ORGANELLE

“Neither conservatives or liberals exist. They are ideas, uniquely instanced in each person that subscribes, and each one subscribes uniquely.

But I gotta tell you that some conservative zealot screaming at ‘liberals’ is like a single pinky yelling at all the thumbs in the world. There’s only one hand here, people, and when its members start attacking each other, it isn’t politics. It’s the social and intellectual equivalent of those diseases in which one’s immune system attacks their own nervous system.”

— Bobby Yingo in private conversation

“Nearly all studies and the vast majority of research implicitly presume that human persons are individuals whose qualities of awareness, affect and ‘personality traits’ »are possessions (container metaphor). I argue that this is not only untrue, but is a form of coercion and scripting — in a context where this is universally declared, human beings will attempt both to obey it and will believe it. As this is not actually true, this process creates a painful double-bind (a situation in which a person is confronted with two irreconcilable demands or a choice between two undesirable courses of action) that divides us against our own actual natures and true senses of self and potential.

Observation of human beings clearly reveals that these common declarations have inclined us to ignore what is demonstrably more true: human persons will »adopt roles and characteristics commensurate with their expectations and historied experiences of participation in contexts». Transform the relational and communications context? You get different human qualities, traits and behavior. In this sense the entire domain of individual typology and trait research is fundamentally flawed.

Perhaps the most astonishing feature of this perspective is that each of us has the capacity not merely to contribute to contextual environments that are evocative of otherwise inaccessible human potentials and growth, we can directly and immediately invoke contextual transformation. We have the ability to immediately invent and participate in contexts that represent radical departures from historical experience and expectation. One of the most profound vectors of this transformative ability is the invitation to authentic »play”

— an intelligence agent

“Names, theories, models … explanations and descriptions… these encompass less than 1% of the phenomenon they are evoked to ‘explain’ or ‘inform’ us about. The nature of nature is infinitely profound and nearly perfectly empty of reference.

The vast body of identity and relation is fundamentally mysterious, and those aspects we distinguish for identification tell us more about our own purposes and perspectivity than they do about the phenomenon.

The discursive mind is delusionally concerned with ideas and concepts. But reality has very little indeed to do with these… except as these minds we inherit from our cultures, parents, falsified authorities, and peers.

It is always interesting to encounter someone more intimate with the mystery than the descriptions… someone who, even in a brief moment of insight… escapes their gravity entirely… into true relation and awe.”

— an intelligence agent

“Mystical virtue is the expression of Virtue by cultivators in the process of nurturing the spirit. They are knowingly and unknowingly helping others and society by healing the sick, helping people in trouble, protecting the balance of nature, etc. They are able to do good deeds without people knowing.

Yin Virtue must rely on the physical body to express. Do kind deeds without expecting rewards. Do kind deeds without leaving names. Even though Yin Virtue is not completely in accordance with nature, it is the foundation of a true cultivator. It is important to continuously work on Yin Virtue to cross over to Mystical Virtue.”

— Qigong Empowerment, Master Shou-Yu Liang & Wen-Ching Wu

“My words come slowly now, and awkwardly. For I am old, and my time is passing. But if you will hear them, I will say thus.

Your senses are not five, or twelve. They are not thousands. They are myriad. In unity with your origins, you can not merely experience aspects of awareness and sensing beyond your capacity to imagine… you were »born for this.

What you call consciousness is ladder of layers that are only accessible… from a position of relational intimacy and union… that is largely foreign to most who live now.

Because they attend that which mimics this…

And though much time and travail has passed… and many distractions have intervened… you live, now, in the full inheritance with which the entire history of life on Earth endowed you.

But these gifts become accessible… only in unity… where the agreement of many transforms those who agree…

A time of great trials is upon the entire world. Our people are primary among the causes. The story is a circle, that repeats, somewhat uniquely in each cycle.

But I ask you to remember… your own nature. To recover it from explanations and even fantasies… for this nature exceeds them all, explosively…

You are made not only to connect with other forms of intelligence, but to transform in this communion. Your societies present mimics of this, everywhere.

But now, some few of you, will begin to see from above. Beyond ideas. Beyond explanations. Without a story. Clear, and true. And those who do… become, somehow contagious.

We are birds who cannot remember we have wings, but in times of crisis the high terrains call to our souls… and we awaken, and begin again… the process of remembering.

Your minds are birds… in the between of all minds.

Unless your habits and ideas … lead you elsewhere…”

— Apopholaeus, the bind.

