V. On the Nature of Souls
Personally, I believe we all have souls that pre-dated our births, as do creatures (even invertebrates!); everything goes in progressive expanding cycles where negative or positive overlap, but if you don’t learn and grow, you can’t evolve to the next cycle of awareness. The more aware you are, the more your soul becomes conscious of itself, and the more you realize your soul is an energy particle that exists within an infinitely larger energy structure made up of telekinetic spirits that use each other in some vast dynamic super-structural grid that has no end to its largeness or smallness; an interconnected being that shares experiences the same way telepathy theoretically allows us to share thoughts. The laws of Euclidean space-time, Newtonian physics, and Einsteinian relativity only govern one particle of energy (that is the universe as we know it) and exists to become conscious of itself through its own particles of energy (souls); and the unseen forces of the energy of the universe condenses part of itself into matter so it can use the elements of hydrogen and helium to provide the material basis for the souls to exist.
The souls themselves slow down their energy vibrations to a point where they produce an outer shell of matter and mass, simultaneously manifesting and conditioning themselves through DNA to survive on the earth and be built in, through the faculties of the brain, with reason and logic to discern form from emptiness, cause and effect, and relative motion. This kind of thinking was needed for self-awareness and to discover the laws of nature, but, as metaphysical scientists agree, this world of matter in motion is not all there is. Now that we are aware that humans are genetically 99.9 percent the same and have cracked the human genome, we are ready for the next stage of awareness that comes from new advances in science and cultural realizations of unity and mysticism. Gottfried Leibniz spoke of spiritual atoms called monads, and many scientists are puzzled by a mysterious unseen force called dark matter, the existence of many more dimensions than previously considered. Many are calling gluons, kind of like a microscopic dark matter, the “God-particle”. Mystics both sober and psychoactive drug taking speak of higher dimensions of consciousness. The world seems to be headed toward a paradigm shift in consciousness where we are becoming so populated that if we don’t learn how to get along with each other and be happy we will kill each other off and drain our planet’s resources while doing so, leaving cockroaches to be the only creature on earth.
If we don’t learn to have a positive self-esteem, respect our selves, other people and the earth, get along with our irreconcilable differences, celebrate what makes us different and discover our underlying spiritual unity, then how can we evolve our universal ball of spiritual energy?
The light of our collective spirits, if they expand to the point where they shine at the final stage of consciousness all together at the same time, will surely cause an illumination in the overall self-consciousness of the universe and allow for new possibilities- heavenly possibilities. Like a world where our wildest and purest dreams come true.
One of these days, the universe is going to wake up. Our souls will take their place on a uterine wall of sorts, ready to be born again. Right now, our imaginations and attitudes, the way we perceive things and the limits we impose on our dreams, will conceive of the new universe in which we will be born into. Our souls will ride the wave of our perceptions/attitudes into the experience of our imagination. Our thoughts, pure and full of love.
Listen, an experience on earth has to have pain in order to appreciate the pleasure. I’m not saying a little pain isn’t good, or a little drama doesn't make good times feel as good, because it sure as hell does. We live in a beautiful world, a world of meaning and purpose. Even if we don’t have a soul, seriously, what could be better than riding a wave with pure respect for the ocean? What’s more beautiful than seeing some exotic natural environment and wandering around its ancient forests? What’s more fun than the things we do for pleasure? I’m presupposing the existence of a soul because I can read into the ancient phrase “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” and also my own experiences with a mystical plant called salvia that seems to show the link between the earth (and therefore the universe) and the brain. If a plant can unlock the limits of experience by accessing receptors built into the brain, there must be some plan. Humans, being the offspring of the earth and therefore the offspring of the hydrogen and helium involved in the starburst of the first cause, are invariably connected to all the matter and energy seen and unseen in the universe; and matter and energy are eternal and interchangeable. The notion of a first cause, at least for our universe as we understand it, implies only the first cause of matter, so is it so silly to doubt energy preceded the first cause, and that that energy is the constant emptiness capable of manifesting itself in the form of matter and becoming conscious of itself by dividing itself into individual souls (temperaments?) And that dark matter, gluons, and spirit guides are the means of energy by which the eternal source keeps its own matter and souls stable? That a soul’s sole purpose is to use its sentient powers to evolve through different circuits of consciousness to the final universal consciousness through science and mysticism working hand in hand, or mind in mind?
Is it silly to assume the concept of good and evil is that the path of good is the path that keeps a person on path of happiness and growth and that the path of evil is the path of growth-stunting cycles and angst? Is it silly to assume that for every soul there is a soul mate that intertwines? That everyone has a place, and to find one’s purpose and self is to find one’s place among the soul grid divided up by temperament quadrants that will share a new universe called “heaven” once the great universal rebirth is conceived? And that this is reached when one is no longer stuck in a lower level of consciousness dictated by attachment to the world of form (C.S. Lewis’ “purgatory” being equivalent to the “samsara” reincarnation cycle of Hinduism and Buddhism)? That the ego is the means by which the soul manipulates matter, matter that is here to help us leave our shell behind?
To quote an essay I wrote for my English class:
The following I learned from a movie called Waking Life. When we die, we have seven to ten minutes of brain activity. Keep that in mind. Now, when we go to sleep, our brain drops a tiny bit of dreaming fluid (DMT/melanomin?) into our brains to satisfy us for the whole dreaming period during REM (rapid-eye movement sleep). You ever notice how when you wake up in the morning and fall back asleep, the dreams are long and intricate? But you wake up and only two minutes have gone past! Your energy seems to have surpassed space-time perceptions. (Or maybe it is our mortal lives that produce the illusion of limited energy…) When you die, all of that fluid gets released into your brain. If one drop of the fluid can sustain you for a night’s worth of dreams, then think about the effects of the whole shebang! Seven to ten minutes of such an influx of this power could determine your next life as you chose to interact with it.
I had where I felt like whole centuries went by as I stared at a silent universe and watched it go from brightness to darkness to illumination again. Time is relative during life, the temporal plane of existence. But in death, is it wrong to assume time is eternal, and that waiting for all the souls to join the eternal will be not waiting at all? I’m talking about those who are stuck in “purgatory” and need either a clairvoyant to tell them to go to the light, a spirit guide, or to be reincarnated until they reach the enlightenment called “moksha” or “grace” during the “end times”. When we reach the top of Jacob’s Ladder it will be a minute or two in relation to eternity that all the souls make it to the soul-grid. This grid will possibly look different to everyone, but will be the same eternal grid.
To quote Wikipedia:
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), also known as N,N-dimethyltryptamine, is a naturally occurring tryptamine and potent psychedelic drug, found not only in many plants, but also in trace amounts in the human body wherein its natural function is undetermined. Structurally, it is analogous to the neurotransmitter serotonin and other psychedelic tryptamines
Several speculative and as yet untested hypotheses suggest that endogenous DMT, produced in the human brain, is involved in certain psychological and neurological states. As DMT is naturally produced in small amounts in the brains and other tissues of humans, and other mammals,[11] some believe it plays a role in promoting the visual effects of natural dreaming, and also near-death experiences and other mystical states.
Dr. Rick Strassman, while conducting DMT research in the 1990s at the University of New Mexico, advanced the theory that a massive release of DMT from the pineal gland prior to death or near death was the cause of the near death experience (NDE) phenomenon. Several of his test subjects reported NDE-like audio or visual hallucinations. His explanation for this was the possible lack of panic involved in the clinical setting and possible dosage differences between those administered and those encountered in actual NDE cases.
To quote my essay again:
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross worked at a hospital and recounted instances of peoplewho 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 shape their destiny.
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. Like some kind of formless eternal grid of spiritual energy wherein which a collective consciousness shares telepathic experiences of eternal love, truth and beauty (not the relative senses of the word here in the temporal plane). Depending on what forms they experience the divine through, that is what forms they experience in the eternal heaven, but it will be the same place. All the Buddhists will have their shared perceptions, the Christians theirs, and so on and so forth. Personally, I’m very open minded and can conceive of all sorts of psychedelic forms I would love to experience when I die, and because of my mind over matter attitude, I believe I will experience this when I die. My perception of death governs my death, and the more conscious I become in different rebirths here on earth, the closer I am to moksha and joining the eternal. As for my imminent death, I will probably spend some time in heaven and then chose to either join the world of form (Earth) again or stay in heaven, leaving the awesome experience of Earth for the even more awesome experience of heaven, and I will probably say I wish to be reincarnated just to teach people how to reach enlightenment just like my hero the Dali Lama. Can you imagine a soul so parent-like that it shepherds the confused souls into the light instead of staying in heaven? The Dali Lama is a spirit guide I would love to learn much more about, and I would love to spend a little time in heaven before following in his footsteps. Reincarnation, I believe, is always a choice, and we can leave the eternal as human angels (spirit guides in the flesh) or energy angels (sprit guides as pure spirit) that act as a voice of guidance or manipulate matter to act as a “sign” to keep souls on the right track. Our spirit guide could be a Master (Jesus or Buddha or the Dali Lama) or a soul mate who keeps us growing in our soul; it could be our future selves, too! Any manifestation we perceive that the divine can speak to us in…Is this concept of every having a spirit guide like this impossible?
I am a pantheist, I hold that everything is God. The Holy Trinity is God the Father (the eternal cause of the first cause immanent in nature and is our collective union of souls), God the son (the formal manifestation of the divine; matter- the planets and stars and earth; our outer shells; also the soul which experiences the life created by God the Father by manipulating matter until he becomes conscious he is the father); and the Holy Spirit (the forces of energy used by God the Father that stabilizes the son through spiritual guidance). They are all one in the same ineffable being.
I have to give credit where it is due to Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, for inspiring me with his trinity, which I dabbled with. To quote his conversation with God-
-Can you simply agree that on some of the questions of life the mystery is too great for even you to solve? Why not hold the mystery as sacred? And why not allow the mystery to be sacred, and leave it alone?We are now trying to do the impossible, which is to speak of the unspeakable. It is what religion seeks to do.
Have you ever looked down into a high powered microscope, and seen pictures or movies of molecular action, and said, “Good heavens, there’s a whole universe down there. And to that universe, I, the now-present observer, must feel like God!” Have you ever said that, or had that kind of experience?
-Yes, I should imagine every thinking person has.
-Indeed. You have given yourself your own glimpse of what I am showing you here. And what would you do if I told you this reality of which you have given yourself a glimpse never ends?
-Explain that. I’d ask you to explain that.
-Take the smallest part of the universe you can imagine. Imagine this tiny, tiny particle of matter. Now cut it in half. What have you got?
-Two smaller halves.
-Precisely! Now cut those in half. What now?
-Two smaller halves.-Right. Now again, and again! What’s left?
-Smaller and smaller particles.
-Yes, but when does it stop? How many times can you divide matter until it ceases to exist?
-I don’t know. I guess it never ceases to exist.
-You mean you can never completely destroy it? All you can do is change its form?
-It would seem so.
-I tell you this: you have just learned the secret to all of life, and seen into infinity. There is no end going up, any more than there is going down…There is no end to smallness and no end to bigness.All of it is God, and there is nothing else. 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.
-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 = CONCEIVEFATHER = PARENTING = CREATESON = 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”?
Back to my words-
I say yes, we have an eternal soul. They are puzzle pieces that fits into God who is eternal, God who keepings being added on to with everything that is alive. The material outer shell layer that produces mass shall decay back into the earth, and our souls, free of fear and earthly desires, shall return to the source, compare itself to the whole, and decide if we want to reincarnate or return to the source forever or join the source for a while and then reincarnate. There’s always a choice, because the nature of our souls, which have progressed from animal spirits from the soul of the first single-celled organism- the first sentient stardust (everything material in our corner of the universe is made up of stardust). The matter that makes up stardust is eternal energy: the Source of all of existence, or at least the part of it and only the source for our existence… being capable of developing not only morality and a third eye but also the parts of the brain that give us decision-making skills, we are characterized by our free will to be moral or immoral, which is because we are able to ignore or look past our instinct and social conditioning and use our higher faculties, if we can develop them (most of us can unless we have a brain deficiency). The more lives you live, lives in which you grow, the brighter your soul becomes, and the more of a Master you become. This light is only capable of being felt, thanks our limited human senses, or witnessed as aura fields.
Sometimes it may seem like you’re going in circles or even backwards, but it is simply impossible to regress. Even in a war or other traumatic situation, you’re still the same person you were before you were traumatized, but your trauma often becomes you and you get confused so as to your true nature. Every time you go back to the places you were before, you bring new knowledge to the table; that is, if you have set yourself up to receive guidance and knowledge. Otherwise you stagnate. The rhythms are cyclical, yet with each new revolution/epoch they expand outward, thus creating a new dimension to the circle, making it a spiral that grows like a DNA strand being enlarged in expansion after each new contraction, looking like looping infinite-sign haloes vibrating outward; gyres of progress; paradigm shifts of consciousness.
Evolved souls here on Earth become less and less dependent on earthly things because of the knowledge they gain. All they need is God and the bare necessities. If we find our golden mean, we will need less and less from life; only bread and water and love; whereas we started out desiring so much stuff. That bare necessity is exactly what we all need, if we want to share the world with everyone else. Giving and sharing, learning and growing, and a Pantheistic sense of God could save the world. Those shared values I mentioned above could save the world if they are all ingrained in everyone’s mind for both externally-motivated and internally-motivated purposes. We wouldn’t need a Green Party or a Democratic or Republican party if every school, church, library and other institution preached the importance of these values and included them in their lesson plan, and every parent explained them to their children in a way each unique child can understand. That is my manifesto. My treatise. Both a plea and a demand to spread this word. This gnosis.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Soul Evolution- Part VI. Liberation Theology: Saving Those Left Behind, Within and Beyond our Borders
VI. Liberation Theology: Saving Those Left Behind, Within and Beyond our Borders
Once we become aware of how our actions affect not just third-world countries, the animal and plant kingdoms and the earth, but our souls and God as well, these values will take on a whole new meaning. No more existential crises- we will know why we’re here, where we’re from and where we’re going; not down to the last detail but enough to end the reason and faith debate. Then the social institutions in dire need of reform will fix themselves- the school systems, the prison systems, the healthcare system, the social services system. And all the levels of government- local, state and federal will have less of a burden because of this.
