If you are considering staying with me...

I just posted this in facebook:

In case more people are considering coming to stay with me, I'm having my doubts right now about the moneyless tribe and my leadership ability. I need a break, time to breathe, have some time to myself, at least for now. I want my friends already here to stay (I love them dearly), but I don't have the means to accept more visitors right now - especially in the winter.

 I still envision moneyless community. If moneyless community is meant to be, a better place/situation will naturally arise to accommodate folks and sustainable community. "Public" land around here is over-run by tourists, not sustainable for communities to live off the land, and living off of society's waste (dumpsters, etc) can only go so far. Living on society's overwhelming waste is only a stepping stone until free, unowned, sustainable land and livelihood arises. 

Common sense says that no land that is owned can be the land of the free nor the brave. 

Free means unowned. 

Free means no money. 

We live in a land of the majority bound and fearful, naysayers without vision. 

But my optimistic self sees human beings alive under there somewhere, ready to wake up.

One, Nothing Else

It's been over 2 months since my last post.

The past couple months: ups and downs and upheavals.  In the up and upheaval times, no time or energy to blog.  In the down times, no inspiration to blog.

Right now, I'm cramming a lot into this post.  I'm all excited and just can't seem to help it.

Upheaval of our moneyless community

Last I reported, there was a loose confederation of four of us camping in the caves: Daryl, Julia, Jake, and me.  Then, unexpectedly, our cave clan had to move.  Actually, it wasn't totally unexpectedly. We were counting the days before the inevitable Orwellian snitch would come.

A zealous tourist from Denver felt it a prime duty to banish us.   He reported us to both the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and to a private group set up to monitor and care-take the wilderness. Of course, our Orwellian zealot, filled with a sense of righteousness, drove in his comfy automobile back to his comfy temperature-controlled big box in Denver, to contribute to this comfy economy where taking-more-than-you-can-possibly-need and wasting-more-than-you-can-possibly-conceive are kept comfortably out-of-sight and out-of-mind. We must, after all, keep things looking neat: nature and wilderness packaged as museum pieces, to be enjoyed only as spectacles two weeks out of the year and on weekends, not experienced as a living daily reality.  After all, a religious icon, an artifact, worshiped on an alter on holidays is worthy of honor, while a living, daily reality is too much to bear in the our artificial, arti-factual civilization, where art and reality cannot be the same, nature and civilization must be two opposing categories.

So our crime ring moved to a spot far away.  And I'm not giving clues this time where it's at.  Yeah, it seems I keep being too naive, believing that if folks have eyes and ears and noses, they can see and hear and smell!  It must be pretty naive to think that the sun shines freely on all, and that a person can breathe completely communal air in and out for free, shared by all, the good, the bad, and even the ugly, in one, single atmosphere.

"Members" and visitors

A young woman named Adelaide came from Ohio to live with us for a while in our new wilderness enclave, bringing her wisdom and insight, and help us establish our new digs, and to join Daryl's and my radio discussions.  However, it turns out, not unexpectedly, that she and Daryl became tight, and she whisked Daryl, my moneyless stalwart, back to Ohio.  Romance, most often the glue that binds pairs yet the solvent that dissolves community.  Meanwhile, Jake also moved on to I'm not sure where after we moved out of our cave camp.

Julia still comes and goes, not with us for long periods of time.  Most everybody who meets her says, "Julia's one bad-ass woman."  She's been helping us with her herbal and exotic concoctions and wise insights.  I finished her book, The Edge of Sanity, (under her pseudonym, Olivia Burnette) and loved it.  It's in a similar vein as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, sort of, and is an important commentary and indictment on our system and mental health industry, and highly entertaining and funny. Julia deals with lyme disease and must have a special diet, so she uses a little money.

We also had a visitor for a couple days from Canada, David, witnessing our little upheaval.  David is the second Canadian (Sean being our first) to visit us this year (not including the Canadian film crew who came last spring).  One thing that impressed me about David was his philosophy of no blame.  If there is not blame in the first place, he said, there is nothing to forgive.  People act according to cause and effect, as do all physical reactions in the universe, and when you fully realize this, the idea of blaming becomes absurd, he pointed out.  How far back to you trace cause-and-effect until you find the source of blame?  This comes from a person who experienced deep hurt from people and has an absence of bitterness.

Blame, Guilt, Debt, Money

David and I discussed this further and came to a conclusion that blaming and punishing accomplish nothing.  When you see a problem, you work to fix it, not punish it.  For example, as David talked, I had a vision of a river flowing through town, over-running its banks.  The blaming, vindictive mentality punishes the water for going out of bounds, while the rational mind simply builds up the banks again.  The rational mind understands simple cause-and-effect.  We are in a society oblivious to basic cause-and-effect, that believes in punishing the water.  We have the biggest prison industry in the present world and in all of history, and it's growing.  If our prisons were a rational solution to the problem, why would they be growing?  Why do we continue with the same futile mistake, century after century?

David said he did not like the idea of forgiving, because forgiving cannot exist without blaming first.  Why blame in the first place?  I like and agree with this idea, on the one hand, yet even the very idea of saying "don't blame in the first place" is a call to eliminate blame, which is to forgive.  The fact is, blame is the essence that runs our culture, in its obsession with punishment and prisons, and there must be forgiveness to banish blame.   It would be wonderful if there were no blame in the first place, and no need to forgive.   Here we could go back to hunter-gatherer culture that perhaps has no blame, no thought of credit and debt, no money, no prisons, no lawyers, no possession, no owning, no owing (debt), as the Lakota, John Lame Deer, pointed out.

Blame is giving negative credit to someone.  Praise is giving positive credit to someone.  There is delusion in both.

But there is the mysterious concept that, with greater forgiveness is greater love.  This gets back to the original concept that David pointed out, that all things are natural.  This, I'd say, would include our desire to blame, and then the need to banish such blame with forgiveness.  It gives me hope for us, a culture that adores blame, adores guilt, adores credit and debt (money).  If we can finally see our delusion, meaning banishing blame, meaning banishing thought of credit and debt, then we forgive all debt.  In reality, please realize I'm not necessarily talking just about money, but about self-credit of praise and blame, and guilt (sense of debt), deep in the human psyche.  Money is the visible manifestation, the symptom, of these things.

"If there were no debts... there wouldn’t be any money," (--Marriner S. Eccles, former Chairman and Governor of the Federal Reserve Board).  

