That Olde Tyme Religion

(orig. published) February 9th, 2007

This is a response I wrote to a post on Siona’s blog on Zaadz onChristian Fascism and pre-rational thought. (still working on my letter to Jeff Wells, sorta coming along…)

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130 to 100 years ago in America, the ancestors of the people who are today falling under the spell of the Christian Eschatologists were tuned into the growing realization that the whole system in this country had become dominated by what were then called the Monopoly Trusts, the capitalists who worshipped profit at any cost (the costs, of course, to be born by other people, by the land, by the web of life). If we study what happened in the U.S. between 1900 and 1920 we can see the establishment of systems to co-opt this threat to the egoistic hegemony of those who “think they are in control” – chief among them, perhaps, public education based on the Prussian and Indian lower-caste models, the so-called “Income Tax,” and the so-called Federal Reserve Banking System. A similar burst of terrified suppression followed the flowering of the Hippy Movement in the 60’s, leading to the wide-spread fear among so many to foolishly entertain the notion that we don’t need experts to guide us in every aspect of how we see ourselves and plan our lives. What has happened to religion follows the dominator / social engineering model. It is made to seem that we need mediators between ourselves and god, that we are incapable of approaching the truth of what we are without external guidance, when exactly the opposite is the case. ONLY we can find the truth of our inner nature for ourselves – and any trustworthy guide or teacher will be very explicit and specific about this.The system that underpins concensus reality has entered into the crisis that social critics in the last century saw coming and characterized as “The Crisis of Capitalism.” Actually, however, IMO, this rapidly escalating crisis is the ultimate crisis of the human ego. All of the human institutions worldwide, and certainly all of the established religions, have come under the sway of people completely obsessed by a false idea of who they are and determined to do whatever is necessary to maintain control and the illusion of a stable, Cartesian, “normal,” unchanging world. These efforts are, again IMO, being driven to extremities by the at least subconscious perceptions of the dominators that there is a flowering of human awakening underfoot. The only commodity that institutional leaders, and particularly those striving to keep people from questioning the truth about their divine nature, have to sell is fear. If I am afraid enough about an afterlife of limitless suffering, about the loss of my support network in heaven due to the damnation of my loved ones, about being unacceptable in the sight of my creator, about the threat represented by anyone I perceive as “other,” then I will follow anything that appears to hold out a scintilla of hope, even if what I’m called to is clearly against my own interests, and those of my children, neighbors, wife, country, whatever. This is where many of our compatriots are headed now. It’s not out of any fault of their own. They are simply deluded, as are we all when we look at the world from a perspective that makes anyone seem wrong, threatening or evil. This is the play of Lila, and a perfect reflection of the mass states of consciousness of humanity as we get ready to awaken from the fever-dream of the ego, apparently so necessary for our evolution beyond it. Let’s just wake up…

Bruce Tanner, February 2007

Haven’t finished my open letter to Jeff Wells yet…

(orig. published) February 6th, 2007

…But, I really feel the need to get something up here, as I am now on my new, responsible blog regimen, and hopefully, will give y’all a reason to keep checking back. So, I have been meaning to put this up for a while anyway – it’s a holiday greeting letter that I put up in December 2003, embodying ideas which were somewhat nebulous for me at the time but which, looking back were very indicative of the way my thinking and heart were moving. I am now quite clear that the ideas and sentiment expressed below are crucial to a new model of human experience. -B

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Dear Friends,I hope this finds you well, prospering, and ready for the year ahead. I don’t know if you may agree with my perspective, but I am seeing a challenging time ahead for all of us living on Earth today. One major factor, in my view, is the failing of the human social contract worldwide, driven by fear, of scarcity, of each other, of the unknown. It is apparent that as this failure unfolds, it coincides with spiraling corruption and epic greed within human institutions, and with something akin to constant low intensity warfare upon people everywhere.Recently, I have been meditating on this common life situation a great deal, and it seems to me that there is no longer any way of fighting fire with fire in respect to this spiraling emotional violence. The students of war, struggling for the high ground throughout the world, are the best at their craft of human destruction that have ever existed, with an unimaginable arsenel at their disposal. To fight them is beyond possibility, and any improbable success will likely only create warriors more grim and indomitable. More than this, I think there is an actual possibility that thinking in terms of opposing or resisting the violence may feed it. As James Joyce said, from the lips of Stephen Daedelus “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awaken.” We are, with grace, witnessing a change in the consensus model of what a human being is, waking up together to a world where we no longer project deadly fear out upon each other. How the burgeoning tide of attacks can be turned outside of the model of action we all tend to understand and invest with “reality” is beyond the fevered attempts of our mental activity “inside the box.” But I believe we know in our hearts.So, I am sharing with you at this time of spiritual focus and renewal an affirmation I have been working with recently. I am repeating this every morning, for 15 minutes or so, hearing the words in my mind and trying to penetrate beyond them to the seed thought they contain. Perhaps you will consider adopting some version of this practice as we work together to wake up. Perhaps you’ll be able to improve on it, and share your improvements with others. A great American sage named Lester Levinson discovered what may be a key truth regarding human creativity – that there is an energetic component to our felt/thought wholeness in each moment, and that we seem to be stuck in a mode of clenching, holding onto that energy so that it drives pathological mental processes and behavior. He discovered that we can learn to release this energy, like learning to use and strengthen a muscle. By thinking about anything we are holding energy with, the energy comes up to be released, is felt in the heart and abdomen, and if you, for instance, imagine that it is like water compressed deep underground and you are putting a tube into it and uncapping the tube to let it go “without engaging your mind,” the complex driven by the stuck energy can begin to dissolve. I have developed a new approach to affirmation in which I combine this release process with the mental focus. As the feelings come up during the subvocalization of the verbal formula, I let them go. I would be interested to hear if this approach has any practical use for others. So, here is my affirmation:

