Month: April 2018

David Hume, in one of his foundational works (I forget the title, and seem to have purged the book from my shelf), proposed, as one option, that our universe was designed by committee.  He argued that, based on what we know, it could be one God, two gods, many gods, quarreling gods, or a committee, among many other possibilities.  We don’t talk with God, directly, the way we talk with one another, so who knows? 

Even now, we guess, using science, and it is my understanding that our best known guess, the Big Bang Theory, has some bit theoretical problems.  As I understand it, there is at least one place in the math where they have inserted “and then a miracle happens” to make it work.  Honestly, it’s as good as anything, but it still requires faith.  What requires that degree of faith has not yet risen to the standard we call fully “scientific”.  It is an activity that is done by scientists, and called science, but it is still educated guesswork.

I would like to propose my own idea, based on a spiritual understanding of things.  What if the universe, the visible universe, which is a very, very small fraction of what is, was created by advanced beings, but not God, and what if it was created for the very specific purpose of furthering spiritual evolution?  What if this creation is on-going, and filled with a lot of fuck-ups they are still trying to fix?  What if Earth, specifically, was groomed for life, one of the first in many, many efforts at creating this form of life, this form of hard life, this form of mechanical life, which was successful?

I am not proposing this as true.  I have no idea.  I am proposing it as POSSIBLE, just as Hume’s ideas were possible, and INTERESTING.  Expand your mind.  Can’t hurt anything.

And to be clear, Hume did not propose all those ideas to mock them, or to say that any or all of them were clearly untrue.  He simply said “we don’t know”.  I have long said that agnosticism is the only intelligent option for people who do not want to study the evidence of God. Atheism is an act of faith mislabeled as an act of reason.

I was praying this morning, beginning my morning Kum Nye practice, asking God “What should I do?”

An image floated into my head–it felt more like I merged with it, but that is close enough–where God manifested as a man, roughly in the image of a Greek god, but which was as large as half the visible universe.  I understood that the was a projection of something ineffable,  and utterly incomprehensible to me.  It was a courtesy.

And I asked God “what should I do?”.  And God replied, “what should you do?  you should make your bed.  You should brush your teeth before bed.  You should worry about everything.  You certainly shouldn’t sleep.” And He was smiling as he was saying this.

What I felt was that God was like a father who figures his kids will figure it out sooner or later.  If they are idiots, it will take them longer.  Not his job to make them smarter.   He was gently mocking me, and my questions.  He was implying that I know most of the answers, that life is a question of trying things and seeing what happens.

And things go on far, far beyond this Earth.  We live many lives.  We have an infinite expanse of time to figure things out, so why should God fret if some of us are imbeciles?  The whole universe WANTS us to evolve, to get smarter.  It allows us to be stupid.

I think it was Dostoevsky who said “if God is dead, then everything is allowed.”  Well, even if God EXISTS, then everything is allowed.  Try it.  See what happens.  You can eat turd if you want.  You can stub your toe on purpose.  You can poke a fork in your eye.

And you can be cruel to other people.  See how it works.  Try it a lifetime or two.  What happens?  See?  Why do you have to be so fucking stupid, son?

More than anything, it felt to me like a father who raises his children, then sets them free, to rise or fall on their own.  It felt to me, to be honest, like a country father, who, when his sons come and tell him they’ll be out rabbit hunting for a day or two, says “great”, and doesn’t ask any questions.  They’ll be fine, he figures.  They aren’t dumbasses.

I remember the Soke, head honcho, of the martial art I used to study, once using the analogy of a tiger mother, who pushes all her cubs over a dirt embankment.  Those who make it back up have proven themselves.  They are not dead weight.  She won’t have to carry them.  They now belong.  She loves them, then.  In this larger analogy, everyone makes it back, sooner or later.  None of us can comprehend an infinity, but God IS infinity.  God is beyond any possible concept.

And I will emphasize the overall sense, the spirit, was benign.  But what good does it do me to be told what to do?  What benefit is there to me in a world where it is perfectly acceptable being a fucking idiot, where there is no negative consequence? 

I have to admit, it occurred to me that perhaps the problem with our current world is that many people make it to adulthood and reproduce, who would have died in many earlier ages of the world because they were dumbasses, if I might quote Red Forman.

The whole thing felt very liberating.  All religions are fine.  Islam: fine.  Christianity: fine.  Flying Spaghetti Monster: also fine.  What is happening with religious worship is that God will show in any form you ask he/she/it to.  God fills the Earth and the stars, but is also everywhere, in every moment.  God is quite equal to the task of having a “personal” relationship with every living creature, while also being vastly, and indescribably larger than anything we see or can imagine.

Where God falters in his kindness, what God does not like to see, is fear.  When we obsess over small details of behavior, this manifests in what I saw in an earlier vision as a “mark”.  It is a stain, a blot.  It is not the act.  It is not a Jew eating pork, or working on the Sabbath.  It is the fear which drives him away from a God who is not, in turn, withdrawing in any way.  It is the fear which pushes people into stupidity, into what amounts to the only sin: turning away from growth, joy, play, and engagement.

