life is a revelation - not an accomplishmentHave you ever been fake in your life? Ever placed an image before what you truly are? Ever tried to impress by telling a lie? I have. I lived like that for years. Lost in illusions for most of my life as I have been. But none so deeper than the illusions I created to live within in my early twenties. I had moved, a shift had occurred, in my reading interests. In early teens, I had been deeply attracted to the paranormal, to latent psychic abilities, to phenomenon such as the Philadelphia Experiment, particularly drawn to UFOs and the existence of aliens. I joined ‘BUFORA’ (British UFO research Association) and interviewed local people who claimed to have witnessed an unidentifiable aerial phenomenon. And I became a regular attender at the local Dundee Church of the Spirit, a small basement two or three roomed apartment which felt like it belonged in the realm it claimed to represent. Here, I received healing for back pain, (it worked), and received messages repeatedly, reportedly from beyond the grave. Here I received information accurate to my young life. Saying nothing more than that. I don’t remember exactly when, but somewhere around my late teens, early twenties, I began to have an interest in uncovering the actual order of things. How did life actually ‘work’? I sought to learn. And I made the greatest of all mistakes, I was so sadly mistaken, as so many of us are, or misled, as so many of us so tragically are, for I imagined, this was something which could be learnt from another. I imagined in all earnestness I could light my candle from the burning flame of another. How mistaken I was, so mistaken, it took many decades to understand this absurd stupidity which seems so obvious today. I jumped around and flirted like a restless seeking of a lovers scent I yearned for, but could never locate. It always seemed just out of reach. For a while, I read a lot, immensely actually, seeking to fill a hole inside it had never occurred to ever look at. I read Paramahansa Yogananda, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, flirting with the eastern menu on offer. I took to Transcendental Meditation and imagined I had found Nirvana, as I repeatedly numbed my life into deeper sleep day by day. I was greatly limited in this life search, the selection of offerings to partake within, were limited to a small esoterical/self-help corner of local bookstore. For a brief time, (very brief), I returned to the teachings of Jesus, and found comfort in his words. And yet a hunger endured. Perhaps fate, perhaps destiny entering a wrong turn, perhaps stupidity, yes, definitely stupidity, but 'naivety' might be a more inclusive word. Regardless of the suitable enclosing adjective to describe where my feet came to stand, I found, 'the art of positive thinking'. It arrived to me in virgin form in the nature of a book named 'The Silva Method'. I had no idea upon this picking up of this leafed volume bound in light covering in my local bookstore how it would alter the next five to ten years of my life. It would see me fly to America, meet Jose Silva himself, it would see me jointly partake in the birth of a business, now something of a global phenomenon apparently. I lay my head in shame of the strong foundation I helped to build which resulted in such a proliferation of a troublesome weed in the garden of the human mind and our shared world. But such days were ahead of me at this point, unseen, unknown, unknowable. And they are behind me now. I may begin to lift my head. It is a recognisable phenomenon that when something, anything, new, unconsidered to life previously, enters life, you begin to see it everywhere. Many were the offerings on this tantalising subject. And I devoured them all so enthusiastically. I must have read hundreds of books, rearrangements of the same words repeating the same ideologies in infinite arrangement. It made so much sense! Thought birthed action, to think ‘negatively’, would lead to actions which brought ‘negativity’ in life. The secret of all of life had been found! Uncovered at such a young age. All one had do, was ‘think positively’. I was blessed, only, I was not. I was surrounding my young life in dreadful dreary illusion, as so many of us do. Image copyright Kevinhbruce. In the back sleeve of the ‘Silva Method’ book I held in my hands was a business card. A phone number, a name of a person offering courses leading into mastery into this new found world of the positive. Jack Black. Silva Method Scottish Headquarters, Cumbernauld, Scotland. I lived in Dundee, Scotland. Cumbernauld, was around an eighty mile trip from my home address, thereabouts. I called and joined a course in an Edinburgh hotel room with, to the best of my memory, another three or four equally naive participants, seeking the wisdom of others, denying any potential of their own. Jack was a young, energetic, convincing, (to the already convinced), salesman. He was also a social worker by week. This was his ‘on the side’ job. The course was expensive I remember, though I do not remember the exact cost, we are talking around forty years ago, and the cost at that time ran in the region of several hundred pounds. Lucrative. For two weekends work and the price of the hiring of a small backstreet Edinburgh hotel room. Even given the small number of attendees, still, lucrative. I will not travel into detail regarding the exact nature of the 