Ep6 In The Shadow Of The Mountain C.L.Knox stories

The speaker is recording episode six at a park. They discuss how the fields are closed for maintenance and will soon be opened for soccer. They mention the various spiritual practices and beliefs that were explored at the commune, including paganism and astrology. They talk about a dog named Rama and the different skills they learned from fellow commune members. The speaker shares a story about receiving hashish through the mail and their involvement in selling it. They also talk about the construction company they started and the cabins they acquired. The speaker discusses their mother's involvement in an Eastern religion and their own journey towards Christianity. They mention discussions about karma and reincarnation with their mother. They emphasize the importance of examining one's beliefs and worldview. So episode six I'm still sitting at the park and I'm recording this one right after the episode five. There is some background noise there's a the fields are shut down for between between soccer between the end of baseball in the summer and and soccer in the winter fall and winter here they close the field down for a couple weeks and they sand it and put put some seed and fertilize it and it's been closed for a bit over a week already and but it's schools back in today's the second day of school I think and soccer is going to be starting they're already practicing not on this field probably in Parksville so pretty soon they're going to open these fields up and the soccer nets are going to go up and they'll paint the fields and there'll be kids all out here having a great time playing soccer and making friends hopefully learning about teamwork and you know some good stuff good life lessons hopefully of course it's always fun to win but it's about playing the game you know yada yada yada anyway so if you hear the background noise I just realized it's probably in the other one too that's the lawnmower big massive you know it looks like he's probably got a 60 inch or 72 inch mower out in front of him so it's pretty big he's mowing the field getting ready for the year to start so back to the commune I talked a bit about all the different cultures that were represented there but along with culture and what was happening at that time there was also a lot of experimental I'm calling it experimental but a lot of people looking testing the waters for spiritual fulfillment spiritual life so things like I'm gonna call it paganism or neo-paganism using tarot cards and using the I Ching to tell your future and reading tea leaves and reading your hands and you know poem reading and all all different kinds of wanting to tell the future the zodiac my mom was quite into the zodiac and had into astrology and she had each one of us her kids she had somebody do a full full chart on us so we could see where every planet was at the day we were born and what the implications of that were and sort of the path that our life would take I don't know what happened to those that would be interesting to see those I think there was a flood in the basement of the house later on and we lost a lot of photographs and I suspect that those were among what was lost which is unfortunate because whether you believe in it or not it certainly was interesting especially to from the era so personally I do place some credibility in the fact that the stars and the moon and the planets have an effect on us would I guide my would I use it to guide my life no I don't I think they're inanimate and I think that the difference between an inanimate thing and a living person which that's the Creator God that I talk about the Trinity Father Son and Holy Spirit though that's a personal God you know whereas space isn't personal though some people today not wishing to be involved in a personal relationship with God do attribute all their fortune and lack of fortune to the universe the universe wills it you know that sort of ethereal belief system to me in theory you know if that's what I wanted to talk about the things that I had learned about like growing up in the hippie movement the experimental a attitude towards religion the East Indian religions in particular were were quite popular so there was another young man there I don't remember his name and he had a dog German Shepherd named Rama I loved Rama Rama was a great dog but he really wasn't that bright used to be able to throw like a big rock the size of a softball into the river and that dog would dive in the river and try to find it he'd bring you rocks until you told him he had the right rock he just keep going in and bringing up another rock and I mean he broke teeth and everything he wasn't the brightest dog I really liked him though I really did like him I thought in a lot of ways he was very smart but anyone he wanted to please right so in the fact that he was named Rama there was some research into who Rama was before the dog was named so there was an understanding that we we had that we had all developed our own understandings about the religions of the world and Christianity wasn't popular it was not embraced it was pretty much shunned like I'm sure Charlie was Catholic New York Italian born I'm sure he was Catholic and he never talked about it I got to be fairly close to Charlie he was a leather craftsman and he taught me a lot about leather work and at some point I was was gifted a bunch of tools leather leatherworking tools and so I used to work with him he had a little he had set up a little studio where he was producing stuff and actually Isamu too he taught me how to make the bamboo flutes and taught me about carving I never got into painting with him but I did a lot of carving basically and the batiking too I did batiking and sewing Sonja was the woman from Denmark that I spoke about earlier so here's an interesting story I want to share I'll try to share it quickly but when Sonja lived in Denmark before she came to Canada she used to send us hashish through the mail she would sew it into children's toys like teddy bears and whatever and and ship it over and then we would turn around and sell it so there there was a time when we had so much hashish and pot and that kind of stuff but we didn't have a lot of money my parents paid me and Joe and Jonathan our allowance in in hashish so we were constantly stoned constantly like like eating it smoking it and you know let's smoke some of yours no let's smoke some of yours we're kids right and just blitzed all the time but that's also how we met those those teachers I talked about earlier too that were involved in the system selling the products to make some money to to finance what the life on the commune we also established a a construction company called cosmic construction cosmic construction got the got a contract with Eaglecrest before it was a golf course we dismantled the there it was a farm it was a commercial chicken farm originally and we dismantled their chicken coops and privacy fences and I think we left the main house but it had a privacy fence around it that we took down and that privacy fence ended up being the interior walls of our house it was a like if if I put I have a video if I put that video up you'll be able to see some of that gray weathered wood inside the house came from a lot of it came from the privacy fences on Eaglecrest we we got a contract to rake out the fields by hand and so there was at one time 21 people or so I counted that lived there and I don't remember how many of us went out and actually raked that field but those fields there was nine fairways we raked but in in the dismantling of the chicken farm we ended up with some of cabins we had we got three cabins that were I'm not sure I think they were about 10 by 16 or 10 by 16 cabins windows all in the front you'll see some you'll see my cabin and Joe's cabin are still on the property the another one became Peter's cabin my cabin