Ever Forward

Fear and judgment surround us like a fence. We live inside this fence, in seeming safety, keeping the fence itself at a distance. This is the Cult of the Known. We revere the known and stay inside it because the only way to go outside it is to venture through our own fears and move counter to our own judgments. We are all priests in the Cult of the Known, and we construct worldviews in homage to it, in hopes it will keep at bay the forces beyond the fence.

But any world view is just a set of opinions. These opinions may be shaped by experience or preference, maybe by example or pressure from others. But opinions they remain. No matter how progressive or expansive the worldview, it's still a closed system ultimately surrounded by the fence of fear and judgment. In the end, it's fear and judgment that give shape to any worldview. 

Some of us are very good at accepting others. And it's a good thing to constantly expand your world view. But even better is to dispense with it altogether, to stop looking at the world through a lens and just start looking at the world. If we had no fear or judgment we would have no worldview. We would have only an adventurous spirit and a tendency toward acceptance and compassion. All we could do would be to reside in the now, take situations as they come, and respond from the heart.

That's why the masters have always warned us against opinions. "Do not judge," Jesus said. It's one of the few commands he actually gave his followers. He recognized the human cult of the known and knew it had to be dismantled. This seemingly simple command, so easily reduced to a mere nicety, carries in it all the power needed to transform the individual and the world.

Fear and judgment prevent that.

Once you recognize your fears and judgments, you recognize the edges of your perspective. This recognition often happens through disturbance. When our boundaries are assailed by something challenging, a religious or moral difference for example, we can feel disturbed. Very often this awakens fear and we resort to judgment. Not discretion, not compassion, but self-preserving rejection of the thing causing the disturbance. Also known as judgment. Judgment is simply a technique for dealing with fear. It doesn't cause growth or healing, it just takes the edge off and in the end it helps fear to grow, or worse, converts it into hatred.

By pushing through fear and judgment we push our own envelope. We reject the Cult of the Known in favor of adventure beyond the fence. By embracing the disturbance and upheaval of challenge at our borders, we evolve our worldview into obsolescence. The best world view is not to have one. Without it acceptance of others and self is inevitable. Without it we can exist in a state of constant surprise. We can live here, now, and manage the details as the heart commands.

Ever forward.

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“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.” Satan in Paradise Lost by John Milton. Recently I had a conversation with a friend about the way people really are. He seemed certain that if we are deprived enough of the things we need we will become violent and ruthless. He seemed convinced that this is who we really are under the surface, that this is our true nature. I don’t believe it.

It is better to rule in Hell.

As we grow in consciousness, we get closer to being who we really are. The wild and demonic in us is real and it doesn’t go away. But it does become integrated. I think that our capacity for evil comes from our repugnance and fear of the uncontrollability of things. The powerful seek to retain power, and the powerless seek to acquire it, because power resembles control.

Than serve in Heav'n.

But as we grow in consciousness we lose that fear of the uncontrollability of things. We recognize it for what it is: a vast creative force, and an ongoing act of creativity in which we can participate. Fear prevents us from seeing that if we stop trying to control we unlock true power and become capable of a vastness that can hardly be imagined. But it’s not our own power, it’s a shared power, power bestowed. And it far exceeds anything we could hope to generate or wield alone.

It may be true that circumstances in a post apocalyptic world can bring out hideous behavior. Heck, I saw The Road Warrior. It’s one of my top five. And there’s a horrifying amount of that behavior going on right now, even without the apocalypse. But it’s not who we really are. It’s the result of embracing the opposite of who we are, out of a desire to keep control. Or, better: out of fear of losing control. We choose to rule in hell. The trouble is, to rule in hell, we have to live there.

Ever forward.

