“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World
VIII. Experience vs. Dogma
“Do I believe in God? What is God?”
What’s there to believe? Either you live life to its fullest or you don’t. And, for most of us, life is impeded by an existential crises of "what are the answers to those big questions- how did we get here, what is our purpose and destiny?" A lot of people, afraid to think for themselves because they don't wish to overwhelmed by such an enourmous task, use easy answers from either Dogmatic believers or hard-scientific-fact athiests. It's a crutch. How can you live life to its fullest; dancing with a crutch like this? It is not symmetrical; it is not beautiful...
I ask again if you are a free thinker or a dependent or an unncessary skeptic...
If you get dependent on a crutch or hung up on just one thing, how is that living life to its fullest? Is that freedom? I’m not just talking about drug addicts, alcoholics, or prostitutes here. Not even only external objects like money, positions of power, or uneven relationships or obsessions. I’m also talking about thoughts. Imbalanced thoughts. You see, just because something is interesting, meaningful, dependable or resourceful now does not mean it is functional in the long run. In fact, it becomes dysfunction when it overstays its welcome; your mind has expanded and is ready to move on to the next level, but you do not want to progress because you are comfortable. You sell yourself short this way, because your thoughts that once helped you now impede you and take control over your attitude and behavior like an authoritarian leader who claims himself to be “dictator for life”.
"The inherent baselessness in physical and mental objects is what we call reality" (ancient Hindu quote)
It's a question that opens the mind to what is real...epistemology...but after a while, it becomes dysfunctional, and impedes the mind! Questions like "what is real?" are to be asked, chuckled at, reflected upon, tucked away and then reassessed periodically throughout one's life, not to be obsessed over...or God forbid, answered...unless you are willing to go insane.
Worrying too much is imbalance. Don't think about the past, it's over, it's not real anymore. Don't think about the future, it hasn't happened yet, it's not real either. Life is always Here and Now- be in the moment, and you will find happiness.
And when something is keeping you down and holding you back; when you have conflicting morals about what to believe- go with the choice that makes you think harder. It will lead to growth when you think for yourself and let go of preconcieved notions or old ways of thinking about things. Expand your consciousness- but remember God's morality!
There's a lot of good stuff in religious texts, but you can see easily where some lies got mixed in there when it impedes on 1) Free Will/Choice in Life 2) Liberty to Pursue Happiness and 3) Fellowship. Anything that can be read as anti-non believer, such as anti-Semite or anti-Orthodox or anti-infidel, anti-female, anti-homosexial; in general, anti-Unity, is a lie. As someone who is aware of both heterosexual and homosexual urges, I find people who don't want to grant gay couples the same finacial benefits as straight couples alarming. Anyone who thinks God is saying, in the Bible, that homosexuality is unnatural, evil, or wrong, I should like to have a word with you. Was Moses not under the Holy Spirit when he received the Ten Commandments? People argue that the Apostles were under the Holy Spirit when their accounts were given. But my argument is this: anyone can be under the Holy Spirit at certain times in their life, but just because we speak the Truth sometimes, doesn't mean we always do so. So the Apostles, although they were right about many things, were not under the Holy Spirit for the ENTIRE duration of their accounting for God’s word. As an example: recall the Apostles all witnessed Jesus’ death, but they all had different accounts of what happened. One of them said Jesus died peacefully, while another said Jesus cried out “God, why have you forsaken me?” You see, the Apostles were just humans, like you and me, and humans are fickle. Like you and me, they spoke a lot of Truth, but also falsehoods as well, and most of it is generally unintentional.
Sometimes we just make up stuff that makes sense to us, or we miss something and fill in the blanks, or we get confused. We can’t be perfect. Jesus, they say, was perfect. But were the Apostles perfect? No! It has been said that the disciples did not even know what Jesus was talking about half the time. “Do you understand what I am saying,” Jesus would ask. “No, but teach me,” they would respond. St. Paul, when writing about gays, he was putting his own opinion in the Bible. It made perfect sense to him, and hey, he was on a roll with all the other stuff he got right. But his understanding of the universe, though it made complete sense to him, was not perfect, and it is not the only perspective. What did he know about being gay? Nothing…he was straight and looking at gays and thinking to himself what made sense; projecting his perspective onto other people and calling it morality. We do this all the time, but we’re not always right, are we? And not only this, but the Bible was passed down orally before it was codified at the Council of Nicaea hundreds of years later where men decided what accounts of Jesus’ life were to be put in the Bible and which were not. The only laws in the Bible that supposedly came from God directly were the Mosaic Laws, which did not include sodomy or scissoring (I've looked over all the different versions of the 10 Commandments and found zilch).
The other "laws" where written by men, sometimes under the Holy Spirit, sometimes not. People who don’t like homosexuality either have no understanding of what it’s like to be gay, so therefore have a limited knowledge and no moral or policy authority when it comes to queer truth and rights; or they have gay feelings themselves and project them onto other people and hate those people for manifesting their inner uncontrollable desires. The Apostles were not God incarnate, so everything they said was is not infallible (the same goes for the Pope). I recommend going through the Bible and finding quotes about Freedom, Liberty and Equality- God's only laws, because they allow us to live Life to its fullest. This is what politics should be all about- what's fair. And discrimnation against something you don't know well enough to understand- such as sexual orientation- is not fair. Only gay people are an authority on being gay.
It's called "praxis"- "the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or practiced" (wikipedia)
In Ancient Greek the word praxis (πρᾱξις) referred to activity engaged in by free men. Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of man: theoria, poiesis and praxis. There corresponded to these kinds of activity three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action. Aristotle further divided practical knowledge into ethics, economics and politics. He also distinguished between eupraxia (good praxis) and dyspraxia (bad praxis, misfortune).
This leads into mysticism- where one can experience pnuematic Logos (which I translate as the breath of Truth- the Word of God), directly from God
in this context it means direct experience of the divine rather than relying on the words of others or speculation.
Lifted from Wikipedia:
Praxis is also key in meditation and spirituality, where emphasis is placed on gaining first-hand experience of concepts and certain areas, such as union with the Divine, which can only be explored through praxis due to the inability of the finite mind (and its tool, language) to comprehend or express the infinite. In an interview for YES! Magazine, Matthew Fox explained it this way:Wisdom is always taste -- in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word for taste -- so it's something to taste, not something to theorize about. "Taste and see that God is good," the psalm says; and that's wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. The mystical tradition is very much a Sophia tradition. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before institution or dogma.[3] In fact, the Hebrew word for reason ("ta'am"), not wisdom ("chochmah"), is the same as the Hebrew word for taste ("ta'am").
You can praxis pnuematic gnosis (knowledge) of Logos anyday and the Holy Spirit will provide a secure line in which God, the source, can answer your call, the question of His Child. As long as freedom, liberty, and equality are the themes, you will know that it is God providing the pneuma (the "breath," the Logos, the divine word). It is true, the Holy Spirit’s channels are subjective to everyone; it is impossible to explain the ineffable experience of mystic divine gnosis to anyone because God is talking to you in a way that only makes sense to you. But it is always the same God; anything that goes against positive principles is the voice of the ego (in the sense of "doership"- the self that is attached to the City of Man as opposed to the City of God), who would have you not grow if it had its way; and often the ego is afraid of the awe-inspiring power of God, so it associates things like God and fear, when they are complete opposites. Fear is instinct, programmed into our DNA to save our tails from predators. But all fear slips away when one finally gets know God. It will be the voice of the Eternal Self, the part of the Source that is within; it will rise above the voice of temporal self and the voice of Thantos, who goes against life. Thantos, who feeds on the blood of war...
