Moneyless World - Free World - Priceless World

Optimism in a Seemingly Hopeless World???

2012-01-22T01:11:00.000-07:00

Since I’ve been house-sitting in town most the winter, I’ve taken advantage of it, changing my tune a lot, from my usualcontemplative philosophy, to getting involved in activist movements (like OccupyMoab). Our latest endeavor is apetition to the City Council of Moab, Utah to pass a resolution that declarescorporations not people and money not speech, as part of a nation-wide movementto amend the constitution [Move to Amend]. I made both a paper non-official petition and an online one for us to present to the Moab City Council thisTuesday, January 24^th. I made the online one, intended only for locals who couldn’t sign thepaper one, but it turns out some people in various parts of the world aresigning it! Oh, well, I thought,that’s good, too, because it shows Moab the world is watching. What the heck, now I might as well openup the petition for everybody (like you) to sign, right here:

Let Moab know you’re watching us!

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Now... for my brainstorming-philosophizing: Somebody recently emailed me aboutfinding it hard to be optimistic in such a tragic world. What to do?

Optimism is Faith, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
Pessimism is Faithlessness, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

I keep coming back to Spirituality, because the most powerfuland successful movements for social change, whether for good or for bad, havebeen religious. Religion isusually bad. But let’s focus on the small bit that’s good, because, as you will see if you read on, small good minority overpowers big bad majority. I'm not talking religious denominations or institutions, I'm talking states of mind.

Life's principle is to focus on the one sperm that makes it to the egg, not the millionsof others that are doomed.

Thus, my focus here is on the tiny minority, the True Triumphant.

Harriet Tubman

Mohandas Gandhi

Look at the leading Abolitionists, like Harriet Tubman. Look at Gandhi, Martin Luther King, George Fox. Look at the movement against Apartheid in South Africa and Poland’s break from the USSR. What motivated them?

True religion is, by its very nature, unshakeable Optimismin the face of seemingly infinite Pessimism. I'm not talking fake smiles and bury-head-in-the-sand ignorant bliss of false religion.

Spirituality is the Faith of the small against seemingly impossibly-large odds. Faith is Optimism. Faithlessness is Pessimism. No movement, no revolution, can succeed for long without this Optimism. Without Optimism, a movement isspineless, cowardly, pathetic. Nothing succeeds without Faith. Faith is even the very essence of all scientific discovery. Even so, such Optimism always appears foolishly naïve andchildishly small to everyone but the Sprititual Mind, and this seeminglysmall childishness against the immensity of Pessimism is what makes thetriumph of this Optimist so splendid when it happens. This Optimist plays out our deepest yearning, ourcultural mythology.

Yes, this Optimism is the Essence of our most valued mythsand fairy tales in every culture in the world. My cynical Pessimist self thinks myth and fairy tale is sillyfiction, and uses this as argument against my Optimist self. Little does this Pessimist know he is only addingto the splendor of the Optimist in her potential triumph!

Yes, the Spiritual Mind knows Myth and Fairy Tale expresstruths too deep for any pragmatic science to ever grasp. This is because spiritual understandingis not theory, but direct experience, direct knowledge, beyond thought (beyondsymbol, beyond words, beyond images). Because it is beyond symbol, the symbols (stories) that point to it appear fantastic, as fairy tale! Scientific theory is wonderful, but it can only be theory, can never gobeyond thought (symbol, words, images), can never be direct experience, cannever truly be knowledge (gnosis), direct understanding.

Examples of Humanity's Ancient Mythology:

Our Power to Overcome

(you willrecognize them, because they are our shared humanity):

(1) The small, insignificant peasant turns out tobe the Prince in disguise who comes to rule. There are countless variations of this myth/fairy tale all over the world.

(2) “The stone that the builders rejected has become theChief Cornerstone (or Capstone).” Jews, Christians, and Rastafarians readily recognize this one.

(3) The unassuming pauper goes through unfathomable trials,beating all his strong and glorious competitors, to triumphantly win the handof the Princess.

(4) The little guy (eg David) slays the Giant (eg,Goliath).

(5) The unassuming man slays the Dragon (this is one of the most common andancient and world-wide)

This mythology is the very manifestation of our biology and physics, thevery principle of all of existence:

Cottonwood Seeds

(

1) A cottonwood seed, so tiny it floats in the air, flies on random currents with no plan, to then fall into the ground as dead, and resurrect as a giant cottonwood tree.

(2) One single bacterium or virus can enter the body of agiant and conquer it.

(3) One single spark can mean the flaming end of an entire forest.

(4) One split atom has the energy to blow up a city.

(5) One single sperm cell, against millions of competitors,goes through incredible odds to reach the egg to become a life formunfathomably greater and more complex than the original sperm cell. And you, yes you, were one in millions who made it to the egg! And you were the egg!

Yes, the Sperm Cell journey is the eternal myth of the Pauper going through trials to win the hand ofthe Princess, the Egg.

Now my Pessimist side, void of Intuition, can only calculate. He can take several samples out of millions of sperm cells that areheaded to the egg. And each of hissamples can contain thousands of sperm cells. He can scientifically prove that every single one of those thousands ofsperm cells are destined for death, doomed. Why? Because none of hismany samples happens to include that one and only sperm cell out of millions thatwill reach the egg! He can withfull self-assurance say that he statistically and scientifically proved thatall sperm cells are doomed and life is hopeless!

This is the comical trickery and essence of all ofLife: Tiny Optimism triumphs overseemingly impossibly huge Pessimism. Life would not be life without seemingly impossibly huge Pessimism!

Optimism is Faith,

Pessimism is Faithlessness:

Both go together

My little person is Optimism, the Very Essence ofLife. My Big Tyrant is Pessimism,the Very Essence of Death. ButOptimism can’t be Optimism without Pessimism. Life can’t be life without Death. The Stone that the Builders rejected can’t become the ChiefCapstone without being rejected! This is why the Stone says, “Forgive them, for they know not what theydo.” All Life and every particlein the universe is playing out this One Myth, this One Drama, theessence of every story we tell, every movie we watch! Little Optimism faces off Big Pessimism and triumphs. This One Myth touches our “interesting”sensor more deeply than any other story. The Small is the Divine in disguise, and even appears to be defeated,even to the point of death, only to resurrect to overcome the Big in theend. Then we all clap our handsand cheer with tears in our eyes! You know exactly what I'm talking about.

I once told a religious person that gay people were “thestone that the builders rejected,” in the same way that African Americans, orany oppressed people, are the stone that the builders rejected, eventuallybecoming the Chief Cornerstone. This person was appalled I could say such a thing, telling me I wasblaspheming, because, he said, this “stone that the builders rejected” refers to Jesus,who was rejected, killed, buried and resurrected as King. But, according to this person’s ownlogic, if he really believes, as he says, that Jesus is God and God is Omnipresent and non-changing,wouldn’t Jesus be Omnipresent, the Non-Changing Essence of All Life and AllCreation? Doesn’t his same Jesussay “I was hungry and you did not feed me” or “I was in prison and you did notvisit me”? Isn't his whole point that he is right in front of your face and you don't recognize him?

Mother Theresa
holding real, live Jesus in the flesh
The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved:
they are Jesus in disguise.
--Mother Theresa

Not knowing my transcendent nature as Sovereign Lord of all beings,
fools condemn me as a man
(Bhagavad Gita 9:11)

Viewing all things with equal regard
he beholds the Self in all beings
and all beings in the Self.
He who sees me everywhere
and sees everything in me,
to him I am never lost.
The yogi, anchored in unity,
worships me abiding in all beings
lives and moves in me,
no matter how he live and move.
He who, by likening himself with others,
senses pleasure and pain for all as for himself,
is deemed to be the highest yogi. (Bhagavad Gita 6:29-32)

The person in me who can’trecognize that an oppressed Mexican immigrant or gay person or anabused puppy or a Third World sweat-shop child are Jesus also can't recognizethat Jesus is a piece of rock that becomes the Chief Cornerstone.

And he cannot recognize that Jesus isthe Buddha and the Krishna and the Muhammad and the Lao Tzu that he rejects. In fact, his own religious dogma that appears to be pro-Jesus, his religious intolerance, is the very spirit that crucified the Jesus he claims to honor!

An adult who abuses a child loses all conception that that child grows to an adult to haunt him, the stone he rejects becomes the chief cornerstone. His intolerance ofBuddha, Krishna, Muhammad, and Lao Tzu is his inability to recognize that Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, and Lao Tzu are actually one and the very Jesus he claims to honor.

However, it is hisintolerant mentality, his Pessimism, that makes Optimism Optimism, his Deaththat makes Life Life, his Battlingthat makes Triumph Triumph. Again,the one who rejects the stone is the one who pushes the stone to be ChiefCornerstone.

What is Interesting Is Truth, What is Boring Is False.

What Is Good Tastes Good, What is Bad Tastes Bad.

Now you might think that by Truth I mean our usual definition of fact, which is idea. No! By Truth I mean Principles. No brain on earth can ever know facts, only theories that parade as facts! Science imparts theories parading as facts. Myth imparts Principles. Theories can only be believed. Principles are known, directly experienced. This turns around what we've been taught all our lives, that science is fact and myth is belief. If you meditate on what I am saying here, you will know the truth, the Principle.

Even if you define myth as fiction, I say that fiction, by the very fact itis interesting, is proof that it is Truth, imparting Principle. If fiction didn’t convey eternal truths, it wouldn’t beinteresting, wouldn’t be a good story. What is not interesting is not Truth.

In the same way nutritious grass tastes good to a deer and toxic plantstaste bad to the deer, so we, in our natural state, know that what isinteresting is good for us. In ournatural state, good food and truth tastes good and bad food and falsehood tastes bad. Truth is interestingand falsehood is boring. Doyou get bored in Church?

Now whenwe depart from our natural state, entering addiction, we start thinking crappycommercial fast food is good and mind-numbing corporate TV andmalls and megachurches with slick manican ministers are "interesting." We think they are interesting, but we don't experience that they are interesting. But if you really know yourself, you know that you never enjoy food you are addicted to. If you enjoyed it, you wouldn't be addicted to it! Addiction is grasping for an idea you think about food or drugs that you once experienced or want to experience. Your mind is never on the food you are addicted to, never enjoying it. You know what I am talking about.

How Did We Get Into This Addictive State?

This brings us back toour myth of our Fall From Grace, taking on the Consciousness of Credit and Debt (Good and Evil),which I talk about in

Our Fall From Grace: Our Departure From Gratis: The Beginning of Money

and

The Seven-Headed Dragon: World Commerce.

The Serpent in Eden, giving the Fruit of the Consciousness of Credit andDebt. And he grows into the HugeSeven-Headed Dragon of Commerce, his Kingdom of Babylon controlling the wholeworld. He seems impossibly,infinitely powerful. Just lookingat him fills you with Pessimism, hopelessness, because he is PessimismIncarnate.

Now We're Back to the Myth of the Little Hero Slaying the Impossibly Powerful Dragon!

Ugaritic depiction of
Baal vs Lotan
(who becomes Leviathan in the Bible)

Yes, we’re back to the Seven-Headed Serpent, the Dragonof Commerce. The Dragon ofPessimism who gives birth to Pessimism in your very soul. Is it hopeless? Or is this another replay of the infinite Myth of little guy Optimism conquering impossibly hugePessimism?

Yes, hark back to the cottonwood seed becoming the tree. Hark back to the spark creating a forest fire. Hark back to the one sperm among millions reaching the egg. Hark back to David slaying Golliath. Hark back to theancient world-wide myth of the little guy slaying the Dragon.

Hercules vs the Hydra

Little tiny you is up against the seven-headed Dragon, World Commercial Corporatocracy of Addiction and Oppression, whichpoisons and kills everything it touches. Now you must decide if the ancient Myth of the Dragon slayer is just asilly story or not. Or is it Eternal Principle? Now you mustdecide if the essence of Biology is a lie or not.

Okay, I admit, I have a part of me that doubts, too. That's what makes this so damn scary and exciting, what makes it so interesting! If we knew for certain, this Drama wouldn’t be soon-the-edge-of-our-seat so scary and exciting, would it? Which do you choose, Optimism orPessimism? Either one you choose, you arepart of the Grand Drama.

Arch-Angel Michael
vs Seven-Headed Dragon

The Seven-Headed Naga Subdued,
no longer being served,
but being servant to Vishnu:
the sign of Enlightenment

Revelation's Queen of Heaven
vs the Seven-Headed Dragon

The Seven-Headed Naga Subdued,
is no longer being served,
but being servant to Buddha,
the sign of Enlightenment

How to Become Free From Debt II

2012-01-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

This essay is from the website, which itself is a clarified revision of my blogpost of October 10, 2010. It's critical that I re-publish it here. Banking is not the root of all evil, but it is a manifestation of the root of all evil within our own thinking. This is about a simultaneous ending of both what's inside us and its outward manifestation. This is Occupy Your Heart and Occupy Wall Street, simultaneously. Both must happen, simultaneously.

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To state the obvious: people all over the world are dealing with endless debt, slaves to banks, slaves to their own promises. I get lots of emails from folks wondering what they can do. Debt puts us asleep to reality and blinds us to gratitude, compassion, and abundance.

It begins with freeing our minds of debt

Debt is attachment, sense of guilt, grudge, sense of vengeance: otherwise called consciousness of credit and debt, which physically manifests itself in the world as banking and commerce. Obviously, I'm saying nothing new here: We can never be forgiven of debt if we cannot forgive others. We cannot forgive others without simultaneously forgiving ourselves.

Thus, before reading on, do a mental inventory of everyone you hold a grudge against. When you can find forgiveness for each and every one of them, when you completely let go, you've cut this noose around your neck. Then you can come back and read the rest of this, about banking. Why? Because then you will see that banking is unreal, an illusion, and what I say will confirm what you already know.

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We must be responsible.

We naturally have a sense of responsibility to pay our debts.

Banks take advantage of our natural sense of responsibility, and this is how we get under their control.

But if you understand the nature of banks, you understand to whom you are truly responsible.

Are you obligated to pay a bank "back"?

If you asked me for a loan and I wrote you a bad check, would you be obligated to pay me "back"?

Yeah, let your mind go wild: imagine you asking moneyless me for a loan to buy a house! I then write you a bad check for $200,000 and tell you to not only “pay me back,” but with interest! Sounds unbelievably absurd, huh? But this is the very nature of fractional reserve banking and fiat money. But the absurdity doesn’t stop there. If you don’t “pay me back,” I get to “re-possess” the house you buy with the “loan.” Ha! “Pay me back,” as if I ever lent you anything! Ha! “Re-possess,” as if I ever possessed the house in the first place!

Funny how it sounds not only bad, but totally stupid, if I, as an individual, write you a bad check to buy a house, huh?

An individual who counterfeits a few dollars one time is guilty of felony, a federal offense, and will go to prison. An institution that counterfeits billions of dollars every day is called a bank, and its CEO and board members even get to be in the halls of government, as they are this very day! They get to be the government!

But this system has been the foundation of our civilization for centuries, so it must be okay, huh? It's tradition, after all!

Let's look at simple reality. You never had a debt to me in the first place, and I never gave or even lent you anything but a bad check! Ask yourself this: how can it be moral to even consider paying me “back”? But you must also consider it was foolish to ask me for a loan in the first place. You must now find out what responsibility and reality is and to whom you’re really supposed to pay back.

We've known these principles since civilization began

The ancient religions (Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam) and philosophers did not talk about reducing interest. They spoke of abolishing interest! They saw the obvious: making profit on nothing is criminal. It will invariably evolve into fractional reserve banking, counterfeiting, as is rampant right now.

(see Is Banking Criminal? What the World's Ancient Philosophers & Religions Say)

Be Responsible

I'm not talking any hidden conspiracy theories here. Every banker and economist knows, logically, mathematically, that your loan did not come from any bank. Your loan came from the backs of the working class, from the poor, and it came from your natural environment. If you erase the illusion of money and simply look at goods and services, this becomes crystal clear.

Let me state it more simply:

You did not borrow any goods from the bank. You borrowed goods when you purchased goods with the bad check given to you by the bank. You traded nothing for something.

Thus, this is your responsibility: you must pay back your loan to those who have less than they need.

Forget money and banks, which are literally nothing, and simply look at reality:
Anybody in the world who has more stuff than they need is in debt to those who have less than they need.

When you accept the reality that you own nothing, then your debt is gone.

This is the Reality: you are defaulting on the loan you took from real, living beings when you pay anything "back" to a bank. A bank is not a living being. It is a fiction and lent you fiction. How can you default on a "loan" from the bank when the bank lent you absolutely nothing?

Excuse me for stating common sense:

it is totally irresponsible to rob the poor to pay the rich.

It is totally irresponsible to rob reality to pay illusion.

This is sacrifice to idols (illusions).

All our ideas to heal the world, our social programs, and our activism are futile, in the bigger picture, if we continue to practice interest banking, either as lender or borrower! It makes no sense to fight the dragon while secretly feeding him at the same time, unless you enjoy perpetually fighting the dragon.

The proof has been all around us for centuries: interest banking causes goods to flow from the workers to the non-workers, from the poor to the rich, and is the cause of the bulk of world poverty, debt, environmental degradation, and mental anxiety that you are likely experiencing right now. Just your own mental anxiety is proof enough, if you don't have eyes to see the world system.

Is It Okay to Break Our Promises?

I’m a strong believer in keeping our word. This is why I don’t believe in making promises, because making promises is a guarantee that we will break our word and become liars. Making promises is boasting for tomorrow, the work of ego. When we make any kind of promise we put ourselves in debt.

However, if we do make promises, we must keep them if it’s in our power. But sometimes we simply cannot keep our promises.

Are there situations in which it is not only okay, but mandatory, to break our promises?

Let’s use an extreme example to drive home a point. Sometimes people make promises in an irrational fit of vengeance to do something horrendous, like a mafioso or gangster swearing vengeance upon somebody in a blood oath. If you promise to kill somebody, is it a “sin” to break your promise?

We in modern culture are making promises in an irrational fit of faithless anxiety and fear, faithlessness that everything we need is not in the present. We are making promises to a Mafia.

Both the "conservative" and "liberal" American public are finally waking up and seeing this, after years of being pitted against each other by this very Mafia that doesn't give a gnat's ass about liberal and conservative, religious or non-religious. The profiteer cares not where profit comes from.

In Sum: Steps to Becoming Debt Free

1. We must establish that it was bad judgment to take out a loan in the first place. We lost faith that everything we needed was available in the present, as it has been for zillions of years in nature's balance.

2. We must acknowledge that we made a promise to pay back what we borrowed, and we want to be responsible and keep our promise.

3. We must also acknowledge that our promise was more than a simple “yes” and “no," because we signed a contract promising we would pay back our debt. We must realize that going beyond a simple yes or no comes from a corrupt mind and reasoning. A lie is a lie, and to sign a contract is to water down truth. How is telling a lie "under oath" any different than telling a lie not "under oath?" Both the mind that requires us to sign a contract and the mind that signs the contract are equally corrupt: both are lost in faulty, irrational thinking. Now that we've acknowledged this error, we forgive ourselves and move on.

4. We must now ask ourselves where our loan came from so we can pay it back. Again, every banker and economist knows that a bank does not lend us what belongs to the bank. The bank wants you to think it is lending to you from its own reserves, but it is lending nothing. Not only that, the bank has the audacity to charge you interest on nothing, creating more illusion of something from nothing. Every banker knowingly practices this deception. But every bank justifies itself, not because it does not know that what it is doing is deception, but because what it does is tradition, and all of commercial civilization depends on this tradition! The bank, however, does deceive both itself and us into thinking life will end if it does not practice this deception. Faithlessness is belief that everything real will fall apart unless you practice a lie. Faith is belief that everything real will succeed if you are completely real, totally true. Faithlessness is pretense. Faith is sincerity.

It is true that everything that is false, the bulk of commercial civilization, would collapse without interest banking. And it must collapse if we and other living beings are to survive.

5. On realizing we have entered into a knowingly-deceptive contract, our contract is invalidated, freeing us from any responsibility to the contract. The fact that most all the world uses deceptive contracts does not validate any of those contracts. It is, in fact, irresponsible to hold to a corrupt contract in the same way it is irresponsible for a mafioso or gangster to hold to a blood oath to his peers!

6. We must not stray from our integrity, from our responsibility to pay back our debt! Thus we must ask ourselves where our loan truly came from! When you erase the illusion of money and simply look at goods and services, reality becomes clear. In the greater world economy, we see, obviously, that goods and services flow from workers to non-workers, from the poor to the rich, from the creative to the non-creative, from the productive to those who produce only illusion, from the givers to the moochers. The bankers take, and do not borrow, from the world’s workers and creators, and they pay nothing back. By doing any business with the bank, you have become an accomplice to theft and you must reconcile it. You have taken an illusion, fiat money, from the bank, and used it to trade for actual goods created by the world’s poor, causing goods to flow from the poor to the rich, from those who need to those who do not need.

The bank may turn you over to a collection agency. But if you have already returned your stolen goods, the bank has no more power over you. Perhaps in many countries the bank can jail you. This is where you must have faith in the Power of Truth, giving you joyful power to shine through Persecution, as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus demonstrated.

There is talk of getting banks to forgive debts.

We could talk about regulating crime, reforming crime, or we could talk about ending crime altogether, refusing to do any business whatsoever with crime.

Some people in the world are talking about reviving the ancient concept of Jubilee. Jubilee is a concept in the Torah, where Israelites would forgive each other's debts every seven years and every 49 years.

But let's go back to me "lending" you a bad check to buy a house. Now how can we talk about me forgiving your debt? It’s like asking a rapist to forgive the victim. It's like talk of getting banks to blow themselves up.

Jubilee was created for families, friends, and neighbors. People lend to family, friends, and neighbors with zero profit motivation. But the very nature of a lending institution is profit from nothing. A lending institution simply cannot be moral and simply cannot look out for the good of the borrower, despite appearances. It cannot forgive and cannot be forgiven, not in this life or any life to come. A bank runs on unforgiveable sin (debt). Its very nature and lifeblood is willful sin (debt). To end willful debt is to end banking.

