Thinking Out Loud (Jihad = Wrestle with God)

“Matter is just energy condensed into a slow vibration”
I’m a metaphysical pantheist and believe that God exists in two ways- matter and energy. In the matter form, I believe God exists as unseen energy using the period table of elements and other unseen forces that interact and combine to create an “environment” in which to house the energetic source that is God’s essence. The big bang was when God made “himself” into these outer shells in which to house “his” essence.
Creativity probably comes from the fact that all forms exist as a potential within God’s consciousness; and that by using our imagination, we are taking an imprint from the “mind of God” so we can manifest the forms into matter. It’s like how when you sleep, your mind conjures up the form of, say, a chair, and your consciousness (the self-aware aspect of your essence) sits in that chair, it feels like you're sitting in a chair for real, but it’s only a dream. That chair you think you're sitting on isn’t matter, it’s some form of energy; because consciousness (thoughts and words in heads, images in head, dreams) are not matter, they don’t exist in the objective world. Things have to be in one place or the other- an abstract place known as the mind or the concrete place known as objective reality; and they have to be either in a matter or energy state (though the state can change). Except God’s consciousness is like a dream where forms exist that haven't even been invented by humans yet, because the potential exists first.
Existing as something you can see in the real, concrete, world where things happen in shared space and time is something done by human bodies, chairs, words or drawings on a page, rain, clouds and are objectively real. Then there are those abstractions; we can’t see them and they exist as in our minds as souls and thoughts and are not objective realities but subjective and personal realities. And since things can either exist in matter form or energy form, and thoughts and words dreams are not matter, and they take mental energy to create, they exist as energy- forms within our consciousness, and our consciousness is God’s consciousness. We take the potentials and make them into realities; we turn forms in our mind into forms visible to all. These potentials and forms always existed. Man did not invent shapes or colors or elements. Man only can turn these potentials and forms into matter. Man also did not invent curiosity, emotions and consciousness. Man can only act out what he thinks and feels deep inside; and man explores and questions as if it were his business.
Matter and energy are interchangeable- energy can turn into matter (an idea is painted, a thought is written down, hydrogen and helium turn into iron through nuclear fusion so the energy that fuels the sun ultimately creates the material for planets) and matter can be turned into energy (splitting the atom- the atomic bomb). I believe the human mind is working to manifest the love and truth and beauty inherent in the part of our selves that is God’s energy/consciousness (our essence) by taking those abstract concepts and forms of love, truth, and beauty, and making them concrete. To God, they are concrete, I suppose, because God exists as energetic truth, love and beauty at all times and has the forms in “his” mind at all times.
We, as in our minds, are the imagination of God’s consciousness, like the characters an author creates. The characters an author creates are unique individuals living separate lives simultaneously in a story, and yet they manifest different aspects of the same unified mind and temperament of the penman, as if these characters were the author living vicariously through a finite number of persons each with a finite number of characteristics and abilities (their DNA) and personalities (the environmentally-created concept of a unique “self”- an ego) that interact with each other. The characters are different, but there is that link across them: their source was the same mind. The same goes with dreams- all the characters in our dreams are manifestations of ourselves- it’s not like your friends left their dream behind to go play in yours. You ascribe a role to the characters in your dream- each one represents something already inherent in you, and acts it out. You experience yourself, your own thoughts and desires and fears, through these actors. God is like that- God is all and nothing. We’re all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
I believe nature is the manifestation of God’s mind because everything in nature tends toward balance and cohesion, so I assume this is the material reflection of the divine energy consciousness that created it.
Balance and cohesion, as attributes reflecting the energy force behind it, belong with other attributes like stability and peace- so these attributes would likely describe God. God would then follow rules and yet be dynamic enough to evolve and possibly create new rules out of these new adaptive experiences, as if everything were growing and evolving and becoming more conscious for a reason- to create new realities and more possibilities. God would then be constantly creating and recreating himself through matter and higher self-consciousness of “his” own nature.
So the energy behind our spherical, symmetrical, geometrically logical patterns of matter in nature must have an energy source of pure truth, love and beauty. But our minds, incapable of sharing any absolute and objective standard of anything whatsoever, must be disconnected from this pure love, truth and beauty source; and we can only do our best by following the clues God has given us- the patterns in nature, and our own essence, which both contain the imminent structures of symmetry, peace, perfect form, beauty and genius. Our own essence inside our materials shells does contain pure love, truth and beauty; but we cannot agree on it because it cannot exist in objective reality unless we stay in tune with our essence at all times, which is impossible as of yet. The essence cannot do anything; it just sits there with all its Godliness. Our egos, and the fact they exist in a relative world, make it impossible for all of us to easily understand our own essences. We have a lot of false teachings, emotional dramas and self-image and self-esteem issues that are hard to recognize which part of us is temporary and which part of us is eternal. This is also hard because it involves losing a sense of the self as we have known our whole lives to be real because we constantly judged it and tried to appease it, our ego (our mask; our social role), instead of our essence (God). I say, through nature, mysticism, and sharing our love with mankind, we create God’s essence into the existence of material form or through the energy of motion and action and words. I believe that’s how God becomes visible and perceivable through the five senses- when we contract our egos and bodies to reflect the divine truth, love and beauty within us. That’s why human chaos such as war and confusion and other instability is seen as ungodly and unpleasant- it breaks away from the natural tendency of peace, stability and beauty that had to exist prior to any material forms.
“To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.”- Zen Master Dogen
We forget the parts of us ascribed (heredity-DNA-nature) and the parts of us attained (environmental factors-personality-nurture) that have interacted with each other to create our self-image (ego). Our self-image is finite. Our essence, our true selves, is the part of the divine mind that is infused into us- that consciousness that is experiencing itself subjectively through interactions of forms- that eye that sees- the part of us that is in everything. The infinite. The nature is the rolodex of biological and neurological possibilities. The nurture is the rolodex of settings, situations, and interactions other biologically- and- neurologically ascribed forms. These are costumes and conventions of a fickle self-image and a fickle crowd. The self-image and the crowd will be gone, but not the memory, which ripples in the consciousness of the single mind- forever. All lives existing forever. All lives directly infused with God’s own “person”ality (“Godality?”).
The zero, the infinite- the eternal nothing that at the same time was capable of producing infinite amounts of something, so how could it have been nothing if it held the potential? How can nothing hold something? Does it have volume? This type of thinking is not getting me anywhere…
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The universe is one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively
Christianity- God’s light inside of us – Conversations with God – God experiences “him”self through us – Jesus – “Have I not said, ‘Ye are gods’”? - Sylvia Browne – Temples of learning have all the stuff imagination and genius can come up with – access past lives – God consciousness – Ram Dass and Joel Goldsmith “Christ Consciousness” – Goldsmith “God is the substance of form…eternity flows through us” Blake “"He who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God. He who sees the ratio only, sees himself only"
Hinduism/Buddhism- Our soul (atman) is part of God (Brahman) – Use yoga to reach Akashic records – memory banks of every life of every person that ever lived – Buddha nature (Deepak Chopra?) – reach enlightenment by middle path

Metaphysics- Our inner light (part of God) can experience gnosis (knowledge of God) – We’re all variations (DNA/environment interact) of the same theme (same God-consciousness) – Tim Leary – Last two circuits of eight circuits of consciousness – telepathy/collective memory banks – universal consciousness/mind of God/faster than speed of light – third eye/pineal gland/DMT and LSD are synthesized versions- brain naturally produces DMT at sleep and near-“death” – Hegel “we are God becoming conscious of himself” - Bill Hicks: Speculating on how a television news anchor would deliver a "positive" LSD story: "Today, a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... here's Tom with the weather"
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Science on our side:
Evolution of consciousness:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670033847/ref=pd_cp_b_title/002-5923179-5868812?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155 The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

DNA: The Language of God by Francis S. Collins
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Eric Coleman Quotes:
In a Native American parable, the Creator amasses his animals and offers the following:"I want to hide something from my human children until they are ready for it. . . . It is the realization that they create their own reality.""Give it to me. I'll fly it to the moon," says the Eagle."No," says he Creator. "One day soon they will go there and find it.""How about the bottom of the ocean?" asks the Salmon."No," says the Creator. "They will find it there, too.""I will bury it in the great plains," says the Buffalo."They will soon dig and find it there," says the Creator."Then put it inside of them," says wise Grandmother Mole."Done," says the Creator. "It is the last place they will look."

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me. ~Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from "The Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Neibuhr
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The universe progresses as one consciousness experiencing itself, just subjectively, through its own formal manifestations. Mankind like when you play with yourself when you’re young- like when you suck your thumb. Except in this case, the mouth and the thumb would be unattached (attached by cosmic strings?) and have separate sets of bodies to house consciousness, and different personalities.
If we think of the earth, nay, the universe as a living organism that has no brain and yet reproduces itself into smaller factions (think of insects- they have no brains or spines- and yet they can function and reproduce), and those smaller factions keep creating smaller factions, we get an idea of how the universe has broken itself down, except there is no end to the bigness or smallness of it all, and there was no beginning or end to it. It’s just the beginning and the end chasing each other to swallow each other whole. It’s God becoming more and more aware of its own possibilities; growing more and more conscious to the point of total enlightenment.

