Saturday, July 31, 2010

Theory of art expanded

Theory of art expanded:

Art has two major attractions: the connection to the Higher Self (and through it to Source), and the more superficial beauty qualities (prettiness). The latter determines largely the commercial viability, the former, the spiritual viability.

The distaste some have for (some) "pop" art is when the latter qualities overwhelm the former. It will seem attractive but meaningless. Sugary, junk food.

The reverse can be true, in which case you may have an artist who is very strongly appreciated but only by very few people, and many are turned away by the lack of prettiness.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Julie sez it

"In the past few months there have been several times when I was overcome by a happiness so intense that I literally felt that it might be more than I could bear. I've never known any happiness that could compare with this and I don't see how any happiness could. It feels like it could kill me and I wouldn't care if it did. I see now, Jed, what you *didn't* say in your book and I see why you didn't. There's a reality to this that you didn't go into and now that I know it, I know why. There's the place where all the paradoxes disappear and where no questions remain, but there's no point in trying to describe this place. You gave the one perfect answer to all the seemingly unanswerable questions: Come see for yourself. I'm here now. I see it now. It was right there all the time. It looks like the price of truth is everything, but it's not. How could I not have known? The price of truth is nothing."

- Julie in Jed McKenna's book Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, pages 279-280

I am happy that this little passage made it into Jed McKenna's second book. Because I think actually while McKenna's books are unique and excellent, they can be so depressing because (unlike The Disappearance Of The Universe) they might give the overall impression that the long and hard journey is *not worth it*. It's pretty much only in Julie's (rare) real life story of awakening that we see in the end that it *is* worth it, that there *is* some place to go to, that the goal is not Nothing.
In the end of the book we also meet Julie (meeting Jed) after she is done, and it is beautiful to see how much is has affected her, unlike the seemingly jaded Jed. (Joyful Julie and Jaded Jed.)

Monday, July 26, 2010

The End

"Thanks to a pesky fly, the person dreaming our lives just woke up."

- TenSecondTales

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Longest Journey

The longest journey is the journey inward.
-- Dag Hammarskjold

Monday, July 12, 2010

See Bill run. Run, Bill, run!

From the book Never Forget To Laugh, about A Course In Miracles scribe Bill Thetford, page 246. During a spiritual event, somebody:
"... suggested that they each hugged the person next to them. Bill tried to run..."

Funny. It's good for me to hear that Bill had as little time for "huggy-feeliness" as I do.

I don't care for enforced lovingness (note the "enforced" part there). Near thirty years ago, I visited a group of artists/spiritualists. I showed them some photos, including this one of my mom.

One of the women was exactly the tie-dye, huggy-feely kinda person... She looked at it and said: "She looks rather displeased, doesn't she". You know, in the spirit of: "why look so sour, the world would be so much nicer if everybody would be happy, or at least take care to look it".
Later this woman played guitar and sang one of her own songs. She looked me deep in the eyes while singing stuff like "congratulations to you, because you are you"...

A genuinely happy person does not need to "sell" happiness, and he/she has no investment in whether others are happy or not.

I think the basic idea is similar to "The Secret" the movie: if you take care to think only nice thoughts, your life will become nice. It won't happen. In fact, I think this attitude may block you for a long time from facing the horrendousness of the Thought Line which underlies  this world. As Jed McKenna points out: you have to somehow go through the natural depression that comes from seeing this ugly truth, before you can arrive at the other side to see that it was not actually truth, in fact it does not exist at all, thus it can't affect you.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Do you want a perfect world?

Most responsible people want a better world, preferably a perfect world. But I think this is a misconception, at least after we learn that the world is just made up by our collective Mind, and that it's an outer reflection of an inner condition. If the world was perfect, we wouldn't want change, and we would stay asleep forever.

There's a classic Superman story by Alan Moore. A telepathic alien plant has taken over Superman's body and put him in a deep coma. The plant generates a beautiful dream where his home planet never blew up, and he has a perfect life.

But his inner soul knows  there's something wrong, and the dream world starts cracking in the corners. As things go more and more wrong, he gets more and more uncomfortable, and finally makes his way out of the dream world and out of his coma.

Sounds familiar?

Sunday, July 4, 2010

A lot of work...

Sometimes I have watched a very good English TV program called Grand Designs, about people, usually couples, who are building an unusual home in some way. Sometimes these people have ambitions waaaay beyond their bank account, so they do most of the actual labor themselves, like renovating a huge building which is really just a rotten shell, and through 18 months of back-breaking labor in all their free hours, they make it into a beautiful home. (And often spectacularly designed too.)

Which is all cool and so on. But I've been thinking "my god, what a lot of work, I couldn't do that". But now I just realized: that work is nothing compared to the work of Waking Up. The mental sweat and effort I have put into it in the past ten years alone feels like building a city.

The thing of course is that a house only lasts a few hundred years at best. When you're awake, it's an accomplishment literally for eternity. (Not to mention is real.)

Saturday, July 3, 2010

All is good

I was watching the so far very interesting United States of Tara, and saw a picture of a typical MySpace page, you know, loud, colorful, confusing. And I just changed viewpoint and saw that from say, a teenager's viewpoint the kinds of communications and web pages that *I* prefer might just be boring. Dusty. Dry.

And for some reason I connected this with my dominating viewpoint for god knows how long, that this universe is a Horrific, Painful Trap.
I've been aware for a while that upon Enlightenment, one might change viewpoint on this and see the universe as a "big happy puppy just eager to please you" as Jed McKenna puts it. But... it had never really come across to me that this invalidated my other viewpoint as being real in any way. I just "knew" that  that is what the universe "really" is. False and a mistake, but a very bad and undesirable one.

But I see now that this isn't so at all. It simple "is". Or more precisely, it isn't. And so any idea and emotion you can have about it is as valid as any other.

Thursday, July 1, 2010