I'd rather not lose my way. I'd rather not get off the path. I'd rather not fall off the wagon and back into those piles of ignorance that I have come to know just a bit too well.

Alas, I am human. I do lose my way. I do get off the path. I do get exuberant and end up running far too fast, far too quickly (and like I said, in the wrong direction sometimes!). I am prone to error.

How do I know? Isn't everything supposed to be all good and perfect? Isn't every 'thing' just as it needs to be? Aren't we all 'learning the lessons' we are supposed to learn? Isn't this one great, big Pollyanna-fest full of shiny, happy people fit for the New-Age? I mean, what's the deal? How can anything go wrong? How can you know that this is the case?

Well, for starters, I can feel it. I think we can all feel 'IT'--that unmistakable something that gnaws at us slow but sure over time... that eats away at us as long as we fail to correct our course and return to the Way. That sucks us of love and life alike, until we repent.

I would be willing to bet that is what repentance means. To admit that you have fallen off the wagon and are using again. To admit that you are craving Matter rather than resting as Spirit. To admit that you have 'lost your way' and need to 'return.'

I even heard that 'returning is the Way of the Tao.' I wonder if that means getting lost and getting found again are the Way of the Tao. I wonder if it means we are destined to 'lose our way.'


The Particulars

Here's the 411 on me losing my way this time. I forgot that art (for me, whether it is music or writing, or just plain old simple work) needs to emerge out of a conscious, ongoing, daily devotion to, and resting as, Spirit. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. 

My recent detour was the result of my exuberance with some music I had recorded. I lost sight of the fact that the music emerged because of a conscious, ongoing, daily devotion to, and resting as, Spirit. And that if anything else was going to happen to or with that music then it would require the same approach.

But I didn't follow that same approach. I started focusing on 'art' and made that my bedrock... rather than resting in/as Spirit and allowing the art to flow from THAT.

In monotheistic terms... Catholic terms... arche-Christian terms, I suppose... I put works ahead of my faith. I forgot that the reason I became so excited about the 'works' to begin with was because of my faith (and the practice of that faith on a daily basis).

Like Abraham, maybe I was putting my son ahead of God. The fruit of my loins was now the 'one thing that mattered most to me.' I forgot that without and apart from THAT there would be no fruit... no loins... no works... no son... no art... no person, place, or thing to exalt, to idolize ... to mistakenly worship.

And so now I feel God (Spirit, Self, Truth, Being, Source and Suchness, Brahman, the mediation of Christ through the medium of the soul) calling me to sacrifice; to lay down the works and the fruits and exalt Thy Maker above and beyond any partricular object that has issued forth from those Hands.


Isaac To The Mountain

So here I am walking up to the mountain, looking up to tthe Sky, seeing the distant peak draped in glory. Knowing what I must do. Knowing that I... I cannot live with myself if I am not on course. I know when I have lost my way. I have been graced with a compass. I have been graced with a means of acquiring feedback relative to my actions and my decisions and my choices. I have been blessed with awareness to know the difference between being on course and falling off the wagon. This body-mind is 38 years old and has some idea of what it feels like to be lost. 'Shit... not again!' is a familiar refrain. I know the feeling well.

Returning is the way of the Tao.

So I am returning. It's what I must do. It's what has to be done so that I can live with myself... so that I can look myself in the I-I and know that all is well and just and right.

But before I return.... before I repent fully... I know there is one thing I need to do first. I need to lay the fruit of these loins down. I need to place the works I have exalted above God before God... and admit that the temporal casts no shadow over the Eternal. I must ascend the mountain that rests so steadily before me, carry my idols to the top of that peak, rest them there to be bathed in Grace and know that all will be transfigured in Glory as sure as the Son will rise tomorrow.

And how do I know this will happen? Because I have been this way before. The path of repentance is well-worn. The souls of these feet can feel their Way up that Mountain. In total darkness I could ascend. And if I have to I will. 

Have you ever tried to row a boat in a somewhat straight line? Have you ever sailed and realized that something that looks so easy and effortless--after all, all you do is just let the wind fill your sails and off you go, right?--is really full of constant correction to adjust to the elements--the wind, the water--so that you can stay on course?

I am thinking this morning that life is just like that: constant correction. That life itself is a constant adjustment and re-adjustment to ever-changing conditions and circumstances.

