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

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

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

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

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

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

Response to Reverend Wright: Fear and Cheer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe:

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

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

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

Crazy Wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything tends to return to zero state- physics

Your soul goes back to zero- Pure Land Buddhist monk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neale: That would be hell.

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

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

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

-In my wildest moments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"form is emptiness; emptiness is form" Buddhist philosophy

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

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

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

A Brief Version of the Soul Evolution Manifesto

Selections from the Soul Evolution Manifesto:
Excerpts from:
The Nature of Good and Evil, Souls, Public Philosophy, Paradigm Shift in Consciousness

On the Nature of Good and Evil:

Life, whether or not we’d like to admit it, is about redemption and salvation. I prefer to call it learning and evolving our souls by expanding our consciousness until we reach enlightenment, but why not just stick with the Christian terminology, because it means the same thing.

We are born, and we crap all over the place and hit people because we don’t know any better. They call this innocence. Then, if we’re lucky, we learn right and wrong from our parents, but we often pick and choose in a game called situational morality. It’s not okay to lie, except when the truth will hurt someone’s feelings. It’s not okay to kill, except when your country sanctions it. It’s not okay to steal, unless you really need something. And we often are irresponsible, ignorant, immature, and quick to doing something we later regret. Situational morality is a steam-fogged forest we are lost in unless we can stand on the mountain of eternal morality, but the clouds also dip onto the mountains and fog it up as well. Religious fanatics, those rigid, dogmatic and holier-than-thou preachers who stand on these mountains, are just as blind as those situational moralists on the ground who too have good intentions.

People don’t always make the right decisions by others and by themselves. Unexplainable urges caused by hereditary instinct and hard-to-break-with-an-average-willpower habits caused by social conditioning both lead to automatic responses to situations. Fear, temperaments, arousal, wanting something physical like sweet foods or abstract like acceptance or domination; they all take the wheel in our zombie auto-pilot-mode selves. Some of these urges are here to help us: fear, for instance, is a natural instinct designed to save our butts from getting hurt. But sometimes we are afraid of things we need to face, like responsibility or truth, because sometimes the truth hurts. We can put it off until we die, leaving the truth in the inbox like an unopened email, but anyone can still read the truth about us after we die. The natural tendency of the truth, it seems, is to come from the dark out into the light, no matter how many years it takes.

Sometimes the truth isn’t the truth at all. Out of context, the truth might seem unforgivable, but given the context, understandable. Sometimes the truth just is what it is, a cold hard fact that is neither bad nor good. The truth means different things to different people. I may not be able to tell you the absolute truth, but I sure can tell you what it means to live a lie, even if that lie made things on an even keel and kept peace and cohesion for the greater good at the time. I’m talking about my reaction to a bi-sexual orientation and the sexual frustration of being predominantly attracted to men. But as we know, what we know about our selves changes over time, and I am no longer dominated by the fear of my own sexual desires.

Sexual orientation and the truth- they both change with time for many people. It’s a known unknown- nobody understands it well enough to explain to me the definitive truth about sexual orientation in no more than three to five sentences, at least not without somebody else arguing something else. Maybe it’s because everyone’s personal story involving homosexuality is different that nobody understands it, and people usually fear what they don’t understand, and hate what they can’t conquer. These urges make up part of the story of my life, but ultimately, my story is about morality. I wasn’t brought up religious, so how did I find God and God’s morality?

Morality is learned, and most people never get past the morality of man-made convention, because it requires them to do some hard thinking about moral relativism and moral absolutism- does an Eternal Law of God exist, and if so, what is it? Or is God just superstition, and both a gift and a curse on the collective imagination of the fearful and rebellious masses? Regardless of the answer to this, we often come to a point in our lives where moralities are conflicting and we are asked to make a choice. Either we make a choice and stick to it, or we make a choice and switch teams mid-game, or push the problem aside for another day and sit on a fence until we are forced to make a choice. When the situation comes, some people are ready with their ready-made excuses for making their choice, and others panic and arbitrarily make a choice.

