Monstaville Book III. Chapter 7

7

“Let us pray for a mind so poised and balanced that we give poise and strength to others.”

- White Eagle.

Regarding the abusers of power in this world, the logical solution is to use every force available to obliterate them, but that’s my male side talking, my will and my head! The love and wisdom that are felt in the feminine heart whisper that the oneness of life is sacred because we all belong to one Godhead; we are all One. When we feel more, we love more. I don’t mean emotional responses in the belly that result from superficial needs and dependency, but - you know? - this the still waters running deep, the wisdom of the heart. It looks like a dark abyss from afar, when centred in one’s own individual will and identity has a human being, as a man. Yet, it is no different from a clear, tranquil, shimmering lake which, to me, is about the most beautiful thing that exists in nature.

At first, you wince as, bit by bit, your legs experience the freezing temperature and your bollocks bark and growl in anger and fear, fight or flight (‘You bastard, what do you think you’re doing?...No, no way, stop you crazy son-of-a-bitch! Let’s get out of here...nooo...!). Yet, it is not long before your body grows accustomed to the temperature and the water feels comfortable and relaxing. Even your bollocks - if they could talk - take it all back: ‘This is Heaven! We really must do this more often!’ Boom boom! (No idea why I seem to think that if testicles could talk they could have a voice like Basil Brush).

So, you swim, or play, float, make-love, whatever, and it all feels beautiful and makes you smile. You feel at peace. The sun is shining overhead and your body feels just right. Stillness and movement flow together naturally. This is the effect that the feminine - infinite consciousness - should have on us. It is both something that exists, with its own properties, and what we make it. We behave differently on land, we men in particular, with our conscious but limited egos. In the lake, there is only so much action you can engage in. The only thing to do is feel...relax. It is a peaceful place where will and identity can exist but not in isolation and where they are less likely to dominate, to exclude consciousness itself from the arena of human experience. For, it is the experience (illusion) of physical separateness that concentrates man’s energy and creates a false identity and that wants what it wants NOW and is blind to the needs and feelings of others.

The inner silence defies the head, like the Oracle defies the Architect in The Matrix trilogy. The old order is mechanical, limited, fixed. Anything beyond its reasoned constructs and the principles which comprise its identity are unacceptable. They are a threat that must be dealt with not accommodated. Zion must be annihilated. It’s logical! Well, I’m not saying that, but I am saying that the worst elements in humanity, the ones who exist to cause chaos...You know, I don’t know what to do about them! That’s why we have prisons. Society doesn’t know what to do with them either. 

Raw power, launched in anger because things aren’t the way we want, or expect, them to be serves no one, least of all ourselves. Reason and compassion, an open mind and an open heart, must be the wings with which the mind is elevated and flies alongside the angels. As long as the separate ego stands in our way, eclipsing the heart, obstructing the flow of love, cutting us off from the whole, the voice of ‘reason’ will remain confined to the logic that is relevant only within a certain framework. The will is then decisive but wisdom is left far behind. Feeling: feeling should permeate every moment of our lives just as we ought to be conscious of what we feel and who we are (‘You teach best what you most need to learn,’ as Richard Bach notes in Illusions).

Monsters at the gate…We men tend to identify with and centre ourselves in what comes up from within us. So if monsters come up we think we must be monsters and feel bad about ourselves or change direction either to ill-effect upon ourselves or others. The male body concentrates energy/will/power so we're gonners unless we can open our hearts and release the love of the divine within us. And that comes through wisdom and practice of course. Like a new muscle we're exercising. Man’s body has a shape that reflects his single-mindedness. His concentrated energy summons will which, of course, has its place, but the ensuing power requires a level of inner strength and self-discipline most do not develop. Years of pain and toil may lead a man to the lake of wisdom and love and then it’s time to go home. Woman’s more curvaceous body reflects her multi-dimensionality, that of consciousness itself as it flows in cycles and response; in fact, like the current of the sea, which builds up momentum and finally crashes on the shore and then withdraws to start the process all over again. Energy circulates through the feeling of wholeness but much is wasted and dissipated without a central focus, a concrete, conscious sense of identity. There can be power then only by developing one’s will (I am generalising; of course some women are more strong-willed than men but it is usually not in isolation as the male ego tends to be), or by bonding with other women.

