[MD] The Last Temptation of J.C.

[John Carl]

Ron you babbling idiot you are going to have to join me soon in the K class.


I mean it dude.  You are seriously getting in my head.

Let's talk.

Soon.

What was running through my head today was Kenny Rogers.  Remember Kenny
Rogers?  Man he was big!  Had hits comin' out his ears.  You gotta know when
to hold em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run.


The thing is, that's all the negative options mostly.  I mean "holdin' em"
ain't so bad, there's hope for the future but it's certainly not winning.  I
asked Lu today in the car, where's the winning?  When do you lay your cards
on the table?  He never mentions the sheer guts it takes to just plunk them
cards down, sydney or the bush.  Here they are.

What a sad song.


John

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 2:05 PM, X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:

> 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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