Mountain Peeks: Elevated Glimpses of the High Life

© 2004 MICHAEL JEAN NYSTROM-SCHUT

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 05/13/04

ISBN: 1-4184-3988-6 (e)

ISBN: 1-4184-3986-X (sc)

ISBN: 1-4184-3987-8 (dj)

ISBN: 9781418439880 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004106919

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

MOUNTAIN PEEKS

A

B   

C   

D   

E   

F   

G   

H   

I   

J   

K   

L   

M   

N   

O   

P   

Q   

R   

S   

T   

U   

V   

W   

X   

Y   

Z   

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

IPI

Intermixt Press International

San Jose – Indianapolis

Specifically given to those who repeatedly

fail to see things my way, but who still deserve

my tireless infringements in making them do so…

For my talented son (Drew) and witty daughter (Rhi).

I love you crazy guys!

Special loving thanks to my friends Mercedes and Vito,

whom were so very loving and hospitable to me as I

wandered and wondered their farm at the border of Panama and Costa Rica, in search of words to share these

many scattered thoughts…

In memory of my wonderful amigo, Vito, 1933-2003

This book is designed to provide basic information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, consultative or other professional services. If such expert assistance is required, the services of competent professionals should be sought.

It is not the purpose of this book to reprint information that is otherwise available to the author/publisher or reader, but rather to compliment, amplify and supplement other texts. The reader is urged to read all the available material, and learn as much as is possible about life, tailoring the information to the individual path.

Every effort has been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes both typographical and in content. Therefore, the text should be used only as a general guide, and not as the ultimate source of information related to these topics. Furthermore, this book contains information that may no longer be either relevant or accurate, as much as we all would like to think our words and thoughts are timeless.

The primary purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained here.

In just about every book you pick up to read, information is set forth that has the raw potential to affect you, the reading inquirer, in a variety of ways. This particular book is perhaps especially like that, since it covers a wide range of topics, and spans a plethora of perception. And it will frequently swerve far from the mainstream of conventional thinking.

As to the general thought presented, some of it contained herein will no doubt make you want to yawn. You will already personally know what I am suggesting about something, and maybe even considerably more on it than I do. You will wonder why I bothered to express an idea that was so obvious, so basic, so simple.

Perhaps the very next thought will cause you to bristle; you won’t appreciate or respect the point. You will not agree. You will see it differently.

You will object to the very insinuation that I would have thought to write it down.

At some point, you might start to wonder about me, the imperfect amateur writer-thinker-theorist-philosopher that I am.

…Still other thoughts will mildly pass in your book as either amusing or entertaining or at least worth as much time to you had you spent the same amount of time petting your cat. Every book has plenty of that, this one no doubt, included.

Finally though – and this finally is why I applied myself very diligently to get this quite lengthy work written – there will be the occasion when you will feel refreshed with the breeze of an enlightening concept; it will smack you in a soft spot, as you experience the euphoria of having had your mind stimulated, and your spirits lifted.

For these times, the book was written, and in those (few or many) instances, you will openly be openly thankful, just as I was grateful to the Universe for showing to me these things in the first place.

Living a full life is, in many ways, a matter of simply passing on intelligent logic and inspiring hope, doing so in the form of core concepts, to those who come after we do.

I sincerely hope we are able to do some of that for you here.

…I chose a dictionary-style compilation as a format, and hope that this does not come to annoy you too much. I found that I could best observe on a wide variety of areas in life by so doing.

It is not recommended that you read in any particular order – cover-to-cover is not so bad for flow – although you might also use it in a scanning fashion, as you would use any small dictionary. I don’t really care; I would just hope that you enjoy it, and to create any particular reading rules for the use of this book would violate my general rule of not having to rely too much on rules in the first place…

So, if you want to just dabble here and there, that should work out for you. Simply to read freely is the fun of this kind of investigative learning.

Please don’t look too closely for groups of organizing themes. Sometimes logic flows unevenly, and inspiration emerges sporadically. In the cumbersomeness of this herky-jerky stream of consciousness, logic and inspiration should rise up to meet you somewhere along the way.

I confess that the book hardly came along as some kind of channeled work. No man or god spoke through me, and I would never profess that it did. Nor did it arrive out of relentless research and organization; I am not that kind of a book-learned student of life, though I can fully respect those who are.

I just wrote…when I thought to, and what I felt to write about.

I do, however, claim a method (to the madness?), and it was that, along with the many other books I have written, I tapped what was within me already, and mined the thoughts therein. The creative energy that pre-exists in each of us (as we are all collections of one another, and of the logic of the Universe) was in some small way then harvested.

My private world within me, unconscious and uncut, then, brought forth these many thoughts, while I simply waited upon them, mind fully engaged…fingertips poised…keyboard in hand.

I think I’ve now lived to about the appropriate amount of time in life to have the right to simply say I have seen a bit of this and bit of that, in my day. Sounds like a really old guy talking, but if that indeed is the case, it is also then perhaps a time for me to ramble on about it to those in my world. After all, we all do what we think we have to do, and I think I had to do this.

I am indeed getting older now. With this, various afflictions are beginning to touch me where I most deeply live. My physical home is starting to show some signs of wear.

