War on Earth, Ill Will Towards Men

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.  Barack Obama

"Empathy" is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.  Karl Rove

Hello again, alla you shaved monkeys out there in Middle-Earth.  Pope Gregory here again to do a bit of blogging.  And I don't reckon this one will be very long.  I'll of course be doing a blog soon in which we examine Xmas (and Christmas) and where I'll be pointing out that all the celebrating you're doing this part of the year means there may just be hope for you yet.  What I'll be touching on in this blog is the subject of Empathy and why it is important to discuss it during this holiday season, seeing that the whole "Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men" thing is such utter bullshit.

Unless you've been living under a rock, one truth will tattoo itself on the inside of your skull...people sometimes, and in certain situations consistently, aren't very nice, especially when you're discussing their money, or the lack thereof.  The wife and I are continuing to shake our heads as to why oh why did the Republicans get voted back in to at least control of the House of Reps...but then when you see how we actually are, it makes you wonder why you wonder.  Not only are a great number of Uhmurkans not intelligent, but they seem to not even think independently and their lives are ruled by ideologies that someone else gave them.  And when it comes to money, they will lie, cheat and steal and then laugh all the way to the bank.  This is how business is done in Uhmurkah on a consistent basis.  The financial crisis was caused by the removal of regulations and oversight, pushed by the GOP, by people who were writing mortgages and wheeling and dealing with all the restraint of a guy playing roulette after half-a-dozen of those free cocktails.  They continue to receive big bonuses on Wall Street while the middle class is told to bend over and take it.  And in the last election, the electorate, like Kevin Bacon in Animal House said, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

In other news, while folks are getting evicted from their homes for lack of a few thousand dollars, Derek Jeter thinks he should make over $40 million dollars a year playing baseball (because, you know...he does his commercial work for free...or maybe a free bag of razors.)  Big Companies got bailed out, but you never see the CEOs of those companies selling apples on the sidewalk, yet the GOP is against continuing the unemployment benefits.  The GOP is the political party of the Conservative Xian who jumps up and down and rolls around on the floor when someone even suggests we say Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, because they object to taking Yeshua bar Joseph out of the holiday.  They might try "putting Jesus in their heart" first.


I don't want to harp on the Xians, I've skinned them alive already in this blog, but you can see how the Xians blaspheme the name of their deity by their behavior and how every time they do so, another atheist is born.  They leave their churches where after another dose of being accepted by sheep just like them, they then use the N-word right there on the church grounds and talk about Obama being a "Lyin' African" and say that we should not have universal health care and other "Socialist" programs while talking about all our soldiers being "heroes" who are fighting for our freedom while millions die needlessly and lives are otherwise shattered on the other side of the world.

Uhmurkah is a rogue, evil nation, a war-mongering empire that wants to keep the rest of world under its heel and the most patriotic members of this country are the ones who supposedly worship a deity that said that you MUST sell all you have and give it to the poor and that you MUST love all other people as you love yourself and that you MUST be as wise as serpents but be as harmless as doves.  Please oh please do go to Iraq and preach Jesus to someone who's father was blown to bits in Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Talk about how Uhmurkah is a Christian Nation to one of the "enemy combatants" who was made to strip and pose while some of our fine heroic soldiers had their picture taken with the same proud expression as if they had just killed that prize buck.  Witness to that illegal immigrant whose mother died while trying to pass into the US from Mexico.  Talk to that person who lost his job because fine upstanding Xians falsely accused him of improper conduct on the job.  Talk to that person who cannot get medical care because fine Xian folks don't want their money being spent to take care of someone else.  Preach the Good News of Jesus' birth to the person who you don't think should get welfare because they take drugs in order to escape the nightmare that Uhmurkah has become for millions of our people.


ARE THERE NO PRISONS??? ARE THERE NO WORKHOUSES???


Huff huff huff

Why do we put a focus on Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men in the holiday season?  Why is it that Scrooge's nephew appreciates the time above other times of the year?  How is it that after decades of watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and watching A Christmas Carol either on teevee or on stage that it seems to not touch the people that it needs to?  Isn't it clear that the story of Rudolph is about?  Do we need to call him Rudolph the Homosexual Reindeer before it penetrates?

Now, Rudolph, Santa has strict policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell regarding red-noses.  Put this bit of mud over your nose.  Yes, I know you were born that way, but everyone else will see it as a lifestyle choice.

Do we need to call it A Christmas Carol Where a Conservative Republican Who Condemned The Liberal Agenda Learns The True Meaning Of Christmas?  No, we don't...and yet we see the very people who shouldn't need to hear these stories continue to persecute and bully the "misfits" and continue to be just fine letting others either starve or just get by.  By (insert the name of a deity of your choice here)! even A Christmas Carol shows the need for universal health care.


Spirit, will Tiny Pedro live?

No, you selfish bastard, you voted to repeal "Obamacare", and Pedro is the son of an illegal immigrant anyway, so what do you care, he wouldn't be covered anyway, no matter how many times you shout "You Lie" at the President.  If these wetbacks are wont to die, then let them do it and decrease the surplus population in Arizona.  And by the way, you will die of colon cancer because it was a pre-existing condition and you will die because your excrement will back up into your body.  Quite ironic since you were so full of shit before anyhow.  Marley was right, you're a hopeless jerk and I'll leaving now so Death can come along and dropkick you down to Hell.  So there. 

The Truth is that many of us are so repellent, belligerent and hostile in our behavior towards our fellow men the rest of the year that we have to compartmentalize the idea that we should be nice to each other during just a certain part of the year because many find themselves incapable of being nice to others anytime else.  The compartmentalization of observances when I was a "Christian," (but now I'm more "like-Christ" than then) was just one of many incongruous things that made me question the religion.  Why focus on Jesus' birth at a certain time of year and then focus on his death and resurrection at another time of year, besides the fact that the pre-Christians, those "godless heathens," had holidays at those times of the year and the Catholic church allowed the folks to keep certain themes of the holidays but layered their symbols on top of them?  The Catholic Church actually bridged the gap between the old and the new and it was the abrogation of it and the rise of Protestantism that caused us to lose our way even further from the "Good Ol' Days."  But why put these observances into the nice little spaces instead of referring to them throughout the year?  Well, the answer is that the average Xian doesn't really bring to mind these theological concepts throughout the year.

Spirituality and having a mature religious life takes work, it requires you to be committed to it.  As I touched on in my last episode (and I'm afraid I'm close to having an episode in this episode), Xianity is designed to require very little on your part.  As long as you go to church on Sunday and act and dress a certain way, etc...then folks will regard you as an Xian.  Are you on Facebook?  Regularly posting about how blessed you are and thanking Jesus if it's a sunny day and stuff like that also helps.  Meanwhile, continue to fornicate and drink too much and goldbrick at work and generally live in direct opposition to the handy guide book that Yahweh published for you.

It was my actually reading that book objectively without the filter of a Southern Baptist study guide or just via a Sunday School lesson or through the preacher and wanting to focus on my religious life, to be "UberChristian," that I realized why Xianity has become so easy and effortless to practice, because there's nothing really there.  All you have to see as evidence is the conduct of these same people who claim to be Xian.  Empathy doesn't factor into it.  Oh, yes...did you give to the United Way?  Did you help build someone a home for Habitat for Humanity?  Good.  Did you give a few bucks for Haiti relief?  Awesome.  Then of course you sold all that you had and sold your home and then gave all that money to widows in Iraq and then did you put on sackcloth and ashes in mourning for their loss, since as an Uhmurkan, you are to blame, because we are a Democratic Republic, right?  No?  You didn't?  BUZZ...sorry, you lose, maybe next time. 

True Christianity, as laid out in the Bible, is generally impossible unless you're willing to be homeless.  That's why the going to church on Sunday is such a big deal and is something an Xian is told to do consistently.  Because you have to keep up your conditioning.  You have to continually have it bored into your brain that you really are a good person and are faithful to Jesus even if the rest of the week you lied, cheated and stole from others because that's just business in a Capitalistic system, every man for himself, eh?

But Jesus, for all his good traits is also not open to compromise.  He is not a team player, it's his way or the Highway to Hell.  He is very demanding and spelled it out very succinctly what is required to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  That's just one reason I unhitched my wagon.  Another reason as I've noted before is that Jesus is a Semitic deity, along with his dad, Yahweh, and my folks came from Scotland/Ireland/Middle England.  He's AC and I'm DC.  He says "Erb" and I say "Herb," because as Eddie Izzard pointed out...there's a fucking H in it.  He's a little bit country and I'm a little bit rock 'n' roll, etc etc etc.

