Enlightening Nonsense

“There is only one pathway to Peace, Love and Joy, and that is reunion with the Divine. This pathway is indeed the journey Home and the gateway is your own heart!”

—Sri Ram Kaa from 2012 Atlantean Revelations (p. 237)

It is a cloudy, rainy Monday. I walked 20-minutes to my new yoga teaching gig at the martial arts school, New York San Da, in which I have been affiliated with for about ten years. No one showed up. I waited for 40-minutes and then walked back home in the light rain. The drizzle would have felt like God taking a piss on me if I hadn’t been walking with Jesus and by “Jesus” I don’t mean the Hispanic guy who sells me fruit on 52^nd & 8^th.

I had recently decided to read the New Testament, mostly to grab pieces from it to form into a metaphoric bat in which to club the heads of the stupid Christians who read everything in the Bible literally. Not that I wouldn’t want to take this out of the “metaphoric” realm, mind you, only, for now, I prefer my liberty outside of a prison cell. I pray for a land, like the Great Muslim Plains, where you don’t have to tolerate others, you can instead beat and kill them—and then pass the buck to God, stating your claim that this is what He wants. But until I find a beautiful country life like this, the best I can do is beat people with logic and humor. Weak.

The other reason for my newfound interest in the New Testament is because of a newfound love for Jesus that occurred years ago after I cut the last chain of identification with being a Jew by declaring that I would only work on the Sabbath. In truth, my love for Jesus actually occurred lifetimes ago, not from frauds like “Saint” Paul or the ignorant apostles but from the J-man himself.

I once got a free New Testament that was so small I could shove it all the way into my ass. I tried this with a Koran but this resulted in not only a ripped sphincter but also sixteen people being killed over a shitty book in the name of Islam, which translates as “peace.” I also tried this with an Old Testament but those cheap Jews, always trying to save a penny, use only single-ply paper in their publications that doesn’t absorb anything and leaves you spending the rest of the day like a mother gorilla picking fleas out of her child’s ass.

So I’ve been carrying around my little New Testament and started to even read it. And I’m diggin’ it! I am amazed that despite the telephone game of translations from Aramaic to Latin to German to Greek that occurred, and all the manipulations from the people in power to keep down the people without, that still the beauty of Jesus finds its way into that book…for those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

The reason why most don’t get as much out of “reading” Jesus is because reading Jesus is like thinking you can know someone by looking at the outside of his house. It is not “only in my name” that you will get to “Heaven,” it is through his energy—which is your energy of love and unity—that you will get to the inner sanctum of yourself and there you will find the most Holy of Holies in your own personal temple. In Hebrew the word translated as “name” in the New Testament is Shem, which can also mean “energy pattern; signature; fullness; abundance” Instead we look at the paintjob of the house and pretend we know its resident. I would prefer a blowjob.

So I’m reading St. Matthew and got to Chapter 5 where located are the Beatitudes, you know, all those “Blessed are the…” lines as well as many that don’t start with those three words. And my heart was flooded. And the tears flowed. And the pain of separation was washed away.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if though bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

—Matthew 5:21-24

To be right with our brothers and sisters—in the hippie sense of the word meaning we are all one family (clarified so you Christian robots don’t just think that if you are right with your nuclear family to hell with the rest)—it is more “holy,” “God’s work,” “devotional,” a faster “path to Heaven” than putting some flowers on an altar, or bowing down to some book or man or imaginary being sitting on a throne somewhere.

The Christian robot will run to their brother and hug him and then run right back to the church, thinking that they were just unclean to enter and the reconciliation was like a shower of purification so now they are “worthy.” The Christian robot tries to become worthy of God’s love; the New Age yoga poser tries to become worthy of enlightenment. Both these ideas are praying to false idols.

You are not reconciling with your brother in order to get somewhere else. In the reconciliation itself you have created a temple and don’t need to run in search of one made of brick and mortar.

