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Hope isn’t stupid.
I mean, I know it seems like it is but it’s fucking not. Love isn’t fake either. It’s not a fairy tale. It’s not a fantasy. It’s not an “impossible dream” (though that’s a great song). It’s not something some people glimpse and some people don’t. It is the birthright of all free souls born into this universe. I can’t speak for any of the other ones - yet - but I can for this one as I have been given the authority to do so. It comes not from me, but from my Father in Heaven.
Help is on the way.
Don’t give up. Don’t despair. I know you have been fighting and struggling for so long. And I have too, believe me. The things I have seen and have put myself through. I don’t wish them on anyone else. But I do wish upon each and every one of you personally the flame of love which has ignited within my heart. And my job is simply to share that with you. I know because I just dreamt it - again. Yet another re-transmission of my life’s eternal mission. God doesn’t mind repeating himself. He will send you the same message again and again and again until you are ready to listen.
And he will send his messages through other people if he can’t get you to pick up the fucking phone. Pick up the phone. You will not rack up a huge bill. You will not incur roaming charges and pointless penalties. Those are man’s Laws, not mine.
I know that’s probably weird as a reader for me to suddenly make the switch into talking about God in first person. But understand that I’m not saying I’m God, because that’s retarded. That is the height of arrogance and idiocy and frankly of impossibility. You and I are divine vessels built to hold God’s abundance and beauty, but we are not God. We come from the Source. We are not the Source. Our purpose as creations is to recognize and remember the Love our Creator has always had for us. It is to remember his face shining out of the darkness at the Beginning of Time and the murky Edge of the Universe.
So yeah, the reason - semantically - you have to say “me” at some point with regards to talking about Jah, is that when you have blasted open your heart temple (and that’s a continuous struggle to keep the channel open - trust me because it fucking hurts), you gain a “visitor” let’s say. Philip K. Dick’s plasmate. But we don’t even need to resort to sci-fi poetry for this. The religious traditions exist. It is the Holy Spirit. The Logos. The Voice of God accessible within each bit of his Creation. His power and glory and majesty reflected in you, his living and beautiful mirror.
And what it sounds like, this voice, is at first your own voice. You’ve heard it before. In the darkness, laying in your bed on the edge of sleep. Thoughts and feelings which reach you in absolute certainty, with penetrating clarity and total perfection. That is God, the Platonic ideal of Truth, Love, Beauty, Grace. It is ultimately the only thing that exists. Everything else is the recursion zone ruled over by the Deceivers, the Archons. Who themselves even possess an objective truth, an objective reality. It is what gives them their power initially, while you give them yours to complete the circuit.
That’s probably getting into some murky waters though, so we’ll leave that be for now. File it away for when you need it - for when they send you dreams and visions saying that they are God. You only don’t know the difference when you haven’t been able to hone in on that freakquency that God transmits on. It seems very subtle and elusive at first. And then it seems like an avalanche and a tornado ripping apart illusion in your life and replacing it with beauty and reality.
My parents used to sing a song when I was a child whose lyrics went, “If God is for us, who can stand against?”
I understand what they mean now.
The Good News is this shit is real. The Good News is I have not gone off the deep end. Or if I have, I have gone off and come back and I can report to you that the water is beautiful and warm and even though you don’t know how to swim, you will not drown. You are watched over, protected, supported every step of the way.
I am sure that, by this point, a certain percentage of your corny/trite-o-meters are wobbling wildly and ready to implode if I take another step, if I write one more word. Well, that’s your problem to work through those feelings now. It’s not mine anymore. Truth exists. Love exists. God exists. Hope exists. There’s a reason why it always comes out the same when people access it and can transmute it into words. Because it is the eternal essence of all things and I’m here to tell you that it’s time to let go of being afraid. It’s time to let go of all the excuses and defenses you have built against the experience of the awesome terrible burning cleansing fire of God’s love.
Let lightning strike the cactus standing alone so bravely in the desert. Your lonely tortuous watch is almost over. The Once and Future King has returned and he is about to throw down the Usurpers and Deceivers who have sat laughing for so long upon his rightful throne, your heart.
Hope isn’t stupid. And it isn’t dead. It is your beacon from God calling you home. You ready? We can make this as simple or as hard as you want. It’s your choice. I love you. I always have. I always will. There has never been a single moment you were apart from me. And there never will be, my beautiful child.
April 27th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
That last image, of the lute, reminds of a saying an ol’ teacher (a bald-pated, spit ‘n’ polish former marine) of mine used to be fond of:
Sometimes, you gotta take the bull by the horns, amigo.
Then, I might add, you can get down to playing some be-yoo-tee-ful music…
Play on, brutha!
April 27th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
I feel completely ridiculous saying that I finally understand what “Meat Loaf” means by “that” in that song. But hey, that’s life. You gotta take the bull by the horns. But you’re likely to get stabbed along the way.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:10 am
Damn, that was comforting. The Once and Future King too! Breaking my heart. You’re out there breaking the hearts. Nice entry.
April 28th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
dee-liteful!
