12.26

R.A.W. says everything goes on forever. Nothing really ever ends. The permanence of impermanence, one might say. The here and now of this body is only a cross-section of a process that has been going on for four-billion years, and our section of spacetime may be related to the processes that are going on elsewhere in time. And when our bodies die, the genetic vector of which this body is an expression will just continue through time. So we have endless freedom...and responsibility. Because everything we do is going to have effects for the rest of eternity. Its karma. Nothing stops, everything just transforms. If you do an evil deed, the effects of that are going to go on forever. The only place it stops being evil is when it reaches someone who's trained in Buddhist yoga and knows how to transform bad energy, and say, "Wow, I just got a lot of bad energy, im not going to pass that on -- I'll turn that into GOOD energy, before I pass that on."

That's the great work.

A certain level of a(r/u)tistic detachment seems to help, lending more distance from lower circuit squabbles based on egotism and emotions, and more and more sense of the unity of everything. But due to the complex nature of interpersonal relationships, this isn't always easy. We're too close. Too involved. Manifesting ethereal values in our daily lives has always been the challenge. The "monkey" side of our brain always gets in the way, filtering the best intentions of the higher mind through behavioral patterns that are organized by early imprints, neurolinguistic programming, genetic predispositions, nervous systems, nature and nurture,  and countless other variables. In the end, more often than not, the best of our buddhist sensibilities emerge as "F-ck you too."

I don't know how to win, but I know where the battle is being fought. It is an internal battle. And if we can change the energy around us by the putting out good energy, then we can change the world by being the change we want to see. Tikkun ha-olam.

And it all cascades from there.

George Herman said it so simply, yet in a way that seemed so transcendentally obvious to me:

"No one can be happy until everyone is happy."

C.