The Therapeutic Value of Coming Clean

An old acquaintance who is a psychiatrist and a great fan of our first book, “The Game of God: Recovering Your True Identity,” called us yesterday, having just read Katie’s “We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity: The Mechanics of Compassion” and my book, “Exposing Myself: A Life of Sex and Truth.”

The doctor essentially objected to two things about both books. First, he thought “We Are ALL Innocent” delivered the diagnosis of universal insanity too bluntly, believing we should have delivered this admittedly punch-in-the-gut-line more slowly and gently. As a still-practicing psychiatrist in his eighties, I can understand how his life-long approach to treatment—a painstaking and time-consuming (and very expensive) therapy—would find our message, “The problem with all of us is that we’re nuts” brutal and insensitive. Then, there is the universal application of the word “insane,” which more than one person has had issues with, believing “mental illness” should be reserved for a troubled minority (those incapable of playing the game like the rest of us). He said, “If I told patients at our first session they were insane, they’d never come back!”

Perhaps if he told his first-session patient they were insane just like him and everyone else on the planet, simply in their own unique way (which is precisely the message of our books), they might not only stick around, they might experience some immediate relief from the self-torture of believing they were crazier than the “normal” majority. 

Katie said, "The operative word in our title is INNOCENT not insane." None of us deserve blame and shame.

Second, he thought both books gave “too much information.” When he used the word “raw” in connection with Katie’s “We Are ALL Innocent” (which he read first) I asked, “Do you mean sex?” “Yes,” he replied. We have heard this before. It is not enough that “We Are ALL Innocent” delivers a brilliant key to understanding the mechanics of insane thinking, and logically reveals how to experience compassion for all dysfunctional human behavior, eminently including our own, the work is somehow “weakened” by Katie’s forthright sharing about her own sex life—something glaringly omitted from other works of self-help, psychology, and philosophy.

My book, of course, positively drips with “too-much-information.” Sex ruled my life and the burden of shame I carried because of it, the need to conceal it, pretend it wasn’t me, made my life a painful sham. Thus when I decided to write my memoir I vowed to tell the truth, to expose myself in print, to hold back nothing except when to do so would cause harm to another. Katie is included only because she gave her full permission. I’m sick to death of compensating in any way for crazy societal attitudes about sexual morality, imbecilic notions that were the very cause of fucking me up sexually in the first place. I am hiding no longer. The only way I found the courage to publish the book, by the way, was by sufficiently experiencing the truth that my sex-addiction was the result of literal insanity. When insanity is driving one, you see, there is no “free-will,” there is no choice but to obey the insane mind—and so there is no blame or shame attached! I can describe my long-held secrets free of guilt and shame. How much therapeutic benefit is to be found in that?

Letter to a Friend

I wrote this to a friend who had just read "Exposing Myself" and chastised me for continuing to indulge my self-hatred:

“It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.” (Anonymous) 

Dear ____,

How very insightful of you to really zero in on my self-hatred. I’ve spent the last twenty years working with Katie on developing the mechanics of compassion but I seem incapable of finding it for myself. It seems to me the best explanation for this paradox is that my self-loathing is the guilt-price I willingly pay to keep indulging; to not get off it; to not step through that curtain of fire. You are like my friend Carl, who moved away from me at the bar because he feared the person he was sitting next to, the one who’d just told him about the incredible spiritual experiences he’d forsaken for sex and drugs, was a clown who squirted whipped cream out his nose.

Arthur is like the man in the rising flood, driven to the second floor of his house. A rescue boat arrives but he waves it away. “I don’t need any help! God will provide!” A few hours later, forced onto the roof by the rising waters, another boat arrives and he also dismisses it, saying, “God will provide!” Finally, perched on top of his chimney, he waves off a helicopter rescue with “God will provide!” The fool drowns and, when he complains to God for not providing, God says, “I provided two boats and a helicopter!”

Miracles and opportunities have truly been heaped upon me. Why do I not benefit more from them? This, more than anything else, is what I hate myself for. I have been given so many boats and helicopters, so many astounding verifications of the truth…and I have largely turned away.