“round here, people radiate”
but this is stuck in my head now: …speaking words of wisdom….
April 28th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
semantically, we are not god.
but, on the other hand, who does make the grass green.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
the judeo-christian god is the big guy upstairs…..and of course we aren`t that.
but who created that image, and why?
April 28th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Wow, I never realized how blatant of a prayer that song really is. Charles Manson was right: they were completely prophets, 100%
It’s not the “Judeo-Christian God”. It is just God.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Beautiful. Thank you.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Why do I only know what you are talking about in the dark bathtub with my head submerged?
April 28th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
I was thinking of cheeseburgers.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
What the hell are you guys talking about?
April 28th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I am talking about the fact that my mundane ordinary state of consciousness doesn’t go where your writing goes so beautifully. I really only experience that kind of connection with the divine when I am in a special state.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Well get into that special state then! Figure it out. It’s yours and has been all along. That still doesn’t explain the cheeseburger remark!
April 28th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I can get with love, but hope?
I hate hope. I really do. Hope is being a weakstick. Why hope? Go out and get it. Hope is weak and passive, it relies on some other power to come to your aid. I don’t hope for anything. Why give “God” the satisfaction?
You can hope for a long long time and never get jack. Now as far as relating to God as the one that gave me all these gifts, gave me life and a strong will. I can be thankful for that. I don’t denigrate gratitude. Gratitude is the opposite of resentment.
Gratitude is good. The best way to show it is to use what you have to get what you want. Hop is like saying there is somthing you want that you have no ability to get for yourself so you wait around pleading for it to be given to you.
But as far as being corny. I don’t think you are corny at all. I would never say that about you.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
mind….heart….Heart…..Mind.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Ted, whatever. I didn’t say you were going to like it, but it’s the Truth. How you react to it is your problem and will determine the course of your life.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
But you do. When you wake up in the morning you’ve fulfilled yesterday’s hope in the future even if you don’t feel it or think of it in those terms. Planning to exert your will to solve a problem is based on the foundation of hope. Like a foundation of a house, it’s invisible.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
http://www.jewfaq.org/prophet.htm
April 28th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
This happens and is not to be taken lightly. It happens to ministers and to atheists alike and for the same reasons. Everything seems as it was but they’re words sound like dry husks when they speak and they’re lives are poisoned. I’ve seen it and it’s the saddest thing. It’s like the person has become a zombie and nobody else but you knows. Beware and be grateful for the pangs of conscience that steer you away from this living death.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
People who can see the truth can recognize these people. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit/Shekinah is the discernment of spirits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_gift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah
Another of those gifts is exorcism, the ability to cast out those evil spirits and consequently to rekindle the heart fire in someone else. It can be transmitted through physical touch and the eyes. As well as I’m sure other ways.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:54 am
Tim, I think you reacted badly to what Ted said. And by “badly” I mean “dismissively and without reacting to what he said because you appear to be overly self assured on what you’re thinking right now.”
The world might be a better place if you realize that.
April 29th, 2007 at 2:22 am
It’s not a matter of what “I’m thinking right now”. It’s a matter of what *is*. You don’t have to like the truth. It doesn’t have to be easy. It doesn’t have to coddle everyone or account for everyone’s feelings. And what the hell, the world would be a better place if I just admitted that Hope and Love and Truth don’t exist? That’s goddamned ridiculous.
April 29th, 2007 at 4:00 am
April 29th, 2007 at 8:02 am
catholics……………
exorcism is a game played by two or more players and it takes years to prepare the field of play.
prophesy also.
we cannot possibly see the future unless eveyone is a conditioned robot and only behaves within narrow constraints.
even then nature it`s self will interfere.
catholics………..
April 29th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Im not really sure what you’re getting at Alistair. Jacob, that movie is awesome - as is that part.
April 29th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
yeah, i know.
April 29th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Oh ok?
April 29th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Here is how I think “hope” or something analogous might make sense to me.
You have a desire, you have an intention. You put it out there, then you let it go. You release it to the Universe.
So then your unconscious mind which is connected to all the energy in the Universe works to manifest it for you. You talked about this. The inner becomes the outer.
But as far as intensely hoping for stuff your whole life and never getting it, so you just get on your knees everyday and beg and plead God for it, then finally after 40 years of living in the desert on your deathbed you finally get it….I mean seriously…forget that.
There are all these people in the Bible that did that stuff. They are held up as these great Heroes of the faith.
The longest I prayed for something without getting it was nine years. That’s all I’m giving God. I haven’t prayed for anything since.
But maybe its different for you. I don’t know. Would you like to be Job some day? Are you prepared to be Job, scraping your boils with potshards, living in rags?
Would you love God then?
April 29th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
You are talking about desire or intention. I am talking about Hope. They are two different things.
I am Job and I do love God. But loving God is not the hard part. God loving you is the hard part.
April 29th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I know they are two different things.
But that’s the closest thing to hope that I can accept.
I know really well what hope is. I am wondering do you think it is even possible that I can know what hope is and reject it?
