WRITING ABOUT MYSTICS, SPIRITUAL QUESTS, GNOSTIC GOSPELS, REALIZATION (FOUNDATION EXPERIENCE) MYSTERIES INVESTIGATED, REPORTS ON THE WEIRD AND THE STRANGE,THE SAVAGE AND INANE; STAYING IN THE ZONE, OVERCOMING REPRESSIONS OF ALL KINDS - HUMOUR WHENEVER POSSIBLE...TO PENETRATE THE THIN MEMBRANE INTO THE EXISTENCE OF A DEEPER AND DARKER REALITY AND REPORT BACK TO YOU.
In that I'm a writer... I have to spend long periods
of time alone. I've accepted this, and I don't really mind it to be honest with you... And I always try to be honest with you, dear reader, after all you're not a hanging judge.... Or at least, you're not my judge - so I can be honest with you. In all this time that I spend by myself, I tend to listen to songs I love. And I cry in my beer during the love songs. Only sometimes... But this song is problematic... OK, this song renders me, occasionally, to my hands and knees... and to crawling to some corner where I cannot be observed... sobbing in a most unmanly fashion.
Carrickfergus is a TRADITIONAL IRISH love song. And if you listen to it five or six times in a row, you'll notice certain facts that make the gorgeous melody, the story even more disturbing.
The singer is drinking all the way through the song. It's important to understand this - for the hopes that he "I would swim over the deepest ocean" or "With gold and silver I would support her"... these are unrealistic and impossible dreams which make the song even more tragic.
For there's no way our singer is ever going to swim far over or support her. "My childhood friends have all departed".... That means they've died. So the singer is no longer any spring chicken - and even if he were a spring chicken, there's no way he's going to make it across that body of water between Ireland and England North/Scotland. Ah, but he loves her. And there's no doubt about that! How do I know? Because it's a rule. If the melody is beautiful - he loves her! "I am sick now..." well, yeah. He's not going to make it, but the romantic dream of his love fills his heart, and that's true. Otherwise there's no way he could sing about her with such a beautiful melody. At least this is my belief. And I'm sticking to it.
Images of death are all through this song (Kilkenny - marble stones as black as ink)... "My days are numbered." Yeah, well all our days are numbered... as a specialist explained to me in the hospital this morning.
The deepest ocean... the deepest ocean - my love to find... (Now "the handsome boatman" suggests to me that once this song was sung by a woman... But let's not worry about who sings it, now.)
At any rate, a great song! I hope my few comments do not detract from the beauty of the ballad.
This slideshow is of random pictures, but the next one won't be. I don't know how to combine audio and video yet for Youtube. Please excuse repetitions and photos of typed pages (?) Where did they come from?
Since I'm writing about music so much, and the joys of playing on stage, together with the scuzzy backstage dressing rooms and rooms under the stage and rooms up a circular ladder above the stage...and the parties we had there and in nearby hotels; and serious conversations into the dawn, and laughter and comic routines all night long, and laughter, laughter and loud music... after already playing for hours... a good jam always made sense. And some of the best songs were written in the wee, small hours of the morning. The idea is to tell the stories around each song, as a sort of living framework put together into a musical round... playing guitar and learning how to use the mike, and how to keep a crowd interested, how to hide behind towers of amplifiers, then creep out on your hands and knees and start to sing a love song.... How to use all the stage equipment and the psychology of dealing with the crowd - until you are an expert. My memory isn't great about a whole lot of things... But I remember where I was and what was happening, and who was where, when I wrote each song. So I'm going to do this - a partially audio book. If the wind don't come up and the waters don't rise!
Problem is, when you put a song on Youtube, the songs need a video component. So I'm starting with slideshows. Tho I don't know how to add the music - add original music, which seems to be more difficult than just grabbing a tune from a list. So this is my first try at adding a video-like component. Unfortunately, the audio track has not yet been added, because I don't know how. Many songs to come.
