DON'T TELL ANYONE

A Look at the Human Condition

~ trough poems, images, and quotes ~

PART 4

Foreword
(Revised)

I had on many occassions considered the value of our everyday thoughts and
actions and came to a statistical representation that 96% of what we say and
think is robotic sloganeering.
On rare occassions something surges in us and produces thoughts, words, and
acts of substance. Something that originates from within our core, and directly
relates back to our core. This, with a sense of serious humour, I refer to as the
twenty-fifth item. The other 24 are insubstancial, but this one has the punch.

A logical evaluation of the human condition, what we are and what we do, leads
me to consider the major player in the situation: that system of programs we call
"our mind".
If we place the mind under a closer scrutiny we can see it does not really serve
our innermost interest. It appears to serve our need for personal survival, but
only in the coarser sense of the word. It makes us endure life, rather than
actually alowing us to live life.
In this scenario of two mutually antagonistic forces - the body and the mind -
each striving to win our being for themselves, our heart of heart's desire to be
fulfilled goes forever unsatisfied.
In the course of this mind-examining activity we may also come to notice how
skillful our minds are in making promisses based on projections into a
hypothetical future, and making us believe in these promises.

The mind's ongoing mode of operation is insinuating personal fulfilment with one
hand, and forever withholding it with the other. For what end? Since the outcome
seems to be always a background sense of dissatisfaction, is it exactly this
subliminal sense of unhappiness that the mind wants to achieve with the body in
the first place?
The mind gives us placebos and soothers. In doing this it skilfully covers up the
real effect of its acts: the deliberate, ongoing and neverending generation of
subtle unhappiness - the first part of its business.

The second part of its business is to convince us that it is doing all it can to fix us
up in so many different ways, and make us good again. When asked: "Well, how
come I stopped being good in the first place, anyway?" - it goes dumb. Silent. It
won't answer. Every other question - yes. But not this one. In answering it it
would have to admit its true role. It would have to say: "You stopped being good
ever since I started running you."

Despite its nefarious agenda the mind can never quite obliterate our true
heritage - the heritage to be free beings run by no foreign programs imposed on
us by forces not originating from within us. And thus from time to time we
remember, in different degrees of intensity, our true status as incomprehensible
beings with the potential to keep evolving our awareness

The following poems, images, and miscellaneous quotes somehow, and in

different ways, pertain to this premise. Though seemingly disjointed, they are
still meaningful through the unifying intent of the desire to know. They beckon
and insinuate that there is something beyond our current terrifying and puzzling
predicament, something outside of this impasse of not knowing what, rather than
who, we really are.
Peter Faigl
 Yowie, The Spirit of Death, and The Southern Cross

Biami was the greatest of all the spirits. His magic was stranger than anyone
else's. He walked the earth.
From the red ground of the ridge country north of the Barwon River he made two
men and a woman. He showed them what plants to eat to stay alive. Soon a
drought came and the plants became scarce. One of the men killed a kangaroo
rat, and he and the woman ate its flesh. They liked it and urged the other man to
eat but he would not. He grew weaker and, despite their urgings, refused to eat
the meat.
Finally, he left them and wandered from the ridges down to the black soil
country. They followed him as he moved to the river and there, weak with
hunger, he died beneath a great white gum tree.
As his companions neared his body, they saw a huge spirit figure raise him up
and drop him into the tree hollow centre. The tree was lifted from the earth and
passed into the southern sky toward the starry warrambool, where the sky spirits
lived.
As night fell, the man and the woman could no longer see the trees, only four
gleaming eyes. Two of the eyes were those of the first man to die, and the other
two belonged to the yowie, the spirit of death.
To another people, those four stars were known as the Southern Cross. To the
Aborigines, they were a reminder of the coming deaths to the world. Two white
cockatoos roosting in the tree took fright at what happened and flew into the sky.
They became the Two Pointers of the Southern Cross.
A dreaming story of the Gamilaraay people, Australia
 Shared Reflections Separated By Eons

Top: "Australia. Songs of the Aborigines and Music of Papua, New Guinea" CD case art.
Bottom: "Tripple J's Hottest 100" Vol.14, CD case art.

Unexpected Turnaround

It was just three days before Christmas, high in the Rocky Mountains, when
some unexpected and uninvited guests dropped in on a young Colorado family.
Two men, desperate for drug money and a car, rushed into their home without
warning. They were wielding guns and held the family hostage over the next two
hours, ultimately deciding to kill them.
While the gunmen may have failed to murder the family in cold blood that night,
they did accomplish something: they succeeded in changing Leo Schreven's life
forever.
"After marching our entire family into the garage to kill us", Leo relates, "Mum
told them, 'You can't kill us, because this family is under the blood of Jesus. I am
a praying mother, and an angel will prevent you from pulling the trigger.' "
Leo well recalls that life changing event 32 years later.
"Afraid they would be caught, the gunmen pushed us into the garage and lined
us up - four in the back and three in the front. With one shotgun blast, they
planned to kill the whole family. But in three attempts to shoot us, the guns
wouldn't fire. As Mum prayed aloud, the rage of the gunmen grew. But they
realised something supernatural was holding them back. Mum yelled out, 'Family,
God is going to save us!' They cursed and told us to get back in the house.
"That was the transforming moment of my life," Leo says. "I saw her courage,
power and joy. She was ready to die and I wasn't. That's when I said I wanted
what she had. I had seen a miracle. And later that night, those same gunmen
shot up another family and the guns worked fine. That's when I realised the
reality of what had happened."
Signs of the Times, Jan/Feb 2010, Vol.125

An Irish Airman foresees his Death

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love.

