A (68:10)
And that. That. That. This is what I. The thing Ram Dass would always talk about that I loved is like, there's all these channels, right? And. And one channel that you. Most people default to is you're you. And I'm a me. And you're. You're my enemy. You're my friend or my lover or my fan or whatever. And I'm this thing. And that's one channel. And politics lives in that channel of reality. That's all politics is there. It's this. How do we deal with this diversity of opinion in a giant country? And how do we execute the will of the people when so many people have different ways of thinking about this? So that's one channel, and then there's the Next channel. That's the Mushroom Channel. That's the channel where suddenly you're like, wait a minute, I think you're just pretty much like me, and I'm just like you. And that leads to other channels, which is sort of a pure unified consciousness. And if you get locked into. Into that. That political channel is. Many of us have been locked like Tucker Carlson. You can feel it pulling you in like quicksand. You can feel how it takes up all of your thought processes, how if you're not careful, in the middle of the day, you'll just be ruminating over whether what ICE is doing is correct. In Portland, a city far away from you, not noticing anything around you, not thinking about anything other than whatever the algorithm has been injecting into your mind. And this is a form of idolatry, Father, if you ask me, which is you begin worshiping the state and you begin worshiping the story in the news or whatever you're encountering, which is default reality. So you start bowing down to this idol with your attention. And, you know, like in. I'm sorry, I'll shut up in a second. The stories of Krishna, which is people who are into Bhakti Yoga, that's one of the deities that they worship. And so in Bhakti yoga, God doesn't care if you are connected to God via love or even hate, because the connection itself is all that matters. And the more like, there's stories of demons that wanted to kill Krishna and were so focused on hating him that they became his, like, greatest devotees because just via the attention, they transformed. Similarly, whether you hate the State, love the State, hate the Dems, love the Dems, hate the Republicans, love the Republicans. All of your attention is fixated on this fucking thing. And what do they say? Neurons that fire together, wire together. Your brain changes. It literally will change the neurological makeup of your brain. You've become a political animal, fixated, trapped, petrified in this, and you've completely or missing out on all the other things that are happening around it. And that's what gives it that malevolent glow of some. Some dark deity. Because via your fixation and focus, the rest of reality dims. Everything else dims until all you're doing is saying some mantra against the state or for the state, you know, now you've become a cultist. Now you are fully engrossed in this new religion, which is worship of the state via hate or adoration. It's the same thing. Don't trick yourself into thinking because you hate Donald Trump that you Aren't bowing down at that altar. That's a whole part of bhakti yoga, attention. Where attention goes, energy flows. And, you know, the state demands attention to survive. If it's not getting enough attention, it loses all power. It dissolves. All it's got is, like, people with guns. That's power. But it requires a very intense belief in it and a very intense belief in it in one way or the other, you know, and if you.