Anytime that we set a goal or chart a course we are setting up a situation where conditions are going to conspire against us achieving that goal or staying on that course. The wind swirls. Our right-side is stronger than our left, so that as we row we are constantly needing to adjust for that muscular imbalance.

The result of living seems to me to include a constant need for the kind of adjustment and correction that may indicate a certain sinfulness or inadequacy in a) the world, or b) in sentient beings. That, perhaps, is the more negative view; indicating that if either a) the world were perfect, or b) sentient beings were perfect, then there would be no need for adjustment and/or correction.

Alas, there is need for adjustment and correction. If we have any goal in mind--any ideal, any image of who we want to be or where we want to go--then we are going to both a) veer off course due to the shifting nature of the ground beneath us, and b) feel a need to correct our course relative to the shifting ground.


The Perfect Sage

There is another option. It is an option pointed to be the Saints, Sages, and Mystics of past, present, and future. These occassionally crazy-wise adepts have suggested that there is only a 'missing of the mark' when you are beholden to some image or idol. Set a goal and you have sin. Chart a course and you have mistakes. Intend to do something and you are prone to failure. 

It's these crazy-wise Holy Fools who have brought a possibility to the table that few are willing to accept, let alone dare to live. The only reason we fail is because we are attempting to use our own personal will to make something happen. Be goalless... be empty... be without agenda or imperative... and you are free, liberated.

This red pill offered by the Sages and the Mystics is about offers up a vision of Truth and Reality that is about as far away from the norms of Western Society and Civilization as one could ever imagine. Christ said that 'many are called, but few answer.' And I know why? There is a sense that being goalless and empty is a cop-out. The basis of Western Civilization (which one might now say is the same basis informing Global Civilization) is that one needs to be industrious. You need to decide who you are. You need to determine who you are going to be. You need to chart your course and stick with it. Don't be a quitter. Don't give up on life. After all, winners never quit and quitters never win, right? 


The Cultural Bias

Next time you are out and about, and you are given the chance to tell someone new that you are meeting for the first time who you are and what you do, just tell them... 'I really do nothing. I don't have any goals in life. Easy come... easy go. I'm just along for the ride.' Then watch them try to digest that statement. Watch how it totally undermines the assumptions that we have about life. For instance, the assumption that you are a specific somebody who is here to do a specific something and you better get busy doing that specific something you specific sopmebody because the clock is friggin' tickin'!

You see this? We have goals even about what the world is for. We now even have goals about what the Universe is for? Many are convinced that they know what the primary goal of the Universe actually is (and God Bless 'em if they actually do!)! 

But how can we know? How can a sole human-being determine what the whole course of the Universe is supposed to be (Omega Point anyone? Singularity you say?) when that person may have trouble just managing his or her own life on a daily basis. Can't even handle the personal, but the Universal is set and determined, final and complete?

 
Universal Uncertainty

Maybe God does have a plan for the whole kit-n-kaboodle. Problem is God only told George W. Bush what that plan was.

Personally, I would never dare to assume knowledge of something so vast and encompassing. Shit, I have trouble finding my keys now and then and I am supposed to re-member the Universal Plan! I think God could do better than to place that Plan in human hands, don't you? 

I am not saying there is no plan. I am not saying there is. Maybe the Sages and Mystics are completely right in asserting that this is all a Cosmic Charade--amounting to not even a hill of beans in the long-run. That seems fine to me. In fact, it would make me feel much better to know that my own personal allotment of f*&ked-upness isn't going to permanently scar anyone or anything. That would be Good News indeed!

Yes, David Jon. You are a mess. A real piece of shit you are. But just know that in the end, after all of this is said and done, no one will remember the hurt, the pain, the wounds you are grieving. Not the wounds on you body, or in your heart... but those wounds you think you have inflicted on others. Those will not stand the test of time... let alone the curtain call of Eternity.

But yeah... right now... right now you really do suck!


Trying Too Hard To Be Something I Am Not

I think I suck most---like everyone else--when I am trying too hard. When my asshole clenches up and I am really giving it my all... then I am really sucking. Maybe that's why a lot of good-intentioned religious people suck the most! Because they are the ones trying the hardest (and they want everyone else to try as hard as they are trying... God help us all!).

