"Knowledge" or "consciousness" in essence and true personality

I’m again working as a private English teacher and in Colombia most people in the middle-upper classes know English well having studied it from kinder-garden but hardly anyone speaks it properly, so a lot of my job is to re-structure the bad habits and re-install the right constructions.

It has been very interesting to observe that even after knowing the right structures and answering correctly in the drill, for some period the student will go back to the old structures when relaxed not only in the bad constructions but in the accent. Observing this it seems very similar to what happens with people in cults… fortunately and unfortunately. Fortunately because no matter how brainwashed, the old structure will stay there even if latent, potentially available for recovery and unfortunately because once the indoctrination is adopted willingly, it will take a similar process for the member to deconstruct it and that is what is so difficult, fearful and painful. All the centers are affected in the process but much more delicate than the centers is the process endured by the self itself, the I, for the I is gradually dismantled in cults to guarantee member’s dependency and “re-mantling” it is a very delicate and long process depending on how extensive the damage is.

Just as the whole process in the cult takes place through the gradual re-conditioning of the centers, through separating them and their functions from the self, what is very interesting to observe, and extremely beautiful, is to realize that the recovery of the self also happens with the “re-conditioning” of the centers and through the activities, the I and the centers reconnect. Even if the person doesn't know the meaning of the activity he or she is performing and depending on the activity, it will shed it's life on the member, that is, the activity itself has a "life" or "power" of its own and reconstruct or continue to destroy his or her many layers, centers or dimensions. What's interesting is that the activity will shed different degrees of "logos" or "life" depending on the person's attention and intention. To verify this which seems to have a great deal to do with the octave of impressions, one simply needs to pay attention to the quality of different activities. Playing tennis for example is a very different experience to playing the piano and they are both equally gratifying for the respective centers but the same applies to all activities.

I think this is what I mean about knowledge in essence and true personality: that in essence we are and we do but are unconscious about our being and doing while in true personality we can understand the richness of being and doing. The difference is not in the levels of energy experienced in either conditions (states?), but in the degree of consciousness of them. In other words, an experience is not less great in essence than in true personality in terms of its energetic quality but in a mature human being the meaning of the action is much more profound to the I. And then again, it doesn’t mean that in essence the action is any less profound, simply that in essence it is a given that is taken for granted valued then only when it is subsequently lost in the process of living as if life itself where the process of making our selves objectively conscious of the life that arises from our connection with the world.

Perhaps the problem was in the word knowledge for what I'm really talking about is consciousness that has nothing to do with the knowledge we tend to think of in the intellectual center. 

I guess I'm just shy to use such words but I also think that if we've worked and given any valuable steps it is fundamentally important to share our experiences not to show off how far we reached, which at least in my case is incipient to what is possible, but because other generations will profit from our information.

Being and centers

Hi apprentice shepherd,

Yes, that certainly happens if one is coming from the mind, I mean, forgetting to be when thinking about it, it’s a good observation because I didn’t even think about it, feeling that it’s a knowing in the realm of being rather than the mind. But then the same could be said about feeling. In true personality knowing and feeling are not the same as knowing and feeling in the ego.

I like to think about it as parts of a car. A great car deserves a great driver and a great driver tends to keep the car in great condition. The parts, when relating to the being are very different to the parts when subduing the being which is what I feel happens all of our lives before we actually make ourselves present in it.

The image of the carriage and the driver is the same in the System but actually experiencing it is what I feel is worth doing if we’re going to talk about it. Although I believe I’m a few lifetimes away from the kind of awakening I think is possible, the little I managed to actually work at the beginning of joining the Cult was wonderfully powerful. Then I turned the work against my self to bear the cult and instead of developing I almost drowned in the sea of psychological slavery. It’s a good thing I’m such a hard headed woman because I never managed to really belong and that was a blessing! There was always an element of distrust that kept questioning it. But that’s exactly what makes cults work so efficiently, that in the first period the member advances because of the love, enthusiasm and effort that he or she put into the work and then realizing that the cult is a cult and not a school takes the whole circle until one is mature enough to understand what one is no longer willing to put up with even if it kills one to leave it!. It took me seventeen years to realize what was so inhuman about it but I’m so glad that I’ve understood that this deeply that I don’t regret the losses. As I recover the sense of my self again which was seriously disturbed until fairly recently, I am also recovering the feeling that everything is possible, particularly the appreciation of beauty in our interchanges. I am so sorry I messed up so badly in my first participation in the fofblog, but I am so glad I was able to keep my self together in the second participation.

