How I have been feeling Just getting it out there.

The patterns of my life are strong, and do tend to stay consistent.I don't know what to do any more. I was asked the other day in an off hand way what I really went through in India, and still to this day I can honestly say I don't know. What I can say about it, now that some time has passed, is that it happened nearly just as the plane landed and came to a complete stop.

I can vividly remember the fight and struggle, financially I'm still paying for it, that got me to India. Once the plane had landed all I can see in my memory is why did I do this again? I went to India to look for the answer in religion. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with the idea of God. If there was any where in the world to find it, it would be India. After all the Mahabharata is the oldest religious text we have, moreover, every religion resides in India. If I could find God or some way to tie it all together It would have been there.

I have issues with all major religions, and let me tell you the least valid of them has to be Christianity. Among the text issues that the Bible contains, it is easily traced back to earlier incarnations of the Man-God. Furthermore, there is just no solid proof that Jesus even existed. The best proof we have is a historian named Josephus. Conspicuously at the end of one of his texts it states there was a man named Jesus. Not only is it at the end and is just over all kinda out of place. A lot of people where named Joshua at the time. In short Joshua in Hebrew simply means God is salvation. So, I'm pretty sure that the first century Jews new this, and if they were going to make up a Man-God, they would name him exactly that. To sum this little rant up all you have to do is study to find out everything is bullshit, it's all made up, and it's probably bad for you. The others are just as fake, but I don't feel like railing on everyone. Besides the beef I really have is that a lot of times Jesus is shoved in my face one way or another, and it just pisses me off. If Islam , Buddhism, Zen, Hinduism, or any other religious faction was around me all the time, I'd be pissed at them.

There is an argument that goes across most religious fields, and this argument is used used in such a way to branch all religious ideas together. So, let's imagine an elephant in the middle of the room. Each priest that is in the room he holds a different part of the elephant's anatomy, and then calls that particular part his way to the truth. In other words each religious sect holds honest claim to ultimate truth, and in the end they are all correct, if only through different perceptions.

I honestly believed that there was some way that I could link them all together, and then write books upon books. Not to say others haven't done this, or attempted it. I believed with today's science I could go deeper with it, and come out with some newer and updated insights. This would not be the case.

What I did find, and as I now roam the streets of St. Louis I still see, is absolute nothing. Here is why: All of it is an out and out lie.In fact I'm going to go out on a limb and tell you that not only is Philosophy pretty much a load of shit, so are all religions. I'm not trying to say logic is all bullshit, but the trying to ask why we are all here.... well... it's bullshit.

Nothing could prepare me for the bombshell that hit in my Indian literature class. As i was trying desperately to find early Mysticism documents to begin my search, I was shocked to find nothing prevalent until the early 17th century. I mean common Buddha was round  500 B.C. there had to be some sort of Hindu mystic writing prior to  the 17th century, but according to my teachers, and subsequent searches nothing or very very little is out there. Now combine that with the idea the the British start to show up there in force just a little bit before these writings really start to appear. In conclusion those bastards were full of shit and only out for a buck, and Goddamn does it work.

A few years back I did meet a yogi who inducted me into his particular sect of Hinduism. He taught us some yoga exercises, and yes in my own way he helped me see something that may or may not have been God. While at this meeting I did over hear a Hindu talking to him and saying something to the effect that Autobiography of a yogi was just a bunch of lies, and I truly believe that a majority of that book is. Why? Because the man that initiates this line of thinking does not appear and come out of the woods until when? yep, a few years before the British showed up. I find that to be wildly convenient.

So, at this point I don't hold any mysticism as anything but a money scheme, or at the very least I see it as something to give the hopeless and something to keep the hopeful in line. This pretty much has taken everything out of me. I've been left with nothing for two years, and have only been reaching out to nearly everyone and anything to hold on to. Slowly and over time I have not only fallen into a deep depression over it, but I have sincerely lost hope and faith of humanity.

So, what do you do when you have nothing left? Well, you kinda end up going bat shit nuts. I remember having a very interesting experience. In my readings I have seen that if one truly reaches a state of enlightenment one does become one with everything. Just outside the apartment in India they were doing construction. Someone dropped something. It rang out. This happened during a meditation session I was doing with a yoga instructor, and it happened. There was no me there was no bell. I became one with the sound, in fact I was the sound. The only thing I learned is that you can't take that with you. The completeness of the true pantheistic state is ripped from you the second you come back to the realness of the world. The yoga instructor's first words to me were, "So, Jason, what do you want to do with your life?" My to my dismay as I quickly searched the file cabinets, and computer storage files of my mind, I could not come up with anything. All my hopes and dreams were gone, and furthermore who I really was... was no longer there. Nothing.