We hear of stories where people believe in some kind of source of values that transcends interests of the self and comes from some unknown outside source, therefore applying to all of mankind for the good of mankind. These people live and die for a code, even if it conflicts with the laws of their sovereign authority or their family or their tribe of friends or their community. We are inspired and horrified by these stories. From Robin Hood to Jesse James, from Jesus to Al Pacino in the Godfather, from Joan of Arc to the Protestant Reformation; from the Shawshank Redemption to Johnny Depp in Blow; from the slave revolts to the civil rights movement; they could be martyrs, warriors, folk heroes, oppressed minorities or men and woman looking back at their personal sins and asking the people they wronged for forgiveness.

Polluting the earth. Making fun of people who are different. Snapping at people. Living a lie. Stealing from my family. Reinforcing other people’s negative behavior. Ignoring problems until they get huge. Being careless and at times downright reckless. I have many sins; we all do. They are our personal vices. We tell ourselves how to be perfect, but we don’t act on it. Sometimes we have no excuse. It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t get other people in trouble. It would be a victimless crime of character flaw if it didn't hurt anyone. But when something happens to me, I have discovered, it happens to everybody. Whether I know it or not, I am a role model and a standard by which people judge. Whether I know it or not, I am responsible for not only having than good intentions behind everything I do- I am also responsible for examining my actions and correcting my mistakes when I make them. I ask for forgiveness, and though I may not obtain it, I will at least have forgiven myself for admitting I did something wrong.

We do things until we get caught. Then we feel the hot shame on our cheeks and a dead feeling in our stomach, like the floor dropped out beneath it and all our intestines and guts are riding a roller coaster. Our heart beats so fast, we don’t know why it hasn’t exploded yet. Our ears widen with fear, our ears perk up, and a sound that cannot be detected by human ears escapes our vocal chords. We are a sorry bunch. I’ll be the first to admit my own stupidity, but I’ve come to terms with it, knowing it is temporary, an awkward phase of foolishness I find beautiful in retrospect.
““To feel trivial and idiotic and to live with this feeling is to be a hero in a way that no god can be” – Stevie Smith
That is why I celebrate my stupidity.

“It's not a matter of right and wrong, really there is no wrong. Not in our own minds. Our own reality. You can never set off to do the wrong thing. You can never say the wrong thing. In your own mind, you are always right. Every action you take-what you do or say or how you choose to appear-is automatically right the moment you act. Because you can do nothing wrong, you are always right. Even when you say, ‘I'm such an idiot, I'm so wrong...’ your right. Your right about being wrong. You’re right even when your an idiot."
Whoever realized this, I hope, also realized responsibility. Surely they felt the shame of guilt gnawing at the back of their throat. It’s not what happens- what happens is either inevitable and therefore uncontrollable, or it is you attempting to do the right thing. But when you make a mistake- and you don’t fix it – it carries a weight. A secret burden on your soul, keeping you down, keeping you in pain. Making things right means reaching inside to find a strength you didn't know you had. It means defying the odds and possibly being scorned. It means being your own hero…

Because looking at our archetypical heroes, we see all that is good and decent about humanity. The human who by definition isn’t perfect lives a life full of trespasses both done unto them and by their own hands unto others, and even themselves. These trespasses are ignored, justified, stored in the back of our minds, made a big deal about, celebrated by certain factions of society, and the source of embarrassment. They make the drama of the world go round and round, because they all have to do with our bruised, holy egos; our self-image and our-self esteem; our definitions of respect, praise and blame. In history, wars, inventions, songs, poems, and whole lives have been built on pride, prejudice, treason, vengeance, jealousy, lust, admiration, praise and blame. What I’m saying is, our heroes were beyond the inflated and bruised egos have had much to do with the terror and beauty of the history of humanity. Religious wars, class struggles, school shootings, imperialism, art, dance and comedy have all often been employed by our egos and what they have to say about truth, rights, pride deserved and undeserved, and the need for emotional security. Our self-esteem is fragile. Our ego, which is the many I’s of our self-image, seem to be defined by how we feed our many urges.

But our heroes teach us not to do things because it will please ourselves or the crowd. They teach us to do things because there is some kind of morality, some kind of karma, some kind of eye watching and listening to us. We should do good for the sake of doing good, or for the sake of God. Not even because of the selfish reason that it will get us into heaven, or that it feels good to give, but just because we keep evil alive every time we are irresponsible enough not to seek redemption for our mistakes. Our mistakes are irreversible, but that doesn't mean we shouldn’t try to compensate the world for our misdeeds. Ignoring the problem by being ignorant and apathetic is all that is needed for evil to exist.

