The biggest mistake I ever made

Was believing that I was somehow innocent.

At 21, coming out of a traumatic series of events where my brother-like cousin had made a flying seppoekoe into my garden, I went through a jungle like travel in the US where I got banged up pretty badly until an angel landed on my shoulder and whispered ‘why dont you go to California?’

So I cried and took the greyhound to LA. Okay this was something you have to imagine for a while. Being in a hole of shit in New Orleans with cockroaches everywhere and sweating so much that the whole mattress is soaked, reading Dostoyevsky and writing stories about … well lets not … well, so and then suddenly, out of nothing, the open Arizona skies. We step out at a Wendy’s in the middle of absolutely nothing, I get some M&Ms and a coke (I am on a diet of a traumatized dude) and do a Zen exercise around the back of the restaurant, and somehow attain a nirvana.

12 hours pass of which I have no memory, except enjoying a piece of food and being surprised at how comfortable these plastic benches can be to lie on.

As I leave LA it is storming, a rainstorm sweeps through the palmtrees on the rocky hillsides and the river is not the T2 chasms of hot concrete but an actual river so violent that it rips out of its bed into the air and meets with the rain. Being the last to arrive and the first in the bus, I took the front seat next to the driver, and talked with him all the way to San Fransisco about the miracles we both had witnessed. He told me of 3 times that death failed to get him. And of one time when he stood on Jim Morrison’s toe, only to be told don’t worry man, people came her to listen to my songs, not to stare at my feet.

It’s cold in San Fransisco. Grey, cloudy. The 7 hills appear like any other semiindustrialized shithole in the middle east.
I get picked up by the uncle of my best friend. That’s why California had such a ring to it. Not just that but mainly that; I have family there, somewhat.

I spend some days in safety. The typical American home. We go disco-bowling. I play no nintendo with the cousins, to my great amazement and disappointment. The uncle suggests a place for me to visit.

The Expanding Light.

Founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, or his first disciple Kryananda, a retreat in the Sierra Nevada where, for the measly tasks fo cooking and cleaning some dust, one can stay and take part in meditations of the most powerful kinds. If you have seen the movie Bruno, you have seen the guy that runs that placed; David. A good fellow who failed to be distracted or insulted by Sasha Baron Cohen, and whom I remember playing expertly the Harmonium, singing weirdly entrancing songs that I still remember with a freshness of heart. I must say, those guys were good.

But as time passed and I went home and I quit being vegetarian and I relinquished some of my routine and I became a normal person again I noticed I didnt turn into a normal person again. I wondered, all the time, what was missing. The end, the answer, is that somewhere down the line, between the searing heat in my traumatized heart and the blessings of the divine mother, something had tilted in me; the light of the world no longer refracted in me the same way; it somehow did no longer relate to the primary emotion I had always enjoyed. This emotion is rage.

I had started to believe that I was innocent. I had actually started to believe that. Which meant that all aspects of me that I could not reasonably consider innocent were repressed. Which resulted in a very thin layer of a personality. I developed a neurotic disorder, and embarked on a path that, within some years, resulted in a cascade of catharses which is still after 12 years or so, ongoing. This false idea of innocence, once it had taken hold, is still somehow doing shit to me.

It is the least innocent phenomenon that I know of; the belief that I am innocence is the greatest cruelty ever inflicted on me; I am cruel, and I know it. I know it so I can control it. This is self-valuing. Knowing the inevitability of cruelty. What ultimately became my philosophy is an antichristian logic; no objective judgments of right and wrong can take place because it is a matter of the flesh; to thrive, one must simply build one what one is and has and is capable of and in terms of what one loves and with the gifts that are valued in the world and with the discipline of which one is capable, all this is measure and ratio of ones heart, or ribcage as the Greeks called that locus of passion.

Intelligence is the substance of durability. Our human intelligence is, sometimes, related to what takes place in our conscious minds. Usually it is merely the breathing, the beating of the heart, and moronic ideas make their paths in the waking mind that is excluded from making decisions, as the body is transported by economic necessity from cubicle to home to cubicle.

