TO TELL THE TRUTH …

It came to my attention that admitting to the partaking of cannabis may, “discredit my thoughts and observations in the eyes of all but a few.” Which led me to see a whole clothes line of metaphors for the mistaken assumption that one may reliably rate the benefit of an idea according to ones judgment of the character of the person expressing it. There are a lot of flaws with such a premise, the primary of which is the belief that it is possible to express a truth more absolute than ones perceptions of it. To expect such veracity is to be lied to at every turn.

The first time I ran into this was recognizing it in myself while reading Carlos Castaneda’s series of adventures with don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer. Some of the occurrences he describes caused me to question the nonfiction genre in which it was published even with the latitude I’ve learned to give hallucinations due to consumption of nature's bounty. In doing so often enough I recognized the motive that caused it, obviating my ever making such a critical mistake again.

What I found in such reflections about the veracity in a variety of expressions was a remnant of the whole basis of religion, belief. I have said before that I had no religious education, but I now realize that just living in a nation ostensibly under any god saturates the population with the premises and requirements of the religion, no matter the pretense of separation of church and state. Just as the pope represents an earthly godhead, the president represents ultimate human authority.

This is the church
This is the steeple
Open the doors
And there's all the sheeple

I was questioning the nonfiction label on Castaneda’s books in a self denying search for authority, a reason to believe something that was already resonating kindred frequencies throughout my consciousness. When, years later Castaneda was found to be a fraud, I was already well over the need for external authority to validate the benefit his tales were to my expanded feelings and ideas. In reflection, I see that while indulging in an intense period of reading biographies of yogis and gurus, I had much less skepticism because of the unwarranted authority I granted them, despite them all recalling events that seemed as fantastic as anything Castaneda described.

Just the idea that we have fiction and nonfiction categories in literature speaks volumes about civilization’s requirement for faith in authority as the only source of benefit and the protection of its dismissal of personal observations to the contrary as anything from frivolous fantasy to hurtful heresy. What good is belief if we have to be told what to believe? The only valid meaning for the concept of belief, faith, trust by which the religious must make leaps to some external authority is for me merely reliance on the genetic memory that has evolved as the gestalt of my cells, a custom designed guidebook tattooed on my being. This allows me to live my life free of the burden of expecting or needing truth to be told me by any one and I can, therefore, not be lied to. I do not depend on anything that can be lied about.

I think I will just let this much go to post, and let the other flaws I alluded to in the first paragraph surface on their own as they are almost bound to in reflections evoked by such an outrageous rant. Eventually we will leave no turn unstoned as we uncover funky self reliance and original thinking hiding, stifled, bloodless, pale under the naturally crumbling concrete pavement of moral authority still awaiting permission to exist, to grow into the light.

Minds are not for making up, they are for blowing