Never pass up a chance to sit down or relieve yourself. -old Apache saying

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Swami SOTU

All hail the great Swami Beyondananda!  It is time once again for the Swami's annual State of the Universe.  And this year, like last year, it's very punny.



Greetings, Mirthlings!
Welcome to the state of the Universe — which is of course, everchanging, same as always.
Here we are once again in the here and now, just like last year at this time.
So … are you finally ready to live in the now?
Good.  We have been waiting for you.  What took you so long?
With time rapidly becoming a thing of the past (the calendar’s days are numbered, you know) people are living in the now like never before. Listen, I know. I was a futurist in a past life. But now, I have no time for time. I am living all the time in the TimelessSchedule Now. I think they call that All-Timers.
Meanwhile, here on Earth — or as it is known throughout the galaxies, the Comedy Channel — a critical mass of the heretofore uncritical masses are awakening to a serious truth.  There’s something funny going on.
Take politics — please.
America’s two political parties spent $4 billion on the last election and it worked — the American people were soundly defeated.  Once again the Golden Rule was overruled by the rule of gold, and the Constitution overrun by the prostitution.  The result is government in greedlock and rule by a one-party system where we the people haven’t been invited to the party.
We don’t exactly have a name for this new system, although I think Futilism describes it pretty well.  Thanks to government for hire, voting has devolved into an act of futility.  Whether we vote Democratic or Republican, we seem to end up with Dempublicrats running things.
Now some mystics — pessimystics they are called — would look at this shituation and see a glass 95% empty.  As an optimystic I take the exact opposite position. I see a glass 5% full.
Yes, there is good news.
An evolutionary upwising is afoot, and left and right are coming front-and-center around a new common sense consensus.
In Colorado and now two other states, this has meant legalizing cannabis.  So what does this mean, other than in the Mile High State you can now legally get a mile higher?  For one thing it means a blooming economy selling transcendental medication.  Science is now finding that humans have THC receptors in the part of the brain called the “hippiecampus”.  When this area is stimulated, people see farce fields and laugh at invisible jokes.
There’s an old saying — and I know it because I myself made it up many lifetimes ago — the truth shall upset you free.  Once again in 2014, inconvenient truths exposed convenient lies. For example, now everyone knows our government is spying on us, and Public Enemy Number One appears to be none other than — the public.  Maybe the NSA needs to be balanced out by another three-letter organization, the ICU — Independent Citizens United, where citizens who intensively care about the rule of law can say, “I see you” and begin to oversee what we have until now chosen to overlook.
From Monotheism to Stereotheism, and a REAL Conspiracy
There was another sign of the upwising in 2014.  Pope Francis took a stand for social justice, making the Catholic Church more non-dominational.  And boy, are those purebred dogma breeders upset!  It just goes to show that maybe you CAN teach an old dogma, new tricks.
Maybe monotheism is evolving into stereotheism, where the same truth comes from multiple speakers, in many different languages, and some with no language at all.
After all, there is no harm in harmony, and no sin in synergy.  And in the end, every dogma must answer to the same Master.  Maybe if religions evolve in this way, John Lennon could imagine “no religion too” becoming “all religions true.”
And for those of us who want peace in the Middle East?
Let us first try peace in the Middle West.  A first step is to quiet our own barking dogmas, and listen to the silence.  Instead of just following the herd, follow the unheard … right into your own heart.  Imagine, Americans from all tribes coming into the same space of silence, and breathing together.  Now that would be a REAL conspiracy, and could expose and help us overgrow the con’s piracy we have now.
The evolutionary upwising calls on people everywhere to rise above the identity issues that each side serves up as dogma chow, and instead focus on the identical issues we face now — like being passengers and crew on Spaceship Earth, citizens and denizens of Gaia.
So, come on you Gaians!
Time to show your species’ pride.  And time to evolve from children of God to adults of Good.  Yes, I know.  We are collectively in this awkward tween phase called addled-essence.  Our essence has been addled by obsolete myth-conceptions.
A Three-Step Plan to Launch the Upwising
So, how do we un-addle our essence?  How do we launch this upwising to turn the funk into function, and leave the junk at the junction?
I’m glad I asked that question.
I have created a three-step program that is mathematically proven to work four times faster than 12-step.
If we want to have an upwising, we must wake up … wise up … and show up.
We must wake up to the awful truth and the awesome opportunity.  Yes the world is in serious condition, largely due to our conditioning to be serious.  Seriously.
And if the problem is serious, then the solution has to be humorous, right?  So we wake up laughing as we recognize that we’ve been running around in circles, chasing our tales.  These tales usually tell us that happiness is somewhere “out there”. It’s a sure sign of the upwising when those who’ve been in hot pursuit of happiness get struck by enlightening and realize, “Gee, I must have run right past it.”
And in this moment of fool-realization, we fully realize our foolishness and laugh in our own face.  This is called self-facing laughter, and it helps us illuminate our world from the inside out.  People ask me all the time, “How can I uplift humanity?” I take one look at their doomy and gloomy expressions and I say, “You can begin by uplifting the corners of your mouth in a smile.” When you feel the levitational pull giving you a natural face-lift, you are literally overcoming gravity.
Hearty laughter brings us from the static of the head to the ecstatic of the heart, and we take the second step to upwising — we wise up loving.  It has been said that the more we expand our hearts the less we will need to shrink our heads.  Beliefs lie in our head, love lives in our heart.  So … are you going to believe those lies?  Or live that love?  When you sacrifice being happy for being right, you know what they call it?  Smartyrdom.
With laughter and love helping us wise to the occasion, we take the third step.  We show up, living and giving.  Each of us has been given a special gift, just for entering.  So you are already a winner.  We are all here to let our light fully shine — the enlightened ones call this full-filament.  It is true that the unexamined life is not worth living, and equally true that the unlived life is not worth examining.  To “show up” means to live life fully, and foolly, laughing all the way.  Make a bucket list of all the undertakings you wish to undertake before being overtaken by the undertaker.  Express your unique love in the world, and make your life a work of heart.
Bring your gift to the party, and show up for the greatest show on earth — REALITY!  You know, reality.  That’s reality TV without the TV.  What a movie we’re in!  A cast of 7 billion, and all of humanity is in the hero’s role.  And the whole world is on the edge of its seat.  Will we achieve critical mass before we reach critical massacre?  Will there be an awakening, or a wake?
As the great baseball player / philosopher Willie Mays once said, “That’s what we’re going to play the game to find out.”
I end this 2015 State of the Universe with good news.  When it comes to transformation, we have all the time in the world. And that time is now.
May we wake up laughing and leave laughter in our wake.
© Copyright 2015 Steve Bhaerman.  All rights reserved.
If you’d like to wake up laughing, why not enroll in the Wake Up Laughing class?
Swami Beyondananda is a noted social uncommontator and spiritual political pundit (If anyone punned it, Swami punned it first) and is the alter ego and brainchild of author and humorist Steve Bhaerman.  Steve and Swami can be found at www.wakeuplaughing.com and on Twitter @swamibe.


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