was Charlie and Linda's cabin and Joe's cabin I don't remember who originally had it it might have been Betty I can't remember I can't remember who had it originally but might have it no it wasn't Peter Peter had one over by the barn off to the side anyway those those cabins became living quarters for the for the people on the commune and they each put their own additions and touches and you know made them into their homes Charlie's had a loft Charlie when the commune broke down that that his cabin became my cabin when I was I either moved in there late 14 or 15 years old you know we had been building on the property all along put additions on the house and everybody was building I think Tui was a carpenter Amino had carpenter experience so when we opened this construction company we started looking for work and we were getting it so as as time progressed my mom also like I mentioned earlier became involved in a Eastern religion called it was it came out of the Sikh faith and it was called Sat Maat the path they call it and my grandmother had been in that that religion as well so it wasn't completely new I think I already mentioned that my mom became a vegetarian at this and followed that path the same time I became a Christian one of the things that happened through that was understanding my understanding of karma and reincarnation like there's different versions of it different ways of understanding it and believing it but as I entered into many discussions with my mom the one thing that astounded her about my faith was that when when we die this is worldview questions you know we all ask these questions why am I here why is there something rather than nothing what's the meaning of life what happens when I die those those are worldviews sort of basic worldview questions we all ask those questions and form our view of reality based on our answers to those questions so if you don't have a coherent sort of answer to those questions if they don't cohere then what you have is some issues with how you view the world and how you live your life and those are those are the kinds of things I'm I want to talk about that's what I mean when I say think I want to get people thinking I want you to examine your life Socrates said the unexamined life isn't worth living and there's a great truth in that so that's the thing I want to do anyway as I discussed with my mom her her belief system was you know reincarnation reincarnation so karma was important you don't eat other animals you don't eat animals you want to eat lower life-forms to accumulate less karma and the whole goal is to be incorporated back into a sea of light nirvana one consciousness you know it depends on your your ilk of Eastern faith that you know how you would term that but that was the thing and I mean the questions I asked her were relevant questions well where did where did this where did the sea of light come from the same questions people ask about about God where did this consciousness come from was you know and how come we're spun off of it how come we're all these individual drops of light that need to make our way back to and I never really got good answers on that and also the other thing was is like I she was like wanting to be absorbed back into a universal consciousness and I'm like I want to I want to live I want to be I want Chris to be Chris I want you know I want to have I want myself I want myself to exist and and I want to you know John Updike John Updike Updike the poet he he he put it really clearly he you know he said I want to be a self forever I want to be a person forever I want to have this reality that of me forever and so in my belief system that's that's a reality I have a personal relationship with God I mean and as I get into more how I arrive at that well I talked about when I was 13 but my understanding of what who God is that personal relationship is everything that that's like that's why God created according to the biblical Christian worldview that's how why God created man was for personal relationship God wasn't alone because there's there's it's a tree he is a triune God there is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and they all work together as one and and you know I can discuss that with you if you have questions about that and I don't know if I can answer them or not a lot of people a lot of those questions are never answered satisfactorily you have you arrive at a belief system and that's where the faith come in but it's not blind faith it's a thought-out faith it's an intellectual it's an understanding you know it's like we can get into that later anyway that the thing that my mom a reoccurring question was like you really believe that you're going to like live forever you're going to live forever your consciousness and it was yeah I do and I believe that in the which I mentioned earlier the the prophetic utterances of Scripture that talk about us Christ coming back and and cleaning the earth rebuilding the earth and all of the believers who are in him so basically that's biblical terminology but we're in Christ we're part of Christ because we believe just believe in him we will be remade to our bodies with physical bodies will be immortalized and and that's how eternity will be as we grow and learn and experience like being a self forever and having interpersonal love like pure love relationships right there there's also another poet I believe it was anyway it's a concept that I held on to I'll look it up and try and get it at a later date but about how we never fully learn to love as we walk on this this plane on this earth we suffer from fear for one there's a fear of death a fear of embarrassment if you know we have these fears and our love it the the visual of it is as though our love flowed through a pipe and that that spread it out to people so you know came from us and went out it's like the pipe is clogged the loves not able to get through in its purest form it's just dribs and drabs of what it is to love and we were imperfect in that that's part of in again biblical Christianity that the curse okay enough again I'm gonna try and do another original song if that doesn't materialize because now I have two songs to do then I will play a song that I recorded either somebody else's song or one of my own I have a few of my own that I've never haven't played publicly or played on this platform before so thanks for joining me again this one's a little long I'll probably edit it out a little bit I hope to see you in episode 7 bye so most of the original songs I've been doing on this podcast are songs I haven't performed in public or I haven't played in a long time anyway they're not songs I've been overly comfortable with and they seem a little chunky to me so song I'm working on right now I'm not quite ready for public so I'm gonna do this Dylan song little side note this guitar strap here was from the commune days so I've had that since 72 I guess made by the I'm not using names am I okay the guy that the leather craftsman from the commune the island ain't no man the strongest wall will crumble and fall all those who have I and all those who have you it's only can reduce me don't you cry don't you die don't you burn like a thief in the night there are place wrong with right and truth is an arrow and the game is narrow the unleashed is power and all known power and no one knows how long can you live how long can I stay drunk on fear well can I catch it aside all this loyalty and this pride that there'll be no peace and that the world won't cease until he returns on this blood-stained ground he sees your deeds and he knows your needs even before you ask how long can you falsify and deny what is real how long can you hate yourself for the weakness you conceal for every earthly plan that be known to man he is unconcerned he's got plans of his own to set up his throne when he returns yes when he returns yes when he returns