[MD] The Last Temptation of J.C.

[X Acto]

Whats interesting is the psychology of the bullshit artist,
where being an ex cardplayer, knows how to read people,
let them fill in the blanks...allow them to come to their own conclusions
a confidence man


I would have been tempted to drop trou, just to call 's bluff.....

I have had some luck with a methodist pastor, really enjoyed his surmons,
mostly about experiences hes had , thoughts about circumstances, what 
he faced...very open honost matter of fact fella, young guy.
What I feel lacks in church is open dialog..bible studies were interesting..
but in the end, they were waay too seriouse about the absolutist 
demand of accepting christ...not me...

like most churches.. they are really fun average folks, a social group...
then they go all "pod people" on ya..see church is fun..it's the religouse
crap thats a drag..the unconditional blind acceptance of some one elses word
the surrender to an authority...and me ...I surrender to authority all the time
socially... but I'll be damned if 
I bow to intellectual authority..I posses me..and I'll suffer no master..

no labels for me man

go naked

an intellectual nudist colony is what would be ideal.. conceptually playing 
dress up with philosphic positions for fun and insight.. but labels..

-Ron


 


----- Original Message ----
From: John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Thu, January 28, 2010 1:16:17 PM
Subject: [MD] The Last Temptation of J.C.

"The fact is, what I hated in the Church was what I hated in society.
Namely, authoritarians. Power freaks. Rigid dogmatists. Those greedy,
underloved, undersexed twits who want to run everything. While the rest of
us are busy living - busy tasting and testing and hugging and kissing and
goofing and growing - they are busy taking over."

Tom Robbins


Me and religion just never got along.  The only time I was able to stand
religion (or more to the point, religion was able to stand me) was a year
and half when I was involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and I
think the only reason I was able to get along as long as I did was because
it was interdenominational in structure, and thus communally open-minded in
orientation.  Plus
I was lonely and they had girls.

But every once in a while I get an invitation to join the warm communal
religious embrace of my fellow beings, and I test the waters with my toe.
I'll tell you about the last time it happened, because it was kind of
interesting, and a funny story to boot.

Who can resist a two-fer?

This adventure with what I call, "Justinanity" came about because of a good
old friend of mine, JD.

I've known JD longer than just about anybody.  My second-oldest friend.
I'll tell you about the first-oldest sometime because he used to be part of
this very forum and so gives me an MoQ tie-in as excuse to describe what
happened with him, but that's quite a long story I'm not ready to tell.

This story begins with a book that JD gave me.  He lives, (like my
first-oldest friend) right here on the Ridge and so I see him pretty often.
He got caught up with a sort of commune he called, "The Santa Barbara
Group" for the simple reason that a bunch of people moved up here from Santa
Barbara with the idea of buying a lot of land and living together, commune
style.

This group of people centered around a teaching, from a book, a pretty good
book, actually, called Another Heart In His
Hand<http://www.amazon.com/Another-Heart-His-Hand-Spiritual/dp/1885420110>,
by J.Jaye Gold.  On the front cover is this quote:

“ All true stories aren’t necessarily about truth.
All stories about truth aren’t necessarily true.

This is a true story about truth."

"Although the author and his teacher never mention Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, or
neo-Gurdjieff exposure, this is clearly the tradition in which this sojourn
happens. The storyline itself is about a poker player who has his ordinary
experiences turned into remarkable opportunities."

That's from a review I found when I googled the name of the book, but I
don't feel qualified to comment since I only read Tertium Organum once, and
that a long time ago and I never really absorbed its dense but poetic prose.

But this book by Justin (The "J" in J. Jay Gold) was pretty good, like I
said, and easy to understand.

My favorite metaphor that I got from the book was an analogy of a rocket and
a launching pad.  Every rocket needs a launching pad.  A gantry, a platform,
a foundation.  We are the rockets, our homes and jobs and various
accoutrement compose the pad.  But so many people think life consists of
improving and tweaking their launching pad, that they've forgotten that the
pad has a purpose.  They put off their countdown, waiting for something to
tell them what to do and tweaking the pad in the meantime.

A profound and scathing indictment of modern materialism, imho.


The book  promoted strongly the idea of creating intentional community - a
big thing with me.  So I liked it.  And it was intriguing to me that this
community and the author lived so close to me, about 10 minutes from my
house, and my old friend JD was part of the group and kept inviting me to
come to a meeting sometime.  Whenever I asked about it, he'd be all evasive
and wouldn't answer me at all, so it took me a while to muster any
enthusiasm.  I ain't in for just anyone's EST, if you know what I mean.

But one Sunny sunday, the weather was nice, and I'd been promising JD for a
long time that I would go and Justin, who travels a lot, was going to be
there this weekend and so Lu and I agreed we'd go and check him out.

We took Lu's little red car, and pulled into a circular driveway which
circled around a very large lawn with a stand of trees and some 40-50 chairs
set up at the top of the circle - nearest the modest ranch-style house, with
an AV system and a table with a pitcher of water and a vase of flowers.
Pleasant music came from the speakers and Lu and I, befitting our tentative
toe-dipping attitude, took our seats in the very back and waited, with about
thirty people, pretty quiet, just waiting for the great man himself to come
out and dispense his wisdom.

