But I felt the need to visit my watering hole, where I know most of the people who work there. This individual usually allows me to get the stronger beers in the larger glasses, which I appreciate, and which I tip for accordingly. I had two 20 ounce beers, 8% alcohol, and felt much better, and listened to the Kings all the way home.
So I am always on. I am always asking questions. I am always dreaming. And pace my post earlier today, I wondered what it would be like to have an “ashram”/spiritual group, where we meditated all week, then got drunk on the weekends, then discussed what we learned on Monday.
So Bill tell us about this prostitute you picked up. What did she look like? How did she make you feel? What do you think you know about her? Speculate. Did this advance your spirituality, degrade it, or is it unclear? Were you kind to her? Cruel?
To my mind morality and wisdom are synonyms. If you can’t see why something is wrong, perhaps it it isn’t wrong for you, right now, or perhaps you need to grow a great deal. This universe is not eager to judge you. There is no council of Elders waiting for your every last misstep.
This universe is rational. I believe this. I choose to believe this, but it also feels correct to me. Your job is to figure things out. For yourself. It is not my job to tell you what to do, and it is not your job to bow down to Authority, which itself is as likely to be imbecilic as wise, as likely to be corrupt as noble.
It’s funny: these ideas were so self evident in the “counter cultural” era that they were truisms. What happened? I’m a hard core “conservative”, and I remember. I remember mistrust in the government, and authority generally. I remember a mistrust of consumer society, of mindlessness, of pervasive superficiality. If this makes me a hippy, then I am a hippy. My job, then, is to finish the fucking job, which the hippies left undone. Or at least do my part, if I abandon somewhat ludicrous grandiosity.
Returning to the point: some of my best meditations are the mornings after I get drunk. The air is clear. It is like the air after a massive storm front passes through, and leaves everything feeling clean, clear, and new. Fresh.
We are all humans, and as humans we have certain needs. If elephants like getting drunk, why shouldn’t we? Now, to be clear, I could reasonably be described as an “alcoholic”. I tend to overdo it. But I also do it in pursuit of something deeper and higher. Some part of me NEVER forgets. I never forget. I never stop striving. I never stop trying to remember, to see, to learn, to piece all this fucking mess together, so that something intelligent can be said, something intelligent done, some order seized–by force as needed–from this chaos. This feeling, this sense, is with me always, if my mind is sufficiently present to know where I am and what I am doing.
I am going to found a Church one day. I don’t know when. But it will be a place where people are happy, where they feel free, and where learning is as natural as flowers sprouting in the spring rains.