If this is true, to forgive all debts is to do away with money, which is to do away with all punitive and credit systems: lawyers, courts, judges, prisons, grade education, banks, lords (landlords, owners), which is to do away with the sense of self-credit, of blame, of guilt, of debt that debilitates our human psyches.  Money has had its place, and money must go obsolete, because money is debt and the very manifestation of blame and debt and self-credit. All debt must be forgiven, all self-credit must be given up.  Blame and guilt and self-credit must be banished.


Ironically, I'm talking to a population where many claim to be Christian, yet adores commerce, big corporations, banks, prisons, punitive laws and our futile wars.  It adores blame and self-credit.  In short, it adores money.  The prime principle in Christianity is that out of greatest forgiveness arises the greatest love.  If this is true, out of the ashes of the collapse of this overwhelming dragon of debt (blame, guilt) and self-credit that runs the world must arise the phoenix of immutable love.

This all sounds far-fetched and impossible when we're under the rule of the overwhelming dragon of debt, the dragon that supports Babylon.  But if you take the time to rationally trace all of this to its logical conclusion, you can't help but see it.

"Celebrating Eccentrics"

During the time of upheaval, the Canadian documentary film maker, John Zaritsky, and his film crew from Reel to Real Productions (who had come last spring) were finishing up the documentary Celebrating Eccentrics, and wanted me to help them blog about it (both here and on their own blog).  But I haven't had time or inspiration to even do caca with my own blog, much less helping with theirs, until now.

So far, it's been in several film festivals:

Here's  the teaser:



And here's a short flick they made with me and my friend Cullen, about our music in the film:



For more info about the film, see
Celebrating Eccentrics

Matt and Cat and Ariella

After Jake went his own way, and then Daryl and Adelaide left, I must confess I felt my usual sadness, and a bit discouraged about our tribe.  But it's been this way from the beginning, people coming and going.  It's all of life - impermanent life.  And very few are willing to live like this through the winter.

However, right as Daryl and Adelaide were leaving, a 25-year-old chap named Matt showed up with a young woman named Cat he'd just met.  Matt had emailed months ago saying he was coming.  Cat stayed with us for a while, but had to move on to Arizona, but Matt wants to stay for the winter.  He totally gets this whole concept of there being no separation between work and play in the moneyless world, and he's excited about every project we work on.  Besides, he's a great musician.  I can't even describe what a joy Matt is to be around, grinning as I write this.

Matt and his dog, Hawkeye, and I hitch-hiked to my parents' in Fruita, Colorado for Thanksgiving.  We also got to hang out with Cullen (the musician in the above video) and a new friend, Levi, in Fruita, as well as my brother, Ron, and, of course, my parents.  Quite fun.

Then, while we were still in Fruita, a young woman, Ariella, arrived from Indiana to join our moneyless tribe, and Cullen brought all 3 of us and the dog back to Moab yesterday.  We're just getting to know Ariella, but I am feeling please with her, so far.  Okay, again, there's a very certain possibility of romance between Matt and Ariella, but, somehow, I'm not feeling at all worried about it.  I am feeling so much love for them right now, its crazy.  And the dog, Hawkeye, too.  I usually discourage dogs, but Hawkeye is a well-behaved, mellow dog and I love him too.

Radio Show

I continue to do the radio show with friends on Sundays, discussing philosophies of gift economy and a moneyless world, and spirituality, interspersed with music (usually new indy music and world music or, if older music, obscure stuff that few get to hear):

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out  

Sundays 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm MST/DST

KZMU Moab Community Radio

90.1 and 106.7 FM

also live-streamed at 

http://www.kzmu.org/listen.cfm  or

http://www.streamingthe.net/KZMU-90.1-106.7-FM-Moab-Utah/p/17864 or 

http://live-onradio.com/country/USA/KZMU---90.1-FM-Moab-UT-live-radio_20363.html

Last Sunday I missed being on the air, since I was in Colorado.

Probably half my shows are recorded, but I haven't gotten it together to archive them yet, or make them available on the Internet.

Daryl and a guy named Raven have been great discussion partners on the show, with other friends often showing up.  It's been crazy fun for me.  Now that Daryl has left, it turns out Matt is not too shy to be on the air and adds zesty spice to the show.

Here's a reiteration of what we talked about on the radio last time:

Money, Oneness, and Division

This gets me all excited.  I'm working on an essay, "Money: the House Divided", showing how the money mentality skews our vision of the universe into divisions and duality, a lack of realization of the oneness of all things.  One example is the concepts of altruism and selfishness.  In our minds, its either one or the other, and we think of them as separate things. This inspired last Sunday's radio topic: "Love & Fear, Altruism & Selfishness."

We think of altruism as selfless sacrifice for others and selfishness as serving the self at the expense of others.  But look at the reality of a living body.

If your left hand scratches an itch your right cheek, is your left hand being selfish or is it being altruistic?  Does your left hand expect any kind of payment, any kind of reward, by scratching your right cheek?  Herein lies the philosophy of living without money or conscious barter.  Freely give, freely receive, expecting nothing in return, because you realize the whole universe is one body.  Anything else is delusion.

Does a cell in your body bring hurt or harm to the whole body if it hurts itself?  Does a cell in your body help or harm itself by bringing assistance and health to a neighboring cell?  To help others is to help the self.  To help the self is to help others.  This is basic life, 101.

You cannot love the Whole without loving your neighbor, and you cannot love your neighbor without loving your self.  And you cannot love your self without loving the Whole and loving your neighbor.  This is the very basic fundamental of both Judaism and Christianity.

The Greatest "Commandment

This concept of the Greatest  Commandment being the fundamental of both Judaism and Christianity is so fundamental, few really think about it, and, ironically, it has become lost, to "fundamentalists," for it is also fundamentally Hindu at its core.

Long before the man Jesus (Yeshua) is said to be born, some clever Jewish rabbi, whoever she or he was, found something interesting in the Torah (books of Moses) about the Greatest Commandment.  

The Torah states,

Hear, O Israel: The Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is One!  You shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5) 

The first phrase starting with the Shema, "Hear, O Israel..." is pointing out something profound at the heart of Monotheism.  Elohim is translated as the singular "God" in English Bibles, but it literally means the plural "Gods."  And Yahweh means eternal being.  

Hear, O Israel, Eternal Being, our Gods, Eternal Being is One! 

(Hebrew reads right to left)

The point is not to say there is one God above all others, but that all gods are One!  

To say there is one God above all others is to acknowledge the reality of separate gods, 

which appeals to the fanatical, divisive, war-mongering fanatic.  

