“In the staircase of life, Art is the only step that doesn’t creak.”

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It’s a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved. Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing. More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

“It is the function of the artist to call attention to what life does not.”

“The mission of the artist in an over-technologized society is to call the old magic back to life.”

“A mockingbird… was heard to blend the songs of 32 different kinds of birds into a 10 minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.”

“If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic.”

And this one is just for Tim:

“Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received. “

One thing about the story of the Gospels: I think they represent a bigger Story above and beyond, one which has been and is played out in different ways throughout history. Think of all the prophecy before the Gospels were written: there’s pre-echoes of the Story to be found there. Which means there’s post-echoes of the Story to be found everywhere right now. It’ll wax and wane, but presumably never go away.

p - awesome.

Ted - Demiurge-tastic, mate!

But I do not yet see how acting out the Jesus myth is any different from our daily interactions with other egos.

You probably don’t see it because you havent actually tried it on as a costume

For me, the thing that allows you to enter that bizarro world of grace and purity, is ruthless honesty and self-awareness (i.e. ego transcendence, clear vision), which gives birth to Love.

Or have you? That is the Christ story in a nutshell.

as for art…there’s an art that elevates and cleanses, reawakens the higher self and unifies the individual and the community through an ineffable and pure connection. then, there’s an art that debases and brings those experiencing it low, to dwell in their worst natures. but at a certain level of understanding (not intellectual “understanding,” but “whole being understanding”), there’s no difference between the two and that art that would debase others still results in divine elevation on account of the nature of the one experiencing it.

glad you mentioned johnny appleseed…his commitment to the Swedenbourgian vision of Christianity is one of those gems of history you never hear about in public school for various reasons.

Ted–devote yourself to your Isht-deva: whole hog, plus the postage! Nietzsche’s a good provisional one; perhaps not recommended for the long haul, though. Conan the Conqueror might be better. Or the Old Man of the Mountain.

Timbo, I think I have my answer.

Nietzsche “The Will to Power”

His kingdom, “Heaven,” exists noographically at right angles to our dimension. It is everywhere and nowhere. It is spread out before you, but men do not see it. Why is that?

“Male”, “Solar”, “Vertical”, “Esoteric”, “|”
“Female”, “Lunar”, “Horizontal”, “Exoteric”, “-”

Cross +, the sign for addition(and askew, multiplication)

The eye inside us looks vertically, “esoterically” down, as into a well. Only at the indeterminate (and thus both “active” and “still”) point of intersection do we find the spring of the fountain that fills the well.

“The one thing needful” so often referred to in Christian mysticism could also be called the one thing crucial, meaning “cross”, derived from Latin crucis or French crux.

“I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Gal. 2:20

“Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” Col 1 26-27

Can we allow ourselves to be crucified on the metaphysical cross, which is no metaphor or poetic language, but the very real intersection of Heaven and Earth?

In the crucifixtion (”fixed to the cross”) story, when the sky went black, the lance pierces Christ’s side and blood and water come out, rose of Sharon and lily of the valley (Sol. 2:1), red and white elixirs, sun and moon, male and female.

Don’t you think the X story is always being acted out, by everyone everywhere, on all levels?

Yes!

I see Jesus essentially as the perfect mirror cum scapegoat, untouchable yet taking the violent brunt of all surrounding ignorance.

Jesus is the body for the Christ XPISTOS, which at all times bears the immense suffering of the world, the indestructible vajra.

“I say our crude Sperm flows from a Trinity of Substances in one Essence, of which two are extracted out of the earth of their Nativity by the third, and then become a milky Virgin-like Nature, drawn fro the Menstruum of our sordid Whore.” - Eirenaeus Philalethes

He calls the subject “our Whore” because in its passivity and compliance, it allows us to treat it however we wish, never resisting. The subject is only “whorish” in relation to external things, in reality, it is “virginal” and untouchable by physical things, indestructible, immortal, and triumphal.

“The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone” Ps. 118:22

It is everywhere and nowhere. It is spread out before you, but men do not see it. Why is that? It’s because the only way to enter into the Truth of Heaven™ is through the story of Christ.

I’m not sure how much of this I should take literally. Are you implying that we cannot activate Jesus-mode without acting out his story?

Don’t you think the X story is always being acted out, by everyone everywhere, on all levels? I see Jesus essentially as the perfect mirror cum scapegoat, untouchable yet taking the violent brunt of all surrounding ignorance. And that is a universal human (egoic) theme, since we are all mirrors.

I agree with you about the cathartic value of art and the bonding experiences of shared ritual. But I do not yet see how acting out the Jesus myth is any different from our daily interactions with other egos. For me, the thing that allows you to enter that bizarro world of grace and purity, is ruthless honesty and self-awareness (i.e. ego transcendence, clear vision), which gives birth to Love.

I hope you can correct me if I misunderstandimate your position. I really enjoy your “treatment” of Jesus.