The Dave Oshana free online event has been and gone. There were over seventy attendants, counting the people that came in twos, like Noah’s Ark. It went on for four and a half hours. A good time was had by all—well, everyone who spoke up about it on the event at least (the last couple of hours was group interaction). If I were to say there have been new converts, I would of course be asking for trouble. But there were those who had impactful, possibly life-changing experiences about which they seemed curious, excited, optimistic, and grateful. (The streaming replay is also freely available to everyone who registers at Dave’s site, see here. Those who have already registered have automatic access.)
This was followed by Dave’s Sunday online event, in which there was some discussion about the free event, including a useful dialogue about my changing role in Dave’s project, and, by inevitable extension, Dave’s role in mine. Immediately after that, I hosted a free Zoom meet for attendants of Dave’s free event, where we shared our experiences and compared notes. This meet was recorded and I may share highlights from it in a future podcast, with permission of those involved.
Meanwhile, back at the Auticulture ranch. Murmurings of discontent continue and have provided unexpected inspiration, though almost certainly not of the sort intended.
A recent commenter (whose comments didn’t make it past moderation) claimed I should listen to the “90% of my fans” who are trying to save me from Dave and get me back on the straight and narrow. This is a curious claim, because, so far, the total of such commenters is probably less than half a dozen, especially if you consider that three of “them” posted from the same IP address. One informed me that they no longer intend to finish Vice of Kings; another, quoted below, that they had planned to buy my book but now they were reconsidering. When I kept this person’s first comment in moderation, they posted again, this time in full-on infant attack mode, complaining about idiot jerks and numb nuts.
Bait and switch. With fans like these, who needs a lynch mob?
One of the most insidious hooks in all this is that, the more stupid, asinine, and vulgar the attack, the more tempting it is for my ego to whip out its mighty pen and start swinging its conkers: it starts to feel like sport. Maybe this was the unwritten temptation of Jesus? The part where the devil acts like a complete ass, hoping Jesus will get all puffed up and give him a good whupping—while Satan secretly snickers the whole time.
But Jeshua knew better. I wonder if I do?
The Voice of the Disgruntled
The first commandment of virtual space is Thou shalt not feed the trolls. But what about making a meal out of them? Turning diarrhea into miso soup, is that better than water into wine!? And if Satan’s body can become bread, can even the tempter-troll be redeemed?
Here’s the email, anyhow. I reproduce it without the author’s permission, under the “fair-usage of troll-shit” act:
Hello Jasun
I posted a response to your most recent podcast, which you moderated out. I just want you to know, I was very interested in purchasing Vice of Kings, but the position you’re in, your background, it all seems to point to you being the devil in disguise. How can your audience trust you? Isn’t counter culture just the next hand of the Establishment?
It’s even more curious you promoting Dave so hard. The answer isn’t to fight culture with better culture, or even to organize and rebel directly — its to go see Dave. It’s to just give up and say: “this is just the way the world is.” Really? Is that really just how it is? I can’t see this as anything less than the most convenient option for those in power. Go follow some guru (but don’t worry he’s not a guru) and meditate about your soul energy. It’s worked for untold millenia in India…it must just be karma then?
At least Grant Morrison had the dignity to say: “don’t trust me.”
But I haven’t heard this from you, Jasun. I think those of us who were hoping for some genuineness are heartbroken, and maybe that’s the point? There’s no one to trust. Stop looking. Give up. Can you see how this would be convenient for Empire? To give that message to us last few on the fringes? I heard you say the word “shill.” I didnt hear you say you weren’t – I hear clever talk-arounds that avoid having to come clean about it. I think your fans deserve some basis of honesty– even if it’s “don’t trust me.”
Disgruntled Fan
When commenting at the blog, this unnamed person used a proxy that was bounced through several countries. Clearly they want to conceal their identity, and have some minor skills in doing so. The sincerity of their intentions is open to question, however: Are they a real fan, or only playing a role? On the other hand, since they did use the word “heartbroken,” however melodramatically, I feel I owe their email at least some serious attention (beside the brief email response I gave them, and despite their most recent comment at the blog ~ 100% troll shit that insulted my readers, while simultaneously claiming to be speaking for them).
There’s more to it than compassion, though. I was sort of glad that someone put into words this position, however loony, since it was something I guessed at, while talking to Martin Jolly on the last podcast, in reference to a comment on YouTube that made similar accusations. This lets me know there are at least two people out there (unless it’s the same body using different avatars) whose minds run down these rusty old tracks. On the third hand, it’s possible I am only using all this as an excuse to write another blogpost, one that allows me to linger in the past a bit longer. It’s possible. But it also seems like a golden opportunity to better articulate and understand what may be happening here, for those who are along for the ride (so far).
It also occurred to me that, as unpleasant as it is to have to entertain these half-coherent rantings for an hour or a day, these troll-people have to spend their whole lives listening to them inside their own skulls! This is not a pretty prospect: in fact, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Why I Don’t Have Fans
The first question that came to me on reading this person’s comments was “Do I have fans?” And if so, are they disgruntled? And if so, why are they only speaking up now, and only to express a feeling of being betrayed? Why didn’t they let me know they were there earlier, with expressions of loyalty and support? This seems more than a little suspicious to me.
Some may say that they have spoken up; but if so, in most cases at least, it is not, so far, these same disgruntled ones (or if it is, they are hiding their identities). All I know for sure about these “fans” is that they generally cease to be fans—in my mind at least—the moment they engage me in a dialogue. I don’t have time for fanatics, including the flattering kind. Maybe this is why my “real fans” stay quiet—until, at least, their disgruntlement becomes more than they can bear?