W B Yeats; first four lines

 Edward Nolan, in "A Galaxy of Poems Old and New", 1970

The Sleepers of the Cave

According to tradition, these young men were from among the early followers of
the Prophet Jesus and were subjects to the polytheistic Roman Empire, which
was treating the believers of one God ruthlessly. According to their mutual
resolve they left the city and hid in a cave in order to escape death by stoning or
forced apostacy.
>If you had looked at them in the cave, if you had seen them, you would have
thought they were awake, whereas in fact they were asleep. If you had looked at
them, you would have turned on your heels and their sight would have struck you
with terror.
And in the same miraculous way, We raised them up again so that they might
question one another. One of them asked,
"How long have we remained here in this condition?"
The others answered, "Maybe a day, or part of a day."
Then they declared, "Our Lord knows best how long we have remained in this
condition. So let us send one of us with this silver coin to the city and let him look
and bring us the best food he can find, but let him be cautious. Let no one
become suspicious of him".
These young men were roused from their sleep in the same miraculous way as
had been employed to send them to sleep and keep them hidden from the
outside world.
 When the man went to the city to buy food, he found a changed world. The
polytheistic Roman Empire had turned Christian long ago and the language,
culture, dress, etc., had undergone a marked change. Thus, this man who was
wearing a costume of two hundred year old fashion and spoke a different
language from the one in vogue immediately became the centre of attention. And
when he offered an outdated coin for food, the shopkeeper looked askance at
him.
On questioning it was found that he was, in fact, one of those followers of Christ,
who had fled the city 200 years ago to save their Faith. The news immediately
spread among the Christian population of the city and a big crowd of people
gathered and followed the officials to the cave.
Now, when the Sleepers realized that they had risen after a sleep of two
hundred years or so, they lay down after making salutations to their Christian
brethern and their souls left their bodies.
The Holy Quran, translated & annotated by Ebu'l A'la Mevdudi;
Al-Kahf 18: 9-21, excerpts

Precipitous Possibilities
 For An Unknown Woman

Go, no more shall we meet;

You who are I do not know, nor you, who me;
but if they speak, the eye, lips, and face,
all is said, even without the help of fraze!

And days, months and and years will pass,

behind us the lazy world shall close,
but you more than sweet dreams' steps will remain,
more than a blossom glimpsed from speeding train.

Years later only, when the old tree trunk falls down
and is cut up - so many growth rings shall be found!
Oh, sweet dreams... You one of them shall be;
I do not know you, nor do you know me!

Jaroslav Vrchlický; transl. Marcela Rýdlová-Ehrlich (modified)

Neznámé

Jdi, my se nesejdeme více;

já nevím, kdo jsi, ty nevíš kdo jsem;
však jestli vluví oko, ret a líce,
vše řečeno, nechtˇ každý zůstal něm!

A dnové přejdou, měsíce a roky,

za námi zavře se ten líný svět,
však budeš víc než líbezné snů kroky,
než z rychlíku spatřen sladký květ.

Až po letech, když starý kmen se skácí

a rozřeže - co najdou kruhů v něm!
Ty jedním budeš z nich... O´ snové sladcí,
já nevím, kdo jsi, ty nevíš, kdo jsem!

Convergent Intent
 The Evidence:
1) Above, above. Reported in The Sun-Herald, Jan 25, 2005.
Four young people were interviewed at random in the street.
Then, in a different place, one and a half years later, a different journalist from a
different newspaper photographed -
2) Above, below. Central Coast Express Advocate, July 20, 2005.
Sculptor Scott Cunliffe with two of his sculptures.

Although they could pass themselves as father and son, Scott and Russel are
not related.
Although they easily could have, neither Carmen, nor Sophia sat as models for
Scotts' sculpture on the right.
Although the image below may suggest, Scott did not model his other sculpture
as a female version of Elie.
 As these people were not consciously involved in bringing about this
coincidental pattern outcome, what kind of power, if not pure blind 1-in-a-billion
chance, created this playful and bewildering alignment?
If such an invisible force actually exists (just like do the millions of TV images
streaming all around us without us having the slightest inkling of their existence),
is this power molding also other, non-visual, aspects of the world?

The sage is square-edged but doe not scrape, To be identified with your mind is to be
Has corners but does not jab, trapped in time: the compulsion to live
Extends himself but not at the expense of others, almost exclusively through memory
Shines but does not dazzle. and anticipation.
Verse 58, Penguin Classics The Power of Now
 Afterword
(Revised)

Anyone can find, or come across by accident, the evidence for this law of 'One in
Twenty-five', as mentioned in the Foreword, in just about all printed matter. The
problem is that we seem to routinely overlook it. The mind wants us to do so.
The moment the mind spots anything that threatens its uncontested dominion
over the body, it intervenes. It makes us skip the crucial information. Through
adult cynicism revelations are ignored or dismissed. Or they are disparaged.
Anything, but examined.
The selected poems, passages, and images do not, or not necessarily, express
my personal convictions. They are just something nI found. When I originally
selected them I had no pre-determined idea what I was doing nor what I was
doing it for. Over a period of some years whenever something I happened to
read or just plainly stumbled upon grabbed me internally, I coppied it in a journal.
Subsequently I titled the journal "Indications from Infinity" and subtitled it "Peeks
into Open-Endedness".
I am not quite sure what I meant by that but the name seemed appropriate. If I
am pressed to clarify my selection criteria I can do that only post facto. To pin
down what it was that made me choose one and discard the other I would say
that it was some sort of intensity I sensed emanating from those items. It was this
intensity that somehow arrested my attention for a moment and made me copy
them into my journal. The mind did not seem to be involved in this process at all.
I hope that the reader too will experience something of similar nature - the
intensity of wonder.

peterfaiglATgmailDOTcom YouTube channel: peterfaigl

~ THE END ~