I sometimes get stuff in my email account that I feel should be required reading for the people who are supposed to be making America great again, or at least decent, and for people who support them, regardless of how un-great and indecent they sometimes are. I like to toss in my 2 cents worth, too. So, here goes.
(To be fair, some Democrats are also trying to do their own sare of point-scoring, but the two parties are definitely not equivalent.)
President Biden desperately wants the Party of Trump to lose its ability to use the border as a cudgel in the presidential campaign.
The best way to do that is to pass a bipartisan border bill, which includes some concessions that are much tougher than Democrats were previously willing to offer.
Trumpists don’t want to do anything that has the slightest possibility of making Joe Biden look good . . .
. . . which led to the situation where Republicans wanted to punt any deal on immigration as Biden was pledging to shut down the border.
Meanwhile, federal Border Patrol agents and the Texas National Guard have been engaged in a standoff over who has control of the border after Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered razor wire strung along the Rio Grande river.
Enter the U.S. Supreme Court, Abbott defiance, Trump incitement, right-wing Christian nationalists and Republican talk of civil war . . . and you have a very volatile mixture.
The right-wing stew includes a gigantic caravan of thousands of semi-trucks out to save America led by brave Christian nationalists proclaiming themselves “God’s Army,” er, scratch that — it sounds like there were only 20 or so vehicles (no semi-trucks) driven by a bunch of grumpy nutballs.
(But don’t worry, God’s Army made a few bucks and got some more followers on social media for their troubles. And, yes, “Great American Pizza & Subs” really is one of the convoy’s sponsors.)
Give me your tired, your poor . . . and we’ll be at each other’s throats fighting about what to do with them.
Keep your eyes peeled for a drawing-and-commentary post coming soon that takes a deeper dive into the people who organized this ridiculous convoy.
Thanks so much for being here and following my work!
-Mark
Sloan Bashinsky
A lady friend in the 1950s vintage apartment building where I live sent me a link to your hardened bunker buster. It’s f-ing hilarious that the Republicans are miserable over Sleepy Joe trying to trump Trump on the southern border. I told her the other night over dinner in a real Mediterranean restaurant in Birmingham, AlaMAGMA, that if I wuz president of the land of the free and the home of the brave, I would bring home my troops prior presidents had put in harm’s way in distant lands, and put them on the southern border to stop the invasion as peacefully as possible. And, I would stop Americans from going to Mexico with their money. And, I would stop people in America from sending money to people in Mexico. And, I would stop any products coming from Mexico to America. Until Mexico stops the invasion. My friend, who once lived several years in France and is fluent in French, said, Merde, that would really screw up the American economy and grocery stores! Maybe she’s right. I majored in economics at Vanderbilt 60+ years ago. America is so dependent on cheap south of the border immigrant labor and Mexican produce and street drugs, not to mention Dos Equis and Modelo beers and various brands of tequila, and NAFTA is a treaty, that perhaps there is no way to do anything about that now. Although the Asian market where I buy beautiful Asian greens every week during the winter - I grow my own greens in a community garden during the warm months - gets its greens and other vegetables three times a week off trucks from California. My friend said America did plenty in Central America to cause people there to want to leave and come to America. I said not all of that is America’s fault, and I know it’s rough down there, but it’s not America’s job to save the Centrai Americans. America has more than it can say grace over taking care of Americans properly. But then, Florida, Texas and west and even north once were Spain, which White Americans swiped, while they were swiping America from the real Americans they were killing off and the buffaloes, too, so perhaps the southern invasion is a karma situation. As, thanks to Donald Trump, America faces its second Civil War, if he is not elected in 2004, or if he is convicted and put in prison. I don’t know where you live, Mark, but here in Alabama, I talk with MAGAs continually, and, although I like some of them, when it comes to politics and religion, they just ain’t right in their heads. Nor are the Republicans who see the orange turd for what he is, but vote for him anyway. The Democrats seem to be lost in space, and Sleepy Joe disgusts me, sticking with Israel after he saw what the IDF was doing in Gaza. But he don’t remind me of Adolph Hitler during his rise to power in 1930s Germany. Look at videos and photos of the Charlotteville protest against removing Confederate monuments, and of MAGA rallies, and of the January 6, 2020 insurrection, and you see oceans of white people, Mark. A picture is worth a thousand words. Or, if you prefer legalese (I’m a retired lawyer), res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. The South is rising again!