There are two types of ego. Both are negative but, within that paradigm are the positive (active) extrovert/bully and the negative (passive) introvert/victim. They represent extremes resulting from conditioning in which people become stuck. To become more balanced, the extrovert needs to relax and open up to become more sensitive and caring while the introvert needs to draw on his or her inner power somehow and become more assertive and confident. Anaïs Nin once wrote, “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” Seen from the perspective of process (feminine), it is so obvious that the fixed, self-centred, competitive ego is an ignorant state to hold on to. Viewed from the perspective of purpose (masculine), it appears equally obvious that just being open to life and people, passively responding and caring for others is pointless. Human beings have at least some potential to express (so they are either winners or losers in a competitive or tyrannical male-dominated society), however limited. What else is there? When we are attuned to our feelings, we know that they flow continuously, and, in the depths of the soul, we also know that, on this level, we are all one, neither being nor becoming, just sharing the body of water in the lake, as it were. It is when the masculine and feminine, the head and heart, are balanced that we realise life is a perpetual process of becoming. But, one cannot continue to become more unless one has a conscious identity to deepen and expand. It is a great cosmic joke. We need both aspects, being and consciousness, yet, taken separately, we are doomed. Either we will be passive victims or selfish despots. Either we will be stuck in a tight, fixed, knot of egocentricity or all the strands will fall apart and leave us with nothing to show for our trials in life.

Firmness and flexibility, say the Daoists, firm in your core as an individual expression of God, with your unique vibration of consciousness, and gentle and yielding, relaxed and accommodating, towards other people and towards all conditions with which life presents you. Because that is all oneness and it is the oneness of the river that slowly shapes the rock, removing its hard edges. Gradually, the rock’s shape no longer resists the flow of water or looks out of place. The individual spark of consciousness adopts a softer shape, a kinder attitude. Its surface becomes smoother and it achieves a state of complete harmony with the incessant flow of water. It looks more comfortable and it feels at home in the river. The water could never change because it has no real substance. That which has substance must evolve until it is perfected, until it is perfectly aligned with nature. We may hate to change, to suffer and grow, but the universe, in its wisdom, has provided tools to shape us so that we may deepen our self-awareness instead of sticking out like protruding monoliths that exist for their own sake in the illusory dimension of separateness. We must remain both centred and open, know ourselves, but be prepared to change, at least in certain areas, certain blind spots which we have yet to explore and understand more consciously. We must know ourselves, not as fixed entities in a physical and material context, but as magical beings with limitless potential, endless possibilities, in fact.

"It's hard for many people to believe that there are extraordinary things inside themselves, as well as others." - Unbreakable (directed by M. Night Shyamalan, 2000).

When we feel at home in the collective universe, when we do not feel the temptation to resist anything, when we are confident in our own inner, conscious will and identity, the water passes all around us and we feel it and welcome it. It does not crash against stubborn walls of resistance or spin off at wild angles from sharp edges. The rock remains. In fact, it knows itself more deeply because it is not forever fighting against the outside world, being agitated or trying to get its own way. It does not confine its conscious awareness to its superficial, external identity alone. It does not identify with those worldly parts of itself which, however powerful and tough they may appear, represent, in fact, the transient exterior that is first in the firing line. While we have been granted free will in order to grow individually through the power of choice, we cannot stop the flow of experience which bombards those hard edges. Become more rounded we must. Hmmmmm. (My best Yoda impression).

Unfortunately, being surrounded by the water of collective consciousness in this world, we do not always receive the warm rays of the Sun. Indeed, the water is often so overcast that we would rather be more active in order to generate heat and keep ourselves warm and stimulated in a physical way than step into the cold pool of water that threatens to extinguish our joy and enthusiasm, even our will to live. Then, there are those who are addicted to stress and displays of aggression and power. And, yet, how are we ever going to create a world in which everyone is surrounded by love? Heaven on Earth can manifest only when we, as individuals, open out hearts fully and allow universal love to shine forth in all its abundant glory.