Are There Any Good Reasons For Blocking Ports?

2011-12-17T08:27:00.001-07:00

I'm stepping out of my usual again, because this is very critical. I'm bracing myself to disappoint or lose readers. Okay... take a deep breath and click "publish"...

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If your daughter is being raped, you're not going to talk spiritual platitudes or go away and pray, you're going to act. And your previous spiritual development will give you power to act well.

There is a time to silently sit in lotus position in the womb, and there's a time to be born with a cry.

I'm going to present the arguments for and against blocking ports, and you can make up your own mind.

Here's Why People Are Pissed Off at the Port Occupiers:

Lots and lots of people, inside and outside the Occupy movement, are intensely pissed off at those Occupiers who blocked the ports. Both liberals and conservatives, leaders and populace, are pissed off at port Occupiers. I got into a heated discussion with local intensely-pissed-off Moabites about this.

Block the ports, and dockworkers, distributors, and merchants lose income. Dockworkers, distributors, and merchants have families to feed. How could people not get pissed off?

Some port Occupiers claimed they had union support--at least the support of union members, not necessarily the official support of union leaders. But many unionists stepped up to condemn the port Occupiers.

Yes, people say the Occupiers usurped the position of the unions, and that working-class people, including union workers, are the ones now suffering from the Occupiers' actions, not the elite 1%!

And people are saying the Occupiers are young, foolish, privileged, egotistical, not understanding what it means to make a living, support a family. They're accused of getting support from mommy and daddy and government, and now biting the hand that feeds them.

Here's Why People Blocked the Ports:

Step back and look at the big picture.

A country is doomed if it depends on imports, notlocally sustainable--not to mention our earth's ecology is doomed. Corporations haveoutsourced jobs and goods. Such corporations must end if our country is to survive.

The point of a conventional union is to improvelabor conditions and wages under corporate rule. The point of the Boston TeaParty and Gandhi’s movement was not to improve labor conditions and wages undermultinational-corporate rule; it was to end multinational-corporate rule. Both the USA and India could not be independent under corporate rule.

But such corporations have us by the balls. Yes, thelivelihood of our dockworkers, distributors, merchants, as well as sweatshopslaves overseas, depend on these corporations, and vise versa. And why havethese corporations outsourced themselves, colonized overseas? Because theydon’t want to pay just wages or abide by just laws brought about by unions! I’mnot necessarily saying this is the union’s fault, but the fault of deregulationallowing corporations to colonize overseas. Corporations removed themselves from the unions’ power. How? They lobbied (bribed) our nation’s Republican and Democratic leaders. Our nation's leaders let themselves be bribed, because their loyalty is to money, not to truth.

But our country is doomed unless multinational corporations end. No conventional union leadership is going tosupport ending their employers! This is the dilemma. Stopthe corporation, and people lose their livelihood (our own dockworkers,distributors and merchants, as well as overseas sweatshop slaves). The union’s goal is not to end people’s corporatelivelihood but to improve it.

The conventional union was a good thing when it had power over the corporation. But now that corporations have moved overseas, the unions have lost their power. Now the general people must act, as happened with the Boston Tea Party and Gandhi's movement.

Yeah, But Instead of Blocking Corporations We Should Create Sustainable Alternatives, Right?

Naturally, the answer to avoid this problem wouldbe to first establish sustainable jobs here, starting with localizedagriculture. But I know by experience the majority don’t have time for suchhippy things, because they have corporate jobs to serve and families to feed! A round robin!

So we’re backed into a corner. Now we don’t see away we’re going to produce locally and sustainably except by cutting off alldependency to multinational corporations! This will cause loss of jobs, sacrifice,suffering. And whatever time we start cutting offdependency will never seem like the right time.

In the same way, end opium andcocaine trade, and droves of families in Afghanistan and Columbia would losetheir livelihood.

Understandably, those whoadvocate cutting off dependency to multinational corporations are going to betarred and feathered, imprisoned, even killed, but something mysterious makesthem still stand firm.

If my right arm has gangrene, cut it off. I'm going to be way pissed off, screaming,calling the amputator names, even wanting to kill him, as the saw cutsthrough nerves and bones, unless I keep my mind on the health of my wholebody, focused and centered. Keeping my mind on the health of the whole body is the very nature of spirituality. To be spiritual is to act.

"To know and not to do is, in fact, not to know" --Confucius

"As the body without the spirit is dead,

so faith without action is dead." --James 2:26

If somebody knows a simpler, easier way, speak it.

To Be Yourself Is To Be Perfect

2011-11-15T15:42:00.002-07:00

I'm house-sitting for my friends Phil and Ann, with a couple dogs and fish in the outskirts of Moab. I don't get into town often on a dysfunctional bicycle, leaving me time to practice guitar and philosophize. I'm going to philosophize about religion a lot in this post. Religion contains the memes that drive whole cultures, including influencing those who are not religious. Religion is the most powerful tool for influencing culture there is, for good and for bad. I know, it's usually bad. But I'm taking a chance with it again.

Generosity is Artificial Institution,
Re-generosity is Life!

I've been involved in some activist movements sprouting up in Moab. And I just attended a weekend permaculture workshop taught for free to all by Joel Glanzberg from New Mexico, offered through Moab's local Community Rebuilds. It was amazingly inspiring.

I'm feeling in my bones that permaculture is a key to bring in gift economy, for whole populations to live moneyless. I've never honestly cared for traditional agriculture, which I'm sure arose with money and barter, and was the beginning of our imbalance. My ideal has been the hunter-gatherer model, which obviously wouldn't work today without a major die-off of people. That leaves us permaculture, which is about creating a self-regenerating system, not only of agriculture, but of everything connected to it. Machinery is generation. Life is regeneration.

This got me super excited, taking the principles of permaculture into social interaction:

Generation is generosity (which we see as a virtue).
Regeneration is re-generosity - Gifts that keep giving.
Generosity is a thing of artificial institutions.
Re-generosity is a thing of living communities!

Generosity has a sense of self-righteousness, self-credit. "I did my good deed for the day", stacking up credit points.

Re-generosity is perpetual giving, such as breathing, having no consciousness of credits or debt. You don't expect praise for every lungful of carbon dioxide you freely give to the world, you just egolessly do it. And you don't feel guilty about every lungful of oxygen you take. Generosity comes from stores of excess, from possession. In re-generosity, there is no possession, only perpetual flow.

It makes no sense to "own" air in your lungs.

When you own nothing, there is no effort in giving, no sense of self-righteousness.

Life is not a charity, it is constant giving.

Permaculture is allowing everything to be its natural self, for greater efficiency and productivity with minimal effort, as all of nature works.

This all connects with things I've been philosophizing on for a long time:

To Be or Not to Be, that is the Question

There is one and only one reason we are imbalanced and our world is messed up:

we are not being ourselves!

Our true selves are perfect.

To be yourself is to be perfect.

Be. Perfect. Even as I Am. Perfect.

I'm talking about every single human as well as every single living thing in the world.

Is this unrealistically-optimistic thinking? Before you judge it so, and even if you think your religion teaches that humans are inherently evil or flawed, from an ancient idea of "Original Sin," I ask you to hear me out.

The Virus of Wrong

Just the other day I had a debate with a friend. He says not everybody knows what’s right and wrong. But we both know he knows everybody knows what’s right and wrong, but we pretend we don’t know. Our pretense is so refined we convince ourselves we don’t know we're doing something wrong, and we pretend we don’t know that people don’t know that they’re doing something wrong! This is how the virus of wrong excuses and perpetuates itself.

Mammon
from Dungeons & Dragons

Whenever you find somebody doing something that both you and they know is disagreeable, you usually hear, “I’m just doing my job”, or, “That’s how business works.” Everybody then goes silent, as if this were a valid argument for doing wrong. But just the fact we say "I'm just doing my job" or "that's business" shows positively we know it's wrong. The idea of excuse comes from the sense of wrong. And this shows society has a common, unspoken agreement. We’ve agreed that business trumps truth. We believe Mammon is more powerful than Truth. We say we believe in God, but our actions prove we believe Mammon is greater than God, meaning we believe Mammon to be the only God.

But maybe it's not so simple. People have families to feed and rent to pay, after all. Over and over I hear this: “I don’t like doing this, but I have to make a living.” Or, “I don’t agree with this, but I have a family to feed.”

In other words, we are not ourselves, because we think we have no choice.

We believe ourselves so helpless that our actions are dependent upon our employers, leaders, corporations, the drugs of our addictions.

Do you see it?
We have given up all responsibility for ourselves.

It's strange how this would be considered radical: What if we all decided to simply be ourselves? I mean total sincerity.

What if we decided we’d rather lose our jobs or starve or die or be ostracized than to not be ourselves?

With full confidence I say we can never be happy and at peace until we're willing to give up all to be ourselves. To be ourselves, we must give up all that we think is ourselves, all that we think we possess. Our true selves possess absolutely nothing, and when we realize this, we are completely free (un-possessed by anything or anybody, un-possessed by the thought of possession).

Lungs that possess air cannot breathe.

What if we did everything, I mean every thing, not because we are getting paid, or for the credit of peers, or because we want to barter for something else, but simply because our hearts tell us to do?

We Think We Need Authority

And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? (--Jesus)

Why are rabbits and ants and monkeys able to manage themselves and know what to eat or not eat, when to have sex, where to go, without bosses or governing authorities or contracts, without scriptures or instruction manuals or schools? “Consider the ant… who has no boss, no overseer or ruler.”

If they can manage themselves and we think we cannot, why, then, do we consider ourselves more intelligent than other animals?

When I say this, many professed Christians often respond, “but we’re born in sin, have a fallen nature. We're evil, flawed.” They say it’s hopeless, and all we can do is wait for Jesus to come and rapture us away from this mess, completely ignoring the most basic of all basic Christian doctrines, that "Christ is in you, the hope of glory." The usual religion gets us hoping for a future reward and day of recompense. Stacking up credit. This idea of original sin has had a grip on western civilization for eons.

But, as one who was raised under evangelical Christian doctrine, having intensely studied the Bible since I could first read, I ask, is this really Christian doctrine? Does it bear good fruit? Is it Jewish doctrine? Is it any religion's doctrine? Since the Bible is the world’s most common book, a meme driving civilization, that doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon, let’s shine some light on its principle doctrines.

“Original Sin”

The very first chapter of the Bible says everything God creates is good, and after Adam (male and female) is created, all creation is pronounced not just good, but very good. Very good is the Seventh Good, the Complete Good. Adam (male and female) is created in the Image of God. Yes, the most fundamental message is that the Image of God is our true nature, and the Image of God is perfect goodness. It’s that simple, the very foundation of all that follows! The next chapter of Genesis proceeds to describe the fall from our True Nature. It’s a simple description of how we decided to try to be something other than ourselves.

Sin means debt. And the "original sin" we've inherited is no more our nature than a debt we inherit from our parents' estate. We've inherited a way of thinking, consciousness of credit and debt, which can be changed. Our innate nature cannot be changed.

When we do for the sake of doing, we return to our true nature. The doing itself is the fruit, the reward in itself, enjoying right now. Because it's always here, not future, it is fruit everlasting, the fruit of the Tree of Life. It's the bread of life that perpetually satisfies. When we act for the sake of getting something in the future, our fruit is forever future, never truly attainable, fickle, the fruit of the Tree of Consciousness of Credit and Debt, knowledge of Good and Evil. If you doubt this is what the Garden of Eden story is about, you may want to read “The Seven-Headed Dragon: World Commerce ” in the website, showing how the Hebrew text confirms these things.

The Core Principle of the World's Religions

Lao Tzu

Giving up consciousness of credit and debt, giving up working for the sake of future credit, is the core principle of the world’s religions. If the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, as Jesus constantly teaches in the Gospels, rather than some future far-away place, then we work for Present Reward, and our work is the reward. Then we are content in whatever state we are. Invariably, good ideas are hijacked by the marketing mentality and take on opposite meaning. Marketing mentality turned the present Kingdom of Heaven into some future heaven that really will never ever come. Notice how we are so programmed that when we find something beautiful, the first thought in our heads is, “we could make a lot of money from that.” Always thinking about future heaven.

What is the central theme of the Baghavad Gita? Do not work for future fruit. The Tao Te Ching? Virtue gives expecting no credit. The Quran? The same. If you doubt this is the fundamental of the world’s religions, check out Here's the One Point We Know the World's Religions Agree Upon.

When our doing is its own reward, this is when we become real, Real, Royal. And we can say, I Am What I Am, no more, no less.

I Am What I Am
The Way, the Truth, and the Life

This is a doctrine you can prove for yourself by direct experience. There is no way to Peace, no way to Perfection, no way to Harmony except being exactly who you are, when you can say in perfect truth and confidence, I Am What I Am! When you are who you are, you are the Light of the World. Jesus said both: “I am the Light of the world,” and “You are the Light of the world.” The slave of the system will ask you, “So who sent you?” “What religion?” What authority?” “What scripture?” “What organization?” “Who employs you?” If you want to short out their brain circuits: simply say, "I Am What I Am; no one else sent me." The only way to say this is to simply Be, with or without talk.

The Burning Bush
Byzantine Mosaic
(Exodus 3:14)
(Quran 20:11)

When we leave the System of Slavery and escape to the Wilderness where there is no money, no government, our eyes suddenly open to the Burning Bush, and we finally hear our Name, the Name by which all life is called, I Am What I Am. And we will understand true human nature and love it so much we will want to return to our fellow humans whose true natures are oppressed under slavery. And we will proclaim the Name, I am what I am, liberating us to say, “Let my people go.”

Only when I am who I am can I ever see you for who you are. This is love. If I can't see my neighbor as myself, I can't love my neighbor. It is utterly impossible for me to love you if I am not myself, if I’m trying to be something else or trying to be what I think you want. When I am who I am, I am love. Love is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There is no other way. Love is the one and only Image of God. Love is God incarnate, here and now, your True Nature, here in the flesh. I am who I am, the Name above all names, the name by which every created thing is called. All other names are just words, illusion. "The name that can be uttered is not the Eternal Name" (Tao Te Ching 1).

If you believe what I'm saying is blasphemy, I challenge you to look at those who harp the loudest that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Do they keep Jesus’ teachings? If they truly believe Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, they will keep his teachings. By their fruit you will know them, not by their talk. If you actually practice Jesus’ teachings you cannot help but see Jesus is your own true nature. Yes, what do you see in the mirror but the Image of God, universal, “Christ is all and in all”? If you practice Jesus' teachings, you can't help but see that Jesus is Krishna, is Buddha, is the Tao.

With the heart concentrated by yoga,
viewing all things with equal regard,
he beholds himself in all beings
and all beings in himself.
He who sees me everywhere
and sees everything in me,
to him I am never lost,
nor is he ever lost to me.
He who, having been established in oneness,
worships me dwelling in all beings,
that yogi, in whatever way he lives his life,
lives in me.
Him I hold to be the Supreme Yogi,
who looks on the pleasure and pain of all beings
as he looks on them in himself.
(Bhagavad Gita 6:29-32)

Muhammad, in the Hadith, says,

Allah made Adam in his own image (Sahih Muslim 40:6809)

[and this Hadith passage mysteriously says Adam is 60 cubits long, refering to the length of the Jerusalem temple, dwelling place of God, in the same way Jesus refers to his body as the temple, in the same way the New Testament refers to the human as the temple]

Early Muslims had no problem saying Adam is in the image of God. But later Muslims have tried to explain this away, partly because they didn't want to be like Jews and Christians, partly because the Quran, like the Bible (the Torah and Isaiah) say there is nothing and nobody like God, seemingly contradicting the Hadith and Genesis.

Hmm, yes, it is contradictory, that is, if you believe God and the Image of God are two different things! Either the Image of God is God, which revolutionizes Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, or else the Bible contradicts itself and the Quran contradicts Muhammad and we continue with the same bullshit for another few millenia. Either or.

The Quran mysteriously repeats a story several times of how God made Adam from dust, then after breathing the Spirit into him, commanded the angels to bow down to Adam (Quran 2:34,7:11, 15:29, 20:116. [Note how this is the Quran's commentary on the same idea in the Bible, Hebrews 1:6, even to the point of referring to the angels as fire]) . Everybody bowed except Satan. The Quran says over and over to worship, to bow, only to God (2:83, 3:64, 7:206, 16:49, 22:77, 25:60, etc). Satan, appearing to be righteous, refused to bow, because he saw only dust, only flesh (15:33, 7:12).

Again, the Quran says that God alone, referring to himself as We, will inherit the earth (Quran 19:40, 3:180,15:23,19:40, 28:58). Then it turns around and says people will inherit the earth! (Quran 39:74, 10:14, 21:105, 27:62). This alludes to Jesus and the Psalms saying "the meek shall inherit the earth." Then the Quran says that God alone rules the world. Then it turns around and says Adam is his vice-regent to rule the world! (Quran 2:30, 6:165, 38:26).

Now, compare these two mysterious Quran passages:

Once I perfect him, and blow into him from My Spirit, you shall fall prostrate before him
(Quran 15:29)

Lo! the likeness of Jesus with Allah is as the likeness of Adam. He created him of dust, then He said unto him: Be! and he is.
(Quran 3:59)

In other words,

Just simply Be, and you will be the Image of God, and you will be One with All and rule the universe.

Become Master of the Universe without striving
(Tao Te Ching 57)

If there is a good store of Virtue, nothing is impossible.
If nothing is impossible, there are no limits.
If a person knows no limits, he is fit to be Ruler.
(Tao Te Ching 59)

Why is the sea King of a hundred streams?
Because it lies below them.
If the Sage would guide the people,
He must serve with humility.
If he would lead them,
He must follow behind.
In this way when the Sage is Ruler
The people will not feel oppressed;
When he stands before them,
They will not be harmed.
The whole world will support him
And will not tire of him.
(Tao Te Ching 66)

And he sat down, called the twelve, and said to them,
"If anyone desires to be first,
he shall be last of all and slave of all."
Then he took a little child and set him in the midst of them.
And when he had taken him in his arms, he said to them,
"Whoever receives one of these little children
in my name receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but him who sent me."
(Mark 9:35-37)

Do you believe in that cross hanging around your neck?

He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people
is fit to rule them
He who takes upon himself the country’s disasters
deserves to be King of the Universe.
(Tao Te Ching 78)

"But I would follow truth, I would be myself, if I could,” so you say, “but I have to make a living. I have a family to feed. My family and my church will ostracize me if I follow my heart, if I do what I know to be true, if I simply Be Who I Am.” We all have been trapped into not being ourselves and feel this way, and breaking out of this into truth is what makes life scary and exciting.

This is where faith and the Cross come in. Do you really believe in that cross hanging around your neck?

First, you must make the decision:

I will be myself no matter what, even if it means I lose my job and starve, even if it means I get crucified by my peers.

If you honestly believe that God is good, then you start knowing that if you follow good, against all odds, against the world’s logic, that everything will fall into place and everything will work out for you and your family. If you grow a bit of a spine, have courage, then you’ll figure it out, I guarantee it. You have no more excuses. Take responsibility. Good is your nature and good will carry you through. Good is God. Love is God. If you think you can’t live by being true, your faith is false, a pretend show. Then you are an actor. The Greek word for actor is hypocrite.

Sect and Political Party:
Seeking Credit of Peers

As soon as we join a sect or political party, calling ourselves a club name, we cease being ourselves, cease using our minds. We can no longer say, I Am Who I Am. We start parroting our club, not our hearts. This is ego. Ego is our put-on self, and ego’s sole purpose is to gain the credit of others. Credit is praise. Credit is money. Credit is barter.

We cease cooperating and start identifying ourselves by what "they" are not. For example, do we think bailing banks out is wrong because a democrat bailed out banks, or simply because our hearts tell us it’s wrong? Do we agree with bailing out banks because republicans are against it, or are we going against our hearts simply because it means not being like republicans?

And look what

Popeye could do!!

This is starkly clear in religion. The ethical teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, for example, are the same. All teach giving up possessions, all teach loving enemies, all teach overcoming evil with good, all teach keeping the mind in the present. But as soon as somebody says, “I am a Christian” or “I am Muslim”, etc., they become ego, false, actors, hypocrites. They identify themselves by what the other is not. A self-proclaimed Christian, for example, is willing to completely trample on his or her own Jesus’ teachings in order to not be like Buddhists or Hindus. This is why Christ’s fundamental teachings are mysteriously absent from classic"Bible-believing" churches. This is why even the self-proclaimed Christian’s own Bible forbids taking on labels, including the label "Christian."

I appeal to you… that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. …there is quarreling among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one of you says, "I am Paulian," or "I am Apollosian," or "I am Cephasian," or "I am Christian.” Is Christ divided?

(1Corinthians 1:10-13)

How much proof do we need? History shows us over and over that peace and rational thinking are impossible when we call ourselves anything. You cannot be Christian if you call yourself Christian. You cannot be Muslim if you call yourself Muslim. You cannot be Hindu if you call yourself Hindu. You cannot be Republican if you call yourself Republican. You cannot be Democratic if you call yourself Democrat. You cannot be Socialist if you call yourself Socialist. You cannot be Libertarian if you call yourself Libertarian. You cannot be Universalist if you call yourself Universalist. How much more disaster must sectarian religion and politics wreak on the earth before we get it?

When will we get it that all we can be is ourselves? I am what I am, nothing more, nothing less. Only when we are each uniquely ourselves do we realize we are all One. “My people who are called by My Name:” I Am What I Am.

Our actions tell who we are, not our labels, not affiliations. By doing nothing more than being myself, I declare the unspeakable Name, when I am who I am. All energy, all liberation, all reality derives from simply Being. How can we think we can be anything else than Who We Are?

The Tea Party and Gandhi

2011-10-08T16:07:00.000-06:00

I've been in Moab the past couple weeks.
Again, I'm departing from my usual blogging to talk about the world scene and what we can do or not do.

Operation Non-Cooperation-With-Deception

A few blogs ago I posted an "Operation Bank Bust", which turned off some people. I should have instead renamed it "Operation Non-Cooperation-With-Deception":

On November 5th, 2011, people are encouraged to remove their funds from their bank, close any accounts and throw away credit cards (cut them up first) in order to promote personal independence from the banking system.

