Friday, August 19, 2011
Another Kind of Prayer
I don't know what is going to happen, and nothing I do on my own can _make_ anything happen. I can only do what seems the most right, and see what unfolds from that. Through the miracles of the human brain and senses, my behavior may adapt and improve with experience. Or, I may be fated to spend my entire life under a cloud of being unattractively different. I can't prevent or change or avoid what is happening to me now by worrying about what I should do next, or about whether I just made the right decision. Decisions aren't made in the head -- so say the neurocartographers. Keep remembering the Sermon on the Mount from time to time, and you will have all the guidance you need, built into your behavior.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Creation of the World
Everything experiences everything.
Every subatomic particle of matter/energy potentially has a partner, nearby or far away in the universe, with which it acts in tandem. Experiments in physics show that two such paired particles, when measured in radiation-beam experiments, are always in complementary states. The scientists can alter one particle intentionally, and thereby effectively predict the state the other particle will be in, regardless of how far apart they are in space.
So not only is all the physical universe in constant contact with itself via more familiar processes of gravity, light, the water cycle, and all of life's mutual interaction. But also, every particle in the universe is directly connected to every other particle, in the sense that there are potentially detectable effects instantaneously, at the farthest distances in the universe, to any particle being changed.
Every particle experiences every other particle.
The changing of the "spin" of a particle is about as far from a human emotion as you can get. But I argue that they are essentially of the same nature. Sentient creatures, and especially humans, are the quintessential conscious beings. We can be affected (through learning and otherwise) by everything that we can know about. Seemingly dead matter is affected by physical forces in a much coarser way.
But much of our learning is ultimately dependent on the physical and chemical events that make up our physical body. The miracle of how these bodies have come to be formed from particles is a mind-blowing mystery, embedded in the mystery of all the particles of the universe, and how they came to be. The exqusite conscious awareness that we share, is part and parcel with the physical laws that scientists are able to discern, and thereby gain power in the physical world. There is no hard and fast boundary between any two particles, much less between, say, members of the animal kingdom. But we have to draw the line somewhere. We need boundaries to create the world that we live in through our exquisite consciousness. Consciousness itself draws the lines, and thereby creates that world. Who draws the lines? God, consiousness, life, love. Also pain, the Void, negativity and rejection.
But God -- all -- encompasses all.
Every subatomic particle of matter/energy potentially has a partner, nearby or far away in the universe, with which it acts in tandem. Experiments in physics show that two such paired particles, when measured in radiation-beam experiments, are always in complementary states. The scientists can alter one particle intentionally, and thereby effectively predict the state the other particle will be in, regardless of how far apart they are in space.
So not only is all the physical universe in constant contact with itself via more familiar processes of gravity, light, the water cycle, and all of life's mutual interaction. But also, every particle in the universe is directly connected to every other particle, in the sense that there are potentially detectable effects instantaneously, at the farthest distances in the universe, to any particle being changed.
Every particle experiences every other particle.
The changing of the "spin" of a particle is about as far from a human emotion as you can get. But I argue that they are essentially of the same nature. Sentient creatures, and especially humans, are the quintessential conscious beings. We can be affected (through learning and otherwise) by everything that we can know about. Seemingly dead matter is affected by physical forces in a much coarser way.
But much of our learning is ultimately dependent on the physical and chemical events that make up our physical body. The miracle of how these bodies have come to be formed from particles is a mind-blowing mystery, embedded in the mystery of all the particles of the universe, and how they came to be. The exqusite conscious awareness that we share, is part and parcel with the physical laws that scientists are able to discern, and thereby gain power in the physical world. There is no hard and fast boundary between any two particles, much less between, say, members of the animal kingdom. But we have to draw the line somewhere. We need boundaries to create the world that we live in through our exquisite consciousness. Consciousness itself draws the lines, and thereby creates that world. Who draws the lines? God, consiousness, life, love. Also pain, the Void, negativity and rejection.