No, the reason why Christmas (or Xmas)  is such a focus for Xians is it is used to reinforce their self-image and when they see businesses, etc use the Happy Holidays or Seasons' Greetings stuff in order to be sensitive to those who observe the Winter Holiday for other reasons, they get upset and...laughably, claim they are being persecuted.  Because any attempt to relegate their religion is met with hostility and contempt because they sense that house of cards is getting a bit wobbly and one response is to lash out at others to deflect your own sense that you've been had, but the mature response is to think it over and wonder if maybe another's religion is just as valid as yours.  But when you think Xianity is the only game in town, you naturally have to fight and condemn all other religions and all other peoples and you're perfectly okay that we illegally invaded Iraq, because maybe some of our soldiers will convert people to Xianity while they're arresting their neighbors for being "enemy combatants."

Meanwhile...and I'll go into greater detail later on...because the vast majority of these Xians also are the spawn of European immigrants as I am, the whole reason why they are celebrating this season has dishwater to do with the virgin birth of a kid about 2000 years ago because waaay before that, their ancestors were observing the time for different...but similar reasons.

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
It's all right

Jesus, you're an okay guy, really.  No, you're better than that, and I feel for you while so many who claim to live in your name are actually blaspheming you.  It shouldn't be happening to you, you already suffered so much for them and they drag your good name through the mud and excrement.  You're awesomeness covered in awesome sauce.  You rock the Casbah, in fact.  You were my sunshine, my only sunshine...but you didn't make me happy.  I was a misfit (and called a nitwit) and while everyone else was just fine making toys, I wanted to be a dentist...and frankly...several other deities were around before you anyway, who actually ARE the sunshine, not just the bright and morning star. Happy Birthday, anyhow, er...even if...um, you weren't born this time of year...ahem.  I would say I'd hope dad finally gives you that (wink wink) special gift this year...but the world isn't ready to accept you yet, they're too busy shooting their eyes out with the gift you gave them.


Selah 

Things That Go Woohoo In The Night

Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.  Dean Kootnz




Forgive me friends, it's been a few weeks since my last confession.  So why no further bloggage until now?  Well, my last few blogs were a bit on the heavy side.  Deep stuff there, difficult ideas.  A lot of calories for the grey matter to digest.  The well had run dry for me a bit, then.  The big things I wanted to deal with...basically that Yahweh has pretty good PR, but he's ultimately a failure,  a minor, depressing (and depressed) god, not a really powerful and important one like...oh, I dunno...say Teh Mighty Thor who picks his teeth with giant redwoods and craps in the Grand Canyon when no one is watching.  I also expressed the point of view that consciousness is part of nature, is concomitant with physical matter and that consciousness is everywhere, that spirit is present in all creation...a view shared universally with native peoples who haven't had their minds scrambled by "progress."  etc etc etc.

There's a truth about Truth.  Once some of it has been revealed, there's no need to keep crossing that bridge.  We all have the connection to truth and enlightenment is only a thought away.  I don't really need to say anything here at all.  But most likely as you have experienced, I myself had toiled in darkness for a long, long while, trapped in a narrow, repressive ideology and a worldview given to me by others who had that same worldview forced upon them by someone else and about a decade and a half ago, I began to try to dig myself out of that hole and try to understand what the true human experience is.


And speaking of rising from the grave...do you believe in ghosts?


Well, first of all, like many questions along this line, the question is wrong.  Another one is "Do You Believe in God?"  Which first of all is wrong because when that question says "God," in the Western World, due to Yahweh's PR, you automatically think of that Judeo-Xian deity.  But as I have pointed out, very few people worship Yahweh correctly, because, he being an anal retentive, wrote his own instruction guide where it spells it all out.  Do you eat shellfish, f'rinstance?  Wrong-a-ronie.  Do you support loaning someone money and then charging them interest as they pay it back, which is of course a fundamental part of the world economic system?...then you're in direct disobedience against Yahweh's will.  By the way, Xians...there's more verses condemning usury than those verses you use to condemn homosexuality.  But you don't find the Westboro Baptists showing up with signs that say "God Hates Mortgages" do you?


A better question is "If gods exist, what are they?"  Then you can point out all the people going back thousands and thousands of years that recognized such beings and even an atheist must give us the benefit of the doubt.  I'll have more on atheists later in this blog.


A better question regarding ghosts is "If ghosts exist, what are they and WHY are they?"  This blog will hope to integrate some of the topics I've already covered, that we are spirits, yay gods even, currently bound to flesh with the topics of death and the great phenomenon of consciousness in general.  Strap in folks.


First of all, lets examine some scientific principles and truths here.  Matter cannot be created and/or destroyed.  This would then be true for consciousness, if we agree that it is also a part of nature and that matter and spirit are peas in the same cosmic pod.  Despite the ideas of infinity, if we agree that the universe was created due to a "big bang" where all matter and energy was prior to that event coalesced into a single point, then there must be a limit to the amount of matter, and thereby spirit.  The matter that is with us today, from belly-button lint to the Rock o' Gibraltar comes from that original point.  This seems hard to fathom, but science has revealed that physical matter is really only energy that vibrates at a slow enough speed so that it can create stuff.  Stuff is actually empty space.  So the human soul, the spirit, is also a form of energy, which cannot be destroyed...and...therefore there is only so much of it.  I call this idea the Limitation of Soul.  And is why it seems that reincarnation, the idea of reuse and recycle is part of the cosmic system.  We as living beings are energy that in one way allows us to have mortal, physical bodies that allow our spirits to communicate with our physical environment and we are also energy that is our soul, the higher being of consciousness that we actually are.


What's interesting is how many Xians (and Christians) accept the idea of ghosts.  Most Xians would declare with absolute certainty that when a person dies, they either go to Heaven or H E Double-Hockeysticks, that they don't hang around wearing sheets.  The bible is actually less clear on this subject...in fact, sadly, like most of the theology of Xianity, the idea that an Xian goes to Heaven when they die is actually...well...it's simply not in that big book.  In fact, there is more scriptural references that say that an Xian "goes to sleep" and then is awakened on Judgment Day.  For example, why would Jesus bother raising Lazarus from the dead, if he had gone to his "eternal reward" already...and why was Jesus troubled by his death?  Jesus wept, right?  Lazarus was a friend of his.  Jesus missed him, and so gave him extra innings.  If Lazarus was in Heaven after his death, then he would have walked right up to Jesus and bitch-slapped him across his mush.  Some friend you are.


No, it is...like most things that apply to the spiritual aspect of reality...it is not that fucking simple.  


Let's take birth for example...according to Xian theology, when you are born, you are a brand new soul.  Now, this concept is agin the laws of science.  Remember, stuff cannot be created or destroyed, it's continually being recycled.  So no...when you are born, a new soul doesn't appear into your body from thin air, or from the breath of *G*O*D*, etc.  If we agree that organic beings go through a process of evolution, then the spirit must also evolve and grow and go through a period of tweaking and improvement.  Based on my Theory of Woohoo...that the point of absoluteness prior to the Big Bang was *G*O*D*, but in a vacuum with nothing in his head by empty space, then as the universe evolved, so did spirit and as time passes, the universe progresses (pun intended) toward some point in the future, or maybe simply ceaseless permutations of infinite variety, then so does spirit evolve.

This is why there appears to be so many crazy, stupid, generally idiotic people in the world today...we're scraping the bottom of the barrel given the population of this planet. When a baby is born, a soul is put into it and as a soul goes through it's karmic cycle, there is invariably going to be an expression of consciousness and continually sleeps during class and doesn't learn nothin'.  They keep watching Fox News over and over again in each incarnation and are a spiritual cul de sac.  This also why I feel a big change is coming because we may be getting to a saturation point where everyone who has a had a chance to evolve spiritually has had that chance and now it's time to go to phase two.


My own view is that yes, we are moving to a point where Humpty Dumpty does in fact put himself together again, and that we do reincarnate through successive incarnations until we reach a point where we are as perfect as we are going to get and that we reach what could only be called godhood and join back and are part of the cosmic consciousness and we will have "spiritual" bodies if we will have bodies at all.  Note this concept is biblical as it is said that the redeemed will have new, incorruptible bodies in that new life.  Which means you can eat all the Taco Bell you want without getting cramps.


But again, if we accept the existences of ghosts, which I do...it's not that simple.  Because ghosts would clearly be evidence that we don't jump from one failed bag of meat at death to a brand new one at the birth of a new incarnation, there must be some intermediate state that is available to an expression of consciousness than either being wedded to flesh or being like unto a god and enjoying an afterlife of harp-playing or being fed peeled grapes by dozens of virgins, or whathaveyou.


Having established that our human lives are not one ride on the merry-go-round and that's it, let's examine the concept of ghosts themselves and move from there.  Still with me?