When we try too hard---when we make that All-American effort--we end up in such a contracted state that the energy gets all twisted up in knots inside of us. When you try too hard you are really fighting your 'self.' With all that earnestness and forceful intention things can't help but go awry. And so maybe we try harder next time! With even a poorer result. So we repent and turn to God and commit to trying even harder to be a 'good person' only to be so clenched up and contracted that we become known as King of the Clenched Sphincters!

That's what the wahitos have to deal with: the White Man's Disease. If only we can spread our religious misery and do-gooding around the world! I can even imagine the first priests to enter the New World saying they had 'Good News' for the Natives and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and Indies. I can imagine the Natives getting together and saying something like the following:

Man bra... you think he hasn't heard the Good News yet? Dude, I'm tellin you this... If it's such Good News then why the hell is he such a sourpuss. Man, he's so tight is ass is sucked half-way up his colon man! Before long he'll be turned completely inside out!!

King of the Clenched Sphincter People indeed. That may have even been me back then. I wasn't Napolean or Alexander the Great in a former life. I was a tight-ass Jesuit Priest!


The Goal? Control

In an uncertain world, where the sands of time are constantly shifting beneath our feet, and where all sense of the Eternal and Infinite is lost, then I suppose we may tend to become given to trying to control the world around us. After all, if we really realized we are Eternal and that Infinity is the Blood of our blood, then why would we ever try to control the movement, direction, and nature of even a single atom?

For the Infinite there can be no control. We only get suckered into illusory attempts at asserting control over the world around us (including what we might call our own body-mind) to the extent that we are convinced there is some goal or objective to existence.

It makes a tremendous difference in how we live when we answer the question, Is existence a task to be completed, or a play to be enjoyed... a goal to be achieved, or a game to revel in?

That's the question for me to begin asking myself. A question whose answer I can feel registering in me as I weigh those options. I can feel my whole disposition change and alter when I answer, 'Existence is a task' vs. when I answer, 'Existence is a game the Gods play in the Field of Eternity.'

Yesterday I could literally feel the difference between supposing that existence is a task to be completed on time, versus existence as a game that we play for enjoyment. The former definitely felt to me like a burden. There seems to be added pressure. Even a degree of performance anxiety can be felt arising in just holding this notion that 'existence is a task... a job... a duty... that we aboslutely MUST fulfill... or else.

Or else what? Else we go to hell? Else we get sent back to the tail-end--the literal ass--of the Great Chain of Being. 'End of the line you loser, back to being a slug. Sorry, you failed... sucka!'

To me there is all sorts of added pressure placed upon us just in terms of what we perceive to be the fundamental direction and goal of existence. If it is a duty or a responsibility then we can fail. If we fail... then we can lose. If we lose... then we are somehow made lesser in some way, or we are deprived of something that we once had, but now have no longer. For example, maybe our eternal status is taken away. Maybe our soul is put on probation. Maybe we are burdened with increasing unconsciousness. Maybe we are reborn as Paris Hilton.


Your Duty Is

For those of us in the West, when we look at something like the Hindu caste system, where people are born into specific roles--roles that come with a social obligations and a set of prescribed duties--there often arises a sense of judgment as to how backwards and archaic that all is. I mean, how pre-modern is that! To not have the freedom to be and do as you choose. To not have autonomy.

Yet, when you look closely at our own lives you find that for all of the freedom we seem to have in the West to choose our own course and plot our own destiny according to the shape of our desires and dreams there is still this matter of our assuming some role or duty. In short, even in the West there is a conspiracy that asserts you must assume some sort of duty, i.e., that you have certain obligations that you must fulfill... (once again, or else!).

The only real difference, it seems to me, is that in the West you might seem to choose your obligations (to what or to whom) while in the caste system there is/was an inheritance of obligation.

What I am getting at is this: Is one really free if one only has the freedom to choose his or her obligations? Doesn't life still have the flavour of a task that must be performed? Doesn't existence still feel like a weight that must we carry to some destination (who knows where though)? Are we really free if the only difference is that we get to choose the cross we bear rather than being given that cross through genetic descent? is that freedom?