But God -- all -- encompasses all.
Being Seen by My Cat
We need to respond to these troubled times with an elevated spiritual level. Your spiritual level is akin to your blood pressure measurement, substituting the flow of Love for the flow of blood. The flow of love is like the blood that circulates between the spiritual cells (people) of our spiritual body (the Divine.)
The whole of reality rests in Consciousness. It is necessary to learn to perceive this metaphor.
Every cell contributes to the flow
If you really contemplate any one of God's attributes (omnipresent, omnipotent, onmiscient, all-good, all-loving, perfect), you will become aware of the perfection, completeness, peace and joy that surrounds you in that moment.
Everything experiences everything.
You can pick and choose the reality you see, because it is all illusion. It's not that there is no reality driving the illusion. The illusion is only the idea that any particular interpretation of reality _is_ reality, or a perfect representation thereof.
To put it another way, no pain is permanent. Neither is _the experience_ of happiness. But we can choose to remember and contemplate the happiness. Consciousness can be directed. By nature it always looks in a certain direction -- that is God's will. God's will the is direction in which consciousness is pointed. To know that is to know peace.
Until you realize that consciousness is directed, and always goes in the direction of God's will, you will be tormented by fear and confusion. This is all part of God's will. The fear and confusion only exists in order to be taken away. Joy, relief and peace are all experienced when the negative emotions leave. Without the negative emotions, we would not get the positive emotions that arise when the negative emotions leave.
You might say, why bother? Why would God let negative things arise, only to replace them with positive? Couldn't the positive be all there is?
Well, that is the case, ultimately. The positive is all there is. But the absence of change gets boring. God creates the world -- all the seeming good and evil of it. Without good and evil, nothing exists. It is fine for nothing to exist, but still...
So evil is good, ultimately. But God's will is directed away from it. We only approach the good that is inherent in evil from the reverse side. When evil is in front of us, we turn around. Sometimes, we go all the way around the world, and see the back of evil. And we see that the backside of evil is good.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
I am supremely happy at rest, And I am always...
I am supremely happy at rest,
And I am always at rest in God.
Appearances to the contrary are deceptive. This is one of the true prayers -- if you can pray a true prayer sincerely, then by definition, that prayer is fulfilled. "True prayer" is my own coinage, and I feel sure that someone has invented a better term for it. It shouldn't be read as excluding other types of prayer from being true. "Self-fulfilling prayer" might be a better term.
And I am always at rest in God.
Appearances to the contrary are deceptive. This is one of the true prayers -- if you can pray a true prayer sincerely, then by definition, that prayer is fulfilled. "True prayer" is my own coinage, and I feel sure that someone has invented a better term for it. It shouldn't be read as excluding other types of prayer from being true. "Self-fulfilling prayer" might be a better term.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Less Fear Controlling Them
One of the big debates in popular culture is over whether you can "follow your bliss" and survive in the world, or whether most people will always have to do things for work that make them unhappy. The former is generally adopted by the far left of the US political spectrum, while everybody else accepts some version of the latter, with some exceptions.
I believe what the debate boils down to, is over how important decisions should be made in an individual's life. One side (the majority) says fear and caution should always take precedence. If that paralyzes you, just do what other people do.
The other side believes positive motivation is important for real success. And indeed, how can anyone who is unhappy consider themselves successful? In order to consider themselves relatively successful, they have to disbelieve the possibility of being happy. Everyone knows on some level that they can be happy. I believe that is so, because of the phenomenon of newborn infants "failure to thrive" if they are not held in someone's arms and given human love a certain amount of time each day. It makes sense to me that love and happiness are a necessary foundation for physical life.
Following the practical thinking of the one's society is certainly (or at least probably) safer. Of the minority who take more risks to do what they want, a higher percentage are dead at the end of each year, than others. That makes it an open-and-shut case for most people. Only people who have less fear controlling them than others, can take such risks.