I suspect an arthritic epidemic is taking roots in this home of mine. My knees, ankles and elbows are all sending signals to headquarters that they need some personal attention.

The cardiologist says the test showed the two heart anomalies could have just recently developed…or might have been there since childhood.

In either case, it’s another thing on the checklist to worry about…

I keep track of the aches and pains in my journal; it’s starting to read like an old ladies gossip column.

So, you get the idea. I will be polite, and not go too much further with the medical details. Anyway…that’s just part of the news…

What’s good for me is that my head is working just fine! Sure, I get random headaches, and continual post-nasal drip is a concern, but I am thinking more efficiently than ever. My head works, and it’s in the mood to talk, too. It’s got a lot to say, so who am I to tell it to shut up?

Somewhere during the past decade or so, these many times for me have become no longer just occasions to sit on the sidelines to merely soak up more of life to myself. Rather, I have arrived at a point in my evolution that I must record and note some of it as it passes. That’s why this book has now managed to show up. It came from stirrings that would have left me restless had I not written it all down.

While I am not concerned about leaving behind any kind of legacy, I do owe it to myself to say aloud what it is I think I am seeing in this world of ours. I myself think if it as some kind of personal responsibility we each have. So, in this very intimate and personal book, I try and do just that kind of thing.

These are some of the thoughts that have grown up around my curiosities; my earnest desires to understand further what this life is all about.

They are bits and pieces of a worldview that I have formed over this span of years. Everyone has a worldview. Having one – one that is healthy, active, growing and complete – is, I think, vitally important for each of us.

In my case, I see that as long as I am faithful to myself in recording my thoughts, I can rightfully ask for nothing else. However, if some of it serves someone in a useful context in any capacity whatsoever, I will certainly perceive this to be a very marvelous thing.

I actually like to think I have strung some synapses together that form pieces to a collection of pragmatically helpful shreds of life-affirming stuff. By that, I mean that the ideas contained herein are practical, sensible, common sense and down-to-earth sorts of things.

Lots of obvious stuff was talked about; some of the most important things (i.e. love is important to us all) are also some of the most obvious things.

Anything too far out didn’t make the final cut, although you might disagree…

We humans are not here for our own selfish edification; I am smart enough to know that. You probably know it too. We are interlinked with all else that exists in life, and as such it becomes important for us to do what our illusive inner selves keep telling us to do about the matter of our lives. In keeping with that, I give you this, yet another expression of my gift of loquaciously wide-ranging opinion, and trust that you will snatch some wisdom from it, and enhance the total person you yourself are trying to be.

Finally (how many times does the preacher man say finally?) I thought it rather slick of me to have stumbled across the name Mountain Peeks for the book. I must give credit in part to a special friend of mine who helped me with this; she in fact has gotten into my thinking with several of my books.

The double meaning in peek-peak is just perfect for how I like to envision the contents. The metaphor of climbing up a mountain and getting a better view of life from a peak high up on it has been a favorite of writers since inspirational writing emerged.

It’s the little things in life. Remember?

…So, I trust you will enjoy the book. And I imagine that you will use it to build on an already growing understanding of what this marvelous blessing of life is for you.

You might recall often that God is inside of you, deep inside of you…and any search beyond the inside is simply in addition to what you already know.

So, up on the peak, and down in the valley too, rest the fantastic notions and bewildering wonderments, of Life.

MOUNTAIN PEEKS

A  

It terrifies us to think of being by ourselves. But there will always be those times in our lives when we know the sensation of the deathly fear of aloneness. This is due to the fact that our egos have managed to become separated from the rest of living life, and in that state, we fluctuate from feeling sky high, to caving down into the dumps, depressed about all that comes our way.

For me, in my life, as soon as I began to realize that it was not really possible for me to actually be alone (even if I wanted to be), the feelings of abandonment that always plagued me in my former selves swiftly went away. They vanished from my being, never – I suspect never, though life for me is not over yet – to return.

Now, even during those inevitable times of great loneliness and personal void, I still maintain the knowing that I co-exist with all that is.

.…Sometimes, when I am feeling down, and the darkness is temporarily covering the way of my path, I step out into the night and take in a deep view of all of the stars that are above me, all around me. As I behold them, I remember again how impossible it is to ever be alone. The blackened sky is just a temporary departure of the sun from us; that fiery ball of light always, always rises again.

Each rising sun should be of great assurance to us that we are in a system that is well beyond our control, linked to so much that is outside of our realm of being.

.When we think about it, to fear, or to internalize any sense of abandonment, is to drain positive energy away from ourselves. After all, locked in our place, somewhere in the midst of this relatively small galaxy of ours, we know that we wield so very little control over anything at all.

Funny, but our only real hope is death.

Ironic. Death, the thing we often most fear, turns out to be the magical door to a deeper understanding of our interconnectedness to all that is. If, through death, we return to a greater Part than is this small part, we will (somehow – don’t ask me how) finally know our reinstatement, and perhaps even a more permanent peace in it as well.

In the meanwhile, we remain always human. As we see the illusion that is the human existence, we can identify with non-human aspects of ourselves, and in so doing, lessen even more our sense of aloneness. The more we recognize ourselves as being interconnected to greater aspects of life all around us, the less our feelings of abandonment will prevail within.

