Sunday, July 25, 2004

I was just reminded again, playing the old songs, the hymns and psalters written down, some of them known to date back centuries and centuries, when they were recorded at least - but probably existed long before then, that music and song is one of the most important ways we propogate the idea of our existences being worthy of note, like birds in a cosmological, metaphysical forest. I hope that we never lose that ability, that honoring of our ancestry, that song of hope for the future. I think that's probably part of the power for me of hymns - the words are immaterial to the ancestry, the ages and ages of humans makes those same connections in tone, whatever the gods they understood at the time. 12:59:53 AM

It just dawned on me what I hate most about dishonesty - and that is the disdain with which the other person holds those they are trying to mislead. And that the success of the manipulation requires the good will of the other. That's something I learned a little watching BK work back in the day - that she could scam people simply because people so wanted to believe that they weren't getting scammed. In the business world, the value of the exchange, whatever it is, would be so much more beneficial to both parties if everyone simply spoke plainly and honestly. Part of the unfortunate reality of money taking on value on it's own, rather than as a means of exchange, is that it perpetuates the scarcity model, a limbic brain economy. This week, I've been fascinated by three different pieces of paid work that resulted from the clients' themselves insisting on hiring us, after I gave them the offer of simply giving them my advice for free. On the flip side, another client is trying to build an elaborate case for NOT paying for services they contracted for, without fully owning themselves, let alone stating, what's really going on with their business - which might allow us to help them further. That's something for me that's even clearer now - that it is more important to me to approach my life and my business dealings with equal integrity than to profit greatly by even the smallest of misdealings. I don't know if it was being tired, or if I'm just feeling this way, but the whole night at Sqwires, this whole week, with the exception of that one dealing this week, which has also provided some tremendous learning opportunities, has felt like grace. It's almost like, not all the time, but most, seeing the world smiling back at me, which makes me want to smile back. I actually felt gracious towards people the way people of extraordinary grace make me feel when I'm around them, as if they are wrapping my whole being with great love using only their embracing gaze. It's something that feels like it's from outside my being, but inside, somehow, myself. The other thing I've just begun thinking about is that part of the process of greater, fuller self understanding, is embracing the void, exploring it, owning it, within ourselves. I think so much of the human existence is predicated upon feeling and then trying to fill the blackness - and I'm not so much sure whether it's the neocortex, to some degree, copping to primal fears, when the void, the empty chaos is from whence our own genetic heritage is wrought. Going into it feels like entering a cave, like a snack slithering back into a hole. The void isn't bad energy - just different energy, something I find restful and calm when I'm there, that I don't have to think about or do anything, and just sit in the stillness inside my head. It's incredibly and mindbendingly refreshing coming out of that place, like I've  just bathed my being, and now can go more cleanly and well rested into the light. I keep thinking about surfing as such the perfect model for the different reactions and evolutions of human consciousness - that the personalities involved can be reckless and territorial, violently so, or completely connected, recognizing and connecting their own wholeness of being, including the infinite void, and the infinity of the sea. 12:17:50 AM