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Soul Evolution- Part IX. Just War Policy
“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World
IX. Just War Policy
Only war veterans are an authority on war. The time has come for old ass so-called Vietnam veterans like Bush (didn't do jack) and McCain (rode around in a plane before he got captured) to keep our troops at war and not risk their own blood. That's right, Bush and McCain should be out on the front lines to experience what they're putting their soldiers through.
Allow me to quote Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which, for a Vietnam veteran author who actually was on the ground, shows a striking parallel to the Iraq "war":
"Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty. Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation, or simple aggression. Who started it, and when, and why?
...What about the Geneva Accords? ...What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. When people are dead, you can't make them undead."
Sound familiar?
William Irwin Thompson has this to say about the people who sent our troops being in Iraq:
“So the neoconservatives of the Bush administration are the mirror-image of al Qaeda; they are also a noetic polity that seeks to deconstruct the modern middle class democratic nation-state and replace it with a metanational corporate cartel – a capitalist al Qaeda. Halliburton, Bechtel, Enron, the Carlyle Group, and Newmount Mining are postnational formations that really care little about the welfare of any particular people or nation. The American soldiers that died in Iraq did not die "defending their country"; they died defending Cheney and Bush's interests in Halliburton and the Carlyle Group. These neocon corporate managers, very much like the privateers and pirates that helped Queen Elizabeth create a postbaronial world of naval power, are offshore pirates that care as little for the entire nation, as Texan Enron cared for the state of California it plundered"
And they have the full support of the Religious Right, who would love to have a Christian version of the Sharia imposed on the United States, especially when they get Chief Justices elected through stone-age conservatives who would not allow gays in the military or to get civil unions and who don't believe evolution never happened (Evolution/Adaptation and Creative/Intelligent Design are synonymous, in my opinion).
Now, back to O'Brien: "If they needed fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the-stone-age hawk? Or some dumb jingo in his hard hat and Bomb Hanoi button, or one of LBJ's pretty daughters, or Westmoreland's whole handsome family--newphews and nieces and baby grandson. There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put our own personal fluids on the line. You have to head for the front line and hook up with an infrantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought."
Extremes aside, he has a point. People who fight in the war do so because they are soldiers- they don't ask questions, they just fight for our security. But something happens to soldiers...if post-traumatic stress is a big-enough umbrella term, than I'll call it that. It puts people in an impossible situation where it's kill or be killed, and then it praises or blames them for fighting for their life. It puts coffins on their conscience, and to cope with that, the soldier has to develop coping mechanisms like dehumanizing talk about the enemy, or twisted humor, or problem drinking and/or drugs to silence the screams of the people they killed, if not sleepless nights. How many cases are there of war veterans from this new war who snap and lose touch with reality? How many more veterans will undergo terrible treatment like the ones at the Virginia hospital? (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/28/health/main3762984.shtml) If you support this war, go put yourself in the situations the soldiers are in, and then tell me if it's worth it. I recommend you read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and listen to what the Iraqi War Veterans Against the War in Iraq have to say.
http://ivaw.org/membersspeak/why-iraq-war-destroying-army-part-i
This is what Aaron McGruder has to say about the current war in Iraq:
Bush and his stay-the-course cabinet “act like he’s [sic: Bush has] done something great. You know, he’s called [the terrorists] ‘evil’. That’s really some childish stuff. They’re bad, we’re good. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. They’re so incredibly stupid. What do you think they do? They call us ‘evil’. I just see so many parallels on both sides in this war, and it’s really uncomfortable. You know, they kill civilians, we kill civilians. They say they’re justified, we say the same thing. This is gang warfare on an international level. That’s all it is. And when gang warfare happens in American cities, we say it’s wrong. When somebody loads a gun, goes 20 blocks and kills the guy who killed his brother, it’s not justifiable homicide or self-defense, it’s murder and we put people in jail for it. Why is it acceptable that we do it now? …”
Does this not hit home? Bush Jr. maybe getting a little revenge for Saddam trying to kill Bush Sr.? Funding Israel and probably funding revenge killings by doing so? A mostly drugged-out (according to Time magazine) Marine squad wiping out fifteen innocents in Haditha, including women and children, as vengeance for their buddy being killed in a roadside bomb?
I’m not even saying I would have acted differently in the situation- I just can't believe we put soldiers this position. God help me, I don't want to understand. Everything is wrong. War against an invisible enemy is nothing a man or woman should experience, and how it screws up everything we've ever believed about right and wrong. We shouldn't put people in the position to become numb to faith. We shouldn't put people in the position to kill. An insurgent becomes a civilian after an American shoots him, then the crowd takes the insurgent's gun when the American isn't looking, and he becomes another dead civilian. How is this a war?
The way the terrorists fight by arming women and children; and the way that our troops are faced with so much doubt and confusion that they have to kill those hostile women, children and innocent people women and children at times like Nisoor Square, too! We shouldn't put this burden on people unless we do it too; it is too unfair for us to know nothing about experiencing the horrors of war and expect other people to carry it out for us because know not what we are asking of them. We are asking them to kill, but it is so much more than that. We are asking for them to be confused and lose a sense of their self and their conscience and their faith. We have to able to put all of that on the line ourselves if we want to ask another person to do so. I swear to God we do. It is only fair.
Would you like to see some more parallels between Bush and his enemy?
McGruder continues:
“In this time of war against Osama bin-Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR leader isn’t the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties.”
Whoops!
I believe McGruder justifies his scathing criticism of President Bush and Co. because of the hypocritical manner in which they, and the conservative media, so simple-mindedly termed the war one of “good” versus “evil”. McGruder calls this fifth-grade mentality, where everything is black and white. I agree; war is gray, and that’s what makes it so scary- morals get twisted and vices become virtues. It’s brother against brother, sister against sister, each one fighting for a puppetmaster who knows not what kind of hell they’ve unleashed.