'Silva Method'. This is not the intention of these unfolding words. It’s an odd mix of a specific kind of ‘meditation’, designed to relax the body and bring the brain to rest in the frequency of alpha waves. Mind control, self-hypnosis, psychic experimentation, programming the brain, ‘creative’ visualisation, all are included elements delivering the whole package. A package I was personally so hungry for I swallowed starters, main course, and ordered up the biggest of ice cream desserts and a large soda to polish off this seeming delight. None as blind as those who hold their own blindness as a virtue. The course was mixture of self-introspection, led into of course, guided, instructed, this was far from free study. We were informed 'how' the mind worked. The subconscious and the conscious, the power of accessing the subconscious, the tools to get there, and what to do when there, to positively alter one’s life. To be used in application from anything such as getting a new job, to meeting an attractive partner, to healing the sick, to seeking great ‘success’ in life. 'Success' in life was centrally focussed upon. All future orientated. All taking control. After all, a boat travelling without direction, was a lost ship. A metaphor Jack used often. Jack ran the course, the young man who way too fast became this sixty-year-old typing these words enthusiastically sought to be involved. And so, he became quickly involved. In time, Jack saw the limitations of paying a hefty franchise fee to the Silva Method head office in Loredo, Texas, and acted upon this in his own self interest. Applying the same techniques diligently and enthusiastically imparted to others, seeking his own greater 'success'. He plagiarised the course. Jack went away for a while on extended vacation and reworked the lessons, the techniques, the methods, the words, the ideology and the philosophy and made it his own. He packaged it all up as the Silva method had been packaged all up, and and gave it a name. ‘Mindstore’ had been born. The ideology behind the name at the time was this. Jack was a big fan of Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop chain. Actually, Jack was a big fan of anyone who had reached the upper tier of 'success', the comparative identities to our 'elitists' today. Jack sought to emulate Anita, borrowing her ideology as he had borrowed the Silva Method, reworking it all together for his own self projected Nirvanic future. ‘Mindstore’ would be a mirror nature of The Body Shop. Only Mindstore would offer books, games, CDs, Videos, posters, anything and everything concerned with seeing life through a 'positive' eye. Placing a patch forever over the negative eye that it may never again seek the light of any day. The negative has no place in the world of those seeking only positivity. To digress a little, this is a phenomenal blindness in itself, comparative to willingly placing patches over both eyes, for the 'negative' and the 'positive' are both judgments on a sliding scale of values representing one's own particular life outlook. 'Negative' is related to 'positive', as 'up' is related to 'down'. Eternally bound together in infinite lovers embrace, inseparable in nature one, from the other. The desire to be only 'positive', is an impossibility impossible to ever achieve. If all is 'positive', there can be no 'positive', for 'positive' is a destination which can only ever be arrived at, in comparison to the 'negative'. These two travel together. Or they do not travel at all. The aim of opening a national/international chain of stores never came to fruition for Jack, though this was the initial plan, the port for Jack's luxury yacht to dock within as the reward for his life endeavours. Plus, many ideas 'borrowed' from the endeavours of others. But the business certainly has become a great 'success'. I am so sorry to say that I was a central factor for the foundation stones of the present day success of Mindstore, for I, was a founding member of the company, and I, was Business Development Manager and I, was very good at my job. So much so, but a few years after I had left, through a combination of growing dissatisfaction in a growing realisation that I had swallowed a red herring and changes to our financial agreements which benefitted Jack. I was young, naive, and was working without any contractual agreement. I visited Jack in his new plush office, alongside my lifetime close friend Richard, Jack held my arm up high in front of all his office staff and informed them that without the efforts of the man standing before them, none would likely have a job. I fear to say he is likely correct. I brought in the business which built the empire. So many mistakes has this man made in his life, none greater than seeking the positive. Jack also at this time offered that I return to work for Mindstore. I explained that I could not, for this man, the whole affair had been rather deceptive, something of a 'con'. I paraphrase now, for my exact memory of the exact words which arrived in reply are somewhat hazy. But it was along these lines: 'Of course it's a con Henryk! But it pays damned well.' Lucrative. I got Jack into places, through doors he had hungered to enter, large financial centres in the heart of London and elsewhere. CEOs looking at the rising curve on a monthly spreadsheet as the only virtue of life. So many of them. Seeking the God of high numbers. Similar in nature to Jack, who