In defence of George Michael

A friend of mine refused to analyse George Michael (the singer) beyond 'fag...homo....gay..'

Is George Michael a criminal because he indulges in homosexuality? Does George Michael not have depth as a human being because he has a drug-alcohol problem?

I do not endorse homosexuality, but I am not AGAINST it. I am neutral to it.

People who are 'PASSIONATELY AGAINST' homosexuality/bisexuality are, at some level, badly attracted to this mode of sexuality. If homosexuality STARTLES you, it means it turns you on at some level. The pure heterosexual is neutral to homosexuality. Neither for it nor against it.

If the reader is, by now, 'startled' by these statements of mine, and thinks I am crazy, I would like to draw his attention to the famous saying 'you lie so much you believe yourself'. Which means--a state of existence in which delusions and repression prevent the mental-emotional construct from realising its own desires.

The tragedy of human existence is that people do not understand and want to avoid thinking about what moves them at what point, and because of that they are very confused about their actions so many times in their life. They lie, not just to others but even to themselves about what makes them tick.

George Michael has drug problems...yes. Many things may go wrong in the drug-dependant's life. He may turn into a vampire that preys on his family or friends, emotionally and/or financially.

But it's not necessary that a drug dependant will become a financial-emotional vampire. There are so many drug/alcohol dependants out there, who lead productive lives and do not feed on other people. George Michael is such a person. He does not harm anyone and his music suggests he is a compassionate person who is very much worried about suffering of the people.

Charities supported by George Michael:
Barnardo's, ChildLine, Children with AIDS Charity, Elton John AIDS Foundation, Gray Cancer Institute, Help a London Child, Jubilee Action, Macmillan Cancer Relief, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Nottinghamshire Bereavement Trust, Outcome, Outline, Positive Nation, Rainbow Trust, Red Cross, Red Hot Organization, Rhys Daniels Trust, St John's Hospice, Swan Lifeline, Terrence Higgins Trust, The Food Chain, UK Thalassaemia Society, War Child.

There's Something About Monogamy...

Monogamy is perhaps nothing more than a lifestyle choice. It is a part of nature, but there is nothing 'natural' about monogamy. The existence of fighter/blocker/killer sperm seems to point to this.

The fighter/blocker/killer sperm exists for the sole purpose of preventing competition from impregnating the egg. Research indicates that 90% of the sperm is fighter/blocker/killer sperm. (Only 10% is designed to fertilise the egg.) This is also referred to as 'sperm competition'.

The fighter/blocker sperm builds a barrier in the cervix area, a barrier that does not allow sperm from a competing male to make it to the ovaries.

The killer sperm neutralises sperm from a competing male.

This scenario, of fighter/killer sperm fighting and killing each other over who impregnates the egg reminds me of jealous lovers fighting and killing each other over the woman..

Jokes apart, it is clear that nature has built into us mechanisms that are designed to ensure that a woman does not get impregnated by two males simultaneously.

Sounds like nature has given us the go-ahead to lead polyandrous/polygamous lifestyles, by offering this biological mechanism!

(Though this mechanism is not foolproof and there have been cases, although rare, in which human females have given birth to twins fathered by two different males.)

I read somewhere that just half a spoonful of semen is enough to impregnate a very large number of women. Perhaps this is a pointer that says men are allowed to get sexual with as many women as they want.

So:

1) Nature protects twins from being fathered by different fathers.

2) Nature has given the power to the male to impregnate a large number of women.

Current Hypothesis:

All lifestyle choices, polyandry, polygamy etc. are equally valid in the eyes of nature. Monogamy is just a choice, not the default.

Love-II

This post highlights the difference between addictive clinging and real love. It was written when I was drunk. Read on...
_________________
Here's some lyrics by Barbra Streisand from her song 'woman in love'.

I am a woman in love
And I'll do anything
To get you into my world
And hold you within
It's a right I defend
Over and over again
What do I do?

I am a woman in love
And I'm talking to you
Do you know how it feels?
What a woman can do
It's a right I defend
over and over again..

what lyrics...... :-/

"I'll do anything to get you into my world and hold you within, its a right I defend over and over again."
Sounds like 'I'm planning to plant my flag on your ass, its a right I defend, over and over again". Wtf is 'its a right I defend'? Right my ass. And I'll say this. Over and over again.

"I stumble and fall, but I give you it all."
Keeping in with the spirit of the song, what she really means is "I stumble and fall, but I'll plant my flag on your ass after all".

"Do you know how it feels? what a woman can do?"
Hell I know EXACTLY what a woman can do if its a woman like you. Because I've experienced it first hand. Do you know how THAT feels?

