Author Archives: mandala56

Old Jules, what is more important: (1)good health (2)being loved (3)have lots of money?

When a need gets satisfied we rapidly put it on the back burner and shift the priorities to those left unsatisfied. Left to its own devices without conscious intervention life tends to be an unexamined race to satisfy a series of needs of diminishing necessity, but each as important as the one just satisfied. Those we take for granted don’t regain importance until we lose them.

Old Jules, are there any good philosophical arguments why an afterlife should exist?

Atheists and their preoccupation with the issue might be the best evidence and argument in favor of an afterlife existing. It’s understandable that people who believe in an afterlife would be allow their thoughts to range over the concept, maybe even be evangelical. But the fact such a huge population of people who don’t believe in an afterlife become so animated and bellicose over it seems to me to offer a strong indirect argument along the lines of the bard, “Methinks the lady protests too much.” IMO

Old Jules, why do so many people in this society get shamelessness confused for pride/dignity?

Not many do. Dignity is self-respect. Shamelessness is passive, a non-acknowledgement anything the shameless person does is worthy of shame. Maybe it sometimes includes a repudiation of those who’d attempt to inspire shame, but not necessarily. People only consider the two in a similar context when attempting to create a rhetorical environment wherein they can elevate themselves above those whom they disapprove and whom they feel appear to have dignity [positive] but in fact are shameless [negative]

Old Jules, why are some people are brilliant and some are dull?

Good question and one worth pondering. I suspect it’s something about operating systems and background software. Might be we’re running too many background programs and could improve things by looking into the activity/process viewer to see what’s taking up so much RAM. Or doing some cleanup routines and defragmenting.

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

Okay, blogsterisimos:

Some of you are already accomplished healers.  Some of you want to learn to be.

Here’s a project for all of us.  Something worth doing.  Something to hone up our blades preparatory to doing something useful.

A MAJOR HEALING PROJECT, Step-by-step. 

What to do and how to do it.

The ducks and chickens will grade our papers.

Avian Flu

Although nobody much is dying of this new Avian Flu thing, America (and every other country that includes people who believe anything the US media says) is doing a bit of untimely urinating in the britches.  Mainly because they need that adrenaline fix.

Let’s all play a shabby trick on the fear mongers.  Let’s rob them of the chance to be afraid they’re gonna get the blind staggers.  They can’t worry they’ll go off puking into the bushes to die from bird flu if birds aren’t even dying of it.

Make them find something else to fret about.

No, there won’t be a tidal wave of human deaths to come out of this epizootic.  You won’t be able hug yourselves afterward with warm fuzzies because of all the humans still burning everything that comes into their paths because you saved them.

But you can be a part of something to save the lives of a lot of feathered critters mostly just minding their own business.

And you can have the satisfaction of knowing you’ll have to wait for something besides bird flu to kill you.

Interested?

Okay.  Whether you’re already a metaphysical wizard, or just someone who likes to hear a rooster crow mornings, here’s the drill:

1. Sit back and take a deep breath.  Let your eyes droop closed.
2. Relax yourself muscle by muscle from the tips of your toes upward, every muscle.  Fingertips inward to your stem, muscle by muscle….Torso, back, stomach, neck, jaws, forehead, ears, eyelids. Usually helps to strain each muscle individually before you relax it.
3. All relaxed, sit a few minutes and savor how good it feels to be relaxed for once in your life.
4. Now, allow a finger of your mind to travel inside your head to the center of your forehead, just above the brow and feel around…listen while you do it, listen to the feel of your forehead… you should feel a sort of ‘puckering’ sensation there when you do this. If you haven’t done it before, practice it a while.  Just ‘listening’ to it.
5. What you just felt was your Third Eye.  If you didn’t know it already, you probably need to do it again, practice opening it.  Remember how it feels.
6. Now that third eye you just felt is the most powerful metaphysical weapon in your arsenal.  If you want, load it up and fire it at something, just for kicks.  See that chain hanging down from the ceiling fan?  Stare hard at it.  Tell it to move.  Start it swinging.  Nevermind if it only moves half an inch at first.  Practice will improve you.   Sometimes it helps to visualize an arm and hand reaching out from the middle of your forehead, pushing the object you’re pushing.
7. Now what I want you to do is visualize your third eye looking through an impossible microscope.  One that can enlarge something the size of a virus.  The virus you’re looking at is the one that’s responsible for Avian Flu.  Reach down into that microscope and feel it.  Listen to the energy coming from it.  Memorize the sound, the smell, the texture and feel of the energy of that virus.
8. Now, I want you to visualize yourself smiling at the virus and all the kinfolks it has everywhere, and throwing a pall over it, sucking the life energy out of it.  Visualize yourself taking the life-energy from that entire species of virus, wadding it up into a shining yellow ball in your hand, crushing it, releasing it to the Universe where it can go on to better things.
9. Visualize the light fragments of that burst ball of energy sprinkling around, dissipating, all in a joyful way, spreading around the way snow spreads in one of those glass balls you used to see.