was seeking the same. I sold Jack on the telephone, at times I travelled with him, his right hand man and we completed the deal in person, lying through our teeth. And Mindstore began to grow. Mindstore's website today claims a proud half a million course graduates worldwide. Jack has franchised 'his' course, and others now pay him a fee, where he, once paid others the same. Given the exuberant fees Jack requires, this venture of which I was an early participating member for a few years, has made Jack a very wealthy man. Lucrative. From a later acquaintance I was to meet in later life, a lady Jack had employed as secretary, I heard Jack was living in a castle in the South of France. Rewarded, for selling horseshit as caviar. But so often is this the case in this crazy world. She had been involved in a court case against Jack, something I believe in the nature of a dispute over financial agreements similar to my own I had met so many years before. Self interest takes no prisoners. And is totally lacking in care for another, let alone love. In my defence, I began by believing firmly in the cause. Highly destructive are the ways of unquestioned belief. The whole thing in those early days was a lie. A mask we wore, long before the mandates of Covid. We rented BMWs, fast, sexy cars, bought expensive suits, we had to look the part. We had to look 'elite'. We pretended to others, the fruits we so eagerly displayed were the results of our use of the course techniques. This stuff really worked. Only, they were not. Bank balances placed firmly in the red, hidden from the eyes of others, played a dramatically different tune. So many with empty lives seek to fill their empty lives with meaning, and so many find meaning where there is none, in the the seeking of power and the incessant possession of more things. In the comparison of the value of my life against yours, on the ever sliding scale between the concepts of 'success' and 'failure', travelled on the road of continuity of applied repetitive action from remembered past to conceptual future, a modified continuity of what came before. Denying the present moment, which becomes a fleeting thing of insignificance to be driven through at fastest speed possible, rendering only a perceptual blur, to reach a self projected future goal. We wore those masks daily, we pretended to be bearing keys to open the door of freedom and transformation of life to so many naive others. And there were no shortage of them. What we were really interested in was the sale of a course and the transformation of our own lives. Fake. Bogus. A total sham. I hold my hands up high and my head lowers to the ground. In my defence, I was as fooled as any other. For I had not yet learned the value of coming to understand life for myself. I was seeking my meaning in life by giving it my own. And my own meaning, had been told to me by another. Enough of Mindstore, enough of positive thinking, enough of Jack Black, enough of the fool I was, who thankfully, has since died and become the lesser fool I am perhaps today. But who is measuring? I am so sorry however, still, that I participated in establishing a corruption of influence in the world which cost heavily in the removal of a potential awakening of intelligence of a reported half a million lives. But perhaps, I am once again falling into the trap of naivety. For wisdom cannot come from any other. This took a long, long time to understand. Wisdom, comes from seeing life as it is. With your own eyes. No one can see life for anyone else. A lonely journey, or rather, a journey alone. Interesting, the word ‘alone’ carries etymological meaning of ‘all one’. As I commented to a close friend only a few days ago. ‘All one’ is another way of saying 'complete', which is another way of saying 'whole', which has etymological meaning related to the words 'sanity' and 'holy'. I can’t blame Jack. He is also innocent, so place no blame on the shoulders of this self-interested trickster. One, among so many others. Jack operated and likely still operates from the central running societally pedestaled factor of deep self-interest. Scholastically programmed self-interest. 'Become something', is the dictated societal scholastic command we have all adhered to. Today, full cycle. ‘Be nothing and be happy’ is the new war cry. One philosophy as damaging as the other, for neither direction is one we have come to find through meeting life ourselves. Our society pursues ‘success’, at whatever the cost. At any cost. ‘Success’ is a measurement, with ‘failure’ on the other side of the scale. exactly as is the case with 'positive' and 'negative', ‘success’ is known only in comparative measure to 'failure' and one judgement slides into the other. The palatial living city banker to the street sleeper lying on concrete. One, brings the other. We never question. We are not educated to do so. We are educated to accept and follow an authority. To obey, rather than to discover. To continue rather than to end. If we did so, success, when questioned, turns out to be not nearly so successful as first imagined. For the introduction of this concept in our world removes our eyes from the meaning of life and stabs violently at the heart of relationship, life meaning, perception, intelligence, understanding and love. The seeking of success leads to self-interest. Leads to a repetitive mechanical form of approaching life, repeating past actions over and over