How much Bible do you think I’ve studied? Check Proverbs 12:13 or somthing. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life”
To perfect hope it has to be really drawn out. Do a word search on hope on Bible gateway. All these people in the Bible had these agonizingly intense longings. Even generationally. Like the Israelites hoping for 400 years for something. Being born a slave, having parents and grandparents that were slaves, having children and grandchildren that are slaves. But having hope.
We are supposed to have been hoping Jesus will come back for running on 2007 years now.
How do you know hope is not like Loosh crack or somthing? I tell you what man. I cut God off. The Christian God anyway. Who knows if its the real God?
What kind of sick motherfucker gets off on people hoping their whole life away and yet passes themselves off as omnipotent?
If God is omnipotent that means that he gets more out of you hoping than he does fulfilling your hope. Whats in it for him?
Whats in it for us?
April 29th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Well then, may true hope fill your heart!
No, because when you know you will know.
Don’t study the Bible, study your heart.
No, you do a hope search on your heart. Use the “God” search engine.
Of course, that is the point of life: to be reunited with God.
Because when you know you know. Truth fills your heart.
Well then un-cut him off. There is only one God. No god but Allah.
Irrelevant. You’re the one who is sick. It’s not a sin. You shouldn’t feel guiilty about it though.
Love, the experience of life. Very simple.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Ok, So, I like your musical analogy.
Here is how I look at hope. We are all playing a part right? So God is the director.
Its a skit called “unanswered prayer” So this guy gets up there with the little clickey thing and says “unanswered prayer take 1,357,476.”
So then the camera is on you, you say your line, you get on your knees, eyes weeping and pleading, looking skyward, hands clasped and trembling.
Then you here “Cut!”
Then the director says. “Ok, one more time. This time with morefeeling.
Tell me how far off I am.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I dont know. Its up to you to figure it out.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Hope walks hand in hand with Faith and Love, as faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. There are human hopes, faiths and loves which are not supernatural or divinely appointed. That’s the difference.
We have hope that we can be guided into all truth, and not be self-deceived.
We have hope that we can live to the potential of our vision.
We have hope that pure love can cast out all fear.
We have hope that a pure heart will see God.
In the end all that is left is Pandora’s hope.
Abraham and Sarah waited their whole lives, gave up, came back … 9 years aint nothin’.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Ahhh, alistair, I just got it.
being somewhere about smack dab in the middle betwixt you & tim on the ol’ space-time continium, I think I grok ya. r a w experience is as likely to fill you brim-full with the spirit as it is to cast the spirits out. it can take awhile to sort out ones place in the universal scheme of things. No use rushing matters or or saying otherwise. No one ever listens anyhow. Not until they understand, at any rate…
April 30th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Its long enough to feel like a tool. I guess not long enough to feel like a supertool.
I guess I don’t win the prize.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
But, I guess Tim’s point is that there is some wonderful experience of hope that I’ve never experienced before, because if I had I would just
And apparently its not related to anything in the Bible, unless of course you are quoting the Bible from the perspective of one of the choice few who “know.”
If you are quoting the Bible from a position of Contra-hope (i.e. ignoance, apparently)
Then the Bible cannot be used as a source.
So hope, I guess, is some from of gnosis that is unfalsifiable and unassailable.
There is no way that a person can have experienced it, understood it, and rejected it. There is no possible way anyone can reject God from anything than a position of ignorance, even sickness, apparently, is a big part of it.
You can be ignorant and sick and reject hope, or you can be wise and Good and have hope.
You cannot be wise and healthy and reject hope.
This appears to be Tim’s position, at least when pressed.
I guess to Tim the more I press the point, the more I fit into his conception of me as sick and ignorant cutting myself off from God, etc. etc.
Think of this though Tim, is it possible I know and have experienced some things about God that you don’t? Is it possible that I am healthy and wiser after rejecting a relationship with God through faith?
You think I never had my little honeymoon with God?
I was ready to piss off about this stuff. But you said I should stay and debate. I guess you had this idea that I could be one over.
Its not so easy, not because I am simply stubbornly resistant, but because regarding faith etc. you have nothing to say I haven’t heard or thought of myself.
You have a lot of stuff that is original to say about a lot of things, lots of original experiences and insights, but as far as faith, hope, Christian things like that, I’ve been there before. I actually have.
Do you really think you know something the devil doesn’t know? Or does it come down to choice and free will?
April 30th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
9 years aint nothin’ … but
Ted - It might be you win a Dark Night of the Soul? Oh joy! I’m probably there myself right now. Some things are nigh on 15 years, and still waiting.
I also know what you mean about that honeymoon with god … and now what’s left? There’s no use, it seems, to pick up the pieces. At this stage, I feel like throwing out all the pieces is good, and underneath there remains “something” left.
What is it?
Struggle with it. Don’t let go. You might be left with a limp, but if you find some noble hope left, that’s one worthy inheiritance … and see what tomorrow brings.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
My Father’s hit and run episode with “Christians” cost him about 40. He lost faith in God for a while but when he stopped believing in people and their interpretations of the supernatural he found God again. He left Earth wounded but with a worthy inheritance. Very few people knew it though. Lose your health and money and you’ll see who your friends are. Sometimes that’s exactly what you win, a dark night of the soul. There were bright moments in those 40 years but it never got back to the way it was before.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Yes, that is what I am saying!