The manager of a band I was once in told me, “Everyone else in this group argues with me when I tell them to do something, but then they go on and do it. I tell you to do something and you immediately say ‘OK’—but then you don’t do it!”

Fancy egoic footwork, indeed!

My crazy wiring has managed to convince me that enlightenment requires hard work (horror) and forfeiture of the right to do whatever I want (double horror). It’s madness of course but I’ve gotten away with it for nearly seventy years.   

As for my self-hatred being groundless, the fact that I make mountains/felonies out of molehills/misdemeanors is true. That quote from Thomas Wolfe about “Every boy, caged in from confession by fear, is to himself a monster,” refers to adolescent males dealing with the sex urge and masturbation. I, like, relate. I also believe that self-hatred is present to some extent until we are enlightened (an absolute, home-base experience of Oneness). But this doesn’t mean we should lie down and wallow in it, as I seem willing to do. Self-hatred may be universal but it is never justified, just as my own fucking philosophy says; it’s an expression of madness that motivated the offensive thought or deed to begin with, and then blames the host forever for having had the thought or done the deed!

I know this. What I need to do is experience and thereby live it.

And maybe “Exposing Myself” won’t have a happy ending but will resonate and serve as a warning about an unrepentant life. If the goal of art is to evoke and provoke then, based on early reactions, I’ve succeeded. As General Corman says to Captain Willard in “Apocalypse Now,” …”because there’s a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph.” (I would say “good,” which is truth, does triumph, though it takes many lifetimes. Maybe I’m just hooked on this level of being and want to make sure I’m coming back!)

Your post has really given me a much-needed kick in the ass. You’re right, my friend, I AM old enough to drop the self-loathing shit. It may interest you to know that Katie has helped me with the “I am a worthless shit” process from “the work.” I’m getting some very revealing insights right away.

Who knows? Why not? 

Why I Hate You

Let me tell you why I hate you.

Here's a key premise in Katie and my first book, "The Game of God: Recovering Your True Identity:" (a) the source of all fear is the unknown, (b) the source of all hatred is fear. In other words, what we don't know is what we fear and what we fear is what we hate. It is absolutely impossible for us not to fear the unknown and it is equally impossible for us not to hate what we fear. Fear and hate are simply the emotional/psychological expressions of flight/fight.

"Know" is a very big word and, like "love," "God" and "friend," much misunderstood. To "know" means to absolutely know. I once read that Charles Darwin became enamored of using the word "infinite," until he was advised by friends more familiar with the concept that "infinite" is a lot more than a very big number; it is mind-stoppingly powerful medicine.

The only thing I know absolutely is that some sort of experience is occurring. That's it. Everything else is limited by some degree of ignorance. I do not absolutely know that the sun will "rise" tomorrow. I do not absolutely know that I will live another second. And because my ignorance is vast and incessant, so is my fear and so is my hatred.

I grew up not trusting people. I did not know them thus I feared and hated them. I still do (and this means you). Of course I don't know myself either. That's why I fear and hate me too.

My life's work has been to discover what the flying duck is going on here. What is truth? Who are we and what is existence all about? A very important answer that my life-mate Katie and I arrived at is that the human race is universally insane. We define "insanity" as the state of confusing our mind-generated reality with actual reality. Insanity, to put it another way, is convincing ourselves we "know" when the truth is we don't know. Some anorexics starve themselves to death because they "know" they're fat. A more blatant nut case "knows" she's Queen Victoria. The more subtle nut case "knows" he's Arthur B. Hancock. All are delusional.

The antidote is humility: simply being experientially cognizant of our limitations. Humility does not make us weak. It makes us strong. Being in touch with the reality of our vast ignorance--and our insane beliefs that we really know who we are, what we are, where we are, when we are, why we are, what we're doing, where we came from, and where we're going--is to be grounded in the way it is, and opens the door to the possibility of meaningful learning and change.