I’m not sure where I developed a firm bias or belief that coming generations of Americans were going to grow more egalitarian. That our youth entering adulthood would grow rapidly more empathetic to the plight of those who suffer. That those assuming the mantle of leadership would be willing to take on issues like poverty, access to affordable if not free medical care, as well ans free education; and bring it to reality.
It seemed logical that “Wokeness,” especially among generation Z adults and Millennials, would grow exponentially, generating a Zeitgeist of positive societal and economic change. Change, both revolutionary and exciting. Change that would become a reality in the final days of the Boomer Generation. At least we could exit, proud of our children and the world they would inherit.
What else can explain why Neo Fascist Republicans live in such dread of “Woke?” Fascist Republicans are so paranoid about replacement that they are absolutely apoplectic over Taylor Swift. A CIA operative who as some sort of Liberal Joan of Arc will lead hordes of LGBTQ+ Zoomers to destroy their last redoubt of White male dominance.
A 10% Change is Simply Not Enough to Meet the Existential Crises We Face.
The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) provides some of the best insight on the political and religious views of this nation. They have long researched and compiled data on Christian Nationalism. In short, they are honest and reliable seekers of truth.
While I endorse their polling research and findings, it might be worth considering the reality of the bar graph below: Do you see really significant and sweeping change in any category over five generations?
Consider that Boomers are 34% Democrat. Now consider that Zoomers are about 36% in identifying with Democrats. Hardly a significant difference from Boomers.
Using Census data on Florida voters aged 18 to 44, that cohort (Zoomers and Millennials combined) comprises 33% of the eligible voters.
Consider now the 18 to 44 cohort as Democrat leaning being only 1/3 of the total eligible voters and you begin to see that the hope for real change is pretty much meh.
Yes, they may comprise the numbers needed to hold back the Fascist Republicans in 2024, but I would caution against such a victory signifying a new day and a new dawn. It will be more of Fascists claiming stolen elections and maybe expanding on the insurrection of 1/6 across the nation.
Sloan Bashinsky
Interesting analysis, OL’ FLAWRIDUH CRACKER :-).
I have wondered if the reds are so anti-woke because being woke is their worst nightmare come true? Didn’t the guy they claim saved them from their sins over 2000 years before they were born keep telling people to stop sleeping and to wake up! God forbid the reds wake up and actually start living like that guy, instead of living like they never heard of him :-).
The blues keep reminding me of the mythical Fukawi tribe, which kept getting lost and gathering in a circle and sitting down and holding hands and closing their eyes and chantings, “Where the fuck are we? Where the fuck are we?”
I voted, very reluctantly, for Biden in 2000, the first time I ever voted for a major party candidate. No way I can vote for him again, after he out trumped Trump by proving in spades he is Israel’s best friend in the Gaza genocide Hamas baited Israel and Biden, via mucho money and weapons to Israel, to carry out and turn the entire world against Israel and America.
Gotta hand it to the folks running Hamas, and maybe its benefactor Iran. Unable to beat Israel militarily, Hamas figured out how to beat Israel in the popularity contest.
Thank you, Hamas, for your brilliant strategy and its fallout, which has Genocide Joe very close to dragging America into World War III, all because, I think, Jesus was born and died in Palestine, and no way good American Christians and Catholics can let Islam get full control of Christendom’s Holy Land again. Let Israel defend it for them, since Jewish leaders back in the day had Jesus crucified.
No way I vote for what a childhood friend of mine calls “The Orange Turd.” I can’t vote for nobody who reminds me of Adolph Hitler, and whose armies of God and Jesus lemmings worship him like he is Jesus returned, even though I never heard of him attending church or behaving or talking anything like Jesus.
Photos of MAGA rallies reveal oceans of white people- the South is rising again!