And then institutions that control the government- the federal reserve, the World Bank, corporations, the owners of the media, the WTO and NAFTA, the military-industrial complex, big oil, big pharma, labor unions, and the diamond trade and the coal industry will finally have to adhere to-gasp!-universal ethics! People will become more and more aware that these are “the man behind the curtain” being represented by elected officials and the direct link between us everyday people and third-world countries! I can't get into all the details of it right now, but I will say, it's bad.
Paul Farmer, a liberation theologist, goes into great detail explaining the structures of society that proliferate extreme suffering; this is all in his work Pathologies of Power. He goes into great detail, way better than my simplistic model of false trinity of Money, Time and Self-Absorbed Consumption. But by following this false trinity, it is like a marriage of convenience with the powers that be who we demonize for screwing with our lives. It's our own fault for electing these people! If we had a better sense of ourselves, our communities and environment, of our own convictions, we would yell much louder at injustice and we wouldn't be yelling all alone.
Our current problem- fixing the gap between the haves and have-nots. Our solution is giving and sharing- and that is how one is a warrior of God. I point to Liberation Theology, which is something all religions adhere to.
Liberation Theology:
Gustavo Gutierrez said: “To be followers of Jesus requires that [we] walk with and be committed to the poor; when [we] do, [we] experience an encounter with the Lord who is simultaneously revealed and hidden in the faces of the poor”
The story of Buddha parallels Liberation Theology as well. He was a rich man living a prince’s life, sheltered from all the suffering that was happening just down the road and into town. Once he discovered the poverty in his own neighborhood, he completely changed his life around. The story goes he showed the world that he could live on only one morsel a day! Buddhism today, “inspired by the monks of Vietnam,” who challenged their government during the war (Thích Quảng Đức burned himself alive as protest) are doing more to become activists for social justice. This phenomenon of “engaged Buddhism” responds to “the crises posed by environmental despoliation, political corruption and global hunger” (John L. Esposito).
Islam has kazat as one of their five pillars: it means give charity to the needy.
"If we want to find God in Jewish tradition, we don't do it by turning our backs on the world and going into mystical contemplation. Psalm 146 begins implicitly by asking a theological question: 'Where is God found?' Then it says, 'God is the one who sustains the fallen and feeds the hungry and brings justice to the widow and the orphan.' We find God by helping the poor, by providing homes for the homeless, and by working for justice. And when we have done that, when we have done the sort of things God stands for, we suddenly find that God has become present in our lives."- Rabbi Harold Kushner, Ph.D.
Each one of us has a calling- we’ve all had injustices done against us and suffered enough by our own self-doubt (and I’m sure periods of self-hate). Liberation theology is the means by which we fight- our church and community groups and our non-profit organizations are our means by which we do all we can. If our passion is the environment, go down to the local stream and clean up. If our passion is helping humans, join a charity or help out at an institution that provides care; hands-on or not, it doesn't make a difference, as long as we act. This is large-scale; we can do things on progressively smaller-scales, too.
“Doesn't life seem nasty, brutish and short? Come on up to the house?”- Tom Waits
On a social network scale, we ought to focus on human relationships over worrying about the time so much. Each of us has a particular story, a struggle, a celebration. The way our memory and imagination blur, the stories are a biased myth; but the pain is always objective. Pain is that universal, shared language of experience; and just by sharing our stories, we can inspire those who are in spiritual crises to keep going. Churches, seminars, psychology, story-telling and just comforting our friends are the mediums through which we liberate those in a spiritual drought.
On an individual scale, we could just be the kind of person who gives and loves unconditionally. It is not easy, because it involves forgiveness, which takes a lot of strength. The true warrior also knows when to control his or her temper. And the true warrior gives, shares, and keeps promises.
“The world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through”- Tom Waits
Kenneth Maryboy of the Navajo Nation:
“My grandfather taught me that you learn to be a man and a warrior by sharing and by keeping promises”.
So why not give? You can’t take it with you.
A lot of what Americans are doing are being self-absorbed, questioning people's motives when they give, and are unconsciously supporting the agencies that keep people left behind. For instance, I don't know who made my shirt- maybe a little girl who gets paid peanuts? I literally never looked into the company I bought this shirt from- and that makes me complicit. It makes me ignorant and it makes me an irresponsible member of the global community.
See Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power for a medical doctor's view of Liberation Theology after working in Haiti. He looks at how we unknowingly support agencies that keep people starving.
He quotes Eduardo Galeano.
"The big bankers of the world, who practice the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings or field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no one; they limit themselves to applauding the show.
Their officials, international technocrats, rule our countries: they are neither presidents nor ministers, they have not been elected, but they decide the levels of salaries and public expenditure, investments and divestments, prices, taxes, interest rates, subsidies, when the sun rises and how frequently it rains.
However, they don't concern themselves with the prisons or torture chambers or concentration camps or extermination centers, although these house the inevitable consequences of their acts.
The technocrats claim the privilege of irresponsibility: 'We're neutral,' they say."
The last time you may have seen these technocrats is when the Federal Reserve helped fix the mortgage crises. You saw everyone panicking and then, like the hand of God coming out of nowhere, the federal interest rate changed. They, along with the world bank, control money and thus make the world go round. The military-industrial complex, corporations and contractors that own the means of production (including the owners of the media, the telecommunications systems, big oil, big pharma, labor unions, and the diamond trade and the coal industry), the WTO and NAFTA policy, they all control politics which control the bureaucratic agencies (the red tape organizations that act between politics and the human initiative to set up a business) that control our institutions (schools, criminal justice system, media, health institutions, social services etc.) and therefore how us individuals live. This system controlled by the bankers allow all the drama in this monopoly world to continue, and the only thing that keeps them in power is us; therefore WE indirectly keep world peace at bay.
All it takes is a lack of ignorance and complacency for wars to end, and injustices to continue.
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’
- Edmund Burke
Question your leaders, read the newspaper, and research topics that interest you. And when there is a crises, remember the world is not your home, you're just a-passin’ through; we’re not here to merely entertain ourselves and attempt to turn ourselves into the ideal rich, pretty, popular fantasy creature from movies; we’re not here to numb ourselves with creature comforts; we’re here to help each other up Jacob’s Ladder. Every mistake makes us stronger, if we let it. We’re here to love and be loved; to be at peace; to let our little light shine. But how can it shine? a poet would ask. Through diamonds on our neck; through bling bling and rims?
Saul Williams cries out for awareness and a call to arms in his poem “Anthem,” a response to Hurricane Katrina’s mishandling by the federal government:
“When the storm remains distant
We are unreminded and dare to forget
School is a fashion show
Violence is comfort food
Family is nothing
And nothing is real
When the storm is forgotten
The struggle ends
May the storm never be forgotten”
It’s a struggle against the easiness of compliancy in which society encourages us to keep shopping and keep our heads in the sand while people are still struggling. The comforts of everyday life easily pull us into Self-Absorption.
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
So WE are the enemy, and the friend; at least our minds are.
We need to be responsible if we wish to be truly free as American individuals. We ought to take only what we need, and let nothing go to waste. And not value our work over our social relationships; or ourselves over anyone else. All it takes is a disciplined mind. We can’t change the world without changing ourselves- as Gandhi said:
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
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 us activists might seem like the first group of haters. Other times we seem to have been studying the nature of the fence- we knows what America’s been up to. 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.
Self-Absorption over community is killing communication and relationships. An American sergeant in Iraq who recently saw his men have guitars donated to them noted:
“Before, you’d see guys with their iPods on, listening to music, staying away from everybody else,” says Sergeant Karsnia. “But when the guitars came, people got together. We’d have four or five guys playing guitar, and 25 others laughing and singing”.
With globalization, we have shown what has been true since the dawn of man: all humans are interdependent on each other. Before, it was as distant as the butterfly effect (a butterfly flaps its wings in China and causes hurricane winds in the United States). Now, complicity is easy; it’s a purchase away, or
As Nelson Mandela explains, “ubuntu” means strengthening your role in a community- take the Zulu phrase umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu - “a person is a person through other persons”. We have much to learn from other cultures, such as Africans and Latinos, and their emphasis on relationships and family and kindness to strangers. It’s not uncommon, a Latino has pointed out, that if a stranger comes to visit your home, you have them come inside and serve them dinner and eat before you even question their reason for being there. In Sweden, it’s against the law to obstruct other people’s view of nature, so fences around family’s lawns are illegal. You’re allowed to just walk right up to and smell and even collect the flowers of a stranger’s garden!
"If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven."
Ralph Waldo Emerson- "Brahma"
The killer is the person behind killed. When something happens to a single person, it happens to all of us.
The United States has and continues to support terrorism at the behest of our ill-chosen leaders. And it’s our own damn fault for electing people who are too wrapped up in their foreign policy schemes to care about the home front. Ron Paul libertarianism wants to isolate America, not in the charity sense, but in the foreign-interest, and change the system so the U.S. is not a Republican war-fare state or a Democrat welfare state. But what they lack are a public philosophy- change doesn't come from the top down. The Republicans want fiscal responsibility and small government; the Democrats want social justice- we can have both if we adhere to a public philosophy. And first on the list of our shared values is consciousness and responsibility.
In this day and age, ignorance is irresponsibility. In the globally interconnected present, being a blind patriot is not being a patriot at all. There can be no freedom without conscientious responsibility.
“It is often difficult for people who have not had continuity in life to understand that freedom without responsibility and accountability is as detrimental as slavery. Freedom cannot be an end unto itself. Freedom from something must flow into freedom to be something else or it is not truly freedom. The object of getting free is being fee: the object of being free is living free.” – The Radically Inclusive Christian Church in Philadelphia
http://www.radicallyinclusive.com
This is not the identity crises, the split-personality disorder of Two Americas: One Black and One White, it’s the attitude of the Self-Absorbed and the attitude of the Giving. Black’s souls here in America have suffered under 200 years of government-sanctioned racism, but have not suffered so bad they couldn't bounce back. It took a lot of fighting, some violent and some non-violent; and yes, there still are ways to go.
But the split-personality disorder of America diagnosed by the Kerner Commission (after the race riots of 1967) of two Americas- one black and one white- is no longer relevant. It’s an attitude disorder- from those who fear that which is different solely because it is different and those who just don’t care enough to work toward fellowship on one side; and those who are breaking down walls of irrational fears and living to give their part in celebrating differences and also celebrating unity.
My mom said that she used to wish all the races had a bunch of babies with one another so everyone’s skin color was some kind of brown and racism would end. But then she realized, people would still find reasons to hate each other. No, she said; our differences should be celebrated! They all make up part of the patterns in the beautiful tapestry of life! (she said something to that effect)
Cultural diversity is a beautiful thing to break down the walls of fear of the unknown. Making fun of stereotypes can be funny, if done correctly. People need to have more of a sense of humor about race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, but be sensitive about it. Use empathy and don’t go overboard. Admit it, we’ve all got some pretty hilarious archetypes inside of us. Sometimes we look like a fool, or do something really flamboyant, or nerdy, or awkward. The best guard about being offensive in our jokes, though, is empathy. You don’t want to be “that guy or girl” who says offensive, off-color jokes where people laugh only out of embarrassment. Simple, non-threatening off-color jokes have a line- they tell the truth without pointing out something the other person already knows and is comfortable in laughing at if you're making fun of them, and in regards to stereotypes, don’t be crude or mean about it. And don't forget, some people just don't find picking out differences as funny, and that's their loss.
My mom was talking about the differences in religion. It all starts with one group who says “this is the way it is! Nothing else;” and then there’s some sort of split to get away from that rigidness, but it’s usually the case that the people who split end up pretty dogmatic and rigid themselves!, and that inspires another split! And now we have Israel versus Palestine- they hate each other, yet they worship the same God and are brothers and sisters!
Ethnic, political, tribal, class, caste and occupational, and cultural differences as a reason for an “us vs. them” dichotomy mentality is just plain ridiculous.“let's stop this talk of ‘them’ because the things we find deplorable in politicians, CEOs and cops are the same things that will tear ourselves apart. and let's stop this talk of words because words like dishonesty selfishness and greed aren't as distant to us as we'd like to believe.”- Defiance, Ohio
These are the words of a band who are surrounded by anti-establishment punk rockers and responding by pointing out hypocrisy. When people join groups, be they social cliques or sports teams or unions or political parties or institutions or location or whatever, based on some distinguishing characteristic or belief, we humans feel a sense of solidarity. We have a shared language, we have a set of rules, and we feel like we all fit in. As important as this is for us humans, it also fosters a primal “us vs. them” mentality if left unchecked. This is dangerous, especially when one group looks down on the other and makes broad, sweeping generalizations such as the “enemy” or “all bad” or “evil,” because this leads to dehumanizing language that makes violence so much easier. This is how genocides happen. I think we’re at an age now were we can move past dehumanization, especially in solidarity polarities fueled by irrational dichotomization.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm
It’s all so simplistic, and it’s what Aaron McGruder calls a fifth-grade mentality, McGruder the author of the comic strip and creator of the television show The Boondocks and is shocked that the Bush administration and the media use such general dichotomies when analyzing something as complex as the jihadist salafi movement on the other side of the war on terror.
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?"
SELF-ABSORPTION:
When McGruder classifies one his characters, Riley, he is actually diagnosing of about half the people I knew in high school in the process: he is “shortsighted, ignorant, and concerned only with instant gratification”. That even sounds like my Freudian “id” to me; as well as my hedonistic rebel, my inner immature child and my American arrogant-consumer desire of my ego (in the “doer” sense, not the Freudian sense).
How can we reform our communities? We can start with respecting ourselves- making sure we know what’s going into our bodies and how it’s affecting us. Basic survival needs like food, water, and air should be at the top of our list with all other health needs. We need to feed our minds just as well as we feed our bodies- with positivity, with inspiration, with smart lessons...sure it’s fun to dumb ourselves down or play into fear every once in a while, but we shouldn’t get hung up on these activities. We can work our way out by fixing up our homes and backyards and not leaving a big carbon footprint or a bad karma footprint. We can work for local stream health with a Watershed project; get in touch with nature and clean up our communities. On a state level we can write our Senators and Representatives and conduct polls and petitions. We can do what motivates us; whatever makes us in the moment in a positive way. We can share with people less fortunate than us.
On a national level we can read the newspaper and see what our federal politicians are up to and write letters to editors critiquing society and policies. We can become more aware and more conscious of how our actions affect third world countries. We can look into consuming less meat and checking out local farmer’s markets. We can look into the practices of corporations. We can join non-profit and non-government organizations that act as watchdogs over corruption in the government here in American and out in the rest of the world. We can spend a year in the Peace Corps., set up a charity at church that donates to a faraway cause we are passionate about.
