A Nautical Parable

There was once a fleet of ships lost at sea.  The fleet had been lost at sea for a long time.  The ships had been lost at sea for so long that the people on board told wild mythical stories of distant times, for no one knew how they even got to be lost at sea.  All they knew was that at some point the first voyagers on this ancient fleet, both the crew and passengers, ended up creating families on board ship because it became apparent that they were not going to find land anytime before they died.

One day a ship helmed by a daring and compassionate captain decided that in order to save the families onboard his vessel, he would have to break with the rest of the fleet and steer off into the unknown in an attempt to find land.  He reasoned to himself that such land had to exist, else where did all the people come from?

And so one day he broke with the fleet, much to the chagrin of the other ship captains.  They chased his ship for a while but soon gave up when they saw they were getting too far away from the apparent safety of the fleet, which was all they had ever known.

The rogue captain soon faced more troubles than he could have imagined.  He made his way thru rough seas and violent storms that threatened to sink his ship.  He faced dangerous ocean serpents no one had ever seen before that nearly tore his ship apart, and was even attacked by whales at one point.  His crew was beyond being upset with him, almost constantly complaining about his unwise decision to leave the fleet.  Each day it seemed they grew more and more indignant, even threatening mutiny.  The families of passengers were always gossiping about the captain, complaining to him, shouting at him from below decks, ridiculing him behind his back.  Everyone was afraid they would drown in the angry sea.  No one was truly with the captain.  Though everyone respected his position (just barely) as captain, he was for all intents and purposes…alone.

Each day the situation grew more foreboding, but still the captain remained at the helm, convinced only by an innate Intuition that he just had to be correct in his reasoning—land must exist somewhere.  Home must be somewhere.

Then just when even the captain was about to give up hope for the last time, something odd appeared on the horizon…

One evening while sailing thru strong winds and thick fog, he spots a light in the distance and heads for it.  The closer he got to the light the smaller the waves became and the wind slacked to a steady helpful breeze.  Closer and closer he got to the light only to see more lights next to it.  His ship was no longer battered by waves, the sails were no longer ripping in the fierce winds and the fog lifted bit by bit until he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

There in the distance was a glimmering city seemingly made of light!  And closer to his weather beaten ship he saw what was only a legend told among his people for eons—a harbor.  Somehow…someway…the captain had had steered his bruised ship into the safety of an enclosed harbor jutting out into the ocean.

The ship’s families began coming out of their quarters below deck wondering what had happened to the waves they had always been accustomed to since birth.  Some even disregarded the ships rules and entered the pilothouse where the captain stood at the helm with his hands at the wheel, too amazed and bewildered to reprimand anyone for the intrusion.  The scene outside the windows had taken away his breath and his speech along with it.  He was trancelike in appearance, unable to think or feel anything.  As if guided by some unseen force, as if he had always known how, he steered his ship to the port that lay just beyond the bow.  He carefully and slowly maneuvered his ship next to a berth and gave the order that no captain in his people’s history had ever given to his crew.

“Cast the mooring lines!”

Ancient ropes that had long remained unused lying on the deck at both the bow and stern were heaved onto shore by the crew and secured around equally ancient and unused moorings, all the while as the families held each other in anticipation of feeling beneath their feet a thing mentioned only in their stories—dry land.

Then all at once, the families of the ships gathered on the crowded deck began to cheer with uncontrollable joy at the miracle that had occurred.

Their tear-filled eyes now beheld a luminous city of unequaled splendor; a reality they had previously only assumed was a crazy myth that existed only in the mind of an equally crazy captain.  But he was not crazy after all.  He had been correct from the moment he broke with the fleet so long ago.

He had done what no other captain had done, what no other captain dared to do, what no other had even tried to do, what no other had thought was possible.

This captain had finally found home.

Light is irresistibly drawn to a black hole by gravity.  Once light gets close enough to the black hole, it cannot escape the black hole’s gravitational pull.  This is generally presented to the public as some kind of scientific tragedy on a colossal scale.  It certainly sounds strange to say this, but scientists never seem to think for even a nanosecond that maybe the light doesn’t want to escape.  That maybe it is the very purpose and function of light’s existence to illuminate everything, even the scientifically and mathematically fascinating and terrifying Black Hole.  All of creation wants light, even the darkness…especially the darkness.

