When we look back through the continuum of space-time memory, we may observe the transition of awakening undergone by humanity, at large. It was an awakening from domination by memory out-of-control to an opening to -- and a bringing into tangible forms -- the emergent developments of heightened and heightening intelligence.
We may look back to the time when commerce was the ruling paradigm shaping life. Strict rules governed exchange of goods -- an intermediary currency, the current value of products and services in terms of the unit of currency -- a currency, in a healthy economy, that circulated through all aspects of human society, but which did not always circulate sufficiently through some parts of society enough to keep it healthy and flourishing.
This circulation very much resembled the stop-and-go traffic seen in cities that developed in a gridwork of roadways, with traffic speeding up and slowing down in different ways in different places, with some accessways clogged and stagnant.
Such was the culture, at large: clogged and stagnant in some ways, and flowing more-or-less well, in some others, the whole being brought down by the problems of stagnation.
On Earth, those who had more than others sought to keep it and to enlarge their fortune, for themselves. It was the way, on Earth. Not so much the off-worlds, the landing places at the other sides of Zones of Incomprehensibility, where humanity grew colonies. For them the vulnerabilities of their situations, as colonists, brought a kind of sobriety, empathy and a kind of pragmatic helpfulness. But Earth was commercial, and commercial meant, "looks good enough to sell".
It's not that the system of commerce was bad, in itself, but that it was so badly carried out and misused. Persons transgressed in so many ways that the laws and bureaucratic red tape and regulations that ensued put a tax on everyone: a tax of energy and attention in the name of, "accountability and compliance". A whole section of the population rankled against it, but it was necessary.
It was necessary because people weren't "firing on all cylinders", ordinary business people sometimes didn't anticipate the adverse effects that would develop from their enterprises, and some who did anticipate them ignored that anticipation and did business in an antisocial or even criminal way that produced an onslaught of adverse conditions for the affected populace, about which they did little or nothing. A few exceptions existed, who sought to mitigate the adverse effects of their enterprises by means of counterbalancing, beneficial actions. "Not firing on all cylinders" also meant that they were slow to recognize opportunity, when confronted with one.
"Not firing on all cylinders" and loss of trust had caused the Earthly economy to stagnate, Earth, the mother-world.
THE EMERGENCE OF GA
The difference in how we operate now, with comparative intelligence, ingenuity, and grace, may easily be traced to a single man who served as a focal point for a convergence of forces and influences upon a life that had to change or be virtually intolerable.He was known by name by those who lived in the township of Thurstbursh, of the metrozone, Capiziano, of the interzone, Capria, of the suntimeparse Ecumenis, of the planet, Eumectis.
He was known, simply, as Ga.
The inhabitants of Thurstbursh were a friendly lot who went about their business in a calm, if not cheerful way. Life was on an even keel, in Thurstbursh, despite the economic inequities in places that surrounded . Ga was the township furbish. Lucky town. In the interzone, Capria, townships had their own furbishes, "wise consultants" -- and Ga was a furbish of furbishes.
Let me describe him, to you.
He was a portly man, darker-skin of appearance with a darker beard around his mouth and chin. He wore vests, but often, no shirt, with loose trousers and occasionally a round cap secured to his head by an elastic band around the perimeter. He often went barefoot. He sat quietly at the open door of his dwelling as it faced the street, and took everything in, quietly. His eyes were alive, and his demeanor was peaceful and indifferent -- most of the time.
Ga had suffered greatly in his life. He had been born a cripple, with one leg bowed and an un-descended testicle, nearsighted and nearly blind. His parents rejected him, emotionally, even if they accepted him, in principle, and gave him food, shelter, brief attention, and more rarely, intellectual stimulation. For the most part, though, he was on his own. He took to the streets. He had no friends, having been rejected there, also, so he hung out in public places and he watched as people met with each other and passed each other without recognition. He listened. At last, he arrived before a library, and being curious, he went in. There, in a few days, he would be seen sitting with book at table bowed far forward for his eyes to be near the book, reading, poring over it.
