Peter Pan Advice

          That I would be labeled as suffering from a peter pan complex I'd imagine would come as little surprise to anyone who has taken a passing glance at my blog, or met me.  Much of the time the same folks that would say I have never grown up often also bitch about me pointing out logical fallacies in their decision making process. Our cultural ideas of adulthood, and the expected path for development are in my opinion not just flawed, but counter productive to my development as not a human, who knows how long I'll be one. It's my development as a whole being, of the mind learning to be master of emotional, and physical being.  Not devoid of emotional content, or physical desires, this only leads to repression, and usually uncontrolled outbursts.  The ability to think clearly becomes clouded as another energy center takes over for the duration.  What is mature, or adult, who decided on the ideals?
         Rites of Passage might be developmentally some of the most important events a self aware being can experience.  Being acknowledged by the public as having transitioned from one group to another, or one phase of life to another.  Cultures through out recorded history have used these ceremonial events. They mark the death, and rebirth a phoenix moment in an individuals life. It actually causes a person to think of themselves differently, as well as be viewed by the wider world differently.  Most of what we think of as reality, is a mental overlay, it is and is not real.  Most of the systems of human centered survival, are high levels of energetic organization. Meaning they would suffer greatly from effects of entropy if not tended.  From ideas of community, to finance, education, governance, the list is almost endless. I'm not saying these are not real, I'm saying we made them up, their reality relies on our acceptance of them as meaningful, and applicable.  These ceremonial events filled with ritual, and formal meaning mark an acceptance of the veracity of these institutions, and the ideas they hold.  These would be fine if the patterning, the indoctrination they presented was reflective of greater reality, for me that answer has been no. Only that what these do is not teach, it's indoctrinate into a system that for me holds very little value.  Before I get bogged down in the pitfalls of the US, the effect of the ceremony itself is what I am getting at.  What we think of as self, our idea of ego identification is altered in dramatic ways by participation in these events.  In altering the way the individual, and greater reality labels the individual. After a certain point in the system an individual must set aside their own ideas, and thoughts to represent the ideas held by the established order. This is mind control, or shaping, mentoring, the differences being of method, and intention. With each ceremony the individual is invested a bit more into the system that offered the accolade, it creates ready defenders regardless of the logic of the position held. This is an amazing strategy, it co-ops opposition, as well as shuts down rational thought or dialog. It is the same one used often by royalty in taking control by making nobles of another country to invested to oppose. Creating defenders out what would normally be adversaries.
        Take a moment, and watch the movie hook, even peter pan was lured by playing pirate, and only by becoming peter pan once again was able to save what really mattered, the children. Not just his, but the lost boys too. It's never to late to become a kid again!

Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Living a Shadow Life

            A little over a year ago what was left of my top teeth were pulled.  After the healing time and 2 sets of digital dentures I gave up on dentures entirely.  While others seemingly have no issues with them, and some even rave. For me they are not a viable option, the constant gagging, and salivating, combine with the constant reminder of being incomplete physically.  Suffice it to say, it's been at least 6 months since I have even taken a look at the dentures.  In many ways this is fine, no one even seems to notice, and as long as I'm a bit careful about what I chose to eat, and the relief from continuous infections, and pain is nice change of pace.  There is little actual recovery, physically sure I'm in better health than I have been in at least 10 years or more.  Recovery as most are aware is more than physical. When my teeth began to crumble away, yes that is how it happened for me, never tried meth, but mountain dew mouth as it's called sure makes it look like I did.  When my left eye tooth split like it was layered veneer and the front half sloughed off, my sense of self shifted.  Even though my physical appearance has rarely been of great import to me, having rotten broken teeth, or now no top teeth at all is pushing the limits for me.  To be fair I had already become for the most part a hermit, out of a sense of self preservation more than anything else. The ideas, drives, passions others chase have for the most part to me seemed trivial at best, and nightmares or worse.  That never stopped me from being social,  Now even though I am healthy, and lost a bunch of weight just from becoming more active, and changing up my diet a little.  People comment how I look great, and all I want to do is run, I understand the change they are seeing, it just doesn't register the same for me as for them.  It's an odd betwixt and between feeling, as implants would be the next choice, though if your a bit forward looking, you might be aware of the research with stem cells, and lasers. Already full regrowth in lab conditions on rats has been achieved, so getting implants might be detrimental to being able to take advantage of a procedure that may only be 5 years or so out.  As I have been writing this, what keeps coming to my mind is feeling broken, of only being partially functional even though it is only a slight impairment. The island of misfit toys keeps flashing through my mind, an odd state of being.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Currency for Living