Is it egocentrism and lack of empathy that causes evil? Is it shortsightedness? Is it vain glory, fear and preventative strikes during heated competition? Is it the lack of a referee to keep two parties in check when an argument gets out of hand? Is it when the balance of power and resources and means of production are not shared equally by humanity? Is it when people pretend to have a false explanation to life and attempt force that explanation into reality? Is it when people with power abuse that power? Is the carelessness of people who can’t afford to be careless? Is it imitating something that hurts other people, be it physically or emotionally, because you don’t know any better? Is it the fact that morality is often relative? Is it because people misunderstand other people and act on false pretenses? Is it when one person or peoples ignores the cries of help coming from another person or peoples? Is it when ignorance or half-truths are attempted to be passed of as the absolute truth, thereby confusing humanity and leading them into dichotomization and dehumanization? Is it immaturity gone on too long? Is it when something that was once functional and is now dysfunctional is forced beyond its appropriate means and not eschewed in favor of the practicality and yet complexity of change? Is it laziness? Is it self-absorption? Is it failure to deal with the inevitable events of life in a healthy way? Is it failure to deal with negative, intense emotions in a healthy way? Is evil caused every time a cycle of deceit, abuse, fear and hatred is perpetuated?

Cold-blooded killers who kill for profit are rare. Criminally insane persons with frontal lobe deficiencies are rare too. Crimes committed in the heat of passion are less rare. Crimes committed by brainwashed subcultures such as gangs or religious fundamentalists are less rare as well. And then there is the mainstream brainwashed culture- people like you and me who laugh and perpetuate bad karma because it has been positively reinforced by the immature factions of society. We make lines of appropriateness, and then we cross them. We pollute, we act out of fear of having to think for ourselves, and we hurt ourselves by neglecting obligations. I believe I just covered most of us. So what’s wrong with looking at our heroes, be they objective ones like Martin Luther King, Jr. or folk heroes like Buddha and Jesus who did the right thing by spreading a transcendent morality. Sure, they had sins, too. MLK maybe cheated on his wife; Jesus maybe doubted his worth as he died on the cross and asked why God forsook him; Buddha maybe lived a lavish, excessive lifestyle before he became Buddha. But they all pointed to a dude upstairs as the source of their values. They might as well have been pointing to the stability of the collective body of mankind or the ground beneath their feet. Wherever this ineffable being is, it goes beyond the self-absorbed ego.
(See Pt. I. On the Nature of Good and Evil) http://ageofmurdanstorm.blogspot.com/2008/03/soul-evolution-part-i-on-nature-of-good.html

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 astronomers are puzzled by a mysterious unseen force called dark matter and dark energy which makes up most of the universe, 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, dark energy, gluons, and spirit guides are the means of invisible tools and 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-

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?

Walsch-Yes, I should imagine every thinking person has.

God -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”
(see Pt. V. On the Nature of Souls) http://ageofmurdanstorm.blogspot.com/2008/03/soul-evolution-part-v-on-nature-of.html

Shared Values: A Public Philosophy

Augustine wrote of free will of choice. You don’t need to read it; let me explain it to you in one sentence. We don’t know the future, and we are responsible for our own actions. Freedom, then, is God’s gift to man. But in relation to the purpose of mankind, soul evolution through mind consciousness to reach enlightenment, God’s Law would be freedom, liberty to pursue happiness, and fellowship. Freedom means freedom to live; freedom to live means freedom to grow and evolve in one’s unique way; growth means a fertile environment, a livelihood and freedom of choice. Liberty to pursue happiness means finding one’s unique golden mean; the golden mean is balance between ego and spirit, awareness, and self-esteem; it means freedom to be unified with a person who they love regardless of caste or class or tribe or gender or race; it means liberty to make mistakes; it means not to be denied rights in a double-standard system. Fellowship means equality and unity; it means celebrating our differences, because differences make us beautiful; it means respect for self, mankind, the earth and the universe- in other words, respect for God. The laws of man should be in accordance to this- the primary virtues of God. Freedom, liberty and fellowship. I speak of primary and secondary virtues, an adaptation of Voegelin’s concept, to create my public philosophy at my blog. (see Pt. II. Shared Values: A Public Philosophy) http://ageofmurdanstorm.blogspot.com/2008/03/soul-evolution-part-ii-iii-shared.html

A Paradigm Shift in Consciousness:

The mind is a window with the temporary ego (the “I” who “does”) and the temporary world of the existence of the form of matter on one side and the eternal essence (the part of you that is God) in the world of the existence of eternal energy on the other. The eternal energy world and the matter world co-exist, but we cannot see the energy world.