Even as a child I knew something was wrong with people. It's taken a lifetime but Katie and I have discovered what the problem is: we're all encumbered with an insidious form of insanity. When I'm experiencing the actuality of my madness, and yours, I can reduce the fear and hate and have compassion for us.

Katie and I define "love" as the experience of unconditional acceptance of what is. Face/accept is the lone alternative to flight/fight. Facing our insanity means the end of self-hatred, blame, and arrogance.

Please do yourself a favor and read Katie's "We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity: The Mechanics of Compassion" and my autobiography, "Exposing Myself: A Life of Sex and Truth."          

Erotic Art or Porn?

I recently saw an art exhibit whose theme was women (and guns!) that included some nudes. It prompted me to think about the difference between "erotic art" and "pornography." Where is the line that separates the two?

What I’m coming to realize in my latter-daze dotterage is that lines do not exist. Whatever life, the universe, and everything proves to be, it very much appears to be one seamless thing. Everything is connected to everything else; there is no fixed line dividing anything, much less one that neatly divides the so-called artistic from the so-called obscene. I suppose I should say right upfront that when I’m reasonably sane I do not find sex obscene at all; I find it beautiful.

What I noticed in the exhibition was, with a couple of exceptions, a conspicuous timidity about sex. There was, for me, an overall coldness in the works that I soon realized was due to the absence of all sexual heat or passion. I invite the reader to Google “erotic art” (images) to see what I mean.

And then it hit me! Any artistic rendering of sexuality that conveys passion to the point of sexually stirring the viewer is deemed pornographic—and must be avoided like the plague. Throughout my life I’ve been aware that this screwed-up world of ours largely holds sex as something dirty, or shameful, or in need of concealment. We must not talk about sex in polite company, we must behave as though we don’t have genitalia, etc. Incredibly, I'd never realized that even sexual arousal itself was taboo! In any case, I checked my New Oxford American Dictionary and found this:

pornography (noun): printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. [My italics]

It very much appears that Puritanical bullshit about sex remains not only alive and well among the general public but has infected and inhibited the avant-garde as well. Many artists are apparently so fearful of having their work labeled “pornographic” that they bend over backwards to make certain that nothing which could possibly arouse the viewer remains. From the same dictionary:

art (noun): the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. [My italics]  

“Aesthetic” (in the pornography definition) and “beauty” (in the art definition) is used to delineate the wheat of art from the chaff of pornography. Say what? I suppose there are some people who find the sex act devoid of aesthetic beauty; I am not one of them.

 

“Emotional feelings” and “emotional power” are used in both definitions to distinguish “art” from “porn.” But is not sexual arousal an emotion? It is for me! And, if it is, why should this particular emotion be denied a seat at the gallery table? Why is any other emotion—anger and repugnance at a crucifix immersed in a jar of piss, say—fiercely defended as a legitimate artistic expression, while the emotion of being turned on by a depiction of sex is condemned as sleazy pandering to lust, as filth, as lacking in importance?

“Don’t do that! It’s a very important work of art!” said the home invasion victim to Alex in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Remember the piece? It was a white porcelain-like sculpture of a penis (not erect) and balls. The point I’m trying to make is that the object was as cold and devoid of sexuality as one could imagine.  Alex wielded the thing as a weapon and fatally bludgeoned his victim with it.

For me, standard pornography’s greatest shortcoming is its failure to communicate the beauty and honesty and fun of the sexual experience. Are the participants really enjoying themselves or are they faking pleasure? Do they really feel beautiful or are they acting beautiful? Is the artist—painter, photographer, filmmaker, sculptor, etc.—sufficiently gifted to capture and convey that beauty and honesty? 

Erotic art—including graphic depictions of human sexuality—would be included in any gallery, were it not for our mass lunacy about sex. 

The Abandonment of Reason Season

I hereby declare the seasonal holiday madness over as of today. It's time to get back to what passes for "normal" on this best of all possible worlds. I usually manage to ignore the mass lunacy that permeates the atmosphere (not unlike the full moon) from late November through year's end but this year the frenetic vibes really got to me. Mark Twain once said, "The less there is to justify a traditional custom the harder it is to get rid of it." 