I believe what the debate boils down to, is over how important decisions should be made in an individual's life. One side (the majority) says fear and caution should always take precedence. If that paralyzes you, just do what other people do.
The other side believes positive motivation is important for real success. And indeed, how can anyone who is unhappy consider themselves successful? In order to consider themselves relatively successful, they have to disbelieve the possibility of being happy. Everyone knows on some level that they can be happy. I believe that is so, because of the phenomenon of newborn infants "failure to thrive" if they are not held in someone's arms and given human love a certain amount of time each day. It makes sense to me that love and happiness are a necessary foundation for physical life.
Following the practical thinking of the one's society is certainly (or at least probably) safer. Of the minority who take more risks to do what they want, a higher percentage are dead at the end of each year, than others. That makes it an open-and-shut case for most people. Only people who have less fear controlling them than others, can take such risks.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Now We BEGIN the Liberal Rebuilding Phase
We are at the peak flowering moment of the conservative movement. Leftward thought and power has ebbed almost out of existence. But we finally begin to see the way forward.
Money has lost much of its usefulness to societal well-being. The current state economic development has seen the partial mastery of money by large corporations. By that I mean that they (the corporations) have learned, by dint of hard work, how to accumulate monetary wealth in such a lop-sided fashion that money is no longer effectively encouraging productivity -- the creation of real wealth. This has become obvious to every one, except perhaps some keepers of statistics. They still calculate that our economy is "growing" most of the time, if weakly.
Corporations should declare victory and go home. But they won't, and their stranglehold on the economic system will only become more burdensome and ridiculous for a while, until the new ways of organizing people power start to take effect. Conservatives' ability to organize people is limited by their non-acceptance or rejection of people. Liberals' biggest strength is the ideology of progressive change, which means accepting change. Accepting change requires being open to new and different things. Being open to newness means it is easier for liberals to accept people who are different from them, even who differ in moral values, as deserving of respect. In their real lives, conservatives are probably just as likely to accept different types individuals as friends, or deserving of kindness, as liberals are, if not more so. But conservatives don't accept people whose opinions differ as groups, with legitimate political concerns. They believe that some groups can legitimately be discriminated against, for some reason or other. For example, Palestinians as a group can be discriminated against, because there have been Palestinian terrorists; gays because there have been gay perverts.
I can't make this argument in such a way that conservatives will accept the idea that their discrimination is wrong. But that doesn't matter. They have always been the minority of the population, and always will be, because their project is distinguishing themselves from others, in some fundamental way. They believe it is by literally making themselves superior, and more deserving than the lazy, the shiftless, the criminals, and miscreants. Their opponents (liberals, progressives), ideologically accept that every person is of equal value, and has equal rights. Those are just the two poles of perspective; everyone chooses one side for inner reasons.
But it doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong; one side is going to rise in prominence in the near future, and the other fall. It is clear which side has been rising for the past 30 years, and equally clear that one side cannot rise forever in this world. We liberals have been astounded and dumbfounded by the relentless rise to power of ever more "conservative" thought. I put that in quotes because when "conservatism" goes to the extremes that it has, it no longer resembles the thought stream that it is named for. Today's "conservatives" want radical change, and they are getting it. Unconsciously, relentlessly pushing for a society in which certain types of people have all political and financial power, they have finally over-reached. The 10% of people who are now permanently unemployed are coming to be clear on that. They 90% who are less wealthy now than they were 10 years ago are coming to be clear on that. It no longer takes a liberally-slanted view to see that the brave new world of the conservatives' dreams will not be a better place for most of us, because that world is almost here. What that new conservative world is about is getting harder and harder to hide.
In my next post, I will talk about how physical organizing of like-minded people in geographical areas is inevitably going to increase, and how it spells doom for the current flavor of "Conservatism."