Before matter ever existed, there had to be energy to bring matter into existence. Energy predates matter. Energy predates nothing. Everything comes from that nothing (which is really eternity), so the infinite universe is the manifestation of nothing, probably just a circle spiraling in a double helix shape and expanding a little wider after every contraction, during every cycle.
Every element, shape, color, pattern, song, voice, it all had to exist prior to us as a potential, all condensed together at one point, called the unknown source of existence. The absence of these forms (elements, songs, structures, colors, etc.) does not mean the absence of existence, such as a vacuum of nothingness; it is only non-formal existence, the soul in its “formally empty” phase. But as the wisdom goes, “form is emptiness and emptiness is form”. There is no nothing. Even outer space isn’t empty; it’s mostly dark matter and dark energy. A Buddhist teacher once told me that when we die, our soul goes back to the zero where it came from. I have discovered zero is just infinity in disguise. Chaos is destined for equilibrium is destined to chaos is destined to equilibrium is destined to…
We know there is no end to the bigness or smallness of the universe- we can go smaller than atoms and quarks and bigger than our fraction of the universe for ever and ever. Such is the nature of God and our souls and everything else we can’t see but we put faith in as a loving being. Because just as form had to come from this “nothing”, so did emotion and feelings of spirituality- connectivity to the whole. This is the feeling you get when you walk out in the forest- you recognize you are all children of the same whole, the zero that housed infinity. You see grass growing and think of hair. You see a stream and you think of a bloodstream. You see patterns, spherical shapes and animals looking for homeostasis, and you realize that you, like them, are all searching for a balance. You see everything natural as a reflection of the divine. And then you see trash and litter upsetting that balance, and mucking things up. Chaos, then order, then chaos, then order…or have we reached the end of the spiral? Each cycle expands outward a little more, like ripples in the water or rings on a tree; even the universe is expanding outward as time goes by. When will human’s awareness hit a paradigm shift in collective consciousness equivalent to the peak of the red shift of the universe? When will the rubber band snap back? Why does it seem like even though our knowledge is growing rapidly, the dumbest and most destructive humans are just getting worse? Why is every natural disaster progressively more harmful than the last? Can we repair the damage we have done to the earth? Is chaos the final step, or is order the final step? The fate of the world is up to us. Only you and I can decide how it will end. If humanity unites like it did in that circle with Fannie Lou Hamer’s ghost, than that was just a microcosm of the giant circle we can all form if all of our hearts beat as one; if all of our purposes are aligned because we finally know and get it; if we end the spiritual crises, implant shared values, instituted a public philosophy on human rights; if we unite the world toward the goal of peace, we can end on a good note. If we do this, all our hearts combined will form a mirror image of God’s heart.
You see our Creator shared with us the ability to create our own reality. And even though I see no difference between the creator and the created in terms of spirit, I see that I am but a microcosm of my own creator, and even though I can create life as well, I cannot create universes full of beings that are autonomous as I am. I can create robots, but they would be inside of a preexisting world. I cannot start from scratch. I can create artificial intelligences within a computer programmed matrix, but they could never posses matter and mass and the same self-awareness that I possess. They would just be powered by the energy of my computer’s electricity. They wouldn’t be flesh and blood. I could copy my brain and DNA and therefore clone myself, but it would be artificial. It wouldn’t be organic. I might even feel elite over my creations, and attempt to control their lives. They wouldn’t have free will, because I may be tempted to intervene. I could raise them like a child, and teach them right from wrong, and then set them free. But what an identity crises it would have! How un-unique it would feel! It would be flesh and blood and DNA and consciousness; it would be making a baby without sex. My point is, I wouldn’t be able to give to my creations the same gift God gave to me- everyone who breathes the air shares God’s gift of freedom equally. It is not my gift to give, it is mine to share.
I thank God for my flesh and blood and organic nature. I thank God for my matter and mass and autonomy and self-consciousness. Even though I believe I possess God’s consciousness, I have the freedom to ignore it, in all its peace and love and beauty and truth and answers. I have the freedom to do anything within the laws of the pre-existing universe. I thank God I have free will, and that God does not intervene in my life. I cherish my freedom. It is God’s gift.
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Would you argue: God had better keep his mouth shut- I am the birth of his seed, I’m autonomous baby, and I know God had better stay out of my life so I can be myself. Then would you plead: where are you, God, I need your guidance…do I have a soul? What kind of thing is invisible?
When you need God to speak, it’ll happen. You gotta let it happen. And it probably won’t happen right away. But if you open yourself up to knowledge, answers and guidance, they will flow unto you like a river.
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New Quote:
“Where can I find a man who has forgotten words?
I would like to have a word with him.”
Chuang Tzu
“In truth the forest hears each sound / each blade of grass… / the world requires no audience / no witnesses”
“you’ll be free child once you have died / from the shackles of language and measurable time”
“tried to listen to the river / but you couldn't shut your mouth / better find yourself a way to level out”
“so we went up the river and recorded all the sound”
“turn off your mind, relax and float upstream”

“the silences of my soul” Khalil Gibran
“get the thoughts out of your mind” Jai

Using sounds instead of words- such as whistling, humming, moaning, imitating animals, harmonizing, and playing music

“Do not rely on words, rely on their meanings”

If you forget words and then someone starts speaking to you, you'll have no idea what they're saying; but they will still have a tone and pattern, a syntax you can follow to catch on to what they're attempting to express. After a while, you may pick up their language. But if you just isolate yourself from all humans and forget language, though I don’t believe you can ever truly forget language, you would learn the language of nature and speak more in more primal terms for survival and a spiritual, emotional and mindful relationship with nature that connects both your self and nature, so it would be a pre-existing language you adapt to you and provide variations on…

At church, sometimes the vernacular the black Baptist preacher spoke in went right over my head and he’d be saying things and people right next to me could understand him, but not me. But I picked up on the tone…

ALL THAT I WANTED TO SAY - WORDS ONLY GOT IN THE WAY.BUT THEN I FOUND ANOTHER WAY TO COMMUNICATE.
THINGS I COULD SAY TO MYSELF - I COULD NEVER SAY TO ANYONE ELSE.BUT WHAT MADONNA SAID REALLY HELPED - SHE SAID: "BOY - YOU BETTER LEARN TO EXPRESS YOURSELF!"
- Jim James, My Morning Jacket “Anytime”
What Apollo’s connections to words are in Homage to Pythagoras

"Blake, Yeats and Pythagoras" Kathleen Raine

William Blake-
"He who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God. He who sees the ratio only, sees himself only"
“Plato and Aristotle considered God as abstracted or distinct from the natural world. But he Aegyptians considered God and nature as making one whole, or all things together as making one universe.” (our stem that connects us all to the fern…the cosmic strings we can’t see that plug us into our matrix)
Blake who held that the living Imagination is the spirit that knows all things, by immediate perception. Whereas the Greeks start from nature, the object of knowledge, Blake starts from the principle of perception itself—spirit.
“Knowledge is not by deduction, but Immediate by Perception or Sense at once. Christ addresses himself to the Man, not to his Reason. Plato did not bring Life & Immortality to Light. Jesus only did this.”
--Here we must remember that for Blake Jesus is the Imagination—the two words are for him synonymous—the living principle itself. Blake goes on to say that “Jesus supposes every Thing to be Evident to the Child & to the Poor & Unlearned. Such is the Gospel. What Jesus came to Remove was the Heathen or Platonic Philosophy, which blinds the eye of Imagination, the Real Man.”
--Man being, of course, for Blake, a living spirit; he is not referring to the physical “garment,” the material body. He continues:
“Jesus consider’d Imagination to be Real Man & says I will not leave you Orphans and I will manifest myself to you; he says also, the Spiritual Body or Angel as little children always behold the Face of the Heavenly Father.”
It is clear that Blake suspected the Greeks, including Pythagoras himself, founder of Western mathematics, as being responsible for what he calls the “wrenching apart” of Nature from the living Imagination. He writes specifically about harmonics, and in this challenges the Pythagorean element in Greek thought.
In considering the Give Senses he is at pains to argue that we do not see with them, but through them: it is the True Man, the Imagination, who is the perceiver. Plato had himself written that we see through the eye, not with it: a phrase repeated in many contexts by Blake. In his Auguries of Innocence he wrote that:
“We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see With Not Thro’ the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to Perish in a Night…” (temporary eyeball but eternal perceiver)
“I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Quesiton a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro’ it ^ not with it”—so he concludes his notes on A Vision of the Last Judgment: Which Judgment is, for Blake, precisely and specifically the awakening from natural to Imaginative perception.
The passage on the natural senses is as follows:
“Ah weak & wide astray! Ah shit in narrow doleful form,
Creeping in reptile flesh upon the bosom of the ground!
The Eye of Man a little narrow orb, clos’d up & dark,
Scarcely beholding the great light, conversing with the Void; [we can only see so much]
The ear a little shell, in small volutions shutting out [we can only hear so much]
All melodies & comprehending only Discord and Harmony;
The Tongue a little moisture fills, a little food it cloys,
A little sound it utters & its cries are faintly heard,
…
Can such an Eye judge of the stars? & looking thro’ its tubes
Measure the sunny rays that point their spears at Udanadan?
Can such an Ear, fill’d with the vapours of the yawning pit
Judge of the pure melodious harp struck by a divine hand?”