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Yes, I think so. But call it what you want. There is a force that opposes consciousness and it's been carrying out its operations for millennia. Basic to its plan is to encourage the loss of individual self knowledge. This culminates in whole societies losing their way through vulnerability to lies and abuse. This loss of self is inherited, augmented, and passed on from one generation to the next. It causes all forms of social and personal deterioration by mixing the will to power with self loathing. The ugliest part is that in the end, it's voluntary. All sages throughout history have sought to reverse that voluntary deterioration by calling us back into true awareness of who we are.

But that which opposes consciousness has patience.

It’s not concerned with achieving its goals now. It’s simply concerned with achieving its goals. And it does have goals. The emergence of immediate gratification is one of the weapons of the enemy. It works because the war for consciousness spans generations. As a soldier, I need to be willing to strive toward an end I won’t see in my lifetime. I need to be willing to raise my children to do their part when the time comes, to carry on the struggle.

"Take to heart these words I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home or abroad, whether you are busy or at rest.” Deuteronomy 6: 6-7

But I’m not talking about anchoring an inadequate consciousness in the safety of some religious or political ideology, or some social or financial outlook. I’m talking about promoting a willingess to risk the expansion of consciousness in order to see what’s really going on. To win the war for consciousness we must be just as patient, creative, and far seeing as the enemy.

Ever forward.

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Last week I had to report for jury duty. The standard response people give when you tell them that is one of sympathetic exasperation followed by suggestions for how to avoid actually serving. Granted, much of this is only in jest, but a large number of my fellow potential jurors went into the selection room bent on not serving. They answered yes or no to every possible question where yes or no might improve their chances of dismissal. The girl beside me actually showed defiance, and like those of her ilk with whom I had contact, seemed to think everyone around her shared her feelings. To be fair, this presumption occurred to varying degrees of earnestness, and many people only joked along these lines. But even then it seemed like they regarded this resistance to jury duty as a common denominator, a place where we could all come together for a tension breaker. Even if inside we really don't feel that hesitation, we're still expected to understand. I found that interesting. Why is that hesitation prevalent to the point of representing common ground? It's interesting to note that the Jury of 12 process has been around for 600 years. I wonder if this repugnance at serving has been around as long? But it's also interesting to note that trials by jury used to be attended by the public as a form of entertainment. It seems logical that at some point in its history serving on a jury must have carried some prestige. So what happened? Whatever happened, nowadays the hesitation to serve is like a default setting, a conditioned response, or something we do because everyone else does. I wonder how many people are even aware of it. I wonder how many people really feel that way. I wonder because from the moment I got the letter to appear I felt different. I wasn't eager and I wasn't unaware of the inconvenience, but I felt interested. I can't really explain why, but the whole idea felt like an opportunity and whenever someone expressed their sympathetic exasperation, I found it hard to respond. Strictly speaking I wasn't chosen. I was one of the few remaining candidates after the attorneys eliminated the rest. But I served on a jury in a criminal trial. Looking back I see what the selection process meant to me and I wonder if any of my fellow jurors would understand. It was an opportunity: an opportunity to separate myself from the heard, which seemed intent on gathering around the watering hole of hesitation to serve. It was a glimpse into what makes the heard the heard and a moment of clarity on my connection to it. I got to see one of the conditioned mob responses we all share. I feel that response, too, but I was able to recognize it for what it is: an autopilot reflex that I've learned. It's not how I really feel. Having a glimpse of that difference playing out inside myself is invaluable. Ever forward.

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Most of us, however we claim to desire freedom, are simply not capable of it. Too easily, the responsibility required by true freedom shuts down the impulse to transcend slavery before it can become anything more than a vague dissatisfaction, or a passing wishful thought. But freedom is not a nicety. Freedom is not a pleasant state of being. Freedom is like wildness, and wildness is both utterly creative, and frightfully dangerous.

As human beings, we have the ability to harness our own wildness, to direct our creative power into solid, useful things that serve our well being. All motivation to power is driven by the need to be safe, or more directly, the need to eliminate threat. But the lack of safety, the presence of threat, is at the heart of freedom. Again, freedom is not the absence of enslavement. Rather, it is the constant reference to its possibility.

