“There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.” (Daedalus or Science of the Future 1923)
Back on the case. Last week, I had to interrupt our investigative search for detecting hidden symmetries in so-called “empty space” by measuring eddies in the quantum currents. The pandemic has briefly disrupted my straightforward explanation of how UFO’s navigate the multiverse without credit cards or cash. Not to worry, though. Wall Street is wholly focused on introducing a new accounting system where “just taking up space itself calls for preemptive service debits.” Time-jumping’s now suddenly all the rage. Meanwhile, my personal land bank is producing wild (upland) cress and dandelions to make a perfectly tender and delicious salad in February’s warmer days. That, friends, is real wealth.
For new readers just joining in, you’ll notice that I often introduce new models of grassroots organization to help us think outside of the box. This is especially timely given that Missouri’s own little legislative swamp remains wholly unprepared to imagine a period of societal chaos, much less govern through it. Our exuberantly incoherent political, business, and religious leaders represent a management class that’s been frolicking far too long in the status quo.
Take, for example, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) which urgently needs the N-95 face mask for front line health care workers fighting the flu. The mask forms to fit the individual’s face. But personnel at every level, including many right here in Ava, can’t get them, nor gloves, nor drugs. Why is everything on back-order? Because it’s manufactured in - wait for it - Chi-nah! China also produces American’s vitamins, insulin, aspirin and scores of items we assume will always be available because we live in a fantasy land of assumptions. The sad truth is that American capitalism long ago jettisoned Adam Smith’s requisite foundation of morality and ethics for hot-diggity globalism.
Why is it that America’s strategic productive capability has been offshored? The “rule of law” fairly cries out to be disinfected but is the last thing that will be. Does it really matter who’s on the ballot if they’re all dug in like backwards-facing ticks? Let’s say we’re facing a Black Plague kind of situation, really nasty. As the global economy collapses, will people wake up to demand a multi-sector, citizen-led preparedness plan? Is there a drug to soften the letdown of our full-blown techno-addictions?
You can search the Herald’s online archives to learn about the Farm Resettlement Congress’ (FRC) 20 Year Plan to restore individual and community resilience. Its watershed-by-watershed (bio-geographical) approach to community-led revival is completely new and at hand for your referral. So, to start where we are now, imagine yourself standing in a big circle of people and in the center of that circle there is a source of bright light. But rather than facing the center and the light, everybody is standing with their backs to the light, facing outwards. When we stand this way, facing away from the light, all we can see is our own shadow projected on the “real world” around us. We cannot see the light, we can only look into our own shadows and those of others. It’s an overarching kind of disconnect, this present state of affairs, one that no amount of public or personal education can possibly remedy. There is an external sun, of course. They tell us it’s the sole source and sustainer of life on earth. Sunlight is “real,” they say, “It comes from matter and there is no other light.”
But what animates our conscience? What lights our minds? “That’s just imagination, silly! That’s just dreaming.” Meanwhile, as our capacity to self govern winks from history, thinking for ourselves is now the last thing left to try. So here’s what we do: We agree to turn around together and face the light that is at the center of the circle. When we turn to this light, we can no longer see the shadow world of ego, struggling, scarcity, envy and greed. When we turn to the light, these shadows exist behind us, and not ahead of us. They are gone. The Gateway Exercise, (introduced January 30th, 2020), directs our extroverted minds to acknowledge the light that animates and sustains all existence. This light is the primal and indivisible source, the internal doorway to freedom from the entanglement of temporality. So to “seek the kingdom within” is not a process that can be “understood” or “figured out” with the rational mind- severely atrophied byproduct of dualism’s shadow world that is simply not up to it.
The alternative choice is to develop a type of “seeing” or re-cognition that delivers a profound wholeness and timeless peace of unbroken intuitive knowledge. In the New Testament, the word metanoia is often translated as ‘repentance.” But this kind of repentance is not about regret, or guilt, or shame. No, the Greek word metanoia literally means a “change of mind,” meaning the entirety of it. To turn to, and become one with, the inner light is to simultaneously become a part of all things where our kernel sense of “I am” rises above temporal conditioning. “Seek within” has to be understood in the context of the entire mind.
In the shadow world of scientific rationalism we seem to have lost our original identity and now identify with our thoughts and body. When we say, “I am tall” or “I am short;” “I am black or I am white” it shows an identification with the shape and color of the body. If I say “I am rich or I am poor” I am identifying with my bank account. “I’m a Christian” or “I’m a Buddhist” means identifying with a religion. But without any identification, who are we? Have you ever thought about it? Once we have “fallen” from the One into separate identities, where else is there to keep falling? The mind’s repertoire of distractions is our shadowland, a place where behaviors that more or less run our lives on automatic. Good spiritual practices are the remedy and they work best when they clarify things by self-demonstration. This is the exact opposite of indoctrination. By correcting our vision we correct things outside. We can make earth a heaven or a hell, but to see a healthier and happier world will take considerable steps towards self-reformation. If not, then the only hope for us techno-peasants is that the hereditary ruling elites continue to interbreed.
To have a full picture of metanoia, of what a major turn-around involves, is to have a full picture of what we mean as “mind.” There are different levels, such as the “I” feeling, or ego; there is a discriminative faculty, a dreaming modality, and also a desiring part of the mind which gets attracted to outside things through the senses. All the differences in the the outside world, in the shadowland, are the result of our mental modifications. To gain control of the modifications at a very deep level is to overcome our last obstacle to unity. Last Monday in New Hampshire, President Trump proclaimed he was all about “restoring power to the people. . . ” If so, maybe he’ll complete the thought by saying “by returning ownership of their own food supply system.”
Coming in the next episode: The mind’s modifications are said to be five in kind and number, whether painful or painless, but I have my doubts.