I dunno, maybe RFK, Jr. is the best hope for America in 2004? Except, from what I read online, he’s Israel’s best friend, too.
Looks to me America has moved past SNAFU to FUBAR.
If I were president, I would declassify all of my government’s UFO files, hoping that would so disturb the peace of every American and the rest of the world’s people, that they all gather in a circle and try to figure out how they are going to save themselves from the sum of all their fears?
Wonder how Trump, Biden and RFK, Jr. would deal with a fleet of UFOs setting down on the White House Lawn? Would they call in a kamikaze ICBM nuclear missile strike on their own selves? That sho’ would drain the swamp!
Ol’ Flawriduh Cracker
As always Sloan, you bring a lot to the table for consideration.
Please indulge my taking a bit of time to provide a more detailed response.
If you haven’t taken a look at “ AREA 51 An Uncensored History of America's
Top Secret Military Base” ANNIE JACOBSEN - This book dating back to 2011 is still one of the best on UFO’s, Nazi tech, Russian use of Nazi tech and the CIA use of UFO “myths” to cover up U2 Spy plane antics.
Out of curiosity do you use Tribel at all? Might be a better way for us to carry on a one to one.
Sloan Bashinsky
Was not aware of Tribel. See several references online, so which Tribel? Can you send me a link?
I saw an alien space craft do interesting impossible human-design aircraft tricks in the sky and stretch a cloud across the horizon as I tried several times to get the liberals I was with to look up and see what I was seeing, and they did not look up, so I know for a fact such things exist :-).
Imagine the pandemonium in earth religions, governments, politics, and the internet, if what the America government actually has about UFOs is released to the general public. :-)
During the latter half of my 81-plus years, I read about and met and got to know a lot of people who had a spiritual teacher, or guru, which I have written about elsewhere from time to time.
My first encounter with such people occurred in the early 1980s, when I was moving toward winding down my law practice in Birmingham, Alabama. The spiritual teacher, or the guru, of those people, G.I. Gurdjieff, had died some years prior, and they were following him via his writings and whatever they were able to discover by reading elsewhere. Their leader was a physician perhaps around my father’s age. The called their spiritual endeavor “The Work,” which I later learned is what the grinding spiritual climb is called in other spiritual traditions.
I attended a number of their meetings, and eventually a man from a Gurdjieff community in New York City came to Birmingham and started a second Gurdjieff group, and I attended a number of their meetings. I was quite intrigued by Gurdjieff, but I found it difficult fitting into the two Birmingham groups, which seemed to me to be religious cults.
I closed my law practice and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to attend a natural healing and massage school. hoping that would turn my life around. It was a terrific experience, I met a lot of new, very interesting people, who were on their own spiritual journeys, but it did not turn my life around.
So, one morning, feeling like I had failed in every way a man could fail, I prayed, “Dear God, I do not wish to die like this, failed.” I paused, added, “I offer my life to human service.” I felt something emotional inside of me, and then went on about my day.
About ten days later, I woke up in the wee hours, maybe 2 a.m., and saw two white-ish etheric beings shaped like shifts hovering above me in the darkness. I heard, “This will push you to your limits, but you asked for it and we are going to give it to you.” I saw a white flash and was jolted physically and otherwise by something electrical, which happened two more times, about 5 seconds total, and the beings faded away, and I was shaking and sweating.
The changes began slowly, and about that and where all it went I wrote about elsewhere, now told in posts at this and other blogs, and in quite a few books at the free internet library, archive.org.
Today, I will discuss Mr. Gurdjieff, who was a very different pussy grabber cult leader than, say, the make America great pussy grabber Donald Trump, who, I imagine, wouldn’t be interested in Mr. Gurdjieff at all :-), but perhaps this post might interest Americans who worship him who would be king, if some day they decide belonging to a cult is not really the best thing they can do for their soul.
I could say the same for people who worship Sleepy Joe Genocide Biden :-).
And, I could say the same for people who think they were saved by Jesus, simply because someone or a book told them they were saved by him, even though they don’t behave much like he behaved in the Gospels.
