[thoughts from ~burning woman~ by Sha'Tara]

Life is movement but not pointless movement. Life is change, but with
single-minded purpose. It is not movement pushed by some exploitative
minority to the detriment of a majority. Nor is it an endless changing of
the guard. Life isn't a job, or repetitive and utterly pointless rituals as
practiced with such mindless devotion in assembly line performance within
religious institutions, shopping malls, political groups and organized
sports. Life moves with purpose. That purpose could be stated as "to
better itself." If life's purpose is to better itself, that says two
important things to me: one, it is motivated and guided by some great
intelligence and two, my own purpose as a living being is to better myself
also or fall into the gaping maw of life's recycling bin or what some call
the wheel of karma.

Let's talk about bettering oneself. What does that mean? If I were to
believe what I see in the commercial world, what the media advocates and
what most people do, I'd think that bettering myself means to be young,
physically healthy and good looking, well informed and well educated, and
rich in money, possessions and friends, and exercising power over others.
When I was young and I knew everything I used to believe that, but now that
I don't know near as much, I realize I was so completely wrong. I've been
observing. I've seen what people do with their incomes, their time, their
few healthy years of existence, how they squander it away as if the meaning
of life rested in splashing, making as much noise as technology will allow
and delegating the rest to the garbage can. From vantage points I scrabbled
to upon my learning mountain, I've watched the powerful and seen what they
do with their power. From the winds that blew up through the cracks and
fissures I've heard the cries of the poor and dispossessed. I've sensed
their suffering caused by oppression and sadism. I've come to understand
the geometry of oppression: that no one can be rich without being a willful
participant in oppression. I've concluded that such is not what life
engages in when it betters itself. That is how death comes about. No
longer is death the thief in the night: it rules openly and freely and
multitudes worship at its pervasive shrines. One's betterment will not come
from that direction.

What then must I do to better myself if I find the desire to do so? The
first question I must ask of my desire is, will it serve me when I die?
Will it be there for me? Will my "Olympic" style health, strength, speed or
skill be my companion as I leave this body? How about my money, or the
power I wielded as a President of a military or financial power, will that
hold me up? How about my world-class facts? My university degrees? The
number of people who adulated me as a professor, inventor, artist? The
number of years I remained on the New York Times best sellers list? The
number of times I won a Nobel prize?

You see my point. Of course if you are of those convinced that death is the
end and that's all she wrote, then I guess it doesn't matter to you should
you discover that it isn't. At first you'll be confused, then pleasantly
surprised. Until you realize you have no say at all in what comes next
because your "life" belongs to someone else. After all, didn't you throw it
away on a "safe" bet? Now you are a slave and as such, you have no say.
Your memory is blocked and you are re-programmed to enter into another turn
of the wheel wherever "they" want you. Soon you won't know the difference
and you will start struggling again, with no purpose other than to satisfy
the desires of those who own you and the systems that circumscribe your life
of the moment.

To become better, I must address those very things I find impossible,
unapproachable and unacceptable. I begin by realizing that the Matrix, or
System (I'm being all-inclusive here) sets up boundaries to literally
everything. No one and nothing under the hegemony of the Matrix is ever
free. Beings who have developed, or been given, the ability to reason with
words, to formulate ideas, are permitted to discuss great concepts,
including the idea of freedom, and are given pieces of such concepts to play
with under careful supervision. Here's a simplistic example of what I mean:
an indulgent parent smiles upon hearing the kid go, "Boom! Your APC is blown
to bits!" after giving him a toy tank. But things would take on a different
turn if the kid, now grown up, builds the real thing in the back yard. The
System isn't going to just let that go, or ask him what he intends to do
with his tank, of that we can be sure. You may get to drive a tank but it
will be for the Matrix and it will dictate who it is you get to blow to
bits. Interestingly, while you have no freedom, it will be telling you that
you are fighting for freedom and you will buy it. Why? Because you don't
know what freedom is and you don't know any better.

Ideas are powerfully motivating things. On earth, they are all carefully
monitored and guided into Matrix-serving channels. If an individual
develops an idea that could disrupt the Matrix order, that individual is
censored and the idea disappears, is neutralized or redesigned to serve the
Powers. We see this happening everyday, particularly in that sacrosanct
area of environmental protection, or "green" awareness at this time. The
monolithic earth destroyers called multinational corporations are climbing
on the "green" bandwagon. Because they care about the quality of life on
this planet? That would violate their reason to exist (see some of Milton
Friedman's arguments here), and destroy their political power base. No,
they don't care-they can't care-and anyone who believes s/he can make a
difference within a corporation by introducing the "care" factor is sadly
deluded, if not insane. The reason mnc's are adopting the green slogans is
simple. One, they're buying out the budding social concerns towards the
environment so the issue doesn't get out of their control and two, they are
afraid that their rapacious greed may indeed spell their doom. They're not
yet sure of this, but they suspect; dinosaurs casting anxious glances at a
changing landscape. While having no solutions to the problems they have
created, they nevertheless believe they can be proactive and with a bit of
tweaking, their ways can go on into the distant future. Well, that's the
nature of the beast, isn't it? When they tell their employees how much they
are doing for the environment I see a group of very fat sharks giving seals
lessons on becoming vegetarians. It's all good: the seals will still be
there to provide food for the sharks and there'll be more fish for the
sharks as well. It's what you call win-win.

I just wanted to point out that "change for betterment of life" is not going
to come from within the System, the Matrix. And everything belongs to the
Matrix, including hell and heaven.

Nothing can change.

Ever.

So the Time Lords ordain it.

Except.