Not long after this particular incident my 27 year old cousin died. I still not have recovered from either incident. The thought of his dying always comes to feelings. The first it should have been me, and along those same lines jealousy.

Ya see, I no longer see the point in the rat race. I now only see life as a terrible torturous board game. I feel it is like a monopoly game where every time you are about to be able to leave the game some asshole finds a way to keep you in the game. I constantly see things on the internet that promote the idea of not giving a fuck, or that you should not care what other people think.I think I should just simply exit the game, because after all it's only with yourself.

I hail all those who find comfort in faith, for I no longer have any. My insides are rather quite empty. However, it's the simple arguments against God' omniscience and benevolence that get me. If he can do anything and does nothing about it..... well, then he isn't both of those things. There are arguments against this, but to be able to debunk something so cleanly. I feel that is proof enough.

So, here I sit empty and at the very end of my rope. I'm trying to find something anything to keep it all together, but the urge to give up is so very strong. I see no point in the struggle, or anyone else's struggle either. I tried to hold on to things only to find that  you can't make someone love you. And most likely if shit gets rough and you do go crazy, people scatter like roaches to light. It's very disheartening, and it often leads to the feeling of being taken advantage of or totally just being blown off. To the very least why people cant stick with things they promise.

Any way right now I am a broken human being trying very hard to find something to pull me through, and every time I think I have found that something it gets ripped away, and I fall just a little bit more. I have been wondering lately just how much farther one can fall. How deep is this pit, or is it just emptiness? For now, I'm so far into the tunnel of nihilism that I can't even see the light from whence I began. There is no reference point any longer, just deep and black on all sides. People sometimes hold up false lights of hope only to rip them away, and the anger and hurt that comes from those actions I can no longer handle.I want to take my boot off the game board. Because I don't see the point.

The scariest part about all of it over all is that it's so deeply rooted I don't know if there is any way out of it. It's like a thick ether that instead helps light travel, it prevents the light from coming in, or back. The stuff resides inside as well as out, and it is eating me every day. Once or twice i might forget the black cancer that grows in my chest, but it always comes back. It's always stronger. I try to placate myself with platitudes and affirmations only to find that the lies I try to sell myself are the same lies the religious figures of today, and yesteryear spewed from mouths of crooked teeth, and hungry greedy hearts.

To me it all feels fake, and I have went off the scale, and I no longer feel the balance of the grey that is absolute truth. Prey for me, send me good vibes, send me good luck, or just forget me. Either way in the end it will all work out in some way, and then you will all look back and say see that was the way it was supposed to go... No that is the way it went. There is no supposed to, or fate to hang your hat on at the end of the day. There is nothing and it is cold here in this nothing.  

Observatory

I have a lot to say these days, and most of it is bottled up. I have found myself trying to tap into the place where it flows out of me like a summer cold front, but alas most of the time I sit at the computer, and stare blankly as the blank page ponders my existence. I am stuck in an endless empty stare down. However, today I think I might have found the fuel to forge the tornado’s path across the trailer park.

While you have that visual in your mind let’s not make a waist of the neuron’s firing.  Imagine yourself in the rubble. Everything destroyed beyond the point of no repair. The road on which you are standing is littered with picture frames, house frames, window frames, and maybe that was a pair of glasses that you saw a few steps back. Every step crunches the rubble that is impossible to misstep. Yet, the sky is now clear, and overhead the stars are outshining even themselves. You point out to me their beauty, and with out hesitation I agree. It is here that I point out decisive contrast of absolute beauty and wonder covering in its beauty horror, trash, and filth. Again you say look up at the sky. I bend down pick up a broken frame that held so many dreams, “That up there is metaphorical; you cannot grasp the stars. Only in your mind can you understand beauty. Ugly can hit you.” At this point I smack you with the trash, we giggle and move on.

This is what I see on most days. The wonder and beauty of everything that is, but it is the ugly that hits me in the face. It is of course where most of my anger is derived from, and I can say without disinclination that it is this very thing I want to fix in the world. Ghandi says be the change you see in the world, however, I can’t help but believe in bad Karma. In many ways I can be that bad Karma.

A year ago I began my Journey in India. I’ll just keep an over view of what I saw maybe later in life I’ll write down the details once they have been come cloudy, and I can paint them however I choose. For now though, I think I’m going to just skim over some of the ideas that grew like weeds of the mind. I’m dearly hoping that these words are my gloves as I begin to weed the garden that is my mind.

Almost nearly as I landed I lost everything that I thought I knew I was. None of my goals seemed important anymore. The Yogi who came to our house kept telling me I needed to know what I wanted to do. All I could ever say is I don’t know anymore…. I don’t know.

I want to say that it was the abject poverty I saw, or maybe how dirty it was there. However, I think that something inside me stopped working. It was if the 8,000 mile plane trip rubbed all of me away and I as left with nothing. In many ways I was gone. The people whom I was to meet didn’t know me. For all intents and purposes I could have been anything or anyone I wanted. Faced with this anomaly, my answer was I don’t know what I am.

