The truth might set you free, if you aren't so brainwashed that you have become an artificial intelligence

 

The other day, I accepted a Facebook friend request from someone, because his FB bio showed he and I had attended the same high school and college: The McCallie School, in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Vanderbilt University, in Nashville.

This from him, then showed up in my FB timeline:

Joseph P. Walker III
March 8
First off, we all need to be thankful that our country has a citizen like Tucker Carlson that is ferreting out the lies that seem to spring daily from DC and their chorus of sycophant nattering Media. Unless one is deaf, dumb and blind or irrationally partisan, the released January 6th tapes reveal that our Democratic Party as well useful Republican toadies have lied often and loudly about the January 6th Insurrection. Let me be specific, there never was an insurrection. For 26 months we have been fed this political hog wash for the expressed purpose delegitimizing the Presidency of Donald Trump and to take whatever steps necessary to prevent him from future office; while at the same time jailing many so called insurrectionists with out trial. Now is the time that we recognize that our free press in so many ways has become a propaganda tool of one political viewpoint while at the same time our Constitutional right to a fast and fair trial has been denied too long within our judicial system. And sadly after viewing these tapes, our court system may have convicted fellow citizens even though the tapes themselves reveal exculpatory facts that would have thrown some cases out of court or mitigated harsh sentences. I am personally disgusted with this trampling of our rights, and I hope you are too. We can and must rectify this miscarriage of truth promptly.

Gay
Well said!

Patty
Excellent !!!! Such insane times,,, little integrity…..

Chris
Well said Joe!

Kay
Thank you Joe for laying this out!

Isabel
Nailed it!

Sloan Bashinsky
This Independent asks where were you MAGA folks when Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence and the Capitol Police blasted Donald Trump right after this peaceful demonstration below, which Ivanka and Jared had tried to get Trump to deal with a lot quicker than he finally did? Have you folks been paying attention to what Tucker's boss Rupert Murdock is saying about FOX news reporting of Jan 6 and the stolen election claims?

 

 

 

Cindy
Omg what drugs are you on that you would actually believe all that hogwash you are preaching? It appears you were paid by ol mafia Don Trump himself and speaking of trampling on rights, how about the trampling of the rights and the persoñage of 100 police officers. Did you ñot see the live footage?

Joseph P. Walker III

Cindy l after reading your FB blurb, I think you are not a real person ; just a mish mash of information that is beneath the experience of someone supposedly born in 1947. What ever you say you are has used any inferior AI creation. If you wish to draw rhetorical swords with me come out of the shadows or bugger off.

Cindy

Joseph P. Walker III lol. I'm not real? Ask my admirers . Have you seen my picture?

The birthdate is to ward off the crazies. Looks like it didn't work

Joseph P. Walker III

Cindy Getting back to the original topic Jan 6th 114 Officer's injured ( acknowledged as bad by Tucker Carlson) but no officers were killed. In fact any officers who died well after Jan 6th were suicides and no one except God really knows the reason. General Garland repeated the same lies about Jan 6th. After Fox had viewing of videos Monday night. You are certainly welcome to continue believing what isn't true like, insisting the World is flat when in fact it isn't. But your poltical bubble has been irrevocably popped.

Cindy

Joseph P. Walker III OMG lol. So you believe those suicides were not instigated by the actions of those red necked, gullible insurrectionists.

Joseph P. Walker III

Non potes figere stultus!!!

GTH!!

Sloan Bashinsky

Cindy You might as well try persuading a snake that it isn't a snake. I have no fondness for the Democrats, nor for the Republicans. Two cults, or, if you will, religions, which cherrypick facts and reality to suit their lemming-ness. No, I'm not a Libertarian. I'm a human.

Cindy

Sloan Bashinsky talk about drugs! What the hell are you talking about? I have no idea what you are responding to. Just another erratic, nonsensible, blind trumper

I suppose.