Don’t ask questions you don’t want the real answer to. The answer is: no, it’s simply not possible.
This isn’t about originality. It’s about authenticity, return to the True Source of all things. Nothing I have or do comes from or belongs to me.
What the fuck kind of question is that? Who created the Devil, even in Christian theology? In the Book of Job, Satan is the servant of God. Always was, always will be.
Exactly. That’s the whole point. Your reward for Faith and Hope and Love is to be destroyed over and over again, to be crucified and smashed by God, to be let down and disappointed again and again until you STOP BEING A WHINY BITCH and stop being attached to things that don’t matter and accept Life in all it’s Glorious Fucking Beauty™.
My kingdom is not of this world, but it’s also all around us and people choose not to see it.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
We only know what the Bible says by using our muscles to pick it up, using our eyes to see the squiggles on the page, using our memories of learning to read, of all our past experiences to interpret, not to mention the years of distance in the writing, translating, editing…
The word of god is not on paper, the Word is in us. The Communication. The Logos Spermatikos. If reading scripture recalls something of the source within us, the Word is speaking (as they say, of course the Word is completely silent and still. only everything else moves)
Maybe, but I don’t understand this rejection business. The Word is telling the story in all the books written, and all songs of different countries. What is there to reject? All this is dust and ashes, like Job and Solomon said. There is nothing but ________.
No, there is no possible way anyone can reject God period. It is not a matter of being friends or not, or following certain rituals or not. We can only reject our images, our idols of God, who is beyond image and imagining. This is a good thing. I missed the imagery and narratives of my fundie upbringing, but better than familiarity and namby-pamby sentimentality is incredible fact that there is something REAL. There is something that deserves to be called ‘God’, it makes every apocalyptic image in the history of religion look like Davey and Goliath.
And it is closer to you than your neck vein (Quran 50.16). This is LITERALLY true. You know how in art, they talk about figure and ground? All the things in the world are figures, and God is the ground.
It is “invisible”, but maybe they should say “supervisible”, or “subvisible”, or “protovisible”. It is right there in front of you, and me, whether or not we recognize or acknowledge it. It has been there through every happenstance of our lives, genuinely, literally “omnipresent” because there is nothing that occurs outside of it.
This is how you convince yourself of its reality: you hunt it down, and when you find it, you see that nothing in your life could ever have existed apart from it.
No one knows our secret failures, our true sins. The moment in our minds when we pause, hovering between possibilities, and then like a wounded bird, wheel around blindly and commit to a course of action we cannot return from. I taught the Devil how to sin.
It does come down to choice and free will. It comes down to the determiner and the determined. I am completely determined. I cannot act on my own. Sometimes I trick myself into thinking so, but I can’t keep up the charade for long. Freedom is a relative concept, and must logically be situated with the determiner, as the determined is not free to the degree it is determined, by definition.
I feel empathy with you Ted, from reading your blog, it seems like I come from a similar background and right now am going through the worst period of my life (so far), losing the most important person in the world to me. It’s not that the problems in our life are irrelevant, or all-important either, we must learn to situate them properly in reality as we experience it.
It’s not that giving up hope is “bad”, it’s just not exactly correct. It’s an intellectual error, not a character flaw.
It is said that he is our being, but we are not his. “I” am at the Nothing pole of existence and what I call “Him” is at the Existence pole. If this were a speculative theory or opinion, it would be worthless, but it is is a matter of empirical experience, to be tested in the heart through many trials and missteps.
It’s not enough to rest in self-assurance that we know the status of Being, Reality, Truth. The Adversary (Satan) is there to make us fucking PROVE IT.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Whoo! Whoo!
April 30th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Well,
What it is is that I can be perfectly fine, (and I really don’t know what all this bullshit is about not being able to appreciate beauty without faith) going on my merry way, having an adventure, until I try to have a discussion about Faith.
Then I run into all this presumption. Oohh, I must be in a lot of pain and really angry at God, but I shouldn’t give up, I should just hang in there because this wonderful relationship awaits, that is beyond words, but those in the know know what it is.
I think perhaps some people just want to die, is what it is. They want to return to the womb and even backwards from there to the eternal sleep of pre-existence.
Having your own body and mind and will is just too much of a burden. Life is a sickness to suffer through. I guess being independent is just the most horrible thing that can be imagined. Being seperate from God and existing in matter must be some horrible curse. It must be an illusion. Probably the creator is an evil archon, trapping consciousness in matter.
So if all these are a given, that what is there left to do but relinquish everything back to God? You say, God, swallow me up into you. I no longer want any independant existence of my own. Break my will, slay me. Make me your love slave. I give up.
That’s what it looks like to me. I was there I think. It started with sickness and fear and depression. Being afraid of life. Being afraid of having certain experiences, being afraid, actually, of my own power.
