Leonard Jacobson

(Redoing the intro) I like reading books and exploring mindworld, since it’s ‘productive’ and fun and you might ‘win’ various prizes the value of which are almost entirely what you decide that they are…. But of course, if you experience pain, (I guess Leonard’s words are, if you get lost), if you’re anxious and angry, you have to ask yourself if that’s really a Productive, fun, I Win, kind of a thing, since your mind is creating all that with the idea that it’s being helpful….

…. If you tell the truth, you do well, but the great thing is not to lie. No one can force you to learn French or biology, but whatever you learn, you must not lie. I believe that all chaos comes from people living the life of a lie, whether it’s personal or social chaos. Silence is a stern treatment, it is true. But it works.

…. Obviously it is impossible to know whether Jacobson is really a better teacher than Tolle or not, or whether I just heard him at a better time of life, or whether I was just apt to try mysticism and then reject it the first time, etc, etc. It’s not that important, really.

Jacobson is different from the kinda Stereotypical Mystic (which I guess I assimilated Tolle to), at times, though. Practice is obviously vital, the Mystic Aussie affirms, (not that you’re getting ‘Strine’ from him though, lol, some distinctly Melbourne thing, certainly not), but often action is also required, in this life and across lives maybe, to heal disorders or whatever inherited from the past life. I think Tolle in a similar place in his first book gave teachings about romance and relationships, so, everybody’s different (on the surface).

And, you know, obviously it is what it is. He might say God is Everything, I might say God is in everything; I think both of us acknowledge that we’re not to ignore God anywhere, or see incorrectly everything as an equally clear mirror of God, I don’t know.

But the point is—don’t listen to me, just give back the extra servings of suffering that you’ve taken on, if you can’t put it away, lol.

…. Re: two minutes every two hours (and yes I know I compare a lot too, although this time I won’t hit the mystics over the head with the relative reality of time)

I’m reading Gangaji’s book on ‘stopping’ (Diamond in your pocket—reading it again “for the first time” lol, as the first time I was really just trying to control my body and value my mind, as a controller, for the first time, so all the ‘for a long time you’ve subtly deceived yourself’ went right over my head because…. Because I was on the wrong side of thirty, I guess), and her advice about stopping reminds me of Leonard. So I mean, now I am, maybe when I move from reading in one book to another or something, just to take a few dozen seconds or a minute or something, I don’t count, like, set my watch, Two minutes!, because I guess her point is, we have a ‘practice’ that’s good, like, a formal practice, and also spending time reading or whatever in a permissible way, but there can be this fear and holding on, like the practice is really, I don’t know. I do this and I won’t have to feel the deep fear that I’ll regress or something. So now sometimes I’ll just sit with fear and feel feelings for thirty seconds or two minutes or whatever, so that my practice isn’t just “practicing suffering” and being in control—because then I really would be like the gossipers and the busy-workers, despite being externally more, good, or whatever. Just a more convincing control technique—convincing to me, if not to God.

So anyway I think Leonard kinda says the same thing, in a way, though when he said “two minutes”, it didn’t click for me. I mean, mystics tend to resemble each other very strongly, they’re not as nervously individuated as most people are. They’re all kinda detached and masculine that way (just let it go), but many of those things they say would immediately sound Uber-love-y if you heard women saying it (love, all is love…. The other is yourself), so I mean.

I don’t like concluding sentences.

…. I mean, it’s like Tarot. I do very vague readings on myself, it’s like, What’s missing here? And then I click the button and I get a reading and I look at it and I say, That’s immensely beautiful, and then it’s like, I guess nothing is missing, you know. I don’t have to translate and verbalize and sell like I was doing it for a nervous person for money. I wish even more skilled Taroters would do readings for me like that, but they all assume you know nothing yourself (some of them lie to you like, You’ll meet a girl and you’ll lie to her and you’ll be happy, like, Bad Philosophy), so I stopped going, you know.

But sometimes all you need to do is say, Beautiful!

…. After-word: Actually in my Christianized new age period I understood basically nothing about tarot, lol. I still almost get what I was saying in that paragraph.

I also disagree with my origin of vice thing in that I used the word ‘all’ when it was inappropriate, but I can understand why it was ‘important’ or whatever for me to think that at the time. (Very ironically.)

But I sorta got it, you know; it’s a good book, and I valued it. My life is less, what do you call it, ‘rule of life’, type of thing now—X minutes per day, and/or don’t go X minutes without meditating (Leonard was more the latter), but I do realize sometimes when I’m insufficiently rooted, and need to change my consciousness. I’ve recently started using crystals for that, which clearly isn’t Leonard’s thing…. It’s a horse of a different color, right.

But Leonard is fundamentally a very good writer, very true, and I might read him again.… (meer)

It’s true I don’t really have the mystic’s edge that Leonard does. (Ie, the present moment is God’s world, and everything you imagine is just ego’s world.) But I am beginning to remember that although there is much more—there is much more later—this moment is all that is given me now; I am given to relate only to this moment now. The present moment, like Leonard says, is God’s gift to us, and our plans are not the primary thing…. I don’t know. He might dig in and press his edge into the idea that there are any plans worth knowing about at all….

I mean, I think it’s possible he might benefit from being part of a religion with (inevitably) a non-mystic wing, you know. (He’s not religious.) If it leads him to press less on the edge, you know, the edge of the ultimate. I don’t know if it’s really true that the humanity that survives is only mystic and nothing else, as people sometimes say, you know. (Even if they won’t continue to be allowed to kill the prophets for all eternity.) But it is a sort of good, and maybe one day I will really integrate the mystic into me instead of just stumbling around in the dark about it, you know.

But there is really only all this, now—not later when I am fully recovered from this and that, (or later when I am crushed!), or later when I am before God and God says…. Were you the one who lived in Massachusetts; no that was someone else. Wait here a bit.

I only have to deal with what I am given to deal with; I cannot be the infinite ego, you know, that can plan out the end of things to my liking.

…. This right now is all this. And then something else happens, and that is all this. But always this one thing is all this. It’s never two different times. And that’s how you forgive, don’t covet, etc., and just generally don’t kill yourself, I guess.

…. I mean, the third topic (everything that’s not honesty or integrity) isn’t bad in itself, but it’s bad if you cling to it. And people cling to it. Sometimes people spend a few minutes on their ambitions, and other times lifetime after lifetime, lost in the woods, like he says.

It’s not that this life is always bliss, you know. Any time my expectations are disrupted, well, any time I have expectations, that are therefore disrupted—it could be something interesting, (lust/anger/fear), but it could be something more like an itchy forehead, you know. (ORIGEN. Mystically, the itchy forehead stands for the desire to philosophize. —Shut up, Origen.) I mean, when it’s like that, it generates unbliss, but on some level even then I know I’m not really waiting for…. I don’t know, I guess in the future, potatoes will evolve and they’ll have all sorts of new powers and abilities, right…. But I mean, I’m not really waiting for enlightenment, even if I’m not acting perfectly enlightened all the time, (some of the time, I am), or if I’m not in bliss all of the time (some of the time, I am), and whatever happens now where people try to take away from me what’s been given—I mean, Jesus is here, either way.

…. After-word: A pretty good review, I guess; given the inevitable differences between my Christian period and now, I have to say I basically still agree with Past Ted.… (meer)