The Mystical Lion

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. —Theodore Roosevelt, “The Progressive Covenant With The People” speech, Chicago, IL, Aug 6, 1912

Ashley St. Clair, who dated and had a baby with Elon Musk, says he admitted to her that he used AI and voting machine technology to rig the 2024 election for Trump.

Do you think the cow version of Satan invented crayons? The UnHathor? The anti-Kamadhenu? The ContraAuðumbla? I mean, do you ever stop and think just how many bovine sacrifices have passed through the grinder and into the hands of innocents over the years? And the deeds done with them? Scribbled kaleidoscopic chaos on living room walls? Hardened immovable blobs on car seats? Melted madness inside dryers like the paintings of a lunatic Pollock? Unholy communion ritual offerings dispensed to pets and siblings alike? “Flesh” colored bigotry?

The udder genius of it all! It’s positively cowabolical!

You call this entity “me.” But really this “me” is a composite creation of the nervous system. The functions of cognition combine with raw sensory data and, through reification, are psychologicaly solidified into the conceptual sense of self-identity. This is what spirituality calls your “ego,” your ever-changing mental story of who or what you “are.”

But you are not, fundamentally, your story. You are Life itself. You are Reality itself, presenting itself to Itself in this endlessly diverse and reflective manner. Reality is Self-Aware Energy in unceasing metamorphosis, and That never dies; It merely, constantly, lovingly changes form.

You—the individual self—are a momentary function of Reality. But fundamentally you are nothing less than that very same Reality itself. Existential anxiety is thus a deeply held but mistaken concept, nothing more, a conviction born of ignorance (of the actual facts of existance), born from an unexamined sense of identification created and contained entirely within the confines of the brain-mind. It is ultimately an illusion.

Understand all of this—explore and feel your own underlying Realness rather than exclusivly identifying with the passing phenomena of the body and brain-mind—and the underlying anxiety that governs most of your life and behavior will slowly dissolve.

As an individual entity, a person, you will die; face this and accept it fully. But as Reality, you will not. Face and accept this fully as well, and you will finally, really start to live.

Bruce Lindner

By now I’m sure you know, CBS fired Scott Pelley yesterday. On his way out the door, Pelley published his own treatise about the situation, which I’ve copied and pasted below the dotted line. That fourth paragraph is a stunning revelation:

“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

A few weeks ago, 60 Minutes interviewed Bibi Netanyahu. To call it an interview is a misnomer, as it came across as more of a P.R. stunt. And who was the interviewer? Major Garrett.

Who? Is he even a 60 Minutes correspondent? Nope.

Has Major Garrett EVER been given an opportunity to do a 60 Minutes segment? I’ve never seen him do one, and until just recently, I rarely missed the show. No offense to Mr. Garrett, but he’s no Mike Wallace. He’s no Lesley Stahl or Scott Pelley either, which explains why Bibi chose him for that “hard-hitting” exposé. He made his bones at Fox News after all, so this sort of “journalism” is probably S.O.P. to him. Now we know why he got the nod; Bibi no doubt tapped him personally.

Pelley seems relieved to be out of there. He had to know they were going to fire him, and it just seems that he’s at peace with how it played out. He kept journalistic integrity first and foremost, even before his career. That’s what REAL journalists do. The cowardly propagandistic types go along to get along.

Mr. Pelley:

“There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”

There are many ways to pass from this world,

From silence to violence,

From killing to willing,

From hope to rope.

The inevitability of transformation embraces equally,

But the expression of the transition depends entirely on the path thus far.

Love and craving, freedom and fixation: relationship is everything,

Because everything is relationship.

Many flavors: One taste.

Do not be afraid.

Dying is painful,

But Death itself is peaceful.

Possibility expands to fill the in-between.

In every heart, a heaven and hell

Are spilt like salt,

Like blood and tears.

When the shell finally shatters,

Fears are faced in fractured mirrors

As memories scatter like flowers.

Haunts and wants, prayers and regrets, shiver and shimmer and fade away.

Do not be afraid.

In the Bardo of the Jaws of Death,

Dissolution is measured, layered,

An inexorable peeling away of elemental familiarity.

Earth into Fire into Water into Air into Space,

The constructed self dissolves like mist in the morning sun,

History into Mystery.

Evasion is unlikely. Defenses fail. Momentum prevails.

The continuity of karma assures a fixed and fated if faithful unfolding.

The reflexive response of fear does the rest.

Only Grace and Wisdom can intervene, but this has always been the case.

Choice is still possible at this point.

At any point, really.

But most never reach out. Most never even know how.

Do not be afraid.

Many things must still be understood

After understanding is no longer available:

That creation is incessant,

And cessation is a lie,

That solitude is impossible,

And faith, a lullaby,

That emptiness is seething fullness,

And time an empty notion,

That thoughts are mere expression,

Like waves amid the Ocean,

That Life is its own meaning,

And Love its own desire,

And Bliss is just the subtle kiss of this all-consuming fire.

Do not be afraid.

Preparation is essential.

Release must be relearned.

Trust, even more so.

Grasping-and-rejecting run neuron deep,

Survival deeper still.

All pain comes from trying to hold onto movement-and-change,

But it is all just movement-and-change,

The magical display of Awareness.

Resistance is absurd and impossible.

Nothing is really happening.

Nothing ever has.

Essence remains immutable.

Do not be afraid.

Awareness is boundless.

Recognition is liberation.

Truth is freedom.

All reactivity simply spins the Wheel.

Release the final contraction.

Ease back into Being.

Do not be afraid.

****🙏****

Shufu Miyamoto (Japanese Artist, born 1950)

"Moonlight", 1994.