In Poetic Outlaws today.
Lost Art By: G. I. Gurdjieff
POETIC OUTLAWS FEB 2, 2024
“Ancient art has a specific inner content. At one time, art possessed the same purpose that books do in our day, namely: to preserve and transmit knowledge. In olden days, people did not write books, they incorporated their knowledge into works of art. We would find a great many ideas in the works of ancient art passed down to us, if only we knew how to read them.” —G. I. Gurdjieff
G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) was a mystic, spiritual teacher, and philosopher who developed a unique system of self-transformation that reconciled the great mystical and spiritual traditions. It was known as the "Fourth Way”.
Gurdjieff's life and teachings are shrouded in mystery and ambiguity, and he deliberately maintained a certain level of secrecy about his background.
Gurdjieff's teachings embody a wide range of ideas and concepts, from Self-observation and Self-awareness to the notion of different levels or centers of consciousness within each of us.
Ultimately, he believed most people live their lives in a state of mechanicalness, reacting to external stimuli without true awareness of who they are. But he also believed in the power of art and sacred dance as potential tools for inner transformation and awakening higher states of consciousness.
He once said: “Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave...
"Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.”
The following is a passage from "Views from the Real World" — a collection of his talks and writings first published in 1975.
THE KEYS TO ALL THE ANCIENT ARTS ARE LOST, were lost many centuries ago.
And therefore there is no longer a sacred art embodying laws of the Great Knowledge, and so serving to influence the instincts of the multitude.
There are no creators today.
The contemporary priests of art do not create but imitate. They run after beauty and likeness or what is called originality, without possessing even the necessary knowledge. Not knowing, and not being able to do anything, since they are groping in the dark, they are praised by the crowd, which places them on a pedestal.
Sacred art vanished and left behind only the halo which surrounded its servants. All the current words about the divine spark, talent, genius, creation, sacred art, have no solid basis—they are anachronisms.
What are these talents? We will talk about them on some suitable occasions.
Either the shoemaker’s craft must be called art, or all contemporary art must be called craft. In what way is a shoemaker sewing fashionable custom shoes of beautiful design inferior to an artist who pursues the aim of imitation or originality?
With knowledge, the sewing of shoes may be sacred art too, but without it, a priest of contemporary art is worse than a cobbler.
Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter
In the early 1980s, as I wound down my law practice in Birmingham, Alabama, I hired a publicist to promote books I wrote for people who bought and sold homes and used lawyers. The books were not well received by real estate companies and lawyers. She told me about a Gurdjeff group she belonged to in Birmingham, and I started attending their meetings. I was by then interested in the New Age and just about anything viewed as “esoteric spirituality”.
The publicist said it was believed Gurdjieff was from Armenia, and he at one time had the ear of the Russian royal family and very much wanted them to get rid of their Russian orthodox priest, Rasputin. Later, Joseph Stalin was one of Gurdjieff’s pupils for a short while.
The publicist got me to read the Russian P.D. Ouspensky’s book, IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS.” At one time. Ospensky and Gurdjieff had some dealings.
Then, she got me to read Gurdjieff’s first book, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN, in which Gurdjieff reveals a good bit about his early searching and how he eventually was invited to join a secret brotherhood, which had monasteries in out of the way place. There, Gurdjieff received his training in the basics of the brotherhood's knowledge and practices to recover their essence.
In that book, Gurdjieff recounts being told by brothers who had been there a while of two very old men, hundreds of years old, who traveled between the brotherhoods’ monasteries, sharing what they knew.
One of the elders was so eloquent in his speech that they swooned on his every word. The other elder’s speech was guttural and they could barely understand him. After the two elders left, the brothers discussed what they had learned and discovered they could not remember anything the eloquent elder had said, because he had spoken to them from his mind, but they remembered everything the other elder had said, because he had spoken to them from his being.
I didn’t stay with the Gurdjieff group, and not long after I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to attend a massage and natural healing school, and to explore various spiritual movements that interested me.