This is what I’ve learned over the past ten years, both to become and be more powerful as an individual, using the power of intention, and to understand that whatever others do is just their personal experience, just part of the collective river of life. It does not affect my core but teaches me to understand that, whatever others do is just their personal experience, just part of the collective river of life. It does not affect my core but teaches me to be more compassionate.

“Resist what resists in you. Become yourself.” - The Mahabarata.

While I have never really hated anybody, I can see how closing off my heart to certain types of people helps to sustain the illusion of separation. Internal division breeds external conflict. It might be necessary to take action and express power but, always, it should be done with love and, preferably, humour. It is important not to resist life or what it throws at us, but to surrender the ego and view things from a higher perspective as well as to find the right tools for dealing with the situation most effectively and harmoniously. As Winston Churchill said: “If you are going through hell, keep going” (or, as Robert Frost suggested, "The best way out is always through"). Pay off your karmic debts and learn the lessons they bring. It certainly looks like I am learning to love all equally.

“Look upon all difficulty as a way to exert your will-power.” - Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov.

Ultimately, we need to ensure that the power and will of God - the Self - is expressed, not that of the ego, the self. Why? Because the latter stunts our growth and chains us to the Wheel of Karma and therefore misery, even if we temporarily silence our fear and insecurities (in the ‘now’), and the former leads us ever onwards and upwards to greater realisations of creative power and, beyond the domain of matter, ever-increasing levels of love and happiness. Under hypnosis, I witnessed myself as a soul in my mother’s womb preparing to be born. I was honestly shocked by the feeling of peaceful, even keen, anticipation at the prospect of undergoing my imminent ordeal which would last for years and affect me for the whole of my life. It was there in front of my mind’s eye, as clear as daylight, with a kind of me-ish form, a pure image of what my soul might look like if it had form. The feeling was beautiful and unmistakably real, but it was hard to believe or accept. It was incredible, fascinating! It taught me a lot about how blind we are to what is going on beneath the surface, underneath all the conditioning accumulated through experience.

For all my incessant desire to escape from all this madness, really it is nothing more than the stirring of mud on the river bed, an opportunity to experience the latent negativity within the unconscious so that it can be cleared with conscious light. The water itself remains pure for, when the turbulence finally comes to an end and the dirt settles back again, the water is as clear and pristine as ever. It is in contrast to the disturbances of the temporal world and their effect on our personal consciousness that we reflect the Sun’s radiant majesty more richly and awaken to our original nature as the Sun, the Self, beaming brightly at the heart of universal consciousness. Thus, each time we incarnate, we gather more gold even though we may not be aware of how much we have accumulated in the spiritual bank. Then, when we depart, yet again, we get to enjoy all that Light. No wonder, then, that the soul loves coming to this chaotic world!

“Take a breath and understand the maturity that is required for the next step. You are given choices and understanding to listen and believe and be greater than you are now. Let your heart begin to open in compassion for what is to become of a world that is lost to many and found by others. Let yourself see into your eyes and know that you are coming forth as a Wayshower and one who can speak the truth and become the truth, become a planetary teacher, a teacher of Light. There are moments in each life when you are given an opportunity to make a choice. This is such a time and you have already made this choice to move into the Light, to move into the higher Light and to hear the sound of the celestial spheres, the sound of harmonics and resonance that echo throughout your mind and into the other dimensions. You are being brought into a higher place of knowing. You are seeing things and knowing things and understanding that you are much more than you ever thought you were. Many experience the psychic experiences of feeling and being in other places and other times, of knowing different people and feeling the coincidences that allow you to breathe through veil after veil after veil.” (YouTube video, September 2008: The GoldRing. Game of Enlightenment and Abundance. ‘Shining Ones of the Enlightenment’).

The Vermont Trip Red Scale Film by omnialx on Flickr

The Fire From Within by Carlos Castaneda (Simon & Schuster, New York, U.S., 1984).

     * Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.

                Every effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. Without self-importance we are invulnerable.

    * I've explained to you that the new seers aim to be free. And freedom has the most devastating implications. Among them is the implication that warriors must purposely seek change. Your predilection is to live the way you do. You stimulate your reason by running through your inventory and pitting it against your friends' inventories. Those manoeuvres leave you very little time to examine yourself and your fate. You will have to give up all that.