McGruder offers a vague solution, but hey, it’s a start!:
“If there’s a terrorist network or a man responsible [sic: for the terrorist hijackings], yes, we should get them, but when you construct it like a police action or an investigation, and not like a war, then you’re forced to respect the lives of the innocents, even if it’s a pain in the ass. I say it’s not worth innocent people dying, even if it takes years and you have to keep sending SEAL teams or whatever in there. What the hell? That’s what they’re trained to do. That’s why they exist. Drop the out in there to get one guy. F-18s exist to wipe out towns. It may take longer the other way, but that’s too bad”
Our strategy was so messed up in invading Iraq. I mean, if we had done a little research we could have found out a civil war would be the consequence of the power vacuum left by Saddam’s ousting. I can’t even begin to explain the unjust reasons behind invading Iraq, so I’ll let these links do the talking.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/08/wbr.iraq.claims/
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/
I still, and always, believe America should hold the burden of proof upon the accuser, because we are innocent until proven guilty, and that’s one of the beautiful things of freedom in America. There was no proof in 2003. That’s un-American. There’s no balance of power when America, the world police (executive), has no impartial judiciary (Congress, UN) to appeal to and becomes the accuser, the judge, jury and executioner all in the same person. We rushed to action without sustaining reasonable evidence. I’m tired of the Conservative movement wiping their behind with the Constitution with such things as Guantanamo’s prison, secret prisons in other counties, and the PATRIOT ACT. Salvation should not come at the expense of our freedom. The reason we have things like the exclusionary rule in the courts is because it is in accordance with American principle that we get things like JUDGE-ISSUED WARRANTS PRIOR to arresting people and searching their homes. But forget the Constitution, the UN, and the Geneva Conventions- we are above the law, right?
Because all is fair in love and war. Because desperate times call for desperate measures, we call in Blackwater to protect public officials and give them no one to be held accountable to. Because of terrorism that we somewhat brought on ourselves, unintentionally of course, because we supplied the weapons to al-Qaeda and Saddam for during fights against Iran and communism? We should have been less shortsighted; now it is our duty to battle the people behind 9/11, but I’m saying don’t make up ghost stories about terrorists to scare people so you can take advantage of their fear and infringe on their rights! Don’t pretend to be fighting for America when you’re really fighting against it and all that it stands for- law, order, accountability, balance of powers, a fair trial…the reasons we formed the country in the first place! England didn’t cut as any slack; they held Americans in inaccessible prisons for a long time without reading them their rights- sound familiar??
To use the Declaration of Independence as a guideline:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
-Check for Bush- no legal declaration of war, making legal what was once illegal by suspending the Constitution with his PATRIOT Act and wiretapping program; his cabinet fires U.S. Attorneys for political reasons
-He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
-We already have Judiciary powers like the U.S. court system and the U.N. courts established, but I guess we’re too righteous for them right now.
-He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power
-Blackwater
-For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
-Secret prisons
-For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
-Ditto.
-For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
-PATRIOT ACT and unjust war (we had no legitimate proof to invade)
-He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us
-The 2003 protest of the Iraqi war really showed that when the heat is on and pressure the government, we really do live in a police state
So then, a just war is first of all one that fights for freedom, liberty to pursue happiness, and equality. But we need to follow the Constitution- the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Violence should be a last resort, and using tactics that endanger civilian lives should be used as a last resort in terms of use of violence. There shall be no infantry wars against an invisible enemy. We should use our troops as reconstructive workers and have the Navy SEALs do the target-hunting. We should do our homework on the country we’re going to invade before we invade it. And lastly, those who support a war have to give at least one tour of duty.
IX. Just War Policy
Only war veterans are an authority on war. The time has come for old ass so-called Vietnam veterans like Bush (didn't do jack) and McCain (rode around in a plane before he got captured) to keep our troops at war and not risk their own blood. That's right, Bush and McCain should be out on the front lines to experience what they're putting their soldiers through.
Allow me to quote Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which, for a Vietnam veteran author who actually was on the ground, shows a striking parallel to the Iraq "war":
"Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty. Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation, or simple aggression. Who started it, and when, and why?
...What about the Geneva Accords? ...What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. When people are dead, you can't make them undead."
Sound familiar?
William Irwin Thompson has this to say about the people who sent our troops being in Iraq:
“So the neoconservatives of the Bush administration are the mirror-image of al Qaeda; they are also a noetic polity that seeks to deconstruct the modern middle class democratic nation-state and replace it with a metanational corporate cartel – a capitalist al Qaeda. Halliburton, Bechtel, Enron, the Carlyle Group, and Newmount Mining are postnational formations that really care little about the welfare of any particular people or nation. The American soldiers that died in Iraq did not die "defending their country"; they died defending Cheney and Bush's interests in Halliburton and the Carlyle Group. These neocon corporate managers, very much like the privateers and pirates that helped Queen Elizabeth create a postbaronial world of naval power, are offshore pirates that care as little for the entire nation, as Texan Enron cared for the state of California it plundered"
And they have the full support of the Religious Right, who would love to have a Christian version of the Sharia imposed on the United States, especially when they get Chief Justices elected through stone-age conservatives who would not allow gays in the military or to get civil unions and who don't believe evolution never happened (Evolution/Adaptation and Creative/Intelligent Design are synonymous, in my opinion).
Now, back to O'Brien: "If they needed fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the-stone-age hawk? Or some dumb jingo in his hard hat and Bomb Hanoi button, or one of LBJ's pretty daughters, or Westmoreland's whole handsome family--newphews and nieces and baby grandson. There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put our own personal fluids on the line. You have to head for the front line and hook up with an infrantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought."
Extremes aside, he has a point. People who fight in the war do so because they are soldiers- they don't ask questions, they just fight for our security. But something happens to soldiers...if post-traumatic stress is a big-enough umbrella term, than I'll call it that. It puts people in an impossible situation where it's kill or be killed, and then it praises or blames them for fighting for their life. It puts coffins on their conscience, and to cope with that, the soldier has to develop coping mechanisms like dehumanizing talk about the enemy, or twisted humor, or problem drinking and/or drugs to silence the screams of the people they killed, if not sleepless nights. How many cases are there of war veterans from this new war who snap and lose touch with reality? How many more veterans will undergo terrible treatment like the ones at the Virginia hospital? (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/28/health/main3762984.shtml) If you support this war, go put yourself in the situations the soldiers are in, and then tell me if it's worth it. I recommend you read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and listen to what the Iraqi War Veterans Against the War in Iraq have to say.
http://ivaw.org/membersspeak/why-iraq-war-destroying-army-part-i
This is what Aaron McGruder has to say about the current war in Iraq:
Bush and his stay-the-course cabinet “act like he’s [sic: Bush has] done something great. You know, he’s called [the terrorists] ‘evil’. That’s really some childish stuff. They’re bad, we’re good. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. They’re so incredibly stupid. What do you think they do? They call us ‘evil’. I just see so many parallels on both sides in this war, and it’s really uncomfortable. You know, they kill civilians, we kill civilians. They say they’re justified, we say the same thing. This is gang warfare on an international level. That’s all it is. And when gang warfare happens in American cities, we say it’s wrong. When somebody loads a gun, goes 20 blocks and kills the guy who killed his brother, it’s not justifiable homicide or self-defense, it’s murder and we put people in jail for it. Why is it acceptable that we do it now? …”
Does this not hit home? Bush Jr. maybe getting a little revenge for Saddam trying to kill Bush Sr.? Funding Israel and probably funding revenge killings by doing so? A mostly drugged-out (according to Time magazine) Marine squad wiping out fifteen innocents in Haditha, including women and children, as vengeance for their buddy being killed in a roadside bomb?
I’m not even saying I would have acted differently in the situation- I just can't believe we put soldiers this position. God help me, I don't want to understand. Everything is wrong. War against an invisible enemy is nothing a man or woman should experience, and how it screws up everything we've ever believed about right and wrong. We shouldn't put people in the position to become numb to faith. We shouldn't put people in the position to kill. An insurgent becomes a civilian after an American shoots him, then the crowd takes the insurgent's gun when the American isn't looking, and he becomes another dead civilian. How is this a war?