In the Spirit of Gandhi, I can say with full certainty that the problem of Wall Street will never, ever end until we stop doing business with Wall Street. Stop cooperating with anything that we see as evil, both for individual conscience and the health of the whole world.

We must get out of victim mentality and realize the power is in our hands to be free, not in the hands of the banks and corporations.

It's not a fight against anything. It's a simple refusal to cooperate with what we know to be deceptive and destructive.

Wall Street Occupation

You've likely heard about the Wall Street Occupation by now. The mainstream media, for some "mysterious" reason, was not reporting it until recently, now that nobody can help not notice it.

Some have criticized the Wall Street Occupation for not having a specific demand. But the idea of it is not necessarily calling for reformation of Wall Street - but to draw attention to the total insanity of our banking and corporate system (Here's Occupy Wall Street's One Demand: Sanity).

What I don't get is that somebody (the corporate media?) is always trying to paint the picture as a battle between Right and Left. And the Right thinks the media is controlled by the Left, and the Left thinks it's controlled by the Right. Funny, huh? But, last I checked, thinkers on both the Right and the Left are coming to the same conclusion: the banking industry has hijacked the economy and to bail it out is criminal. And, last I checked, non-thinkers on both the Right and the Left don't see that free trade agreements pushed strongly by both democratic and republican presidents have sent production of goods oversees, tanking our economy. In addition, this has created unbridled multinational corporations outside our borders that don't have to abide by any labor laws or ethics. Notice how both Republican and Democratic politicians go hush, hush in full agreement, when the Federal Reserve chairman speaks, or when somebody talks about the "need" for more international "free trade."

Can Somebody Tell Me What This "Tea Party" Is?

Maybe I'm an ignoramus, but I can't figure out what the "Tea Party" really is, and it appears people claiming to be Tea Partiers are just as clueless as I.

But let's look at its namesake, the Boston Tea Party, which sparked off the American Revolution, breaking the American colonies' yoke from Britain.

We read in school history books that, on December 16, 1773, American colonists didn't want to pay taxes to Britain, so they trespassed onto three ships and dumped British tea into the harbor.

But do we ever think what this means? We don't stop to ponder that this wasn't so much a breaking off from the nation of Britain but the breaking off from the control a multinational corporation, called the East India Company. The multinational corporation and the nation of Britain had become so intertwined that Britain had become the multinational corporation and vise versa.

Refusal to do business with the multinational corporation was the birth of the USA.

Now, let's bump ahead a few years to Gandhi (The Struggle For Indian Independence). A replay of the same game! India wanted independence from this same British multinational corporation. Gandhi led the Indians to not use and/or to burn goods from this British multinational Corporation: namely, he led movements to burn British textiles and to have Indians weave their own cloth and produce their own salt.

This same principle gained both the independence of America and of India.

The Boston Tea Party and Gandhi's Moral of the Story: Stop Business With Multinational Corporations and Produce Locally

We see by two examples that it works. Non-cooperation with what you believe to be evil is the only way to be free from it. Gandhi 101. The power to do good is in our hands, not in the hands of banks and corporations. They cannot be reformed.

All the protests in the world against banks and corporations aren't going to do an iota of good if we do any kind of business with banks and corporations. All our talk of freedom is nonsense if we do business with them.

Now we see the same pattern in the USA as happened to Britain way back when. It has become so intertwined with multinational corporations that the USA has become a multinational corporation, doing to the rest of the world what Britain did to the American colonies and to India.

Will the real Tea Partiers please stand up?

Now what do you think? Are the"Tea Partiers" true Tea Partiers? Would they or would they not consider cutting off all business to banks and multinational corporations, including throwing corporate goods into a bonfire? We know by example of both the Boston Tea Party and Gandhi's movement that this is the only way independence can come. Would the "Tea Partiers" consider it an act of terrorism to destroy corporate goods? Did or did not both the Boston Tea Partiers and Gandhi destroy corporate property? Go ahead, challenge the Sarah Palins, Glenn Becks, and Michelle Bachmanns on this. To whom are their ultimate loyalties, corporations or people? Will the real Tea Partiers please stand up?

Both thinkers on the Right and on the Left are coming to these same conclusions. But somebody is letting labels divide.

See also on the website:
Is Banking Criminal? What the World's Ancient Philosophers & Religions Say

Over Lava Fields & Through Salt Flats to Wakan Tanka's We Go

2011-09-08T01:41:00.003-06:00

I hitched out of Oregon, intending to land in Moab, Utah, but bipassed it and landed here in western Colorado. I thoroughly enjoyed the people on this trip.

Bye Bye Timo & Logan

Yeah, the summer whizzed by and it felt time to migrate south again and say goodbye to Timo and Logan. Logan walked me to a hitching spot outside of Redmond, carrying the guitar for me.

It wasn't long before an 84-year-old man named Bill stopped to take me to Bend. He lived there in Redmond, with his wife.  It turns out he'd been in the army of occupation with my dad in Japan at the end of World War II! My dad says, after all these years, he's never once met anybody else who'd been in Japan at that time. Bill offered me lunch, but I'd already eaten, so I settled for a rootbeer.

My next ride was from an easy-going 60-something country/blues pony-tailed musician named Dale who cussed like a sailor and had a strong belief in the providence of God. He said he'd once played with Robert Cray. He gave me food and let me off in Burns.

I found a variety of fruit at the grocery "specialty section" there, then bedded down for the night in a mint patch in a cow field by a canal and woke up covered in dew. I guitar-jammed as I waited for my bag to dry in the rising sun.

After hitching for a while, a young dude in a dented Suburu with a crazed look in his eyes pulled up and told me this was one of the most dangerous counties for hitch-hiking in the country, that it was the "city of Satan".  "Beware and God bless!" he said as he pounced the gas and sped off. I simply couldn't keep from smiling, couldn't bring myself to even begin to be afraid. In fact, I oddly felt a stronger sense of peace than before. I'd hitched several times before through this same area, no prob.

Fear is self-fulfilling prophecy, and our society is running on it, more and more. Fear fuels the money economy. Love erases fear.

Cowboy Enlightenment

Within minutes, an old, white stretch-limosine sporting a pair of longhorns mounted with welded horseshoes pulled up on the other side of the road. A 27-year-old smiling dude dressed to the hilt as a cowboy, spurs and all, got out and asked where I was headed. "Utah, via Winnemucca," I said. "I'm heading through Winnemucca tomorrow," he said, "but first I'm going to a rodeo in Lakeview, if you want to join me!" he said. Lakeview was in the opposite direction.  I totally loved the good-natured vibe of that cowboy and didn't hesitate to hop in his limo with his loveable border collie.  I had no idea where Lakeview was and remembered what that crazed guy before had said, thinking maybe I should beware. But all my instincts said this cowboy was a primo human being. And he was. He was a real cowboy (no wanna-be) named Seth, from generations of real cowboys, and he kept me smiling non-stop the next couple days, with his intriguing stories and good conversation.  On our way to Lakeview, he had to stop at a ranch and shoe a horse, me as his assistant. He put a smile on the face of everyone he encountered.  I regarded Seth an enlightened being, cowboy and all, to my surprise.

We stayed at the rodeo all night. He roped a couple steers there. Afterward, he ended up drinking all night with his cowboy buddies, but old-man-me ended up crashing early in my sleeping bag on the grass. Even hung over early next morn, Seth was as even-keel good-natured as usual. He gave me breakfast and we headed east through Nevada, through Winnemucca, then he let me off in Wells. He was heading to another rodeo in Twin Falls, Idaho, to ride broncos. He invited me there, too. Tempting, but I decided it'd be easier to hitch east from Wells.

After "shopping" behind the grocery store in Wells, I settled in for the night with my delicious loot under a bridge by the rails, on the chance a train might decide to stop there.  No such luck, but a good night sleep.

Across Deseret

Next morning a spunky 50-something woman named Ann with her young son, Philip, and 2 dogs, picked me up in a U-Haul. They were moving back to Utah from California. Unusually friendly and fun, they were. She took me across the salt flats and, thankfully, bipassed Salt Lake City and let me off in Heber city.

A strikingly good-looking, way-friendly 20-something blond woman named Michaela, with piercing grey-blue eyes, stopped for me in her sporty new car. She was a beautician and rock-climber was totally intrigued by the vagabond lifestyle, wanting to live that way herself. She let me off in Provo.

The next day a 20-something musician named Jeff took me to highway 6 to a better hitch spot. He said he'd struggled for years with depression and heroin and had a close friend who'd recently killed himself. He gave me some guitar-playing tips. I'm quite sure the guitar is helping me get rides, and with pleasant people at that. At least most of the time.

A couple way clean-cut 20-something boys then took me a short ways down the highway. They asked me about what I did. When I told them I'd renounced money, they went totally silent and looked at me funny.

A 70-something guy took me to Soldier Summit (where he lived), and spoke of how he had always hitched that route as a boy, going to school and basketball practice. He also went silent when I told him I'd renounced money.

Past Moab to Western Colorado

By this time I was thinking I might want to bipass Moab and visit my parents in Fruita, Colorado, since it was my mom's 84th birthday, and I hadn't seen them for months. I decided if a ride came that was going as far as Colorado, I'd skip Moab and visit my parents. A way friendly 30-year-old Mexican-American from LA, named Mike, driving a truck, with his pit bull, stopped and said he was going as far as Denver.  He asked me to play guitar.  I finally got to play the 4 Spanish songs I knew to a Mexican, and he knew one of them. He said he used to sing Spanish songs in his church's praise band. He also gave me food and took me all the way to Fruita.

Now I'm at my parents'. My sister and her hubbie and my brothers are coming next week for a little reunion, maybe with my sis-in-law and nephew, so I'll probably stay for that.

Book and Blog Stuff

Oh, yeah, Mark said the book is becoming pretty much "official" and has a Facebook page (The Man Who Quit Money).  It feels like a dream, sort of. I'm a bit nervous, but my ego is also tripping, of course.

Funny, the popularity of this blog went way down after my "Operation Bank Bust" a couple posts ago. Ah, threatening the world's Most Sacred Cow by doing nothing but neglecting the poor creature.

North By Northwest

2011-08-24T15:23:00.003-06:00

I'm now in Redmond, central Oregon, at my friend Timo’s house.

Portland

Over a month ago, after the Rainbow Gathering, I hung in Portland a bit, staying with my friend Tsarra at the “Ninja house”, and got to know her house-mates, Ben and Hollis. I was very pleased to see my close friend Satya (who I wandered and camped with over past years) and to participate in his meditation group again. And I delved into Food Not Bombs again, seeing old friends from forest activism days, and meeting new friends. I always feel a strong sense of committed community in Portland, and I often feel torn between Portland and Moab. But it’s a bit harder living outdoors in Portland in winter rains, so I always opt for flapping south to Moab.

Olympic Pantheon

My new friend, Corwin, from Atlanta, invited me on a pack trip to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, and I didn’t hesitate to say yes. My friend Denise knew Corwin, and she recommended we hook up. Corwin is about as pleasant, easy-going and thoughtful of a person as you’d want to travel with. He’s so stable you can’t get him excited (which is funny, because he got a bout of hiccups for 3 days, and I could in no way scare him to cure them).

I decided I didn’t want to carry a rocket stove or pot, so I toasted a bunch of rice, buckwheat and tapioca, threw 'em together with a bit of olive oil and salt, to munch as my main staple on the trip. We thought we’d start with a simple loop trail in the Quinault rain forest, then explore other areas later. The trail started way easy, but as we reached higher elevations, we ran into fields of deep snow and lost the trail – not at all what we’d expected. It made for a gnarly and difficult hike and us bantering back and forth on which direction to take. But that’s also what made it remarkably fun. And we got through, of course, feeling good about it. Easy things aren't memorable.

We then decided to go to the coast, near the Hoh reservation, and do a little hike there. That ended up more gnarly than we’d suspected, too, sludging through knee-deep mud in the coastal rain forest. We ate berries galore, lots of wild peas, and I cooked and ate quite a few slugs (they’re okay if you clean out the guts and toast them well). We also ate toasted seaweed of various sorts. Funny, the whole rain forest trip had nary a drop of rain, except a brief shower one morning.

Chief Seattle

Drive 'em from their lands...

that's okay cuz we name cities & stuff after 'em

Back in the Seattle Again...

Corwin then took me to Seattle to stay with his friend Oscar at Sherwood House, a large community house with lots of pleasant people. We hung there maybe a week, exploring Seattle and doing a lot of specialty :-) shopping in the backs of stores – finding amazing quantities of food, most of which the Sherwood House gladly accepted. Corwin’s girlfriend, Beth, from Atlanta, later came to town and hung with us for a while.

...Or Again to Oregon

When Beth left, Corwin's friend Kathryn also came to town, and the three of us went back to Portland together, with gobs of goodies to share with Food Not Bombs. I camped in the Ninja house garden again. I read through Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen while there, one of the most profound things I’ve ever read. Not wanting to wear out my welcome at Ninja, and wanting to come here to see Timo and his daughter, Logan, I felt it time to move on.

I got a ride again with Corwin and Beth, who happened to be coming this way last week. So here I am. It’s been 3 years, and Logan is already a young woman, going into high school this Fall.

A couple days ago Timo took me to a weekly Spanish-speaking group he attends, and later to a Lakota sweat lodge near Bend – a very deep and blessed experience for me.

Now I’m reading Harish Dhillon’s The First Sikh Spiritual Master, about Guru Nanak (who lived at the time of Columbus and Martin Luther).

I’m not sure how long before I start hitching back to Utah, inshallah.

…how will all these things make our journey more comfortable?

We cannot clutter up our lives, not now or ever.

We must travel light, live simply, and not worry about tomorrow,

secure in the knowledge that God will always provide—

perhaps through the generosity of people like the good Uppals.

--Guru Nanak (p. 70, The First Sikh Spiritual Master)

Sitting quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes,

And the grass grows by itself.

--Zen Sage Zenrin Kushu

Let the earth bring forth grass

--Elohim (Genesis 1:11)

Ye are Elohim

--Jesus (John 10:34)

Operation Bank Bust

2011-07-21T02:21:00.002-06:00

I have an important announcement, so I'm departing from my usual blogginess to cut-and-paste and publish this Facebook post about a Bank Bust action like I've been wanting to start. I'm glad to see I don't have to: somebody else already has the ball rolling. Please spread the word:

===============================================

Operation Bank Bust

	Time: Saturday, November 5 · 8:00am - 9:00pm Location: Everywhere Created by: Nightingale Jones This Operation is from The Plan! www.whatis-theplan.org On November 5th, 2011, people are encouraged to remove their funds from their bank, close any accounts and throw away credit cards (cut them up first) in order to promote personal independence from the banking system. We encourage people to purchase a heavy safe that can be bolted down to secure their money or place it into a trusted, local credit union. This is an ONGOING Operation! It's never too late or too early to reclaim your fiscal independence!

Time: Saturday, November 5 · 8:00am - 9:00pm

Location: Everywhere

Created by: Nightingale Jones

This Operation is from The Plan! www.whatis-theplan.org

On November 5th, 2011, people are encouraged to remove their funds from their bank, close any accounts and throw away credit cards (cut them up first) in order to promote personal independence from the banking system. We encourage people to purchase a heavy safe that can be bolted down to secure their money or place it into a trusted, local credit union.

This is an ONGOING Operation! It's never too late or too early to reclaim your fiscal independence!

......................................................................................................


El 5 de noviembre de 2011, la gente se anima a sacar sus fondos de su banco, cerrar todas las cuentas y tirar las tarjetas de crédito (se cortan primero) con el fin de promover la autonomía personal en el sistema bancario. Animamos a la gente a comprar un seguro pesados que pueden ser atornillados para asegurar su dinero o el lugar en una de confianza, unión de crédito local. Se trata de una operación en curso! Nunca es demasiado tarde o demasiado temprano para recuperar su independencia fiscal!

El 5 de noviembre de 2011, la gente se anima a sacar sus fondos de su banco, cerrar todas las cuentas y tirar las tarjetas de crédito (se cortan primero) con el fin de promover la autonomía personal en el sistema bancario. Animamos a la gente a comprar un seguro pesados que pueden ser atornillados para asegurar su dinero o el lugar en una de confianza, unión de crédito local.

Se trata de una operación en curso! Nunca es demasiado tarde o demasiado temprano para recuperar su independencia fiscal!

=========================================

My Zero-Cents-Worth Comment If we're activists protesting various evils in the world, our activism is of little use if we keep feeding the root of the problem: banks (and also if we give our business to the banks' bedfellows, big corporations). It's pretty simple: if we give banks and corporations our business, we are the banks and we are the corporations and all our protesting against them is totally absurd. Get out of the helpless victim mentality and know that we the common people are the power of the "people in power"! If you don't like the monster, stop feeding it! Take responsibility! My purist moneyless self would like to see everybody walk away from all money, but my practical self says, if you use money, please do not use banks, unless you want to feed world poverty, war, environmental destruction, and mental duress. At the very least, please put your money in a local credit union instead. In case you have doubts about participating in this Bank Bust, or aren't clear about the nature of banks and banking, please see the clear and simple video below I keep pushing, "Money As Debt". You may also want to check out the essays in my website on the nature of money: What Money Is and What Money Is Not and Is Banking Criminal? What The World's Ancient Philosophers & Religions Say
Still in the Northwest On my usual blogger note, I'm still in Portland, Oregon. I plan to spend the next week or so on a pack trip on the Olympic Peninsula with a new friend, maybe two. That means I'll be out of cyber contact for a while

Let Light Be

2011-07-10T21:55:00.004-06:00

I'm in Portland, Oregon now. I'd thought I'd spend a nice quiet summer in Moab this year, but ended up unable to resist the road magnet.

I just realized it's been over 2 months since I last blogged. It has to do with not having/not wanting computer time and/or not feeling inspiration to write.

What To Do With My Website?

I've gotten occasional comments from friends on my website LIVING WITHOUT MONEY, that it's "too busy" and hard to navigate. I keep thinking I'll sit down and manicure it... but again, it takes computer time. Part of me likes to think of it as a brambly, wild forest grown from wild spontaneity, with broken branches and dead leaves, and hidden nooks and crannies, that only somebody not in a hurry could appreciate, not a sterile, manicured city park for quick picnics. But maybe that's just me clinging to not wanting to change it. City Parks, after all, are many urban people's only bridge into wild nature and are thus valuable. And I suppose the reason I use the Internet in the first place is to communicate with urban folks, not preach to my wild comrades who aren't much on the Internet. I dunno. What do folks think?

Bittersweet Impermanence

Carolyn and Phil left Moab together early June, making Moab feel emptier. Phil had been with me continually, mostly camping in the canyon, for over 2 months; then he realized he had debts and family obligations to settle before fully committing to living moneyless. Carolyn had come to Moab for over a year, and we hung out a lot, but never really camped together. Carolyn wrote her thoughts in Facebook on experimenting with simple living, which I am adding at the end of this blog post.

I suppose I should clarify, folks sometimes have asked me if I'd been in any kind of romantic relationship with those who have come to join me or observe, and I have to clarify that it's been platonic. I say this more for their sakes than mine.

Fickle Projects

I'm still learning lessons on commitment and starting projects. Carolyn and I started "The Sustainable Moab Project", most of which was to convert lawns to gardens as a way of making Moab economically sustainable, less dependent upon money. We had a lot of interest at first, but it sort of fizzled. We had plenty of folks volunteering their yards - too many, in fact, but not enough folks to work them. Part of it had to do with Carolyn and I being too much of rookies, too.

I also had a couple other projects I was trying to do with friends.

Meet the Press

Then my friend, Pemo, told me he had a free press pass from KZMU radio to go to the Sonic Bloom electronic music festival in Georgetown, Colorado. It took me a whole 5 minutes to decide to go with him. Frankly, I loved it - dancing all night with 20-somethings to cutting-edge music. I am astounded at the endless, wondrous possibilities of music nowadays. Pemo and I discussed what is natural what is not natural. Even though I envision a world without money, I don't see technology as un-natural. It is beautiful in balance, if it serves us and we don't serve it. The problem is not the technology itself, but that it becomes out of balance and we become slaves to it, the result of marketing and mass production of products we don't need. The problem isn't cars, it's too many cars, and we now serve cars, cars don't serve us. Right now, electronic music is a beautiful thing. I even saw my friend Bonnie there.

The same creative process within us that produces art and technology is the same process that produces babies and redwoods and planets and amoebas. When we know ourselves we know this.

When we know ourselves, we know Creation, and we know the Seven Days of Creation are Ever Now, the possibilities as endless as the seven directions of Time and Space direct.

"Does it not say in your scripture, you are Elohim?" (quoth Jesus). "In the Beginning, Elohim creates the Heavens and the Earth." (that's present tense, for you Hebrew scholars). When we can stop manipulating, stop controlling, and simply say, "Let light be" or "Let the earth bring forth plants", then, paradoxically, we become participants in Creation.

Anyway, I now had a press pass and Pemo informed me I was his KZMU assistant, so invited me to the Sonic Bloom press conference. We got to hear from the performers' mouths, and I understood even more the human passion and art that goes into electronic music. Pemo pointed out that many of the press were bloggers and that I was a blogger, so I belonged there. So I said I would blog about it. So here it is.

Now, of course, the flip side of it all is that it was a paid festival. It did not have the same vibe as a Rainbow gathering (which is totally free), where there is no exclusion, where masses of people are so open and giving and accepting, because they are there totally voluntarily. I occasionally felt a consciousness of my age (50 years old in a sea of early 20-somethings), an ageism at Sonic Bloom that I don't feel at Rainbow. As much as I was infatuated with the music and all-night ecstatic dancing there, I found myself missing Rainbow gatherings with their sincere open-ness and love. I started thinking I might want to go to the Rainbow Gathering, after all, this summer.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Rainbow Gathering 2011

When I returned to Moab this year, mainly because of the projects and not wanting to hitch-hike more this year. But my projects were kind of fizzling. I decided that if a magical ride to the Rainbow Gathering came along, without my asking - preferably fueled by vegetable oil, not fossil fuels - I'd go. My friend August rolled into Moab with his friend, Jen, and invited me to join them to head to the gathering. They said a veggie oil camper truck was coming through the next day to take us away.