There really is no cause to fear at all. No matter what happens to us, we are somehow cared for. If that idea is too simplistic, or simply far too fantastic, too unbelievable – just consider it anyway. Most of all, consider your alternatives, and then compare them together.

When it comes to our plight in life, we have no real choice but to trust in whatever processes govern it, and then assume the logical position of knowing that we are never, ever alone.

Sometimes when I am deep in the illusory fog of fear, and no light is shed on my path whatsoever, I step confidently out into the night, and simply look up.

Those twinkling diamonds, they tell me otherwise.

No, I could never again believe it; I am sure, beyond any fragment of a doubt, that we are not alone.

It can be very irritating to contend with ideas in the minds of those who claim they know about the operation and function of the wide universe, and of God. In a world of wonder and mystery, matters that we can absolutely say are true, should be good indications of things in life we should most carefully question.

Nicholas of Cusa, born in Germany back in 1400, stated it well. He offered the suggestion that the more we know the more we know we don’t know. His idea was called learned ignorance, and is a contradiction to any and all concepts of moral and theological absolutes.

How often have we sensed the irrational knowingness in someone as they told us in certain terms what this thing called life, and this Man called God, was all about?

In accepting these kinds of ideas, we would be buying into a philosophy (a theology) that guarantees us the need to defend our actions and thoughts against outside forces for our entire stay on earth. That’s because if you trench in, and declare something non-negotiable, you will not become an adventurer, but rather a mere defender.

And that to me seems like it hardly leaves us time for the fun things in life, such as spiritual growth…

We have all undergone countless experiences of probing deeply into something, and then suddenly seeing it dawn on us that we have barely dipped into the matter at all. The tip of the iceberg represented the sum total of our known knowledge; little did we know how much more was submerged, lurking beneath the surface of our feeble understandings of the thing.

The more certain a person is about what he thinks, the more assured we could be that he doesn’t know. Why would he be so certain in the first place? He needs to throw massive amounts of energy into all of what he thinks he knows. How else will his ideas be able to stand the test?

An alternative to knowing so much is to embrace the (rather humiliating) stance that we don’t know all that we think we do, no matter how many books we’ve read and no matter how much time and effort went into getting us where we (think we) are.

And that’s not so bad; it leaves the door open for vast amounts of additional light to be shed upon our path.

An (incredibly insightful, but simple) Eastern saying goes, When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. This does not apply to those of us who already know too much, or who are in no need of such things. If we don’t recognize that we are always in class, we might start thinking we have graduated.

What learning is left for us when we are permanently missing from school?

No, it’s far better to understand a reality that puts forth the whole of life as a perpetual classroom. We are the students; life brings on the lessons.

To the beholder of the absolute, no matter what life might be or how it represents itself as reality, he feels he is demonstrating personal strength and fortitude as he staunchly maintains his belief systems against all odds. Real character rests in the individual who knows that reality is not so easily wrangled, who is willing to expand and contract on his glimpses of life as it continually ebbs and flows through him.

Much more energy is required to take the second road.

Learned ignorance is a paradox. So is the whole of life. Even the theologically confident and runaway influential St. Paul suggested that we saw the world through the lens of some kind of dark looking glass, and only knew in part…though someday, he suspected, he would see it all, face to face, and know reality in all its varied fullness.

So to know we don’t know, doesn’t mean that we should stop learning, or that we should throw up our hands and quit. It merely suggests the humility of our dilemma as mortals, who, in the throes of a life that does not supply clear answers and total truths, must incorporate faith, while flowing through the processes.

This idea of our innate uncertainties should always be the answer to the absolutists, and remain paramount in our thinking.

Anything, balanced and used properly, can be of great benefit to the individual in life. Sexuality, balanced and used properly, can of course be of great benefit to the individual in life.

Sex is like anything else; it is a wonderful gift of Life. It should be appreciated as being such a thing.

I receive much personal reward from sexuality. I do so all the more as I understand its appropriate place in my being. If it is not mishandled, or trivialized as a mere biological release, it can become a powerful life-affirmer for me, for anyone in fact.

It is easy to recognize that sometimes to abstain from sex is a more advisable thing to do than not. Although it may not be the ultimate choice among the choices for us, we might see, from time to time, that abstinence is the high road to take.

This could be the case, taking place over a period of days, or for even for months or years.

But too much abstinence (what’s too much?) can be more than just a pesky concern. Depending on certain factors (such as age and health and one’s general situation in life) we might not want to do too much abstaining.

In itself, this can become a large problem.

I personally think I speak for many when I say that if we destroy this valuable instinct during a long period of sexual abstinence, the sexual stirrings within us have a chance to become channeled along unhealthy and inappropriate lines. Ideally, a positive and loving partner(s) will emerge for us, and we can experience sex as the lovely gift it is surely intended to be.

Now, a brief word about the use of sex merely for the propitiation of the species: Not. We already have enough humans here on earth; at least for a while we could all take a break, and still not risk extinction.

Certainly sex is for more than just recreation anyway!