The only fans I am really aware of are people who have become collaborators and friends, or at least acquaintances (as well as the occasional client). There are dozens of readers and listeners who have made this simple transition, and many of them are currently intrigued, and supportive, about me sharing my experiences with Dave Oshana. In a number of cases, this has led to their meeting Dave (attending online events, and even retreats); of these cases, the majority have expressed enthusiasm and gratitude for the opportunity.
But for some reason, the attitude of the disgruntled fan is that I should listen especially to their cry of indignation—which sure enough becomes full condemnation when not satisfied—and that if I don’t, I am proving my bias. But if my first acquaintance with a “fan” is when they start to complain about being betrayed or accuse me of being a shill, is it really surprising I am not especially interested in what they have to say? Or in having fans, at all?
Apparently, the mere fact of their being a fan (which apparently also means disgruntled) means they deserve special consideration. “I almost bought—or half-read—your book! Dude, you owe me!” One good thing has come of this at least: it has helped me to realize how little I care about selling books compared to actually reaching people. It may even be better in the long run if I sell less books, if it means having less “fans.” Or perhaps I only need to be reaching a different demographic?
Am I responsible for a disgruntled fan’s disillusionment? Or am I responsible for giving them the illusion they feel disabused of? Is it both, or neither? Where does my responsibility begin? Am I my brother’s keeper? At what point do I cease to be a human being, sharing his experience with anyone who’s interested, and at what point do I become a teacher, leader, cultural figure, with followers or fans, and a corresponding responsibility for looking after their feelings?
Ironically, I have (mildly) wrestled with this question regarding my previous written output, The Lucid View and Homo Serpiens especially, via which (I now feel) I unintentionally spread disinfo due to my own naiveté and unconscious complicity with bad memes. Yet, also ironically, no one so far has complained about that earlier material. (My guess is the sort of “fans” who are disgruntled are more likely to groove to old Aeolus material; they certainly don’t seem like they would appreciate the subtleties of Seen and Not Seen.)
Another irony: several of these fans (possibly the same one, using multiple sock puppets?) have tried to argue that I am repeating the mistake I made with John de Ruiter, only now with Dave Oshana. As Mr. Jolly jests, Dark Oasis 2: Electric Boogaloo (and yes, Dark Oasis and Dave Oshana have the same initials: what more proof do you need?!). Despite this, no one, so far, has tried to argue that, since I have reneged on some of my earlier books, why the hell should they trust me to read the more recent ones? Yet surely this would be just as reasonable a position to take—or just as unreasonable?
Fear of the Light
As my wife said yesterday, when I told her of some of the troll comments: “This (project) is not for the faint of heart.”
You thought you were going to have it easy? You expected to be able to lounge around with your bongs and your Bibles and bitch about Empire and controlled oppositions till the hens came home to roost in your unwashed underwear? To ferment like mushrooms in the darkness of the cozily-familiar and fantasize about fomenting a grass-roots revolution while binging on Netflix or Gnostic Logos Media?
Well, you wuz wrong.
Anyone who thinks they know where this project is going is in for a rude awakening. You thought darkness was scary? Darkness is comfortable, safe, predictable, easy. It keeps you warm at night. It whispers in your ear that you don’t have to do anything at all except keep on dreaming.
The light is something else entirely.
Some people apparently think that wising up equals becoming wise. From what I’ve seen, it’s just as likely to equal the opposite. You wise up, and then you become the biggest fool of all. This is what happens when people think they have seen enough shit—enough of the toxic and deceptive nature of the world—to know that it’s all shit. They become complacent in the certainty that culture and society is nothing but lies, so they can stop looking for truth. Stop seeking anything besides entertainment and distraction—including online “information” about how the world is all shit, which, since they “know” this already, is just reinforcing their prejudice, idly fingering a wound instead of dressing it.
There are two sorts of complacency in the face of unrelenting darkness: either we give up or we start fighting. These are the only two options the mind identity ego sees. Revolt or despair. Fight or flight/freeze. The problem with rejecting culture while remaining embedded in it and dependent on it—instead of looking at the ways we have been conditioned by it and made complicit with it—is that it leads to self-rejection, guilt, self-loathing. It leads to a tale of a beast without a beauty, a troll without a soul.
*
A curious fact about Dave Oshana is that he appears to annoy both spiritual believers and spiritual skeptics. He annoys the first class because he doesn’t meet the requirements of a spiritual teacher or guru. He bugs the second because he looks too much like one.
Sometimes, most curiously of all, the critic comes at the conundrum that Dave presents from both sides simultaneously: “He’s a guru!” (bad); and: “He doesn’t act like an enlightened person!” Presumably, by this token, a guru who did act like an enlightened person would be OK. But in fact, that’s not OK either, because gurus are bad. The only OK thing, apparently, would be an enlightened person who acts exactly like anyone else (especially them).
It’s either that, or enlightenment itself is bad, or perhaps a proven delusion. Essentially, the problem seems not to be with someone saying they are enlightened (which is only considered arrogant and rude), but with the possibility of enlightenment itself, at least pertaining to anyone but themselves. Because, if enlightenment did exist, and someone attained it, they would have no choice but to look up to them, and this is ipso facto already established (by the cultural program) to be bad.
It feels good to write all this down, but what feels best of all is to share good news with good folk and to see that, for every disgruntled trickle oozing from behind a soiled proxy condom, there are five or ten heartfelt and soulful voices who seem increasingly receptive and willing to let down their guard of cynicism and mistrust, without sacrificing their critical faculties, and take a chance. There is relief in seeing that healthy skepticism isn’t the same—is not even related to—suspicion and distrust. Seeing that the exact opposite is the case: that the purpose of sharpening our skepticism and discernment to a fine point is precisely so we can begin to trust in life, more and more full-bloodedly, and to go boldly forth, without hesitation, doubt, or fear, where only the intrepid few have gone before.
