My Dear Earth

My dear Earth, I have a confession to make.  I am weary of you and the political promises made on your behalf by those who live totally artificial lives; who watch your “nature” by sitting on a couch in front of their TV and who “love” you without having a clue as to who you really are, or rather, what you have become. 

My dear Earth, I’m tired of your bullshit. In my opinion, backed by having grown up within your actual wilderness, by lifelong observations; by involvement in “environmental” efforts and studies, I say you are either a rank hypocrite, or you simply don’t give a horse’s patootie about what goes on over, on or in your body.  I think if I could hear your response it would be using that particularly offensive current expression: “It’s all good.”

Well no, it’s not all good. In fact it’s far from being even a bit good.  My first challenge to your fans’ claim of status, that you are a goddess, has to do with predation.  Yes, you heard me correctly. You accept, support and probably believe, or at least want your supremacist, exceptional homo sapiens species to believe that predation, the killing of large numbers of totally innocent and helpless life in order to feed much smaller numbers of not so innocent and much less useful life is of paramount necessity to the promotion of a “balanced” slate on this world. 

Let me point out how utterly wrong you are on that.  Let’s take your most successful predator species to-date, “man” and see if their unchallengeable success is conducive to engendering a balance of life on this world, on your body.  What do you think? Even among these ultimate predators (ignoring for the moment any alien force equipped with planet-busting weaponry) there is a saying, “a bad predator annihilate its host.” This so-called intelligent predator is ostensibly aware that his life-sustaining system is entropic.  After man, nothing. I don’t call that balancing the slate, I call that utter irresponsibility, arrogance and injustice of universal proportion. 

Now Earth, if I actually believed in evolution I would have to state categorically that this nefarious, and may I add, absolutely useless and pointless predator called “man” is a child of your desire and invention.  It is so perfectly adapted to your modus operandi that it is in the process of destroying itself and your living environment in the bargain.  It’s all about predation.  Every system man has used (I will not say ‘invented’ because the creature is mentally incapable of such invention) is predatory in expression.  Boil the chaos instituted by man to its lowest common denominators: organized religion, government and finance, and you hold in your cauldron all the evil that man has wrought against all other forms of life and against its own species. 

Whence comes lust? Greed? Lies? Wars? From man’s civilization. What sustains that civilization? The three predatory abominations mentioned above.  Remove them and what’s left of that civilization? Nothing that would uphold man’s claimed superior tenure of earth, of you, Earth. 

Let me back off from man and look at the rest of your “creation” and assess that.  The process of creating stress, fear, fight-or-flight reactions and necessary successful killing attack modes among every creature that flies, swims, walks, crawls or tunnels is everywhere apparent. Simply put, it’s how things work here. Kill or die.  Rule or be enslaved. Where’s the middle ground? There isn’t any. You haven’t allowed for that in your twisted reasoning.  Everything must suffer, either the predator’s fear of missing a kill and going hungry, or the victims’ fear of being targeted while simply engaged in foraging, or in raising young in a burrow or hatching eggs in a nest.  Your entire system is based on raw fear.  How did you ever let it come down to that?  What made you fall so low that you would sell your surface dependent life to fear and constant depredation?

You made a very bad choice a long time ago. You became addicted to fear, hate and pain. You learned to use gratuitous violence to create your drug. Subsequently you discovered man and subverted him to your horror, addicting him to an innate need of violence, particularly by shedding innocent blood. You taught him to use violence against all life, but mostly against the smaller, the weaker, the most helpless.  You demonstrated how the prey would greatly multiply as a defense mechanism against annihilation of its species and taught that predatory killing was a defense against the prey “taking over” the territory legitimately staked out by the predator.  

You know me, Earth.  You know I’m here observing, taking notes. You know you don’t have me. You know the programming used to subvert intelligent life here doesn’t work with me.  So don’t lie to me.  That worked for a time. I believed the lies; that you were not really sentient; that you had nothing to do with what went on; that you were a victim.  Yes, I recognize that you are a victim, just like a drug addict is a victim.