So what about when sex is not the best thing to do at a given point in time? Sometimes the right person does not exist for us in a given chapter of our lives. Our tank is dry, and all of the numbers in our black books are obsolete. Do we then just dress, and go out and find something?

Having sex under the wrong circumstances, with the wrong person(s) will almost always prove to be unworthy of our time and energies. Better to wait.

…Better still, to circulate; make something change in your life. We don’t have to be satisfied with our circumstances; redistribute yourself, and make them change.

There are people out there, whom like we, from time to time go through the same things as we, and these individuals need love, too. We sometimes have a wonderful way of getting around to finding each other…

On the other hand, there may be an opportunity for sex, but it would be with the wrong person. To participate in it would absolutely not be the thing for us to do. I don’t see how we can ever fulfill the true meaning of God’s gift of human sexuality when we are doing it with someone’s wife, or someone’s boyfriend.

A sure way to come to a working knowledge of Karma is to cheat in someone else’s sexually committed relationship, or have someone cheat with you, in yours. It never pays. It’s never worth it.

Does this, then, constitute a moral absolute? I absolutely don’t have the right to say. I just know that this is a pretty safe rule for life. Just don’t do it, ever, and you will be far better off.

A third reason to abstain might stem from some real "high road’ thinking. It could be that we have a number of legitimate possible sexual partners to choose from. It’s just that, at the point of our evolution we are in, choosing a partner for sexual expression is not what the doctor seems to be ordering.

All previous inclinations are tossed out the window as we see that some things are of primary importance to us at points along the road of life.

Sometimes something more is needed than what we have (or don’t have). So we are wiser to pass up on our great field of choices and pursue what is urging us on the inside to do. You could call this thing sublimation, which is something like the psychological conversion of a lesser value or need, in exchange for the pursuit of a higher value or need.

Sometimes we are better off trading up on the value chain…

The spiritual path, of which we all knowingly or unknowingly travel, is one that may ask any and everything from us, even including (I don’t believe I am saying this!) abstinence. Sometimes, though, this is the path to choose.

Did you know that somewhere in the world, once a year, they (who are they?) stage an annual hot-dog eating contest? For many years the champion hot-dog eater in the world could wolf down, in about a half an hour of allotted time, about twenty of them (including the bun; condiments are optional).

It has generally been a contest of the heavyweights, literally, and to imagine that anyone could kill off that many in that short a time is truly, shall we mildly say, unusual.

This past year, who would have thought that a skinny young kid from Japan (or maybe it was Korea) would walk into the show as a virtual unknown, and calmly make, not twenty, not forty, but fifty of them disappear quietly down his gullet? His technique was to do them raw, two at a time, and then wash down the buns after soaking them quickly in water.

This is a totally absurd rearrangement of common logic, right?

How’s that for an example of real life? Life is an adventure in absurdity. The expression from the ridiculous to the sublime suggests to us that we can find beauty, meaning, wonder and awe in this crazy and confusing world around us.

The problem is when we don’t see it that way. Maybe we are being too serious about life. Maybe we are letting it pass us by due to our busy concentration on one of the many distractions that get in our way. I can only imagine how it must be to be deeply inclined towards theological correctness in this age of the ever-enlightening realities being brought forth by modern physics.

We hardly need to understand the Big Bang when we have it going on in our heads after about eight hours of contemplating the illusive facts.

We are a seriously need-to-know type of people, us humans, and our striving to strip away the layers of truth to get to the bottom of them frequently consumes us. We can hardly conclude that illogicality is at the base of things, yet the common belief that Intelligence governs the Universe, if one were smart enough to know all of what we know, could be seriously questioned.

Follow carefully, and take, for example, the second law of thermodynamics. How many of us know how that law works? Very few, I suspect.

While the second law is pretty much a given in the world of modern physics, the heart and soul of the law is that every day the universe is becoming more and more disordered; everything is descending into chaos! Examples include the eventual collapse of structures and buildings, aging and death, and general erosion and the depletion of natural resources.

Ah, you say, but we humans rebuild things, and new babies are born all the time. We’re improving our technology, too!

True. But the law doesn’t claim that this does not happen. It merely says that disorder wins out over order, given enough time. It is possible for us to create occasional order, but the standing rule of the universe is not that – it is disorder.

If this is absurd to you, then you are beginning to understand; life, itself, is absurd.

God is in charge of everything, knows everything and has everything under control, you reason. We really become fuzzy-logic minded when we bring God into it. The personal notion that anyone has of God is built from personal experience. While it is backed up by things from the outside world – things such as other people’s personal experience, in the form of their influence, or their channeled writings, or their close up encounters with God – it remains highly subjective and personal.

Why do you think they call it faith? You have to have faith to believe it; to believe in anything you must put forth, in fact, faith.

Nearly all of the religious readership will disagree with this part of the logic; to be able to transcend the confusion of everyday life, we need the unmistakable peace of God in our hearts. Nothing short of that will do. So we must also believe that a perfect God is taking care of a predictable universe. After all, since we’ve been around, the sun has risen in the morning, set at night, and shown up again the next day to do it all over again…hasn’t it?

The absurdity comes in when we think about it too much, that’s all. My personal experience has been to do just that – and remember, you can’t argue with personal experience.