Sloan Bashinsky

Cindy Gosh, I don’t see how even a blind Trumper could in 10,000 years think I’m a Trumper, whose lemmings have elevated him above Jesus and God. Please reread my comments here.

I can’t imagine why Jospeh Walker sent me a friend request, yesterday, I think. I suppose he didn’t check out what I post at my FB page.

Cindy

Sloan Bashinsky who is Joseph Walker?

Sloan Bashinsky

Cindy The fellow who launched this inane Tucker propaganda, with whom you have been fencing :-)

Looks to me that he, Tucker Carson and their ilk are AIs, robots, lemmings. The same can be said of most lefties. The facts, the truth, don't pick sides, but are what they are.  

 

Cindy Woodall
Sloan Bashinsky Why can't Trump's cult accept this.truth?

Sloan Bashinsky

Cindy Woodall Looks to me they can't see anything they don't want to see, which I imagine pleases the Devil. The left is like that, too. They have made their politics their religions, and they have to be loyal. 

 

Cindy Woodall

Sloan Bashinsky I definitely see Trump as being the closest thing to an anti-christ that the world has ever seen, and I'll bet he'll skate by his present troubles. Satan protects his disciples

Sloan Bashinsky

Cindy Woodall I hope not

Cindy Woodall

Sloan Bashinsky hope not what? Which statement?

Sloan Bashinsky

Cindy Woodall he doesn’t skate

Cindy Woodall

Sloan Bashinsky pray he finally receives what he deserves!

Sloan Bashinsky
Cindy Woodall I don’t pray that way, because I think it’s God’s call.

Joseph P. Walker III
Sloan Bashinsky I didn't friend you because of supposedly shared political views but because I thought you are interesting and I haven't been dismayed from that view. I will say this we all Left, Right Center and Independent have been abused by our political leadership for a long time on a lot of fronts and it's time for the average American to wake up from it's Rip Van Winkle sleep and realize that the People created this government and not the other way round. As for Tucker Carlson, I found all of his interviews have been provocative and interesting and importantly He seems to pick interviewees from differing occupations,and political viewpoints but gives them much more free rein to express themselves than the typical three minutes sound bite his competition allows. As for my views I am unabashedly Rightist so long as I and others are allowed the right to speak freely about the judgement and mistakes of our political leadership.I find that media people in the vein of Tucker Carlson know how to skewer fools that had the American public not been asleep in 2020 would never have voted for in the first place. Hopefully the American voter won't fall for the gibberish mouthing of our current POTUS in 2024.

Sloan Bashinsky
Joseph P. Walker III, after the Jan 6 insurrection, didn't Tucker Carlson give free reign to people on his show, who were hollering the election had been stolen, and privately Tucker was saying those people were making shit up? Hasn't Rupert Murdock, Tucker's boss, been saying the same thing, lately? Tucker reminds me of a very young man still trying to prove himself, and he will go to great lengths to try to do it.
The problem with being unabashedly right, is the same problem as being unabashedly left. You can't be objective, clinical, about what you have made into your religion.
As far as your tolerance for people who don't agree with you, you wrote this to a woman you don't even know, who called you out on your Tucker Carson post:

Joseph P. Walker III

Cindy Woodall after reading your FB blurb , I think you are not a real person ; just a mish mash of information that is beneath the experience of someone supposedly born in 1947. What ever you say you are has used any inferior AI creation. If you wish to draw rhetorical swords with me come out of the shadows or bugger off.

Looks to me the Republican, MAGA and Democrat religions consist of programmed AIs, robots, clones.

 

When I attended The McCallie School, it was run by hard-core Presbyterians: one of the founders and his two sons. We were required to attend chapel service every week day morning before class and every evening before dinner, and every Sunday evening. We had to attend a church service in Chattanooga on Sunday morning. We got Saturday off. We had to wear pretend military attire and march every week day carrying empty M1 carbines, which we had learned to field strip and reassemble.