Behind The Mask Of Freedom

If we strip off the mask of apparent Western autonomy (though I acknowledge that autonomy is not strickly Western anymore) do we not find that there are still brutal burdens that reside beneath the surface of apparent liberation? Are we not still obliged socially and culturally? Do we still not find that there are rules and roles that we must fulfill (again, or else!)?

In many ways, one could say that the Western predicament I am describing here is worse in that it is hidden, concealed... much subtler a bondage. As people only see the slick surface of apparent choice there is little to no awareness brought to the question of how in our stepping free of a set of social obligations, in the guise of genetic descent, we have stepped into a whole new set of social obligations and roles. As The Who sing it in the song Won't Get Fooled Again:

Time for the new boss...
Same as the old boss...


Does Freedom Exist? 

I'd be willing to bet you that most people assume freedom exists in ways that are not actually practiced and embodied in the culture of which they are a part. In other words, people---especially in the West, and America specifically (as this is the culture I am most familiar with)--are not nearly as free as they think they are. In America you hear talk about freedom so much. It is pumped over the airwaves of talk radio and the TV news shows so much that you, like me, might begin to wonder how a free people would ever spend so much time talking about freedom. I am reminded of the opening lines of the Tao-te-Ching here... which I'll paraphrase for the purposes of our discussion here:

Those who speak of freedom
Don't really know freedom.

So the more you talk about freedom, does it mean the less you actually know freedom? Are the freedom-obsessed the least free? Does an obsession reveal a lack or deficit? Do we focus on freedom so much because it is a) slipping away, or b) non-existent in the ways we imagine it actually does exist?

To ask these sorts of questions is to ask, 'What freedom is?' What is real freedom? How would it look? Would we recognize it? Do we believe in the radical freedom and liberation put forth by the Saints, Sages, and Mystics of past, present, and future? Or do we only believe that freedom is relative, is conditional--only a part and not a whole?

 

I have come to learn, from past experience, that anytime there is an issue that I cannot escape--that arises incessantly within my own awareness--that the issue itself is, in a way, asking to be danced with. From time to time there just seems to me to be a desire on the part of specific issues to be examined more closely. Ideas want attention too. Ideas... concepts... notions... they come across to me as a lady dressed to the nines, wanting to be savoured.

So, when you can't get away from something, I say, then why not embrace it. Dance with the idea. Do the devotional disco with the dilemma that you cannot escape. It will open up into something else. I promise.

Of course, as with any lady, you cannot just pry your way in. You cannot simply forcibly enter. You don't come to learn anything about a concept or idea by raping it aggressively than you learn about a woman with the same attitude. One has to invite the dilemma to open. Look lovingly at freedom... gaze upon freedom with the eyes of your desire and you will find freedom responding to your attentive stance. Freedom will begin to move for you. Freedom will begin to respond to you. Freedom will begin to reveal herself. Freedom will show you who she really is.


Show Your Interest

So, let us say that Freedom is a Lady. Let us also suppose that we are interested in Freedom. Freedom attracts us. Freedom, for whatever reason, has our eye (or is it I?). She is one whom we cannot help but look at. Freedom is so beautiful that we are maybe in a bit of awe in her Presence. Freedom is captivating.

Some just stare at Freedom and go 'Wow! Would you like at that! Check her out! She is HOT!' They don't approach Freedom though. They don't seek to have a relationship with Freedom. They don't endeavour to dance with Freedom. They just desire Her from afar. They are the people whose desire for Freedom is never known to anyone but themselves. They know how much they are attracted to Freedom. But no one else does because their desire is held in check by fears and insecurities: 'She could never love me. Shoot, Freedom would never even talk to me. Not like that bitch Bondage who never shuts the F*&k Up!'

For people with too many fears and insecurities--who believe their destiny is to get screwed by that insufferable bitch Bondage--Freedom remains a dream. They desire Freedom at night. They roll over in the morning and see nothing but Bondage. They desire Freedom throughout the day. They see Her. They see 'others'---always others--seeming to have a happy relationship with Freedom. But that is not their fate. That is not their destiny. Their desire for Freedom is like unrequited love.

But how can Freedom know we love Her... that we desire Her... that we want to learn more about Her... if we don't approach Her. If all we do is keep a safe distance from Freedom how can She ever bless us with Her Grace?