Ms. Streisand's song is a typical example of what Eckhart Tolle calls 'addictive clinging that humans call love'.

Someone should introduce Ms. Streisand to Osho Rajneesh, who repeatedly says 'possess by not possessing'.

Or to Scott Peck who says 'Love is separateness'.

Eckhart Tolle [paraphrased]: "Love is not a portal into anything. Love is what starts flowing through you, as your connection with the formless dimension starts re-forming."

This is the sanest thing I've ever heard. And it points something. That some degree of spiritual growth is necessary before love can be given/experienced. A person who finds security in his/her connection with the cosmos is perhaps the only one who can give love. The rest of us, well, we are unfortunately not that blessed. We are in the grip of 'addictive clinging'.

Some more lyrics:

I'll close my eyes and then I won't see
The love you don't feel, when you're holding me
Morning will come, and I'll do what's right
Just give me till then, to give up this fight
And I will give up this fight..

Wonderful words that have no trace of the 'addictive clinging' quality. Very well sung by George Michael, in the song 'I cant make you love me' from his album 'older'. Lyrics by a lady named Bonnie Rights or something.

None of George Michael's love songs (own or borrowed) have the addictive clinging quality to them. Not even one. That's a sign of a being on the verge of awakening, on the verge of enlightenment.

His high degree of spiritual evolution is also evident in the following lyrics from his song 'the strangest thing':

"Take my life...time has been twisting the knife...I don't recognise the people I care for...there's a liar in my head, there's a thief upon my bed, and the strangest thing is I cannot seem to get my eyes open...please don't analyse...please just be there for me."

Words of wisdom. These lyrics suggest that perhaps the condition of George Michael's ego has finally entered George Michael's awareness. The seed has been planted.

Here is the wonderful George Michael number, 'I can't make you love me'. Worth listening to. Wonderful experience. Switch off those lights and close your eyes. ;-)



Update:
I was just listening to 'Love is a battlefield' by Pat Benatar....and I'm like...'wha..?' Why should love be a battlefield? Sex may be a battlefield ;-) but why should love be a battlefield? Humans have made everything a battlefield. If its a battlefield, I don't know what it is, but its not love.

George Michael, in his song 'Father Figure' sings 'If you are the desert, I'll be the sea....if you ever hunger, hunger for me'. This line is a good example of the (necessary) separation between two lovers. Beautiful lyrics by George Michael.

Summary:
So Scott Peck writes of separateness, Osho Rajneesh writes of separateness (possess by not possessing). George Michael says the same thing. Eckhart Tolle says the same thing -- Do not try to possess your lover, do not be an addictive clinger. Your lover is a distinct person, not an extension of your ego, not your toy. Find security in yourself and your life, and then relate to your lover like a mature person - one who does not try to possess, is not jealous, and does not drain the other emotionally.

The Passion of the Christ

For a long time I wondered why the Christ archetype has the effect on people that he does. Perhaps the following passage by Eckhart Tolle explains it:

"Why is the suffering body of Christ, his face distorted in agony and his body bleeding from countless wounds, such a significant image in the collective consciousness of humanity? Millions of people, particularly in medieval times, would not have related to it as deeply as they did if something within themselves had not resonated with it, if they had not unconsciously recognized it as an outer representation of their own inner reality---pain. They were not yet conscious enough to recognize it directly within themselves, but it was the beginning of their becoming aware of it. Christ can be seen as the archetypal human, embodying both the pain and the possibility of transcendence."

Questioning the absolute validity of the Intellect

In the following passage from his book 'A New Earth' , Eckhart Tolle questions the absolute validity of the intellect:
ξ
The greater part of most people's thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive. It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfils no real purpose. Strictly speaking, you don't think: thinking happens to you. The statement 'I think' implies volition. It implies you have a say in the matter, that there is choice involved on your part. For most people, this not yet the case. 'I think' is just as false as the statement 'I digest' or 'I circulate my blood'. Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.

The first glimpse of awareness came to me when I was a first-year student at the University of London. I would take the tube (subway) twice a week to go to the university library, usually around nine O' clock in the morning, toward the end of the rush hour. One time a woman in her early thirties sat opposite me. I had seen her before a few times on that train. One could not help but notice her. Although the train was full, the seats on either side of her were unoccupied, the reason being, no doubt, that she appeared to be quite insane. She looked extremely tense and talked to herself incessantly in a loud and angry voice. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she was totally unaware, it seemed, of other people or her surroundings. Her head was facing downward and slightly to the left, as if she were addressing someone sitting in the empty seat next to her. Although I don't remember the precise content, her monologue went something like this: "And then she said to me….. so I said to her you are a liar how dare you accuse me of …. when you are the one who has always taken advantage of me I trusted you and you betrayed my trust…" There was the angry tone in her voice of someone who has been wronged, who needs to defend her position lest she become annihilated.