We can form groups and non-violent protests to bring light to certain injustices, and we could even sanction local policies or organizations we don’t like by nonviolently going against them. We can be responsible for everything that comes in and goes out of our bodies- our thoughts, too and words, too! We can support people who need help and focus on people as more important than strict adherence to time. We can listen to what people have to say. We can get to know everyone in the neighborhood and have block parties where everyone gets to know each other. We could do things for our schools and our children. Being active and social and passionate and helpful are all things we can do for the positive benefit of “ubuntu”, and we can truly understand its religious context once we begin to shed the layers of the ego that was such a tool of self-absorbed consumerism.
We can help those left behind, be they people we know, people we don’t, plants, animals or the environment. We can stop enabling attitudes and behaviors that certain groups in society enable and positively reinforce, such as: blissful ignorance, drug or alcohol addiction, sexual promiscuity, mob mentality, blind faith and dogmatic and rigid adherence to authority, stubborn rebellion, unaccountability, crude language, deception, degrading attitudes, revenge and hatred, overly-proud aggression, discrimination and intolerance of people they perceive as different, fear of God or the unknown, gossip, laziness, cocky arrogance, low self-worth and powerlessness. These qualities society often finds as hilarious, necessary, safe or indestructible truths here in America. We are lying to ourselves if we think we can continue this behavior past childhood and adolescence. If these vices are not transformed into their opposites, and especially if we preach any of these attitudes and behaviors, we are crafting lies.
If you cannot learn to shed your security blanket that is provided by creature comforts, instinct and social conditioning and dependence; or if you cannot move past a once functional or sensible and now dysfunctional truth or way of looking at things, and you defeat its purpose by prolonging it, you are not free- so how can you be truly alive?
We all get caught in traps we made for ourselves; self-imposed limits and vicious cycles of our own doings, but awareness followed by action is necessary for the liberation of our souls; for our lights to shine.
The following information about life was pooled together by Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God (I had a spiritual transformation while reading this work) and ideas from St. Augustine, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christian medium Sylvia Browne:
If it is not done in this lifetime, you meet up with God again if you are lucky enough to leave your desires behind; and you may be reincarnated either on earth; or possibly, if you never loose your desires when you die and ride your Holy Spirit to the light, your soul might turn away from the light and come back down and be trapped on Earth; you may choose to re-enter the samsara cycle (which I believe is always an option), or in some other dimension like purgatory (I do not pretend to know anything besides reincarnation, which I truly believe our souls do). You’re gonna either grow or lose your sense of eternal self no matter what. Right now it depends on how committed you are to the City of God, the place where everybody that exists now, has already existed, and has yet to exist, who live their lives for God the Eternal reside. The City of Man is where all the souls reside that live with their sense of self attached to a temporal object as opposed to God. It’s healthy to have one foot in each world right now, as long as you don’t lose your sense of eternal self that has no earthly attachments, but if you are a man or woman of God, your goal will be to shepherd the lost souls from the City of Man to the City of God.
"No Soul Left Behind", probably the unspoken motto of the Dali Lama and Sylvia Browne. I can conceive of myself as joining those ranks. My focus is the people I understand the most because I was one of them- the alienated people with highly fluctuating degrees of self-esteem and a people with deep existential crises.
SOCIAL STRUCTURES:
A kind of synthesis of democracy and socialism...except no one is forced to follow these ideas. Remember, change happens from the bottom up and comes from within, so people would have to adopt to the public philosophy on their own accord.
The goal of economics, politics, healthcare and even the corporate, industrial, and military institutions should be to lessen the distance between the haves and the have-nots. It's more than providing goods for the highest bidder; it's about seeing to it that everyone gets their fair share. All of these entities work together all the time anyway- they need to find the shared goal of soul liberation, and especially those who are left behind, as soon as possible! And who populates these entities? The privileged! The privileged should make philanthropy their highest priority without getting the have-nots dependent on them. It should be to provide basic needs- food, shelter, clothes, clean environments, a job, an education, security, and resources. I'm not talking about the Democratic party versus the Republican party- I'm talking about anyone who's well off to do their duty to those left behind out of moral obligation!
And to go further from physical haves, I will say mental and spiritual ones. Those who have no mental stability or faith are have-nots, too. Victims of trespasses have been temporarily deprived of liberty, and are entitled to coping mechanisms as well. It should be the goal of religion, schools, community centers, psychologists, music, poetry, media and the arts to band together for the common goal of providing positive inspiration and solid foundations on which to build faith and stability of what Maslow calls our basic needs and Eastern philosophy calls the chakras. And who populates these entities? The everyday people!
People who work should combine immediate and process jobs. An immediate job is something like a wage-labor job; it makes society run. A person creates something in a craft to distribute to the masses or does a job like a cashier or secratary or whatever position needs to be filled, but the thing is, they have to do it five days a week at least. This is a job people should not be stuck in unless they enjoy it.
A process job is a person's personal striving- a creative job that is done for the self to express its story, which benefits other people by sharing burdens. An example would be the arts, sports, or music, or writing; something that has no boss other than one's self and editor or teacher. It is an educational job, for the most part. Everyone should have a teacher who teaches a creative skill such as this. This is what could liberate a person from an immediate job, if it is done right. A person's individuality being expressed is often worth enough money to live on.
But there are some people who live their lives on process jobs, like actors or writers, and don't do wage-labor. They need patrons- sponsors, if you will. They could be athletes, skateboarders, artists, philosophers...that sponsor should be the community itself or a non-profit group within the community. There is community service as a requirement. Obama's plan that they can go to college on a $4,000 a year scholarship as long as the fulfill community service is great. It means the person is focusing on education, but also has to give back to society. The same should go for those who’s process job is also their immediate job. Someone who gets rich from a single idea or song or whatever should do service to the sponsor, and they also, now being privileged, have a moral obligation to help the have-nots with their money.
I'm not talking about forcing anyone to give up their money, like communist states do. I'm talking about giving being second nature. Remember what E.O. Wilson said- for everyone in the world to live on a Western-level of consumption, we would need four planet earths. Rich people should be giving because it will save the world. If they don't they ought to be shunned by the world.
Then there is the spiritual aspect of life. We have those people who are not in the immediate or the process jobs- people who just want to help people. That is why I said the religious institutes and psychologists should ban together to be a part of the collective health-care industry that is holistic in body-mind-and soul. Some people feel a deeper yearning for God than others, and wish to make it their life's duty to participate in the divine. Now there are two aspects of this job
1. Preaching, and
2. Being
Preachers and can be "be"ers and vice versa in different points in their life; but preachers are the sermon say-ers and be-ers are the quiet monks who meditate and pray all day (or they could be temporary monks- people who are just seeking some time alone to find themselves). The preacher collects money from the church-goer and the monk, in theory, collects no money. The give and take cycle is different here. The preacher gives a sermon but is also a faith-based psychologist, and so he gives. The preacher receives money for a sermon, like an actor running on ticket sales, but not for counseling individual people. The monk worships and meditates and practices yoga and mysticism, but who pays for that institution to run? A stipend from each monk's savings? No...monasteries where people seek God all day are like rehab facilities- they should be run by non-profit organizations that members of the community all support because it could come in handy for them at any time they need a spiritual cleansing. What should these churches include? In addition to sermons, music, art, counseling, yoga, mysticism, dancing, singing, eating - a celebration of the sacred (recall Pt. 1- the sacred is what evolves our soul) - churches should primarily focus on being warriors of the light, by helping people. Sharing, keeping promises, performing charity, helping our brothers and sisters up Jacob's Ladder by attaining the basics- both physical needs and TLC. (see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow)
This is surely doing God's will- everyone helping everyone reach their potential. And remember, mysticism does not find God; liberation theology does. Mysticism can only find the true self- the essence- which is God's consciousness on the side of non-matter. It may be able to access a collective unconscious. But restoring God's morality of freedom, liberty and fellowship by a public philosophy of shared values that promote liberation theology as the church of man- that is making God's heart incarnate on earth. It shows how our creator wishes for us to experience the joy it experiences all the time, while being an individual who wears the tragedy and comedy masks of beautiful, holy life. Being one with God is pure, non-relative and non-abstract joy of love, truth and beauty, so while we are separate, the only way we can make God exist as One with "his" children is by reflecting him in everything we do- that is- by ordering our lives in accordance to his justice (justice is love in action).
Once we become aware of how our actions affect not just third-world countries, the animal and plant kingdoms and the earth, but our souls and God as well, these values will take on a whole new meaning. No more existential crises- we will know why we’re here, where we’re from and where we’re going; not down to the last detail but enough to end the reason and faith debate. Then the social institutions in dire need of reform will fix themselves- the school systems, the prison systems, the healthcare system, the social services system. And all the levels of government- local, state and federal will have less of a burden because of this.
And then institutions that control the government- the federal reserve, the World Bank, corporations, the owners of the media, the WTO and NAFTA, the military-industrial complex, big oil, big pharma, labor unions, and the diamond trade and the coal industry will finally have to adhere to-gasp!-universal ethics! People will become more and more aware that these are “the man behind the curtain” being represented by elected officials and the direct link between us everyday people and third-world countries! I can't get into all the details of it right now, but I will say, it's bad.
Paul Farmer, a liberation theologist, goes into great detail explaining the structures of society that proliferate extreme suffering; this is all in his work Pathologies of Power. He goes into great detail, way better than my simplistic model of false trinity of Money, Time and Self-Absorbed Consumption. But by following this false trinity, it is like a marriage of convenience with the powers that be who we demonize for screwing with our lives. It's our own fault for electing these people! If we had a better sense of ourselves, our communities and environment, of our own convictions, we would yell much louder at injustice and we wouldn't be yelling all alone.
Our current problem- fixing the gap between the haves and have-nots. Our solution is giving and sharing- and that is how one is a warrior of God. I point to Liberation Theology, which is something all religions adhere to.
Liberation Theology:
Gustavo Gutierrez said: “To be followers of Jesus requires that [we] walk with and be committed to the poor; when [we] do, [we] experience an encounter with the Lord who is simultaneously revealed and hidden in the faces of the poor”
The story of Buddha parallels Liberation Theology as well. He was a rich man living a prince’s life, sheltered from all the suffering that was happening just down the road and into town. Once he discovered the poverty in his own neighborhood, he completely changed his life around. The story goes he showed the world that he could live on only one morsel a day! Buddhism today, “inspired by the monks of Vietnam,” who challenged their government during the war (Thích Quảng Đức burned himself alive as protest) are doing more to become activists for social justice. This phenomenon of “engaged Buddhism” responds to “the crises posed by environmental despoliation, political corruption and global hunger” (John L. Esposito).
Islam has kazat as one of their five pillars: it means give charity to the needy.
"If we want to find God in Jewish tradition, we don't do it by turning our backs on the world and going into mystical contemplation. Psalm 146 begins implicitly by asking a theological question: 'Where is God found?' Then it says, 'God is the one who sustains the fallen and feeds the hungry and brings justice to the widow and the orphan.' We find God by helping the poor, by providing homes for the homeless, and by working for justice. And when we have done that, when we have done the sort of things God stands for, we suddenly find that God has become present in our lives."- Rabbi Harold Kushner, Ph.D.
Each one of us has a calling- we’ve all had injustices done against us and suffered enough by our own self-doubt (and I’m sure periods of self-hate). Liberation theology is the means by which we fight- our church and community groups and our non-profit organizations are our means by which we do all we can. If our passion is the environment, go down to the local stream and clean up. If our passion is helping humans, join a charity or help out at an institution that provides care; hands-on or not, it doesn't make a difference, as long as we act. This is large-scale; we can do things on progressively smaller-scales, too.
“Doesn't life seem nasty, brutish and short? Come on up to the house?”- Tom Waits
On a social network scale, we ought to focus on human relationships over worrying about the time so much. Each of us has a particular story, a struggle, a celebration. The way our memory and imagination blur, the stories are a biased myth; but the pain is always objective. Pain is that universal, shared language of experience; and just by sharing our stories, we can inspire those who are in spiritual crises to keep going. Churches, seminars, psychology, story-telling and just comforting our friends are the mediums through which we liberate those in a spiritual drought.
On an individual scale, we could just be the kind of person who gives and loves unconditionally. It is not easy, because it involves forgiveness, which takes a lot of strength. The true warrior also knows when to control his or her temper. And the true warrior gives, shares, and keeps promises.
“The world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through”- Tom Waits
Kenneth Maryboy of the Navajo Nation:
“My grandfather taught me that you learn to be a man and a warrior by sharing and by keeping promises”.
So why not give? You can’t take it with you.
A lot of what Americans are doing are being self-absorbed, questioning people's motives when they give, and are unconsciously supporting the agencies that keep people left behind. For instance, I don't know who made my shirt- maybe a little girl who gets paid peanuts? I literally never looked into the company I bought this shirt from- and that makes me complicit. It makes me ignorant and it makes me an irresponsible member of the global community.
See Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power for a medical doctor's view of Liberation Theology after working in Haiti. He looks at how we unknowingly support agencies that keep people starving.
He quotes Eduardo Galeano.
"The big bankers of the world, who practice the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings or field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no one; they limit themselves to applauding the show.
Their officials, international technocrats, rule our countries: they are neither presidents nor ministers, they have not been elected, but they decide the levels of salaries and public expenditure, investments and divestments, prices, taxes, interest rates, subsidies, when the sun rises and how frequently it rains.
However, they don't concern themselves with the prisons or torture chambers or concentration camps or extermination centers, although these house the inevitable consequences of their acts.
The technocrats claim the privilege of irresponsibility: 'We're neutral,' they say."
The last time you may have seen these technocrats is when the Federal Reserve helped fix the mortgage crises. You saw everyone panicking and then, like the hand of God coming out of nowhere, the federal interest rate changed. They, along with the world bank, control money and thus make the world go round. The military-industrial complex, corporations and contractors that own the means of production (including the owners of the media, the telecommunications systems, big oil, big pharma, labor unions, and the diamond trade and the coal industry), the WTO and NAFTA policy, they all control politics which control the bureaucratic agencies (the red tape organizations that act between politics and the human initiative to set up a business) that control our institutions (schools, criminal justice system, media, health institutions, social services etc.) and therefore how us individuals live. This system controlled by the bankers allow all the drama in this monopoly world to continue, and the only thing that keeps them in power is us; therefore WE indirectly keep world peace at bay.