I only had to look up scambi which I should have guessed, for in Spanish it’s cambiar or intercambio so it might not be too difficult to keep up the game. For me it’s more an opportunity for you to express yourself without the inconvenience of not feeling too comfortable with the English, so if you mix them some I should be able to understand you more fully. That is only for when you’re “eager” to say what you need to say in Italian.I assume neither one of us has too much time for the dictionary so unless it’s essential we can do most of it in English.

Pero para probar, si hay algo lindo en nuestros idiomas es la calidez, así que te mando un fuerte abrazo. Que tengas un bello día! Gracias por estar por aquí.

Avaaz in Brazil

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The Sheperd and Elena on essence

23. Elena - July 26, 2010

The other suicide cases that I’m much interested in is that in cults. It is really very tragic because cults are a little like young renegades. They scape the world trying to find another solution and end up more trapped than those outside for the simple reason that they isolate themselves from humanity. If cults are the “solution” people are finding today, where are we heading towards?

Reply

24. apprentice shepherd - July 26, 2010

“One because just the attitude of not dealing with problems disables people, two, because when we don’t want to deal with a problem we end up buffering it, three because while we buffer the problem at the same time we make a huge drama of it instead of finding solutions and four because we end up living in an imaginary world. ”
Yes. I was ” italian cocco of mamma” mama’boy so she knotted my shoestring till up age. I wish to add (also if it is a corollary one point) that we learn to suffer (as synonymous of bear friction) for the wrong things. You could spent a lot of physical and psychological energy because you have buffer your real aim.
The comic of the situation is that the people as you tell about the lower working classes is less lunatic than intellectuals,but lacks the ability to develop it. In Italy the old socialist,communist people had a strong solidarity feeling between them. In my place the worker built their Theatre stone by stone.
Now we are involving anywhere…

Reply

25. Elena - July 26, 2010

Are we now involving each other anywhere or evolving everywhere? Or do both have to happen for either one to occur!!? I’m kidding you a little, I think you just misspelled the word!

It’s very good to hear your fresh voice. Thank you again.

This idea that lower classes lack the ability to develop it is of course an idea from the system. Have you ever thought about why that might be?

Reply

26. apprentice shepherd - July 27, 2010

May be you are right and I am conditioned and there is to understand what means evolve, develop.
But i see that people (not just lower classes) that not have time or energy or inclination to intellectual food lacks that knowing that we can use from the people that have experienced before us to make more clear the big picture(life). I live in Italy: between me and and American there are 2000 years of culture that I without do nothing have in my brains-
I am not able to express better this:i am not at all nationalist, but for example Italian is a better language to express many things than English. And to know two 3,5 languages gives a different prospective view to understand if then you try to do something with it.

Reply

27. Elena - July 27, 2010

I guess the question for me is not so much whether we’re Italian or American but how human can an Italian or an American be? They are both such great cultures in their own way. They’ve both given us so much.

Italian is a much better language to express one’s self if one is Italian but a chinese would say the same thing about his language! A culture might be great because of its age but that doesn’t necessarily make the people of today from that culture more human than the other. It’s like saying that a saturn is better than a jovial which was also common in the cult but then we wouldn’t understand the wonder of diversity.

Talking of which, if you’d like to try some Italian, I might be able to understand you. Would you understand Spanish? Could be fun!

Reply

28. Elena - July 27, 2010

On the subject of lower classes having what is necessary I don’t think the question was formulated correctly, in fact, the idea in the System has nothing to do with lower classes but with people in essence and something I’ve been pondering about that is that in essence WE ARE while in true personality we know we are. Like in Adam and Eve’s story, after the apple they knew both good and evil like God!…to express it simply!

It’s as if the journey through the body were only a fifth of the journey and we would then need to travel the heart, the mind, movement and processes, fire and laws. And as if we had to become objective to ourselves while in essence we simply are one with the whole without having to think about it.

As if the journey were a slow dismantling of all the obstacles that we ourselves invented in the trip from essence to false personality which, as ego, is nothing more than the separation from the whole.