    * Seers are divided into two categories. Those who are willing to exercise self-restraint and can channel their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would benefit other seers and man in general, and those who don't care about self-restraint or about any pragmatic goals. The latter have failed to resolve the problem of self-importance.

                Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy.

    * In order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. In the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be. Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not principle.

                Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself.

                Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy.

                The strategic inventory covers only behavioural patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being.

                In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it.

                One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechannelling that energy is impeccability.

                The most effective strategy for rechannelling that energy consists of six elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will. They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant.

                A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction.

                Petty tyrants teach us detachment. The ingredients of the new seers' strategy shows how efficient and clever is the device of using a petty tyrant. The strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for the final realisation that impeccability is the only thing that counts in the path of knowledge.

                Usually, only four attributes are played. The fifth, will, is always saved for an ultimate confrontation, when warriors are facing the firing squad, so to speak.

                Will belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive manipulation of the known.

                The interplay of all the five attributes of warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have mastery over will. Such an interplay is a supreme manoeuvre that cannot be performed on the daily human stage.

                Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty tyrants, provided, of course, that a petty tyrant has been found. The petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot control and the element that is perhaps the most important of them all. The warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a lucky one. You're fortunate if you come upon one in your path, because if you don't you have to go out and look for one.

                If seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand the presence of the unknowable.

                Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.

                The perfect ingredient for the making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives. Seers have to go to extremes to find a worthy one. Most of the time they have to be satisfied with very small fry. Then warriors develop a strategy using the four attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing.

                On the path of knowledge there are four steps. The first step is the decision to become apprentices. After the apprentices change their views about themselves and the world they take the second step and become warriors, which is to say, beings capable of the utmost discipline and control over themselves. The third step, after acquiring forbearance and timing, is to become men of knowledge. When men of knowledge learn to see they have taken the fourth step and have become seers.

                Control and discipline refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a selfish way but in the sense of a total examination of the self.

                Forbearance and timing are not quite an inner state. They are in the domain of the man of knowledge.

                The idea of using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior's spirit, but also for enjoyment and happiness. Even the worst tyrants can bring delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior.

                The mistake average men make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have understood that reality is an interpretation we make.

                Petty tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while warriors do not. What usually exhausts us is the wear and tear on our self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being made to feel worthless.

                To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control. Instead of feeling sorry for himself a warrior immediately goes to work mapping the petty tyrant's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of behaviour.

                To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called discipline. A perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming feature.

                Forbearance is to wait patiently - no rush, no anxiety - a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.

                A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for. Right there is the great joy of warriorship.

                Timing is the quality that governs the release of all that is held back. Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.

                Forbearance means holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully due. It doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing, forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it.

                To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but devastating. Warriors who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.

                Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger, without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated.

                After warriors are defeated they either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life.

    * One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear, it spurs them to learn.

    * Pull yourself together and don't fight your fear, roll with it. Be afraid without being terrified. Put all your concentration on the midpoint of your body - a true centre of energy in all of us. Fear does not exist as soon as the glow of awareness moves beyond a certain threshold inside man's cocoon.

    * Any warrior can be successful with people provided that he moves his assemblage point to a position where it is immaterial whether people like him, dislike him, or ignore him.

    * The two basic qualities of warriors are sustained effort and unbending intent.

                (Excerpts from www.prismagems.com/castaneda/donjuan7.html).

"The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or as a curse." - don Juan (The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe by Carlos Castaneda, Washington Square Press, New York, U.S., 1998).

“To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.” - Carlos Castaneda (The Wheel of Time, Simon and Schuster, New York, U.S., 2001).

Baldrick (Tony Robinson): Wait my lord, do not despair. For I have a cunning plan.
Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson): Can I say I'm not optimistic Baldrick?
Baldrick: To be quite frank my lord, neither am I. My family have never been very good at plans.
Blackadder: So. With suitably low expectations, what is your plan to get us home?

- Blackadder Goes Forth (Series 4, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, BBC TV, 1989).