All it takes is a lack of ignorance and complacency for wars to end, and injustices to continue.
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’
- Edmund Burke
Question your leaders, read the newspaper, and research topics that interest you. And when there is a crises, remember the world is not your home, you're just a-passin’ through; we’re not here to merely entertain ourselves and attempt to turn ourselves into the ideal rich, pretty, popular fantasy creature from movies; we’re not here to numb ourselves with creature comforts; we’re here to help each other up Jacob’s Ladder. Every mistake makes us stronger, if we let it. We’re here to love and be loved; to be at peace; to let our little light shine. But how can it shine? a poet would ask. Through diamonds on our neck; through bling bling and rims?
Saul Williams cries out for awareness and a call to arms in his poem “Anthem,” a response to Hurricane Katrina’s mishandling by the federal government:
“When the storm remains distant
We are unreminded and dare to forget
School is a fashion show
Violence is comfort food
Family is nothing
And nothing is real
When the storm is forgotten
The struggle ends
May the storm never be forgotten”
It’s a struggle against the easiness of compliancy in which society encourages us to keep shopping and keep our heads in the sand while people are still struggling. The comforts of everyday life easily pull us into Self-Absorption.
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
So WE are the enemy, and the friend; at least our minds are.
We need to be responsible if we wish to be truly free as American individuals. We ought to take only what we need, and let nothing go to waste. And not value our work over our social relationships; or ourselves over anyone else. All it takes is a disciplined mind. We can’t change the world without changing ourselves- as Gandhi said:
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
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 us activists might seem like the first group of haters. Other times we seem to have been studying the nature of the fence- we knows what America’s been up to. 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.
Self-Absorption over community is killing communication and relationships. An American sergeant in Iraq who recently saw his men have guitars donated to them noted:
“Before, you’d see guys with their iPods on, listening to music, staying away from everybody else,” says Sergeant Karsnia. “But when the guitars came, people got together. We’d have four or five guys playing guitar, and 25 others laughing and singing”.
With globalization, we have shown what has been true since the dawn of man: all humans are interdependent on each other. Before, it was as distant as the butterfly effect (a butterfly flaps its wings in China and causes hurricane winds in the United States). Now, complicity is easy; it’s a purchase away, or
As Nelson Mandela explains, “ubuntu” means strengthening your role in a community- take the Zulu phrase umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu - “a person is a person through other persons”. We have much to learn from other cultures, such as Africans and Latinos, and their emphasis on relationships and family and kindness to strangers. It’s not uncommon, a Latino has pointed out, that if a stranger comes to visit your home, you have them come inside and serve them dinner and eat before you even question their reason for being there. In Sweden, it’s against the law to obstruct other people’s view of nature, so fences around family’s lawns are illegal. You’re allowed to just walk right up to and smell and even collect the flowers of a stranger’s garden!
"If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven."
Ralph Waldo Emerson- "Brahma"
The killer is the person behind killed. When something happens to a single person, it happens to all of us.
The United States has and continues to support terrorism at the behest of our ill-chosen leaders. And it’s our own damn fault for electing people who are too wrapped up in their foreign policy schemes to care about the home front. Ron Paul libertarianism wants to isolate America, not in the charity sense, but in the foreign-interest, and change the system so the U.S. is not a Republican war-fare state or a Democrat welfare state. But what they lack are a public philosophy- change doesn't come from the top down. The Republicans want fiscal responsibility and small government; the Democrats want social justice- we can have both if we adhere to a public philosophy. And first on the list of our shared values is consciousness and responsibility.
In this day and age, ignorance is irresponsibility. In the globally interconnected present, being a blind patriot is not being a patriot at all. There can be no freedom without conscientious responsibility.
“It is often difficult for people who have not had continuity in life to understand that freedom without responsibility and accountability is as detrimental as slavery. Freedom cannot be an end unto itself. Freedom from something must flow into freedom to be something else or it is not truly freedom. The object of getting free is being fee: the object of being free is living free.” – The Radically Inclusive Christian Church in Philadelphia
http://www.radicallyinclusive.com
This is not the identity crises, the split-personality disorder of Two Americas: One Black and One White, it’s the attitude of the Self-Absorbed and the attitude of the Giving. Black’s souls here in America have suffered under 200 years of government-sanctioned racism, but have not suffered so bad they couldn't bounce back. It took a lot of fighting, some violent and some non-violent; and yes, there still are ways to go.
But the split-personality disorder of America diagnosed by the Kerner Commission (after the race riots of 1967) of two Americas- one black and one white- is no longer relevant. It’s an attitude disorder- from those who fear that which is different solely because it is different and those who just don’t care enough to work toward fellowship on one side; and those who are breaking down walls of irrational fears and living to give their part in celebrating differences and also celebrating unity.
My mom said that she used to wish all the races had a bunch of babies with one another so everyone’s skin color was some kind of brown and racism would end. But then she realized, people would still find reasons to hate each other. No, she said; our differences should be celebrated! They all make up part of the patterns in the beautiful tapestry of life! (she said something to that effect)
Cultural diversity is a beautiful thing to break down the walls of fear of the unknown. Making fun of stereotypes can be funny, if done correctly. People need to have more of a sense of humor about race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, but be sensitive about it. Use empathy and don’t go overboard. Admit it, we’ve all got some pretty hilarious archetypes inside of us. Sometimes we look like a fool, or do something really flamboyant, or nerdy, or awkward. The best guard about being offensive in our jokes, though, is empathy. You don’t want to be “that guy or girl” who says offensive, off-color jokes where people laugh only out of embarrassment. Simple, non-threatening off-color jokes have a line- they tell the truth without pointing out something the other person already knows and is comfortable in laughing at if you're making fun of them, and in regards to stereotypes, don’t be crude or mean about it. And don't forget, some people just don't find picking out differences as funny, and that's their loss.
My mom was talking about the differences in religion. It all starts with one group who says “this is the way it is! Nothing else;” and then there’s some sort of split to get away from that rigidness, but it’s usually the case that the people who split end up pretty dogmatic and rigid themselves!, and that inspires another split! And now we have Israel versus Palestine- they hate each other, yet they worship the same God and are brothers and sisters!
Ethnic, political, tribal, class, caste and occupational, and cultural differences as a reason for an “us vs. them” dichotomy mentality is just plain ridiculous.“let's stop this talk of ‘them’ because the things we find deplorable in politicians, CEOs and cops are the same things that will tear ourselves apart. and let's stop this talk of words because words like dishonesty selfishness and greed aren't as distant to us as we'd like to believe.”- Defiance, Ohio
These are the words of a band who are surrounded by anti-establishment punk rockers and responding by pointing out hypocrisy. When people join groups, be they social cliques or sports teams or unions or political parties or institutions or location or whatever, based on some distinguishing characteristic or belief, we humans feel a sense of solidarity. We have a shared language, we have a set of rules, and we feel like we all fit in. As important as this is for us humans, it also fosters a primal “us vs. them” mentality if left unchecked. This is dangerous, especially when one group looks down on the other and makes broad, sweeping generalizations such as the “enemy” or “all bad” or “evil,” because this leads to dehumanizing language that makes violence so much easier. This is how genocides happen. I think we’re at an age now were we can move past dehumanization, especially in solidarity polarities fueled by irrational dichotomization.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm
It’s all so simplistic, and it’s what Aaron McGruder calls a fifth-grade mentality, McGruder the author of the comic strip and creator of the television show The Boondocks and is shocked that the Bush administration and the media use such general dichotomies when analyzing something as complex as the jihadist salafi movement on the other side of the war on terror.
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?"
SELF-ABSORPTION:
When McGruder classifies one his characters, Riley, he is actually diagnosing of about half the people I knew in high school in the process: he is “shortsighted, ignorant, and concerned only with instant gratification”. That even sounds like my Freudian “id” to me; as well as my hedonistic rebel, my inner immature child and my American arrogant-consumer desire of my ego (in the “doer” sense, not the Freudian sense).
How can we reform our communities? We can start with respecting ourselves- making sure we know what’s going into our bodies and how it’s affecting us. Basic survival needs like food, water, and air should be at the top of our list with all other health needs. We need to feed our minds just as well as we feed our bodies- with positivity, with inspiration, with smart lessons...sure it’s fun to dumb ourselves down or play into fear every once in a while, but we shouldn’t get hung up on these activities. We can work our way out by fixing up our homes and backyards and not leaving a big carbon footprint or a bad karma footprint. We can work for local stream health with a Watershed project; get in touch with nature and clean up our communities. On a state level we can write our Senators and Representatives and conduct polls and petitions. We can do what motivates us; whatever makes us in the moment in a positive way. We can share with people less fortunate than us.
On a national level we can read the newspaper and see what our federal politicians are up to and write letters to editors critiquing society and policies. We can become more aware and more conscious of how our actions affect third world countries. We can look into consuming less meat and checking out local farmer’s markets. We can look into the practices of corporations. We can join non-profit and non-government organizations that act as watchdogs over corruption in the government here in American and out in the rest of the world. We can spend a year in the Peace Corps., set up a charity at church that donates to a faraway cause we are passionate about.
We can form groups and non-violent protests to bring light to certain injustices, and we could even sanction local policies or organizations we don’t like by nonviolently going against them. We can be responsible for everything that comes in and goes out of our bodies- our thoughts, too and words, too! We can support people who need help and focus on people as more important than strict adherence to time. We can listen to what people have to say. We can get to know everyone in the neighborhood and have block parties where everyone gets to know each other. We could do things for our schools and our children. Being active and social and passionate and helpful are all things we can do for the positive benefit of “ubuntu”, and we can truly understand its religious context once we begin to shed the layers of the ego that was such a tool of self-absorbed consumerism.
We can help those left behind, be they people we know, people we don’t, plants, animals or the environment. We can stop enabling attitudes and behaviors that certain groups in society enable and positively reinforce, such as: blissful ignorance, drug or alcohol addiction, sexual promiscuity, mob mentality, blind faith and dogmatic and rigid adherence to authority, stubborn rebellion, unaccountability, crude language, deception, degrading attitudes, revenge and hatred, overly-proud aggression, discrimination and intolerance of people they perceive as different, fear of God or the unknown, gossip, laziness, cocky arrogance, low self-worth and powerlessness. These qualities society often finds as hilarious, necessary, safe or indestructible truths here in America. We are lying to ourselves if we think we can continue this behavior past childhood and adolescence. If these vices are not transformed into their opposites, and especially if we preach any of these attitudes and behaviors, we are crafting lies.
If you cannot learn to shed your security blanket that is provided by creature comforts, instinct and social conditioning and dependence; or if you cannot move past a once functional or sensible and now dysfunctional truth or way of looking at things, and you defeat its purpose by prolonging it, you are not free- so how can you be truly alive?
We all get caught in traps we made for ourselves; self-imposed limits and vicious cycles of our own doings, but awareness followed by action is necessary for the liberation of our souls; for our lights to shine.
The following information about life was pooled together by Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God (I had a spiritual transformation while reading this work) and ideas from St. Augustine, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christian medium Sylvia Browne:
If it is not done in this lifetime, you meet up with God again if you are lucky enough to leave your desires behind; and you may be reincarnated either on earth; or possibly, if you never loose your desires when you die and ride your Holy Spirit to the light, your soul might turn away from the light and come back down and be trapped on Earth; you may choose to re-enter the samsara cycle (which I believe is always an option), or in some other dimension like purgatory (I do not pretend to know anything besides reincarnation, which I truly believe our souls do). You’re gonna either grow or lose your sense of eternal self no matter what. Right now it depends on how committed you are to the City of God, the place where everybody that exists now, has already existed, and has yet to exist, who live their lives for God the Eternal reside. The City of Man is where all the souls reside that live with their sense of self attached to a temporal object as opposed to God. It’s healthy to have one foot in each world right now, as long as you don’t lose your sense of eternal self that has no earthly attachments, but if you are a man or woman of God, your goal will be to shepherd the lost souls from the City of Man to the City of God.
"No Soul Left Behind", probably the unspoken motto of the Dali Lama and Sylvia Browne. I can conceive of myself as joining those ranks. My focus is the people I understand the most because I was one of them- the alienated people with highly fluctuating degrees of self-esteem and a people with deep existential crises.
SOCIAL STRUCTURES:
A kind of synthesis of democracy and socialism...except no one is forced to follow these ideas. Remember, change happens from the bottom up and comes from within, so people would have to adopt to the public philosophy on their own accord.
The goal of economics, politics, healthcare and even the corporate, industrial, and military institutions should be to lessen the distance between the haves and the have-nots. It's more than providing goods for the highest bidder; it's about seeing to it that everyone gets their fair share. All of these entities work together all the time anyway- they need to find the shared goal of soul liberation, and especially those who are left behind, as soon as possible! And who populates these entities? The privileged! The privileged should make philanthropy their highest priority without getting the have-nots dependent on them. It should be to provide basic needs- food, shelter, clothes, clean environments, a job, an education, security, and resources. I'm not talking about the Democratic party versus the Republican party- I'm talking about anyone who's well off to do their duty to those left behind out of moral obligation!
And to go further from physical haves, I will say mental and spiritual ones. Those who have no mental stability or faith are have-nots, too. Victims of trespasses have been temporarily deprived of liberty, and are entitled to coping mechanisms as well. It should be the goal of religion, schools, community centers, psychologists, music, poetry, media and the arts to band together for the common goal of providing positive inspiration and solid foundations on which to build faith and stability of what Maslow calls our basic needs and Eastern philosophy calls the chakras. And who populates these entities? The everyday people!
People who work should combine immediate and process jobs. An immediate job is something like a wage-labor job; it makes society run. A person creates something in a craft to distribute to the masses or does a job like a cashier or secratary or whatever position needs to be filled, but the thing is, they have to do it five days a week at least. This is a job people should not be stuck in unless they enjoy it.
A process job is a person's personal striving- a creative job that is done for the self to express its story, which benefits other people by sharing burdens. An example would be the arts, sports, or music, or writing; something that has no boss other than one's self and editor or teacher. It is an educational job, for the most part. Everyone should have a teacher who teaches a creative skill such as this. This is what could liberate a person from an immediate job, if it is done right. A person's individuality being expressed is often worth enough money to live on.