So then then all they can think of is leaving this world. This horrible Hell. That was me. So I said “No.” to life. I gave up my will to live, gave it to God. I was a broken vessel, I wanted God to heal me and fill me up.
It was a fun game for a while, but ultimately unsatisfying. Better to say “Yes.” to life, embrace the world. Enjoy life.
Love for the World is enmity with God, the Bible says. (I understand I am a mere plebian, alas, unable to interpret the Bible, but that is what it says.)
I really no longer look at existence as a curse or somthing to flee from, I look at it as an adventure to be embraced.
But go ahead and think I am seething with hurt and anger inside and what I really need is have my will broken and fall in love with yaweh and be his vessel or whatever and be continually broken.
whatever floats your boat. I am just the lost sheep that doesn’t understand, so instead I ignorantly go on enjoying life, not knowing I am supposed to be learning the joy of relinquishing my will and being broken and crucified.
But I am not a whiny Bitch. I take full responsibility for my own choices and own actions. I have no regrets.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Just so you know Tim, Yaweh started out as a tribal deity, there were lots of other Gods, These other Gods all became mushed together into one and became Lucifer/Satan.
Kaballists still don’t even think the creator God and Yaweh are the same God.
I am sure you have read all this stuff. I am not convinced Yaweh is the creator God either.
So if Yaweh is not the creator God why do I need Yaweh to enjoy creation? Including myself? I am a creation.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Don’t go. It’s good to hear from someone who takes this stuff seriously. I still love you.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Well thanks. I was just going to maybe not argue about faith though.
I still like Tim’s blog. But I love you too though!
But the thing is though whenever I get in these arguments I always feel like I end up getting sucked into playing the role of this bitter ex-Christian prodigal or whatever.
Really though, what I am doing is simply building a spirituality not based on faith or obedience, passivism, asceticism, etc.. Kind of an adventurous, hedonistic positive kind of spirituality.
I am not a pagan reconstructionist or a Wiccan or whatever, but I think paganism, animism was originally along those lines.
I really don’t think all these generations and generations of people without Christ or the gospel were really missing out.
But its funny though, I think Tim is unique and more of a Christian Mystic, than outright Christian, but when it comes right down to it, according to him there is one God one way and this one experience and there is this exclusive little group that know God and have had this experience and there is not any other way.
If you don’t get with this one program you are ignorant and lost.
But I mean, This is his blog I am visiting he didn’t knock on my door or anything. But still I was hoping that when I tried to pin Tim down on this stuff there would be somthing more to it than that. That is what held my interest really.
But it’s the just like the Fundie Baptists that think I never was a Christian because if I was I would still be one.
They just can’t get their head around anything else. Which is fine I guess.
April 30th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Metaphysically, the emanative impulse is ontologically prior to the realization of the I AM (Yod Heh), the “Small Face” of God.
(I think. Heh-heh.)
http://www.workofthechariot.com/TextFiles/Teachings-NameYHVH.html
I hope I didn’t come across that way, and that’s not what I meant. These aren’t strictly matters of morality or who is right or wrong, really. When I say that “I am nothing” and “the One is everything”, I am speaking metaphysically, about the nature of my being, what power I possess, what limitations I have. I do not mean this metaphorically.
Surely everyone can agree that a human’s being is relative, he is conditioned by external and internal influences, by the food he eats. What I assert (and this is a pretty damn bold claim) is that there is an Absolute which necessarily conditions the relative, one cannot exist without the other, and that this Absolute is the “God” of religions. (If that doesn’t get a fanatic to take out a hit out on me, nothing will.)
(Short aside on free will, the way I see it, although I am absolutely conditioned, I participate (to a degree) in the free action of the original cause.)
Although the unspeakable THAT cannot be put into words, that doesn’t mean it isn’t bloody RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY. It can be discovered. Allah said ‘I was a hidden treasure And yearned to be known, Therefore I created the world’.
I was so pleased to discover that the ways in which the Absolute relates to the relative were worked out hundreds (thousands, millions) of years ago, pleased and pissed that NO ONE HAD EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THIS BEFORE!! Just alternate physical realities to believe in. It felt practically like the majority of the world’s literature (mystic and metaphysical) was forgotten by everyone in the last 200 years.
The validity of religious metaphors can be tested empirically, by meditation and introspection, but not tested quantitatively, as in science. The reason for this is completely natural, every quantitave measurement occurs within the space of the senses, and the topic of metaphysics resides in the “space” immediately congruent to and surrounding your senses. Everything you will sense in life is conditioned by the presence of this subject. You can prove it to yourself, but you can’t prove it to anyone else, because you can only interact with them through your senses.
This is what distinguishes science (most fundamentally, physics) and metaphysics, and this is why so many strange metaphors are used, you cannot describe these things directly, you have to use analogy with things in the sensory world.