        I'm going to be talking mostly from the perspective of being a resident of the United States, most of my explanations will apply with a few name changes to almost every nation. Money makes the world go round, not true obviously, but also tough to argue with as it certainly seems to spin the human world.  Going without currency is to an extent impossible if you live in a modern nation. we are paid, sometimes even forced to get special accounts just to receive the fruits of our labor. Why given the facts of how much impact money, and finance has on our everyday experience it's a wonder hardly anyone seems to understand it, or even have any desire to.  The boons of an abstract store of value, a thing that represents all other things in potential can not be understated, and would have to make it to any list of ideas that changed the world. Having a representational system of value has without a doubt opened up trade, allowed for specialization at unprecedented levels.  That does not mean our current system will continue as is, nor does it mean our current system is infallible.  There has been much made about how contrived our markets are, with not price discovery, but manipulation at work as the rule.  As a world we live in a debt based system, consolidation of resources, and money as a thing.  Money as thing is fine, if the money is a thing, ours is figures on a screen or pieces of paper, with the majority of it only coming into being when it is created with interest attached by private parties.  This makes for different classes of money, easy to understand if all money is debt, the money created with a lower interest rate attached would have more value than that created with a higher rate.  This interest on the creation of money sets in place a organized crime like skim, where the percentage of interest charged is stolen right off the top.  All while zero risk, as your product is needed by everyone, yet does not exist till you sell it to them.  Many will now be saying that I am ignoring the reserve requirements.  These might have been a restraint at one time, with zero interest and the presses on full blast, meeting the requirements is an after the fact event.
        How might we change this?  Issuing currency is and must remain with the sovereign, be it a nation, or municipality what have you.  In order for the money to not take over, it must be maintained as a service to the nation by the nation.  The US must issue it's own currency the credit agencies, and private banks would have to adhere to a full reserve requirement.  This would eliminate the infinite growth mythology, and allow for expansion and contraction of the currency supply based on the needs to facilitate the exchange of goods and services.  Isn't that what representational money is about?  Making it as simple as possible for an individual to exchange what they have, for what they need?
      In fairness the US monetary system never stood a chance, with even our history being rewritten to leave our money as a prime motivating factor for the revolution.  Some even goes so far as to make a case that Hamilton, our first secretary of the treasury was an agent for international banking interests. As interesting as history can be, the who did what who, or he said she said game will not do a thing to change the present.  Like all technology, money is a thing most do not wish to spend time thinking about. We just want it to work, ours doesn't, was not planned to, and we are in the world change over of global trade settlement.  If there was intent to work our system as intended the bail out would have been in public works projects. Where those with the least are put to work by the government to make improvements everyone will benefit from. This allows the currency to enter at the bottom, and trickle it's way up through the full economic structure.  What we have done is cut out the middle and bottom, injecting the currency almost at the top. Combined with interest rates kept artificially low, that currency has no choice but to enter into speculative markets just to find a return. This only adds distortion to the overall economic data.
     We can make money the tool it is intended to be, or we can be little more than economic servants to those who understand it's tricks. The choice is always ours.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard  