But there are some people who live their lives on process jobs, like actors or writers, and don't do wage-labor. They need patrons- sponsors, if you will. They could be athletes, skateboarders, artists, philosophers...that sponsor should be the community itself or a non-profit group within the community. There is community service as a requirement. Obama's plan that they can go to college on a $4,000 a year scholarship as long as the fulfill community service is great. It means the person is focusing on education, but also has to give back to society. The same should go for those who’s process job is also their immediate job. Someone who gets rich from a single idea or song or whatever should do service to the sponsor, and they also, now being privileged, have a moral obligation to help the have-nots with their money.
I'm not talking about forcing anyone to give up their money, like communist states do. I'm talking about giving being second nature. Remember what E.O. Wilson said- for everyone in the world to live on a Western-level of consumption, we would need four planet earths. Rich people should be giving because it will save the world. If they don't they ought to be shunned by the world.
Then there is the spiritual aspect of life. We have those people who are not in the immediate or the process jobs- people who just want to help people. That is why I said the religious institutes and psychologists should ban together to be a part of the collective health-care industry that is holistic in body-mind-and soul. Some people feel a deeper yearning for God than others, and wish to make it their life's duty to participate in the divine. Now there are two aspects of this job
1. Preaching, and
2. Being
Preachers and can be "be"ers and vice versa in different points in their life; but preachers are the sermon say-ers and be-ers are the quiet monks who meditate and pray all day (or they could be temporary monks- people who are just seeking some time alone to find themselves). The preacher collects money from the church-goer and the monk, in theory, collects no money. The give and take cycle is different here. The preacher gives a sermon but is also a faith-based psychologist, and so he gives. The preacher receives money for a sermon, like an actor running on ticket sales, but not for counseling individual people. The monk worships and meditates and practices yoga and mysticism, but who pays for that institution to run? A stipend from each monk's savings? No...monasteries where people seek God all day are like rehab facilities- they should be run by non-profit organizations that members of the community all support because it could come in handy for them at any time they need a spiritual cleansing. What should these churches include? In addition to sermons, music, art, counseling, yoga, mysticism, dancing, singing, eating - a celebration of the sacred (recall Pt. 1- the sacred is what evolves our soul) - churches should primarily focus on being warriors of the light, by helping people. Sharing, keeping promises, performing charity, helping our brothers and sisters up Jacob's Ladder by attaining the basics- both physical needs and TLC. (see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow)
This is surely doing God's will- everyone helping everyone reach their potential. And remember, mysticism does not find God; liberation theology does. Mysticism can only find the true self- the essence- which is God's consciousness on the side of non-matter. It may be able to access a collective unconscious. But restoring God's morality of freedom, liberty and fellowship by a public philosophy of shared values that promote liberation theology as the church of man- that is making God's heart incarnate on earth. It shows how our creator wishes for us to experience the joy it experiences all the time, while being an individual who wears the tragedy and comedy masks of beautiful, holy life. Being one with God is pure, non-relative and non-abstract joy of love, truth and beauty, so while we are separate, the only way we can make God exist as One with "his" children is by reflecting him in everything we do- that is- by ordering our lives in accordance to his justice (justice is love in action).
Soul Evolution- Part VII. The Eternal Damnation Lie
VII. The Eternal Damnation Lie
First of all, death is not the end. I have had mystical visions and cosmic vibrations like the ones Ginsberg, Emerson, Thoreau and Kubler-Ross have all written about. I have a dream like Martin Luther King and George Lucas about the battle of light and dark that goes on in our souls and manifests itself in nature. The eternal promises free will and a place to rest when we die; God does not wish to meddle with our choices. And we can always change the road we’re on, but if we chose the dark side, then we lose ourselves. We need to learn for ourselves, though, which side to be on, and not have God’s Will forced upon us. We are separate and yet equal from God, and though it is scary and we often forget who we are, where we came from, why we’re here and where we’re going, God is like the parent who is right behind us as we take our first steps or go out exploring into the world. We are separate and yet equal from each other, too. All our souls, our essences, they are all connected to each other and the universe.
To quote from Wikipedia, the Dali Lama is an incarnation of the spirit of an ancient Buddhist magistrate who has taken a Bodhisattva vow “stating that they [the various incarnations] will strive for as long as samsara [the birth-rebirth cycle of souls trapped in desire] endures to liberate all sentient beings from samsara and deliver them into Nirvana. The Bodhisattva does not seek bodhi (Awakening) solely for him/herself, but chiefly for the sake of freeing all other beings and aiding them into the bliss of Nirvana.’ I have made it my intention to do the same, no matter how hard it is. I get my strength from inside, from my inner light, and I will tax my body if I have to. There are so many different languages around religion, making it hard for me.
Ramakrishna’s parable goes as follows: ‘God is one only, and not two. Different people call on Him by different names: some as Allah, some as God, others as Krishna, Shiva, and Brahman. It is like the water in a lake. Some drink it at one place and call it “jal,” others at another place and call it “pani,” and still others at a third place and call it “water.” The Hindus call it “jal,” the Christians “Water,” and the Muslims “pani.” But it is one and the same thing. Opinions are but paths. Each religion is only a path leading to God, as rivers come from different directions and ultimately become one in the ocean.”
This discrepancy in language can lead to mistaking the forest for the trees, meaning we get hung up on the words describing the Holy Experience and forget about the Experience itself. Dogmatic religions that are intolerant of other ones come up with ideas like Hell and Eternal Damnation, which are all out lies. C.S. Lewis, the Dali Lama, and Neale Donald Walsch would agree with me on this one, and do a far better job of explaining this than I ever will (though I have tried and will continue trying). The superstition of Hell can be directly related to the ignorance and intolerance of religious figures who are too egocentric to consider they are drinking from the same pond as a Muslim, a Buddhist, or whomever. “The Tower of Babel and specialization of knowledge / Unshared vocabularies leading us to confusion /Misleading labels that make us seem farther apart / Dichotomization into dehumanization”- this is my theory on how and why people commit organized violence for something higher than profit- things like holy wars and ethnic genocides. Religion is when you realize that the dreams of comfort in your mind, and all the love that’s shared between your heart and the world, are rooted in the fact that you have an eternal soul. You learn to trust this newly developed organ’s sense of eternity, couple it with unity with all things, and learn to tap into its inspiration. You return to a child-like state of bliss, if you ever left it, so you start to live not just by reason, but also faith. Now you understand that religion is not just superstition, but that it is guided by those who worship Masters who they see as manifestations of positive force- Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Bahá’u’lláh, and Halle Selassie.
They were true believers and could do nothing but preach freedom-promoting virtues because they were full of the Holy Spirit. They did not start out as manifestations of God, but they were destined to transcend casual space and time and achieve liberation. They listened to their souls, to eternity, their dreams and visions. They listened to wise men who wanted to say nothing but the Truth (that’s right, they had teachers too!). They listened to nature. And in doing all this, they were listening to God. Their virtues were in accordance to freedom, allowing them to experience liberation from the causal plane of reality, where their souls joined with the eternal again. They had no need for reincarnation. They do come back, whenever someone speaks the Truth under the inspiration of the Holy Force, of positivity, of the light. We all speak Holy Words every now and then; we all perform Holy Acts of Liberation too, when we engage in conscientious activities that make us one with nature and our inner light; in doing so, we reflect the eternally divine in us and not the temporal, earthly attachments we all are dependent on that are subject to change. The wind when it blows is so ancient and sacred, and our souls are like this wind, but our souls are covered in shadows of what Nietzsche called the death of God, the hypocrisy of man-made religion, the non-distinction of the sacred and the profane, confusion of languages and differences in culture, confusion of even our homogenous languages, vicious cycles, ignorance, immaturity, lack of convictions and dogma, and especially what I said before about our refusal to truly live by restricting our own freedoms by not growing, learning, loving, laughing, expressing oneself or being healthy.
The whole concept of hell is human suffering- the lack of truly living – vicious cycles – desire – fear – the opposite of all the virtues I listed – poverty – ignorance. When we deceive ourselves, we are in Hell. When we get hung up on a trauma, we are in hell: the scene plays itself over and over and over. When we live in the past or worry about the future all the time, when we have too low or too high self esteem, when we are living in two realities, when we are oppressed, it is all living in hell. Heaven is the future where there is no hell. When all the souls are liberated. The Dali Lama understand this. God, the eternal cause of existence and immanent force in nature understands this. If we had no free will to choose God, heaven would be forced on us. But like the parable of Adam and Eve, we exercised our free will and chose to believe in inequality. Rousseau talks about how when we first claimed ownership over land, we set off a chain of events guided by inequality that was the cause of the rich and powerful enslaving men. That was our sin – when we took our separateness for being dualistic compared to equality, and we took it too far. When at first we realized we had developed morality and then regressed to act against it. When at first we dehumanized other humans. When at first we took more than we needed from the land. When we restricted freedom from ourselves and others. The Tower of Babel is a great parable to describe how, because of language and cultural differences, civilizations of men saw other men as less than human, took them to be mere oxen to enslave, and disregarded their Truth (The Holy Spirit affected all cultures and it does so during all generations). Did you know that chimpanzees have turf battles where they viciously kill all the male chimpanzees in the opposing groups and then rape all the women to inseminate them with their genes? Some humans are no smarter than this, but if they have their frontal lobes, then they have the potential to transform. But they have to do it out of their own free will. Nobody, contrary to Scientology, sharia, and dumb parents, can offer us salvation at the expense of our freedom. We have to want to change to change. We have to have awareness, direction of thought, and behavior to act on morality.
You are free to doubt heaven, and God’s gift of freedom, too! God wouldn’t want it any other way- Doubt, then is just as holy a gift from God as Faith, until Faith is realized and chosen rather than blind! The Holy Spirit can bring us all to liberation, but these things take time, and leaders and prophets and mystics. I am not sure if I’m a good leader of men, but I am a good writer and a hell of a mystic. I am a prophet because God talks to me, but God talks to everyone; I just listen is all. The Holy Spirit shines from my soul whenever I tune into it, and I wish to help liberate all of humanity; to do God’s work is my will. I wish you liberation.; to find your self and forget your self all at once. Who knows how many lifetimes it will take?
First of all, death is not the end. I have had mystical visions and cosmic vibrations like the ones Ginsberg, Emerson, Thoreau and Kubler-Ross have all written about. I have a dream like Martin Luther King and George Lucas about the battle of light and dark that goes on in our souls and manifests itself in nature. The eternal promises free will and a place to rest when we die; God does not wish to meddle with our choices. And we can always change the road we’re on, but if we chose the dark side, then we lose ourselves. We need to learn for ourselves, though, which side to be on, and not have God’s Will forced upon us. We are separate and yet equal from God, and though it is scary and we often forget who we are, where we came from, why we’re here and where we’re going, God is like the parent who is right behind us as we take our first steps or go out exploring into the world. We are separate and yet equal from each other, too. All our souls, our essences, they are all connected to each other and the universe.
To quote from Wikipedia, the Dali Lama is an incarnation of the spirit of an ancient Buddhist magistrate who has taken a Bodhisattva vow “stating that they [the various incarnations] will strive for as long as samsara [the birth-rebirth cycle of souls trapped in desire] endures to liberate all sentient beings from samsara and deliver them into Nirvana. The Bodhisattva does not seek bodhi (Awakening) solely for him/herself, but chiefly for the sake of freeing all other beings and aiding them into the bliss of Nirvana.’ I have made it my intention to do the same, no matter how hard it is. I get my strength from inside, from my inner light, and I will tax my body if I have to. There are so many different languages around religion, making it hard for me.
Ramakrishna’s parable goes as follows: ‘God is one only, and not two. Different people call on Him by different names: some as Allah, some as God, others as Krishna, Shiva, and Brahman. It is like the water in a lake. Some drink it at one place and call it “jal,” others at another place and call it “pani,” and still others at a third place and call it “water.” The Hindus call it “jal,” the Christians “Water,” and the Muslims “pani.” But it is one and the same thing. Opinions are but paths. Each religion is only a path leading to God, as rivers come from different directions and ultimately become one in the ocean.”
This discrepancy in language can lead to mistaking the forest for the trees, meaning we get hung up on the words describing the Holy Experience and forget about the Experience itself. Dogmatic religions that are intolerant of other ones come up with ideas like Hell and Eternal Damnation, which are all out lies. C.S. Lewis, the Dali Lama, and Neale Donald Walsch would agree with me on this one, and do a far better job of explaining this than I ever will (though I have tried and will continue trying). The superstition of Hell can be directly related to the ignorance and intolerance of religious figures who are too egocentric to consider they are drinking from the same pond as a Muslim, a Buddhist, or whomever. “The Tower of Babel and specialization of knowledge / Unshared vocabularies leading us to confusion /Misleading labels that make us seem farther apart / Dichotomization into dehumanization”- this is my theory on how and why people commit organized violence for something higher than profit- things like holy wars and ethnic genocides. Religion is when you realize that the dreams of comfort in your mind, and all the love that’s shared between your heart and the world, are rooted in the fact that you have an eternal soul. You learn to trust this newly developed organ’s sense of eternity, couple it with unity with all things, and learn to tap into its inspiration. You return to a child-like state of bliss, if you ever left it, so you start to live not just by reason, but also faith. Now you understand that religion is not just superstition, but that it is guided by those who worship Masters who they see as manifestations of positive force- Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Bahá’u’lláh, and Halle Selassie.
They were true believers and could do nothing but preach freedom-promoting virtues because they were full of the Holy Spirit. They did not start out as manifestations of God, but they were destined to transcend casual space and time and achieve liberation. They listened to their souls, to eternity, their dreams and visions. They listened to wise men who wanted to say nothing but the Truth (that’s right, they had teachers too!). They listened to nature. And in doing all this, they were listening to God. Their virtues were in accordance to freedom, allowing them to experience liberation from the causal plane of reality, where their souls joined with the eternal again. They had no need for reincarnation. They do come back, whenever someone speaks the Truth under the inspiration of the Holy Force, of positivity, of the light. We all speak Holy Words every now and then; we all perform Holy Acts of Liberation too, when we engage in conscientious activities that make us one with nature and our inner light; in doing so, we reflect the eternally divine in us and not the temporal, earthly attachments we all are dependent on that are subject to change. The wind when it blows is so ancient and sacred, and our souls are like this wind, but our souls are covered in shadows of what Nietzsche called the death of God, the hypocrisy of man-made religion, the non-distinction of the sacred and the profane, confusion of languages and differences in culture, confusion of even our homogenous languages, vicious cycles, ignorance, immaturity, lack of convictions and dogma, and especially what I said before about our refusal to truly live by restricting our own freedoms by not growing, learning, loving, laughing, expressing oneself or being healthy.