So I'm riding down Main Street on my smallish, rusted red woman's bicycle. Apparently my silver hair flies behind me about 2 feet, which looks funny to some people; and it look's horribly offensive to other people. Some of the burly truck loaders and box deliverers, they are horribly angered by my very appearance. And the fact that I appear to be quite satisfied with my meager means of conveyance. Granted, my bicyle is not a car. But the wind is in my face when I ride it and weave thru traffic, I like this. But some people are deeply offended - like this less than intelligent 300 pound delivery boy, an errand boy really despite his appearance as a man. Now I am master of one martial art, the kindest one on earth - judo. And I am highly proficient fighting with staffs, steel pipes, 12 inch blades and full long swords. I happened to have a sword with me, tho no one could tell by my elderly, apparently weakened demeanour... I could have circled around and removed his head as he was bent forwards trying to read the words on his delivery form. Shout in my ear, will you? As I pass by on a pleasant shopping jaunt, with my former lady, ex and sometimes not so ex woman who was riding her bike right before me, as we both pedaled down the street. No one would have been the wiser. No one was watching. No one cared.
(1) It is best if your enemy underestimates you drastically.
He,too, has found conscious entities through various membranes beyond time - riding the wave of semi-legal BRAIN CHEMISTRY.
I'm told he's dead: I expect to see him at any time.
The little people exist
all right. And there are more of them
than anyone ever imagined!
The problem is, it took me three days
with no sleep in order to see the little people
And I was usually drinking something, too
I never saw them otherwise - unless I had
gone without sleep for the requisite three nights - and that's not easy. I used to do it frequently. "Exhausting the brain."
Terrence found an easier way to enter into
forbidden and unknown realms. He used D.M.T.,
which is a natural chemical in the human brain.
If you starve yourself for about a week,
you will start to experience the same kind of
visions you will experience if you boost the
DMT in your system. 'Exhausting the body.'
I have done it and it's not pleasant -
the streetcars get very annoying as they squeal
around corners when they make their turns.
Sometimes it's better to ingest a medicine
in order to effect the improvement in brain
chemistry, rather than engage in extreme practices.
The shamans have been doing it for thousands of years.
Why not we?
The early Christians ingested
the Sacred Mushroom ("Eat this, this is my body").
After that the knowledge of the sacred mushroom was repressed. Mushroom use is esoteric knowledge.
Not for the masses. Ho! Ho!
And look where we are now, because of this repression. The churches are screwed. Communion is meaningless.
When Christ said, "Eat this, this is my body." He
was being literal!
I am talking about the nature of the original Christian Communion. They used wine and the flesh of the sacred mushroom. If you ate the flesh of the gods,
you yourself would undergo an experience of divinity.
You didn't have to take some priest's word
that holiness was real. You embodied it.
??Many of the words in the New Testament
are code mushroom words.
SEE: johnallegro.org for his brilliant delineation
of the hidden mushroom words. See especially the INDEX in the back of his book, "THE SACRED
MUSHROOM AND THE CROSS."
John Allegro was brilliant in his methods, sussing out the derivation of language all the way back to the Sumerian. His thesis is now ACCEPTED by most independently
thinking etymologists working today, including one well-respected Russian professor professor, who affirms Allegro with gusto. It is generally accepted these days that John Allegro's perspective on the meaning of words in the New Testament is the correct view, however unpalatable Allegro's findings may be to the churches.
(Despite being right, John Allegro's
honesty about the Christ and the mushroom
being intimately related, this courageous
truth-telling resulted in him being mocked
and rejected. It ruined his career.)
*
?? We have to discuss the basic right of PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEVELOPMENT. We must encode it into our CONSTITUTIONS and BILLS OF RIGHTS.
For this is the paramount right. The right to explore and control one's own mind, and make meaningful decisions.
Without having this right and encoding it into law, all the other rights we supposedly have become meaningless.
This is a topic for another day. I'm having way
too much fun writing this article to get bogged
down in a legal argument.
This is a central legal issue. And
it is always much more pleasing , in the realm of Constitutional Law, to argue a principle that is
entirely correct.
The right to explore your
own consciousness and think independently
goes to the very foundation of the law of nations
I am extremely serious about the necessity
to encode this basic right, but let's not
make the argument now.
