Painful Blessings

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called “reality.”

For all you fellow truth warriors here is something I'd like to share with ya'all. It is one of my favorite poems by our very own Bob Brezsny from Santa Cruz. One of my New Year's resolutions is to talk about and write about at least as much positive and inspiring stuff as I do the negative stuff. Balance in this regard is important, I've decided, to be an effective Warrior of peace and justice.

So without further ado, here is the first step of my keeping my end of this bargain. And besides, everyone's on a holiday today anyway.

Painful Blessings

From the Book Pronoia is the antidote to Paranoia

by Bob Brezsny

 This is a perfect moment.

It’s a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumb-sucking, dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,

their crimes against nature,

extinctions of species

and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying

in the name of the father,

sterilizing seeds and

trademarking water.

Molestations of God,

celebrations of shame,

stealing our dreams and

changing our names.

Their cunning commercials

and blood-sucking hustles,

their endless rehearsals

for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the awful teachings flow, we are waking up.

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called “reality.” And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul’s true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge of creating a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we can’t let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy, resist, and prevent their tragic magic; unleash our sacred rage and supercharge it.

But overthrowing the living dead is not enough. Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough. We can’t afford to be consumed with our anger; we can’t be obsessed and possessed by their danger. Our mysterious bodies crave delight and fertility. Our boisterous imaginations demand fresh tastes of infinity.

In the new world we’re gestating, we need to be suffused with lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. We’ve got to be teeming with radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

So I'm curious, my fellow creators. Since you and I are in charge of making a new world—not just breaking the old world—where do we begin?

What stories do we want at the heart of our experiments? What questions will be our oracles?

Here's what I say: We will ignore the cult of doom and gloom and embrace the cause of zoom and boom. We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate, and summon the brilliance to praise and create. No matter how upside-down it all may temporarily appear, we will have no fear because we know this secret: Life is crazily in love with us—wildly and innocently in love with us. The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

Pronoia is our word of power, the spell we cast to shake ourselves awake again and again. It’s the antidote for paranoia. It’s the brazen perception that all of creation is conspiring to shower us with blessings.

Pronoia means that even if we can’t see and don’t know, primal benefactors are plotting to emancipate us. The winds and tides are on our side, forever and ever, amen. The fire and rain are scheming to steal our pain. The sun and moon know our real names, and the animals pray for us while we’re dreaming. Do you believe in guardian angels and divine helpers? Whether you do or not, they’re always wangling to give you the gifts you don’t even realize you want. Can you guess how many humble humans are busy making things for you to use and enjoy?

I’m allergic to dogma. I thrive on the riddles. Any idea I believe, I reserve the right to disbelieve as well.
 

But more than any other vision I’ve ever tested, pronoia describes the way the world actually is. It’s wetter than water, stronger than death, and truer than the news. It smells like cedar smoke in early spring rain, and if you close your eyes right now, you can feel it shimmering like the aurora borealis in your organs and muscles. Its song is your blood’s song.

Some people argue that life is strife and suffering is normal. Others swear we’re born sinful and only heaven can provide us with the peace that passes understanding. But pronoia says that being alive on the rough green and brown earth is the highest honor and privilege. It’s an invitation to work wonders and perform miracles that aren’t possible in any nirvana, promised land, or afterlife.

I’m not exaggerating or indulging in poetic metaphor when I tell you that we are already living in paradise. Visualize it if you dare. The sweet stuff that quenches all of our longing is not far away in some other time and place. It’s right here and right now.

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew the truth: “Earth’s crammed with heaven.”