Old Testament and New Testament were required courses. The founder taught the New Testament Course. He said he believed the Soviet Union leader, Nikita Kruschev, was the Anti-Christ, and we might be called to pick pup our M1 Carbine's, for which we had no ammunition, to defend America. He said he believed he was one of The Elect. He said that he and his wife of 60 years had sex three times. Twice to have children, and once for pleasure, and he had regretted the third time ever since. His poor wife.

Vanderbilt was a liberal arts university with an excellent engineering department and medical school, a divinity school, a lousy football team and a good basketball team. I mostly majored in my fraternity, socializing, drinking beer, intramural sports and meeting and falling in love with my first wife. I had no fucking clue what lay ahead. Had I known, I might have drank a whole lot more beer.

Instead, I enrolled in the University of Alabama School of Law, in Tuscaloosa, where I would watch some very good Crimson Tide football teams led by Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, whose Sunday afternoon TV replay show was sponsored by Coca Cola and my father's Golden Flake Potato Chip Company. "Great pair, says the Bear."

Little did I know what lay ahead. Had I known, I would have drunk a lot more beer and smoked a lot of marijuana.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Why I write poetry, or why poetry writes itself?

This below was posted at an online group I found in early 2023.

Poetic Outlaws

Why I Write Poetry

By: Julia Vinograd

Because I can't trust God

to look after the world and my friends.

Worship sure, wandering forests of legend

braiding flowers from the Tree of Life in my hair

while God's beard storms overhead.

But not trust. People die. Everyone dies.

It may be God's will but it's my won't.

Sea turtles live a thousand years.

My words can't become flesh.

My words can't heal an open wound.

But I am a poet and I know we need more time

to make our own huge splendid mistakes,

mistakes we deserve, not just the small clinical mistakes

built into out bodies.

We could have many-colored rings spinning around our minds

like the rings of Saturn.

We could map constellations around a lover's face

and every child could be the Messiah

because the world always needs saving.

God, it is a very beautiful world,

but no thank you, it is not enough.

No thank you for the sunrise when our eyes go blind.

A blank page is a place to list the creation

we weren't given. A shopping list of eternity

where we're never too sick to swallow fresh blueberries

and where the dance never ends.

A blank page is a paper bird to fold up and fly.

I can't change anything but I am a poet

and if I can't trust God I must speak

for the world and my friends.

Want more. Want so much more.

Test each day and night for ripeness

like a melon at the market.

You're crucified on the hands of a clock,

pull out those nails.

I'm throwing you a rope of words.

Hold on.

Julia Vinograd was a revolutionary street poet who threw bubbles instead of bricks. Her poetry was profound and she had a keen eye on what was happening in the world. She felt the suffering of the human race deeply and beautifully captured it in her poetry.

A feature documentary is being made right now about this important street poet titled: ‘Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone'. Check out her incredible story and sign up for the newsletter. Any support to help complete the first cut of the film would be greatly appreciated.

To read a few interviews with the great filmmaker, Ken Paul Rosenthal, check these out— Reaching The Head Through The Heart in Between Spirit and Stone and A Closer Look: On Making Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone

Appreciate you all keeping OUTLAW POETRY alive and thriving!

Sloan Bashinsky

Beautiful. 

I lived off and on the street maybe 6 years. Poetry started erupting out of me in the early l990s, before I was homeless. A 4-year dark night of the soul came, and a great deal of luminous and other poetry with it. I knew God existed, whereas before, I had only believed. A black night came, and there was nothing brewing in me but plotting every day how to kill myself, for 16 months. I was resurrected from that dead zone by something clearly not of this world. The first stint at being homeless came and lasted a few years, as more poetry came, some of which I could not assign to my own creation. I was not homeless and more poetry came. I was homeless again, and very little poetry came. Very little poetry came since then. Since late 2017, I'm not homeless. I'm 80. When I wrote poetry, it was because it just came out of me. I did not sit down to try to make a poem. The poem sat me down to show me something about me, about life, and about much more. I came to view all of life as poetry.  