In this world, if you do 90% of the work, you get 90% of the benefit.  It is not zero sum, or either/or. You can grow in many ways, at many rates of speed.  You can backslide, then turn around.  It is not all sudden ascents and horrific falls.  It’s a moderate landscape, and only made otherwise by dumbasses.

I continue to believe that the Tao Te Ching is the most profound thing I have read.  The “road”, the “way”, is how we continue to move forward.  We all have one. 

I have more to say, but am having trouble organizing it.  I will do more in separate posts.

The net, though,  is that we need not fear this time, this place.  Nothing which cannot be undone in the abundance of time is even possible.  The worst torture can be processed in a couple lifetimes, or perhaps the equivalent in an afterlife.  Nothing can happen which will be permanent. 

Yes, your mind can be erased.  You can be broken in countless ways.  This has long been my fear.  Congenitally I tend to go to the worst case scenario.  I had a period perhaps 4 years ago where I was obsessed with all the ways I could be killed, and all the bad things that could happen to me. 

All this is possible.  No honest person can tell you it isn’t.  But in the fullness of time, all is worked out.  God is betting on us.  The task is to be smart, to be switched on, to do the work, to pass the test, to get through the challenge.  This is hugely hopeful.  Very, very, very hopeful.

And, of course, things can still work out in this world, in this life.  I hope so.

Everything is blooming and Bib Seeger is finally on Spotify. 

You know, I’m not sure how the tone of the previous post came out, but I feel good. I’m getting the range on this thing, figuring out where it bends and where it doesn’t.

I saw God in my meditation this morning. It was highly useful and a bit amusing. I got some questions answered, sort of.

I will post more later, I promise. I am largely insulated from having to work when others demand it, but I am not insulated from meeting deadlines, so day job it is for a while.

I got “attacked” by another demon last night.  I don’t mention it every time it happens.  It’s happened so many times.  10-15 I would suppose, in the last 6 months.  I’m like “I was having fun with the other dream.  Why are you bothering me?  What do you want?”

As I picture this thing, it would be useful for you to picture millions–perhaps billions–of demons flying around in the night, creating tension.  That is all they need to do: create tension.  We do the rest.  Posit a given, inherently stable system.  Add sufficient tension, and it will careen out of control eventually, as we are.

Does not our world seemingly exist, in the main, to make us tense?  Does it even matter where you stand on the political spectrum?  Does it even matter if you are involved in politics at all?  All you need to do is watch TV.  And who do you know who is neither involved in politics nor watches TV?  I can’t think of anyone I personally know.  They must exist.  You don’t know them, though, because they are off the cultural grid. And likely lonely, because they are “weird”.

What I feel is that the demonic represents the inner side of us, the dark side.  There is nothing particularly interesting about this observation.  But before I got distracted, I was in a dark place where I could see the inner realities of everyone.  Imagine a world where you ONLY interact with people as they truly are, where you see what they have not processed yet, where you see what REALLY animates them, where they cannot lie to you about who they are.

Seriously, imagine that.  Would that not be scary as shit?  It is little wonder I am a bit–perhaps more than a bit, although my social skills are fine, when I’m putting on my social face–of a lone wolf. I have reached a point in my work where I can seemingly live with my work, where I can make processing my pain and separation from God a primary focus.  I have the energy and resolve.  This is good.

I will admit that I cried, listening to “The Agony and the Ecstacy”, when Father Bichiellini died, because I have never had a friend or mentor like that. I think so many of us, in this world, are crying for want of wisdom, for want of someone we can trust, who is wise and good and kind in equal portions.  TV, our culture, our lifestyle, makes “wisdom” the trait successful entrepreneurs have, not successful human being.  I have learned, regretfully, to mistrust nearly everyone in the self help industry. I do retain a fondness for Zig Ziglar.  I do suppose he cheered me up at times, the way a true mentor would.  He was old school and hokey, but for all that, I think he was sincere.  Don’t ever dump on Zig in my presence.

And one last thing, before I move to my work.  I watch people, conforming to their expectations of how they are supposed to be, separated from their own guts, their own hearts, their own minds, their own will, floating.  This is not different in principle from what ants do.  Ants operate according to programs with which they are born.  They can no more decide what they are going to do than can a complete conformist, confronted with evolving social realities.

The point of life is to be DIFFERENT from animals, not the same.  It is not the details of the conformity which bothers me, but the fact of it.  It is no better to be a conformist conservative than Leftists, but the practical difference is that being a Leftists asks much, much more of you: it asks for your soul, by changing the terms of the engagement continually, by asking more and more and more and more, until there is nothing left but self righteousness, and the propensity for chanting in the pews, in affirmation of your “identity”.