It looks like what we are seeing on a cosmic scale with light and the black hole is what is happening on every smaller level as well.

Light’s very function is to illuminate the darkness.  This is the nature of light—to dispel darkness.  For the Biblically inclined, there is a verse which states “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can do nothing against it.”  Stated another way, the purpose of darkness is to try and snuff out the light, to destroy it.  But it is doomed to fail.  Even the famed black hole does not totally destroy the light that gets sucked into it—some radiation escapes.

But so what if the darkness attempts to destroy the light?!?  It will never work.  I use the word ‘attempts’ because no matter how hard the darkness tries, it can do nothing against the light.  That is just elementary physics.  Light expands endlessly and seemingly effortlessly.  It is impossible to destroy light once it has left its source.  Like sunlight, it just spreads out evenly in all directions.

On the more mundane plane of life, it seems that the darkness of human ignorance and selfishness is doing everything it can to eliminate the light of knowledge and wisdom wherever it is found.  In recent years, the darkness has even gone so far as to destroy some isolated monasteries and convents around the world.  Even spirituality is under attack.

A question—is it really so big a leap of consciousness to think of the darkness in humans as a black hole that is attempting to destroy the light of knowledge and wisdom found in the more enlightened members of the population?

The thing that the darkness never seems to understand is that even if it manages to destroy an enlightened group and their home, the truth is that somehow or other their light of knowledge and wisdom inevitably gets spread out to other places.  Therefore the darkness unwittingly helps distribute the very light it attempted to eliminate—stupid.

In our generation it was proven mathematically and scientifically that not everything is doomed when it falls prey to a black hole.  As it turns out, only the negatively charged particles get sucked in—the positively charged particles escape as energy called Hawking radiation (named after Stephen Hawking).

So even on the cosmic stage we find a replication of what happens when an enclave of light is attacked by darkness.  Only that which is expendable gets destroyed while that which is precious escapes to take root somewhere else.  This is exactly what is happening with the attacks on spiritual groups around the world these days.  They may lose a building or two, perhaps some of the members of the group and even a large portion of their more superfluous knowledge and technology, but somehow and someway the essential light they have safeguarded inevitably spreads out somewhere else.

The ever-increasingly vicious actions of the darkness these days is like a destructive child who thinks he can destroy a dandelion by plucking it and blowing on its delicate structure until all of its little white hair-like seeds disperse.  But then what happens?  Those seeds just grow into more dandelions somewhere else!

The dumbest thing the darkness can ever do is to try to destroy the light.  How can you destroy something whose very nature is to expand endlessly without fail?  IMPOSSIBLE!

So go ahead darkness…give it your best shot.  The more you try, the more you fail.  The more you try to break it, the more the little pieces spread out and become harder to maintain.

But what can else can you expect of darkness?  Something intelligent?

I think not!

This be the Tao of stupid.

All the work we do in life, assuming we are following our dharma, is to express and explain completely an idea.  That’s it—an idea.  We get an idea that we can hardly understand except in the most subtle abstract way, and if it fits our personality and ignites our enthusiasm and emotion, we are naturally spurned into action to manifest this thing that is nothing more than an idea, a mere thought.  Everything that has ever manifested on earth throughout history began as nothing more than an idea from the Mind of God.

Even we human beings ourselves may have begun as just an idea.

All the universe and everything that occurs within it is an expressed & manifested conglomeration of many ideas for us to experience.  They are dreams downloaded from God.  When one learns all the rules of the game, one can play it and teach others to play it until boredom occurs (death, willed or not).

I think one way to attain enlighten is to choose one dream-idea that is representative of God (such as a mythological god or goddess) and focus all attention on it until one gets so occupied with it that “voluntarily induced boredom with life” occurs…or death.  This is the end result of Yoga practice, of perfect Life Force Control (Pranayama), whose best expression is the practice of Kriya Yoga.  All of this is akin to choosing a method of uniting with God, a meditation or ritual, and sticking with it no matter what until Wisdom and Understanding come, leading to the way out of the suffering inherent in the Dualistic experience called life.