To say, as this Shema states, that all gods are One, is to appeal to the spirit of love and inclusion.

Now some rabbi looked further at this and wondered, how can you love this One with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength and have room to love anybody else, unless there is nobody else?  This commandment absolutely makes no room to love anybody else!

Then this rabbi wanted to bring this concept to everyone's attention, so found another similar commandment in the Torah, in Leviticus:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Yahweh. (Leviticus 19:18)

And he squished this "love your neighbor as yourself" commandment in Leviticus up against the "love Yahweh" commandment in Deuteronomy to point out this blatant anomaly:

Hear, O Israel, Eternal Being, our Gods, Eternal Being is One! You shall love Eternal Being your Gods with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am Eternal Being. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 together with Leviticus 19:18)

Hear, O Israel, because I'm pointing out something you have been deaf to!
What you see as many is One!
And you shall love this One
with all your heart
with all your soul,
with all your strength.

Your love must for One and no other, never divided, not adulterous.

How can you love your neighbor and love yourself if they are separate beings from the One?

If they are separate beings, love is impossible!

This is the Holy Trinity, and the Trinity is One:
The Whole, Your Neighbor, Yourself.

The Whole is the Source, the Parent, of all.  All credit goes to the Whole (Hallelujah).  No particular can do anything of itself, but all comes from the Whole. ("I can do nothing of myself.")
Your Neighbor is Christ himself.  If you don't see this, you do not accept Christ.  "I was hungry and you did not feed me.  Loving your neighbor, as yourself, is the way, the truth, and the life.  There is no other way to loving the Whole.  I Am who I Am, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Your true self is the Holy Spirit, God within, "the hope of glory."
This is fundamental Christianity, and it is fundamental Bible.

Here is another scripture I love bringing up, because "fundamentalists" won't touch it with a 10-foot pole:

I [the Son of David] said in my heart,
"Concerning the condition of the sons of men,
God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are animals."
For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals;
One Thing befalls them:
as one dies, so dies the other.
Surely, they All have One Spirit [רוּחַ ruach]; 

man has no advantage over animals,
for all is emptiness.
All go to one place:
all are from the dust, and all return to dust.
(Ecclesiastes 3:18-20)

All have One Spirit.  The Hebrew word here is רוּחַ ruach , which means Spirit or Breath, the same word translated as Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible.  The Sanskrit word for Spirit or Breath is Atman, the same word used in the Baghavad Gita to refer to the Life Spirit, in every living creature.  Atman is often translated as the Self in the Baghavad Gita and the other Hindu scriptures.

With the heart concentrated by Yoga, with the eye of evenness for all things, he beholds the Self [Atman] in all beings and all beings in the Self [Atman].He who sees Me in all things, and sees all things in Me, he never becomes separated from Me, nor do I become separated from him.He who being established in unity, worships Me, who am dwelling in all beings, whatever his mode of life, that Yogi abides in Me.He who judges of pleasure or pain everywhere, by the same standard as he applies to himself, that Yogi, O Arjuna, is regarded as the highest.(Baghavad Gita 6:29-32)

Notice how Jesus himself is recorded as saying to his own people, when they condemned him for calling himself Son of God:

“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”? (John 10:34)

He was quoting from the Psalms:

I said, “You are Gods [Elohim],
And all of you are children of the Most High.
(Psalm 82:6)

Now Jesus is calling his own people Elohim!  Now it's all becoming clear, huh?

Hear, O Israel: The Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is One!  You shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5) 

Yes, Jesus taught nothing new, but reminded those of his own Jewish faith of their own fundamental religion, pointing out these two Great Commandments as One:

(Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:25-28)

Notice how, in the Mark passage, he and a Jewish scribe are conversing in full agreement about the Greatest Commandment, and the Jewish scribe confirms what Jesus says, then takes it farther to this deepest fundamental of Judaism and Hinduism that I have just pointed out above:

So the scribe said to Him,
"Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth,
for there is one God,
and there is no other but He.
And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
(Mark 12:32-33)

Notice how he is pointing out what is stated in the Torah and the Prophets, which literally says there is nobody and nothing else but God.  All is One!

What would make "fundamentalists" purposefully skirt around and deny these most basic fundamentals of their own religion?

Now that's the mystery.
God is playing hide and seek with Herself,
Her Atman.
Holy Spirit,
the Hidden Feminine.

Now, that's a teaser for essays I'm working on, essays to come, Insh'Allah.

One Faith, One Creative Force

Ebbing and Flowing River

Since I last blogged almost a month ago, our "tribe" has, again, fluctuated: people coming and going - some returning, some new arrivals.  Right now, our "tribe" consists of Daryl, Julia, Jake, and me.

A very easy-going lass named Rainbow showed up one day, and ended up staying with us for a few weeks.  She hadn't heard about me or this "tribe" until she came to Moab and somebody told her about us and directed her to our cave.  She felt a dilemma of either quitting her job, getting rid of her car, and staying with us, or going on a promised journey to Sri Lanka with her long-time friend.  After much soul-searching, she opted for going to Sri Lanka.  Then it turned out that Max and Tom returned!  So for a while we were back up to a tribe of seven folks camping in the caves: Daryl, Julia, Sean, Rainbow, Max, and Tom.  Then Tom decided to leave again on his experimental search.

It then came time for me to visit my parents a hundred miles away in Colorado.  I usually don't go anywhere without the "tribe", but this time I went solo, staying with my parents for nearly a week.  I had the hunch folks in our tribe would leave while I was gone.  Sure enough, Max and Sean left to California with Rainbow in her car.  Now it was down to just Daryl, Julia, and me again.  I've been saying this tribe is more like a river.  It's not the same water on whatever day, but it's the same river, and the same rocks.  It seems Daryl, Julia, and I are the rocks of this tribe.   But perhaps another rock has tumbled back down stream.

The other day I was pleasantly surprised to see Jake, from early summer, just showing up again!  And it sounds like Steph and Freebird are also on their way back in a week or two.  Maybe I can have photos in this blog again, Steph being the prime photographer.

I am pleased with our "tribe" of eclectic drop-outs, drop-ins.  Daryl is a play-write and general writer, comedian, and a very articulate radio companion with a keen eye for spiritual truth.  Julia is an extremely independent feral feline who understands wild plants, edible and domestic, and basic wilderness survival, as well as being an artist and published author of a couple books.  I'm half-way through her excellent "The Edge of Sanity" under her pseudonym.  So far I'm really impressed, and will see how I feel about it when I'm done reading it, maybe push the book here.  Jake is our youngest family member, recently turned 21.  Early 20s was the majority last year, but he's the minority, for now.  He's easy-going and constant, and you have to glean what his interests are (like I'm discovering he's got a growing talent for guitar), and I'm looking forward more to seeing what makes him tick.

