Wed 10 Apr 2002 14:13
I'm back to my sanctuary. My morning was miserable. Must escape it. and create something wonderful to look forward to. I have an idea. It is feeling wonderful to get some food in my system, though all my sedentary activity has been getting me a bit chubbier. This evening I shall go for a run and see if Carmen is home!!
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Tue 09 Apr 2002 17:35
I am dead to myself and to the world.

I feel like an idiot for paying $296 in additional federal taxes to make a total of $1234 taken from ~$15,000 for year 2001. I should not be paying taxes. for ethical reasons. It was only fear and a desire to have the ordeal over with... Moreover, the return submitted said an effective tax rate of 7 to 8 % while $1234 is clearly more than that-- a detail I should have checked. I do not have a family or children, and probably will not. I should not be paying the war tax; environmental destruction tax; civil servant support tax; miserable social engineering tax; though the war tax is the big reason ~70% of every U.S. tax dollar goes for war? I really have nothing to lose but retirement fund money which I may never get to use. It is foolish to be greasing the Federal Gov't more than I already am (sales tax, telephone tax), with such an outright show of support, when I cannot think of anything they are doing that I agree with. I am curious to see if I follow through on this.

Wilber believes research in certain areas may have to be prevented, in an attempt to prevent low moral reasoning individuals from using advanced technology in harmful ways.

he very much appears to contradict himself with the following
p103 toe
the atomic bomb is the product of formal-operational thinking, but once it exists it can be used by individual at lower levels of development.

--cognitive development is not the issue here but moral development. Wilber earlier made it clear that one could be cognitively well-developed but underdeveloped in all other respects.

there is so much more I need to think about which I avoid, the magnitude is hard to comprehend.

for example, why this writing in public? why? Why this messing with others in public? Why? (the people I interact with, and have known)?

why not lead a wonderful life instead of this half-baked one, filled with uknowing and dissatisfaction? Why?

In time, I will either die, or resolve these issues.

why?

I am not here. Sunday I stayed up too late reading old email I'd forgotten about, and overate in such a way I had to regurgitate food (not voluntary--stomach pushes it out if I move around--and it is better to have it out then than to leave it in and face worse consequences at the other end). Monday I was tired, and while reading TOE fell to nose picking again, and probably eating more than necessary though without serious adverse effects that time.

I've probably worn out my eyes a bit.

Work is ridiculous.

The basic issue is I should exercise more, but I also wish to read these books and sleep more. Tax idiocy did not help either.

Not really sure what to do next, other than excercise more. Relationships will not cure me, I know that much. It's quite possible I'd be better off knowing relationships were not a possibility--say if I were hideously disfigured in some way.

what pleasant thoughts-- I should be going out for a run or at least a stroll,  and I'll be quite different when I'm back--sleep, eat, exercise (work, unfortunately) repeat. Yes, such a good way to live.

Yet, I suppose, I think these books may point to a way out of it. Doing what I'm not sure. Or it may be time to just hit the road again and space. Or maybe I really should become a homeless person and work with that lifestyle, or a peace pilgrim type but without a life-affirming mission.

Yes, I feel it, this is the attitude of my true self. How wonderful to be at home at last, instead of striving to be something other than I am.

Complacency was never my strong point, though I've feigned it admirably well on occasion, and as a taxpayer. Self-destruction, however, I have a knack for. And this self destruction affects others as a sort of malaise, which Is why they stay away.

So is this just mood poetry?

How annoying that the tone of my writing changes so much from time to time, based on amount of sleep, people interactions, amount of exercise.

You see, I have no true self, and am merely a mirror of activity. Yet that which is me, steers me away, or at least toward the edge, of what is livable and good for me. Because the ritual good does not satisfy me. I always want to poke the darkness, or pick the nose.

this darkness is a space in which something can be done, but what?
what?

Unfortunately as long as I have a job, rent to pay, and friends, ties with goodness and apparent well-being are maintained, however minimally. But to be alive and to die all the way? That would take me somewhere I've never been.

why speak for death rather than life? Because it is so strong in me, pulling me closer all the time, resistance is dishonest, for it is my comfortable home, and has been for some time. Attempting to make sense of this world populated by--well one can never be sure, but at least where media attention focuses on those who express vitality..
the difficulty is that those who express death and explore living death will not receive attention, will appeal only to the sick, and so in effect not be heared.

Now the problem becomes, what if in exploring living death I become vital, alive, energetic physically healthy and fit, morally straight (i.e., not paying taxes, simply to go along with things).

So the trick is to maintain the half-way line-- pretending to live and pretending not to die, while in actuality doing neither.

Then, only then, can I truly experience living death.

