I saw that female postal worker lottery winner on the Letterman show. She was old, fat, and had thin lips. She openly admitted that she was basically a miser and a cheapskate like me. But, she had the young pretty boy movie star at her knees... with only the smell of big money as the bird-in-hand. It was all she needed. LOL

Seeing ourselves in other peoples words and actions is what humans do best. It's delusional, of course, admittedly so, with the blind leading the blind! But, delusion is what we're good at, and our being good at is also the beauty of it. We are free of each others delusions, and we are free of our own delusions because we can only see what we think we were or would be, and presently, we ain't even that.

Why would we pretend to be this or that kind of person for each other, if other people, ourselves included, can only see their own concept of themselves in our words and actions?

I propose that every true motive is concieved with totally selfish intentions. Okay, maybe the motive is not intended as selfishness in any conscious understanding of the word, but in spite of that, is selfishness, disguised as our honest intent and all dressed up for a day in the life of a fool.

I compiled the information above after reading some internet articles about the Greek Cynicism movement. A person I feel friendly toward strongly suggested I am extremely cynical, and so I ran a search on Google because I wanted to understand what he was calling me. Greek Cynicism was indirectly fathered by Plato though one of his followers. You gnow, "what's-his-nayme?" or "Whoever." They stayed poor and made mockery of other peoples pretensions. I wish I had the nerve to do that. Right?

I composed the paragraph to see what it felt like to openly write something Cynical-like. People have said that I was cynical before now, but until recently, I had never actually been accused of being a Cynic. What I have written up to now exists only within the limitations I have imposed on myself, and yet, I enjoy testing those limits in small ways as I go along. I am still possessed by words and actions I have not written about. If I don't write about the stuff that needs to have it's say, I'll never have the chance to miss it, because if I don't write it out, it never leaves me or ever takes responsibility for it's own existence, as I devoutly wish for, as I ernestly prey.

Thus, I often stand accused of flaunting a brash attitude akin to some tarnished bravado that betrays a deep weakness or wound that purportedly makes me vulnerable to the eyes of the beholder. I just love for others to work this scam with me. Nothing opens the door for deep-rooted, debilitating remarks of sarcasm more than this spiteful projection.

The pain can go on forever and it is easily accomplished. My experience as a victim myself tells me they gonna give it up. They gonna roll over. Just like I gave it up. Just like I rolled over. In time, but not of choosing. Like me, they are waiting for that time to come, when their chance is gone.

Half Masks

The appearance of things caught drifting in matter
Leads on to a scheme or design.
The way of repugnance not totally shown
Is a symbol of ignorance benign.
In the pitter and patter of eloquent pose
The ghost of a maniac shows,
That the half-mask of life is endlessly empty
Until the spirit of death gnows it's throes.

fmp January,1972

A deluded sense of self importance brings the salt to the table, but it's the truth about our own selfishness that puts the salt into the wound and leaves the mark of ownership.

The phantasmagoric visuals Gautama envisioned sitting under the Bo Tree represents to me that which appears each time I sit to practice meditation.

I have peculiarities I observe as I ritually prepare a place before me. Things have to be just so. It doesn't take long to establish the set and setting because I have been anticipating the time previously. I gnow exactly what I'm going to do to allow specific, recognizable events to occur. I hardly ever gnow what part of the process these events will occur, but I gnow where to sit and wait for them to approach.

Upon assuming my sitting position I attempt to wiggle around so that I will be as comfortable as possible for as long as possible. From years of practice I seem perfectly aware that the main reason I will eventually move out of my sitting position, will happen because my wrinkled old ass gets too sore to keep sitting there on it. Otherwise, if my ass didn't start hurting, I might sit longer sometime than I do.

I practice this ritual most days at around 11 a.m. for about an hour. I practice until it becomes a pain in the ass. Then, I stop practicing, and keep my stopping still.

I really don't enjoy experiencing a pain in the ass, or anywhere else that I can't turn into pleasure. That's why I put practicing meditation off until the last second I can get away with it, and still maintain some semblance of self-respect and/or presupposed integrity.

I've read quite a few books written by meditators. I haven't had many face-to-face conversations with them, but I do read their stuff in some irregular, digital pattern. It amazes me they have anything to say at all considering the subject at hand. Meditators sit down and teach themselves how to do nothing really well, and that's about all there is to it.

When meditators write about meditating, we seem to write about technique, and the problem with writing about technique is that technique can be so subjective, and so self-instructive that reading what other people have to say about resourcing that state of emptiness appears unuseful and tritely cumbersome for the most part. This open-ended reading habit appears tedious and unnecessary, but essentially so.

I think I read about what other meditators say about meditating to learn how I'm suppose to feel about doing it. Otherwise it appears like a very selfish thing to do. This unholy inquisitiveness about how I'm supposed to feel regarding this deliberate inactivity seems to be part of the deal of thinking I'm a certain type of person. Not only in meditation, but in most of the activities I created for the sake of somebody else's conscience, and executed as if it had sprung from my own head like the Goddess Athena. It is not as though I could actually own myself for my own reasons without excuses could I? As if I could provide myself with my own reasons to exist as my own hero. And yet, I vauntfully insist that I do and I am. Imagine that as the epitome of selfishness.

