Hacking verbal reality

So this morning I open my email and read this headline--Lulzsecurity and Anonymous are joining forces. These are the names of two hacker groups who may or may not have the noble purpose of highlighting weak cyber security in the political areas on the planet known collectively as "the west."

The headline started me thinking about the topic of this post to American Mysticism. Because here you have labels and with these labels you have the feeling you understand -- more. And yet, how could you really understand what is going on with these groups -- because if you really understood you would be able to stop their incursions into corporate and government computer systems. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't understanding mean being able to code "better" than these folks? And yet, we have just by using labels a sense that we know what is going on here. And that is the nature of verbal reality, the words prevent you from grasping --- your own ignorance. 

Without knowing what you don't know, what you know, what you think you know --- is dubious. 

By the time I was on my second cup, this headline--

"Suspected LulzSec leader arrested." I wonder, does someone thinks aha, we do know something about these hacker groups, or else we would not have caught someone.

Because my choice of news items is as an example, of verbal reality, and how it obscures other reality, and how we do not notice, notice --- where the accent of reality resides.... The hacker story continues, because it is part of the magic show which must go on. The intellectual show continues, it has to, it has to fill up the verbal space so no one notices, how flimsy, how gauzy, the words are, how beside the point, are the words. 

Flying on metal

Maybe reality is an aluminum fence---the hormonal metal has metallic polish over it, a coating of ideas. And sometimes a blue bird flies, not over, but through, the fence. 

Words are like fire

Words are like fire. When they are out of control -- as they are all the time for modern man -- they can only be managed by bare areas with no fuel. These bare areas could be like the mystic's inner quiet, not totally word free -- not totally bare -- , but with the volume turned down, the ground cleared of most obstructing fuel. 

Of course before then one must see there even is a problem, their problem; a challenge since there are "no problems" to use the phraseology of Jan Cox. Words are the basis of man's civilization and civilizational progress. Really the second sentence above is misleading to the extent that 'out of control' ignores the larger forces of containment, but this subject is even more difficult to address, and not the current topic. 

Like fire, words cannot be allowed to rule, if an individual's goal is to understand the world and his world. The nature of a discipline which allows the containment of fire, of verbal reality, is rare in life, and non-existent if your only information is books or the internet.  And this is related to the importance of pressure for real change. This pressure is not conveyable at a distance. For all practical purposes. 

This quote from an advertisement on the web

"Personal Urns (Keepsake Sized)

"Keepsake sized Personal Cremation Urns are the latest in custom personalized cremation urns. They are created from one or two photographs with exceptional attention to details. With advances in facial analysis and the advent of state of the art 3D imaging, these high tech urns can be made to look like anyone. The full sized personal urn can hold all the ashes of an adult. For holding just a portion of the ashes, we recommend the keepsake sized personal urns.

The personal urn does not come with hair. For hair we can digitally add hair if you wish, as you can see with our sample of president Obama. For people with longer hair we can add a wig from your specifications. This cremation urn comes on an elegant solid marble base. A Plaque and nameplate are also available.

Personal cremation urns can be designed to look like anyone. We just need good pictures. We prefer one picture from the front and one from the side. Complexions can be adjusted in the final stages and customers get a chance to proof the results."

A huck would lave it, I read this immediately after the previous post. I quote it at length to show the difference between a person with some degree of awareness, and a normal lively person (the urn imagined below) who is mostly  mechanical. MY point, not that of the advertisement of course, but rather a chance to picture, the mechanical person, which I am thinking is nicely pictured by the idea of a copy of their head, full of their ashes. Hope this isn't too gross. Of course my real point is to specify two inner points, of many, on a gradient between dead, and not just alive, but mentally evolved beyond the crowd, what the book readers call an awakened person. (No such thing but that is another story.) To appreciate my point consider the difference between any living person, and a statue of them. The difference might present a chasm  to those trying to evolve faster than the normal pace. 

Are words are kind of mausoleum of reality

Got this picture: words are kind of mausoleum of reality after reading this quote--

"Mausoleum, noun. The final and funniest folly of the rich. -Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914) "

My extension would fit---words are a kind of death----no one speaks aloud and is awake at that moment, not Jan Cox, not Gurdjieff, to say nothing of the cloud of wannabees who had one forkful of cake  and think they are a pastry chef.

Poets and philosophers

Poets and philosophers have both contributed to the literature of mysticism. One difference between them, is that poets have no glimpse of what sustained patience can accomplish. The little it can, is the difference between being able to stand back, and enjoy the growth that stress can enable, and succumbing to the troughs of the machinery. 

So God Is a Forger, huh?????

Okay, I cannot resist

Here is a contemporary headline---like this week, of May 14, 2011

Is the Bible full of 'forgeries'?

From MSNBC:

A biblical scholar has raised a holy fuss by declaring that more than a third of the books of the New Testament were "forged" — that is, written by scribes other than the apostles to which they've been ascribed. By itself, the suggestion that nearly half of Paul's epistles....

For starters, God didn't write the Bible?  Are we charging god with forgery? If he made the world, can't he do what he wants? If he inspired people, aren't they just being tacky by claiming they wrote something themselves anyway?

Alright, enough with the jokes. And so much for that childhood.

Forged huh? You know, what I grew up believing, that god wrote the bible,  might be closer to reality. Can someone fake being awake? If the author of those books did a better job than the person they were supposed to be by, what is the harm here, harm in the sense of diminishing a spiritual tradition. At least in the medieval European period, art was not signed, people did not imagine that an individual could claim credit for what was an act of worship. This whole idea of individualism might be a lack of historical imagination. So could we be misunderstanding historical reality by even raising the question whether some books of the bible were forged?

Am I going to have to read this article, to find out if any of these questions are mentioned?  Nah.