Josh Kent's Blog, page 6

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Be sure to read this poem and watch the video prior to our next post

WATCH “Revival” by Beats Antique

then read

The Dance by Theodore Roethke

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
That made him think the universe could hum?
The great wheel turns its axle when it can;
I need a place to sing, and dancing-room,
And I have made a promise to my ears
I’ll sing and whistle romping with the bears.

For they are all my friends: I saw one slide
Down a steep hillside on a cake of ice, —
Or was that in a book? I think with pride:
A caged bear rarely does the same thing twice
In the same way: O watch his body sway!
This animal remembering to be gay.

I tried to fling my shadow at the moon,
The while my blood leaped with a wordless song.
Though dancing needs a master, I had none
To teach my toes to listen to my tongue.
But what I learned there, dancing all alone,
Was not the joyless motion of a stone.

I take this cadence from a man named Yeats;
I take it, and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.
Yes, I was dancing-mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.

This poem is included in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, published by Doubleday.

The Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing

The reading for this next series of posts is the Grimm Fairy Tale called, “The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids” http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/grimm/bl-grimm-wolf7kids.htm

“Dear children, I have to go into the forest, be on your guard against the wolf; if he comes in, he will devour you all – skin, hair, and everything. The wretch often disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet.”

In the Buddhist teaching of Seung Sahn, he described these important points of his style of practice:

“Don’t make anything,” he would say. “When you make something, then you have something.”

“Don’t check thinking, don’t check yourself, don’t check anything,” he would say. When you experience emotions, you might tend to attach a meaning to them, but he teaches to avoid the attachment of meaning to these emotions, which he describes (partly) by an experience of color. When you have emotional experiences, let them be what they are, “When red comes, red. When white comes, white. When anger comes, angry! When sad comes, sad!” These were some of his teachings. These teachings were meant to point a person toward zen mind. The activities and teachings are not zen mind, but they point you toward zen mind.

What does that have to do with wolves and children? Nothing, specifically, but this is meant to point the reader toward something about this story.

How familiar it is, the wolf pretending to be the mother, the repetition of phrases. Do any other stories come to mind?

The story activates other stories and images within your available stock of imagery in your head. When you read this story, it draws upon your symbolic lexicon, you involuntarily begin using the image dictionary in your mind. Stories like these light up the pictures that your mind uses to communicate meaning to you. You can add to this lexicon any time, expanding and energizing it by added symbols through stories, media, movies, etc.

When we are young, the ideas of the world and how we experience it are installed in us by the stories told to us by our parents and by our society. At a certain point in this human life, we become able to self select some of the imagery and story we used to expand our experience of life.  But the earlier images remain.

Additionally, there are certain stories and images that seem to arise from nowhere and yet are experienced trans-culturally. It seems as though some of our symbols (like those of dreams) emerge from some as yet unidentified store of images that have similar meanings in every culture.

When Jung, Adolf Bastian, and others viewed these images across cultures, they found that these images had what appeared to be both universal and local properties. Meaning that some images only appeared to be different because of their local translations or depictions, when in reality, they held the same functions.

Don’t check anything.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”

John 10:1-6

Introduction to Introduction

Money is a meaning-laden symbol that shapes our thinking far, far more than many of us would care to admit. Some of us admit this matter with a sense of pride, although they might not make the statement as such (in other words, via euphemism, such as “I have a strong work ethic”, “dedicated worker”, “ambitious”, etc.) Others direct their thinking into strong abreactions and anti-formations.

This symbol that inspires humans toward (or away from) work proves that we exist (at least we live our mental lives) inside a kind of architecture of imagination. We even let this structure dictate more subtle and personal ideas like self-worth and our own attractiveness. We allow these extra-personal structures to break into our inter-personal mental life and become internalized judges and set measures and boundaries for us. Rarely do we question them, and if we do question them, do we ever question them enough?

In the West, we live in a situation in which the more personally significant symbols have been bullied into the background. This grates on our more original self, or maybe our “actual” self (for our current life situation requires a virtual self). A life-energy that we were born with, that connected us to our mother and to the energies that existed before we did. That same life-energy with which more “primitive” cultures seemed to have a direct line has been obviated or occluded by these brash money and media symbols; but, these old energies have not disappeared. We perhaps have become unable to recognize them, but they have not disappeared. When they disappear, if they ever should actually disappear, all life will disappear, and we will not know that they have gone because we will then be the void and will not be. (yikers)

Since we generally lack the symbolic vocabulary to engage the originating energies, and assuming we want to reengage them, we must make a beginning of scratching away the occluding symbols of our current society, so that we can see the symbols that point toward and gives us clues about these source materials. Many religions are able to accomplish something akin to this with icons. But when other symbols block the way, we have to find a way to disassemble the blocking architecture. (Incidentally, this is probably why Atari’s “Breakout” has had so many iterations, the idea strikes home, but we wonder why this little game is so fun, frustrating, and why we can’t seem to stop…)

Some Buddhists do this “breaking out” with the Kong An exercises, some people do this with LSD, others may use sweat lodges or asceticism to remove the barrier and place them in the more direct path of these symbols and the energies they whisper about. While most of these techniques have their qualified merits, they are not all very accessible to many of us. Stories are.