Love, Life, and Liberty the Lies We Tell

           Those without prior exposure to the insanity I  call a blog, or the drivel that comes rushing out my fingertips when the flow moves me are warned now. What proceeds is a work of the mind, it has little to do with the conceptions of everyday existence most cling to.  I ask no forgiveness, nor do I apologize, I am warning.  This type of thinking is detrimental for some, it sets up questions of mind that can not reasonably be answered while within the experience we call life.  This is a logic play, if you do not understand when to draw your own lines between reality, and fantasy than please just refrain from reading any further.  If you have strong religious convictions likely this will only serve to irritate you, or cause to you question your faith.  If that is so, your the one questioning, not me, so leave me out of it.
           From my perspective, which is all I really have, and is in itself something changing constantly. We, and by we I mean every thing in the universe, creation, whatever you call it, is in a state of delusion.  That the only way we can be having this experience of life, of being real is through clinging to several delusions.  These are in no particular order, they seemingly change order of importance as functions of each other.  That we exist at all, with the energy to matter conversion equation we learned that there is no such thing as what we think of as matter. That energy can not be destroyed or created it can only be transformed.  This sets up an interesting dilemma, as there can only be energy, and energy needs a transmission medium, which according to this can not exist, other than as a conditional state of the energy itself.  The concept of our lack of reality has been expressed many times in many ways. From the dream within a dream idea, or the matrix, this conception our own non existence is expressed.  The second delusion is that we exist as individuals. There is no place where anything stops, and anything starts. What we think of as our seemingly solid bodies with continuity are in reality a constantly shifting mass of energy, much like a storm appears to us. The third delusion is we are the center of all things. This one even for those that have been able to accept the ideas of the first two often reject.  My own sense of I, finds this fact to be most humorous, and exactly as it should be.  That we perceive as if we were the center of all things is not really up for debate. Our sense of self stems for the idea we are a body, that we look out from our eyes. That our senses interpret what for us is reality. This is such an amazing state of being, it can not be celebrated enough. That you are the one sitting at the center of creation, even if it's only from your perspective such a cool trick of relativity it becomes overlooked. As if it couldn't possibly any other way, this isn't so, as nde, obe, remote viewing, channeling and the like lead to the conception your point of perception is not permanently attached to what we think of as our physical body.
          An oddity in the ideas of reincarnation, through ego attachment we seem to get many people who due to feeling powerless now project themselves forward, and backward through time to be powerful people somewhere, or sometime else.  It is seemingly rare for people to consider that if there is a linear progression of reincarnation, where have new people come from?  As well as how few consider the idea they might have been Hitler, Stalin, Nero, these figures from history that are viewed as evil, or corrupt, or just plain insane.  The flip to this is those who end up in the messianic complex, they rarely actually consider the price those who represented this energy, or personality complex had to pay.  If as our latest equations point to, and spiritual traditions predating recorded history state, that this is eternal, that we always are.  Well eternity is just that, we would have nothing to do, no place to go, other than in relative senses, and we have forever to get there. I am now all I will ever be, even if it's from your perspective not in evidence.
        If someone has a world view that completely accounts for, and encompasses yours, plus adds in others in a larger framework. While theirs is not necessarily accurate, it is likely more accurate than yours. An hour, day, or year are not measurements of time, they are measures of movement, a measurement of rate of motion, or rate of change.  No one on the planet has ever been in the same place twice, even in their own room, or bed. Change the rate of motion, and change the experience of time. I am not me, never was never will be, I am merely reflections of all things I have encountered, The existence of what is seemingly other, is what helps define what I am.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard     

Self Styled Slacker

         I am a slacker, what does that mean?  

slack·er

ˈslakər/

noun

informal

1. a person who avoids work or effort.

   synonyms:

   layabout, idler, shirker, malingerer, sluggard, laggard; More

   • US

     a person who evades military service.
   • NORTH AMERICAN

     a young person (especially in the 1990s) of a subculture characterized by apathy and aimlessness

   
   

I avoid anything I think of as work, or anything I view as being wholly stupid.  Not to say I am not productive, or that I never act in a manor that can be rightly called stupid.  I wasn't always a slacker, and to be fair, I have adopted the term as it's easier to cultivate that view in people than being honest.  In many ways the self adoption of the term is not unlike any other person taking a slight, and using it.  That does not mean I am unable to use that trick of detachment, and see how from others perspectives I do exactly that.  