Don't we have to dare to approach Freedom. After all, who doesn't like to be told they are attractive? Who ever refuses real love? Who, upon your saying you admire him or her, doesn't respond with thanks and gratitude? Besides, for all we know, Freedom exists for us. Like Jesus said, 'The Law is for the People. It's not the People for the Law.' The same may apply to Freedom. She may desire a dance with humanity in the same way that humanity desires a dance with Her.


The Revelation Of Freedom

What if we wanted to have a love-affair with Freedom. Sound silly to you? Not to me! Heck, I am already in love with Freedom. So, too, would I hazard to guess is all of humanity. That's the point I am making her: that everyone loves Freedom, but not everyone has an active, ongoing, committed relationship to/with Freedom.

Too many think that they don't deserve Freedom. Or that other 'things' are more important than Freedom. Or, via their ignorance, assume that they can just 'man-handle Freedom any which way they want. The result is that few if any of us have an actual relationship--based upon love, fueled by passionate intensity, bourne of our genuine attraction--with Freedom.

So Freedom waits. You can see Her. She stands their, ready to be approached. Waiting for a Lover who will come to know Her in Her Fullness. She has all of these dirty, little secrets she is just itching to tell. Freedom's Nature is waiting to be revealed. She is ready to open like a flower. But who will open Her? Will it be you? Or you? Or you?

Who is both soft enough... yet powerful enough... to earn Freedom's Trust. Who can love Freedom without abusing Freedom? Who among us will inspire the Revelation of Freedom; where Freedom reveals Her Nature through Her relationship with a mere mortal? Who knows how to win Freedom's Heart: not through conquering Her... but by earning Her rerspect and trust so that Freedom's Heart becomes a gift She willingly gives? 

For as much talk as there is of Freedom there is also concern about what Freedom might mean. After all, if we are totally free then we are free to do anything, right? We are free to be perverted. We are free to be violent. We are free to be a criminal. We are free to offend the mores and standards of the society and/or culture that we are embedded within the matrix of.

So, is Freedom, then, a two edged sword? Is Freedom both 'good' and 'bad?' Are there pros and cons to the human pursuit of Freedom over time?
 
Do we desire Freedom, but only within a limited context? Is our Freedom meant to be proscribed within a certain set of boundaries? And if that is so, then is it really Freedom?

Psychoanalysis Looks At Freedom & Moral Depravity

An assumption held by many people--especially those who consider themselves Conservatives, or Right-Wingers--is that Freedom can run amok in society. People with too much freedom, in other words, can fall into lives of moral depravity. They become sexually licenstious, they become criminals and drug-users, they become the indicators of what seems to be a world where there is too much freedom.

Like I said, this an assumption many people make. It seems that there is evidence for this. If people were not free then they would not be able to act out in such ways. So, curtail people's freedoms (which is why, for instance, we have an ongoing battle in America between the ACLU and Moral Conservatives, the political Left and the political Right) and the problems produced in society by too much personal freedom will be dealt with. Just make people less free. Or... increase the means of surveillance and governmental intrusion into people's lives so that their relationship with Freedom can be monitored.

So, yes, you can be free. But we'll be watching you and when your relationship with Freedom steps over the bounds we will send our agents to intrude into your perverse acts and put an end to them. And if you don't consent to this and admit your error then we will confine and imprison you so that you will not be able to act on your relationship with Freedom. We will place you bondage.

That is the threat that hangs over every person who considers themselves a member of virtually any culture to be found throughout the world. You have a relationship with Freedom, yes, but it only can take place within these 'norms,' these 'standards,' these 'confines.'

The result can be that we are not free to explore our Freedom unless we break with convention. I am not saying that we need to become perverts and deviants, criminals and thugs. That is not what I am saying at all. I am saying, however, that if we are not aware of how circumscribed and defined is our relationship to and with Freedom--to the point where we are only acting on the basis of what we have been told in so many ways that we can and can't do--then we really don't know Freedom. The result is that we are just acting on a set of instructions handed down to us from others. 

The result is that we are just programmed.

Like in the movie The Matrix, we may not know how programmed we are, are enslaved, how conditioned... how unfree we truly are in our apparent freedom! That is why that movie resonated with so many people around the world. Because everyone here on Earth has been a slave at some time. Because everyone here on Earth is a slave still in some way. We are all still fighting with our programming--the cultural and biological wires that connect us to The Matrix; that give us a sense of freedom while we slumber in our sealed chambers... feeding some unknown entities continued existence.