The whole concept of hell is human suffering- the lack of truly living – vicious cycles – desire – fear – the opposite of all the virtues I listed – poverty – ignorance. When we deceive ourselves, we are in Hell. When we get hung up on a trauma, we are in hell: the scene plays itself over and over and over. When we live in the past or worry about the future all the time, when we have too low or too high self esteem, when we are living in two realities, when we are oppressed, it is all living in hell. Heaven is the future where there is no hell. When all the souls are liberated. The Dali Lama understand this. God, the eternal cause of existence and immanent force in nature understands this. If we had no free will to choose God, heaven would be forced on us. But like the parable of Adam and Eve, we exercised our free will and chose to believe in inequality. Rousseau talks about how when we first claimed ownership over land, we set off a chain of events guided by inequality that was the cause of the rich and powerful enslaving men. That was our sin – when we took our separateness for being dualistic compared to equality, and we took it too far. When at first we realized we had developed morality and then regressed to act against it. When at first we dehumanized other humans. When at first we took more than we needed from the land. When we restricted freedom from ourselves and others. The Tower of Babel is a great parable to describe how, because of language and cultural differences, civilizations of men saw other men as less than human, took them to be mere oxen to enslave, and disregarded their Truth (The Holy Spirit affected all cultures and it does so during all generations). Did you know that chimpanzees have turf battles where they viciously kill all the male chimpanzees in the opposing groups and then rape all the women to inseminate them with their genes? Some humans are no smarter than this, but if they have their frontal lobes, then they have the potential to transform. But they have to do it out of their own free will. Nobody, contrary to Scientology, sharia, and dumb parents, can offer us salvation at the expense of our freedom. We have to want to change to change. We have to have awareness, direction of thought, and behavior to act on morality.
You are free to doubt heaven, and God’s gift of freedom, too! God wouldn’t want it any other way- Doubt, then is just as holy a gift from God as Faith, until Faith is realized and chosen rather than blind! The Holy Spirit can bring us all to liberation, but these things take time, and leaders and prophets and mystics. I am not sure if I’m a good leader of men, but I am a good writer and a hell of a mystic. I am a prophet because God talks to me, but God talks to everyone; I just listen is all. The Holy Spirit shines from my soul whenever I tune into it, and I wish to help liberate all of humanity; to do God’s work is my will. I wish you liberation.; to find your self and forget your self all at once. Who knows how many lifetimes it will take?
Soul Evolution- Part VIII. Experience Vs. Dogma
“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World
VIII. Experience vs. Dogma
“Do I believe in God? What is God?”
What’s there to believe? Either you live life to its fullest or you don’t. And, for most of us, life is impeded by an existential crises of "what are the answers to those big questions- how did we get here, what is our purpose and destiny?" A lot of people, afraid to think for themselves because they don't wish to overwhelmed by such an enourmous task, use easy answers from either Dogmatic believers or hard-scientific-fact athiests. It's a crutch. How can you live life to its fullest; dancing with a crutch like this? It is not symmetrical; it is not beautiful...
I ask again if you are a free thinker or a dependent or an unncessary skeptic...
If you get dependent on a crutch or hung up on just one thing, how is that living life to its fullest? Is that freedom? I’m not just talking about drug addicts, alcoholics, or prostitutes here. Not even only external objects like money, positions of power, or uneven relationships or obsessions. I’m also talking about thoughts. Imbalanced thoughts. You see, just because something is interesting, meaningful, dependable or resourceful now does not mean it is functional in the long run. In fact, it becomes dysfunction when it overstays its welcome; your mind has expanded and is ready to move on to the next level, but you do not want to progress because you are comfortable. You sell yourself short this way, because your thoughts that once helped you now impede you and take control over your attitude and behavior like an authoritarian leader who claims himself to be “dictator for life”.
"The inherent baselessness in physical and mental objects is what we call reality" (ancient Hindu quote)
It's a question that opens the mind to what is real...epistemology...but after a while, it becomes dysfunctional, and impedes the mind! Questions like "what is real?" are to be asked, chuckled at, reflected upon, tucked away and then reassessed periodically throughout one's life, not to be obsessed over...or God forbid, answered...unless you are willing to go insane.
Worrying too much is imbalance. Don't think about the past, it's over, it's not real anymore. Don't think about the future, it hasn't happened yet, it's not real either. Life is always Here and Now- be in the moment, and you will find happiness.
And when something is keeping you down and holding you back; when you have conflicting morals about what to believe- go with the choice that makes you think harder. It will lead to growth when you think for yourself and let go of preconcieved notions or old ways of thinking about things. Expand your consciousness- but remember God's morality!
There's a lot of good stuff in religious texts, but you can see easily where some lies got mixed in there when it impedes on 1) Free Will/Choice in Life 2) Liberty to Pursue Happiness and 3) Fellowship. Anything that can be read as anti-non believer, such as anti-Semite or anti-Orthodox or anti-infidel, anti-female, anti-homosexial; in general, anti-Unity, is a lie. As someone who is aware of both heterosexual and homosexual urges, I find people who don't want to grant gay couples the same finacial benefits as straight couples alarming. Anyone who thinks God is saying, in the Bible, that homosexuality is unnatural, evil, or wrong, I should like to have a word with you. Was Moses not under the Holy Spirit when he received the Ten Commandments? People argue that the Apostles were under the Holy Spirit when their accounts were given. But my argument is this: anyone can be under the Holy Spirit at certain times in their life, but just because we speak the Truth sometimes, doesn't mean we always do so. So the Apostles, although they were right about many things, were not under the Holy Spirit for the ENTIRE duration of their accounting for God’s word. As an example: recall the Apostles all witnessed Jesus’ death, but they all had different accounts of what happened. One of them said Jesus died peacefully, while another said Jesus cried out “God, why have you forsaken me?” You see, the Apostles were just humans, like you and me, and humans are fickle. Like you and me, they spoke a lot of Truth, but also falsehoods as well, and most of it is generally unintentional.
Sometimes we just make up stuff that makes sense to us, or we miss something and fill in the blanks, or we get confused. We can’t be perfect. Jesus, they say, was perfect. But were the Apostles perfect? No! It has been said that the disciples did not even know what Jesus was talking about half the time. “Do you understand what I am saying,” Jesus would ask. “No, but teach me,” they would respond. St. Paul, when writing about gays, he was putting his own opinion in the Bible. It made perfect sense to him, and hey, he was on a roll with all the other stuff he got right. But his understanding of the universe, though it made complete sense to him, was not perfect, and it is not the only perspective. What did he know about being gay? Nothing…he was straight and looking at gays and thinking to himself what made sense; projecting his perspective onto other people and calling it morality. We do this all the time, but we’re not always right, are we? And not only this, but the Bible was passed down orally before it was codified at the Council of Nicaea hundreds of years later where men decided what accounts of Jesus’ life were to be put in the Bible and which were not. The only laws in the Bible that supposedly came from God directly were the Mosaic Laws, which did not include sodomy or scissoring (I've looked over all the different versions of the 10 Commandments and found zilch).
The other "laws" where written by men, sometimes under the Holy Spirit, sometimes not. People who don’t like homosexuality either have no understanding of what it’s like to be gay, so therefore have a limited knowledge and no moral or policy authority when it comes to queer truth and rights; or they have gay feelings themselves and project them onto other people and hate those people for manifesting their inner uncontrollable desires. The Apostles were not God incarnate, so everything they said was is not infallible (the same goes for the Pope). I recommend going through the Bible and finding quotes about Freedom, Liberty and Equality- God's only laws, because they allow us to live Life to its fullest. This is what politics should be all about- what's fair. And discrimnation against something you don't know well enough to understand- such as sexual orientation- is not fair. Only gay people are an authority on being gay.
It's called "praxis"- "the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or practiced" (wikipedia)
In Ancient Greek the word praxis (πρᾱξις) referred to activity engaged in by free men. Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of man: theoria, poiesis and praxis. There corresponded to these kinds of activity three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action. Aristotle further divided practical knowledge into ethics, economics and politics. He also distinguished between eupraxia (good praxis) and dyspraxia (bad praxis, misfortune).
This leads into mysticism- where one can experience pnuematic Logos (which I translate as the breath of Truth- the Word of God), directly from God
in this context it means direct experience of the divine rather than relying on the words of others or speculation.
Lifted from Wikipedia:
Praxis is also key in meditation and spirituality, where emphasis is placed on gaining first-hand experience of concepts and certain areas, such as union with the Divine, which can only be explored through praxis due to the inability of the finite mind (and its tool, language) to comprehend or express the infinite. In an interview for YES! Magazine, Matthew Fox explained it this way:Wisdom is always taste -- in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word for taste -- so it's something to taste, not something to theorize about. "Taste and see that God is good," the psalm says; and that's wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. The mystical tradition is very much a Sophia tradition. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before institution or dogma.[3] In fact, the Hebrew word for reason ("ta'am"), not wisdom ("chochmah"), is the same as the Hebrew word for taste ("ta'am").
You can praxis pnuematic gnosis (knowledge) of Logos anyday and the Holy Spirit will provide a secure line in which God, the source, can answer your call, the question of His Child. As long as freedom, liberty, and equality are the themes, you will know that it is God providing the pneuma (the "breath," the Logos, the divine word). It is true, the Holy Spirit’s channels are subjective to everyone; it is impossible to explain the ineffable experience of mystic divine gnosis to anyone because God is talking to you in a way that only makes sense to you. But it is always the same God; anything that goes against positive principles is the voice of the ego (in the sense of "doership"- the self that is attached to the City of Man as opposed to the City of God), who would have you not grow if it had its way; and often the ego is afraid of the awe-inspiring power of God, so it associates things like God and fear, when they are complete opposites. Fear is instinct, programmed into our DNA to save our tails from predators. But all fear slips away when one finally gets know God. It will be the voice of the Eternal Self, the part of the Source that is within; it will rise above the voice of temporal self and the voice of Thantos, who goes against life. Thantos, who feeds on the blood of war...
VIII. Experience vs. Dogma
“Do I believe in God? What is God?”
What’s there to believe? Either you live life to its fullest or you don’t. And, for most of us, life is impeded by an existential crises of "what are the answers to those big questions- how did we get here, what is our purpose and destiny?" A lot of people, afraid to think for themselves because they don't wish to overwhelmed by such an enourmous task, use easy answers from either Dogmatic believers or hard-scientific-fact athiests. It's a crutch. How can you live life to its fullest; dancing with a crutch like this? It is not symmetrical; it is not beautiful...
I ask again if you are a free thinker or a dependent or an unncessary skeptic...
If you get dependent on a crutch or hung up on just one thing, how is that living life to its fullest? Is that freedom? I’m not just talking about drug addicts, alcoholics, or prostitutes here. Not even only external objects like money, positions of power, or uneven relationships or obsessions. I’m also talking about thoughts. Imbalanced thoughts. You see, just because something is interesting, meaningful, dependable or resourceful now does not mean it is functional in the long run. In fact, it becomes dysfunction when it overstays its welcome; your mind has expanded and is ready to move on to the next level, but you do not want to progress because you are comfortable. You sell yourself short this way, because your thoughts that once helped you now impede you and take control over your attitude and behavior like an authoritarian leader who claims himself to be “dictator for life”.
"The inherent baselessness in physical and mental objects is what we call reality" (ancient Hindu quote)
It's a question that opens the mind to what is real...epistemology...but after a while, it becomes dysfunctional, and impedes the mind! Questions like "what is real?" are to be asked, chuckled at, reflected upon, tucked away and then reassessed periodically throughout one's life, not to be obsessed over...or God forbid, answered...unless you are willing to go insane.
Worrying too much is imbalance. Don't think about the past, it's over, it's not real anymore. Don't think about the future, it hasn't happened yet, it's not real either. Life is always Here and Now- be in the moment, and you will find happiness.
And when something is keeping you down and holding you back; when you have conflicting morals about what to believe- go with the choice that makes you think harder. It will lead to growth when you think for yourself and let go of preconcieved notions or old ways of thinking about things. Expand your consciousness- but remember God's morality!
There's a lot of good stuff in religious texts, but you can see easily where some lies got mixed in there when it impedes on 1) Free Will/Choice in Life 2) Liberty to Pursue Happiness and 3) Fellowship. Anything that can be read as anti-non believer, such as anti-Semite or anti-Orthodox or anti-infidel, anti-female, anti-homosexial; in general, anti-Unity, is a lie. As someone who is aware of both heterosexual and homosexual urges, I find people who don't want to grant gay couples the same finacial benefits as straight couples alarming. Anyone who thinks God is saying, in the Bible, that homosexuality is unnatural, evil, or wrong, I should like to have a word with you. Was Moses not under the Holy Spirit when he received the Ten Commandments? People argue that the Apostles were under the Holy Spirit when their accounts were given. But my argument is this: anyone can be under the Holy Spirit at certain times in their life, but just because we speak the Truth sometimes, doesn't mean we always do so. So the Apostles, although they were right about many things, were not under the Holy Spirit for the ENTIRE duration of their accounting for God’s word. As an example: recall the Apostles all witnessed Jesus’ death, but they all had different accounts of what happened. One of them said Jesus died peacefully, while another said Jesus cried out “God, why have you forsaken me?” You see, the Apostles were just humans, like you and me, and humans are fickle. Like you and me, they spoke a lot of Truth, but also falsehoods as well, and most of it is generally unintentional.
Sometimes we just make up stuff that makes sense to us, or we miss something and fill in the blanks, or we get confused. We can’t be perfect. Jesus, they say, was perfect. But were the Apostles perfect? No! It has been said that the disciples did not even know what Jesus was talking about half the time. “Do you understand what I am saying,” Jesus would ask. “No, but teach me,” they would respond. St. Paul, when writing about gays, he was putting his own opinion in the Bible. It made perfect sense to him, and hey, he was on a roll with all the other stuff he got right. But his understanding of the universe, though it made complete sense to him, was not perfect, and it is not the only perspective. What did he know about being gay? Nothing…he was straight and looking at gays and thinking to himself what made sense; projecting his perspective onto other people and calling it morality. We do this all the time, but we’re not always right, are we? And not only this, but the Bible was passed down orally before it was codified at the Council of Nicaea hundreds of years later where men decided what accounts of Jesus’ life were to be put in the Bible and which were not. The only laws in the Bible that supposedly came from God directly were the Mosaic Laws, which did not include sodomy or scissoring (I've looked over all the different versions of the 10 Commandments and found zilch).