I did have a direct connection to those of the lower casts. I’ve been known to do those jobs. Building things, playing with sewer pipes in the streets, or simply in American standards just a poor piece of shit. I felt for them and gravitated to their side of the coin. On one occasion in the classroom a teacher told me that a Dalit couldn’t eat at her dinner table. It bothered me for a long time, and for some reason in the beginning I could never understand why, but it bothered me to the point I quit going to her class (I was just auditing it). Maybe a month later as I watched a group of workers toil away with what I saw as out dated equipment it hit me. That bitch was talking about me. She said I couldn’t eat at her dinner table. Well, that is not what she really meant, or said. That is how it hit me. It was a slap in the face. For the life of me I couldn’t break away from seeing the reality of he situation. Yes, at a devastating cost I have lived my life in such a way the it has been more of an adventure than anything, but looking at these people in the eyes I could not break away from the feeling that what I had, the choices I could make, and the things I had were not equal. I am human they are human, and I have so much more.

It isn’t to say that I have so much more, but to say I have better opportunities, where I sit. The unfairness is where I begin to question how people can go about their lives allowing the deprivation of others. It all comes down to petty excuses that wipe away un-cried tears. There is no compassion, or if there is compassion its somehow forced compassion. It is as if people think they should feel a certain way toward a fellow human being, but really don’t feel that way.

I see people not caring a great deal, and moreover I do see a great number of people laying waste to other’s feelings without much forethought. There is no malice behind it, yet with the way laid push of destruction that emanates from their being it is hard to discern stupidity with that of ignorance.

I feel a need to breakaway and explain myself here. There is a difference between being stupid and being ignorant. Stupidity is knowing better. It is the idea that one knows all the information and just can’t put it together. Ignorance is never being told, and not having all the information available. Stupidity is the choice to be ignorant. Never is there anything more saddening to see people not caring, or just letting them selves get into the way of another to advance them selves. This is the way of nature. It is the very nature of nature I seek to destroy. It’s the very nature that I hit my friend with, as we walked through the trailer park.

I see humans just as I see the wrecked trailer park: a steaming pile of shit, with the opportunity for beauty and cooperation. It’s the ugly I see. It’s hard to look at the destruction the deprivation, and forget to look up at the stars the few who tried so hard to change the things they couldn’t, and lastly have failed. The largest failure of all (if he even existed) would be Christ. His efforts were totally in vein, and moreover he started the standard that when you talk about peace and love: those bastards will kill you.

Why? Who knows, it could be simply that everyone wants to feel loved, but no one takes the time to realize that you first must love outwardly, before you can be loved. Or even feel it for that matter. The ol’ cliché’ you must love yourself before anyone can love you is absolute bullshit… try loving someone else for a change. Love someone and blanket them with the stars.

One would think that this would not be a hard thing to do. However, it is not an easy thing to give away something you love. I.E. yourself. It is and endless fight to survive, to keep above the mire. Ignore the ignorant, and love… love for as long as you can. Before you become me: hateful, ungrateful, untrusting, loathing, misanthrope. I hope my ways can change. I hope.  

Hello again

I’m breaking the silence today. It’s the first time in a very long time I have felt the need to be in any way out pouring of any ideas or thoughts that regularly cross my mind. If you wondered in any way about what I’m doing with my life at the current moment, all I can honestly say is that I’ve been surviving. That is all I do, and it isn’t Much I’m simply marching through each day with the hope that each day is going to be better than the last, but at some point, I think because of fear, we as humans feel we peak out. We reach the top to where we as individuals can never get any better. At this point in my life I have done a great deal of things, and I feel that things are getting better. Furthermore the need to do things that I haven’t before is coming to an end. I no longer feel the need to consume experience, or rather I’d like to now rest with the experience and see where I have come out at the end. I need to take a break. However, there are things that have recently not settled well with me, they started in the mystic lands of India.

As you may or may not know I have a staunch stance against religion. The beginnings of my unease began very early if I remember right, and even my mother might be able to point out instances where questions began to emerge that weren’t normal. I have never taken things as is, or simply because I was told to. The reasons given to any occurrence in life had to mean something to me. After officially leaving my faith about God being a person that can consulted, effected, understood, or conversed with I dabbled and read nearly anything that claimed that it had some deeper meaning, or the claim that it had a stake in the truth. Now that I have systematically gone through most of the world’s belief systems I can only see the irrevocable flaws in each, and how these flaws seem to reverberate through out each and every one of them. It then only brings to mind that these flaws are without a doubt human in nature, can explained by looking at it with an anthropological lens, and lastly as if we aren’t anything special, but animals that are lucky to posses a high level of brain functioning.

