Creating An Idealized Persona Part One

 

Creating An Idealized Persona

Part One:  What are we doing wrong?

 

1  Hi Everybody!  This is Leo Volont.  I’ve begun a new Video Series entitled, “Creating An Idealized Persona”, and this is Part One: “What Are We Doing Wrong?”  So, okay, we will eventually talk about what exactly we mean by an “Idealized Persona”, and then we’ll discuss how we can structure our own personalities on such a model, but, first, in this particular video, we’ll examine why it’s such a problem that we now have so few Idealized Personas in our Society.  What is Modern Society doing so wrong? 

 

2 One problem seems evident, that we’re not educating our population in how to be optimum Parents, particularly our Girls, our future Mothers.  I believe the problem there was that in trying to achieve Equality for Women, we inadvertently negated the Womanly Qualities, and in the Schools our little Girls became ‘Boys Version Two, and the unique biological and social roles of Women were ignored.   Education focused on making Women into competent Wage Slaves that could be interchangeable with Men.  But it wasn’t always like that.  Yeah, just 4 or 5 decades back, American High Schools had Home Economics Classes which were predominantly for the Girls.  I believe that most of these programs have since been dropped.  But, if we only had such programs today, than we would now have available a great number of Female Interns that could source out from the High Schools who could help bolster up the Day Care Programs that our Economy really calls out for.  But, more importantly, our Society would’ve better prepared our Girls to be more competent Mothers.    But, in terms of Persona Development, I worry most about the problem of bad or insufficient Role Modeling.     

 

3  Also, I’m not confident that even the Academic Community realizes the full extent of how badly our Society is doing with Role Modeling.  Our Society seems totally committed to the Nuclear Family Model where children will only really have exposure to  two Role Models, their parents, who are usually just a young man and a young woman starting out with no experience, but it will be entirely up to those two to show Baby all the Ideal Persona Possibilities available in our complete Social World.  And whatever kind of personas these Young Parents do have, well, most likely they wouldn’t be ideal.   Children end up being molded by lackluster and insufficient Role Modeling.  Even when it is not bad, it’s never very good.

 

4  Role Modeling never used to be such a problem.  You see, in Primordial Evolutionary Times, People did not live in the Suburbs, confined to Nuclear Family Households, but they lived communally.   Remember that in Paleolithic Times the priority for Living Quarters was their Defensibility from wild animals, and so one large Cave for the entire Community would often have been our Evolutionary Home.  Yes, I’ve read the Academic conjectures regarding Living Arrangements in Primitive Times and I’ve seen the Assumption put forward that dwellings were assigned for the purpose of segregating each Nuclear Family, but how could they prove that without finding 100 Thousand Year Old His and Her Towel Sets?  I feel that the Academics are superimposing Modern Protocols on the Primitive, as though we’ve always been this stupid.  We only have to look back at the Medieval Period to see that in Extended Family and Clan Compounds, that the divisions created were between Male and Female quarters, and often with separate nurseries with specialty staff, and the Men wanted as little to do with squally babies as possible.   Yeah, Some things never change.  The only times we saw Men being quartered with Women and their babies was when the Home was a single room shack for those living in the most dire poverty, and it was largely assumed that the Young coming out of such slum dwellings would mature into being dysfunctional adults – ‘Commoners’ used almost as a slur. The more Affluent Members of Society, because of their more expansively populated Living Accommodations, they were better able to impart a broader scope of Role Modeling to their children, and so we could expect that they enjoyed far better Mental Health and were therefore better able to become “Somebody” when they grew up, that is, they’d have a higher probability for developing an Idealized Persona.      

 

5  Also, child rearing during our Evolutionary Primordial Times was significantly different from today.  Today, we are far too clingy and sheltering.   Yes, for the first few years, even way back then, a child would need to stay close to its Mother, but even then the Mothers were mostly young women of Child Bearing Age, but were effectively Supervised by the more knowledgeable and experienced Grandmothers and Grandaunts.   Yes, In a communal setting there’d be a limit to how much damage an ignorant or lax mother could do.  Fathers would not be a problem because, well, their visits would last only so long as it takes to have social time with the Mother, and then they’d be back to their Friends where the real partying takes place.  Yes, our own feelings tell us that we couldn’t believe the Academic Assumptions that any man, Primitive or not, would rather sit around with fussy babies, trying to keep company with a woman, dingy with cooking fire soot, who goes from one household chore to another.  Where’s the Fun in any of that?   Men would rather be sitting around the communal fire, smoking and joking with the other guys, right?... perhaps even enjoying the dancing of the fresh clean blooming Maidens.  Yes, I think that the Modern Academics are looking at the results of all the Modern Coercive means being used to ‘domesticate’ the Human Male, and forget that all that is artificial and injurious to the Character of the Beings into which we have evolved.  They want us to be Good, when they should be pleased if they find us only Strong, Noble and Active.    

 

6  And, then again,  often times the Men were off on Hunting Parties, and this would require that the Women would set up a routine where they could take care of themselves for days at a time.  Yes, men were appreciated for bringing home the Meat, but nothing was happening back at camp that the Women couldn’t handle.  But the Hunts were exhausting and returning home was probably only about their own Recovery Time, and not about any extra work they’d need to perform.    We know that traditionally Men were not saddled with Child Rearing Responsibilities.   I also think it may screw up the Evolutionary Expectations for Role Modeling if the Masculine Mystique of Dignity is permitted to be trampled under the confusion of Men doing the traditional duties of Women.   What can a Boy Child look forward to in Life when he sees his own Father living a life of Cross Gender Role Humiliation.  Yes, I remember laughing when I saw my father wearing an apron for the first time, but then wondered how he couldn’t help but feel embarrassed.  You know, I wouldn’t have thought the Laugh worth the Shame of dressing like a Girl.  Perhaps as a child I was a bit more in touch with my Archetypical Receptivity for Valid Role Modeling Expectations, if such a thing exists.  That’s something we will need to look into later.