Looked at from a psychoanalytic perspective, this sense of freedom while being unfree and bound is just the predicament that the psychopath and deviant finds him- or herself in. The problem is not 'too much freedom.' The problem is 'not enough freedom!' Those who act in ways that appear perverse are often doing so because they cannot act in any other way: there perversion and depravity are indications of bondage. And you hear this in the testimony of those who end up in Court for criminal sexual misconduct, rape, or murder: that they couldn't not do what they have done, i.e., that they had no choice in the matter!

In other words, they were not free. They were not free to not do what they did. They had no choice. There was no freedom present in their awareness at the time so that they could choose amongst alternatives. Like all psychopaths, and some Presidents--there was only one-way... one answer... and they could only adhere to that monotheistic pronouncement issuing from within the confines of their own psyche. "Do it! Do it! Go to War! Kill! Hurt! Get Her! Get it! Do it! Do it now!"

No alternative. One way. Un-freedom.

Yesterday I raised for viewing the assumption that those compelled to act out in ways that most of us would find cruel and/or perverse... are not really free. The assumption that there is too much freedom and it needs to be curtailed--an assumption I largely attribute to the politically Conservative--is based on the fact that we see people acting out in ways that are destructive. So, curtail freedom... cut back civil rights... allow government to be more intrusive. That is the widely-held Conservative solution.

What I argued yesterday--based upon a psychoanalytic view of human destructiveness--is that the pathological human is not acting freely. That freedom is usually the last thing influencing someone to act in the public sphere in such a way that there actions prove harmful to others. I argued the opposite of too much freedom. My argument is that there is not enough freedom present within the consciousness of those who bring harm to themselves and others.


Freedom Not To

Isn't it obvious that if we cannot not do something--if we cannot prevent ourselves, stop ourselves, cease, wait, hold back, withdraw... retreat from the moment of intensity and heat--that we are profoundly un-free? Is it not obvious that just as much as Freedom is about the right to do... it is also about the wisdom to not-do?

That is the trick in all of this: that when we see people acting we assume they are free. They are moving. They look liberated and unencumbered to us. People appear to be free in all sorts of ways. And yet, within--in terms of consciousness and the availability of choice and awareness--there can be profound un-freedom in-forming those actions and behaviours.

This discrepancy between what we see on the surface and what is taking place interiorly--the discrepancy between surface and depth, appearance and reality--is what I think leads to confusion amongst Conservatives, who may tend to assume that rolling back liberty is the way to make the world a safer and more secure place. In short, increase governmental repression at home. Deny people their rights to have a relationship with Freedom---or at the very least, curtail those rights. Place limitations on human freedom.

If my argument is correct and the problem is not too much freedom, but not enough freedom, then the Conservative solution to the dilemmas afforded us by our political existence only serves to make the problem that much more severe. For as you limit Human Freedom people only begin to act out in ways that are increasingly harmful to themselves and others. Result = increase in pathology.

What we need are ways to be more free so that we no longer feel compelled to act in ways that are destructive. What we need is more imagination applied to the problems presented to us by the mere fact of our existing. What we need is an opening of human consciousness and awareness--so that when we are faced with the prospect of perversity and violence we are left with more than just the one possibility of, 'Do it George! Go ahead! You'll be a Hero! You can save the world if you just... do it... do it now!'

Think about it for just a moment. Consider what is indicative of a lack of freedom. Isn't a lack of possibilities and options itself evidence for a profound lack of freedom? If we only have one or two options at best (monotheism or partisan duality) then how evolved are we really? How free are we in all honesty if the best we can dream up, imagine, embody, foster, encourage... is God's way is the only way (monotheism)... or polarizing partisanship (duality) that freezes us dead, caught up in the throes of mortal political combat? How free are with only those political options governing us?

The most obvious answer--to me anyways--is not very! We are not very free if we are limited in the options available to us in terms of how we orient ourselves to the larger world (which is always a politics of one sort or another).