We can agree that for the most part, the idea of a ghost is that a human, when they die, does not move on to another state of being, but lingers and "haunts" the locale it was associated with.  Often, those paranormal events that are said to be ghosts are the spirits of murdered people, or people who otherwise met their death in an unexpected or violent manner.  Other times, the ghost haunts a place it was closely connected to in "life" and stubbornly remains there.  In these cases there is either the idea that the spirit may not realize it's body has died or decided it was not going to move on to whatever was next.  Then there is the concept of a ghost being someone you knew well in life who comes back to show you where you lost a family heirloom or something like that.


Now this is not an exhaustive examination of the phenomenon of ghosts, I don't mention poltergeists, for example, but we can say that this is the general understanding:  that a ghost is the spirit of a person, that, when they died, their spirit stayed among us, untied to what we understand an organic body to be.  Frankly, there is a lot of silliness out there regarding ghosts.  Orbs, for instance and other things that weak-minded see in photographs and video clips and because they're looking for ghosts, why, what a coincidence, they see them.  There is an entire industry out there now that runs on the perpetuation of the idea of ghosts and of course you have the concept of (chuckle) "ghost hunting."  Which doesn't involve wearing camouflage or sitting up in a tree all afternoon.  Ever try skinning a ghost?  Better luck brushing a chicken's teeth.  Ghost hunting is now big business and you see many locations advertise the idea that their town is haunted to bring in the tourists.  And of course, given our current state of spiritual incompetence, these folks hunt spiritual entities with yes...a van full of electronic gizmos.  You can't see a ghost, but it'll show up on a polaroid?  These folks need a beginners course on How We See Things, succinctly stated that anything we see is seen because light is reflected/refracted off of it.  You can't video tape wind, only the effect it has on its environment.  You can't see a tornado, for example, just the clouds and dust and debris that it kicks up and gets trapped in the vortex of wind.


So no...if we are dealing with the spiritual, it's not going to show up on your video camera and it's not going to speak into a microphone, because based on the law of How We Make Noises, you need an apparatus for moving air over objects in order to make a sound.  And I don't think ghosts have lungs.  We have to deal with the spiritual like we deal with aspects of our religious lives, with our consciousness.  And if we "see" a ghost or "hear" a ghost it may only be happening on a level of consciousness or our minds may be trying to process information in a way that we can relate to it...given the narrow view of reality that our physical senses only allows us to have.  Can a ghost have a form, via the coalescing and otherwise manipulation of energy?  I am not disputing that.  What I am saying is the idea that modern technology is used to try to prove the existence to "capture" a ghost on film, etc is evidence of our failure to understand the nature of reality, it is the Lust of the Result, the need for PROOF and that if we have an experience that we are honest about and we can't explain it because it doesn't conform to the expected Consensus Reality, that is, how life is "supposed" to be, then it is a paranormal experience.  It doesn't have to happen over and over and over again in a controlled laboratory setting for it to have been real.  And yes, I have a ghost story to tell at the end of this novella.


But back to the general idea that a ghost is a person who died either unexpectedly or violently or otherwise in a fashion that was not of their choosing...or when they died, they wanted to remain and therefore haunt the place(s) that person was closely associated with in "life."  This implies that for our consciousness to move on, once the physical body no longer is able to operate, we have to be and are involved in that process.  That at the moment of death, if we know we are going to die, we mentally are prepared for that transition and somehow actually make a decision to move on.  You'd have to die to prove this theory, so we'll just have to speculate, but we see that, in the case of a violent death, for example, where the body fails quickly without the consciousness having sufficient time to understand what is happening, the spirit lingers.  Also, we can say there are people who, having been so deeply connected to their earthly life, choose to stay around.  Maybe it's unfinished business and they want to intervene in the lives of their families, friends, etc, maybe they don't trust anyone to look after the library like they did, etc.  Maybe they want to haunt those who brought about their untimely end and scare the fertilizer out of them.  Maybe they died young and said "no fair" and are still playing in the hallways.  

Then of course you have the idea of a ghost being someone who didn't linger, but appears in spirit, not necessarily visually, for a specific purpose...like Jacob Marley for example...which is a pretty good example.  In the Christmas Carol, those who were eeevil people in their lives, meaning they were Republicans who were okay with, say...illegal immigrants dying by the hundreds while trying to cross the border into Arizona, and generally wanting to keep all their wealth for themselves while people who are out of work due to their irresponsible financial practices can just do without and starve, or they can have some benefits if they only can pass a drug test first.  If you think we need to cut medicare and social security and that every Uhmurkan doesn't have the deity-given right to medical care...you can look forward to an afterlife of wandering the earth wearing heavy chains with your stock options and your 401K and your stockpile of gold bars attached and having to support your lower jaw with a handkerchief.

Then there are ghosts who come back to help you, like say, turning the wheel at the right instant, or maybe you felt someone unseen shove you out of the way of that falling piano, that sort of thing.  All these cases universally present the concept of a person who, divorced from the flesh, has a state as a spirit and that there is an intermediary state in between simply jumping from a corpse immediately into the next baby that comes along.  There are variations on this theme, of course.  My own idea is that there is perhaps "waiting rooms," humorously shown in the movie Beetlejuice, where those recently deceased have to be processed and sometimes, are simply ghosts because of the bureaucracy.  The Catholic concept of Purgatory shows this idea of a halfway point between living and the next phase.  There is also in cultures around the world the concept of an "Otherworld" where a person can visit and then come back.  Shamans visit these places where the gods and spirits dwell and then come back with wisdom from that place.  There is also the idea of travel between both places by spiritual beings.  Both the Cherokee indians and the ancient Celts for example had in their myths the idea of invisible beings that live in mountains or mounds and that you can visit their magical realm and that they come out and interact with humans.  To the Cherokees, they were invisible warriors that could also appear be be just like them, although from another tribe altogether and to the Celts, they were called Elves and Fairies, etc.  There may very well be a whole range of beings from high gods like Thor or Krishna or Zeus down to the little household spirits that you also see worldwide from both past myths and in the theology of current indigenous peoples.


It may very well be that what is sometimes perceived as a ghost is actually one of these spiritual beings that appears in a shape that we can relate to.  Take demons for example...these are spiritual beings that are said to be able to interact with us in certain ways...but are most potent when they can actually inhabit a living person and "possess" them.  Also, if you notice when you watch those ghost hunters folks on teevee, often they are talking about demonic activity when they are turning out the lights and scaring themselves.


So, yes...we do see through a glass darkly and there are beings that do not obey the natural laws as our science understands them to be, yet are part of nature.  Here follows my "ghost story":


A few years ago, the wifey and I went to the Shiloh National Military Park, the site of the Civil War battle.  Civil War battle sites are regularly said to be haunted, and they certainly meet the criteria of a place where people died violently, and of course in great numbers.  I knew there was stories of Shiloh being haunted before we went, I need to express.  The problem with going somewhere where people have said there has been paranormal activity is it is all too easy to be looking for it and interpreting an experience as paranormal.  All I can do is tell what happened and let you decide.  One of the places in Shiloh where the most bitterest fighting took place was an area called the Sunken Road which links up with a place called The Hornet's Nest...after the idea that the bullets were buzzing by like hornets.  The Union troops during this point of the battle set up a line at the Sunken Road, which as it's name suggests was a road that was at a lower elevation than the surrounding land, basically a natural low trench.  We walked down the Sunken Road path to the Hornet's Nest and back.  Now this was in early September, if I remember right.  There was a breeze, there was the hum and buzz of insects and the bushes and grass and such was moving in the breeze.


On the walk back from the Hornet's Nest area along the Sunken Road path to get back to our car, about midway along the trail, the breeze immediately stopped, there was NO insect, bird or bush or tree noise and the bushes and grass and such around me froze.  I continued walking and for a few more steps, it was as if nature was just frozen in time and space and the only noise was my footsteps.  Then, after a few yards, immediately, like someone turning on a switch, I felt the breeze again, the insects and other nature sounds started up again and the bushes and grass moved slightly in the air.  I instinctively turned to my wife who looked a bit dazed and I asked, "did you feel that?" and she replied that she did.  We had felt and sensed the same thing together.  Now I'll let you take from that what you will.  But there was a physical change in the environment that could not be explained.  There was nothing to block the breeze, etc.  There was a general hush over creation that we both experienced.


I'll also now tell you about something that I haven't told my wife that also occurred at Shiloh.  Also on the grounds of the park are some old Indian mounds.  They're well off the path so I walked to them by myself, so it was just me.  When I got to the location of the mounds...I felt the same thing.  It was like there was a vacuum.  A hush was present over that place.  It has taken me sometime to process this experience and this is my conclusion:

Both the experience on the Sunken Road trail and at the indian mounds was not due to the visitation of a spirit...but the absence of the same.  On the Sunken Road, the hush was due to the movement from that area of ghosts, which itself qualifies as a ghostly encounter.  The energy that a ghost may be did not coalesce into the form of a Union or Confederate soldier, but moved in such a way to make their presence felt by removing from a certain area the energy of that spot.  At the indian mounds, the same would be true, except I was in a place that had been occupied by a certain people for who knows how long but are no longer there...and which no other person has claimed.  It is set aside and has not been paved over by us.  The implication is that whatever spiritual energy that was at that spot has left.  There are no spirits there anymore, either of the indians or the spirits of that land, as the people who the land was used by are gone, and so are the spirits who were also a part of that community.  They have moved on to be somewhere else and nothing else took its place. 


