BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!

Subject: BS: Pronoia - a new state of mind!
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 May 03 - 05:23 PM

WyoWoman sent me this. It gives me hope in these trying times and I wish I'd written it!:-) Hope you enjoy it, too.

PAINFUL BLESSINGS
by Rob Brezsny

This is a perfect moment.
It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you
and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumbsucking, dumbclucking
collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow,
We are waking up.

Thanks to them, from whom the awful teachings ooze,
We are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their devils and borders,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases,
their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names,
their brilliant commercials,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow,
We are waking up.

Thanks to them, from whom the awful teachings ooze,
We are waking up

Their painful blessings are cracking open holes in the sour and
puckered mass hallucination mistakenly called reality.

News of the soul's true home is pouring in, infiltrating our
increasingly lucid waking dreams.

Wild, ripe, juicy eternity is flooding in.

Our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in.
We're waking up.

And as Heaven and Earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime
merge, as paradise and the underworld overlap, we register the
shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge -- you and I are in
charge -- of making a brand new world.
Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right
now.

As we stand on this brink,
as we dance on this verge,
we can't let the ruling fools of the dying world
sustain their curses.

We have to rise up and fight their insane logic;
defy and resist and prevent their tragic magic;
unleash our sacred rage and let them feel it.

But overthrowing the living dead is not enough.
Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough.
We can't afford to be consumed with anger -- can't be obsessed and
possessed with complaint. Our sweet animal bodies need to feel rowdy blessings.

Our amazing imaginations need to thrive on missions that incite our
delight.

We need truths in their wild state,
insurrectionary beauty
that excites our curiosity,
outrageous goodness
that drives us to perform
heroic acts of lusty compassion,
ingenious love
that endlessly transforms us,
tricky freedom
that is never permanent
but must be reinvented and reclaimed every day,
and a totally-serious-yet-always-laughing justice
that schemes and dreams
about how to diminish the suffering
and increase the joy
of every sentient being.

So I'm radically curious, my fellow creators; I'm seriously
delirious: Since we are in charge of making a brand New World, where do we begin?

What truths in their wild state are we planning to plant at the heart
of our creation?
What stories will be our reminders? What questions will be our fuel?

Here's one for you:
In the New World you will know through and through
that life is crazily in love with you --
life is wildly and innocently in love with you.

In the New World,
you will know beyond a doubt that thousands of secret helpers are
angling to turn you into the gorgeous curiosity you were born to be.

But then here's the loaded question.
The love that life eternally floods you with
has not exactly been unrequited,
but there's room for you to be more demonstrative.
If life is wildly and innocently in love with you,
are you prepared to start loving life back
the way it loves you?

In the New World, you will.

In the New World,
you will reject paranoia with all of your smart heart.
Instead, you will embrace Pronoia,
Which is the opposite of paranoia.

Pronoia is the sneaking suspicion that the whole living world is
conspiring to shower you with rowdy blessings. Pronoia is the dawning perception that life is a conspiracy to liberate you from ignorance, and fill you with love, and make you brilliantly soulful.

My fellow creators, I want you to know
that I am allergic to dogma.
I don't trust any idea
that requires me to believe in it absolutely.
There are very few things about which I am totally certain.

But I am absolutely certain
that Pronoia describes the way the world actually is.
Pronoia is wetter than water,
truer than the facts,
and stronger than death.
It smells like cedar smoke in spring rain,
and if you close your eyes right now,
you can feel it shimmering
in your soft warm animal body
like the aurora borealis.

The sweet stuff that quenches all of your longing is not far away in
some other time and place. It's right here and right now.

Earth is crammed with heaven.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: Doug_Remley
Date: 19 May 03 - 06:02 PM

"Pronoia?" I am bothered with the admixture of the first "column," and one that appears later. Mostly, I like it very much and feel its flow needs more structural editing. It seems the best parts are spoken sentances but that is the kind of poetry I like.

I've never heard of this person, is there more for comparison? Thank you, Kat, for something out of the blue that has such rich thoughts.

Doug :)

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 May 03 - 06:10 PM

Thanks, Doug. I'd not heard of him before this. I may have mucked up the structure with guessed at line breaks. You can see how he's posted it at this site. Evidently he writes a column for the Village Voice every Wednesday.

There's some other interesting stuff on that site.:-)

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: michaelr
Date: 19 May 03 - 08:26 PM

Pronoia is the sneaking suspicion that the whole living world is
conspiring to shower you with rowdy blessings. Pronoia is the dawning perception that life is a conspiracy to liberate you from ignorance, and fill you with love, and make you brilliantly soulful.

Thanks kat, I've been looking for a new way of looking at things. I love it!

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: michaelr
Date: 19 May 03 - 08:53 PM

Lots of cool links on that page... I especially like "Hippie crap saves the World".

Rob Breszny and Caroline Casey are the only astrologers that make sense to me...

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 May 03 - 12:10 AM

Thanks for pointing that one out, Michael, I love it!

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: Doug_Remley
Date: 20 May 03 - 02:12 AM

Thanks, Mike! I wannabe Pronoic? a Proniac? from now on. "Specially like the rowdy blessings part. I knew about the ignorance part but the rest escaped in the smoke.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: michaelr
Date: 20 May 03 - 02:28 AM

"Rowdy blessings", yes, that's brilliant, innit?

Check out Caroline Casey ("The Visionary Activist") at Spiritual Intrigue. She's an ally of Rob's, and "dedicated to the wild blooming of the Compassionate Trickster Heart stirring within all of us". She has a weekly radio show on Pacifica (which is archived so you can listen back), and is a tireless voice for positive change in these depressing days.

These are the voices that mean so much in times when one wants to throw up one's hands and say, "I give up; what's the use?". I'm guessing a lot of us can use some spiritual uplift and encouragement right now -- and there it is. Priceless!

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Pronoia - waking up HOPE -new state of mind!
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 May 03 - 04:00 PM

I love that Visionary Activist! Thanks! We should all be such!