NOBODY'S BUSINESS BUT MY OWN

      the little dog laughed to see such sport    

     and the cow jumped over the moon

Sometimes I wish I had been as casual with my earlier life as I am now. Earlier, it was about making money to get by with. The money to pay bills was my only motivation. On one job, the employer asked me why I was working there. My answer, the money. Response, then why don't you just leave. And so I did. I didn't understand that I was supposed to have some other reason to have a job. This is America. We don't care about anything but money. If I didn't need the money, you can be sure I'd have never had the job. I would get a lot done, but it wouldn't be production. I don't know how to live in a world that requires I think only in terms of money and pretend not to. It's the pretend part I have the problem with. The early part of my life was in the world of pretend. A few weeks ago it came to me for the first time that the first half of my life was in darkness and the second half in light, like two sides of a coin---the same coin, one side the opposite of the other side. It's been that way. I see looking back that it was coming to the mountains that switched my life to the other side of the coin, the side that before was unknown. Until I settled in the Blue Ridge I could easily say my mind was in confusion that could be called blindness. I didn't feel at home in myself.

The only momentum I had was wherever I was, I wanted to be somewhere else. It surely came from habit thinking living with parents wishing to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Then I get out where it's possible to make my own decisions and I want to be somewhere else all the time. I didn't know it then, but it was a habit pattern. It also could have been a knowing. In Charleston, I knew I did not want to live out my life there, always thinking about moving on, getting on to the next place, not knowing where it was. Falling in with Meher Baba was the turning point in my life, 1975, the 180 degree turning point. I saw it something like shooting an arrow straight up. Before, I was racing away from the source, my true self full speed, evolution, development of the ego. Eventually, the arrow's momentum slowed to a stop; it made a 180 degree turn and started the process of involution, returning to the source. I'm seeing the first half of this lifetime racing away from the source, inner self, development of ego, and the second half returning to the inner self, the true Self, shedding ego along the way. First half looking away from the Source and second half looking to the Source.

Anyplace I would go through this would have to be "in the world." I came to a much more conformist world in the mountains than the world I left in Charleston. I learned it is much easier to go your own way in a big city than in the country. Naturally, I would pick the hardest road for myself. Primarily, I picked the road of manual labor, living alone on a rural road. A monk's life. A pilgrim. Every time I meet somebody new they take it I'm lonely and need a companion. That never works out. I don't need a companion. That's not what I'm here about. I'm here doing "inner work" and not social climbing. I don't want to be in with any set. I know people from different sets and am welcome in a few, but that's not what I'm here for. I've reminded myself, "that's not what I'm here for," so many times I know it pretty good by now. I want to read a lot in a world of people that don't read. I want no television in a world of people that want television. That's wherever I am USA. It means years of turning a lot of people down, distancing myself from social games and sexual games. Distancing self from games. I like games like throwing darts at a dartboard. But not games like I-know-more-than-you-do and Come-here-I-love-you-get-back-I-hate-you.

The fact is, I bit off a bigger chunk than I could chew, as Confucious might have said. I started to say I bore down on it, but I also did not. In the long term, I did. In the short term, did not. That is to say, I just let it flow. The Tao explains it for me the best of all scriptures. If I had thought of it earlier, it would have been a good exercise to memorize verses of the Tao Te Ching until I had them all in my head. But the duty of memorizing Bible verses as a kid put me off of memorizing verses. I have copies near at hand to pick up whenever I want to touch in to it. I'm here on my own quest. Today I was questioned in the store about why I don't socialize. I tire easily of answering that question. My reasons are never comprehensible to anyone else. So I get caught up with you gotta, you oughta, you needta, you should, and I say, No I don't. Then somebody gets mad. And I say to myself, Shit happens. I've been suspected of everything from devil-worshipper to white-witch to I don't even want to know what else. I have some African masks on my walls that scare the shit out of a lot of people that come in here. It's nothing but fear of the unknown.

I try not to traumatize the people around me too much by talking about such things as reincarnation or the evolution of the soul. I'm thinking of a song I know by Taj Mahal, "ain't nobody's business but my own." I believe that's an important way to look at one's own spiritual life. I'd like for the Jehovah's Witnesses to catch onto that. We're a missionary culture, first off following a perverted form of Christendom that focuses on telling other people what to do instead of getting with self. And living with commercial interruptions on tv all the time telling us we're inadequate has become our collective belief system. I am not a commercial, nor will I think like one. I do not need Taco Bell. I do not need Burger King. I have no need for a car I can't afford, that I couldn't even afford a new set of tires for. I like to watch the videos of a new Cadillac driving on a highway in China carved out in rock cliff. Lexus commercials are pretty good videos. The high end ad agencies are making some fairly spectacular commercials now. I see them and I see myself in a culture of shopping experiences. I have it too. Not pointing fingers. I'm just looking at self and the world I live in from afar, looking at what I've learned in my quest to learn how to live in this world.


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