Meditation is sort of like masturbation, it seems to answer unasked questions within an imposed frame that usually passes by unnoticed, unless such ignorance is deliberately flaunted out of proportion. and then pondered until the time arrives when the chance is gone... and we are chosen.

I have started getting all sorts of odd responses to my blog recently. I must be doing something right. The responses I'm getting seem angry, mixed in with a little disgust. I can't be sure exactly what is disturbing people, because they themselves don't seem to know what it is. It may have something to do with my attitude toward selfishness. Selfishness was the last subject I wrote about on the GoT list, and that list, for all intents and purposes, has shut down.

Maybe personal selfishness is a sore point with many people. Do they still carry resentments from the time they were forced to share as children? Was the loss of selfishness as a child something more than we realize? What was lost when we were forced to share with others?

From the Gospel of Thomas found with the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt in 1945:

4) Jesus said, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same."

The above is the pertinent saying which I referenced in posting to the GoT list. When Jesus talks about being as a child he is talking about a newborn of less than 7 days age. A life form that has not learned the process of ideation. Innocent. Innersense. A newborn cannot distinguish another human from a jackal. It cannot distinguish friend from foe. As far as the newborn is concerned all that it surveys is itself, and it prevails through the word. It doesn't know that it's screaming is responsible for the comforting that follows to get it to quit screaming, but that learning is not far away.

Somewhere in the canonized version of the new testament Jesus says "No man shall enter the kingdom of heaven except through me. The "me" Jesus is talking about is the only "me" any of us know. Ourselves in the first person. Or, more specifically, Adam, the first person of the Genesis myth. The child of seven days previous to having it's rib torn out to be shared with the feminine aspect of itself. Previous to it's betrayal by that shared self. Previous to the knowledge of duality, and of good and evil. Previous to the Mother? Previous to entry into the womb? If the kingdom of heaven is only entered through an act of pure selfishness such as that possessed by the newborn child, and that innocence gets degraded by the dissolution of selfishness, no wonder some people get pissed off at the very hint that selfishness can and must exist as a desirable trait.

So, is that what is taken away from us when we are forced to share as children? When we are taught not to be selfish, are we also having the ability to enter the kingdom of heaven ripped away from us without recourse? Is that what my writing about the desirability of selfishness provokes in people? It reminds them that they had their ticket to ride taken away from them as if it didn't matter?

I"m gonna find out. And if I'm right, I'm gone have a lotta fun. Cynicism? You ain't seen nothing yet! LOL!!

I received a post from David K. that was interesting to me and I thought some of the other people who comment on my blog would like to read.

"I'm still a regular reader of your blogspot and from
the beginning I was amazed at your alias. To me you
are anything but a rabblerouser but a Cynic in almost
optima forma, "a distance creating mocker, a sometimes
grim and malicious individualist claiming having no
need of anybody and loved by nobody because he allows
nobody to escape from his sharp unmasking look "(Peter
Sloterdijk: Kritik der zynische Vernunft). And now I
read your other face in the moving poem Love's Labor
Lost, tragic and wry.

I haven't looked up the definition of cynic until today. I have assumed I knew the meaning of the term and thought it meant something similar to sarcastic. It turns out I was right in a way, but was surprised at how selfishness got into the picture.

Webster's New World Dictionary defines "cynical" as "1. believing that people are motivated in all their actions only by selfishness; denying the sincerity of people's motives and actions, or the value of living 2. sarcastic, sneering, etc."

There is a reason why I behave in a cynical manner, mocking people with extreme sarcasm, and sneering at their petty little efforts of adapting to the pressures of today's society. I do admit that I can become a "sometime grim and malicious individualist." I do what I have to. Many times I move outside of the conceptually perceived contructs that many people seem stuck in, and when I do that I do not want to be called to task to explain why I'm doing what I'm doing. I cannot be there in that specious present and critique my behavior as if it were something I did in the past. I have to be there... now!

Critizing my own behavior requires that I reflect upon my behavior as if I were on the outside looking in. As if I were not really there, but above and beyond the actual activity of my presence. It is not easy to get to the place where I can dwell inside the specious present, and then to have someone (anyone) demand that I stop what I'm doing to explain why I did or said something that happened in that specious present is more than I wanna deal with. So, I do whatever I need to do to get them off my back so I can continue in the flow of the eternal now. If it takes hurting their feelings or humiliating them to create the distance I need to make it happen, so be it. In these kinds of situations my motives are definitely selfish. When I get into the groove and I'm moving mountains I will not take time out to explain how I'm doing it. Screw you!

It took a long time to learn this from others who knew how to get there. I have been treated the way I treat people by the best I could find. I would find myself fascinated by their being able to do what they did and interfere in some way to get them to go slow and let me observe, and suddenly find myself in some corner somewhere in the fetal position trying to figure out what in the hell happened. The power of the flow has no respect for beginners, and humiliation is the teacher. Get used to it.