Imagine for a moment you are a member of a small band of Native people, quietly camped at the base of some hills alongside a stream. Before you to the east lies a long valley, with hills rising from its farthers end. One morning as you are out from the camp some three miles down the valley you notice two black specks over the hills to the East. As you continue your work, you occasionally watch the specks until you can make out that they are a pair of golden eagles, flying in lazy loops but steadily progressing your direction. You watch for a few minutes more, and the Eagles come closer and closer. You turn and begin to run, you run as fast as you can back to camp as a deep fear takes hold of your veins, turning them to ice and sending the cold tracing fingers of terror racing along your spine and across your shoulders.
Now, back to being your modern self, do you know why you were afraid when you saw the eagles? Do you know why you ran? Think about it.

You ran because the eagles were following something, very possibly a band of men from another tribe, or of soldiers, making for your camp for thievery, rape, murder or all of the above.
If you were you, as you are today, would you recognize such a sign? Would it mean anything to you, would you ignore it and be killed where you stood, or would you even notice the eagles to begin with?

This, the internet, worldwideweb, information-super-highway, whatever you want to call it, is the greatest resource for information that has ever been available in the history of our world. A hundred thousand times greater than the Library of Alexandria, more collected knowledge and learning than the Medici family could have ever hoped to command, that is the scope of the resource that is literally at your fingertips right now.
And it all means nothing if you are so disconnected from the really real world. Not the world on CNN.com, or news.google.com, not the world on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, or CSPAN... not murder, drug dealers, politics or the latest SWAT standoff, but the real world. The world that is in the dirt and trees, the plants and animals, the earth upon which all this supposed grandeur and bullshit is built, and the things that happen on its surface.
We are like mold growing on the top of gelatin in a petri dish, thousands upon millions of teeming little bacteria, of all different shapes and sizes, tending to our rat-killing and doing what is natural to us... except for introduced variables.
Those introduced variables, like the internet, change how we do things and change the very things we do. Does this make them better? Not necessarily.
This awesome resource is nothing if you do not have the simple understanding to actually apply the things you can learn here. To understand anything, you must start at the mudball and work up. You cant ever really know anything until you do.
Euro-Western society has the nasty habit of regarding everything in a Dualistic manner. That is to say "we" look at everything as individual pieces, each one at least mostly free of the other, and not dependent on anything else with an implied hierarchy to things; Human beings are the single dominant species, we are our own unique critters, everything else is beneath us and ours for the taming, taking and killing. The land and the trees are a resource to be mined, turned into money or fuel, and used to further our desires and increase our creature comforts to ever-greater levels. Etc. Etc. Etc. There is God, there is Man, there is everything else God gave to man to do with as he wishes, and it can all be destroyed, raped or ignored one thing at a time, without any damage to the rest of it. This is, simply put, wrong.
You have to have a Monistic approach, because everything is truly part of the whole. Every thing, literally, is an interconnected, related, part of everything else. How can you successfully understand your fellow man, if such simple things as the movements of leaves in the wind are alien to you. How can you do anything, be anything, if you are completely disconnected from all that is the root and base of life... the dirt under your feet, the other presences on this mudball, the things that live, hunt, kill, die, decay and nourish everything else, including you.
You cannot. You can pretend to, you can live in your cubicle, in your car, in your shittily constructed (but every so elegant and expensive) home, and stare into a little blue screen all day... you can read everything ever written about a topic of interest, and talk about it like the worlds foremost expert - but it will all be a lie. And I know, I know, so many people live like this... they live until they die. However they live poorly. No amount of money, no amount of possessions, no amount of second-hand information, no amount of lying will ever replace or be more valuable than truly knowing one thing.
If you can come to truly know, for yourself from your own experiences through your own eyes and hands, one single thing, you will become far richer than most of the people on a daily basis.
This little box, a house full of books, a flickering television screen... none of those things will bring you to truly knowing anything.
How can you learn from others knowledge and teachings if you cant make the information a part of yourself? You cannot. If you dont know what the wind feels like on your skin, how can you understand a written description of it? You cannot. How can you know any god if your only exposure is through the words of another, through a book, inside a building built by others? You cannot.
If you cant grasp the simpler truths of life, you'll never grasp anything of importance.
One of my favorite quotes is from the book Shibumi, by Trevanian: "One must pass through knowledge, and arrive at simplicity". Well, one can start there too. Pay attention to the simplicity, become knowing of it, and come into knowledge... its a circle, one into another into one again. You can only understand, if you truly come to know it.