I release, I forgive, I hold blameless, I wish well, and I pray for
all invasive, invidious, judgemental, fear-driven, ego obsessed and threatening beings,
including me,
and so am free from any attack or trespass.

May this help you to clear an inviolate space of peace within your heart now and throughout the times to come.

On the Sea Change

(orig. published) January 31st, 2007

Well, I have thrown all my thinking regarding what the heck I’m up to with this blog into the great mix-master in the sky. My friend Evelyn, ace blogger since the dawn of social media, has been chatting me up about what the blog thing is really about, and what I have been up to (not much) is totally not it. Wah. So, there’s that.The other small thing is that I am going through what I am still somewhat hesitant to claim is a major awakening experience, following a weekend retreat with Adyashanti earlier this month. This is fomenting basically a moment to moment reassessment of what I think I am doing here (apparently) in the world, and communication with my fellow inmates in the asylum is way up there in the What Was I Thinking? category. There is work to do, and change is afoot. Coming soon: an open letter to Jeff Wells, Canadian novelist, iconoclast and bleeding edge thinker, regarding the somewhat despairing tone I am detecting in his recent excellent post (1/30/07):

“I’ve been having a hard time lately, and it’s largely because of the times. I don’t think I’ve ever regarded this world, or even any other, with less hope than I do now, and frankly it’s costing me. Though bearing the cost feels like an indulgence, because it seems so superfluous to the everyday business of just getting on with things.

Know what I mean? Life goes on regardless of what states we worry ourselves into, and all our effort to understand the forces at play does nothing to keep them in check. However much we know – and who can know how much that is? – knowledge does not change our condition, but adapts us to its accommodation. Charles Fort said “I think we are property.” If so, what becomes of property when it knows it’s property? More pointedly, would it be better if it never knew?”

I’m going to try to express the big news, to whit, the war is over and peace has already done won. Hard to swallow, perhaps, anyway it is for the ME (or imaginary self, as Adyashanti terms it). Adya’s name is way better name than ego, IMO, as it (correctly) has the connotation of some kind of small dream rather than as the ultimate worthy adversary. All we have to do is get over ourselves. Easy.

Another post to the “Psychopaths Brains Different” thread on SOTT

(orig. published) December 5th, 2006

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=28524#p28524

Bholanath wrote: (quoting) I’m tending to agree with the above. While I hear from many quarters all day long about the necessity for “compassion”, “unconditional love”, etc., I’ve been shown the down side of “idiot compassion” and the really complex reality of in-the-moment nature of levels of compassion. We all have. “Ruthless”- or “Fierce”-compassion is what some call this other path. (And I’m so sick of new-age teachers/disinfo-agents constantly “mixing up the levels”.)

Another thing is the axiom of non-dualists that “knowledge-transmission must only be given when specifically requested”. This leads to serious self-inquiry regarding attachment to a “goal” of, say, “creating a critical mass” of awareness around the planet. Maybe its like what one Tibetan lama said (a book called “Carefree Dignity”): [to paraphrase] the self-motivation to become aware is like a cold…if you’re around someone who has it, you will just “catch it”.(end quote)

I think that true compassion is “Fierce” compassion. Pema Chodron tells the story of a Buddhist monk on a sea voyage who decides he will slay the captain of a pirate ship attacking them to save the pirate from creating further karmic debt for himself. Tolle speaks in a couple of places in A New Earth about sometimes having to defend yourself or others from the actions of deeply unconscious people, but that it can be done without “making them into enemies.” And it’s not compassionate to let a system that feeds on ignorance and suffering grind on in its brutal course out of some kind of sentimental sympathy with the tragedies of the lives of the perpetrator class.

