http://pub25.ezboard.com/fsurfingtheapocalypsefrm1.showMessage?topicID=155.t
opic
Constructive Moping for the Downtrodden

By Diane Harvey
merak@...

The specialized definition of downtrodden here is: people with sense forced
to observe a large portion of mankind continually trying to pinch its own
head off. The goal of the rationally downtrodden is to somehow wrestle the
insane bits to the ground before they kill us all. Collectively, the
eminently reasonable constitute an unorganized worldwide militia of common
sense, called upon by the force of events to maintain Madman Watch. And
naturally enough, understanding the possible results of the current trend
toward dedicated mutual annihilation is hard on the sane. Continually flying
in the face of so many embodiments of geopolitical dementia is tiresome as a
way of life. Therefore moping, or episodes of gloomy and listless
melancholy, is the all-too frequent result of intelligent and loving concern
for the future. Remaining on Madman Watch for long stretches of time has a
distinct tendency to result in attacks of profoundly logical depression.

It’s not easy to remain sufficiently vigorous so as to keep up with the
present assortment of energetic lunatic leaders, as they attempt to drive
our world straight to hell. We occasionally tire of carefully pointing out
the life-devouring black holes in the heads of those in authority. We may
find ourselves temporarily reduced to morosely sitting around, drumming
fingers, idly wondering if The Great Trance will ever lift from the
perceptions of our fellow citizens. Will the majority of sentient beings
ever emerge from that dense fog of believing what they are told, and
directly perceive what is actually happening to all life on earth?

This is not to say that anyone already has all the answers to emerging
intact from the elaborate nightmare of unfolding events. But at least many
more individuals might begin to shake off the state of soporific entrainment
to the dictates of the greed-eaten. As it is, justified fears about the
unnatural sameness resulting from cloning are far too late in one way: the
majority has already been there and had that done, long ago. In every way
except the purely biological, too many humans have already been carefully
raised as socially engineered monocrops. Original thought is now a severely
endangered species. There has been a widespread sterilization project
underway for a very long time, directed toward the human mind, and it has
been much too successful. The deliberate effort to boil down, extract, and
embalm the volatile substance of freedom is working too well. And, en masse,
the victims are still being wonderfully cooperative in the concerted effort
to reduce human creativity to meaningless preprogrammed two-dimensional
thoughts and activities- “or else”.

Who are we then, to try cruelly to yank out so many intravenous feeder
lines? Why should we incessantly emit alarmed noises in the tranquilized
faces of convocations of sleepwalkers? What's it to us if most human beings
these days have traded their very lives for the simpleminded relief of being
willfully ignorant and remotely controlled? Such may be the typical late
night thoughts of the downtrodden, after a hard day trying to transmit yet
more unwelcome information to the unwilling and uninterested. Tired thoughts
of renunciation of responsibility may come creeping in, after one too many
conversations in which plain statements regarding the facts of our overall
predicament are greeted with derision, indifference, and outright threats.

Perpetual active duty on Madman Watch is difficult to wedge into the busy
schedules of those of us interested in eating regularly, and similar trivial
pursuits. We do have other personal considerations as well: families,
professions, friends, responsibilities, enjoyments and plans, all of which
already constituted a full and interesting life. We have therefore had to
endure wistfully noticing many attractive lines of personal possibility, and
entire alternate lives, go by unlived. The typical consequence of seeing
through society’s surface into the lies, propaganda, greed, and secrecy
beneath, is to be swept up into a life of doubled effort on half pay. We
were already fully engaged with the necessities of our own existence, when
we became unpleasantly aware that all those we imagined responsible for our
well-being entertained the opposite agenda. Then, to already overtaxed
personal energy, was added the stark realization that if we do not work to
change the world, no one else will. All this is fodder for the unwanted
presence of midnight melancholy while attending Madman Watch.

The role of disinterested onlooker can seem so appealing, in relation to the
global dance of death playing itself out to the tunes of patriotic marches
and canned sentiments. Although, even so much as watching the monstrous
stupidity of evil in full bore on all sides is fatiguing to the senses. One
would require a cast-iron imagination to bear up under this without ever
sagging, and that amounts to a contradiction in human qualities.

Yet in the end, all our mental and emotional moping can too easily amount to
warmed-over Hamlet, endlessly trying to decide in favor of the obvious. We
aren't really going to escape being, which means being here, which means
being personally implicated in this struggle. We live, we breathe: we are
thinking human beings, and that means we are already too far gone to duck
back under the blankie. There is no use in succumbing to cringing paralysis
at the ongoing spectacle of The Infuriated Chimp Stomp. We can’t unknow what
we know, or unsee what we see. The blue pill doesn’t work after taking the
red pill. And besides, the rabbit hole, uncomfortable as it is, provides the
best company. To sustain us in our falling sensation, the bright flares of
intelligent minds are lately appearing in unprecedented outbursts, offering
excellent alternatives to the pleasures of endless war, suffering,
destruction and death.

