- The specialized definition of downtrodden here is: people
with sense forced to observe a large portion of mankind continually trying
to pinch its own head off. The goal of the rationally downtrodden is to
somehow wrestle the insane bits to the ground before they kill us all.
Collectively, the eminently reasonable constitute an unorganized worldwide
militia of common sense, called upon by the force of events to maintain Madman
Watch. And naturally enough, understanding the possible results of the
current trend toward dedicated mutual annihilation is hard on the
sane. Continually flying in the face of so many embodiments of geopolitical
dementia is tiresome as a way of life. Therefore moping, or episodes of
gloomy and listless melancholy, is the all-too frequent result of intelligent
and loving concern for the future. Remaining on Madman Watch for long stretches
of time has a distinct tendency to result in attacks of profoundly logical
depression.
It's not easy to remain sufficiently vigorous so as to keep up with the
present assortment of energetic lunatic leaders, as they attempt to drive
our world straight to hell. We occasionally tire of carefully pointing
out the life-devouring black holes in the heads of those in authority.
We may find ourselves temporarily reduced to morosely sitting
around, drumming fingers, idly wondering if The Great Trance will
ever lift from the perceptions of our fellow citizens. Will the
majority of sentient beings ever emerge from that dense fog of believing
what they are told, and directly perceive what is actually happening to
all life on earth?
This is not to say that anyone already has all the answers
to emerging intact from the elaborate nightmare of unfolding events.
But at least many more individuals might begin to shake off the state of soporific
entrainment to the dictates of the greed-eaten. As it is, justified
fears about the unnatural sameness resulting from cloning are
far too late in one way: the majority has already been there and had
that done, long ago. In every way except the purely biological, too
many humans have already been carefully raised as socially engineered monocrops. Original
thought is now a severely endangered species. There has been a widespread
sterilization project underway for a very long time, directed
toward the human mind, and it has been much too successful. The deliberate
effort to boil down, extract, and embalm the volatile substance of freedom
is working too well. And, en masse, the victims are still being wonderfully
cooperative in the concerted effort to reduce human creativity to meaningless
preprogrammed two-dimensional thoughts and activities- ãor elseä.
Who are we then, to try cruelly to yank out so
many intravenous feeder lines? Why should we incessantly emit alarmed
noises in the tranquilized faces of convocations of sleepwalkers?
What's it to us if most human beings these days have traded their very
lives for the simpleminded relief of being willfully ignorant and
remotely controlled? Such may be the typical late night thoughts of
the downtrodden, after a hard day trying to transmit yet more unwelcome
information to the unwilling and uninterested. Tired thoughts of renunciation
of responsibility may come creeping in, after one too many conversations
in which plain statements regarding the facts of our overall predicament
are greeted with derision, indifference, and outright threats.
Perpetual active duty on Madman Watch is difficult to wedge into the busy
schedules of those of us interested in eating regularly, and similar trivial
pursuits. We do have other personal considerations as well: families, professions,
friends, responsibilities, enjoyments and plans, all of which already constituted
a full and interesting life. We have therefore had to endure wistfully
noticing many attractive lines of personal possibility, and entire alternate
lives, go by unlived. The typical consequence of seeing through society's
surface into the lies, propaganda, greed, and secrecy beneath, is to be
swept up into a life of doubled effort on half pay. We were already fully
engaged with the necessities of our own existence, when we became unpleasantly aware
that all those we imagined responsible for our well-being entertained the
opposite agenda. Then, to already overtaxed personal energy, was added
the stark realization that if we do not work to change the world, no one
else will. All this is fodder for the unwanted presence of midnight
melancholy while attending Madman Watch.
The role of disinterested onlooker can seem so appealing, in relation to the
global dance of death playing itself out to the tunes of patriotic
marches and canned sentiments. Although, even so much as watching
the monstrous stupidity of evil in full bore on all sides is fatiguing
to the senses. One would require a cast-iron imagination to bear up
under this without ever sagging, and that amounts to a contradiction
in human qualities.
Yet in the end, all our mental and emotional moping can too
easily amount to warmed-over Hamlet, endlessly trying to decide
in favor of the obvious. We aren't really going to escape being, which
means being here, which means being personally implicated
in this struggle. We live, we breathe: we are thinking human
beings, and that means we are already too far gone to duck
back under the blankie. There is no use in succumbing to cringing paralysis at
the ongoing spectacle of The Infuriated Chimp Stomp. We can't unknow
what we know, or unsee what we see. The blue pill doesn't work after taking
the red pill. And besides, the rabbit hole, uncomfortable as it is, provides
the best company. To sustain us in our falling sensation, the bright flares
of intelligent minds are lately appearing in unprecedented outbursts,
offering excellent alternatives to the pleasures of endless war, suffering,
destruction and death.
