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Stephen Pickering

Author: Stephen Pickering

  • The Current Fed Mandate Doesn’t Allow For Prosperity

    What we need is not necessarily a gold standard, but rather a “de facto” gold standard where the fed keeps the price of gold within a tight range. That way there’s plenty of liquidity for growth, and excess liquidity during recessions is “sopped up” so that it can’t cause inflation. What’s interesting is that the Fed’s policy now doesn’t allow for growth. Because even during growth surges, such as the first internet boom, they cut off the liquidity supply. They crash boom cycles, and prolong downturns as well as adding inflation on top of them.

    I wrote the above as a comment to a Facebook post by Steve Forbes. Here is his FB post:

    “Reading book on the gold standard by the noted economist, Mark Skousen. Skousen is also the founder of Freedom Fest, a great gathering of libertarian and conservative thinkers.”

    It got me to thinking of how destructive the Fed is, and how it’s philosophy or mandate, simply will not allow for economic growth. Also, it got me to thinking again about how it’s ideas, such as adding liquidity to an economy somehow stimulates growth, or that growth itself somehow creates inflation, are the economic equivalent of Science still saying that the Sun orbits the Earth. I don’t know how they get away with it, nor how the media and politicians get away with espousing as fact, ideas that are not only not true, but the exact opposite of what they state.

    The end result is suffering. Suffering for most of us, and a huge amount of unearned, unworked for, or risked for wealth, for the few of the establishment, those who hold positions or are friends with those who hold power.

  • Sonnet #2 in Iambic Tetrameter: “Moon Day”

    Sonnet #2 – “Moon Day”

    I let the moonbeams be my guide.
    I look into the night for you.
    I must go down to see your eyes
    But somehow keep on passing through.

    The earth I roll around my lips.
    There seems to be some kind of fire.
    It’s coming from your dancing hips.
    Sweet music frees the ancient lyre.

    The oak trees’ branches grow in threes.
    But somehow only one path is made.
    Come here, my sweet, my flor-de-lis
    And guide me down their magic lake.

    I rise when splendor greets the Sun.
    My Vita Nova has begun.

    ©2013 Stephen K. Pickering

  • A New Sonnet in Iambic Tetrameter

    I’m here with you up in the Sun.
    We’ve come together, shadow soul.
    Today the mountain’s song’s begun.
    Those guarding clouds have let us go.

    We’re born from rays that blossom light,
    when he appeared and took her hand..
    The jewel of our mind shines bright.
    The space ahead is diamond land.

    Where once we walked the pollen path,
    we fly upon a golden horse.
    The only wisdom we had to ask
    was through her eyes the sacred course.

    A sacred marriage flamed down there.
    We found our father from her stare.

    ©2013 Stephen K. Pickering

    Related:

  • The Key Insight of Mysticism and Meta-Physics

    After having listened, watched, read hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours of material from and about mysticism, over the course of more than a decade, the primary message that keeps coming through these experiences, if I could boil it down to one sentence is this:

    Consciousness creates reality. Consciousness creates matter and not the other way around.

    It’s tough when 99.999999% of the time your mind, all of your senses (And I would say those false messages are directed by the ‘Ego’) are telling you just the exact opposite. But then, looked at one way, that’s part of the game. That’s the challenge of the game.
    And that consciousness is not just our personal consciousness, or even our deep, archetypal consciousness (‘atman,’ ‘soul’), but a pure consciousness that is deeper and “a priori” to the Universe (or even ‘Multiverse’) itself. This could be called “The Ground of Being” which in the language of mysticism “neither is, nor is not.” The fundamental error of our experience is the belief of just the opposite: That “reality” or matter “out there” creates our consciousness “in here.” This is the fundamental source of all of our frustration. Because this latter belief leads to the feeling that life is a prison, that our consciousness, our experience. is determined by an outside force that we have no power to change.

    Let’s look at an analogy in nature: An apple grows out of the tree. The apple isn’t made somewhere else and then placed on the tree. It grows out of the tree.

    Well, wait, you might say, you are contradicting yourself. If the apple grows out of the tree, isn’t that analogous to consciousness grown out of, coming from matter?

    Only if you mix up the metaphor. In this analogy, the tree, the “Axis Mundi”, is a metaphor for consciousness, and the Apple (The “Knowledge of Good and Evil”) is a metaphor for the duality of the “objective” world.

    So the question would be, if one believes this theory, or perhaps has even had a mystical experience themselves, is what do you do? How does one expand on that, how does one change? When does the adventure begin?

    My answer is that I’m not sure. It may take me another decade to even come up with a hunch. But my gut tells me a practice of meditation is one if not “the” answer, or at the very least a way to get to “first base.” Because when you can step back from your thoughts, it starts to take the energy out of them, to quiet them, and then the mind starts to become “transparent to transcendence” which feels like taking a psychological shower, cleansing the mind, cleansing the personal consciousness, so that the connection between it (Your everyday living body and wakefulness) and your archetypal consciousness (Your ‘Atman’ ‘Soul’ or  ‘Wisdom Body’) becomes reopened. Then the billions (if not infinite) of years of wisdom consciousness becomes immediately available to your present, your ‘right now’,  experiential consciousness.

    If that’s not the “It” itself, it would seem, at least at the gut level, to be a great jumping off point. A place where many more options or ‘doors’ become available. A place where an adventure may begin. Like the earlier analogy I used, if the “Ultimate” is like a home run in baseball, then it seems like meditation, or some form of it, is at least a way to get to first base, from where you’ll automatically know, from the wisdom level, of what to do, or not to do, to continue your progress.

  • Chords and Lyrics for Julie (Come Out of the Rain) by Josh Rouse

    JulieChordsYou capo the 4th fret to play these chords. Here’s a diagram of the chord voicings in this photo to the right. I included, at the bottom of the page, a video of him playing it live where I was able to catch the chords. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get them right by ear, and you’d almost think the video below wouldn’t help you because 90% of the time either it’s just a shot of Josh’s head or some audience dude’s head’s in the way! And really, now that I watch it again, it’s only towards the end, at about the 2:00 minute mark, after the solo, that you can get a decent look at his left hand, and that’s where I picked it up. Here’s a link to a PDF you can download:

    JulieComeOutoftheRain (1)

    Ebm
    It’s cold in San Francisco
    Ab       Abm
    It’s California gray.
    Ebm
    One night on Telegraph Hill,
    Ab              Abm
    we kept the wolves at bay.
    F#
    I wrote you a long letter
    Abm
    Some things you can’t explain
    B                            Ebm
    Julie, come out of the rain
    Abm
    It’s cold and I can’t wait forever
    B                               Ebm
    Julie, if you want me to stay
    Abm
    Why don’t you show it?
    Ebm
    I called a taxi for ya’.
    Ab                Abm
    Your raincoat it was blue.
    Ebm
    Outside the wind was talkin’
    Ab         Abm
    of how I fell for you.
    F#
    You left your cigarettes and
    Abm
    a dozen other things
    B                            Ebm
    Julie, come out of the rain
    Abm
    It’s cold and I can’t wait forever
    B                               Ebm
    Julie, if you want me to stay
    Abm
    Why don’t you show it?
    F#                       Abm
    Gimme a smile and say,
    A#m            B
    Everything’s ok.    		                  Ebm       Abm
    Oh, oh, it’s California gray
    Ebm         B
    Oh, oh, it’s California gray..
    (Musical interlude over the chords
    of the previous Chorus)
    Ebm
    It’s cold in San Francisco.
    Ab       Abm
    It’s California gray.
    Ebm
    One night on Telegraph Hill,
    Ab              Abm
    we kept the wolves at bay.
    B                             Ebm
    Julie, come out of the rain
    Abm
    It’s cold and I can’t wait forever.
    B                                Ebm
    Julie, if you want me to stay
    Abm
    Why don’t you show it?
    F#                       Abm
    Gimme a smile and say,
    A#m            B
    Everything’s ok.
    F#                         Abm
    Look in my eyes and say
    A#m            B
    Everything’s ok…
    Ebm       Abm
    Oh, oh, it’s California gray
    Ebm          B
    Oh, oh, it’s California gray..

