Is it me, or is it me?

How do I reconcile within myself the red zone belief that others, who shall remain nameless, for reasons which I cannot fathom, have ill will towards me? On this super challenging journey towards the self, it may be one the higher rungs on the love walk. Either by hook or by crook, the certainty with which my perception, to a certainty, knows this to be true, is intensely threatened. First off, as I now know having had a certain amount of sober time, it may have absolutely nothing to do with me at all. Secondly, if the offending agent does have disdain for me, it still has nothing to do with me. And yet, the internal conflict, made all the more strident by Satan's strongholds, is far more intense than the actual experience I perceive in the "real" world.

It is one thing to have conflict, a normal event in the course of human intercourse. It is quite another to watch that perceived conflict blown up into a nuclear bomb inside my soul, the eating me alive that we are cautioned to be mindful of. The inciting incident may be small or potentially dramatic, the offense actual. Nothing is more serious, however, than my process around it. Hence the sincerity of the adage to "pause, when agitated or doubtful, asking God for the right thought or action, humbly saying many times today, thy will be done". It is a long way from "Don't you know who I think I am", to that last adage.

Again and again, I must have the God given courage to remind myself that it is me. I am the responsbile party. By doing this one action, I may change the course of the entire auric field in a situation, job or relationship.

But, oh it is difficult.

I want to blame, to victimize, to have vengeance, which "is mine" sayeth the lord. The blindness of the heart of others is not ultimately their heart, although strongholds are built with or without our consent, it is finally up to us as to who we will serve. I speak, again, more of myself than those I am seemingly injured by. Do I chose to jump into the mud with someone, or do I keep my heart and mind on the divine and, if neccesary, act from a place of authority and faith, as opposed to fear. Due to my disease, my virus, it is almost incumbent upon me at all times to be exceedingly careful about my reactivity, which is among the hardest things to do. Ready, Fire, Aim needs to be replaced by their proper order.

God, protect me from the darkness today, help me to do your will, show me when and how to act if necessary, and replace the devil's strongholds in my mind with your ever present and ubiquitous love. My heart will always be yours, but my mind is at war. Help me to be of service today, and especially help me to pray for those who Satan has usurped, whose minds and heart are blinded by the dark one. Let me be a conduit for peace and love and light.

Words that every single human being should read.

Find out for yourself

Questioner: Why are some people born in poor circumstances, while others are rich and well-to-do? Krishnamurti: What do you think? Instead of asking me and waiting for my answer, why do you not find out what you feel about it? Do you think it is some mysterious process which you call karma? In a former life you lived nobly and therefore you are now being rewarded with wealth and position! Is that it? Or, having acted very badly in a former life, you are paying for it in this life! You see, this is really a very complex problem. Poverty is the fault of society - a society in which the greedy and the cunning exploit and rise to the top. We want the same thing, we also want to climb the ladder and get to the top. And when all of us want to get to the top, what happens? We tread on somebody; and the man who is trodden on, who is destroyed, asks, "Why is life so unfair? You have everything and I have no capacity, I have nothing". As long as we go on climbing the ladder of success, there will always be the sick and the unfed. It is the desire for success that has to be understood, and not why there are the rich and the poor, or why some have talent and others have none. What has to be changed is our own desire to climb, our desire to be great, to be a success. We all aspire to succeed, do we not? There lies the fault, and not in karma or any other explanation. The actual fact is that we all want to be at the top - perhaps not right at the top, but at least as high up the ladder as we can climb. As long as there is this drive to be great, to be somebody in the world, we are going to have the rich and the poor, the exploiter and those who are exploited.

LOST and Joseph Campbell

I have always thought that LOST was a commentary on our cultural and social deadness using Joseph Campbell as a guide. The fundamental message has not changed, paraphrasing Campbell, "What we are looking for is an EXPERIENCE of the divine". The morality is clear: human beings are spiritual in nature and are here to engage in a dramatic game of our own making. It is a choice, which can be misinterpreted as being voluntary when in fact it also consists of involuntary choices. The one fundamental reality of LOST that is being missed almost without fail is the essential fact that life is a drama, the plenum of the all, the Brahman, the unknowable and supra-transcendent, the I AM, which is a Wow-Wee adventure that always, at the end, comes back to itself. We, the viewers, are not separate from the experience. Even in our private lives of quiet desperation, we have adjoined in a community of intellectual and spiritual joy. One does not have to be an actual participant in the drama to recognize the mythological food that has been consumed, a reflection of our ontological movement towards Gnosis. As a witness to Ultimate Reality, we are co-creating the human experience with them.