Money has lost much of its usefulness to societal well-being. The current state economic development has seen the partial mastery of money by large corporations. By that I mean that they (the corporations) have learned, by dint of hard work, how to accumulate monetary wealth in such a lop-sided fashion that money is no longer effectively encouraging productivity -- the creation of real wealth. This has become obvious to every one, except perhaps some keepers of statistics. They still calculate that our economy is "growing" most of the time, if weakly.
Corporations should declare victory and go home. But they won't, and their stranglehold on the economic system will only become more burdensome and ridiculous for a while, until the new ways of organizing people power start to take effect. Conservatives' ability to organize people is limited by their non-acceptance or rejection of people. Liberals' biggest strength is the ideology of progressive change, which means accepting change. Accepting change requires being open to new and different things. Being open to newness means it is easier for liberals to accept people who are different from them, even who differ in moral values, as deserving of respect. In their real lives, conservatives are probably just as likely to accept different types individuals as friends, or deserving of kindness, as liberals are, if not more so. But conservatives don't accept people whose opinions differ as groups, with legitimate political concerns. They believe that some groups can legitimately be discriminated against, for some reason or other. For example, Palestinians as a group can be discriminated against, because there have been Palestinian terrorists; gays because there have been gay perverts.
I can't make this argument in such a way that conservatives will accept the idea that their discrimination is wrong. But that doesn't matter. They have always been the minority of the population, and always will be, because their project is distinguishing themselves from others, in some fundamental way. They believe it is by literally making themselves superior, and more deserving than the lazy, the shiftless, the criminals, and miscreants. Their opponents (liberals, progressives), ideologically accept that every person is of equal value, and has equal rights. Those are just the two poles of perspective; everyone chooses one side for inner reasons.
But it doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong; one side is going to rise in prominence in the near future, and the other fall. It is clear which side has been rising for the past 30 years, and equally clear that one side cannot rise forever in this world. We liberals have been astounded and dumbfounded by the relentless rise to power of ever more "conservative" thought. I put that in quotes because when "conservatism" goes to the extremes that it has, it no longer resembles the thought stream that it is named for. Today's "conservatives" want radical change, and they are getting it. Unconsciously, relentlessly pushing for a society in which certain types of people have all political and financial power, they have finally over-reached. The 10% of people who are now permanently unemployed are coming to be clear on that. They 90% who are less wealthy now than they were 10 years ago are coming to be clear on that. It no longer takes a liberally-slanted view to see that the brave new world of the conservatives' dreams will not be a better place for most of us, because that world is almost here. What that new conservative world is about is getting harder and harder to hide.
In my next post, I will talk about how physical organizing of like-minded people in geographical areas is inevitably going to increase, and how it spells doom for the current flavor of "Conservatism."
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
A Poem By Paul
A Poem By Paul (Foster, I think -- Jeannie Stevens' partner)
What in my life can I face today?
Perhaps the mistakes that have led me astray.
My joy, my sorrow, today, tomorrow
My dark, my Light, the wrong, the right
My addictions and habits
(they breed just like rabbits)
The past, the future, or lack thereof
My brat attacks, my deepest Love
My dying body, my futile hope
My fiercest fighter, my “just can’t cope”
But most of all I have to say
I face my True Self night and day
And all I really actually know
Is nothing at all and happily so!
Om Om
July 2011
This is a poem from an online friend of mine, that is so simple and innocent, I wanted to share it (with permission). Someone could make it a song.
What in my life can I face today?
Perhaps the mistakes that have led me astray.
My joy, my sorrow, today, tomorrow
My dark, my Light, the wrong, the right
My addictions and habits
(they breed just like rabbits)
The past, the future, or lack thereof
My brat attacks, my deepest Love
My dying body, my futile hope
My fiercest fighter, my “just can’t cope”
But most of all I have to say
I face my True Self night and day
And all I really actually know
Is nothing at all and happily so!
Om Om
July 2011
This is a poem from an online friend of mine, that is so simple and innocent, I wanted to share it (with permission). Someone could make it a song.
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