What’s being revealed to me over the course of this latest unveiling is that there are people out there who dare to care, to love and trust, not because they are naïve or uninformed, but because they have found something good and are willing to stick to it. Not everyone needs to know the dark, inside out, in order to find the light. There are different degrees of immersion required of us all. And I have immersed enough.
What could be sadder, more wasteful or tragic, than someone who has become so acquainted with the darkness that they have lost all sensitivity to the light? Yet this seems to be what’s occurring within the field of conspiratainment: limb-thrashing, teeth-gnashing seekers of “truth” who are willing to go so far and no further, who shrink back in horror at the sight of light, of an actual way out, and who seem less afraid of a life of endless tunneling than of the light shimmering faintly but unmistakably at the end.
Those who have been unable to go from paranoid awareness to self-awareness have unwittingly chosen paranoia over awareness.
For the Convenience of Empire
In Disgruntled Fan’s email, he writes: “I think those of us who were hoping for some genuineness are heartbroken, and maybe that’s the point? There’s no one to trust. Stop looking. Give up. Can you see how this would be convenient for Empire? To give that message to us last few on the fringes?”
What has broken this person’s heart? The fact that I have been saying the precise opposite to what they have heard? That I have been writing and speaking about someone I have found who I can trust, someone who I believe is offering the possibility of a way out? The disgruntled are objecting, not because I am giving a message of hopelessness that is convenient for Empire, but because I am giving a message of hope that is inconvenient to them. It is easier—more convenient—for them to believe I am a shill. Why? Because Empire has them, body and soul. It has captured them via their own fear and loathing of Empire. They have succumbed to the devil’s wiliest temptation.
Originally, this person thought I was genuine and trustworthy, if not quite as good as Grant Morrison (who they can trust—because he tells them not to). Then I did something they didn’t like, and the romance was over. What did I do? I spoke about somebody I consider trustworthy and genuine. Their disgruntlement is this: “Why the hell did I ever look up to you, man, when you are stupid enough to look up to this guy?”
What an ironic paradox! Apparently, I exposed my own gullibility, foolishness, and untrustworthiness by being willing to trust someone besides myself. Yet if we can’t trust anyone besides ourselves, why would they even care (if I trust someone)? The lonely troll was looking for a savior to save them, but couldn’t admit it to themselves. What could be more humiliating for them than seeing the one they were unconsciously looking towards, doing the very thing they couldn’t bear to admit to?
That which you have within you that you do not bring forth will destroy you. Troll, digest thyself: or submit to becoming fodder for thine own soul. Hey it’s almost Easter: someone has to be the sacrifice, right?
While mulling all this over, I realized yet another irony: there are a whole lot of people (maybe—or maybe all sock puppets to one Borg-mind) who insist they would never be stupid enough to look up to someone else. And yet: they have no problem at all looking down on just about everyone. When they say, “I don’t look up to anyone,” they aren’t claiming that everyone is equal—far from it. They are saying, implicitly, that they are better than everyone else.
How do you square this diabolist’s circle? I had a brother who also considered it weakness to believe in any kind of superior power to himself, so I think I have the answer. When “You are the only light there is, my friend” becomes “I am whatever the hell I choose to pretend to be,” you have moved 180 degrees from the tiniest of openings to a dead-end. You have gone into nihilism-lite, which is solipsism, dark. Faith in anything outside yourself is weakness, gullibility, stupidity? Contempt, superiority, and cynicism are the only measure of strength or integrity? What a perfect state of submission to reduce people to!
The Empire is within you—which is why it never seems to end. Both Jesus and the Serpent said “Ye shall be as gods.” There are two ways to receive truth; but only one of them leads to freedom
.
*
There’s another problem. Since we are cultured, socialized beings, we don’t (yet) have the tools—we haven’t developed enough sensitivity—to recognize anything that doesn’t come to us via the world. If we reject anything and everything that appears to be good, on the basis that “nothing good comes out of culture” (while we carry on taking the stuff we know is bad, and hating ourselves for it), what does that leave? A tunnel without light. Because if we are waiting for something that isn’t wearing the outer garments of culture to save us, how will we even recognize it if it appears?
The same applies with Dave Oshana and the spiritual marketplace. Dave may have no other choice but to parody being a guru in order to be identifiable to those he can assist. The awakened must enter the nightmare to awake the dreamers; formlessness must assume form, if it is to transform it.
The same applies to this blog, podcast, etc. Whatever is happening here. Not “If we build it, he will come,” but, as we come together, something (formless) enters into form. There may be no way for souls to come together and share a burgeoning awareness and optimism about something that has nothing to do with the world—or with the terrible state it is in—without appearing “woo-woo” (formless, fruitless, or un-in-formed!) to eyes and ears that are permanently fixated on the world. Whether their senses are fixated in idolatry or dark fascination matters little. Often enough it is both combined: We idolize the darkness, and fetishize the pain.
I should know. I am the original sinner. Once upon a time, while half demented from too many psychedelics, I heard God say to me, as I turned away from infinite love, “Well, kid, if perfect beauty ain’t enough for you, you’re on your own.”
That moment of sheer damnation seemed to go on forever. Yet every moment since has presented the same choice to me. Mercy is infinite, but we have to ask.
The Problem of “Enlightenment”
Now I will offer up my one olive branch to the disgruntled, however wildly irrational, obtuse, circular, and numbingly empty their arguments may have been. The word “enlightenment” does seem to be part of the problem and not the solution.
