March of thoughts

Conscious faith that can adapt to change confers freedom. Emotional faith is inspired by fear and wishful thinking and renders a person a slave to these emotions. Mechanical faith is sheer nonsense. Miracles are an integral part of evolutions. Species develop and change through mutations and mutations can no more be explained than any other miracles.

March 16th a.m.
Most of Joyce’s work is written to show the stream of consciousness in a single mind – Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in “Ulysses” eg – but “Finnegan’s Wak” is meant to be an account of the stream of consciousness in the race. Biological Science, which pretends to account for every thing, fails to even consider this; and evolutionary theories apparently dismiss the growth of consciousness because it can not be studied in a laboratory. Thus does science by its own arrogance and stupidity, indict itself.

Jacksonville – March 17th
The Watergate criminals are the living proof of the failures of religion in this century. They are all pious frauds. Haldeman and Erlichman are Christian Scientists. So is Egil Krogh. Colson, Kalmback and Magruder represent a typical Protestant hypocrisy while the greatest paramaic of them all, Gordon Liddy, professes to be a Catholic.

Jacksonville – March 18th
Relaxation is the key. It is the only way to dissipate fear and discourage anger. Repentance, curiously enough promotes relaxation.

March 21
The only thing a successful psychiatrist can do is to help his patient to relax by convincing him that his hang ups are illusions promoted by fear and discouragement. He does this best when he can show that anger is only a substitute for courage. Courage without anger of or any trace of indignation is a God-like quality of man that is rarely seen. Man does not need more knowledge; he has enough for the present. What he needs is more understanding.

March 22
Writers gain a reputation for humor by being able to relax in print. Art Buchwald is a case in point. He is never hung up. He knows that today’s anger is tomorrow’s headache and that the most futile of all human emotions is moral indignation. He is effective because he makes happy people happier, pompous people silly and angry people a little more blatantly absurd. “I have an unreligious churchgoing friend who was shocked the other day when I said that the trouble with religion is that it has fallen under the influence of covert atheists like Billy Graham.”

March 24th
The struggle of our times may be defined as between aggressiveness and compatibility. Aggressiveness was once thought to be the driving force of survival. Man defended his pad against the whole world and every stranger was a potential enemy. But today the whole world is the pad of man and our survival depends upon how we can learn to share it with each other in trust and confidence. Aggressiveness can destroy us; compatibility can save us. Matter is the enemy of life and has been compelled to obey a living soul. The compatibility of the soul and matter is the integral ingredient of a healthy and happy life. They are travelers on the same ship and their ability to relax with each other is imperative if they are to understand. All illness may be the result of incompatibility between the two - - - Discouragement is a giving up, a mean reluctance to face up to the vagaries of existence. There are no hardships of misfortunes; there is only a lack of awareness. The joy of life is the delight in seeking always a greater sense of awareness, and to be able to relax without worry of mindless, craven anxiety.....a relaxed mind that can consider the causes for worry and anxiety has no trouble overcoming them.

March 25th
One of the troubles with writing things down is that it becomes a completed thought and, therefore, dismissed from the mind. Yesterday’s note on compatibility vs. aggressiveness is good and should be pursued further. More over it should be applied in daily life, in meeting people and situations, and become a personality rule...it shouldn’t eclipse the fact, however, that nothing is more important than money. It should be remembered that relaxation and compatibility go hand and hand. It shouldn’t be forgotten that these notes should be referred to from time to time; and the aggressiveness vs. compatibility syndrome be made clearer, more interesting and charged with more human overtones. Men rarely listen to advice from a total stranger. That’s why no one ever pays attention to his religious conscience – to associate a religious conscience with a soldier, a civilian war-monger, or a murder-loving slaughter preaching professional American sagionaire is as silly as associating temperance with a skid-row bum. Contrived similes or other figures of speech (contrived) amuse no one and hinder the flow of thought.
Good quote. “If the nation is ever to forgive those who lied us into that miserable war, we must first forgive those who would not go.” I despise people who delight in gore and revel in slaughter and I have an unspeakable disgust for a God who tolerates or encourages such bloody nonsense etc.

March 26
Later in the day I shall return to this journal with some reflections on the experience of relaxation. My God is a God of mercy and charity, of peace and compatibility but I am afraid Nixon’s God of arrogance and anger, of aggressiveness and threats is not on speaking terms with us.

March 27
The failure to keep my resolve was due to getting a job at Lum’s as a security guard. In writing this journal there are too many signs of carelessness and slovliness in the writing itself. This must be corrected. It indicates a disposition to confuse carelessness with relaxation; as if concern with consciousness and a wider awareness was a cause for anxiety rather than a joyous challenge. It should be easy to acquire knowledge and to develop a facility to use it if you can relax in your curiosity.... once I saw a signature of John Kennedy and it was quite illegible. Was this an indication of his contempt for the ordinary run of mortals who must depend upon legibility! Or was it merely an artificial attempt to attain distention! There is a need for me to make more legible R’s. Carelessness in writing indicates only defects in awareness. There may be exceptions to this rule but an accident of politics that puts snobs or morons in positions of grave responsibility is not one of them. Rushing to get a thought on paper is the sign of an unrelaxed and frustrated mind. This rule will be kept uppermost in my thoughts while planning my strategy for the lecture campaign. There is nothing wrong with learning from experience; there is everything wrong with blaming and commiserating – spaced and legible writing is more easily reread.

March 28th
The success of Agatha Christie as a detective-story writes lies in her ability to create characters that are relaxed.....a situation – suspense account of the death of Edgar Hoover with an archeological background might create a sensation and make a lot of money....there would be no detective- protagonist, only a highly suspicious observer... suggested line of conversation “do you really believe this” Marion asked. “Of course, I do”, was the answer. The last 10 years have been ones of assassinations, unprovoked violence and undeclared wars. What does one murder, more or less, mean to them. Ends are what they are interested in, and the only test of the means is whether it is efficient and effective. These people only become moral after they are caught.

March 29th
A relaxed attitude has got to be achieved; it does not emerge naturally in a situation ordinarily tense. It is easy to conceive of characters in a congenial atmosphere and built up suspense with an informal bantering conversational tone. The verisimilitude in the above case is there and the credibility of the reader is easily assumed. The climax is a different thing; the verisimilitude has got to be contrived and in such a way that the credibility of the reader can be just as easily assumed. It would be foolish to begin the story until this kind of climax is thoroughly imagined.

March 30th
The use of the word verisimilitude above is pompous. Why not say the conversation referred to actually occurred at a dinner of the Florida Anthropology Society in Jacksonville. It may be easier then to conceive of another actual situation that would provide climax….relaxed behavior is impossible when anyone is worried about the attitudes of other people; it is too likely to be influenced by fawning to modify the suspected impression, by belligerence to combat it or by a stupid indifference that fools no/one. Relaxed behavior comes easily when the mind is emptied (freed from) suspicion or posturing…the press, like every other enterprise not actually owned and controlled by the government , is owned and operated by men and corporations for the purpose of endowing these men and corporations with influence, wealth and prestige. Only to this extent is it free. Silly comments and appraisals are much less likely to occur in daily life if they first appear in a journal like this; this is also true of wit and wisdom.