I still felt a bit of a dilemma, to go or not go. Then my friend Damian advised me: "Think of the most irresponsible thing to do and do it! The point of your living this way is to be free of chains, and the point of your living this way is to be free from Babylon's obligations, and it makes us happy to see that. So go for it!"

So off I went. There were 7 of us in the Van. The driver, Collin, I had also happened to meet at Sonic Bloom.

The Rainbow Gathering was splendid and sublime for me, and I am oozing with gratitude. What also amazes me is that I myself didn't see a single law enforcement officer there (though I had heard they had come now and then), which is highly unusual. I never heard of any crime incidents there this time, either. Maybe some happened, but I didn't hear of them. I truly believe law enforcement encourages crime. Case in point: there are usually incidents of crime at Rainbow gatherings, but nothing even near the amount of crime in towns the same size (some 20,000 people), towns under strict law enforcement.

Now I'm in Portland - not sure how long I'll stay around here. I'm staying in the back yard of my friend Tsarra's "Ninja" house now, but have offers of some other friend's houses, too. I haven't been to Food Not Bombs yet, but am itching to hook up with them again. I'm hoping to eventually visit my friend Timo on the east slope, and maybe see friends in Ashland, too. Though I love Moab, it is nice to be out of the Utah desert extreme heat, I must say.

Carolyn's Thoughts

Okay, here's Carolyn's assessment and musings of her past year in Moab that she wrote over a month ago:

Money
After a year of living with as little money as possible, I have realized for myself, based on my own personal experiences (not someone telling me so), that money is a useful tool that I can use for good and great convenience. I realized there are some things I do not want to sacrifice in order to live a moneyless lifestyle: drinking fresh brewed coffee in a quaint, locally-owned coffee shop, going to concerts and festivals, chocolate, and ice cream. I also realize that having a family, which is something I want to do, costs money these days. At the very minimum, one needs a decent shelter for a family and in this society, right now, that requires money. Still, living near-moneyless for a year was a valuable experience. I now see that it is possible to live a wonderful life without money. Also, I am free of the fear of becoming homeless or losing everything.

Technology (electronics)
There is a time and place for all sorts of technologies. By removing all technology from my life for a time, I've learned for myself, from my own personal experiences (not someone telling me so), when it's appropriate to use technology and why. I haven't had a cell phone for a few months now, but still have an infrequent need to contact friends, family, a business, etc. that can't quite be satisfied by Google Voice. Free of addiction, I will reintroduce the cell phone to my life, recognizing that when I am in the present moment with real people, it is almost always totally unacceptable to use it. Having a cell phone will allow me to have a social life in a society not as open to the good ol' "stop by anytime" philosophy. Having a social life is important to me and not having a cell phone greatly reduced my ability to maintain one.

Also important to me is learning. Computers and TV can be amazing tools for learning. So, I will continue to use them. Today, being sick from so much raging, I watched three documentaries: The God Who Wasn't There, Moment of Death, and Food Matters... all about topics I am really interested in: religion, death, and food. Thank goodness for these technologies! We can learn so much!

Technology is to mind as meat is to body. Technology is not necessary to live a good life. Neither is meat. To have a cell phone and a computer, other things happen: mining for the metals, oil for the plastics for the parts, electricity for their fabrication and operation, possible contamination of the environment, addiction, impaired social functioning. To end up with meat on one's plate, many not-so-pleasant things happen too. Being aware of the negative aspects of these luxuries, I appreciate them more and also acknowledge that one day, they may not be available to me so easily and affordably. I'll use technology as a tool while I can.

Hygiene
For a year or so, I've been running experiments in not showering, not using soap, eliminating deodorant, and discontinuing my use of shampoo. In the desert, where the air is dry, this isn't so bad... your sweat dries quickly and washing certain areas with water and Dr. Bronner's is sufficient.

After suffering in the 97 degree, high humidity misery of Arkansas for four days for Wakarusa, I craved a shower like never before. Constantly sweating without relief for 109 hours pushed my limits. But, I wasn't willing to pay $10 for a shower, so I washed myself with a cloth and water. This took a long ass time. And within ten minutes of finishing, I already felt disgusting. So, I now have a rejuvenated appreciation for showering... (and air conditioning)

I wash my pits and privates using Dr. Bronner's. Shower 1-2 times a week. Wash my hair with water, although eventually it really needs some Dr. Bronner's. I like Dr. Bronner's because it's organic, fair trade, mild, and simple. And it's not very smelly. Through experience, it seems that showering less often and using less soap keeps my skin and hair in a healthy, natural state (not dried out and in need of even more products, like lotions and conditioners). And possibly, my natural scent/pheromones are present, which can only be a good thing in my opinion.

Food
I haven't been very respectful of my body over the last few months. There is lots of junk food to be had in the dumpster and it has been really difficult to control my impulses when pastries and pizza are so easily had, and freely! At Wakarusa, I did some drugs and, as expected, my desire for junk food is gone. I want to capitalize on this and continue eating healthily. My next experiment will be a (mostly) raw food diet. I have never tried this before and I expect it to be very difficult.

Activity
I never want to force myself to be active. It should be a natural part of my life. For the most part, it is. I particularly love going to concerts and festivals and dancing for hours and hours. I think dancing is one of those universal healthy good-feeling activities. Walking or biking for commuting purposes is also entirely natural-feeling to me, so I love doing it. Walking, biking, and dancing combined with a healthy diet should be sufficient for good health. Maybe I'll be able to continue climbing rocks too, which would be fun.

Why all these experiments?
To be told that such-and-such is healthy or beneficial and doing it is completely different than to discover for myself that such-and-such is healthy or beneficial and doing it. So, I experiment with my lifestyle, my activities, and my mind and body so that I can learn what is beneficial to me based on my real life experiences. It's a lot easier to do what's good for me if I'm doing them because I know so rather than because I think so from someone telling me so. Experimenting and coming to my own conclusions about everything increases my confidence and enthusiasm. It also makes it pretty hard to suggest to anyone else to do something in particular. Because everyone has to do their own self experiments to find out what's good for them.

I'm not satisfied living life a certain way because that's the way things are done, because someone said so, or because people expect it. I am compelled to break free of childhood and societal conditioning to discover my own realities. It's fascinating, challenging, and rewarding. I think a lot of unhappiness in people's lives is because they follow a path that their family or friends or society or employer showed them.

Down with Big Government, Up with Unbridled Free Market!

2011-05-03T17:31:00.007-06:00

Spring in Moab has been gorgeous, naturally. I've been mostly living in the canyon caves, with a couple short house-sits thrown in.

Phil

Another "apprentice" has come to try the moneyless life with me for an indefinite time. His name is Phil, from Indiana. He came on the Greyhound to Grand Junction, Colorado, at the same time I went to visit my parents near there.

Phil is a 21-year-old wiser than his years and easy-going, and he's teaching me Qigong. It's been good to get back into such practice, since I got out of practice since James started teaching me Tai Chi a couple years ago. It is truly empowering for me.

Phil and I have been camping in a large cave but just move to a smaller one, and we're psyched about our new home.

Towny Goins Ons

After having acquired and shown the film "The Power of Community" mentioned in the last post, Carolyn then was able to get the new movie about Heidemarie Schwermer, "Living Without Money", and show it at Moab's library. We had a nice discussion afterward.

Discussing the movie about Heidemarie Schwermer, "Living Without Money"

Mark Sundeen, the guy writing my bio, also came to Moab about the same time as Phil. The second draft of the book is done, but it looks like it won't be out until March 2012. He came and camped at the big cave with me and Phil, and did a little filming for the book promo. With the camera going, it made it feel, for both Mark and me, like the book was now becoming a reality. A strange feeling. There's something about Mark's personality that is strangely and uniquely similar to mine that makes this whole thing feel like another of the universe's synchronicities.

I just passed the half-century mark last Sunday (May Day). My friends Damian and Dorina hosted a party for me at their house. Carolyn provided the music, most of which was a fabulous mix of new dance music.

Carolyn just left Moab today and I'm missing her. She has been here over a year and has been going through here own gradual transformation to a simpler life. Now she is going on solitary journey with her dog, hitching to the west coast to walk the Pacific Coast Trail. She plans to go for maybe a month, then probably coming back to Moab.

What Are My Political Views?

Maybe this can be another FAQ.

Okay, people often try to get me to talk politics, but I shy away from it. I like to concentrate on the individual state of the heart, and feel that if we all did this, politics would work itself out. By working itself out, I mean working itself out the door, becoming obsolete. I guess I'm going to talk politics now, or it seems that way. But, really, I'm going to talk about faith and the state of the heart.

I've been reading several books and thinking more about the economic and social system again. I read most of the Anthropologist Colin Turnbull's The Forest People when I was in Phoenix, and I'm presently reading another book about the Kalahari Bushmen, The Harmless People, by Anthropologist Elizabeth Marshal Thomas, and thinking about other primitive peoples.

Milton Friedman

Ayn Rand

I've also been reading two very different views of capitalism: Niall Fergusen's The Ascent of Money as well as Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Both those books talk about Milton Friedman, the first in his praise, the second not. The first talks about the glories of a Free Market system, with little or no government control. This Free Market system is an ideology that drives modern "Republicanism" and right-wing "Libertarianism." Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman were its biggest and most popular prophets. (See My Answer to Ayn Rand)

Let There Be Unbridled Free Market!

The ideas of Republicans and Right-Wing Libertarians, and the greatest of their prophets, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, appeal to our human instinctual sense of faith, which is why a great majority of religious people lap them up. This is despite the fact that Rand and Friedman were avowed atheists.

Karl Marx

Joseph Stalin

When I read the philosophies of the Free Market Capitalists, their ideas start making so much sense to me, it kind of frightens me. Then, when I read the philosophies of the Socialists, their ideas also make so much sense to me. But the Socialist ideas don't frighten me so much, simply because I am more biased toward "socialism", since I have seen with my own ideas the disaster caused by the unbridled capitalism espoused by the likes of Friedman and Rand. As for religious people, the religious right loves the ideas of Rand and Friedman, avowed atheists, and the religious left loves the ideas of Marx, an avowed atheist. Kind of funny, huh? But notice how people like Ayn Rand, who had grown up in a "Socialist" state, saw how disastrous "socialism" was. Perhaps I would have felt as strongly against "socialism" as I do about "capitalism" had I also been raise in the USSR. After all, Joseph Stalin had more people massacred than any other person in history, including Adolph Hitler.

I've always felt that every ideology and every religion is based on profound truth, and somehow that truth gets lost when the ideology gets institutionalized. I totally get it why Republicans believe as they do when I learn Republican ideology. I also get it when I learn Democratic ideology. Same with Communists, Socialists, Libertarians, and Anarchists. The same goes for religion. If you care to pick most any religion and delve into it, you will start seeing why people believe it is the Greatest Religion of All.

There is a strange Law of the Universe going on here. To practice the Golden Rule is to put yourself into another's shoes so thoroughly you can see exactly how two "opposing" views can believe they are right. Then you can hypothesize: Maybe both sides aren't really opposing! Maybe at their deepest core they are saying the same thing? We often devalue and deny our feelings, but, really, feelings are the deepest core of what drives us, and feelings are our point of agreement.

So, then, here's what I feel: I don't like to be controlled. Often throughout my life, I got angry when I felt controlled or when I saw others being controlled. It was a yearning for freedom. One thing that both sides of the political spectrum feel is a yearning for freedom, to not be controlled. My moneyless philosophy is based on this feeling, and I use logic to communicate it. And, yes, I grew up in a Republican household, so I can safely say I understand the Republican yearning. I have both embraced it, reacted against it, and then re-examined it.

When I feel what right-wingers are saying, I get it. I feel that a Free Market makes sense. But then I see that jargon gets in the way of truth, as it also does, equally, with left-wingers.

No government control. I like that idea. The word "free". I like that. Free Market. Don't control business and money flow. Let everybody do their own thing, and everything will work out. "Let everybody do their own thing" sounds totally liberal, not conservative. Hmm. This appeals to that childhood yearning to not be controlled. Amen, preach it! When "conservatives" say "let everybody do their own thing", that applies to public morality (don't inhibit greed and war, business, and property). When "liberals" say "let everybody do their own thing", that applies to private morality, personal conduct. Both are reacting against a feeling of control, seeking a freedom.

But I like the idea of Free Market and No Government Control, but only if we apply it to all levels. What is a Free Market? If you understand the very nature of money (see the What Money Is and What Money Is Not) you find that the very nature of money, why it was invented, is control, manipulation of the free-flow of nature's economy, lack of faith that credit and debt will work itself out if we just let it be. Let it be!

A Free Market is utterly impossible with money or conscious barter involved. The only Free Market possible is Pay-It-Forward, with no consciousness of credit and debt. The Great Banker in the Sky controls all pay-back, all vengeance, all "punishment" and "reward". There can be no other just banker: no banker on earth can be just. Nature is in balance, with its hardships and pleasures, while you can't find a trade economy on earth that can balance its budget. Nature is the only Free Market. This is the principle that appeals to both the liberal and conservative, our deepest nature, our deepest yearning.

Big Corporations Are Big Government!

Excuse me if I point out common sense: Corporations are governments. Governments are corporations. Whoever has the money and stuff rules. If you believe in corporations, you believe in Big Government. If you believe in unbridled business you believe in unbridled Big Government. Property owners are called lords for a reason. If you possess, you rule, you control. If all land goes private, all land is owned, not free. This is not a free land if the land is owned, by anybody. No land is free if it can be bought and sold. A person bought and sold is a slave. I'm not saying anything genius or novel. This is simple seeing.

If you use money, you agree to control. If you accumulate possessions, you agree to control. Possession and Control are synonyms, are they not? If you agree to money and possessions, you agree to law. You must have law, you must have government, if you have money and possessions. Law is nothing more than money-management, possession-management. We invented barter and money (consciousness of credit and debt) out of our lack of faith in Natural Process. We accumulated possessions out of our lack of faith in Natural Provision. We ceased believing in the Banker in the Sky.

All our world ideologies, political and religious, are based on profound truth. I dare say our ideologies don't work because we don't really believe them, we only pretend to.

Lao Tzu

Jesus

If you want to be a true Libertarian or Republican, you must truly believe the Free Market you espouse, which can only exist apart from money and possession. If you want to be a Christian, you must truly believe in the teachings of your own Jesus (You have them right there in your own Bibles, most likely printed in red letters so you can't miss them). If you want to be a Buddhist, you must truly believe in the teachings of your own Buddha. I say the same for Taoists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Bahais (See Here's the One Thing the World's Religions Agree Upon (In Word)

Truly Free Market Populations

As far as Free Market happening in human populations, I use true hunter-gatherers as an example. I discuss this in the website (A Culture Living Abundantly Without Money Today and Our Fall From Grace: Our Departure From Gratis:The Beginning of Money), though I left out talking about the Pygmies. Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, is a beautiful work of art about the Pygmies, and it shows the contrast between the mentality of the Hunting/Gathering Pygmies with the surrounding Trade/Agricultural tribes.

Yes, when I talk hunting and gathering societies, I'm talking societies that don't even consciously barter. (When you have only what you need, you can't afford to barter, because in barter, you usually have to take something you don't need off hand, because the needs are not simultaneous, as in freely giving and freely receiving). People sometimes argue that many primitive societies are violent and far from balance, like the Yanomamo or Papua New Guinea tribes. However, both those, too, are not true hunter-gatherers, but agricultural and trade societies. Both those societies even have a calculated system of war trade. In Papua New Guinea tribes, for example, if one person is killed by another tribe, the other tribe must either kill a person of that tribe, or seek trade retribution (such as pigs or other goods). I like using these primitive tribes as examples of the transformation that happens when people take on consciousness of credit and debt (knowledge of good and evil), manifesting in the form of agriculture, war, domestic violence, and barter/money. These non-hunter-gatherer primitive tribes are the seeds of modern civilization. I'm not necessarily a primitivist, as I discuss in the essays above.

There's No Such Thing As Supernatural: Everything Is Miracle!

2011-03-25T02:09:00.006-06:00

Dark Night of the Soul

Things have felt a bit difficult since being back in Moab - not so much outwardly, but in my body, mind, and spirit. I just got over a bad case of bronchitis that's been going around Moab. And inwardly, it's incredible the times of intense doubt I was catching myself going through the past few weeks, nothing like I've felt since giving up money. But I sit with those times, and they pass, and I then find that something grand has been growing in me in those times like a baby in the womb. I have a pregnant cousin who is describing a similar intensity within her.

Snail-Mail Synchronicity

Outwardly, perfect synchronicities keep happening. I forgot to mention one that happened in Phoenix months ago. I'd left Slab City and forgot to return a poetry book (written by a former Moabite) to my friend, Jon, there. He emailed me and I told him I'd mail it back to him. Then I remembered snail-mailing takes money. One time I had to mail a package some 9 years ago, and I found a pile of coins in the street, just enough to mail it that day. But this time I didn't want to use money. I'd rather this time send it with somebody or something already going to Slab City. But what are the chances of that? A silent voice deep inside me kept saying, "just you watch, it'll work out," so I ceased worrying about it. I was staying at Claire's house, never having mentioned this to her, and one day she asked me, "I am going to the post office to mail a package to some friends in Slab City. Would you like me to mail anything anywhere for you? My mouth dropped open. We simply included the little book in her package and she sent it off. Then she asked me, "So if you don't use money, how on earth did you intend to get that back to Slab City?" I said, "I didn't have a clue. But it's happening right now, and you're part of the mysterious process, huh?"

Sleeping-Bag Synchronicity

Now, back in Moab, I've stayed mostly up at the cave, but decided to also set up a camp near town for when I can't make it up the canyon at night. I still had the sleeping bag Gregory and Beth had lent me last autumn for the California trip. But I still wanted to use it at the town camp, since it was still too cold at night for a blanket, and return it when it got warmer. I wanted to see Gregory and Beth, but, I must confess, I was avoiding it because I didn't want to deal with the sleeping bag.

Meanwhile, Carolyn and I have been brainstorming about things we could do to cultivate sustainability in Moab, to break people's dependence on money. We had both seen the film, "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" at about the same time last winter, her back east and me in LA, which got us both inspired to want to do something back in Moab. I kept talking about how we should start mobilizing people to convert their yards to vegetable gardens, among other things. Last week, she said, "Why don't we get something going right now, schedule a gathering and show the film?" I agreed, so we scheduled the "Sustainable Moab Project and Potluck". We were wondering where we would get seeds, and if people would step up to provide yards to garden, so we'd have something to start with.

That night I crawled back into Gregory and Beth's sleeping bag, thinking how I needed to return it to them. That silent voice spoke to me again: "Where is your faith? Just return it to them tomorrow and you just watch something work out!" I knew they would actually give the bag to me if I asked, but I wanted to return it to them, especially after that silent voice. So the next day I packed up the bag, ready to take back to them, but first decided to ride over to my friend Pete's house, near the storage unit, before I brought them the bag. There on the ground was a really nice sleeping bag laid out (I've lost count, but I think this is the fourth or fifth time I've had a sleeping-bag miracle happen like this exactly at the right time over the last 15 years). Then I took Gregory and Beth's bag back to them.

Sustainable Moab Project Synchronicity

Little did I know as I returned the sleeping bag, Gregory and Beth had heard about our Sustainable Moab Project and said they really wanted to participate, though they didn't have time to work but had a yard we could maybe use, plus they had two boxes of all kinds of seeds they wanted to give us, along with a good gardening book! I had no idea they would be interested or had those things!

So we had our Sustainable Moab Project Potluck, showed the movie, and had a pretty good brainstorm discussion afterward. Even with our last-minute notice, over 15 people showed up. I feel so grateful Carolyn is here. She's lighting a fire under me and we're doing things I don't think I have the gumption to initiate on my own. But it sometimes hits Carolyn and me that we wonder what we're getting ourselves into. Sometime this seems a daunting commitment, and naturally we have felt scared. But she just read something very wise about fear (maybe I can put the reference here later) and shared it with me. We think of fear as a bad thing, it said, but, if we use it right, fear is actually the source of exciting energy that takes us out of our listlessness, giving us the power to perform and build our project. I'm realizing that's so true. People who do risky sports like rock-climbing or tight-rope walking know this. Everything in the universe is good, in its proper place and timing, including fear.

In Tent Synchronicity

Meanwhile, back at the camp, I slept cozy in the new bag. A couple nights it was really windy, and my tarps and plastic coverings were whipping around like crazy, tearing the plastic. Rainclouds were blowing in with a few showers. I've always preferred tarps or plastic to a tent, because they're simpler, but this time I thought, "I think I now need a tent - this is getting a bit out of hand." Then next day I rode back to that storage unit and decided to peak in the dumpster and saw what I thought was a rolled up tarp. I took it, thinking it would be good reinforcement. I unrolled it back at the camp and discovered it was a pup tent, in perfect condition, with stakes! So now I'm all bourgeoisie at my townhouse with a sleek sleeping bag and tent.

Nothing or Nobody is Special:
All the Universe is in Synchronicity

Yeah, this is stuff that keeps happening to me outwardly. And it's not because I'm special. Rain falls on everybody, good and bad, alike. Miracles happen to everybody, but most people don't notice them because too much stuff and thought accumulation closes their eyes to it. How else would life have evolved so miraculously and synchronistically million years after million years? For me, it astonishes me that I forget these continual synchronicities so easily, and it scares me a bit that I can relate to the Pharaoh in the Torah legend, hardening his heart even after getting miracle after miracle thrown in front of him. Rationality is a good and natural thing, but when it gets out of balance, it becomes a bully and rationalizes away intuition, blinds us to miracles continually before our eyes.