By saying that it’s an absurd world isn’t by any means to demean it. I think it’s a wonderful place. I enjoy each of my days in it, no matter what they bring. My point is that it is not something we can know about, for sure, and be absolutely positive that we are correct about.

Even religious people we speak to know this. It is rare for them to not become somewhat defensive when their faith is attacked. They do not wish to be disturbed from the dream. Having become rocked to sleep by their religious notions of a Loving, Perfect God, it’s just too painful to contemplate anything different.

The stage of spiritual growth they are in will do just fine. Someone wake me up when we get to heaven, you can hear them think.

I can’t live in their world. I can, however, use faith to trust in God. I just know that my faith does not know, and that it’s absurd to try and sneak up to the truth. God is like the pea-shell game. Three shells – one pea, guess where the pea is.

I can actually do that, in real life, pretty well. I’ve won a dollar or two in the men’s room. But with God’s pea-shell game, I have never picked the right shell, and I never will. God’s just that illusive; It will not be known.

Sometimes the best logic is found in total stupidity. Try some Zen! The higher knowing is ignorance. The most profound truth is shallow. You can’t know. I can’t know. We can’t know. We just don’t know. Zen people don’t know. Them others don’t either.

Who knows?

Life is potentially an incredibly frustrating absurdity, of the highest imaginable level. That’s why nearly all of us leave "the hot stuff" alone. We don’t probe very deeply. We don’t investigate. We don’t even seem to want to know.

Wake me up when we get there…and until then, let me sleep it off.

…I don’t blame them. Having dabbled a little too gingerly into the Divine Mind of Mystery myself, I have often been sent whimpering off like the inquisitive puppy dog who got too close to the proverbial porcupine. I have been compelled to really get into it a few times, and probed into readings and meditations that left me literally throbbing from both temples, and bleeding pride profusely.

It sometimes makes me want to do nothing but take a long, nice nappie…

Some of us must hunt, though. We must keep probing. I am not saying that I am one of them (are you?) but I like to play about like the big boys, and toss the ball around a bit before game time. My brain really isn’t massive enough to gobble down the whole wide macro picture. My guts aren’t tough enough to not back off when it gets to freaky. My heart isn’t bold enough to look too long over the edge without falling back.

But I nibble away at it still. I’m a nibbler.

Yes, it’s absurd. The more you think about it, the more absurd it becomes. It doesn’t matter that so many know so much. We really know they don’t know – I think they’re just trying to be tough.

What would happen, after all, if they showed how weak and afraid they really were?

…I don’t seem to know enough to shut up talking about this thing about absurdity. But there’s really nothing else to say. I just keep saying nothing, though, even though I know I should know better.

I will officially close my commentary on this…the head…it hurts…when I think too much about it.

A most special woman in my life thinks of me as an egghead. When I compare my thoughts, and writing and daily patterns of being, with some in the world of academia, I have to laugh, for I am hardly an egghead by their high standards of practice.

But thank God for them!

The real smarty-pants people among us set the pace for somewhat dumber people to paraphrase their work so that all who would like to understand it may do so. Take a molecular physicist, for example. She might offer up the suggestion that we are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift in favor of a cosmology that modifies how we see our hologramic selves as they relate to the universe as a whole.

That’s helpful!

And as long as we can get someone a few rungs under her to break it down for the needy masses, we’re all going to benefit!

The braincases have a tendency to be quite gifted in understanding stuff personally, but often turn out to be basket cases when it comes to explaining it to the greater world of dummies. So we need the middlemen.

I, for just one, like to think I’m one of them, which by saying so I don’t mean to imply that you are on yet a lower rung!

My point is that I will leave the academic treatises to those other guys, and concentrate on relating to mainstream thought.

It takes all kinds, so they say. If all of us were like any one of us, we’d be a sorry lot. We’re each on a different conveyor belt, and each on a different place on that different conveyor belt. We’ll all get there, I suppose, given enough time, and provided we are offered enough lifetimes by the Kosmos to get it finally right!

One of the amazing parts about life is that it’s not always got to be rocket science. In fact, isn’t it amazing how sometimes a physicist, who’s plugged himself into great universal truth, can be so much less enthusiastic about his truth than the Bible-toting preacher who is spouting off in tongues from the pulpit every Sunday morning?

What’s all that about anyway? Imagine how much that guy knows about rocket science! Why can’t he present it to us with enthusiasm? I guess, that in our differing ways, the truth always manages to set us free, and maybe we all have our ways of showing it.

But I enjoy trying to tap into the great world of eggheads. These experts are certainly more that just former drips. (This was a stab at humor).

They are some really tuned in people!

…I know. The joke was not so very funny.

But you get the point, don’t you? Pioneers (the eggheads) are what they are because they are paving a way for others of us to follow. They are brave enough, and talented enough, and curious enough to break new ground in various realms of life. We need their insight.

And even though they might not seem to have the ability to put their revelations into language that you and I can get excited about too, some of the rest of us should be able to work out those kinds of details, and help interpret.

So, by all means, let’s keep cultivating those eggheads out there! May the awareness of God bless them all, each and every one of them.