 

7  Then perhaps the greatest difference between Primitive and Modern is in regards to when it is considered time for the Child to be Independent.  Nowadays children are kept in the Nuclear Family Home until they are at least 18, even while these kids are almost in a constant state of rebellion, almost literally breaking down the walls to free themselves.   It is easy to see the cause of this great frustration, when we look at the Primitive Model where by the time the child is 3 years old and has the dexterity to run and play, then, in the Primitive Community, that is exactly what the children were allowed to do.   The door would be opened to them and the child told “come back if you get hurt and be careful about those snakes” and the 3 year old might as well be 21 in our Society.   The children would be allowed to come and go as they pleased.  The Children themselves would set up various Cadres, sorted by Age Group, and the younger groups would be off playing the games they’d learn by observing the older gangs, who’d be acting as Role Models themselves.  Then, remember, in the Primitive Community the Meals are Communal.  Mothers would  get to see their children when they’d get hungry enough to come back to ‘Camp’ to eat.    

 

8  I remember reading that in the Ancient Aramaic Language that the word for ‘brother’ was the same as the word for ‘cousin’.  This is linguistic proof that nuclear family categories weren’t being recognized, and that every child of a generation would be a collective of ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’… or cousins…  you see, they weren’t making any distinction!  Then we have the convention of including in the name of a child the phrase “Son of Whoever”, that is, tagging a child with the Father’s name.  This would only be necessary if the Son and the Father had so little contact that extraordinary means would need to be employed so that nobody would forget who the father was.  Yes, where the Family Unit is the Clan, then we might not expect Fathers and Sons to get that much personal interaction.  Oh, and then there is the Commandment that we honor our Mothers and Fathers, which, again, is probably conveying only the suggestion that we make a point of remembering who are Parents are amidst all the crowd of Family faces they may be blending in with.  

 

9  But, yes, while the Children may be preoccupied with their Little Friends and the games they play, still, when their eyes would turn towards the Adult World, they’d see an Entire World, where in a functioning, viable Group we would expect them to see approximate “Ideals” of every necessary Type of Persona.   You see, it’s my assumption, that given a random distribution of population, that in every group of 50 to 100 members, the optimum size of the Primordial Group, that there will be a sufficient representation of each necessary Type required by the Group for functional viability.  You see, if Evolution wanted us all to be the same, well, Evolution would have had plenty of time to bring us all to Blond Haired Blue Eyed Intelligent and Well Behaved Uniformity, but we are all so different, temperamentally and functionally, that we should assume we were designed to be like that, that a Functioning Group needs all sorts and for various reasons.  

 

10  Yes, in Primitive Times kids got to see All Sorts.  Also, keep in mind that at a Time in our Evolution when verbal language was still so young, that our abilities then with Non-Verbal Body Language would have still been very acute.    So the Children would know which Members of their Community were being respected, and more often than not it would not be their own parents.  So I believe that Children would be attracted to their own Types, automatically gravitating towards those Role Models in their Community with whom they’d resonate the best. 

 

11  But in Modern Times, it’s as though Parents are keeping their children Prisoners, sequestered from Society, insisting that they themselves be the Role Models, no matter how indifferent their Social Standing.   Then we have the question of just how the damage of Bad Role Modeling will manifest:  first, we could assume that the kids, with no references for comparison, would find even dysfunctional behavioral patterns in their Parents to be ‘exemplary’ and the damage would result from the children copying what’s wrong, or, we may have certain children who show a natural abhorrence to dysfunctionality, but then the children would grow up acting out with a lot of Reactive Fight or Flight Conditioning, which is also no good substitute for optimized communal Role Modeling. 

 

12  But perhaps the greatest harm that follows with inadequate Role Modeling is discernable as a Cultural malaise, that most people don’t have the fulfillment of behaving coolly and crisply as coherently recognizable Personas, and then we all look around and we have little understanding of what anybody else is trying to do or be either.  We’ve allowed our Universal Non-Verbal Communication and Body Language Lexicon to become muddled and indistinct.  We should live in a Culture where EVERYTHING, objects and actions, should have commonly understood meanings or subjective connotations, with often special meanings for each particular Persona Type.  But because of mixed up Role Modeling, everything means something else to everyone, and this state of confusion should not be our status quo condition.

 

13  Really, our Modern Society is now based on the Poverty Model for Social Organization in an Industrial Society, where our Suburban Homes are just upscale luxury models of the Breeding Sheds that 18^th Century Industrialists provided for their adult workers who could survive the rigors of Child Labor.  You see, Child Labor used to be preferred because of the children’s finer manual dexterity and for their pliability and ease of discipline.  Then the hours and intensity of the Work was intentionally gaged to systematically wear down the health of the children so they could conveniently die before they’d reach their rebellious adolescences.   But, then, more children were always needed.  So, breeding sheds, that is, housing men privately with woman in order to have children produced, well, that was the answer… well, yes, that, and also supplying the men with cheap Gin.

 

14   Also, in the 19^th Century, as the realization struck the Leaders and Statesman of Society that Wars would one day mobilize entire Societies and turn Workers into Warriors, well, the Social Planners at the time pushed for ‘Breeding Sheds’ everywhere for most everyone, in order to populate their future Armies, and so nearly all residential accommodations were designed for the Nuclear Family, to house the Bulls with the Cows, so to speak.   Now, even among the Affluent, who could certainly still maintain Estates adequate enough to house not only complete Extended Families, but their entire Clans, well, they too have adopted the Poverty Model, setting up Million Dollar ‘breeding sheds’ and keeping their children prisoners most the time… but the Rich do insist on getting out more often, and so Rich Kids almost always do better in Life, and it’s not just the money.  Rich Kids benefit by their broader exposure to Life and the Social World and; therefore, they enjoy a larger exposure to Idealized Role Modeling, but by adopting the Nuclear Family Residency Pattern for themselves, they do limit the advantages they should be enjoying.  Yeah, it is a special mark of a Dysfunctional Society that our Rich People don’t know how to behave as Rich People.

