Certain old bumperstickers still appeal to me, rattling out of my mind now and then. Truth is probably best spoken in a bumpersticker phrase. Two favorites: Are We Having Fun Yet? and Don't Believe Everything You Think. I might alter the second one to Don't Believe Everything You Know. More ironic. Which of course reminds me of my own particular aphorism: Too much irony makes one overwrought. But even the notion of "my own particular" anything is suspect to me these days. I have many experiences from life that I recall as "memories," and I do believe them and know that they occurred in some version of "reality." I even have such memories of events and moments of things that happened to "me" in previous incarnations. Rarely do I reprise these; most if not almost all people cannot relate even if they do believe. I myself can barely relate though it is as real as the moment at which a childhood scar was made upon one's body. I have a few of those which proves that they must have actually occurred, assuming that I am the same person who occupied my body when I was a child. I even have a school photo of myself from second grade right next to my desk at which I am writing write now, which must prove that "I" existed back in 1954. And it has "Joe" scrawled on the back in pencil, unless someone forged it and had convinced me that this was the child I was back then. And my right pinky is crooked from when I punched my college roommate in the mouth when he said that my girlfriend was a "slut," and we had to go to the ER to get stitches for him and a splint for me. He was actually right but she was beautiful and that's all that mattered, except for him saying what he said.
The only kids I knew who were funny were either Jewish or gay. I went to Catholic grade school and high school and kids there were entertaining in their crudity but not with their irony or even their slapstick. I was raised among mostly Italians and Jews. In fact I was the only goyim at a Jewish summer camp for a few years, where the girls loved me and I loved them, and they guys made me laugh in all seriousness. My father's Jewish friends were inherently rabbinical midrashers and I held my own with them on various philosophical points even at the age of twelve. My father, who called me "Pope Joseph" whenever I attempted to engage him, didn't know what to think.
Over many years, perhaps 56 or so, I have quested, as it were, for the Truth, for Reality. I read many sources from many religions, philosophies, psychologies, theosophies, occultisms, and practiced numerous methods of prayer and meditation, particularly zazen rather regularly over forty years, including a stint in a Zen monastery as a Zen monk, as well as doing a lot of acid, peyote, and psilocybin once upon a goodly number of times. "Touching the sky" was almost as possible as touching my toes. But it was what life gave me that brought me to any sort of what is called "enlightenment," such being the realization that we are the product of our own imaginations, our own thoughts and feelings, which is to say also our own lack of reality. After sitting and observing myself, my thoughts, my navel, the world, I got a clue that it was all a phantasmagoria largely of my own making and that my own making was something greater and more prevalent than simply me, though I am not referring to either a Hellenistic Christian or a Gnostic Christian scenario in particular.
Some refer to Reality as "what is." But, if that's so then tell me what is. The question may be, What am I in relationship to What Is? Am I What Is? Which is much the same as saying that I am God. And if one can't see the reality of such a notion, one cannot say that one is "not God." I don't worry or think much about such things these days. I read well-written, often "deep," just as often funny novels. There is hardly anything left of scriptural, spiritual, psychological sources that I have not examined. I now look, seeing but not knowing what I see. It is similar to telling but not knowing what you tell. Something happens and it is simply not known. It cannot be defined, in my estimation. It is not to be understood. Reality remains unreal and vice-versa, especially on the physical level, which only seems to be the way it is.
The only kids I knew who were funny were either Jewish or gay. I went to Catholic grade school and high school and kids there were entertaining in their crudity but not with their irony or even their slapstick. I was raised among mostly Italians and Jews. In fact I was the only goyim at a Jewish summer camp for a few years, where the girls loved me and I loved them, and they guys made me laugh in all seriousness. My father's Jewish friends were inherently rabbinical midrashers and I held my own with them on various philosophical points even at the age of twelve. My father, who called me "Pope Joseph" whenever I attempted to engage him, didn't know what to think.
Over many years, perhaps 56 or so, I have quested, as it were, for the Truth, for Reality. I read many sources from many religions, philosophies, psychologies, theosophies, occultisms, and practiced numerous methods of prayer and meditation, particularly zazen rather regularly over forty years, including a stint in a Zen monastery as a Zen monk, as well as doing a lot of acid, peyote, and psilocybin once upon a goodly number of times. "Touching the sky" was almost as possible as touching my toes. But it was what life gave me that brought me to any sort of what is called "enlightenment," such being the realization that we are the product of our own imaginations, our own thoughts and feelings, which is to say also our own lack of reality. After sitting and observing myself, my thoughts, my navel, the world, I got a clue that it was all a phantasmagoria largely of my own making and that my own making was something greater and more prevalent than simply me, though I am not referring to either a Hellenistic Christian or a Gnostic Christian scenario in particular.
Some refer to Reality as "what is." But, if that's so then tell me what is. The question may be, What am I in relationship to What Is? Am I What Is? Which is much the same as saying that I am God. And if one can't see the reality of such a notion, one cannot say that one is "not God." I don't worry or think much about such things these days. I read well-written, often "deep," just as often funny novels. There is hardly anything left of scriptural, spiritual, psychological sources that I have not examined. I now look, seeing but not knowing what I see. It is similar to telling but not knowing what you tell. Something happens and it is simply not known. It cannot be defined, in my estimation. It is not to be understood. Reality remains unreal and vice-versa, especially on the physical level, which only seems to be the way it is.
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