Now, why not turn to drugs and other addictions, get myself into various sorts of trouble, and force dependence upon others (by becoming an addict and needing treatment, or causing crime, etc.?)

that's a no-go. why I am not sure. Has something to do with wanting control [of nothing] and
the ultimate is living death consciously and with full awareness-- there is no alternative for me.

I keep a narrow field of vision, limit myself in what I consider, and then, only then with things stay the appropriate degree of grey and meaninglessness and joylessness. To vary from that low energy path in either direction would be to tempt vitality.

Yet how low energy is that low energy path?

I'm tired, and running out of babble. evidencing too many modicums of vitality.

p123
Moreover, in order for the rest of the world to get to green, individuals have to develop from purple to red to blue to orange to green.

p131
the technology usually spreads very rapidly, and then that technology slowly, over many generations, remakes the cultures arising within it. infrmational

p140
robert kegan's _In over our heads_
Roger Walsh's _Essential Spirituality_

p141 And it is all undone
and never again will you search for a mere theory of that which is actually your own Original Face.


--to do discuss/cosider effect of parents' negativity aside from their positivity--analyze the parenting

_The Life We are given_ by george leonard and michael murphy
1995 jeremy p tarcher/putnam

p xi
Like the human heart, the world points beyond itself to something greater and more beautiful than its present condition.
that something attracts us all
and leads us to seek transformation.
our own growth is rooted in, and furthers, the whole world's advance.

Hegel
Friederich Schelling,
Henerey James Sr.
Henri-Louis Bergson
Teihard de Chardin
Jean Gebser
Alfred North Whitehead
Charles Hartshorne
sri aurobindo

pxiv ways to find holy joy in daily life. a good work, a good marriage, a feast among family and friends.

hildegard of bingen
Meister Eckhart
st teresa of avila
st john of the cross
jakob bohme
george fox

pxvi
They require time, but frequently make more time availabe to us: They can slow time down, and open us to the timeless moment from which we have arisen. They require sacrifice, but they restore us. While demanding the relinquishment of established patterns, they open us to new love, new awareness, new energy; what we lose is replaced by new joy, beauty, and strength. They require errort, but come to be effortless. etc.. typically hard to start, they cannot be stopped.

for most of us, integral practices require hard work. But with patience, the intial discomfort they cause turns into an ever-recurring pleasure. Renewing mind and heart, rebuilding the body, restoring the soul, become sources of endless delight.

"flesh"
yeah baby--

p3 we had long held a vision of human evolution and the transformation of human societies.
we had worked for most of our adult lives inspired by the belief that all of us possess a vast, untapped potential to learn, to love, to feel deeply, to create, and that there are few tragedies so pervasive, so difficult to justify, as the waste of that potential.

agee: I know only that murder is being done against nearly every individual on the planet."

a close friend or relative who at the approach of death is heard to say, "I realize now I've wasted my life." Oops!

Against the backdrop of the billions of years it took to give us our life and the brief time we have to experience it here, the dimensions of such waste are beyond calculation.

p4
But surely people who are deeply involved in lifelong learning, in proactices that encourage community, good health, and a sense of oneness with the spirit of the universe, would be unlikely to sink into the despair, unrest, and cynicism that lead to so many individual and societal ills.

How sad that mom was pressuring me--I might have chosen to go otherwise...

p6 prof george brown ucsb confluent education

p8 Any significant long-term change requires long-term practice, whetherthat change has to do with learning to play the violin or learning to be a more open, loving person.

what Aldous Huxley called the "nonverbal humanities"--such activities as meditation, creativity training, encounter, movement, sensory awareness, emotional expressiveness, and inner imagery.

p9 Leonard's book, _The transformation_

p12 every human attribute can give rise to extraordinary versions of itself.

p18 it is said that any true practice puts us on a journey during which , for every mile we travel toward the destination, the destination is two miles farther away. We were ready to embark on such a journey.


p18 leonard _the silent pulse_

p22
Affirmations
"My entire being is balanced, vital, and healthy."
if so I should go to sleep immediately, but I have this pathology...

p26 to do whatever flexibility, strength, balance, coordination, concentration, and relaxation exercises would be necessary to realize their affirmations.

to be conscious of everything they ate and to consider the many benefits of a diet low in fat and high in fiber. This meant, first of all, no unconscious snacking. It meant eating deliberately, with full awareness of the contents, texture, smell, and taste of everything eaten.

--to take care of emotional needs in appropriate and healthy ways. to stay current in their relationships with teachers and fellow participants and to

--to include their affirmations in their Kata and to seek in all appropriate and healthy ways to manifest those affirmations in body and being.

p27 the essence of boredom is to find yourself in the obsessive search for novelty.

harder not to do kata than to do it

p32 participants' awareness of what they ate showed up as even more significant in their success in achieving affirmations than did what they ate.

george leonard writes well- knows how to make a readable book (i.e., low nose-picking, mindless eating, etc. scale).
good night! 22:18:12


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