The way the terrorists fight by arming women and children; and the way that our troops are faced with so much doubt and confusion that they have to kill those hostile women, children and innocent people women and children at times like Nisoor Square, too! We shouldn't put this burden on people unless we do it too; it is too unfair for us to know nothing about experiencing the horrors of war and expect other people to carry it out for us because know not what we are asking of them. We are asking them to kill, but it is so much more than that. We are asking for them to be confused and lose a sense of their self and their conscience and their faith. We have to able to put all of that on the line ourselves if we want to ask another person to do so. I swear to God we do. It is only fair.
Would you like to see some more parallels between Bush and his enemy?
McGruder continues:
“In this time of war against Osama bin-Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR leader isn’t the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties.”
Whoops!
I believe McGruder justifies his scathing criticism of President Bush and Co. because of the hypocritical manner in which they, and the conservative media, so simple-mindedly termed the war one of “good” versus “evil”. McGruder calls this fifth-grade mentality, where everything is black and white. I agree; war is gray, and that’s what makes it so scary- morals get twisted and vices become virtues. It’s brother against brother, sister against sister, each one fighting for a puppetmaster who knows not what kind of hell they’ve unleashed.
McGruder offers a vague solution, but hey, it’s a start!:
“If there’s a terrorist network or a man responsible [sic: for the terrorist hijackings], yes, we should get them, but when you construct it like a police action or an investigation, and not like a war, then you’re forced to respect the lives of the innocents, even if it’s a pain in the ass. I say it’s not worth innocent people dying, even if it takes years and you have to keep sending SEAL teams or whatever in there. What the hell? That’s what they’re trained to do. That’s why they exist. Drop the out in there to get one guy. F-18s exist to wipe out towns. It may take longer the other way, but that’s too bad”
Our strategy was so messed up in invading Iraq. I mean, if we had done a little research we could have found out a civil war would be the consequence of the power vacuum left by Saddam’s ousting. I can’t even begin to explain the unjust reasons behind invading Iraq, so I’ll let these links do the talking.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/08/wbr.iraq.claims/
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/
I still, and always, believe America should hold the burden of proof upon the accuser, because we are innocent until proven guilty, and that’s one of the beautiful things of freedom in America. There was no proof in 2003. That’s un-American. There’s no balance of power when America, the world police (executive), has no impartial judiciary (Congress, UN) to appeal to and becomes the accuser, the judge, jury and executioner all in the same person. We rushed to action without sustaining reasonable evidence. I’m tired of the Conservative movement wiping their behind with the Constitution with such things as Guantanamo’s prison, secret prisons in other counties, and the PATRIOT ACT. Salvation should not come at the expense of our freedom. The reason we have things like the exclusionary rule in the courts is because it is in accordance with American principle that we get things like JUDGE-ISSUED WARRANTS PRIOR to arresting people and searching their homes. But forget the Constitution, the UN, and the Geneva Conventions- we are above the law, right?
Because all is fair in love and war. Because desperate times call for desperate measures, we call in Blackwater to protect public officials and give them no one to be held accountable to. Because of terrorism that we somewhat brought on ourselves, unintentionally of course, because we supplied the weapons to al-Qaeda and Saddam for during fights against Iran and communism? We should have been less shortsighted; now it is our duty to battle the people behind 9/11, but I’m saying don’t make up ghost stories about terrorists to scare people so you can take advantage of their fear and infringe on their rights! Don’t pretend to be fighting for America when you’re really fighting against it and all that it stands for- law, order, accountability, balance of powers, a fair trial…the reasons we formed the country in the first place! England didn’t cut as any slack; they held Americans in inaccessible prisons for a long time without reading them their rights- sound familiar??
To use the Declaration of Independence as a guideline:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
-Check for Bush- no legal declaration of war, making legal what was once illegal by suspending the Constitution with his PATRIOT Act and wiretapping program; his cabinet fires U.S. Attorneys for political reasons
-He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
-We already have Judiciary powers like the U.S. court system and the U.N. courts established, but I guess we’re too righteous for them right now.
-He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power
-Blackwater
-For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
-Secret prisons
-For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
-Ditto.
-For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
-PATRIOT ACT and unjust war (we had no legitimate proof to invade)
-He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us
-The 2003 protest of the Iraqi war really showed that when the heat is on and pressure the government, we really do live in a police state
So then, a just war is first of all one that fights for freedom, liberty to pursue happiness, and equality. But we need to follow the Constitution- the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Violence should be a last resort, and using tactics that endanger civilian lives should be used as a last resort in terms of use of violence. There shall be no infantry wars against an invisible enemy. We should use our troops as reconstructive workers and have the Navy SEALs do the target-hunting. We should do our homework on the country we’re going to invade before we invade it. And lastly, those who support a war have to give at least one tour of duty.
Soul Evolution- Part X. Conclusion.
“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World
X. Conclusion
The time is right for us, America, to lead the way to World Peace. We can never kill Thantos, our quest for drama and our death-drive, at least not from within; but we can make sure he does not get positive reinforcement or enabling from society. I pity the pessimists, nonbelievers and so-called “realists” who do not believe that this Utopia can exist, or at least is not worth fighting for. I will field your questions if you are not swayed by this article. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know enough to set the record straight on God, morality, politics and society, and what about them is in need of critique.
This is my manifesto, but it is also yours, too, if you believe.
Let me leave you with some wise words:
Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch
-Can you simply agree that on some of the questions of life the mystery is too great for even you to solve? Why not hold the mystery as sacred? And why not allow the mystery to be sacred, and leave it alone?
We are now trying to do the impossible, which is to speak of the unspeakable. It is what religion seeks to do. Have you ever looked down into a high powered microscope, and seen pictures or movies of molecular action, and said, “Good heavens, there’s a whole universe down there. And to that universe, I, the now-present observer, must feel like God!” Have you ever said that, or had that kind of experience?
-Yes, I should imagine every thinking person has.
-Indeed. You have given yourself your own glimpse of what I am showing you here. And what would you do if I told you this reality of which you have given yourself a glimpse never ends?
-Explain that. I’d ask you to explain that.
-Take the smallest part of the universe you can imagine. Imagine this tiny, tiny particle of matter. Now cut it in half. What have you got?
-Two smaller halves.
-Precisely! Now cut those in half. What now?
-Two smaller halves.
-Right. Now again, and again! What’s left?
-Smaller and smaller particles.
-Yes, but when does it stop? How many times can you divide matter until it ceases to exist?
-I don’t know. I guess it never ceases to exist.
-You mean you can never completely destroy it? All you can do is change its form?
-It would seem so.
-I tell you this: you have just learned the secret to all of life, and seen into infinity.There is no end going up, any more than there is going down…There is no end to smallness and no end to bigness.
All of it is God, and there is nothing else. You cannot not be. You can change form all you wish, but you cannot fail to be. You can only fail at not knowing Who You Are, and in this failing, experience only the half of it.