again, building in constant progression towards my idealised dream. Perhaps, a castle in the south of France. Perhaps, a Great Reset. The seeking of success divides one man’s life from another because success is something constantly pursued. All else fades and dims into the background. Success is also of infinite potential, as our centenary billionaires this day, still ever gathering, seeking to place the whole world into their bulging back pockets perfectly exemplify. There is no fixed destination, one success, leads to another, and as the pile grows, the ability to manipulate the world grows accordingly, and all are open to such manipulation, for all are seeking to better their life position in similar fashion in conceptual time. All have their price. Most all, anyway. The pursing of success is the pursuing of the more, and more, is a number never, ever, reached. Success demands that I compete, that I stand on others who seek the same prize as I do. That I become brutal in my approach to life. I become driven. That I become focussed on 'me', and correspondingly come to care a lot less for 'you'. My ability to relate well to another is all but destroyed, viewed through a screen of interest of how you may help me achieve my desired aims, or not. Relationship is a present moment delight, and it is impossible to relate to this, if my interests are more centred in another future conceptual time than this, or if my awareness is totally consumed by myself. Perhaps the greatest of injuries of the following of time driven success is the death of love. For love is only found in relationship, and relationship is lost when the mind is constantly occupied in conceptual activity, seeking more, in another time than the time which presents to the senses. This, is the time of love. Now. the arrival of the only meaningful destination in life we continually ignore. Love is not conceptual. Seeking success, from a life gifted potential perspective of harmony, relationship, love, and a quality of timeless life existence witnessed in great beauty, has to be, the greatest of all failures. The man typing these words feels the aloneness he stands within. For this world makes so little sense to him, it regularly brings him to tears. The meaningless divisions of wealth, the wars fought for gain of a few, the innocents whose miserable life's and deaths bear witness to a world drunk on 'success'. Born into a world promising so much of inconsequence, blind to where the real treasures might lie. It could all be so simple. It is all so simple, it is we, programmed as we have been, programming ourselves to the same, finding value where there is none, in measurement against each other, who are our own enemy. We have lost love. And this is the greatest tragedy of all. Love, is meeting the present moment in all completion. Meeting the Universe as it is. Meeting life as it is, a diametrically polar oppositional state, to seeking to turn it into what you think it should be, the greatest of errors, shared by both Jack Black and Klaus Schwab alike. I wonder if Klaus was educated by Jack. I do hope not. That, would be a cross indeed difficult to bear. But so many of us have accepted what has no value in our lives, and have denied that which has most. Life, itself. Perhaps even you, the reader of these words. You cannot meet life so simply, (as it is), if you are busy consuming all your energy into turning it into something else. Neither can you meet life as it is if you have any accepted belief or ideology as to how it functions. You must stand absolutely naked, void of any other distraction, as naked as you might need be to go skinny dipping on a beach in the darkness of a warm summers night, enjoying the delight of the warm waves as they gently caress your naked body. To stand in front of life, void of all concepts, beliefs, words, images, fears, longings, past and future. Void even, of yourself. Then life becomes a revelation. It is a revelation because life itself has its own movement, its own rhythm, its own play. It is heard in the sounds of a bird song outside the window, it is seen in a cloud drifting across the sky. It is everywhere, so prevalent it can never be isolated, so simple to see, it is hardly ever found. Life, as it is, is a revelation, because as it moves, it reveals the new through it's very own death. And so every moment has never been seen before and will never be seen again. Such is the nature of the beauty of life and death we miss, as life actually is, when we meet life through a calculated or accepted conceptual formula seeking life as we wish it to be. Life does not continue the past. Neither does it seek a future. It is found in the timelessness of now. As there is no need of continuity for life, for life ends as it begins, begins as it ends, complete within itself, and so whole, and so holy. It has nowhere to go other than where it is, and nothing to aim for outside itself. It is complete, and it has arrived. Life and death here merge into one, and this one births all of creation and love. And all is fragranced with such indescribable beauty. The loss of all this, is the high cost of our 'success'. We are the race confined to a cage of living in the past which is memory, which is thought, which is legacy of twelve years of enforced scholastic memorisation and tradition. Carrying dead things in our desire to add to them in a conceptual future. Missing the meaning of life entirely.
