There was an apprentice who hesitated long enough on which tool she should pick up to reach enlightenment.
First she had to locate where the destination is.
Christians say it is above. Taoists say it is here within everything. Buddhists say it’s in the emptiness.
Then she needed to know the key.
Egyptians gave her a tree hanging with silent shining fruits; When the Egyptians lost their sound to name the fruits, the Jews preserved them with the sound of Hebrew; Christians marked a cross on the tree. Taoist say work on growing the fruits through breathing and simplification; Buddhists say through investigating your problems.
And every school has its language, prayers, glyphs, rituals, deities and splendid Kingdoms. At the orientations, the young students were given pamphlets written with brackets of brackets of information alluding to the unknown esoterics. No guarantee it is enlightenment sitting in the bracket.
She got a bad feeling that it is not her first lifetime tangled in this bafflement. When she was in 3rd grade, her father gave her a fable to recite for a school contest. The fable talked about a trapped fox who got a million methods but no way to get out. Way, path, Tao, is the same word in Chinese. That fox probably died while contemplating on which way to go.
She realized it is probably why she had failed at it last time and is here on earth again.
That fable suddenly shined like a white stone in the river of her memory, while she is stuck at the entrance of the Taoist’s way, the Yogi’s way, Buddhis’s way, and the Hermetic’s way again. All are splendid, all have shown wonder or magick, each differently. Hesitating, she remains in the cave, in fear of the practices may lead into different kingdoms.
The universe abhors her failing at the same spot every time, or her multiple life procrastination. It gives the classic initiation, suffering; it kicks her around, raises havoc in her life, no peace until she picks up one, any one.
Out of shock she grabbed the most convenient one and moved the step. Not the one by her lineage.
****
#
From drowning in the suffering to moving towards the cave door, this is how it went.
First, there was pain. Virtue and evil coexist in her. Sometimes she understands it’s her own responsibility, sometimes she blames those who gave her life and lessons.
From the abyss she asks,
“Why was I born here on earth, half-aware and half-blind? I followed and practiced after you for the past six lives. What did I do to be cast into the most unilluminated world of all? I looked into fellow humans’ hearts and minds, it was pitch dark with rare sparks of light and compassion….”
In the storm she asks,
“What karma brought me here? ”
She knew she must have messed something up to be dropped in the black box.
Some clarity sprinkled with some unilluminated darkness makes the pain really sensible, highly. She asks why the universe chooses her to bear so much darkness projected from “others'” darkness and the pain inflicted by “others'” numbness. For she did not recall committing unforgivable sins. How is someone mostly kind and good deserving the most pain?
Even when the “external” disasters stopped, in a seemingly peaceful life she still was thrown off by the wind cuts. Whenever she saw shadows in others, she aches for there are impurities in human hearts.
She prayed to merge with Tao. “Please teach me how to fly in Mundi.” she asked. It was the way she knew to ascend and leave earth.
Her teacher said nothing but asked her to peel the onion.
She peels the onion; it was so pungent, her tear came down. It reminds her of all the suffering on the face of the earth she and others went through.
“From where does the pain come from?” The teacher asked.
“In my heart, for the shadow shrouding this earth.” She wept.
“‘My heart’ is an illusion. The shroud is an illusion.” the teacher said.
“How many more incarnations until I start climbing up the ladder of ascension?” She asked.
“Tao is not up, down or in the left, or right. ” the teacher said.
“I can’t bear with the suffering for any longer. “
“What suffering?”
“The vicious saw me and tread me with humiliation and shame; They are hurt at the sight of my light and I am hurt at the sight of their darkness. “
“The opposite is also in you still.” the teacher says.
“They shred me into pieces but I can’t harm. How do you handle this? Do I lack a tool? Tell me please, which school of practice solves this problem and sends me into ascension faster? Taoist, Buddism, Yoga, or Kabbalah? “
“Just peel the onion.” Her teacher said, “and don’t forget courage, courage out of compassion.”
#
Thus she heard.
Get to know the Onion.
