What is The Product?

Scientologists (Hubbard) saw things as agreements, contracts, products.

We all trade in life with others. We sing for our supper. We provide a product. We need to be able to define our product to find our market, so we can find where what we offer is valued, is useful, so we can survive, eat, and keep on keepin’ on.

What is my product? What do I offer and sell? Where is my market?

Leslie Stevens once said I was an “explorer.” That is, I don’t stay in one place for too long because my “rush” is knowing something new. Thrill junkie. Lover of those “Aha moments.” Gnosis. The orgasm of the light bulb going off over the head, and the “Oh NOW I see” glimpse of the next step up the misty mountain. With all your getting, get under-standing. That is, what is “behind” this level, behind the Wizard’s curtain...then behind that curtain? 

What is at the “end”of the search is WHAT was at the beginning. Where Alpha swallows the tail of Omega. WHY did the perfectly balanced Plenum, a crystalline body of All potency, fracture Itself over and over, only so that each part, born out of balance, would then try and find its way Home back to balance? That, by definition, Truth is Remembering (re-membering, putting the pieces back together).

My product is that there IS NO product, only the movement of the Spirit, which is likened to a wind. You can’t bottle the wind. It keeps on moving. You might say, as I do, that of the 3 aspects of Divinity, Create-Preserve-Destroy, I see the middle element as primary, the Skambha, the pillar that has the oscillating poles. The oscillation passes through the PIllar, IT remains. While we call it “preserve” which sounds static, Its real job to keep balance by letting each side have its turn. So it restores balance by unbalancing either pole when its turn is over.

My job is to undo things, to point out how no one particular aspect is sufficient. To be like an entheogen, to dissolve, even to the edge of destruction, but to then regroup and recrystallize. To engender the god within, by challenging and undoing part of the protective carapace that the god has formed up over itself as it over-clings to any one role.

This is the action of the original Spirit, which we liken to Fire. Fire heats and excites, which our systems like, feels good. It’s the "warm" in warm and fuzzy. Too much Fire burns, and we don’t like it.

Yet everyone seeks excitement when there is too much same-old. Books, movies, stories of adventure, forbidden love, danger, that is, we are thrilled by Fire when it takes us to the edge of almost being undone, and then, we re-organize to a higher level. The love-adventure story seems to always end where the hero-heroine overcome danger, and finally rush together for insanely mad sexual union, the promise of ... of... what? Next, it’s kids, boring job, disappointment, careers, bog down in same-old. Now it’s time to repeat the formula: excitement, have an affair, conquer new countries, launch new products, eat new food, new product... all in an endless circle some believe is “progress.”

I have no answer to that. But I have figured out that my product is to be a catalyst, an acuator (note the spelling), a representative of the Fire... and a "troublemaker," endlessly pointing out what is wrong and not living up to the specs of the Plan. At first people feel like you are liberating them, as you are, by saying the unsayable, the unfriendly, the critical. So a shy quiet guy (like one we know) is prodded by me over some years into realizing that he has just been cruising along, and things are no longer "good." He slowly gets up the courage to make a change. But now he is back to “hiding in plain sight” the telling phrase he applies to himself. He admires Braveheart on film, has his guns, his stock, but does not feel the URGE to stand on the front lines.

They loved Thom Paine when they needed a catalyst to get the revolution going. They hated him when they wanted to go back to business as usual. 

Vitvan knew what the product was. We have seen over and over how he warns that one would fall apart, how Love would be your undoing. Of how to get to that moment of the Father glorifying you on the cross, you have to pass through the suffering of being undone. The God-drug will make you feel awesome, but you will die in the Process...

If we have a job, it is to cooperate with the Wind of the Spirit, a warm halcyon breeze at times, or a hurricane of destruction. It’s all in the time cycles Hari.

The symbol of the ruler, “god on earth,” is the scepter, or wand, or more precisely decoded, the Skambha, the Pillar who supports ALL but keeps the system in balance by not letting any faction get too strong.

So the role of the catalyst is to remove stuckness, and to monitor that process. Ideally we want to produce enough excitement that the lemmings can dream on that their ego fantasies are just about to be fulfilled. But then to disabuse them of holding onto an objectified image of the Moving Tao. This is a thankless job, and very tiring. I want rest too, but cannot find the “role” that doesn’t seem like a cop out, or feels like going back to sleep. You can tell old man Ralph got tired of his job as trailblazer; he says near the end that he just wants a place to end up his days in harmony, like Dr. John. I’m sure, after a life of healing, fixing, guiding, instructing newbies and groupies, who keep repeating the same old mantram of “I know how it should be,” and “I’m right,” they get tired of tending the Flame, and want to rest.

But that is where we are at. Rekindling the Flame. People get stuck, and they resent you pointing that out, pushing them to break through. Then they feel some release and excitement so they tell you “do it some more,” by which they mean, you do it to them, and they will passively submit. You do the work on their behalf. But then, when they feel better from the release, they want to go right back to being comfortable, attending ladie’s lunch, watching football games, and feeling confident about “having all the answers.”

My model is the alchemical process. The necessity for the Secret Fire is therein the big secret, hidden in plain sight...

Well, that sets my goal for today! Will watch The Good Wife and immerse myself into the Mythos again: the seeking of Balance and Redress (scales of Justice, which of God’s chosen roles will prevail over another?), the conundrum of Love (once loved husband, still loved children, tempted to new love, excitement mounting), the so often unsatisfactory way “justice” works out, because anyone can see that almost no one is entirely bad; even Colombian drug lords love their wives and kids too.  So the story cannot resolve these issues, only keep tottering on the edge of excitements, puzzles to be solved, the celebrations of winning (happy vagina mouths eating and drinking), then corruption, feet of clay... I like the emotional churning, helps me dredge up feelings for housecleaning, but at the end of the day, it is still Chinese food... I am hungry for more existence, yet tired of the same meals.

Doesn’t “gnosis” sound like fun?