Or you can spend the rest of your life desperately clinging to the 9-to-5, the SUV and the minivan, the house in the suburbs, a good private school for the kids and a robust college fund, even if those things are merely dreams. When you are old and waiting to die, you will look back at your life and realize the horrible job, the illusions and delusions of "doing well", were all lies and that in the end you truly know nothing about nothing.
I find this idea horrible, more horrifying than any hell I can imagine. That will not be me.

More of the same...

I've had a cold for the last week + and havent been able to do much but watch TV, so I've seen a lot of the news of the woman kidnapped in east-Texas, who's body was found in West-Texas. I've even managed to read a few bulletin board discussions about this incident.
On one, a firearms related board, they were making a big deal about the killer having been shot during a later crime and having to drag his sorry ass to the hospital. This is indeed note-worthy, because the fucker deserved to be shot. They were also noting how regretful it was that the young woman did not have a gun.
One poster also raised the issue of the wal-mart security personel needing to be taken to task for not doing their job and better patroling the parking lot and thus possibly preventing this attack. I'm not sure I agree with this, as the primary function of security at a retail store is loss-prevention. Their job is to secure the merchandise, cash and ability of the store to keep selling that merch, raking in that cash. In this one Texas store, they technically did their job. They allowed nothing to happen that cost that Wal-Mart any money, caused them any losses. Its not really their job to protect personnel.
This is just one more example of something I've said before - everyones safety is their responsibility, and theirs alone... no one else will protect you, you cannot depend on that.

This leaves me sorely tempted to comment that if anyone should be criticized for their actions resulting in harm, it is that young woman. Hey... lifes tough, wear a helmet. Or, have some situational awareness, dont walk around with your head up your ass failing to notice threats until its too late, and be prepared to fight like a wild-cat when trouble comes anyway.
This is everyones responsibility... if no one else can be counted on to protect you 100% of the time(and no one else can) then that duty falls squarely on your shoulders. Not recognizing and accepting that, that is a failing.
Sorry if that seems harsh to some... I'm just not in a real hugs for everyone mood tonight.
I am sorry the young woman got killed... what a waste of life. It is very sad.

Fluidity of Action, No Mind, Aware Mind.

It is a great feeling when a trained skillset suddenly clicks on without having to actually think about engaging it.
Sitting here at my desk earlier this evening I heard some strange noises outside and after listening for a few minutes decided to go check it out.
I grabbed a flashlight and a rifle (a lever action .30.30) and went out. I didnt chamber a round in the rifle, as I suspected it was just cats being cats and not an actual threat, some sort of predator skulking about. Indeed, I was right, or so I thought, and right away found a couple of cats knocking about in things.
As I looked around where they had been to make sure they hadnt done any damage there was a sudden rush of noise behind me, something moving and fast. From the amount of noise it sounded like something large.
I turned, very quickly, to come facing the threat-potential with a balanced fighting position. As I turned I worked the lever action of the rifle, chambering a round, and turning the rifle top-line inwards at a 45 degree angle I tucked the stock up under my firing arm, establishing a stable one-handed close-quarter firing position. My left-hand, with the light, went out to the side and a little high, angling the beam towards the source of the sound, so I wasnt "painted" by the light.
Two little kitty eyes shined up at me, reflecting in the glare of the light, from within a pile of scrap-metal. The source of all that noise. Nice to know.
It was then that I had to pause - the process I described above had come so automatically, so smoothly, that I actually had to go down the checklist and make sure I had done everyting I thought I had. Indeed, I had.
This is how it should be with fighting skill, survival skill. Your training, your repetition of drills to reinforce that training, should come to that point where when your skills are needed they come naturally and without thought, just like breathing. Your body, your mind, has natural actions and reactions to things such as possible attack, your training, drilling, is simply evolving those reactions into something that better guarantees "hard survivability", especially in the initial contact. These correctly improved actionary/reactionary (action is always faster than reaction, the closer togather you can bring the two, the faster you go through the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act Loop, the better) skillsets for survival are what let us respond to immediate attack with a proactive, positive, counter-attack, instead of just throwing up our hands and getting pummeled.
It is a good feeling to know that all that training, all those hours of drill and practice, really do work and have given you that ability, the fluidity and "no mind" to automatically deal with a possible threat, protect your own life.