-That would be hell.
-Exactly, yet you are not condemned to it. All that it takes to get out of hell, to get out of not knowing, is to know again.
HOLY SPIRIT = INSPIRATION = CONCEIVE
FATHER = PARENTING = CREATE
SON = OFFSPRING = EXPERIENCE
The son experiences the creation of the fathering thought, which is conceived of by the Holy Ghost. What you experience changes what you conceive. It is a cycle. Can you conceive of yourself as one day being a God?
-In my wildest moments.
-Good, for I tell you this: You are already a God. You simply do not know it. “Ye are Gods”
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe:
Just the other day I was wondering:Is anyone willing to admit that people they loved have died fighting for something that is now unnecessary?
Can they learn that their loved ones did not die in vain, but in accordance to the inevitable fact that they didn't know any better, but now all must be forgiven and we need to admit that they fought for a cause that is now in the way of world peace?
My belief system is a synthesis of creation science, C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce; Ram Dass' Be Here Now; Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God; Pantheism; the Abrahamic tradition (Judasim-Christianity-Islam and all the sects that have been borne of them); the Eastern tradition (Taoism-Hinduism-Buddhism-Sikhism and all the sects borne of them); the Hellenic tradition (ancient Greek metaphysics); native tribal religions (dancing around a fire and shouting in a trance); Theosophy, which seeks to uncover the often-secret-or-hidden mystical teachings of all the religions (yoga, meditation and astral projection, Jewish Kabbalism, Christian Gnosticism, Greek gnosticism; Pentecostal church; Sufiism; transcendental philosophy); Tim Leary's 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness (http://www.futurehi.net/docs/8circuit.html); Star Wars; the Lord of the Rings; the Mask; Calvin and Hobbes skepticism; the Matrix; my own mystical experiences (automatic writing; consciousness-raising drugs; lucid dreaming; drum circles; near-death experience; trance dancing; being in awe of nature; having good self-esteem; experiences of mind over matter).
My belief in a spirit guide in terms of the illuminated souls in the Great Divorce, the "witness" in Be Here Now, God in Conversations with God, and is behind moments of clarity (the meaning and purpose you feel during synchronicity, serendipity, and intuitive inspiration to accomplish a certain goal) that it is the first soul already comfortable being in heaven, and therefore an illuminated soul of God's ineffible being (you might as well call your spirit guide an extension of God or God), who devises a secret language to keep your soul on the right path toward your soul's purpose- a language that manifests itself in form (patterns and favorite songs and favorite animals or a specific speech or story or work of art that transforms you or a soul mate) and inner light (a voice of reason and balance and intuitive purpose; a hallucination or dream character). Since we all have free will to follow the path of our soul (the path of growth, soul evolution, God), we can deviate, which is characterized by complete unbalance interacting with lack of faith and dysfunctional immaturity and other life-staggering and growth-stagnating habits. Souls who lose their way and do not see the light are helped by people like Sylvia Browne, who finds spirits and tells them to go into the light. To reincarnate or give it all up and join God is always a choice. Free will characterizes all. The Dali Lama, a physical spirit guide, will not rest until all the souls are free from attachment. Literally, he will not go to heaven, and will continue to be reincarnated until each and every soul evolves into the person they want to be and are thus released into heaven forever.
X. Conclusion
The time is right for us, America, to lead the way to World Peace. We can never kill Thantos, our quest for drama and our death-drive, at least not from within; but we can make sure he does not get positive reinforcement or enabling from society. I pity the pessimists, nonbelievers and so-called “realists” who do not believe that this Utopia can exist, or at least is not worth fighting for. I will field your questions if you are not swayed by this article. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know enough to set the record straight on God, morality, politics and society, and what about them is in need of critique.
This is my manifesto, but it is also yours, too, if you believe.
Let me leave you with some wise words:
Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch
-Can you simply agree that on some of the questions of life the mystery is too great for even you to solve? Why not hold the mystery as sacred? And why not allow the mystery to be sacred, and leave it alone?
We are now trying to do the impossible, which is to speak of the unspeakable. It is what religion seeks to do. Have you ever looked down into a high powered microscope, and seen pictures or movies of molecular action, and said, “Good heavens, there’s a whole universe down there. And to that universe, I, the now-present observer, must feel like God!” Have you ever said that, or had that kind of experience?
-Yes, I should imagine every thinking person has.
-Indeed. You have given yourself your own glimpse of what I am showing you here. And what would you do if I told you this reality of which you have given yourself a glimpse never ends?
-Explain that. I’d ask you to explain that.
-Take the smallest part of the universe you can imagine. Imagine this tiny, tiny particle of matter. Now cut it in half. What have you got?
-Two smaller halves.
-Precisely! Now cut those in half. What now?
-Two smaller halves.
-Right. Now again, and again! What’s left?
-Smaller and smaller particles.
-Yes, but when does it stop? How many times can you divide matter until it ceases to exist?
-I don’t know. I guess it never ceases to exist.
-You mean you can never completely destroy it? All you can do is change its form?
-It would seem so.
-I tell you this: you have just learned the secret to all of life, and seen into infinity.There is no end going up, any more than there is going down…There is no end to smallness and no end to bigness.
All of it is God, and there is nothing else. You cannot not be. You can change form all you wish, but you cannot fail to be. You can only fail at not knowing Who You Are, and in this failing, experience only the half of it.
-That would be hell.
-Exactly, yet you are not condemned to it. All that it takes to get out of hell, to get out of not knowing, is to know again.
HOLY SPIRIT = INSPIRATION = CONCEIVE
FATHER = PARENTING = CREATE
SON = OFFSPRING = EXPERIENCE
The son experiences the creation of the fathering thought, which is conceived of by the Holy Ghost. What you experience changes what you conceive. It is a cycle. Can you conceive of yourself as one day being a God?
-In my wildest moments.
-Good, for I tell you this: You are already a God. You simply do not know it. “Ye are Gods”
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe:
Just the other day I was wondering:Is anyone willing to admit that people they loved have died fighting for something that is now unnecessary?
Can they learn that their loved ones did not die in vain, but in accordance to the inevitable fact that they didn't know any better, but now all must be forgiven and we need to admit that they fought for a cause that is now in the way of world peace?
My belief system is a synthesis of creation science, C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce; Ram Dass' Be Here Now; Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God; Pantheism; the Abrahamic tradition (Judasim-Christianity-Islam and all the sects that have been borne of them); the Eastern tradition (Taoism-Hinduism-Buddhism-Sikhism and all the sects borne of them); the Hellenic tradition (ancient Greek metaphysics); native tribal religions (dancing around a fire and shouting in a trance); Theosophy, which seeks to uncover the often-secret-or-hidden mystical teachings of all the religions (yoga, meditation and astral projection, Jewish Kabbalism, Christian Gnosticism, Greek gnosticism; Pentecostal church; Sufiism; transcendental philosophy); Tim Leary's 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness (http://www.futurehi.net/docs/8circuit.html); Star Wars; the Lord of the Rings; the Mask; Calvin and Hobbes skepticism; the Matrix; my own mystical experiences (automatic writing; consciousness-raising drugs; lucid dreaming; drum circles; near-death experience; trance dancing; being in awe of nature; having good self-esteem; experiences of mind over matter).