We whispered back and forth to each other, surprised by the lack of friendly
greeting you usually get when you're the new people at a group meeting, and
surprised by the lack of banter as everybody just sat, some with reverent
looks, some with eyes closed, meditating, praying,  who knows.  Not
conversing.  We waited for about 35 minutes like this, whispering amusedly
when out came the great author himself, Justin Jaye Gold.

He looked about mid fifties, very fit, nice looking, well dressed and thick
white hair, carefully coifed.  He took a seat in front of the table, a
beatific half-smile on his face, looking out over the audience.  Just
sitting.

And just sitting.

And sitting.

Nobody spoke, barely moved.  The expression on the faces around us was that
of open adoration.  It was a little creepy to me, but whatever.  Lu and I
continued to whisper and snicker behind our hands to one another, and we
caught a glare from one especially adorational lady a couple rows in front.
And then, Justin spoke.

He described how he had been a professional poker player for a while, and
went into this story about a poker game at someone's house where there were
attractive women and the suggestion came up to play strip poker.  He said he
told those women the same thing he had to offer to us, and with this comment
he looked right at Lu and took off his sunglasses, and said, "I'll show you
mine if you show me yours."

And with this bald declaration, he kept looking straight at my wife and
didn't say anything for about 5 minutes.

Well, I'm not saying he was hitting on Lu, but there is an element of sexual
dominance in any group or community that turns into a cult.  It's
practically the dominant feature of a cult - the alpha male gets to breed
with whatever members he chooses and usually it's the aspect that drags them
down in the end.

Lu just sat there, staring back.  Not removing her glasses.  Lu isn't real
prone to social coercion.  And she has a thing about eyes.  She herself has
one brown eye, and one blue and the most prominent feature in most all of
her art is the focus upon the eyes.  It was a bright sunny day, she's a
sensitive (and stubborn) redhead.  Her sunglasses stayed on.

Mine too, but mine are prescription and I can't see very well without them.

After the awkward silence, Justin launched into more exposition about the
fear of vulnerability, the hiding behind our shell, the dropping of masks.
Blah blah.  Yeah, I know.  But such things don't disappear just because
some charismatic guy manipulates using peer pressure.  And I hadn't bonded
with any of these people, they weren't my peers.  So our glasses continued
to stay on.

I also bristled a bit at another man trying to dominate my wife.

And I had to take a piss.  We'd been sitting for a while.

So as he's going on and on about SOME people's fear of "showing theirs", Lu
is seething and whispering to me and the reverential lady a couple rows in
front of us turns around and goes "SHHHHH. Some of us are trying to listen
and learn."

I smiled, nodded, and said to Lu, let's go.  This guy didn't have anything I
want.  The first tendency to be overcome in a communal group is the tendency
to hero-worship the leader, and if he didn't know this and take himself with
enough humor and grace to diffuse the tendency, he wasn't anyone I wanted to
hear.

Besides, I've read his book and I've read others more profound on the
Community Building process which was his main shtick these days.

So we quietly got up, and walked toward the car.  Nobody called out "wait!"
Nobody so much as glanced at us.  It felt awkward, like farting in church,
but we got back to our car and I noticed I had about 3 inches in front, and
3 inches in back, and it looked extremely shaky as to whether I could
maneuver my car out of the space it was in, the other cars parked in a line
behind and in front blocking my swift and painless exit, stage left.

I thought for a minute about going back and shouting, "Hey, I'll let you see
my eyes for a second if you'll let me out of here" but what I did was back
and forth, back and forth, back and forth, about 25 times till I slowly
eased my car out of there, feeling somewhat foolish and silly, but at the
same time relieved to be leaving and kinda amused.

Since it was taking me so long, I decided to milk the situation.  I couldn't
screech out with tires spinning?  Fine.  I inched along, slowly and
carefully.  Somewhat in keeping with the mood of the whole meeting with its
long, meaningful silences and reverential stillness.

The structure of the circle was such that we had to pass in front of the
grouped chairs, which was very near that end of the circle and thus as we
passed, not more than 10 feet from Justin's back.  And I drove very, slowly.
As we passed, not a single eye glanced at us for even a moment.  Not a
single head swiveled to notice that a car was driving away, virtually
through the very middle of their worship service.  All eyes stayed glued in
rapturous attention upon the fearless leader.  Even my friend JD dared not
look other than where he was "told" to look.

Lu and I laughed our asses off once we were clear.  I told her "Just
inanity.  Get it?  They worship Justin like Christians worship Christ,
they're a cult of Justinanity"

I offered my definition to JD next time I saw him.  He didn't like my term
and I asked him if anything had been commented about our departure and he
said not really, just that some people are too afraid to venture from their
shell.

He keeps inviting me back.  He says I should give it another chance.  I
always laugh.
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