Accordingly, this is my open letter to Dave Oshana:
Dear Dave,
Like “conspiracy” and “guru,” the word “enlightenment” may at this point be tainted beyond salvaging. There may even be a solid reason for this. The word “conspiracy” was coopted by conspirators to further confuse us, to prevent understanding, and to obscure their actions behind a cloak of counterfeit narratives designed to constantly trigger our ego-minds into perceiving the problem as an “us-and-them” one, rather than an “us and us” one (exhibit A: DF’s email).
“Guru”—as you spoke about in the last online event—traditionally referred to “fixers” who worked in conjunction with religious, political, and economic power structures, to help the world-oriented become more comfortably entrenched in the world. No freedom here, either.
So then, what if “enlightenment”—the word—has, by and large, likewise referred to a state of consciousness that is compromised and incomplete? One that was itself a form of worldly dissociation, of super-egoic inflation and siddhi-wielding, turbo-charged, psychic consciousness, allowing for genuine power and knowledge, perhaps, but lacking any deeper reference to the body or the soul (wholeness), and hence divorced from truth or goodness? In other words, a lie? What then?
(This is simply a more nuanced way of saying: what if 99% of people throughout history who claimed to be enlightened, weren’t?)
In this case, does using the term associate you with a lineage of delusion? And if so, is it time to coin a better phrase? Far be it from me, who has only the most partial experience of this mystery, to offer suggestions. But, in the spirit of getting a heavy boulder rolling: how about “cellular sentience”? Or “full-body awakening”? Or “somatic ensoulment”? Or “embodied formlessness”? Something! Anything!
Will you hear the appeal of the unenlightened? You are the enlightened one here, so you tell us. Provide us with a pithy and punchy description that doesn’t trigger all of these unnecessary associations, the good, the bad, and the ugly, a descriptor that requires some unpacking, certainly, while stimulating healthy curiosity and interest. I know you can do it.
You may counter that we shouldn’t cater to the negative critics (don’t feed the trolls). This is something I am learning now, as I slowly shift my literary focus away from the dark, towards the light (scary stuff—this is not for the lilied of livers, as we have seen). On the other hand, if a door squeaks often enough when you go through it, maybe it needs some oil?
And if a word sticks in enough people’s throats, perhaps it is not only the throats that are at fault? Maybe not all words are created equal, and this particular fish is too bony by half?
*
Speaking of words, here’s a last tidbit that speaks directly to that matter. This is from a dream I had of Dave, following the free event. Just the relevant parts.
Dave explains to a woman who is antagonistic to him that he can only help people if he cares about their bodies. The implication is that caring about someone’s body (their being) is dependent on how much they themselves care about their bodies, and how they treat it. All this makes perfect sense to me.
I am talking with Dave about writing a book together—telling his life story. I feel I have cleared up enough space, internally and externally, to take on the task. Dave says, “I don’t think you are ready. You haven’t asked for lightning to strike yet.”
I disagree with him. “There are several reasons that’s not right,” I say. “Number one: I ask for lightning to strike every day. Number two—I forget what number two was just now. Number three: how do you know that working on this project might not be my way of asking lightning to strike?”
Dave seems to accept this. He begins to talk about his life, and shows me several previous attempts to write it down. I am flooded with material, a vast and overwhelming amount of impressions and data (the only thing I recall has something to do with mushrooms). There seems no conceivable way to organize or structure this material (turn it into a book). It is unthinkable. I realize then that, if I am going to take on such a project, since there is no way to contain all of this material with my mind, I will have to rely on something other than my mind. More: I will have to go outside my mind to do it.
I realize then that it is not a matter of wanting lightning to strike but of needing it. I am outside my mind realizing this. All that “Dave” content has pushed me out of it. Lightning has struck.
I wake up in a spacious bodily state, energy coursing through my body, which feels quite different, like an expanding container of light, possibly a sphere. I wonder for a moment if I have awoken in a new state of being (I won’t say that word). I realize after a few moments that I am still in my mind today.
***
Follow-on live event, Sat 13th 11 am PST:
“the “fair-usage of troll-shit” act”
Is Dave still around ? Can I get a freebie ?
What (if anything) do you think of the following quote ? :
“When the more civilized Europeans showed the letters of their alphabet to the uncultured American Indians, the latter were frightened by what they took to be so many little kobolds, little demons. This will show you what it means to introduce to a human being something that is so unnatural, so alien to him at the age of six or seven, as the letters of our script — for I ask you, has an A or a B in the form that is thrust upon us as children any relation to human life? It has none, not the very remotest! In ancient Egypt there were at least hieroglyphs, and the picture that was painted or drawn did bear some suggestion of resemblance to the reality; moreover men were made conscious of the relation between the picture and the reality. But today we learn A, B, C, as something entirely remote from life. Those who want to judge everything materialistically, to live in the world only with the ordinary, everyday consciousness, cannot possibly realize all that is driven out of the human being, what is really killed in him as the result of having to learn this A, B, C, this reading and writing, by modern methods.”
Freebies on Mike B! There will be a free video replay of the event this Saturday. Requires registration and answering a few questions in advance: https://www.daveoshana.com/events/821-video-replay-of-a-taste-of-formlessness
Helsinki 7pm – Geneva/Munich 6pm – London 5pm
Boston/NYC Noon – Minneapolis/Chicago 11am
Edmonton 10am – San Francisco 9am – Honolulu 6am
Mumbai 9:30pm – Tel Aviv 7pm
Next Day: Brisbane 2am – Tokyo 1am – Bali/Hong Kong Midnight
I think Mike was hoping for a free comment on his chosen quote, from the Dave of ancients.
Heh, yeah, I was rolling for a response to that Steiner quote, but it’s good to know that there are replays of these meetings happening if I ever want to check them out !