The ongoing experience of outraged sanity we are plagued by is merely an
exaltation of common sense. But we knew that already. Intermittent
periods of understandable moping notwithstanding, the choice between
being an activist and being a passivist is still the same old choice
between being awake or asleep. Here and now, for better and worse, we are
necessary advocates of one kind or another of pro-evolutionary anti-devolutionary
activity. Except for occasional spells of pure essence-of-exhaustion, we
are mostly fairly alive, and therefore naturally, actively tinkering
and tweaking our mutual reality-at-large. To truly live means to act consciously
in the world, and to manage the impacts as best we can. The only alternative,
that abhorrent condition of numbed, uncomprehending, accepting passivity,
is merely a lukewarm twilight sleep somewhere between life and
death, and neither here nor there.
Temporary immersion in waves of acute misery due to the state of the world is
almost impossible to avoid. But even so, this can be taken as a useful
signpost pointing to its own opposite. If being sick doesn't energize
new strategies for staying healthy, we missed the point. The point of being
miserable is to notice that we are temporarily out of touch with reality.
And reality means Reality, not the consensus nonsense making all the trouble.
If we didn't already possess an innate inward sense of what is ultimately
real, the dangerous and ignorant display of the power of the unreal at
large in the world would not trouble us in the least. Depression is the
symptom of having been gobbled up by the gaping, fanged, drooling mouth
of raving Unreality. But tickle its gorge and it will spit you back up
more or less intact, other than the thin coating of slime, which washes
off.
To turn episodes of bone deep hand wringing to constructive account, we
might dwell at length on one of the most useful observations ever made.
ãNo problem is ever solved on the level at which it occurs.ä
Consciousness is designed to be opened, expanded, and ratcheted up a notch
or three on a regular basis. The mind is a cosmic cargo container, an infinite
direction finder, and an instantaneous teleporter. It holds the keys to
every possible path and destination, and automatically leads us anywhere
we decide to go. The darkest hells and the illuminated heavens begin between
our ears. We are the ones who program the direction, with every thought
we think. One of the greatest wonders of our construction is that the mind
is not meant to be heartless. The mind contains a heart, with all the energies
we associate with the heart fully present. To think with and through the
heart of the mind is entirely different from thinking without it. And heartless
thoughts are the point of origin of most of our species' self-induced agony.
Thinking with the heart of the mind does not mean abandoning discernment.
The real meaning of the word ãdiscriminationä has been much
abused, and deserves to be restored to its original condition. To discriminate
simply means to have the capacity to perceive subtle distinctions and differences
among all created forms of life. The absence of the discriminative faculty
results in the inability to register subtleties at all, which is hardly
a virtue. Discernment and love go hand in hand, or one falls into the pit
on either side. ãLove your enemiesä doesn't mean it is never
necessary to fight for what is right. By all means, whip the moneychangers
out of the temple.
And when unregenerate humans become professional predators, to remove
them from incarnation with dispatch, for the common good, can also be a
form of love in action. Intelligent love is not stupid or suicidal.
It is not an enabler or an excuser, or blind to the machinations of criminal
intent. Nevertheless, we are required to love our enemies, and to forgive
them, even while cracking the whip at their backsides as they scurry out
of the temple. Love is the energy that can understand the long evolutionary
story of the human soul, including the worst souls can fall into here,
and the inevitable consequences of the worst. Love bears with us all as
we undergo the trauma, delight, mess and enjoyment of working through the
net of illusions. We live and die and live again, and sooner or later we
begin to notice our own continuity. The wisdom of love reveals that nobody
really dies, and our extremities of grief about death have been a case
of mistaken identity. There is a great deal more to every one of our earthly
dramas than meets the outward-directed eye: there are levels upon levels
of meaning which only reveal themselves as we go along, a little at a time.
The heart of the mind knows this, and in knowing this, can still find joy
in the midst of chaos and confusion, and even in pain and the death of
the body. Saints who could sing while being burned at the stake were certainly
not pretending.
Behind, above, and beyond the zones of our gloomy ruminations, there are
other and far more real dimensions of existence. Infinite spiritual potential
co-exists with the sorrowful events of our times. It is not a matter of
either/or. We cannot thrive by choosing only one: either spending
our lives struggling for the sake of sanity in the world, or withdrawing
from the common ground and exploring our glorious personal evolutionary
possibilities. This is the cycle of both/and. To be whole, we must embrace
both the external and internal complexities, and move into the
totality. Whoever wishes to enjoy the light, while evading the responsibility
for also facing the dark, will in the end be forced back into a tardy
confrontation with all that was avoided. But those who are willing to address
the full extent of the spectrum of light and dark, and assume the burdens
of working in the world and on themselves simultaneously, will more quickly
transcend the limitations we are accustomed incorrectly to thinking of
as the human condition. There is nothing exotic about this: it is
even obvious. Wherever we exist, and whatever we participate in, we must
eventually improve to the best of our ability. This is just what being
human means. The refining process begins and ends with ourselves, yet the
world is carried along with us.
