those who have known war 

say courage isn't going into battle without fear

courage is going into battle with the fear

you don't gain courage only when you heal yourself of fear

fear is natural in a state of war

there can be no winning of the battle without courage

and there can be no courage without fear

the very same could be said about

life and engagement and suffering

full engagement in life doesn't happen at a state of no suffering

full engagement happens by engaging life with the suffering

you don't gain full engagement in life only when you heal yourself of suffering

suffering is natural in a state of living

there can be no full life without engagement

and there can be no engagement without suffering

life/war   engagement/courage   suffering/fear

"What a strange machine man is.
You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes,
and out come sighs, laughter and dreams."
                                - Nikos Kazantzakis

in eternity everything is already born
and everything has already died,
everything has already happened
and everything is still happening
everything has had its meaning wane
and everything is just as meaningful as it was
eternity can't let go of all or anything it contains
letting go is a consideration only in time
and our love - is not in time


"in eternity everything is already born and everything has already died."
                                                                                                       - carl jung

everything is simple when little is known about it
the more that's known about it, the more complicated it gets
when everything is known about it, it gets simple again
but it's a different kind of simple

A great Eastern monarch ordered his wise men to produce one statement that would be true and appropriate in all times and situations so he could have it displayed on the gates of the palace, forever in view.

The wise men returned with -
"And this too shall pass away."

Given the look on the monarch's face,
I don't believe these were the wise men.

WHAT THE MUSHROOM SAID

Clarity is the only way through anything. 

Without clarity you "do the work" forever. 

Without clarity perhaps you manage to heal peripheral things, 

things far afield of the true wound. 

Don't confuse the will to heal with doing what's necessary to heal. 

The will to do the work is not the same as seeking clarity in truth 

from the thing you won't look at and won't approach. 

Once upon a time you were certain 

you left that thing out of sight for a good reason. 

There are no good reasons for leaving things out of sight, 

not after you experience where time takes you when you do. 

Fat cats have the POWER!

PEOPLE want the power!

People ORGANIZE to win the power!

People GET the power!

But power corrupts! what THEN?

A NEW class of fat cat arises 
from the PEOPLE'S organization!

we know we can't trust people's intentions 
from their words even in the presence 
of their apparent heartfelt love and concern 
and yet so often we hope for the best 
despite our intuitive warnings 

they may say they hope you "sleep like a baby"
and what they picture is you 
spitting up on the pillow
awake every two hours
and shitting the bed

"If you aren't suffering from self-imposed misery
and only suffering from inescapable misery, 
maybe you can handle that."   -jbp







Maybe you could if you could differentiate with some certainty what's self-imposed and what's simply inescapable. And that's not obvious, especially to someone in misery. It's also not obvious that self-imposed misery is escapable in this life given the fact we're flawed creatures stranded in a place where inescapable suffering exists as a foundational principle of existence. One has to be able to "think straight" to sort out such things but this might be precluded by the stress, pain, and unavoidable warped perception produced by being in misery. 

Then there's the prospect of handling inescapable misery because you're "only" suffering from that. "Only" minimizes without supporting reason. The fact of being inescapable by itself has nothing to do with minimizing something. Death is inescapable so should we minimize its effect on us merely on that evidence? But let's consider "maybe you can handle that." Maybe that's like saying a mountain exists so maybe you can climb it. Sight unseen, that would be difficult to know. Is the mountain Mount Baker or Mount Everest? And yet the inescapable misery mountain is even more elusive and insidious. This is a mountain whose scope is never fully seen or understood, and worse of all, it's a mountain whose shape and size can change moment to moment with impediments compounding in unpredictable ways. 

To tell someone they should be able handle that situation sounds like heaping upon them another form of self-imposed misery. The pressure and expectation that some forms of misery should be "do-able" merely because they are of a certain type, regardless of their scope, might create colossal performance anxiety such that if one doesn't have self-imposed misery before, being told that inescapable misery should be "do-able" would self-impose some fast.

If there really isn't any difference between you and your experience as Jung postulated, then the experience of one's inescapable misery becomes you. In a phenomenological way, how then could one ever avoid self-imposed misery? It seems quite possible that self-imposed misery is yet another form of inescapable misery. Whether or not either can be "handled" seems purely situational and specific to the makeup of the individual. The devil's always in the details.

when god takes on the sins of the world in a redemptive act
that god takes on responsibility for those sins

original sin, if it exists, becomes contained in god
by the act of assuming responsibility for all sin
and by creating creatures needing redemption

if a creator is not responsible for what their own creation does
then how can that creator judge the results of the free will created?

it's way worse than you thought
but that's OK
because there's way way more to you
than you think
                                             -jbp

it's been said
"the sun does not measure its light by the shadows it casts"

perhaps it doesn't measure its light at all
any light, regardless of its measure, penetrates the darkness
and any shadows cast are not its own
they only exist due to the denseness of others 

(Without the Grace of the Sacred)

Life is the automatized emotionalization 

of incremental irreversible anomalies 

in a domain of imagined purpose and inescapable misery 

made irrelevant by the indifference of others

and onrushing mortality.

this relationship thing is the heart of the alchemical furnace... i don't know if psychedelics make it easier or harder - it certainly reveals its many facets with incredible and sometimes bewildering clarity
                                                 - terence mckenna

"You can't wake someone who's pretending to be asleep."
                                          - Navajo Proverb