So now you are not the only tod waiting on a response from God. 😉
That’s confusing. Does Mike B. buy into that “there’s no person here” shit? As proclaimed on the 2002 Consciousness CD (nascent Enlightened personality sound bites set to original music): “there is no one here but YOU”.
Inspired new album: “Clash of Daves: From the Ancient of Days” (expected 2020)
Now THAT’S confusing..
No one IS enlightened.
It’s a word, a MacGuffin, a gimmick.
But it’s cute. Keep it up.
Aha, my learned colleague, Mike B. The old MacGuffin shuffle.
Which year, if any, did you unequivocally prove, to your total satisfaction, that the G-Spot and female ejaculation were not ephemeral puffin’ MacGuffins?
touché
bet you had to work a long time on that riposte, Mike. 😉
lol
In a perfect world Dave would have showed-up to the blog anon or a’la Till. They are both funny, insightful and share good links.
But we know about Dave’s puffy white shirts. It just takes a minute to get used to.
> MikeB: “But we know about Dave’s puffy white shirts. It just takes a minute to get used to.”
Yes, very comfortable. 100% natural cotton. But no longer easy to find. Who or what is to blame? Or is this an opportunity to change gear?
this reply is a perfect example of what I meant earlier by
“but it’s cute”
@MikeB
I am rapidly getting confirmation (from confidential non-terrestrial sources) that your tongue is always in your cheek. If that weren’t so, I’d wonder where it is.
if I didn’t keep it there, the king would have-it-out
one of the worst things about being a happy American is when you have those moment of being AWARE of your tongue.. man, if that’s enlightenment y’all can keep it 😉
I think the idea is not that language is a negative thing but that it has been used as a form of shackle of the mind by it’s modern useage. The alphabet most likely has some form of “divine” origin and if you look into research by Stan Tenen there is a rich amount of information to take in about this idea. It can be a lot to take in at once but pretty amazing.
https://youtu.be/vE-ViyPXj4Q
More at –
http://www.meru.org
Dig it. Thanks. Downloaded for later.
I had this dream years ago about a very human-looking guy from the waist up, in “space” that was made of like, wire wrapped blue/white liquid fire letters and he was holding a globe made of same and the letters looked Hebrew.. ish
I was reading a Charles Upton piece on inverted metaphysics after reading Van Helsing trying to explain Dracula metaphysics in Bram Stokers book as i wanted to know what a Vampire is. It seems to marry with what you are saying.
In the spiritually healthy, spirit guides the rational, conscious mind which governs the will which governs desire.
In the Vampiric mind, desire animates the will which then informs the rational mind. The numinous is veiled, and does not come into play.
Your boy, working from the inverse, covets you, he infuses you as an object with his own desire, his own subjectivity. This is the scapegoat mechanism at work i guess. Instead of responding passively or as he desires, you, Jasun, the object , are making noises that do not correspond with the boys desires. This causes him to want to destroy you like a kid with Thors hammer.
All the while he is staring intensely into the Horsley pool and not recognising his own reflection. Its poignant isnt it ? Poor bastard.
If he is intell’ , it speaks volumes about them, no ?
Thus the Vampire, while appearing rational, in fact has the mind of a child, as explained by Van Helsing on page 489.
I guess this sort of child mind is like the corporate guy who Kunstler talks about in his article last evening who puts tens of thousands of local hardware stores out of business and then donates generously to a University, thinking that will be ok.
Or the sort of child mind being displayed by your boy.
Great podcast you did with Charles, thankyou.
to Prodigious Voracity – thanks for the added commentary; it is indeed a dark pool into which the young narcissus must gaze.
mentioning the scapegoat mechanism seems esp. relevant, with Easter just 11 days away and due on Adolf’s birthday this year, the collective scapegoat of history’s superego… It will require some unpacking for the unversed reader, however. DF sees JH as a role model to imitate, but imitation leads to mimetic desire, which leads to mimetic rivalry and finally violence, scapegoating. Too much for me to unpack right now, but clearly DF has gone from admiring me from afar (safe-sex mimesis) to getting too close for comfort, competing with me, and finally out-and-out hostility. In the process, to justify his emotional responses to himself, he has had to invert his original view of me from that of rare genuine article to dangerous fake. Somehow, my introducing Dave into the mix messed with the transference process, and triggered major daddy issues.
Too bad he didn’t buy my book: he could have burned it sacrificially.
Somehow it feels as though all of this is playing out in a very useful way. That (en)lightening is striking chords in observers that twang whatever dissonance or harmony needs twanging.
I may still be crawling through my familiar tunnel of poop, but I feel the buzzing of tiny light particles as they swarm through the interstices of the iron prison I’ve helped to build. They are not altogether unwelcome, although the urge to swat them away is reflexive.
That urge has something to do with language, or rather, my personal internal constructions of meaning that are attached to the language we share. The desire to trust, to allow admiration is not dead, but it has so often led to unpleasant destinations that it feels dangerous to simply give the horse its head…to gallop wildly in the direction of what may be a false beacon is understandably not the most palatable of decisions.
It can seem like wisdom to linger in the darkness, plodding slowly toward a light source that may or may not be actual. All of the old harbingers are absent: the spikes of excitement, of hope, of desperation that accompany the siren song of salvation as sung by the false sanctuaries of lust, the desire to possess or be possessed by the other, the endlessly sanctioned collision with other souls in a never ending dance of simulated wholeness seeking…these are what my conditioning insists that I look for: the familiar frisson of approaching the ONE that will complete me. In their absence, I must fall back to basics, to listening to the cells in the body: not the excitation of the fight/flight/freeze/engulf system. Unfamiliar, and therefore challenging.
There is, however, a slight smile that tugs at the corners of the mouth, and is irresistible in its gentle pull. I’ll go with that. For now. Wary, but charmed, nonetheless.