Such a great adventure!

On friction and negativity

Thank you very much for your post apprentice shepherd. It's very good to have someone that actually hears what is being said and ads something to it. What an incredible change! Thank you.

I would like to hear your appreciation of the idea of friction and go into it more deeply. I think I was brought up thinking that friction wasn't supposed to exist which was awfully difficult with a mother that shot herself when I was eight, that in the emotional sphere and also because in Colombia we still have a very strong influence from the Spanish nobility that thought that physical labor was for the lower classes so it is common for middle and upper middle classes and above to never have to deal with difficulties because somebody in a lower class should have to deal with them which is a great disadvantage when compared for example with American upbringing. So in the physical instinctive sphere there is also a "not get involved" attitude and leave it for the workers. On the other hand "the american way of life" also seemed to paint a world without problems and in the cult the attitude is that there are no problems unless you speak about them so SHUT UP! It's amazing that so many of us actually bought it for so long.

Anyway in the System the idea of friction followed by the transformation of friction and regeneration is very clear but what I wanted to emphasize is that, don't you find that in upper classes people pretend to avoid friction and that is a great disadvantage? One because just the attitude of not dealing with problems disables people, two, because when we don't want to deal with a problem we end up buffering it, three because while we buffer the problem at the same time we make a huge drama of it instead of finding solutions and four because we end up living in an imaginary world. I think one could go on but let’s look at least at those.

Living with people in lower working classes I've noticed that they hardly make a fuss about almost anything and that's wonderful! They do deal with it and most of the time don't even consider things a problem, just a way of life that needs to be dealt with while at the same time, enjoying themselves. At least this is the case in Colombia where the families remain somewhat together. It also seems connected with being more or less in essence, doesn’t it?

In my biography my mother's suicide seems to have had another opposite effect which was that I seem to have acquired an extreme behavior to friction as if I were trying to avoid things from getting so bad that they'd prompt anyone to such extreme "solution" but in fact reacting so extremely myself that I was the only one in danger of the problem!!! Which also took place in its own time, over twenty years ago, exactly today!!! 

Deciphering one’s biography is such an adventure! Until I “survived” things just happened! Suicide just happened (of course, after twenty years of building up to it) and then I’ve spent the next thirty years trying to decipher what happened!! It’s quite funny isn’t it? And rather tragic too from another perspective for I imagine I’m no exception to the rule.

I’m not the subject here, I’m just using my biography to convey the point which is that our attitudes to friction do determine a great many things including the negativity of our reactions. For example, I didn’t even realize how negative I actually was until after I survived! In fact what prompted me to try to commit suicide was that negativity itself. That energy simply turned against me at some point and…. 

All this when looked from the cold analytical position. On the other side of it is of course the tragedy of an individual who suffers situations that don’t find resolution before they themselves become tragic. In other words, I’m saying that it was the negativity that led me to suicide and that we live in a world in which we are not dealing with the problems before they themselves become tragic. We are not being able to help each other soon enough because if we also understand that negativity is just the shield people put up before the world to try to cope with it not knowing any other way to do so, where we need to help people is in finding solutions that are less tragic. My biography has led me to become interested in the cases of suicide in Japan and Russia where there is an estimate of a hundred suicides daily and the recent suicides in the telecom company of Paris also begin to reveal a pattern of where people are today.

The point of all this writing is trying to help each other understand the problems and find solutions, is it not? Or where is your interest?
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Apprentice Shepherd

I remember R Collin wrote about how a school works: There is a point where friction as to be managed to become regeneration. If the experiments fail :corruption instead happens(it is more complex, but this is my juice of it).
So it is on personal, social political scale.
A school is where people learns (anything) a cult is when people that are not learning has to find “something” to substitute that and the choice of self-calming is really enormous.
I had an automatic association with Elena story about leg and BT on Italian people: I copy here a piece:
““At the present time the beings of various parts of contemporary Italy actualize this property of giving-pleasure to-others in the following way: “The existence of the quadruped beings called ‘sheep’ and ‘goats,’ whose planetary bodies they also use for
their first food, they do not destroy all at once; but in order to give this ‘pleasure’ they do it ‘slowly’ and ‘gently’ over a period of many days; that is to say, one day they
take off one leg, then a few days later, a second leg, and so on, for as long as the sheep or goat still breathes. And
sheep and goats can breathe without the said parts of their common presence for a very long time because, in the main functions of the taking in of cosmic substances for the possibility of existing, these parts do not participate, though they do participate in the functions which actualize
those impulses giving self-sensations.”
You see connection with cult behaviour (and one could have this also outside the organisation).