Exploring Inner Consciousness itself, the FINAL FRONTIER is far more interesting than making legal arguments. Though the above mentioned argumnent will have to be made,
and it will be fascinating to make it.
Think of this: in a democracy
one man is required to vote. But how can a person vote
without totally exploring the ground of his being. The very principle of democracy is based on the freedom to derive one's own opinion - freedom of thought and freedom of speech without restriction or restraint.
Certain medications, fuels and foods are necessary for deep thought
for the individual to fully form his own
opinion - in order to properly make the democratic decision.
Medicines that illuminate the mind and increase the vision of the brain, we must use
such substances. It is necessary that such medicines be legal.
Why should we restrict ourselves from using these necessary shamanistic plants?
Chemicals are important.
Emotions are carried through the human body
as chemicals, peptides.
Is it so strange that
an organic chemical messenger should gives us
our first taste of holiness? Our first taste of the Lord who rides the clouds, the Lord of the Meeting Rivers, the Lord who is the mirror within us, the sacredness of all things?
God uses chemicals. Why is it improper
to find Him with the assistance
of chemicals?
To find the Universe of the Mind within us, explore the ocean of the real...the God Molecule
exists to help make us see the nature of the sacred.
We have been taught such utter crap. It
is necessary to unlearn all one's upbringing, all one's schooling, in order to be able to begin
to see.
It is urgent that we begin to know the divinity
around us, the incandescenc
which is the spirit-heart-mind burgeoning within us.
Consciousness travels in mysterious ways - but it does travel. And it reaches into our innermost being.
Distractions are not enough to nourish
the soul, we must have the vision of what is precisely before us, exactly in the here and now.
Whatever fuels are needed, we must use and
approve them.
The Sacred Mushroom - it is essential to use it in the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion. It is necessary for the religious use of an indigenous sect - the Christians. Because it is essential for a religion to perform its most important sacrament, it must be approved by the Courts.
The more we are different the more we are the same.
Each generation believes it is going
to change the world.
I suppose this is supreme
arrogance; but at the same time it is each generation's Grail quest... contained within this beautiful, caring arrogant dream.
The earth does not need to change... we need to change; we have meditative work to do to to attain to the wisdom of dogs! let alone meet the level which is the
sensitive, inter-related wisdom of the earth.
Some work can be done in the spirit of play. Dolphins play in
the deep blue sea. Why can't
we?
Dolphins have bigger brains
per body size then we do. But we
make up for that. We have hands,
Fingers with opposing thumbs!
We can throw things over an
intermediate distance with
amazing accuracy.
Dolphins might be smarter
than we are, but we are more dangerous. Have you ever seen a dolphin
light a fire?
*
Elizabeth used to travel 150 miles
in order to visit me and clean my kitchen.Then she'd get naked and run a bath and we'd b
hop in. She was a very attractive
woman... so I'd want to have sex.
More than once she said: "Oh, no!"
"Billy, Billy, Billy!......Man is a playful creature."
She wouldn't have sex with me. She said:
"If I have sex with you now, you'll never
write about me."
Well, we had no sex,
and I'm writing about her now
thirty years later. I guess she was right about
a few things.
*
The more things change, the more they
remain the same. Talking about the passing
of generations,
I was amazed when I discovered that
bellbottoms were in fashion once again in the 1990's.
I was running a large bar at the Concert Hall
in Toronto (Davenport and Yonge). That's
where I saw the returning bellbottoms
on folks attending the concerts. Those pants hadn't been in fashion since the late sixties.
Also, I swear I saw a clone of Lionel Ritchie!
The clone was singing exactly the
same kind of songs that Lionel Ritchie used to sing. The same party was going on, but a different generation was doing the dancing.
Things recycle and return in human affairs,
.... even people. Archetypal
identities recur.
I used to sit by the sidewalk and
watch the crowds pass on Yonge St., Toronto.
The crowds passed and I watched them and I saw
the same karmic groups strolling past, with almost identical faces as those I had seen decades before. The same groups recur.
Again and again they pass... and it seems as if I am watching again.
Maybe I am fulfilling an archetypal role also. The role of the poet- observer. This role has a long lineage, going all the way back to Homer. I was sitting by the sea once, north of Louisberg...