Anyone who calls himself innocent, or who wishes to forgive you without knowing what you have done, is insane. That I did not see this immediately for the grave atrocity that it is when I engaged it in the form of yoga was due to the nobility of these specific people, who truly weren’t wretched, cooked extremely well and built temples of splendid craft and proportion; I was eased into the belief without having to lose my aesthetic standards.

The Elder yogi Babaji says that a man with a strong heart could physically withstand the atomic bomb. No one believes that. But people believe that Jesus walked on water. Because he was another dude. Someone who was somehow innocent, and who somehow saw it in them, too. They didnt know how that could possibly be, but they ran with it. Why not? Easy sell. I can’t believe I fell for it.

Banged up by niggers and fate I wound up a near-Christian in the hills of the west, where dreams are born. But mine was thin and pained, and I did not believe in it, I only feared it. What if we are all equal? What a terrible fate would that be! What if karma represents some objective standard of pain? Then we’d all be fucked to hell to eternity and back any moment now… I could see the consequences all too well. I was able to fend of the steel terror of equality, of one standard, of one law of ox and lion, for most of the time by heavy meditation, which revealed to me in an instance the presence of a superior being. But it was no mere Jesus, or Lord. What I beheld, of which I beheld myself a suddenly revealed part, was a god of power, merely that, no control or will or plan or face, simply a finger of a massive body of power touching me on the brow, so to speak, though it was a beam of force that bestowed only light in me, but was itself of a great gravity.

I do not understand.

I understand now.

(often this is enough, to state that one does not understand. The understanding will feel welcome)

I understand how to interpret; the potentiating that I witnessed in recognizing me became my horizon.
Where others meet their horizon in Dante’s hell, or in the Grace of Glory, mine came when I was 21, that most fragile age where a boy leaves his perfect mind and becomes a struggle; where he is recruited into the army and into careers, into love and into a place under the sun; no longer doth he follow the sun, this young man who is now destined to grow old. But I would stay forever young.

Power as such; not will to power, but simply overflowing might.
Is this not a far better premise?
Because in this case all that is not overflowing rises up, is fed and fed until eventually it becomes part of the thrust, the sheerness of the ascent which is god.
God is the Riser.

Fixed wrote:

I instantly thought of this …

youtu.be/Zmu71H_6UAA

Just imagine the bedtime stories you can tell your kids :eviulfun:

but please do carry on, it is quite interesting.

Basically I threw my soul on the line. But everyone does this who enters into the army or a covenant or a congregation, or a fraternity or sorority or a group that demands certain behaviors and standards in order to ‘grow up’. At least I refused to give away my own, even as I plummeted into an abyss of alien values. Which means that, when I survived it all, I still had my soul. Most people go around not having the faintest clue where they left their soul. Most of them left it with some society boogieman figure in their late teens or early twenties. You can recognize such people by the stunted way they laugh; a person with a soul sounds joyful when he laughs, a person without sounds hollow. Their laughter is a social thing that brings them a second of comfort. It is never aimed at themselves; they can not look at themselves, nor can they laugh as a form of affirmation.

If you can laugh, freely and joyfully, at yourself without any loss of power or self-respect, good chance you picked the right adventures when you were young.

Yeah ummm… please don’t refer to these hijinks of yours as being near Christian… your pretty far distant if anything, then and now, and that is not a compliment. I know in your twisted worldview it is, but it isn’t.

I really was expecting your biggest regret to be the sodomy. Instead it was gaining spiritual enlightenment behind Burger joint on a sugar rush. Your hair brained or on some serious drugs. Perhaps both. This isn’t what sane people do, of most religions. Small wacky cults, but your suggesting in this all you lack even the commitment for small wacky cults.