Which brings us to the fundamental meaning of LOST, and what is really going on. All answers lie in the cave of Golden Light, which I will refer to as The Golden Womb of the Island. What could this light be? It seemed to have spawned Smokey, or perhaps Smokey has been protecting it, a kind of "security system". Is it good or evil? It is neither. The Golden Womb is nothing less than the Axis Mundi, the Navel of the world or Omphalos, where the world began, which is the central locus or hub of transcendental numinosity. Its effulgence gives birth to multiple symbols, among them traditionally are columns of smoke and other ubiquitous connections. It is both feminine, uterine in nature, and masculine, providing phallic insemination (Smokey emerged from the cave, becoming fecund, after intercourse). It may exist in nature or by human manufacture (a tower, a pillar, a spire, a totem pole, such as the Tawaret statue and the Lighthouse). In Mircea Eliade's opinion "Every Microcosm, every inhabited region, has a Centre; that is to say, a place that is sacred above all." This is what Jacob has benevolently proffered, and which Jack has chosen to "protect". It is no accident that Jacob's Ladder stands as an Axis Mundi expression of the Middle East. The Axis Mundi is multiform, appearing in virtually all human cultures.
LOST is compelling us to pay attention and, especially, to nurture and protect this spiritual point of departure, the birthplace of our souls.

Alan Watts and Lost magnets

In the late author Allan Watts' splendid dissertation entitled "The Nature of Consciousness", the former Episcopal minister turned lay Hindu offers an alternative approach to the traditional Western religious myths which lie at the heart of our culture and are observed most notably by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In this first myth, the universe and man were something made, constructed by a mysterious Patriarchal potter out of a kind of clay that the creator breathed into, hence making the inanimate figurine come to life, as it was now "informed". Mr. Watts called this the Ceramic model of the universe, and it was quite normal for a young Western child to ask its mother, "how was I made"? This belief was not shared, however, by the Chinese, or the Hindus. A young Chinese boy might not ask his mother how was I made, but rather, how did I grow? That is very different from the making process, indeed.

After the invention of the steam engine, however, this worldview changed to what Mr. Watts referred to as the Fully Automatic Model of the universe. Think of the universe as a trolley, or a funicular on a track:

There was a young man who said, damn.
For it certainly seems that I am,
A creature that moves, in determinate grooves,
I'm not even a bus; I'm a tram.

From this perspective, science replaced religion as the modern Weltanschauung, and has remained there till this day.

There is another view, altogether, in Mr. Watt’s mind. This myth of the universe shall not be called the Ceramic model, or the Fully Automatic Model, but rather the Dramatic model. Think of the universe as a drama. What is the nature of all games, of all dramas? It is the game of Hide and Seek.

When a child is born, and in LOST children are the very plenum of the Island's consciousness, it comes into the world really knowing what everything is all about because the baby is a recent incarnation of God. In Hide and Seek, the adult covers his face only to reveal it to the baby, who then starts laughing. Why? Because it comes into the world really knowing what everything is all about, and in all games, in all forms of drama, there is this idea of the green room, off scene, where the actors take off their masks. And if human actors can convince an audience of their reality, think what the cosmic actor can do? He can take us in utterly.

LOST is about the nature of non-dual consciousness, using the game of Backgammon in order to reveal a hidden flaw in our perception. It is NOT about good versus evil, at least in the traditional sense, but uses this battle as a mirror. In fact, it is quite the opposite. LOST uses our three dimensional illusions of time (past, present and future) to show us that existence is a game of polarities, not opposites. The Yin/Yang symbol acts as a hintergedanke, a fundamental ulterior symbol of an unconscious memory, a Mandala. Within these alchemical fields of life, and non-life for that matter, are plays of light and shadow, with the universe itself constantly in the process of rebirth and creation. We ARE that universe. While seemingly involved in a conflict that must be exalted by the supremacy of the light over the dark, it is in fact the very existence of the dark that gives the show away. It is collaboration, a conspiracy of forces united to balance the equation. It is not ou! t in the open, but is tacit. Without this agreement, there would be no universe at all, and thus no story, no drama. Hence, LOST is about magnets, and always has been, from the very first when the plane crashes, to the ineluctable destiny of all its players. It is a game of opposites, which can only exist by agreement. Light cannot defeat darkness, nor vice versa. Cut off the ends of a magnet to get rid of one of its poles. You cannot. There is simply no way to do away with the South Pole from the North Pole. No matter what you do, you will always have another south or north pole, no matter how hard you try to be rid of it. This is the game that the children understand on the Island. This is the game that they are all playing, one with specific spiritual principles and rules. Thou Shalt Not Kill, says the young mystery boy, not because it’s wrong, but because there would be no game otherwise. And the universe would disappear. Just ask Desmond, or Arjuna.

Therefore, LOST is ultimately about our voluntary participation in this existence. It is to recognize that there are no such things as victims, or mistakes, or wrong choices, either when the script is scripted or not. When Locke throws the white rock into the ocean, he calls it “an inside joke”, and he is, of course, quite right. What is so delicious about this season, in particular, is the overt humor that has finally, rightfully, entered into the fray. Within this dramatic model of the universe, Mr. Watts offers us the extraordinarily relevant notion that the universe in fact may not be serious at all, that even within the tempestuous nightmare of dark dominion and fear, there is a wild inclination to blurt out laughing. But still, what if the darkness wins? What if the light goes out forever? We live in an age where, as Father Maskell puts it, “we are something that happens between the maternity ward and the grave, and that’s it baby, that’s it”.