He educated himself by following a pull of attraction he felt within the library. He would wander from section to section, gazing casually at the shelves, with their round books with titles set vertically along their upright edges, and occasionally a title would capture his attention. He knew the feeling, by now. He would take the book and begin to read, pivoting the pages. By this means of navigation and book-selection, he discovered books of ancient practices developed by sages for mental discipline and physical healing, books with many large pictures. He would study, and imagine remembering, and then go home or wander to the park or wander the streets for some more watching and listening.
At home, he began to practice. His first project was to straighten his bowed leg. Using and developing in the mental:physical integrated practices of the sages, he uncovered the hidden, underlying condition keeping his leg bowed. It wasn't anything wrong with his leg or his bones; it was something wrong in his brain, brain conditioning that kept his leg taut, in a certain way. The practices taught new brain conditioning and he learned and he practiced and became more and more proficient. In months, the tautness decreased. His leg straightened and he walked differently, straighter.
His parents never noticed.
Next, he went after his vision. Using the principles of the sages, he realized that his "nose-in-book" reading habit revealed a brain-held habit of being cross-eyed, and so, nearsighted. In some months, he had recovered enough control of his eye movements that his vision began to improve.
His mother couldn't account for it, but had no comment when she and the ten-year-old emerged from the eye-seer with a prescription for new, lower power lenses.
His undescended testicle was his final task. Breathing practices did the trick.
As a young man, he underwent many sorrows -- the sorrow of loneliness because he was so isolated, the sorrow of the loss of a promising love, the sorrows and frustrations of unfulfilled dreams, for the realization of which he felt fully capable and ready. Mostly it was the loneliness because he had grown up isolated and now, because few would understand him and could commune with his deeper sensibilities. It was "superficiality meets depth."
The practices of the sages had failed to heal his loneliness. Something more was needed. He wondered what it might be.
He studied. He didn't study for a cure for his loneliness. He studied by navigation, as before.
He had noticed certain similarities among the foundations of the many disciplines and traditions he had studied. Some cultivated memory. Some cultivated imagination. Some cultivated attention, and some cultivated will-power, or intention. But very often they cultivated only one or two of these powers of mind, and most rarely, all four.
He applied this observation to the practices of the sages and found a similar lack of balance.
So he began to modify the mental practices to include all four -- and lo! -- he underwent his first Wisdom-Transformation. First, he discovered features of his character and moods of his intelligence that were familiar, when "surfaced", but the existence of which, he had not suspected, beforehand. They would dissolve, leaving him with a feeling like scratching his head and wondering how he ever got that way. In the process, he uncovered the formless ground of being, his own origin and ground of being.
Each area of his character thus dissolved would undergo transformation of his behavior, in life. Without special effort, and with less effort than that with which he had lived his life, before, his responses were different, spontaneously more imbued with intelligence. The more he cleaned up, in himself, the wiser he seemed to become.
What he became was the township furbish.
Now, he lived in a dwelling out of town in an area of wild fields and dirt roads.
Ga.
What did he do for a living? Furbishes are sustained by their townships for benefit received from the their attentions.
I'll give you an example.
Krodinger owed Sapsinger money. Sapsinger felt that the loan had lived on for too long and wanted his money. Krodinger said he was glad to pay, but he didn't have enough money. They came to Ga.
Ga listened to one and Ga listened to the other.
He felt their moods within himself. They felt like places of heated intensity, one tainted with sorrow and fear and the other with frustration and indignation. He felt into them, both. He felt their shapes and their forces of truth, their locations both in space-time and in mind-space, their existence. He bore the full experience. He felt into the root of all that and felt an intertwined fixation in memory and two entangled locations in space-time. He felt into That-Which-Has-Always-Been and then, after he had taken that resort, ceased his effort to do so. That dissolved the fixation, in himself, as it fell away into the formless field. Then, he flashed his attention, with a movement like a whip, into their mind-fields, which were continuous with his own, and dissolved the vestiges of the trouble, in them.
The room felt peaceful.
Sapsinger said, "Good fortune, next time."
Krodinger said, "Much about little."
Krodinger ultimately did pay back the money.
Ga was furbish.
He was a precursor of what we have become. I say this, to you, because you haven't become so, yet.
Ga was discoverer, integrator, tangifier and teacher.
Ga was furbish of furbishes.
He sat in the opening of his dwelling looking out into the street with a peaceful, impassive look on his face.