I don’t believe in last men, over men, bigfoot, knights of faith and infinite resignation, and all these other cryptozoological creatures that drive men mad on idealistic supposition. God is taken be me primarily through the same processing one uses for any real relationship, and in this I’m pragmatic and introspective. You will never catch me running Willy Billy like a damn fool, thinking meditation or some guru will get me shit anymore than a blessing from a Bishop or being told by a nihilist there is no god and dance a silly dance. Enough has happened in my life to confirm God exists, but I don’t go silly jumping through hoops over it. I approach things sober, stable, pragmatic. I too exist, as do others. Many a task ahead, and a complex history behind. I try to make the best out of life.

Trying to mimic the worst in Crowley, in running stareyed from one retarded feat to the next, without thinking the pragmatic aspect out balanced against the ideal, won’t get you anywhere… it is literally a dead end. You won’t become a real high priest, or gain wisdom or insight, but are more likely to bust up one day realizing you’ve been bullshitting yourself all along. Empty ritual leaves you empty, and collecting miscellaneous scaps from the pilgrims trails of other faiths won’t substitute for getting a hold of yourself first.

When I set out for a long journey, I combine the attraction of the unknown with the necessity derived from great purpose, in emulation with what has been known to be needed. My emotions and memory align with that. My tempo isn’t a concern usually, I just go as needed. Discipline takes the place of this drive to tempo… I will take time fixing everything, and planning every step forward. I take especially close attention to my shoes and backpack, banging them. I have a spiritual connection to the necessities of pushing forward.

I never get lost in words, architecture, art or ritual, despite seeing wonders. I cherish them as memories, but I’m after things of a much greater order. As a philosopher, I’m after solutions to problems. I have done the endless pointless time on zazen cushions, in a variety of temples, walked into just about every library, every temple, every source of learning. If it doesn’t have it, I move on after learning the system. I’m not interested in the fraud of ritual as a substitute for God or my drive forward. If I see problems, I push forward for solutions, step by step by step.

And no, as Nihilism isn’t a unified belief, doesn’t exist in the Nietzschean conception of it, no… running amok for the over man to avoid the last man isn’t being pragmatic. One can have a emotive delusion to press forward as if it was a great purpose, but it isn’t pragmatic, real. One can’t be a skeptic or Doubting Thomas in doing so. If any of those Cryptozoological creatures above exist, it would certainly be the Nietzschean as The Last Man, trying to save the world from itself. People are pretty smart, they don’t need some druggies misfit with delusions of exceptionalist grandure to save them. You will never become a great prophet, or Savior through such actions save to a few misfits, and your teachings will be quickly forgotten within a few generations.

Why? Because people don’t care, as they see through your bullshit. Your a silly man, a emotional wreck, a needlessly emotional wreck… you don’t deserve to even be a wreck, all harm self afflicted. You turned your back on your religion, on your heritage, and on your nation in pursuit of foolish pipe dreams, and never seem to get that nobody else is really, honestly into your games save for alterior motives.

Nobody cares. We got plenty of Schizos on more entertaining journeys, jousting windmills. And no, I’m not going to be inspired by your Nietzsche quote or allusion to something some pervert like Satyr says in reply. None of that shit matters. Great walk down memory lane… this thread is, but be prepared to walk away from it if your want to salvage your life. Hiding in distant lands on fools journeys won’t fix anything about you. Wont make you wiser or stronger unless it breaks you of these childish, poorly thought through motivations. Say nothing about Odin and Puss in Boots and Big Bird frolicking in some field either with some elves… nobody believes you. Nietzscheans are always frauds and never sincere about religion, it is always a game to exploit and manipulate. They can’t save humanity from Nihilism if they are the main force for the negative effects presumed under it. They are the ultimate fuckups and exploitative parasites. In a just society they would be jailed along with those engaged in highly exploitive, interest based usuary and other similar sales fraud like ponzi schemes and selling perpetual motion machines.

Yours is a concern not of spirituality, but of ethics, for first falling for it then embracing it openly. You have no business here, go report your sins in the social forum under a title thread called Bad Ethics: How I Betrayed Society and Myself.