 

Sheila
OMG! Your reply, which in fact is itself a poem, literally made me gasp ..an adjective for which I'm struggling to find... it was positively powerful.

Sloan Bashinsky
There's nothing like seemingly endless grindings into dust and oblivion to season a soul and however it expresses on this small backwater planet in an unfathomable universe, which I seriously doubt just up and came into being without a little nudge from ... something ... 

 

This poem leaped out of me shortly before I was diagnosed with life-threatening MRSA flesh-eating bacteria, when I was homeless in Key West, 2003.

I AM A MAN  

 

I am a man. 

 

I said,

I am a man! 

 

What means it,

being a man? 

 

A man is a warrior:

he lives by a code of honor,

his word is reliable,

his actions confirm his words,

his commitment is holiness,

his enemies are welcome at his hearth,

he fears but moves forward,

he cries and gets up again,

he hates but forgives,

he loves and let’s go,

he doubts but trusts God,

he’s a good friend,

he seeks resolutions,

he demands nothing,

he risks everything,

he regrets his mistakes,

he seeks to make amends,

he puts others’ welfare first,

he accepts apologies truly made,

he expects nothing back,

he lives ready to die,

he laughs when he “should” scream,

he screams when he “should” laugh,

he sings just because,

he shrugs off insults,

he learns from misfortune,

he cusses God for making him,

he wishes he was done,

he loves children and animals,

he relishes a woman’s scent,

he smiles when he’s content,

he knows God’s his master,

he walks in rainbows,

his garden is the world,

his way is nature,

he loves fishing,

his wife is his soul,

his food is life,

his pay is whatever he receives.

Yep, he’s crazy.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

spirituality, sex, kundalini, gurus, Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and beyond

For quite a while now, I've wondered how Christendom still reads the stories about Jesus and Magadalene in the Gospels, yet does does not see they were a couple in every way. I mean, if she publicly kissed his bare dirty feet and washed them with. her own tears and hair, and then anointed them with precious ointment she scarce could afford what did she wash and anoint him with when they were in private? 

And, of the three women who saw Jesus at the tomb after his near-death experience, who'd he tell to go to the men disciples in hiding and tell them she had seen him and he had sent her to tell them he would be with shortly? It was not his mother or the other woman there. It was Magdalene he sent. Jesus never did anything by happenstance. He wanted the cowardly male disciples to know who was the most important to him. His wife. 

I knew that before I read HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, which should be required reading for every teenage and adult Christian.

Meanwhile, in an online spirituality group where I don't think I've seen anyone close to being a Christian, this question was posted. (I'm Puzzleheaded)

Ambz

Does anyone else start to feel aroused and sexual when embracing spirituality or is it just me and I am odd??

Doesn't happen every time or with everyone but I definitely have noticed when talking aboit spirituality and getting deep into it I can have weird thoughts for the other person if I am feeling very connected such as a fleeting thought of hugging or kissing them and yes the odd time ( down below can get frisky)....
😂
I am 28f for the record and I do not know if this is normal but it's happened for as long as I can remember and especially if I am feeling love or warmth from feeling connected with someone...

I feel weird about it and I don't think this would be common!? 

 

Plum

A lot of people sexualize themselves and others when they experience spiritual energy. It is normal and should be taught openly as an experience on the path. A lot of spiritual teachers are trained on how to deal with students who approach or manipulate them sexually. And obviously a lot of leaders and teachers also know this and either fall for their own influence, or apply it on purpose. 

 

This is also why world leaders, and CEO's are at the top of the sexual hierarchy. It is normal though. And needs to talked about openly to clear everyone's conscience and purify the mind and body of distractions. If you are sexually aroused, ask yourself what it is that you want to create, or become. These 'feelings' enter the body and move the lower energies for material creation, which includes sexual union. Mastrubation helps, and I am a big fan. But honestly there is something deeper going on. And pursuing that is part of the inspired way of life.