Such is the world to those who look not through but with eye and ear and the other bodily organs. The sense of haring can register, Blake notes, harmonics (discord and harmony) but not melody—“shutting out all melodies” because harmonics are a physical phenomenon whereas melody belongs to the Imagination, and exists only in terms of meaning and imaginative experience. Yet when he writes of “the pure melodious harp struck by a hand divine” he might well have been thinking of that Lyre of Apollo whose origins go back to Pythagoras himself.
For the materialist could well argue, yes, music affects us because our bodies are attuned to the harmonics of the universe through the structure of the sense-organs: music is no more than a physical structure of the sense-organs: music is no more than a physical sensation evoking a physical response. For Blake music is something else altogether; and this is why he makes his distinction between harmonics and melody—the “pure melodious harp”—melody being pure meaning; considered physiologically it has no existence. Therefore Blake writes that the heavens are themselves only an instrument upon which is played the music of the Imagination.
I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord! For Blake the question is, who plays the harp?
We find the theme of the Lyre and the music of the universe in the writings of other Romantic poets, notably Shelley and Coleridge. Shelley, a Platonist, writes of the breath of the Spirit, that touches and awakens the lyre of the universe:
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be though, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
We must not suppose that Shelley is speaking metaphorically of this spirit of life striking the tuned lyre of the created world. The so-called “pathetic fallacy” is an invention of the nineteenth century which accepted as a matter of course the post-[sic:Rene De’?]Cartesian view that still holds good in our Universities that the universe is a mechanical structure without life, which operates according to mechanical laws. To attribute life to such a universe (the “pathetic fallacy”) is presumed to be a sentimental personification of what is really lifeless. This may be so in the case of certain rationalist poets who do hold a mechanistic view of the universe and who just for fun or for some other effect personify its elements; but this was never the case with Shelley or Keats, Coleridge or Blake, all of whom followed a more philosophically venerable tradition of the unus mundus, in which nature and informing spirit are one and indivisible. By no poet is this made more clear than by Coleridge, who in The Aeoloian Harp expresses this one life:
O! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, a joyance everywhere. (1.26-9)
The light in sound and sound-like power in light suggests the Pythagorean harmony that governs the whole universe; and the Lyre of Apollo appears even more clearly in later lines:
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely fram’d.
That trmble into thoughts, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all? (1.44-9) (Gibran and the lyre quote about marriage)
Coleridge is very close to Blake; and is it of deliberate intent that he too speaks rather of harp than lyre [the instrument of the Jewish tradition—the harp of David—rather than the lyre of Apollo and Pythagoras]. And both Shelley and Coleridge use the Biblical image of the “wind” of the spirit, the “breath” of life without which the “organic Harps” are silent.
As to Pythagoras, his last appearance in Blake’s writings is still an ambiguous one. In Jerusalem there is a list of the names of the men of God sent to “preserve from eternal death” the secular-world rulers. Los, eternal spirit of prophecy, creates
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Ezekiel,
Pythagoras, Socrates, Euripides, Virgil, Dante, Milton.
--So Blake wrote; but changed his mind and deleted the classical philosophers from Pythagoras to Milton. It seems that, finally, he had concluded that these were not agents of the spirit, the Imagination, but of the ratio—natural reason. He was doubtless in this unjust not only to Pythagoras himself but to the Platonic metaphysics; and yet it is certainly true that the course history has taken in the West, from Pythagoras by way of Plato and Aristotle, has been to a purely quantitative scientific measurement of the Universe, with a consequent loss of that spiritual vision it was Blake’s prophetic task to restore. Blake had a battle to fight and had to state this case without any trace of ambiguity.”

The “Other Side”, the “Kingdom of Heaven” is the Apollo- our Imagination / our meanings and feelings we add to external phenomenon (the manifestation of Apollo/God) is up to us and interacts with life. What can you imagine? Such is your destiny. Children can see God because they can imagine so much more? Imagination coming out of Apollo (the seed of consciousness) – we are all the imagination of our selves – imagination/conception leads to perspective/attitude leads to thoughts/patterns/syntax and language leads to experience/habits we live out our attitude at is our self-fulfilling prophecy, we see the world through the lenses of our perspective/attitude and use that to define our experiences, giving meaning and spirit and imagination to the external world, animating it. In turn, our experiences shape our imagination/conception of external reality. It all goes in this cycle. So we create our own reality by our imagination. What can you conceive of your self being? If you believe, if you imagine, if you conceive of something, it can be yours to experience. Coincidences, synchronicity (the feeling that it has to be MORE than coincidence, like it was meant to happen), serendipity (the feeling when things don’t happen the way you plan but ends up being better anyway)- they are all created by you.
"In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true,or becomes true within certain limits to be learned byexperience and experiment." Dr. John Lilly
Your consciousness is just a fertile crescent in which thoughts are reaped and sowed by your imagination. I’m talking about seeds of thought, and which ones you give light to by focusing your attention and concentration on. You can focus your light of attention on the external world or the internal one. They are both important, but only one houses the spirit. God, the universal consciousness, is experiencing himself through you. To look inward, to concentrate all your light onto your own imagination of God until you realize it is you who is the imagination and God who is all that is real…to find that secret place within where God in all his Apollo good order lies- everyone is God experiencing himself subjectively. Think of the external world and your body as capable of experiencing only harmony and discord and God as the provider of melody. This melody can be shared, like listening to classical music, or your own mix of meaning and imagination to hear what God sounds like to you as a subjective, unique individual. Maybe art is your focus, and God manifests unto you through visualizations you can express. Maybe you don’t use music or fine arts to express your Christ Consciousness/Buddha nature/God within. Maybe you use Logos…and write all the time in an attempt to capture with words what God is manifesting himself as through a parable or narrative or other form of story. God could manifest himself as architecture, as story, as formula, as theory, as musical composition, as dance, as art…just open yourself up to God.
Everything has a seed. The seed of humans and animals is sperm + egg as a zygote, rooted in the DNA tape-loop of mankind coming together. The seed of plants are seen more easily with the naked eye. The seed of minerals are hydrogen, which burns itself into helium in nuclear fusion to create all the elements in a supernova. This was “let there be light”- the universe’ light seeds that came from their Creator. The same spirit that fills our mind with seeds of thought fills the universe with seeds of light- supernovas that will create their own solar systems. “Let there be light” took on two meanings- the light of the supernova and the light of a thought being borne. They both were conceived, like how parents conceive children. The universe is the fertile crescent in the way that consciousness is the fertile crescent- they both are the foundation on which our Creator placed his seeds to grow. The best received child (experience of life, earth) is born of love of the parent (thoughts about life, Creator) and in turn fills his life with love and inspiration (knowledge borne from experience, Holy Spirit) which conceives of more children in an endless cycle. The universe is not as random as it seems, God did not take the stars and toss them. It may seem that way, because we are the only planet we know of within a wide (wide relative only to us) radius with life. And the first few years of the planet were seemingly chaotic with volcanoes, earthquakes and a primordial soup of elements synthesizing into chemicals to form single-celled organisms that adapt and evolve into humans. We are the only species we know (and this is not true) that can think and feel emotions. Evolution seems blind and impersonal. Such an attitude is limiting. Hydrogen burnt into helium and had to wait to create all the elements on the period table until it hit iron, and then it burst outward to create the solar system. Out of hydrogen, all the necessary tools for life was conceived. In that same way, every animal in the ecosystem had to be created before it hit human and spread outward, forming the human race. Out of single celled organisms, all the necessary personalities, those interactions of every-DNA combination possible and self-perception, that could exist and had to exist were made. For every personality makes sense given its context, but then there reaches an age where one realizes that all persons, are united and the creators of their own reality- “God and nature as making one whole, or all things together as making one universe (Blake).” Our stem that connects us all to the fern…the cosmic strings we can’t see that plug us into our frets so that God can play his heavenly hand on us, with all his heart and soul.
Oprah Winfrey:Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Oprah, you genius! The force that holds the universe together- unseen but it’s the dark matter and dark energy in the macro-sense and gluons in the micro-sense! The force! The Chi! Cosmic strings! Who knows WTF the force is; science is working on it, right? What about quarks, gluons and the oft-overlooked monads?
The words are absolute, and while we live in a relative and subjective world, their may be discordance as to what God is saying until our language and education is fixed so that we all understand the underlying universal consciousness, the telepathic Christ-consciousness/Buddha nature, the unity of all our souls that are just modulations of the same key, variations of the same theme, in the great hymn of Love- which is the sound of God’s music- Absolute and Pure Love, Truth and Beauty.
You will live up to your own expectations. You create your own luck, your own character, and your own destiny. How you feel depends on your neurological know-how. Future evolution depends on your decisions now.
Shine your light of concentration all inside and find God in “that secret place”. Remember that you make your own reality. Life has the meaning that you give it. And meaning cannot be quantified like numbers; meaning is substance and quality.
“Every Thing has its own Harmony & Proportion. Two Inferior Qualities in it. For its Reality is its Imaginative Form.”
If you can imagine your harmony and proportion, your homoeostasis where your body, mind and soul are at an equilibrium, where your life and balance are that much closer, you can find that inner peace of mind, that quiet of the soul that is quiet only in that your thoughts no longer exist- only God’s thoughts exist. You can find where only God speaks, and you can reflect the divine inside of you.
http://deoxy.org/winlose.htm
Bill Hicks: Speculating on how a television news anchor would deliver a "positive" LSD story: "Today, a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... here's Tom with the weather"
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I have this phantom voice in my head; she narrates my visions. Memory and imagination blur together when I use my third eye; but there is a certain clarity to this blurriness that allows me to see straight through to the Other Side; like a seeing-eye image that you stare at and then take a step back until a 3-D image pops out at you. No wonder I can’t see my soul- it is the Clear Window where my God gazes through my eyeballs and into the light known as existence here on earth. Inversely, it is the Clear Window I look through to gaze at God. The Soul, the Spirit, call it whatever, is just a way of looking at things when you want to see where you came from, why you’re here, and we’re you’re going.
There is an electrical storm going on inside of my head
A flash of lightning in the dark
Holy baptism water conducts electricity
Like I would conduct like a Beethoven symphony
My ears are tuned into his frequency
But instead of music I can see a seeing-eye image
Structured like a pyramid
And it gets clearer every time I look inward
I kept getting déjà vu flashes from Eternity. Live and learn, then get Luvs. Old commercials. Late ‘90s pop songs. Old names.
Names of freaks who I ran from and freaks who I emulated. Old dreams. Old experiences I never learned to forget. Faces, tunnels, prophecies, muses. I burn with an intense desire not unlike diarrhea; catch me walking briskly as I hurry on to my computer to connect the dots, plug in the numbers, synthesize ideas and use shamanistic magical rituals to report back my inner visions.
Whenever I am not using my third eye, the window has a curtain over it. But when I concentrate, the veil is lifted, and I can see the light inside of me. Sometimes it happens unconsciously, like a light bulb that goes off in my brain, and if I’m lucky, I’ll recognize it for what it is- The Perfect Order that architects have made it their destiny to recreate on the physical plane; that composers became obsessed with and heard as they walked down the street into deafness and madness; that we all have access to. Everyone from carpenters to tapestry makers to the visualizors, those eccentric manipulators of form, to show us how.
Sometimes when I look outward (at the world, my eyes being open) I can see the result of other people looking inward at that seeing-eye image. Sometimes it happens when I see or hear something beautiful for the first time, and it chills me. Perfect form is a song, a piece of art, a scene in a movie that sends shivers down my spine. I’m looking in two places at once- inward and outward. I’m recognizing God as manifest in form. But then it passes away. But for that short time that I really appreciate the beauty of something, realizing its source as the eternal inner vision, I see God’s work. I see it especially when someone puts all their heart into a labor of love- be it charity or justice or just lifting the spirits of family or friend in a very authentic and conscientious, meticulous manner.
You know how when you look into a cloud and you see some beautiful form in it, and your friend sees some entirely different beautiful form? That’s an apt metaphor for looking inside one’s self. We all see different forms, but it is the same Kingdom of Heaven. I just need to illuminate the darkest regions of our consciousness, concentrate as if it were a seeing-eye image, and then the guidance, knowledge and answers will pour into us…
Sometimes I concentrate really hard on what I’m doing, putting all my heart into it, and then I am manifesting God into my work. I’m reflecting the divine inside of me, passing something over from the “Other Side” (the depths of my consciousness) into this one by putting my individual stamp on my creations, creating a form out of my pre-existing materials, knowing that both the form and the materials came from the same place, even though the materials came from the earth and the idea came from my consciousness, the earth came from that very consciousness that even now is reading this in the form of you, the reader. You just have a different mission than I…
The earth is a microscopic universe, and I am a microscopic earth; the earth is light with substance, substance with feeling, feeling with consciousness. What is the light, you may ask? What is it trying to hide?
Everything. First, there is the good order that rests in the mind of the Creator. Then, the light of a supernova creates all the tools the creator needs, in the form of the elements- thereby creating substance and form, God being the substance of his own form. Finally, after the elements evolve into meat, the Creator’s consciousness arises from the sentient meat, allowing for them- us – animals- to demonstrate the beauty of the Creator’s mind here and now; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven- the mind of God.
“Everything’s foreseeable. Everything has already been foreseen. What has been fated cannot be avoided. Even this baked potato. This fork. This chunk of bread. This thought too. My grandmother sweeping the sidewalk knows that. She says there’s no god, only an eye here and there that sees clearly. The neighbors are too busy watching TV to burn her as a witch.”- one of my favorite quotes.
This is the third eye, probably located in the pineal gland. The Clear Window into the perfect order of our souls. Being moral is not enough; to understand where morality comes from is to understand what Socrates said: "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."
And now we bit the apple of the knowledge of Good and Evil, and in doing so, have flung our fate up into the air like a pinball, and as it comes crashing down around us, the best we can do is to find inner peace- that secret garden inside our minds that returns us to a state of equilibrium, where we see that we are God, and then are able to express it. Biting that apple was the best thing we could have done.
Sometimes when I close my eyes and look inward (when I dream or meditate or pray), I can see that the forces of light and dark are the forces of awareness and ignorance. I do not wish to be ignorant of my own true self. I wish to illuminate my consciousness. And that’s why I’m here in the wilderness, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the stream and bird calls. Not speaking; just listening for an echo, so I can find The Voice. Not looking; just searching for a memory, so I can have A Vision. And my intention is to be an artist of vocabulary; a vocabularist; and convey The Message as simply as possible. It gets easier with practice, thank God.