Associated with a real live human lately? Or just the rocks and the trees?

It may be hard for you to grasp, but you are quite far from what I would consider a desirable life. For all my problems, I have a life I would not trade with anyone - but certainly not with a Christian.

If you want to hear the truth, you lack the integrity to leave the straight and narrow. That path was designed for those that think making their own path is a vice.

Go to sleep, little babe. Innocently at the stream.

Christianity is a psychoactive drug, you’re overdosing… which produces some nice rants frequently.

You have yet to produce a single coherent statement that pertains to philosophy. You are aware of this.
Religion is definitely a stronger point. But given the dogmatism, this too is a terrain where faltering is more akin to you than producing clarity.
Random information is your strong suit, along with emotionalism.

But no matter how much random information you spout, it will be unlikely to do the monkey-typewriter thing. I mean as a monkey at a typewriter, you should not have great expectations of yourself.

Seriously, it’s more interesting to me to find out that you also have some human, cognitive aspects, and not just all this weird shit in your tummy.

You really need to do something about those tantrums of yours.

So you didn’t leave it on the line?

I think they brought out a “find my soul” app for iphone.

Don’t worry if you can’t. I’ll do it for you.

Please stop running backward with your pants down. And get some cleaning products.

I’ve no doubt that this is a very sharp and witty remark. I just wish I knew what it meant so I could appreciate it.

Along with a lot of grateful dead, i wish we could have the groovy ,naive tripping long hairs around, who let it all down.They were sadly defeated by the drug: reality. They were ever so much less up tight.

I saw the grateful dead once.

…big mistake huh?

My mistake? I dated.

The crowd was quite strange. Pretty much everyone there was on some kind of hallucinogenic drugs. I was about 15 years old at the time and had never heard their music, but they’re like one of those iconic bands that’s been around since the 60s so I went to see them in a van full of hippies. Decent overall experience, but definitely a smelly dirty crowd and the music wasn’t that good.

I was in a band playing the saxophone. When I was a kid. Then I sold the sax to buy ([{…¿¿¿}]) and now I am in a rap ensemble. Istill do a tubular cif solo.

Man everyone has a mixtape now. They’re just handing them out on the sidewalks.

I have been told I need to smile and laugh more (generally by people who are unhappy).

Horrible shit people make, too.

In any case I cant shake my addiction to the music.

What you say about innocence interests me. To me, believing oneself to be innocent is similar to being unable to feel guilt, or to not feeling any guilt/remorse and having no memory of feeling it. A person who feels no guilt and has no memory of feeling it is one of three things: a narcissist, a true saint, or a child. If we’re talking about someone over say the age of 13, who is a normal human being (not a saint) then such a person who had no experience with guilt would seem almost necessarily to be a narcissist. I think narcissism is a phase the free thinker goes through, s kind of self-cleansing. I’ve gone through it, which is why I don’t trust others who haven’t made it through that yet (e.g. Trump) because I know what it’s like still being inside of that limit.

Not being innocent is a philosophical state of being, a common experience for essentially all human beings; feeling guilt or remorse is simply associating the pain of another with oneself due to the phenomenological linkage between oneself and that other person on account of the fact that oneself was causal to the pain in question. This is a kind of deepening of the connections of existential being. In self-valuing terms we extend our values-sphere to incorporate another value-sphere by way of some shared valuations; I don’t like narcissists because they don’t trust other self-valuings that are marginally different from their own, which means they cannot rely on their own self-valuing as an anchor and ground for valuing differences, which means they don’t really value themselves. And not valuing oneself, being constitutionally and logically unable to value oneself, is the root of all “evil”.

Guilt is really a debt. And debt is karmic. After all who ever not heard a spoiled child tell his accusative parents that he or shr didn’t ask to be born? How an a genetically so called burdened family, on perpetual welfare beget so many kids, in some cases only to increase the size of their dole?

Reasonable: only desperate people went to see the Dead rather then the Stones, not because of the music, but of the intriguing ambiguity between death and being grateful.