The other "laws" where written by men, sometimes under the Holy Spirit, sometimes not. People who don’t like homosexuality either have no understanding of what it’s like to be gay, so therefore have a limited knowledge and no moral or policy authority when it comes to queer truth and rights; or they have gay feelings themselves and project them onto other people and hate those people for manifesting their inner uncontrollable desires. The Apostles were not God incarnate, so everything they said was is not infallible (the same goes for the Pope). I recommend going through the Bible and finding quotes about Freedom, Liberty and Equality- God's only laws, because they allow us to live Life to its fullest. This is what politics should be all about- what's fair. And discrimnation against something you don't know well enough to understand- such as sexual orientation- is not fair. Only gay people are an authority on being gay.
It's called "praxis"- "the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or practiced" (wikipedia)
In Ancient Greek the word praxis (πρᾱξις) referred to activity engaged in by free men. Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of man: theoria, poiesis and praxis. There corresponded to these kinds of activity three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action. Aristotle further divided practical knowledge into ethics, economics and politics. He also distinguished between eupraxia (good praxis) and dyspraxia (bad praxis, misfortune).
This leads into mysticism- where one can experience pnuematic Logos (which I translate as the breath of Truth- the Word of God), directly from God
in this context it means direct experience of the divine rather than relying on the words of others or speculation.
Lifted from Wikipedia:
Praxis is also key in meditation and spirituality, where emphasis is placed on gaining first-hand experience of concepts and certain areas, such as union with the Divine, which can only be explored through praxis due to the inability of the finite mind (and its tool, language) to comprehend or express the infinite. In an interview for YES! Magazine, Matthew Fox explained it this way:Wisdom is always taste -- in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word for taste -- so it's something to taste, not something to theorize about. "Taste and see that God is good," the psalm says; and that's wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. The mystical tradition is very much a Sophia tradition. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before institution or dogma.[3] In fact, the Hebrew word for reason ("ta'am"), not wisdom ("chochmah"), is the same as the Hebrew word for taste ("ta'am").
You can praxis pnuematic gnosis (knowledge) of Logos anyday and the Holy Spirit will provide a secure line in which God, the source, can answer your call, the question of His Child. As long as freedom, liberty, and equality are the themes, you will know that it is God providing the pneuma (the "breath," the Logos, the divine word). It is true, the Holy Spirit’s channels are subjective to everyone; it is impossible to explain the ineffable experience of mystic divine gnosis to anyone because God is talking to you in a way that only makes sense to you. But it is always the same God; anything that goes against positive principles is the voice of the ego (in the sense of "doership"- the self that is attached to the City of Man as opposed to the City of God), who would have you not grow if it had its way; and often the ego is afraid of the awe-inspiring power of God, so it associates things like God and fear, when they are complete opposites. Fear is instinct, programmed into our DNA to save our tails from predators. But all fear slips away when one finally gets know God. It will be the voice of the Eternal Self, the part of the Source that is within; it will rise above the voice of temporal self and the voice of Thantos, who goes against life. Thantos, who feeds on the blood of war...
Soul Evolution- Part IX. Just War Policy
“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World
IX. Just War Policy
Only war veterans are an authority on war. The time has come for old ass so-called Vietnam veterans like Bush (didn't do jack) and McCain (rode around in a plane before he got captured) to keep our troops at war and not risk their own blood. That's right, Bush and McCain should be out on the front lines to experience what they're putting their soldiers through.
Allow me to quote Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which, for a Vietnam veteran author who actually was on the ground, shows a striking parallel to the Iraq "war":
"Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty. Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation, or simple aggression. Who started it, and when, and why?
...What about the Geneva Accords? ...What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. When people are dead, you can't make them undead."
Sound familiar?
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"
And they have the full support of the Religious Right, who would love to have a Christian version of the Sharia imposed on the United States, especially when they get Chief Justices elected through stone-age conservatives who would not allow gays in the military or to get civil unions and who don't believe evolution never happened (Evolution/Adaptation and Creative/Intelligent Design are synonymous, in my opinion).
Now, back to O'Brien: "If they needed fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the-stone-age hawk? Or some dumb jingo in his hard hat and Bomb Hanoi button, or one of LBJ's pretty daughters, or Westmoreland's whole handsome family--newphews and nieces and baby grandson. There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put our own personal fluids on the line. You have to head for the front line and hook up with an infrantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought."
Extremes aside, he has a point. People who fight in the war do so because they are soldiers- they don't ask questions, they just fight for our security. But something happens to soldiers...if post-traumatic stress is a big-enough umbrella term, than I'll call it that. It puts people in an impossible situation where it's kill or be killed, and then it praises or blames them for fighting for their life. It puts coffins on their conscience, and to cope with that, the soldier has to develop coping mechanisms like dehumanizing talk about the enemy, or twisted humor, or problem drinking and/or drugs to silence the screams of the people they killed, if not sleepless nights. How many cases are there of war veterans from this new war who snap and lose touch with reality? How many more veterans will undergo terrible treatment like the ones at the Virginia hospital? (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/28/health/main3762984.shtml) If you support this war, go put yourself in the situations the soldiers are in, and then tell me if it's worth it. I recommend you read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and listen to what the Iraqi War Veterans Against the War in Iraq have to say.
http://ivaw.org/membersspeak/why-iraq-war-destroying-army-part-i
This is what Aaron McGruder has to say about the current war in Iraq:
Bush and his stay-the-course cabinet “act like he’s [sic: Bush has] done something great. You know, he’s called [the terrorists] ‘evil’. That’s really some childish stuff. They’re bad, we’re good. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. They’re so incredibly stupid. What do you think they do? They call us ‘evil’. I just see so many parallels on both sides in this war, and it’s really uncomfortable. You know, they kill civilians, we kill civilians. They say they’re justified, we say the same thing. This is gang warfare on an international level. That’s all it is. And when gang warfare happens in American cities, we say it’s wrong. When somebody loads a gun, goes 20 blocks and kills the guy who killed his brother, it’s not justifiable homicide or self-defense, it’s murder and we put people in jail for it. Why is it acceptable that we do it now? …”
Does this not hit home? Bush Jr. maybe getting a little revenge for Saddam trying to kill Bush Sr.? Funding Israel and probably funding revenge killings by doing so? A mostly drugged-out (according to Time magazine) Marine squad wiping out fifteen innocents in Haditha, including women and children, as vengeance for their buddy being killed in a roadside bomb?
I’m not even saying I would have acted differently in the situation- I just can't believe we put soldiers this position. God help me, I don't want to understand. Everything is wrong. War against an invisible enemy is nothing a man or woman should experience, and how it screws up everything we've ever believed about right and wrong. We shouldn't put people in the position to become numb to faith. We shouldn't put people in the position to kill. An insurgent becomes a civilian after an American shoots him, then the crowd takes the insurgent's gun when the American isn't looking, and he becomes another dead civilian. How is this a war?
The way the terrorists fight by arming women and children; and the way that our troops are faced with so much doubt and confusion that they have to kill those hostile women, children and innocent people women and children at times like Nisoor Square, too! We shouldn't put this burden on people unless we do it too; it is too unfair for us to know nothing about experiencing the horrors of war and expect other people to carry it out for us because know not what we are asking of them. We are asking them to kill, but it is so much more than that. We are asking for them to be confused and lose a sense of their self and their conscience and their faith. We have to able to put all of that on the line ourselves if we want to ask another person to do so. I swear to God we do. It is only fair.
Would you like to see some more parallels between Bush and his enemy?
McGruder continues:
“In this time of war against Osama bin-Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR leader isn’t the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties.”
Whoops!
I believe McGruder justifies his scathing criticism of President Bush and Co. because of the hypocritical manner in which they, and the conservative media, so simple-mindedly termed the war one of “good” versus “evil”. McGruder calls this fifth-grade mentality, where everything is black and white. I agree; war is gray, and that’s what makes it so scary- morals get twisted and vices become virtues. It’s brother against brother, sister against sister, each one fighting for a puppetmaster who knows not what kind of hell they’ve unleashed.
McGruder offers a vague solution, but hey, it’s a start!:
“If there’s a terrorist network or a man responsible [sic: for the terrorist hijackings], yes, we should get them, but when you construct it like a police action or an investigation, and not like a war, then you’re forced to respect the lives of the innocents, even if it’s a pain in the ass. I say it’s not worth innocent people dying, even if it takes years and you have to keep sending SEAL teams or whatever in there. What the hell? That’s what they’re trained to do. That’s why they exist. Drop the out in there to get one guy. F-18s exist to wipe out towns. It may take longer the other way, but that’s too bad”
Our strategy was so messed up in invading Iraq. I mean, if we had done a little research we could have found out a civil war would be the consequence of the power vacuum left by Saddam’s ousting. I can’t even begin to explain the unjust reasons behind invading Iraq, so I’ll let these links do the talking.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/08/wbr.iraq.claims/
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/
I still, and always, believe America should hold the burden of proof upon the accuser, because we are innocent until proven guilty, and that’s one of the beautiful things of freedom in America. There was no proof in 2003. That’s un-American. There’s no balance of power when America, the world police (executive), has no impartial judiciary (Congress, UN) to appeal to and becomes the accuser, the judge, jury and executioner all in the same person. We rushed to action without sustaining reasonable evidence. I’m tired of the Conservative movement wiping their behind with the Constitution with such things as Guantanamo’s prison, secret prisons in other counties, and the PATRIOT ACT. Salvation should not come at the expense of our freedom. The reason we have things like the exclusionary rule in the courts is because it is in accordance with American principle that we get things like JUDGE-ISSUED WARRANTS PRIOR to arresting people and searching their homes. But forget the Constitution, the UN, and the Geneva Conventions- we are above the law, right?
Because all is fair in love and war. Because desperate times call for desperate measures, we call in Blackwater to protect public officials and give them no one to be held accountable to. Because of terrorism that we somewhat brought on ourselves, unintentionally of course, because we supplied the weapons to al-Qaeda and Saddam for during fights against Iran and communism? We should have been less shortsighted; now it is our duty to battle the people behind 9/11, but I’m saying don’t make up ghost stories about terrorists to scare people so you can take advantage of their fear and infringe on their rights! Don’t pretend to be fighting for America when you’re really fighting against it and all that it stands for- law, order, accountability, balance of powers, a fair trial…the reasons we formed the country in the first place! England didn’t cut as any slack; they held Americans in inaccessible prisons for a long time without reading them their rights- sound familiar??
To use the Declaration of Independence as a guideline:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
-Check for Bush- no legal declaration of war, making legal what was once illegal by suspending the Constitution with his PATRIOT Act and wiretapping program; his cabinet fires U.S. Attorneys for political reasons
-He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
-We already have Judiciary powers like the U.S. court system and the U.N. courts established, but I guess we’re too righteous for them right now.
-He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power
-Blackwater
-For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
-Secret prisons
-For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
-Ditto.
-For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
-PATRIOT ACT and unjust war (we had no legitimate proof to invade)
-He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us
-The 2003 protest of the Iraqi war really showed that when the heat is on and pressure the government, we really do live in a police state
So then, a just war is first of all one that fights for freedom, liberty to pursue happiness, and equality. But we need to follow the Constitution- the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Violence should be a last resort, and using tactics that endanger civilian lives should be used as a last resort in terms of use of violence. There shall be no infantry wars against an invisible enemy. We should use our troops as reconstructive workers and have the Navy SEALs do the target-hunting. We should do our homework on the country we’re going to invade before we invade it. And lastly, those who support a war have to give at least one tour of duty.
IX. Just War Policy
Only war veterans are an authority on war. The time has come for old ass so-called Vietnam veterans like Bush (didn't do jack) and McCain (rode around in a plane before he got captured) to keep our troops at war and not risk their own blood. That's right, Bush and McCain should be out on the front lines to experience what they're putting their soldiers through.
Allow me to quote Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which, for a Vietnam veteran author who actually was on the ground, shows a striking parallel to the Iraq "war":
"Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty. Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation, or simple aggression. Who started it, and when, and why?
...What about the Geneva Accords? ...What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. When people are dead, you can't make them undead."
Sound familiar?
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"
And they have the full support of the Religious Right, who would love to have a Christian version of the Sharia imposed on the United States, especially when they get Chief Justices elected through stone-age conservatives who would not allow gays in the military or to get civil unions and who don't believe evolution never happened (Evolution/Adaptation and Creative/Intelligent Design are synonymous, in my opinion).
Now, back to O'Brien: "If they needed fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the-stone-age hawk? Or some dumb jingo in his hard hat and Bomb Hanoi button, or one of LBJ's pretty daughters, or Westmoreland's whole handsome family--newphews and nieces and baby grandson. There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put our own personal fluids on the line. You have to head for the front line and hook up with an infrantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought."
Extremes aside, he has a point. People who fight in the war do so because they are soldiers- they don't ask questions, they just fight for our security. But something happens to soldiers...if post-traumatic stress is a big-enough umbrella term, than I'll call it that. It puts people in an impossible situation where it's kill or be killed, and then it praises or blames them for fighting for their life. It puts coffins on their conscience, and to cope with that, the soldier has to develop coping mechanisms like dehumanizing talk about the enemy, or twisted humor, or problem drinking and/or drugs to silence the screams of the people they killed, if not sleepless nights. How many cases are there of war veterans from this new war who snap and lose touch with reality? How many more veterans will undergo terrible treatment like the ones at the Virginia hospital? (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/28/health/main3762984.shtml) If you support this war, go put yourself in the situations the soldiers are in, and then tell me if it's worth it. I recommend you read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and listen to what the Iraqi War Veterans Against the War in Iraq have to say.
http://ivaw.org/membersspeak/why-iraq-war-destroying-army-part-i
This is what Aaron McGruder has to say about the current war in Iraq:
Bush and his stay-the-course cabinet “act like he’s [sic: Bush has] done something great. You know, he’s called [the terrorists] ‘evil’. That’s really some childish stuff. They’re bad, we’re good. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. They’re so incredibly stupid. What do you think they do? They call us ‘evil’. I just see so many parallels on both sides in this war, and it’s really uncomfortable. You know, they kill civilians, we kill civilians. They say they’re justified, we say the same thing. This is gang warfare on an international level. That’s all it is. And when gang warfare happens in American cities, we say it’s wrong. When somebody loads a gun, goes 20 blocks and kills the guy who killed his brother, it’s not justifiable homicide or self-defense, it’s murder and we put people in jail for it. Why is it acceptable that we do it now? …”
Does this not hit home? Bush Jr. maybe getting a little revenge for Saddam trying to kill Bush Sr.? Funding Israel and probably funding revenge killings by doing so? A mostly drugged-out (according to Time magazine) Marine squad wiping out fifteen innocents in Haditha, including women and children, as vengeance for their buddy being killed in a roadside bomb?