So we can’t see our own souls, but we can see life one way, and with our will, strength and intention we can order it accordingly to the way that we feel within when we are at peace. That’s why things in nature tend toward spherical shapes and perfect symmetry; but also must tend toward chaos, so the cycles can continue and progressively reach a higher order, because it learns from its own mistakes - adaptation. That Highest Order- that’s the way “heaven” is organized, and everything in “heaven”, being accessible through our consciousness, is the necessary order of our souls. That is why we humans long for peace, security, control, and predictability. It is also why we long for variety, spontaneity, and disorder- because too much of a good thing is not good at all. If there is no challenge, no stress, and therefore no way to grow. And the nature of the universe is to keep growing, to keep learning from itself, to keep healing itself, and to keep expanding toward the Most High. I see no difference between God, enlightenment, heaven, Brahman, and “the Other Side”; I see no difference between the spirit, the soul and Atman- they are just the third eye, the Clear Window, that gazes upon God. I only know they exist as long as I grow the lizard's tale of faith, hope and trust in God. They are my gateway to accessing what always is and always has been and always will be there- the God consciousness, the Buddha nature that is inside of me. That is why they call "getting possessed by the Holy Spirit" any action in which it seems like God has overtook the mind and body of a true believer. My spirit exists no matter what as that gateway, that window, that "eye that sees"- as long as I believe in God, I can contact him through my spirit. Our souls are not meant to be seen; they are meant to be seen through. The only way God and our souls do not exist is the mind of the non-believer. Paradoxically, they only way they do exist is in the mind of the believer. What I call "God" someone else, including my old self, would call "peace of mind;" but then again, "peace of mind" takes on a whole new meaning when you experience it with an open-mind toward the divine. Trust me.
Just believe and you can do.

“The Assurance of Doubt” folk song

“The Assurance of Doubt”

I couldn't think of a more perfect place for God to reside
Than inside the mind
It’s a personal relationship
And if we can’t prove Him
Then free will still exists:
To believe or not to believe
That is the question
The answer is only an educated guess
But how can you be educated in the spirit in a society like this?
Yeah it’s true God doesn't exist
At least not in the way we were made to think
Inside the mind, God is all that is good and holy
Take a look in that secret garden, he’s still there waiting
Leave your emotional baggage on the door
Wear your faith like a crown of laurels
March with the saints to heaven’s gate

The kingdom of heaven is right here and now
Existence is as shapeless as a cloud
We’re looking at it and seeing different things
But when you feel the pain of lack of faith in change and fear of death or suffering
And the lenses in which you perceive life need readjusting
That’s when you must realize you took your logic too far
And tried to shape it to forms that it was never meant for
You must realize
God is the cause and it never meant for us to worry
When we do our inner vision must be blurry

God only wants for us to learn and grow and have fun
To be in truth, to be in love
To pour your heart into the mouth of the volcano as it erupts
And when the time comes it wants you to be ready

Do your duty to the beauty of the world
It’s a canvas waiting for your touch
Tracing abstractions across the sky
Lining yourself up to receive the high
To learn is to fortify your feeling of just what it means to be alive

Isn't it so special and free-
The fact that we can create our own reality?
Just don’t forget your origins
God wanted me to remind you
As you go explore this beautiful world
He’s got open arms right behind you

We are all one and never done
We are all one and never done

I pray for your immortal soul
Not because it’s also mine
But because I want you to be in love
With a spiral we all ride

All we see is not all there is
I found a key to different dimensions
Ineffable perceptions and out of body experiences

What’s keeping us down?
The Tower of Babel and specialization of knowledge
Unshared vocabularies leading us to confusion
Misleading labels that make us seem farther apart
Polarization into dehumanization

Some are here for material things
Some are here for the light the Lord brings
Some are here to walk a line
Don’t ever forget why you're alive

Coincidences are for the blind
Inspiration I wish for the inert
You're not at the mercy of the world
Your thoughts are more powerful than you know

People are not here to be overwhelmed
Meet your strength and talents halfway with faith

Inspiring words fall on deaf ears
How can I teach you what I can hardly express
When you wouldn’t even want to hear it
But when you feel the pain of lack of faith in change and fear of death or suffering
And the lenses in which you perceive life need readjusting
That’s when you must realize you took your logic too far
And tried to shape it to forms that it was never meant for
You must realize
God is the cause and it never meant for us to worry
When we do our inner vision must be blurry

Use your tools of hope and doubt
But don’t think you’ve got God figured out
I know he’ll be there when I die
But you couldn't believe me if you tried
And that’s all right

Separation is divine
But don’t forget why you came
God wanted me to remind you
He’s got open arms right behind you

Words for comfort
Flesh for the senses
Soul music for the weight of intangible burdens

Words for comfort
Flesh for the senses
Soul music for the weight of intangible burdens

I pray for your immortal soul
Not because it’s also mine
But because I want you to be in love
With a spiral we all ride

"Searching for the Silences of My Soul"- a short story

Outside in the park, I could echo any sound I heard. After I heard a bird call, my mind could replicate the sound perfectly, as if the vibration left a ripple in my head that I could recall. But could I echo the silences of my soul?
I could describe to you and articulate most things I could see in the park to try to give you a sense of the beauty. Instead of saying “it was spring and it was noon and there were a bunch of trees,” I could say, “I felt nature animated and cartoonishly colorful. The harsh midday light exaggerated all the light colors of green leaves, purple wildflowers and endless light blue sky; and the perpetual melodic chirping of the various birds meant it was springtime in the park again.
As I entered the forest, it was like entering a kingdom of ancient beauty that had opened its heavenly gates unto me. No other humans were in sight, and yet I didn't feel alone; it was all so alive. The forest was like one living, breathing organism; a nurturing mother, and I was going to nest in her for a short time. As I happened upon an open valley along the hillside, walking at a slow, steady pace, I didn't even feel like I existed; I just felt like a floating eyeball spirit visiting a cherished memory. And yet when all birds and flies and squirrels acknowledged my existence, I accepted them as my brothers and sisters.”
I could even articulate the pain in my leg I gathered from running too hard on my midday jog in the park. How it felt like barbed wire had been thrown into a fire, left to char as embers encompassed its sharp nubs, and then was removed from the pit of flames and cast into my nervous system while still glowing hot. But it felt like someone had even taken the time to tie this barbed wire around my veins and muscles and tie it in knots. Then, every time I put pressure on my right foot, it felt like someone was tugging on the barbed wire, squeezing my veins and nerves and muscles into my bones, so they all pressed together tightly, at chronic intervals. At last I sat down to meditate.
I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, counting to make sure they were even. I was tuning out my thoughts with numbers. Then the front of my brain got fuzzy, and I could feel it warming up. I started to fly. I can describe this to you, but could I ever begin to describe the migration to God that comes from such inner peace? Could I begin to describe to you, or paint you a picture of how it felt to sit and meditate and feel the glowing depths of my soul?

