Some intellectual Fuck Up

Lateral thinking gets me NO-WHERE
In a world of infinite possibilities;
Like pissing in the wind
And clutching at straws -
Grabbing at the "What might have beens,"
Whilst stumbling along with what IS.

Your material successes reflect my failures,
Futile attempts evolve into negative impressions;
Low self-esteem borne out by oppression,
Spits in the face of free expression.
I am ALL of what I always NEVER wanted to be:
Living in BAD FAITH.

Man is defined insofar as he acts:
Rudderless vessels set adrift
Find their own compass
In seas of infinite possibility.
Drifting with the currents of popular belief
Till they find their own course.
Action-without-Action
Determines the results;
Born of non-being We Are
Empty creatures full
Of fruitless intellectual efforts.

Because some head exploded (One journey through insanity)

An impoverished Daemon sat, whispering
In a recess of the formative mind.
At first suggestive tendrils spread, slow
With paranoia, hate and dread - And
So the volume and the chaos climbed, till
Shouting obscenities: drowning and scrambling
Cognition most times - It strove to leech
And pervert an existence:
To thrive on fear, then break free,
By committing its' subject to play out suggestions;
Shaking the bars of its cerebral cell,
Chasing ruin through a now unquiet tortured mind,
Which manifest in desperate self-administered cuts;
Or blisters from some stubbed out fags;
Or bursts of violence: Unbalanced and Unjust.

A remorseless contest
In meta-realms of Subconscious
And the Conscious Prime,
Erupted from the core
And the façade fell all to pieces;
No longer troubled whole - but shattered Self,
Void - Devoid of any purpose left to call.
The rot took hold as isolation settled round,
Self-imposed Apartheid splits the rational and the lost.
And so the Daemon gorged and shat
On the imploded remnants in that head;
It fed and fed then choked to death
On one remaining gram of pride -
Barbed with a steeled drive for life -
Silently, patiently waiting deep inside.

For some years the captive wandered on,
In mental purgatory - Feeling Nothing and Caring less:
One of the many concealed dead who walk this world,
Popped full of pills to fix an illusion of existence
And permeate the void inside them:
Masking negativity, whilst suppressing positivity;
Another subject of the zombie state.

Then a psychiatric voodoo priest
Delved deep inside his alchemist chest,
And plucked from a medical book of conjecture
Yet another attempt at psychological salvation;
A tablet of Quetiapine - Etched
With symbols on its front and back:
One more calcium-based promise of hope.
Each day - One swallow flooded the being,
Disrupting each ling'ring fear-flecked shadow
Of the former lurking Daemon.
Cementing each surviving scrap
Of rationale and gentle ways,
Reforming values and distorted ethics,
Till a newly wired, rebuilt subject
Emerged with cautious concepts probing;
Testing out each new found process
As calmed order steadfast descended.

And so a Phoenix from the ashes -
With fewer foibles: Less fucked-up thinking -
Stood unaided, whole and stable,
Each thought its' own - no longer buckled:
Clear in purpose, strong and reasoned;
Bourne from the depths of silent sources.
An offspring of a quiet mind.

Prabhupada

I have just sent the following message to a YouTuber who is the follower of Prabhupada, a disciple of Hare Krishna:

Please don't think I am attacking you or mean you any wrong, I was listening to the Radha Krishna Temple album at home and Googled it, which led me to your YouTube channel. But after a brief visit to a couple of the links, I was left with a few questions I needed to pose to you concerning certain elements of your views. Furthermore, I like to be able to engage in philosophical exchanges as each one assists my comprehension and experience of this life, helping me to relate and empathise with others around the world and make sense of my observations and contemplations on life.

Please could you explain to me why you consider this enlightened man to be a divinity? Surely all that he is, is a human being who has attained a level of existence which allows him to glimpse at a clearer understanding of life above that which is not even contemplated by billions of closed, lost people around the world?