When perception itself stops, so does life.  When one can behold the eternal hidden within the changing panorama that is life, then one will have God, for only God truly is, and is eternal.  God is the hidden, invisible fabric upon which the tapestry of all experience is woven.  All we are and do in life creates a kind of geometric pattern on the fabric.  But if we choose to reflect God in our lives, enlighten ourselves, then the pattern we create will be so like the eternal fabric that those who look upon you cannot see any difference between you and the Fabric (God).  If you can see that in the whole world, though they who live in the world are not even aware of it themselves, then you will be enlightened.  See all people as all equal in that they are just another pattern woven on the fabric.  Only when you are one with the Fabric can you truly see the whole pattern woven upon It.

Spiritualists, especially yogis, are (to use a lousy word) ‘worshipping’ death until it finally occurs.  Worshipping a thing brings it to you.

Yogis are busy practicing dying so they can experience Bliss here and now instead of waiting for physical death.  They worship death in order to bring about the Bliss of union with God.  Eventually they succeed.  And when death finally occurs, they are unafraid of it.

Maybe that is one reason people are afraid of spiritual masters.  They have the secret of death with them.  As such, we are fearful of them, while simultaneously wanting that very thing they possess because it would mean that we could end our suffering too, just as they have.

The Soul’s Nature is Joy.  The Ego instigates the Fear that attempts to restrict the Soul’s essential nature.  The Ego is Restriction itself.  Aleister Crowley was right when he wrote “The only sin is restriction.”  Every choice is the action of Love Under Will.  The wild and chaotic nature of Love must be placed under control by the Will.

When one does what one wants, it is an act of Will, a free will choice.  These choices arise as a reaction to a perceived lack or vacuum in the universe and one’s own self.  If one chooses to stop choosing itself to such an extant that it is automatic and is therefore no longer a choice, then that is perfect programming that leads to God.  Not choosing is as easy as following any inspiration.  After all, when one is really & truly inspired…there is no deliberation, no musing, i.e. no CHOICE.  Then one is not living, but BEING itself.  It is effortless.  So when one is following one’s true inspiration, then there is no choice or thought about it…which would be the result of doubt and fear brought on by the ego.

Not following your God-given inspirations is Sin itself.  Not following what drives you is the restriction that brings the Hell of Ego.  Do what Intuition tells you, for it is the voice of your inspiration guiding you.  Your inspiration is a reflection or manifestation of your Soul.  Follow your inspiration, for it is the Voice of the Soul telling you how to Be Love and Joy instead of listening to the doubt and fear that comes from Ego.

Criminals and Spiritual Servants of God both face disdain from the general population stuck in the middle of the Free Will spectrum.  The population sees both as violators of the general population’s own unconsciously created Hell we call “the world as we know it”.  They secretly hate both the criminal and God’s servants for following Will, their will…since the herd doesn’t follow their own will but let themselves be herded and pushed around by outside forces.  The general population has allowed themselves to be programmed by the outside world until all ability to follow their own internal wishes has all but vanished.

But they who are at the opposite ends of the free will spectrum (the criminal and the spiritual servant) are following a different program, each created by themselves, uninfluenced by what the middle herd thinks and believes.

All that is different is the motive of each.  One works for themselves.  One works for all.

And ignorant society hates and persecutes them both.

The only way for a government to effectively do anything or ‘get the job done’ is for the common people to give up that power to the government.  The power of any government is dependant upon the will of the people, or more accurately the sacrificing of the will of the people to the government.

Pre-war Nazi Germany had a government that got things done.  The people gave away their power to the new regime, literally—history records that Adolph Hitler was voted into office by the people.  He did not overtly wrestle control from the people as is commonly believed.  That is not to say that he didn’t cleverly maneuver his way to power—all power hungry politicians do exactly this.  It is called covert control.  But it is impossible to truly control anything, much less a people.  Failure is always the result.  Sure enough, the Nazi government (if it can be called that) led the German people to self destruction.

Post-Revolutionary War America had a very small and limited government with little ability to get much of anything done.  The first Americans were hardy and self-reliant.  When something went wrong, they took care of the problem themselves if it was possible to do so.  Only when the problem was too big or the common people lacked what was needed to take care of it did they ever give up any power to the government.  So it should always be in the case where any government at all is needed.

Ultimately, the ability of a government to tyrannize or force the common people is wholly dependant upon the willingness of the people to be controlled.

