a r penck
Every day I see some in-yer-face current event that's heinous with text calling for change. Some want more police state, some want less. I laugh when it says to "tell" Boner, Cheney, other republicans, something or other that makes sense, something that reason applies to. Somebody like me doesn't tell a republican what to do. It's like speaking to a parrot, telling it what to do. The parrot bobs its head up and down. Get too close, it will bite. I remember what a gift it is when somebody who despises me stays away, won't go where I go, leaves when I turn up. I think, thank you, and smile big. I find it a truth that somebody I don't like for whatever is behind it, that person doesn't like me either. I've got to where I can just about tell what somebody is thinking about me by what I'm thinking about them. Dislike tends to be mutual, same as like. We're taught all through school it is necessary to be liked by everybody. No reason why, just necessary to be popular. I fell for that until it just fell away from me for being assessed not worthy of attention. Recently a friend was moaning because she'd found out someone we both knew did not like her. I said, Do you like him? Answer: no. There it is, I said, what does it matter if he likes you or not? Better that he doesn't like you so he'll stay away and you won't have to bother to stay away from him. I just heard myself say that, said it without forethought. It spoke itself. I heard it and made a mental notation for myself to pay attention. I added, you don't want everybody liking you.
a r penck
I found some good spiritual counsel about hating and being hated. That's some powerful energy to have coursing through your blood. Hate is close to love when it comes to power of the energy. Somewhere, and I don't remember where, in reading Meher Baba's discourses and sayings, he said that the karmic danger in hating someone is that I pull to myself whatever it is I hate in the other. Hate is a bar of soap. When somebody hates me for something about my character that he or she doesn't like, the hate pulls the reprehensible characteristic that I may not like having myself, pulls it to the individual doing the hating, taking it off of me onto themselves. It taught me to keep an eye on my own active hating. As far as I know I have no hates. I know of some who hate me, and I'm ok with that. I think of them as my friends scrubbing me good with soap, taking my trash to themselves. I say thank you. This one character I cannot name, though the name is so common there must be multiple hundreds of thousands of them, hates me so bad that when I come into view he starts shaking and finds a way to exit himself immediately. It cracks me up. I always speak to him, Hey, how you doin? And I'm laughing inside. I don't even care why he hates me. I just thank him for taking whatever it is from me to himself. It makes me laugh. I'm grateful in a big way that he avoids me first. It's just easier that way.
a r penck
Since learning about hate as a bar of soap, I welcome it anymore, almost flippantly. I tell myself to watch that part. It's like curiosity about the other side, over yonder, glory land, makes me almost flippant with danger. Sometimes I have to keep myself reminded. Not that I have a suicide problem. It's more a relaxed attitude about dying that makes it something I'm not afraid of, but look forward to. It's relaxing into accidents that concerns me. Like letting something happen because I'm not afraid. I have to remind self that I'm in the body because I'm meant to be in the body, so don't be frivolous with it. Don't take it too seriously, but don't take it too lightly either. I think of it as a form of being responsible. An awful lot of hate is in the air in this time, but there has always been hate in the air. Hate in the air is where wars come form. I've seen in people new to the county, mostly republicans who moved to the mountains to get away from the N word in the cities, intolerant toward any political opinion other than their own. I can't say how pervasive this is. Going only by my limited experience. One old boy quit going to the coffee shop because not enough cement-heads went there. One day talking with a woman who was retired Army, brilliant woman I enjoyed talking with, there came a time I realized she would be intolerant of me if she knew she was not talking to another teabagger. So I dropped the bomb that I'm a liberal. She turned her back to me and had no more to do with me. I thought: thanks, and had to contain my inner laughter so it wouldn't show.
a r penck
I see in a lot of younger people (to me, everybody is younger) an intolerance unspoken, unacknowledged. It is a common belief that if you don't agree with somebody on whatever level, you can't know each other. I find it not all the time, but frequently among people under my age. It's a shock for me, because I've known so many mountain people older than me for so many years and adopted their culture as my own. It was never a consideration among mountain people to dislike somebody because he has a differing opinion. The mountain way is the same as the old American way, that a man's politics is his own and a man's religion is his own. Democrats and republicans could sit around a wood stove in a country store spitting "backer" into tin cans, somebody telling about finding a bee hive in a white pine, "aint never seen narry bee hive in no white pine." The old people knew who was a democrat and who was a republican, same as they knew what church everybody went to. It was ok for a Regular Baptist to know a Primitive Baptist or even a Methodist. In the present day, I don't mean the attitude is unanimous to stay away from people with a different checklist of likes and preferences. However, I see enough of it to catch my attention after years and years of living among people who accepted others for who they were, not according to a checklist of tastes.
a r penck
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a r penck
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