It was there that I had my first encounter with angels, who quickly impressed me to shed all the other stuff, because they had taken over. A few months later, I moved to Boulder, Colorado, where the angels began in earnest trying to help me recover my essence.
I won’t say more about that here, other than what happened in Santa Fe and in Boulder and later elsewhere is reported in quite a few books I wrote, which are free reads at the internet library archive.org. Three of the books are novels, the rest are stranger than fiction true stories:-). archivel.org
In Boulder, I read Gurdjieff’s second book, BEELZEBUB'S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON: ALL AND EVERYTHING, in which Beelzebub is Gurdjieff and his grandson is the reader, or Gurdjeiff’s students. Beelzebub recounts his own early goofs and growing ups, and stuff he learned along the way, some of which is quite interesting, such as, of all the great saints who had lived on Earth, the one whose teachings had he best chance of helping humanity was St.Jesus. When I mentioned that to my publicist friend, she looked like she had been stung by a wasp.
Beelzebub described human beings as three brain beings, one brain was in the solar plexus, another was in the heart, and the third was in the head. And, it was for human beings to fully develop all three of their brains, to be their true essence.
I then read Gurdjieff’s third book, LIFE IS REAL ONLY THEN, WHEN “I AM”, which he wrote as himself, candidly sharing events from his own life and work and of his students. He said he had hoped to teach by writing books, but he had found only his students could understand his books. That book ended in mid-sentence, because he had died.
Later, I stumbled across a book entitled ON A SPACESHIP WITH BEELZEBUB: BY A GRANDSON OF GURDJIEFF, by David Kherdian, a professional writer, who had belonged to a Gurdfiellf group in New YorK City, from which he eventually weaned and moved to Washinton state, as I recall, where he joined another Gurdjieff group, in which he participated a few years, before he decided he needed to leave it proceed on his own.
For me, Kherdian’s book is the most important book about Gurdjieff, because it brutally describes the workings of Gurdjieff communities and the power the leaders of those groups have over the community members, and the extreme difficulty of members leaving and striking out on their own. I recommended Kehridan’s book to several people, who belonged to Gurdjieff groups, who were trying to leave and make their own way. It is very difficult for anyone in a cult to leave it.
Much later, I met a woman whose grandfather [the physician] had run the Gurdjieff group I had run with for a while in Birmingham. She said it was well known that Gurdjieff impregnated a lot of his female students, who bore him children. I asked her why I had not been told that when I was involved in her grandfather’s group? She smiled, said, it’s not something they liked to discuss.
I knew from LIFE IS ONLY REAL THEN, WHEN “I AM”, that Gurdjieff’s wife had gotten sick and died while he was far away doing something, and he was so distressed, because had he been with her, he could have used his power to save her.
Cleveland McLemoreCleveland’s Substack
As I recall Ouspensky expressed some remorse on his death for having devoted his entire life to this quest without much resolution. I would surmise that much like Jung's path of transformation through individuation we might arrive at better understanding of what it might mean to be fully present in the moment. "When a summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges, then, as Nietzsche says, 'One becomes Two,' and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation... a moment of deadliest peril!" Jung. Yet even here his final formula on becoming whole slipped into alchemy.
Sloan Bashinsky
It indeed is alchemy, of the soul, and it is a process, which has no end for most people, although I have read accounts of people who got to a singularity event, where they were one with God by any name called, and that’s where they remained until it was time for them to leave their bodies. For the rest of us, it's get up each morning and deal with what’s in front of us as best as we are able. In my case, I am assisted by angels, for which I take zero credit, nor do I take credit for the changes in me, other than I did not kill myself many times I wished I was dead, and even then maybe something stayed my hand :-). My take was Ouspensky searched for something magical, which would change him, and perhaps that does sometimes happen, but that’s not what Gurdjieff was about, nor Jesus, nor Rumi and his teacher, Shams, nor Kahlil Gibran, nor many others, some known today, most never heard of. One thing Gurdjieff taught, which seems the core of all spiritual paths, is not to react to what bugs us, and instead, simply sit in the discomfort, stew in it. This also is the method presented in A COURSE IN MIRACLES, which said to do that for a year and you emerge a new person.