Thus she heard, when she was lying on the acupuncturist’s clinic bed, after causing two modern therapists sad and at a loss of what to do:
“My teacher said, it is here and not here.” The acupuncturist twisted the needles under her skin, “You can feel it, right?” sending the thin river of Chi currents flowing down that path. The healer showed to her the first layer of the onion.
Thus she heard, from ancient Taoists coming before her, the type of breathing that generates the energy is there and not there, formless and soundless. The gems and elixir they left in the poems and music notes led her to peel the first layer of the onion.
Thus she heard, from Surangama Sutra, Ananda asked Buddha if the awareness is in the body or outside of the body. Buddha denied him twice. Buddha did not say what it is, he just kept peeling off for him what is not. “Not in the body, nor outside of the body.” For polarity is a misunderstanding. They are one, here and now.
Gate to Shangrila, Way to the Garden Paradise of Dilmun, All the best things, here and not here.
Once she had a peek at the core layer, she stopped crying.
The cloud opened; the sky is like a hand holding and pouring down iridescent light.
The light is the champagne, and she is the living glass.
Her internal layers flipped outside and were shown in nature. The internal and external became interactive. It has always been. The waving tree; under the moon, the cat and the fantastical rodent walking on the same fence; the greeting passerby; people speaking her mind; She meets what she wants. The balance reached the nature and living beings in that neighborhood. The world she lives in encompasses all, layers upon layers like the onion. The virtue and purified humanity she wanted for all is in here. There is nothing to correct. It was her. At that moment in that vicinity, there and then, it was all good.
Tao is right here, in her and everything, in the middle. How do you tell people where “middle” is? At that moment she is grateful that humans are born symmetrical — some odd questions she had about creation and anatomy. Otherwise, how would you describe to someone who hasn’t opened the onion where to find Tao, something metaphysical shown in the physical.
Like lost travelers asking where is the road sign to heaven? Like that song, From her to eternity — Enter through desire, walk towards the mountain Mashu. The road will be less bumpy, and we will be less obsessed. We glide smoothly.
Or magicians who weave magical fantasies, from looking within to the middle and act outside in the middle. Virtue is where we arrive. That most worldly, mundane Confucious scripture left untouched, whose light seemed dulled by all the book of gods and grimoires, describes how we live eventually, naturally, towards Mt. Mashu.
西山暮霭 董其昌
The destination is here and not here, so soften up. Do not obsess.
Where is Tao? You can trust that it is in the “middle”, not just in your body because you and the world are one. Breath, down and up the middle, until there is no breath. From Nihara 止息 you enter Upasana 寂灭生死. Breath is the motion of the pendulum, through ceasing it, you escape the door of life and death, float above the illusion of the theatre, like that Hermit in Crowley’s tarot card. Act, between compassion and valor. Live, in silence. What does silence have to do with the middle path?
She learned that the shadow triggers and cuts her heart because some of it is still in her.
From then on she rests in silence. Of a pair of contradictions, had the opposite statement isn’t in her, she wouldn’t be debating it in her mind. Had she not been debating, she wouldn’t be talking. Listen to the words said, but hear their opposite ends. What is hidden is true. If she is hurt by the darkness in others, if others “shown” evil hurt her, aka their dark values contradicted with hers, eliminate her hidden evil first. Out of compassion, feel the mighty braveness. Filled with mighty, she sits still, does not fight. — it fits Laozi’s description of Tao.
Then she saw her past trajectories, back 10 years, 20 years, a life time, many life times, she was dancing erratically around Tao. Tao is there like a verticle middle line. Her dances deviated, but never left it, intersected with it here and there, yet to merge with it. It was beautiful.
Life on earth, appeared to be unenlightened and avarice, it encompasses Tao and everything in between. It is beautiful. Diversity makes beauty.
No one threw her here as a punishment. She is here because she desired it, because she is yet to understand how to enjoy life without desires. Suffering and drama came after desires. There is something masochism about reincarnation as a human. All pain is self-inflicted by desires. And we asked for it.
From the Taoist classic, The Secret of the Golden Flower: “The seven souls generate desires; the Spirit wants nothing more. The souls are Yin. The Spirit is Yang. The souls want death; at the underworld they eat fleshes and drink blood; The Spirit wants to live …. kill the souls and retain/rule with the spirit.”
