April 20, 2022

01

Everybody has a way
and everybody wants to have it their way.
Everybody has to grow up first,
before anyone else does.

It is amazing how Tabloid Journalism 
has taken the country to the psyche ward
with everyone having something more 
outlandishly absurd to say than anyone else.
But.
Here we are.

And a lot of these people control state legislatures,
and are bent on taking over the US House and Senate
along with the Presidency. 

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, World" came out on 1963. 
The current world is soooooo much more of a madhouse
in real time.

I don't know of anyone who can turn things around,
flip the script,
and have people begin acting out of good faith
and a genuine concern for the best interests
of all concerned.

The general public needs to be sent to their room
until they learn to behave in public
the way they are supposed to behave in public,
with their grown-up face on.

And, that isn't going to happen.

Someone would say that violates their right to free speech,
and that they can do anything they want to,
and no one can stop them.

This crowd has not heard of self-restraint and self-discipline.
And that suggests it is going to be 
an awful, terrible, no-good, very bad summer even at the beach.

No one has the answer to this situation. 
Each person is responsible 
for seeing what they look at, 
interpreting it correctly 
and doing what must be done 
in ways appropriate to the occasion--
and no one can know beforehand 
what that will be. 

Each day is its own test. 
Our weapons for the journey 
through the days are 
emptiness, 
stillness 
and silence. 

No agenda. 
No opinion. 

Just seeing. 
Just knowing. 
Just doing. 

If we see clearly 
and know properly 
and do what truly needs to be done, 
that will be that, 
and all will be well with us. 

Sincerity, 
Original Nature, 
And the Virtues 
that are ours from birth 
are our helpers along the way. 

With the three weapons 
and the three helpers, 
we have all we need 
to find what needs to be done 
and do it in each situation 
as it arises 
through all the days that lie ahead.
 
Take heart! 
Mind how you go! 
Peace be with you!
All along the way!

–0–

02

Without a grounding,
organizing,
motivating,
directing
cultural mythology,
we are lost,
at loose ends,
with only money
as our reason for living.

Money for what?
We don't know.
All we can come up with is
for making more money.

Maybe we will go into space.
For what?
What is there?
Nothing.
So we just zoom around a bit
and come back
in order to talk about it.

We have to have something 
to talk about.
So we go big game hunting,
do drugs,
do sex
and talk about it.

We have to have something to show for it.
For having lived.
We live for nothing.
We can't talk about nothing.
So we talk about each other.
Juice ourselves up hating each other.

It is almost like being alive.

We are drowning in the wrong kind of emptiness.

It is the emptiness of being filled
with dread, hatred, anger, anxiety...
It is not emptiness at all.

We are afraid of the right kind of emptiness.
There is nothing there.
We are terrified of nothing.
But, nothing is our last hope.

If we can sit still
in the silence
and open ourselves to
the experience of nothing
long enough,
something will stir to life
and call our name
out of the Mystery
on the other side of nothing.

That is the beginning
of the construction
of our own personal mythology.

Whereof the Mystery?
What's there?
The Mystery is the Ground of Being--
where we come from,
where we return to.
We are extensions of the Mystery,
aspects of the Mystery.
We are the Mystery ourselves.

Being open to the Mystery
is the great adventure of being alive!

Being closed to the Mystery
is having to make up our own reasons
for being alive.

Money is all we can come up with.
Money for what?
For making more money
is all we can think of.

Sitting on the Mystery,
we count our coins
and call it really living.

We are really living now, aren't we?
Isn't this the life, though?
Look at all this money!
Isn't this something?

It is nothing.
And we are filled
with the wrong kind of emptiness
because we won't open ourselves
to the Mystery,
the Wonder,
the Radiance,
at the bottom of it all.

Because we are afraid there is nothing there.
Clutching nothing,
we huddle in fear of nothing.
When nothing is our only hope.

–0–

03

Confronted with the Mystery,
we have no choice 
but to construct a mythology
to explain,
to make sense of,
the Mystery.