 

15  Oh, I had done a brief informal Video concerning the Role of Women, but I’ve gotten some further thoughts which I can fit in here.   Yes, I’ve heard it mentioned among Feminists that because Men are predominantly stronger than Women, that a Patriarchal Society is in effect forced upon them.  But this is only so because of the Institutionalization of the Nuclear Family Living Arrangements, that is, housing the brutal men with the more delicate Females and then complaining that the boys play too rough.   So far our Modern Society has only blamed the men for what is only the characteristic behavior we could expect under these circumstances, which is then criminalized so that Women can enjoy their measure of revenge upon the men they are in familiar relationships with.  But that only compounds the problem.  Assigning Blame and issuing Punishments is the most distinctive hallmark of Incompetent Management where Failure Analysis Studies show that most problems arise through Systematic Vulnerabilities.  Blaming People in such situations is only playing “Gotcha”.  So why do we have to hear about a Crisis of Domestic Abuse all while we insist on maintaining Residency in Nuclear Family Units.  Women, for the sake of their own Safety,  require their own Quarters, and the institution of Marriage needs to be re-evaluated for it’s Social Utility, especially since nobody any longer supposes that Husbands have unquestionable conjugial ‘rights’ over the bodies of their Wives, and Marriage is just a Property Contract that commodifies Women anyway, right?  For men, marriage is mostly just a legal liability, and nearly every man who marries is doing so against his own interests.  So I suppose Women must still be in favor of the Institution, because they calculate it must help them more than it hurts.   But, mostly, we need to change how and where we live.  While I think that women should have their own dedicated residential buildings, well, at least, where costs must be contained, they, as a minimum, should have their own sanctified bedrooms.  Yes, a Lady’s boudoir should always be ‘knock first’ and entrance be ‘by invitation only’.   Besides, the idea of a ‘Master Bedroom’, to be shared by Husband and Wife, is actually from the Medieval Period, before chimneys and fireplaces became common, where it was ordinary for either Wives or Maids to be used as literal ‘bed warmers’.  Yes, our Civilization needs to be able to move on from the 15^th Century.  Women need their own Rooms!  Then, once secure, Women will be free to turn Civilization into a Matriarchy.    

 

16  So, to sum up this Part One of my Idealized Persona Video Series, well, we’ve been implying that any Persona Development we do now would be akin to just doing damage control for a Society where effective Role Modeling has broken down.  But we need to ask whether a Persona can be successfully created later in life, or whether Early Role Modeling is developmentally necessary.   I would like to be optimistic and say, yes, even if we can’t imprint as easily on Ideal Persona Type Role Modeling as we could when we were kids, still, we’re not insensible.  It might be the same as with languages, that children of a certain age can pick up a second language quickly, but while it may be more time consuming and tedious, adults don’t find it impossible to learn new languages.  And so it is that in regards to Persona Development, that we must learn to be conversant in all the ways that Personalities can be understood to present themselves, but we will have to apply ourselves at maybe great pains in order to be proficient at it.  And then I hope we can fix our Society so that our children won’t have to waste time spinning the same wheels we do.      

Adventures In India

 

Adventures in India

 

1  Hi Everybody.  This is Leo Volont.   Yes, I had promised you all an “Adventures In India” video, but, heck, it just got way too long.  Yeah, I had some stories I thought would be interesting, but each story introduced characters that I’d be leaving behind, and that’s just not good storytelling.  And then the larger Story of how that Indian Trip contextualized into my life, well, I went into some very great detail about all that, but then I wondered whether it was all worth your Time, and decided No, not really.  You don’t need to follow me step by step if the milestones will tell you which way I went, right?  So, yeah, I’ll just be presenting only the necessary outline of this chapter’s Autobiographical Information, and I think you’ll all be happy if I just tell the best one of my Indian Stories.  So, yes, let’s get started.

 

2  So, yeah, In 1988 I had gone to visit my Guru’s Ashram in India.  No, not my Kundalini Guru, but the other one, the Cult Guru.  This one was supposed to be the Avatar of the Age, you know, like God on Earth.  He called himself Sathya Sai Baba.  But, yeah, he turned out to be a fake.  So, yeah, this is basically the Story of me wising up, but, yeah, I’ll be making a few excuses for myself, and probably for the thousands of others much like myself who got caught up in one cult or another back then but eventually came crawling back to the World ready to fit back in again.

 

3   You see, I had gotten interested in this Sathya Sai Baba because he was purported to be the Reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi (1838-1918), who was a very interesting example of a Modern Day Saint.   I had learned about Old Sai Baba at a pivotal moment in my life, that is, the summer before I’d go off to College.  Yeah, I had already started doing my Dream and Astral Work while I was still living at home, but Knowledge of this Old Sai Baba introduced me to both Indian Philosophy and the idea that Saints were probably more than historical fictions, and then I had the entire University’s infrastructure for digging up the details and talking about it with other like minded individuals.  I’ve been studying Saints ever since.   Anyway, when the same “Sai Baba” name came up again, in a book I found in a San Francisco book store just before going into the Army, well, while the same trick wouldn’t fool me today, it was enough to fool me back then.  Ooops. Live and Learn.

 

4  But, yeah, when I arrived at the Guru’s ashram, seeing him without all of his Public Relations and Marketing Filters and Packaging, well, I found the Imposter just too flawed, you know, even obnoxious by ordinary human standards. The ugly little creep was simply repugnant, even at a distance.   Yeah, whenever you find your Guru physically repulsive, that’s a warning sign that not all is well.   And there were moral ethical problems with him too.    Yeah, I had gotten lucky when I found a drunken Old Timer in the Swami’s Old Village who revealed over a few drinks that Sathya Sai had started out as a Scam Artist.   I’ll save you all the details there, because, well, that ‘Dirt’ was actually relatively minor compared to what came out when the newly invented Internet first took off and people found out how easy it would be to either Post anything or Search Up anything.  Yeah, those were some bad times for more than a few of the biggest money making Gurus.   Yeah, whoever would have thought that the Internet breaking down Trust in Society could be a good thing. 

