Bholanath
Jedi
Hello, Greetings and Namaskars -
Since I have been reading a fair amount of Cass/SOTT material slowly over maybe 4-5 years, and more recently, and have gradually come to learn of and trust the seriousness of the group, I am feeling at a point of sufficient confidence to sort of formally introduce myself. (I am normally reticent to engage in this way - illusory web anonymity? - I live a somewhat 'under the radar' life, and no computer.)
At this point SOTT is where I now first go for crucial information on all levels. Almost every other site I've investigated over the years is too "mixed", and its freakin boring and useless to waste my limited time on computers. My criteria is resonance. The clear viewpoint and approach of the work that you all do is, from what I've read so far, in major resonance with my own experiencial knowledge and approach. How else to put it? Whew, it's such a relief! Don't know how to even begin to thank you.
So I have "joined" in this forum. Like everything else, an experiment. Believe me, my hesitancy and reticence has nothing to do with any reason not to have anything but the highest respect for the primary voices, Laura and Ark. Wow, people! I'm just not a 'joiner'. Lately I have been reading Wave material, Splitting Realities, To Be or Not, whatever grabs me as timely and relevant to my own current situations/involvements. It's probably impossible for me (or most folks) to actually go through all the immense material, and as questions/reflections arise one always wonders if a subject is covered more elsewhere. I am therefor anticipating the need for occasional direction in clarifying C's responses to similar questions. I'm not really looking for "answers" (if I'm in my right mind), but I sure like hearing C's responses, to all the right questions too. Yes, indeed. And equally amazing and disciplined is all the correspondence between individuals examining and focusing as a group to "see" the underlying truth of situations and what constitutes crucial knowledge needed currently - those being parts of the articles.
A couple things that I'm mulling over here. Hardly anything I read in any of the material triggers in me any uncomfortable feeling-response. But I have 59 years of experiencing, and I still don't see everything perfectly clear, and I was pretty impatient for a long time (less,now). My own sometimes-need for clarity are about choices made which determined how I now live personally and professionally. For 36 years I have developed mastery in an ancient musical art form from India. Over time it has become more of a full-time "gig". I perform, teach, record, play for 'religious' occasions, and still study from other young and old lineage masters many styles. I'm an "american", but have lived mostly (after work) deep in a rarified 'world' of a big part of the spectrum of old-style to modern South Asian musicians and dancers. Not really involved with "western" culture, except to collaborate with jazz/celtic/flamenco/rennaisance traditional artists. (Friends say I'm barely American, mostly Indian/Hindu/Sufi/Iconoclast, but I'm ALWAYS observing my culture.) Never been trapped in a cult. Never been interested in "institutions of higher 'learning'" once I started learning things the apprenticeship way. I HEAR music with Indian ears, and much western music sounds foreign to me, to say the least! The science of music and relationship to body-mind-spirit is a deep subject I've long explored/researched as an independent "ethnomusicologist", and special focus on rhythm/time theory-and-practice. Also lived in (American) Indian Country for some years.
So the matter here is: involvement with RITUAL, which blurs into an unavoidable involvement with SHAMANISM. - C's said "_Ritual drains directly to Lizzard beings_ (Truth Is Out There). Hmmm. All these traditional art forms, passed down for generations, surviving innumerable calamities, were originally ritual forms (and still are) and the artists (channels?) participated in some shamanistic procedures in conjunction with "priests" "road-men/women" whatever. I know these artists to be of all levels of consciousness from contemporary personal experience. Our job is to be as clean in mind and awake as possible generally in our lives and particularly at the times of executing our form of creating beauty to give back to Creation. That is what we are (hopefully) taught in apprenticeship. The performance is a prayer in the form of focus, concentration, emptiness, trusting in the Creative wave, watching the beauty and energy flux so to respond accordingly, etc., and many other elements are involved from initiations. The "effects" of the performance/ritual are not our business. (It also feeds us like nothing else!)
So I spend a lot of time 'there'. I don't think many people today have a clue what kind of 'world' traditional artists, performers, and craftsmen live in even today - mostly in 'poverty' and marginalization; they have been primary targets for all STS control/elimination-groups throughout modern history. The catholics and nazis slaughtered thousands of gypsies, and not because they were dirty and homeless, but they are part of the streams emerged from ancient Indian/Vedic/Lemurian civilization, I believe. Conquistadors always sought out musicians and shamans for 'special' treatment in this hemisphere and in Africa.
I think I might have a lot of lifetimes in these oppressed cultures. I don't know.
Has anyone looked at the writings of Martin Prechtel, especially "Toe Bone and The Tooth"? Most moving book on Mayan reality in decades. Its a resonance thing for me. Modern-day shamanic reality-check, I think. Crucial. A Completely altogether different use of language. All prayer/praising. -Just wondering.
Never know if "choosing" this role ('sacred' music practitioner) is a trap or not. Was hardly a _choice_, as we 'coincidentally' arrived somewhere and the masters just gifted us with their timeless beauty and said, "it's yours if you do the work to make it your own, and you remain a clean empty vessel for the lineage to keep filling, and you take to heart our lessons on banishing the false-self-mind which interferes with all of our natural creative flow and you will confidently improvise in music and in life - at least it's worked that way for Indians..." (or something to that effect). An offer we can't refuse. It's all just being in class every day, showing up. I REALLY don't want to think that we're all just "feeding the Lizzies"! or something, you know?
Didn't know whether to post this on The Work, Music, or Rant, or what...I'm new, and not from around here.