Nicely articulated. You almost cause me to doubt my “decision” to linger no more in yonder dark forest. Ah but ’tis too late to retreat, the trolls have already spotted me. There is no other way but onward.
Hi Jasun… this all seems really weird… that some folks have a problem with you and your relationship with Dave Oshana.
To me it is simple – does the relationship (in the form it is in) help you? Help you to be happier with Jasun? Help you to be a better person for others? If the answer is yes to any one of these, how could anyone possibly take issue about it?
Additionally, that the relationship you have with Dave Oshana is a reality you share about publicly, it is sad there are those out there who think that, because you share about it, that gives them license to bash you in one form or another about it. Yet, what does that say about them? IMO they need a life.
Anyways, from the minimal Youtubes I have watched of Dave talking to folks, it appears to me he “gets it” (regarding the Absolute) and that, to me, is the key to being “enlightened.” But also, what I like about him is it seems he allows the human (in him) to be… human. That’s gravy to me… and an additional expression of his enlightenment (like the story of him blushing to the waitress).
I also thank you for recognizing there are those of us who… and I know I am new to you, but I say this with sincerity… are your friend. Thank you (again) for your writings and blogs and recorded discussions.
Sam
Thanks Sam. Apparently for some of these folk, a) they don’t want to see me happy; and b) a happy Jasun isn’t a better person for them but only a brainwashed one. To some small degree I can sympathize; after all I used to believe that happiness was a sign of stupidity. Now I know the stupid are as unhappy as the rest of us, and stupid to boot.
I know there are many followers of JdR who believe, or once did, that being “with” him made them a better, happier person. I am not sure if many others around them agreed, and I saw very little evidence that following JdR led to a happy or better life. With Dave, others (inc or esp. those closest to me) have remarked on the improvement of my demeanor and way of being with them since working (playing?) with Dave, the lightening of my heavy load, so to speak. All this has occurred in tandem with other developments, such as house renovations, running a thrift business, resolving some past trauma issues, partially at least, and so on. But that’s very much the point to me: Dave is not so much a cause as a central effect of a growing movement and momentum towards well-being, peace, and contentment. He is part of the package that is my life, currently, albeit a part that points to the whole and beyond it.
Thanks for understanding. & i agree about the gravy. We all need more of the merely human, all we can eat, if we are ever to slide gracefully beyond.
@ Samuel Hunter
“To me it is simple – does the relationship (in the form it is in) help you? Help you to be happier with Jasun? Help you to be a better person for others? If the answer is yes to any one of these, how could anyone possibly take issue about it?”
This! THIS! This is *almost* verbatim how I’ve tried to explain my reasoning to other human Earthlings that are in a pickle about how we behave and what we {don’t} choose to believe or trust.
Thanx, Sam.
Also, your blog just provided me with a jolt of synchronicity, as one of your posts reminded me to listen to a recent Legalise Freedom interview with Bernardo Kastrup.
Thanx, again.
Regards,
Benjamin Michael Walker
Thank you Jasun. Just Thank you!
Dana F
The, or an other DF
Follow-on live event, Sat 13th 11 am PST:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DijXeTCQvEU
Jasun,
Thanx for *another* wonderful essay.
I’ve been lurking around your “scene” since The Stormy Weather Existential Detective Agency days, but have, until now, never made a peep.
Peep!
Oshana is someone I’ve yet to research, but certainly will do so now — just to figure out what all the fuss is about.
“The awakened must enter the nightmare to awake the dreamers; formlessness must assume form, if it is to transform it.”
Regarding human Earthlings, if one can learn to to be all {most} things {forms} for all {most} people, they will be able to inhabit common grounds where appropriate help can be given and shared.
Adaptable malleability and non-identity, aside from a lovely spirit.
Whatever; I don’t know.
Keep on keepin’ on, man; your work *is* appreciated.
Some people just like to shit all over everything they encounter in the puzzling theater of life.
Regards,
Benjamin Michael Walker
Hooray – another silent “fan” crosses the threshold – driving a BMW no less.
@Jasun
Obscure reference. 90% of your (now former) fans don’t watch Top Gear. Empire magazine will strike
back for unregistered brand placement of company that profited from Dachau concentration camp labor.
not SO obscure, what’s in a man’s name? ^^
Shucks!
Playing Vulcan chess in public now, hey?
Another closet falls.
careful, people will start to think we are communicating in cult-lingo
But we are – and so are they.
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
gosh, real stand-up; you could be channeling woody allen before the fall.
@ Jasun
O, good sir… I am presently without vehicular automotive transportation machines of any sort, even though I do have a valid driver’s license. I’m waiting for the sporadic car fairy to come and gift me a Karmann Ghia and an Airstream trailer.
Also, please note that my parents *did* consider gracing me with the initials “LSW” — Luke Sky Walker. If they had gone through with this naming scheme, I’m not sure if I would’ve been called “faggot” more or less times while growing up; but, at least then no one could’ve teased me with “Bengay”.
@BMW, LSW
Typecast from birth. Americans read it as “Licensed Social Worker”. The harassment during the ‘Star Wars’ teen years would bring forth an inexorable idealism to do good so that others would not have to suffer your post-Lucas fate.
@ Benjamin Michael Walker
Sagacious!
@ Dave Oshana
Aww, shucks.
Really though, please do watch out with those ego-inflationary, one-worded, polysyllabic compliments.
What is is they say about diapers? It depends on who gets pampered.
@BMW
I suppose a one-word response without a contextual emoticon could be qualified as good or bad. Is the diaper joke about adults who wish to regress to the idyll of their baby years?