 

5  But, yeah, my Blog would have been a lot shorter if I had just quit the Cult while I was still there in India, you know, the moment I found out about the Guru’s Dark Side.  But life’s complicated.  You see, back home the Cult was really just about showing up for weekly meetings where we’d do Bhajan Singing and Chanting.  Well, in that setting I was a kind of a local Superstar with my Stylized Singing Voice and Tabla Drum playing.  Then, from there, I’d been invited to sing with other groups that liked to do that same kind of Chanting.   So, yeah, while my Moral and Spiritual Convictions were highly offended with the Guru, well, his Cult had actually gotten me into a rather cozy Social Circle.  Yeah, I guess you could call it one of those Deal with the Devil kind of things, huh?

 

6  But the scandals were getting progressively worse and I eventually did quit the Cult.  The Precipitating Event occurred when a Lady I nominated for Center President was flagged by the ‘Fussy Old Married Couple Faction’ for violating a Morals Clause in the Center’s Bylaws.  Yeah, the Lady I put up for President was divorced and had been known to go out on dates.  But I never imagined that anybody in my Center would ever give voice to such an insult, and I couldn’t let it stand like that, and so I gave a Big Speech about “How If you Think that’s Bad, well, you all need to know what you’re Creepy Gurus been up to”, and then that was that, no more Social Circle.  After awhile I found another job and left town.   

 

7  But, yeah, after quitting the Cult, I did have a good decade or two to rethink my Spirituality.  I believe it’s been the Fulfillment of that last Dream I mentioned in my video “Horse Dreams, where my Horse and I had been caught napping too long and were persuaded to recommence our Journey.  Also, I had had another dream a long time ago where I was told that I’d be enlightened when I was 43 years old, but that turned out to be exactly the year I Quit.   Ironic, huh?  Perhaps it was the first big Spiritual Paradox of all the Paradoxes I’d begin to see everywhere.  Yeah, here I think I was being shown that it had been my Spiritual Path itself that was keeping me in the Dark, but once rid of that, I was apparently out in the Light.  But, no, I didn’t consider myself “Enlightened”, but only took it as a hopeful sign that leaving the cult had been a positive step.  

 

8  Oh, but, yeah, I do hate the idea that the fake Sathya Sai Baba may have tarnished the good name of  Old Sai Baba of Shirdi(1838-1918), you know, with guilt by association.  But then I had a dream.  I found myself back in the front lobby of the Fake Guru’s residence where there was hung a large portrait of the Original Old Shirdi Sai Baba, and I reverentially bowed before it, touching one knee to the floor, the way the Catholics do.  They call that Genuflecting.   I had done the same in Real Life back in ’88 when I had gotten the House Tour, making the other Sathya Sai Devotees squirm uncomfortably in the presence of Real Devotion.  But here and now in the Dream, the Old Sai Baba stepped out from the canvas and down to the floor.  He then presented me with a small white marble statuette, just over a foot long, which was emanating fragrances that I could see as floral pastel colors wafting and shimmering through the air.   Azure Blues and Magentas, as always, seemed the most prominent.   He called that small statue “The Feet of the Guru”. Well, yes, that was a puzzling name for a statue that was the Representation of a Person, though the form was fluid and shifting, as objects in Dreams often are, and so I could recognize the likeness of no individual I knew, but it certainly wasn’t a statue of a pair of feet.  But now I wonder if it has anything to do with my eventually taking up the Study of Dance, you know, becoming what they used to call of “Hoofer” back in the old Vaudeville days.  And I’ve always respected the Sufi Religious Orders for thinking it more important to Dance than to Meditate.  But, yes, with this dream I realized that the Old Sai Baba was still in my Corner and that was a huge consolation for me.

 

9  So, yeah, that takes care of all the autobiographical details we need to know for this chapter.   So now we can get onto the Story I’ve promised.  And, yeah, I promised you Flower Girls and so we’re going to get Flower Girls.  But the Main Character here will be the most intelligently and psychically sensitive man I’d ever met either before or since.  Yes, up until then I had been troubled by the apparent Conundrum that all the Spiritual Paths seemed to be promising far more than they were delivering.  You see, of the Thousands of Seekers, and Devotees that I’d met, well, I really wasn’t finding them all that very much different from anybody else, and sometimes not even that good.  I was still waiting to meet my first Enlightened Man.  But now, here was this one Guy who, while not Perfect, well, he at least looked like he had a lot to show for all his Travels.   His Knowingness seemed to hit the level of Connectedness.   This guy really seemed Plugged In.  And It made him a lot of fun to be with. 

 

10  It was odd how we met.  You see, I was not carrying around a lot of cash on this Trip… I was using travelers checks, and while I had changed some of them out into Rupees back at the Hotel in Madras on the night we flew in, well, I was getting low on pocket money, but heard there was an Office somewhere down on the Low Side of  the Village where I could cash more of them out, but I didn’t know exactly where to find the Office.   But I saw this one Guy standing out on the Ashram Square, contemplating the morning ambiance of the place, and I remembered seeing him around before, and he looked like the type of guy that would know things, and so I thought it’d be convenient enough to just interrupt him to ask.  But, he said “No No No!  You don’t want to go there.  The real exchange rate’s 14 to the Dollar,  but they’re only giving out 12.   But the shops will change out all your Money Order Dollar Purchases in Rupees at the rate of 13.  So, yes, just buy something and then haggle over the change”. 

 

11  Well, if you hate haggling than you’d hate India’s Shops.  But then I thought of the Flower Girls.   But, yeah, here I should explain about the Flower Girls.  You see, you’d find the Flower Girls walking the Main Street festooned in Strings of Jasmine Blossoms that they’d tie off into Leis that people could wear around their necks.  Yeah, at a distance you’d wonder what the appeal is, because the Jasmine Flower isn’t really visually so impressive.  It’s just a small White Flower with a little Yellow dot in the center, you know, even the common Daisy has a bolder visual presence than the Jasmine.  But when you get up close you catch what’s really the thing going on with the Jasmines – it’s their Fragrance!  Really, the Jasmine’s scent is richer, deeper, and sweeter than even the Rose.  Then, on the commercial side, well, the Jasmine grows like a weed, and so it’d be perfect for India.   So, yeah, a single loop of jasmines was cheap enough, even after tipping the Flower Girl, but they would wilt overnight and so everyday I’d need a new one… but that’d give me something to do each morning, and one does need to have a Purpose in Life, even while on Vacation, right?    