The earth does not need to change.
The human world, of course, does need
to change. We can't keep shitting in
our water supply.
I'm using the word, "shitting"
as a metaphor for all the nasty poisons,
twisted chemicals and substances
we create in city dumps... to leach
out and poison the groundwater.
And the sources of our food.
A large pipeline company
analyzed the chemicals leaching
out of the old city dump in North Bay
and they found thousands of chemicals -
including chemical compounds that are unknown
to man!
It's not fair to point at just North Bay. All of us know this. The mechanical
monster we made to serve us - this monster
can do much to effect the clean-up, if we have the will. The clean-up
will take time - maybe fifty years - before tuna
can thrive again in the ocean's depths.
And if we only live once, we can say, "Fuck it! I'll be gone. Who cares!" But what if we don't live just once? What if the eternal return is a certainty?
Chemicals are important. The emotions we feel are carried through the blood as
chemical messengers. We embody hundreds
and thousands of chemical processes, most of them
life-giving.
We have to change our way of thinking and
That's not easy. "Be the change you want to make in the world" *
Michael Jackson's song, "Man in the Mirror," is apt.
Most of the mystics are very aware.
It really does come down to the Man in the Mirror.
The mirror, amazingly enough,
even if it is a metaphorical mirror, the
mirror comes into evidence
in most mystical pursuits, after a certain amount of sitting is done.
I see the shining face of Philip
Kapleau, zen master of the Rochester
Zen temple, the man in large part responsible
for bringing zen to the west...
I see his face
when I talk of the mirror and
mystical pursuits. He comes
to me and confronts me one more
time, with an understandng smile.
The first time he saw me, he frowned.
He appeared just now. What a joy
it is to see him!
So it is all true, after all, is it not
wondrous teacher? It is said you died
years ago... But somehow you are alive
and you come to me across distances,
still conscious. You just proved there is really no death.
One smile from a Buddha or a Christ
can teach you more than all the conversations
you have had in all your days with other people.
Peoples' minds are distracted... Not so
the mind of master Philip Kapleau.
He is one of the saints and bodhisattvas
who make up the CONSCIOUS NO-OSPHERE
around the earth.
I hail them every morning: "O you holy saints and bodhisattvas, I honour thee!"
"O Great One who is creating us, I praise thee!"
Each time I have a difficult task
... this communal array of conscious minds thinking as one -
any name will be insufficient -
THIS GANG OF GOD-MINDS, incredibly, inexplicably
they help me, and after my task is done, I know I have had their help.
How do they help me? I can't say.
In the same way E.S.P. works... in the
same way sub-atomic particles can be conscious...
That's how they help me.
I have no idea how the universe works! Or
How the earth is inexplicably conscious in
various places... I have no idea how. I know only that I have been there...
that this consciousness exists.
In my lifelong pursuit as MYSTIC EXPLORER,
I have had many deep experiences of weird shit
and also experiences of transcendental magnificence... realms where the past and future are known in one burning presence.
PART 2
CHEMICALS, FOLKLORE AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS
I give a happy shout out to Terrence McKenna!
He, too, has found conscious entities through various membranes beyond time - riding the wave of semi-legal BRAIN CHEMISTRY.
_________________________________________ NOTE - Part 2, "Chemicals, Folklore and the Bill of Rights" will be continued in the following article. __________________________________________ * * * * * * * *
on a peacock's tail
On a peacock's tail there are many eyes,
Within you, jewels are hanging from the trees Pearls and rubies of worth beyond imagining.
There is not one Big Bang, there are many! BOOM! There goes another one!
In the frucktifying Mind of the Multiverse, Crystals and diamonds twist in the galactic wind.
I may see the same view through an electron microscope as I do through a telescope. Inner is outer - literally.
You don't have to go anywhere else to buy your true love jewelry.
You don't have to go half way around the world to find the answer.
The answer is within every molecule of all things, both inner and outer.
The answer is within you, and it is out in the midst of the rollicking stars,
Oh boy! What fun!
*
What you have to do sometimes is go a little crazy... in order to join the dance.