About year ago, when I didn't know what to believe about God, I had an experience as I sang “We Shall Overcome” while holding hands with a circle of my peers and an old black woman. She had struggled through oppression in the South, enduring hardships nobody ought to endure. She was dead, no doubt, but the actress who played her had channeled her spirit so precisely, I had forgotten she was an actress while it was still early on in the production.
She looked like a seventy-five year old woman, with her hunched back and cane and the slow shuffle of her feet. She had the braided hair done in a style that had long gone out of fashion; the kind that only could have been popular in the nineteen forties, fifties or sixties; braided, jet black hair, appearing tough as rope and in the shape of a bun. There was a look of stern confidence embellished her face but could not hide the age marks of painful experience. She had the old, wrinkled face, and the eyes of a woman of experience. Those deep and wide unflinching eyes that seamlessly extended to the size of a dinner plate when she got excited. Her dark brown skin was the color and texture of a chocolate covered raisin; I could see her pruny hands and wrist sticking out of an old pink blouse with white spots and ruffles on the shoulders. The blouse was cut off at the top of the knees; and thick calves separated the blouse from white, high socks. The actress told the story of Fannie Lou’s life from the first-person perspective. By the end of the first fifteen minutes of the performance, my consciousness of this being an act slipped away and I drifted off into a lucid sleep as Ms. Hamer weaved a dream for me out of nothing but her memories, her commanding voice seeming to draw its power from images of grave injustices that had been indiscriminately been floating in the room that only she could see. She turned her pain into strength, pride and glory.

And so I let the ghost of Fannie Lou Hamer arise from the dead to tell me her secrets through both spoken word and song. I clapped along when she clapped, and sang along when she sang, and laughed when she laughed and cried when she cried.
I’ll never forget- she struggled to speak as she recounted the story of her own near-fatal beating. Her bus full of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members were going across the South to get black people registered to vote, but in one town, the police pulled her bus over and imprisoned everybody on board. The cops brought two young men, fellow SNCC members, into to her cell. Fannie Lou was made to lay face down as the young men were given nightsticks and forced to beat her. They beat her until she was a bloody pulp, even cracked her in the back of the head. They cried out as they carried on:
“Oh God, please forgive me!”
Fannie Lou was hysterical as she told us how she prayed she would die then and there; she told us this as she shook her fist in the air and looked through the ceiling and into the sky.
“But God had bigger plans for me”, she said.
I felt sick to my stomach. Tears burned my eyes as they came out, and I kept my lips tightly pursed because they began to wildly quiver. I was so angry and heartbroken and I couldn't speak because I knew anything I could say would be irrelevant in comparison. Tears washed down my face- there was no trying to empathize with the hopelessness of her situation; she effortlessly produced an empathy mist in the room that lingered over the hearts and minds to everyone who had just heard her words as she spoke. And yet she still preached hope, among faith and trust in God.
Why? Where does that mind of yours disappear to- what fantasy world is there waiting for you when the world strikes you a blow that leaves you for dead?
By the end of the show, she had come down from the low-rise stage to the small audience and requested everyone join hands in a circle, so we did; we were a melting pot of all types of races and sexual orientations, singing “We Shall Overcome”. I remember forgetting any doubts I had about God at that point. God had finally come to me because I was finally ready. As I clasped my neighbors hands, I didn't realize it but I was swinging my arms back and forth as I sang. I asked myself, “Isn't this perfect? This performance and unity could not have been executed any better.” That’s just a thought coming from a feeling, a feeling that I could only describe as my heart beating as one with everyone in the room, and beating in synch with the rhythm of God.
It was a feeling of being face to face with something larger than me- like how the birds must feel seeing me, this 6-foot bewildered looking, heavy-breathing creature walk into the park where nobody else is around, and I stare into their eyes. Except I don’t see anything bigger than me- just like-minded human beings; but I perceived something; I felt, with what must be by third eye, that these humans are being concrete love and purity, respect and unity; and I’m overwhelmed by a feeling of childlike innocence. I mean, here I am, a twenty year old man who’s impulsively and widely swinging his arms back and forth before he even thinks to feel embarrassed by it. I feel like I’m a two year old meeting Barney the Dinosaur, except Barney has this ancient wisdom of what it truly means to be alive, to have a pure emotion, or faith, hope and trust in an unseen, unconditionally loving creator. This is concentrated guidance; this is Yoda and Master Splinter and Gandalf the White and Rafiki and the collective good intentions and actions of mankind multiplied by infinite but condensed into a drop of chemical liquid that was now tickling my brain and sending chills throughout my nervous system. Everything inside of me was laughing loudly, but the look on my face was one of reverence. It was reverence to wisdom ancient like the trees of the forest; the wisdom and guidance provided by studying the celestial skies; the knowledge encoded underneath the soil; and the answers that come when a light bulb goes off in someone’s head when they completed the puzzle to use objects in nature as tools, from canoes and paper to medicine and computers. It was nature’s apparent ability to create order out of chaos, to reproduce itself, to grow and learn from itself and adapt and evolve; and most importantly, to heal itself. The lizard’s grows back when plucked. And Fannie Lou Hamer taught me faith, hope, and trust in God ain't nothin’ but a lizard’s tale, but you got to grow your own tail when life plucks it off.
All of this knowledge in one feeling caused by one drop of a chemical in my brain- I was witnessing life with my third eye for the first sober time of my life. And yet isn’t this feeling ineffable?
Nay, if you ever were a child full of awe and wonder, you can understand; the bird calls and the green grass before you is the demonstration of my “soul”; anything pure and natural, such as the unconditional love of a strong family; the truth of a child’s or a faithful and wounded woman’s speech; and the beauty of nature in all its symmetry. The universe is us living out our “souls”; it is the formal substance of its divine origin. The order of the universe- the homeostasis, the equilibrium, the balance, the peaceful resting state that we all tend to as we arise out of the necessary chaos of the primordial soup- that order that we perceive as fundamental for the birth and growth and existence of anything, is the reflection of the order of our “souls”. It’s also why what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light, because the truth has an energy to it, to be known. The good order is always there, in the back of our mind, waiting for our body and mind to use evolution to catch up to it.
All this I remembered as I basked in the light of the park. But it was easy too find peace- It wasn’t challenging me at all; I felt like I wasn’t growing in the sunlight. I decided to shape shift into bamboo so I could be skinny enough to thrive in the darkest regions of my consciousness.
But could the narrator in my head describe what was seen as I entered the wilderness’ underbrush called my unconscious mind? In the thick, shadowy jungles; the unexplored territory lay just as pure as anything else. Yet I rarely have shown much light on it, except in my dreams or when my imagination ran away with me. Sometimes both attractive and repulsive thoughts of S&M and the ingesting of drugs and alcohol took me there, and turned me into both gods and beasts for the time being. I often carried those desires into out-of-control extremes, so I am taking a sabbatical from drugs and mental pornography, hoping to find myself as able to exist without them. Maybe someday I shall return to their suffocating arms of irrational paranoia and temporarily satisfying and yet overall unsatisfying flavors, but that’s another story.

As I sat in the wilderness to meditate today, I felt someone walk up behind me and tap me on the shoulder. “Are you on drugs?” the apparition asked, with a concerned look upon her phantom face.
“I am drugs!” I replied cynically, in my haste. What I meant to say was this:
“I am the child of a passionate night of intercourse between the minds of Salvador Dali and Lewis Carroll.
The earth is a child of the universe, and I am a child of the earth, making me a son of a son of a big bang. The offspring of the birth pangs of a red shift. I am made up of tiny universes as well.
I am also the son of God just as much as I am the son of man. I am Jesus and Krishna, but what makes me dangerous is my ability to deviate from this enlightenment. One minute I could be inspired by the Holy Spirit and speak Pure Truth; another minute I could be confused and leading you astray. Everything I say and do can either bring you to the Devil or God. I should just become a religious man, so people aren't confused as to what side I’m on, but you can never tell nowadays.
But let’s not talk in such extremes. Everything I do is either in accordance to my virtues or my vices, yes. But the thing is, my mind lives on the beach, where my virtues and vices blend into each other. It’s the fact nothing is good or bad in itself that confuses a lot of people. Take war, for example; join the front lines of an infantry unit and see how handy your vices come in then. Everything society abhors, such as laughing about death, becomes necessary to cope with the everyday reality of death and evil.
They’d like to be superstitious, those tribal moralists, but breaking a mirror is only bad luck in the context of having a bad day; or in leading up to a self-fulfilling prophecy. In another context, a broken mirror might end a narcissistic trance. You see, a virtue can easily become a vice, and vice versa, given the right conditions. That’s why you’ll see me throwing my vices into the sea of virtues, just hoping someone will see that even my faults are the products of my good intentions. This shoreline of ambiguity is where I do my best thinking.
The most religious thing I can do, rather than be a hedonist or a monk, is to live my life the middle way. To strive for that balance between peace and adrenaline, between love and fear of the things I am fully aware of and the things I forget in my unconscious ignorance.
Because you’ll be surprised of what you miss when you're not looking for it- and my awareness is always blind to something. There’s always something to miss. And there are things only my ignorance remembers and my awareness forgets. That’s why I’m here, in the shade of this thicket of bamboo, deep in the heart of the wilderness.”

She looked at my outstretched leg, which was tense and burning from jogging too hard and she called forth the wind to massage it.
“You mustn't force your body,” she told me. “You must listen to what it is telling you. Sometimes it seems like you are slowed down, but your body is just healing itself. The same goes for your mind and spirit. You are too impatient to regain your autonomy, so you say ‘I AM in control’ and push too hard. But there was a part of your body that was meant to be slowed down, so it could rest. Don’t push it, child, don’t push it.
“Frankly, your body you was not meant to be in complete control over- such as pushing through pain, when that pain is warning you not to push. That’s right, you can be in control over your tongue and your penis and your brain, but before you came here, on this big beautiful earth, you carved out some lines that you just couldn't cross without damaging ya. For the gift of pain is as precious a gift from other side as the gift of freedom. Free will and freedom to create your own reality- that’s beautiful, and you own it. But you mustn't, in your haste to be yourself, lose control by trying to grain control- such as taxing your body’s limits and then riding roughshod over the healing process. You can’t skip the quiet moments; sometimes you just got to stand still or even go backwards a little bit. It’s part of the master plan; the limits you make here on earth and the limits you made before you got here. Pain, baby, and stress; you have to use it the right way. You got to use just the right amount of freedom in certain areas, and control in the others.”
Her words echoed in my head. Was she a ripple in time? She sounded a lot like me. I had considered these ideas before, but never had they so articulately been brought into existence using speech. Was she telepathic? I decided I might as well ask her the big question, then.
“Why am I here?”
“To be a painter, an author, a director, a composer- who comes to live inside his own beautiful painting, story, film, or musical for a while. To live through the manifestation of your own seed of thought that reflects the divine inside of you. To be doing three things at once: to mind a garden of thought; to grow with the flowers in that garden; and to never forget the source of your seeds. Don’t you see now where your soul is now?”
My eternal soul, I whispered in a hushed and astonished voice. I am the planter and the planted. I am the universe, the earth, and the body. And I am the seeds that I spread; right now, I remember that I am God.
And that remembering brings my soul forth, in its purest essence, and I can see all that I can’t see with my naked eye; feel all that I can’t feel with my naked body; and perceive all I cannot perceive with my naked mind. I was actually demonstrating this fact- putting an experience to knowledge- engaging in spiritual praxis.
Could I liberate the universe, the earth, and my body by using only the dialogues between my mind and soul? I’ve seen beautiful artists liberate tree branches by turning them into instruments of paint brushing. Why couldn't I do the same with words? Why couldn't I paint the picture-perfect masterpiece behind the back of my eyelids using language?
That’s why I’m here in the wilderness, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the stream and bird calls. Not speaking; just listening for an echo, so I can find The Voice. Not looking; just searching for a memory, so I can have A Vision. And my intention is to be an artist of vocabulary; a vocabularist; and convey The Message as simply as possible. It gets easier with practice, thank God.