We aren't easily going to be able to manage the oppressive atmosphere of
a world run by the criminally insane without a viable connection to living
spiritual energies. Concerned consciousness too often runs in ruts, jerking
its knees at every passing nightmare folly, of which there is far too overwhelming
a selection. No matter what, it is essential to avoid unwittingly allowing
awareness to sink permanently into the sight and sound of the present tidal
surge of human madness. Volunteers for Madman Watch have no choice but
to spend enormous amounts of energy keeping track of unfolding events,
and plotting ways and means to alter the careening global course toward
utter ruin. At the same time, living through this prolonged siege between
devolution and evolution is extremely wearing and tearing. Let us therefore
give serial melancholy its due; yet take great care not to be permanently
brought low by the effects of gravity and the reign of unreason.
There is that in us which has the power not only to face the worst, but
also to overcome it. It is folly to unconsciously commit oneself to personal
wretchedness in the name of the cause of human enlightenment. Whoever has
chosen to be a part of the effort to alter the wildly dangerous course
of history at this time is also simultaneously undergoing a process of
intense spiritual stimulation. And while these words are inevitably platitudes
on one level, they refer to the most vividly meaningful experiences on
another. We are learning to be and to act and to feel in this world, while
nevertheless remaining detached from it in spiritual being. We are learning
to evolve consciously, under increasingly terrible circumstances. And while
no one knows the details of the immediate future, it seems highly likely
that most of us will live out the rest of our brief lives here within this
fundamental and ever-intensifying duality.
This is clearly a crossroads of criticality in the age-long human story
of physical and spiritual striving toward freedom. In such a context, the
spiritual awakening of each individual becomes far more important to the
whole than it would be in a less critical period. The value of every person
attempting to explore and employ untapped spiritual power has never been
greater. At the same time, there has been an unprecedented explosion of
helpful forms of guidance and information, available to anyone and everyone.
While it is in the nature of any field of information to be a complex mixture
of truth and untruth, sorting through the field is the eternal test of
applied discernment. When it comes to spiritual teachings, all are on their
own recognizance. We can perceive only that level and those qualities of
reality about which we are already at least partially conscious. And even
the most accurate knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is forged only in the
long struggle to fully become that which hard-won accurate information
points toward. The possibility of spiritual progress is being freely offered
to all, but genuine achievements are not the products of mere optimistic
and overactive imagination.
Spiritual dimensions are real, and their principles, laws, energies and
existent inhabitants are also real. At the same time, the potential for
illusion also persists. Being free to a certain extent to create one's
own reality also means being free to create elaborate encapsulated unrealities
as well. This includes enormous and longstanding fantasies being generated
and maintained by large groups of temporarily deluded souls in nonphysical
realities. There is nothing new in this tendency. Innumerable mental and
emotional worlds on earth are built of these same types of warring paradigms
of the unreal, embraced by multitudes of adherents. Subtler worlds are
subject to the same conditions. Caveat Emptor is a multi-dimensional cautionary
statement. Those who become addicted to merely feeling good, at the expense
of developing the difficult power of spiritual discernment, will not enjoy
the long-term results, either in or out of the physical body.
We are being given generous access to a treasury of old and new spiritual
technologies, in order to counteract the advances in technology being used
against us. No effort is being spared in the program to annihilate freedom,
and to curtail the manifestation of the human spirit on this planet. Equally,
no effort is being spared to provide us with ample resources to counteract
the onslaught. It is no accident that both the ancient wisdom of the East
and the most modern advances in quantum physics reinforce one another's
conclusions as to the primary nature of reality. It is not by chance that
the hidden ancient wisdom of the East is being made available to the West,
just as modern physics has reached the startling realization that the universe
is far more malleable than we thought. These two far-flung ends of human
enquiry meet, the oldest and the newest, and in their similarities a powerful
and useful spiritual direction is indicated.
We are finally realizing in significant numbers that the human race is
creating and sustaining a large part of its own misery, out of the plenum
we call thin air. We are learning to understand the significance of living
in an ocean of astonishing energies, readily available for any purpose
whatsoever. There is nothing inherent in this universe to prevent us from
completely transforming ourselves and our species' prevailing attitudes
and behavior. We are in essence perfectly free to recreate our world in
the light of as much beauty, and goodness, and truth as we can handle.
What prevents this is first of all the general utter ignorance of the latent
spiritual powers within human beings: ignorance deliberately and ferociously
maintained by all those who wish to use humans as energy-slaves.