One thing I've noticed about our tribe, those here and those coming and going, is a common sense of humor.  I'm amazed at how often my tummy hurts from laughing so much.  Some days we also have elevating, eye-opening philosophical and spiritual discussions.

Radio Show continues

Meanwhile, I continue to do the radio show with Daryl, "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out," every Sunday, 9:00PM to 11:00PM MST/MDT on KZMU Moab Community Radio, often joined by Julia and whoever else is with us.  We often continue our discussions from the previous week on the air for all to hear who cares to.  For listening online, if www.kzmu.org doesn't work, try http://www.live365.com/stations/kzmu or http://streema.com/radios/KZMU.

Random edibles

In addition to the plethora of food we find in dumpsters, we've found lots of fruit this season: delicious prickly pears in the canyon, and, around town, peaches, apples, pears, grapes, and jujubis.  We've also been drinking lots of teas: from wild grasses, wild basil, Mormon tea, as well as from juniper and pinion needles, and a lot of mysterious concoctions brewed by Julia.  And wild mustards, including seeds, and lamb's quarters, have been a main staple.  Today I harvested a bunch of feral peppermint.  And we made some fermented wonders, too: sauerkraut, plum wine, peach wine, and peach vinegar.

Working on my magnum opus

I'm back to working on my life's magnum opus, about the divine feminine hidden within judeo-christian tradition, and discussing it with Daryl.  It astounds me to be able to talk with someone who already gets it. It's something I had long put away, but it inadvertently came up when Mark Sundeen was writing the book about me.  And, little did I know, it would have everything to do with the philosophy of living without money.  It has come full circle, getting me all excited.

But talking more about  this stuff will have to wait.  Meanwhile, some epiphanies about faith.

Faith

I'm thinking about the concept of faith again, having more epiphanies about it.  I just remembered blogging about faith before, so I did a search and realize my post called "Faith" was almost exactly a year ago!  I guess it's the season to talk about faith.

A lot of pragmatic minds really dislike the world faith.  And some have argued with my saying that faith is the essence of not just religion and spirituality (with some Buddhists also even arguing with me here), but that faith is the essence and foundation of science.  Not only that, I will go so far as to say that faith is the essence and foundation of all life and all existence!

For those getting turned off already, let's make this really simple and let's look at, ironically, the pragmatic evidence of faith right before your eyes.

Examine everything you know how to do.  I mean everything!

Is there anything you know how to do that you did not first believe you could do?

Some people have smaller faith, some have greater faith, but everybody that can do anything has faith in the unknown.

You don't know you can do it until you do it.  You must believe it, not know it, to do it.

And you can't do it until you believe you can do it, regardless of how much or how little evidence you have to go on!

Some have small faith to do small things, some have great faith to do great things, but everybody who knows how to do anything has faith in the unknown.

That means everybody on earth!  And that means that the very first foundation for all scientific discovery is faith in the unknown!

If you want to do great things, you must have great faith.  But you can't have great faith until you start with small faith.  Faith is synonymous with courage.  Courage is facing fears, walking into the unknown, believing.  Have courage to face your small fears, small unknowns, and your courage will grow, your faith will grow.  If you cultivate your small faith enough, you will eventually be able to move mountains, or even do greater things.  If you start out as a cottonwood seed, you can eventually become a huge cottonwood tree.

All the talk in the world, and all the logical arguments about how unfounded your fears are won't make your fears go away.  Only by stepping into your fears and facing them will they go away.  And only then will your faith grow to levels that will astound you.

People will say, then, "faith in what?"  or "faith in whom?"

That's a moot question.

Faith itself is the creative force of the universe.

Faith itself is God, or whatever you want to call it.  Faith does not care what you call it.  If you can pinpoint and name what you have faith in, it wouldn't be faith.

Faith is resting in the unknown, in what the eye cannot see, what the ear cannot hear, what can't even enter into the human mind!

The word "God" can exist in the human mind.  But what you have faith in cannot exist in the mind.  You cannot think it.  Thus, even that word "God" and all conceptions of God must ultimately be crucified, banished, as your own mind will most certainly die some day, along with all its conceptions.  Any conception of God you think you have faith in is an idol, an illusion, a creation of your own mind.

One Creative Force

Meditate deeply on this:  If you do not have faith in the unknown, nothing you do can be new.  That means, if you do not have faith in the unknown, nothing you do can be creative.  If you replicate what you already know, you can only imitate, not create.  Only by faith can you be creative.  Without faith, you can only imitate.  Without faith, you can only be a machine, reproducing cookie-cutter images, with zero creativity.  Without faith, there can be no life, only soul-less machinery. 

But don't get me wrong, most of what is called "religion" or "faith" in our world is completely without faith.  Why?  Because it cannot accept the unknown.  It can only follow scripts.  It can only follow scripture or liturgy.  It can only follow what is already written, already thought, already done.  It can only follow the old, not the new.  All scripture is Old Testament, even what they call the "New Testament."  All that is written down, all that is thought, all that is "known", is old, is script.  All scripture is script, and all who follow a script are actors, imitators.  The Greek word for an actor on a stage is hypokritēs (ὑποκριτής), hypocrite.  


Faith follows what is unknown, what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what has not entered the human mind.  Faith follows what is born anew.  You must be born anew, every moment, else you are not life, else  you are not creative.  

"You are my offspring, this moment I have given birth to you," says the Spirit.

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Scripts follow faith, faith does not follow scripts.  Scriptures and forms and thoughts arise from faith, faith does not arise from scriptures and forms and thoughts.  Scripts describe what has already passed away, even if a split second ago!  All that is written, all that is thought, all that is recorded, is script.  Faith describes what is perfectly new, perfectly Now!  And what is new is, paradoxically, the only ancient, the only unchanging, ever Now.

People speak of many religions, many faiths.  There are many words, many thoughts, many so-called religions, many ideas, many labels put on faith, but there is only one faith.  There is only one faith, there is only one creative force.  And to have "faith" on what is known by the mind, what is thought, what is seen, what is heard, what is written, is to not have faith. 

