It’s not often that I bother writing protracted “spiritual” posts on Facebook anymore, because they tend to fall on blurry eyes, but yesterday I decided to go with the flow and see what comes out and who comes alive in the comments thread. This is what came out:
The real miracle of life is that Mamma Earth has given us infinite time to live peaceful, integrated lives within nature, to understand death and therefore ourselves, and to not name any of this. Instead, we live the opposite and name that, progress. We extinguish those nations who don’t conform to our illness and call that an acceptable loss.
You may roll your eyes because you know all of this. You may be sick of hearing this. And you’re still allowed to be here to figure out why you shouldn’t be. That is compassion.
Mother Earth isn’t going to flick us off of her. We are going to do so ourselves. That is consequence.
We have infinite time but not infinite place. And no amount of wishing our partial selves into the whole of the universe with rocket-fueled dreams of change is going to make us whole. No injection of our consciousness virus into the technology that came from our virus is going to save us. The consequences are always the same.
What begins ends. Mechanical minds and their robotic patterns break down. The pattern of replacing them with “upgraded” versions of the same also ends. This and this alone is the inevitable future of forward-thinking, because forward-thinking is stagnation.
Transformation is instantaneous or it is not at all. It is all at once or it is not at all. Transformation is out of thought, out of diseased mind, not deeper into it. No vacation in impersonal mind via meditation or hallucinogens transforms us. It informs us. It shatters us to rebuild us. Rebuild us in thought. Still within and as thought.
Watch those thoughts drift by. Who watches? Oh, right, the witness. Oh, right, the higher self. These are code words for thought. More and more thought believing itself to be the thinker above and beyond itself. Discipline is delusion.
Transformation is a black AND white issue in a world that increasingly only realizes shades of gray, because that same mind has oppressed itself with its own black OR white thinking.
You’ll yell. You’ll scream. You’ll sit quietly. You’ll nod along or nod off. You’ll react. Always reacting. Reacting in a situation that demands action is the whole of the problem.
And you may wonder what any of this means. You may wonder if this is correct or not. You may wonder how to transform. You may argue that there are as many ways as there are people. You may say you’re already there.
Thousands of years. Thousands of years to figure ourselves out. Thousands of years to have to look no further than that.
Thousands of years for this to not sound new or like news to you. Thousands of years to not react with anger or agreement.
Thousands of years. That’s the miracle. Thousands of years and counting.
Counting down, that’s the consequence.
***
Who came alive, you ask? No one. Not a single peep in two days. Someone may eventually brave the waters of the comments section, but it’s rare that no one does for this long. Why is that? If I were, say, my friend Tiokasin Ghosthorse and I wrote that, I’d have over a hundred comments by now. But I’m Jeremy Vaeni. The witty guy. The alien guy. The angry political spectator. Who takes that guy seriously? He is white and a clown. He’s just tearing us all apart because he’s got a touch of the sadist. He doesn’t use “Love” and “density” in the same sentence. He’s making fun of us right now.
Screw him. Lead me to the hall of kitten gifs.
Now, before you condemn this as sour grapes, let’s look at what happens when Tiokasin Ghosthorse writes similar sentiments. What happens? Who responds? People with moral platitudes. People in hero worship mode. People who don’t understand what he’s writing or why any more than what I’m writing or why, but who comment as if they do. Comment to pretend to relate and/or pretend to be his spiritual or intellectual equal–notions that don’t matter at all to him, yet mean everything to them.
When reading comes from a place of identifying oneself in the words–however that works out, usually in oneupmanship or pretending to relate so that you are not “reading up” at anything transcending and including you–understanding has no chance. Before we identify with the words we’re reading, we identify with the writer. We have feelings about that person which color anything they say. Some of these are impersonal feelings, meaning not restricted to the writer. In my case, it doesn’t help that I am a white man speaking authoritatively. This arouses anti-establishment defenses, ill-will toward white patriarchy, and fear of dictatorship for a lot of people. Not so much if I were Indian.
But then if I were Indian, or anyone else, would they hear me? Would you? Are we more sycophantic toward people from cultures we’ve been taught hold a mystical secret to life that we want? Do we interpret authoritative language as harsh with one person but straightforward with another based on what we think about their culture, even if we know little about it?
Watch how you take in information as you’re reading and listening. If you can identify and understand not just all of your prejudices and alarm bell triggers, but everything that goes into how you perceive another person sharing something with you, see how your abilities to hear and read change. Notice how immediately you transform from this simple act most “complicated” people find unbearable.
Now ask who that person is. But don’t ask anyone, not even yourself. In other words, ask it without seeking an answer outwardly or inwardly.
Inhabit the question.