I think the trickiest thing, perhaps even the most dangerous thing, is the problem of absorbing the projections of other people. Other people who are caught up in their own peculiar mess and think that the world must be re-made in the image of the mess.

To someone self-aware of things this becomes both a source of amusement and a source of frustration. "What? They actually believe that? They are so dense that they can't see that?" Of course, why should it be any other way? Life demands that one play various parts for a while until we are used to the stage.

One of the strangest effects, a regular electro-magnetic force, is that of the pure unhappiness of other people which emerges in relation as the demand that you, who are relatively happy, must not be happy because you are not performing or actively engaged in some pursuit that the unhappy victim would wish in his or her deepest dream to be doing.

In other words, there is always the disinclination of human beings to relate to one another as if they are human beings. Rather, we seek images. We would rather have the chimera of our brains alive in front of us then a real, existing human being.

If I were to do an in-depth study of war and conflict this is where I would start. I would start at the rejection of the actual human being for the image whose power is then invested in the group, which is then threatened by other groups who have their own images to defend.

And then there are the ponderous one's who keep telling everyone "that is reality and it has always been that way and will never end except in utter annihilation." In a media age this is even more intense. The media simply takes a predisposition in the human being and expands its capacity 1000X thereby annihilating any relation to actual human beings.

And when common humanity attempts to recover from what it has obviously fallen into, it scrutinizes even the most private of acts in an attempt to recover that humanity.

Sex, in this era, simply being the most normal way wherein abstract, image-wracked, over-stimulated humanity goes in order to feel like real human beings. Violence has the same function.

Well, it's easy to become pessimistic.

There is no truth perse in the common acts of human beings.

Truth comes from naked humanity alone in the cosmos. Truth is not passive. And now, since a person is crusted over in ornaments and armor to protect him or her from that confrontation, they must actively undo themselves so to speak. And then the person must actively seek that place, both physical and in mind, when he is indeed alone.

A man in this position see's death.

He also see's life evolving toward a richer, more complex future.

Technology is certainly a part of that ornamentation and armor.

The glamor of the social universe is certainly a part of that.

It is where everything is anonymous and yet absolutely personal.

It is not the withdrawal from the world that is painful; it is the return.

Why in the world should anyone crave to return to a period of time that existed 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years ago? All of that exists in your mind and if you have some sympathy for your own mind you can experience these things.

I don't know where I would be or who I would be if I didn't have an extensive knowledge of the past 2500 years of history. I feel attached to it but I don't feel subdued by it.

Mind in confrontation to what creates it and destroys it. This is the eternal question.

It is just as interesting, though, to look at all of the activity that exists between the creation and destruction.

To know that intimately!

One should be both a lover and a critic of humanity.

Most of the quest is foolishness.

It is not a matter of control but the release of the desire to control. And that comes only when the soul is utterly confident. Anything less than the most profound confidence re-introduces the mind to control and all of the natural conflicts that follow.

Is it idealistic to look at the world realistically and say, "Given the path it is on it will not survive? Therefore, the path or the travelers on the path must change."

And then, naturally, the desire to do everything. And then the demoralization when it is quite obvious little can be done.

In one moment one is free on the periphery giving the horrid inheritance up. And then, in the next, he is in the middle of it, being judged by it, being let down by it, being buried by it.

The emotions are not the thoughts. The emotions are the depressants of thought. The emotions can only be experienced. If they are confused with thought, thought itself is extinguished.

When one has successfully separated emotion from thought the first thing to appear is the overwhelming observation of how much emotion controls thought and, by extension, action. And how, certainly not all, but most of the acts driven by emotion are "not good" in a strictly moral sense.

On a certain level there is little or no effect. As you go further and further up or into the circle "bad" acts become more amplified and the implications become quite extensive. Obviously, existence as it is now can never be the way one wishes it to be. Nonetheless, the fact that we can imagine something better means something.

Why is it that we can see that things could be better? Even if we are afraid of saying so?

This must be a direct perception of reality that is then "judged" or "measured" against something innate in the mind.

1987

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