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Word Gems

self-knowledge, authentic living, full humanity, continual awakening

the Krishnamurti lectures

and the true self

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Even less dramatic loss can bring on profound grief. In my own life, I sometimes find myself emotionally drained as I consider the brutalities and deceptions of the world. So many.

The movie Hostiles, too, brought to the fore the plight of the Native Americans, and the genocidal program instituted to subdue them.

I thought of all this in light of the instruction on the Krishnamurti page concerning calming the mind and entering a better level of consciousness. There, I speak of “focusing on the confusion” to disarm it. All that information is valid, but, especially if grief is augmented, we cannot immediately turn off the mental confusion like a water tap.

we are not stocks and stones

This acknowledged, I noticed within myself, during my recent bout with sorrow, that, though the mental confusion would not abate in a moment, after a while I did experience that better level of consciousness coming to my rescue. We have to work with this procedure. But patience is also required.

We're not in Summerland yet. We're not going to get what we want here. This is a very imperfect world, a veritable suburb of the Dark Realms, heavily influenced by that dystopia.

We live in a world governed by dark egos – ever grasping, continually pillaging, attempting to quash the inner neediness of “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.” There is no hope for long-term happiness and stability in such a world.

Lt. Speirs explained it to us:

'you still think there's hope here' Given the uncivil, and dangerous, state of the world, with the diminishment of personal freedoms, and the rise of totalitarianism in our midst, plus the economic crisis, I have noticed, in myself and in others, a growing tendency to want to escape the stress of it all. I’d been thinking about this, what I could do in my own life to remain sane and productive, when I happened to view a segment from the movie, “Band Of Brothers.” On youtube you can find a short clip entitled “Speirs’ Hopeless War speech.” It features an incident between Pvt. Blithe and Lt. Speirs. Blithe had suffered psychological trauma in battle, such that, he found himself, at times, frozen in terror, unable to move, and even blind. Speirs offered some advice that helped him: “We're all afraid, Blithe. But you hid in that ditch because you think there’s still hope – but the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to function the way a soldier is supposed to function.” In other words, "If you spend your time terrorized by death, then you’re already defeated, and you have no hope of getting through this.” I thought about Speirs’ words. They're very jarring. It’s not what we want to hear. But, then I realized, he’s actually right. Our situation, at least for the moment, is not one of enduring the horrors of living in a war-zone, the kind Bob Feland spoke of. Given the lawlessness of the world, this could change, but, even so, the counsel “you need to accept that you’re already dead” is not all wrong. In many of the WG writings, I have argued that “this world cannot be fixed, only forsaken; cannot be saved, only transcended.” In view of this precariousness, and if Lt. Speirs were addressing us, he might say: “Yes, we’re all afraid or feel ill at ease living in this world. There’s so much violence and injustice, so much corruption, unfairness, and people taking advantage of others; and, of course, this gets us down. But, the real reason we get angry or depressed is because we think there’s still hope. We become frantic or despairing because we still believe that we might find our perfect life here, our perfect career opportunity, our perfect mate and perfect marriage – our perfect health and happiness – in this world. But, for virtually everyone, this isn’t going to happen. We didn’t come to this world to receive these things. There’s a larger purpose in play, more important lessons to learn while on planet Earth, and our personal comfort is not always part of that plan. And so, the sooner we realize and accept the fact that “we’re already dead” – dead to our most cherished hopes and dreams – the sooner we’ll be able to function as an enlightened person is meant to do while living on the Earth. Summerland is our home-world, and that’s where we’re assured to find our total happiness – not here.”

no sturdy ontology

Also coming to mind was a principle from quantum mechanics. As we drill down to the essence of matter, smaller and smaller particles, it all disappears into a nothingness.

So, too, with any aspect of materialism. As we learn more about this world, its methods, and how to negotiate them, we're confronted by an unsatisfactoriness - it all disappears into a nothingness. This world has no sturdy ontology, no stand-alone existence. It’s not part-and-parcel of ultimate reality.

Final thought. The history of America is not all sweetness and light. We have many national sins. However, let us remind ourselves of something Churchill said concerning democracy and capitalism: it’s the worst of all possible forms of government – except for every other form government in this world.

America has not been a perfect “shining city on a hill,” but it’s the best form of government the world has ever seen. Today, because of our dumbed-down system of education, with the average person lacking even a rudimentary understanding of history, we dabble and experiment with socialism and totalitarianism.

compared to what

Those who decry the sins of and hate America never the pose the counter-argument “compared to what?” The mountebanks who routinely denounce America everlastingly position themselves as your savior -- as the New Testament uses the phrase, "they call themselves benefactors" -- it's an old ploy, seen a lot of mileage, but they couldn’t give a rat’s ass for you or the betterment of society. Their orchestrated concern and compassion is but "mask of piety," on their way to totalitarian control.

Editor's note: This brand of hard-core huckster, along with frothing minions, often finds accommodation in the "sewer pit" for thousands of years. See the channeled reports. 

They might yet get their chance, as so many are gulled and deluded by a narrow and very selective presentation of the news of the day.

I think we’re all in a severe cosmic learning situation, class is in session, and we might find out the hard way just what the dysfunctional ego, the seeds of evil within each of us, is really capable of.