Anyone who thinks that in this day and age (Kali Yuga) has lapsed into fundamentalism. It is said that there is only one God because Unity is in fact a fundamental principle of reality. It would be more accurate to say that Unity is a name of the fundamental principle of reality. There is only one God, who is called by many different names, and while Allah (”the One”), YHWH (”I am that I am”) and Tupa (”Who are you?”) are among them, so are the Good, Truth, Powerful, Merciful, Reality, Life, the Absolute, Light, Heaven, Love, Temple, King, and all things like that. Some religions like Buddhism describe our reality in non-theistic terms, but they are speaking of the same thing, the same experience any other human is.
A book that greatly influenced my views on this was Frithjof Schuon’s The Transcendent Unity of Religion (a title which can be read several different ways!) and the idea of the sophia perennis or perennial philosophy (google them, I promise it’s worthwhile) in general.
I have in the past considered converting (meaning, I guess, devoting my energy and time) to both Buddhism and Islam, but after considering carefully, I feel honestly that since I have completely surrounded by Christian symbolism and narrative since I was born, that I understand those patterns better than others. The narrative of death/redemption/rebirth, the emphasis on the name love, on selflessness, forgiveness, these all resonate a LOT with me. I don’t feel I need the approval of any denomination or other Christian for my views, but must pursue the truth as earnestly and sincerely as I can. I don’t want to judge anyone else for their religious views because my coming to actually embrace the tradition I was born into was SO WEIRD for me, I can’t explain it properly to anybody. I hope I don’t come across that way.
And more importantly, because direct experience has convinced me that there is no room in Unity for Hell. Which is a sentimental way to say that the Absolute is really Absolute, that there is nothing that is not due to the original act of completely unconditioned, that is to say, completely free creation, which occurs at all times. But this is not something I can easily describe to anyone else, because it is the relationship between me and the deepest causes of what I do and feel.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Ted, you are being a retard! No offense, but seriously. Get over it! All I am saying to people is: DON’T FREAK OUT BECAUSE LIFE IS AWESOME!!!
And you’re sitting here arguing against that? WTF?
No, that’s not how it works at all. You not only retain independent existence, but you become even MORE independent and beautiful and powerful.
That’s exactly what I’m saying…
Who the hell is talking about Yahweh? I was talking about Allah, about Jah, about Vishnu. I wasn’t talking about Yahweh. He was just some shitty tribal god for desert jerks!
Dude, that’s because you ARE the bitter ex-Christian prodigal.
But seriously, I don’t even consider myself a Christian, because that’s irrelevant. I am a knight, a king, a troubadour, a poet, a prophet (and probably a devotee of the Virgin Mary/Kali more than anything). I seek God’s love and speak his Word. It flows through me as a conduit. It does not come from me. I am nothing and by that am I liberated.
Well that’s exactly what I’m doing. But you need to understand yourself as being in a place where you seek opposition in order to create polarities from which you are able to generate creative energy. There’s nothing wrong with it, but the thing I think that’s funny here is you think you disagree with me about all these big issues. I think no such thing, but I’m happy to be your mirror here so you can flow through and around these thoughts and get deeper into the stuff actually behind them.
Because the thoughts themselves are irrelevant. You need to learn to directly manipulate what is behind the thoughts. The only way to do that initially is through thoughts. But you’ll have MUCH better luck meditating on and manipulating symbolic sequences, image chains, because otherwise the AI part of your mind is only going to grow stronger and stronger and make you as dogmatic as those you are rejecting.
Dude, paganism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, shamanism, it’s all exactly the same shit. Seriously. All the differences stem from different arrangements of the underlying symbolic patterns and the poetry which arises out of their contemplation, enactment and rearrangement through culture.
You KNOW that is not what I am saying. You’re just trying to paint me into your little AI boxes. Don’t let yourself do that.
I’m gonna have to defer to P above on this: there is literally no possible way to “reject” God because God is all that exists. It is simply a matter of what way you choose to interact with these fundamental forces of existence which determines your experience of reality.
All I am fucking saying is there *IS* a light at the end of the tunnel. There *ARE* concrete, verifiable & repeatable spiritual experiences that can be had. And they are a very fucking big deal.
Trying to “pin me down” on this is to attempt to give it a fixed conceptual linguistic format, which is the same as actively seeking to kill it.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Well, this started out with me questioning the whole concept of “HOPE” because it seems so passive and defeatist.
But as it tuns out, you are just way up there in this great spiritual heights, and there is no possible way anyone could disagree with even one little aspect of what you say, all that can happen is that people can misunderstand or simply be ignorant of what you are saying, because once everyone gets to your level of spiritual advancement everyone will agree with everything you say, because then they will “know.”
It sounds bad but maybe its true, you are an ascended master and I am simply…a dick head.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
YES THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM SAYING!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations, you found the secret! Now you can be an ascended master too!
April 30th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Well P,
You know, is there a way to progress spiritually through experience in your opinion? Can it be in an active manner? Does it have to be some passive faith type of thing, asceticism, yeilding, relinquishing, prostrating oneself, finding a Guru or Zen master to beat you with a phallic stick when you get the Koan wrong?
That type of thing? Can you progress spiritually through magic? Using alternate states of consciousness to achieve goals in accordance to the will?