I’m not even saying I would have acted differently in the situation- I just can't believe we put soldiers this position. God help me, I don't want to understand. Everything is wrong. War against an invisible enemy is nothing a man or woman should experience, and how it screws up everything we've ever believed about right and wrong. We shouldn't put people in the position to become numb to faith. We shouldn't put people in the position to kill. An insurgent becomes a civilian after an American shoots him, then the crowd takes the insurgent's gun when the American isn't looking, and he becomes another dead civilian. How is this a war?
The way the terrorists fight by arming women and children; and the way that our troops are faced with so much doubt and confusion that they have to kill those hostile women, children and innocent people women and children at times like Nisoor Square, too! We shouldn't put this burden on people unless we do it too; it is too unfair for us to know nothing about experiencing the horrors of war and expect other people to carry it out for us because know not what we are asking of them. We are asking them to kill, but it is so much more than that. We are asking for them to be confused and lose a sense of their self and their conscience and their faith. We have to able to put all of that on the line ourselves if we want to ask another person to do so. I swear to God we do. It is only fair.
Would you like to see some more parallels between Bush and his enemy?
McGruder continues:
“In this time of war against Osama bin-Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR leader isn’t the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties.”
Whoops!
I believe McGruder justifies his scathing criticism of President Bush and Co. because of the hypocritical manner in which they, and the conservative media, so simple-mindedly termed the war one of “good” versus “evil”. McGruder calls this fifth-grade mentality, where everything is black and white. I agree; war is gray, and that’s what makes it so scary- morals get twisted and vices become virtues. It’s brother against brother, sister against sister, each one fighting for a puppetmaster who knows not what kind of hell they’ve unleashed.
McGruder offers a vague solution, but hey, it’s a start!:
“If there’s a terrorist network or a man responsible [sic: for the terrorist hijackings], yes, we should get them, but when you construct it like a police action or an investigation, and not like a war, then you’re forced to respect the lives of the innocents, even if it’s a pain in the ass. I say it’s not worth innocent people dying, even if it takes years and you have to keep sending SEAL teams or whatever in there. What the hell? That’s what they’re trained to do. That’s why they exist. Drop the out in there to get one guy. F-18s exist to wipe out towns. It may take longer the other way, but that’s too bad”
Our strategy was so messed up in invading Iraq. I mean, if we had done a little research we could have found out a civil war would be the consequence of the power vacuum left by Saddam’s ousting. I can’t even begin to explain the unjust reasons behind invading Iraq, so I’ll let these links do the talking.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/08/wbr.iraq.claims/
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/
I still, and always, believe America should hold the burden of proof upon the accuser, because we are innocent until proven guilty, and that’s one of the beautiful things of freedom in America. There was no proof in 2003. That’s un-American. There’s no balance of power when America, the world police (executive), has no impartial judiciary (Congress, UN) to appeal to and becomes the accuser, the judge, jury and executioner all in the same person. We rushed to action without sustaining reasonable evidence. I’m tired of the Conservative movement wiping their behind with the Constitution with such things as Guantanamo’s prison, secret prisons in other counties, and the PATRIOT ACT. Salvation should not come at the expense of our freedom. The reason we have things like the exclusionary rule in the courts is because it is in accordance with American principle that we get things like JUDGE-ISSUED WARRANTS PRIOR to arresting people and searching their homes. But forget the Constitution, the UN, and the Geneva Conventions- we are above the law, right?
Because all is fair in love and war. Because desperate times call for desperate measures, we call in Blackwater to protect public officials and give them no one to be held accountable to. Because of terrorism that we somewhat brought on ourselves, unintentionally of course, because we supplied the weapons to al-Qaeda and Saddam for during fights against Iran and communism? We should have been less shortsighted; now it is our duty to battle the people behind 9/11, but I’m saying don’t make up ghost stories about terrorists to scare people so you can take advantage of their fear and infringe on their rights! Don’t pretend to be fighting for America when you’re really fighting against it and all that it stands for- law, order, accountability, balance of powers, a fair trial…the reasons we formed the country in the first place! England didn’t cut as any slack; they held Americans in inaccessible prisons for a long time without reading them their rights- sound familiar??
To use the Declaration of Independence as a guideline:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
-Check for Bush- no legal declaration of war, making legal what was once illegal by suspending the Constitution with his PATRIOT Act and wiretapping program; his cabinet fires U.S. Attorneys for political reasons
-He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
-We already have Judiciary powers like the U.S. court system and the U.N. courts established, but I guess we’re too righteous for them right now.
-He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power
-Blackwater
-For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
-Secret prisons
-For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
-Ditto.
-For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
-PATRIOT ACT and unjust war (we had no legitimate proof to invade)
-He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us
-The 2003 protest of the Iraqi war really showed that when the heat is on and pressure the government, we really do live in a police state
So then, a just war is first of all one that fights for freedom, liberty to pursue happiness, and equality. But we need to follow the Constitution- the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Violence should be a last resort, and using tactics that endanger civilian lives should be used as a last resort in terms of use of violence. There shall be no infantry wars against an invisible enemy. We should use our troops as reconstructive workers and have the Navy SEALs do the target-hunting. We should do our homework on the country we’re going to invade before we invade it. And lastly, those who support a war have to give at least one tour of duty.
Soul Evolution- Part X. Conclusion.
“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World
X. Conclusion
The time is right for us, America, to lead the way to World Peace. We can never kill Thantos, our quest for drama and our death-drive, at least not from within; but we can make sure he does not get positive reinforcement or enabling from society. I pity the pessimists, nonbelievers and so-called “realists” who do not believe that this Utopia can exist, or at least is not worth fighting for. I will field your questions if you are not swayed by this article. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know enough to set the record straight on God, morality, politics and society, and what about them is in need of critique.
This is my manifesto, but it is also yours, too, if you believe.
Let me leave you with some wise words:
Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch
-Can you simply agree that on some of the questions of life the mystery is too great for even you to solve? Why not hold the mystery as sacred? And why not allow the mystery to be sacred, and leave it alone?
We are now trying to do the impossible, which is to speak of the unspeakable. It is what religion seeks to do. Have you ever looked down into a high powered microscope, and seen pictures or movies of molecular action, and said, “Good heavens, there’s a whole universe down there. And to that universe, I, the now-present observer, must feel like God!” Have you ever said that, or had that kind of experience?
-Yes, I should imagine every thinking person has.
-Indeed. You have given yourself your own glimpse of what I am showing you here. And what would you do if I told you this reality of which you have given yourself a glimpse never ends?
-Explain that. I’d ask you to explain that.
-Take the smallest part of the universe you can imagine. Imagine this tiny, tiny particle of matter. Now cut it in half. What have you got?
-Two smaller halves.
-Precisely! Now cut those in half. What now?
-Two smaller halves.
-Right. Now again, and again! What’s left?
-Smaller and smaller particles.
-Yes, but when does it stop? How many times can you divide matter until it ceases to exist?
-I don’t know. I guess it never ceases to exist.
-You mean you can never completely destroy it? All you can do is change its form?
-It would seem so.
-I tell you this: you have just learned the secret to all of life, and seen into infinity.There is no end going up, any more than there is going down…There is no end to smallness and no end to bigness.
All of it is God, and there is nothing else. 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.
-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. “Ye are Gods”
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?
My belief system is a synthesis of creation science, C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce; Ram Dass' Be Here Now; Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God; Pantheism; the Abrahamic tradition (Judasim-Christianity-Islam and all the sects that have been borne of them); the Eastern tradition (Taoism-Hinduism-Buddhism-Sikhism and all the sects borne of them); the Hellenic tradition (ancient Greek metaphysics); native tribal religions (dancing around a fire and shouting in a trance); Theosophy, which seeks to uncover the often-secret-or-hidden mystical teachings of all the religions (yoga, meditation and astral projection, Jewish Kabbalism, Christian Gnosticism, Greek gnosticism; Pentecostal church; Sufiism; transcendental philosophy); Tim Leary's 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness (http://www.futurehi.net/docs/8circuit.html); Star Wars; the Lord of the Rings; the Mask; Calvin and Hobbes skepticism; the Matrix; my own mystical experiences (automatic writing; consciousness-raising drugs; lucid dreaming; drum circles; near-death experience; trance dancing; being in awe of nature; having good self-esteem; experiences of mind over matter).
My belief in a spirit guide in terms of the illuminated souls in the Great Divorce, the "witness" in Be Here Now, God in Conversations with God, and is behind moments of clarity (the meaning and purpose you feel during synchronicity, serendipity, and intuitive inspiration to accomplish a certain goal) that it is the first soul already comfortable being in heaven, and therefore an illuminated soul of God's ineffible being (you might as well call your spirit guide an extension of God or God), who devises a secret language to keep your soul on the right path toward your soul's purpose- a language that manifests itself in form (patterns and favorite songs and favorite animals or a specific speech or story or work of art that transforms you or a soul mate) and inner light (a voice of reason and balance and intuitive purpose; a hallucination or dream character). Since we all have free will to follow the path of our soul (the path of growth, soul evolution, God), we can deviate, which is characterized by complete unbalance interacting with lack of faith and dysfunctional immaturity and other life-staggering and growth-stagnating habits. Souls who lose their way and do not see the light are helped by people like Sylvia Browne, who finds spirits and tells them to go into the light. To reincarnate or give it all up and join God is always a choice. Free will characterizes all. The Dali Lama, a physical spirit guide, will not rest until all the souls are free from attachment. Literally, he will not go to heaven, and will continue to be reincarnated until each and every soul evolves into the person they want to be and are thus released into heaven forever.
X. Conclusion
The time is right for us, America, to lead the way to World Peace. We can never kill Thantos, our quest for drama and our death-drive, at least not from within; but we can make sure he does not get positive reinforcement or enabling from society. I pity the pessimists, nonbelievers and so-called “realists” who do not believe that this Utopia can exist, or at least is not worth fighting for. I will field your questions if you are not swayed by this article. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know enough to set the record straight on God, morality, politics and society, and what about them is in need of critique.
This is my manifesto, but it is also yours, too, if you believe.
Let me leave you with some wise words:
Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch
-Can you simply agree that on some of the questions of life the mystery is too great for even you to solve? Why not hold the mystery as sacred? And why not allow the mystery to be sacred, and leave it alone?
We are now trying to do the impossible, which is to speak of the unspeakable. It is what religion seeks to do. Have you ever looked down into a high powered microscope, and seen pictures or movies of molecular action, and said, “Good heavens, there’s a whole universe down there. And to that universe, I, the now-present observer, must feel like God!” Have you ever said that, or had that kind of experience?
-Yes, I should imagine every thinking person has.
-Indeed. You have given yourself your own glimpse of what I am showing you here. And what would you do if I told you this reality of which you have given yourself a glimpse never ends?
-Explain that. I’d ask you to explain that.
-Take the smallest part of the universe you can imagine. Imagine this tiny, tiny particle of matter. Now cut it in half. What have you got?
-Two smaller halves.
-Precisely! Now cut those in half. What now?
-Two smaller halves.
-Right. Now again, and again! What’s left?
-Smaller and smaller particles.
-Yes, but when does it stop? How many times can you divide matter until it ceases to exist?
-I don’t know. I guess it never ceases to exist.
-You mean you can never completely destroy it? All you can do is change its form?
-It would seem so.
-I tell you this: you have just learned the secret to all of life, and seen into infinity.There is no end going up, any more than there is going down…There is no end to smallness and no end to bigness.
All of it is God, and there is nothing else. 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.
-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. “Ye are Gods”
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?
My belief system is a synthesis of creation science, C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce; Ram Dass' Be Here Now; Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God; Pantheism; the Abrahamic tradition (Judasim-Christianity-Islam and all the sects that have been borne of them); the Eastern tradition (Taoism-Hinduism-Buddhism-Sikhism and all the sects borne of them); the Hellenic tradition (ancient Greek metaphysics); native tribal religions (dancing around a fire and shouting in a trance); Theosophy, which seeks to uncover the often-secret-or-hidden mystical teachings of all the religions (yoga, meditation and astral projection, Jewish Kabbalism, Christian Gnosticism, Greek gnosticism; Pentecostal church; Sufiism; transcendental philosophy); Tim Leary's 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness (http://www.futurehi.net/docs/8circuit.html); Star Wars; the Lord of the Rings; the Mask; Calvin and Hobbes skepticism; the Matrix; my own mystical experiences (automatic writing; consciousness-raising drugs; lucid dreaming; drum circles; near-death experience; trance dancing; being in awe of nature; having good self-esteem; experiences of mind over matter).
My belief in a spirit guide in terms of the illuminated souls in the Great Divorce, the "witness" in Be Here Now, God in Conversations with God, and is behind moments of clarity (the meaning and purpose you feel during synchronicity, serendipity, and intuitive inspiration to accomplish a certain goal) that it is the first soul already comfortable being in heaven, and therefore an illuminated soul of God's ineffible being (you might as well call your spirit guide an extension of God or God), who devises a secret language to keep your soul on the right path toward your soul's purpose- a language that manifests itself in form (patterns and favorite songs and favorite animals or a specific speech or story or work of art that transforms you or a soul mate) and inner light (a voice of reason and balance and intuitive purpose; a hallucination or dream character). Since we all have free will to follow the path of our soul (the path of growth, soul evolution, God), we can deviate, which is characterized by complete unbalance interacting with lack of faith and dysfunctional immaturity and other life-staggering and growth-stagnating habits. Souls who lose their way and do not see the light are helped by people like Sylvia Browne, who finds spirits and tells them to go into the light. To reincarnate or give it all up and join God is always a choice. Free will characterizes all. The Dali Lama, a physical spirit guide, will not rest until all the souls are free from attachment. Literally, he will not go to heaven, and will continue to be reincarnated until each and every soul evolves into the person they want to be and are thus released into heaven forever.
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