Once in a while, some sentient creature discovers the meaning of freedom
through self-empowerment. In the worlds of the Matrix under the brutal
tyranny of the Time Lords (planet Hurt being but one tiny part of their
hegemony) it is not an easy gig to even dare think self-empowerment. As we
have seen in the movie "The Matrix" those who would become self-empowered
become targets for persecution and destruction. Self-empowerment is a
geriatric disease to the System. It causes limits to break down by eating
away at the conditioning, the social mortar that keeps a sentient race from
evolving. Self-empowerment wears away time limits and opens avenues to the
timeless, to infinity. Self-empowerment equals understanding. Not
education, not knowledge, but understanding. When you understand something
you know what it is and you know what it does. Understanding is not
permitted within the realms of the Time Lords because with understanding
comes a power that allows one to function with truly new ideas. It allows
one to reject all the paths offered by the System and discover new paths,
hidden paths which the TL's and their minions cannot see, cannot block,
cannot control, cannot re-direct. And that is what scares them.

The self-empowered understands powers and forces, knows to bend with the
wind, knows to hide, knows when to surface and fight in a way that the
System cannot resist: satyagraha or non-violent non-cooperation. It doesn't
take much in terms of action, it only requires understanding of why the
action is taken. I could list some very simple things that have moved me to
self-empowerment. Beginning some 25 years ago I chose to no longer indulge
in infotainment media. No TV, no radio and no newspapers. Later it became
no Internet surfing. Immediately I freed up huge chunks of my hard drive
mind capacity for personal thought work. I filled in the "time" by writing
ideas down and by reading. There was an obvious betterment to my life and
for almost the same quarter century I have not used the dubious services of
"doctors" or other medical practitioners. I also gave up religion as a
useless crutch. While there is much spiritism in religion, there is no
spirituality there-and how could there be? That too is within the realm of
the Time Lords. Since I had no need for doctors, I also had no need for
drugs. As my "needs" grew less and less, I was able to become
vegetarian-another kick to the guts of the Matrix. I ate less, lost weight,
increased my stamina and gradually reached a place where the concept of
"being healthy" didn't factor in my thinking. I was healthy so didn't have
to think about it.

These are just a few of the things I did for myself. Of course that freed
up income I could use to help others with, and time that could also be
spared for the needs of others. Once freed of the media I realized I did
not need to indulge in organized sports or other inanities. I did not need
to "invest" or buy property for security or profit. There was always more
than enough, of money and time. I found more and more time to slip away
from the grind, to go off alone on the River, not in polluting machines but
in silent, sleek kayaks, traveling hidden channels, finding places where
Earthians had yet to encroach upon. This I still do, and will as long as I
can. But that is not what drives me. Somehow through this search for
self-empowerment and the bettering of my own life I entered upon the path of
the Avatar. While I searched for the meaning of love (and subsequently
rejected love as a working concept) I discovered compassion. I experienced
this wonderful truth: that my joy can only come from what I give to another,
and I also discovered that joy and sorrow are partners for life, never to be
separated. I found out that happiness and pleasure are Matrix tools
designed to fool the unwary. No one who knows joy would ever again seek for
personal pleasure and happiness, and yet, from joy, one receives pleasure
and happiness. What you can never get by chasing after is given to you
freely while you are busy working out your life within compassion. In that
I discovered peace because my mind was at peace. And I found freedom.

I discovered the passion of having a purpose. Within the Matrix no one has
purpose, all serve as functions. All are numbers, that reality becoming
more and more obvious with each passing day as the Institutional bureaucracy
develops and installs computers to oversee and control all of life. But
those who discover purpose find themselves somehow beyond the functionality
imposed by the System. Yes, on the surface they continue to serve within
the institutions and appear no different than the rest but they know they
are bettering their own life and they know also that the entire race is on
that cusp, that individuals within it could, with example and the right
word, take that mental leap from the meaninglessness of Matrix functionality
into proscribed realms where anything is possible.

And that first possibility is that life is indeed in a process of
self-betterment and that anyone can enter into that process by creating or
discovering a personal purpose and choosing to practice self-empowerment
through satyagraha.

The alternative, for the people of planet Hurt is just that: hurt. The
planet will have little choice to follow the dictates of life and shake
itself. It will choose self-betterment and when this begins in earnest,
Earthians will realize they have been living on short time. Billions will
be uprooted and die in natural cataclysms or man-made wars and plagues. No
place will be safe or secure for hundreds of long, dark years. Forget 2012
as the marker-all those who used Time to measure earth changes have been
wrong because Time is a tool of powerful and inimical intelligent forces and
they can use it as they wish. Predict this or that and they will change it!
It's not a matter of time, it's a matter of awareness. The Earthian
invasion of, and proliferation upon, planet Hurt is unsustainable: it's that
simple.

In conclusion here's one of many dreams I had last night: There is a room I
cannot reach as it is behind a metal barricade. In the middle of the room
is a thing that looks like a large, black steel bed. On it a young girl of
about 12 years is chained crossways, with her head hanging over the edge.
Her legs are bent under her and held tight by crisscrossing chains. Fire is
lit under the metal frame and soon she is enveloped in flames. Her clothes
and skin are charred completely. I can see the flaking burned skin all over
her, including her face. Though she struggles, she does not utter a sound.
When the flames die down, the barricade is removed and I rush into the room,
remove the chains (and in the dream wonder why they did not burn my hands),
pick up the burned body - the girl is still very much alive but in atrocious
pain - and rush out to some healing place. End of the dream.

To the observer, such a symbolic dream is easily interpreted. I leave it to
you to find your own understanding of it.