The individual and the social

Elena post 16 "It’s interesting that doctors are willing to amputate a leg when not doing so will kill the patient but the laws today and that is, society at large, is unable to amputate cults out of life although they tend to annihilate the people inside, psychologically first, then physically, through suicide or a slow deterioration of the body out of lack of vitality.

It shows how lost everyone is, including the so called leaders who cannot really respond for the people they have in charge."

Thinking about this I wonder if "leaders" are actually lost or whether in fact people in power are intentionally allowing for such things knowing religion will take care of making people passively accept the status quo. There are those layers in which people seem to jump from the actual facts to a "divine" determination that they are unwilling to challenge. That they perceive as the "facts" rather than the imposed conditions and it is precisely that “divine” what calls for its "hegemony" over the land.

What's amazing is that social behavior does change when the level of being of the society changes just like individuals do. And the level of being of individuals does change after powerful experiences of love or death or other forms of suffering. In the social scale would we be looking for wars, great leaders, tremendous catastrophes for the change in level of being?

I do experience some difficulty using this System language remembering how it was manipulated, distorted and used against the members in the cult but reinstating it in its own integrity is also a healthy process.

I guess the importance of developing a strong individuality lies precisely in the fact that if the tendency to imitate and repeat other people's behavior is so strong, unless the individuals are powerful enough to follow their own conscience, people would continue to repeat the old forms without ever adapting to new circumstances or innovating. The process seems to be somewhat guaranteed by new generations but at the same time there seems to be a powerful force holding the mold together so that the majority keep the sequence!!

This question of "one's own conscience" is relevant because at some point in my development I realized that I had not really been following my own conscience but "interiorizing" the standard behavior and if other people WERE that way it was alright for me to behave likewise. Then I made the same mistake in the cult and probably in the fofblog too. I reproduced the standard rather than hold to my own conscience. I assume most people do that for that is also what I see in most people which is where will would come in to make a difference. And then will is such a difficult load to carry because when an individual starts acting different to others he or she will inevitably create rejection, for his or her actions question others and in that questioning there's always friction which brings us to the realization that living in friction is our "natural" state. 

I like this understanding because it has been in the agenda of certain "ways of life" to think that friction is NOT a natural and an extremely necessary social condition. The ideal of no friction means the fixed status quo where every relationship between people is unmovable and that is living death, like in cults. This is very important! Cults are frozen in “no friction” and that is their most deadly weapon against the soul of its members who are supposed to feel very grateful and content in the "all is well" environment. But "ALL IS WELL” only for as long as you sacrifice your self, surrender yourself completely. This is even more important because it addresses the question of master, pupil and reveals the fact that in any surrendering what we are dealing with is the I. It is the I that surrenders and with it all the centers and in surrendering to another person we give our selves up. This is what we have traditionally called “love” and what seems to have been so justified in our world. “Surrender to your husband, your job, your nation, sacrifice yourself for the well being of your family, your company, your nation” And in the end people, both men and women, simply give themselves up so that someone else does with their life what is to their convenience. I realize how difficult it is to make an affirmation such as this one for the question of the “cause” is always there. What “cause” are people surrendering to?  There’s always a cause. Why did women tend to surrender to their husbands? Because they were protected? Economically? Physically? They and their children? Why do men and women now surrender to their company? And I mean surrender in the sense that not only work is done but also a certain emotional “surrenderance” is given and it’s in that emotional “gift” that the whole transaction is justified. Why do they surrender to their nation? And the question is: Why do we surrender to anything that acts against our own self or that of others?