The ongoing experience of outraged sanity we are plagued by is merely an
exaltation of common sense. But we knew that already. Intermittent periods
of understandable moping notwithstanding, the choice between being an
activist and being a passivist is still the same old choice between being
awake or asleep. Here and now, for better and worse, we are necessary
advocates of one kind or another of pro-evolutionary anti-devolutionary
activity. Except for occasional spells of pure essence-of-exhaustion, we are
mostly fairly alive, and therefore naturally, actively tinkering and
tweaking our mutual reality-at-large. To truly live means to act consciously
in the world, and to manage the impacts as best we can. The only
alternative, that abhorrent condition of numbed, uncomprehending, accepting
passivity, is merely a lukewarm twilight sleep somewhere between life and
death, and neither here nor there.

Temporary immersion in waves of acute misery due to the state of the world
is almost impossible to avoid. But even so, this can be taken as a useful
signpost pointing to its own opposite. If being sick doesn’t energize new
strategies for staying healthy, we missed the point. The point of being
miserable is to notice that we are temporarily out of touch with reality.
And reality means Reality, not the consensus nonsense making all the
trouble. If we didn’t already possess an innate inward sense of what is
ultimately real, the dangerous and ignorant display of the power of the
unreal at large in the world would not trouble us in the least. Depression
is the symptom of having been gobbled up by the gaping, fanged, drooling
mouth of raving Unreality. But tickle its gorge and it will spit you back up
more or less intact, other than the thin coating of slime, which washes off.

To turn episodes of bone deep hand wringing to constructive account, we
might dwell at length on one of the most useful observations ever made. “No
problem is ever solved on the level at which it occurs.” Consciousness is
designed to be opened, expanded, and ratcheted up a notch or three on a
regular basis. The mind is a cosmic cargo container, an infinite direction
finder, and an instantaneous teleporter. It holds the keys to every possible
path and destination, and automatically leads us anywhere we decide to go.
The darkest hells and the illuminated heavens begin between our ears. We are
the ones who program the direction, with every thought we think. One of the
greatest wonders of our construction is that the mind is not meant to be
heartless. The mind contains a heart, with all the energies we associate
with the heart fully present. To think with and through the heart of the
mind is entirely different from thinking without it. And heartless thoughts
are the point of origin of most of our species’ self-induced agony.

Thinking with the heart of the mind does not mean abandoning discernment.
The real meaning of the word “discrimination” has been much abused, and
deserves to be restored to its original condition. To discriminate simply
means to have the capacity to perceive subtle distinctions and differences
among all created forms of life. The absence of the discriminative faculty
results in the inability to register subtleties at all, which is hardly a
virtue. Discernment and love go hand in hand, or one falls into the pit on
either side. “Love your enemies” doesn’t mean it is never necessary to fight
for what is right. By all means, whip the moneychangers out of the temple.

And when unregenerate humans become professional predators, to remove them
from incarnation with dispatch, for the common good, can also be a form of
love in action. Intelligent love is not stupid or suicidal. It is not an
enabler or an excuser, or blind to the machinations of criminal intent.
Nevertheless, we are required to love our enemies, and to forgive them, even
while cracking the whip at their backsides as they scurry out of the temple.
Love is the energy that can understand the long evolutionary story of the
human soul, including the worst souls can fall into here, and the inevitable
consequences of the worst. Love bears with us all as we undergo the trauma,
delight, mess and enjoyment of working through the net of illusions. We live
and die and live again, and sooner or later we begin to notice our own
continuity. The wisdom of love reveals that nobody really dies, and our
extremities of grief about death have been a case of mistaken identity.
There is a great deal more to every one of our earthly dramas than meets the
outward-directed eye: there are levels upon levels of meaning which only
reveal themselves as we go along, a little at a time. The heart of the mind
knows this, and in knowing this, can still find joy in the midst of chaos
and confusion, and even in pain and the death of the body. Saints who could
sing while being burned at the stake were certainly not pretending.

Behind, above, and beyond the zones of our gloomy ruminations, there are
other and far more real dimensions of existence. Infinite spiritual
potential co-exists with the sorrowful events of our times. It is not a
matter of either/or. We cannot thrive by choosing only one: either spending
our lives struggling for the sake of sanity in the world, or withdrawing
from the common ground and exploring our glorious personal evolutionary
possibilities. This is the cycle of both/and. To be whole, we must embrace
both the external and internal complexities, and move into the totality.
Whoever wishes to enjoy the light, while evading the responsibility for also
facing the dark, will in the end be forced back into a tardy confrontation
with all that was avoided. But those who are willing to address the full
extent of the spectrum of light and dark, and assume the burdens of working
in the world and on themselves simultaneously, will more quickly transcend
the limitations we are accustomed incorrectly to thinking of as the human
condition. There is nothing exotic about this: it is even obvious. Wherever
we exist, and whatever we participate in, we must eventually improve to the
best of our ability. This is just what being human means. The refining
process begins and ends with ourselves, yet the world is carried along with
us.

