Orsi makes a great point about drugs and how they are not neccesarily needed. The evidence that shaman/ vision seekers and mystics from each and every spiritual tradition have messed with whatever it was around that could introduce their minds to another state of being, often perceived as a different 'realm.' The Arabs ate hash, the Scythians smoked pot, avinida muscaria for everybody in Europe (there is even a picture of this mushroom on a fresco from Rome titled, 'the tree of life', so yea, maybe even Jesus was a shroom-head)... search for images on google.
But some Buddhist sects purport similar states of conciousnes just from sitting still for hours on end, and when the Lakota Suoix wanted to talk to the spirits they deprived themselves of sleep and sweated intensely, and when the Celts wanted to divine their next king they ate pounds of raw meat! Im sure, sleep deprivation and food poisoning can make you trip balls, probably the same state Mohamad was in (drug induced or not) when he ascended to heaven on the dome of the rock.
BUt what about just staying still and meditating? Could it be that when we merely stop distracting ourselves that we emerge into a kind of conciousnes not bound by normal rational rules of nature, but ones of symbolism, like those of the spirit world?
I think it is so, that we can all reach the prophetic state that Blake was so fond of, and, like Dorothy, we only need what we have to get us there -but dont make a drug your only ticket, that leads to a kind of spiritually justified dependence. And none of the ancients thought increased dependence on corporeal things was any good.
Instead, we ought to see stressed importance on drugs in spirituality as a kind of bastardization of a revolutionary state of mind, a castration of spirituality into the eunuch of blind consumerism. Borring. Dull. Predictable. But most importantly, and in the style of the water genie: sterile, impotent, degenerate, non-creative, lacking in: rigor, virility, potency, vitality, vigor, semen/vaginal fluid.
Hippies...
;)just kidding, not all of you.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
the matrix-what is it?
This site has a story that is freakin awesome.
http://www.followtheleader.ca/info/resources/poems/awakening.htm
This story calls attention to the kind of paridigms that are instilled in us from a young age. These are presupositions that everyone has within our minds, the notions and values that go without saying.
THese notions shape our world view and cause us to block out stimulus that doesn't fit our meta narrative for fear of having to find a new paradigm.
But this is how we grow.
In mythologies around the world, the trickster spirit is the only one capable of really teaching humans anything because they present them with a problem that doesnt fit the world view, causing us to either go into denial, or emerge into a large shell, as Hesse talks about in his novel, Demian.
It is this notion I want to talk about as concerns the matrix.
The Matrix is not merely the world the machines have created, but the world of man as well. As the Buddhists of the order-of-bendin'-spoons say: all is illusion, all is false.
Wiki, on Simulacra and Simulation: "“ The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.[1]"
This reminds me of a story I read somewhere about the god of illusion and suffering, Mara. In the story, Mara and one of his consorts are walking down a city street. Mara and the follower pass an ascetic who is meditating on the sidewalk with a blissful smile.
"dosn't it bother you when you see a man experiencing epiphanies like that?" asks the evil disciple.
"No," says Mara confidently, "After the experience, people usually form a belief out of it."
IN other words, experience is what is real, not any kind of formed belief.
There is no spoon, yo!
Again, the wiki article:
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:
First order, associated with the pre-modern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.
Second order, associated with the industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The item's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original version.
Third order, associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation breaks down. There is only the simulacrum.[2]
Here, in the real world, Plato's allegory of the cave is alive and kicking.
We all make haste not to actually live in the real world, not to actually
muse, but to be a-mused. That is, to sit before the wretched Television box and drool, zone out, space out, click off, go tarded. This is how we quiet our inner voices, our spirituality. Video games, my space and television are socially sanctioned versions of heroine in that they allow us to continue to exist without challenging out paradigms, without entering into the beauty of always becoming, of constant and never-ending awakening to the beauty of the dream. Like the bliss that Bill Murray finds is quite capable of making even the most maddening recurrence seem fresh and new.
A friend of mine once told me her parents told her that TV was created by aliens so that they could have the whole human race distracted whilst they scoop out man-brains with a spoon.
Strangely enough, I think this statement has allot of truth, .
http://www.followtheleader.ca/info/resources/poems/awakening.htm
This story calls attention to the kind of paridigms that are instilled in us from a young age. These are presupositions that everyone has within our minds, the notions and values that go without saying.
THese notions shape our world view and cause us to block out stimulus that doesn't fit our meta narrative for fear of having to find a new paradigm.
But this is how we grow.
In mythologies around the world, the trickster spirit is the only one capable of really teaching humans anything because they present them with a problem that doesnt fit the world view, causing us to either go into denial, or emerge into a large shell, as Hesse talks about in his novel, Demian.