My belief in a spirit guide in terms of the illuminated souls in the Great Divorce, the "witness" in Be Here Now, God in Conversations with God, and is behind moments of clarity (the meaning and purpose you feel during synchronicity, serendipity, and intuitive inspiration to accomplish a certain goal) that it is the first soul already comfortable being in heaven, and therefore an illuminated soul of God's ineffible being (you might as well call your spirit guide an extension of God or God), who devises a secret language to keep your soul on the right path toward your soul's purpose- a language that manifests itself in form (patterns and favorite songs and favorite animals or a specific speech or story or work of art that transforms you or a soul mate) and inner light (a voice of reason and balance and intuitive purpose; a hallucination or dream character). Since we all have free will to follow the path of our soul (the path of growth, soul evolution, God), we can deviate, which is characterized by complete unbalance interacting with lack of faith and dysfunctional immaturity and other life-staggering and growth-stagnating habits. Souls who lose their way and do not see the light are helped by people like Sylvia Browne, who finds spirits and tells them to go into the light. To reincarnate or give it all up and join God is always a choice. Free will characterizes all. The Dali Lama, a physical spirit guide, will not rest until all the souls are free from attachment. Literally, he will not go to heaven, and will continue to be reincarnated until each and every soul evolves into the person they want to be and are thus released into heaven forever.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Metaphysics Kicks Ass! Pt. I
I came from my parents which came from the DNA of their ancestors which came from building blocks of amino acids in the water which came from the particles that originated with the birth of the sun which came from the death of another sun and it continues like this on and on until the big bang because a sun is just a lot of hydrogen and a little helium which are just matter and all matter came from the big bang which was just all of space, time, matter and energy in a dot the size of a standard comma that exploded but that means all matter may have existed already within that dot or at least the potential for all matter but where did that dot exist within?
Maybe it was a splash in the ocean of another universe. We just don’t know. We don’t know what made it explode either. That’s where the idea of the dot exploding because of a purpose, such as an intelligent being setting it in motion, comes into play. “Let there be light”. But don’t some people refer to God as light? Was God originating himself, or performing some sort of mitosis or meiosis to reproduce from itself? A vacuum? A circle? A circle-vacuum? Maybe a continuation of the birth-rebirth-cycle- like linear genesises (genisi?). Or maybe it’s not just linear, but each time the cycle is repeated, it has expanded over time- as if it were growing. Maybe that expands each time, until God realizes himself through manifestations of the dimensions of the universe (space-time-matter-energy are just manifestations of God that he is or isn’t limited to). (Maybe it contracts again once it moves on to the next stage, and everyone who connected to the source made it on to form a new higher power, but we all have a chance to catch the next boat?)
If God isn’t limited to the universe, that would make sense, because God could be the sum of an infinite amount of space that encompasses everything that exists, as if the universe were a dot that could fit under God’s microscope. Or maybe when God said “light”, did he mean “light” as in stars (hydrogen and helium), or electricity, or the primal force or energy that holds the universe together? Because stars aren't the only things that shine- spirituals and John Lennon proclaim there is a light inside that shines on forever. Possibly the energy of our souls have God’s light in them, thereby making all my theories for “let there be light” correct. Maybe everything in the whole universe has this light inside, but humans, because of our nature (the pineal gland known as the “God spot”), are the only ones conscious of it and can tap into our third eye (maybe dolphins can too, because their brains are bigger).
The implications of science can be a stunning cause for unity and religion-
The spiral staircase double helix spheric 0 and 1 and infinity cyclical expansion/contraction hourglass shapes vibrations waves are all constant in nature. The universe is 99% hydrogen in the elementrary sense and 90% of this mysterious force known as dark matter, the earth is 70% water and the human body is 70% water (keep in mind water is mostly hydrogen, but where does dark matter fit in? the soul? Electricity? The source?) Humans are genetically 99.9% the same- only a tiny twist in DNA supplies all the variations of human life today. The brain and the power of belief are so powerful that we are only beginning to make sense of what mystical religions have known forever- we are capable of supernatural, telekinetic and divine powers.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
“Dolphins Commit Suicide, Not Realizing They Are God” (An R&B Gnostic Psalm)
“Dolphins Commit Suicide, Not Realizing They Are God” (An R&B Gnostic Psalm)
Like an asteroid that got hit too many times
And never got to form a sphere
Your psyche is oblong
It’s been traumatized
It needs tenderness to fill the craters
It needs love to complete the circle
In order to finish what it started
You need to change your life
I said you need to let God in there
Or at least let your guard down for a lover in your life
Life is what you make it
Seeing is not believing
I have found
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
So do what you love
Baby do what you love
Do what you love
Baby do what you love
Live your life as if it was sent from above
You can be anyone, your soul it can’t be crushed
If you just believe
Then you will see
Seeing is not believing
If you believe
Then you will see
Yeah!
If you just believe alright
Then you will see the light
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
That is what I’ve found
Have you ever done something so loving
That you made someone’s day?
Have you ever said something so wise
That you couldn't believe it came from your head?
You got a light inside, you gotta let it shine
Have you ever looked in the mirror on a good day
And said I look as good as I feel?
Or created something so beautiful?
Because you got the light inside of you
It reflects in everything you do
And when you doubt that you're divine, it makes me want to cry
Life is what you make it
Seeing is not believing
I have found
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
So do what you love
Baby do what you love
Do what you love
Baby do what you love
Live your life as if it was sent from above
You can be anyone, your soul it can’t be crushed
If you just believe
Then you will see
Seeing is not believing
If you believe
Then you will see
Yeah!
If you just believe alright
Then you will see the light
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
That is what I’ve found
A pessimist will go through the day
And see things that only support his philosophy
While a person with an attitude that’s positive
Will find everyday miracles and God because
Their beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophesy
You are truth (you are truth)
You are love (you are love)
You are beauty (you are beauty)
You are the highest idea you could have of yourself
Sometimes it seems like you’re going backwards
Because life it goes in cycles
But every time you return to the same old temptation places you’ve been before
You come back a whole lot wiser, that is, if you allow yourself to grow
We can never say we’re better off alone
We’re just a thought in God’s brain
If other thoughts weren’t being created
We wouldn’t know what we were
Cause we’d have nothing to compare in relation
We'd be a zero
So look at your brothers and sisters with respect
We all got reasons to be here
We all do stuff that hurts
Rise above the pain and be a hero
But the time will come when we die
When we reckon ourselves as the source:
The spirit in the mind
Until then we can only guess
And thus we’re only human
Life is what you make it
Seeing is not believing
I have found
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
So do what you love
Baby do what you love
Do what you love
Baby do what you love
Live your life as if it was sent from above
You can be anyone, your soul it can’t be crushed
If you just believe
Then you will see
Seeing is not believing
If you believe
Then you will see
Yeah!