Isn’t surrendering a purely instinctive necessity that has to be justified emotionally so that we manage to live up to it? Don’t we surrender mostly because it is necessary for survival? To fit in a family, community, nation, group, company, so that our instinctive needs are satisfied? Instinctive, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, sexual? But ironically in our imaginary picture what we’re surrendering to is something higher than our selves that we “love” when what we’re really surrendering to is something lower than our selves that is acting against not only our selves but humanity at large. All this is much to the point because the question of institutions then comes in: the institutions of marriage, class, nation, university, company, corporation, the government. And while they should all be legitimate institutions in their own right what we have is people taking advantage of the institution to justify their abuse through their position of power. They use the credibility of the institution to manipulate people into its sphere and then take advantage of their position to make personal profit not just economically but socially by remaining in positions of power. Isn’t this precisely what happens in cults? People taking advantage of the legitimacy of religion to enslave the members? But then is it not also true of governments themselves, isn’t the whole economic crisis of today due precisely because of this fact? Because people without power allow people in power to do as they wish with the institutions that govern our lives? They call it corruption in the newspapers.

Isn’t it interesting that we tend to say “instinctive needs” but seldom acknowledge our emotional, intellectual, spiritual or sexual needs as “needs”? This seems relevant because it shows that in the mind frame of our times the tendency to label instinctive needs as the only reason for social participation allows those in power to manipulate the offer of art, leisure, education to the upper classes while the lower classes can stick to religion, sport, brothels and drinking which ironically enough still keeps them more directly connected with themselves than the upper classes who have to distort themselves psychologically to hold and justify the show of being superior and separate to the rest of mankind.

Isn’t it a tremendous irony? That in the long run the upper classes and the people in power hurting and living on others end up being more psychologically damaged for the mere reason that to be able to live at the cost of other people they have to build up such a psychological makeup that in itself suffocates their own soul. The crust that they have to put up between themselves and the rest of mankind who they are exploiting, manipulating and abusing is all right for their external appearance but their inner soul suffocates without the connection.

Communism seems to be the ugly duckling today but the fact that the human being in Russia was not mature enough to carry out communism but instead reproduced an authoritarian dictatorial society with a centralized power doesn’t mean the ideal of community is still not worth considering. The U.S.S.R was not communist! It was a dictatorship. A “cult” on a huge scale. It doesn’t matter in reality how we call it, capitalism would suit me just as well if the privileges of the few were for the many and we know well that’s not the case. What I believe that needs to be understood today is that beyond the classes and nationalities, continues to be the human and where the human being gets lost, we’re no longer connected to our “divine” purpose, to our “selves”.

It’s tricky, isn’t it? Who would buy such language as “divine” today? Would economists take it into consideration even if they go to church? Would lawyers? Would Americans? Europeans? Russians? Chinese? Arabs?

This period seems to be one of transition from legitimate authority of the hierarchy to legitimate authority of the individual: From the king to the people: from royalty to democracy.  As if we were turning ourselves outside in to be able to then turn ourselves inside out for in the long run the true individual will be as conscious of the whole as any true king ever was. It’s such an honor to be human.

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Organic "social" life

One of the problems seems to be that life and not just organic life, is a lot more “organic” than I had ever realized. That actions people perform tend to repeat themselves and condition the inner world of individuals without people realizing that they are sculpting themselves from the outside in as much as from the inside out, hence the importance of “social” life.

It seems so obvious but the way it feels obvious today is very different to what I had always taken for granted. And the problem is that people do actions then we justify those actions and one way to justify our actions is repeating them over and over until they seem normal no matter how abnormal they actually are. And then if everyone seems to be doing the same thing it looks ever so normal. That’s how cults work but society also works very much like that. And the problem in the short run is that people are hardly responsible because they are all just aspects of our unconsciousness. Perhaps when someone starts screaming about it and is called crazy, it is because it takes a long time for others to come to terms with the fact that what is happening is actually not normal at all and that is precisely the role of whistleblowers.

This idea that life (social life, that that we call life and not just biological processes),  is a lot more organic than we tend to perceive, seems relevant because being such it is under a lot more laws than at least I would have wanted to admit. Processes take a long time and the trouble with impatience is that it simply turns back against one’s self. That’s why anger, disappointment, frustration and all the other expressions of horror at the speed with which most people deal with problems like cults is just an expression of my own lack of understanding of the laws we’re under.

It’s good to think about these things again.