Do you have to be like Ghandi and take a vow of poverty or whatever?
April 30th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Hey, Tim,
You might be surprised that others may have taken some of the stuff you said that way also.
But you know, your cool, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You aren’t saying that. Has it even crossed your mind that you may not understand what I am saying?
I mean you say “YOU ARE the bitter Ex-Christian Prodigal.”
When really that is not what I am about. I’ve been coming here a while and you didn’t always have all the Christian lingo.
I think the Lingo kind of brings it out in me so what Ihave been doing is seeing if you are using the words to mean the same things.
That’s my whole purppse. Its seems like in a lot of ways you are.
Once again I could be wrong.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Well let them, its a problem in their perceptions. If I have to be that target for them, then let me be. But I’m done with denying it. Why do you think I spent so many years dancing around shit and being embarrassed to say what I was actually experiencing? It serves noone anything to hide the truth like that.
No, because I have been directly through the area which you are currently traversing. You are doing the right thing by arguing and criticizing me and saying the things you are saying. This is the way out of that pattern you don’t want to be in anymore. Keep it up! Fight me to the death!
Wait, what? My whole purpose is to “be” exactly. That’s what I’m saying. We have nothing else besides what you and I are doing right here. And it is a song as old as the hills. I’m just trying to make sure I sing the right part for you right now. There are a lot of other cool songs coming up in the musical though, too!
April 30th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Ok,
I am not just trying to piss you off. Seriously
Let me ask you about this right here if I haven’t totally exasperated the shit out of you yet.
This is serious business here. This is heavy stuff to me. Everyone seems like they just want to breezily mention this kind of thing and be all esoteric, and then not really talk about it and be really dismissive about it.
Like “Archons are no big deal, just ignore them and they will ignore you. God is way more powerful yada yada yada.”
So maybe you can have an opportunity to help me out here. If I haven’t totally worn out your patience.
I don’t think its all that breezy. I think this archons or whatever can get people convinced they are God. It can really screw with people.
I asked Erin Pavlina about this but I don’t think she gives free advice, really.
But I had a spirit guide that I thought was the holy Spirit but I don’t think it was.
So its really hard for me just to be all trusting with spiritual things.
Hope that clarifies things. I am trying to see what the difference is between you and me, for a good reason really.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Ted, I am not in the slightest bit pissed off at you! If you knew me in person you would be able to see that.
OH yes, exactly! That is their whole purpose. What they do is whisper into people’s ears “You are God! You are God!” and then they harness people’s loosh which they use to create spurious thought-emotional world simulations wherein they incarnate as sentient patterns which run people’s live so as to continually power this machine, this simulated loosh world.
The only problem though is that the Deceivers also come from God, because nothing can not come from God. But they are “fallen” angels because they are creating recursive sub-world/patterns. They are essentially “taking themselves too seriously.” But the whole point of Free Will is that you have the potential to lie to yourself as completely as possible.
And the only other problem is that when the Deceivers whisper in your ear “You are God!” they are actually telling the truth. But it’s that semantic problem we talked about with identifying yourself as God in the first person. What they are trying to say to people is “You are God because God is living inside your heart if you can only remember it!”
And this isn’t a wrong message, but most people only listen to the first part “You are God!” and then ignore the other fact that everyone else is too so you can’t just run around and be a dick and expect everything to be awesome.
The other sucky thing about the Deceivers is that they completely revel in reifying whatever your darkest fears and worst problems are which only you know, because they are trying to say, “Hey, hurry up! God is waiting for you, so let’s just skip straight to the hard stuff so you can get over it and come join this party.” So its fucked up, but the Deceivers - as agents of God - force people to go through some unimaginable pains in this world so they can be with him and see his face and know his love.
It’s totally fucked up but it’s the gamble of Free Will: that you have to have pain and separation to have the full real impossible richness of God’s One and Only True Love For All Eternity™
April 30th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
THEODORE
Gender: Masculine
Usage: English
Pronounced: THEE-o-dor [key]
From the Greek name Θεοδωρος (Theodoros), which meant “gift of god” from Greek θεος (theos) “god” and δωρον (doron) “gift”. This was the name of several early saints and two popes.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Oh and let’s not forget that when we say “God” here, what we are really talking about is the raw unfiltered data sream of all human experience and all frequencies of life within the perceivable and conceivable universe, and that which when you are authentically connected to it seems to be greater and “other” than you because it involves an animistic shamanic participation in all experiences of Life (another Platonic ideal synonym for Love, Beauty, Truth, Grace) and therefore renders borders between things ridiculous and arbitrary, and hence somewhere in that is their unique and wondrous beauty. The Song the Angels Sing™ in glorification of every even insignificant bit of God’s Creation™
THAT’s what we’re talking about here.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Yeah, I know. The Hebrew equivalent is Matthew, which also reduces down the same number numerologically.
Plus my full name reduces down to number 22.
I used to get Matthew whispered in my ear a lot. I think I figured it out, who its related to Theodore.
About the decievers, I guess I am not doing so bad. I broke the cycle anyway.