"Some people never go crazy, what horrifying lives they must lead" **
I've been working at popularizing the Source Gospels for some years now*. And writing articles about them from about 10 different sites. One thing about the internet - new ideas flash through the synapses of collected minds, like wildfire in the tops of trees on a windy day. When I talk about the Source Gospels, of course I'm talking about the miraculous and devastatingly real conveyance of the earliest Christ Consciousness into this "modern" day and age.
There are mysteries that we have not delved , there are daily miracles that we do not see, there is the vast field of interpersonal and cosmic telepathy: we have hardly stepped into this field!
What if we ask questions about our identity or the meaning of things? What if the One Who Is Creating Us can answer these questions telepathically? What is logical and rational then? When you hear profound answers in the silence of your mind? I have seen the phrase the other day "Quantum Spirituality." Is there consciousness in the quantum world? Do we know? Can we say?
Of course, we can't!
WE DON'T KNOW THE LIMITS OR DEPTHS OF THINGS! WE DON'T KNOW HOW ANYTHING WORKS!
Or how deep the rabbit hole goes... Or the way earlier cultures worshiped the spirits and divinity of this earth!
Nothing! We know nothing about the vast extents of consciousness - how it works and how it can work when listening to silence of the mind, when travelling along untold paths!
We are a species which has lost its memory. We are a 'species with amnesia' **
We don't have a clue about what great things might have happened in the 4 1/2 billion years the earth was alive before us.
Don't let anybody characterize for you life's great pageant of the past. No one is qualified.
And I hear people blithely say they don't believe in God. And they laugh! It's modern to be an atheist.
Well, which God are you talking about? The God as taught in the churches? I don't believe in that God, either.
But the God of the quantum world, the God of outer space, the telepathic God, the holy One who is creating us, the Trickster God - a whole lot of research ought to be done before we're atheists about these Faces of God - we just don't know enough to be atheists.
And unless we have experienced God through deep forms of mysticism, or maybe just through simple acts of love - we don't know enough to be theists, either.
That is why voyagers go down the longest rivers before us, rivers of the psyche, oceans of the unconscious, and tales of mystical revelation emerge from some of these heroic voyages.
We can't talk of frontiers of the future. But as for now - the final frontier is the Mind; as discovered by some of these great travelers. Only with the mind... very few have voyaged there before us.
It is rude to disbelieve all their reports.
* "Most Ancient Gospel Found Anew" amazon.com/author/williammilne. Also, Blogger sites: "The Second Coming of Christ", and "The Whip and the Cross", plus other sites.
Thinking of the long nights of blues at Grossman's tavern and the Upper Lip - kitty corners to the Gasworks on Yonge Street. At the Upper Lip during the week, a number of singers from other bands would show up to have the 'Happy Hour All Night' drinks with the JOHN ROCK AND THE ANGELS band. Various singers from other bands would get up on stage and sing a song or two, including B.B. Gabor, Paul James, who opened the show, and the Hock from Downchild Blues Band. We also got together at the Hotel Isabella. Downchild was playing upstairs. John Rock was playing downstairs. And drinks were had between sets in the bar on the main floor, near the entrance. We fueled up for the next sets.
At the Upper Lip, we had a private dressing room in which all kind of monkey business was going on most of the time, and a whole lot of sex against the wall or halfway on the benches that circled the room, being that the floors were a tad sticky. We're not talking luxury here. Paul James used to open for John Rock. He did a solo number... and he was pretty accomplished even then.
INSERT SEE Paul James song above... from his birthday bash at the Phoenix.
I'm just beginning to digitize John Rock songs from hundreds of cassette stage recordings, and the John Rock album called, "IT'S SO SERIOUS!" I hope to insert many of these songs into this blog and future book, if my luck holds. If the truth be told, the only way I can remember many of the stories in this book to be is if I center the stories around each song. That way I'll have some idea what I'm talking about.
