiantly at his mom when he said: "Of course! You’s still be Mr. Brian who I love and who had helped me over the past 16 months!”
Faith without works is said to be dead. Works without a clue much less faith is futile. Not saying to NOT DO anything. Is your intention to DO based from fear or love? A Jewish Rabbi told me that using God’s name if vain had nothing to do with our fearful word addicted superficiality. He said that saying: “God damn” was not the vanity but speaking the word of Yahweh (minus the vowels) was tantamount to saying. “God bless you brother, I’ll pray for ya!” Don’t say it because all insincertiy is vainglorious moonshine. As soon as we have God in our Jesus in the Box pocket, we have no clue because we’re more concered with certitude than knowing that we don’t know.
"Mere words have something of quicksand about them. Only experience is the rope thrown to us.” I read a poem recently written by someone I felt I knew and it makes more sense now than when this guy wrote it years ago.
One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bellwether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bellwethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made,
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed — do not laugh —
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet.
The road became a village street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare,
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed that zigzag calf about,
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They follow still his crooked way,
And lose one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah, many things this tale might teach
But I am not ordained to preach.
People, places, positions and possessions are the things rocks dream of.