If you just believe alright
Then you will see the light
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
That is what I’ve found
Like an asteroid that got hit too many times
And never got to form a sphere
Your psyche is oblong
It’s been traumatized
It needs tenderness to fill the craters
It needs love to complete the circle
In order to finish what it started
You need to change your life
I said you need to let God in there
Or at least let your guard down for a lover in your life
Life is what you make it
Seeing is not believing
I have found
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
So do what you love
Baby do what you love
Do what you love
Baby do what you love
Live your life as if it was sent from above
You can be anyone, your soul it can’t be crushed
If you just believe
Then you will see
Seeing is not believing
If you believe
Then you will see
Yeah!
If you just believe alright
Then you will see the light
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
That is what I’ve found
Have you ever done something so loving
That you made someone’s day?
Have you ever said something so wise
That you couldn't believe it came from your head?
You got a light inside, you gotta let it shine
Have you ever looked in the mirror on a good day
And said I look as good as I feel?
Or created something so beautiful?
Because you got the light inside of you
It reflects in everything you do
And when you doubt that you're divine, it makes me want to cry
Life is what you make it
Seeing is not believing
I have found
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
So do what you love
Baby do what you love
Do what you love
Baby do what you love
Live your life as if it was sent from above
You can be anyone, your soul it can’t be crushed
If you just believe
Then you will see
Seeing is not believing
If you believe
Then you will see
Yeah!
If you just believe alright
Then you will see the light
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
That is what I’ve found
A pessimist will go through the day
And see things that only support his philosophy
While a person with an attitude that’s positive
Will find everyday miracles and God because
Their beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophesy
You are truth (you are truth)
You are love (you are love)
You are beauty (you are beauty)
You are the highest idea you could have of yourself
Sometimes it seems like you’re going backwards
Because life it goes in cycles
But every time you return to the same old temptation places you’ve been before
You come back a whole lot wiser, that is, if you allow yourself to grow
We can never say we’re better off alone
We’re just a thought in God’s brain
If other thoughts weren’t being created
We wouldn’t know what we were
Cause we’d have nothing to compare in relation
We'd be a zero
So look at your brothers and sisters with respect
We all got reasons to be here
We all do stuff that hurts
Rise above the pain and be a hero
But the time will come when we die
When we reckon ourselves as the source:
The spirit in the mind
Until then we can only guess
And thus we’re only human
Life is what you make it
Seeing is not believing
I have found
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
So do what you love
Baby do what you love
Do what you love
Baby do what you love
Live your life as if it was sent from above
You can be anyone, your soul it can’t be crushed
If you just believe
Then you will see
Seeing is not believing
If you believe
Then you will see
Yeah!
If you just believe alright
Then you will see the light
Seeing is not believing
It’s the other way around
That is what I’ve found
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Questionnaire to Help You be a Person of Conviction
Forming an Ideology:
By Answering these Questions Thoughtfully, You Can Find out What You Know For Sure and Be A Person of Convictions.
In my ideal world, in what way would people act differently?
How can I be the change I want to see in the world?
What morals are common sense to me that other people don’t seem to get? How can we as a society work together for these higher ideals?
How can I balance your obligations to your body and your mind?
Anything else comes second: family, friends, teachers, bosses. If you don’t have your health, both physical and mental, then you are useless to them.
What kind of people am I attracted to? What patterns and cycles do I fall into?
What are my strengths and weaknesses both personality wise and activity wise?
If you don’t build on your strengths and weaknesses, then you are like a flower that never blossomed, or a caterpillar that never morphed into a butterfly.
What makes me sad about how other people act? Why might that be? How can our society change that? How can I help other people? This goes back to strengths and weaknesses.
How can I express myself? That is, how can I get people to understand me?
And how can I take all of my experiences and build off of them to become specialized in some form of life? This also goes back to strengths and weaknesses. If words are insufficient, how can I act to show people how I feel? Or how can I show people how I care, and that I think about them?
Who was I before I learned how to speak, how to tell time, and other modes of human limitations? Who was I before traumatic and other life altering experiences happened to me? What part of me is just habit? What do I say or do that I got from other people’s rules? What do I say or do that I got from other people’s characteristics I admire? What do I say or do that is only for pleasing other people?
What have I done in the past to other people or to myself that makes me shudder or disgusts me?
In what situations might breaking the law or ten commandments might be excused?
How can I act in a way that will not be misinterpreted?
What am I afraid of? Which of your fears are irrational?
What mistakes have I made? What did I learn from them about myself and my relation to life and the people in it?
What gives me the greatest joy in life?
What about the world is beautiful to me? How can I routinely stand back and take in its beauty? How can I participate with nature? How can I create something beautiful?
What quotes inspire me? What books inspire me? Movies? Music? What is it about it that really speaks to me? What is it saying? What truth am I connecting to? How can I build on these truths? How can I argue them?
Who do I love unconditionally? What degrees of love do I have for my fellow species? How can I show and make love without compromising who I am? What are my passions? What makes me lose track of time in a healthy way? What keeps me going? How can I keep other people going? How can I contribute to the source of my love and passions?
Once you finish, you will have the answer to this question: If my desires imprison me, which ones are more worth my time and which ones? What might I have to sacrifice in order to protect my beliefs? Am I willing to do so? What have I outgrown already? What part of me should I never compromise?
What Insights of Yours Can You Add to Figuring out The Mysteries of Life? Find Out:
What have I taken on a leap of faith?
Whether you're right or wrong, either way it’s a leap of faith. Which direction gives you the most hope? Why?
What do people call God that really isn’t God in the sense it is unexplainable? What does that leave? Is reason more important than intuition? What about what logic can’t answer?
Cosmology: Is there a structured order to reality? What patterns have I found in life?
Ontology: What is the difference between my childhood over-active imagination and the feeling of getting high and hallucinating? How are those two experiences any less real than sober or mature experiences? How are my dreams different from reality in terms of how it affects me?
Human nature: How can I generalize how humans act? Is this an over-simplification? What evidence can I point to? How has mankind progressed? In what areas have they remained the same?
Politics: Are borders necessary? Should the world be “every country or man for themselves”? Do stronger countries have obligations for weaker ones? If we can all agree that nobody wants their country, or their cause (in the case of religious fundamentalists who want their religion to rule the world, and same with communism and capitalism) to be lost, how can we all compromise and respect each other?
By Answering these Questions Thoughtfully, You Can Find out What You Know For Sure and Be A Person of Convictions.
In my ideal world, in what way would people act differently?
How can I be the change I want to see in the world?
What morals are common sense to me that other people don’t seem to get? How can we as a society work together for these higher ideals?
How can I balance your obligations to your body and your mind?
Anything else comes second: family, friends, teachers, bosses. If you don’t have your health, both physical and mental, then you are useless to them.
What kind of people am I attracted to? What patterns and cycles do I fall into?
What are my strengths and weaknesses both personality wise and activity wise?
If you don’t build on your strengths and weaknesses, then you are like a flower that never blossomed, or a caterpillar that never morphed into a butterfly.
What makes me sad about how other people act? Why might that be? How can our society change that? How can I help other people? This goes back to strengths and weaknesses.
How can I express myself? That is, how can I get people to understand me?
And how can I take all of my experiences and build off of them to become specialized in some form of life? This also goes back to strengths and weaknesses. If words are insufficient, how can I act to show people how I feel? Or how can I show people how I care, and that I think about them?