We asked for the deadly erratic dance. Our heart and the souls were moved, hence we are here.
Her teacher gave her a mirror with a cross on it. He said, everyday before you walk out, place your body in that cross, so you are in the middle; then walk, between courage and compassion. which Buddhism calls, Vajra and Bodhisattva; which the west called Mars and Jupiter; which Laozi called Valour and Compassion.
Then she thought, the reversed cross given to a devil must be the opposite of that pair. His is Fear and Greed. But his is also part of IT. She does not hate or fear the devil anymore, for she saw him standing at a checkpoint of a layer of the onion, guarding polarity, the law of matter, and one feature of matter, time.
How to be at ease with him? Do not drive by deadly desires, that energize the erratic dance.
Though she doesn’t know what is a true will and how to power life with it yet. The pamphlet at the orientation said nothing with lots of words: words, the sealed containers only allude to but empty of meanings. She trusted the ancient Wiseman to keep walking a path.
— for all the beings who are sensing the suffering, which are the beads on the rosary of transformation.
I happen to be awake throughout the night on Mar. 11th, and saw in the market a candlestick freezing on top of a circuit breaker. It’s been three years since the talk goes around town, about our debt piling up reaching a dangerous breaking point per its ratio to GDP.
And it’s been three years since my friend introduced me to the term Apocalypse and Armageddon, not as Bible stories, but as forecasts. I thought he could be a bit lunatic. I didn’t understand the Bible as a screenplay of world events.
But indeed everyone felt it’s a strange time we live in, drama surfaces, casino owners showing their cards. Zoom outside of looking at just one arena, be it financial, economical or political, just for a moment, to gauge it all as one orchestra, you saw the eerily loud prelude in 2016, where the reality TV actors of politicians steered the mass consciousness into two extreme ends.
In 2017 Trump tweeted about an act under a code name, Covfefe. Nothing like the interpretations on Wikipedia, it doesn’t have to do with his “feud” with the press. No one has a feud with anyone in a good cop bad cop play.
However, some of us understood that Covfefe triggers the speed up of the endgame. Anticipating an economical and social collapse since 2017, we forgot about it in the long waiting. Even when Coronavirus spread in China, it did not come to us that this is it, the black swan.
Lately, an open-source engineer who built Apache, Jon Stevens, shared this video on his Facebook.
Count 90 years as a cycle, for human to repeat their mistakes. Herding with the alternating fiscal policy and monetary policy — the first 45 years, grow the crop; the next 45 years, reap the crop. The pendulum, with this pumping force of the productivity and the reinforcement of a molded group consciousness to direct this productivity propels us along an agenda.
Slumbering Americans bounce between a short spectrum of greed and fear. On the way to the stupid Singularity they will cut our connection as One. The spiritual dimension of this cacophony, stands almost at the center of it all, I will explain in the last part of the article.
We entertained the idea of all the worst-case scenarios, of a very segregated and totalitarian world. In concerning war and chaos, I invite the math minds and intuitive minds to join to understand the grand scheme and get the social discourse going. (Clearly there isn’t enough time for me to understand the current finance world before the next change hitting us, so I will keep coming back to expand this writing as I learn. This was supposed to be my fiction material, and now I’m throwing it out for free as Gonzo journalism in Medium. (And so far they won’t publish it. Sensitive info? ) Because changes happen in a matter of two days. At this rate, in one month, instead of writing sci-fi, I would be writing history and feeling loss that it didn’t help to actively forge the path at this critical time.)
Historically the Public Debt to GDP ratio peaks at the time of Civil War, WWI, WWII, and Now.
In history, a sudden dramatic money multiply happens before a war to fund the war. It results in wealth transfer (the Mystery of Banking by Murray Rothbard). Though purchasing debt through repo market took place of federal reserve banking, but notice the direct relation between money printing and militant expansion throughout history.
Three zenith points make 2020 comparable to 1930S, an era faded into black and white picture and only a few alive to remember: the gap between rich and poor, the debt to GDP ratio, the rise of populism.