Trapped in the mind, we seek love and union through logic. “He makes a good living; he is moderately good-looking; his breath smells good, like spearmint; he is a good partner for me.” But in practice we see that logic seems to play no role in love. If someone asks you, “Why do you love him?” and you answer, “He’s very wealthy,” it is not love but leisure. If someone asks you, “Why do you love her?” and you answer, “Look at that ass! How could I not love her?” it is not love but lust. If someone asks you, “Why do you love him?” and you answer, “I don’t know, I just do,” it may be love. Then again, you may just be an inexpressive idiot.

The Jewish girl brought a boy to her home and told the family the great news, that he had proposed to her and that they were engaged to be married. The father said that he’d like to speak to the boy alone and went in the other room with her fiancé.

“So, what do you do for a living?” asked the father.

“I don’t have a job right now,” said the young man.

“So how are you going to support my daughter?”

“God will provide.”

“Do you have a house where you will live?” asked the father.

“Ever since my parents kicked me out of their house, I have been wandering the streets for awhile and rest my head in the alley ways between stores after hours,” answered the young man.

“Is this any way for my daughter to live?” asked the father.

“Of course not! She will live in a big house with a beautiful garden and a white picket fence,” said the young man.

“And who will pay for this big house and garden and picket fence?”

“God will provide.”

“And what about children? Do you plan to have children with my daughter?”

Oh yes, sir, many, many children! We will have at least a dozen, maybe more.”

“And who is going to feed and clothe these children?” asked the father.

“God will provide,” said the young man.

“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Please leave the room and tell my daughter to come in here,” said the father.

The young man left and the daughter entered.

“So what do you think? He’s great, isn’t he, father?” beamed the daughter.

“He’s a nice enough boy,” said the father. “My only issue with him is that he thinks I am God.”

Logic has a use but when you take the heart out of the matter—not just as a tool to feel what your mind has logisticated but acting as the interpreter as well—your reading of anything is going to be heartless and dead. And when that happens, you fit the words of the Masters into your own philosophy and chisel away what doesn’t appeal to you. You have taken in a Botero, pulled out your paintbrush and changed the big fat white woman into a petite Asian, because you don’t appreciate art or an artist, you are instead attached to an ideal of what you think art is. I may not want to fuck a fatty but this doesn’t stop me from seeing them as masterpieces of the Artist.

This is also why someone like my friend Dizzy got completely offended when after she told me how she was too busy to come to my yoga classes because any free time not working or acting, she was supporting her actor friends by seeing them in plays I responded was an acknowledgement that she is strung out, not just on heroine but on busy-ness, but also pointed out that my teachings are my “plays.”

She told me, “When I come to your yoga class, I focus on myself. I’m not there to watch you teach. I don’t ask you to come to one of my plays and get up onstage and act!” She sees me as a “good” yoga teacher because my sequencing is “good” and my instructions are “good” and through the intellectual mind that seeks to divide and conquer into “good” and “bad” one will never grasp that what I teach has little to do with yoga postures and how I guide you through them—even if that were all I was to talk about in a given class. My teaching is really just a platform for me to try out my dirty jokes, likened to an out of town preview for a Broadway show. [See “Duck Concedes To Anal!” http://rebelyogi.com/duck-concedes-to-anal.html]

And so when she takes beef with my interpretation of Jesus or the Catholic Church, such as her comments on Ash Holes [http://rebelyogi.com/ash-heads.html] and even her snotty (incorrect) “correction” to my poem The Warrior [http://rebelyogi.com/the-warrior.html], it is partly because she takes herself and her religion too seriously but mostly because she hasn’t gotten past the words to the heart of the teachings. For if she had she would be able to see to the real message that lies in a spring of pure energy beyond my crudeness and that this message is the same one that Jesus shares, only he does so with “these” and “thou’s” and I do so with “pussy” and “douchebags.” Maybe she was just on the rag that day.