But then the night wore on. And Mike came down from his hut on the roof. Mike was an OK drummer when he was half way in his right mind. But I remember he came down and we asked him up on stage. Turns out he was not 1/2 way in his mind; he was 12 times out of his tree! I was breaking in a new bass player that night. I was teaching John Saunders how to play bass, so it wasn't fair to throw anything too different at him - he'd never been on stage before. And his legs were shaking. We had a big crowd that night. It was a Wednesday evening, so I wasn't sure why... In those days I hadn't understood the meaning of the word, "Advertise." So the crowd was all word of mouth from up and down Yonge Street. Anyway, we packed the place. I was standing in the hallway to the stage and I heard the breathing of the crowd, the chattering talk... the ebbs and flow of the crowd noise, with the occasional cheer and shout, and then the shouts in unison and the feet pounding on the floor.
I heard a guy in the crowd near the front say, "John Rock. I hear he's heavy." Expectations were high. So I wanted to put on a real blast. Start with a viciously hard rocker called, "NO EXPLANATION". I had written that song with a lot of feeling, as I was sneaking out of a really rough relationship, one that was going to end in death or jail... My death. Or me in jail. It certainly wouldn't be the princess! (I didn't feel the need to go one more time into the Don Jail in those days. It had happened before. Invariably they'd throw me in an all black, mostly Jamaican range. The guards were trying to screw with my head. I guess they thought I was a real asshole, but stories get pretty twisted , when they're told about you and you aren't there. People can make up all kinds of weird stuff. Especially the woman I was trying to leave. She was real good friends with a cop in 52 division. So... So I got tossed in this all black Jamaican range - and that was the good part. I grew up in Jamaica. A lot of stories were told, and we made some hooch, got high, and laughed until we had tears in our eyes.) But not always. I got bail in three months.
The song I wanted to open with was about the very woman who had me tossed into the Don Jail recently.
THE SONG GOES LIKE THIS:
"Oh, babe, I'm not ever gonna phone! Yeah, babe, I'm not ever gonna phone! Just gonna lie down in my basement... And chew my lonesome bone!"
The ice is coming, the snow is coming, too! The ice is coming, the snow is coming, too! But in our last season together, Nothing ever grew!"
Hook: "And they'll be no explanation! No explanation! No explanation! No explanation! There'll be no explanation baby, Nothing you need to know!"
(C)1984 John Rock etc. etc. Naturally there are several more verses.
At any rate, Mike came flying down the stairs, jumped up on the stage before we were ready to play. I think Mike was Lebanese. He had very good connections for certain items I was trying to avoid. Anyway, Mike launches into an elaborate drum solo with distinctly different rhythms than the band was used to playing. The only 2 people on stage at that moment, other than Mike, was Saunders and I. John had a look of utter horror on his face. He didn't know how to play anything to that rhythm and I bloody well knew it. I tried to project to him from twenty feet away at least the root notes of each chord. After a while, he understood and he could play at least those notes to the changes. Mike wasn't stopping. Somewhere he'd found a black beret and green fifties shades. And he was wearing them. So I did the only logical thing. I launched into some minor chords vaguely reminiscent of Morocco. And we played...we played that same weird, foreign, exotic tune... for quite some time... The eyes of the crowd appeared to be glazing over with shock and growing boredom...That first 15 minute song needed congas and maybe a belly dancer. The rest of the band joined us after our 15 minute excursion across the desert. We launched into, "YOU'RE GONNA BURN!" Which is a truly nasty bit of edgework and drama about war and you're to blame, etc. etc. The lead solo is the sound of a helicopter landing right in the middle of your head - a monstrous effect I found I could create with my Morley WAH peddle. Well, that shut all of us up, including the crowd. Mike, the owner bought drinks for all 200 of us. "A round for all the room!" We all stopped, had a drink or three, talked to the audience, shouted back and forth, then I launched into "Rosemary" which is a sweet love tune that people tend to remember. And the applause started and continued off and on for the rest of the night. We snapped into our trademark blend of music called: "Rock-Reggae." "Northern reggae!" One of the Garys, Gary Cormier shouted this to me over the phone with a laugh and some hilarity. We locked the doors, sold booze at Happy Hour prices - the happy hour that lasted half a day. And a pretty damn good day it was. A great time was had by all! But not always.