Toolkits that the central bank uses: We currently are witnessing a great wealth transfer where Fed is owning the industries through stock market bail-out. This measure in reality just worsened the wealth distribution. The large asset holders just got bailed out with many sold their stocks low.
As some have said, it resembles a socialism society. But Fed is not a government agency. There is yet any term for this newly emerged Cthulhu type of thing.
Fed adjusted to 0 interest rate desperately in trying to stimulate the spending and generating paychecks, which, smacks on a pandemic lockdown where people are not spending (this is fresh).
Despite all the money printing, the money supply is not enough. The liquidity shortage will bring a deflation and the current financial toolkits are losing it.
Is there a war and revolution looming in the coming decade? We stand right at the edge of it.
As we already predicted, from the early news on Central Bank Digital Currency, and the cover of a 1980’s Economist magazine, a global currency is in the making. A central bank puts money directly to your pocket without using the commercial banks for expansion and contraction. What does this mean?
Would it really be a peaceful transition? And surely down this road, there is AI lurking in the horizon asking more from you, probably bio implants to merge with the network of intelligence. Just like how we predicted the downfall of the economy since 2017, we see an underlying theme here. It wants more order and control, and we are entering into the era of AI and Space.
The push and pull of Populism and Communism might emerge again, but this time do you need to tread on the old Lenin Stalin path again? It’s not even that different from the extreme right. Every thought experiment came after the Great Depression failed us by missing the middle path. The lack of a constructive practical social economical model in the group minds prevents us from bringing it into reality. Just, the fact that everyone is lashing out on Fed yet No One has came up with a replacement plan is like a society being blindfolded from dreams.
If we are unhappy with one entity exploiting us using money, how does a community of people maintain markets and trades without that money? Do we need everything built with global supply chain? How do we sustain an industrial world globally?
With all these questions calling for answers, I asked some smart friends to come up with a practical economical model that’s not promoting the current pyramid structure.
It’s not easy. For the economists just don’t have a panorama of how things coming into being in this universe, and don’t yet boldly hold on to the magical possibility, that by changing minds, you change the reality.
There is some scientific spiritual preaching we need to do before getting everybody on board to lift us up from the pit.
See the story under, how manipulation of mass psyche and energy being used by Edward Bernays, the father of Mass Communication and nephew to Freud, in self servitude.
As a law of the universe, this kind of manipulation produces backlashes. In an individual, it’s your personal emotional off-balance and plight; on a massive scale, it’s Depression and war. We’ve been locked in this pendulum for over 5000 years in mass hypnosis — at the lower part of the composition of human nature. You, as a beast, and you as a soulful being, pans out in totally different behaviors. One of you could be tucked in anxiety and the feeling of incompleteness and the consequent depression or aggression, and the other you could be just chilling in Baroque music. As a group, you can imagine. And last century the pendulum was just swinging higher and higher.
Where is everybody at in this organized chaos.
Marc Fleury released Two Prime FF1 on Mar. 10th, right on the crash. He responded to the situation with this 39-page pamphlet, mentioning AI and Peaceful transition. You can get it here or ask him for a copy. As Fleury is known for interacting with mystic energies, he continues to perform rituals in progressing the projects and receives 6666 in response in his Google authenticator.
Archer Norton, spiting out Robert Anton Wilson level of truth to Robert’s research subject at Occupy Denver 2011 — a movement grew out of Fed’s response to 2008 Financial Crisis.
Meanwhile, just before the market freefell, former OTO student Archer Norton voted with his feet and moved from the occult capital Denver to Oklahoma the capital of bison to grow plants, getting shared supplies from neighbors and the community.
The anarchist density in him is dangerously high. The hazardous amount of TNT in the box could knock us back into the stone age, where we all enjoy barter economy and robbing coffee from neighbors. As usual, he self-triggers on the word money or blockchain and performs social shaming.
“Money is enslavement. Money is energy. Bank is the bank that guides water, it guides money through society.” he rants to my earphone in two two-hour calls, “Work does not need the reward of money. I work because I want to. Native Americans in South America live a good life.”