In "Hamlet," Marcellus says,

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long.

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.

The nights are wholesome. Then no planets strike, 

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallowed and so gracious is that time.

How charmingly innocent. Today the bird of commerce singeth twenty-four seven...but my fear and loathing is not restricted to the commercialization of Jesus' B-day (and other "special days" invented by Hallmark and the florist cartel). It's more about the mindless adherence to custom. Our country is in peril, the rich are running the show, and way too many people actually give a shit who wins a brutal gladiatorial contest between muscle-bound meatheads. The environment is being stressed to the breaking point while "news" channels cover "American Idol" as though it actually merited serious reporting. 

Attention, shoppers and sleepwalkers: wake the fuck up and look around you. There's more to life than mindless conformity. And the clock is ticking.

A songwriter friend once closed one of his compositions with these lines: To make a song is all I mean to do/To fill the hours until the night has passed away/It’s like the day was never coming…

Experience Generates Reality

Experience Generates Reality

1. Experience is all there is. Experience is the absolute truth.

2. Experience is being, free of a survival identity.

3. Reality is being, encumbered with a survival identity, via amnesia.

4. Experience generates an illusion of reality, what we call the universe.

5. In amnesia, experience is restricted to varying levels of non-experience.

6. “God” is absolute experience; absolute consciousness: there is only One.

7. “Reality” is an illusion of duality; it exists in order to allow experience to experience non-experience.

8. Evolution is the process of awakening, of regaining consciousness: the steady reclamation of experience unfettered by illusion.

9. Experience is innate consciousness, independent of the five senses, the body, the brain, and the ego. It is the source of all creativity, intuition, and invention. It is the source of love and telepathic communication. It is immortal and infinite. It is the underlying true identity of the universe.

10. “Reality” is non-experience, dependent on the five senses, the body, the brain, and the ego. It is the source of all emotion, deception, suffering, and death. It is the source of fear, hate, and insanity. It is mortal and finite. It is an amnesiac illusion effectively posing as truth. It is a lie and as such can never deliver the satisfaction and peace only available in experience.

11. Experience generated the illusion of reality, what we call the big bang. At that instant experience was lost in illusion; the truth was lost in a lie. A boson, an atom, an electron, a star, a supernova, a planet in the Goldilocks zone, a unicellular life form—all represent experiences of non-experience with an observable trajectory and purpose: to awaken. The development of increasingly complex life forms with more sophisticated sensory capabilities, followed by analytical thought and self-awareness, further demonstrate this purposeful regaining of experience/consciousness. One might say that at the big bang, “reality” took control and generated non-experience. If one is born blind, the reality of one’s blindness thoroughly dictates one’s ability to experience.

When I was in my adolescence I always liked the “pulsating”  universe model: big bang—big crunch—big bang—forever.

A.   Experience generates “reality.”

B.   “Reality” generates the experience of non-experience.

C.  Ultimately, the experience of non-experience becomes experience.

D.   Experience generates “reality.”

E.   This cycle repeats forever.

  

Speak Your Mind if You Dare

What’s wrong with Christianity is what's wrong with politics: both are corrupted by money. A minister has to please the congregation in order to keep that collection plate full. Jesus didn’t give a rat’s ass what anybody thought—he spoke from his heart. He was, of course, crucified for his trouble but that’s not the point.

Or is it?

Here’s an example of Christ-like fearlessness in the early Sixties, from Taylor Branch’s great history of the civil rights movement:

In Baltimore, after nearly a decade of persistent negotiations, the city’s white and Negro Baptist preachers came together to discuss the role of the church in a time of racial tension. The meeting itself was a historic event, a gathering of uneasy strangers, and for the occasion the preachers of each race selected a representative to speak about their common religious heritage. The Negro preachers chose Vernon Johns, hoping that he would dazzle the white preachers with his learning. Indirectly, Johns was an employee of some of the white Baltimore preachers. His Maryland Baptist Center, which offered adult education to Negro preachers, was a kind of missionary program sponsored jointly by the white Southern Baptists and the National Baptist Convention.