 

12  So, yeah, when I suggested to the Guy that we check with a Flower Girl in regards to my High Finances, well, he just looked at me with a blank face, and so I felt I needed to explain.   Yeah, it might not seem intuitively obvious that simple Village Flower Girls would be set up for dealing with Money Orders and Financial Arbitrage, but we only had to look at the few girls in the Village who were Flower Girls, against all those who weren’t, and we could see that the Flower Girls had something a little extra – that along with being very pretty, they’d also each be ‘Bright Eyed’ in a mathematically astute kind of way, but with enough sly cunning to allow us to suppose they’d have good little heads for business. “Besides”, I said, “you know, those girls aren’t alone out there. No!  You can bet that some Beggar King has that whole Street wired up and in his pocket!”   So if the Girl can’t  handle a deal, she’d just wave in somebody who could.  Remember, that every businessman in India wants to put his savings into either Gold or US Dollars, and so with the Flower Girls’ Beggar King, why should he be any different.  Yeah, I’m ready to believe those girls are ready to do some business.

 

13  But then this Guy startled me with the comment “you know, they say the Flower Girls are Prostitutes.”   Well, I wondered whether he was deliberately trying to shock me, but I didn’t hesitate a second and fought right back with,  “Nooooo!  I don’t see that at all!”   And then it was like I suddenly had this Intuitive Vision, not of what the Reality necessarily was, but of what it very well might have been, and so I explained it to him, that those Flowers are an Industry, with growers producing a steady flow of product, which would then go to the Workshops for Stringing.  So these Flower Girls would only be the Tip of the Iceberg, you know, they’re just the Sales Department of a far greater Organization than just themselves, and so they’d need to keep their pretty little Butts out on Main Street and work off their quotas, right?  If they didn’t, the others would go hungry, right?  Yeah, the Flower Girls wouldn’t  have the time for the kind of back alley dallying he was suggesting.”  

 

14  But, yeah, I also got the glimpse of an understanding that separate Street Businesses may have integrated together for their mutual benefits.  So I told that Guy that where he might have made his ‘mistake’ was in supposing that the Flower Girls were the Prostitutes, when the truth was really that they were only the Fronts or first contacts to the Sex Trade, you know, the role that’s usually filled by Cab Drivers and Hotel Concierges when you ask them, “Where does a Guy find a good time in this Town”.  So, it was my guess that the Flower Girls would be directing a lot of the Sex Traffic, sort of like the Hostesses that greet you on your way into a Diner and point you to your table, or whatever.  Yeah, I had noticed that each Flower Girl was accompanied by several smaller urchins, and thought maybe they were there being apprenticed into the Flower Girl profession, but now it seemed likely that the little ones could serve as messengers or even as guides to the Back Alley Rendezvouses.      

 

15  But then I was wondering how I could prove my point.  Really, I had two favorite Flower Girls and I wasn’t going to insult either one by asking whether or not they were prostitutes.  A Gentleman always assumes that every Lady of his acquaintance has an impeccable Amateur Standing, especially when they’re still under the age of 16.

 

 16  But, yeah, let me describe my little Favorites for you – there was the one who was a Proud Little Queen of Sheba dressed in a Pure Red Sari that looked like a print of Rose Petals on the finest Silk, which was probably more valuable than she was, which made me suspect that she was the personal property of the Beggar King himself, maybe even a daughter.  Yeah, that would make her important, and she certainly acted important, and I like important people, which would account for why I’d be liking her.

 

17  And Then there was the Taller Girl, prettier and with a lighter complexion, wearing a sari with Blues and Magentas, which are the same colors I see cropping up all the time in auras, dreams and visions.  Yeah, while she may have just been only a single growth spurt ‘older’ than the Little Red Queen of Sheba, well, she seemed to be ‘ripe’ enough, in that Old World Matrimonial Sense, so that I’d need to be carefully discreet around her, which forced me to be coy, but then when I’d act coy, well, she’d see that it wouldn’t hurt if she were the Flirty One and so she’d lead off and we’d both have some fun bantering back and forth.  And her English was actually good enough to look forward to.   Heck, now that I think about it, she was probably looking forward to seeing me so she could practice her English, you know, with somebody who could speak it in more than just monosyllables.   But, yeah, perhaps the reason I was so adamant about the Flower Girls themselves not being the Prostitutes was because, well, the Blue Girl never crossed that line, and prostitutes typically aren’t that shy about pushing those kind of boundaries.  

 

18  But, then I worried about how to prove any of this while still preserving my own good reputation.  Really, I had never said “where does a guy find a good time in this Town?” ,no, not in my entire life and didn’t plan to start now.  But, then I got a cute idea – I’d use suggestive innuendo behind the shield of plausible deniability.  So I told the Guy that what might work would be to tell the Flower Girl that she’s Very Very Very Pretty, you know, with enough ‘verys’ to think that at least one of them would want to take it up to the next level, you know what I mean….and then I bet the Guy a crumpet with his tea that the comeback would be something like “My Sister is even Prettier.  Would you like to meet her?”   Well, that was the first time I got a smile out of him, and then he said “Bet’s On” and we shook on it.

 

19  So, off we went. When we got out the Gate we just had to scan the street for a second or two when our eyes alit upon the bright Red Little Queen of Sheba up the street by about half a block, and I told the Guy, “There! The Little Red One!”  Well, sure enough, first things first, she was able to handle the Arbitrage.   Really, she had more cash on her little 4 foot 3 Person than an ATM Machine.  Yeah, the folds of a Sari can probably fit some deep pockets, couldn’t they.   She even carried in her bag the necessary Rubber Stamps and Ink Pads for franking the Travelers Checks.  Yeah, I was waiting for the Guy to show some amazement so I could gloat, but, he deprived me of the satisfaction by appearing as though he expected as much.