The best we can do now is find a balance- between our ego and our soul, the profane and the sacred, the city of man and the city of God, the temporal and the eternal, our weaknesses and our strengths. Everything in moderation, including moderation. Happiness is an art accrued from these simple virtues. To find our soul mates, to find our purpose- God’s plan/our soul’s plan (the same thing), to find balance- in doing so we find ourselves and God.

That means making mistakes. That means being bold and exploring our selves, no longer afraid of what we'll find. It also means being afraid and living with our fears but knowing that everything will be alright in the end. Our fears are here to protect us from harm, but to find our irrational fears and kill them by understanding what causes the anxiety is part of our plan. Our temptations are here for a reason, too. Our imagination and God can turn temptations into dust by replacing them with mystical visions of a future place where we have all we desire, multiplied by 100,000,000 trillion percent.

A new world is at hand, one where we cannot tolerate irresponsibility from those who seek to murder on the basis of our differences, those who seek to destroy the planet, those who seek to turn men into machines, those who seek to cause harm and promote social injustice. Sports is healthy, politics is unhealthy; wars should no longer be personal and over Gods and territory and resources, but for fun and done through competition.

Mankind is the body politic, there are no borders; there is only earth, and the only God goes by many names, to which all religions and science study. But to fight the war for unification, we must also fight the dark side of our ego (being absorbed in the temporal self): irresponsibility, ignorance, fear, selfish desires, vanity, spite, arrogance, indifference, jealousy, lack of self-respect, laziness, hopelessness, boredom, and any kind of immaturity that prevents us from growing or living life truly free or that causes harm. We all have these voices; the key is not to let them take over. We hear them, we examine and understand them, and then we let them pass, knowing this kind of thinking stunts our growth into God's loving arms.

Everything that is matter is no-thing because it is temporary; matter comes from energy and energy is the Source, the Force, the Chi; the way in which our universal consciousness acts. To look into an object and find the Holy mind that crafted it by turning its energy into matter is to find eternity in a grain of sand. The bodies we have are temporary and yet they are the product of our eternal soul, as are our material creations, if we are conscientious in making them, reflecting the divine inside of us as we create.

Things that are made in haste are not Holy. But even every piece of junk is made from the same stardust as our planet and that same stardust is a material form from the Source, when it exploded into the periodic table of elements, the first-cause of matter in our universe. So then even the profane will turn into sacredness when its matter is broken down into quarks and gluons and beyond that into spiritual energy...broken into eternity

What is profane about man is the ego. The ego is necessary- it is the tool of the soul to manipulate matter to reflect God inside of the soul, the essence who only can be. Our eternal essence, our soul, since it can only be, cannot manipulate matter, so it hires the ego, the doer, to create. Our ego is then necessary to experience life (to live in a world where one can perceive and manipulate matter)

But to remain attached to the ego and this world of matter means to divorce from God into purgatory until you see the light within you. There are many who are trying to get you to see the light- one being me right now. Find your spirit guide- your mental manifestation of God- both inside of you (a voice of God) and outside of you (your meaning and purpose). My spirit guide is my voice of inspiration, and guides me to reach within and find strength I didn't know I had. My spirit guide is the collective love, truth and beauty of my day. My spirit guide has no distinct face- it is like Buddha and Jesus shapeshifting and creating Holy Coincidences that show me the Way. When I am in tune and balanced, my spirit guide sings to me in the songs stuck in my head. When I tell someone something that makes their day, when I say something so real that I can't believe it's my own words, when I glow beauty and create beautiful bodies of words, my spirit guide is channeling me directly to God.

Some say my spirit guide is my pineal glands, a divine antenna. It picks up the divine in everything within and without. My spirit guide lives vicariously through my environment and my internal voice of God, every moment. I perceive with my six senses. It's a matter of mind over matter: I believe, I ask for guidance and answers and knowledge, knowing I already have them, and they pour into me. I ask, and I receive; I seek, and I find...