Who was I before I learned how to speak, how to tell time, and other modes of human limitations? Who was I before traumatic and other life altering experiences happened to me? What part of me is just habit? What do I say or do that I got from other people’s rules? What do I say or do that I got from other people’s characteristics I admire? What do I say or do that is only for pleasing other people?
What have I done in the past to other people or to myself that makes me shudder or disgusts me?
In what situations might breaking the law or ten commandments might be excused?
How can I act in a way that will not be misinterpreted?
What am I afraid of? Which of your fears are irrational?
What mistakes have I made? What did I learn from them about myself and my relation to life and the people in it?
What gives me the greatest joy in life?
What about the world is beautiful to me? How can I routinely stand back and take in its beauty? How can I participate with nature? How can I create something beautiful?
What quotes inspire me? What books inspire me? Movies? Music? What is it about it that really speaks to me? What is it saying? What truth am I connecting to? How can I build on these truths? How can I argue them?
Who do I love unconditionally? What degrees of love do I have for my fellow species? How can I show and make love without compromising who I am? What are my passions? What makes me lose track of time in a healthy way? What keeps me going? How can I keep other people going? How can I contribute to the source of my love and passions?
Once you finish, you will have the answer to this question: If my desires imprison me, which ones are more worth my time and which ones? What might I have to sacrifice in order to protect my beliefs? Am I willing to do so? What have I outgrown already? What part of me should I never compromise?
What Insights of Yours Can You Add to Figuring out The Mysteries of Life? Find Out:
What have I taken on a leap of faith?
Whether you're right or wrong, either way it’s a leap of faith. Which direction gives you the most hope? Why?
What do people call God that really isn’t God in the sense it is unexplainable? What does that leave? Is reason more important than intuition? What about what logic can’t answer?
Cosmology: Is there a structured order to reality? What patterns have I found in life?
Ontology: What is the difference between my childhood over-active imagination and the feeling of getting high and hallucinating? How are those two experiences any less real than sober or mature experiences? How are my dreams different from reality in terms of how it affects me?
Human nature: How can I generalize how humans act? Is this an over-simplification? What evidence can I point to? How has mankind progressed? In what areas have they remained the same?
Politics: Are borders necessary? Should the world be “every country or man for themselves”? Do stronger countries have obligations for weaker ones? If we can all agree that nobody wants their country, or their cause (in the case of religious fundamentalists who want their religion to rule the world, and same with communism and capitalism) to be lost, how can we all compromise and respect each other?
Eric Voegelin on "Stupidity"
Voegelin and stupidity:
"The idea of man is not a question of arbitrary definitions, rather, man is discovered in quite specific historic places and in quite concrete situations. In the Hellenic society, man was experienced by the philosophers of the classical period as a being who is constituted by the nous, by reason. In the Israelite society man is experienced as the being to whom God speaks his word, that is, as a pneumatic being who is open to God's word. Reason and spirit are the two modes of constitution of man. This world itself exists by reason of a mystery, and the cause of this being of the world, of which man is component, we call 'God'.
"One cannot dedivinze himself without dehumanizing himself, because to do so is to close off oneself to the divine, whether it be the rationally divine or the pneumatically divine, that is, the philosophical or revelational divine. In both cases there occurs a loss of reality. Typically, the reality of man is put in the place of the lost divine reality, which alone grounds the reality of man, so that in place of the ground of being as the cause of being, man as the cause of being advances to the point of exaggeration in the idea that man must be the creator of the world. There you have in a nutshell the problem of Hitler- 'The world shall be as I wish it!' Stupidity here shall mean that a man, because of his loss of reality, is not in a position to rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.
"If I have lost certain sectors of reality from my range of experience, I will also be lacking the language for appropriately characterizing them. That means that parallel to the loss of reality and to stupidity there is always the phenomenon of illiteracy. There is illiteracy among people who are able to read and write very well, but who, as soon as it is a matter of understanding a problem of reason or of spirit, or questions about right action, of justice, are completely uncomprehending, because they do not get it.To be a leader, one must be in a position of power, administer the law with religious conscientiousness, and defend the faith. That is, he must rule by power, reason, and spirit. The problem of Hitler is that he ruled with power that allowed society to exist, but he did not represent reason or spirit. – Voegelin
Voegelin's Division of Man (derived from Aristotle who derived from Hesiod):Those who have authority (led by his own nous, by reason- Aristotle; who himself considers or thinks through all things, who can advise himself, possesses nous- openness toward the divine ground of being- Hesiod)Those who can follow authority (those still being educated; those who never get beyond certain educational levels but at least are still approachable insofar as they listen when a wiser man tells them what is right and what is wrong- Aristotle; who listens to the best- Hesiod)Those who 'rabble' (slave by nature- Aristotle; those who neither thinks nor listens, the “useless man”)Political problem- the 'rabble' in high levels of government.
"The idea of man is not a question of arbitrary definitions, rather, man is discovered in quite specific historic places and in quite concrete situations. In the Hellenic society, man was experienced by the philosophers of the classical period as a being who is constituted by the nous, by reason. In the Israelite society man is experienced as the being to whom God speaks his word, that is, as a pneumatic being who is open to God's word. Reason and spirit are the two modes of constitution of man. This world itself exists by reason of a mystery, and the cause of this being of the world, of which man is component, we call 'God'.
"One cannot dedivinze himself without dehumanizing himself, because to do so is to close off oneself to the divine, whether it be the rationally divine or the pneumatically divine, that is, the philosophical or revelational divine. In both cases there occurs a loss of reality. Typically, the reality of man is put in the place of the lost divine reality, which alone grounds the reality of man, so that in place of the ground of being as the cause of being, man as the cause of being advances to the point of exaggeration in the idea that man must be the creator of the world. There you have in a nutshell the problem of Hitler- 'The world shall be as I wish it!' Stupidity here shall mean that a man, because of his loss of reality, is not in a position to rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.
"If I have lost certain sectors of reality from my range of experience, I will also be lacking the language for appropriately characterizing them. That means that parallel to the loss of reality and to stupidity there is always the phenomenon of illiteracy. There is illiteracy among people who are able to read and write very well, but who, as soon as it is a matter of understanding a problem of reason or of spirit, or questions about right action, of justice, are completely uncomprehending, because they do not get it.To be a leader, one must be in a position of power, administer the law with religious conscientiousness, and defend the faith. That is, he must rule by power, reason, and spirit. The problem of Hitler is that he ruled with power that allowed society to exist, but he did not represent reason or spirit. – Voegelin
Voegelin's Division of Man (derived from Aristotle who derived from Hesiod):Those who have authority (led by his own nous, by reason- Aristotle; who himself considers or thinks through all things, who can advise himself, possesses nous- openness toward the divine ground of being- Hesiod)Those who can follow authority (those still being educated; those who never get beyond certain educational levels but at least are still approachable insofar as they listen when a wiser man tells them what is right and what is wrong- Aristotle; who listens to the best- Hesiod)Those who 'rabble' (slave by nature- Aristotle; those who neither thinks nor listens, the “useless man”)Political problem- the 'rabble' in high levels of government.
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