Suffering is considered to be the worst thing in the world. No one wants to suffer. Hide under the table if necessary. A terrible mistake is being made there. People do not understand what suffering is for – don't realize its PLACE. Not only can suffering be useful – it can help us in ways as nothing
else can. But People don’t want to go near it.

It was 1979 and I was back living in Jerusalem after an absence of some six years. Now with Dina, who had become my most dear companion in London, at her apartment in the German Colony district of Jerusalem.

This period entailed one of the most people intensive times of my life. Like the proverbial ants in the woodwork they came from all directions to my most receptive pot of honey. I welcomed one and all, still curious and concerned as I was to advance on the road of pragmatic understanding with whomever showed prospects of compatible potential.

Your explanations about yourself are within
your explanation of everything. It’s all of the
past  an illusion, a picture, in fact an
elaborated guess.

The coming text, which at first glance might seem like a relatively fluent mish-mash of random experiences and reflections, was never conceived by me as heading for publication  nevertheless, in its own strange way, is begging for exposure.

The material was written between September 1982 and June 1983, mainly in the Galilee, during which time and for roughly two months a war was raging with our 'Lebanese cousins' to the immediate North. As such, I originally labeled this text 'Two Months of War'. More recently a friend, while reading this, was 'inspired'  knowing not exactly from where  that its 'true title' was meant to be DIRECTORY.

I want to do the impossible. I want to write about something that does not exist.

Not only does it not exist, it could never exist, not even in the imagination of a person - not in the imagination of a sane person that is.

I have no idea how I am going to do this but do it I will. Otherwise I would have to conclude that love has no door, love has no use, love simply cannot work. I would have to conclude that love is totally useless. And, who could live with that?

It's not love I wish to write about. That which does not exist is the very thing that allows a person the illusion of his own existence as a separate individual, an independent something - his 'own man', so to speak.

That which I wish to write about is TIME. And if it does not exist then I do not exist, which of course is totally ridiculous, except for the fact that it is true.

It's all insane. That's also true. I wish to write about what does not exist. I wish to write about Time.

Can we talk the same language? Can we get down to the things that really bug us, the things that cause us to squirm? Is it not that the real question - ‘How to get out and stay out?’ Out of that place our energies are always being sucked dry!

Let's face it - we're always looking for the opportunity to get high! A drink, a smoke, a meal, some sex - always looking to get high, that is some relief from the PAIN - and that so often begins to look normal, look inevitable.

So the real question has to be 'How to get out and stay out.'

FEBRUARY - APRIL, 1992, TEL - AVIV

The social reality of known friends and family so clearly a mixture of vague fears and hopes. The needs and expectations of the OTHER SIDE are at a great distance from this city of Tel Aviv. Attempts to glue relationships together in anticipation of the mabul (flood).

'What to do and where to go, in a rush or do it slow.'

Of course nothing new, but each time one 'dives in' one must 'dry up', and there is a tendency for a lot of mud and grime to stick. The fear thing is the worst of all, like an invisible coating, talk of it as you will.

October 18, 2005

What I want to open up with you tonight has most immediate and deep implications. It might also serve as an opportunity for others to re-view the basic issue of : what constitutes personal responsibility?

There are all kinds of things going on in the world – internationally, nationally, community wise, with family, friends etc. – leaving aside for the moment all the busy-ness going on inside a person in reaction to it all. People are so busy… how to put it… keeping balance on their 'personal tightrope', that they don't have much alternative other than to react to it all. Within the usual dynamics of life nobody 'acts' – everyone is just reacting!

Things are now developing so quickly on the outside that any activity is like catching up with everything that has been going on over the past years. It was seen . . . but it still left room, for dreams. And now it’s going so quick and so many things are changing that . . . what does it do? It actually dissolves imagination, itself. You can’t ‘imagine’ anymore. Whatever the pieces are of imagination, by the time you’ve finished one sentence, it feels everything has already changed.

This Sermon on the Mount is the most incredible text that has come out of our current civilization. I don't know how far you have to go back to say 'our civilization' but for at least two thousand years. The New Testament is known to be fragments of the Teaching of its Time. The 'language' comes from Tanach (Old Testament). It talks to the world, but it has to start talking from somewhere.

The Work of today is the same Work as always, but in the language and circumstances of today. It incorporates the same principles - a program for evolution. Its meaning is in an area completely different from the things usually considered. An 'unknown' area, actually - dealing with the 'next world'. Though it's unknown it can be smelt, touched or intuited at times. But it is, for the most part, unknown. So, how do you talk about the unknown?

Everybody know what suffering is? (Laugh) You know what it is, hah? You see, it’s not just a word. If I talk about it enough we’ll have, at least the honest ones, and I see a few around here − twelve and under, at least − that if I talk about it a little bit more we’re going to have to leave the room because there’s going to be such a flood of water on the floor, from tears.  (Laugh)

So, that’s a funny thing, now that I want to talk about suffering, you see − I can’t avoid the kids. They may not be dealing with as many issues as the so called adults, but the ones they are dealing with are very deep and very serious and go right to the bone, right to the heart. And their heart is still functioning − so they can cry without shame, for instance. Most adults cut off those emotions, they are left with a kind of vague after-taste.

The funny thing about it, Batya, is that I want to talk about it as ‘something which is not bad’. I want to turn the whole bucket upside down. The worst thing in the world that everybody’s worried about all the time, you don’t know so much about that but never mind − everybody is suffering. Is there anything worse than suffering? So it must be ‘bad’, right?  No one wants it − hide under a table if necessary.

(August 2005)

If I can put out clearly what I want to get across to you tonight it will be a miracle. A little or a big miracle, if only to make myself clear. What you might do with it is another story.

I made some notes from different angles on what I wanted to say but I’m not going to look back at that right away. I’ll see what’s possible to get through now – maybe we’ll just have to wait until we have the right level of energy. I would like to have the right level. You people have had meditation exercises in the past. Maybe you can now think of your best one – just to remember, in your mind, when you were most serious, and most within your own being. You must have some experience of that – not as an explanation, but as a FACT. Maybe you can get there without me having to continually throw my voice out.

Magic flows through our lips and through our fingers whether we like it or know it or not.

'What happened to you?', asked uncle Jack B. a few years ago when I was on one of my infrequent visits to Montreal, 'you used to be so, so reasonable!'

What he did not get a chance to say, but nonetheless meant, was that I also used to be kind, honest, helpful and reliable, in terms that he could easily recognize. Now what happened? How could anyone change so much?

Now, I would like to lay out my story for him, for others and for whoever.

TRANSCRIPT OF TAPE: January 30, 1997.Second Printing: September 2004

The notion behind putting this recording machine on now was to talk about a subject that came to mind earlier in the day. I thought that with a bit of luck and whatever else it might take we could get a paper out, the heading of which would be, WASTING GOD'S TIME.