As the train approached Tottenham Court Road Station, she stood up and walked toward the door with still no break in the stream of words coming out of her mouth. That was my stop too, so I got off behind her. At street level, she began to walk toward Bedford Square, still engaged in her imaginary dialogue, still angrily accusing and asserting her position. My curiosity aroused, I decided to follow her as long as she was walking in the same general direction I had to go in. Although engrossed in her imaginary dialogue, she seemed to know where she was going. Soon we were within sight of the imposing structure of Senate House, a 1930s high-rise, the university's central administrative building and library. I was shocked. Was it possible that we were going to the same place? Yes, that's where she was heading. Was she a teacher, a student, an office worker, a librarian? May be she was some psychologist's research project. I never knew the answer. I walked twenty steps behind her, and by the time I entered the building (which ironically was the location of the headquarters of the "Mind Police" in the film version of George Orwell's novel, 1984), she had already been swallowed up by one of the elevators.

I was somewhat taken aback by what I had just witnessed. A mature first-year student at twenty-five, I saw myself as an intellectual in the making, and I was convinced that all the answers to the dilemmas of human existence could be found through the intellect, that is to say, by thinking. I didn't realize yet that thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence. I looked upon the professors as sages who had all the answers and upon the university as the temple of knowledge. How could an insane person like her be part of this?

I was still thinking about her when I was in the men's room prior to entering the library. As I was washing my hands, I thought: I hope I don't end up like her. The man next to me looked briefly in my direction, and I suddenly was shocked when I realized that I hadn't just thought those words, but mumbled them aloud. "Oh my God, I'm already like her," I thought. Wasn't my mind as incessantly active as hers? There were only minor differences between us. The predominant underlying emotion behind her thinking seemed to be anger. In my case, it was mostly anxiety. She thought out loud. I thought mostly in my head. If she was mad, then everyone was mad, including myself. There were differences in degree only.

For a moment, I was able to stand back from my own mind and see it from a deeper perspective, as it were. There was a brief shift from thinking to awareness. I was still in the men's room, but alone now, looking at my face in the mirror. At that moment of detachment from my mind, I laughed out loud. It may have sounded insane, but it was the laughter of sanity, the laughter of the big-bellied Buddha. "Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be." That's what the laughter seemed to be saying. But it was only a glimpse, very quickly to be forgotten. I would spend the next three years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my mind. I had to get close to a suicide before awareness returned, and then it was much more than a glimpse. I became free of compulsive thinking and of the false, mind-made I.

The above incident not only gave me a first glimpse of awareness, it also planted the first doubt as to the absolute validity of the human intellect. A few months later, something tragic happened that made my doubt grow. On a Monday morning, we arrived for a lecture to be given by a professor whose mind I admired greatly, only to be told that sadly he had committed suicide sometime during the weekend by shooting himself. I was stunned. He was a highly respected teacher and seemed to have all the answers.

However, I could as yet see no alternative to the cultivation of thought. I didn't realize yet that thinking is only a tiny aspect of the consciousness that we are, nor did I know anything about the ego, let alone being able to detect it within myself.

ξ

Saviours and Satans all around me

Post in Archive.

The Search for God

The fundamental flaw in the 'search for God' is 'search'.

The 'search for God' is no different from the 'search for enlightenment' or 'search for the self' or the 'search for sleep'. If you start searching for sleep, start wanting it, analysing it, praying for it, it will not come. Give up the search, and it may come...the beyond doubt DIRECT experience.

Another way of looking at the search for God-----'God', if real, could perhaps be waiting for us to do something 'real'.......all our thoughts and emotions are so very second hand, so torn apart, it's almost like we are not real.

This 'real' something could be developing the ability to love someone beyond addictive clinging.

(Another way of looking at the 'search for God' is comparing it to the 'search for women'. The more you chase women, the more they run away from you!)

Beliefs

Someone I came across said, "without a personal experience of a given thing, just HOW can you say that it exists.."

This statement takes us into the realm of 'beliefs and testimony'-a realm that must be stepped into VERY carefully.

Beliefs can be looked upon in different ways. Everyone would know what the popular definitions of 'belief' are..'irrational' and all that.

But a belief is no longer irrational if one knows how to dance with uncertainty.

Rational 'Belief' can be looked upon as the result of inductive reasoning applied to personal experiences AND/OR pointers provided by credible sources.

Inductive reasoning allows for uncertainty in the conclusion.