It is this notion I want to talk about as concerns the matrix.
The Matrix is not merely the world the machines have created, but the world of man as well. As the Buddhists of the order-of-bendin'-spoons say: all is illusion, all is false.
Wiki, on Simulacra and Simulation: "“ The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.[1]"
This reminds me of a story I read somewhere about the god of illusion and suffering, Mara. In the story, Mara and one of his consorts are walking down a city street. Mara and the follower pass an ascetic who is meditating on the sidewalk with a blissful smile.
"dosn't it bother you when you see a man experiencing epiphanies like that?" asks the evil disciple.
"No," says Mara confidently, "After the experience, people usually form a belief out of it."
IN other words, experience is what is real, not any kind of formed belief.
There is no spoon, yo!
Again, the wiki article:
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:
First order, associated with the pre-modern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.
Second order, associated with the industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The item's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original version.
Third order, associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation breaks down. There is only the simulacrum.[2]
Here, in the real world, Plato's allegory of the cave is alive and kicking.
We all make haste not to actually live in the real world, not to actually
muse, but to be a-mused. That is, to sit before the wretched Television box and drool, zone out, space out, click off, go tarded. This is how we quiet our inner voices, our spirituality. Video games, my space and television are socially sanctioned versions of heroine in that they allow us to continue to exist without challenging out paradigms, without entering into the beauty of always becoming, of constant and never-ending awakening to the beauty of the dream. Like the bliss that Bill Murray finds is quite capable of making even the most maddening recurrence seem fresh and new.
A friend of mine once told me her parents told her that TV was created by aliens so that they could have the whole human race distracted whilst they scoop out man-brains with a spoon.
Strangely enough, I think this statement has allot of truth, .
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Gypsy Punks
http://new.music.yahoo.com/gogol-bordello/tracks/forces-of-victory--60939204 (the last one I had here sucked, sorry)
Samuel Beckett's whole, "i can't go on, I'll go on" thing is pretty awesome, and so is this bad ass song by Gogol Bordello. It repeats almost the same line over and over again in juxtaposition to statements about taking out dictators.
Here I think it is important to think of Malloy. He rests over his bike, merely occupying space, and has to deal with a self righteous pig questioning him as though he had no right to be old. "There is only one law, not two laws, one for the young and one for the old... one for the happy and one for the sad."
In other words: do what you're told no matter what, don't think, don't quest/ question, don't rest on the sidewalk your tax dollars helped pay for, or an asshole with a badge (whose salary your taxes also help pay for) will throw you in the pin, where you will be waiting for a Goddot, a reprieve, or a conjugal visit that will never, ever come.
The band is a gypsy punk band and I think the lyric has to do with some of the sadness of being, like the gypsys and Molloy (or whatever his real name is), down and out, wandering from place to place. The thing is that this state is also very sacred even though you have no money with which to bribe the cops, or, in America, to convince them you have somewhere to stay, and you might just go to jail for loitering.
It doesn't matter
One day, someway, those bastards are going down and I'll be laughing.
As the song says, "just as any king before/ will be on the floor."
It is only a matter of time before the wheels of fortune spin to another season and fate. Those who now are strong will one day blindly pull themselves through wood and marsh with crutches that are useless as anything but grapling hooks.
Samuel Beckett's whole, "i can't go on, I'll go on" thing is pretty awesome, and so is this bad ass song by Gogol Bordello. It repeats almost the same line over and over again in juxtaposition to statements about taking out dictators.
Here I think it is important to think of Malloy. He rests over his bike, merely occupying space, and has to deal with a self righteous pig questioning him as though he had no right to be old. "There is only one law, not two laws, one for the young and one for the old... one for the happy and one for the sad."
In other words: do what you're told no matter what, don't think, don't quest/ question, don't rest on the sidewalk your tax dollars helped pay for, or an asshole with a badge (whose salary your taxes also help pay for) will throw you in the pin, where you will be waiting for a Goddot, a reprieve, or a conjugal visit that will never, ever come.
The band is a gypsy punk band and I think the lyric has to do with some of the sadness of being, like the gypsys and Molloy (or whatever his real name is), down and out, wandering from place to place. The thing is that this state is also very sacred even though you have no money with which to bribe the cops, or, in America, to convince them you have somewhere to stay, and you might just go to jail for loitering.
It doesn't matter
One day, someway, those bastards are going down and I'll be laughing.
As the song says, "just as any king before/ will be on the floor."
It is only a matter of time before the wheels of fortune spin to another season and fate. Those who now are strong will one day blindly pull themselves through wood and marsh with crutches that are useless as anything but grapling hooks.
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