Okay.  Practice that, and keep doing it a while.

That might do the job.  But let’s throw everything but the kitchen sink at bird flu, drag out the heaviest artillery, the pocket nukes, the ray guns.

Let’s keep it up until the ennui of this bird flu epizootic goes out of our lives and we can find something worthwhile to be scared about.

I’ll post Step 2 in a day or so.

Jack

(Step 2 was never posted, due to lack of interest- Jeanne)

Jack wrote this in August, 2005:

Jack wrote this in October, 2006:

I’ve composed this from memory of the events of the time.  Some minor inaccuracies, names of places might be wrong or miss-spelled.  But this is a generally accurate description of an actual event as it happened, including the reaction of the world (Europe and the US) during the aftermath.

Not many years ago, 1987, maybe, the Israeli Defense Forces, moved into Lebanon to intervene in a war between the Christian Phalangists and the Palestine Liberation Front forces.

As they did so, the UN personnel and the PLO combat personnel evacuated by ship, leaving a non-combatant, mostly un-armed population of 1000 Palestinians at the major PLO base at Shatila, Lebanon.

The Israeli forces moved to surround Shatila, but didn’t enter it.  They locked it up so nobody could leave, and brought the Christian Phalangists in to do the dirty work.  For 36 hours they lit the sky with flares while the Christians moved in and slaughtered all 1000, every man, woman and child at Shatila.

A few managed to survive, hiding under the bodies of the dead until the dust settled and the gunfire stopped.  Then the Israeli loudspeakers came on.  “We are only looking for terrorists.  No one else will be harmed.  (words to persuade any unlikely survivors to come out with their hands up).”

No US president ever became outraged by the slaughter, clearly a military action.  Clearly no terrorist act.  No wars on THIS terrorism, because the right people were killed by the right people.

We in the US never liked Palestinians.  They didn’t give up their homes and their land easily enough to suit us when we created the Zionist state of Israel.  When they were shoved off into filthy camps in Gaza and elsewhere, they threw rocks at cops and got their ugly pictures in the papers.

The PLO became a leading force among them, dedicated to trying to get the ancestral homeland back by any method.  They killed Europeans.  Killed some good Americans.  Bastards.  Their leader dressed the way Jesus must have dressed, dressed the way Matthew, Mark Luke and John probably dressed.  Didn’t shave often enough.

Let the Christians slaughter them all they want, was the world reaction.  They ain’t getting their land back.  We gave it away, and we wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t know what was best.

Let the Christians kill them all.

The Lebanese Christian Phalangists did their work at Shatila, but they ran out of steam.  So we had to declare war on terrorists to expand the job.

A holy war with the right people killing the right people.

We’ve got to do it, because they hate us (gotta wonder why), because of the unprovoked 9/11 attack, because, as luck has it, they’re sitting on the oil we need to keep the country running.

And, of course, as everyone knows, they want to destroy us.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with racial, ethnic, religious, or patriotic cleansing. Slaughtering, enslaving, and taking the property of people who believe differently from you, who have a different skin color, who speak a different language, so long as they have something you want.

The Jews have done it from their earliest history.

The Muslims have done it since the beginning.

The Christians have done it throughout their own history.

The US could never have become great without a willingness to follow lockstep in that tradition, taking whatever it wanted from anyone who had it, Indians, French, Spaniards, Mexicans, Mormons, and slaughtering them out of pleasure or necessity occasionally.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, if you’re a good Jew, Muslim, Christian, good American.

What’s wrong is the hypocrisy. The lies.

Have the decency to be honest about your beliefs, your actions, your bloody history and the bloody future you aspire to.

Jack

Jack wrote this in June, 2005:

Jack wrote this in 2005 or 2006:

Honoring ‘heroes’?

To suggest Memorial Day is for honoring ‘heroes’ is to rob the 99 percent of those rows of graves in National Cemeteries of being honored (by you) on Memorial Day. Those runned over by trucks, drowned, killed by accident far from any contact with enemies weren’t heroes. Those who died in plane crashes, ships hit by torpedoes.

To suggest they were is an insult to the men of courage who did throw themselves on hand grenades.

But to suggest those who weren’t heroes aren’t worthy of remembrance measures the worth of those who say it.

Memorial Day became Memorial Day in 1882 for remembering those who died in the Civil War on both sides.

Depending on perspective, one side, or the other, definitely wasn’t defending freedom.
Whether they’d be correct in believing they died in vain, whether almost all our ancestors who’d look at us and despise us for what we’ve become, are correct, those rows of graves include thousands of reluctant draftees who served and died because they had to do so or go to jail.

Many didn’t believe they were defending freedom, nor anything else worth dying for. If they could look at this country today and speak of what they see here many would tell you their deaths were meaningless. They died for nothing, many would say.

Memorial Day ain’t for flag waving, for drumming up support for current wars.

Memorial Day is for remembering those who died in uniform.