The realization that the phenomenon I experienced was the absence of spiritual energy then reveals that being surrounded by spiritual energy is our normal experience and a "paranormal" experience in the context of a ghostly encounter is when this energy moves in such and such a way.  So this why so many are today spiritually incompetent and why an atheist can glibly say that there is no such thing as spirit.  It's something we naturally experience all the time, like breathing.  And we only truly experience our true spiritual nature when we pay attention to it.  We are, at this moment in a haze of spirit, the air is alive with it.  We are only one thought, one mental decision, away from being part of that larger world.  We are distracted by stuff and petty concerns when the gods and other beings running the entire spectrum of intelligence are all along all around us.  If you want to be a good athlete, you have to work at it, "gifted" athletic ability only goes so far, you have to practice, watch your diet, etc.  The same is true for intellect, you have to study, you have to read, you have to work hard at it.  To be spiritually mature and competent, you also have to exercise and research and pay attention...you are not going to be spiritually complete by simply walking down a church aisle and saying yes to a couple of questions asked by the pastor.  It is not that simple or easy and that is why so many Xians are completely out of touch with reality...they've been suckered into thinking they're reached that place of spiritual completeness but they have not...because you know them by their fruit juices.  And they taste like vinegar.


If there is a Hell, a place where souls are punished, like Luke Skywalker was by the Emperor for his "lack of vision," then Hell is a place not to punish "sinners" because they didn't follow the arbitrary rules set down by Yahweh or another "loving" god, but a place to sequester away that quantity of spiritual energy that refused to grow up and recognize what it was.  A place where defective consciousness is either simply disposed of or isolated so it can't poison the sacred well or...more positively...can be purged by fire and/or cleansed by ice until it's suitable to join us in Heaven or the State of Nirvana or the Halls of Valhalla or the Sephiroth of Kether or what ever name you want to give that that perfect other place we may be destined to inhabit when we are perfected and when all our gold has had the lesser elements burned away from it and we are pure.  When the chaff is separated from the wheat and the sheep are separated from the goats.  Hell would be a place where a spirit would realize the truth and be separated from it and beg and plead to warn, like Jacob Marley did, those still living to realize the truth.  Jacob Marley was allowed to come back...but some are not and told so sad, too bad.  For verily, if they would not listen to the prophets, they will not listen although the dead come back to life to preach unto the lost.  Except in the case of Ebenezer Scrooge that is.  So yes, Glenn Beck...there is even hope for you.


Selah.

The Science of the Irrational

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Mark Twain

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics 
Attributed to Twain, but said by someone else.  Experts differ on who said it.  Attributing this quote to Twain is a lie. 


Mark, you have cleft my heart in twain.  And yet, the saying is true.  As I haz previously stated:  those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know.  Another saying is true:  sometimes those who speak actually do know, but they tell a bunch of lies when they are speaking.  Sometimes the lies are true, "noble lies," and sometimes they are goddamn lies.  And then statistics is the physical world, which is a lie itself.  Sometimes being exposed to Truth is so staggering that if you were just told it outright, (1) you wouldn't believe it and (2) you might have a personal crisis that you couldn't recover from.  Sometimes, that way madness lies.

I am confident there are people, right now...who could tell you EXACTLY what the meaning of life is, but they're in a room with mattresses on the walls and they are wearing pajamas that have really long sleeves that buckle in the back.  This is what makes the character of the Joker in the Batman funny books, and of course the portrayal of the character in Dark Knight, so compelling.  I mean...what if he's the sane one?  If the Joker and Bruce Wayne both have bats in their belfry, which one is in the right?  A scary concept is that they both are, and they are both examples of Chaos and the struggle between it and Order and it seems that Chaos is always getting away with murder while the Agent of Chaos finally catches up with the villain before he goes too far.  And sometimes it's hard to tell who is the good guy.  Batman is a person who we feel understands what THE GREATER GOOD is and we trust that his actions are necessary, but damn, when he dropped that mob boss off that fire escape and snapped his ankles...didn't you wonder?


But back to bearing false witness:

A noble lie would be when, if you believe this, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor well ahead of time, but did nothing about it, because America needed to join into WWII and needed to be pushed.  Because the US of A wasn't a war-mongering nation scared of boogey-men back then.  We were just getting our heads on straight after the Great Depression (which wasn't really great, was it?) but didn't really see what all the fuss was.  Blitzkrieg shmitzkrieg.  Americans weren't displaced Europeans back then, most Americans had forsaken the ways of their various homelands and cut ties to a lot of their traditions and weren't returning the long-distance calls from their ancestral deities, who tend to call collect anyway.  Europe can take care of itself and hey, I left Europe for a better life anyway.  Good riddance.  So, yeah...FDR may have known all along, but for THE GREATER GOOD, Pearl Harbor had to happen, because frankly...we may have then realized too late the threat poised by Nazi Germany and I don't know about you, but I do not look sexy in lederhosen. 

But Roosevelt, like Batman, is just too BIG a person to haul before a Congressional committee, and this is also why there has never been a satisfactory result into the investigation of the assassination of JFK.  Nuff said.

For examples of goddamn lies, I'll refer you to the Fox News Channel.

Another noble lie would be to say that I know how the universe was created.  A goddamn lie would be to say we're merely shaved apes or to claim conclusively that there is no such thing as gods, spirits, banshees, Keebler elves or anything else in that category.  That's fundamentalist talk and someone who claims they know the Truth and says they are sure about something should immediately be ignored and shunned like that stuff growing there in the back of the fridge that might have been potato salad once, but now it's hard to tell.  That new organism is right now wondering if there is intelligent life outside the fridge.  And your insistence on watching bad teevee still has it wondering.

I have made some rather cosmic claims in this hyar blog and have come to some rather heavy conclusions but what I want to make perfectly clear is you need to take what I'm giving here and come to your own conclusions.  A great deal of what I have offered for consideration here is plausible and I try to arrive at each conclusion logically and reasonably.  Except when I'm clearly talking rubbish.  And I'm trying to dispense Truth in small enough increments so you don't lose your mind and begin to go around wearing too much make-up while asking people, "you want to know how I got these scars?"

I believe there are somethings we can be sure about.  There are some small Truths that we should embrace.  One of them, atheists, is that if our minds are just side-effects of our nervous systems, etc...then we have no Mind and we're just biological robots who have been tricked into thinking we are self-aware.  And even atheists don't claim that.  I pity them, the way I pity the executives of Blockbuster Video.  They knew their company was doomed...but only made it worse.  Most people when they are in hole, do not ask for a shovel so they can dig deeper.  But this is how atheists and some corporations are currently operating.

There is a cynical attitude in the general public toward more "esoteric" philosophical ideas.  That it's all rubbish, lies, nonsense and when it goes over their head, they employ the term "mumbo-jumbo."  Even those folks like me out there who are willing to dip their toe in the forbidden puddles, having found out that fundamentalist, institutionalized religion's puddle is full of soul-eating acid, often read one book, etc and then go "that's interesting" but then they go find someone else's ideas and read those, and then move on...never stopping to graze on any new pasture for very long.  At some point we need to say, "yes...this I can accept and embrace and actually practice, while keeping my mind open and continuing to employ critical thinking so I don't start hanging around on rooftops dressed like a flying rodent."

This means checking out all the ancient wisdom and knowledge that has accumulated throughout human history, especially for the last 10,000 years, while also taking a look at modern science and seeing what it has to reveal as well and see where there is any synergy between what appears to be opposite mindsets.  I'm getting an awful late start at this, and I'll need a couple hundred more years to be able to absorb only a certain percent of that knowledge.  And then modern science and technology right now is advancing so much, no one person can be expected to be able to take in everything in order to arrive at a good Theory of Everything.  Which is not to say it would even be the Law of Everything, and if there is one evil being practiced in the scientific community, it is treating Theories as Laws and therefore closing down the mind and trying to tie reality down into what are really just guesses.  Pretty good guesses, but shots in the cosmic dark, nonetheless.