No Such Thing as Supernatural:

Everything is Miracle

But we must be clear what miracle really is. When we become superstitious, we think miracles are super-natural, because our minds are strayed from the present, unable to see that every moment is total miracle. What we think is "supernatural" is nothing more than natural that is somewhere else, that we can't explain. If we saw "supernatural" occurrences here and now, we would get bored with them as natural. Nature is miracle, and the mind removed from nature, discontent with nature, is searching for super-natural. It's our
"adulterous" mind, our mind that cheats on the Present, that seeks after signs, seeks miracles other than what's before our face. It's the marketing mind, which thinks imported products are better because they are from "exotic" places. But to the pure, all things are pure. To the miraculous, all things are miraculous.

The very first chapter of the Bible says that everything in the universe is Good (Genesis 1:31). According to the Gospels, Jesus says there is none Good but One God (Luke 18:19) If you believe Genesis and Jesus don't contradict, you can draw only one conclusion.

Death and Resurrection Ever Now
To the true Christian, a seed sprouting from the ground and a baby being born is exactly as miraculous as Jesus rising from the dead or Adam being formed from the dust of the ground, because they are all One Thing, all happening ever Now, and the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Quran constantly states that the Death and Resurrection is ever happening before our eyes, and that the Day of Resurrection is the Eternal Today, and we all resurrect as One Soul (Quran 31:28). The superstitious mind might think I am devaluing Jesus by saying his resurrection is no more significant than a fungus spore sprouting. On the contrary, our superstitious mind is devaluing the Omnipresence of Christ by not recognizing that Jesus and the fungus spore resurrecting are one thing, Christ come in the flesh, right before our eyes, that Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11), Ever Here. The Bhagavad Gita emphasizes this, that the enlightened mind sees the Holy in everything and everybody and regards dirt, stone, and gold as all equal (Gita 14:24). The marketing mind sees one object more valuable than another, one person better than another, one thing, place, or person as sacred and another as profane, one event more favorable than another, one religion superior to others, unlike the Holy mind, which is no respecter of persons, as the Bible keeps saying . The Tao of Heaven is impartial, Tao Te Ching 79 says. The Infant Mind is the Zen mind, and sees all things in perfect equanimity, the Buddhist sutras keep telling us.

Persecuting the Holy

Is Persecuting Nature
Is Persecuting Our Own Natures

People crucify the Holy before their very eyes because they only see insignificance, common-ness. They do not see that the way, the truth, and the life is Omnipresent, everywhere and right here, I am who I am. They think the Holy always comes as a crowned King in glorious robes and splendor in the sky, or in some miraculous time in past history, but never present (which is the only reality). But the Holy is always right here, equally now as ever. The only thing that changes is how we choose to perceive it. In the Quran, the Holy says,

We are nearer to a person than his jugular vein.
(Quran 50:16)

and the Torah says

It is not in heaven, that you should say,

'Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us,

that we may hear it and do it?'

Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say,

'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us,

that we may hear it and do it?'

But the word is very near you,

in your mouth and in your heart,

that you may do it.

(Deuteronomy 30:13-14)

Because our minds are not present, separate from nature, we think the Holy is also somewhere else, separate from nature, and we think the Holy in front of our eyes is insignificant and silly, so we continually condemn and trample the Holy. We mistreat and reject each other, we mistreat and reject nature, not realizing we are mistreating and rejecting the Holy:

In the Tao Te Ching, the Holy speaks:

Because people do not understand,
they have no knowledge of me.
Those who know me are few;
Those who abuse me are honored.
Therefore the Sage wears rough clothing
And holds the jewel in his heart.
(Tao Te Ching 70)

Repeated in the Tao Te Ching:

He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people
is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country's disasters
deserves to be King of the Universe.
(Tao Te Ching 78)

In the Christian Gospels, the Holy says:

I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. (Matthew 25:43)

and

The world did not know him.
He came unto his own,
and his own did not receive him.
(John 1:10-11)

The Jewish Tanach says the same about the Holy:

The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone. (Psalm 118:22)

The Divine says in the Bhagavad Gita:

Not knowing my transcendent nature as the sovereign Lord of all beings, fools condemn me incarnated as a human. (Bhagavad Gita 9:11)

And the Dhammapada of Buddha says of this same Holy:

The world may hate him
but good people love him. (Dhammapada 6)

The master endures insults and ill treatment
without reacting. (Dhammapada 26)

Movement and Rest

2011-02-03T18:36:00.004-07:00

I made it back to Moab!

Conjuring the Past, What has Passed

Though going to Phoenix was totally unplanned, it became a place of conjuring up my past. I spent most of a weekend with my cousin, Scott, and his partner, Michelle, at their house, and got to meet their daughter, Christine, and their grandson. Scott lived with my immediate family when we were kids, and, of course, we talked a lot about old times. He also showed me what he does for his work, now, helping to develop neighborhood lay-outs with computer schemata. Scott sent me off with some clothes and food for the road.

The day before I left Phoenix I was doing email at the ASU campus, and a high-school classmate, Don, emailed me and said his office was on the campus, a couple blocks from where I was! It turns out he teaches Russian at ASU! I hadn't seen Don since high school, 30 years ago! I only got to talk to him for a half hour, since he had a class to teach. But we learned quite a bit about each other in that 30 minutes.

Seeing old family and friends reminds me how fleeting life is. Seems like common sense, but we constantly forget. Funny how we put so much stock into passing vapors and the castles we build on crests of waves. When I get worried, or when I think the injustice of society is overwhelming, I remind myself it takes a galaxy hundreds of millions of years to make one revolution! Our nations, our religions, our institutions, and our philosophies are blinks in time. We're like gnats, soon swatted by the Cosmic Hand. We often think we and our systems are the center of the Universe, lasting forever.

But we can forgive ourselves, because our perceived self-importance is also part of nature, a tricky play of the Universe! And the dissolving of our illusion of self-importance, our Dis-Illusion, is the Grand Finale of the Play! Disillusionment happens to every single one of us, but is either heaven or hell to each of us, depending on whether or not we are willing to Let Go, give up all possession. Dis-illusion is breaking of illusion (Crucifixion) into Reality. Reality is Eternal. It wouldn't be Reality if it weren't! And Reality is Hell if we run from Reality. Reality is Heaven if we fully embrace Reality. But the paradox is, if we are desiring heaven or fearing hell, we are running from Reality.

Inch-by-Inch, Back to Moab

Besides the above happenings, and hanging out with Claire, her house-mate Dave, and her friends, my life in Phoenix was fairly non-eventful. I felt it was time to go.

Dave's friend, Kevin, was driving them to Durango, Colorado, last Thursday, so I decided to ride with them as far as Shiprock, New Mexico, and camped in the woods there. Next morning a Navajo couple gave me a ride as far as Cortez, Colorado in the back of their pick-up. A young woman took me to Dove Creek, CO. She was studying to be a nurse. She and her mom take excess clothes from thrift stores and distribute them where needed, and they also pick up stray animals and shelter them. Obviously, she picks up stray humans, too. After raiding a dumpster for food in Dove Creek, I got a ride to Monticello with a local who lived there. I slept in the hammock in the woods there. The next morning I walked out to the highway and didn't get a chance to put my pack down when a guy named Felipe stopped for me and took me to Moab. Felipe was from Houston and had never been through Utah before, and was awe-stricken by the landscape.

I must say, this time I now feel way burned out on hitch-hiking, and am glad to be back in Moab. The first person I ran into was my houseless friend, Harold, who talked me into going to the free Sunday Brunch put on by Wabi Sabi thrift store.

Then I headed up the canyon to set up camp, where I holed up in the cave a couple nights as a cold front blew in. I can't describe the relief I felt being in the wilderness. I upgraded the flue on the wood stove I had made form a cookie tin, sealing it with river mud, so there was no more leaking smoke in the cave. It's toasty warm in there. I also went back to a "seep" where I've gotten water and found its source is a regular bubbling spring, so I don't have to worry about critters trampling in my water. I feel so blessed up there.

It's good to see old friends back in town. Today, Carolyn was fired up about getting together with John M and me to brainstorm on ideas of creating alternatives to the money system. I don't want to blog about them unless we actually start doing those things.

Los Angeles Review

Since I couldn't post photos before, here's a photo review of my time in LA:

Eric and Grace

Jayme, Isaac, Eric, Jen


Isaac, Jen, Jayme, me, Jeromy

Veronica, Celina, me

Jayme, Paul, Jen, Isaac

Only Reality Is At Hand - All Else Is Illusion

2011-01-19T19:18:00.013-07:00

Now I'm in Phoenix, looking for a ride to Moab, Utah or thereabouts.

There are photos to share, but I can't do it on this ASU public computer, so maybe I can share them later.

From Slabs to Fee Nicks and Knacks

I thought I was parked in Slab City for a while. But my new friend, Claire, talked me into hitching out with her at the last minute.

I was just feeling I was getting to know Slab City and meet some really, really interesting folks, so it feels like I left something undone there. I guess that means I'll be back there sometime.

Claire is in her early 20s, pleasant, easy-going, and good-looking, with anarchist ideals, loving to philosophize and sing with the guitar. I had, incidentally, found a book of folk music from around the world lying in the desert near Slab City, so we've been learning songs from it since.

Claire and I got a ride to Brawley with a Slabs resident. That afternoon we tried hitching east on 78 to no avail. So we hit some Brawley dumpsters, harvested feral dates, and went to stay in the abandoned warehouse I'd slept in on my way to Slab City. We played guitar and sang until we couldn't stay awake any longer.

The next day we tried hitching most the day. Only one in thousands picks up hitch-hikers in southern Cali. But Claire and I kept ourselves entertained with singing and philosophising. Finally a young dude named Dan gave us a ride to Holbrook. Dan was from a farming family and was a student at a Christian college in eastern Texas, at home around Holbrook for the holidays. He said he wanted to be a missionary helping prostitutes in developing countries to escape their plight. He let us off at I-8 on a ramp at which nary a car passed.

We decided it was futile hitching there. According to our map, El Centro was 5 miles back, so we walked west again, gorging on the plethora of dates on the way. We learned my map was bogus, and we ended up walking 15 miles to El Centro.  We had thought for sure we could be in Phoenix by now, and Claire had classes there to attend, so she called her parents who bought us bus tickets to Phoenix with her Christmas money. Yeah, I decided to accept the ticket, a bit disappointed, but very very very grateful to finally be getting out of southern Cali.

Phoenix Habitation

Claire told me I could stay at her house the winter if I wanted, though I'm feeling an urge to finally go back to Moab, despite that it's cold there and warm here. She has 3 other room-mates. I decided to sleep in the garage where pigeons enter and greet me every morning, and where I can practice guitar unabashedly.

My second cousin, Scott, also lives in Phoenix, and I've gotten to see him for the first time in some 25 years! He was a teenager when I last saw him! He calls me Danny and I call him Scotty.

Claire and her roomies are way generous and share everything, but I've been able to also forage tons of food. Oranges grow everywhere, as well as some dates, pecans, and edible acorns that don't need processing. For greens I've been eating lots of mallow, which grows all over the US in urban areas. Of course there's the usual urban foraging in dumpsters, too.

Pondering My Role

I've been pondering my role in community these days. My moneyless comrades, Mark Boyle, in the UK, and Heidemarie Schwermer in Germany are more of community movers than I. Mark's book, The Moneyless Man, is out and so is Heidemarie's movie, Living Without Money.  The proceeds from Mark's book are going to buying some land to start a moneyless community, and I think Heidemarie's movie's proceeds are going to charity.  They have both already previously started their own projects to motivate community participation in moneyless living (see their links to the right). They inspire me to do similar, but I ask, what? We each have different paths, different functions.

I've sometimes toyed with the idea of helping start a moneyless community, mostly because I want to be able to offer something to the many people with families and kids who ask me what they should do to live moneyless. But, in my path, I feel totally resistant about purchasing any kind of land to start such a thing, even if it means I don't accept any proceeds. A big part of my philosophy is to live in this world as if it is already moneyless community, and actually it really is. It's a matter of bringing to light and cultivating what's already here, at hand: freely giving and freely receiving that is the True Nature of every human already existing, at hand.

Also, I'm realizing my path and my philosophy is Pot Luck. Let me explain.

Pot Lucky Visions

A pot luck is where people bring food already at hand (the luck of the pot) together and share it. According to the original idea, you don't buy anything, you use what is already at hand by "luck."  By mystical coincidence* it is related to the Native American potlach, where people regularly brought goods at hand together to give away for the shear pleasure of giving away, to maintain egalitarian community [*It seems the word potluck existed in Europe long before anybody heard of the Native American potlach].

Okay, sometimes I accept something somebody buys me, albeit reluctantly, like the bus ticket. I like it better, it's more magical, when it's something already at hand. "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." For me personally, if it's not at hand, it's not the Kingdom of Heaven, and it's better and more magical and funner to do without it.

Last night I was brainstorming about starting moneyless community using what is at hand, without having to exchange money to start it, or to even pay taxes. "Is this possible?" My doubting Thomas side asks.

Why Buy Farmland?

What if we totally revived the idea of the Victory Garden of the Depression era and took it to new levels?

Is there any way to take land that is already owned, already at hand, and share it? Maybe for you, right now, totally giving up land is too radical. What if simply digging up your wasteful, unsustainable lawn and opening up your yard to community gardening to feed people for free could be your contribution! Maybe if you don't have time or desire to work it you could open it up to people who do.

Why Buy Habitation Land?

Then I thought about churches. This may be the one doorway in the USA to make this vision possible. To my understanding, churches don't pay taxes on property used for religious purposes, not used for profit, and I don't think they have to go through any 501(c)(3) fee hoops that non-profit institutions go through. I once heard of some folks who declared their community house a church and became tax free. I need help with this from you folks out there who know more about this than I.

I'm Calling For Your Help

Churches all over this land own land, already tax free, at hand. What if we called for any of those thousands of churches to consider doing something radical and not just hearing and talking, but acting on the teachings of their own faith, creating a communal space in which nobody owns anything but everyone shares all things in common?

If a church doesn't want to partake in this Pot Luck, what about going into the hi-ways and bi-ways and asking non-religious people to this Supper? What if regular religious or non-religious people who own houses and land hear the call and are inspired enough to give up their ownership to this vision, declaring it a "church?"

Yes, what if we could slide outside the money game without buying anything, without searching for anything, but simply by using what is at hand, Here and Now?

We have all these resources at hand that are locked up, that we are not using for Life. We have dead religion at hand that neither the "religious" or the "non-religious" use in practice. The religious are asleep to it and the non-religious are so repulsed by religious hypocrisy they won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. We have a dead constitution at hand that neither the "patriot" nor the "rebel" use in practice, for the same reason. It could provide this door to make this moneyless vision possible. We have land at hand that is owned and not shared, guarded in fear and dead sterility, covered with useless lawns and structures. We have food at hand, locked up inside supermaket walls and locked inside dumpsters, destined for the landfill, even as millions of people in this world are malnourished or starving. We have neighbors at hand whom we don't even know, because we're too fearful and too busy loving everything and everybody except our neighbor, when loving our neighbor is our only requirement in life. We have everything we need at hand, but we say, "when I have enough money, enough education, enough this or that, then I'm going to do such and such good for the world." Let me let you in on a secret: if you can't do love now, what makes you think you can do love later?

Change yourselves, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Matt. 3:2).

Slab City

2010-12-31T14:18:00.001-07:00

I'm in Slab City, California (near the Salton Sea). It's been weeks since I could get onto a computer. I'm not sure when I can do Internet again, so don't expect comments or replies from me.

Isaac, Jen, and I didn't have much success finding a boat to Hawaii. Yachts & sailboats rarely go to Hawaii this time of year, and port security for freighters is way too high to even get near a port much less into it to even ask people. Everybody we talked to was pretty clueless. It's probably worth trying again in warmer months.

Both Isaac's and Jen's families wanted them home for Christmas, so both families bought them round trip plane tickets back to Illinois. They want to return to San D after the holidays and, this time, hitch south to Costa Rica (and maybe hookup with our friend Aaron on his farm there). I don't like San D and didn't want to wait around there, plus I feel the risk of hitching without ID, much less passport, past the border just isn't worth it right now.

So I started walking east, through miles upon miles of mcmansions in Chula Vista (a SD burb).  I thought I'd see if I could make it back to my parents' by Christmas. But the rains and wind hit, and I hunkered down in a baseball field bathroom "foyer" for 3 days until the rain sort of passed.  The next day I started walking and came to Lower Otay Lake. I was absolutely overjoyed to finally be out of the city and hit the beautiful countryside. But it started raining again. Border patrols were everywhere, and a man and woman stopped to see why in the world I was walking in the middle of nowhere in the rain, 4 miles from the Mexican border. The woman seemed way too serious, but the man was friendly. He seemed like a classic, young, idealistic military type. He said he thought my living without money was "cool". They told me where a campground was miles up the road, and took off. Then they screeched a u-y and came back.  The man asked if I wanted a ride to the campsite, and the woman seemed annoyed at him.  He told me there were hot showers there. There was a shelter there which I stayed in until the rain subsided. Then I found a tree outside the ground and set up my hammock high in its branches. And I went into the campsite and took a hot shower. Thought I was in heaven. It rained all night and I got kind of wet, but stayed warm.

I walked further until I found a creek and a bridge. I camped under the bridge.  The sun finally came out so I could dry my bag and wash my clothes.  Border patrols were everywhere, watching my every move. But they were all super friendly with me.

I decided to hitch up Honey Springs road, more away from the border, than Highway 78, A man picked me up right away. I asked him what day it was and was surprised to learn it was Christmas Eve. He was really kind and took me way out of his way to I-5. He gave me a burrito, too.  Very few cars were going east on 5. One man with "Jesus" and a big fish on his TShirt stopped and handed me $10. I then decided it would be better to hitch the road crossing under I-5, and found out it was highway 78.  It was the road going north to 79, which heads to the Salton Sea. I had had it in my mind days before to go that way anyway, so this was working out! I'd heard Slab City was that way, so maybe I could check it out.

Hundreds of cars passed me by. People have more important things to do on Christmas Eve than practice the teachings of the one who's birth they celebrate. Finally a couple Jehovah's Witnesses (who don't celebrate Christmas) stopped and gave me a ride, going way out of their way to the town of Julian, but preaching my ear off in the process. I was told it was going to rain again, and my tarps were leaky, so I hunkered down at an awning at an elementary school. I found lots of apples in Julian, and lots of good food thrown away at the school. The sheriff kept watching me, but didn't seem to be bothered I was staying around the school.  It rained crazy that night. But the sun came out on Chrismas and I started hitching again. Hundreds of cars passed me by that day until a 70-something man named Fred stopped. He said he thought I was a Pacific Trail hiker. He asked me what I did, and seemed extremely irritated that I lived without money. I actually appreciated finally meeting somebody willing to tell me that to my face. Hundreds do it anonymously on the Internet, but few to my face. That's what I like about old people, they often speak their heart. Anyway, we discussed it and went round and round with my philosophies until he started getting what I was saying and doing. He then got really friendly and we enjoyed each others' company thoroughly. He told me about Slab City and Salvation Mountain and Leonard Knight (who created the mountain). He took me all the way to Brawley.

I dumpstered some food there, and a couple stopped and handed me a delicious Chinese dinner-to-go. I started walking up hiway 111 toward Slab City. There were lots of feral date trees, and a fig tree, so I stocked up their fruits. I found an abandoned warehouse and slept there in my hammock. The next morning I got a ride right away from a woman named Helen. She took me to her home town of Nyland. I started walking to Slab City from there, and a super nice Slab resident named Evergreen gave me a ride in, and introduced me to some folks. A woman named Karen showed me a place to camp near here little trailer. We've quickly become good friends. I've met some good people here so far, and am glad I'm here. It's nice to rest. I'm clueless how long I'll be here. Maybe until the winter passes. I had no plans to be here, but here I am. It's a strange, funny place, and it's growing on me. I met Leonard Knight and his Salvation Mountain, too. A beautiful spirit he is.

For days I felt really lost and disconcerted. But, deep down, this is state of mind I so wanted to experience. It's a beautiful thing, believe me, to find yourself in a position of being totally lost, discouraged, and full of doubt - ready to throw in the towel on everything; but, then, to take those feelings and sit with them. Find out where they're coming from. Hand them over to God, if you want to use that lingo. Then watch the infinite Peace come. It's absolutely splendid. I've been getting into the Baghavad Gita again, and seeing again its shining splendor. For me, it shines light on Christianity, revealing it's deeper mysteries, rather than diminishes it.

San Diego

2010-12-13T19:52:00.002-07:00

I'm in the San Diego area with Isaac and Jen. Computer time and access is rare so this could be the last post for a while. Jen's cellphone died, too, so texting email is out, too. This is a quick and scattered post.

Our encounters with friends, new and old, has been absolutely grand. We spent Thanksgiving with Roy's family. One of the funnest Thanksgivings I've ever had.
Then we spent time with my close friend Grace, as well as our friends Jeromie and Jayme. We also got to stay over at the house of Grace's boyfriend Eric and his roommates, Paul and Jupiter as well as Eric's daughters. Paul wowed us with his sitar music, having studied under Ravi Shankar.

From Jen's cellphone. Our camp beach.
Sun dim like moon through clouds.
I don't have time to figure out
how to right-side-up these.

Paul took us down to Santa Monica where we walked the coastline trying to check out all the harbors and docks in our attempt to find something to Hawaii. Futile attempts. We found some shopping carts for our packs and walked for 3 days to the southern side of LA. Then we hitched southward, camping on the beach and in random crannies of civilization. And who should pick us up and take us half way to San Diego, way out of her way? A young woman named Apania, Jenna Jameson's personal assistant. Apania was so friendly and funny - had us laughing the whole way. Gave us an inside tour of California's chic spots down the coast. What a foreign world, almost creepy to me. Apania commented on how she serves the rich and is around unbelievable wealth and celebrities constantly, but hasn't enough to pay her own rent. But she said she has a deep bond with Jenna, a priceless friendship.