Stories are accessible.

These next few posts will make an attempt at this kind of reintroduction. The goal is for us to be able to disengage the interruptions of the market symbols (buying and selling) and to allow for a reconnect with the source materials. When we are reconnected to the source materials, we might discover that we are able to sense that harmony which exists within us even now, but that we are unable to read or to see or to feel.

While other techniques can work, they can also be romanticized or be used to exploit people. These upcoming articles seek to present the symbols and allow for the reader to experience them originally, without a specified structure for that experience.

“The sun is in the sky everywhere, why does a cloud obscure it?” 1st gate of Gate 7 of Seung Sahn’s 12 Gates

The Magic Moxxee Coffee Jar Karma Experiment

Right. Rarely do I post anything that specifically involves the vertical pronoun, “I”. So, can’t help this one much.

If you go to Moxxee Coffee you must know that there are a bunch of coffee superheroes behind the counter, churning out perfect cups to every Charlie West goony bird who figures out what’s going on with the silver goats. I won’t name those coffee superheroes because I don’t know their names. But there they are doing what they do, with great precision. I hope everyone appreciates them as much as I do. If you don’t appreciate them, you need to enlarge your life experience.

When you get drinks there, sometimes they whirl their little iPad around and let you send yourself an email that tells you that you just bought a drink and even what your change was. Put your change into that jar. No matter how much it is. That jar is 100% magic. OK, the other thing that the email does is send you a little electronic punch card with Moxxee stars on it. When you get 10 stars, you’re supposed to get a free drink. Admittedly, I really don’t know exactly how to use the system and I am shy around the superheroes, so sometimes I would knowingly have 10 stars, but not ask for a free cup.

I go there so much and so often, that one day I decided that I would never ask for a free cup of anything, that I would always put my change in the jar and that I would see if anything good would happen.

You have to understand that I can truly say that I go to Moxxee at least once every day except Saturday and Sunday and on Saturday and Sunday I think about going there.

So, I am putting a good amount of change in that jar, and I am not asking for my free coffee, on purpose to try an experiment, a karma experiment.

NOTE: We only use words like “Karma” to make reference to an unknown force that some people believe gives back to them whatever they put into it. I am only using the word for lack of another immediately recognizable word.

What happened?

The first thing that happened was that I found $10 (two five dollar bills) on the parking lot outside of Moxxee. Sorry to whoever lost that, I gave $5 to a friend because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find money. I took it as a sign that I should continue the experiment.

Next, one morning, when I went there super early because I couldn’t sleep the night before, one of the Moxxee superheroes gave me a free brownie. I could not determine the reason, but, hey, why question free brownies?

Then, on another day, one of the superheroes was filling my order and said, “This doesn’t smell like Burundi” – which was the coffee I ordered. He gave me that coffee for free (whatever it was) and made me my regular order. So, I went away with two for the price of one.

Now, all that happened fairly quickly, and then there was a lull in the events. But, my faith was galvanized, so I kept on putting money in the magic jar.

Then, just a few months ago, one of my co-workers found an injured kitten in his neighborhood. Injured. Kitten. Ah, my heart. He brought this little critter to my office and I looked at her (and smelled her) and knew she had to go straight to the vet. She had some kind of massive wound that ran from the left side of her face all the way to her chest. My office mate nicknamed her “9”.

9 went to our vet. I dropped her off and got a call that night. She needed immediate stitching, debriding, wounds were septic, she could have FIV, you know a bad scenario. Knowing full well that the repair of this busted up little kitty could quickly move to over a thousand, I did something dumb and right. I told the doctor to do whatever needed to be done.

My wife and I visited 9 and kept folks apprised of her rapid recovery on Facebook and Twitter. She looked on most days like franken-kitty, stitched up, with a wound in her cheek so deep that they thought she would lose an eye.

We boarded 9 for three weeks, the initial surgery-fixer-up and long term care cost just a bit over $800.

Without asking for it. WITHOUT asking anyone. People all around me stepped forward and donated cash for more than 75% of those bills. I was handed cash, mailed checks, and found anonymous envelopes on my desk at work. THANK YOU TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE! It matters so much to me, to my wife, and especially to little 9 (kitty cat smiley face emoticon here).

9 got better and better and better and better and purred and purred and purred each time we went to see her.

What’s more than that, a vet tech at our vet fell in love with 9 while caring for her and took her home to care for her. What better owner for a special needs kitty?

This is why I am telling you that you must put money in the magic Moxxee jar.

Please experiment with life by putting good things into it, instead of trying to take good things out of it. If you put good things into it, you may get a huge happy surprise!

You may discover that there is a force that gives back good things to you when you give or do good things to others. You may wonder what that force may be. You may already know. TRY THE EXPERIMENT!

I don’t really think it’s the jar, by the way, but you should tip those guys and gals back there regardless, they are making the best coffee in the world, after all.