Everything that is real has faith.  Only that which is artificial has no faith.  All that is alive has faith.  Faith, by its very nature, is life.  Only what is dead has no faith.  Everything that steps forward has faith in the unknown, for there has never, ever been a step that has stepped into the known, what is known by the mind.  Only delusion thinks it steps into the known, and only delusion can have no faith.  Ego thinks it knows.  And whatever thinks it knows knows nothing.  Faith is humility, and humility is not self-deprecation but the simple ability to see reality.

The same force that moves a spider to venture out of hibernation into the first days of spring, not knowing where he's going or where he will live, carrying no possessions, carrying no food, is the same force that makes you write a song or make a sculpture.  The same force that moves a sperm cell to make its way to the ovum, uniting with her to create a new egg, to become a new zygote, a new fetus, a new baby, is the same force that invented the wheel.

Religions can fight and compete with each other, faith cannot, because there is no other faith to fight and compete with.  A religion that calls itself a faith and must denounce other religions is not a faith.  Faith cannot say, "I have faith".  Anyone who says, "I have faith" demonstrates they have no faith.  Faith can only be, and only by being can faith proclaim Herself.

Faith is not something that is added to the worldly mind.
It is the manifestation of the mind's Buddha nature.
One who understands Buddha is Buddha;
one who has faith in Buddha is a Buddha himself.
(Mahaparinirvana Sutra)

One Faith (Ephesians 4:5)

Anything that is not of faith is debt (Romans 14:23)

According to your faith let it be to you.  (--Jesus, Matthew 9:29)

 Now, forget everything I've said, and have faith.

Caving In

I don't come into town from the canyon caves so much these days, so I let cyber contact with the world slide.

During the winter I felt fairly disconnected with the world and spent a lot of time in solitary stillness.  But since the spring began I've had a fairly constant influx of visitors.  It's been kind of a moneyless tribe all along, but with people coming and going, like a river, no same water moment by moment, but a river nonetheless.

It's been raining a lot.  Overwhelmed with beauty at our camp.  This pic (by Pete Apicella) is from a couple years ago, but looks like these days.

As I said in the last post, the "tribe" was down to just Daryl and me when we arrived back in Moab from the Rainbow Gathering last mid July.  Then we were pleasantly surprised to be joined by my friend of a few years, Julia, a.k.a. Squirrel Girl, a veteran wilderness and wild-edible and medicinal plant expert.  She's still with us, off and on, at the cave.  Incidentally, we've eaten a lot more squirrel since she arrived with her fall traps.

Here's the latest on the "moneyless tribe", or whatever it is:  Tom, the early-20-something wandering non-sectarian-monk-in-Indian-saddhu-garb, had come back after a stint hitch-hiking southwest of here.  At about the time he came back, a couple early-20-something dread-locked guys named Benjamin and Nicolas (who also look like another variation of Indian saddhus) showed up, camping in a nearby cave.   We call them the saddhus.  Then a late-thirty-or-early-40-something guy (who now calls himself Max), who has an MBA in finance, walked away from his high-finance job and showed up to join us.  Max immediately made a figure-4 fall trap, which caught us 2 squirrels for our pot-o-stew.  A bit later, an early-20-something chap named Sean from northern British Columbia came to stay with us.  And, shortly after, Daryl's friend Bayla (who looks early-20-something-but-is-30-something) showed up from New York City.  Besides all them, we've had other visitors come in waves.  For a few days we had 12 people up there, and I was starting to feel overwhelmed at times, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.  For those short moments I feel overwhelmed, I sit with the feeling and it passes, knowing that everything works out.  Some days I feel so blessed -- that blessing also overwhelms me. 

Now it turns out that most everybody is leaving or has left, except for Daryl and Julia (off and on) and I'm back to learning more about non-attachment and the meaning of community.  After Wednesday, it looks like it's back down to just Daryl and me, with Julia still coming and going at our camp.

Daryl and I had a great talk yesterday morning about the nature of community.  I am finally learning some new things, how to do this better, thanks to Daryl's observations.  I am realizing repeating patterns that have happened since the first "moneyless tribe" was launched last summer in Montana.  Time to learn from them.

Daryl and me at Dead Horse Point.  Pic by Cullen, who took us there to see the sunset.
Daryl and Cullen are some of my best of friends.

Meanwhile, I'm still doing my radio show every Sunday, 9:00PM to 11:00PM MST/MDT on KZMU Moab Community Radio, with help from Daryl and a new radio man, Raven.  Julia just joined us last night, and might also be a regular.  Other friends often join us at the station, sometimes also on air, but mostly just hanging out.  It just gets funner and funner for me, and even better having my friends up there to join in.  I comment and philosophize between music, with friends joining in discussion.  The music is usually new Indy stuff (rock, nu-folk, electronic, singer-songwriter stuff, and some punk) and an eclectic mix of other things, often world music, indigenous, and sprinkles of classical.  Maybe half the shows are recorded, but I still haven't gotten around to compressing them and archiving them online.   

For listening online, if www.kzmu.org doesn't work, try http://www.live365.com/stations/kzmu or http://streema.com/radios/KZMU

There's much we talk about out there in the canyons, philosophical musings and epiphanies, and I'd love to share them here, but I gotta go for now.  Maybe later I can get something together. 

Coming and Going but Ever Here

Here I am, back in Moab

Here I am, back in Moab, and it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere for a while.  I last blogged June 23rd, and it's been a continual odyssey of un-expectations since then.

Right now there are four of us in the "tribe": Daryl, Julia, Tom, and me, camping together in the wilderness.  I finally met Daryl in person at the Rainbow Gathering, and he and I have been together since.  Julia and I have been friends for a few years, but she decided to start camping with us a couple weeks ago, saying she was now living moneyless "by default".  And we all just met Tom, who showed up out of the blue at our cave a few days ago, having hitched into town from the Portland area.

And what happened to everybody else?  Steph and Freebird parted ways with us at the Gathering to walk the Pacific Crest trail together.  Brandon got snagged by his family in the northwest and hasn't returned.  That happens a lot with folks.  Jake went to visit his family in Salt Lake City after the Gathering with plans to return here or hook up with us later if we hit the road.   

A recap of the past few weeks

Jake, Steph, Freebird, and I were camping in the canyon caves, sharing meals and music and fun, with other friends coming and going.  We also met at the park in town on Sundays with other friends for pot-lucking.  All the photos here are by Stephanie, and more can be found on her own blog, Spreading My Wings.

L-R: Chelsea, Tess, Freebird, Pete, Jake, Phil

Suelo, Phil, Jake

Suelo, Jake, Chelsea

Jake, Chelsea

Jake

Jake, Steph, preparing wild nopales

Steph with an astounding sculpture, carved by a beaver, that I found a decade ago.  I'm surprised it's still there.