On the appointed day, some 150 preachers met for lunch at the Seventh Baptist Church. There were no disputes over seating arrangements, the blessing of the food, the singing of “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross,” or the meal itself. But as the chosen white preacher developed his sermon on the theme of Christian salvation, of being “washed in the blood of the Lamb,” Vernon Johns began to twitch noticeably in his seat.  When the white man finished, Johns stood up abruptly. He did not wait to be introduced, nor did he begin with the effusive salutations that had been established as the order of the day. “The thing that disappoints me about the Southern white church is that it spends all of its time dealing with Jesus after the cross, instead of dealing with Jesus before the cross,” he growled, and a number of the Negro preachers already were sinking inwardly toward oblivion.

Johns turned to the white preacher who had just sat down. “You didn’t do a thing but preach about the death of Jesus,” he said. “If that were the heart of Christianity, all God had to do was to drop him down on Friday, and let them kill him, and then yank him up again on Easter Sunday. That’s all you hear. You don’t hear so much about his three years of teaching that man’s religion is revealed in the love of his fellow man. He who says he loves God and hates his fellow man is a liar, and the truth is not in him. That is what offended the leaders of Jesus’ own established church as well as the colonial authorities from Rome. That’s why they put him up there.”

To a stunned audience, many of whom seemed to be leaning backward, Johns sputtered through quick explanations of Dives and Lazarus, and a story about how God rebuked Abraham for driving a stranger from his tent. “There is a world of disparity between the idealism of Jesus and the practices of men,” he said. “But Jesus is not crazy. We are crazy. The church has not formally denounced the Sermon on the Mount. It has merely let it slide. I want to deal with Jesus before the cross. I don’t give a damn what happened to him after the cross.”

With that, Johns sat down again, having consumed no more time than normally allotted to opening jokes and bromides. Faces were red. Appetites were lost. The tentative brotherhood of Negro and white Baptist preachers in Baltimore was stifled as a collective movement, and Johns soon was asked to resign his position at the Maryland Center. He drifted off again to the sermon and lecture circuit. In his own gruff, impolitic way, the old man had spoken up for the same idea of worldly religion that [M.L.] King supported at the Philadelphia convention, with similarly disastrous results. 

                                                                                                             Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch, 339-340

What's Wrong With Us?

In the motion picture "The Matrix," Trinity tells Neo, "You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." What was wrong, as it turned out, [Spoiler Alert!] was that Neo--like everyone he knew--was living in a false reality: a computer-generated dream world.

Of course there's nothing wrong with our world, the planet Earth. There IS something very wrong with the human race. We--all of us--are living in another kind of Matrix; a false reality; a subjective mind-generated dream world. Because we believe this dream world is real we are insane. I'm not using the word "insane" lightly. Just because we have conveniently restricted the diagnosis of "insanity" to a more overtly disturbed minority, who can't hold jobs, who have to be medicated and/or institutionalized, doesn't mean the rest of us are in our right minds.

Notice that I said subjective mind-generated reality. The physical world, in all its perfection, is perceived by the objective mind: everyone with sight sees the tree. Subjective (individual) mind is the domain of value judgments, opinions, beliefs, tastes, customs, traditions, etc. that distort, like cataracts, our objective perception of the "real" world. It was the collective subjective mind of the Nazis that literally saw Jews as parasites in need of extermination. It is the collective subjective mind of one group or tribe to see all others as inferior. Hell on Earth follows: from slavery to persecution to exploitation to Doomsday. Fifty years ago today Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger because his subjective mind convinced him he was fully justified in doing so.

The source of our self-hatred, our shame, our blame, and our arrogance is our subjective mind successfully convincing us that it is objective reality. Subjective mind is the source of our insanity: the state of confusing subjective opinion with objective fact.

If we could suddenly see physical reality undistorted by our subjective bullshit we would be in paradise. The key to enlightenment is humility. I like to say,"You can't be any humbler than nuts." The fate of humankind hangs in the balance.