Response to Reverend Wright: Fear and Cheer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tMvS5Ny2E4
Your attack on Hillary: too easy. Your tone: perpetuating mistrust = not good! The way you use the word "enemy" = scary!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9HUdF9OZa8

Hell yes, it's about time somebody said something about this.

“in a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act” George Orwell

Reverend Wright’s mistrust of “rich, white people” is kind of scary because he’s formed a dichotomy between the blacks and the rich, white people. The “enemy” is really within our hearts and minds; some black people and some white people become the enemy when they commit harm and racist injustices, and some black people and some white people are also fighting constantly for fellowship and give to the needy.

But I will say that Reverend Wright’s blaming 9/11 on the United States was not unfounded. First of all, yes, a lot of innocent people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II; a lot more than 9/11. We owe an apology for that. But that should have nothing to do with the September 11th attacks. If Wright is trying to say that the two are related, he doesn't really have a point, except to say that America kills innocents the same way al-Qaeda kills innocents.

But we did have our own role to play in 9/11. Osama didn't want to bomb us “because he hates our freedom,” as the neo-cons say. Many third-world countries are probably both jealous and resentfully angry at the American way of life. But Osama was pissed for other reasons- like globalization and how it imposes Western ideals on other countries.

I am in no way justifying the September 11th attacks- violence should be used as a last resort, and killing innocents is never justifiable. The thing is, though, the United States has been meddling on foreign shores. We still are. NAFTA and World Trade are making it harder for other countries to get along economically. Poverty in Latin America and Africa has a lot to do with our foreign policy on the global market. Drug testing on poor people worldwide from the hands of U.S. based pharmaceuticals is bypassing the FDA standards by using CRO’s and outsourcing to India, Africa and Latin America, to name a few. The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. The United States has supported Iran against the communists in the 70’s and then Saddam against Iran in the 80’s. We even supported Osama.

“In the war against Hitler, the United States found common cause with Stalin. In the war against Japan, America aided Vietnamese rebel Ho Chi Minh. In Third World struggles, America helped Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein.”
Yes- we helped Saddam- see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war
http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/for-whom-bell-tolls-top-ten-ways-us.html
The article continues: As Afghan rebels fought Soviet invaders in the 1980s, the United States gave aid from afar while Saudi exile Osama bin Laden provided support from within Afghanistan.”
http://archive.capecodonline.com/special/terror/binladen17b.htm

Maybe I should be more clear and say "the United States INDIRECTLY caused 9/11, and by caused I do not mean deserved". There, if I have to spell it out for you, that's what I meant to say. But I'm not going to sugar-coat it, I'm going to be real about it, and show the cause-effect relationship that lead from American foreign policy to show how we supported Osama and Saddam in their wars against Russia and Iran with cash, arms and training.

Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005,

“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development

"Pakistani investigative journalist Ahmed Rashid reported recently that the CIA funded an underground arms depot, training facility and medical center that bin Laden helped build in 1986 near the Pakistan border. There bin Laden set up his first training camp."
http://archive.capecodonline.com/special/terror/binladen17b.htm

In 1998, American businessmen from U.S.-based companies were still doing business with the Taliban.

In a 1998 article-
"Even worse, the United States lent and continues to lend its tacit blessing to the Taleban by doing nothing to stop them. In fact, American oil giant UNOCAL, closely tied to Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, was hosting Taleban delegates to the U.S. and praising them in Washington at the same time the Taleban were murdering and terrorizing women in Afghanistan. And at the same time Osama bin Laden, who bombed our embassies in Africa, was living as a welcome guest of the Taleban and helping finance their takeover of Afghanistan-- a bit of incidental irony."
http://www.genders.org/g27/g27_afw.html

After al-Qeada bombed U.S. embassies in Africa, "the Clinton Administration was raining Tomahawk cruise missiles upon the Taliban and Al Qaeda, business was dealing. Whereas UNOCAL had withdrawn in December, other international investors were engaged in serious project negotiations. A New Jersey-based company, Telephone Systems International [TSI] announced in September a $240 million contract with the Taliban to set up a network of satellite-call centers in major Afghan cities, as well as a 30,000-line wireless system in Kabul. Eight percent of the profits were to go to TSI and 20 percent to the Taliban."
http://www.cursor.org/stories/karzai.htm

The Taliban was hiding al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at that time, and with one hand, Clinton was gunning for Osama, and on the other, TSI was funding the Taliban.


And we did betray Saddam. We supported him AND Iran-
Author George Crile, in his book Charlie Wilson's War, writes regarding CIA involvement in the Iran-Iraq War:[11]
As explained by Ed Juchniewicz[12] -- Avrakotos's patron and the number two man in the Operations Division at that time -- they were just leveling the playing field: "We didn't want either side to have the advantage. We just wanted them to kick the shit out of each other".
(George Crile, "Charlie Wilson's War", 2003, Grove Press, p. 275)

No one is saying the U.S. is directly to blame for the 9/11 attacks, but what I am pointing out- and what I chose to celebrate from Reverend Wright's sermon- is that the United States' support of terrorists in a policy of "the enemy of our enemy is our friend" has come back to bite us. Wright clearly says that (“the stuff we’re doing abroad has come back to bite us”), and I clearly say it because the facts clearly say it. I disagree with a lot of what he's saying, and I don't think we deserved to be attacked, like I said throughout my post, but I think it's time the truth came out about our involvement in inadvertently causing 9/11 by enabling the Taliban and giving Osama CIA training.

And we continue to support Israel, and it doesn't take an investigate journalist to figure that money isn't going to terrorism. I'm not anti-Zionist, but I am anti-going-too-far-and-fucking-up-Lebanon-in-2007. And let's not forget our indefinite commitment to the drug market in Afghanistan:

A 2003 Reuters article:
"The Taliban was cracking down on poppy production in the year before the US military drove the movement out of office in late 2001 in response to its friendship and cooperation with the al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/28/afghanistan.drugs.reut/

And we continue to support the drug trade:
"Following the American invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and subsequent removal of the Taliban from power, competing agencies within the US government set about to prove their worth (with some individuals intensely involved in lining their pockets with the drug money) by adopting policies to "short-cut" the process of Afghan reconstruction. One of these short-cuts involved a deal with the warlords. The deal was to allow the warlords to grow poppy, so that these warlords could buy arms and recruit militia to strengthen their ranks. In return, they would not only provide the Americans with the intelligence on where the al-Qaeda and the Taliban are hiding, but would also provide the Americans with fighters. "
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EG15Ag01.html

William Irwin Thompson has this to say about the people who sent our troops being in Iraq:“So the neoconservatives of the Bush administration are the mirror-image of al Qaeda; they are also a noetic polity that seeks to deconstruct the modern middle class democratic nation-state and replace it with a metanational corporate cartel – a capitalist al Qaeda. Halliburton, Bechtel, Enron, the Carlyle Group, and Newmount Mining are postnational formations that really care little about the welfare of any particular people or nation. The American soldiers that died in Iraq did not die "defending their country"; they died defending Cheney and Bush's interests in Halliburton and the Carlyle Group. These neocon corporate managers, very much like the privateers and pirates that helped Queen Elizabeth create a postbaronial world of naval power, are offshore pirates that care as little for the entire nation, as Texan Enron cared for the state of California it plundered"

What we need to do is stop meddling in foreign affairs. Our dirty business in Israel and Afghanistan, as well as NAFTA’s effect on Latin America, is fueling anti-American hatred and supporting terrorism and drug wars.And we need to start calling the war on terror and the war on drugs what is really is- an endless waste of time and tax-payer's money. (see "Traffic" and read Under the Influence (ed. Preston Peet) to see what I mean)

“By 1999…world opium production had reached 7,000 tons. Of this, 4,700 tons, or 70%, was being grown in Afghanistan and trafficked by heirs of the mujahedin who in the 1980s had been financed, armed, and supported by the CIA.”- Peter Dale Scott (preface to his book Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina). It was to fight the communists- see the film Charlie Wilson’s War.
It was the heirs of the mujahedin, the Taliban, we went from friends to enemies with; and the Taliban didn't exist until the mid-90's

“If one recalls the various US wars on Central American countries during the 1980s, he or she will certainly remember the so-called Iran-Contra affair. In essence, this was a US operation that was run out of the Vice President’s office [sic: George Bush, Sr.] that traded guns for cocaine to the CIA proxy army in Nicaragua (the Contras) and in turn traded weapons parts and technology via Israel to the Khomeini government in Iran for cash. This cash came from the sales of the contra cocaine to various drug dealers in the United States—some of whom were enterprising enough to turn the coca paste and powder into a substance that would turn many of our country’s inner cities into cocaine-fueled war zones. The substance I am referring to became known as crack.” Ron Jacobs
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs01062004.html

"But I will say that Reverend Wright’s blaming 9/11 on the United States was not unfounded. "- that's what I said.