We’ve lost the eyes to see and the ears to hear and so we rely on words as our sole way to interpret another’s message, be it Jesus or me or your brother, instead of the heart as the “soul” way to really know another. Jesus wasn’t giving us more Commandments to imprison us into a new moral code; he was giving us technology to open our hearts as not just a pump, but as a sense organ of understanding. The “Truth” that would “set us free” was not Jesus or his words…but our own hearts.

After connecting to the energy of Jesus, I put my prayer hands to my forehead and said, “Fill me.”

Jesus said, “I am always pouring; you just have to open your vessel and you will be filled.”

I lowered my prayer hands to my lips and said, “Bless me.”

Jesus said, “I cannot bless you for you are already a blessing.” And in these words I knew he meant that all of my brothers and sisters were blessings as well.

I lowered my prayer hands to my heart and said, “Love me.”

Jesus said, “Whether you murder your brother or feed the poor, whether you are successful in business or busy with sickness, whether you become famous and remembered forever or your name disappears with your body, all I can do is love you. For my love makes no decisions, points in no particular direction and is always available to all who are open to it.”

And with this I wasn’t “born again,” I had just carved away the scale of judgment and worry and doubt that had formed on my pipe and created a space inside for my natural love to fill and flow. And as I stood up and went about my day, I didn’t leave Jesus, for he was in that space inside of me. And he wasn’t even a “he”…he was a blessing.

“The spiritual master expresses what he is in his silence, in his gaze, in his gestures, in his very presence. The disciples who gather around him absorb his silence, become lost in his presence and discover the presence of what they really are, their authenticity…”

—Swami Ramakrishnananda

Being Ash Wednesday today, I saw the ash heads out in droves. It’s hard for me to look at them and not think them ridiculous. I’ve never seen one of them that didn’t have an underlying smugness about her as she holds her nose high and thinks, “I’m a pious Catholic who went to church today.”

Jesus told his posse, “You feel like praying, go off and do it by yourself and don’t act like a holier-than-thou jackass by prancing around and showing it off.” And that is what Jesus did. There are references in The New Testament to him going off by himself and praying often. He didn’t make an announcement, “I am going off to pray now”—he just did it. Jesus was interested in connecting to God, not showing how great he was.

Even all the healing stories didn’t have him end it with, “Now tell everyone in your community that The Great J.C. saved you.” In fact, besides the flocking of lepers who came to him in droves carrying their ears and arms and other pieces of body parts that had fallen off, including Michael Jackson with nose in hand, most of his healings were done one-to-one and in private.

Now Jesus wasn’t against community and sharing together and in the Essene community that he was a part of, as well as in the eighteen “lost years,” he was wandering around the East and going to all the Mystery Schools and growing in his understanding of wholeness and the power that it bestowed, he often spent—and enjoyed—time in community. Of course the Vatican won’t ever share with their cult members all the books and scrolls they have in their collection documenting his studies in the East because it doesn’t fit in with their controlling fairy tale to have a God-Man who had to study with other masters for 18 years.

Unlike Mahavira, who wouldn’t allow a woman to touch him, or Buddha whose premature ejaculation problem prevented him for the longest time from even initiating women for fear he would blow a load if he just touched them on the crown of their heads, Jesus wasn’t afraid of woman, the poor, the Untouchables—anyone—and he enjoyed communing with all of them. This was an external manifestation of embracing all the parts of ourselves, even the shadow parts, in order to come into Wholeness.

Until we do that, all communing—whether in the family or in the ashram—is going to be a small slice of pie and why settle for a measly portion of life when you can gobble down the whole Existence? We voice fears that, “It may upset our stomachs” while we accept the teasing taste that only makes us aware of our current state of self-imposed limitation. Why not risk it and see? Besides, you could always take some pharmaceutical drug for an upset stomach with the minor inconvenience of  cancer as a side effect.

Interesting, many have repeated like parrots the phrase, “As above, so below,” from their Bibles and yet they would never think to utter, “As outside, so inside.” And that is a big reason why religion and all the cults like raw foodism and yoga exhibit such a chasm between the members’ “spiritual” lives and their day-to-day lives.