Read Kathleen Brugger's "We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity: The Mechanics of Compassion," which is based on our life's work, and presents this theory in detail. For a personal account of madness and transformation, read my autobiography "Exposing Myself: A LIfe of Sex and Truth."

Male and Female Survival Strategies: The Tusk and the Pit

The male survival strategy could often be likened to a bull elephant stampeding through the jungle and crushing anything in his path. The female would be crazy to stand up to such brute force, such overwhelming physical superiority. She therefore compensates by using her wits: epitomized by a deep pit dug in the jungle floor ahead of the charging male, with sharpened up-pointing bamboo stakes embedded at the bottom and the entire trap concealed by a delicate lattice-work of branches and leaves. The trumpeting, bellowing (and not-too-bright) bull usually doesn't stand a chance.

I believe that the lone alternative to flight/fight survival behavior is face: the experience of unconditional acceptance of what is (my definition of love).

Puttin' on the Om!

I once had a friend, now departed, who always asked her guests to join hands at the dinner table and "Om" before eating. My late friend Ernie Mickler ("White Trash Cooking") and I wrote a devilish little satire of this alternative grace. It's sung to the (approximate) tune of "Puttin' on the Ritz." We called our song "Puttin' on the Om!" Here goes:

When you sit and face your plate just close your eyes and concentrate then start to moan
Puttin' on the Om!
Facing North South East or West just concentrate and do your best to hit that tone
Puttin' on the Om!

Hold hands with the people right next to ya
Feel that cosmic current flowin' through ya
Do ya?

When your chair begins to rise don't peek or open up your eyes it's best unknown
Puttin' on the Om!

Hold hands with the people right next to ya

Feel that cosmic current flowin' through ya

Do ya?

When at last it's time to eat the foods all cold but you can't beat that primal groan

Puttin' on the Om!

Puttin' on the Om!

Puttin' on the Om!

Puttin' on the Ommmmmmmmmmm!

In Praise of Fools and Madness

We are all familiar with Alfred E. Neuman, the smiling unhinged mascot of Mad Magazine. His world-view is encapsulated in the rhetorical question, "What, me worry?" And he clearly doesn't worry, his goofy lopsided face is always beaming with a kind of beatific serenity. Is madness the key to Mr. Neuman's happiness?

Or take Curly Howard of "The Three Stooges." Easily the dumbest of the trio, his charm lies in being a classic case of arrested development: a child's mind operating in the body of a grown man. He is always upbeat and of good cheer. No disaster, no pummeling by Moe, can keep Curly down. Like a cartoon character he bounces back and is ready for anything.

Ditto Harpo Marx. Groucho was rapier-sharp, Chico was the devilishly clever immigrant, Zeppo was vanilla, but Harpo was the child; the fool; the mad--and mute--genius (The Fool on the Hill/the jester).

Jesus said "Except you become as little children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." A child is open to learning because they know they do not know. A child is willing to act like a fool because they have no rigid self-image to protect. The golden key is humility...and you can't be any humbler than nuts.

I'll leave this with one of my favorite quotes, from The Laws of Form, by G. Spencer Brown:

Discoveries of any great moment in mathematics and other disciplines, once they are discovered, are seen to be extremely simple and obvious, and make everybody, including their discoverer, appear foolish for not having discovered them before. It is all too often forgotten that the ancient symbol for the prenascence of the world is a fool, and that foolishness, being a divine state, is not a condition to be either proud or ashamed of.

Unfortunately, we find systems of education today which have departed so far from the plain truth, that they now teach us to be proud of what we know and ashamed of ignorance. This is doubly corrupt. It is corrupt not only because pride is in itself a mortal sin, but also because to teach pride in knowledge is to put up an effective barrier against any advance upon what is already known, since it makes one ashamed to look beyond the bonds imposed by one's ignorance. 

To any person prepared to enter with respect into the realm of his great and universal ignorance, the secrets of being will eventually unfold, and they will do so in measure according to his freedom from natural and indoctrinated shame in his respect of their revelation. 