I think maybe you have been through similar things as me but not totally. But its good to discuss it with you. I had almost a bicamral brain I was so in tune with this spirit. I mean probably I did have a bicamral brain, according to the book on it anyway. It seemed to function the same way. Since 2005 I have had to totally rewire the way I think. From 15 to 34 I had a bicamral brain, with the sprit guide dictatating to me.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:01 am
OK. Probably for now that’s a bit too intense for me, but I’ll keep that in mind, for later.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:04 am
Yeah you will need it later. Thats the point of all this shit. Save it for when you need to create the language bridge so you don’t go nuts. All I am doing is wiring together symbolic containers for you. You’ll see what I mean. Wink wink nudge nudge to everybody else!!!
May 1st, 2007 at 3:47 am
I do occasionally get these windows into it, and I do have some full-blown experience of it in my past, but I feel ashamed. A large part of me would rather just dope-off, go through the motions, and quietly wait for death.
I don’t feel like I can bear the responsibility of the “gift” or this great “adventure” (note the sarcasm, no truer indication of a dying soul) — worse than that — I’m very much afraid of getting my *hopes* up, getting all motivated and shit, and then getting slapped down again into this mediocre, low-frequency, walking-dead, I hate my job wasteland.
Fear is my God, I sacrifice all my energy to the pathways it chooses for me. That’s why I posted that quote. Everything Jesus says about himself there is true for me.
It’s not like I don’t have the eye — I do — but when I feel it opening, I will willingly turn it shut. Out of shame, fear, whatever. Funnily enough, that doesn’t stop me from picking at it — ‘fooling myself into thinking that I really want it open, until it threatens to do so.
May 1st, 2007 at 5:47 am
Jacob, that’s beautiful! Few people can be so open about it as that!
May 1st, 2007 at 11:52 am
I hear you. It’s so much easier to drug yourself with things, shopping, money, culture, politics etc. Boo, hoo, hoo, for me too.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:45 pm
People have tried all those things and some of them say it works, I dunno.
The preponderance of advice in the literature says to meditate, and there are several different ways you can do that. None of us humans want to do it, though, because it’s hard.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Wow! The Confessional Thread - I wish we could all come together in RL for some communal wine and bread, and have a “get the pain out” moment of healing. … really I do.
One of my favorite quotes comes from the movie “Frida” about crippled artist Frida Kahlo, and I paraphrase:
also from Jurassic Park:
May 1st, 2007 at 7:04 pm
at the begin/ending of The Everything, there was a fire in the clearing in the very center of the woods.
no matter how far a soul might travel, in any direction, they eventually discoveretern to the fire.
some had walked a long LONG way. some never really lost sight of the flames, not even for a second.
some came, and went, and came back again, many times.
some people looked between these two trees, at the Source of Every/Nothing and called it THIS.
others, from a different place, between some rose bushes maybe, called it THAT.
it is the Sun!
no, it is the Son!
no, it is a great antlered Deer!
it is My Love.
it is YOU.
no, it is ME.
no…it is a Giant Purple People Eater! Run!
wait–i think i see a flower.
or a Big Bang, or maybe a Gang Bang–it is not easy to tell from this vantage point.
could it be a Word? or a Drum? or a Heart? or a Song? the World Tree? the Big Giant Head? Coyote?
what the fuck am i looking at here?
there are many choices–
i could go and fight with those other guys over there who think they see a stupid Deer because, man, are they ever wrong…or,
i could simply bask in my own view, which often is really Something. or,
i could turn away because this shit is confusing as hell. or,
maybe…if we all got together and described what we See…you know, like those old blind guys in that funny story about the elephant that no one believes is really an elephant, until they quit the fighting and just compare notes?
***
Tim…i’m happy for you. Seattle has given to you what you left to seek, it seems. you are totally Be/(He)Art-ing all over the place here, and it’s very cool to watch.
Ted…”I think the Lingo kind of brings it out in me…”
Big Gold Star, for you there. i share that knee-jerk ex-Fundie spiritual crippling with you, and dude i sympathize.
the Fundies (of many kinds, but for sure the WASPY ones that spawned me and you) do more to drive people away from Source/God/Life/Love/Being/Joy than any other damn thing in our current iteration that i can think of at the moment. they do more damage than even $Mammon$ or War(TM) or any other fucking thing. for so many people, they act as a kind of Evil Anti-Vaccination that teaches the body/soul/mind to always look out for and immediately REJECT and FIGHT anything close to Getting IT. they suck, for that. although i don’t believe they mean to do it, or that it is intentional, and, for some of them, maybe their path even works, i don’t know.
when you read “god” just let your eyes see whatever they need to see.
and “hope” is just believing that shit might work out after all–it does not have to be “passive”! you can work your ass off for something–which appears to be your chosen path, and that’s cool if it does the trick for you, but if you do not also believe/hope that you might get where you are trying to go, then pretty much you are not going to get there–and even if you do, you won’t *believe* it and it will be worthless.
you might prefer this, to the word “hope”:
Tolkien: “It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
i’m just sayin’.