(C) 2015 by W.G. Milne Part of a book that is coming, with songs and artwork inserted. It be called, "Mainliners on Mainstreet." No, no, no. Not that!
IS LOVE WAR OR IS LOVE COMMUNION? Talking about spiritual and sexual love between 2 people...
I always thought that when you're having sex with a person you care about, and you stare into her eyes and your sight goes deep into that person's being ( spirit, soul, heart-mind)
and she stares back into you... until the two of you are one, and you don't know where her body ends and your body begins... and you're feeling pleasure all through that One glowing being that is the two of you. This is COMMUNION. Of course it is! And don't let any narrow-minded prelate tell you differently.
*
Hell, there's a John Rock song that goes like this:
There is love that is communion, And there's love that is war; There's love down at the union And driving in your car. And love it will lift you As you are flying across the sky But don't you ever trust the wind To be with you... If your life's a lie.
from, "If Your Life's a Lie" (C)1984 John Rock. *
Living in the same house as your partner, well things can get evil pretty quick, especially if you both come from backgrounds where your parents lied a lot. Then it's hard to trust. Then trust has to be built between you, as you wander alone and/or together across a hellish countryside. And you see the bodies bleeding and the smoke from burning cities. Then love is war! And no one knows who is going to be the last man/woman standing. And, yes, oh yes - demons do appear in the midst of this WAR And these beasts who seem to have a preternatural consciousness , smile and laugh and smirk at you, winking at you as if to say: "You know me, and I know you," and the beast smirks as if to say, "I'll be back. You'll see me many times again. "
When I put my mind to dreaming, I imagine what it means for the earth to be 4 1/2 billion years old. And until recently human history was thought to be a mere 6000 years old - back to the garden of Eden. (For a long time the church insisted on this view). But the sphinx has rain erosion on it from 9,000 to 10,000 years ago. And the worldwide monoliths appear ( oriented towards the spring equinox) to have sunk 400 feet beneath the sea, after the melting of the last ice age. And unrecorded human history goes back certainly 250,000 years ... to where it began to get interesting, and human types began to form symbiotic relationships with the sacred mushroom. A strong sense of the divinity of things came to the humanoid man with the eating and smoking and making tea out of a variety of sacred plants. To be fair, not everybody agrees that human history was drastically changed by the ingesting of sacred plants. There are two schools of though: (1) human history was changed in a major way by the consuming of the sacred plants and (2) the sacred plants had very little effect on human history.
But if John Marco Allegro is correct in asserting that the New Testament in the Bible is in large part a code containing puns on words for amanita muscaria, and that the anointing of Christ himself is a process that involves the sacred mushroom... If Allegro is correct in his highly-detailed etymological argument, which is to be found in the endnotes of his book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross... then we really must re-think our attitudes towards both Christianity and human history. By the way, a number of highly respected scientists have confirmed in recent years that John Allegro is absolutely correct in his findings, thought and argument.
We have been so certain about our limited opinions, but this is madness and sheer stupidity. The incredible scope of four and one half Billion years - we have no idea what has occurred in that massive stretch of time - the miraculous blossomings of culture, and the abysmal devastation and inundations that occurred to sweep each culture/civilization away. The only name that survives from the last global sea-going culture is Atlantis. And that name is half myth. Thousands of advanced civilizations may have come and gone on our earth over billions of years, and we have NO IDEA what has happened, how, when, where or why. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last global civilization, a mere 10,000 years ago, was so completely destroyed that not one name of one individual has survived. Makes you think, doesn't it... about the efficacy of human pride. I mean, go ahead and become famous, my brothers and sisters, but don't expect that fame to last. In a mere speck of time, globally speaking, all names disappear into the beginningless and endless dancings of the Tao. Many ice ages have come and gone, and no names have come down to us. Nothing has been recorded. The ability to write and talk and start fires has come and gone and come and gone and come and gone, and the conscious life through which the earth arises to know itself - this life likely was not always humanoid.
There used to be a writer for the Globe and Mail in Toronto, who did a weekly article called, "a Writer's Notebook." I think this is a good idea since writers ( like me) have long attention spans...when we're hot on an article, but extremely short attention spans when listening to the opinions of others.