NOTE FROM JEANNE: I’ll be offline for a week or so, heading out to the wilderness to commune with pack rats and sunsets and the Milky Way. I’ll catch up with comments when I get back!

Old Jules, do we incarnate with specific lessons to learn as I frequently hear in spiritual circles?

I personally believe we do. The reason I think so [or one of the reasons] is that we learn from hardships and don’t learn from ease. A good case can be made that life is about challenges, going into them or avoiding them as a matter of self definition.

But I happen to also be convinced that what we don’t do this time around we’ll do next, or the next or the next. And what we do manage isn’t an escape because there’ll be more, just as growth-oriented and probably just as difficult whatever we might get done this time.

In my view this provides the strongest possible incentive to face challenges and do what growing we’re able, even if it’s not rewarded with something easier, but at least something different.

Old Jules, if earth was going to be destroyed and only option left to design a spaceship…? If earth was going to be destroyed within a year and only option left was to construct a large spaceship let’s say all countries came together and it was technologically and financially feasible to construct self-sustaining spaceships for just 2000 people, which people do you think should be on it? and how should the people be chosen?

2000 fertile women along with viable sperm from men with courage, mechanical abilities, intelligence and achievement in fields of literature, philosophy, science and math. No sperm from politicians, bankers, shoe salesmen, hamburger flippers, lawyers, cops, or stockbrokers.

Old Jules, in what ways is the world not working perfectly?

The moon wanders around badly in its orbit and people who don’t speak Hindi use the Hindi word ‘Namaste’ to elevate themselves in the eyes of others.

Jack wrote this in October, 2006:

anne c’s blog, ugly Americans, about anti-homosexual bigotry got me thinking on the subject.  As I considered the matter it dawned on me, maybe the reason people aren’t horrified about sending our youngsters off to the penal institions for victimless crimes to be gang-raped for a few years is partly the result of changes in our attitudes about homosexuality.

Send a 20 year old middle class Anglo kid off to the pen and it’s a done deal.  Any problem with that?

I suppose the answer would be, “He’s lucky.  Lots of sex to be had in prison these days.  No need for women.”

That’s the only rationale I can put together that would explain Americans condoning what’s happening.

A few years ago early ’90s I was working in a NM State office in Santa Fe. We had prisoners from the NM State Correctional Institute cleaning up the offices daytimes.

One was a kid, maybe 20, 21, Anglo, two years into a 5 year sentence for possession with intent to sell a pound of jade. A courteous young man, but pained and bitter.

One day I was standing outside on break and he came and stood beside me… smokers exchanging small talk. “You ought to be coming up for parole before long. You must be behaving yourself to be able to work away outside this way.”

“I don’t want parole.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I can’t go home. I can’t face anyone anymore.”

“???”

“Listen man. I wasn’t in that hole a week before I’d been raped by every prick in the place who was bigger than me. I came in there as a man and I’ll be leaving as something else.

“You think I can go home? You think I can ever go anywhere and look people in the eye? If I live to get out of there I’m going to kill myself.”

Not much I could think of to say to that kid. Tough gig, sexual preference, sometimes. Tough gig, life and learning to live with the consequences of lousy judgements.

Jack

Jack wrote this in March, 2006:

Morning blogsters:

Actually that old moon isn’t bad at all, and she ain’t rising.  She’s maybe 30, 40 degrees above the western horizon this pre-dawn.  I just had the old Creedence Clearwater Revival song going through my head and figured I’d remind you of it, see if I could get it going through yours.

Rooster’s crowing down in the village, though it’s too early for that.  Likely the villagers piddling around getting ready for the day has the chickens fooled.  I’d really never thought of it before this moment, but in a human packed environment, even one as remote and relatively unpacked as this one, a chicken probably has some problems getting his head on straight and eeking out a night’s sleep.

Still haven’t made up my mind whether to find a few chicks this spring.  I love having them around, but it offers me challenges I don’t need when dogs, coyotes and other predators begin stalking them.  I’m not big on possessions, but while I don’t precisely ‘own’ my cats and whenever possible, chickens, I do take care of them, offer them shelter and food and friendship.  Hospitality that gets me riled when some outsider, be it canine, feline, bird of prey or human, threatens my guests.

Sometimes when I remember how much I came to admire those Y2K chickens, how much I came to value their friendship I’m still surprised.  I’ve had quite a number of human friends I valued more, but not as many as a person might expect.

More later,

Jack

Edited in later:

Moon’s still high enough to take advantage of it.  Red-gold moon.

Noticed one of the large water bowls for the felines was empty…. they paced and stomped around the dry water-hole fussing…. telling me about it.  Even though there was another with plenty in it across the room.  So I drew a quart or two and poured it in.

Suddenly that new water was a threat.  Had to be sneaked up on and sniffed carefully before losing interest entirely without so much as a tease of the tongue.

Humans in cat form is what they are.  Humans without all the complications.  So, like humans, they create their own.