We aren’t easily going to be able to manage the oppressive atmosphere of a
world run by the criminally insane without a viable connection to living
spiritual energies. Concerned consciousness too often runs in ruts, jerking
its knees at every passing nightmare folly, of which there is far too
overwhelming a selection. No matter what, it is essential to avoid
unwittingly allowing awareness to sink permanently into the sight and sound
of the present tidal surge of human madness. Volunteers for Madman Watch
have no choice but to spend enormous amounts of energy keeping track of
unfolding events, and plotting ways and means to alter the careening global
course toward utter ruin. At the same time, living through this prolonged
siege between devolution and evolution is extremely wearing and tearing. Let
us therefore give serial melancholy its due; yet take great care not to be
permanently brought low by the effects of gravity and the reign of unreason.

There is that in us which has the power not only to face the worst, but also
to overcome it. It is folly to unconsciously commit oneself to personal
wretchedness in the name of the cause of human enlightenment. Whoever has
chosen to be a part of the effort to alter the wildly dangerous course of
history at this time is also simultaneously undergoing a process of intense
spiritual stimulation. And while these words are inevitably platitudes on
one level, they refer to the most vividly meaningful experiences on another.
We are learning to be and to act and to feel in this world, while
nevertheless remaining detached from it in spiritual being. We are learning
to evolve consciously, under increasingly terrible circumstances. And while
no one knows the details of the immediate future, it seems highly likely
that most of us will live out the rest of our brief lives here within this
fundamental and ever-intensifying duality.

This is clearly a crossroads of criticality in the age-long human story of
physical and spiritual striving toward freedom. In such a context, the
spiritual awakening of each individual becomes far more important to the
whole than it would be in a less critical period. The value of every person
attempting to explore and employ untapped spiritual power has never been
greater. At the same time, there has been an unprecedented explosion of
helpful forms of guidance and information, available to anyone and everyone.
While it is in the nature of any field of information to be a complex
mixture of truth and untruth, sorting through the field is the eternal test
of applied discernment. When it comes to spiritual teachings, all are on
their own recognizance. We can perceive only that level and those qualities
of reality about which we are already at least partially conscious. And even
the most accurate knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is forged only in the long
struggle to fully become that which hard-won accurate information points
toward. The possibility of spiritual progress is being freely offered to
all, but genuine achievements are not the products of mere optimistic and
overactive imagination.

Spiritual dimensions are real, and their principles, laws, energies and
existent inhabitants are also real. At the same time, the potential for
illusion also persists. Being free to a certain extent to create one’s own
reality also means being free to create elaborate encapsulated unrealities
as well. This includes enormous and longstanding fantasies being generated
and maintained by large groups of temporarily deluded souls in nonphysical
realities. There is nothing new in this tendency. Innumerable mental and
emotional worlds on earth are built of these same types of warring paradigms
of the unreal, embraced by multitudes of adherents. Subtler worlds are
subject to the same conditions. Caveat Emptor is a multi-dimensional
cautionary statement. Those who become addicted to merely feeling good, at
the expense of developing the difficult power of spiritual discernment, will
not enjoy the long-term results, either in or out of the physical body.

We are being given generous access to a treasury of old and new spiritual
technologies, in order to counteract the advances in technology being used
against us. No effort is being spared in the program to annihilate freedom,
and to curtail the manifestation of the human spirit on this planet.
Equally, no effort is being spared to provide us with ample resources to
counteract the onslaught. It is no accident that both the ancient wisdom of
the East and the most modern advances in quantum physics reinforce one
another’s conclusions as to the primary nature of reality. It is not by
chance that the hidden ancient wisdom of the East is being made available to
the West, just as modern physics has reached the startling realization that
the universe is far more malleable than we thought. These two far-flung ends
of human enquiry meet, the oldest and the newest, and in their similarities
a powerful and useful spiritual direction is indicated.

We are finally realizing in significant numbers that the human race is
creating and sustaining a large part of its own misery, out of the plenum we
call thin air. We are learning to understand the significance of living in
an ocean of astonishing energies, readily available for any purpose
whatsoever. There is nothing inherent in this universe to prevent us from
completely transforming ourselves and our species’ prevailing attitudes and
behavior. We are in essence perfectly free to recreate our world in the
light of as much beauty, and goodness, and truth as we can handle. What
prevents this is first of all the general utter ignorance of the latent
spiritual powers within human beings: ignorance deliberately and ferociously
maintained by all those who wish to use humans as energy-slaves.