If it is possible to have a Utopia on earth (and I doubt such is possible in this Dualistic Universe) then rest assured it could never be realized if a controlling government still exists.  The dream of Utopia cannot even come close to manifesting unless all people exercise self control and remain as individually and completely autonomous as possible, unwilling to give away even a smidgen of their personal power, their sovereignty, their very free will to choose the life they desire to live.

When tyrants appear, the blame lies solely on the people for allowing such a person to take control over any part of their lives.  The easiest way to depose a tyrant is to simply take back the power of self-determination that was given to the tyrant and refuse to be controlled in any way.  Just say “NO”, and leave him/her no option but to crawl back to whatever dark corner of the world they came from.

Some say the world would be different if women were the ones in positions of political power.  I disagree.  I think we might have just as many wars, except they would be fought over irrational, unreasonable, illogical grounds.  That is not to say that male politicians go to war for good reasons, just different reasons that lack any compassion, warmth, feelings or understanding or consideration.

Of course, when I think of it, I perceive both extremes to be very much the same stupid shit.

If you think we need a president or even a government, then you are not getting the point.  It doesn’t matter if you elect a man or a woman or even an alligator.  Honestly…who gives a shit?  You are still making the mistake of giving away your personal sovereignty to someone else.  Why bother to give away your freedom to either a pair of tits or a pair of balls?

Either option is a boneheaded idea best flushed down the toilet with the rest of the shitty ideas people come up with these days.

Life is pretending.  We are all pretending that what we are experiencing during life is actually real.  The fact is, it is anything but real.  By one definition, becoming enlightened means that we stop pretending a little more each day, stop pretending to believe that what we experience around us is real.  The truth teaches us many things, especially that we have been playing a game, so to speak.  I think I once heard it explained in the phrase “at play in the fields of the lord”.  I don’t know the intent of the first person who penned that expression, but to my way of thinking it is a definition of life itself.  Life is a play, much as Shakespeare alluded.  We are all players, actors portraying our little parts to an audience of the world.

What we see at a play or a movie (the modern equivalent) is anything but real.  Although we may react in such a way while being a spectator in the audience, most of us would agree that only a fool would continue to believe what he saw in a theater is real.  In fact, most people laugh at and ridicule those who are fans of one particular movie or other (usually a fantasy film or a sci-fi epic), those who are so enthusiastic for the story that sometimes they may dress up as one of the characters when they attend the movie.  I don’t belittle these super-fans.  At the very least, they are enthusiastic about something that speaks to them on a deep level.  At least they are enthusiastic about something.  Most people are enthusiastic about nothing at all.

Sometimes I wonder how much more we would voluntarily react to a movie if the movie was a hologram projected all around us.  Such holographic movies, I think, are the way of the future.  Imagine going to the movies and when the movie begins you find yourself completely alone in the theater which then disappears and gives way to a holographic projection all around you.

Imagine that movies became so big they could be projected to a whole country, then a whole planet, then a whole solar system, a group of stars and planets, then a galaxy, then a cluster of galaxies, then the whole universe.  If one could project one’s idea for a movie to the whole universe, wouldn’t that seem like a power of God Almighty itself?  More importantly, being that it is still a movie (of Universal dimension and scope), wouldn’t it still be stupid of us to react to it as though it were real?  It is still a movie after all.  Why bother to believe in its alleged existence as fact?  Only a fool would be such a fan of movie that big…right?

And yet, I ask you…isn’t Life itself just a giant movie?  If taking a movie too seriously are the actions of a fool, then isn’t taking life itself too seriously equally foolish?

People who take life too seriously are indeed fooling themselves.  Let them be.  They must learn the Truth one day or another.  When we take things too seriously, we believe in the supposed reality of a thing that is anything but real, so unreal in fact that it is not even a thing to begin with.

Of course, none of this means that we should shirk off all cares and responsibility, as we would learn nothing at all.  And the thing we must learn about life is that it is not really real in the first place.  Just as we can learn from movies by keeping a level head during and after the viewing of the film, we may also learn the most from life in the same manner.

Being balanced is the key here.  If we lead a balanced life, we can learn the most about it and the most from it…mainly its unreality.  If we can learn this, then we will have no attachments to anything in life (which yogis warn us about) and we will be liberated from this otherwise endless movie called life.

This is enlightenment itself.  Knowing of the unreality of life while simultaneously being in it.  Stated another way, “Be in the world, but not of it.”  Or “The world is a bridge, do not build on it.”