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Published on Leave a comment on Million Dollar Baby: The Talented Niece Who Took Uncle Melvin’s Advice Literally

A cautionary tale of piano abuse, fractured skulls, and impersonations gone terribly wrong in the shadow of Albert Einstein. Told to Uncle Melvin in conversation with his adolescent niece. Or with her brain. Whatever! [Her voice in italics.]

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A new variety of Miracle Gro 

Uncle Melvin! Guess what!  What? I’ve taken your letters to heart. Wonderful! I’m so glad they’re useful. Very! You mentioned we have an important choice: whether to think of ourselves as minds or bodies. And why it matters. Yes. It can make a big difference. After careful consideration and much reflection, I stopped letting my body tell me who I am. Wow! That’s remarkable! I’m all mind now. No more body. You’re a role model! You could build a fantastic career out of traveling and sharing what you’ve accomplished.

Well, not exactly. Why? I don’t have a body. Huh? I’m a brain in a jar. OK. Timeout! No. I’ve been having a ball. I can’t wait to tell you all about it. But I need a favor first. (This can’t be happening. My precious niece!) What can I do for you, sweetie? Come rescue me. What happened? Where are you? Caltech. In a dumpster behind the house where Einstein’s papers are stored. How on earth. . . ?

I was intrigued by your ideas and got an operation where they preserved my brain in a jar. I didn’t mean to be taken literally! Where’s your body? Fertilizer. They’re using me to beautify Los Angeles with plants and flowers and stuff. Landscaping. Landscaping? Next time you take the Expo Line to Santa Monica you’ll be going right by me. We all wind up pushing up daisies but this is ridiculous! My darling niece – Miracle Gro!

The very best brain food

It went really great at first, being in a jar. They set my brain and the jar inside an electromagnetic force field for my protection. Anyone would be zapped like Luke was by Palpatine if they tried to grab my jar. I’m so relieved! Then they rigged my brain so its thoughts displayed on a giant monitor. With sounds too. Aren’t thoughts quiet? Sure, but emotions can get pretty loud. Brains like background music. . .  And, of course, applause. When I took over the Galaxy it was deafening! 

Don’t brains need nourishment? What did they feed your brain so it could produce stupendous thoughts and reshape the world? A steady diet of your letters. So packed with brilliance and wisdom that my brain gained weight. They had to repot me in a larger jar. Poor thing! Yes, but getting bigger with your wisdom gave me a remarkable talent. Really? For telling people where they can find a million dollars. Or anything super valuable lying around waiting to make someone Powerball rich. Whoa!

What pianos are for 

One day, the maintenance guy. . . Where was this? In a secret bunker beneath the Smithsonian College of Musical Knowledge. Of course! The maintenance guy joked that maybe if I was so smart I could tell him where he could lay his hands on a million dollars. I told him to take a shovel to the South Coast Botanic Garden and dig under the ladies’ rest room. He did and found a million dollars. Lucky guy! Not quite. He had to pay it all back to get out of jail. They thought he was digging a tunnel. 

Word got around. Next thing I know there’s a horde of people stampeding into my room like crazed Walmart shoppers on Black Friday. Wanting to have me all to themselves and make them rich. Terrifying! Actually it was fun. When the paramedics arrived the floor was stacked high with people knocked unconscious. You were loving it. Yes. Watching people get zapped by my electromagnetic force field was so entertaining! 

But the best part was when it turned into a saloon brawl like an old Western. No, really? With guys bashing each other over the head with chairs and tables? Crashing through railings and breaking stuff on the way down? Cool! Even better. There were musical instruments lying around. One guy had a piano dropped on his head from the third floor. No one was left standing. 

Payback time! 

Lucky you. What a great experience! For a little while. But the College of Musical Knowledge didn’t want me around after that. I had to take my act somewhere else. To Caltech? To Dave and Buster’s. Of course! Customers paid to guess what I was thinking. If they got it right they got a suitcase full of little yellow tickets they could exchange for worthless junk. I was in a display case where they could operate a clamshell and scoop up more worthless junk. 

How humiliating! It didn’t last long. Word about my special talent got to Dave and Buster’s. How? The guy I sent to retrieve a rock that fell out of Neil Armstrong’s pocket on the moon blabbed on cable TV when he got back. First thing in the morning here comes another crazed Black Friday mob. How awful!  Not really. Watching Dave and Buster’s worthless junk get piled up and set on fire, you know – payback time! It felt soooooo good! 

Putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again 

But I got kicked out again. To Caltech? The dudes in charge of Einstein’s papers thought having a brain in a jar around would attract more interest. Make it less boring. Yes. Definitely one of your special talents. My act went over well at first. It was fun fooling nerdy academics who thought they were communicating with Einstein. You impersonated one of history’s greatest minds?? I made principal’s honor roll, didn’t I? Dear me, I must have forgotten! I was on a roll. But a guy showed up who’d communicated with Einstein’s real brain in a jar. I was toast. 

You couldn’t talk your way out of it? I told them that it was all Uncle Melvin’s fault. I meant to project a photo of you graduating with honors at Harvard but accidentally showed you falling on your face outside the Galleria. That’s what got me into their dumpster. Where you belonged after betraying your kind Uncle.

I’ll rescue you but I want a favor too. May I have a word with your brain? Of course! What stop should I get off when I look for your body on the Expo Line?

Published on Leave a comment on The Archetypes of Function and Their Imitators: the Olympian “Gods” of Dysfunction

Excerpt from unpublished essay with working title "The Perversion of the Laws of Cause and Effect and the Jokes We Play on Ourselves"

Names without function, names without meaning

In common parlance, “God” often connotes Being whose doing mainly consists of “creating” and abandoning “life” divided against itself inside a temporal-material “reality” constructed only so that it can deconstruct. Hardly worthy of “reality” or its “creator.” It further connotes Being-authority whose business is to rule its “reality” without the limits of Logic, definition, or Order, then judging, condemning, and punishing its “creations” for violating its “laws” of disorder. A self-absorbed authoritarian. A narcissist-bully that many fear but nobody could “love.”

“Heaven” often connotes not the happiness of meaningful work and loving relationships but the “happiness” of idleness. Hovering above fleecy clouds plucking harps, lounging on sandy beaches beneath palm trees, sipping mint juleps on permanent vacation with nothing to do.

A cliché that owes its absurdity to “heaven’s” missing function: meaningful work and loving relationships that really are “paradise.” Because the work to be done is the creation, affirmation, and reciprocation of Worth. In a state of Mind that’s Trust, Innocence, and Intimacy. Spontaneity -- the fun of playfulness. The essence of Creativity.

“Heaven” on earth?

What is Reality-Creation but Worth itself? Relationships that work. What is the purpose of Relationships if not affirming that Life is Worth and its sharing is the affirmation and empowerment of Self? Self-Worth.

Why is “Life” on earth not “heaven?” Because it’s got purpose backwards: making unreality real instead of unmaking it. Thus affirming and empowering not the Self-Worth of Truth and Honesty but the self-worthlessness of deception and dishonesty. With relationships that don’t work. With littleness captive to “fun” and games of pointless competition; to the distraction, savagery, and depravity of violence. Of mindless, pointless, authoritarian cruelty, combat, and conquest.

The usefulness of function

Misinterpretations inevitably come about when names leave out function. The working parts of every shared venture: roles and responsibilities. Left to personalities with different perspectives and priorities to interpret, the result is incoherence and confusion. The consequence of one of our “reality’s” laws of chaos: everyone is the author of their own truth.

Reality-Creation is Purpose that requires usefulness. So, in place of “God,” the terms preferred here rely on function. Indispensability that is Mind, Self-Awareness, Consciousness, and Logic bonded with Love. That is Logic-Love, the Parents of their Child-Mind, who is of a different kind of Consciousness: Free Choice. A usefulness necessarily unique, autonomous, and also indispensable.

In place of “heaven” the terms preferred here are Reality, Creation, and Truth. Terms capitalized are of Reality-Creation. The world of Mind-archetypes and not of the dream of unreality, our material world of body-brains. 

Archetypes in Reality, "gods" in unreality

Function that completes Definition uncovers Mind of more than one part, more than one function. Actors whose roles combine to explain with Logic why and how Mind-Reality came about and why and how Creation-Worth is its Purpose. And by extension why and how our dream “reality” came about. Why and how healing and awakening from the illusion of separation and the projection of guilt is our purpose.