Thinking about cults

It's interesting that doctors are willing to amputate a leg when not doing so will kill the patient but the laws today and that is, society at large, is unable to amputate cults out of life although they tend to annihilate the people inside, psychologically first, then physically, through suicide or a slow deterioration of the body out of lack of vitality.

It shows how lost everyone is, including the so called leaders who cannot really respond for the people they have in charge. It's an interesting period to be living in because next to the horrors are also the wonders and everything is changing so rapidly. The internet is an amazing leap into a more democratic world... So good to be out and about!

The great thing about having been in a cult must be the wonder of being out of it and allowing for life to flower again. It's an amazing experience to be numbed to the world for so many years and then slowly let it be as if it opened up in one's self. The wonder of people! The wonder of the things people do to survive their difficulties. And the possibility of creation. Nothing is more hurt in cults than one's creativity. The cult eats away one's self and with one's self precisely one's creativity. The lack of trust in one's self doesn't allow for creativity to develop and THAT is exactly what the cult has to manage against each member to make the dependency powerful enough to keep the member inside, working for it. Those in the inner circle develop a particular kind of creativity against other members which is what makes them hasnamusses acting against the well being of other human beings. It is a terrible tragedy for them as much as their victims. They are worse than people in concentration camps because in concentrations camps they kill the victims and physical death is more merciful than psychological death. To manipulate individuals to such a point that they no longer exist for themselves but for the guru and his agenda is a despicable crime. 

How far are ex cult members including those in the fofblog and the other Fellowship that has nothing greater about it, away from deeply understanding and not avoiding this truth? How can people live with such truths and do nothing about it but reproduce a similar club in another context? I wonder what it is that keeps people from calling crime, crime and doing something to stop it. The lack of consciousness of the fact that we are all connected is what stops us. Those without consciousness think they can get away without getting involved, they can separate themselves from the horror and pretend it has nothing to do with them but their silence is what makes it possible and that is what makes us all accomplices of the crime.

The one beautiful thing about seeing how life is at my age, is realizing how incredibly naive people also are. One of the reasons that people don’t call crime, crime, is that they don’t want to see it, they want to believe that everything is fairly alright and under control by God if nobody else! They or us for I have also had a huge amount of this naivete. That innocence is beautiful because it remains in people even after they’ve much suffered. It doesn’t help a great deal which is perhaps why we end up suffering so much more but the power of such innocence is worth all the beauty.  I don’t think it’s healthy to be that naïve because in its dark side it hides so much fear and at some point it’s good to face the horror and look at it straight in the face. Even the horror can be looked at and when one does it is not nearly as bad as one feared… if one is still innocent enough, as I am, to believe that everything can be recovered, everything can be healed, now or later, in this or another life.

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A un perro fiel

Como un perro loco aullando bajo la lluvia
sales a saludarme como si no nos vieramos desde antier!

Mi amigo fiel
de suave piel
si no es amor lo que brilla en tus ojos
que el desamor se vuelva ley!

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Your soul in my soul

I hold your soul in my soul
I rock your soul
until the seasons change


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Poem...a

Vengo a tu lado oscuro de la luna
porque es soleado!




I come to your dark side of the moon,
because it's sunny!
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The Social and Neuroscience

I got this ad this morning which shows how much science is moving into understanding the connection between the social sphere and the instinctive sphere. It’s wonderful that they are doing this because they will eventually have to admit that without a healthy society we can’t be individually healthy. They will also come to understand more exactly the power of the logos or life in its many expressions and be able to account exactly for how positive and negative activities affect our lives. People will understand better how a sick environment like that of a cult and all the regular cults called industries, corporations, governments, etc, based on hierarchic interchanges between people who cannot act humanly towards each other justified by their so called “position” are in themselves the greatest source of illness in our time.

We’re moving so fast towards greater freedom!

First Impact Factor for Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience: 4.203 and a ranking of 9/70 in Psychology

Dear Miss Elena …

We are delighted to announce that Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience has recently achieved its 2009 ISI Science Citation Index Impact Factor of 4.203.

As an online only journal publishing highly cited, original papers in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience, SCAN has achieved an excellent first competitive ranking of 9/70 in Psychology and continues to thrive in to 2010, recently publishing a special issue on Cultural Neuroscience.