“As outside, so inside.” We look at the rampant destruction in our world, from natural disasters, some of which are “naturally” created by governments’ weather manipulating weapons, to wars and other violence, and commit ourselves to sending an Andrew Jackson to Greenpeace or replacing our light bulbs with the government mandated swirly ones whose light output pales in comparison to their mercury output. We favor legislation to mandate others to “shape up or ship out,” always thinking the issue is outside of us.

We are all One. I never thought I would say that phrase without either throwing up in my mouth or mocking it for being so cheesy. But it’s true. The issue is not outside of us—because there is no “outside of us.” We are ALL One. And there is no problem outside of us that is not our own.

The Earth is a conscious being, albeit not a “human” one, sometimes referred to as Gaia.We are akin to the cells in our own bodies, individually a viable life on its own but also a part of a greater whole—and unable to survive without the whole body.

The Earth is experiencing greater and greater turmoil, and I don’t mean the lie of “global warming” which is pure manipulative fiction designed in order to set up world bodies to control and regulate the masses by telling them what kind of light bulbs they can use, cars they can drive and toilet paper with which they can wipe their ass. While conspiracy webpages like prisonplanet.com don’t seem to think it can rain without the government or the Jews being behind it, it does.

We have been experiencing more and more tornadoes and tsunamis and earthquakes in the past several years and this will continue and get even greater and potentially more destructive up until the end of 2012, when The Great Transition occurs. This Transition will not happen on a given day but has already been happening for years. At the end of 2012, like the Mayans saw, Gaia will finally settle back into her easy chair and start to feel comfortable in her new skin, kind of like Barack Obama after the first day in the White House, as he had been informed years earlier by the Bilderbergers that he was going to be placed in as President, not only because they thought it would be cute to place a black man in the White House who would only serve to create slaves of all colors but also because they thought it would be hilarious to place a Kenyan there.

Gandhi said, “One can measure the greatness and moral progress of a country by how it treats its animals.” We go on murdering animals in horrific, torturous ways because we’ve developed a taste for blood; we are raping the environment with unsafe toxins and greedy motives that destroy its life-giving creatures; we are stealing from our brothers and sisters by overcharging and selling them products that intentionally wear out before they need to; we are creating drug addicts through psychological campaigns that make everyone think that they’re not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, worthy enough, unless they become junkies to useless shit they don’t need. This goes nothing to say about murder, robbery and withholding food from innocent people who just want to live their lives like you and me. This is not “THEM”—it is “US.” And then we complain that the world’s a fucked up place and think the answer lies in some government body enforcing punishment.

That answer is like your father beating you senseless with a belt after you came home late for curfew because you met a new girl that you thought you could love;  the only thing it reinforces in you is that your father is a prick. And when you come home late again because you proposed to that girl and was more focused on watching her flowering beauty blossom than staring at your watch, the only solution that abusive logic can come to is one of progression, where your father concludes, “I guess I will have to beat you harder!” And this patriarchal logic won’t work to solve the word’s problems either.

“Isn’t it funny how taxing, spending and borrowing doesn’t cure economic woes caused by taxing, spending and borrowing!”

—Rand Paul, running for the Kentucky Senate and son of Ron Paul

Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” yet we think we can solve the world’s violence and hunger and pollution while continuing to be violent and hungry and polluted ourselves. “An eye for an eye” doesn’t fill the emptiness inside; it only destroys our depth perception, not only for sports competition but also in our ability to focus our vision to the core of our problems.

That’s the first problem in coming to a solution: where we assign the problem to be. It is not THE WORLD’S—it is OURS. Believe me, if we start tossing nuclear bombs around and kill all life on the planet except for the cockroaches, the Earth will go on fine without us. She will even regenerate herself and eventually start to grow life on the planet once again; only She might think twice before “peopling” Herself this time. Stop seeking to save the world and save yourself.