“My perspective or understanding is that, in the past here, there were definitely some long-standing conflicts with neighbouring tribes… the Crow, for instance. One of the very famous early contributors to the Beaver Bundles was Aapi’kohkomannim… Round White Robe, who lived for a winter in a beaver lodge, and used what they gave him, when he returned to the humans, to keep the Crow south of the Yellowstone River. He was the one who added the scalp to the Bundle.

And of course, looking at all the old rock art, we can see that there were heavy-shield warriors going back a long time. So definitely there was conflict. Not the idea of wiping out an enemy, removing them from the face of the Earth, nothing like that. But definitely dominating over them, yes… and keeping them out of Blackfoot territory.

This, however, is not the same as “war” as known by Europeans, who committed entire armies to campaigns to seize and control others’ lands and resources. That’s an entirely different thing than what was happening here. Blackfoot tribes had no interest in colonizing others, or gaining control of their territories, etc.

That kind of perspective just doesn’t even make any sense from an indigenous knowledge perspective, because you recognize that your way of life comes from your place, and is adapted for that place. You can’t take knowledge from a grizzly bear and go apply it in the Everglades. It’s not meant for there.

So I associate “war” with colonization and expansion. The Blackfoot concepts that are used to describe war translate, as previously mentioned, as “playing against one another” and “going into water” (aisowoo). These metaphors suggest that there was a very different understanding in the past to what was happening in localized conflicts.

Like many aspects of the language, it’s difficult to fully appreciate because our minds have been tainted by familiarity with English, and all the baggage that goes with it. So people say aatsimoyihkaan = prayer. It doesn’t. It means something totally different. In the same way, neither awahkaootsiiyssin nor aisowoo = war.

They mean something else. The first one is not too difficult to understand, given that there has long been a tradition of counting coup here, by not killing the enemy, but rather stealing his transportation or weapons, or humiliating him by some slight injury and then escaping unharmed. It was more of a game. There was even a points system, lol. True story. But in European war, the intent and understanding has always been very, very different”

— Ryan FirstDiver in response to my post…

“My mom taught me to let others go first. She said that they will think I am being polite, which will impress them and incline them to think I am kind and attentive. Then she explained that the real benefit is that the lions and alligators and other hidden threats will eat them instead of me, and I will get to watch instead of becoming a snack or being obliterated. Haste makes waste, right?

I mean, think about it — the first person through the traffic light is the one that is going to get T-boned by the guy on his smartphone (boy there’s a contradiction in terms) who is running the red. Even if I had a car I wouldn’t sign up for that.

So I like to let others go first. I’m not in a hurry, and it’s always entertaining to watch them being destroyed by whatever the hell is lying in wait with dire intent. Plus there’s the added bonus of people thinking I’m nice, which, of course, simply isn’t true.”

— Bobby Yingo at the Gray Room

“My heartbeat usually goes nuts when they measure it…”

Mine is also affected by measurement… differently under different circumstances.

But consider the glance. When someone is observing me, and I am aware of this, I am changed by this awareness. Perhaps I change when people are observing me and I am not aware of it. But one thing I am deeply aware of is how observation transforms all sorts of things… particularly human minds, and relationships…

State checking is a peculiar phenomenon. Asking someone to check or report their state causes a state-change. So the invitation to check or report on one’s state, effectively collapses one’s state into ‘state-checking’, thus producing a double-bind.

“My headlights are super fucking bright. I mean, they might be the brightest headlights ever. Other people notice my headlights and tell me ‘woah, dude, that shit is bright’. And it’s true, they’re really fucking bright.”

— I am actually blinded by my own headlights

“My grandmother once recounted her experience in a college classroom. She was in her 60’s at the time. The teacher made a joke, and my grandmother laughed out loud.

This was accompanied by her unexpected emission of a loud fart, attracting the attention of the entire class… which caused her to laugh again, this time in embarassment. This word is exceptionally appropriate here — for it was the function of her ass that was laid bare to public participation.

The second laugh again instigated an even louder expression of undesired flatulence. She rose from her seat at once, and began laugh-farting a route to the door and beyond it.

If only she had shit her pants, I suspect that she would have experienced enlightenment on the spot.

Thus it is with our minds and expectations; it is their sudden violation that represents escape, and not, as we generally suppose, the preservation of the facades we are so invested in sustaining.

And this is one of the keys to the nature and origin of humor…”

— Bobby Yingo at the Blue Room