That mythology has to take everything 
into account--
has to see and say
how this connects with that,
flows from that,
leads to that,
and here we are.

A mythology that works today
to settle us into the world we live in
as servants of the Mystery,
here and now,
has to speak to us in ways
that harmonize us with all we know to be so.

The old mythologies worked fine in their day,
but Copernicus and Galileo and Einstein 
and their ilk 
laid all those mythologies to rest
without offering an up-to-date mythology
in their place.

And, worse than that,
they declared "There is no Mystery!
It is all nothing more than facts
waiting to be discovered!"

There are no facts 
that aren't mysteries
waiting to be perceived!
Honored!
Revered!
Mythologized!

Mystery is the Ground of Existence and Experience!
Mystery is the Heart of Life and Being!
It is Mystery all the way down!

It is our place to recover the lost sense
of awe and wonder,
reverence and radiance,
in response to the realization
of the Mystery
of who we are
and why we are here, now.

And create a mythology 
that honors it all.

–0–

04

Our mythology has to incorporate
our own personal story
within the story of the world
up to right here, right now,
encompassing where we come from
and where we are going--
with particular emphasis upon
our original nature
and the virtues that are ours
to serve and to share,
and their origin being our origin
in the Mystery
out of which we come
and to which we return.

We are here to tell the story
that we write
with our life--
with all of our lives
fitting together
as the story of the species,
to be told and retold
around campfires,
or their equivalent,
through eons to come.

We start with who we are
and what is ours to do,
issuing as they do
from the source 
that brings us all into being
with, "Here you are,
and this is what you have to work with--
see what you can do with it
in the time that is yours to live!"

How we balance our original nature
and our virtues
and live in harmony 
with one another
within the context and circumstances
of our life
is the story that is ours to tell/live out
as it unfolds before us
in each situation as it arises
day by day
throughout our life.

Our mythology is what we tell ourselves
about our life experience
to make it all possible,
to organize our life,
guide and direct our boat
on its path through the sea,
sustain and motivate ourselves
through the trials and ordeals
that must be surmounted 
all along the way.

Who are we?
How do we know?
What is ours to do?
How do we know?
What is deepest, truest, best
about us?
How do we incorporate,
exhibit,
express,
that in the life we live
within this context
and these circumstances
every day?

What helps/enables us
in the work that is ours to do
with the virtues that are ours
to work with?

Our answers to these questions,
and all the others
that beg to be answered,
constitute our mythology,
the things we say to keep us going
in light of our experience
of all that is.

What say you?
How do you articulate what is you
and yours to do
within your experience
of being alive?

Saying what needs to be said
and asking the questions 
that beg to be asked
constitutes the work 
of mythologizing our life
and our reason for being.

What say you?

–0–

05

It is our place--
our work--to perfect ourselves,
not in light of some moral ideal,
but in service to our original nature
and the virtues that are ours 
to serve and to share
throughout the time left for living.

Our challenge is to be who we are,
in sync with that which is
deepest, truest and best about us,
in conjunction with the time and place,
context and circumstances,
of our living.

We are rarely welcome to be who we are,
but, without resistance/opposition,
we would never come forth
by rising to the occasion
and doing what calls us to action
on the field of action.

Joseph Campbell said,
"It took the Cyclops
to bring out the hero in Ulysses."
It takes our life 
to bring out what we are capable of doing.

We would never think that into being.
We have to live ourselves into 
our essential self--
birthing ourselves all the way to the grave.

This means integrity is the ultimate value,
not wealth.

Success means aligning ourselves with ourselves,
understanding that when we are
transparent to ourselves,
we are "transparent to transcendence."
That when we are our natural self,
we are as the Buddha was,
"one thus come"--
one fully come--
as the Christ was,
and can say about ourselves
as Jesus said about himself,
"The father and I are one"
(Substitute "the Source" for "the father,"
and you say all that can be,
or needs to be said).

Our work is our life:
To be one with the Source,
with the Mystery at the center of us all,
and to live in ways that make that plain.

–0–