To live with that tension requires mental, emotional, and spiritual maturity. One must learn to be certain in uncertainty. Once the possibility of total ruin is embraced and factored in, it is possible to truly take responsibility for self, and not rely on power structures, protectors, religions, governments, even families or relationships—any of the constructs we’ve developed, whether healthy or escapist—for our sense of well being and security. That must come from the clarity of our own connection to the life giving-energy of reality.

Americans are not free, even in the political or economic sense. We think we are, we even insist that we are. We spend the greater part of our intellectual and emotional energy perpetuating the illusion of freedom, which amounts to energy spent on the refusal to take responsibility for our real situation. We continue to rely on power structures, protectors, religions, governments, families and relationships—whether healthy or escapist—to provide us, as individuals, with a sense of well being, and even our sense of our own worth. That we can continue to ignore, en masse, the political and economic dimensions of our enslavement, however fully they reveal themselves before our very eyes, is evidence that we are not, as a group, ready for the alternative.

A person who is not his own source of power, can be pushed around. It happens in the checkout line, it happens at the auto dealership, it happens on the job. It happens in far more obvious and ugly situations where people quietly allow themselves to be abused, or even brutalized. It happens whenever we are in the presence of a power we consider greater than our own, or worse, when we place the responsibility for our own power in the hands of another—a spouse, a boss, a so-called lover, a substance. And a society of people who are not the source of their own power can be pushed around as a group. It happens in congress, at the polls, and in the façade of the presidential campaign, where the sheer number of candidates is presented to us as evidence of choice. The fact that we continue to buy the illusion means that we are not ready for the alternative.  

But the real trouble is in every individual heart. It is the weak, fearful heart, seeking to eliminate threat that both perpetrates, and tolerates, injustice. We will never be free as a group until we are free as individuals. We live in a society of individuals who, for the most part, are not the source of our own power. The result is our current collective condition, which produces our current, collective situation. And there will always be individuals and groups ready to prey upon that condition for their own gain. Revolution after revolution has been fought all through history. That none has ever produced a lasting, failsafe environment is evidence that the one true revolution has yet to be fought—the revolution of self.  

We live in a world filled with people who are psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually blocked. That simply cannot yield a healthy environment conducive to general prosperity. It will always yield an adversarial situation in which someone tries to put it over on everyone else, and vice-versa. There will be no change in the system—at the top or at the bottom—until there is change in the individual. It’s just as important to stop tolerating crimes as it is to stop committing them. Until we claim the dignity we each bear as human beings, and demand from our world and neighbors the respect entitled to that dignity, nothing will change. There really is no other way to begin. Being satisfied with the ebb and flow of history is not acceptable. That is why it’s so important to wage the inner war, to seek the ways in which I sell myself out, and become capable—not worthy, but CAPABLE—of being free.

It’s the subtitle of this blog: If you do not transcend your own psychology, you can be controlled.

Ever forward.