Society led us, to this garbage. Religion became relegated to the nature of belief, love became relegated to sex and life became relegated to living in continuity of the dust of the past. It is no easy task to live easily when one finds security living in such accepted educated complexity. It is no easy task to leave a prison cell you have well decorated and come to value as home. We need to end our tightly held reigns on life. We need to end our beliefs and desires we derive so much comfort within, a compensation for a life lived with so little meaning. And we need to die, to end everything we carry, which is what we are, to meet the blessing, which is love. Love cannot be met by the past. We are the names given, the beliefs educated into us, the past history we have recorded. We are the values stamped deep into the brain from the earliest of our days. We live and function from the past. The continuity of this past, into a conceptual never ending future of betterment is what we have desired. From the lowest to the highest, from the poor man who seeks a warm bed and bath, to the Kings and Queens of nobility of this deeply measured and so deeply divisive world. And so we come to fear death, the ending of the potential for our selfish infinite continuity. And so we live in fear of life, for death, is life, and life, is death. And our whole race stands upon a divisive ground of never ending sorrow. A sorrow, we seek to make better by improving in time, and so the whole process is never ending in nature and guaranteed to lead to the complete extinction of our race, at worst. Or the never ending of living a meaningless life and dying a meaningless death void of love, a pointless existence into all of eternity. I stand unsure of which is the most appealing destination. The time has come to stop. Our bettering of everything, our seeking of success, is our greatest of failures. The time has come to face our world and our lives as they are. To free the brain from all time other than now, to have the courage to open our eyes upon the festering ground our seeking to better creation, life, death, and love, as they are, has led us to. Life, is to be received, not built. And life is a revelation. Not an accomplishment. And in all this lives unquenchable beauty.
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AuthorHello to all, I am a 60 year old man who has spent the best part of his life studying the teachings of J.Krishnamurti. My name is Henryk. I am rather unimportant, although what I talk about on these pages, has great importance. Particularly today, in this dark world, led by men of infinite wealth, unfortunately without the intelligence to match. My work here stands on the shoulders of that of J.Krishnamurti. Without this man's passion and great life understanding, this website would never have existed. His effect on my own life has been immeasurable. A man of infinite vision and wisdom, who spent over 60 years of his life travelling the world and discussing life and societal problems. Krishnamurti passed away in the 1980s. Anyone interested in the nature of discussion in the content of this site, will likely find great interest in the work of Krishnamurti. Hundreds of videos may be found on YouTube. There is a link above dedicated to his work to which new content is planned to be regularly added. The beauty of truth in life, is that it is identical for each one of us. Truth is the place we all come to meet in unity. And truth belongs to no man. Only pointless opinions, divisive, traditional, educated into and gathered by us, may be claimed as ownership. The change in our world so desperately needed this day, is within us, not external to our lives. All man's actions begin in the area of human thinking, it is this needs understood and brought to revolution. Thanks for taking the time to visit, a few posts are being added to the site weekly at the moment, when I find time. If you would like to support the work here, you can do so from the price of a cup of coffee each month, contributors are invited to online discussions. If you would like to contribute, our Patreon page may be found at the following address: www.patreon.com/rainbow_warriors. Archives
September 2023
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