-DJ Bholanath
Since I have been reading a fair amount of Cass/SOTT material slowly over maybe 4-5 years, and more recently, and have gradually come to learn of and trust the seriousness of the group, I am feeling at a point of sufficient confidence to sort of formally introduce myself. (I am normally reticent to engage in this way - illusory web anonymity? - I live a somewhat 'under the radar' life, and no computer.)
At this point SOTT is where I now first go for crucial information on all levels. Almost every other site I've investigated over the years is too "mixed", and its freakin boring and useless to waste my limited time on computers. My criteria is resonance. The clear viewpoint and approach of the work that you all do is, from what I've read so far, in major resonance with my own experiencial knowledge and approach. How else to put it? Whew, it's such a relief! Don't know how to even begin to thank you.
So I have "joined" in this forum. Like everything else, an experiment. Believe me, my hesitancy and reticence has nothing to do with any reason not to have anything but the highest respect for the primary voices, Laura and Ark. Wow, people! I'm just not a 'joiner'. Lately I have been reading Wave material, Splitting Realities, To Be or Not, whatever grabs me as timely and relevant to my own current situations/involvements. It's probably impossible for me (or most folks) to actually go through all the immense material, and as questions/reflections arise one always wonders if a subject is covered more elsewhere. I am therefor anticipating the need for occasional direction in clarifying C's responses to similar questions. I'm not really looking for "answers" (if I'm in my right mind), but I sure like hearing C's responses, to all the right questions too. Yes, indeed. And equally amazing and disciplined is all the correspondence between individuals examining and focusing as a group to "see" the underlying truth of situations and what constitutes crucial knowledge needed currently - those being parts of the articles.
A couple things that I'm mulling over here. Hardly anything I read in any of the material triggers in me any uncomfortable feeling-response. But I have 59 years of experiencing, and I still don't see everything perfectly clear, and I was pretty impatient for a long time (less,now). My own sometimes-need for clarity are about choices made which determined how I now live personally and professionally. For 36 years I have developed mastery in an ancient musical art form from India. Over time it has become more of a full-time "gig". I perform, teach, record, play for 'religious' occasions, and still study from other young and old lineage masters many styles. I'm an "american", but have lived mostly (after work) deep in a rarified 'world' of a big part of the spectrum of old-style to modern South Asian musicians and dancers. Not really involved with "western" culture, except to collaborate with jazz/celtic/flamenco/rennaisance traditional artists. (Friends say I'm barely American, mostly Indian/Hindu/Sufi/Iconoclast, but I'm ALWAYS observing my culture.) Never been trapped in a cult. Never been interested in "institutions of higher 'learning'" once I started learning things the apprenticeship way. I HEAR music with Indian ears, and much western music sounds foreign to me, to say the least! The science of music and relationship to body-mind-spirit is a deep subject I've long explored/researched as an independent "ethnomusicologist", and special focus on rhythm/time theory-and-practice. Also lived in (American) Indian Country for some years.
So the matter here is: involvement with RITUAL, which blurs into an unavoidable involvement with SHAMANISM. - C's said "_Ritual drains directly to Lizzard beings_ (Truth Is Out There). Hmmm. All these traditional art forms, passed down for generations, surviving innumerable calamities, were originally ritual forms (and still are) and the artists (channels?) participated in some shamanistic procedures in conjunction with "priests" "road-men/women" whatever. I know these artists to be of all levels of consciousness from contemporary personal experience. Our job is to be as clean in mind and awake as possible generally in our lives and particularly at the times of executing our form of creating beauty to give back to Creation. That is what we are (hopefully) taught in apprenticeship. The performance is a prayer in the form of focus, concentration, emptiness, trusting in the Creative wave, watching the beauty and energy flux so to respond accordingly, etc., and many other elements are involved from initiations. The "effects" of the performance/ritual are not our business. (It also feeds us like nothing else!)
So I spend a lot of time 'there'. I don't think many people today have a clue what kind of 'world' traditional artists, performers, and craftsmen live in even today - mostly in 'poverty' and marginalization; they have been primary targets for all STS control/elimination-groups throughout modern history. The catholics and nazis slaughtered thousands of gypsies, and not because they were dirty and homeless, but they are part of the streams emerged from ancient Indian/Vedic/Lemurian civilization, I believe. Conquistadors always sought out musicians and shamans for 'special' treatment in this hemisphere and in Africa.
I think I might have a lot of lifetimes in these oppressed cultures. I don't know.
Has anyone looked at the writings of Martin Prechtel, especially "Toe Bone and The Tooth"? Most moving book on Mayan reality in decades. Its a resonance thing for me. Modern-day shamanic reality-check, I think. Crucial. A Completely altogether different use of language. All prayer/praising. -Just wondering.
Never know if "choosing" this role ('sacred' music practitioner) is a trap or not. Was hardly a _choice_, as we 'coincidentally' arrived somewhere and the masters just gifted us with their timeless beauty and said, "it's yours if you do the work to make it your own, and you remain a clean empty vessel for the lineage to keep filling, and you take to heart our lessons on banishing the false-self-mind which interferes with all of our natural creative flow and you will confidently improvise in music and in life - at least it's worked that way for Indians..." (or something to that effect). An offer we can't refuse. It's all just being in class every day, showing up. I REALLY don't want to think that we're all just "feeding the Lizzies"! or something, you know?
Didn't know whether to post this on The Work, Music, or Rant, or what...I'm new, and not from around here.
-DJ Bholanath