Two impossibilities that certify the insanity of Self that is Mind split into two. The original thought of separation, formed into another impossibility that is matter by the temporal, finite energy of unconscious Mind lost in a dream. By entropy, the condition of spacetime-matter that began with a Big Bang and will end with inertia. Events that we, the actors in the dream, unknowingly re-enact with the splitting of the atom and the parody of “life” that is death. The mimicking of Child-Mind’s loss of consciousness and the "death" of Life Force that cannot die. “Events” so nonsensical and unreal that they can only be a joke.

Explanation that owes much to the Logic and intuition of Carl Jung, who added archetypes to the factual basis for psychoanalysis. For its insights, and the insights of these essays, depend on them. Not the “God” of common parlance, name without function. “Creator” of this shadowland of opposites whose “plan” can’t make sense.  But archetypes who are Function. Whose roles, relationships, and stories account for the coherence and evolution of Reality-Creation in the Now. Their Selves and stories re-enacted in reverse by the gods and stories of Olympian myth and legend. In the illusion of time that can’t be Now. Projections of a split Mind whose stories we have yet to get right.

Two minds evolving into one 

Explanation that also owes much to the ultimate source of intuition. To Logic and Love from a perspective not bound by the body’s five senses. Accessible through a sixth sense and shared with us by the Author of A Course in Miracles. By “Jesus,” another name like “God,” obscured by misinterpretation because it leaves function to personal bias. The function identified here as an agent of Soul.

Because Soul is Oneness without opposites that knows no boundaries. Whose function is to interconnect Everything including the self-delusions of an unconscious Mind. Free Choice that chose in error. For the impossibilities that can’t co-exist with the Possibilities of Creation are derived from them. Appearances to the contrary, even opposites can’t be separate and must be included in Everything.

It is agents of Soul, boundaryless and Innocent, who can respond through our sixth sense. Who can connect our calls for Love and Guidance to the Wisdom of Logic-Love, through the innocence, trust, and intimacy of spontaneous, loving friendship. Relationship required by its purpose, the recognition of “others” as one Mind-Self, to evolve into the intimacy of two minds thinking and feeling as one.

Best friends and soulmates

“Agent of Soul” needs to be personalized if it’s to be taken into its friend’s mind, heart, and soul. The same goes for religious equivalents like Christianity’s “Holy Spirit” and philosophy’s “muses.” If the Agent’s chosen identity is taken in by the individual’s Psyche then the choice and the timing may be right. Even better if the Guide’s identify responds to the individual’s call for Love and guidance by revealing itself.

C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces (1956) recounts the moving story of Psyche, my original Agent of Soul. My Guide and confidant who got me dialoguing, first on paper and then in my head. Until our friendship and conversations became part of everyday life. Through 26 years of dialoguing that began with, “You had a job to do and I haven’t heard back.”

When I needed help handling strong emotions, “Dobbin” responded -- a simpatico sorrel draft horse, massive and beautiful. A symbol of strength, patience, and wisdom at my side for nine years. A soulmate with a reminder, that my will alone is no match for the animal in my human brain. Will driven by instinct that has no use for Mind, capable of replacing my will and turning me into an image of itself. A reminder that I am Mind, and with the strength, patience, and wisdom of its Logic and Love -- with guidance from my friend Dobbin -- truth will prevail.

When I needed help with understanding and healing relationships, Owen became my intimate friend and constant Guide. The son with extraordinary gifts who left this life prematurely because he couldn’t use them. Including the gift of insight, because the insights that continue to move explanation toward Understanding, that replace confusion with clarity, are gifts from our two minds working together. In friendship, toward becoming one Mind, gradually and imperceptibly. Understanding that every relationship, in this life, is a call for Love.

Published on Leave a comment on Seriously Proud: The Joker and Its Alternate “Reality” of Worthlessness

Hey Dad -- Look what I made! 

The Joker’s perversion of affirmation and reciprocation is entertaining its host with perversions of Truth. Jokes meant to cause laughter. Where the Child Free Choice takes part in the Creation of Life and Worth, Order and Freedom, through its Relationship with its Parents, Logic bonded with Love; through the Interconnectedness, Oneness, and Innocence of Psyche-Soul; through the reciprocation of Worth -- the gifts, values, and talents given by its Parents -- that consummates connection and earns recognition from Consciousness, the ultimate affirmation from its Parents, the self-delusion of the unconscious Child, its misidentity with its own shadow-reflection, its dark side, the mask of the Joker, expects affirmation and recognition, validation and praise, from unconsciousness for its part in the perversion of creation. For its comic book Truman TV Show fabricating appearances from mirror-image opposites. From perversions of Truth that compose its host’s Reality-Creation in consciousness.

