Month: February 2017 Page 1 of 2

Dueling With God

Why is it that the things in life that bring pleasure to the soul tend to bring destruction to the body?

Would it not make more sense that you should crave fresh vegetables instead of chocolate cake when you get hungry? Why celebrate special occasions with wine when water is far healthier? And the risks we take by having sex when abstinence is clearly the safer option do not bear thinking about! (Well, maybe we can think about it…)

This particular little conundrum is the focus of many religions.

The Bible tells us that if we even look at someone lustfully, the sin is already committed. Who would design a world to be like this? Is God a cruel child? Creating people and giving them desires only to require they deny them? Or worse, telling a person that they can come to heaven after they die but that most of the other people they know and love will be set on fire and burned forever. (Mainly because they refuse to believe in a God who would do something like that.)

Old Gautama recommended getting rid of desires as a way to short-circuit suffering. The less you want out of life, the less disappointed you’ll be. And if you meditate hard enough, you can merge with the ultimate Emptiness and become One with the great Nothing.

You could also do the whole atheism thing so it’s not like there aren’t options…

You can only imagine what God is when you are God. And you’re not right now so stop trying. Just keep letting God imagine you for the moment.

As I mentioned in a previous post, God-as-Unity is a worthy thing to aspire to and to be able to fall back on. Blissing-out and I AMing all over has it’s place. However, when you view this through time-colored glasses, you need to become a Creator unless you want to be Bored-Beyond-Words.

So what does Unity need to do? Become Duality. Bipolar. Splitsville.

This allows Interaction. Dance. Conflict. Yes and No. Good and Evil. Desire and Fear. Here are the Forges of Creation wherein friction becomes a Thing in itself and a new world is born…

“Zwei ist drei und jetzt haben wir eine party!”

Triple Crown Device #2

That Synching Feeling

I have heard the word “synchronicity” defined as a “meaningful coincidence”.

My experience with this phenomenon has been less narrowly constrained. Most of the “synchronizations” I experience have had no apparent meaning to me. For instance, during a road-trip a few years ago, I saw three different vanity license plates in one day that each had a variation of the word “killers” on it. That really got my attention. Thinking that this might have been some kind of message or warning, I spent the next week or so on the lookout for further developments.  As far as I could see, there were none. On another more recent occasion, I crossed paths with three different strangers on the same day who each made reference to the small, obscure town where my mother was born and raised. A tiny New Jersey hamlet of about 2500 people (c. 1936) that was famous for nothing at all. These encounters took place in Minnesota around 2014. The connection? Only myself as far as I could tell. Aside from the incorporation of the number three, there were no messages or lessons to be taken from these events. Coincidence? Yes. Meaningful? Not so far. Not to me.

The vast, heady vistas of mathematical statistics suggest that there is nothing unusual here. How many non-related facts cross paths in our lives every day without notice? Are the very few that do seem to be related really pushing beyond the realm of random chance? Could this be some pareidolia we apply to the data-stream that we call experience in order to comfort ourselves in the face of our ultimately meaningless existence?

Sure, that could be it. (Bummer for you though, if that’s the road you need to take!)

Psychology and anthropology have a term that you may have come across; “Magical Thinking”. It is used in a sarcastic and condescending manner to dismiss the fools who believe that reality can be changed in unapproved ways by uncertified people.

If you’ve read much of what I have written, you will know that I enjoy magical thinking the way a cat enjoys mice. It is both my sustenance and my play-thing. You experience everything through your mind. Whether you are a modern doctor shaking your head at the poor, ignorant shaman or the anorexic teenager crying over the fat girl in the mirror, only you can decide how you want to view the world.

There is meaning in your occasional glimpse behind the curtain. Deep and enduring wisdom can be seen through the cracks in the facade that reveal the secret machinery underneath. The unexpected synchronicity is a wake-up call to pay close attention to what is going on right now and to learn from it.

Or not. Entirely up to you.

Triple Crown Device #1

Undertakers

After taking more than one excursion into the Undiscovered Country, I developed an interest in what other people may have encountered there.

Several years later, I discovered the website of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation. It features an enormous database of near-death experiences that have been submitted by users world-wide. At that time, there were approximately 3000 entries. Over a number of months, I read them all. The reports ranged from profound to just plain crazy. Part of the problem was the result of semi-literate people experiencing things above the symbolic level who then attempted to convey them using verbal descriptions. (One fellow found himself on the bridge of the star-ship Enterprise and Captain Kirk was Jesus! Sounds completely silly on the surface but it is interesting to note that the word “enterprise” comes to us from the French “entreprendre” which means “undertake”. And a “kirk” of course, is a church…)

Below is my distillation of that data into the most common experiences that were encountered time after time as described by the most sincere and level-headed experiencers.

  • The experience is “more real” than this world.
  • Extreme relief and happiness to be “Home” again.
  • Total assurance that the loved ones left behind will be okay.
  • A light so brilliant that it should be blinding but is not.
  • The air is notably “warmer” although not uncomfortably so.
  • A tunnel, door or bridge to mark transition the into next world.
  • Full life review.
  • They judge themselves.
  • Meeting loved ones who have died.
  • Surrounded by unconditional love.
  • All communication is telepathic.
  • Seeing colors that one has never seen before.
  • Hearing music that is more beautiful than any previously experienced.
  • 360° vision/awareness.
  • Instantaneous travel.
  • Complete understanding of all mysteries.
  • Anger at finding themselves returned to this world.
  • Loss of all fear of death.
  • Increased empathy for others.
  • New or enhanced psychic abilities.

Now see if you can rise above these written descriptions. To comprehend the non-verbal concepts that lie not just above the words but above the very symbols that the words imply.

If you cannot, I recommend you keep trying. It’s well worth the effort.

Don’t be too disheartened if you cannot grasp it however.

You’ll experience it for yourself soon enough…


I am sure that many of you have encountered the “scientific” explanation that the near-death experience is simply an illusion created by the expiring mind to comfort us as we die. That the body has evolved to do this. That a few people somewhere along the line mutated to include this trait and then passed it along to their offspring after they died.

Strata (Various)

Awoke this morning from the strangest dreams.
Imagined I’m sure, the lingering screams.
The truth, like the onion seems
layer on layer of bittersweet dreams.

For again I awoke, with laughter this time
and started to set the illusion in rhyme.
Then startled, I realized this world was not mine,
not my true place, not my real time.

I awoke once again! This seems solid and real
but never again can I trust what I feel.
Broken my walls and shattered my shields
as I wait to awake to what’s finally Real.

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