 

20   But then came the Morally Decisive Moment for settling the Bet, and so I said, “Oh, and by the way, have I mentioned before how I think you’re the very very VERY Prettiest Flower Girl in the whole wide World?”… yes, ordinarily I would have included the word “Little”, in there, you know, to keep the whole situation safely in the Diminutive, but this needed to be racier in order to prove my point, but I wasn’t able to keep from blushing, and I could see that she saw it.  

 

 21  Well, even I was a bit surprised with what came next, because she responded word for word with, “My Sister is even prettier”, etc, etc.  But, yes, I thought this had all gone far enough and so I gave a reluctant shrug and said “Oh, I’m sorry. I’d ordinarily be delighted to meet your Sister, but it’s just that Mr. Smith and myself are so busy advising the Swami on Spiritual Matters and World Affairs that we simply wouldn’t have the time, but please take this twenty Rupee Note to buy a ribbon for your sister’s  hair to make her prettier even still!”, and then I finished up with a bow.  Well, that was enough to make the Proud Little Goddess in Red laugh and laugh and laugh, and then my new Friend, well, it made him laugh too.   Then I saw their eyes meet and they both decided to laugh at me together.  Well, I counted it as quite a victory, since I think that neither one of them was especially given to Laughter. 

 

22 Yeah, I know that the Guy doesn’t appear all that spiritually impressive in this first story, but, honestly, looking back, I think he was just putting me through my paces, you know, testing me for my character.  Just as I’d been testing him.  Honestly, I think I would have taken my leave of him, politely, of course, if he hadn’t shared a laugh with my little Favorite, you know, after he implied in dark tones that she was a Prostitute.  It wouldn’t have been quite Gentlemanly, if I hadn’t, would it?   But in only a few hours more my New Friend would orchestrate an event which would cause my respect for his spiritual powers to sky rocket.   

 

23  This Story begins as we were standing in line for the Guru’s Darshan, you know, his Daily Appearance.  Then it was like my Friend suddenly became preoccupied and he took me by the arm and told me we had something more important to do.  Okay.  How could I argue with that.  So, again, out the Ashram Gate we went, and then we took a Right, and up the hill past the Village, and then about 100 meters off to the Left of the Road, we crossed a scrubby field to a broad shade tree.  There we found an Ox who had been staked out to keep him from wondering off.   He had really long curled horns.  As the Crow Flies, it was probably a bit more than a quarter of a mile from where we had started.   Looking around, my friend pointed and said “There!  He must have knocked over his Water, and now he’s really thirsty”.   Yeah, it looked like they’d put his bucket too far inside the sweep of his chain.   So we took the bucket to the closest Communal Water Spout and filled it up and carried it back together, both of us with our inside hands down on the handle and our outside hands thrust out to the side for balance, with our feet pressing into the ground against the weight of all that water.  It must’ve looked like we were a very wide 4 legged bird spreading its wings to fly.     

 

24  No, I didn’t ask him how he knew the Ox had knocked over his Bucket, but that didn’t keep me from wondering about it.  Yeah, we had been together most of the morning and then through Lunch, and it was clear that the bucket had only been knocked over within the hour or two of our arrival.  Also, well, my Friend didn’t have the servants he’d need to deploy in order to set up a deception.   And so it is that the Thirsty Ox’s Spilled Water Bucket Incident remains a mystery to me even to this day.  But whatever it was, well, look at the interesting Picture this makes with all its Symbolisms – Yeah, Picture This: He and I together were both Aquarius the Water Bearer and also Gemini the Twins, and we were serving a thirsty Taurus the Bull under the Tree of Life.   Yeah, after more than a decade of Dream Work, I was pretty much used to seeing even Real Life Events in terms of their Symbols.  But you’d have to ask an Astrologer what any of this stuff means.  But, yeah, it also gave me a Feeling, and the feeling was like I had just gone through some kind of a Sacred Ritual.  And That might explain why I had kept quiet the whole time… yeah, me being quiet.  

 

25  The second thing this Guy did which impressed me was, well, the next day we were actually going to stay for the Guru’s Darshan, and were sitting on our mats out on the sand waiting with hundreds of other people, all placed in well formed lines, when an Old Sadhu, you know, with leathered skin under cracked and fading Blue Face Paint, with tangled matted hair and beard, and wearing just a few tattered rags, barely enough to preserve decency, sparse even by Indian Standards, and he was also really tall for an Indian, maybe 6 foot 4.   But, yeah, he was standing up, shouting and gesturing wildly.  Well, Old Sadhus like that are famous for being crazy, and nobody of the hundreds of people around, official or otherwise,  knew what to do about it, and many of us, I supposed, were getting really nervous about it.

 

26   So, my New Friend, nonplussed as always, just serenely gets up and excuses himself through about the seven rows of Devotees between us and the much distraught Old Sadhu, and putting his hand on the his bare shoulder; he stood up on tiptoe and whispered something into his ear, and, whatever it was he told him, well, the Old Sadhu immediately shut up and sat down.  Well, then, the whole crowd emitted a hushed murmur of amazement.   My friend, still nonchalantly as ever, excuses his way back and just sits down next to me as though nothing at all just happened.  But I’m curious and so I quietly ask “What did you whisper to that Guy?”  Well, he looks at me as though I’m really obtuse and says, “I told him to shut up and sit down!”  Then it was I who caused the next scene when I yelped out a spontaneous  “HA!”, you know, before I was able to bite off the rest of the laugh.  You see, I had thought of telling the Old Sadhu the very same thing myself, but then hesitated over the uncertainty of the results I might expect.  But apparently my Friend enjoyed a Universe where the consequences of his calculations would always break in his favor.    

 

27  The third thing my new friend did was, well, it was getting time to set up traveling arrangements for our departure, as he was planning to leave the Ashram on the same day as my Group, and so we were out in the mid-day sun, like Mad Dogs or Englishmen, and he was quarrelling with Abdul the Cab Driver over the fare back to the Big City.   Yeah, Abdul was speaking for all the other cabbies who were standing out there behind him, and my friend had a specific figure in mind that he remembered being told was the going rate, but Abdul would explain that their new Taxis ran on Gas, not Diesel like before, and gasoline costs extra.  But my Friend wouldn’t budge, and so it was just back and forth with the same circling arguments, all while I was growing more and more delirious from the Heat, where the only shade from the burning Equatorial Sun, was apparently beneath my feet.