      From my own view, work is not required, work is something people feel they have to do out of a sense of obligation.  What that obligation is up for debate, it is slightly different for everyone.  Generally coming from lessons taught in childhood, either intentionally or through osmosis, just absorbing what everyone around them says, and does in relation to "money".  That is what it pretty much always comes to, the majority work because they feel it's the only way to get money, and they feel they need money in order to survive.  Some have gotten to a point where the idea of what survival looks like, might be extravagant. That isn't overly important, it's the idea of have to work to survive.  I've never felt that way, and though the hows have changed, the intent has remained fairly constant for about 30 years now.  I'm not even saying I haven't been employed, the what is less important as the how I feel about the what. I mean I had a job at gas station for 5 or so years, it was an exchange, I didn't feel like it was work, with the only time I felt taken advantage of was when being asked to fix a computer as a cashier.  Let me explain this a bit, I covered fri, sat, sun, from 1pm, till midnight, on my own from 5pm on, was allowed to sit and read. My friends would hang out, even had this beautiful woman that would come have dinner sometimes.  It was for me a nice break, and forced me to stay social in the physical world. On my time I was playing Everquest 50+ hours a week, so being in a high profile position where I was forced to interact with people was needed.

      There is seemingly an expected life path, birth, school, job, spouse, kids, death.  Well I do not remember getting the choice of being born, and if I had a say you'd have to question my sanity from the get go. For the first x odd years they tell you, your job is to learn, than they proceed to cram you full of garbage that has very little to do with learning, and an awful lot with Pavlovian conditioning. While I love learning, everyone, and thing teaches me all the time, I do not yet remember a day I didn't learn something.  School as it turns out, was not really about learning, oh sure there are some foundational aspects, the reading, writing, arithmetic. Along with some introduction to higher concepts.  For the most part my experience of school was about the next school, or job you were going to get. When I stopped going, end of junior year, it was there wasn't much left to learn there, and the piece of paper did not mean anyone had learned a thing.  The fact that people were getting degrees essentially handed to them based on who their parents were, or how skilled an athlete they were.  Made the piece of paper meaningless to me, as well as setting up a disdain for those who put faith in them. This doesn't even account for the ideas of diminishing returns being applied, or the shrinking need for a labor pool due to automation. They say that nearly 3/4 of the american population lives paycheck to paycheck, with around 60% being one missed check from the street.  How well is our system working?  In the writings of the founders of America, not the United States, they are different. They wrote about our times right now, not in dates, and prophetic announcements. Nah, they didn't need to go through all that, at the times of their writings they were already being forced to, or had just broken from, an outside agency printing their currency at interest.  They already saw jobs as wage slavery, The idea that future generations would end up homeless due to compounding interest on currency creation in private hands was not, and is not esoteric. Given this perspective the idea of "working" for a "living" loses it's appeal at least in my eyes. 

       For me a flip side to the slacker lifestyle is this, only once you have leisure time do you begin to contemplate.  When your life is about survival, or chasing the next big thing, there is little space for the what if's, the scent of flowers. Often there isn't even room for friends, and family, usually the very ones purportedly being worked so hard to benefit are lost in the daily shuffle, grinding out the next dollar. Or perhaps for some it is the ego identification with a title that gives meaning to their existence. Having lost count long ago of the number of times people have talked to me in the capacity of clerk, and told me I was wasting, or under utilizing my abilities. How can this possibly be? I have no pedigree so to speak, would feel the endorsement as a burden, not a blessing. Strange it feels as if I am becoming, or have been the ultimate con person, convincing everyone I am something, while always being something else.

