One night, I stumbled upon a comment I'd left ages ago on someone's blog... and I was struck by the fact that I had almost completely forgotten what I said. Most times the comments are written on the spur of the moment, scanned for typos, and then published. And that's that. Anyway, I felt prompted to trace a few comments I had scattered here and there along the way, like some digital age Johnny Appleseed, and archive them. Re-reading them after weeks or even months had passed, I found many worth sharing (even if I say so myself!) Why not compile some of the more interesting ones into a blogpost? Why not indeed!
A friend ruminating on Death and Taxes in his blogpost:
This was my comment:
Unsubscribing from the 3D illusion of Decay, Debt and Death.
Ironically, after watching my mother endure five years of dialysis and being subject to other medical ignominies (with a meter running all the while which eventually enriched the medical profession by at least a quarter million ringgit - that's right, folks, not only do you pay death duties, you also get heavily taxed as you're dying) I found myself encouraging her to let go, to allow the currents to take her from the pain and suffering of her bodily existence... I found myself promising her that she would be safe and well protected on the other side of the veil... and, thinking about it, I have served as Angel of Death for quite a number of people over the years!
Often, all one requires is a little reassurance that all of it has been just a colorful drama, a fabulous movie indeed, but the REAL LIFE awaits outside the theater. Indeed, it's like a show within a show within a show (or a trial within a trial :-)... What's evident is that when the Book Religions displaced Ancient Wisdom, they deprived humanity of any in-depth understanding of all the different dimensions in which Consciousness dwells - the only recent cultures that paid any attention at all to the scientific study of Death being the Egyptian and Tibetan; so it is to them that we must turn for some guidance to the realms that reside just beyond the EXIT.
I THINK I HAVE SPECIAL POWERS!
"I hope something comes out of 2012 or we'll have to wait till 2112."
What that presumably meant was that he suddenly became conscious of the primordial consciousness permeating the quantum space-time within sub-atomic dimensions - more poetically expressed by the mystical knowing that the Divine Dwells Within Our Innermost Core. In effect, we are creators with a small 'C' who will eventually graduate to being Creators with a big 'C'- and then there will be nobody to blame when shit happens because it's only our own shit!
FICTIONAL CHARACTERSThe first fictional being that pops unbidden to mind who has exerted the greatest influence on me, I must confess, is Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan/Lord Greystoke. Indeed, I often think I've modeled my own life after the Lord of the Jungle who, amazingly, is also Lord of the Manor.
A close second might be Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes - but, much as I enjoy the occasional bit of sleuthing, I found Holmes's misogynist Old Boy ways (hanging out the whole time with his sidekick Watson) rather off-putting. Same goes for Henry Higgins. Seems to me that our "education system" has done a thoroughly fine job of dumbing down children born in the late 1970s (that's right, when Dr M was education minister) But, alas, the same can be said about Britain - I meet some dazzlingly ignorant young people from there.
Postscript: After 50 years of serious probing and research I have been forced to the inevitable conclusion that a character I profoundly admired (from the New Testament, no less) and who exerted extraordinary influence on my own character development - is not only fictitious but an intentionally manufactured icon inserted into the collective psyche by pioneers of mass mind control. That's right, folks, I'm referring to the world's most successful fictional character, Yeshu Ben Joseph aka Jesus the Christ :-)
Political systems on this planet are essentially a facade for old-style warlordism - wherein the baboon with the longest fangs and loudest roar (and who controls a large army of samseng,* uniformed or otherwise) invariably ends up being Boss Baboon.
In effect, Might-Is-Always-Right (as the UK/US-Israeli Gang have clearly demonstrated in recent days). Same applies to the Baboon Nazional party who have had such a long run ruining the country it's very hard for them to contemplate giving up their power to anybody now or anytime.
The ones largely responsible for propping them up are the comfortable, well-educated middle-classes whose obsession with financial success turns them into potential Ananda Krishnans, Vincent Tans, and Patrick Lims (got enough money can buy the garmen wat?). BN's prime appeal is to the lowest common denominator of primeval self-interest. Donkair de udder flers, aku cukup makan sudahlah!**
FREE BURMA!The phenomenal world is like a magic lantern show of moving images that ceaselessly change and distract from the ONLY authentic task at hand: clearing our neural and emotional circuitry so that we can individually emerge from our cocoons of illusory powerlessness and victimhood. As each of us achieves Buddhahood and other degrees of spiritual maturity, the historical nightmare on this beautiful planet will abruptly end.
Bloggers (and most humans for that matter) are like gossips. Always a new sensation to obliterate yesterday’s scandal. Another day, another disaster… and for businessmen, it’s always busyness-as-usual… until the first heart attack or stroke.
The Battle at Wounded Knee, Malaysian style. Goreng pisang seller. How totally appropriate! It just wasn’t this guy’s day. But they say “Bapak borek, anak rintik” (Like Father, Like Son) - and who’s the “Bapak” of the Polis Di Raja Malaysia? Isn’t it the Home Minister? Is he at Home??? If you get mauled by a vicious dog, you find out who the owner is and file a suit.
Your ANALysis reveals a loose sphincter, Mat Salleh
It may once have been fashionable, indeed de rigueur in journalistic circles, to sound worldly-wise and cynical, Mat Salleh, but your busyness-as-usual mindset has become part of the problem, not part of the solution.Are you too old to have ideals? Must you reduce everything in life to the Bottom Line by viewing the world through that primly puckered aperture in your nether regions? Do you truly believe you can get away with pretending to be "objective" in an observer-created universe? What comes across in your opinion piece is that you subscribe to a belief in politics-as-usual, failing to see the significance of such a massive turnout for the 10 November march.
And, in this instance, what's genuinely important isn't the expected Umno infighting - or the rulers' sophisticated mummery - it's the fact that so many Malaysians from across the racial and social spectrum overcame their own fear and inertia to show the BN that they will no longer be intimidated by the police nor will they be placated by pious platitudes and empty promises of clean and efficient government.
Without the police roadblocks and the turning away of dozens of buses at the outskirts of KL, the crowd on Saturday may well have exceeded 100,000 - and that's a REAL phenomenon when you consider the climate of fear Malaysians have lived under for 20 years. I'm so glad I was there to witness so many Malaysians break free of the shackles of their own fear. And FEAR is the only power any oppressive government can wield over people - the power to terrorize and paralyze them via the mass media. You are doing us all a gross injustice by belittling this simple act of bravery consciously undertaken by at least 50,000 Malaysians.
GLOSSARY
*samseng = hooligan, thug
**Donkair de udder flers, aku cukup makan sudahlah! = Après moi le déluge!
[First published on 24 November 2007, reposted 2 September 2013 & 12 January 2019]