The masterminds of our enslavement are deadly opponents, but not on their
own. They are, after all, comparatively few, while we are a multitude.
The effectiveness of their rule is based on the extensive mass hypnosis
and conditioning that keeps a large percentage of the human population
at any given time in a state of cooperation. The main source of the power
of the forces of devolution comes not from themselves, but from successfully
enlisting a massive army of unconscious and half-conscious enablers. We
have basically handed over our planet to various types and degrees of conscious
and unconscious dark forces simply because we have not yet become sufficiently
awake and unified, and therefore strong enough, to stop them. The cunning
of the powerful, combined with the total weight of hapless slave-consciousness,
is no weakling: it is a formidable enemy. As a result, the usual fate of
those who have come along periodically to tell humanity the good news has
not been wonderful. Nevertheless, Schroedinger's cat is out of the box:
human beings are endowed with unused but formidable creative powers for
good as well as evil. And too many of us know this now for the liberating
awareness to be effectively suppressed, at least as things stand now. A
vitally useful proportion of the human race is rapidly maturing into functional
levels of creative self-awareness, little though that is outwardly obvious
on the world stage. And one of the signs of this is that what was once
of necessity esoteric knowledge, simply because so few could be trusted
to understand it, has now become exoteric, and freely available to anyone
alert enough to recognize it.
There are urgent reasons to get beyond the condition of personal misery
under stressful conditions as a psychological lifestyle. The duration of
this battle for sanity is unknown, but Madman Watch will continue, and
intensify. No amount of personal unhappiness and despair will change one
iota of what we are facing. Sustaining negative energy currents is damaging
to oneself and others: it's that simple. Fear, anger and depression are
the best destroyers of the very energies we need to survive. Love cannot
reach us though these blots on consciousness, neither from within nor from
without. It takes effort to root out such subconscious conditioning forces,
because these negative reactions form a line of least resistance for the
human psyche. Nevertheless, they are easily enough replaced by positive
energies, once we remember we have the choice and gain a little practice
in turning ourselves around. It is technically not very difficult to switch
channels; it is only the accumulated brute power of long-held subconscious
habits that makes this feel so overwhelming.
The lines of probability, which connect the world we have now to our vision
of a decent future, are constructed of quantum particles at the deepest
level, and are subject to instantaneous alteration by emotion, thought
and intention. The human race is being run along these lines of probability.
Our relatively accessible higher faculties can be set free to reconfigure
this world to a higher standard and into a generally positive direction.
The alternative is that those who wish to institute wholesale imposed control
for the worst possible motives will overtake all hope of effective human
freedom for a long time to come. Although the forces arrayed against the
successful introduction of higher energies seem enormous, a meaningful
level of transformation in the way human beings live together here is not
only quite possible, but absolutely necessary. Setting aside all premature
expectations of a miraculous earthly paradise just around the corner, the
practical potential for mitigating a great deal of unnecessary human suffering
is still nearly limitless. If enough of us choose to understand what we
are all capable of, and strenuously pursue and encourage the development
of inherent spiritual attributes, we can change humanity's present dead
end destination, by energy-fiat. This is basic material and spiritual physics,
and has nothing to do with imagination operating outside the laws of matter,
energy and consciousness.
Meanwhile, bouts with the old reactionary ego will no doubt continue to
bedevil us, while increasingly conscious relations with our good angels
and the joys they bring demonstrate the alternative. Both types of experiences
serve to remind us of the energies we are either inflicting or bestowing
on ourselves and others. And moving in tandem with efforts to master our
own complex energy systems, Madman Watch must likewise be assiduously kept.
We are asking a great deal of ourselves by being here now, and being a
minority who are conscious of all that is at stake. But we would not be
here, immersed in this magnificent and terrible time, if we did not wish
to be put to this very test. We are here now because we know that our collective
intention to transform ourselves, and the course of human history, is of
the utmost significance- and we accepted the challenge.
Whether we win or lose the struggle in the short run is not a foregone
conclusion. We know this. Increasingly sophisticated forms of techno-totalitarianism
could succeed in shutting down the human race for a long time to come.
The eventual result of the present battle for control of this world will
have consequences beyond our imagination, either way. We have understood
that, if and when we can learn to align and coordinate our energies in
sufficient numbers, we can succeed in making a degree of reason and love
the most powerful determining energies on earth. When, where, how and if
the required percentage of dedicated souls here will manage to unify and
synchronize, effectively asserting our transformative power and tipping
the balance in this cycle, we do not know. But we do know that we have
pledged ourselves to become embodiments of consciousness and love and life
in the midst of a maelstrom of ignorance, hatred and death. All this we
have freely chosen in the light of our souls. Therefore let us take heart,
keep faith, renew our minds, and abide with our decision.
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