And before anyone screams I am a reactionary paranoid freak, please note - I safely and intelligently searched for the source of the noise, and when surprised by something else, although I reacted with a fluid preparation for violence, I further observed and oriented to the situation before taking any action.
A paranoid, a violent person, would have simply whirled and begun firing, caring not for life or limb. If you wish to ascribe such traits onto me, or those like me, perhaps you should look instead at yourself and see if your feelings that others are such un-controlled violent people dont actually stem from feelings about yourself, your own fears about your inability to control your actions, emotions and fear.

Them uppity women folk...
The Image of Gun Owners

New NRA President

How can an image of gun owners as male chauvinist backwoods "Deliverance" rejects ever be established if these intelligent, educated and capable women keep getting involved with guns!
Dont they know that its such a very un-lady-like thing to be able to actually protect yourself, or take care of yourself in any fashion?!! Diane Feinstein and Sarah Brady said so, so it must be true!!!

Good for the women... more guns in the hands of more women will make me a happy man.
being able to take care of and fend for yourself should be regarded as the supreme ability, something to be revered and proud of, not something to be ashamed of!

(And thanks to The Bitch Girls for pointing those links out... )

Lost

From The Angel of Losses, a Jewish (Eastern Europe) tale
"... a tzaddik who searches after lost things is himself sometimes lost."
(A tzaddik is a "righteous" man, for those not up on the language. Not to imply anything about myself... replace tzaddik with student, or seeker, and you have the same meaning for the overall quote, or the one I get out of it)

Those who know me, if anyone reading this does, will be familiar with the Lost-Visions that is part of my URL for this blog... the lost theme has been long-running for me. Lost Warrior was a past title as well, Lost Visions has been the theme for the past two years or so.

There are many meanings to this use of "lost"... not all of them negative.
For "Lost Warrior" there is always the connotation of someone who has "forgotten the face of his father", lost his warrior way. But there is also, and this is still appropriate, the connotation of a warrior seeking for that which is lost, to him at least - the greater knowledge, the greater truth.
Taking this a step further, this is very introspective, looking for the lost "warrior" within. Joseph Campbell said "The hero has a thousand faces, one of them is yours" - this is what he was talking about, that great journey to find yourself. In a sense all great journeys, all heroic adventures, are a road that leads the hero within, to find that which is hidden, or "lost".
Lost Visions has much the same meaning... the visions of self, the idea of self and the full knowledge of self, are the lost or hidden things within.
But what is the self? What is within that which completes all journeys, all quests?
My take on that is this;
There is a Native American legend (I forget which american aboriginal group at the moment) which says that when the creator made everything, he/she stopped and asked the other spirits (in the form of animals on the earth) how the truth of the universe, of creation, should be protected from man. First it was suggested that the truth be put deep into the earth, but the creator said "No, man will some day go there". Then it was suggested that the truth be put on the moon, and again the creator said "No, man will some day go there".
Finally, after much thought, the creator told the other spirits "Hide it within man themselves. There it will be safe".
Are you beggining to see what I see? The great journey, the adventure into self, is the greatest finding of that which is lost, hidden.
Lost means many things, few of them truly negative... all who seek must at some time be lost, because you cannot find the lost without being lost. Being lost, knowing not where you are, having no reginmented plan of travel, is very much being of "no mind", that nothingness in which all truth comes, the emptiness in which the cup is filled. We can tie togather many religions, many myths, here... because they were all saying the same thing, about wandering, about wondering, about being lost, being empty, making journeys, and finding the hidden/lost, the truths.
Not all those who wander are lost, but not all those who are lost wonder.