Riffin' On Lincoln's General

“Concerning the determination of his commanding general, President Lincoln liked to tell a story: When Ulysses Grant was ten years old a circus came along, and Lys volunteered to try to ride a pony who could throw anyone. He got on and hung on until he had almost circled the ring three times, when he slid off over the animal’s head. As soon as he got the tanbark out of his eyes and mouth, up he went again, but this time Lys faced the rear, coiled his legs around the critter’s body, and held on by the tail. There Grant stuck like grim death and came off victorious. “Just so,” concluded the president, “he’ll stick to Richmond. He’s a very obstinate man.” Reader’s Digest “American Folklore and Legend”

The Great Emancipator knew a thing or two about…emancipation…about liberation from suffering. “To thine own self be true” didn’t simply apply to the White man, or rather, there was no biological basis to racism; there was no justification to the stratification of society, as the evident truth was that all men were created equal, meaning that they already are in the moment at hand. The idea that the republic can survive reliably when it superimposes artificial realities (such as slavery) over what the forces of nature are supporting/rendering is the absurdity, and it is the evident threat at hand, in addition to it playing an integral part in your wife being short with you last Thursday whether the two of you realize it or not. Vibes man…energy…we’re all connected, and we have been actively rolling in it.

There are right ways to do things. There are wrong ways to do things. It is beyond me, but across time, things jump from one side of the list to the other, and then back again, and this often times has more to do with the context at hand than time, per se, but sometimes it has to do with time as social trends and the such flow parallel to it…

Our traditions became our traditions, in the weirdest sense of it, because they reliably provided the serotonin…the feel good…the ghost…the sense that we were all where we ought to be, doing what we ought to be doing…unwitting, meaningful communion with God… but sometimes we keep going through the motions and the ghost is gone. I will say though, we always know where we ought to be and what we ought to be doing, and this is never beyond us, forecasting just where the ghost will be and just what acts truly do make it manifest.

Lincoln was not only a great emancipator…he was a great leader, although the two certainly go hand-in-hand. He led in utter deference to that spirit which sometimes shows up here and sometimes shows up there. And in his leading general, he looked for a man obstinate in his determination to do the damn thing, no matter how it was done.

This is not a fragile situation. That horse is going to buck. Whether with grace and social accolades or hair on end and a warm meth pipe… the future will arrive.

Honestly, sometimes if you found yourself a political leader…and there was an emerging meth problem, the cultivation of liberal values and the utter respect of human rights is honestly how you clear it out. Sometimes the nation itself catches bad bugs, and it’s time itself spreading the great ick, forcing cultural progression. It’s silly but that’s what plays out as mass numbers of people dance with devils that they end up escaping from at some point (and much prayers to those who never escape that struggle or who are still fighting through it…)

One way or another…the future is coming. Like a belch that emerges forth from a loved one as they are asleep, in the dead of night. Like a bad chest cold that somehow makes you aware of both your mortality, as well as the sheer invulnerability of your consciousness itself…that helps you chart the territory, personally, of where your will intersects with what is possible, enlightening you as to what you truly really are capable of potentially doing with the finite time you have here…

The future makes itself. It is the evident truth at hand in this very moment, amounting to the entirety of your physical sensations/your experience of your body. Tension, as a phenomena, only exists in departures from it, this unfolding Lotus flower, this fruit that is the Tree of Life, itself, which, itself, produces fruits…

The spiritual mission is testifying. Testifying to the evident and comprehensive truth at hand. The will is Supreme; despite there being many beings who fall into ignorance, they can’t effectively challenge the Supreme force of the Cosmos. All we are playing for is our personal experience of the process of salvation. The biggest stakes we have up upon the table is how comfortable the ride to utter, incomprehensible resonance with our Maker will be…

That being said, people get killed. Jesus Christ…the holocaust actually fucking happened. We can’t shut up about it, and even then we struggle to really feel it in a real way as we keep talking about it… that’s how crazy and seemingly broken this existence stuff and our emotions seem to be… does the human creature really even work?

Even then, the evident truth at hand…testifying to it helps stop those sorts of things, and permanently so. We’re hurdling towards that as a people, but the tone of media doesn’t often really portray such a notion. I never knock tv, but if anyone ever knocked the notion of us being obsessed with drama to an unhealthy/unrealistic extent…

We’ve won. Socially we are hurdling towards something beautiful. And we are hurdling towards shutting the doors to these pervasive patterns of hate and genocide. How effective is genocide in a world with satellite feeds and the internet relative to a world before these things? We are watching every square inch at every moment now…and things have gotten so much better because of it, and this is still a relatively new development in human societies…

We just have to ride the ghost. To speak our truths. But I think we need to really work hard, and be incredibly serious…in cultivating some sort of life system…some sort of conglomeration of living habits and skillsets, before we can experience meaningful “truth” or, at the very least, “our truth” (your truth…his truth…etc.). For whatever reason it’s just not enough to listen to the news, that doesn’t get people “there”…there is some sort of alchemical process of refinement that needs to take place. Time and time again, I find this happening in circles of working creatives…stand-up comedians, musicians/songwriters, writers, poets, etc.

And time and time again, that process of “refinement” is predictable/consistent. The performer draws attention to an internal order of reason to conventional and relatable phenomena and his insights run parallel to insights Brahmans have been having for thousand of years regarding the nature of existence/God, or that Jesus taught in the Bible. Apparently when people look at things and then reflect on the things…no matter when they are doing it…no matter what they are looking at…they have the same exact abstract revelations/epiphanies, and that, in and of itself, is cosmically hilarious/lazy (it reminds me of NPCs in video games…).

I draw attention to it because the curriculum on the Boddhisatva… it’s perfect in regards to the philosophy behind it. It captures the mechanics of what happens as these creative types are “refining” their observations of the world. To study this curriculum greatly empowers you to become super effective at any forms of expression, artistic or otherwise. Apparently communication is a means to an end, even, and if you realize as much consciously it naturally enhances your ability to communicate.

This is what was taught by Christ in his life. I tend to point people towards Buddhism because it’s abstract philosophy, whereas the New Testament is historical narrative. One is easier than its counterpart to interpret correctly. Both are perfect.

I guess when it’s all said and done…people are forces of nature. The dynamics of life build people into forces of nature. If you want to get good at ____ (and because of the dynamics of life/society, you really really do in a deeply visceral, hot teenage lust kind of way) then you literally have to be a bastion for the very same truth/message all of the world religions are trying to relate. You have to become a decent person on top of that…or else we will put a boot on your car for improper adherence to incomprehensible parking regulations/charge you extra fees at the DMV…

We’re all amazing. And just because those bastards (much love!) at the He-gets-us campaign are probably stalking me, I’m going to autistically scream here, “BECAUSE WE’RE ALL AS IMPORTANT AS ANYBODY ELSE WHO EVER LIVED, AND WE’RE ALL BASICALLY SAINTS FOR PUTTING UP WITH THIS…THIS EXISTENCE SHIT!” Equanimity…