But is this true? Based on our notions of life, our somber terrors, one would have to say that this is what most people really believe. You may say you are a religious person. That you believe in God. You may go to church regularly. But if people really believed what the church said, they would be rioting in the streets. “You would take out full page ads”, says Mr. Watts. “You would have the most terrifying television programs if you really believed what the church says. But you know you don’t. What you really believe is the Fully Automatic Model of the Universe.” But at the very heart of LOST is the wink of the eye that says, oh now, come off it. I know who you are. “Shiva, I recognize you”. Mr. Watts would not be too far afield in asking the question, “isn’t this a more optimum game rule for life rather than supporting the supposition that it is hopeless”?

What I think LOST is about, “is a reexamination of our common sense”, using Mr. Watts words. What has in fact been lost, is our connection to this basic universal principal. There is the central self, that is all of us, and we are playing the game that we don’t know that we know:

There was a young man, who said “oh”,
It seems that I know that I know,
What I would like to see,
Is the “I” that knows “me”,
When I know, that I know, that I know.

And that is mankind’s fate. He is a being who knows that he knows. It is the introduction of this quite obvious Eastern spiritual view on the nature of waking up to our inherent divinity that has moved LOST from its Cartesian reality to one dominated by non-linear spiral hemispheres, Vedic leitmotifs, Buddhist mysteries and, just to throw in a Westerner, Jungian archetypes. The unifying and revivifying forces at work, which under-gird the Island, is water. LOST is finally nothing more than a brash re-imaging of our possibility to be. A wake up call to the soporific nature of our collective stupor, urging us to remember the times of our most infantile, oceanic selves. It is we who participate in the journey home. It is a comedy, not tragic at all.

Boxers Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Shane Mosley, fight, drug test - latimes.com

Boxers Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Shane Mosley, fight, drug test - latimes.com

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The Dark Prince.

The demonic "Money" furthers his argument as pound for pound best.

This weekend was a benchmark of sorts for me. Once again, I was duped into shelling out shekels for an over-hyped "super match" between Boxing phenom Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and, quite obvious in hindsight, a fading, shot, and ancient Sugar Shane Mosely. Not to take anything away from Money, but once again he showed why he is the Dark Prince of Boxing. No one can calculate the market better than he can. Obviously terrified that his 0 may go against the great Manny Pacquiao, Floyd took the Boxing world hostage by his self-serving demand that Pac Man acquiesce to Olympic style drug testing, rather than the traditional, and functional, Nevada State Athletic Commission's program. Whether Pacquiao was advised to decline Money's request, either from having to really hide something or from his actual fear of having his prana drained, we may not know. When that fight fell apart, Floyd found a hall of famer in Mosely who really had no choice but to fall in line with his request, which of course Floyd had to do in order to not appear two faced. The fact of the matter is, a fight that had the entire sporting world salivating may never happen, if Floyd's comments about it after the Mosely fight were any indication. He is clearly not budging from his position. And so, all of us are left to wonder and argue, in taverns, around the water cooler, or at home in our underwear. Who is the best pound for pound? There are certainly arguments to be made in both directions. But here is a rather meaningful question: When was the last time either man fought another great fighter in his prime? For Floyd, you would probably have to go back to either Ricky Hatton, who turned out to not really be that great after all, or Zab Judah, who also would not have to be considered great. In Manny's case, Joshua Clottey is a legitimate top five welterweight, but not a great fighter to be sure. could Miguel Cotto really be considered great after his assault in the ring at the hands of Antonio Margarito? Ricky Hatton had been softened up by Mayweather, prior to his head being softened up by Pacquiao. De La Hoya was already carrying his Boxing AARP card when Manny pummeled him senseless. Even Barrera and Morales were past their primes. The only fighter that either Floyd or Manny fought that could be labeled great would be Juan Manuel Marquez who, it could be argued, defeated Pacquiao both times. I disqualify Floyd's victory over Marquez because he was at a two weight disadvantage, and Floyd came in over the weight limit for that joke of a fight. Point of the matter is, neither man has a true history of fighting other great fighters. Not that there are that many to begin with.

We may never know who is the man. If these fighters miss this opportunity, shame on Boxing for it.

The only current fighter in the world to actually defeat other great fighters would be Argentine middleweight champ Sergio Martinez, who has arguably beaten the best fighters in his weight class, even with his controversial losses to them. He knocked out Kermit Cintron, and had the referee overturn the knockout out in one of the most shameful displays of incompetence in ring history. He defeated Paul Williams, in my opinion, but did not get the win. He then brutally beat former middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik in resounding fashion. All of this in less then 18 months, and all of those fighters at the very top of their division. Isn't it time for the Mayweather/Pacquiao twin pound for pound champs to do the same?