In the name of all that is fair and just as Life understands it, I condemn man’s civilization and I also condemn you, Earth, to a just death.  Your anti life perversion and corruption is beyond redemption, as is man’s.  You possess a few very shaky years yet in which to change, in which to make amends, in which to prove me wrong about you. 

I suggest you get to it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purpose

[an essay, by   ~burning woman~ ] 

Until perhaps a decade of Earth years ago I had not yet realized that any intelligent, sentient, self aware life form needs a purpose in order to make sense of itself and to give itself direction. Without purpose such a life falls into an endless treadmill. How can any intelligent life with the ability to self propel move forward, or in any meaningful direction, without purpose?

Serving a purpose instead of just existing as asset, a “labour resource” or a consumer makes sense. But in a world teeming with billions of Earthians how can one develop a meaningful purpose? How can “I” make myself mean something outside the dictates of a system that by observation increasingly tends to go off the rails and doesn’t seem to have any meaning in itself?

That’s a legitimate question, I think. What is our civilization’s purpose? There was a time that “purpose” for Earthians was to serve the gods. For better or worse, we lost that, or deliberately turned against it. Not totally our fault since the gods, real or imagined, no longer responded to our prayers and left us to our own devices, lead by unabashedly greedy certifiable morons in the field of religion. It wasn’t long before the System offered a new type of belief I would call political atheism.

We were swayed by a new idea: evolution, or natural selection. Instead of gods, nature was the arbiter of everything that had ever been, was, or could be. To top that, man rediscovered himself to be a meaningless physical, finite entity with absolutely no hope of any future beyond his one pointless life. Essentially that is the atheist creed. Like belief in God, gods or whatever, belief in no hereafter is just another type of faith-based concept. The difference is that this belief does not exactly promote the seeking for greater purpose.

For an ISSA being, purpose can only be properly expressed in a mind conscious of existence beyond one physical lifetime. Purpose carries across time and space to encompass cosmic reality. Purpose means partnership with life and its creative force.

Purpose awareness brings one dangerously close to thinking like a god also, and that is a place one must shun with every part of one’s being.

We’ve done the god thing and all it has accomplished is help solidify a societal reality that is destroying us as a species. While pretending to worship some God or other Force, what we have done is create a civilization wherein we would rule the world as gods. In that we have been abject failures. Instead of developing purpose as self empowered individuals we have corralled all the available resources of the planet, human and non, to jerry build a mindless, directionless, self-defeating finite monstrosity that is ever poised to destroy itself through internecine warfare. Our civilization is a predatory Frankenstein without specific direction, without purpose. When we read the questionable records of its history the final question that remains is, what was the point? What’s the point? What comes after?

If we use the Pleasantville allegory as indicative of the development of civilization – and why not? – we end up with the same question: what comes next, once the Pleasantville illusion is shattered? In the movie the answer is we’re not supposed to know. The same answer you get if you do religion. “In my father’s house are many mansions.” Fine, well and good, but that is not an answer. The type and condition of life in the father’s house are never answered. Why not?

Neither religion nor its nemesis atheism, want, or can, give anyone purpose. Purpose relates to a “higher” type of thinking. Purpose shatters the programming of the Powers and sets the mind free to be itself. To develop its own thinking patterns. To see reality, not propaganda. To dare accept a knowledge once sought by mages, visionaries, dreamers. A knowledge ignored and despised in today’s academic and political circles.

Purpose takes us out of mindless existence on the wheel of fate, or karma, or dead-end as is the more common case today. Purpose is the action field where an individual practices living at the expense of her mere existence until all that’s left is life. Once one discovers life society and its manifold chaotic beliefs no longer hold sway.

I can think my own thoughts and know beyond any doubt that they are superior to any expressed by society and those who rule and ruin it to their own destruction. From purpose I can see the past and I can walk into the future, up to “the 13^th Floor” and beyond. Can you?  

 

 

 

 

Man’s Last War

 – a poem by Sha’Tara

The world hasn’t changed much
Since so long ago I was born, when I happened
For no reason it would seem, without hubris.
I learned to talk, walk, listen and observe
With the sense it all had to mean something
In the end.