 

 28 Well, remember the “Drunken Old Timer”, of whom I had spoken of previously (Hat #4).  Yeah, he had been the Old Guy I had been buying shots for while he was telling me what a Scam Artist the Young Swami had been.  Well, that Old Drunk was Abdul himself.  Yeah, Small World, isn’t it?   So, yeah, Abdul and myself had already developed a certain rapport, and so standing back behind my Friend, I gave Abdul some secret hand signals telling him to just say “Yes Sahib” to my Friend,  and then I’d slip him the extra money he wanted later; really, just the Rupee equivalent of less than twenty bucks, which I thought well worth the cost if it could save me from suffering a bout of Sun Stroke.  So, with the bargaining session behind us, my Friend says, “Good we can get some Tea now and get out of this sun”.  So we stepped over to the Canteen and got our tea and some toast and were speaking of other subjects for about 10 minutes, probably about Going Home, when it was like he was jarred by a sudden impulsive thought and he barked out at me “Did you somehow signal Abdul for a pay off?”

 

29  Yeah, that took me aback because I’d been careful not to show any signs of gloating.  Heck, I even looked around to make sure nobody was signaling from behind my back.  But, yeah, I had to answer quick or he’d think I was making up a story and so I replied with  “Oh, Jesus! We’d still be out there broiling in the noon day heat if I hadn’t, wouldn’t we?  So, yeah, a few Rupees in your pocket and out of mine, and so, really, I guess I need to say ‘You’re Welcome!’, and then I smirked.   So, yeah, my Friend shared back the smirk, which seemed to have as much of a hint of a ‘thank you’ in it as I was ever likely to get, and then he appeared to shrug it all off, and we moved onto just the usual small talk. 

 

30  But, yes, for my own part I wish I had had greater discernment back at that time.  You see, I think I missed on picking up what his play had been.  Think about it – That Guy wasn’t so poor that he needed to squabble over not much more than pocket change.  So why would he pick a fight with all the Cabbies?  Was he setting it up so that Abdul would be honor bound to walk away and leave us to find Cabbies that were running Diesels?  But there were no Diesels, and that would make us miss our flight, forfeiting our unrefundable tickets.  Yeah, we’d have to bum around India together while we figured out how to get back Home. So maybe that was his Play.  Well, think of the Adventures we might have had!  In a situation like that my Spiritual Development might have been greatly accelerated.  I also thought we probably would have become best friends.  Heck, we already were Best Friends, and it ended too soon.

 

31   But, yes, this seemed to be the one Situation that didn’t break his way, and it was my fault that it didn’t.   Well, that could account for the shocked expression on his face the moment he discerned what my Play had been.   It must have seemed like a betrayal, a stab from really behind his back.  Now I only wish I could apologize.  But I don’t even know who he is.   You see, we’d never bothered introducing ourselves, or if we had, well, I’ve always been horrible with names.   And now I wish I knew what happened with him.  34 years is a lot of water under the Bridge.  Really, I can’t explain why such a man isn’t the Maitreya Buddha by now.  But he seemed like only a few years older than I and he’d be the healthy sort.  Perhaps he’ll still turn up yet.  You know, He never had a problem with the Heat and so times such as these may be what he could thrive on.  

Beyond Delusions of Grandeur

 Beyond Delusions of Grandeur

 

Hi Everybody!  Welcome To An Informal Evening with Leo Volont.

Yeah, “Going Beyond Delusions of Grandeur” is really a funny Title, isn’t it?  So let me explain.

 

1  So, yeah, I’m in my last week or so doing the  Rewrite Editing and Reading Rehearsals for my next Formal Blog Video, “Adventures In India, and I really like how it’s coming along, but then, well, last night, after hours, as I began to unwind into my new routine of Dance Practicing, where my Body’s really busy, but my mind was free to wonder, well, I got to thinking that many of the Exalted Feelings I was describing in my “Adventures In India” Blog, well, I saw that one day  I might have to face the criticism that I was entertaining Delusions of Grandeur.   Okay.  But that got me wondering about just how much Semantic Distance exists between Socially Acceptable “Fantasy” and what seems like Pathological “Delusion”.   You see, Nobody on God’s Green Earth objects to Sexual Fantasy.  Really, no Loving Couple could survive their 4^th Date unless they recruited Fantasy to come in and jack up Reality a little bit, right?

 

2  So, yeah, where Sexuality is propelled by Desire, well, while Spirituality certainly isn’t same thing as Sex, there is a Desire that also propels Spirituality forward, isn’t there?  Yeah,  I’ve been focusing a lot on Persona Development with my Channel.  My intention there derives from my understanding that Spiritual Realization is not Partial or limited, that is, it fills out a Complete Persona.   (Yeah, I just thought of something – what about Multiple Personas?  But that’s a topic for another day).  But, yeah, it’s been recognized that Yoga is Integral, filling out one’s entire Being.   Yeah, perhaps the foremost Spiritual Philosopher of the 20^th Century was Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) ,and he often spoke in terms of a Synthesis of Yoga and Integral Yoga, implying that when Yoga is successfully engaged in, well, it expands its Domain and reaches into all facets of your life.   And then there’s my old Spiritual Hero, Swami Vivekananda, intellectually more accessible than the more abstruse Aurobindo, and he said much the same thing, using mostly smaller words.

 

3  So a Spiritual Realization will not just give you some new Outlook on Life, no, but you’ll be onto developing a New Persona, that is, a New You.  Yeah, it made me understand what the Bhagavad Gita meant when it talks of the Wise as being the Twice Born, and the Christians were once familiar with the Concept because they use the Terminology “Born Again”, and, yeah,  if they do have their Religious Experience at a time of personal crisis and Nervous Breakdown, then it’d probably be actually true that they’d be coming out of it ready to become something “New”, though not guaranteed to be much better than what they were before, considering their limited stock of Spiritual Influences and their dirth of compelling Role Models.  You see, its all about one’s Ideals.  That’s where all my Dream and Astral Work come into play.  In Real Life you rarely meet an IDEAL, but Ideals are the Stuff that Dreams are made of, but only if you make it the object of your Dreams to look for and find them.