My mind is in charge of the vast regions of me. In this abode of strength and resolve, I can be assured that much of what would have befallen me in life, thanks to a strong and stable mind, will never come to pass.

There are those times, however, when I will succumb to the inevitable afflictions that befall the feeble and vulnerable human shell that I occupy. I accept that those times exist, and that I am essentially powerless to always control the direction of my life.

If, for example, my body goes up against a speeding bullet, I have a good chance of losing the conflict.

I accept this as an aspect of my reality. And I am not interested in any endeavor of time and attention that asks me to metaphysically evolve above and beyond the cutting edge of the bullet.

I accept the role of the bullet as it penetrates into my being. If it enters my body, and specifically into my heart, or my head, I must immediately have need to be instantly ready to accept that this could usher in the transition of all that will be into the next realm of being, whatever that might include or not involve.

Now, if a fight is called for, I will fight. If acceptance is called for, I will accept. I will do what is called for, then, in either case.

There are the obvious times to resist; we most often know when they come to us. Then there are the equally obvious times to accept, for in the frustration of resistance we fight against that which is not our battle.

Circumstances often call for us to challenge the confrontations that meet and greet our lives. But not all of them are to be challenged. Grace and mercy, however those spiritually illusive terms translate for us in our lives, will whisper in our ear for us to either fight, or to resist.

And if we are listening, most often we will know the distinction.

As far as it is concerned, this term (active imagination) is one of the many original contributions that emerged from the fruitful mind of Carl F. Jung.

After Jung experienced a growing rift, and subsequently broke relations with his friend and colleague, Sigmund Freud, he seemed to lose both confidence and orientation. He tells in his writings how his moods ranged from fear to lethargy to euphoria, and back again.

Upon and subsequent to considerable introspection (during the years of 1913-1916) he determined that he had, as an adult, lost his ability to play, and also was out of touch with the creative spirit we use, as children, to conduct ourselves in our varied games of play.

Jung thus again began to play. And to simmer a long story into a shortened one, his evolved ideas of active imagination emerged.

Jung suggested that every one of our good ideas, and all of our creative work, come from the imagination, and that this imagination is something we first cultivate in the fantasy of childhood play.

As we grow up, these traits often fade within us, giving way to the logic and reasoning of the adult world. The result is that we lose much of our mind’s ability to be stimulated in these ways.

To put active imagination into our minds, we should recognize the two stages of doing so: first, letting the unconscious come up, giving rise to all that is below, and then, (second) coming to terms with all of that which emerges.

This sounds easy enough, but if you are not ready to deal with the impulses, fears, images and impressions that come from these unconscious promptings, it can be a very frightening, and even dangerous proposition. For this reason, it is recommended that in order to actually practice active imagination, you should be of sound mind and stable psychological makeup.

I am; are you?

Then let’s go! With such strength of ego, the conscious and unconscious parts of us have a chance to come together in a positive manner; otherwise, buyers beware.

So, just what is the stuff of our unconscious? We know that whatever it is, it takes up considerable space in our mind – some suggest the overwhelming majority of it.

It might be submitted that the unconscious is emotion, impulse and imagery, to name some of the key ingredients in it.

One way to trigger the active imagination is to concentrate on our emotional state. This is not always so easy. From our emotional state live all kinds of weird demons, and strange mental animals. Beckoning them to the surface of our conscious world, we don’t know what might come of those thoughts.

But this is also where the party begins.

Of course dreams, which were much of Jung’s passion in life, can also be a good starting point, too. Along with a vision, or a fantasy, an intense or profound portion of a dream can be concentrated upon, and as we look deeply into it, there is no telling what might come up.

But that something will emerge, Jung assured us that there could be no doubt.

He had a habit of keeping his theories to himself for a period of fourteen years. After that, if they still floated, he would release them to the world. How much integrity and thoughtfulness had to go into that personal policy?

At any rate, what to do with it once it surfaces? That’s the next piece of the puzzle. We can do about anything we like with it; we can paint, or draw, or write, or create concepts, or dance, or cathartically talk out the upcoming feelings with others who are interested in the same things we are. The sky is the limit.

Just what we create is endless, in its possible range and scope. We have but to open up to it in the first place.

Why do any of this at all? Why bother? (This is Michael inquiring seriously now.) We do it because it’s there for us to do. To leave unexplored the vastness of our mind is, in effect, relegating a huge city (the brain) into a great wasteland.

Why waste the most interesting feature of our existence, leaving it untapped?

So, what else? Of course there’s more. When we were young, we were not able to reconcile all of those great mysteries that flowed into our lives. As we matured, however, we qualified ourselves to go back and do some probing of the past. The mature mind has a great capacity to go back and update the past.

What our five year old, ten year old, fifteen year old (and other aged selves) determined was reality, when re-examined in the light of more years of growth and learning, is very subject to a great amount of positive revision.

So revise we should, and we should have fun doing it.

And finally, while we lacked the wisdom and experience we would come to accumulate as we grew older, there can be no doubt that we lose something from childhood that is a shame to see take its leave of us.

Our insatiable curiosity for life back in the beginning was simply voracious. Can you vaguely remember that? Practicing active imagination can revitalize us, and keep us on the cutting edge of evolutionary change.