The world was cruel to me when I was young
Though I didn’t know that then, it’s what is
To a child life is the norm, the form.
There was much hardship, harshness
Little tenderness, and it seemed dangerous.
One could get used to tenderness
And the world I knew hated it with passion
unchecked.

Life is cruel they said without apology,
Why not, they’d just survived a world war
Knowing naught but blood and losses.
I thought, yes, I have to be bold, and tough,
I too must survive, there’ll be another war
And I must know how to fight it; must know
My enemy before he knows that I know
I will beat him.

No, the world hasn’t changed, not at all.
The same people lie, cheat, rob and rule,
The same people suffer and die, their blood
Lubricates the scythe blindly sweeping
To leave fodder and dying stubble in its wake
To be ploughed.

Yet something did change, has changed:
A new World War is being fought
No longer man against man but once again
Man against nature-she fighting her protracted way
She can never lose. Man in his hubris
Still believes he can win this war and it will be
As he never, ever, won any of his other wars.
Earth withdraws her bounty.

Man’s motto remains against, never with
Rashly, brashly he spreads his nets,
His barb wire, his jet trails, his towers,
His stacks, his chimneys, his warehouses
His poisons, his noise, his armaments and bombs,
All to be measured in corporate profits for
The rich to get richer.

Civilization teeters on the brink of extinction,
The skies are deeply troubled, changing colours,
Glaciers melt, calve, fires burn, smoke rises:
Death, death, death! Booms and cackles
The Lord of Greed, the God of man, terminator
Soulless and heartless

The last man stands on his funeral pyre
Proudly made of planet Earth’s skin
Sure he’d won his very last war against life.
*********
He raises his fist to the soured heavens,
Claiming his last divine imperative thinking
I have destroyed the environment, I have killed
All that sustained life. I leave my boot print
On a weak, worthless and dying world, hah!
“I Am become Death, the Destroyer of Earth,
I will be remembered, halleluiah!”

How then does one achieve enlightenment?

[thoughts from   ~burning woman~  and essay, by Sha’Tara]

Quote: “Prescience reveals no absolutes, only possibilities. The surest way to know exactly what the future holds is to experience it in real time.” (Sandworms of Dune – Kevin Anderson)

How do I approach this? Let me say that lately I have been allowing myself to “feel” and that has translated into deep and abiding sorrow for this world. Certainly if one is remotely aware of the many sick things going on here, or being done here, there must arise a sense of anxiety. But “anxiety” means concern for one’s self, or one’s “special people” within the greater body politic.

Sorrow is a different thing, as I have written about before. My understanding of it is, it isn’t about me (or mine, if I had any special people) but about all of it, about the flow of life… and death… all around me, as far as my senses can reach.

One achieves “enlightenment” when one gathers enough personal courage to look at her or his world exactly as it is and not as the conflicting sources of propaganda declare it to be. Yes, that takes courage because it removes all the facile excuses we constantly make up to justify our sustaining beliefs regardless of how such beliefs affect others. Enlightenment means I no longer regard others as conveniences to supply my endless wants; I no longer view them as competitors for space or resources; I no longer see them as threats to my personal, or national, beliefs and security.

Enlightenment means becoming aware of reality without blinders or protective armor. It means choosing to become vulnerable so that others may not have to feel vulnerable but safe in our presence.

Enlightenment then means living the compassionate life does it not?

If we accept the truth of our current social condition, that being a very difficult thing to do, we will of necessity plunge into a maelstrom of personal conflict. If we are of the relatively “rich” West, we will feel the weight of responsibility for many of the world’s ills and we won’t know what to do about it. We will want to protest; we will seek to blame someone, particularly “they” for the world’s major problems. We will think that just changing “me” is useless in the grand scheme of things and when we see that all our struggles, our protests, our votes and our hopes are increasingly dashed, we will go the route of despair, despondency, denial or seek solace in “old time religion” and our spirit will die within. We will go through the motions of living and when death comes, that will be that. It might even be seen as a relief from pointlessness and boredom.