It always troubles me when I encounter beings who allow themselves to be revered as "gods," regardless of whether their intentions are for the good or for other ulterior motives. Jesus Christ; the Dalai lama; Halie Selassie; Sathya Sai Baba; His "holiness" the Pope. etc. etc.

I personally don't accept or believe any form of god exists simply because the concept requires believers to employ blind faith above everything else. Placing their lives and their "fates" in the hands of something which will never physically intervene to make any difference. Each beings' experiences and understanding of life is relative to that specific individual, none of us knows what is inside the head or heart of anyone else. A snail's concept of life is poles apart from from a bird's and the same is true for everything else. None of us can ever truly "know" what it is to be the other.

'Humanity's' understanding or concept of "god-head" is more or less the same regardless of which particular religion they follow: An otherworldly extra-dimensional life force which is responsible for and determines the existence of everything else in the universe. A creator or originator with some kind of divine plan or purpose for everything and everyone, who resides in another dimension considered to be a form of "heaven" or "Nirvana," where each of us might go if we have devoted ourselves freely to its prescribed subjection and oppression of the true self.

Maybe Prabhupada is different and the teachings you and he follow do not require acceptance of this form or mode of theology, however, I did read that he is not in agreement with Darwin's theory of evolution, claiming that it could not have occurred through an act of random chance. To which I would ask the question, "Why not?" Why is it not possible, if he himself has found a degree of enlightenment (and through doing so altered and shaped his own existence), for every other living thing which possesses a life force to achieve the same? Obviously this would be relative to the individual life force and subject to a myriad alternative experiential processes, but if each life force, after having negotiated an apparently random event, then retains the experience and conveys it to others within its species during its lifetime, so that they may prepare themselves for a similar occurrence happening to them, then wouldn't that original random event be the impetus for a "change" in the whole species over many generations?

It would not be enough to make claims that, "Maybe the event was not random because it was orchestrated by "God" in order to initiate the alterations and conditions needed for the life forms to continue to propagate and evolve," or, "Through reincarnation, the "Soul" or "Spirit" retains its past life experiences which in turn become the vehicle for change and the impetus for evolution to take place" because that would require the above mentioned act of faith and empirical scientific proof that everything is in fact ordered and predictable, which it is not. Furthermore, if the "Soul" is eternal and it carries its past experiences and knowledge through with it, then wouldn't that preclude the need for any new "souls" to come in to "being" after a set amount of time?

As a philosophical Taoist I can accept that certain "energies" are constant, after all it has been scientifically proven that matter can not be entirely destroyed, because of this I also ascribe to the notion that these "energies" become "re-cycled" or "reused" and "re-formed," however, my senses will not allow for me to accept that whole entities remain intact in the event of death, then proceed to take another "host" and get "re-born." Following "The Way" one becomes enlightened to the notion that our brief existence is the one and only opportunity to embrace the challenges and demands of life, our opportunity to be a living example of spiritual evolution. Through our interaction with others and by the choices we make given our relative circumstances, we alone have the ability to determine our "fate" and the direction of our lives. Whether we are born rich or poor; in England or in India; whatever the random circumstance into which we are born, we alone choose to be who we are.

As for trying to make guesses about whether there really is an afterlife or not, isn't it wiser just to accept and make the most of what we have in the physical world, rather than expending energy on preparing for the "after-life" based on divine conjecture?

I'm sorry if my arguments are clumsy and ill formed, hopefully, if you are willing and able to respond to this message, I will be able to redress this.

I will leave you with a chapter from "Tao Te Ching" which I feel is potentially hypocritical given my ramblings above, however, it may provide you with a little more insight as to why I am intuitively suspicious of organised religion and troubled by human "divinities," it is not specifically directed at anyone in particular,


71

Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realise that you are sick;
then you can move toward health

The Master is his own physician,
He has healed himself of all knowing.
Thus he is truly whole.

Lao Tzu.