The first thing that has to be acknowledged is the need to survive. In the case of plants, an oak tree will devastate every living thing that lives under it literally stealing nutrients and choking the plants below to death. Much like a tribe would do if the resources to their survival were threatened. If there were a smaller weaker tribe, the larger stronger tribe would wipe them out and take their needs. If you don’t think this is the case look up Africa. People slaughter people in the name of God, and the name of God is often survival.

Take WWII as an example. The German’s only wanted to survive, and look at the very ugly place that it took them. There is a whole slew of things that could be said about that situation, but for now we are going to just put in your mind that one group of people who out number another group of people, fear them, and loath them will destroy them given the opportunity to.

I feel that lumping it into generalities, as I can here, for better or worse this explains nearly every war waged, whether God’s name was used or not. However, this is where things get very interesting. In order to live in a social group one must adhere to the laws that govern that society. Atrocities really begin within a social group. There are certain players that don’t play along with the rules. Sometime in the fifties the powers that be pushed forth the ideal that to be a good American was to be Christian.  Now that a social group has been used to tie religion and the status of citizenship, the result is that now that your local tribe has been threatened the entire country is also threatened.

In EVERY religion, with no exception I have found, is the idea one should mind your own damned business. Regardless of what another tribe is doing, one should keep to their own, and not try and force the ideas, concepts, ways of life, religious rituals, or the social structure upon another. To further this point I think it is safe to say that every sage understood that this is where strife arises. Is this not the definition of oppression? The imposing of outside and foreign stipulations to someone outside of the tribe is right now taking place in our country.

This is what scares me about the human race, and it’s marriage to religion.  I don’t think it would take much to shoot us straight back to WWII or the witch hunts in Massachusetts. While religion speaks clearly on minding one’s own business and inclusion, the hate and what I prefer to as dark humanity overrides it all.

A married couple having marital issues in the next house, the Wal-Mart isle, or at a restaurant when does this affect your marriage? So, how does a man kissing a man affect your relationship? Him simply being not in your tribe of liking girls, does not make him evil.

Christ spoke about this. I think he put it very nicely. The man outside of your tribe, who treats you as if he is in your tribe, is in your tribe.  

And I'm out of steam....

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On my mind

What’s on my mind? I’m glad you asked, because there is a great deal on my mind. Hindi just might kick my ass, but I am picking it up quickly. The fact that I was singed up for the wrong class, and so many other things that I am feeling over whelmed. I have stayed in the last few days more due to logistics than anything else, and sometimes I just don’t feel like venturing out all that much. There are still so many walls have built, and it’s only out of fear that I keep them out. The best part about it is that I have nothing to fear hear but me.

            The one thing I’m gathering out of all of this is confidence in myself. I doubt myself usually, and sometimes I don’t think I’m the greatest guy in the world. However, I do know I have at least been honest as I could to myself the whole time. The only time I discover lies that I made to myself is when I induce hind sight, and that means that between the lie and time I have learned, and what is wrong with that? Nothing I’d say.

            The biggest thing I am beginning to see is the impatiens that I have for change. I want life to change before my eyes. I want the rest of Americans to stop embracing war, and begin to have compassion and understating. I then begin to realize that I’m pushing much too hard for immediate change. A change like that can only come over time. The change toward compassion will happen!

            I can hear you neigh sayers now that it is impossible, but I ask you too look at how far we have come. The idea of equality has only been around for just in the last forty years in America. So, we are still squabbling over gay marriage, women’s equal pay, and scant racism. The powers that be are losing their grip, and as you can see within the legislation they are attempting you can see this is unsettling them. Yet look at how it’s been stopped.

            The one thing as a current human you can do is lay foundation for a better and brighter tomorrow. This isn’t going to take tomorrow. I have seen in the OWS movement a sense of failure all ready. Look at the change it caused! While it was an opposing push for legislation slightly against the movement it was still an acknowledgement of it’s presence. We are the generation to push the change.  

            Yet the change may not occur in our life times. One must understand that there is a much bigger picture in all of this. It involves the world, and we are taking it down oppression and limitations to humanity one brick at a time, and in doing so we will be teaching our children how to do this as well. There is no stopping the falling of a wall once it starts. To put a time limit or some sort of expectations on how fast a wall will come down is absurd.

            I know there is a great of work that needs to be done, but anything worthwhile takes time does it not? You have taken your whole life to become who you are, and was it worth it? The answer should be yes, for you are the only and best you that now reside on this Earth. Yes, even your flaws are a part of what make you you.

            The waves of change are picking up speed, and that is a good thing, but an idea of patients needs to go along with the momentum of righteous deeds and thoughts. With compassion comes patients, and I think that really we should all stay the course and put patients before compassion this time. For it is going to take a basket load.