Yes, it is true that some physicists who explore the Big Bang Theory are also students of the kabbalah and see a harmony between those concepts.  Our science has progressed to the point where we see able to see some wisdom to some things that ancient peoples practiced, regarding their relationship to the natural and "unnatural" world...although all phenomena would be part of Nature.  It's all one fruit salad, mixed altogether.  You can pick out only the bits of apple if you want, but that's going against the grain, it is more tedious and you're not able to enjoy the whole salad.

I have tried to read The Golden Bough by James Frazer.  "A Study in Magic and Religion."  Originally published in 1922, it is an exhaustive examination of the religious practices and traditions of indigenous peoples...and a dismissal of them.  It's a perfect time capsule of the prejudice in the Western World at that time, which still continues today, that aboriginal peoples have lived in ignorance for millennia and that everything they believe about how the world works can just be summarily dismissed as "superstition."  Atheists love this word and relegate all religion to superstition.  A better definition for the word superstition, if your are a fundamentalist, is "someone's else's religion."

James Frazer, for example, goes to great lengths to inform his readers that in some "savage" cultures one of the most desirable roles to have is that of the shaman/witchdoctor/medicine man.  And one of the responsibilities of this person is to intercede on behalf of his village, etc to make sure the weather is agreeable considering how his tribe "makes its living."  Frazer then describes how this wanna-be shaman then tricks and deceives his gullible tribesmen into thinking he actually has some power over the weather and thereby lives a life of priviledge with his own private hut and basically lives by the principle:  I Don't Want To Work, I Just Want To Bang On De Drum All Day.  Frazer, in the next breath, informs the reader that the penalty for not making it rain...or not being able to make the rain stop, etc...is DEATH.

So...Jimmy...let me get this straight.  This cunning dude wants to be the shaman because of how cushy a job it is...he cons his simple-minded people into thinking he can make the sun shine...but if he can't, he is killed by his tribe?  Seems the risk doesn't match up with the reward, there.  I mean, Jimmy...please don't appear on the teevee show Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, because you will go home in disgrace.  I mean...seriously.  Yes, Godfather, I can whack Bobby "Big Nose" Linguine for you.  Sure sure.  (A week later.)  No, sorry, Godfather, I wasn't able to whack Big Nose for you and he's taken over the wharf and the dogtracks, too.  My bad.  Oh well.  I'll be going now.  What?  Take me for a ride?  Sure, thanks.

On a more speculative note, Frazer also dismisses stuff like the practice of say, making a clay figurine that represents someone and then doing something to it and expecting that person to have a reaction to it because there is no invisible energy field that connects similar or dissimilar objects so therefore such a practice (despite such folks using such practices for centuries) is impossible and just childish superstition.  And then...scientists have now discovered dark matter/dark energy which is at least 85% of the total contents of the universe and yes...like George Lucas' force...it binds the universe together.  Dark matter/dark energy is pervasive throughout the universe and particles of it are passing through you right now.  It fills your home, it's in your refrigerator with the intelligent potato salad, it's in your pants.  So, invisible energy field...CHECK.  Now where is my modeling clay?

I have stated that a plausible reason why there is so much chaos in the world and why it seems people consistently seem to be oblivious to common sense and continually make wrong decisions is that the universe is alive with consciousness and we're all on this "ride" as Bill Hicks put it.  We want LIFE to be a roller coaster ride because we want thrills and spills.  A little order goes a long way.  And yes, as stupid as many people seem, as frustrating as our jobs seem to be at times, it's because there is no constant other than constant, seemingly pointless, change.  We are all capable, when faced with a decision, to make the right decision, to research, to plan, to decide what is best.  And yet we seem our own worst enemies at times.

This is the challenge.  To realize that the universe resists the inertia that occurs when things are orderly and perfect, but also to try to realize that perfection as much as we can, even if it is impossible, from our point of view.  It's irrational to become an Agent of Chaos, right?  Yet such people are also part of the system.  Bruce Wayne needs the Joker because it would be too easy to be content with what you were able to do as Batman, yet an Agent of Chaos like the Joker reminds the Hero that you cannot rest and let your guard down...being an Agent of Order requires constant...VIGILANCE and sometimes you, yes you...even you there in the back nodding off...YOU may be the only one who can do anything about it.  Whether it's speaking your mind, or going to Mount Doom on a fool's errand, you cannot put up you heels if you care about what is right and expect the hottentots to just gather up their toys and go home.

Part of being able to do this is to try to understand what THE GREATER GOOD is, and one of the first steps is to give up the arbitrary ideas of morality and such, and know that our understanding of right and wrong is not a result of evolution and we do not need religion to teach us right and wrong.  What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong and one Truth is this:   because we are part of the universal consciousness, we are already illuminated and enlightened.  We are not lost, we are found already, we just have to go within to discover ourselves.  The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.  And maybe we can even find where all those missing socks disappeared to.

We need to embrace and believe in change and try to enjoy the ride.  But I also believe that we are also in charge of both up-keeping the roller coaster and, like an erector set, we can change and modify the ride because physical reality is an illusion, always in a state of flux and change, everything from mountain ranges to soap bubbles.  Therefore, the implication is that reality is mutable and malleable.  Do you pray to your deity?  As the Pink Floyd song puts it, those are your "softly spoken magic spells."  What are you praying about?  For your deity to intervene and change your world for the better?  Yes, shape the clay, yon potter at yon wheel.  And we are also potters, even if your name isn't Harry.


Being rational about irrational things makes atheists get all red in the face.  But what we continually have to remember is that we do not experience reality directly, as I have already covered.  We experience a Consensus Reality that is based on the feedback our senses receive from our environment.  But reality for you is different than the reality your housecat experiences.  The spider making that web in the corner of the ceiling experiences a different reality.  Humans, cats, spiders...so on and so on each have what could be a called a rational reality that obeys certain rules and meets certain expectations.  And yet, those "realities" are fictions. We're like the blind man touching an elephant, it's different wherever we just happen to be touching it.  Rarely are we able to touch the elephant all at once.  Doing that requires escaping the prison of our limited sensory apparatus.  There is a higher reality that defies the abilities of our senses (or the scientific equipment we make using our limited senses and worldview) to comprehend.  That higher reality is consciousness, which is the real you, the thing you really are.  As a Jedi Master said once, "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

Pinch you in your narrow ideology I will.

Thinking reality is solely that which you can see, hear, taste, touch and smell, or what can only be reproduced over and over in a laboratory or which has to be proven by mathematics is like saying you can build an earthquake-proof skyscraper out of Legos(tm).  The physical world is the Legos, it is built out of atoms which are empty space.  Behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain is the real reality, the mechanism that produces the dog and pony show of the Consensus Reality and sometimes you need the perception and innocence and irrationality of something other than what makes us "human" to pull back that curtain.  To pass through the veil of superficial reality, to knock down the false storefront on the movie set and see the director sitting there.  You don't go to the theater to see a play or a musical where the curtain is never opened.  And yet, that is our current lot.  The really interesting stuff is going on not only behind the scenes, it's going on in front of our eyes, but we immediately are bombarded with physical stimuli which has us going, "ooh look shiny" when the real brilliance is not seen with the mortal eye.  But to most of us, it's like looking into the sun, we can't bear it.  Thinking outside the box is itself a limiting idea.  We need to not only think outside the box...we need to obliterate the box, because we make our boxes, or allow others to make them.

If you can do this, you're not in Kansas anymore, because you realize there never was such a thing in the first place.  There is an area of flat land in the middle of the United States but it doesn't have a name, we have created these boundaries, these restrictions, these cages.

Your sense are lying to you.  It's a noble lie, but if you rely upon them solely, you're misunderstanding that you are your Mind, you need your senses to function while you're a golem made out of meat and bone, but they are not revealing reality to you.  And your Mind is able to do more than just react to stimuli and it has its own "senses."  Sometimes your mind can itself be the stimuli, the catalyst.  This is what the ancients realized when their nervous systems became advanced enough to allow them to be aware of consciousness at the higher levels.   Those who want to control the Consensus Reality and dictate to you what is right and wrong understand this.  They want you to be obsessed with stuff, whether it's your wealth or your ideology or your cultural identity, etc but you cannot serve *G*O*D* and Mammon.

Get on the roller coaster, c'mon.  Strap in. Yes, it'll scare the fertilizer out of you sometimes...but you'll find it's a lot of fun, too.  And later on...you might be able to turn right instead of left and get on a whole 'nother ride altogether.  Do something irrational today, when no one else is looking.  And when someone asks if you want to see their "disappearing pencil trick," politely decline, and then run in the opposite direction.

And all I have just told you is a lie.  It's up to you to decide if it's noble or not.