(in reference to the facebook debate)
Andres O is right, "I believe politics boils down to those who seek to solve the cause and those who seek to solve the effect. Brian wants to fix the effect, while Shep questions the causes. "

And Reverend Wright questioned the causes- that's what I was celebrating him for- speaking up where American politicians were silent!

Aaron McGruder and George Orwell argue this, and I agree-

We're living in a time where the presidential administration is secretive, unbalanced and full of lies. And you think that just by telling the truth, and I are labeled as being radical? What kind of time in the history of America is this where telling the truth becomes radical?

Reverend Wright is breaking a lot of ground by speaking out. But be wary- the enemy he talks about is not the enemy.

"Mind can be one's friend or enemy."- Bhagavad-Gita

Allow me to offer a parable.
"A lion was captured and placed in a large yard surrounded by a high fence. He soon became acquainted with the social life of the other lions who had been there a long time. The lions had divided themselves into several clubs, each with its own activities. One group met regularly to hate and slander the captors. Another group met to sing sentimentally about a future jungle having no fences. And a third group met to secretly plot violence against the other groups.Each group tried to pressure the newcomer into joining, but something held him back. His hesitation was caused by observing one particular lion who kept to himself and who seemed to be in deep thought. The newcomer shyly approached the solitary lion and requested an explanation of his apartness."Join nothing," replied the lion. "Those foolish creatures do everything but the necessary. I am doing what is essential, so one day I will be out of here. You are welcome to all the facts I have uncovered."
“But what is this necessary thing you are doing?"
"Listen carefully. I AM STUDYING THE NATURE OF THE FENCE."
-Vernon Howard

Now at times Wright seems like the first group of haters. Other times he seems to have been studying the nature of the fence- he knows what America’s been up to in other parts of the world. You see, people fluctuate- sometimes we rage, sometimes we sing songs of hope, sometimes we fall down to the level of perpetuating violence among our brothers and sisters, and if we are smart, sometimes we study the nature of our consciousness.

We fight ignorance, laziness, selfishness, lack of self-respect, violence, haste, indifference, arrogance, fear, hopelessness, egoistical thinking and boredom.

I won’t get into America’s involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict right now- though I will say apologies need to be made on both parts, in fact, every organized religion should have their leaders apologize to one another for centuries of violence, which goes directly against God's Free Will.

Gandhi has a point: in 1938, he said
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. … What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. … if they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. … A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. … They can settle in Palestine only be the goodwill of the Arabs. …As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. …I am not defending the Arab excesses. … I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. ..But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arabs in resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”
[originally published in Harijan, the weekly newspaper published by Gandhi, on November 26, 1938].

My perspective is, Zion is anywhere you lay your head. Displacement is sad, yes, but quit being so hung up on generations-old-tribal-blood-feuds; this whole religious war thing has gone on too long. The world is one big family- you’re only laying your brothers and sisters down into the ground, six-feet deep. Nobody should care that much about something man-made like a religious organization to want to blow themselves up over it. The injustices done in God's name, including the spread of atheism (wake up, organized religion, you're scaring people away with your dogmatic BS! Quit taking ancient texts literally! And WTF is up with rampant child-molestation??), Sharia (which goes against freedom of choice), the FLDS's tacit support for polygamy (people force young girls to marry their cousins! shame!) and FLDS "prophet" Rulon Jeff's decree against "heathens" (this is religious persecution on a political scale now in Phoenix) and Scientology (what a sorry excuse for a religion- this is a freedom-depriving, profit-driven cult that preys on the young and elderly, the spiritually confused and prisoners looking to be rehabiliated) will be recognized for what they are- blasphemous!

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe:

"Just the other day I was wondering:Is anyone willing to admit that people they loved have died fighting for something that is now unnecessary?

Can they learn that their loved ones did not die in vain, but in accordance to the inevitable fact that they didn't know any better, but now all must be forgiven and we need to admit that they fought for a cause that is now in the way of world peace?"

For more, see my blog:http://ageofmurdanstorm.blogspot.com/2008/03/soul-evolution-part-vi-liberation.html

Crazy Wisdom

“reality is a wave function that moves backwards and forwards in time” John L. Castri

We have our moment of reality check-ins as it passes through our consciousness. Maybe beforehand we were shortsighted and lying to ourselves- getting away with a good ride while it lasted. But then we realize we didn't know diddly. So we have to rebuild. And it’s always like that; reality comes in and puts us in our place when we act like we know too much. And it crushes us; it’s like we built a sand castle only to have it swept away, except the sand castle was everything we build our confidence, self-esteem and knowledge and faith on. We think we can explain the meaning of love, life and God; and then BLAM! Reality ends our little charade and we find out the support system we built wasn't strong enough to hold the weight of how it really is. But thinking we were in our cozy niche was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it life-affirming?

You know those moments where everything makes sense- just comes together, everything seems to be in its place, and you’d swear the stars aligned because a miracle just happened in a way only you could understand? When you're on top, you never see your downfall coming. You're not supposed to. You're not supposed to worry about it either. Then, when the rug gets pulled out beneath you, you demand things go back to the way they were before, but it can’t. It’s like everything you’ve done that was so important and meaningful was all a game. There’s that hollow, empty feeling, like you want what you can’t have; except what you want is the basic comfort that should be mandatory for everyone. But the only reason I feel secure is because I know that with every new low, there is a new high waiting for me. Reality has really put me in my place, so when I finally am secure and confident again, it will be increased because I’ll actually have felt like I learned something. And I did learning something, I’m not living a lie anymore. At least not the same lie. And at the time, what I believe will be so true to me, because I’ll know I’m seeing past the fog that once clouded my vision. This is really the only thing that keeps me going- knowing that with every new low, my new high will be that much higher. That new moments are on their way where everything will come together and be life-affirming, like God and I are smiling at some secret joke.

Everything goes in cycles, and each time I learn something and then use what I learned. Then I get too arrogant with my beliefs, but the tide comes in just in time to destroy my fantasy world. It’s humbling, really. Even though everything I worked for was not as important as I thought it was, I needed to do it at the time, and I realize that. But I have to soak in the harsh truth and move on. There are no pieces to pick up; it’s not like my belief system has been shattered. It’s just that reality shines its light on what’s real and constant- and that is uncertainty and entropy- where everything returns to dust. My old reasoning lies in the shadows; they moved me at one point, but now it’s really useless in the face of reality. What was once easy is now impossible, but it’s all a circle, and as long as I remember everything I’m going through is preparing me for being the realest person I can ever be, it has meaning. And as long as I remember that with every low, there will be a new high, then I won’t give up.

“Castles made of sand fall in the see, eventually” Jimi Hendrix

"Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust, and when you're up, it's never as good as it seems, and when you're down, you never think you'll be up again, but life goes on." - George Jung's father in Blow

“When love is gone and the one you thought would stay does you wrong / and you're left alone to pay the price-- / is high, but somehow you'll survive – turn the other cheek and don’t give in / that old wheel is gonna roll around again / That old wheel, it’s gonna roll around once more / and when it goes, it’ll even up the score / don’t be weak, as they sow they will reap, don’t give in / that old wheel will roll around again” Johnny Cash

“And when you wake up, everything is gonna be fine / I guarantee that you'll wake in a better place / at a better time / so you're tired of livin’ / feel like you wanna give in / Well don’t; it’s not your time” Streetlight Manifesto

"I've got a masterplan babe,I been workin on it from the start.
Pluggin in all of the numbers, watchin it on all of the charts.
Just cause it starts off slow babe,
Doesn't mean it don't have a heart.
You'll be walkin round showin off someday
And it'll take you right back to the start.
It's everything that you want babe.
It's everything that you need." My Morning Jacket

“Entropy and uncertainty won’t yield to you” the Vandals

"And this too shall pass" King Solomon (?)

Everything tends to return to zero state- physics

Your soul goes back to zero- Pure Land Buddhist monk

“Everything’s a cycle, you gotta let it come to you / and when it does you’ll know exactly what to do” Bright Eyes

“Reality is a wave function that moves backwards and forwards in time” John L. Castri

“Point B [the future] chases its own tail (Point A) [the past] in an effort to return to the zero-state [point C, from which came point A and B, which are supposed to be point C but stretched out in a space-time dimension], the forward point will slightly sift inward in an attempt to catch its tail. Thus it will acquire the shape of a spiral.For particles [to return to the point of zero-state] it would require all the energy of the universe” Chaul Ryu

Bill Hicks, speculating on how a television news anchor would deliver a "positive" LSD story: "Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... here's Tom with the weather"

How can I come up with a belief in reality? When I read something that feels true, I look to support it.

Go off of “the universe is one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively”:
Each perspective an experience of a subjective form of heavy matter and genetics infused with a temperament of the universal consciousness and sharing experiences of objectivity with other individuals in the world, though reacting to it differently based on their different perspectives.

The universal consciousness leaves the form at death, leaving the material shell behind

The subjective mind of that individual, though, lives on in memory of its experience

Subjective experience is then something taken with the spirit when it leaves the material form

Then each person lives on in the collective memory of the universal consciousness

What better place for God to exist than in the mind?

We experience God subjectively, so we can’t prove it, but it’s still a personal, emotional relationship that is felt and not seen.

“Everything’s foreseeable. Everything has already been foreseen. What has been fated cannot be avoided. Even this baked potato. This fork. This chunk of bread. This thought too. My grandmother sweeping the sidewalk knows that. She says there’s no god, only an eye here and there that sees clearly. The neighbors are too busy watching TV to burn her as a witch”

All the things we wish God would do- end war, famine, hunger, disease, depression, exploitation, greed and corruption- we have to do ourselves. That is possibly how God exists- when we answer the cries of our friends and fellow man where God supposedly is silent. We speak for him without realizing it.

You know how when you look into a cloud and you see some beautiful form in it, and your friend sees some entirely different beautiful form? That is what heaven must look like.We experience the same event, but it takes different forms based on our imaginations. Even Christians, who have a shared projection of their imagination onto the cloud of heaven, will differ from person to person on the minor details.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross worked at a hospital and recounted instances of people who have died and been resuscitated. Some people saw the face of God, some Buddha, some felt the love of Jesus- it depended upon their religious beliefs. People who committed suicide, though, saw nothing. This suggests that life and death are a natural cycle and we should not mess with it. It also suggests that ones beliefs and attitudes shape their destiny.

