Emergence

My post content

When I’m writing here, I used to think to myself, I can worry about what you my reader will think about it, or I can just write it. Now I just write it. My writing must hit the stories I already know, and then the mind tries to filter it into something that works or makes sense, but to know that life is but a dream is to know that nothing will ever make sense, and yet, on another level it perfectly does, almost seamlessly. This is actually mind blowing to me. What I notice most is the more I open up, or cultivate this sense, this feeling of allowing whatever is arising to be it’s own perfection so to speak, basically fully realizing that my own interpretation is always sorely lacking, in that any surface or cultural equation is basically a trick, that only awareness is and appearance is just a play on this awareness, to the degree that I allow myself to let go into what is happening, basically withholding or delaying judgment or interpretations, the situation whatever it is, invariably almost always surpasses what I thought was even possible within the parameters I thought were there. This reveals to me this: Whatever parameters I thought were there, weren’t there. There was no container, no structural integrity according to normal observable constraints or self evident already known possibilities. Therefore, anything can happen at any interval of experience. It doesn’t have to follow a story you already know, and quite honestly, it’s more fun when it doesn’t.

A few days have passed now, but one night at the start of my work shift I was walking back up to my locker to go back out on the casino floor and I had my headphones in as I almost always do. I was listening to a playlist, the same playlist that I’ve had for almost ten years now. The songs are just somehow relevant to me. I don’t even know how but I never seem to tire of any of them. Occasionally a new song gets added but now not too often. I probably have a hundred songs on it. So I’m walking back and a song starts that I like a lot. It basically references the phoenix rising from the ashes, that’s what it’s about, being low where you once walked on thin ice and then somehow rising above the surface of things in some way. So I get to my locker and the song is really only half way over but I don’t have the time to finish it. I felt a lament for some reason then, but continued out to the craps table and pushed in to the stick position and as soon as I did, a player I’ve known superficially for several years now, nice guy, always pleasant, exclaims we need a phoenix on this game, something to pull us out of the ashes. Let me tell you, my mind took note of that like a jolt to the system, and wondered, how? I am far beyond the point where anything can be called a coincidence or just a fluke. I can tell you for sure I have never heard reference to the phoenix before from anyone on any casino game. No, things are connected, energetically connected, that’s the only explanation, just how they are is really a facet of how our own minds are working. If they are working properly, I suspect the whole world opens up in ways that no one who thinks they are in reality would ever dream of.

For years now I have often been nervous at work when it comes to the tips we make. I have a certain threshold of money I need to make to take care of the bills here, and part of me is still insecure that one day it might not happen. The fear is the universe might hang me out to dry, and just let me drown, that’s the feeling, that’s the fear (this part of me, the phantom ego has). You would think that after many years of this never happening, I would come to trust where I am, what I’m doing, and just know that everything is okay by now, but some things linger much longer than you ever wish they would. Trust even when built from experience itself is a battle to the end I think. If it was just me I was taking care of, I’m sure it would be much easier since I don’t need much and I might have saved a shit ton of money to fall back on. That didn’t happen, instead what did is I basically spent all my money on my kids trying beyond hope to give them a better life experience than I thought I got. Growing up, I always had the idea that my own parents didn’t actually want to give me anything. I felt that anytime I needed or wanted something I had to grovel for it, and they might succumb to my groveling but somehow make me pay later, maybe over and over again, bringing it up as some sort of you owe me now charade, something like if we give you something the least you could do is behave and follow the rules of this culture we live in, make us proud you loser, and stop being so much trouble. That never happened, because as a youth I was a combatant. My first response to being ordered around if I detected any type of attitude at all was to maybe start screaming, “Fuck you, or fuck off, or fuck something.” Of course, always a fight would ensue where having no resources of my own, I would lose and then basically afterwards become withdrawn and often even suicidal, sensing I was outsourced and outmaneuvered on every level as if I had no other options but to opt out permanently. How our childhood environments shape our inner landscapes or capacity to deal with life as we encounter it is always something to see through. Getting your own body on board with your understanding is another endeavor entirely, for the reverberations of the pattern often linger for years. In normal people, they don’t linger for years but for the entire lifetime and every drama you see being played out on the small stage or the worldly stage is only that, fear arising within a declaration that the problem whatever it is, is real.