Wikipedia: Inductive Reasoning:
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that allows for the possibility that the conclusion is false even where all of the premises are true. The premises of an inductive logical argument indicate some degree of support (inductive probability) for the conclusion but do not entail it; i.e. they do not ensure its truth.

The following is a perspective on 'inductive reasoning applied to PERSONAL experiences'.

Everyone has had experiences that are odd. One can start from there.

A 'belief/hypothesis' does not necessarily have the same degree of certainty as the initial premise---that is the nature of conclusions arrived at through inductive reasoning--- but induction is 100% ok, as long as the uncertainty involved is understood.

Sometimes it is necessary to construct beliefs, but constructing too many such 'beliefs' should be avoided unless one has developed some kind of tools that are well equipped to deal with the uncertainty that will increase exponentially as beliefs increase--dealing with such complex uncertainties is a very difficult task, it is more or less impossible.

But once induction has been applied properly and the uncertainty understood, your beliefs become a pointer to reality--You can then look around and see if there are other people around who have reached more or less the same point-----if yes, great! If induction has been applied properly, convergence WILL happen. And once you experience convergence, your beliefs turn into something more solid--you have extrapolated successfully--you now have strong pointers to the existence of 'it' without having experienced 'it' directly.

Life experiences=>apply induction=>beliefs are generated=>if convergence with another happens=>pointers to reality.

Note: Convergence with another should be looked at carefully. This 'other', with whom convergence is happening should be analysed thoroughly. This 'other' could be a person or a group.

There is no substitute for a direct experience with reality of course. All of us have direct experiences but most of us dismiss them as vague feelings or temporary mental dysfunction.....but there are some who don't, and then there are some who display the ability to understand even other people's experiences---such people are remarkable and very rare.

What I am saying is not all 'alleged hallucinations' are mental dysfunction. Some may be visions. Satori.

All said and done, total convergence with another will most probably never occur, and constructing beliefs is best avoided unless absolutely necessary---pointers to reality are not reality.

What I am talking about is different from what religion does---religion generally builds down from accepted general principles using deduction...like building down from the principle of spiritual penalty for example.

Recognising the Real Teacher

A real teacher will not ask you to have 'faith'.

There is no need for the teacher to ask you to have faith. He/ She knows what she is, knows what she is doing, knows how to express herself, knows how to convey.

And a real teacher will ALWAYS have an active sense of humour--it is the hallmark of a true teacher.

No sense of humour=dead person, zombie with zero insight into the true nature of reality---which bubbles with energy, enthusiasm and joy much like a fast paced techno trance remix! Makes no difference how many books he/she might have read, how many degrees some religious authority might have presented to him or whatever. Without a sense of humour, he is dead, a walking encyclopaedia of junk. The real teacher will be full of love for life and ALL its creatures. A teacher who has conditional love is not a real teacher. This does not mean the real teacher does not criticise or use 'bad words'. He is full of compassion, and his criticism will not be hypocritical.

The presence of a real teacher will speak for itself----there will always be a peaceful aura, bordering on bliss, around the teacher, which can be FELT BEYOND DOUBT when you are in his/her company---The real teacher is centred in stillness and silence---though of course stillness may not be there sometimes, they can get moody too. The real teacher may not have read any scriptures, may not be educated.

The real teacher may be a recluse, or may be a player in the real world---he/she could be anywhere. Could be your pizza delivery boy for all you know.

Killing the Descartes Thinker

In this post, I have analysed the 'Descartes thinker' from within the paradigm of 'self organisation' which is a part of Chaos Theory. Chaos Theory is relatively new, and it's field of application is very vast. From Neural Networks to psychology, to biology, it seems to apply to everything humans know.

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She Walks Alone

She walks alone
Petite and austerely beautiful,
Sombre in her loneliness...

She's a sorceress
Witch
An innocent enchantress...
Her magic silver and golden

She casts her spell...

Inadvertently?
He wonders...
As he is held.

He admires her from far
Hesitant to go near
A victim of his own insecurities...

She senses him
And builds a wall around herself
Trying to look fierce and strong
But it takes him hardly a moment
To see through the facade
Beneath which she tries to hide her real self
Which is
Badly hurt and insecure...

Li'l lady, I'm sure
You've been through bad times...

And I
Acknowledge your sensitivity
Sense your tenderness...
Admire your endurance
Respect your strength.

Lil Lady,
I feel your sadness...

I've never seen anyone like you
So beautiful, so pure, so mystical, so intense
So very mesmerising in your hypnotic beauty
So very enchanting in your innocence...

The way I feel for you is an enigma to me...
To tell you honestly,
Lady,
You fascinate me.