November 29, 2003, amended December 4, 2003 Pensive . . . The quiet darkness in which to collect my thoughts, I take a deep breath and take another and see what's here. Oh such pandemonium is the wild cacophany of human discourse. So many voices all screaming loudly and who stops screaming long enough to listen? Better it be shy, and learn a few things. Here I do both, listen and speak. Listen first and type as I go. Maybe I learn something. When to the discernment of 'lesser' minds we turn our eye, what do we discover? Rambled hopes, rambled curses, some stab at glory, some forgotten weakness, some remembered strength. All so much like ourselves. Maybe, we think, not in the same degrees of each item, but all there, bleating away in five part harmony. Or disharmony. That's the way of the evolution. So another's thoughts make me cringe, that I discover. Is it enough to be here in the far round moonlight, scribbling away before a near rectangular light, while that man, I don't know what primitive light source under which he wrote a century earlier, perhaps candlelight? So I don't like what the bloke wrote? At least he got me thinking. And now I am here, trying to see if I can do better. YOU, sitting before your glowing screen, you can do the same if you don't like this here effort. Or even if you do like this here effort. Can I inspire you? Ah, that would be great! Scratch that beaner a little, good! THIS is the day in which we create our own reality. That's what my horoscope fortune cookie told me, ''You have the power to create your own reality.'' But not just Scorpios on the 29th day of November in the year 2003. EVERYone, EVERYday is doing this, whether they are conscious of it, or not. The trick is to get conscious of it. Then we unlock the door to the kingdom of the whispered 'magical' hopefulness and fulfillment. We all do it! We all CAN do it! Say to this difficult whatever, ''POOF!'' and it is gone. Well, maybe it is not QUITE that simple. So to the seven parts roaming, we will organize them all. Wait! Wasn't there only five parts earlier? Some members of the choir keep sneaking in and out the back door! We are the choir director. In that case, that would be me, Queen Illuminaria, remembered divinity, or just plain Joan, all so mundane and up to her elbows in toilet cleaning. It's me, either way. Can I be 'regal' while cleaning toilets? Maybe that is the secret to the happy life. Curse not any aspect, but bring to it our best selves, pridefully and joyfully. I try to do that, work on that. But come morning Monday, I'll watch and see if my first wakening thought is a curse for that alarm clock! Not that it does any good. We must awake early for work, no matter how many hours we stayed up in the quiet moonlight doing whatever, and the toilets need cleaning. It's just 'business as usual'. But I will try to bring to the mundane the regal attitude. Now, let's see, right now, a Saturday of 6:39am, there are two full laundry bins . . . But it is cold outside and maybe they'll wait. That's all right. When the 'emperor' has no clean clothes, he'll get washing them. For pride of being will motivate him out the door with the bin and the soap. He'll stumble to the laundry with all the other mortals. Oh, YOUR inner ruler has a washing machine in your castle-at-large? Nice! Some of us divine beings are roughing it. But I am not the old, cold woman scrubbing things in a pail of centuries past. If SHE could get past her weariness to find the spiritual crown and regal bearing, then I can so in this century. Big machine does the scrubbing. All I have to do is fill it and drop some quarters in it. And are YOU living in a century in which the clothes clean themselves? What wonder that must be! And would there be mortals who curse that they must first remove the garment and then push the little button below the 'spare buttons' to accomplish this? There could be. We do determine our attitude towards things. And maybe this is all I have to say on this last Saturday of November 2003. No, this isn't all I have to say. After sending this up, I realized you might wonder what made me cringe. The text is in LeVey's Satanic Bible, although these words are not original with him. He took many of them directly from a book entitled Might is Right or The Survival of the Fittest by 'Ragnar Redbeard' written in 1896. Here is enough of a snippet to give a clear enough picture: Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth. Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke. Blessed are the powerful for they shall be reverenced among men - Cursed are the feeble for they shall be blotted out. The rest of it continues in the same vein. I don't know what caused LeVey to include these words. Perhaps he wished to think of himself as strong and powerful. Perhaps he was so certain he himself would never be found weak or feeble that he felt justified to toss curses at the already unfortunate. I don't know why he saw this attitude as being in his self-interest. (note of December 2, 2003) Or maybe he figured he was just being 'realistic' in these 'reverse Beatitude' statements. If you're 'strong', you've been 'blessed', and if you're 'weak', you've been 'cursed'. Perhaps he wasn't suggesting such poor unfortunate individuals need further cursing. Still, such sometimes unavoidable circumstances in life are an opportunity for us to learn compassion. I do agree with George Washington Carver: How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. (note of December 4, 2003) Sometimes in your life, you're just plain 'hosed'. You can look at it that way. If you're feeling feeble, it's a natural reaction. There's other possible reactions, though. One can, as some do, gaze 'toward a richer life beyond the grave', as LeVey mentions. Some may find this a useful opiate. But in this state of dulled consciousness, one could well 'perish amidst plenty'. And it's not the path of one who takes their life into their own hands and declares their own divinity. Transformative, then, this path of the 'mighty-minded'. Yes, to avoid delusion, it requires we ascertain what we can and cannot change. This could be the 'path of serenity', if we make it so. It is better a serene wakefulness, alert to possibilities of transformation, rather than cursing your lot in life. But, yes, sometimes all you can change about a particular situation is your attitude. It's not 'admitting defeat' to admit this. A better goal of life is to bring to any stage of life in which we might find ourselves as much dignity as possible and to accord to others that same right. This is the reality I will try to manifest in my own life. scarab, sacred symbol of evolution, regeneration and transformation . . . © Joan Lansberry Go to'There Will Be An Answer, Let It Be' Go to 'Like Fabled Heroes' Go to 'The Essential Joan'