…No time for any of this? Yet we have time to slip into the many ways we vegetate with the passage of our years.

In the meanwhile, this brief treatment of a wonderful Jungian concept can either cause you to go drowsy, or stimulate you to learn more. As a free moral agent, that is predominately a personal prerogative.

Hopefully your atom particles will move in creative directions towards this. Will them to do so now, and they will.

…Just imagine what treasures we might bring up from the ocean-bottoms of our minds. In the great depths of our unconscious world, we are fishermen, and our trophies await us.

Jung thought that a primary benefit in practicing such activity in the world of our imagination was to distinguish our selves in the conscious world, as opposed to all of that which is the content of our unconsciousness.

Such distinction has the ability to inspire. And maybe we can dredge from those sea-depths some inspiration for ages yet to come.

Shall we seek to try and do this?

While no formal definition from the gentlemen and ladies of the mental health profession might usually view any kind of addiction as a good one, there are many of us who do not necessarily pattern our lives after their interpretations. Just like many who worship and follow God, don’t go off to church to do it, improving on our mental state of affairs doesn’t require us to line up to lines of reasoning endorsed by the official profession of mental health.

Face it, mental health and religion are downtown-constructed corners on markets that are really, as individual beings, ours, not theirs, to decide upon. While we are free always to borrow from bits and pieces of their doctrines, we hardly owe them our systematic adherence.

Even if we thought differently, we would then have to choose which expression of the mental health model (or the religious model) we were going to emulate. That’s another problem in itself.

Placing this idea aside, in our encounters with life, we might just as often experience addiction in healthy ways as in unhealthy ones. It seems like the negative addictions just get more attention.

Maybe we could point to formal classifications of words, and observe how they bias our minds. If addiction, for instance, is to be defined by such words as obsession, craving, compulsion, then it seems the negative meaning prevails. But why can’t those words, and corresponding conditions, apply to healthy things we come to practice in our daily lives?

Am I not free, for instance, to obsess over knowledge, crave the exchange of love, and compulsively do the right thing? These three generally accepted virtues, carried out appropriately in my ongoing existence, hardly make me the kind of addict we all think about when we think of life among the addicted.

We are all destined to attach to this thing, or that thing, as we encounter a myriad of experiences in life. What we grab (more likely what grabs us) will become the focal point of our addictions.

Addictions have the ability to mix and match at will, as in the case of my overriding obsession for collecting baseball cards at the age of thirteen, which became an overwhelming obsession for bird-watching by the age of fourteen. These two addictions, by the way, were not the things you went and told everyone at school you did; by about that time, my peers were starting to get into more hip addictions.

I was more of a white-socked geek.

At any rate, we are all busy, on one level or another, trying to rid ourselves of our addictions. It seems like a better use of time would be to transfer them (redirect their energies) to healthy ones.

To focus directly on the enemy is often to empower it to take even more control of the direction of our lives. Letting our will move naturally in new directions, however, is quite another matter, with different corresponding outcomes to go along with it.

So it is that we are all addicts. Some who have known me, for example, have suggested that I possess an addictive personality, for which I thank them. I am interested in life, and the interest is on a passionate level. This naturally brushes me up against obsessions, cravings and compulsions all the time. Not having them in my life would suggest to me a less involved, more apathetic way of living.

So I wish to be left with my addictions, but I desire also to choose which of them will influence me the most.

To this day, the viewing of a 1956 Willie Mays baseball card will stir me deeply. To this day, a Bald Eagle flying over my rowboat in the lake will bring me to tears. A passionate absorption in life is nothing but a plus, but to be passionately absorbed in, you name it, sexual promiscuity or alcohol consumption or jerking slot machine levers, is hardly the same thing.

It’s all addiction, and we shouldn’t fight that, but the positive, life affirming ones are the ones we really want to prevail.

Be addicted. But pick carefully, your poison.

Let’s face it together, why don’t we – it is not something that we can really know, as far as what’s coming up next in the great progression of existence after we pass from this phase of our being.

What can it be?

The varied responses are interesting, and depending on whom you are asking – whether it be the theologian or the scientist or the philosopher or the easterner or whomever – you are sure to get a different answer every time.

We’re really on our own, then, and left to wing it (no pun intended) as it concerns the very tricky questions of what comes…well, after-this-place.

…When my brother died in a car accident during his teen-age years, the most difficult question I faced then (and for years to follow) was the one about whether I would ever see him again. He was the best friend I had ever known, and had it not been for a second (much younger) brother, I would have felt the pains of his separation even more, going on thirty years later.

My brother has always remained on my mind, and in my heart, during the passing of the last three decades of time. And while he may have never grown along with me as a fellow human celebrating mortal-ness, his presence has been with me, in some way difficult to explain, to this very moment still.

So where did he go? Where is he now? Will I ever see him again?

Scoff at me, Mr. Scientific Mind, but I somehow feel I will.

Back in those times, and as a young Methodist ministerial student, I deliberated over whether or not Terry made it into heaven, or, due to a few sins scattered here and there, of which he might not have sought pardon for, went to the other place, into that tormenting inferno of hell.