Freebird, Jake, Me

A new friend John, and LuAnn

Rainbow Gathering

We all had plans to go to the national Rainbow Gathering, which was in Utah this year.  I figured the Gathering would be a good place for others to meet up who wanted to live moneyless, too.  Daryl and I had been in e contact for over a year and decided to meet there.  Jake and I hitched there early to meet up with Daryl, while Steph and Freebird came later. 

Jake and I set up a camp for the "moneyless tribe" and put signs around the Gathering so folks could find us.  We met a guy, Daniel Divine, who wanted to camp with us.  Then Daryl showed up to join us.  Then Steph and Freebird showed up to camp in our vicinity, as did a new friend named Kyle.  This is the only photo I can find with Daryl in it. 

L-R: Freebird, Suelo, Jake, Julia, Daryl, Nate

Steph, Rachael & Son, Freebird

We hosted four conversational workshops about the philosophy and practicalities of gift economy and a moneyless world.  I was pleased to find so many people show up interested.

 

Tribe of Two, Back to Moab

But it is kind of funny that, out of all that, by the time it was time to leave the Gathering, it was down to Daryl and me.  A guy named Ariana said he was going through Moab and offered us a ride, so we took it, though it seemed a bit early for us. 

Daryl and I set up camp at a cave in the canyon, hanging out and talking a lot, finding we have much in common, not just about the desire to live without money, but in our spiritual perspectives. 

Since nobody had filled my slot at the radio station, I've started doing my radio show again, and Daryl came up and talked on the show with me.

 

On my soap box in Grand Junction, Colorado

The Humanists Doing Good asked me to do a talk in Grand Junction on July 19th, so Daryl and I hitch-hiked there for that, and stayed a few days with my parents in nearby Fruita. This talk even made it onto KKCO Channel 11 News in Grand Junction.  My friend Cullen is in the video, and you can spot Daryl and my dad in there, too.

Yeah we hung out a lot with Cullen and friends, and Cullen brought us back to Moab.

 

Tribe of Four 

Daryl and I were pleased to find Julia had moved into the cave.  I've known Julia for a few years, and have thought she would be a perfect addition to our "tribe".  She's been living as an urban and wild forager, like me, for years, living out in the wilderness.  And she's a wild-edibles expert, knowing much more about plants than I do.

Days later, Tom showed up.  It's funny, I was telling Daryl I had given up on trying to make the moneyless tribe happen, that it seemed everything I tried to do never quite worked out.  It's out of my hands.  If it is meant to be, it will happen organically, if not, good.  All we can do is wait and be receptive.  A flower does nothing but is itself, becoming receptive.  It is then that a bee may descend to pollinate it.  This is the nature of faith.  Wait, and manipulate nothing.  Only then do you bloom and become receptive, and only then does the Holy Spirit descend, and the doing happens through you.  "I can do nothing of myself."

While we were discussing this,Tom showed up at the cave, and Daryl and I looked at each other and smiled.  It somehow didn't seem like a surprise.  He was wearing to be orange robes, like what some Hindu sadhus wear.  And he walked up as naturally as if he'd always lived there and known us.  He's not really a Hindu sadhu or a Buddhist Bikkhu, but a kind of non-sectarian monk in his 20s, rooted in the Christian tradition, but embracing the truth of all the traditions.  It amazes me how much the 4 of us jive with each other.  Nobody's made any vows or promises, and who knows what will happen tomorrow, but it looks like we're a tribe right now.

I am crazy filled with gratitude about my friends, who are my family, my tribe.  But I'm also learning non-attachment, as they have come and gone so much these past years.  I might be getting used to it and it's not wearing me out so much anymore - learning not to grieve so much when they go.  It's cliche, but still true: as one door closes, another opens.

Staying in Moab?

As Daryl, Julia, Tom, and I were talking, we realized none of us want to go anywhere.  We're content right here for now.  We (mostly I) had plans to go different places and do other things this summer, but such plans fell through.  And through it all, I've most wanted to just be here, now.  If the Spirit leads us otherwise in the future, so be it.  If not, so be it. 

 

I'm DJing again 

 

Last Sunday I did my radio show again.  Tom came up to the station with me while Daryl and Julia stayed in the canyon.  They were able to pick up the show on a transistor radio I'd found in a dumpster.  I talked about the nature of speaking truth, much gleaned from my time with the Lakotas last summer, and also about what "myth" really means.  I might talk about this in another blog post.  But for now my eyes are getting blurry and my brain going numb staring at this library computer too long.  I plan to be on the air again this Sunday and every Sunday to follow, indefinitely:

"Turn on, tune in, drop out"
Sundays
9:00-11:00pm MST/DST
KZMU Moab Community Radio
90.1 and 106.7 FM
Online at
www.kzmu.org
If the above link doesn't work, try
http://www.live365.com/stations/kzmu
or http://streema.com/radios/KZMU.

 

Re-Genesis

Since I don't know when I'll next have a chance to blog, and I'm feeling inspired, I'm writing a pretty long post here, reviewing principles I've been writing and talking about the past few years, all crystallizing together here.

But before I get started philosophizing, here's what's happening in my life now, an update on the "moneyless tribe" and possibilities of meeting up with us, and a re-cap of what's been happening the past few weeks.

The "moneyless tribe," 
meeting at the Rainbow Gathering again

Right now it's just me, Steph, and Jake camping in the canyon, as well as Freebird (who is camping near us and hanging with us a lot, but using money).  Steph, Jake, Freebird, and I plan to leave for the Rainbow Gathering here in Utah sometime this week, and maybe others around Moab will join us.

Brandon left to visit his family with plans of hooking back up with us at the Gathering.  Govinda left for good back to Australia.  And Jake is the newest newcomer.  He didn't know about me or this 'tribe' and just randomly bumped into us while hiking a couple weeks ago.  Then he decided to bike back down here from Salt Lake City and hook up with us.

I kind of gave up on the "moneyless tribe" last Fall, and decided no more planning for it.  I figured it will happen organically if it's meant to be, or it won't.  When I let go, it started arising again on its own, though fluctuating.

Since folks ask how to find us, we'll have a "moneyless tribe" camp again, with a sign and directions posted at the gathering, like last year, so people can find us.  And I really don't know what's going on after the Gathering.  We might head to Oregon or we might stay around this area, or who knows.  Depends on the consensus of our group.  See consensus here if you're not sure what it is.