Some thoughts on the demise of Michael Jackson and the subsequent hypocitical popularity explosion

If one were to comment upon the relatively recent emergence of a notoriety obsessed, credit driven, "get rich and famous quick!" mindset infecting vast swathes of the population right across the western world; with fulfilment being measured in the accumulation of wealth and "fame;" and the subliminally imposed, narcissistic aspirations of countless of misled millions resting upon "that one big break" to catapult them to "stardom." Then the overwhelming sense of grief and loss displayed by huge numbers of Michael Jackson "fans" serves to act as an example of how morally blinded and ethically selective people have become in their quest to identify with the cult of celebrity.

If Jackson had been an ordinary Joe Bloggs he would most undoubtedly have become a social pariah and more than likely have served time for certain offences. At the least he most probably would have been placed on some sort of register or surveillance order. But no, he was an above standard international multi-millionaire "star" who's foibles have always been passed off as a combination of eccentricity and the result of a difficult, abusive upbringing which left him vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous parties both inside and 'outside' the Jackson family. Reasons given, I might add, by thousands of prisoners and sex-offenders in their defence as to why they committed their crimes.

During his more controversial years Jackson was subject to a barrage of character assaults which cost most of his fortune and completely battered his reputation and moral standing. Even Jon Snow (Channel 4 News) admits in one of his blogs that, "the even stranger, even sinister, delight in the menagerie of young children with whom he consorted in his home, undermined my total appreciation of what he achieved." A sensation and opinion which once-upon-a-time reverberated throughout a number of people in Jackson's broad fan base, as it was whipped into a frenzy by almost the entire membership of global media networks.

Jon was most definitely not alone in his uncomfortably felt concerns regarding Jacko's interests. I for one can relate to Jon when he alludes to "strange" and "sinister" apprehensions, which automatically overshadowed any regards, respect or appreciation of Jackson's undoubted talent and gift for entertaining.

What concerns me however, is the observation that now Jacko is dead, people around the world are once more lauding his praises, selectively remembering his "best" bits and jumping on the band wagon to promote his kudos born of "fame."

The only way in which this switch of judgement and morals has been allowed to occur, is through blind public acceptance of an insidious form of ideology which promotes "celebrities" to a "higher order" among "average" human beings. A form of Demi-God status which places them above and outside the regular rules and terms which govern the realms of Terra firma.

Of course there have been numerous "stars" whose careers have ended due to a misdemeanour or two, but only a very small handful who have dodged the moral bullets and returned to their original Stella magnitude. Unfortunately I think Jackson was poised to become one of those 'forgiven' through misplaced concepts of 'truth.'.

According to existentialist theory,

"There is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give to it. People actually make decisions based on what has meaning to them rather than what is rational. That there are no values to be found in the world in-itself doesn't mean that there are no values: Each of us usually already has his values before a consideration of their validity is carried through, and it is, after all, upon these values we act. Making "choices" without allowing one's values to confer differing values to the alternatives, is, in fact, choosing not to make a choice - to "flip a coin," as it were, and to leave everything to chance. This is considered to be a refusal to live in the consequence of one's freedom, meaning it quickly becomes a sort of 'bad faith.'"

We encounter experiences every day which support this notion, as people are constantly making judgements based on how they "feel" about something. Their values are frequently challenged and each time they are required to make a decision, they will apply; emotion; personal historical experience; and their appropriated, circumstantially acceptable social morals, ethics, beliefs and values. It is the third of these foundations of decision making which holds most influence over the way people 'choose' to think and behave.

Hypocrisy is borne upon the dark wings of "Bad Faith," in the thousands of freshly inspired "Jacko jokes" doing the rounds; in the way people are so easily programmable and infinitely malleable, and so ready to follow the herd in their complicit acceptance and 'forgiveness' of wrongful deeds; And via the means of the masses to sell out on their values and judgement before the alter of Idolatry delights.