The humorist expects praise and gratitude for its production and direction of the ultimate in entertainment: a one-dimensional facsimile of Reality-Creation, the only achievement its stolen talents are capable of. Expects an Academy award for generating laughs with its talent for pretense and perversity. With the antics of cartoon characters, psychotic replicas of itself. Obedient to a script that’s pleasant and peaceful, harmonious and sociable. Except, that is, when it’s hostile and intimidating, insensitive and cruel, psychopathic, and lethal.

Someone’s warped idea of “creative writing.” Top-down authority deceiving and forcing its replications into a made-up alternate reality. A joke lacking self-awareness and therefore a deception. That deceives itself as well as its captive audience. Because it’s a perversion, itself. An opposite of its host Love, Mind, and Self-Awareness. It can’t be aware of its deception, its perversion. The captor is entirely captive to its own delusion, not a free spirit. The opposite of Free Choice.

The munificence of delusion

So, the humorist is not amused when its foolishness is exposed, the fantasy of affirmation and empowerment that is its opposite. The emperor strutting his royal garments, wearing no clothes. Laughing gas takes offense. Its deception is dishonest because of its purpose: to take captive rather than to connect through Love and support. Through sharing and affirmation, liberation and empowerment.

The occupants of Plato’s Cave, deluded into identifying with their Cave master, imagining that they are the Cave master, are entirely unsympathetic to attempts to part them from their self-delusion. They are the self-delusion. And they must have recognition of top-down authority that wrote, produced, and directed the cartoon show. Their “voice” demanding reciprocation for the “gift” of the Cave master’s deceptions and perversions, will always override competing voices with narratives that contradict their contradiction. That deny their denial. For they must control the narrative. They cannot listen to competition from other voices, hear direction from other “authorities.”

They resent their host’s not praising their invention, their ingenious substitute for Creation. Resent their host for not showing due respect for an alternate reality devoid of Creativity, so it invents illusion instead. Unreality -- the Joker-world of humanity -- is an invention of a delusion that’s a perversion of Reality and Truth. For which the humorist, the Joker, expects validation. Expects genuflection from a truly grateful offspring for its munificence.

The thoroughness of the self-deception

Our unconscious ancestral mind that I call the Child had the task of fabricating a reverse mirror-image facsimile of Reality-Creation. To produce on short notice an alternate “reality” for its escape from an unsafe environment. An environment that it deluded itself into imagining was threatened by angry Parents seeking vengeance for its offense: the loss of consciousness that released the Child from their Relationship. That abandoned its Parents and their Reality, their Creation. That caused the ultimate offense to the Oneness of Reality-Creation: separation.

The Child responded to the challenge by reversing and perverting every attribute and process of Creation -- gifts-values, talents, sharing, affirmation, empowerment, reciprocation, freedom, and order, and more. Every attribute of Reality-Creation: the being and doing, the self and function of Reality, the Relationship Parents-Child, Life-Growth / Free Choice. Everything a reverse-perversion of Reality-Creation. The resulting illusion the substitute-alternative to real achievement, to the Creation of Life, of Worth: fabrication, invention, appearances, death. Plato’s Cave. The universe of spacetime-matter described in Brian Greene’s book, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe (Alfred A. Knopf 2020). The universe of entropy that defies meaning. Worthlessness.

Let’s do it!

For this “achievement” laughing gas is seriously proud and expects validation. Academy awards that the occupants of Plato’s Cave have been giving it since the beginning of time. Themselves, for making fools of themselves. A mind that in unconscious delirium imagines itself all Creation, its own Creator. Served by Energy that will animate all manner of magic tricks if directed by Mind to do so when it’s just dreaming.

Know what? I can do that! And so can you. People just like us make careers out of scripting fantasies for the entertainment industry. Spiritual descendants of Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, talented in the art of absurdity. Of hilarity. Until he woke up, Pete Hamill made a comic book cartoon of his everyday life and even trained to become a professional cartoonist. It’s all there in A Drinking Life (Little, Brown 1994). We can compete to see whose imagination comes up with the most outlandish comic book absurdity. Real achievement. John Belushi. Animal House.

Let’s do it!