       Tied into this are the ideas of the rites of passage, ceremonial markings of the transitions through the accepted phases of life. Having not personally finished the school portion, I'm still a kid, with most I encounter recognizing me as such, within the context of western society.  I have done many of the so called mystery traditions indoctrination's, intentionally or just as an outcropping of the exploration.  In the extreme other people have attempted to foist all sorts of labels, or titles onto me, in order to make it ok for them to relate to me as I am.  Having been called everything from cult leader, to guru, asshole, st. germaine, or sanada, a reincarnation of a grey that crashed at roswell, to being told you are as the buddha, or a child of satan. There is an odd thing my slacker life of leisure and contemplation has taught me, at a certain point it doesn't matter what is and isn't true. Even when it comes to ideas of what we may or may not represent as spiritual beings.  That sure you might have genetic predispositions, with the cellular memory, and that is all well and good.  When you get to most abstract connections to all things, it's simply a matter of accepting that all things are connected to all things. Once you are able to see yourself as, than you are.

Jack

aka

PanseyBard

Labels, Labels, Everywhere!

          Labels, we all seem to love to identify, classify, organize, like collectively we are OCD. We make all sorts of systems to enable us to make connections, to make sure everything is as it should be.  Should is of course a key word, as it points to a trap of perspective. We look out on the world seemingly from a point of isolation, we categorize, included, or exclude based on a framework we rarely if ever question.  The very notion we are human is a boarder, a boundary, it isolates us from feeling a sense of connection to the world we inhabit.  As we have self identified as being different, or other, we have become exactly that.  If I am Jack, and you are not Jack, there is no choice for me but treat you as less important than Jack.  When self is identified as merely a differentiated portion of a greater tapestry, a thread in a fabric the universe, multiverse, god, whatever label works for you. At this point, other becomes self, self becomes other, with the juxtaposition being merely a trick of perception.  As all of our experience is a trick of perception. from our senses being equivalent to input/output devices.  These are all finely tuned to pick up certain frequency ranges, we are than given the framework to make sense, everything around us informs us of what it is, much like a function call in object oriented programming.  We in turn broadcast what we are, and what we expect everything else to be.
        In some teachings of what has been called the fall. When the angels we driven from heaven, where they were driven to was the abyss, the chaos or all potential. Kinda what we think of as space, that perfect balance on the Planck scale that we witness as empty.  Into this nothing, the hierarchy of angels imposed order, bringing into form worlds for themselves to inhabit. Our world is just one of many, The impressing of form on formless is a recurring theme in every tradition, crossing into fundamentals of physics. At the core these are attempting to explain what is essentially a tendency, much like the morphogenic fields expressed in the ideas of Sheldrake. Does this mean we can make up whatever want, mold, and shape as we see fit. In a way yes, in other ways no, it sets up a feedback loop. Where we are created, and creator, our own acceptance of there being other gives the other the power to imprint their conception of us, and how we exist in relation to their conception of self.  As we see the world is how the world presents itself to us, as we are incapable of seeing in any other way.

We make it up as we go along, and cling to it like it's our life raft, some to the point of violent reaction to anything that might alter a world view. We seem to continually look for an out, a way to keep our self importance, our place as the center of all creation, I am the center of my own universe, in that way I am the center of all things, everything radiates out from me, I shape by, and in return am shaped by all things.  I've often said I am as I am because no one else was willing to be me, an odd notion, but not far from the truth. The people around me push me into being portions of self they know exist but are unwilling to express for themselves, for what ever reason.  It does not make me anything of these things, except in relation to that which perceives me as such. What the I is that seems to lurk in, around and through me, you and everything. Well that you have to come to on your own, in your own way. My way is very personal, tied to metaphor, and the logic of chaos, coupled to life long exposure to the logic externalized, to become cold, crunching big data in quantum environment where space/time/energy functions of each other. Be aware, or be awareness itself, devoid of attachment to that observed. The world becomes a much different place.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard