A Second Plea

The Trouble with King-speak

In exaltation of yum.

Twenty two years ago today became the most astonishing day of my life.  Something happened so impossible that … words fail.  I think 22 years is long enough.  I’m spilling the beans.

Suddenly, without warning: love!  A love beyond love filled me.  A feeling of warmth filled my chest and went down to my ankles.  It was so far beyond anything I’d experienced.  It was yum.  

By a few days later, that yum filled my body from tip to toes.  But the crazy thing is: it stayed.  It became a non-speaking voice of harmony guiding my actions.

I ascribe nothing supernatural to it.  It feels as natural as it gets.  It said to me: there’s something wonderful about our universe, something hidden that’s spectacular.  I want that for you.

About a month later, another feeling hit me.  It gave me a strength and resilience I never thought possible.  It added to what was already gorgeous, a beauty beyond beauty, a feeling so tender I would have crumpled if it hadn’t also given me power, a power to help hurting friends.  I want that for you if you want it too.  I’ll tell you exactly how to get it.  It involves freedom of thought, feeling, and activity.  If you’re not into full-freedom, forget it.  Don’t follow me: follow the harmony inside.  Change any and every idea to match that resounding freedom.

Sages have stated it for ages.  I met at least one sage: a friend of a friend of a friend.  I call her Violet.  I call her Violet because she didn’t tell me her name.  In a two hour period, she spilled life’s beans to me.  I disagreed with everything she said.  After that two hour bean-spilling, life did what life did.  I mostly ignored her statements.  One thing stuck especially: “Live from love, Hillary!  That’s your ticket to freedom!”  I couldn’t shake the idea, though I fought against it vehemently.

Now you.  You can do something different that (very nearly nobody) talks about today: improve the English language!  Improving the English language—down to the meanings of words—frees you, only you.  It’s each person freeing ‘self’.  It’s undoing patriarchy from within.

We’ve each been exposed to the thinking of ancient kings.  Ancient kings ‘knew’ they were gods, or pretended such.  Or, they claimed to be representatives of gods or the prime local god.  The upshot?  Everything the local king stated was completely true, important, right, and good.  It was necessary to agree.  If you valued your intact body at least…  

Kings stated ‘the’ ‘truth’.  Each local king was utterly ‘right’.  Over time, this pattern of thought by kings resulted in slavery, subjection of women, full enslavement of women by ‘husbands’, etc.  Men owned women and children.  Kings owned everyone.  Today, some people speak of ‘owning’ someone or some group...as if that’s helpful.

Kings placed people on verbal ladders, with kings ‘on’ ‘top’.  Kings were ‘high’ (“high and mighty”).  Other people were pushed ‘low’ and made ‘lowly’.  Kings levitated in their own minds, becoming ‘superior’ to ‘everybody’.  Even though kings didn’t ‘know’ everyone, each local king (or emperor) ‘knew’ “I am better.”.  

“I am the best.  I am above everybody.”  

That’s king-speak, for instance.  

Kings made a mess of the languages they spoke.  We live with the aftermath of that mess today.  The yuck of life descends from ancient kings and their ilk.  That includes clergy who set themselves up as ‘better’ than ‘everyone’ ‘else’.  That can be a hypothesis—an hypothesis if you’d rather.

Kings cast a spell on humanity.  That spell includes these words and ideas:

These four (especially) have ruled, setting down rules of thought and judgement-against-us.

Four more concepts make matters worse, locking in pain and sorrow, magnifying struggle, and enforcing a lack of help from language.

In the ancient world, various sages pointed out problems with these sorts of words and concepts.  It’s not that we ‘shouldn’t’ use concepts emphasized by ancient kings: the idea of ‘shouldn’t’ forms part of the problem of human disharmony.  It’s not that we ‘need-to’ think differently: we can if we so choose.  It’s not ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ to continue to think using these king-approved ways of thinking.  Ideas of ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ have been used to harm persons for centuries.

“When patriarchy started” hardly impacts this topic.  Yes, it may be useful to have a sense of it.  My sense (though, like everything I state forms merely a thought and opinion): patriarchy bubbled forth especially around 4000 BCE and became a serious deal (in parts) by 3000 BCE.  If you prefer to say 3000 BC, I’m fine with that also.  I’m interested in whatever actually reduces pain and increases the pleasures of love-joy-tranquility-with-energy.  Or call it love-joy-peace-energy instead.  I’m not interested in equanimity that sits around.  I enjoy élan, throwing myself energetically into life’s beauty.  Love is that beauty.  Joy is that beauty.  Energy-of-life (élan vitale) is that beauty!

What about you?  Why do I write these things today?  When a person falls into the Universe’s Yum Factory, there’s little that remains to do but assist where assistance is desired.  I assist.  I feel far too much yum-feeling, see far too much beauty (visual yum) to ‘need-to’ ‘get’ things for myself.  And to think that ‘I’ somehow ‘deserve’ anything (or don’t deserve yum) compounds patriarchy and distracts from why we’re all here.  And if there’s no reason for our existence, let’s make one:

Yes, shiitake happens.  So what?  No person—upon sufficient reflection—is ‘responsible’ for yuck.  We each learned a language full of error and harm-to-us-humans.  King-speak impelled that yuck, the ick of human life.  Kings divided and conquered.  That’s a prime hint.  Concepts of division and dominance harm us.  There’s no ‘us’ and ‘them’—we’re all of one planet.  We’re earth.

Thought-by-we’re-earth (thinking in terms of love and oneness): that unifies. It makes us whole.  Thought by oneness-of-universe: that helps us as well!  Rethinking words in the sage-tested ways of non-hubris and non-separation works and helps.  I don’t ‘know’ anything.  Instead of ‘knowing’, I can work to uncover ways that help.

Let’s do it.  Please share thoughts.  What have you found to generate harmony?  How can we have a conversation?  What would you like?  What are your deepest wishes in life?  I don’t presume to ‘know’ answers.  The concept of ‘know’ hurt me.

I’m for yum-for-all-persons.  I call it Love.

Love,

Hillary

November 29-30, 2021