PTS-Glee: Chanting the AUM
Worshiping a Metaphor
“And when you hear some of these Tibetan monks that are over here from the Rgyud Stod monastery outside of Lhasa, when they sing the “Aum,” you know what it means, all right. That’s the zoom of being in the world. And to be in touch with that and to get the sense of that, that is the peak experience of all. “Ah-ooh-mm.” The birth, the coming into being, and the solution to the cycle of that. And it’s just called the four-element syllable. What is the fourth element? “Ah-ooh-mm,” and the silence out of which it comes, back into which it goes, and which underlies it.” –Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth
My niece recently appeared with her University A Cappella performance group at Virginia Tech and one of the young women introduced herself as having PTS-Glee, saying she was a product of her High School show choir.
This was over a dozen young women singing and enjoying themselves. Creating music and contributing “vibes.” Singing a cappella, which is a form of the AUM…the beautiful singing and the silence in between the notes.
These young women weren’t shining their brights in your face while you were driving a dark road late at night.
In Season One of the Trumpocene, someone told me he thought it was great that “We finally have someone who’s going to keep their brights on.”
I remember thinking to myself, “Really? The asshole? The jerkoff that doesn’t have the etiquette to turn his lights down when they’re in your eyes? This is good?”
This is the mindset of the MAGA cult, don’t be respectful and dim your lights, blast them in your fellow citizens’ face, because, you know, “Fuck you.”
For decades, we have been lectured on morality and “good behavior.” These are the progeny of the people that did not want Elvis Presley on stage because his “hips” were too risqué and caused him to be censored on the Ed Sullivan Show. They clutched their pearls tightly when Clinton got a blow job.
“But here's the thing about the social conservatives that is wild to me. It is like they went from seeing sexual morality as a mark of character to like sexual assault is cool, y'all, and we're fine with it. And to me, that's like in two decades. And to me, that is a wild swing.” –Sarah Longwell, Bulwark
From “Christian Conservatives” to a man credibly accused and adjudicated as a sexual abuser, to four (FOUR) cabinet picks with sexual abuse backgrounds?
MABA: Make America Bully Again
Some are saying that this election, and this era, is a backlash to the #MeToo movement? (Note: that is a NYT link, e.g., New York Trash) The wimmins were just getting a little too “uppity” with their complaining about men sexually assaulting them. Quick, bring in the sexual abusers, stat.
This is the Manosphere bullshit that is poisoning the minds of young men in the country. It is the bully mentality that women are meant for men to abuse at will. Extreme masculinity. The Andrew Tate influence over young men, INCELS. “If you put yourself in a position to be raped, you must bare [sic] some responsibility.” --Tate
“Tate is not empowering young men, he is radicalising them. Young men are learning that, if they express emotion they are weak, if they do not have girlfriends they are failures, and if they do not receive female subservience they are not adequately reaping the benefits of manhood.” –The Conversation
Think of Hulk Hogan and Dana White at Madison Square Garden. UFC “Fighting.” Raging testosterone is being sold to the young men of the country because the wimmins just have too much say in our patriarchy. UFC is not fighting; it is ridiculous brutality that is just flat out stupid.
This is the energy of MAGA. Kick the shit out someone, make them bleed. There is no art, no contribution to society, no bettering of humanity. Just violence for violence’s sake. Kicking another human in the head is not strategic, it’s brutality.
Martial Arts is about strategy. It takes a thinking man/woman to learn Hapkido because it is, at its core, a self-defense sport. A good Hapkido athlete must learn how to use their opponent’s energy against them. This takes training and requires learning techniques.
The keyword here is Art. Martial Arts...Jujutsu, Karate, Aikido and they encompass philosophy and religious overtones and are designed to guide the practitioner to “overcome oneself instead of cultivating violence or aggressiveness.”
The young women are creating art singing a cappella, the young men are jerking it to porn and looking for people to hurt.
He Who Drinks from My Mouth
“Jesus also says in this text, “He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I shall be he. “He’s talking from the point of view of that being of beings which we call the Christ, who is the being of all of us. And anyone who lives in relation to that is as Christ. And anyone who incarnates, or rather brings into his life the message of the Word, is equivalent to Jesus. That’s the sense of that.” –Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth (Discussing the Gnostic Gospels with Bill Moyers)
In the gender-bend of 2024, where young women are getting an education and creating art while the young men are watching porn and violent “MMA fighting,” where do we find the AUM?
Campbell says the “Ah” portion is the “The birth, the coming into being.” In one of Wayne Dyer’s lectures, he talks about the “Ah” being the universal sound of creation as it appears across all languages to represent The Source. God, Allah, Buddha, Ra, Wakan Tanka, Tunkashila, Krishna, Jehovah. The sound of Ah.
Dyer calls this “Japa,” the space in between. Getting in the gap.
In today’s “Attention Economy,” getting in the gap requires a commitment. Like a true Martial Art, it requires discipline to ‘overcome oneself.’ Mental Hapkido might be as simple as a walk, a fifteen-minute breathing meditation…it could be music, reading, any number of actions that do not require a supercomputer to be in your hand. Dyer recommends a 20-minute “Ah Meditation.”
Whatever it is where we can find and achieve PTS-Glee and keep us from being the one who chooses to keep their brights on...knowing that it not only hurts the other but potentially puts them at risk.
When MAGA strikes out, we need to have Hapkido skills to use their offense against them. We don’t strike back; it is self-defense. It is a Jujutsu move that allows us to deflect their meanness and cruelty and render it impotent. Be the Gnostic Christ.
We are ‘busy little creatures chasing out our destinies.’ We may as well commit to Art. Perhaps, as he often has, The Professor (and The Holy Triumvirate) said it best?
“Art as expression, not as market campaigns
Will still capture our imaginations
Given the same state of integrity
It will surely help us along
The most endangered species: the honest man
Will still survive annihilation
Forming a world, state of integrity
Sensitive, open and strong”
--Neil Peart: Natural Science