We camped the beach that night, were told in the morning it was illegal. We tried hitching, then walked. We camped in a crack under a road overlooking the ocean. We tried hitching out of Carlsbad but some cops told us hitch-hiking was illegal, and we'd be cited if we got caught again the next 15 miles. I discussed with one of the cops how unjust the law was, telling him both he and I knew in our hearts such a law has nothing to do with serving and protecting humans, but it had everything to do with economic status. He couldn't officially agree because he has a job he has to do, and has to say what he is paid to say, and that helps me not be angry. Slaves to mammon cannot do other than what mammon says, otherwise they would not be slaves. I understand, I've had plenty of jobs where I sacrificed my mind for the mind of the institution I worked for. After the cops left, a man named parked at the beach, named Carlos, called us over, asking us what happened. "Fascists." he said, "I'll give you a ride, though I can't go very far." But he ended up giving us another royal tour of the entire coast, all the way to San Diego! "I didn't have anything to do, anyway!" He said.

So we've been walking a lot, with shopping carts again. It's strange, this lifestyle. I go from feeling overly flattered from publicity to going to feeling less than scum from the looks and the treatment of quite a few people. Both the flattery and the ill treatment are based on distorted images in the head, not on reality. Isaac and Jen have discussed how troubled it makes them feel, sometimes, too. My masochist side actually gets off on it all, like it's some big wonderful challenge to maintain noble dignity at the bottom of the heap. I love it in fact, usually. But we're almost always treated with real respect by the Mexicans here, who now an then astound us with their generosity and friendliness. I've found there isn't much to eat in dumpsters in Mexican neighborhoods. They keep giving us what they don't eat instead of throwing it away.

Then there's the authorities. Most everything is military and high security here. Cops, military all around, continual helicopter surveillance from above. Pretty much everything is illegal when you don't have money. I'm not being facitious by saying that to live freely is to live illegally. You simply cannot live without money and be legal here. I suppose that's true all over the US, but especially here. But I can also see it from the viewpoint of law enforcement. There are simply too many people here, and it's out of control. Everybody wanted to move to beautiful southern Cali, and everything turned into money and privatization and business and military. Humanity has been almost squeezed out of the picture. You try to rest your bones at a business, the owners shoe you away. You try to rest your bones on "public" land, the cops shoe you away. You walk, you're tresspassing. You hitch-hike, you're an illegal "threat." If you live free, you remind people that something matters besides business, and that might be bad for the economy. But people are "free": "free" to shop, "free" to buy plastic surgery and botox and silicon injections, and look at all the "freedom" of choice at supermarkets and malls! Okay, I'm seeing this place from a different viewpoint than most. But few get to see it from the bottom. So now you get to see it from homeless eyes. I hope it's a bit uncomfortable for you.

We've been sleeping in a park and found an abandoned rowboat on a nearby fenced-off beach. I found some discarded cans of latex paint and used it to patch up the holes. So we might take it into the bay tomorrow and float south. That's probably illegal too. We're still open for a chance to find a magical boat to Hawaii, but not attached to expectations if it doesn't happen.

I'm still learning guitar and feeling good about it. We have flutes with us, too.

I love Jen and Isaac more than I can say. They're amazingly still with me though I've led them on a wild goose chase. We are amazingly compatible.

Accept disgrace willingly.
Accept misfortune as the human condition.
What do you mean by "Accept disgrace willingly?"
Accept being unimportant.
Do not be concerned with loss or gain. . . .
Surrender yourself humbly;
Then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the world as your own self,
Then you can truly care for all things.
(Tao Te Ching 13)

He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people
Is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country's disasters d
Deserves to be King of the Universe.
(Tao Te Ching 78)

To La LA Land

2010-11-24T03:32:00.005-07:00

Jen, Isaac, John

Jen and Isaac and I are now in Los Angeles. What a crazy fun trip!

Me, Aaron, Carolyn

Amanda

Goodbye Again to Moab

We finally hitch-hiked out of Moab on Tuesday of last week. Aaron had thrown us a going-away party at his hogan, Amanda traded my bulkier guitar case with her lighter travel one, Gregory and Beth did my laundry and sent me off with a sleeping bag and a food care package, John gave me his climber's backpack, and Travis and Kate gave me their hammock for Hawaii and walked us to our hitch-hiking spot on Highway 191.

Church Rock

Roadies Again

A rock climber named Nick gave us our first ride out of Moab. His Suzuki car had a carrying capacity of just 650 pounds, causing us to weave all over the road. He took us to the Indian Creek turn-off. I remembered there was a cave at Church Rock, so we camped there that night.

The next morning a Boznian trucker named Denis took us all the way to Gallup, New Mexico. He said he used to hitch-hike all over Europe. It's funny how he described free-spirit hippy types as "real Americans", and how he was disappointed when he first got to the US to find that most Americans were slaves to jobs and money and talked about guns and war and US superiority all the time, not the "real Americans" that he admired from afar in Boznia. Denis gave us lunch on the road and dinner in Gallup, taking us to a Chinese restaurant there.

Hobos Again

Woody Guthrie

We hopped a coal train out of Gallup, which took us as far as a small town in Arizona and dropped our car there. I knew from past experience we could hop another train from another town farther west in Arizona, but not from this one, so we started hitch-hiking again. We weren't having much luck with the three of us. But it was good, because it finally gave me a chance to pull out my guitar and play my Woody Guthrie roadie songs I'd been practicing (66 Highway Blues, Hitch Hike Blues, I Aint Got No Home In This World Any More). We were even hitching along Woody's old hitching Route 66 that he sung about. Okay, so we had only a few moments of hitch-hike blues and started walking down the highway until a guy whose name I forget, which means "bear," picked us up and took us to the town we wanted to go. We cooked and hung out at a campfire we built under an overpass and camped out there. The next morning we found an abandoned shopping cart, put our packs in it, and walked to the other end of town where we could catch a train out. Just as we were wheeling the cart near the tracks where we were planning to hop, a sheriff's deputy showed up. He said he wanted to check us out since we stuck out like sore thumbs and we were "close to the tracks," but he ended up being really friendly, telling us where shelters and food were located and warning us of wanna-be gangs in the area. He told us, "try to stay off the tracks," shook our hands, and left. Within 5 minutes, a stacker train ("hotshot") stopped, and we hopped on, and we managed not to touch the tracks :-) A hotshot was what I was looking for, since hotshots are "express" and would take us all the way to a major city like L.A., with no worries of being dropped in the middle of nowhere (as happened with the coal train).

Off we went, with spectacular views of Arizona and grins on our faces all day long. As it got colder, Isaac decided to open up one of the crate containers and we crawled into the warmth, bedding down on top of bags of cat food for the night. I wouldn't have thought to do that, and we would have been pretty miserable had we remained outside all night over the passes.

Homies Again

We slept through the night and the train arrived into a city by sunrise. We couldn't figure out where we were, but I suspected a burb of LA. The train stopped outside a train-yard there, and it would have been wise to hop off there. But we decided to sit tight and see how much farther the train would go, since we were clueless of our location. Unwise decision. The train started up again, took us into the yard and stopped, for good. There was activity all around us. We sat tight inside the container. Then one of those big upside-down horshoe-shaped lift thingies came along right above the car in front of us and started preparing to lift that crate out of the train! Talk about nervous! Nowhere to run without being seen, and our container was going to be lifted out, and we couldn't see where we could exit the yard! We finally had no choice but to run, so we scurried left. A service vehicle came by and we got non-chalant and pretended to not see it. The driver asked us where we were going, and we said, "out of this trainyard!" He said, with slight grimace, "Well, you better hurry before you get arrested!" So that we did, and we happened upon the gate and escaped with a sigh of relief.

However, after we walked about a block outside the yard, a "bull" (security truck) pulled up beside us and demanded we line up against the wall and produce identification. We ignored his request. He asked us if we had been on the train, and we simply said we were lost. He had zero authority outside the yard so we said "bye bye" and walked on. He followed us, trying to bluff us, and it was working. A couple other bulls drove up, too. We came to a tall barb wire fence in an alley and were cornered. We could have just ignored them and kept walking, but fear set in and I decided we should climb the fence into the private lot. Jen said, "now we are adding bad to bad and could get caught tresspassing." The bulls circled the block and kept yelling at us, but we sat tight. Finally they lost patience and went away, and we left the lot and walked to freedom.

Bless-ed Again

We found out we were in a burb of L.A. and walked to a park. It started raining, so we hung out in a community center there. We were the only white people around. The people around were refreshingly friendly. One man handed me $5, which I passed on to Isaac (although Jen and Isaac aren't using money on this trip either). Some other folks had had a kid's birthday party and gave us tons of left-over food from it, which we gladly snarfed down.

Gary

I'm not used to the luxury of having a cell phone around. I decided to check email on Jen's phone and discovered that a dude named Gary was offering us a place to stay at a ranch he is caretaking north of LA if we happened to be in the LA area! So we called him and he gladly came to pick us up. We stayed at a primitive cabin at this charming ranch filled with funky artwork and animals and good people (e.g., Cici and Steven), and he offered us hospitality, grand conversation and joy for a couple days until the rain subsided. He then took us all the way back to LA and dropped us off at the ports there.

We found another abandoned shopping cart and wheeled it for miles into Long Beach. Real Bag People we were!

Roy, Silvia

At the ports we got a message from Roy and his mom, who offered to pick us up and bring us to their home. So that's where we are now! So good to see Roy again, as well as his mom and Sylvia! They invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them. After that we plan to go back to the ports and figure out getting on a boat to Hawaii. If it doesn't work out in LA, we'll head to San Diego.

Roy's mom has been showering us with Mexican hospitality, feeding us splendid food, overflowing with generosity.

I feel so intensely grateful I'm traveling with Isaac and Jen. They are about as pleasant and easy-going and fun as you can get, never complaining about anything and open to everything, never saying anything bad about anybody.

Born Again, Continually

Yes, how blessed I feel.

Falling Leaves and Winter Migration

2010-11-12T12:45:00.008-07:00

Chasing the Setting Sun Over the Sea

It looks like I'm blowing out of Moab soon for the winter, heading west. Every year I talk about hopping a boat to Hawaii without money, but I never quite get inspired enough to do it. This year all my talk infected my friends Isaac and Jen, and their passion to do it pushed me off the fence. So we plan to hitch to San Diego and wait around until we can hop a random boat! It's a shot in the dark, but I know of people who have done it. Last winter was like Siberia here, so I'm itching to go to warmer climes. Another person might be coming to join us (but I won't give his name until/if/when he actually comes).

I decided to bring the guitar that I found in the dumpster. I can't believe how into playing it I am (since I was not much interested in it in my youth). This old dog is learning. I wrote down some Woody Guthrie roadie/hobo songs that I'm wanting to master as we go west. Maybe I can write a few of my own when I get better.

Gift Economists' Cyber-Meeting

Since I last blogged, quite a bit has happened. Twelve of us moneyless folks in the world had our cybermeeting on Oct 27th. We were, besides me:
Heidemarie (Germany)
elf Pavik (Germany)
Offie (Germany)
Mark (UK)
Sonja (South Africa)
Adin (South Africa)
Tomi (Finland)
Hugo (Brazil)
Raphael (Germany)
Benji (Holland)
The 2 girlfriends of Raphael and Benji (who just joined them. Sorry, can't remember their names).
(Raphael, Benji, and their 2 girlfriends are currently traveling in Central America)

To see links to websites/blogs for some of the above friends, see

Lifestyle Gift Economists

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the cyber thing worked, so there wasn't much substantial conversation. It was mostly a chance to see some moving faces of our clan with a bit of chatting, and it was fun and heart-warming.

We couldn't get some faces (like Mark's and Heidemarie's) to show up, but here's a few:

(L-R) elf, me, Sonja, Adin, Hugo

(L-R) Adin, Raphael & Benji's partners, Sonja, me, elf

It turns out Hugo, Sonja, and Roy are no longer on the moneyless path.

New Friends Joining Me, Coming and Going

Roy didn't get a chance to join our cyber-meeting (he was busy hitching moneyless into Mexicali, Mexico!). It also so happens that, shortly after, Roy quit the moneyless path and decided to settle in LA and be with his daughter. I think it's a good decision. He's one of the few who actually gave up all his money to join me. He then hitch-hiked out to the east coast and back here without money, then to LA and back and back again, then down to Mexicali!

A mellow dude named Braedyn came down from Canada for about a week with his guitar. I was looking forward to getting to know him better, and have him join us in our go-west adventure, but it seems there were some family complications calling him back to Canada.

Shortly after that, Carolyn left to see her family for the winter. She plans to come back to Moab in the Spring. I'm also hoping to be back here then (If the Hawaii *cruise* happens and we find a boat back!). Carloyn spent 7 months here, and added sparkling joy to my life. I did a lot of fun and unique things I don't think I would have done had she not been here. She was also by me through some intense, down times and helped keep me going.

Freegan Ponderings

Free Meal in Moab has also been a total joy, on both ends of it: eating and preparing. It has brought a lot of people together in Moab, like a daily party. New people from in and out of town meet all the time. Just like Food Not Bombs in other cities, I am often pleased at how close I feel with people there. You can go to clubs and churches and jobs and organizations, supposedly to meet people you have things in common with, but it's not the same. What we have in common is food, and it's freely given. That's it. That's what Communion, (Eucharist) really is. All food is my body, your body, one body. No ideologies, no trend stuff. Free Meal is not classist or hand-down like your classic soup kitchen or welfare program. It is hand-across. Folks from all classes and needs and no-needs show up and sit down together for food that would otherwise be thrown out.

But I do think there's a certain kind of person who is willing to go to eat at something like Free Meal or Food Not Bombs. It's a person willing to forget class and ideology and sit humble on the grass with everybody else and just be sincerely human. I'm realizing that that's what's the only real common among us all: simple human-ness. When we try to find people with things "in common" with us, trying to find people who "think" like us, that's not the common I'm talking about here. Our common-ness isn't in what we think. Our common-ness is when we give up thinking. It's not about belief, it's about Being, which is the True Faith. This is why I feel so passionate about the freegan path (freely giving, freely receiving), the path that every natural creature in the infinite universe follows. That is the One True Church, the One Mind.

It sounds like I'm idealizing. But idealizing is seeing Idea rather than Reality. Realizing is not eutopic but is just Being, accepting the bad and the good, the downs and the ups. Commerical civilization is base upon eutopism, trying to eliminate the negatives and stockpile the positives. Realism is based upon Reality, accepting the negatives and the positives as they naturally come. Realism is balance, peace, contentment. Eutopism is a pipe dream that shatters. Realism, ironically, feels more eutopic than any eutopia we chase after.

Free Meal, like everything in the universe, is precarious and could end tomorrow. But there's a principle there that is the essence of all life. That's what doesn't end and what we can every day cultivate within ourselves.

Catching Cynical Comments Before They Come Yet Another... Yawn... Time

Some cynical joker with a stick in his or her hinder parts will invariably come along and say all these free things couldn't happen without the businesses that create them and caste them off. Never mind that few say anything when enough food is thrown away in the US alone to feed the entire starving world. [Note added Nov 13: My statement probably is exaggerated, and even if it were accurate, I should have references. Now I'm dealing with the consequences of quickly writing a post without editing or fact checking before I hit the road. I won't be able to rectify this for some time, so I'll just leave this disclaimer for now. But what we do know is that the waste in both this country & in Europe is beyond obscene in a world where millions are malnourished. I recommend Tristram Stuart's writing to get these facts straight.] Never mind that few consider that businesses couldn't exist without the sun and the clouds that freely give, expecting nothing in return, sending sun and rain on both the "deserving" and the "undeserving", or without the earth which few seem to have problems taking from beyond her capacity. And a separate entity like free meal wouldn't need to exist if we didn't have commercial civilization. Again and again, I say, freely giving and freely receiving, without thought of credit and debt, is the essence of all of nature.

Courts & Parents & a Comrade Conference

2010-10-15T18:43:00.001-06:00

Summons and Plea

If you've been following this blog, you might be curious what happened with the summons I got from getting caught train-hopping in Arvada, Colorado in early August with Roy. I was to appear in the Jefferson County Court in Golden on October 15.

I called the Court shortly after to see if I could work out avoiding court, to save me hassle and to also avoid court costs and save taxpayers' money. They told me to wait until mid-September and call them again, asking about a "plea by mail." So I did. They gave me instructions, then I faxed the "plea by mail" (my friends Damian and Dorina let me use their fax machine). I plead guilty and requested either community service or jail time in lieu of any kind of fine, because I live without money. Then I waited.

Last Tuesday I called them back. The first woman I talked to told me the plea by mail was rejected and I must appear in court the next day at 1:15pm or I would have a warrant for my arrest. So I asked her if there was anything I could do, since I was moneyless and car-less, out of state, and didn't think I could make it. She referred me to another woman. This woman wasn't very friendly and wasn't open to any other options, but kept saying, "be here or you will have a warrant for your arrest." She wouldn't tell me why my plea by mail was rejected, either. When I asked her why nobody contacted me about this, she said, "We don't make long-distance calls." I had stated in the letter that the best way to contact me was by email, but also leaving open the option of calling my friend or contacting me by snail mail. By this time I was expressing my frustration. She then asked, in a not-so-friendly tone, "well, why did you wait so long to fax the plea by mail?" My mouth dropped open. "I waited until mid-September, as your office, at this number, instructed me to do!" She then told me if I couldn't make it to court I could show up at the DA's office by 8:15am to avoid the arrest warrant. So I hung up the phone, immediately got my backpack, and hit the road to hitch-hike. It was about 3pm Tuesday here in Moab, and my appointment was at 1:15pm in Golden, Colorado, about 350 miles away.

Hitch-hiking seemed harder than usual. I got as far as Fruita, Colorado by nightfall in 2 rides. Fruita happens to be where my parents live, so I decided to pop in and stay with them. I had been trying to keep them out of this. Of course they insisted on driving me to court the next day.

Parents

So my dad drove me across Colorado. It was good, because he and I had great conversation the whole way. My dad talked a lot about how much he adores my mom. Yeah, believe it or not, my parents have been married over 60 years and adore each other. But he's naturally concerned about how they are nearing their end. My mom is getting fairly decrepit and my dad has to care for her more and more.

My dad and I also talked theology. My dad is a theologian (he used to be a pastor), so we talked a lot about the principles of living by faith and, as Jesus taught, to "lend hoping for nothing in return," and why Jesus said "lend" rather than "give." How in the world can you lend if you're hoping for nothing in return? This idea has been on my mind for a long time. It unravels all these ideas about nature's "interest banking" that have been brewing in my head and heart over the past year. It's about nature's "lending at interest" as opposed to human ego hijacking this process of lending at interest, bringing corruption into the world. I'm still working it all out, to write down. But my dad totally gets it, and it makes me happy we can find agreement at deepest levels. We used to have arguments about religion in the past (a lot of it having to do with my bitterness over most religion and its hypocrisy), but we've both mellowed and found common ground.

My parents are unusually supportive of my lifestyle and would do most anything for me. How many parents would could be like that? They are conservative Christians, and they blow stereotypes of what a conservative Christian should be. Now they have been giving me full support in this latest adventure of going to court for train-hopping.

So my dad and I walked into the courtroom together.

Court

My name was alphabetically near the end of the line, so my dad and I had to listen to case after case before the judge, Susan Fisch, before she got to me. Seeing the other cases I was preparing myself more and more to possibly be put into a Jefferson County jail. But I also grew to be very impressed with her. She seemed to be an endless supply of patience and compassion, and I started relaxing about my own case. By the time she finally got to me, I told her my circumstances, that I lived voluntarily moneyless and "homeless" as a spiritual path. For this reason I requested either community service or jail time in lieu of a fine. I also explained how difficult it was to make it to this court appointment due to my circumstances, and that it would have saved a lot of hassle for us all, and it would have saved court costs and taxpayer money if the plea by mail had been accepted. She said pleas by mail can't be accepted if there is the possibility of jail. Giving me an endearing look, unusual for a person in her position, she told me that, due to my indigent circumstances, she would wave all fines and give me 10 hours community service and 90 days probation (which would be erased on completing the community service). I was astonished that was all the sentence I got, and my dad and I left smiling.

Cyber Conference?

Now I'm back in Moab. A guy named elf Pavlik, who recently started living without money in Germany, decided to contact me and other folks in the world who are consciously living moneyless, and have a kind of "cyber conference" this Sunday. Hopefully I can get it to work on my end with a borrowed computer. There are 3 moneyless folks in Germany (Heidemarie, elf, Jurgen), 1 in England (Mark), 2 in South Africa (Adin, Sonja), maybe another new-comer in Brazil, plus the Dutch (Benji) and German (Raphael) dudes who are hitching moneyless around the world (now in South America, I think with their 2 girlfriends who've just joined them), and 2 of us in the US (Roy and me). I hope we can pull this off. It's getting scintillatingly exciting.

It looks like Roy is getting ready to start his moneyless trek south of the border!

How to Become Free From Debt

2010-10-10T17:31:00.008-06:00

In the last post, I got a comment from Jayme, one of my vagabond Christian friends, urging me to write down and publish these ideas on debt that he, our friend Jesse, and I talked about when I last saw them. I plan to put it as an essay on the website. It's partly from a letter I wrote to a friend, and it probably needs more editing, simplifying, for the website.

I also just wrote My Answer to Ayn Rand in the website, responding to an email from a thoughtful challenger. It also needs editing, but this computer won't let me edit my website now. Somebody once told me my thoughts reminded of Ayn Rand. There are a lot of things she says that jive with me, but some that totally don't, like her ideas on money, which she didn't think over very thoroughly. She was genius in logical intelligence, but a total retard* in the greater intelligence of Intuition, which is usually, ironically, the domain of women. [*Note, added Oct 12, 2010: I'm admitting myself wrong in saying Ayn Rand was intuitively a "total retard", tacking a label on somebody--going against my own principles. Tacking labels on people is a tactic of politicians and is a lazy way of avoiding critical thinking.]

Okay, I've been putting this off for a long time because of the repurcussions it could have. Gulp... here goes:

How to Become Free From Debt

To state the obvious, people all over the world are dealing with endless debt, slaves to banks, slaves to their own promises. I get lots of emails from folks wondering what they can do. Debt puts us asleep to reality and blinds us to gratitude, compassion, and abundance.