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"Tell me lord," Éomer says to Aragorn, “what doom do you bring out of the North?” “The doom of choice,” said Aragorn. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Doom is an interesting word. Webster's 10th Edition Collegiate Dictionary defines it several ways, and most of them reflect death or destruction. One reads: “To make certain the failure or destruction of.” But another is, “a law or ordinance, esp. in Anglo-Saxon England,” and another is simply, “Judgement.” William Morris (one of Tolkien's primary influences), in The Roots of the Mountains, uses the word Doom in an interesting way. The people of the story have a meeting place called a “Doom-ring,” where they meet to discuss important matters: “such as great manslayings and bloodwites, or the making of war or ending of it ... .” Doom, in this sense is more like “situation.” What's our situation? What's our doom? Loosening the definition of the word Doom helps me get inside Aragorn's answer to Éomer's question: “The doom of choice.” Choice is an interesting word too, and its significance is often underestimated. To choose one thing is, necessarily, to reject all the other options. That's where a lot of people get stuck. That potential loss is why choice can feel like a burden. But the ability to choose carries amazing power. It's the ability to unlock the potential of each moment, and shape the course of things. To choose is to bring one thing into being, and not another. It's like having the power of life and death over the details of existence. It's as simple as what flavor ice cream to choose, and as complex as how to negotiate peace between hostile nations. Both choices literally change the world, maybe not noticeably, but if one detail changes, that's change. Choosing vanilla might lead to an enjoyable ice cream experience, followed by a movie. Choosing chocolate might lead to a stained shirt, followed by a movie, then a trip to the dry cleaners the next day, where you meet your soul mate. Choice is like a chisel for sculpting the future. If you want your statue to look a certain way, then each cut makes a difference. Being aware of any and all possible consequences is important, but it's impossible to foresee them all. So being willing to accept them and work with them is vital. I consider my situation, my doom, as closely as I may, then I choose. My choice alters my situation and creates new details, with new choices. I've just changed history. Then I choose again and it starts all over. I choose again, and so on. In LOTR, the need for choice, the Doom-ness of it, is highly intensified because of the life and death situation everyone is in. But it's easy to not feel that edge in the everyday world of 21st century America. To be a person of destiny, however, is to keep that edge sharp, to feel the pressure to choose at all times, because something big hinges on the choices you make. To be a person of destiny is to be a person for whom choice is a constant doom, that is, for whom choice is always, daily, moment to moment, inevitable. “None may live now as they have lived,” Aragorn continues. The truth is, we're all in a life and death situation at every moment, we're just good at not noticing it. The power to choose can make the difference between life and a long slow, unnoticed death by creeping mediocrity. Ever forward.

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Jesus was patient.

Jesus knew that every choice he made could either forward or hinder his destiny. Three instances come to mind. First, tradition holds that he was 33 when he emerged into public life, and there are few if any written records of his life before that, after the age of 12. Then, when he heard John the Baptizer was on the move, he stepped forward. That's one of the most mysterious and intriguing details of the story for me—that deliberate timing. 

Another example is the raising of Lazarus in John 11. When Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick, he says “This illness is not to end in death, but in the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Then he waits two whole days before making the journey to visit Lazarus. This involved returning to a place where just days before the people had been ready to stone him. This is some razor sharp timing. His friend is dying, but to help him Jesus must put his own life on the line. He waits. When he finally gets there, the sister of Lazarus (Mary) tells him “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.” The people standing around get on him, too, saying “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”

In Matthew 17, Jesus seems fed up with his disciples, because they lack the faith needed to cure a possessed boy. “How long will I be with you?” he shouts at them. “How long will I endure you?” Then he proceeds to make short work of the demon. At a glance, Jesus seems to lose patience. But he doesn't. Instead he seizes the opportunity to push his disciples to the next level. It's a key moment in their training. Jesus's patience is taxed to the point where he must make deliberate use of it—and he does so with strong results. That's a sign of sturdy patience: the ability to wield it under pressure. Here Jesus demonstrates the difference between patience and delay. He waits when necessary, but he also knows he doesn't have all the time in the world to do what he came for. 

This distinction between patience and delay is also illustrated in The Lord of the Rings. At the Council of Elrond, Gandalf explains his motives in dealing with what turned out to be the One Ring. He is hindered early in his search for the ring when Saruman convinces him it will never be found. “There I was at fault,” he said. “I was lulled by the words of Saruman... I should have sought for the truth sooner... our peril would now be less.” But when his doubts are “awakened again to sudden fear,” and Gandalf wonders “whence came the hobbit's ring?” it suddenly becomes wise to wait: “I spoke yet of my dread to none, knowing the peril of an untimely whisper... That was seventeen years ago.”

Patience and waiting can be the boldest form of action.

Ever forward.

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