I put "moneyless tribe" in quotes because I don't like the idea of us having an official label.  We're not really called anything.  Just people who love each other and don't use money.

Any of you who hooks up with us must have zero expectations.  Randomness and zero expectations are the ultimate driving force of this lifestyle, and the seeming lack of direction can be frustrating when you've been programmed by Babylon to have every minute of your life planned and scheduled and filled with incessant talking and "doing something."  Incessant talking seems to be the biggest epidemic among especially white people.  If you can't be content with doing nothing or randomness or silence, then don't come.  What appears as lack of discipline (defined by Babylon) is our discipline.  The discipline is living in the moment, accepting what is, and loving each other unconditionally.  And it's a time of healing for us who need healing.  Some folks come and leave because they think they might be a burden on us with their "hangups," and that makes me sad, because healing hangups is what this is about.  Don't be so absorbed in yourself to think you're the only one with hang-ups.  We all have our hang-ups.  Also, expectations can be shattered realizing we do have hang-ups too.  Boosting each other through thick and thin is called life.

The link between money, agriculture, conventional religion, 
and our violation of nature

Last night I did my last radio show at KZMU Moab Community Radio for a while, maybe for good.  I've enjoyed DJ'ing there so much, it's hard to let it go.

Between Cullen and me, we got about 2/3 of my shows recorded.  I'm hoping to get them available on the internet when there's a chance to work on it.

My topic last night was "THE LINK BETWEEN MONEY, AGRICULTURE, AND OUR VIOLATION OF NATURE".  My talk was an attempt to illustrate that our money, agriculture, religion, and their violation of nature, is not a lack of knowledge or proper programs or systems, but a simple manifestation of our not being authentic, a simple manifestation of having impure hearts.  Here I'm going to expound on what I talked about last night.

First, I referred to Jared Diamond's The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth, and Michael Quinn's Ishmael.  In bringing up Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth, I don't necessarily knock vegetarianism or vegan-ism, but I want to point out that if you do it for the purpose of avoiding killing, you're mistaken.  If you're doing it for the purpose of not supporting factory farms, that's a good reason.  But if you're eating from conventional agriculture, you're supporting just as much destruction as if you were eating factory farm meat.

What we must realize is there isn't a single life form that exists without the death of another.  We cannot eliminate death any more than we can eliminate negative-charge particles.  It's about finding the beautiful balance between life and death, not eliminating death.  And, as Diamond, Keith, and Quinn point out, the evidence is overwhelming that mass extinctions, environmental devastation, chronic disease, malnutrition, class-ism, sexual inequality, and overpopulation came with the advent of agriculture.

Agriculture and money arose from the same mindset

My point is to take this deeper to show that agriculture and money arose from the same mindset.  I have a hunch that money and agriculture arose simultaneously as a direct manifestation of our spiritual mindset, our lack of faith in the very most basic law of nature.  Again, I call it thought of credit and debt, or "knowledge of good and evil", our fall from Grace, in our Judeo-Christian tradition, and "stealing fire from heaven" found in countless other traditions all over the world.  The stealing fire from heaven is a way of describing our attempt to control the flow of energy and to possess it.  It is our lack of faith in the current of energy, the currency of nature, trying to control and possess it.  Our currency, our money, is not energy, nor the flow of energy, but simply our attempt to control that flow. 

Money and agriculture, as well as conventional religion, represent not doing for the sake of doing, but for the sake of future reward, future fruit.  Sow for the purpose of reaping in the future.  Work for the sake of a future salary.  Be good for the sake of a future reward in heaven or because of fear of punishment of hell.

Pay Myself vs Pay-It-Forward

In true hunter-gatherer culture, as well as in all wild ecology, there is a pay-it-forward system.  One sows, another reaps.  A bird eats a berry with no sense of payback to the berry tree.  She reaps what others have sown.  Then she poops out the digested matter as well as the berry seeds, planting and feeding and fertilizing other creatures, who reap what she has sown.  And they continue this perfect pay-it-forward economy, all with no thought of barter or prices or economics.  When you are authentically yourself, you are nature, and you have no attachment to the fruit of your actions.  You have no ulterior motivation.  This means you do for the sake of doing, not for future reward.  Your reward is in doing.

On the other hand,
every interaction of nature is a perfect, simultaneous barter

At another level, the level of the present moment, you are participating in a perfect, unconscious simultaneous barter.  Every interaction in all of the universe is a perfect barter, simultaneously in the present moment.  Everything is paid for, everything runs on perfect justice.  

I am talking the law of physics.  For every force, there is an equal and opposite force, simultaneously in the moment.  For every action, there is an equal simultaneous reaction.  For every positive, there is an equal negative.  For every wave crest, there is an equal wave trough.  This is the most basic and simple law of all the universe, the law behind all laws, the simplest to grasp.  Yet we somehow lost faith in it and cannot grasp it!  This law of physics is also the law of biology and of social interaction. 

If I cannot see that your giving to me is my giving to you simultaneously, if I cannot see that your doing a service to me is simultaneously my doing an exactly equal service to you, then I am living in delusion!  The only possible impetus for inventing money and conventional agriculture is delusion, the delusion of not seeing this most basic law of the universe.  

Vengeance is mine, I repay right now, says the Law of the Universe.

So, what do we do?

So, what do we do?  The simple answer is, be authentic, be yourself, and all will fall into place.  If I am myself, I won't do what I'm paid to do but will do what I know is natural for me to do.  If I am myself, I well not give in to anybody or any system telling me to go against my own nature.  That might mean quitting my job, quitting my religion, quitting my bank.  Simple, but daunting to do.  It might mean I get crucified.

On a larger scale, what could happen?  Right now in the world we have a massive agricultural and money system and out-of-control overpopulation.  Do we, must we, go back to hunter-gatherer living?

Permaculture

Let's refer back to a blog post I wrote here on November 15, 2011, To Be Yourself Is To Be Perfect

I'm feeling in my bones that permaculture is a key to bring in gift economy, for whole populations to live moneyless.  I've never honestly cared for traditional agriculture, which I'm sure arose with money and barter, and was the beginning of our imbalance.  My ideal has been the hunter-gatherer model, which obviously wouldn't work today without a major die-off of people.  That leaves us permaculture, which is about creating a self-regenerating system, not only of agriculture, but of everything connected to it. 

Machinery is generation.  Life is regeneration.  