In the face of the strong, and indeed violent, social pressures against it, few people have been prepared to take this simple and satisfying course towards sanity. And in a society where a prominent psychiatrist can advertise that given the chance, he would have treated Newton to electric shock therapy, who can blame any person for being afraid to do so? 

To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are being continually thrust upon them. 

In these circumstances, the discoveries that any person is able to undertake represent the places where, in the face of induced psychosis, he has by his own faltering and unaided efforts, returned to sanity. Painfully, and even dangerously, maybe. But nonetheless returned, however furtively.          

As the Moon Draws Water

"In spite of our warnings and explanations, it drew [Dill] as the moon draws water," Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird                                                                                                                                                             

Dill Harris was instantly hooked on the mystery surrounding Boo Radley; he couldn't leave it alone, he had to know, had to see Boo with his own eyes.

Some kids are like that. A mystery drives them nuts. I was such a child. I used to tear small holes in my Christmas gifts to see what was inside. Forget waiting or deferred gratification. To quote the infamous Reverend Ike, "I don't want pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by, I want my pie right now with ice cream on top!"

My curiosity killed Santa Claus when I was eight years old. I'd already begun to ask myself questions like, "We don't have a fireplace. Does he come in through the heat grates in the floor?" In any case I sneaked around and discovered  the stash of "Santa's gifts" and had to be told that the preposterous myth was a preposterous myth (self-inflicting who knows what degrees of psycho-trauma). Santa Claus: God with training wheels.

Death was also a mystery. I was, like many children in the South, taken along to funerals and "visitations" and the lame explanations for the smiling Grandmother lying in a big shiny box made not only no sense ("She's gone to be with Jesus in Heaven") but radiated a quality of evasion and uncertainty that I suspected would fit quite comfortably in the Santa Claus category. I used to conduct funerals for neighborhood pets and even considered being a funeral director when I grew up!    

When a mystery was freighted with a moral injunction it significantly boosted the attraction-factor. Surely the finest example of this is the Garden of Eden allegory. Adam and Eve had it all--including hanging out with God Himself--and only had to obey one simple rule: lay off the fruit of a single tree. We all know what happened next. Clearly God didn't know much about child psychology.

For me sex became the ultimate mystery and my fire-and-brimstone Grandmother made sure I was well-versed in all the Southern Baptist strictures against engaging in any form of it--including nudity --and made me aware of the terrible consequences of succumbing to lust. Thus when I discovered that sex was deliciously pleasurable...

I wrote this in a song called Swimming With the Sharks:

They told me sex was dirty except unto a wife

They told me I was jerking off the best years of my life

But somehow I saw different

And guilt was worth the price

To all alone or with someone escape to paradise!   

Desperately Seeking Rejection

I've been depressed as hell the last week or so, which has resulted in a falling-off of blogging activity. My book is finished and published. Now comes the task of flogging it, selling it, marketing it, promoting it--and the prospect makes me feel ill (in fact, I do feel physically under the weather today). I have long believed that wherever art meets business the interface is particularly abrasive. True art, I believe, springs from an irresistible compulsion to express one's personal vision of existence. I suppose one could say that business is also a compulsion to express one's vision. The difference, for me, is that with true art making money is never the primary motivation; with business making money is the whole point. 

But the artist has to eat and pay the rent! The temptation to conform, to compromise, to make palatable, to COMMERCIALIZE, is always beckoning. The more these siren calls are listened to, the more the art suffers. Commercial art is an oxymoron.

I once asked a successful screenwriter, "What if my script presents love as the solution to our problems but during the production the studio decides to change my message to 'killing is the solution'?" His answer? "Well, you got your money." 

To me true art is the honest--as fearless as possible--expression of the artist's take on reality.

Now Katie and my work--a philosophy of life is also art--says that we're all insane, that none of us have free will, and that we all hate ourselves. This is not an easy "sell." The last thing most people want to face is the idea that they're not in their right minds, not in control of their lives, and hate themselves. We have presented our ideas to quite a few "open-minded" people and I have yet to hear even ONE person say, "I get it! I'm not in control of my life, I see that my 'insecurities' arise from deeply suppressed self-hatred (born of not really knowing who or what the fuck I am!), and I'm literally insane for imagining myself 'happy' and content and satisfied with the way my life is!"      