In the 'writer's notebook' method, a posting may have four different subjects. I wanted to give Richard Needham a thumb's up because this idea was originally his,
and the title was his also.
SEVEN DESCRIPTIONS OF DEPRESSION:
(Jesus! What a subject for early February!) _______________________________________
(1) DEPRESSION is anger turned inwards.
So they say, but I've never totally understood this definition. However there is no question that repression, both spiritualand sexual, repression is a major cause of rage... and rage repressed causes depression.
In my psychological studies (and when I have been studied) I 've learned that
repression, for example female orgasm repression, is a major cause of stress and rage, and not just among women. Rage not felt
is depression.
(2) DEPRESSION is listening to your 'Negative Script' 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - listening
to that hateful inner voice circling round,
just above your unconscious mind - saying
vicious statements about your lack of worth,
about your ultimate identity as a shit.
(3)DEPRESSION is believing that your life
is over when it's not, and while other people think you are doing
well...(when in fact you are doing well)
(4) DEPRESSION is distrusting the motives of those
people you love. For example, thinking your
wife and children can't wait to bury you. Can't wait to kill you for the money wrapped up in your life insurance policy... or you can't wait to kill yourself for the money in your insurance policy.
And your neighbours want to steal your land.
And more such paranoid thoughts, which may or may not
be true.
(5) DEPRESSION is the feeling that you yourself are
worthless scum, and you don't deserve to live,
and the voice circling inside your head confirms
this belief repeatedly, endlessly...in a hundred different
ways
(There are techniques for avoiding the NEGATIVE
SCRIPT, but they are not easy and they don't always work).
(6) One quarter (1/4) to one third (1/3) of Manic
DEPRESSIVES kill themselves. It's a very dangerous
disease.
So survival schemes are necessary. A plan
is essential, and a calender to map out the upcoming
nadirs of your mind.
(7) DEPRESSION is no fun. Depression can kill you, even when you try to run to avoid it.
((When I wrote this depression bit, I found some of the paragraphs funny...This morning before coffee, I'm not so sure))
A MAN WHO LIKED TO TALK
____________________________
So I found myself locked up with a man who liked
to talk. He talked all thru last night, but I heard very little
as I passed out about ten seconds
after I was pushed into the green steel
drunk cell - the kind with a drain in the floor,
and a floor that slopes gently down to the drain -
the kind that they can hose down in the morning.
My cell mate was shaking his fist and striking a
pose to make a speech. There was no one
listening.
The police shut the outside door,
cutting off the five "night cells" from their own hearing
and the hearing of the public as well.
LOADED!
TRUE TALES OF THE UTMOST MENDACITY
I have been lying to people, saying I buy this cheap sherry from the LCBO because it's the best value in the store (which it is)... Saying this, "It's OK if you add water to it (which I do) and add lime to it. Which I never have done.
Actually, any alcoholic drink you get very
very used to... it'll be just fine. Your alcoholic body
will crave the alcohol so much that a mess of water
will not ruin the drink. In fact, a major inundation of water into your booze will be more than all right. Your addicted,twisted, perverted, craven alcoholic soul JUST WANTS THE BOOZE!
Your real body, the spiritual, cultured, happy and generous " spiritual" part will want the extra water... Do you know why? Because your body BLOODY WELL NEEDS THE WATER!! So this will improve the drink - in so far as you'll be healthy enough to have another.
And the limes, which I have never put in before... but spoke of because I wanted to make the low cost drink sound classy... The limes I NEVER bought and added, tho I said I did...Well, today LIMES WERE ON SALE at the grocers. So what did I do? I bought ten of them. And you know what? LIMES MAKE THIS DRINK TERRIFIC!!! Just as I said it would in my MENDACIOUS storytelling.
Fantasy, reality, storytelling and mendacity
all combine today, right here, right now - they weave together
into a wonderland of truth, taste and lies INTO A BEATIFIC piece ofexquisite drinking!!!
So what does this mean? Does it means I was
telling the truth all along? Not exactly. But I'd order this drink in a chic chic expensive bar any time. If I could get them to carry the ingredients.