Email exchange with Till that bounced back (if you read this Till, you need new email):
Till: “I mentioned to you that we are caught between naivety and paranoia. Right now you might think I’m being paranoid, even though I’m pretty sure that the elite is not just a cliché, but a well organized system of relations that has spread its tentacles world wide – held together by a common narrative-ideology formed through the same developmental dynamics vis-à-vis others.”
Me: “I think so too; but I also think the model has been rendered all but unworkable by the elite and their narrative engines of meme creation.”
Till: “They are fueled by hatred, anger, arrogance and self-absorption. It emanates most strongly from the most offensive levels: the military, banking, religion and politics.”
Me: “No arguments from me there, except, well, we are all in this together so they might best be viewed as terminally damaged souls clogging up the natural distribution of energy within the collective human system.
“If thine right eye offend thee, give it some TLC.”
> Jasun: (This is simply a more nuanced way of saying: what if 99% of people throughout history who claimed to be enlightened, weren’t?)
Crikey Kurtz! That’s disturbing!
Jettisoning mimicry and the undeserved flattery it provides. Entering a brave new world unmediated by broken language, especially spiritual concepts. Doesn’t leave much flat earth to stand on.
Diabolical Easter challenge!
Something for my fans and your “fans”, instead of “Enlightened Teacher” (which I don’t use, anyway): ‘Riddle Diddle Dave’? Not an exhortation but a descriptor.
it meets the first 3 requirements: a) pithy & punchy (kind of); b) does not trigger unnecessary associations (true); c) requires unpacking (& then some!);
however, it’s a fail on d) stimulating healthy curiosity. I can see the expressions now when I say I am off the Finland to see my “Riddle Diddle man”
Clearly, this is a very lost soul. They’re both attacking you and searching, or so it seems. It’s mildly entertaining and also a little sad and disturbing. I don’t think I would have gone as heavy, Jasun… prob. just asked: “what’s up man?” “How can I help?” All you can really say is, “Dave works for me,” take it or leave it, or ‘I’m trying to help.” And just leave it at that.
Sure, with you background and history, it can be easy to paint you into a corner. Couldn’t anyone be a stooge and we not know it? I always say, we never can know, so just take what you can from the info and move on. Make up your own (damn) mind. A lot of people, unfortunately,because of the culture and the education (dumbing down) process, really have no mind of their own. They have no mind, and they have no method of thinking their way to it, either. I call it, “the incompetent mind.” It’s beyond sad. Beyond criminal, even. It’s the systemic abuse you write about.
I will say, as others have, my own spiritual breakthroughs happened when I threw all of the concepts away. All the books, all the mantras, when I stopped what other people had tried, that’s when things really happened. It sounds like Dave is a leader in this pursuit? In truly deprogramming we DO become aware of what wasn’t there. This cannot be described. I say, anyone can do this, but that’s not necessarily true, given the incompetent mind. It’s taken me a lifetime. If Dave can save you time in this, he is offering a service which is wholly worth charging for. It would be no different than a yoga instructor, or a priest, or a shrink offering guidance—time is money.
I wish it hadn’t taken me a lifetime, tbh. I can corroborate that there are profound effects in the body, bliss states can be accessed, and phenomena that I can’t really explain. That’s how I know Dave sounds legit, even without participating in his version. If he really wanted to change the world though…why not just throw up a youtube video of his method? If I could get more of a sample, I’d probably be MORE inclined to go through the rigmarole of signing up on his site, and revealing personal information about myself. There’s a manicured element to his current videos and website that does come off as…guru ? I don’t want to say disingenuous…but, to the incompetent mind, how else do you present yourself as a spiritual teacher? Perhaps there is some other shirt he could wear? I don’t know. I mean this entirely as constructive criticism.
Anyway, keep calm and carry on !
Anon UN-Disgruntled Fan };^D
Yes I’ve said for some time now that Dave’s site is too vanilla, not punk (goofy?) enough. ‘Course Dave IS super hygienic (tho AFAIK he does not visit a manicurist) and does often wear white. Wouldn’t it be ironic if there were a bunch of practices and methods for maintaining physical and energetic health (and assisting others with it) that had, over the millennia, been aped by false ceremony masters and pseudo-hoodoo-gurus, to the point that they have become tropes familiar to the point of contempt? That would create a double-bind for the somatically ensouled or cellular awake, damned if they do (follow these procedures), doubly damned if they don’t.
I agree that a loosening of some of the trappings of spiritual teacher-dom can (and maybe should) happen, without sacrificing any of the necessary rigors.
Glad to get your comment anyhow, anon or not.
My current website should be more like “Fight Club”?
Did you ever see my original site?
This is how I used to communicate (innumerable email correspondences) in 2000/2, using the word “awakening” as much as “enlightenment”:
http://oshana.org/answers/index.html
> Jasun: “over the millennia, been aped by false ceremony masters and pseudo-hoodoo-gurus, to the point that they have become tropes familiar to the point of contempt”.
Sums up the New Age, therapy, transpersonal and spiritual marketplaces: “If it walk and quacks like a duck, imitate, f*ck it and make a profit! We don’t need swans queering the pitch.”
Thanks Ferris using your day off to comment and keeping it wheel!
Presenting myself verbally, non-verbally and graphically (but I never stooped as low as Sly Stallone to a certain type of -graphically to launch my guru career) is an endless conundrum.
If I appeared in jeans and t-shirt then that would overlap with a section of the modern spiritual teacher crowd who range from actually or artfully messy to, well, “done”.
I don’t have a method except it looks like madness to anyone who is not in it. Meaning that when I converse with someone they get IT, but don’t understand. Bystanders on the side of the pool wonder why everyone in the water is having such outrageous fun. Which might explain to Jasun why he is getting “terrible two’s” tantrum trolls throwing their toys around to get attention. They only need to jump in to experience “what all the fuss is about”.
