There are flowers on my breakfast toast. At the next table a costumed youth is saying Dude, over and over again, and finally, Id be so good at California. The birds actually sing here and in so many varieties of song. Dropping down onto the trails below the bluffs by the sea, the sound of ocean waves overcomes the roar of the freeway. I am enjoying this. I look up into the eucalyptus, past their perpetual undressing, and wonder if another lifetime could be given to the study of trees. What other lifetime, continues the wondering.
There is still time remaining in this life to pick up where I left off before my heart was given to a thief. Still time to return to becoming what may still bear fruit after all these years, the many years of doing service inside a closed-loop control system. Ah, the joy of giving! Oh, the deep, rich nurture of serving, how virtuous! Of charity, how enlivening! Of gifting, how intoxicating! Over time it became a feel good addiction, giving to John and giving to his belief bound subjects. Hidden in the acts of generous service lurked a pathology, inherent to any service. It may be experienced in varieties of religious highs. What a turn on to help and give and serve and forget about oneself. A perfect drug to pleasure the ego.
Nowadays I am highly circumspect of where my giving goes.
Looking back there has been a fair amount of ripening. In spite of the narrowed beliefs that funnelled down into one mans vision of personal power and authority— as if spiritual, as if transcendent, as if divine— not all is lost.
Because now its plain to see how manipulation is possible through the powers of belief. The evidence is everywhere. Beliefs can appear indisputable once they have been reiterated, over and over again, into the malleable metal of a human being, soft as aluminum or curvy as copper. Who is not susceptible, in varying degrees or within the infinite levels of experience, to becoming a believer? Everyone believes in something, and everyone is likely to believe in someone— someone other than themselves. Its easier to believe than not. Its easier to believe someone else than to sort it out for myself.
By my beliefs I can be moved. By your beliefs, you too can be moved.
I listen to old friends and I hear their beliefs in and behind their words. I listen as whole castles are built upon their assumption of the way things are. My ears and heart are primed, by betrayal and heartbreak, to listen for the beliefs behind peoples words. These ears of mine are newly calibrated to pick up the automations of systems of belief that offer comfort by virtue of limiting possibilities. Much easier to believe in something than to reflect on what that belief deprives me of. Better to ask, where does believing keep me small and safe and malleable?
Perhaps its not too late for me to learn the art of discernment.
I dreamed of picking flowers with one of the complainants. We were talking together and I couldnt help myself from speaking to her in the language of the cult. I was apologetic, yet I couldnt stop myself. Everything I shared was voiced in Johns words, much like we used to speak to each other when we were cultside.
Wide awake now and looking into the greenery outside the window, I would like to annul any apologies for the things I have learned from John. He is a thief and a predator and he uses truth and the trusting unformed lovers of truth to ensnare his guileless followers. But he is not the owner of truth. The truth will win out, despite all of his spurious applications of honesty and truth.
Looking around at this Kodachrome green paradise, Im feeling into the mistake of abandoning this paradise for the sake of Johns Belief Machine. I used to brag about leaving the land of milk and honey to live in the frozen north, in that special proximity he peddled as imperative. Now I am shut out of the garden, re-entry unaffordable, all footholds out of reach. Looking back, I remember The Moment, the one and only bright shining moment when I could have easily returned. For one long unforgettable moment, I was looking into a tiny newborn face and feeling magnetized by an unfamiliar love that called me to return. Come. Be with her. Spoil her. Pour into her. Be here for her. However, the belief in my teacher was so absolutely infused in me that it overcame the call to serve the children. Familial love is only an attachment, an illusion, said the metal of my captured being.
That is not true. Familial love is the first of our connections to the world. It is primary. In spite of the tides and turns a love like that may take, it informs both parent and child simultaneously of what we came here for. It may be only one single bright shining moment, by way of an unseen and unmeasurable responsiveness, that we are activated and briefed on the life we are destined for. In the same bright moment, we are free to throw that real knowledge away for the sake of a false belief, one that keeps us small and safe and malleable.
The communism of Wokedom, infiltrating the dreams of upcoming gens, appears to be interposing obstacles to those human parent and child activations. Obstacles made of beliefs. Beliefs made in China.
Returning to the places I deserted for the sake of a false prophet I have begun the winnowing of harvest. Here is a piece that I believed to be true but it wasnt. Enlightenment doesnt come in bed with a self proclaimed Messiah. Giving to the single pointed vision of a single man is delusional. That chaff falls to inform the soil of my next gleaning.
Here is another piece that is definitively true and I have proved it myself. Truth can be used and abused but it remains immutable however, and by whoever, it is handled. Here it is in my own hands. Let me move it as I am. Let my aim be true.
“There is still time remaining in this life to pick up where I left off before my heart was given to a thief. Still time to return to becoming what may still bear fruit after all these years, the many years of doing service inside a closed-loop control system.”
This! This is my hope too❤️❤️❤️
Beautiful as always Jess !💜