All these conflicts are not outer conflicts but inner ones. The prophet Muhammad said that the real “jihad” was fought inside of us and not by wasting random people that you decide to label “infidels.” Our “insides” are polluted. We are feeding ourselves not only with processed garbage for convenience and because we’ve lost our joy for pure, wholesome foods, but also with negative thoughts and judgments—not only of others, but of our selves. We are saturating ourselves not only with unclean water polluted with toxic poisons like fluoride, chlorine, chemical waste, and pharmaceutical drugs, but are also flushing through our system insurmountable pressure from guilt and trying to keep up with the Joneses. It’s time we take a huge dump and piss all this garbage out of us.

We are so fragmented due to conditioning from our parents and pastors and professors that we want to have sex but are guilty about it; we want to go out dancing on the Sabbath but that would be against the prison rules of our faith; we feel emotions that want to surface but we stuff them because a strong woman is considered a bitch and an emotional man is considered a pussy; we hate our jobs but, oh, we have to be “responsible” adults. Responsible to what? Society? Our families? How about ourselves and living Authentically!

Jesus brought everyone to the table, from the rich merchant to the homeless, from the society woman to the prostitute. When he “turned water into wine,” he didn’t do it through alchemy; he did it by making the water that was available to the common man as sacrosanct as the wine that only the wealthy could afford, in order that everyone could feel special and one with God. He was teaching that we are all the Sons and Daughters of God, regardless of privilege or poverty, of special powers or none at all, of Three Wise Men or a dozen idiots. This was real world spirituality and it was also another parable, subtler than ones spoken with words, about integrating all the spicy parts of ourselves if we want to have a joyful and exciting meal of life. You see Jesus lived what Gandhi said when a reporter asked him if he had any lessons for us, “My life is my lesson.”

Look at most “religious” services; it is the dead leading the dead. “Stand up. Say these words with a monotone. Sit down. Feel guilty! Be better! Stand up. Sit down. Think yourself lesser! Make more promises you won’t keep so you can feel guilty! Stand up. Sit down.” Is there someone moronic enough to think that this is serving anyone in any way besides building his or her leg muscles?

Stop going to church or temple or the mosque for God. That is stupid, as God is everywhere. You can go for joy or a sense of community if you want, but why not instead of reading tired old books written by tired old dead people, talk to your fellow brothers and sisters and sing and dance and play games?

And if you are going to bring your religion outside of the churches, don’t do it by parading at what a mindless follower you are by walking around all day with an ash cross on your forehead. Live it.

Don’t talk about piety—be piety.

Don’t talk about spirituality—live spiritually.

Don’t talk about caring—care.

And, for God’s sake, don’t talk about God…be God.

A year or so ago, my brother and I started going for hikes with our dogs once a week on his day off. I remember the first hike my brother commenting how the dogs seemed like they were in Heaven, romping around the woods non-stop. I told him that for them this was like Disneyworld—there were things to smell, places to explore, obstacles to jump, an occasional large mouse that would fondle you around the corner for a few of the D-ride tickets and no one bugged you about where you could shit or not. My brother nodded in understanding.

My brother and I soon realized that this was a taste of Heaven for us humans as well and only in part because nature is a public toilet with no cleanup required. It became a committed time, once a week, where two brothers—regardless of whatever else was going on in their lives—made an effort to get together, walk in nature, talk about life and take the occasional piss when no one was looking.

In our lives of busy-ness, we often forget to focus on what is really important to us. This is in large part due to the fact that we have so many other stupid things filling our field of view and secondarily because after so much eyestrain from the driftless floaters, our eyes become too tired to focus on anything else.

It is not all trees and birds and outdoor urination, though. The roundtrip train ride to Connecticut costs $25 from Grand Central Station. As I am a swami, I have taken an involuntary oath of poverty and $100 a month is the difference between me paying rent and still being able to feed my dog or paying rent and starving the little bitch. So my brother, who is doing financially better than the average hobo swami, covers my travel expense. I once talked to him about taking over that necessary evil but greenbacks allude me as much as the logic of women and so, for the moment, he has continued to pay the toll.