Selah

In the Beginning was the Woohoo

Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.
Max Beckmann

My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, then in your imagination God is supposed to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people.
John Henrik Clarke

All of us have mortal bodies, composed of perishable matter, but the soul lives forever: it is a portion of the Deity housed in our bodies 
Flavius Josephus

 Well, you dirty angels you, how did it feel after reading my last blog entry and finding out that you are a god?  You didn't get up on top of the roof and jump off with a tablecloth around your neck thinking you could fly did you?  Good.  Now lissen.  When I start talking "nonsense" like I did last time, the most important thing is not what I am saying but what I'm not saying.  I used to love Mad Magazine when I was younger.  Yes, you can blame Mad Magazine along with W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx and Mark Twain among others for how I am today.  Mr Fields, Marx and Twain or currently unavailable to receive your feedback.  Please press nine if you want to hear a raspberry.  Sorry all operators are busy, your negative feedback is important to us, please hold for a couple decades.

But back to Mad Magazine.  The wonderful Sergio Aragones would do these little cartoons in the margins of the pages.  Just little small cartoon strips a half-inch high or so without dialogue.  Reading between the lines of Mad Magazine was for some issues the funniest stuff in there.  And when you're reading a sacred text, or sometimes reading this blog, that's what you'll need to do, read between the lines, to stop being so literal minded and let Truth sneak up on you side-wise.

When the bible says Adam and Eve were in a perfect state of bliss and that they were evicted by eating the forbidden fruit, an event that Terence McKenna has referred to as "the world's first drug bust," that didn't actually happen.  It's not important if it actually  happened or not...what is the most important thing, is what it means.  It's a story trying to express a Truth, not trying to document tru fax.  The people who wrote that stuff were keyed into the larger picture, which is why the bible still captivates us because there is a lot of Truth in there amongst all the fiddle-faddle.  Those ancient writers are rolling their eyes at all the folks still suggesting the earth is only 6000 years old in terms of human activity...and it's so hard to do that today when we now know that, f'rinstance, the Sumerians were already building little pink houses and grilling in their backyard and reminding each other not to wear white shoes after Labor Day at least that far back.


But that's what happens when ideology is more important than facts and reason and otherwise using your gray matter.  Spirituality isn't supposed to be the province of flakes.  Oh yes, there's plenty of bubble-headed folks out there for whom every day seems like a Renaissance Festival and they create for themselves silly, desperate religions because Dungeons and Dragons wasn't realistic enough for them.  I don't want to offend someone here, but if you go around calling yourself a witch or a druid, I'd like to see your diploma and a few references.  The ancient Druids spent a dozen years or more learning all their mystic knowledge and memorizing oral histories and had their own secret coded language, etc...putting on a white bedsheet and wearing exciting jewelry is playing dress up.  Yes, I know you've read a few books, but please.  It's like when Dr Howard and Dr. Fine and Dr Howard put on surgical smocks and administered anesthetic by rapping someone in the noggin with a wooden mallet.  I don't think they finished med school.  Call me crazy, porcupine, but if you claim to be something that you're not, it's not helping some of us folks who are trying to un-educate and dis-inform.  You're scaring the straight people.

My wife slipped one day and called me a "shaman" which I denied immediately and I could technically be called a "mystic" but I shun such labels and categories.  I'm just a loser from Middle Tennessee who is trying to kick it old school while trying to reconcile 21st Century science and knowledge into a Theory of Everything.  Or the Theory of Woohoo.  I don't see that there is anything special about this, just like the Ancient Egyptians didn't think themselves weird for practicing what we would today call "magic" if they wrote a spell on a piece of papyrus then dunked the papyrus in a dish of water, allowing the vegetable-based ink to dissolve into the water, then would drink the water, and the magic spell, because they woke up with a headache, or wanted to catch a lot of fish that day, or wanted to shag that chick down in Memphis that they know, the one with the awesome wig and perfect almond eyes.  Tapping into the mysteries of the universe is something folks used to take for granted, somewhere along the way a significant population of humans lost their contentment for that and I'll be examining that when I do my "let's all go back and live in wig-wams again" blog entries.  And yes...modern religion gets the credit and blame for modern civilization.


Now of course fundamentalists like atheists and Xians and such people who are likewise mesmerized by the 24/7 brightly-lit and spasmodic carnival that the superficial material universe is write myth and such off as being created because people didn't know any better before SCIENCE.  Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of myth.  When you read about the Cherokees and that they thought that the earth floated on a big ocean and that it was suspended by four cords at the cardinal points and that the sky was the underside of a big dome of rock and that the sun didn't go into the sea, but slipped over the sky vault at night and then traveled behind that rock arch to reappear in the morning, that was their unique interpretation.  This story meant something to them.  It didn't matter, the sun rose and set, just the same.  And the same go for gods.  The idea that people created gods because they wanted to explain where thunder comes from, for example, because they didn't know the science behind it is just plain wrong and that is making the mistake of applying our modern sensibilities onto ancient and aboriginal peoples.  No, the Ancient Egyptians or aboriginal Australians didn't/don't share your same modern concerns.  The Rainbow Snake wasn't created because they didn't know any better.  The ancient Aussies shifted their consciousness so that they went to where the Rainbow Snake lives and discovered him/her/it.  Science serves sometimes to take the wonder out of life, not to really enhance it where it counts.  This is why many atheists are also mean, arrogant, hard-core people who will call you ignorant and closed-minded at the drop of a hat if you disagree with them.  They are lost and deny their own humanity if they claim science can explain all phenomena.  That's why they're so grumpy.

Which comes to the point of this here blog.  I know you were wondering about that.  I want to try to define what gods, spirits, fairies, elves, boogey-men, rainbow snakes, etc are.  Yes, we meet the definition of being a god as we are spirits.  The principle of spirit/soul/mind/consciousness are all the same thing.  You are your own invisible friend.  You are a mind, currently linked (and in linked I mean by a chain, the "mortal coil") to a physical body composed of perishable matter.  And by shifting your consciousness via meditation or other methods, some including magical mushrooms (which I have never taken) you can also send your mind to places other than your local latitude and longitude.  Ancient peoples, when their nervous systems were developed enough to receive consciousness and also transmit it, realized that not only were they more than just an another animal, that they were also not alone in being self-aware and repositories of consciousness.

Let me take a moment and show you a passage from the New and Improved Testament:


And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent at the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise (Yahweh) with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; saying, "Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of (Yahweh): peace in heaven, and glory in the highest."  And some of the Pharisees (boo hiss) from among the multitude said unto him, "Master, rebuke thy disciples for verily they are noisy waterheads."  And Jesus answered and said unto them, "Get off their backs, you jerks.  I be droppin' some knowledge 'ere that if they should stifle it, why even these rocks around here would immediately shout and holler."


Luke 19: 37-40  New Woohoo Version


Consider the stones:  taking into account the previous  miracles that Jesus was said to have performed, seeing stones crying out and singing Amazing Grace might be impressive, but not necessarily unexpected.  The implication here is that if the people weren't going to praise Jesus, seeing as how the multitude of disciples (and you thought there were only 12) are better equipped to speak, then the stones would not be able to contain themselves and they would then speak up.  The implication here is that the stones were aware of the importance of Jesus' arrival into Jerusalem.   I won't even mention the talking ass from the Old and Outdated Testament.  Talking asses in this day and age are a dime a dozen, anyway.  You can't throw a talking rock without hitting one.


The ancient (and present-day) shamans, medicine-men, witch doctors, by modifying their perceptional apparatus and expanding/altering their consciousness experienced (and experience) other layers of reality and other expressions of consciousness.  They met entities, we believe mostly totemic animal spirits to begin with, then as humans evolved and became more sophisticated, the types of beings they encountered also became more sophisticated...consciousness in general was evolving and growing up.  Revealed to them was a cosmos alive with energy and sentience and that man, as highly evolved as we are, was just the tip of the iceberg.  Yes, we qualify as gods and maybe even the gravel in your driveway has a limited understanding of the universe.

I didn't say we were doing a very good job of being gods, did I?  We're more like gods who are currently in kindergarten with attention deficit disorder.  We spend most of our lives being told that *G*O*D* is this and that and being taught how to read and write and therefore having reality pinned down with labels and strict definitions.  Language both allows us to express the wonder of reality and at the same time limits our understanding of it.  We build ourselves and others build for us what Robert Anton Wilson called a "reality tunnel."  And "tunnel vision" is the idea here.  It may be safe to live in a well-provisioned bomb-shelter of ideologies, but you don't get to go fishing that way.  In the Western World, in a Capitalistic society concerned with wealth and stuff, we are taught that reality is the material world and stuff can make you happy.  Jeep currently has an ad campaign with the slogan, "What we make, makes us."  Bull biscuits.  Yes, you probably have some religion in there, but Xian offspring are taught as early as possible that you are forsaken by your deity and that you have to go to where he is and obey his rules to even have a taste of what it means to be a child of god, not that you, as an expression of consciousness, not only are custom-built with a connection to divinity, you yourself are part of that same program.