 

4  Yeah, in my series “The Material Mechanics of Spirituality” I discuss the Enlightenment Experience as being initiated by a kind of severe nervous breakdown, where the Body is reacting to an overpowering internal dread that the Personality is going to get the Body Killed, you know, you know, with the Personality so dysfunctional that the Body can’t understand how it could possibly continue going in such a direction without it leading to doom.  The Purpose of the Breakdown is just to STOP all forward momentum into Disaster.  The Second Phase of the process is a Personality Rebuilt.  Well, back in that video I spoke of the Rebuilds coming in two kinds:  the Unstructured Rebuilds, which is what happens to people who have spontaneous Breakdowns, and the Structured Rebuilds which is what Monasteries, Cults and Military and Criminal Organizations use after they’re able to use deliberate stresses and traumas to precipitate intentional Breakdowns. 

 

5  But what I’m trying to do with my Channel now goes beyond that Material Mechanics Breakdown and Build up Model.   I’m putting across the idea that we can take responsibility for our own Post Breakdown Persona Restructuring by Identifying our own Idealizations, you know, your Idealization would be what you would consider the Perfect You?   But there’s the problem of not having the Breakdown Phase for giving us an effective Blank Slate for our Idealization Implementation.   You see, Strong, Capable, Intelligent and Responsible People like ourselves simply don’t have so many Breakdowns.  It is because we can’t help but to figure out ways to Cope, and our  Bodies never lose confidence in our ability to Stay Alive.  Yeah, being Damned Near Perfect is kind of a Blessing and Curse, isn’t it?   But Idealizations can Implement without the extreme of a Complete Nervous Breakdown, but understandably the Process is slower, happening in Episodic Steps, where Events cause Epiphanies or Mini-Realizations.  Yes, the Fully Integrated Persona would not yet be completely manifest, BUT the Personality would no longer be in Balance, but our Psychic Gravatas would more and more weigh towards merging into the Idealization, with the Old Personality sort of being replaced Block By Block, as it were.   Yeah, if you do go to some real valid Spiritual Sourcing and find some actual Idealization Archetype that really does have real Psychological Foundations that go all the way deep down into the very core bedrock of your Soul, and you’re not just trying to create some silly disconnected Private but Powerless Universe, well, such authentic Idealizations would be ATTRACTIVE and COMPELLING for the Personality, and therefore it would be natural for these Idealizations m to take root and grow out and Blossom into the Realization of an Idealized Persona.   

 

6  Any of my Old Subscribers have probably noticed by now is that Leo Volont is a Persona Idealization busy with just trying to fill out his own Details.   Yeah, but there’s something you all need to know, that there is the Ancient Adage that Story Tellers have passed down through the Ages, going back probably all the way to the Conception of Language, and that is that “The Hero of every Story is always the Fool”.   Yeah, just consult with any half way decent Tarot Card Reader and ask about The FOOL Card… it’s not really such a bad card, is it?   And so we can understand that about Leo, that he’s not trying to be a Fool but striving to be a Hero, and so there’d bound to be a lot of “If at first you don’t succeed, try try agains”, right?  It’d be inevitable,  wouldn’t it? 

 

7   But what my New Video, “Adventures In India” deals with are some moments where Leo’s Persona Idealization flared up with several Epiphanies, you know, nothing Really Big, but just Moments where my Persona Ideal seemed to kick in and take solid hold and I could sort of feel that Electrical Connection to the underlying Spiritual Stock and Power that would bolster and energize such an authentic process.  But that’s where my After Hours thoughts and doubts got active.   So, okay, would such experiences be termed to be “Delusions of Grandeur” or could we say they are “Grandeur” pure and simple?    Yeah, we might have to ask ourselves whether there can ever be some Real Healthy and Permissible Grandeur, or do we live in a Jaded Age were Materialism dictates that there can be no rational basis for such an “Unstable” Emotional State, and so Grandeur must always be considered as being carried along on some False Body of Delusion, you know, just about in the same way that True Love has been getting a hard reception among the Materialists too, but who among the Happy and the Healthy hasn’t felt the undeniable State of being in True Love, right?  Heck, on a good day I can be in True Love twice before breakfast!

 

8  So, yeah, I think that we in the Spiritual Community need to look more at the concept of Grandeur.  We talk about Love Love Love Love Love all the time when trying to describe the ‘Ineffable’ State of God Consciousness, but, honestly, using that kind of ambiguous terminology, well, it just looks like we can’t keep our minds off Sex for a minute.   So what are we really talking about when we’re trying to describe the Mystical State?   Are we really just talking about Love or do we really mean Grandeur?   Remember that Love requires Subject and Object, but in the Oneness, there aren’t these two separate things, are there? – Lover and Beloved are still down there groveling in Duality, aren’t they?   But that One Perfect Thing that we Experience in Cosmic Consciousness, well, aren’t we really just throbbing and pulsating with Grandeur.  Yeah, the Core Spiritual Emotion is Grandeur, isn’t it?  

 

9  But, yeah, enough of this talk talk talk.  I gotta get back to work on “Adventures In India”.  Oh, It’s looking like that thing go 90 Minutes.  Yeah, that’s like a full Length Movie, isn’t it?  But, honestly, I’ve been busting my butt to bring the narrative style up to Literary Quality and I think the Story Line is interesting and the Philosophy pithy enough to carry you all through that much time.   And there’s going to be Flower Girls.  Yeah, Man, Flower Girls!  Who doesn’t like Flower Girls, right?   So, yeah, I think you’re all going to like it.   But, yeah, I need to get to work…. Jesus!  Look at the Time!  I’ve already wasted half the day!  So, yeah, I gotta split!   Thanks everybody.   Leo the Slave needs to get back to Work before the World stops spinning, right?