My own experience has actually been the opposite, instead of being left out to hang upside-down in the wind, something invariably always comes to my aid, every time. I might for instance go 9 days at work without many tips at all, and coming right down to wire, knowing I’ll come up short when the bills were tallied, only to have some guy I’ve never seen before show up to my table to tip me the balance of what I actually did require. Of course, it’s one thing to have them show up and quite another feat to watch as the blackjack cards let them win almost every single hand without fail since big tippers are winners not losers. On those occasions, I almost felt like I was in a trance during the whole operation because they are often so surreal but what I’ve learned from it is this: there are many layers to this dream life we live and you don’t get to pick how they show up, just that they do show up in a timely manner when and where you need them to. You can trust life to do what’s best, because it’s always doing this even when we don’t think it is. Even so financial fear is something I’ve always struggled with since invariably if you think anything should go one way it won’t, nothing goes the way you think it will but maybe that’s the key already, when you forget to worry about something, it also, forgets about you.

My sense of struggle and lack have been around a long time and I’ve been aware of it, so it’s not something that takes me by surprise anymore. Naturally, as I’ve often sensed it, I’ve tried things to alleviate this pressure but who knows what helps and what doesn’t. Time and life have a way about them that personally I think we can know nothing about. I think we just can not know something until it wants us too. The pathways through which we interpret whatever reality we feel we are in are just too numerous, mysterious, complex, and often hidden from our conscious awareness in ways that can only unravel as they want to or are able to, given our personal history and billions upon billions of moments of experience that are still energetically active within our make up. This is the great misunderstanding between all of us, that one path does not fit all in fact no one path fits anyone but the one on that path, and sharing it, suggesting it, calling it right, or imposing it on anyone else even in a helpful spirit is precarious at best and dangerously harmful at worst. I think it’s wise to know then, that no matter who is talking, no one will ever be right about anything.

I think the most ironic thing of all when you finally find the one thing you’ve been looking for your entire life is at first, there’s this sense of pure relief, absolute joy is immediate, and then, there’s the adjustment that follows the realization that nothing about the world at large will ever come to reflect it. No one will ever understand what you’ve seen, what you understand, and how this came upon you. You are forever stranded on an island of understanding that no one else alive can share. Even if or when you think you’re sharing it, you’re not. The whole journey of understanding can only unfold personally and be specific to you alone. That’s how most teachings when they reach us, if we feel they make sense, ultimately don’t help us, but cause doubt, because our own experience being outrageously unique will never fully coincide with anything we experience in exactly the same way. No person alive can develop in the same way as any other one. The timelines vary widely on everything. That doesn’t mean that teachings are totally useless, they’re obviously not, sometimes they do reinforce us, or propel us in our prospective directions but only as they want to, not as we want them to and almost never when we want them to.

I suppose the angle I’m aiming at here isn’t that this is bad, everything, every single experience we have seems to be required though at the time it causes us pain, this pain actually becomes useful for something later on even if it’s just to cause a type of sympathy for the plight of a fellow traveler, just to know that everyone only knows what they can know right now and that’s fine too. For instance, I used to feel that what I did for a living was somehow inferior, that I was even onboard or complicit in harming others by this job. I used to feel hurt almost every single time a person lost their money to the cards or dice I was dealing. I felt some type of morbid responsibility for everything that happened only to learn that in Truth, I wasn’t doing it. Neither was being a casino worker any different than say being a doctor or dentist, that in reality, there was no distinction between this and that, absolutely no differences, and the concept of good versus bad was just that a concept, a fantasy of gigantic proportions that meant absolutely nothing at all.