The other day my brother said to me, “X,” (as I forgive him addressing me by my formal “swami” title,) “I figured it costs me over $1000 a year for us to go hiking together.” And with that he took a dump on the trail and I stepped in it, leaving a bad smell to haunt the rest of my outdoor experience.

My brother is a Jew. And by that, I don’t just mean he follows the same spin-in-a-circle and touch your head mindless rituals that this particular set of cultists follows. By this I mean that he lives in a fear mindset that is based on a world where there is never enough and everyone wants you exterminated. His freeloading wife who thinks that he is an agro-specialist focusing on the select breeding of money trees only fuels this.

It is my belief that because Jews have been ostracized and kicked out of everywhere they have ever settled—because they were different, self-sufficient and often smarter than those around them—that culturally they have developed a hoarding energetic patterning. Back then when the Diaspora hit, you had to take whatever you could on your person—no desktop computers to break your back; a thumb drive with your documents would be the most you could carry, as well as the bag of gold around your neck that all Jews carry with them at all times. This is in part why Jews are cheap. It is based on an energetic survival fear, or to you New-Agers, “an ancestral blockage of the first chakra.”

But it is not just the Jew who calculates everything with a mind that contains ledgers and tallies, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Most people weigh every interaction as a business transaction. “What’s in it for me?” is the underlying statement in any dealing or in lilting Jew-speak, “How much is this going to cost me?”

On the practical side of things, we need money to pay for rent and feed the starving dog, no doubt. But when everything is weighed on the scale of “Does this tip things in my favor?” you gut out the heart of a relationship and turn it into an interaction which entails little more than, “You make dinner and give me a blowjob once a month and I’ll pay for everything,” or if you have a Jewish wife you substitute “a kind word” for the blowjob once a month (“Why is a Jewish bride smiling when she is walking down the altar? Because she knows she has given her last blowjob.”)

Yes, as a responsible adult, perhaps I should figure out how to pay my keep. Perhaps I will instead tell my brother to keep his thousand dollars and go fuck himself. I know he can’t help it, that like a crack addict, everything he does is weighed into how much rock he can smoke from his pipe or shoot into his vein. But you can’t place a value on a human being (although my pimp seems to manage to somehow) and when you do—whether overtly or covertly—you kill the beautiful day, the fresh air and trees with your fear-based pollution. The will result in your companion either avoiding the toxic nature site altogether or you planting a seed of cancer in the other that if it doesn’t eventually metastasize and kill the relationship, the subtle discomfort will take the joy out of your sharing.

Much is conditioned into us from an education system which defines the worth of a child based on how well he memorizes useless facts and can spit them out come test-time, reinforced by parents and teachers rewarding their academic—and physical—performances based more on how they compared than on how they enjoyed. Taken to market, the value of a child is based on how well they can behave not like a child by sitting quietly, not doing anything mischievous and walking around like a Ken Doll with no balls. This creates a plastic child with no heart and soul and while there may be buyers in a sick society for this kind of “toy,” to suck out an organic soul and replace it with dead processed synthetics is the worst kind of crime one can commit.

Add to this that we are sold by people who care only about money and power on the idea that “Sure, you’re not happy now but if you buy more useless garbage then you will finally find happiness amongst the clutter,” and you have the formula for a society that may manage to still function like a machine, but as a living entity cannot be called anything other than dysfunctional.

“Just think of a businessman: he simply lives as a businessman. Morning, afternoon, evening, night, he lives as a businessman. He dreams of business, he talks of business, he reads of business—his whole life has become business…He cannot be anything else! He does not know how to relax. He does not know how to slip out of this small hole in which he has started living…”

—Osho, Walk without feet, Fly without wings, and Think without mind (p. 104)