Cleveland McLemore
Point well taken, Caroline Myss speaks of spiritual madness, transpersonal psychology thrives on spiritual emergencies, every time we crack the code of our own conditioning to reveal the original self, where we come face to face with the eternity of our own liberation, we are faced with a conundrum as we are no longer tethered to the mundane, as Jung says "a moment of deadliest peril." And why is that? Gibran suggest that "When a man hears to call of his heart and the cry of his spirit, we say that such a one is possessed of a madness and we cleanse ourselves of him." because we no longer fit the mold that we were cast into from birth. If we are wise we heed the warnings and keep such revelations to ourselves, otherwise the life of such an unfortunate seeker will be made very unpleasant. That is only to be expected for senseless lack of discretion. "Wisdom stands on the street corner and calls to us above the multitude, but we deem her thing without worth and despise them that follow her." Gibran. And yet we don't break the mold of our conditioning without some serious incentive, as the Taoist say, "Learn to die before you die." When you've already lost everything, what more do you have to lose?
Sloan Bashinsky
Heh, I lost everything twice, if you mean money. I lived on the street and just off it for five years, and then did a second stint of two years. I lost plenty else, too. But perhaps the most important thing I lost, because I destroyed it, was my reputation, and then I could be free, because there was nothing left to protect :-). I read some of Myss’s writings, and I watched a video of her speaking to an audience. I thought she was facile at collecting various spiritual concepts and putting them in books, but I did not think she had lived the theories in the way that, say, Gibran, Rumi, Shams, Jesus, Lao Tsu, Buddha, or even Gurdjieff lived them. A chapter of my book, A Southern Lawyer Who Became a Mystic, at archive.org, contains a psychic friend’s and my discussion of Myss. The psychic ws more impressed by Mysss, than me, who had somehow survived the dark night of the soul and the much worse black night of the soul described by San Juan de la Cruz in his commentaries, as presented in St. John of the Cross: Alchemist of the Soul, by the Spaniard poet Antonio T. de Nicholas. I take no credit for any of that, other than I did not kill myself during the black night, in which I was suicidal every day for 16 months. It arrived over 2 days' time, and it left over about 6 months' time. Then, the angels really went to work inside of me. That was in 1998. And they have not let up. but most of it became engaging the world as it engaged me. The internal work receded, except for dreams, which always are about something I am dealing with when I am so-called awake :-). Maybe some day I will get smart enough so that I don’t keep running off the rails at times and the angels spank me, and redirect me :-)
Here is a link to a podcast, in which I discussed Gurdjieff and related stuff.
Halloween- The Veil At Its Thinnest: A Discussion of Authors of Spiritual & Important Works
About a week later:
Cleveland McLemore
It is curious, we all have our particular challenges in life, all upon the premise of being human. I am still new to this site, and have yet to figure out how to navigate conversations such as they are, although I must admit that it is not at all what I had expected more of a dead poets society. When I was looking more for a place of creative exchange and expression. Just now finding my way back here and noticed, that this conversation does not appear to be a part of an on going thread. Not sure why that is.
Sloan Bashinsky
Eric quoted Gurdjieff re lost art. I know a good bit about Gurdjieff, who was a spiritual guru and still has a pretty wide following. Dead Poets Society is one of my favorite films. Eric mostly features poets who have left this life. I didn’t know I had poetry in me until 1991, when this came out of me and became the back jacket of a book I had written, Prisons & Freedom, which is a free read at the internet library, archive.org.
"Living Poets”
Dead poets are poets who never write
Who obey shoulds and oughts
Who live to please others
Who value money over God
Who die without ever having lived
Death is their mark
Dead poets are remembered by the living.
Living poets are remembered by time
Dead poets never sing their song
Living poets never stop singing it
The difference between the two is this:
One worships fear, the other life
To be a dead poet is hard
It requires being someone else
To be a living poet is easy
It only means being myself
One choice is hell, the other heaven
That is what is meant by free will
Then a whole lot of poetry came up out of me.