The masterminds of our enslavement are deadly opponents, but not on their
own. They are, after all, comparatively few, while we are a multitude. The
effectiveness of their rule is based on the extensive mass hypnosis and
conditioning that keeps a large percentage of the human population at any
given time in a state of cooperation. The main source of the power of the
forces of devolution comes not from themselves, but from successfully
enlisting a massive army of unconscious and half-conscious enablers. We have
basically handed over our planet to various types and degrees of conscious
and unconscious dark forces simply because we have not yet become
sufficiently awake and unified, and therefore strong enough, to stop them.
The cunning of the powerful, combined with the total weight of hapless
slave-consciousness, is no weakling: it is a formidable enemy. As a result,
the usual fate of those who have come along periodically to tell humanity
the good news has not been wonderful. Nevertheless, Schroedinger’s cat is
out of the box: human beings are endowed with unused but formidable creative
powers for good as well as evil. And too many of us know this now for the
liberating awareness to be effectively suppressed, at least as things stand
now. A vitally useful proportion of the human race is rapidly maturing into
functional levels of creative self-awareness, little though that is
outwardly obvious on the world stage. And one of the signs of this is that
what was once of necessity esoteric knowledge, simply because so few could
be trusted to understand it, has now become exoteric, and freely available
to anyone alert enough to recognize it.

There are urgent reasons to get beyond the condition of personal misery
under stressful conditions as a psychological lifestyle. The duration of
this battle for sanity is unknown, but Madman Watch will continue, and
intensify. No amount of personal unhappiness and despair will change one
iota of what we are facing. Sustaining negative energy currents is damaging
to oneself and others: it’s that simple. Fear, anger and depression are the
best destroyers of the very energies we need to survive. Love cannot reach
us though these blots on consciousness, neither from within nor from
without. It takes effort to root out such subconscious conditioning forces,
because these negative reactions form a line of least resistance for the
human psyche. Nevertheless, they are easily enough replaced by positive
energies, once we remember we have the choice and gain a little practice in
turning ourselves around. It is technically not very difficult to switch
channels; it is only the accumulated brute power of long-held subconscious
habits that makes this feel so overwhelming.

The lines of probability, which connect the world we have now to our vision
of a decent future, are constructed of quantum particles at the deepest
level, and are subject to instantaneous alteration by emotion, thought and
intention. The human race is being run along these lines of probability. Our
relatively accessible higher faculties can be set free to reconfigure this
world to a higher standard and into a generally positive direction. The
alternative is that those who wish to institute wholesale imposed control
for the worst possible motives will overtake all hope of effective human
freedom for a long time to come. Although the forces arrayed against the
successful introduction of higher energies seem enormous, a meaningful level
of transformation in the way human beings live together here is not only
quite possible, but absolutely necessary. Setting aside all premature
expectations of a miraculous earthly paradise just around the corner, the
practical potential for mitigating a great deal of unnecessary human
suffering is still nearly limitless. If enough of us choose to understand
what we are all capable of, and strenuously pursue and encourage the
development of inherent spiritual attributes, we can change humanity’s
present dead end destination, by energy-fiat. This is basic material and
spiritual physics, and has nothing to do with imagination operating outside
the laws of matter, energy and consciousness.

Meanwhile, bouts with the old reactionary ego will no doubt continue to
bedevil us, while increasingly conscious relations with our good angels and
the joys they bring demonstrate the alternative. Both types of experiences
serve to remind us of the energies we are either inflicting or bestowing on
ourselves and others. And moving in tandem with efforts to master our own
complex energy systems, Madman Watch must likewise be assiduously kept. We
are asking a great deal of ourselves by being here now, and being a minority
who are conscious of all that is at stake. But we would not be here,
immersed in this magnificent and terrible time, if we did not wish to be put
to this very test. We are here now because we know that our collective
intention to transform ourselves, and the course of human history, is of the
utmost significance- and we accepted the challenge.

Whether we win or lose the struggle in the short run is not a foregone
conclusion. We know this. Increasingly sophisticated forms of
techno-totalitarianism could succeed in shutting down the human race for a
long time to come. The eventual result of the present battle for control of
this world will have consequences beyond our imagination, either way. We
have understood that if and when we can learn to align and coordinate our
energies in sufficient numbers, we can succeed in making a degree of reason
and love the most powerful determining energies on earth. When, where, how
and if the required percentage of dedicated souls here will manage to unify
and synchronize, effectively asserting our transformative power and tipping
the balance in this cycle, we do not know. But we do know that we have
pledged ourselves to become embodiments of consciousness and love and life
in the midst of a maelstrom of ignorance, hatred and death. All this we have
freely chosen in the light of our souls. Therefore let us take heart, keep
faith, renew our minds, and abide with our decision.