Looking back, I see how absurd that whole hypothetical was. In his brief sixteen years, he of course committed actions both good and bad, and also did some intermittent running from God, and praying to God. The heaven-hell question, while burning in my mind and heart back then, is not even the point now.

No serious person would ponder heaven and hell in a scenario such as this.

Could it be that he had been annihilated? If I am to believe the vast bulk of materialistic scientists, I will have to just get over my loss, because he’s long been gone, never to return, and his one exposure to this life was completely wiped out in that dark, rainy September night of the accident.

His body-mind is not what they were; there can hardly be any way to question that. So maybe he sprung up in the soul of someone-something else? This belief system has worldwide popularity, and not just in the East, where it originated. Maybe my brother’s soul is yet again on the earth, and evolving and growing and making its way through the wheel?

Maybe.

After-this-place is a very good question: heaven, hell, annihilation, reincarnation? Of course we also have the variables of him being in a prolonged sleep, waiting for a resurrection, living in limbo, purgatory, la-la land, and the like.

There are many ways to see it, and many prognosticators seeing it this way or that way. All to say what?

…So where is my brother?

Well, here’s my take: he’s free…simply free.

He’s back from where he came from. He’s in all places. He’s liberated from mind (with it’s thoughts and worries and preoccupations) and body (with it’s pains and limitations and debilities). He’s not embodied, because he left the body long ago; he’s not aware, because he lost that awareness when he died; he’s not even himself, because he was a personality constructed out of variables that are no longer active in body/mind form.

He’s just free, and when I, like him, become free, in some way I will encounter his freedom as it intermingles again with my own.

Pie-in-the-sky? Sure…but it’s my fantasy.

I don’t think I’ll go face to face with him ever again. Those encounters leave with the other programming. But something not of a physical nature took place between us during those few short years we had before his departure. It was invisible. It was powerful. It was meaningful.

In some way (in a way that I will never be able to place into words), it was also very, very, very…eternal.

I am oftentimes bogged down with multiple troubles that concern both body and mind. I can sometimes only imagine not carrying the burdens that go along with the opportunities of each of my days. When I lay them all down for the final time some day soon (in the next moment, or in the next thirty years – both are relatively soon), I can’t say what will come of me, except to say that I sincerely, in my mind of minds, and heart of hearts, know that I will be a free bird.

…You should keep your own illusions alive…I will go off and be a free bird.

I am not interested in being any age in particular; any age in general will actually do. Some days I think very old thoughts, which does not actually make me very old. There are other days in which I make the choice to apply a more youthful contemplation, which is not to turn back any clocks.

Sometimes I separate out the flow of the day, choosing old age in part of it, and youth in another part. There are no cornered markets, and I can pick my age on any day I wish.

We actually have two ages, then, and not just one. We were born in a certain time and place, and that spells out part of the limitation of one of the ages. In the other, it is a matter of our individual mind, and it has nothing to do with anything but time and timelessness.

Whatever age we choose to possess is characterized by this timelessness. At the so-called early ages, our bodies jump over fences. At later ages, our minds are more inclined to jump them.

There are the illusion of advantages and disadvantages at all ages, but in staying with a steady flow of time, we know that we can experience the cyclical time stuff along with the linear time flow. The passing of the illusion of linear time will show us things all along our way, and our history will be contributed to, and added upon.

We will think that we are on some evolutionary path during these passages. Enjoy them.

The illusion of cyclical time is different. We will repeat the experiences of our childhood, over and over again, such as in the case that we celebrate the Thanksgiving season year after year. The difference is that at one point we will have the turkey chopped up into tiny pieces for us, and delivered to the tray on our special chair. At yet another point we will be the carver, and maybe even master of ceremonies to boot. Still later on, we might have the turkey chopped up into little pieces, again, and delivered to our special chair.

But it does not matter, time is just an illusion, and an illusion, prefixed here to describe time, is used because we are talking about an invention of Man.

At some point we also invented a watch, and we probably did so because we wanted to monitor our deeper invention more carefully, that of time itself.

…Since there is really no such thing as time – it being an invention from our mind – there is no reason to so frequently refer to it during the course of our lives. Each year we turn in our old label (i.e. I am a Michael, and I am 50) for a new label (i.e. I am a Michael, and I am 51).

We update and then identify with the new label, and begin to slowly dis-identify with the old. For me, though, while I try to avoid placing the label of one hundred years old on my bad right leg, it seems appropriate that a label of nine years old should still apply to my very-curious mind.

In reality, all parts of us are at whatever age we choose to view them as being. Some people do aging about as well as a squealing pig responds to getting led to the slaughter.

Why not handle it, instead, with grace?

How old, then, might the sum total of all of our parts be, if we did not know how old we actually were? Remember this metaphysical pondering from the ageless Satchel Paige? Failing to dwell in negative ways upon aging, and rather, just celebrating life at whatever age you find yourself is a great way to do life.

Can you imagine that sustaining this kind of practice for a lifetime might just be to touch up against timelessness itself?

Think about you: What would you say just now to yourself, if you, that is, had something to say to yourself? How would you phrase it? What would the general gist of your observation towards you be? How does it change from moment to