And the so-called Singularity, if it ever comes (and it will come in parts, in dribs and drabs, and indeed is already arriving, but the mind is not the self, so it cannot come fully), will merely emphasize not the most human aspects of our lives, but the most primitive, most ant and cricket-like.  We might have instantaneous access to the whole of human knowledge, but will still be chirping.  We will know the Thus-ness of everything, but the texture and the why of nothing.  There is no spirit in machines.  They are neither friend nor enemy.  A supercomputer and the first pulley are not different in principle, if they serve truly human aims.  But are we human?

Increasingly, no.  We are rats in a maze, looking for food pellets of human warmth, companionship, and love.  And there are countless demons absolutely willing to keep us company, at the cost of everything we are.

My work continues. I  am of course quite willing both to give my life for this work, and to dedicate my life to this work.  I don’t want to die for what I do, but I believe I am on this Earth to fight, and fight is what I intend to do until my dying breath.

It is my understanding that when Eric Blair–you know who he was (edit: it occurs to me George Orwell is already a memory destruction of sorts, interestingly)–worked for the BBC, they would literally destroy records to alter “history”.  What he wrote in 1984 he had, even then, already seen.

I look things up here and there.  I use DuckDuckGo mainly.  It doesn’t track my every move, I don’t think, and it isn’t evil.

And it occurs to me that all the old paper records are going the way of the dodo bird.  Nobody has encyclopedia’s any more, I suspect.  Why?  It’s all a click or two away.  Even on your PHONE.  Your fucking phone.  Who saw that coming?

But if everything is in a place where it can be amended easily, can it not be disappeared easily?  Alex Jones has been going on about AI bots which learn our personalities and generate fake news to generate political tides, and which even imitate us, for a variety of purposes.

Such bots clearly are possible.  How much and if they will be deployed remains to be seen.  We may never know, really.

But history can be played with, now, too, with much less trouble than in yesteryear.  Many of us still have many books, much history.  But most people don’t, and the trend is towards everything being digital, and easily mutable.

Everything depends, ultimately, on the wisdom and humanity of the people who get control of power and knowledge.  Things are trending badly in that regard.  I sure as fuck don’t trust Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or Apple.  The people running them are bad people.  It’s likely safe to say most of them are atheists.  Most atheists will tell it doesn’t matter, but in my view, it is very hard to create coherent and shareable morality which will remain coherent in the long run as an atheist.  And in any event, they are not even TRYING.  Their morality consists in throwing gold coins from their chariots to the plebeians, while on their way from one palace to another.

How FORTUNATE black people are that white people who call themselves “liberals” are so eager and willing to speak for them, to defend them, and to police carefully how other white people speak.

If blacks had not had this amazing service lo these many years, many of them might still be living in large groups in poverty and in neighborhoods filled with crime.  That would be horrible.

Good thing the white “Liberals” will never let that happen.  You know, because they care.

A great deal of the time, the answer to a problem which arises within a system can only be found outside the system.

I was pondering my own family.  I have been having strange emergences, I will call them, in my dreams, in which very accurate emotional sketches are being presented to me.  I feel now, what I could not feel then. I feel it clearly.  It is the emotional equivalent of thinking clearly.  You can “see” what is there without ambiguity.  It is not nameable.  Emotional gestalts never are.  But you can say “that” to yourself, and know what is meant.

And since I obsess about the very real and present danger that all the varieties of Communism continue to pose to the peaceful transition of the human race to something better, I thought I would add the comment that they are not wrong when they say that something much better is possible.

Where they are wrong is in lacking the emotional skill to realize that nothing deep can be built by force, that nobody likes to be told what to do, much less who to be.  And they are wrong is making the creation of a different–a much worse, to be clear–world a purpose in itself.  If they succeed, then what? 

And again, where is the concern for the physical, scientific evidence for God, for the survival of death, for psi, for our fundamental non-local interconnectedness?

I watched a play over the weekend which indulged in the cliche of the fake happiness of 1950’s America, where the kids were perfect, the mother was perfect, the father was perfect, and it was all a lie.

This is Communism.  The worst aspects of 1950’s America, where conformity was, as we reimagine that period, an absolute necessity and where everybody PRETENDED to be happy.  What the fuck do you think the people enslaved by Communists and their happy smiles did? 

There is a path forward.  There are many paths forward, many of them very good, very salutary.  But large segments of our intellectual, media, and political class keep choosing the worst options, the most dismal, hopeless options, the options without creativity, joy, freedom, or growth.

I don’t know why this is, really. But I will speak out against it until it stops, or I can’t.

Great Spirit (I don’t like “Lord”.  God is not a man, or even humanoid, and Lord implies someone as likely to beat you as be kind and generous, which is roughly the Christian–and certainly the Jewish– conception, if they are honest):

Thank you for this day (your life is the Spirit within you).

Please help me do my work with gentle grace, beauty, and gratitude.

Please help me  to do better than yesterday in living up to my own ideals, and

Please help me fill my day with more love, light, life, laughter (it does occur to me that some forms of laughter are acts of generosity and abundance) and joy.

And when I lay down tonight, when my work is done, please help me sleep peacefully and in tranquility.

Amen (may it be so).

On a related note, it occurs to me that every day is the day of rest, if your work is filled with love.