The Perverse Paradigm

We can move around seemingly free. We can appear free in terms of how the body moves and speaks and eats and fucks. We can look as free as a bird to others. But what if all of our movement is taking place within the confines of a larger field that limits our possibilities and potential? What if we are free to move in a field that almost guarantees perversity and pathology of one sort or another? What if we are free to move about... but that movement only guarantees that we are free to pick our poison? What if we are wrapped up in a perverse paradigm that sets boundaries on The Possible Present by the very nature of the assumptions underlying that paradigmatic field?

Isn't that a way in which our freedom can be but a ruse? Isn't that a way in which we can be severely limited and handicapped... and yet not even know it? Isn't that a way in which we can narrow our field of vision to a small corner of the Cosmos and presume that we have attained some supernal heights? 

And isn't that a way in which we can swim about in our little pond, assuming all the while that we are immersed in the Ocean Grand? 

I don't know if you happen to know this or not--actually I just discovered this the other day and I have this sneaking suspicion that it is going to have profound implications for me for some time to come--but you can literally feel freedom. What I discovered is that there is a felt-sense of Freedom that registers in/as/through awareness.

Let me say this another way--more concisely: consciousness can be free and unbounded... or consciousness can be limited and enslaved. Even more importantly, you can literally feel the degree of freedom present in this moment right now by sensing the degree of openness... or lack thereof... that registers to you when you check in on yourself.

For instance, do you feel tight? Do you feel pressured? Do you feel heavy, weighted down, cramped, trapped? Do you feel as if there are chains on you, holding you back? Are you left feeling tied down?  

Or, are is there a sense of opneness and spaciousness present as you sense the Now? What does this moment feel like to you? How are you oriented to the present? Does the present, and what you are faced with make you want to recoil, contract, tighten, clench up? Or is there a melting away of identity and self so that awareness itself becomes boundaryless?

Why do I think it is important to 'feel where we are at' and 'register the nature of consciousness to ourself?' Well, I think it is important.... check that... I know it is important because where we are at in terms of our consciousness will in-form our actions. In the simplest and most succinct terms I can put it, we will either act from Freedom or act from Bondage, period.

In each and every moment we are either acting as a slave or acting as a liberated being. Of course, this spectrum that goes from bondage to freedom, and back again, may have some gradations, i.e., we can be more or less open and unbounded, more or less weighted down and crippled by the chains of the past and so forth. But to say that we are either acting from a position of enslavement and bondage or a position of Freedom and Liberation is, to me anyways, a way for us to cut straight to the Heart of the Matter.

The ramifications of this are simple and direct: in each moment we are either contributing to Liberation... or Bondage. In each moment... with each act in this-world... we are feeding the one or the other, Liberation or Bondage. And we can tell what we are contributing to by applying awareness to our consciousness and registering the degree of Freedom and Unboundedness present in that moment. You can feel It. You can sense the openness. The unbounded reach of awareness stretching beyond the horizon is an opening you are capable of right now, because It Is Your Nature. You are that Freedom. You cannot not be that Freedom. It is only and ever just a matter of deciding when you will allow your own Nature to you once again.

When will you open? When will you stop holding on to the not-you so that the You you are can be realized? When will you allow the heavy accumulations of the past that oppress you even when no one is around, even when no one is looking, even when you are all alone... when will you finally allow all of that to drop away so that you can recognize who you really are and what your Nature truly Is?

How long will you make your 'self' suffer so needlessly? Know that it need not be and that you are the Unbounded waiting to remember that you have never not been That.

Feel the weight of your holding on melt away... as you fall into a Self that has no bottom. That's who you are.

register to theWe can even hold possibilities in our mind's eye---alternative futures, if you will--and feel to what degree those different paths either contribute to Liberation or bar that same Liberation.

It struck me yesterday how easy it is to disclose the Unbounded Nature of Awareness Itself. To do so, all that you really have to do is realize how much you--as this Awareness--are capable of being aware of.
 
So what are you/I/we aware of? What are you/I/we capable of being aware of? Is our capacity for awareness limited in some way? Are we only able to be aware of our emotions, for instance? Or only retaining the capacity to be aware of sensations such as physical movement and/or friction? is awareness confined to any particular domain?

Or does awareness's capacity for resting as Itself include virtually anything and everything? Might it be better of us to say---meaning, more true--that there are simply no intrinsic limits to Awareness; that Awareness is fundamentally, intrinsically, inherently free.