Sloan Bashinsky
A truly lost art today is spiritual alchemy, called “The Work” in some circles, which was Gurdjieff’s life work. As happened with some gurus, past and present, Gurdjieff had sex with female disciples, which he skipped over telling in his books. My poetry is about spiritual alchemy, as I lived it, and still live it. Ditto, my books, non fiction and novels, some of which contain poetry. Free reads at archive.org.
Cleveland McLemore My computer ate a large portion of my poetry files on the alchemical furnace as it is referenced in Taoist teachings. West meets East or so the expression goes.
"The Tao of spiritual alchemy is none other than the Tao of the I Ching, the Tao of sages is none other than the Tao of immortals, and that the I Ching is not a book of divination but rather is the study of investigation of principles, fulfillment of nature, and arriving at the meaning of life."
Liu I-ming
"Although the words are very clear, yet they are also very vague. The shallow may take the I Ching to be a book of divination, but the profound consider it the secret of the celestial mechanism.”
Lu Tung-pin In The Dark We can live in the dark without a spark And call this the light We can live all our life In obedience to ignorance and call this divine We can worship our own intelligence and believe that what we achieve is worth the price Who is at the helm? We are a nation of fools In a world spun out of control In our bid for power Without honor or humility there is no impeccability We neglect the totality of the Self ~*~*~ Original natural reality fire that burns fire that heals Return of the real yin fire is restless yang fire is true when yin culminates yang is born light enters into the earth a companion comes reversing the path creative energy is born
Sloan Bashinsky Very nice.
I went looking for something and “accidentally” stumbled across this discourse during the covid pandemic, when I was using a different blog than what I now mostly use. I brought that old blog with me when I moved from Key West to Alabama in late 2018.
And I was looking for this poem, which syncs, sort of, with the two Eve/Yin poems in the apocalypse post.
Earth, the sacred prism through which souls are refracted into their elemental parts, purified in Holy Fire, then one-forged and sent on their way to not even God knows where, simply because they are all unique emanations of God,
In the law is the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur: The thing speaks for itself.
Oceans of white people.
Charlottesville, Virginia Confederate monument removal protest
MAGA rally
January 6, 2020 peace demonstration
A while back, I wrote a law school exam question and answer: Discuss the relevance, if any, of Amendment 14, Section 3, today.
U.S. Constitution Amendment 14, Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
My tech buddy Bob put that exam question and answer at the free internet library, archive.arg.
A satellite radio station host in Denver, Colorado read the law school exam question and answer and watched the podcast, and interviewed a Republican federal judge on the air about the exam question and answer and the podcast. The judge ridiculed me and said Trump had blacks in his cabinet. The host asked, what about the thing speaks for itself? The judge finally said such a lawsuit should have been brought by President Biden, which was the point of the law school exam question and answer.
The podcast went viral in Colorado, and the radio station received a lot of death threats, and its insurance bonding company cancelled its coverage, and the station went off the air.
The Colorado Supreme Court then ruled Trump had engaged in resurrection and Amendment 14, Section 3 barred Trump from being on the Colorado ballot, and the court received a lot of death threats.
Maine’s Secretary of State then received death threats after ruling Amendment 14, Section 3 barred Trump from being on the Maine ballot.
The judges presiding over civil lawsuits against Trump in New York received death threats.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal from the Colorado decision, and the nine Justices know, if they rule Amendment 14, Section bars Trump from being president of the United States, they will receive death threats.
Down below are the links to the two most recent episodes of The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast. The first episode was done in late December, and the second was done within the past week. By the time my tech friend Bob and I did the second episode, the first had 316, 000 complete watches in the Torrent system. We were delayed receiving YouTube links, because YouTube was flooded with uploads about the war in Gaza.
Some Rumble users found the first episode and cut clips out of it and put the clips on Rumble and made fun of Bob and me until we started getting death threats in comments under those clips, and Rumble took down the clips.
Based on what I read in Wikipedia and elsewhere online this morning, Rumble is a very conservative competitor of YouTube, and Donald Trump’s Truth Social uses Rumble’s platform and cloud.