To be sure, there’s no real harmony to be found in the world at large at the level of appearance and human endeavors, it could be seen very clearly that as a species we are and have always been on track to extinct ourselves in ways that often hide themselves behind necessity or something that is promoted to benefit us. That is just the sad truth and to deny it is be deluded. Mass awakening is not coming neither is some type of evolution of the human psyche. This delusion which is at the heart of all spiritual teachings and movements might be seen as positive but adding to the conviction that forcing kindness or people to behave peacefully will do nothing to save us from the end. The end however long away it is, was always coming, just like the end of you, is also coming.

I’m very much convinced as of late, that we might save ourselves from the madness but not anyone else. The only good news is that we don’t need to. Things do take care of themselves regardless of the widespread suffering that has always enveloped humanity. As a matter of awareness, changing one’s mind about what one is seeing, knowing this imaginary layer is only imaginary is all you can do. There is no final state, no final peace that must descend upon you, no need to rest, no need to pray, no need to practice anything. The layers continue to fall away at their own pace, and life, is just lived, not as someone, or something, but as that which sees and feels what it does.

Here is that iconic song from my playlist. I guess it was performed at Eurovision and won the grand prize, much to the dismay of homophobic populations throughout Europe and even beyond. The idea of a gay man sporting a beard dressed in drag was too much for them. Anything that threatens a person’s view of reality is always taken as a threat, small little ego just can’t handle being challenged so it flexes in the only way it can citing moral values and concerns. Well, wasn’t it the Catholics who burned women they imagined were witches at the stake? Man, selective memory is an astonishing thing. “Oh that, yeah, maybe we were mistaken, but we’re better now.” What about the molesting of little boys? That was pretty recent. “There’s always a few bad apples, what can you do? We are still one of if not the most powerful institutions in the world so we got that going for us. That proves our idea’s are right, doesn’t it?” No, not really, sorry, you’re a goner like everyone else, totally out of your mind. I’d pray for you if I had that kind of time and thought it would help but look, you’ve been performing some kind of ritual prayer for centuries and you’re still pretty dumb. “That’s blasphemy, don’t you know you’ll burn in hell for that?” What hell are you talking about the one you use to keep your little charade going or the real one? “They are both the same thing. We have a monopoly on all hells.” Yeah, I don’t doubt it. Religions are responsible for most shit, need I cite all the inquisitions? Remember those? What exactly was that? Any idea? “Practice forgiveness you heathen. We know God and you don’t. Our pope today is calling for world peace.” Is he really? Well, it’s about time, that’s a nice gesture, and you want some what? Some type of acknowledgement? Man, get over yourself already, I grew up Catholic and let me count the ways it added to my life, I see the number zero. My own mother is still praying to your phantom God as if there were such a thing. Can it get any more deceptive?

It can and it will but here’s your song. Rise from the ashes, you can fly if you want to. It just takes some time for your wings to remember what that actually was, how it worked, how it’s done. All this other shit, money is power, level of money determines whether you win or fail, stay in line and stick to the script is still bullshit. No one and nothing is judging you. You can imagine it if you want to. Here, I reject all conclusions past the sun will rise again tomorrow. Beyond that, I can’t hold on to it. Whatever is grasped and held will sour like a glass of wine left in the sun too long. Its only sweetness is when it’s passing through the fire of awareness, blurring lines that were never there. No one lives without regrets, that’s just the way it goes.

As a side note, my daughter called my mother one afternoon here and she was drunk. The stuff that was coming out of her mouth was, I can tell you, very final. I cut ties with her then, like I had a pair of scissors and finally just cut the cord, snip, snap, the cord broke in two. I was done. Whatever reflections she was still prone to reflect in me, and any belief I had that what she saw was me, was instantly deflated, like a balloon with the air seeping out. There’s a reason this path requires you to cut ties with your parents. They will only stand in your way because to them, you are whoever they think you are, and your whole beginning identity is wrapped up in how they were able to perceive you. They can not see you any other way, they never will and because of this shared agreement, you will somehow be beholden to their imaginary formations whether you want to be or not. You will continue to carry the scars of that beginning life, what they did, what they said and all your responses to it are entangled within your own memory block of squiggly squirming lines of shit that form a personality. But alas, you’re not that. You never were. Let this song inspire to burn it all, and emerge, as something else, maybe what you really are.