My piece on liminality picked up by alt. site run by ex-military men – a site named after the inspiration for the Fabian Society.
Maybe I AM a shill? :/
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/04/12/our-identities-are-changing-disorienting-america/
@Jasun Have your trolls started hibernating since the bears started waking up? You seem to be feeding them. Maybe your (now comforted) trolls will no longer feel the need to put out bait on forums to get their ounce of psychic flesh.
@Dave – ha yes almost a literal case of feeding a troll, i.e., giving validation & confirmation to his trollery.
Or – a cunning move in which the defense presents evidence before the prosecution can, with a shrug and a jest to signal to the jury there is nothing to see here?
>writes 2 kick-ass books exposing the mechanics of the progressive empire that never ended
>full-stop.jpg
>starts writing about Kosher-stuff like enlightenment and spiritual teaching
>immediately promoted by Military Industrial Blogplex
lmao
@MikeB
Not so farfetched, since as recently as the Kurukshetra War (c. 5,000 – 500 BCE but who’s counting?) the Avatar Lord Sri Krishna (the proposed Supreme God of the Yuga) convinced his disciple Arjuna to do battle in a nasty spat between cousins (which may or may not have happened). Not that Jasun seems au fait with subcontinental philosophy. But he is suspected of a secret fondness for curry. Some things are hard to hide.
Did your “a” actually fall off?
oh, I meant : Laughing My Anxiety Off.. and yes
but you mention the Yuga stuff..
do you/have you enjoyed the gita, upanishads, etc ?
or is it just a chunk up ?
Are we making smalls talk?
If you mean “The” Gita, then yes. Much shorter than the other Sanskrit telephone directories.
Nothing to boast about. Better forgotten. A substitute for not being a skinhead/punk (in the British sense) in my teens. I “enjoyed” it like one enjoys reading that fate is unending lifetimes of never quite making or getting IT/there/off and dreaming of a romantic age of accelerated spiritual progress in Mother Bharat that never was.
Naturally I was relieved and surprised to find myself Enlightened in June 2000. I must have jumped the queue due to a clerical error.
well, I was trying to keep it small, but here goes :
do you know anyone else who is enlightened ?
or suspect anyone currently living of being enlightened ?
have you met people that are enlightened that didn’t know they are ?
I’m not interested in specifics really, but, I mean, you can’t be the only one, right ?
Not small at all. Let me help you understand that question: how many do you know who have the same penis as you?
for their sake I hope none
naturally despite that I was relieved and surprised to find myself genuinely happy in May 2014
@’Happy May’ MikeB
In this case “it takes one to know one” doesn’t exactly apply. More workable is “it takes one who knows, to rumble one who doesn’t”. How does that fit your Donald’s scriptwriter discovers Johari worldview, AofD?
rum·ble
verb
past tense: rumbled; past participle: rumbled
2.
informal•British
discover (an illicit activity or its perpetrator).
“it wouldn’t need a genius to rumble my little game”
intensify.jpg
I remember reading that, “If you say you are enlightened, you are not.” I thought about that and concluded that whoever wrote that wasn’t enlightened because only someone who was, to some degree, dominated by their ego would bother writing that. And thus I concluded that whoever wrote that was not enlightened because they are dominated by their ego and thus also, likely, not in a position of concluding who might be, including those who say they are because it takes one to know one.
I like being enlightened… so much so that I can honestly say I am stark, raving enlightened. My wife agrees.
I think that is an augmented form of “Those who say they know don’t know and those that know don’t say they know”.Which is an altered statement from the Tao te ching which is” Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know. Close your mouth, block off your senses, blunt your sharpness, untie your knots, soften your glare, settle your dust. This is the primal identity. Be like the Tao. It can’t be approached or withdrawn from, benefited or harmed, honored or brought into disgrace. It gives itself up continually. That is why it endures.”
I would understand it to mean that knowing exists outside of the rational mind therefore in order to not be cornered into trying to explain in worldly terms something that is unworldly it is better to avoid the conversation all together lest one will seem like a fraud.There may be some part that is about humility for the egos sake but I think that would have to do with a larger part of the spiritual process and somewhat universal to many traditions.I like to think of Rumsfeld’s( the only time I like to think of him) use of the johari window and augment it to say ” There are enlightened enlightened; there are those that know they know. We also know there are elightened unenlightened; that is to say they know they do not know. But there are also unelightened unelightened — the ones that don’t know they don’t know. Pretty simple,you know?
Lao Tzu’s advice sounds like Taoist internal practice, especially since your list contains advice to close the senses (similar but possibly not the same as the 8 limbs of Patanjali’s ancient internal Astanga Yoga (not Jois’ modern popular physical form). A Taoist, unconcerned by appearances, stands in stark contrast to Confucians who are all about appearances. Humility is a confused, unnatural, crazy-making concept which typically involves dishonesty and would have no value for a Taoist, imho 😉
@SH
Ha! Devilish logic turn turned tables to become self-serving.
I did have a similar reaction but was unable to decide how to articulate it.
the (egoic) flip-side of “anyone who says he is enlightened isn’t,” is, of course, “anyone who believes he is enlightened, is.”
Surely the flip would be “I am enlightened because I don’t say I am” but dare they go as far as to deny that they are enlightened? That would be precarious.
The way your mind works and your ability to wield the English language with deft swordsmanship are exquisite but neither have the power to cause me to be a “fan.” There is only One worth worshiping, in my estimation. This world offers nothing to those who earnestly seek anything of true value. The very best stuff is outside of this realm of time and space but it can be experienced if one is willing to surrender to it.
Just sign me, Troll Petting Zoo Keeper