What do I mean by free? Do I mean, 'un-confined?' Do I mean 'un-bounded?' Do I mean incapble of being possessed by anyone or anything at anytime? Do I mean... transcendent of any and all limits?

Well... yes... yes.. yes... and yes!   ; o )

Awareness is not confined to any one particular domain or sphere, realm or dharma, religion or creed, race or ethnicity, ideology or emotion, truth or lie.

Neither is Awareness bounded by an edge such as the human body seems to have. Awareness transcends the body, allowing for such possibilities as your travel to distant stars and galaxies, locales and lands, i.e., you don't have to physically be there in order to be aware of that which resides 'there.'

Nor is Awareness capable of being owned, possessed, territorialized? Buddhists don't own Awareness anymore than Christians or Hindus do? Neither do neuroscientists own Awareness anymore than a punk-rocker does? Awareness transcends any and all claims of territorialization and/or ownership. No one can call IT 'mine'... or bar you from IT.

Last night was eventful for several reasons. First, a longtime friend and I got into a discussion about why he sees me focusing on Freedom so much in the last few days here. He reads the blog and seems to think I am far less 'free' than I would like to assume I am.

It turned into quite a heated exchange. He had points that he wanted to make. He was bound and determined to get me to see how correct he was. I felt like I was standing more on a matter of principle coupled with my own direct experience.

After he had said to me the following---'Dude you just had a son. That's huge! You are a parent now. So I think you are rebelling against what you sense your future will be.... less freedom. Think about it, man, you have all of these new responsibilities and that adds so much more pressure to you and your life. Someone else is counting on you now.  So, you end up trying to write about Freedom as a way to try and reassert to yourself that which you feel slipping away. Your old bachelor life'--it was my turn to reply to his accusations against me.

'You can look at it that way,' I began,'but what are you missing out by taking so narrow and negative a view. All I am doing is pointing to the inherently free nature of Awareness. That doesn't mean that the conditions I am faced with life in terms of this body and this mind, various relationships and responsibilities, etc. and so forth, may change to a point where a former manner of existence becomes somethign wholly other. Shoot, life is change. But what registers to me as a constant source of unfettered Freedom is Awareness itSelf. I just think its obvious. It's not that I am rebelling. I am just stating that which is. Awareness has no inherent constraints.'

'That may be all well and good,' my buddy recanted, 'I just don't believe you. You are suggesting that you are this Awareness and this Awareness is inherently Free. So you are saying that you are inherently Free. And I just don't see that as being so. I don't think you are Free. I don't think anyone is really Free. I think we all assume that we have this thing called 'Freedom' that we really don't. We are deluded.'

Yes. I know. I agree with you. We are deluded! I just disagree with you, I suppose, about what we are deluded into believing is true. For example, I take it that you are saying we are deluded into imagining we are Free when we are not. What I am saying is that we are deluded into imagining we are not Free when we really are! Big difference right!!

Yeah... then you should be able to do whatever you want! If you are that Free then what is stopping you... from...

Stop! You are assuming that I believe that I am this body... or certain emotions. You are of the impression that because I am the body-mind and I believe I am Free then I should be able to do whatever I want as this body-mind, right?

Right... so why don't you...

Wait a minute. I don't believe that I am this body-mind. My Identity is not as this body. After all, if you look closely this body is constantly being transformed... cells are constantly trading places... electrons are constantly jumping from atom to atom. So how can I say I am this body-mind. Like Jesus said to the Scribes and Pharisees, 'Before Abraham was, I AM!' And he wasn't talking about a piece of meat. He wasn't talking about a specific configuration of personal traits. He was speaking about the Primordial Awareness that Is the only isness that ... well... Is!

What are you talking about? There you go again... you think that means anything to me??

Someone has to hold that possibility for you if you are not willing to. So you can dismiss what I am saying... what I have been writing about... and you can call it delusional all you want. And while you are doing that I am going to be asserting Freedom as intrinsic to Awareness itSelf, as well as our existence as That which is intrinsically Free.

Dude, that's why I love you. You stick to your guns. Man, I can come at you blazin' with my best arguments and you don't waver a bit. Shoot, even your bullshit makes sense to me once in awhile.... not often.... but once in awhile it does.