     

    Here’s a cover version I did a couple weeks ago. Maybe I should have just aimed the camera at the fretboard, but I think you can probably see the chords pretty well as it is:

  • The Metaphorical Meaning of Sacrifice and Bliss in Mythology

    The soul is the arrow. Brahman is the target. AUM is the bow.  — Ancient Hindu

    I.e., meditation, sacrifice is the “bow” or the mechanism to get the soul to God. Aaaah, ooooh, mmmmm is Being. Being, Consciousness, Bliss or in ancient Hindu: Sat, Chit, Ananda. In some iterations it’s Being, Sacrifice, Bliss. Consciousness and Sacrifice are interchangeable because you’ve got to sacrifice your thoughts into order to be conscious, in order to let consciousness in.


    Update: 10/8/14     – Reading over this post, this thought/feeling seemed to “bubble up from my archetype, from my soul:

    “When you surrender, the life that is waiting for you will arrive.”

    It feels an awful lot like Joseph Campbell’s famous quote:

    “You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.”

    Notice how “give up” and surrender or sacrifice are synonymous. Ah, wait! I just had an Ah Ha! moment about what this means: You’ve got to quit planning on what you are going to do, just start doing the thing that you love. So you are surrendering control, control of the outcome, control of the results, and instead living, engaging inside that activity that you love to do because you love to do it in and of itself. You love the process of that activity (ie, writing, music, art, acting, but it could also be business or science, just as long as you are engaging your creative, visionary side to these activities, and of course, above all, it is something you truly love, in and of itself, and not for the money. But enough philosophizing! The meaning of the statements is to begin doing it, right now! Go start singing, go start writing, go start dancing and acting, or whatever it is you love. It doesn’t matter if people say you aren’t good enough. If you love the process, you are immune to criticism, and you don’t have an Ego that cares about the results. It cares about the activity itself. And when you are engaged in it, you are living your purpose. You’re on the edge of excitement all the time, as Joseph Campbell used to say.

    So, what you are surrending is philosophy, philosophizing, talking about it, and what you are accepting, what you are leaping into, is activity. The activity will guide you, open doors, send “magical” helpers, not the philosophy. Not the thought.

    Update: 3/28/13: Now that it’s Easter, and today is Maundy Thursday, if you wanted to bring the Mythology alive in your own life, you could practice, right now, for instance, sacrificing your need to hold on to the past, and your need to control the future. And then by this act, this psychological act, the irony is, you psychologically “rise above” the duality of time, and for that matter all dualities, and you arrive at an “a priori” transcendence, in which letting go and surrendering, ironically, paradoxically, wins you back your true nature, your true gift, your “sacred” treasure and power. When you sacrifice your need to control time, you wind up in a timeless world, living a transcendent life.

    Update 3/26/13: I was blown away just now when I learned that the word Islam itself means, literally, “surrender.” Fate, kismet, “Wyrd” are all common archetypes in religion, and so it makes sense that this idea of “surrender”and or “sacrifice” would also be an important archetype that is found in all religion or mythology. These two fundamental archetypes are symbiotic, and almost call out to each other.

    “You can’t control your destiny, Jack. You’ve got to just let it wash over you like a bad spray tan that won’t take.” – from “40 Rock”

    “You’ve gotta learn to let go. You can’t try and control everything all the time.” – From Celeste and Jesse forever.

    “This isn’t turning out the way I wanted it to!” – Debbie, from this is 40 exactly the 44 minute mark.

    Orpheus died to himself, in order that he may live on through everybody else. What does that mean, “to die to yourself”? Think about this for a minute. It means surrender. It means letting go. It means dying to your ego, the sense that you and everything else in this world are separate. It means dying to your inner self which only worships eating and sex, and then also dying to your outer self, which has the potentiality for achievement and greatness, but only worships at the feet of social recognition, the addiction or the endorphin rush of attention, of being worshiped yourself.

    Sacrifice of the flesh is metaphorical of this idea of dying to the ego. The ego is this psychological structure that is blocking out transcendence and bliss both from the outside and from with in you.
    (“The Kingdom is within you and is without you. If you will know yourselves, then you’ll be known and you will know that you are the sons of the Living Father.” – Jesus, from The Gospel According to Thomas.)

    Bliss is like a secret underground fountain that’s bubbling up within you naturally, and also like a ocean that’s trying to pour into you from the outside.
    But ego blocks off both of these sources that naturally would be flowing, like a damn, or like something that’s blocking off the root of a tree.

    So the idea of sacrifice, in part, is this willingness or this sense of psychologically dying to your ego, letting the ‘rat’ that’s in you, secretly nawing at the root of the sacred tree, the Axis Mundi, die. Or letting the “damn” or “dike” that’s in you, which is trying to control and manipulate the waters of life, nature herself, letting that psychological structure be destroyed, not giving it any more energy or “soul” food. Your sacrificing the inner desire of hunger and the outer desire of pride, in order for the waters to flow again through you, or the light to once again shine through you after having become transparent, once again, to transcendence. You’re trying to balance the truth of who you are, of where you came from (“the rag and bone shop of the heart”) without crushing the totality of the human potentiality going forward, but also without cutting off those supply lines from which this very potentiality, the Cerebral Cortex, is made from. Remember Indra had the power to kill Leviathan, the snake that was blocking out the waters of life from nourishing the world, but in doing so he also brought down his own potentiality out of pride of the very act. So one could say that sacrifice is a religious archetype that has been needed to enable life to carry on evolving, while at the same time not losing touch with its origin, its essence, it’s soul.

    Paul: “Wouldn’t you rather have me around for less years and I’m incredibly happy rather than longer and I’m miserable?”
    Debbie: “Yes, and I just realized that just now!” – This is 40 – 47:15

    “I guess the party didn’t turn out like you had planned.”
    “Yeah, but it was a good party.”

    Here’s another good example of an everyday way of putting this idea into practice: Sacrifice your Ego’s need for attention, and instead put that same energy in the direction of your bliss, you’re “calling”, the things or thing that makes you happy in and of itself, and not because it makes you money or gets you attention (Social Reward). In this post I have used “Ego” and “Flesh” sort of interchangably both in the ideas of “Dying to the Ego” and “Dying to the Flesh.” I think there are two good reasons for the comparison: 1) In Hindu, it is the outward, most superficial “body” of all of our “bodies” that is the most cut off from spirit (the inner body, “Atman”) and needs “religion” (re-linking) back to the soul and 2) If you think about your everyday life, its the experience of your body, the impulses of the flesh, and the experience of the senses that most feed this “illusion” of ‘Ego’.

    The ideas of Yoga and Meditation are Eastern exercises in metaphorically “Dying to the Ego” or “Dying to the Flesh.” It’s not that you want to really die to your flesh. It’s that you want to think of the metaphor, the psychological aspect of it. The purpose here is to rebalance psychologically so that you are experiencing the impulses of the “subtle” body (Soul) at least as strongly, or some would say more dominantly, than you are experiencing the impulses of the “Ego Body.”

    Neither are wrong. Both are natural. And in a way, the aspirations of a “New Religion” going forward would perhaps be a Unification or “Marriage” of these two separate bodies. That may be the true, ultimate life experience and fulfillment. In a way it’s sort of like the current goal of cutting edge physics is to “Marry” if you will Quantum Theory (Metaphorical of the Subtle Body) and Relativity (Metaphorical of the Physical Body).

    I just realized that this idea of “Destiny” and “Letting go” or “Surrender” or in our terms here, “Sacrifice” (When thought of as ‘sacrificing’ your need to control) have a lot in common, that they almost are born from each other. So, if you sacrifice your Ego, then your true Destiny will take over, and then your life’s adventure will be automatic. “It” will begin. You won’t have to try. It’ll be like getting on a ride at Disney World.

    The question I still have, that’s burning inside me, is how does one, in practical terms, in terms of your everyday life, actually “Die to Yourself” or “Die to Your Ego”? That’s the question that’s burning in me: how do you do this metaphorically in the everyday, “real” world of your life?

    “I never meant for any of this to happen, but I’m glad it did,” Spade’s character in The Wrong Missy [-06:46]