There are different levels of consciousness. To experience the world through higher circuits of awareness of dimensions is our ultimate purpose, once we all leave the world of form behind. We find our that our collective, cohesive web of souls have created life on earth, experienced life through DNA, which contains our collective memories, and share our experiences in a new reality of heaven.

I assume our universal consciousness will create a reality like a dream that not only contains only the highest experiences of human and animal life, but also makes anything conceivable possible in this new world. Our life is like a straight video game now, with us as the players but our collective souls as the creators, so I can imagine that this new world would be like a video game with all the cheat codes on, so we can free fall through endless beautiful skies and then listen to a choir of mountains perform a rock song through a synchronized earthquake and we sing along as a booming voice of thunder. It will be a lucid dream, where we experience the softwares that provide the setting for this dream, softwares created by our soul’s final trip to earth in all its imagination and love. Can you imagine the peaceful, serene dreams Jesus must have had? Those dreams, governed by his thoughts and experiences, must have been Jesus developing the “software” so to speak to experience the Matrix of heaven. People with wild temperaments, on the other hand, who dance until they reach a trance and love movement and shouting and crying out, their heaven will be a place with louder activity than the heaven of those with a mild-mannered and mellow temperament. And those, I think most people, who are torn between both wild and calm, Dionysus and Apollo temperaments, can have a peaceful yet colorful dance across the matrix of eternity. Our temperaments, banded together, moving past the speed of light to a universe governed by laws limited only by our imagination and full of extreme joy and freedom...heaven...the mind of God...the universal consciousness.

To get in touch with this universal consciousness, join those who seek to experience the divine through trance, only to feel the awe of life, the awe of nature, the awe of the universe and its future possibilities. Dancing, shouting, skiing, snowboarding, skating down a slope, catching a wave, praying, meditating, being in awe of nature, practicing yoga, conducting scientific experiments, taking mind-expanding drugs (none of that opiate, speed, alcohol crap), automatic writing, lucid dreaming, free falling, praising the word of the masters of God (If you praise specific people as God, do it because they represent the status that mankind, all being manifestations of the divine, will be one day because eventually we will all be just as aware as these masters) and taking part in other religious-mystical-scientific-concentrating-conscientious-channeling methods to experience the divine. Get sensual self-esteem high from running or making love or other physical feats- how you feel when you put your health first and give to people is how you should always feel because that is always who you are, you just lose that state of mind when you change your attention to focus on something else you still need work on. Being in love is a way as well; in loving a single person you can love all that is good about the world, knowing they are they same and your spirit guide has finally reached the manifestation with which you wish to live with, be it a soul mate or an energy love like Jesus or Buddha or Jah etc. Tantric sex is another way to contact the eternal source.

As our souls progress toward liberation, through many lives and many methods, and as we respect and begin to understand the ways of nature and the universe, celebrating its differences but realizing its holy unity, we will become less attached to the emptiness of the world of form and more attached to our universal consciousness that is the seemingly formless empty space. Telepathy will become possible as we all share our experiences and leave our bodies and the world of form behind. We will all become the angelic souls we are trying to be now.

The mind will no longer be a window into the world of form, but a window unto its own imagination and soul. Who knows what kind of specific realities I am speculating, all I know is let's get there and find out! Let the paradigm shift in consciousness begin!
(taken from Pt. IV. A Paradigm Shift in Consciousness) http://ageofmurdanstorm.blogspot.com/2008/03/soul-evolution-part-iv-paradigm-shift.html

Other parts of my manifesto critique politics (Why America is Heading on the Wrong Course / Liberation Theology / Just War Policy) and religion (The Eternal Damnation Lie / Experience vs. Dogma). I still have much to learn about politics and organized religion. Hopefully you can give me constructive criticism. But I especially want you to critique my metaphysical, spiritual-mystical stuff because I am really focused on that aspect of my manifesto. It is my cosmology, and therefore the groundwork for all the rest of my political-religious-moral writings. Please let me know if I am fundamentally flawed or missing something, because solving the existential crises by proving the existence of a soul, setting a moral absolute standard everyone can agree on, setting a public philosophy up in America and working to save the planet from environmental destruction, inequality, genocide and identity confusion are all probably more achievable than changing the political system of America! My social critique doesn't call for destroying anything; it works to change the system from the inside out with a clear standard of spiritual right and wrong.