Level confusion is a malady that anyone in the process of unfolding awareness is going to have to meet head-on and chronically. Learning to use your mind efficiently to think critically about things probably requires understanding the nature of mind itself, and what its innate limitations are. Its necessary to look at any idea skeptically, regardless of its source. It’s likely that anyone tends to move between states of greater of lesser clarity on a (daily? momentary?) basis, and someone momentarily in a state of greater ignorance may then be/seem an agent of disinfo inadvertantly at that time.

As to the arising of a “critical mass” of people who are “catching it” (ironically, catching that which buddhas seem to suggest is seen on awakening as having always been there behind the veil of ego) that would seem to depend on whether such a gestalt “wants” to happen. Certainly, no one can force or manipulate anyone else into waking up. I think that may be part of what Gurdjieff was talking about when he stated that the forces of inverted intelligence have access to tools and strategies that the forces of evolution don’t. Still, I think we perhaps need to hope that such a thing can occur, as if “we” have the fight the PTB in conventional terms, the probability of the significant survivability of living systems on this planet doesn’t seem high. Also, should “we” be able to prevail in such a war, whoever came out “on top” could well be a “Galadriel” that all would worship and despair. Several teachers have spoken of being around someone who’s awake being like a log coming into contact with one that’s already ablaze – you can begin to “ignite.” But then you have to tend the flame when away from the awakened one, no one else can do this for you. Particularly as one begins to grow in awareness, though, falling back into states of ignorance starts to become more and more intolerable. Then, as Adyashanti says, you can put a fork in yourself, ’cause you’re done. He calls that “great good luck.”

Neural responses particular to psychopathology

(orig. published) December 4th, 2006

In response to thread:
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=28319#p28319It seems not that this article is reporting a difference in the physical organ of the pschopaths’ brains, but rather a difference in neural responses. In my opinion, this can indicate that there is a difference in the psychopaths’ model of reality – that they are differently conditioned than more healthy people.I infer from other items I have read on SOTT, both in the forums and editorials, and in the fraction of Secret History of the World I have had a chance to read so far, that basically anyone trying to study and teach about mind/body/spirit issues is to be considered as suspect as an agent of Cointel programs to control the masses. However, from my study of psychology and history, based to a large extent on self-observation and serendipitous experience, I have come to agree emphatically with Eckhart Tolle, among others (principally Zen or Buddhist or Non-Dual teachers) that psychopathology is the result of easily understandable misperceptions of so-called reality. These deeply hypnotic experiences have resulted in the misidentification of apparently stable patterns of behavior, thinking, and “external” threats as being who we actually are and are in conflict with. The result of the tendencies arising from this ideational/energetic complex of misidentifications is a state of chronic “dis-ease,” or unhappiness that covers over a direct experience of our true nature, the natural state spoken of by teachers like Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadata Maharaj. This state of disease runs a very broad range of conditions starting from mere identification of being exclusively a (perhaps quite functional and superior) mind dependent on our body for existence, through reactivity and extreme fear, to the extreme states of pathology exhibited by a Marquis de Sade or a Pol Pot.

According to this approach to understanding our juncture in history, there is now arising in the world an unprecedented possibility of large masses of humans waking up to the reality of who they really are. Of course, if such a thing were to take place the consequences for the entrenched power relationships that support control by people trapped in such extreme states of unhappiness as to be considered insane would be completely intolerable to those people, who need their apparent temporal power as part of the emotional defense structures that protect their fragile and objectively “unreal” identities (all their glorious wickedness…). If we, the “good guys,” identify ourselves as being in opposition to the “powers that be,” then I would suggest that we are involved in a mild, but similar process of strengthening the structures of our misidentifications, and supporting entrapping ourselves in reactivity that prevents our most creative and positively assertive responses to the objectively difficult situations we’re now facing. We need to support each other in waking up at truly profound levels.

Thinking that ascribes the obvious pathology of the “powers that be” to some kind of objective difference between “us” and “them” is, again in my opinion, a dead end that cuts us off from deep compassion for the suffering all all beings now caught in the spiraling descent into automatism that threatens the survival of the living sytems around us. This compassion is the energy we need to facilitate the unique potential for the awakening of a critical mass of people that can help us turn the corner toward healing on a planetary basis.