There a system of control at foot and the policy by the "elite" is to keep the multitudes under the boots of the rather small minority of folks who are actually keyed into spirituality and then pervert it in a quest to accumulate power and wealth for themselves.  Both George Bushes weren't memorizing the Psalms when they were members of Skull and Bones in college, they were learning the stuff mother warned you about.  Make no mistake, Glenn Beck is not an idiot, he is a spiritualist of the first order and may very well be currently shopping around for just the right black goat to sacrifice to whatever god he's hitched his wagon to on All Hallow's Eve, while giving lip service to Xianity because he knows so many people are, as Flannery O'Conner termed it, "Christ-drunk."

Many successful people in the Western World wear the official uniform of Christendom but when you're not looking are doing things that would offend even Marilyn Manson.  Because, as I have previously pointed out, Yahweh is not the king of the mountain and regularly has sand kicked in his face by other deities.  And don't get me started with all the rock stars, actors and other celebrities who are also keyed into these higher energies.  When you see Robert Downey Jr appear on Craig Ferguson and he makes an off-the-cuff remark about sexual "serpent energy" while CraigyFerg drinks from a mug shaped like a rattlesnake, try not to notice.  Oh, the Rolling Stones never have hid the fact that they were and may still be using the occult, they just don't necessarily advertise the fact.  You may think Madonna is a great artist and may think her belief in Jewish mysticism is indicative of a celebrity being eccentric but has no bearing on her continuing success...and hey, Madonna wouldn't mind you continuing to think that way.  She doesn't want any more competition.

We because of how complex and advanced our nervous systems are, can tap into the larger picture of consciousness and thereby expand ourselves and our relationship with nature, with reality on all it's levels.  You don't have to be a star to do this, because you are a star already.  We are however, like most sentient life, cursed with a collection of dodgy and imperfect sensory apparatus which does not allow us to experience reality directly.  And the human senses are by no means the gold standard.  Far from it.  We see through a windowpane that is smeared by the limitations of our senses.  Grass is not green, we only perceive it to be green.  True Reality is something else altogether.

I just caught our male tuxedo cat Pippin staring up at the ceiling.  There's nothing up there except a light that is always there.  He was seeing something.  I joked that it was a muse hovering overhead to my left.  This cat has a different experience of reality than I do because of how he can see, hear, smell, etc.  Some of his senses are better than mine, some are just different.  Because his vocabulary and therefore also his language, the size of his dictionary, is small, and because his nervous system is not as sophisticated as mine...he could very well be seeing something that would cause me to have a religious experience...but to him, it's just part of his unique perception of reality.  No big deal.  He is probably just wondering when breakfast will next be served, when he had it just two hours ago.  Cats are intelligent, sure, there's a whole range of intelligence from rocks and Sarah Palin to Stephen Hawking (who is so smart he even outsmarts himself)...but cats are also are not wise and have a tendency to favor curiosity over self-preservation.  But that's not to say they don't have a religious life and maybe they're not always sleeping, sometimes they're actually meditating.  I wonder who rocks worship?  And if they're supposed to make a pilgrimage to Devil's Tower in Wyoming in their life time.


Here's part of my Theory of Woohoo, so strap in:  In the Beginning all energy and matter were compressed into an impossibly dense, impossibly small point.  (Sound familiar?)  When we have energy and at least the potential for matter we also have consciousness.  The idea is that energy/matter/self-awareness are part of each other and are not separated and we can call this original pure unification of all energy *G*O*D*.  Since this perfect point of energy was also all the consciousness there was, it was self-aware, but in a very limited way.  Because who we are is defined by our environment.  We are stimulated by stimuli and our response builds us, brick by brick.  Conflict builds character.  This entity was all alone, there was nothing besides itself.  It had no experiences, no personality, no name, no hobbies.  It was a blank slate, like someone in the mental ward who has to be tied to his wheelchair because his brain doesn't function enough to remind him to sit up.  So this perfect, pure consolidation of energy was also staring blankly out into space much like Goldie Hawn does and just saying "DUHHHHHH."  This culmination of all energy wanted to BE, even if it didn't realize what it was wanting.  It wanted to have experiences.  Nature abhors a vacuum and wants to go running through tall grass in its bare feet.

So, then *G*O*D*...well...ahem...it commits suicide, sorta.  It stops being what it is and destroys itself, tears itself apart at the seams, knowing however that consciousness will continue, it knows that much, it will just be dispersed over infinite space.  So all matter and mind explodes out, and I don't want to get icky here...but this small point of matter, by ejaculating out into space, which is the womb, then is able to create little versions of itself in an infinite number of manifestations.  Instead of being nowhere...now...*G*O*D* is everywhere and also everything.  The Godhead sacrifices itself in order to share what it is with an entire universe and we along with all matter are also the cells of *G*O*D*.  Catholics believe when they take communion they are actually eating the body and drinking the blood of Jesus, who they believe is *G*O*D*.  We are actually the body and the blood already.  We are pieces of this entity and *G*O*D* may one day be looking to unite and put itself together again, a being that now has all the experiences of all the atoms of matter that it cast out like break upon the waters, and that...maybe...we'll also be self-aware even at that point, as part of that perfect being.  Or maybe this will never stop and *G*O*D* is already fulfilled and stills looks forward to the rest of eternity to learn more about itself by creating new paradigms.  It's hard to satisfy such a being, contentment is not a virtue, which I believe is why humans were not content to live in caves and hunt and gather and communicate by a limited series of grunts and gestures.  We wanted to learn because we were part of a system that was all about growing and learning.

Your understanding that there is a *G*O*D* is because you are part of that, we all give our consciousness to this ultimate being and that is reflected back to us, yes even you atheists who really don't realize what you're saying when you deny the existence of anything you can't see/hear/taste/smell/touch or reproduce over and over in a laboratory.

As both physicists and students of the kabbalah believe, matter and energy has slowly coagulated and condensed over time.  The further down the kabbalistic Tree of Life you go, the more the spheres become grounded in material reality, until you get to the bottom, which is the material universe that is the mixture of dust and deity, the sacred and the profane, the spirit made flesh.  Now the Tree of Life doesn't exist.  No one is going to look into a telescope and see a technicolor windchime hanging somewhere in the Milky Way, or the Lactose-Intolerant Way for that matter.  It's a metaphor, an allegory, but it overlays very well with the Big Bang Theory, which is also a pretty good teevee show.

The metaphor of the Garden of Eden is like the metaphor that *G*O*D* was in a state of bliss, but had no knowledge.  You see, when you do not know good and evil, you know nothing.  *G*O*D* had to "fall" from that state of grace in order to be anything meaningful, and Adam and Eve had to "fall" from grace in order for there to be a human race.  Because just as there was no death in the Garden, there was also no Sex, there was a fixed, static reality of Man, Woman, the garden and the animals.  Animals didn't eat other animals, everyone was a herbivore.  The matter of the universe had to leave perfection in order to be something greater, even if it meant a lot of suffering along the way.  There is nothing evil or dirty about death or sex, it's all part of the plan, the matter of the universe gets recycled over and over so there can be more experiences, consciousness gathering knowledge to itself the way a lint roller picks up kitty-cat hairs off your sofa.  There has to be suffering, loss, death, disaster and other manifestations of change.  You can't make an omelet with breaking some eggs.


Basically, the divine perfection shattered itself, sending its essence out into space and I believe has been slowing putting itself back together again so it could share that with everything else and be bigger and better than before.  It's taken a long time, and may still take a long time, because when you're that high an order of consciousness Time is experienced in a much different way that we mortals understand it.  A few billions years seems like a long time to us, not so much to *G*O*D*  So now, the collective unconsciousness is not stuck as it used to be in a very very very very very small egg, it's found in all matter.  It's a kid in a candy store the size of the universe and it can have all it want.   And the more sophisticated the nervous system of an organic being is, the better you can experience this principle.  Gods, spirits, fairies, etc...are also expressions of consciousness and saying that consciousness can only reside in a person is like saying water can only be found in a bottle.


If consciousness is only a side-effect of our nervous system and certain bio-chemical processes, then we don't actually exist.  We would have no more importance that algae growing on top of a pond, or the fuzzy mold growing on those hamburger buns you forgot about in the pantry.  But no...we are part of nature and when we look out the window on a beautiful, sunny Autumn afternoon, we realize it is beautiful because we are part of it, we're not programmed to think it is pretty, we cannot and no one does, look dispassionately and coldly on the universe as merely the result of convenient accidents.