Someone said, "If people agree with you you can't be ahead of the curve or revolutionary or original." True art requires the balls to starve if needed. Many have done so. 

Art is a communication. The communicator hopes, of course, to be understood, to be appreciated, to make a difference in the world. 

When you're ahead of your time you must expect little in the way of encouragement. Not to mention that artists are also encumbered with self-hatred, doubts, and madness, and can, as a result, become perversely addicted to rejection. After all, if I hate myself as a fraud and a loser, why should I be allowed success or recognition? And then the rejection feeds my insecurity: maybe I'm not on the cutting edge; maybe I'm self-deluded (aka full of shit). 

I once wrote, "Artists are usually discovered after their deaths because they are no longer around to sabotage their own careers." I speak from experience. I'm just becoming aware of how very much I've actively sought rejection.

I just realized that what I seek is confirmation of my story (the way I see myself). My story is that I am a loser unworthy of success.

My story says that I have always been rejected and always will be. So I seek/see rejection everywhere. Then another aspect of my story kicks in: "When I'm rejected I should just quit in protest."

Rocks Turned to Meat

Here's what science has to say about why we're here: Around fourteen thousand million years ago the universe spewed out of absolutely nothing ("One quintillionth of a second after the big bang, the universe was infinitely dense and zero in size." --Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris) and billions of years later molten rocks turned to meat and started thinking. I drew a cartoon of this in our first book The Game of God: Recovering Your True Identity and represented "thinking" as an egghead in a lab coat saying, "There is no God!"

My metaphysics is best summed up in a song I wrote for a friend dying of AIDS. It's called The God Almighty Blues:

God Almighty is the name that you all give to me

But God Almighty isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be

So hush your prayers, complaints and whines and hear my side a bit

I’m gonna tell you why I made a world so full of…it

You all think that being God is really where it’s at

Just lounging on a throne all day while chewing cosmic fat

With fifty trillion angel choirs all singing lavish praise

If you’re like me this scene would drive you nuts within two days

It’s true that all I have to do is give one small command

And there it is, just what I want, and I don’t lift a hand

How ’bout a perfect diamond with each facet light years wide?

No problem! I get what I want as soon as I decide

Limitations don’t exist as long as I am me

But that’s a limitation! It gets boring don’t you see

So I enter amnesia, what you call the universe

In which I savor all those feelings God can never nurse

Like fear and hate and jealousy and worrying ’bout the rent

Like walking up to my new car and finding a big dent!

Like falling oh so deep in love then falling out again

Like knowing that I’m gonna die and fearing how or when

Like having some old bastard ride my ass from nine to five

Like freezing down on skid row begging wine to keep alive

Like giving birth to babies and like starting to grow old

Like chasing after cuties and that rainbow’s pot of gold

So all of you who wonder ’bout the “meaning” of your life

It’s just a way that I can get a taste of toil and strife

By living out a life just like it’s really life or death

I play as many characters as ever drew a breath

Like Oonga in the jungle and like Bill who lives next door

Like Mary Queen of Scots and like old Fred who mops the floor

Like Hitler and like Joan of Arc like Blackbeard on the Main

Like Tom and Dick and Harry and like Einstein and plain Jane

Like Moses on the mountain like the woman at the well

Like Francois and Beethoven like Alexi Ho and Nell

Like Ala and Johannes like Mugobwe Singh and May

Like you and everybody else--just parts I like to play

Yes just for fun I let myself lose my identity

I trap myself in human form then wait to be set free

The pain cries out remember oh remember who you are

Escape this cage of flesh and let your light blaze like a star

So who you think you are is simply me there in disguise

I think you’ll find this makes up for the pain of life: surprise!

Yes God Almighty is the name that you all gave to me

              And life’s my way of passing time...inside eternity