Puzzleheaded

Well, said, Plum, except I'm not sure the lower chakras are any less nor more important than the upper chakras, which all together, in or out of harmony, make up a much greater whole.

Puzzleheaded

I'm 80, and probably am past the sexual arousal stage, but I went through it in many heterosexual ways and variations. I made my share of bad decisions with being intimate with women, and I made some good decisions, as well.

My question to you, Ambz, is, you didn't feel sexual arousal before you embraced "spirituality"?.

My suggestion to you is, whenever you feel sexual energy with someone else, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with "spirituality". It very well could be "projection", seeking missing parts of oneself, what mental health workers call "transference." So, take it slow, see if it keeps showing up between you and another person. And if you and/or the other person already are involved in another intimate relationship, then perhaps best you don't have sex, unless you want to complicate your life in ways you perhaps cannot possibly yet imagine :-).

Some people say sexual urges are caused by the kundalini rising, which certainly can happen. The India yogi Muktananda wrote about that in his autobiography, and of his shock that he had lost control of his penis after his guru had given him shakitapat.

I knew a woman, who, with her husband, were Muktananda's students dating back to his ashram in India. She said she left Muktananda, because he was having sex with his female students. Her husband did not leave Muktananda, and that's why she left her husband, or vice versa. I knew other students of Muktananda in Boulder, who seemed to be having a really hard time living without him, after he had given then "shaktipat", which is said to cause the kundalini to start rising.

Renown American educator Joseph Chilton Pearce became a student of Muktananda, and wrote what seemed to me very good stuff about the kundalini being innate in every person, and, in tribal times, the Kundalini rose naturally in rites of passage stages, as a child grew up, culminating around age 22. But in "civilized" society, the kundalini was blocked in children by "modern" childrearing, education and religious practices. Pearce said giving shakitapat was a way to try to set that right, but to help children avoid all of that, they needed to be raised very differently. Pearce did not write in what I read by him, anything about Muktananda having sex with his students.

The best thing I saw written by a well known yogi, is Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, about him and his yogi master. Both men seemed to me to be on a very good path.

I've heard first-hand accounts and have read many more accounts of "gurus" having sex in their "ashrams" with their students, in the name of "spiritual growth".

For example, the somewhat famous guru G.I. Gurdjieff was reported to have impregnated quite a few of his women students. 

 

An excellent book on leaving a guru is David Kherdian's ON A SPACESHIP WITH BEELZEBUB: BY A GRANDSON OF GURDJIEFF. (BEELZEBUB'S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON, was one of Gurdjieff's books.) A professional writer, Kherdian tells of being in two different Gurdjieff groups, and the ordeals he endured when he left each group. He did not write about the leaders of those groups having sex with their students. Nor did he write a bout Gurdjieff doing that. I recommended that book to quite a few people, who were trying to leave a guru.

The rinpoche of the very large Tibetan Buddhist community in Boulder, Colorado, was reported to have had sex ongoing with his male and female followers. He also was reported to have died of from liver failure caused by alcoholism. It was reported that his hand-picked American student successor continued the sex with students of both sexes practice, and he contracted HIV and did not tell anyone, and a number of his students became infected, and that's what caused the public light to shine on all of the above, and that Tibetan community split in half over it. One half said it was nobody else's business, it was part of their spiritual path and karma. The other half rejected that. One half left Boulder. Finally, the Tibetan hierarchy stepped in and appointed a young Tibetan lama to take over, and he seemed okay to me. I lived in Boulder during all of that.It's very difficult to leave a guru, whether or not sex is involved.

I never had a human guru. What grabbed and went to work on me was not of this world. it turned me upside down and inside out and every which a way but loose, and stood me before many mirrors looking at me. It arranged all manner of things for me to experience, which I would not have chosen. It's still at it.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com