For Authors…
Why not contribute to this up and coming journal?
Visit our instructions to authors page to find out how to submit your paper. SCAN offers rapid online publication of all articles, open access options and online submission making it an ideal choice for your next paper.

For Readers…
To read more from the journal visit the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience homepage where you can read FREE articles, find subscription rates or fill in our Library recommendation form. Or simply sign in (or register) to My Account to read a sample issue.

There has never been a better time to get involved with this thriving journal!

I hope that this information was useful to you, please do forward this email on to anyone else who you think would also be interested.

With best wishes,

Laura Brannagan
Oxford Journals

Carta a Yevtushenko

Tantas cosas Yevtushenko, tantas cosas, incluyendo tu nombre hermoso y tu, más hermoso que tu nombre. Pero lo verdaderamente hermoso no son tu o tu nombre sino la fuerza con que nos cuentas sobre la vida como si ni siquiera estuvieras hablando de ella, como si ya te vinieras despojando y eso te facilitara el ofrecérnosla más libre de ti mismo.

Casi te veo porque decir que te veo sería una mentira aunque bien nos miramos y al mismo tiempo ¿como no verte cuando una sola palabra es suficiente? Te veo un hombre; un ser humano.

Y es bello oírte gritar sin vacilaciones, contame Yevtushenko, cuanto te costó? ¿Cuantas veces tuviste que morir para poder vivir? ¿Cuantos cayeron en el camino? A cuantos de ti mismo y de los tuyos tuviste que dejar morir para existir? O eras ya un hombre cuando naciste?

Sería difícil creerte. Quizá nacemos Dioses pero hombres ya no nacen sino que se vuelven de andar pisando el barro y correr entre la maleza huérfanos de padre, madre, patria o tierra. Llegamos a ser hombres… y mujeres claro, no porque hayamos tenido algo sino porque nunca lo tuvimos y estamos teniendo que inventárnoslo.

Cada generación nace más huérfana, las familias se acabaron y las comunidades se extinguieron y cada hombre se posa sobre sí mismo desfigurado en una deformación que se vuelve modelo hasta que otra generación recuerda lo que alguna vez fue ser hombre. Cada joven busca a tientas referencias que no encuentra pero en este caos sin tregua se yergue fuerza.

No es “tradición, familia y propiedad”. Y menos la nación o multinacional. No habrá nada de eso después de la guerra. ¿Cuantos más muertos habremos de vivir antes de morir? Cuantos más vivos habremos de sufrir antes de vivir? Y te confieso desde ya que prefiero la guerra que esta paz cuando por guerra entienden cualquier protesta. No es acomodándonos para no luchar que vamos a cambiar. Vivo a veces en un estado de guerra sin violencia, otras, en un estado de violencia sin guerra y la mayoría en una guerra violenta en donde la gente se desangra sin que muera y me niego a aceptar que esta sea la paz por la cual hay que vivir mientras nos echan el cuento de que hay que aceptar pacíficamente el referendo y volvernos profesionalmente inhumanos como ellos.

La guerra entre nosotros, como las putas, se esconde en la trastienda, aunque ya ni las putas se esconden mucho más honestas que cualquiera. Unos ponen muertos que no vemos y otros matan en nombre nuestro. Pero la guerra más dulce es la que llevamos dentro, no siendo, muertos de miedo de morir, pero igualmente muertos de no vivir, no solo aquí, sino en la tierra entera. O acaso es menos violenta la paz en tus tierras? O en el mundo entero en donde la gente ya se suicida sin dar guerra?

Buen viaje Yevtushenko, esta gratitud es con firmeza. Vuelve con todas tus batallas para vivir más dulcemente mi guerra. Perdóname si te hablo con demasiada confianza pero si no es confianza lo que inspira tu entrega, de que se trata tu fuerza?
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Life's beautiful ironies.

It’s such a beautiful irony of life to have me find the Poetry Festival of Medellín here and now! To spend the day with some of the best poets of the world and laugh at my writings not being able to find three poems worth showing.

It’s a good thing that I don’t expect to sell my writings because as Thot Plickens recently said no one would read them but it’s an even better thing to know that it would have been good if what I had to say had been said beautifully but that the lack of beauty does not discount what needed to be said. They are all saying the same thing in different words: We are One. We’re young enough to work on the beauty but not young enough to not understand the things that matter.