I could easily say, “I told you so. You shouldn’t have gotten in debt in the first place!” But I’m not faultless.

My Own Experience With Debt

Back in my money days I took out a loan to go to school. For years I was plagued by this debt, not making enough money to keep paying it. I had to keep applying for deferments. But the more I deferred it, the bigger it got, due to interest. When I slacked on my payments, the bank would send me notices, threatening my credit rating. I had forgotten that my parents had cosigned for my loan, and when I defaulted long enough, the bank started harassing my parents. I didn’t want my parents to bear my burden, so I decided to hunker down and pay off my loan. I gave up living in a house and camped out, so I wouldn’t have to pay rent, and I ate rice and beans and foraged produce. I became a total slave to the bank. I sent most all my paychecks to the bank until my debt was totally paid off.

At the time I thought paying off my loan was the responsible thing to do. Now I’m realizing that I did not do the responsible thing. I was not paying back my loan to those from whom it was taken.

Let me explain.

Is It Okay to Break Our Promises?

I’m a strong believer in holding to our word. This is why I don’t believe in making promises, because making promises is a guarantee that we will break our word and become liars. Making promises is boasting for tomorrow, the work of ego. When we make any kind of promise we put ourselves in debt.

If we make promises, we should keep them if it’s in our power. But sometimes we simply cannot keep our promises.

Are there situations in which it is not only okay, but mandatory, to break our promises?

Let’s use an extreme example to drive home a point. Sometimes people make promises in an irrational fit of vengeance to do something horrendous, like a gangster swearing vengeance upon somebody in a blood oath. If you promise to kill somebody, is it a “sin” to break your promise?

We in modern culture are making promises in an irrational fit of faithless anxiety and fear, faithlessness that everything we need is not in the present.

Is It Okay to Default on a Loan?

Until now, I've been reluctant to talk about walking away from debt, defaulting on loans, because I surely don't want to encourage anybody to shirk responsibility! But now I am sure that we have fooled ourselves into thinking we are responsible to banks, just as the gangster is fooled into thinking he is responsible to keeping his blood oaths to his peers!

But don’t get me wrong. We must be responsible and pay back our unforgiven debts. But we must pay back our unforgiven debts to whom they are due!

Again, I say, we must pay back our unforgiven debts to whom they are due!

Steps to Becoming Debt Free

1. We must establish that it was bad judgment to take out a loan in the first place. We desired what we didn’t have, or we got scared we wouldn't have enough. We lost faith that everything we needed was available in the present. We must acknowledge and confess, “I was wrong in ever taking out a loan.” Now that we’ve acknowledged and confessed this error, forgive ourselves and move on.

2. We must acknowledge that we made a promise to pay back our debt, and we want to be responsible and keep our promise.

3. We must also acknowledge and confess that our promise was more than a simple “yes” and “no," because we signed a contract promising we would pay back our debt. We must realize that going beyond a simple yes or no comes from a corrupt mind and reasoning. A lie is a lie, and to sign a contract is to water down Truth, to say that a simple yes is not a yes, that a promise or oath is somehow more worthy than our word. Both the mind that requires us to sign a contract and the mind that signs the contract are equally corrupt: both are lost in faulty, irrational thinking. Now that we've acknowledged this error, we forgive ourselves and move on.

4. We must now ask ourselves where our loan came from so we can pay it back. Every banker and economist knows that a bank does not lend us what belongs to the bank. The bank lends us an illusion it creates out of thin air with the stroke of a pen or a typing of a keyboard. This fiction is called fiat money. The bank wants you to think it is lending to you from its own reserves, but it is lending you nothingness, then has the audacity to charge you interest on this nothingness, creating more nothingness. Every banker knowingly practices this pure deception. But every bank justifies itself, not because it does not know that what it is doing is pure deception, but because what it does is tradition, and all of commercial civilization depends on this tradition! The bank, however, does deceive itself and us into thinking civilization will end if it does not practice this pure deception. If you doubt what I'm saying, see the video, Money As Debt.

5. Now that we realize we have entered into a knowingly-deceptive contract, this invalidates the contract, and frees us from any responsibility to the maker of the contract. The fact that the whole world uses deceptive contracts does not validate any of those contracts. It is, in fact, irresponsible to hold to a corrupt contract in the same way it is irresponsible for a mafioso or gangster to hold to a blood oath to his peers!

6. We must not stray from our integrity, from our responsibility to pay back our debt! Thus we must continue to ask ourselves where on earth our loan really came from! When we step back and look at the world scene, it becomes clear. In the greater world economy, we see, obviously, that most money and goods flow from workers to non-workers, from the poor to the rich, from the creative to the non-creative, from those who are productive to those who produce only illusion, from the givers to the moochers. These who produce only illusion are called bankers. The bankers take, and do not borrow, from the world’s workers and creators, and they pay nothing back. By doing any business with the bank, you have become an accomplice to this theft and must reconcile it. You have taken money, which is not a real substance, but an illusion you borrowed from the bank, and used it to trade for actual goods created by the world’s poor.

Ah, now you see who you must pay your loan back to, don’t you? If you find out you have stolen property, the only ethical and responsible thing is to return it, and it definitely must not be returned to the one who stole it! This is called redistributing the wealth.

The bank will probably turn you over to a collection agency. But if you have already returned your stolen goods to those from whom they were stolen, the bank has no more power over you. Perhaps in many countries the bank can jail you. This is where you must have faith in the Power of Persecution, as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus demonstrated.

An Appeal to Your Own Faith Tradition

I have already appealed to your basic logic and to your heart, and that should suffice. But if you don’t trust your own judgment and want assurance from past prophets of your faith tradition, then I appeal to that:

Charging interest is considered criminal by the world’s religions and ancient philosophers (the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, the Buddha, Greek philosophers, all the early church fathers, etc). [See Is Banking Criminal? What The World's Ancient Philosophers and Religions Say in my website].

However, since everybody relies on banks, we think it's okay or unavoidable for this day and age, even though charging interest has ultimately never, ever caused anything but grief in the world. It is ironic that the followers of religions that most clearly condemn banking are banking's best supporters! Banking creates poverty, then throws a few bones to those from whom it stole, giving the appearance it is helping them. I wager that poverty would end if most everyone practiced their own religion and agreed to never use a bank again. That means default on loans and, instead, be truly responsible and pay what we owe back to those who actually need it. Yes, there probably will be chaos first, but everything good and worthwhile must "have a falling away first." A seed begins by falling to the ground and dying. What do your prophets say? "Babylon is fallen, is fallen."

It is our responsibility and common sense to redistribute the wealth to those from whom it was stolen. History shows us this does not work by Marxist redistribution through government or organized programming, but through basic, instinctual, natural human conscience, expressed in truly conservative religious values especially forgotten by self-proclaimed "conservatives".

Stop Thinking We're Do-Gooders!

We who think we are do-gooders must finally stop fooling ourselves that we are giving charity to the poor, thinking we're righteous! Philanthropists do "good" because they think they are owners. The Human Spirit just does what's natural. The poor widow puts her penny in the temple donation box and gives way more than the wealthiest philanthropist. Nature's creatures do what's natural: be like the ant or rabbit or redwood tree, which don't do "good," because they possess nothing. Instead we who have excess must realize we have to simply pay our debts to the poor we robbed from! We must wake up and realize that sharing is no act of goodness, nothing that deserves reward or praise, but simply a natural act like breathing free air in and out, or a natural act like the sun sharing its energy on ALL life forms, expecting nothing in return! Working with no thought of reward or ownership is a constant theme of the Bible, the Baghavad Gita, the Quran, the Buddhist Sutras, the Tao Te Ching, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bahai scriptures, the Book of Mormon, the Jain sutras, and the practiced philosophy of Native Peoples all over the world. Christians, what does Jesus say but to be like the servant who works because it is his duty, not even expecting thanks. Only we who fool ourselves think we own anything to give! Muslims and Mormons, your Quran and the Book of Mormon especially stress this fact. See Here's the One Point We Know the World's Religions Agree Upon.

To Possess Nothing is to be Under No Earthly Power

We ourselves who realize we don't need anything must forgive those who "borrowed" or "stole" from us, erase all grudges, simply for our very own mental health, if anything! Everything I am saying is directly provable if you but look inside and find what brings you Peace. Actually, when we finally realize we own no possessions, we have nothing to steal, and nobody to trespass against us, and nobody can have power over us! In other words, to give up the idea of possession is Perfect Forgiveness, "forgive us our tresspasses (debts) as we forgive those who tresspass (are debtors) against us"

"Neither Borrower nor Lender Be"

Banks will starve if you have the faith to not use them. And you will find mental and spiritual health if you live by faith. The health of the individual is the health of the whole world. That is Pure Selfishness Divine (This is where I sound like Ayn Rand ;-) Again, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," as Jesus prayed, and, as Muhammad stated, there is no difference of blame between lender and borrower. There is no difference of blame between corporation and consumer, owner and owned, ower and owed. It's a bit comical to see consumers blame corporations, when consumers are corporations' life blood. And there is no difference between physical and spiritual debt (also called "sin").

What really would happen in the world if every follower of religion woke up and actually practiced his or her own religion?

Courage to Follow What You Know For Yourself to Be True

Of course this would mean taking on persecution, meaning courage. This is why the central message of Christianity is the Cross. To live and speak any truth in this world is to risk the Cross, to believe in the Cross, regardless of your religion. If we call ourselves Christian and can’t live and speak truth, perhaps because we're afraid of losing our jobs or losing the respect of our church peers or losing our comfy McMansions, all our talk of believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus, all our talk of "not being ashamed of the Gospel," all our talk of salvation by “grace”, is utter nonsense. By Grace, not our own egos, we will live and speak truth. If we don’t live and speak truth, whereever and whomever and whatever religion or science that truth comes from, we aren’t under the Power of Grace, we are not living by faith.

Faith is the realization that debt is not necessary, that everything will work out if we follow truth, that everything we need is forever in the present, which means, as basic Buddha teaches, abolishing all wants (debts), which means taking on happiness & abundance.

I don't know if these ideas are conservative or liberal. All I know is they are simple & natural instinct in all life.

Don’t take mine or anybody else’s word for it. I am asking every human being to act on what you know to be true in your heart, by both your reason and your intuition.

Do you have the Courage (the Faith, the Hope, the Love) to act on what you know to be true?

Waiting For Messiah

You can keep procrastinating and wait for zillions of years for Messiah to come to zap everything right. Or, you can realize what your own scriptures teach you, that Messiah is in you, your Hope of Glory. You are the Hands and Feet and Eyes and Mouth and Breath of Messiah. Wake up and realize that Messiah will never, ever, ever come, except through you.

Take Responsibility.

Dying is Living

2010-09-30T14:20:00.010-06:00

Life's been fairly peaceful since I last blogged. My friend John is giving me a ride to my parents' in Colorado tomorrow, for a visit until next week. They got rid of their computer, so I'll probably be out of cyber touch for a while.

Immutable Law: One's Life Means Another's Death

Carolyn took some pics of a roadkill dinner I shared with her and David, and I told her I'd post them here. I found this squirrel freshly killed on the river road. It had an acorn stuck between its teeth when I found it, plus about 14 acorns stuffing its cheeks! Their looks of contentment say it all!

A Loud and Clear Calling

A few days later, Carolyn, Aaron, and I went to a party of mostly rock-climber kids way out in the desert at Jug Handle arch. Though I'm not really a rock-climber, I love rock climbers. The times I've done it, I've realized rock climbing is a spiritual path that teaches perseverance and humility, minus dogma. Okay, once in a while I meet a really cocky climber, but not too often ;-)

Anyway, they had set up a really really high swing, made with a rope and harness, from the overhanging rock near the arch. It was absolutely exhilarating! Then we jammed around a fire with drums and a guitar and my flute. Even though I can't play the guitar, I eventually picked it up and used it as a percussion instrument, sort of strumming it, and it didn't sound half-bad. "I wonder why I never learned guitar?" I thought. All the sudden I had this almost mystical urge to learn how to play guitar. "But I'm 49," an alter voice said. "Should that matter?" was the reply in my head. "But I don't have a guitar," the other voice countered.

The very next night (a couple nights ago) I went dumpster-diving at the thrift-store to find warmer clothes for winter. The dumpster was so full of junk it was overflowing--stuff piled around it. I dug around a bit and found a booklet on how to play the guitar. "What a coincidence." I thought, "But I don't have a guitar," my other voice reminded me, again. As I was getting ready to leave the dumpster, I took a last glance back and noticed I hadn't checked the stuff piled against it. I lifted up a box and noticed a guitar case underneath. "Nice case. I have friends who might need it," I thought. I lifted it, and it wasn't empty! I opened it up, and, voila, a guitar! "Surely there must be something wrong with it for it to be here," I thought. I brought it back to the farm,checked it out the next morning, and found it was virtually new and flawless! There were also some instructional DVDs included in the case and two extra strings. If ever I got a clear message to do something, this time it was, "Learn to play the guitar!"

So I've been practicing like crazy, like an excited kid, playing my fingertips raw.

More Mulling Over "Duality"

I've been mulling over blog comments today, and here are some brainstorms to share here. I'm still working out rough edges, so feel free to point out any flaws you might see. Ideas are no good if they can't be thrown to Natural Selection.

Now these are generalized statements, and I'm sure you'll find lots of people who don't fit the stereotypes.

This gets into the "non-duality" thing I essay about in the website. On the lower level, I find I often have a black and white, good and evil, view of things: as is the very nature of the binary human brain. But on the Higher Level, it's All Good:

Sometimes I like to step back and watch 2 energies at play--one Conservative, one Liberal--one saying nothing's going to get better so why change it, one saying let's progress, evolve, and not discount possibilities. Both are in myself! Each annoys the other, yet each holds the other in check.

Social Conservatives, who don't want to change the social order, are usually Tech Liberals, welcoming new technology with little reserve. Physically, Social Conservatives are generally older, less prone to sexual exploration, wanting to preserve the gene pool, Old DNA.

On the other hand, Social Liberals, envisioning a better social order, are usually Tech Conservatives, wary of nature-manipulation, new technology. Physically, Social Liberals are statistically younger, more prone to sexual exploration, wanting to expand the gene pool, New DNA.

Both conservatives and liberals are playing out the innate Law of Nature, the Grand Drama!

It's becoming obvious neither will go away any more than positive or negative will go away. Social conservatives often persecute and often kill their own prophets, just like an ant colony will attack and expel ants that are a bit different. Social Liberals persecute and often kill their prophets, too, but usually when they have ripened into Social Conservatives (like in the late USSR and Red China and North Korea). Yet religious conservatives preserve the teachings and traditions (Old DNA) for future generations of the ones they once persecuted.

Religious liberals are accepting of other people's viewpoints and new ideas (New DNA), but dislike tradition and are bad at organizing and preserving tradition. The persecuted sages are secretly grateful to their persecutors for refining their character and catapulting their messages into view of all. Those who survive rejection are refined, Naturally Selected, secretly admired by their persecutors (silencing or eliminating "heretics" physically often means promoting their message, their Mystical DNA). The canal to the female ovum is full of spermicide to weed out the unfit. Those that don't survive go the way of the extinct, and secretly know this is their lot, and they can rest in it. The two are always with us, battling it out in the Grand Drama.

Religion most clearly sets the stage for this Drama. It is the very nature of Religion to give birth to both the Dogmatist Persecutor and the Persecuted Prophet! Reading the Torah, for example, it is as sure as the sun shines that Dogmatic Pharisees will arise out of Judaism side-by-side with a prophet Isaiah or Zechariah or Jesus that they can persecute. In fact, the prophet Isaiah says himself that it is ultimately God who blinds people's eyes, and God who crucifies the Messiah. This concept of divinely-imposed blindness of the persecutors is a strong theme in the Quran, too. This is why the persecuted ultimately realizes: forgive them, for they're clueless what they're doing. But there's also a blindness of the "persecuted." Actually, each side often sees itself as the "persecuted." The left hand becomes clueless of what the right hand is doing. The lion species could not survive if lions felt the pain of their prey, if the right "knew" the left. Nothing in nature would survive if the positive "knew" the negative. In the same way, it is the very nature of the New Testament to give rise to an intolerant Church and a Saint or Reformer to persecute or burn at the stake. Likewise, you see this in Islam. It's not as pronounced in Eastern Religion, but it's there. It was Hindu Fundamentalists who killed Gandhi. The Word comes to its own and its own does not receive it. Both the Baghavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching describe this phenomenon, as does the Quran, Torah, and New Testament. You see it not only in religion, but in science and in every institution and organism. Ultimately, the baby is a nuisance to be horrifically expelled from the mother's body!

It is the very nature of Nature to create a colony of bees to protect their homogeneity, but also to hone down innovators and prove them worthy to progress the colony. It is the very nature of nature to create a pride of lions and a pack of hyenas to harass each other.

But on the Highest Level, the Wolf lies down with the Lamb, the Lion lies down with the Calf.

Yeah, ultimately, stepping back and looking at it all, you realize it's All Good. Good Drama can't exist otherwise. On the lower level, it's Duality. On the Higher Level, it's All One--beautiful beyond the human mind's ability to grasp!

People think money is my enemy. On the lower level it is, in a way. But money has arisen in human consciousness, evolution, for some mysterious reason. It's no more my enemy than an obstacle course is to an athlete or a puzzle is to a gamer. A toy or a game is fun until we learn what we have to learn from it, then we move beyond it.

Now we see in a mirror darkly. Then we recognize who's in the mirror.

Endless Possibilities

2010-09-11T16:48:00.000-06:00

Inspiration to blog doesn't seem to happen but about once a month.

Funny Farm

Drama has been happening at the farm, with our stupid mistakes and human silliness. Several times it has seemed our sense of community was falling apart. Maybe the farm itself is falling apart - who knows. But the sense of community behind it? I figure if our sense of community falls apart, it was never authentic in the first place, and should fall apart! Then something happens and Love triumphs through our nonsense, we talk it over, forgive through hugs and tears. Life is absolutely splendid if we stick with it, don't give up.

Penniless On His Own

Roy hitch-hiked back to Moab from L.A. with his little sister, Sylvia. This was her first time out of Los Angeles, and what a way to do it! I found Sylvia totally delightful. She has a don't-give-up sense of adventure just like her brother, and I felt a connection with her.

It turns out that Roy's and Sylvia's mother, meanwhile, took a trip to New Mexico, so Roy and Sylvia decided to hitch-hike there to meet her. She then took them back to L.A.

Meanwhile, I was thinking and meditating on my relationship with Roy, feeling like our goals weren't the same. He can't let grass grow under his feet and I often feel like I'm holding him back. I was thinking of ways of discussing this with him before he came back to Moab, when he sent me an email saying he had other plans. He wants bigger challenges and has decided to hitch-hike out of the country with no money, to head south through Mexico, eventually to South America. His family, apparently, is helping him get a passport. I feel proud of him. He changed the name of his blog, which also makes me feel better. I really don't feel comfortable with any kind of -ism, much less "sueloism".

Ramadan

I take a deep breath before publishing this, bracing myself for the ire of commentators.

I last blogged at the start of Ramadan, and Ramadan is over. Carolyn had the idea to celebrate Ramadan from new moon to new moon and asked me to join her, in solidarity with authentic Muslims, people of Peace (Islam, after all, means "peace", derived from the same semitic root as the Hebrew shalom). What's great is that Carolyn is dating a totally cute dude named David, of Yiddish background, who happens to be a bomber cook. David likes to cook elaborate Shabat (Sabbath) meals at sundown on Friday. That makes for a perfect dance between Islam and Judaism for Carolyn and me, because on Ramadan you aren't supposed to eat all month until after sundown!

Muslims celebrate Ramadan as the month that Muhammad received his Quranic revelations in his cave in the Arabian desert. I thought it a splendid idea, in perfect timing, not only as a declaration of solidarity with Muslims--because of the recent bigotry of people not allowing freedom of religion for Muslims wanting to establish mosques here (it's anti-American and anti-Christian to deny freedom of religion for others)--but also because I've been studying the Quran, with new brainstorms waiting to burst out of my head and heart. It blows me away the epiphanies crystallizing in me this month: a strangely eerie harmony between the Bible and Quran has become crystal clear.

I can see why people might reject the Quran for what it says, in the same way people reject the Bible for what it says. If you take both books literally, the Quran's Jihad is almost as violent as the Torah's Jihad. But whether or not the Quran is violent is a moot point for most self-proclaimed Christians and Jews: they reject the Quran not because of anything it says or doesn't say, but because of religious ego. It was already decided to be evil before they even looked at it (the simple fact they reject the Buddhist sutras or the Tao Te Ching, which couldn't be more loving and non-violent, proves my case). In the same way, most self-proclaimed Muslims reject the Bible not because of anything it says or doesn't say, but because of religious ego, despite the Quran itself saying over and over that it was given to confirm the Jewish and Christian scriptures already existing as they are, not replace them. I keep looking at the apparent contradictions and finding they are actually intriguing clues to get you notice something infinitely deep. I hope to write down these mysteries to share, Insha'Allah. No, I can't deny there are things in the Quran, like in the Bible, that I find way bothersome. But the gold nuggets in the ore are too splendid to throw out with the ore.

Religion, A-Religion, & Science

Besides, history shows us religion is not going to go away any more than the human heart will go away. Whatever doesn't go away, we must find a way to embrace it, transform it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I keep feeling religion will go obsolete by embracing it, not fighting it. Billions of people hold some form of religion in their deepest heart, and you can never truly understand any people or culture if you don't understand their religion.

The a-religious are also not going away, will always be with us, and must be embraced. It usually seems the a-religious make less of a mess of the world than the religious. But then there are huge exceptions, like the old Soviet Union and today's "People's Republic" of China. It could be argued that the these two countries never eliminated religion (dogma) but simply replaced one form of worship (deity) with another fanaticism (state).

And Christianity? The paradox of Christianity is that it cannot be Christian if it doesn't practice the Golden Rule. You must examine other religions with your full, respectful, non-judgmental heart in the same way you want them to examine yours, otherwise your religion is not Christianity! The Golden Rule is Christianity!