This reminds me of a song I once wondered about so long ago, sung by Peggy Lee: “Is That All There Is?”

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWTnsemkIs

Lyrics:
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he gathered me up
In his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement
And I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over I said to myself, is that all there is to a fire?

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

And when I was twelve years old, my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads
And as I sat there watching
I had the feeling that something was missing
I don’t know what, but when it was over
I said to myself, “is that all there is to the circus?

And then I fell in love with the most wonderful boy in the world
We’d take take long walks down by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes
We were so very much in love
And then one day he went away and I thought I’d die, but I didn’t
And when I didn’t I said to myself, is that all there is to love?

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep

I know what you must be saying to yourselves
If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me I’m not ready for that final disappointment
‘Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
When that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

Yesterday was my 73rd birthday, a pretty good milestone, even by today’s standards and I realize that all my life I have refused to accept that “is that all there is” condition.

In “Sandworms of Dune” Kevin Anderson wrote: “By following the same beliefs and making the same decisions one wears life’s path into a circular rut, going nowhere, accomplishing nothing, making no progress.”

That is “the” problem Earthians seem unable to confront and move beyond. Many a time I suggested doing something outside the status quo in order to get off the treadmill. I was mocked and accused of not knowing the difference between imagination and reality. Eventually I chose in favor of imagination and against man’s sacrosanct reality. I chose against “Is that all there is” and went on a life-long quest for whatever lay beyond this view.

I found the doorway, and I saw the future, yes, and experienced it in real time. That is what the gate keepers do not want Earthians to realize: that their future exists, that it is waiting for them to enter into it and experience it, that it is neither some bullshit religious “heaven” or “hell” nor equally bullshit materialistic annihilation.

If we would become truly enlightened we all have to take that chance and go questing for our own particular future. It’s a strictly personal reality and not a collective affair. Scary thought that, hm?

I Am so Ready!

I Am so Ready

(thoughts from   ~burning woman~   by Sha’Tara)

No matter the number of years I’ve thought about it and meditated on what it means to me, the idea that I am ‘so ready’ for that final breath is still, well, stunning. I’ve given myself the freedom to speak openly about my ‘impending’ death for some time now even if it causes a frozen lull in most conversations.

Why would someone speak about dying? Some are simply fed up and think, ‘enough is enough’ while some, if rarely, are eager to join up with their chosen loving deity or whatever. That’s not how it is for me.

Am I dissatisfied with the conditions of Earth as imposed upon it by a ruling species unwilling to control its power and take responsibility for its actions? Certainly but that does not drive me to despair, quite to contrary, since I have an impeccable solution to such problems.

Do I think that I’ve done enough and it’s time for a much deserved break from the merry-go-round and the pig pen? No, quite the opposite: I know I haven’t performed to the best of my abilities and there is so much more to be done. I know that my sudden “departure” would currently leave some people in the lurch.

No, my sense of being ready does not come from selfish motives. It comes from an innate knowing. It comes from a bursting of joy having something good and tangible to take with me after a wonderful day at the fair.

The fair is still going full bore; I could stay and play some more but speaking of bore, any fair will get boring if it goes on too long. I don’t want this to go on past the point where I can enjoy it. I don’t want to just sit in the car as the night falls and the lights come on only to fade.

There is a sense of fullness that is driving me, today particularly. I want to enjoy that quiet if passionate, fullness. I want to enjoy one accomplishment in particular: detachment. There is nothing, and no one that has the power to hold me here. I am the one with the power, all of it and that means I have also managed to get a handle on self empowerment.

I choose, I decide, no regrets. I gave myself a purpose for my life henceforth and that purpose is anchored within my own nature now. Like Leto Atreides II choosing to forfeit his humanity in order to become a sand worm, the Fremen deity called Shai’Hulud, I have forfeited my humanity (or perhaps gained it!) by turning myself over to becoming an avatar of compassion.

This is done now. What comes next, is next. I live in the joy of this accomplishment. I was taught even as a child that it is possible to change one’s nature. I had to prove it to myself and the answer is, yes.