Namaste, Bruce

Ya Can’t Have Too Much Stuff

(orig. published) November 19th, 2006

I am still moving my heap ‘o stuff from my old house, and doing the stuff meditation as I go. Went to the new Bond movie, Casino Royale (Mick LaSalle’s review which I vibrate harmoniously with is at http://tinyurl.com/whyqs). Tho’ the film rocks in a major fashion, and I remain a staunch admirer of Daniel Craig, the newest incarnation of JB, my feelings on leaving the theater were of an overwhelming sadness for Bond, the Urban Spaceman Killer Machine. When he says he’s ready to quit Her Majesty’s Mercenaries to save what’s left of his soul, I was sensing the doomed poignancy of his desire to get off the treadmill, metaphorically of contemporary ego-driven materialistic culture. In the end he’s left with a steely resolve to press on with a broken heart.In my email client, I somehow got into a message from Oct. 1 which contained a link to an excellent piece by Paul Craig Roberts, one of the few people of conscience who have emerged from the captive media monolith in the last few years. He writes about the transparent propaganda lying to us about the strength of the U.S. economy based on the mythical conversion from manufacturing to high-level intellectually skilled sectors – it can be found at: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09302006.html . Well, I’ve spent time I didn’t have simply posting SOMETHING. Peace.

“Awakening” – Posted to the Rigorous Intuition message board 9/9/06

(orig. published) November 9th, 2006 (http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/)

Just Wake Up…

Hi, I just want to dip my toe in here – I’m at work and can’t wax too eloquent, but will take a trial stab at what I’m seeing in the face of the apparently WAY DIRE situation we’re all facing in the world now.

The US Bi-election has gone off pretty much as expected, and in all the talk of a sea-change, I see no indication that any alteration in our descending spiral will eventuate. I see speculation on this board that the American Sheeple seem cowed (to mix metaphors), but that some final straw could awaken a sleeping rage within them (us) and bring about something to confound the puppet masters feverish drive toward ultimate control.

But from my POV it seems that another kind of awakening is more realistically potential in the foreseeable future, one that could really start a movement toward global (in multiple senses) healing. Eckhart Tolle, particularly in his most recent book, A New Earth (which I can’t recommend too highly) speaks of two simultaneous movements occuring in human consciousness now – a ratcheting madness that I think no one on this board would dispute, and a countervailing exponential flood of awareness, an unprecedented awakening. In some sense, this awakening may be driving the desperation of the madness, as the self-styled ruling elites sense that the jig is up for their programs of domination.

This awakening, which is possible individually in each of us, involves bringing our awareness into each moment, to each problem that arises, to every thought that arises in our minds, to everything in our perceptual field. Tolle’s A New Earth describes in practical detail the functioning of the ego-structure each of us lives, and tends to totally misidentify, with. Only by seeing the operation of this structure in its gritty detail, and beginning to release what can be characterized as an addiction to feeding it, can we begin to uncover the formless, timeless, peaceful, alert beingness that is at the core of each of us, as it always been. Even while seemingly entirely drowned out by our habitual mental noise.

This is our mission, should we choose to accept it. This calm, peaceful awareness, brought into each moment, can radically change our responses to the challenges we face.

The Mechanical Nature of the Powers That Be, part deux

(orig. published) November 3rd, 2006

This is a second post to the Our Orwellian World forum at SOTT in reply to one by Anders to the
post from yesterday. As a sidenote, this was apparently removed from the forum thread by a moderator:

Anders wrote:
I noticed that you wrote that it is not conscious on the part of the self-identified elites. Being conscious is linked to knowledge, as I understand it. So just as knowledge is necessary to move ‘up’ on the creative STO path, so is knowledge equally necessary to move ‘up’ on the entropic STS path. Graduation from 3rd D STO/STS to 4th D STO/STS
depends on knowledge.[end quote]

Hi Anders,

IMO, it is possible to spend an endless amount of time studying the array and strategies of “the enemy,” i.e. those darn STS entities, particularly those of “higher densities.” My point would be that they couldn’t/can’t do what they do if they were aware of the whole of their actions, and the implications for their “small selves” therefrom. As to their “moving up” in knowledge and control, as the Grateful Dead put it:

When I was just a little young boy,
Papa said “Son, you’ll never get far,
I’ll tell you the reason if you want to know,
’cause child of mine, there isn’t really very far to go” (Dupree’s Diamond Blues)

Lester Levenson, an American spiritual teacher, now deceased, after discovering how to heal his own body and mind, posited that the habits and misidentifications of the ego-structure were driven by the repression/resistance to the innate energies of the deep Self which he experienced as flowing from “within” his body from the gut-heart-solar
plexus region. He taught that by learning to release these energies we can disarm our misidentifications with thought forms trapping this energy and creating a reality in which we need the illusory ego-structure trapping the energy to defend ourselves and to fight against/resist external dangers. From this viewpoint, observing the operation of the structures in us that are empowered to trap this energy by our activation of them through mechanical misidentified actions (i.e. addiction to thinking), enables us to awaken from the egoistic dream-like state.

I don’t think that working with this approach obviates understanding the pathology of entities busy using stolen and toxic energies to feed their illusions and to trap and control others. Ultimately, I suspect it may be the key to effective solutions.

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