This got me super excited, taking the principles of permaculture into social interaction:

Generation is generosity (which we see as a virtue).  Regeneration is re-generosity - Gifts that keep giving.  Generosity is a thing of artificial institutions.  Re-generosity is a thing of living communities!

Generosity has a sense of self-righteousness, self-credit.  "I did my good deed for the day", stacking up credit points.  
Re-generosity is perpetual giving, such as breathing, having no thought of credits or debt.  You don't expect praise for every lungful of carbon dioxide you freely give to the world, you just egolessly do it.  And you don't feel guilty about every lungful of oxygen you take. Generosity comes from stores of excess, from possession.  In re-generosity, there is no possession, only perpetual flow. 
It makes no sense to "own" air in your lungs. 
When you own nothing, there is no effort in giving, no sense of self-righteousness. 
Life is not a charity, it is constant giving.

Permaculture is allowing everything to be its natural self, for greater efficiency and productivity with minimal effort, as all of nature works.

Re-Genesis

   
As I was re-reading what I'd written above, another epiphany hit me:  

Regeneration is re-generosity is re-genesis!  

We are in a culture, an agriculture culture, an agri-culture, a money culture, and a religious culture that thinks linearly, not cyclically.  We are in a culture that sees a genesis and an end, with no regeneration.  And it cannot recycle its own waste.  We are in a culture that sees a linear scripture of Genesis and a Revelation, a creation and a final apocalypse.  Nothing regenerates, nothing evolves, nothing recycles, everything has one beginning, regresses, then ends, capoot.

We sow a seed, it grows, we wait for its fruit, we harvest it, and it is over.  Unlike a wild plant, it does not regenerate itself.  It is not self-sustaining.  It does not recycle.  Its driving force, its motivation, is extrinsic.  It needs an outward force to keep it alive.  It does not have the wherewithal to live on its own.  It is weak, and it imparts its weakness to us.  We are a weak and immature culture.

Extrinsic or Intrinsic Motivation

And we are what we eat.  We cannot find our motivation from within.  Our motivation has become extrinsic.  This principle is the theme of this speech I gave last May, on video here (You are your own diploma, you are your own currency). Yes, our motivation has become ulterior.  Ulterior means further, future.  Ulterior is something far away in space and time.  Our reward is no longer in doing.  Our reward has become far away in space in time. 

Created in the Image of Reality

When our motivation is ulterior, we are not authentic, we are not real, we are not ourselves, we are not the Image of Reality.  The Image of Reality is Reality.  Reality creates us in Reality's own Image.  Anything else is an idol.  Idol is illusion.  What motivates us is what we worship.  We are what we worship, an idol, ulterior motivation, fake, illusion.  What we worship is what gives us energy, our driving force, our food.  This is my body, take, eat.  We are what we eat.  We are our agriculture.  We are our money.  We are our deluded religions.

Our agriculture does not regenerate itself.  It is not permaculture.  It is in battle with nature.  It violates nature.


Myth of the Eternal Return:
Regeneration

And our conventional myth does not regenerate itself.  It is linear, like our agriculture and our everyday thinking.  Mircea Eliade pointed out how "primitive" cultures worldwide, unlike modern western culture, have a Myth of the Eternal Return.  The Creation is ever repeating, yet Ever Now, and people enter into this Creation in religious ritual. 

Our Suicidal Myth of Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Our world does not regenerate itself.  It is artificial.  It is not a Re-genesis, but began with a one-time Genesis.  And, after linear time, like our agriculture, it will end in an Apocalypse-Armageddon.  We have made our world such a prison, such a living hell, we rub our hands together in awaiting our Apocalypse Armageddon.  We are making this Apocalyptic Armageddon happen in self-fulfilling prophecy.  Except that we cannot recognize that our Armageddon is subject to the cycle of nature, thus we live in a perpetual Armageddon, a prison of hell, making us futily desire even more that it would end.  Look around.

Take note that hunting and gathering cultures have never had a concept of an end of the world.  This is a concept invented by agricultural cultures.  If they have made the world such a better place, why oh why do they hope for its end?

We love our Savior in the past and we love our Savior in the future, but we call blasphemy any idea of our Savior within, here and now.  We love our Eden, our Paradise, our Kingdom of heaven, in the past, and we love our Kingdom of Heaven in the future, but we call heresy any idea of the Kingdom of Heaven within, the Kingdom of Heaven at hand, here and now.  

Uncovering Our True Myth Right Under Our Noses

You don't need any book to show you that Creation as well as the Apocalypse is happening now.  Just look around you.  

Light is coming to being right now, 
as well as division between light and dark.  
Water is accumulating into bodies 
and atmosphere is forming right now.  
The earth is bringing forth plants, right now.  
And stars are being born, right now.  
And animals and humans are being formed from the soil, right now.  
And we are being conformed to the Image of Reality, right now.  
And all is being destroyed, right now.  
Apocalypse Now.
Genesis Now.

Even so, it's fun to look deeper at our old religious texts and uncover their covered truth.

Our myth (by myth I don't mean lie, I mean deep spiritual truths imparted through stories) was originally the Myth of the Eternal Return, and this deeply true Myth was lost, covered.  Uncover the truth.  Apocalypse means uncovering what already is.  Yeah, it's funny we have to refer to books, like the Bible, to tell us what we already know.  I get a kick out of telling folks I take the biblical Genesis creation literally, that the "fundamentalists" don't take it literally enough!  If you take Genesis literally, you see that it is Re-Genesis.  It is happening now.  The Hebrew text is literally present tense! 

Check out Young's Literal Translation of the Bible.  The Hebrew scholar, Robert Young, found that,

Bereshith bara elohim, the RSV's "In the beginning God created...", is in the construct state (bereshith), not the absolute (barishona), meaning it refers to an action in progress, not to a completed act.

and

Young's usage of English present tense rather than past tense has been supported by scholars ranging from the medieval Jewish rabbi Rashi... to Richard Elliott Friedman in his translation of the Five Books ...

Until we get out of our delusion of linear thinking, of credit-and-debt mentality, of running on ulterior motivation, otherwise called greed and idolatry, yes, until we uncover the truth, until we realize that the Beginning is the End, ever Now, the same yesterday, today, and forever, until we see that Genesis is Ever Now, and the Apocalypse is Ever Now, we will not escape our violation of wild nature, violation of our own true natures, violation of our very own souls.  Until we find our true Myth, the Myth of Re-Genesis, we will not live, we will not regenerate, we will not recycle, we will be fake and pathetic just like the characters we see on our televisions and in our offices of politics and business.