Even the scientists who are also atheists who go to conventions and preach their gospel admit wonder when they gaze on the universe.  They speak about how we are made of stardust and get cold chills talking about it.  They are far closer to Truth than a fundamentalist Xian is.  They are just human-centric, which is also them realizing how important people are...since we're gods.  The ability to reason is a big, big deal, but atheism has naugahyde to do with reason and critical-thinking.  This is why atheists frustrate me so much and why I pity them.  They are so close, so very close but are hamstrung by materialism and the testimony of failed religions.  They see Xianity as false and bad for you, but then they throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater.

No...we are not organic robots that have just been programmed to think we are individuals and unique persons.  We are more than that, so much more than just meat-puppets.  This is what atheists don't understand, blinded as they are by superficial reality and made spiritually incompetent by "religions" like Judaism, Xianity and Islam that are really just political systems meant to control people while the Secret Chiefs of the world accumulate wealth and power unto themselves because they have read the old grimores and understand some of the old mysteries and take advantage of them, while keeping their underlings in the dark and at the same time, via Hollywood and the Inquisition and other means of propaganda and oppression warn them against anything that might expand their consciousness, like Yoga, having your palm read, horoscopes, etc...the "gate way drugs" to being able to later take a long walk one afternoon with a deity or two other than Yahweh and Jesus and having your mind re-calibrated and realizing that you're a part of *G*O*D* and it is your birthright by simply being alive of being part of something not only bigger than you...that you are a part of that bigger thing.

Yes, we are gods, but we are imperfect and not very good at the job right now, we're slackers, gold-brickers, not even fit to do the landscaping around or clean the windows of the mansions of glory.  We do things like leave the oven on and eat too much and watch bad teevee and write run-on sentences.  We've got a long way to go before we can slip off the overcoats of our mortality and soar on the wings of our higher selves.  And as soon as we take off the concrete overshoes of our small, petty ideologies and leave behind narrow-mindedness, as soon as you dig your way out of your cramped reality tunnel, you'll be able to see the sky...and you'll see someone looking back.


Selah

Nothing is Real, Everything is Woohoo

Out, out, brief candle!  Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Macbeth Act V Scene V

Well, no.  Sorry, campers...not going to examine city-building and "civilization" and why protestant Xianity is to blame for nasty, unfortunate things like the Industrial Revolution and stufflikethatthere.  Nope.  Gonna do something a bit diff this time around.  And I had a long blog post last time and I'm going to have mercy.  The anti-civilization blog will probably be a two-parter, too. Taking down Babylon brick by brick is no easy task.  So no, that comes later.  Now comes this:


Imagine a wooden rocking chair.  Just picture one in your mind.  Give it as much detail as you want, etc.  The rocking chair I'm imaging is a big one, the type they sell at Cracker Barrel, painted Tennessee Volunteer orange.  I know it's a wooden rocking chair because the words wooden, rocking and chair all define what I am seeing and I know what the words wooden, rocking and chair put together describe.  Language allows me to recognize something by it's shape, etc because we have categorized reality with these defining words.


Beyond the immediate image of the big orange wooden rocking chair I can further describe it by it's size, weight and other physical characteristics.  Like maybe I can see some of the wood grain even though it's painted orange.  And then there is all the history of the chair.  How it got there, who made it, the whole process that went into making the chair...the type of wood it's made of, the machinery and tools that were used to make it, the people all involved in the process.  And then there is the history of chairs itself, when we first started making chairs and when we first figured out if they could rock...well, that would rock.  Think about your chair in these terms, all the descriptive terms you could employ and all the backstory you could give it.



Now I'm going to take an axe to it.  Chop chop chop.  Until it's little jagged bits of wood.  Where is the chair?  If I wanted to, and had enough time and wood glue, I could maybe put the chair back together again.  I recognize the bits of wood as what the chair used to be.  So I'll put the jagged bits of wood in a wood chipper.  The wood is still there, so I'll now burn it until there's nothing but ash...and I'll take this up into an airplane and dump it out over the Atlantic ocean.


Where is the chair now?


It doesn't exist does it?  Wrong.  In my mind is the memory of the chair.  And I can go to Cracker Barrel and maybe see a chair just like it.  Or have them order me one.  So let's say Mars Attacks! and they beam up all our wimmin and all our chairs.  Every single friggin' chair and every single whoaman...because, y'know...Mars Needs Women and Chairs.  Even now, we still have the memory of chairs.  We could make chairs again, because the memory of the chair exists even if the chair...and the women do not.  And even if we could not make chairs again, the memory of them would persist in our minds, until a future generation forgets chairs altogether.  The memory of the chair is more real than an actual physical chair.



But we cannot make women.  We have the memory of women, but we can't just order more from the factory.  Then think of humanity in general.  And that while we can make a bunch of chairs, we can't make people.  And then, just like the chair you imagined is different from my chair, everyone of us is different.  There have never been two people ever on this planet that were the same.  Because we are each individual expressions of consciousness, we are each a different mind, unique, special.  *G*O*D* don't make no junk.  We are not born bad or evil or doomed, we are each a unique mirror that the cosmos holds up so it can admire how fascinating and beautiful it is.  We are so much more important than chairs.

Now consider that all physical matter is made from empty space, the atoms that matter is made of.  The physical universe is continually in a state of flux, of change...it is an illusion, a hologram made by energy that vibrates at a slow enough speed.  Nothing is real, everything is true.  Only the mind is real and we cannot prove via science that it exists, although we all know we have a mind.  Consciousness, something that defies a scientific explanation, is the only constant.  The only concrete and permanent thing.

When a person dies, whether they died in their sleep, or were pushed into a wood chipper...that person will not appear again.  One brief candle flame and whoosh...gone, never to darken our towels again.  We are all different, single facets on the immense diamond of human experience, we wink once when the light hits us and then we are not there anymore.  Yet we are remembered by those we leave behind, the memory of us persists and certain people cast long shadows after their "death."  John Lennon would have been 70 years old now, and his memory persists in us now, whether you liked him or not...he still affects our consciousness.  He is 70 years old now, but he will always look young.  Joan Rivers needed plastic surgery to pull that off, the dirty cheater.


John Lennon is a god.  John Wayne is a god.  Marilyn Monroe is a goddess.  JFK is a god...etc.  These people have reached their apotheosis...have reached godhood in our minds as they, being dead and gone...are not gone at all.  It doesn't matter if John Lennon can appear before you with all the Hollywood special effects or not, atheists, John Lennon is ALIVE in our minds still.   Having a conversation now with John Lennon may be a fiction, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.  Lennon, Wayne, Monroe, Kennedy, etc...these people have become ideas, they represent so much more than just that they were once alive and are now dead.  They are now more alive than they were when they could actually sit in a chair.



And now think of those in your life you loved who are gone.  Are they gone in your mind?  No?  They are still alive.  You keep them alive.  Some of you have shrines in your homes to them, as you still display photos and other objects of their lives.  Because what we actually are are MINDS, we are linked to our bodies, but we are minds, expressions of consciousness that is not just the chemical and neurological side-effects that our body generates.  We are invisible beings, we do not exist and yet we do. You cannot see your mind, but it is really all that you are.  Your brain and the rest of the nervous system is a receiver and a transmitter of consciousness and your body is how your mind is moved from place to place, usually, and your body allows you to interact with your environment, nothing more.   And when we are burned and our ash is spread over the ocean the memory of us will persist, who we were.  People will remember your face, but what they are actually remembering is your mind.


No, Macbeth, you Nazi shithead...live does signify something, it signifies much.  And we are the epitome of intelligent life.  We are the bomb.  Words fail us to describe what we are and words just serve to limit us into categories: white, male, American, long-haired, progressive, sexy, eccentric, sexy, handsome, artistic, sexy, near-sighted, etc.  We limit ourselves with these labels when we shouldn't.

We can call a chair a chair, but how much more description goes into describing who YOU are, when you will be the only you who ever exists.  How can we fill such a void as that?  How can we dare to put ourselves in boxes and limit ourselves and let others control who and what we should be, what we should think?  Free your mind, the rest will follow.  Drag yourself out of the mud and slime of ideology and prejudice and circumstance and all the limitations and definitions, pull your ego down around your ankles and walk out of it and become borderless, immense, walk the earth like a giant...you'll then realize the only real sin is to not become all you could be, to settle for living in a safe, narrow box when you could spread yourself over the earth like a sunset.  The solar system is your rocking chair and the earth is your footstool.



We are all divine, we are how nature expresses itself.  We are the narrator of the universe's story.  We take on roles on this ephemeral stage, say a few lines and then we make our exit, some of us are in the the lead roles, some of us are extras, but we are all important.  We are angels with dirty faces because our faces are covered with meat...but we are alive, invulnerable, immortal, our mind/soul/spirit exists temporally while linked with our bodies and when the organic structure we inhabit no longer functions, when the rocking chair our mind rests in is no more, we will persist and continue and be alive.  And we will still rock.


Like the Police song goes... We are spirits in the material world.



WE ARE GODS



Selah