What you can conceive of happening becomes the basis of your thoughts; reality is shaped by the perspective of the lenses in which you view them. The forms, the archetypes, the symbols and manifestations of fears, desires, hopes and love are often shared by others, making them objectively real or universal symbols as agreed upon by the convention of general human consensus. But there are slight variables, making all of our common fears and desires unique in their special ways, in relation to our subjective minds. Everything you experience happens within the confines of this realm you created for yourself by your own conceivable limits.

The only thing to “transcend” is our level of thinking:

"In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment.

These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind. There are no limits."John C. Lilly

If you ever dare say or do something past your limits, such as explore your far side or face an irrational fear to find an experience you can’t put a label on, you can reject it as not true and deny the experience. Possibly you stay away from an unexplored reality because you say you can’t deal with because you conceive it to be overwhelming. Or you let your guard down, experience uncharted parts of you, and accommodate it and thus change your belief system. If reality fails to change your attitude, though, then you only fail to have a better understanding of yourself and the world around you. But we all have our walls. The break down bit by bit, either by us or by fate, and it’s how we react to the reality of experience- our emotional responses- we are changing the prescription to the lenses in which we view the world; opening our minds to get the big picture of what’s real.

I say let change happen, because change is real. Let reality happen. Accept it. Love it or fear it, but accept it. Don’t deny experience. Don’t deny other people’s experience. Be able to assimilate it into your constructs of reality. Make it yours. Make your lenses better reflect reality. Don’t be a table under a glass surface, and allow other people’s experience to be spilled on you and just run off your deflective shield. Be like wood and warp with the liquid of truth others spill onto you by their being. And by all means, warp yourself. Dare. Challenge yourself. Question everything. Be humble. You can only be you, no matter how uncertain things get. And you are the master of your destiny; literally, the creator of your own world.

"Ideas are Toys. The Search for Truth is a Game.Believe Nothing. Explore Everything."

“The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."----- Sir Winston Churchill

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy - Shakespeare

"I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: 'Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.' I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have." - Harry S. Truman

“I do believe, you are what you perceive / What comes is better than what came before” Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground

“Watch your Thoughts, they become words.
Watch your Words, they become actions
Watch your Actions, they become habits.
Watch your Habits, they become character
Watch your Character, for it becomes your Destiny”

“God, speaking to Neale: You cannot not be. You can change form all you wish, but you cannot fail to be. You can only fail at not knowing Who You Are, and in this failing, experience only the half of it.

Neale: That would be hell.

-Exactly, yet you are not condemned to it. All that it takes to get out of hell, to get out of not knowing, is to know again.

HOLY SPIRIT = INSPIRATION = CONCEIVE
FATHER = PARENTING = CREATE
SON = OFFSPRING = EXPERIENCE

The son experiences the creation of the fathering thought, which is conceived of by the Holy Ghost. What you experience changes what you conceive. It is a cycle. Can you conceive of yourself as one day being a God?

-In my wildest moments.

-Good, for I tell you this: You are already a God. You simply do not know it. Have I not said, ‘Ye are Gods’”
Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations with God

“my war paint is sharpie ink and I’ll show you how much my shit stinks
and ask you what you think because your thoughts and words are powerful”- Kimya Dawson

It starts with attitude- do you allow yourself for imagination? What is conceivable to you in life and death? What convictions come as a result of your attitude? This is how perceive the world- through this attitude.

This is the fertile crescent of your own personal, individual, subjective, unique perspective.This fertile foundation conceives of a million thoughts every second, which grow in the garden of your mind. The thoughts you give attention to get the most sunlight, and two or more thoughts can synthesize and parent an idea, a concept that articulates the life you are experiencing. You can have a million thoughts at once, consciously or unconsciously, depending on your intent, which focuses the light on the seeds of thought so they can grow. Keep in mind “mind over matter”, because your life is not determined by what happens to you, it’s your perspective and belief system that interpret this reality and make it good or bad. It’s not that events are value neutral; good and bad is determined in relative terms by society- by how much oppression of freedom and infringement on fairness and respect and equality. In terms of being relative to your own freedom as a human being- freedom to learn, freedom to grow, freedom to evolve into the person you want to be, you need to be responsible for what you’re feeding your mind. You can turn a negative into a positive. And in life, we need the negative to appreciate the positive. Life is a test of negativity to see if we can grow through it all.

Let us be the water, let our attitude be Jesus’ mind, let’s turn ourselves into wine and have a real good time!

Let us end worry whenever we can. Let us turn pain into strength. Let us learn and grow and pass this test called life. Enjoy the bright side of life; what stupidy and fears you in your way should be laughed at.

Belief is the fundamental starting point. Belief in God, it is lost and found over and over again, but it is one of two choices that are impossible to know for sure: either God exists, or God does not exist.

“Whoever says they know for sure is full of crap”- Tim O’Brien

Just remember:
“Believing is seeing, not the other way around.”- The Orphanage

We know that people with an internal locus of control, people who don’t feel at the mercy of persons, places and events, accomplish more things because they believe they are at least somewhat in control of their lives. Also, a person in a bad mood all the time will walk around all day and only see the bad things in life and use it to support his pessimistic outlook on life. A person with a good attitude will see the beauty in everyday life, and can experience sacred things every day because of it.

We’re all looking at the same cloud. We’re all going to die. We’re all “on the same boat”. If the earth was a living organism, we’d be all be the offspring of the same parent. If stars were alive, we’d be their grandchildren. If the first cause was an intentional act of creation, we’re all the formal manifestation of the cause of the first cause- be it God, or some random energy. We’re like sentient energy. What’s spiritual is enjoying being conscious of our aliveness while we’re alive, knowing it’s just a ride. To enjoy it, we have to progress. To progress, we’ve got to learn. Learn what? Exactly.

Learn who you are and why you're here. Practice positivity to do so. I mean, right? Whoever learned anything from being trapped in vicious cycles? Old patterns? Addictions and stunting habits? Why have a crutch? Why be timid?

"Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.”-Mel Brooks

Life is a ride.
“And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey - don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride...’ And we... kill those people. ‘We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.’ Just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because: It's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. " Bill Hicks

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special"
Jim Valvano

“Pray in the morning. Be active at noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep at night.”

“Do what you have to do before you do what you want to do” Denzel Washington

We are all here for a purpose- to learn who we are, and in doing so, we learn what we want. By knowing what we want, we know what our purpose is. This knowledge is power. It gives us a principle to stick to, an attitude to have, and a job to do. Play is fun because it is the opposite of doing our job. We play ourselves as mere mortals. We get drunk on the fact we are not the almighty God of Gods who created the universe.

“To feel trivial and idiotic and to live with this feeling is to be a hero in a way that no god can be” – Stevie Smith

This extremism in celebration of stupiduty is fun in moderation, yes. Getting drunk every now and then is a blast. Making mistakes and being stupid and realizing it is a cosmic joke- the comedy and the tragedy that makes up the epic story of life. Have your moments of foolishness. But remember you are God, just on a different dimension of consciousness. The universe experiencing itself subjectively. If you fall into your fears and worries and musts and desires and lusts and money and other people’s opinions about you, you are lying to yourself, pretending you truly need all these things. Give your foolishness a big Buddha belly laugh. Learn from your ego dramatic games of self-esteem, pride and discrimination. Parts of me are insane and want me to die; I have to come to terms with their nature. I have to realize my inherent negative dark side and understand it. To understand my limits, by foolishly pushing them, I learn from experience until it hurts; until the thought of another transgression is seen as a personal sin against myself and society. To be aware of my faults, to watch my negativity scream, to watch others scream fear and hate and suicidal tendencies and recognize it in myself- and to let its rage pass without acting on it now is my version of respect, honesty, and understanding.

“This above all: to thine ownself be true"- Shakespeare

Integrity means not selling yourself and your dreams short. Knowing what you want and not standing for anyone belittling you. It means not belittling yourself and denying you have a soul without giving the possibility of its existence a chance.

I hate saying "if there is a God, then..." because it's either one or the other, and if I'm going to put myself in the shoes of a believer, I might as well do some method acting. I might as well take a leap of faith and believe.

I believe God is in us. Then I believe in myself, love, and mankind's capability not to kill itself off.

The universal consciousness experiences itself through us. It is the eye that sees here and there during our mortal lives, when we have our revelations and everything makes sense. What we call our souls, I believe, is the spiritual energy directly from the Eternal Source, beyond space-time, that expanded itself as matter in the big bang to experience itself in all its power. This eye of universal consciousness is in our brains, but it doesn't come from pure reason. Call it Christ-consciousness, or Buddha nature.

I say to myself, just conceive of yourself as a feeler of God, because everything we experience, God, as the source, experiences. Now you are like God’s hand, so give handshakes to life! Live for the experience of yourself/the world and the source of the universe (they are two sides of the same thing, ultimately)! Matter and energy- what's visible and what's invisible - what we percieve to exist and what exists but we cannot percieve - the manifestation and the source - they are one.

"form is emptiness; emptiness is form" Buddhist philosophy

Soon enough, you will return to God. You will be a god yourself if you can concieve of it. Your imagination, influenced by your experiences, which are experienced as a result of your thoughts, which come from your attitude's imagination, will see that cloud of eternity that everyone sees differently; you will see it in the forms you understand it. You will be a god here because anything you will has to manifest. You will be the source and its creation all in one, if you can accomodate such a philosophy. Remember, your philosophy becomes your destiny because it reaps the thoughts sown by your subjective perspective- your attitude on life. And thoughts become your destiny, which cyclically creates your attitude.

I view God like a child’s relationship to their parent- they and the mother are one at one point. Then comes separation. The child goes out to explore, and is sometimes anxious, but the mom is always right there waiting for the baby when it is done exploring. God is that source that is always behind us.
“Separation is divine” Broken Social Scene

It is just the Alpha and Omega swallowing each other in a spiraling dance across the universe.