And you cannot be a complete scientist, a complete anthropologist, sociologist, or psychologist if you ignore religion. Religion is part of human biology, part of evolution. Looking at the horrors religion has caused in the world (especially our own Big Book religions), and after reading past comments in this blog, I often get discouraged and wonder why I bother. I lose site of the gold in the ore. The ore can't be changed, just burned away by life's trial. Just when I'm about to give up, throw down my pick-axe, and leave the dirty mine, I see the gold sparkle: passion is passion, and I can't repress this passion in me. Funny, me, Mr Zerocurrency, using gold as analogy.

What Next?

Roy and I had plans to travel together this Fall, but since he's meandered off a different path, I'm not sure what will happen now. With all this inner stuff I want to write down, I feel more inclined to stay put, because time is short and I don't want to waste it. I just don't want to leave this life without sharing with everybody the absolute splendor I see.

Over the Rockies

2010-08-12T14:39:00.003-06:00

We made it back to Moab from our little Colorado excursion.

(I've poached the photos from Roy's blog, since I don't have a camera)

Old Friends and Fam

Mark Sundeen took Roy and me to my brother Doug's mountain cabin in Conifer, Colorado, where we stayed a couple nights (That's when I wrote the last blog post). Then Mark took us to Louiseville, outside Boulder, where we had dinner at the house of my old friends, Tim, Sherry, and their son Daniel. My old friend Joan showed up with her 2 daughters, Charya and Maitri, and an old acquaintance, Bruce. It was good going over old times, but also kind of emotional, talking about my little Mount Evans escapade (see last blog post; Joan had been my room-mate at the time).

Roy and I then went back with Joan and her kids to Thornton (suburb of Denver) and stayed with them and her husband, Sokha, for a week or so. Then Sokha took us out to Arvada to train-hop.

Snitching on Hobos

We spent the first night under a bridge, and the

trains kept stopping in the wrong direction. The next day we walked westward to where the trains went by an opulent neighborhood (which is unusual). Rainy storm clouds were gathering, but there happened to be a horse trailer for shelter right by the tracks and we camped the 2nd

night there. Again, no trains were stopping in the westward direction so we finally decided to walk out to hitch-hike. Funny, I kept thinking

in the back of my mind how things always work out when we're on the

verge of giving up, that a train would stop right as we were walking

away. Sure enough, it did! We got excited and overconfident and loud.

We hopped into an empty scrap car, but a resident of one of the McMansions spotted us, came out with his cell phone, yelling out to us from his back yard. I was feeling attached to our car so wanted to

just lay low and hope for the best, but Roy thought we should get out and

hide in the bushes. We finally did. But another train came eastward

and slowed way down, blocking our way to the westward train. That got me a bit worried we wouldn't be able to get on if we didn't do it now, so we did. Roy was still worried about cops coming, but I, Mr

Over-confident, told him we shouldn't worry so much, that I hadn't

gotten caught by cops in 10 years of train-hopping. But...duh,..the cops came, and they knew exactly what car we were hiding in, and cited us. Totally avoidable. Roy was right. So we ended up hitching out.

I later called up the court to see if I could work out community service and

avoid court. They told me they thought it would be possible, to call back in September, and I could probably write out a plea thingy.

Family and Teeth

We hitch-hiked to to my parents' in Fruita, Colorado, where we stayed almost a week. Roy and my parents got along splendidly. I think my parents fell in love with Roy.

My parents also got me hooked up with an old friend of our family's, Don Adams, a retired dentist who goes to their church, and he fixed up my teeth for free! He has been doing free dentistry for homeless people for years, as well as doing mission trips to Peru and Siberia to do free dental work. He's a quiet, gentle man, and you'd never know all that he does for people - he never talks about it. I didn't want to ask him to do my teeth, but my parents let the cat out of the bag. I feel so grateful.

We had pretty much gourmet dinners every evening at my parents' - most all bargain food (3 for the price of none) from the supermarket "specialty section". The last evening there, my brother Ron, my nephews, Kyle and Wayne, with Wayne's wife, Lila, joined us for a nice dinner.

It feels good being back in Moab. We're here just in time for Ramadan. Carolyn and John and I decided to celebrate it this month.

On the philosophical side of things, because of a plethora of comments and questions from Evangelical Christians, I recently added FAQ # 32 to the website: Don't you know about grace? Aren't you trying to "work" for your salvation?

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

2010-07-25T08:50:00.001-06:00

Right now, I'm at my brother Doug's in Conifer, Colorado, with Mark (the writer) and Roy.

Mark took me up to Mount Evans to the spot where I had driven my car off a cliff back in 1991 and almost died. I had discussed this suicide attempt with Roy the day before, and he let cat out of the bag in his blog to the public. So now is the time to share it publicly. I had wanted to reveal it in my own time, perhaps in a special website for suicidal people and survivors, but it looks like now is the time, now is the blog, as premature as it feels. But what is, is, and the point of living this path is to completely accept what is. I choose what is, the good, the bad, the ugly. There is no greater liberation than choosing What Is. Call it Submission.

I didn't really choose the publicity I've gotten. But now that it's here, I choose it. I didn't choose the praise and the hateful slander, but now that it's here, I choose it. It's all a rare tool, and I must use it well, now that it's been granted me. I've been saying for the past few months that I decided to make my life an open book, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. Whitewashed lives are no help. I'm telling Mark about it for his book, which is one of the reasons we came here, to see the site of my suicide attempt on Mount Evans.

My clinical depression, with its suicidalism, is a thing of the past, and my life as it is now is borrowed time, precious time. Why not now use it to help my fellow humans out of the darkest quagmires of hell?

An in-law in my extended family had committed suicide during the last time I was in Alaska (August, 2007), and I knew then that it was time to take a big chance and talk about my own suicide attempt with the extended family. So I wrote this letter to the survivors of the family. They wrote back and told me how helpful it was, and that they had even shared it with suicide support groups. I then decided I should use it in a special website. I had no idea I would put it in this blog, but here it is. (I've deleted names for their privacy, where brackets are), I decided to post it with original spelling & grammar errors:

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I'm still in Homer, maybe going to hitch out soon. . . .

Please read & consider what I'm saying, and if you feel it is worthwhile, forward it to [the rest of the family]:

I'm hoping this helps you all out to tell you this. I never know how much news spreads through the family or not, and what you know about my car wreck 15 years ago, or if even I talked to you about it.

My car wreck off the cliff in Mount Evans in Colorado was a suicide attempt. I thought it would be failsafe, that in no way I could survive - but I did. And now I live to tell you about what [M's]point of view might have been. I didn't know it at the time, but I was suffering from severe clinical depression. I knew something was wrong, but didn't know it was an actual disease. One day I got up at 3AM & realized I had gone a whole month without experiencing even 5 minutes of even the least happiness, and that I was sinking deeper & deeper into a black hole, with not a single glimmer of light at the end of any tunnel, not a spark of hope. I was going weeks without sleep - except maybe 5 min or an hour per night, so my brain couldn't even function. I couldn't hold conversation, couldn't decide, and I was too tired to hardly lift myself from bed. I felt like hell was a reality, & I was in it. No matter what people said or did to help, nothing helped, nothing could help. But then I figured out a solution - finally, a solution that I thought would work. Kill myself! The idea of it was so freeing, &, strangely, and FINALLY the ONLY thought that brought me happiness!

And here's the rationalization that went through my head. The thing that had kept me from going through with it in the past was the thought of how it would hurt the loved ones around me . But I had finally reached a critical point - a point when I felt I had no more choice. I could see that all my loved ones had at least some strength to experience happiness, unlike me, and that we all die and would have to face death, of both ourselves & others. I finally had to put all of our pain in the scales, and thought that the pain I was experiencing now was way worse than even the pain my suicide could inflict on others! They could handle it, I thought, but I couldn't even now handle a moment's more pain. From my perspective then, I simply had NO OTHER CHOICE! I also felt like my whole being was in self-destruct, ready to die, like any creature that is ready to die. My brain was an organ that had sparked its last strength, just like a heart that is worn out beats its last beat. I simply could not fight it any more, could not resist death, death that we all must face sooner or later. And family & friends would simply have to deal, just as they would have to deal if I had had cancer, and just as humans & creatures have had to deal with death zillions of times over zillions of years in the past! And in 100 years all of us would be dead & gone & all forgotten anyway!

But I didn't know, until after I had been taken to the hospital, that I had an actual disease, a treatable disease. However, ironically, even though nothing anybody could have said or did could help me, I still had thought that my happiness somehow depended on people & things around me, so I was constantly reaching for something or somebody OUTSIDE OF ME to help me. Little did I realize that the problem was INSIDE ME, that I was suffering endless loops of negative thought about everything & everybody. Little did I know that if I gave up negative & judgmental thoughts, my depression would go away with them! I didn't realize that NOBODY could help me if I clung to my old thought patterns, which totally distorted my whole world view, making the universe a living hell.

After having gone through it, and found my way out of depression, I have had to assure family & friends that they were in no way responsible for my depression or suicide attempt. Nothing they could have said or done could have made it better. The responsibility was fully mine. But I also give myself slack & forgiveness, too, because, on the other hand, it was truly a disease I was suffering. It is chemical & it is cognitive. The chemical feeds the cognitive & the cognitive feeds the chemical in the cyclic nature of it.

For you survivors, NEVER even let your minds do the "shoulda coulda" thing, even for a second. That begins a cognitive disorder in yourselves, which spreads the disease. What is, is, and no amount of thinking can go back in time - so why even try for even a second? Just let this be an opportunity to love each other more deeply & more fully, more than ever before. Shoulda coulda thoughts keep our minds away from loving one another, here and now. Shoulda coulda is destructive & damning to both ourselves and everybody around us.

So there you have it.

With much love,

Daniel

Human Miracles

2010-07-01T16:40:00.003-06:00

Enter Roy

The day after I re-entered civilization from my soul-searching retreat in the canyon a few weeks ago, a dude named Roy showed up in town from LA to begin a life without money. He was determined to come, and his determination and positive attitude has inspired me to no end! And my feeling weak these days is totally good, to remind me that if anything is taught, it isn't from me.

He even started a blog about all this.

The uncommonly common amidst uncommon uniqueness

Like Carolyn, Roy has something deeply unique and mysterious about him. But unlike Carolyn, who has a demeanor of calm patience, Roy has an exuberant, go-getter personality. All the folks who have hooked up with me so far have been tantalizingly different from each other and from me--both the newcomers into town and my local friends already here. Yet there's a certain commonality among us all that intrigues me to no end, that I can't put my finger upon. It's bare, raw sincerity--yes, I think that's it! Usually, when we look for friends, for people to love, we look for people just like us--you know, like in dating services. But what blows me away now is how we all are so different, and yet we have an indescribable love for one another. It's a commonality beyond understanding.

If anybody should have a book written about him...

Roy's life fascinates me to no end. He is straight out of hard-core, LA Latino culture; he was a fitness trainer, a military man, then a professional poker player, before coming here. While in the army he had a spiritual epiphany and became a pacifist, getting himself out of the military against all odds (being disgraced by his military superiors and peers). He then made easy money from poker, and, by all appearances, "having it made," he found himself gliding up the economic scale, feeling like he'd never have to really work again. But he realized he felt unfulfilled. He did what virtually any other person would never dare to do: he decided to give it all up, give up all his money, his car, his house, and he came to Moab. On top of that, his parents drove him to Moab all the way from LA, and basically gave him their blessing. How unusual is it for parents to do something like that? They hugged me as they left.

Roy is a challenge junky and a genius and is driven by a divine wisdom that I've rarely seen so clearly in a human. He blows all stereotypes and astounds me.

The past week-and-a-half that Roy has been here has been packed with fun. The love and hospitality of my friends has shone bright as the sun. We've gone to a few parties, including a couple jams, some hikes, and the community of Free Meal. Here's a pic of a going-away jam for Aaron and Amanda (they just left for Costa Rica). I'm usually not such a socialite.

Roy was prepared (and hoping) for some hard-core survivalist living and random challenges, and discovered that my Moab life is pretty cush right now. This is the first summer I haven't left Moab and haven't wandered the US since I gave up money, I think. It's when I'm on the road that the magic of random blessings happen most clearly, as well as trials taking me to my wits end (Usually the magical random blessings happen right when I'm at my wit's end). Of course, this is what appeals to a young person like Roy, wanting to be baptized into the heart of life.

I was considering hitting the road for Roy's sake, to give him a taste of the magical roll of the dice. But I have a couple obligations keeping me here this summer, and I have to be here early October as well. I've been using this summer to hang out, develop community, farm, meditate, and write--taking a needed reprieve from years of past summer wandering. We were talking about hitting the road in late July, train-hopping and hitching for a few weeks, coming back, then going to the west coast in later October and trying for hitching to Hawaii. But Roy was itching to plunge in now before the Hawaii plan.

So Roy, in his spontaneity, decided to put on his pack and hitch-hike out of Moab this morning, wander around the US, with zero money, for maybe 3 months, then return in October for our next venture. It seems right he go through this baptism by fire first. His teacher won't be me, but the Laws of Chance, otherwise called the mind of God. He has the perfect attitude for it.

Love through the fires

Meanwhile, there've been other things I've been processing. Before Roy came, I went through some way hard, humbling stuff, as I alluded to in the last post, and some of my best friends witnessed me at my weakest. Such things either make or break friendships. Hmm, I think I must say that my friends', and especially Brer's, highly noble character has shown through all this, as his light shines through everything. Oh, yeah, that's him and his daughter, Veda (I don't think I've ever before witnessed a human who savors and unabashedly celebrates life as she does. It's astounding, in fact).

!

I added another FAQ to the website (#31. Why are you an extremist? Shouldn't you follow the Middle Way between extremes?) and hope to add other writings.

Dancing with angels & dualing with demons

2010-06-14T11:39:00.002-06:00

I went through something very hard a couple days ago and saw hideous demons in myself that I'd been unaware of, and I was feeling like a fraud. It's actually good, keeping my ego from running away from me. It's good to realize the cold truth that we are nothing and that any good that shines through us is pure Grace.

In addition to surrounding myself with loving friends, I've also been surrounding myself with a lot of distractions and not-so-healthy foods these days, so I've decided to head up the canyon today for a weak-long retreat to face my wounds and heal. Just wanting folks to know so you don't think I'm stuck-up for being out of contact.

Infinite love
Suelo

Stationary in Moab

2010-06-05T12:00:00.004-06:00

I'm slacking in the blog universe. It's been harder to sit down at a computer and write when it's been so beautiful out.

Last time I blogged I was at my parents' house in Colorado. My 82-year-old dad's pneumonia cleared up pretty quickly. He's strong as an ox. Pic'd at left are the sweetest couple in the world: my mom (Laurel) and dad (Richard) and the cutest dog ever, Molly.

I want to see my parents as often as I can in this fleeting life. It turns out my uncle Bob (my mom's older brother) just died. She and one older brother are left out of 7 siblings.

Carolyn brought me back to Moab on her way back from Boulder, Colorado. She's been devoting tons of her time to Sol Food Farms and our community of friends. She has caught the infection. She and I have talked a lot about this miracle of community we're feeling. The farm is working from a volunteer spirit.

It's strange to think how few can make a living growing basic, nutritious food in our skewed system. What is most important is devalued the most, and visa-versa. If/when our economy crumbles, maybe priorities, simple common sense, will return.

Yeah, I guess this wilderness/urban hunter-gatherer is going agricultural, for now - more because of the community I'm feeling than a need for food for myself. From reading this blog, you can glean that I feel the hunter-gatherer model is the most balanced. But we also have to deal with easing into harmony between modern society and nature. A perma-culture model seems the best for doing this, though Sol Food is not really permaculture yet.

Basically, deep down, I'm still on this idea that balance can't truly happen until we take on the model of nature, where one reaps what one does not sow. Yes, one sows, another reaps. In other words, pay it forward. For example, when I eat a mulberry from a random feral tree, I reap what I didn't sow. And some bacterium eats my waste, reaping what it didn't sow. This idea of giving up the fruit (reward) of our actions is a prime theme of all religious traditions, most clearly stated in both the Bhagavad Gita and the Gospels. I've been brainstorming about this for some time - how civilization's banking, commerce, and agriculture are all based upon grasping after the fruit of our own labors, rather than the pay-it-forward economy of nature. I'm still working on a treatise about the law of compounding interest, in both nature and in commercial banking, and how the appeal to nature's model is at the core of the world's religious traditions. But it's just too beautiful, springy to summery, outside, with friends I love so much--not too conducive to study & writing. Oh well, summer is for outward growth, winter for inward, mostly. Everything is beautiful in its season.

A young couple, Garlan and Erin, came to work on the farm for a couple weeks. They fit right in and we fell in love with them, too. That's Garlan, Erin, me, Chris, and Carolyn pic left (L to R).

It's been a season of music. We had a grand jam party in a culvert under a road a couple weeks ago that turned out absolutely divine. I kid you not. We've also had a couple jam times at Rotary park and at our friend Conrad's house that almost rivaled it. Rotary park has a bunch of "freenotes", xylophones and drums for public use, all tuned in a pentatonic scale so anybody can harmonize on them. This Moabite, Richard Cook, created them for the park years ago. Unfortunately, neighbors complain and we have to go silent after 9pm. That's Chris, me, Pete, and Brer (L-R) tootin' and bangin' on the xylophones.

Our friend Amanda has been keeping life exciting and interesting for us, too. She and her friend Chelsea took Carolyn (pic right) and me rock climbing a few weeks ago. Then she's been instigating getting folks together to play Ninja tag every few nights on the monkey bars in the park. It feels like being a kid again.

I'm glad I decided to not wander and stay in Moab this summer.

Jubilant May Day

2010-05-07T00:49:00.009-06:00

Back in Fruita, Colorado

I was feeling my usual disconcerted, Spring-time troubledness for weeks on end; but over the past week or so, with lots of meditation and love from friends, it has started giving way to infinite Peace and Gratitude again.

It turns out I’m back at my parents’ in Fruita. I felt a need to come here since my 82-year-old dad got a bad case of pneumonia. But he’s on the upswing now. My new friend, Carolyn, had to go back to Boulder to take a class for a few days there and dropped me off here last Wednesday. She plans to cart me back to Moab on her return next week.

New Friends and Old

So much has been happening. A few weeks ago a few folks showed up in town around the same time. My friend Mark, the writer, came back. Then I met Indigo and Ben, with the Zen Army, for the first time on the same day that a young woman, Carolyn, came to town from Delaware via Boulder. Indigo and Ben were staying and volunteering in Green River, Utah and only came to Moab for the day to do some work at the food bank and to chat with me at Free Meal. Indigo and Ben are basically traveling around the country with an Airstream, doing free work for folks. I feel privileged having got to meet them.

Who is Carolyn? She’s a 20-something who had seen my previous blog entry about Sol Foods Farm and decided to come here to work there with me for a couple weeks, starting a circuit as a kind of WWOOF-er. She wanted to later hit other farms in other states. But it turns out she hit it off so well here that she’s decided to stay indefinitely! I and my friends feel way pleased about that.

Meanwhile, my friends Jesse and Jamie rolled into town from L.A. for a few days not long after Carolyn had arrived. They are part of the world-wide Jesus Christian community. I had hitch-hiked and train-hopped up the west coast with Jesse and a couple other “Jesus Christians”, Simon and Grace (who’s since left the JCs on

good terms), a couple summers ago. I love and feel a true comradery with those guys.

What Motivates the Universe?

I haven’t been staying up the canyon much. I moved the near-town camp to some woods near the farm, mostly camping there. Now I can devote more time to the farm, feeling more and more like family with my co-workers. Chris and Brer are farm stalwarts, and other friends, like Haila, Riley, David, Aaron, Pete A and Jason often join us, as well as other random folks. Now Carolyn is becoming a stalwart, too. She’s been staying at my friend Pete G’s house but has recently set up a tent near mine. Brian Ballard, from an old Mormon Moab family, is leasing over 40 acres of land and letting us farm it, too. It looks like he’s got the vision, too! I keep discovering how much I love these folks more and more. Everybody there is volunteering. I mean people aren’t getting paid anything – hardly even food (since it’s too early in the spring)! So what motivates them? What motivates the entire universe to roll? Community! Nature! Community of atoms, of space, of living beings. I am seeing before my eyes people acting out the basic principle of Life talked about in this blog! Who knows how long it can last among us humans. Day by day is all we can know. Our Daily Bread. Only when it is Day by Day can it last perpetually as it does in the rest of the Infinite Universe.

We are also reviving an old abandoned half-dead orchard, pruning trees, diverting water to them. Visions are brewing of a sustainable perma-culture forest garden. Of course, not a single one of us farmers owns any of the land; it could be pulled from beneath us like a rug. But where in the infinite physical universe is there a permanent, stable place! Totally accepting this perpetual instability, this perpetual death and resurrection, perpetually born again, is the only true stability, the only eternal peace, the only Promised Land.

L-R: Haila, Veda, Brer, Pete A, Chris, Me at the farm.

Carolyn is not in this pic since she took it.

Jubilee

My blood-brother, Damian, and his classy German wife, Dorina, decided to throw my 49th May Day birthday party at their house. I felt so blessed that day – still do. It’s now my Jubilee Year, 7x7th, and I’m brainstorming like crazy about the ancient Jewish celebration of Jubilee, beginning on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement, At-One-ment), when the Seven Trumpets are blown beginning the Year when all debts are forgiven, all land is laid to rest for the poor and for wild animals to freely eat, and possession of lands is given up and returned to communal clans. I’m realizing more and more that Jubilee is the essence of the human purpose on earth. Hint: Jubilee is the Eternal Present, the Sabbath Rest. Yes, it is our entire mission to enter that Rest, Today.

Funny, I was dwelling on this idea when I returned to the farm after my birthday. Carolyn was there planting melons. I asked her which watermelon seeds we were planting that day. “Jubilee,” she said. A tingle darted down my spine.

*{{May 8, 2010: I just added a new essay to the website:
Contradiction between Eastern Religion and Christianity? Non-Dualism embraces Dualism? }}