I’ve Seen the Sun,
so you see,
I am I
but I’m not me.
Flown so high
my tongue is tied.
Just this smile
and laughing eyes.
Tag: Paradox Page 3 of 5
Precognition. Extra-Sensory Perception. Telekinesis. Psychometry.
Mind-reading. Divination. Dowsing. Astrology.
Medicine. Sorcery. Witchcraft. Hoodoo.
Powers.
Throughout history and literature, presented as fact or as fiction, we find endless tales of men and women who are somehow able to bend reality in various ways. Some do it for profit or personal gain. Some do it to selflessly help others or to glorify their gods. Some do it to pick Zener cards.
Many people are willing to believe that at least some of these stories are true. One of the reasons for this may be due to the fact that so many of us experience our own seemingly magical events. Perhaps we dream of a person we haven’t seen in years and then they call on us the very next day. Maybe we just know what someone else is thinking. Or we sense that we are being watched before the watcher is revealed. The existence of minor miracles opens the way for the possibility of greater ones.
Due to the nature of this blog, I will assume that a fair number of readers have experimented along these lines. I will also assume that a large percentage of those who have can report positive results. By which I mean that something happened whether for good or for ill. If you accept that “magic” is real, then please read on. If you do not, I have no desire to try convincing you. Your time may be best spent elsewhere.
What is magic and why does it work?
All consciousness is One. Many refer to this One Thing as “God”. What we experience as Reality is created by the Imagination of God. The true You is a piece of God. Your imagination IS God’s Imagination.
Words are an entirely insufficient tool for conveying this type of information. Please try to experience the previous paragraph at the purest level you can.
Your reasoning mind may object. “If I could create my own reality, it certainly wouldn’t be this life on this world!”
All reasoning is flawed from God’s point of view. It is but a tool and a crude one at that (relatively speaking). The flaws in the “reasoning” above revolve around the misunderstanding of what the word “I” represents. You may also think that you want to live in a world where your thoughts manifest quickly. Believe me, I’ve been there. You do not.
To Know Who You Are is the piece of knowledge symbolized in alchemy as the Philosopher’s Stone. The completion of what is called the Great Work results in the Realization that your true self is… well… Something that cannot be put into words. Therefore, it is also Nothing that can be put into words.
Anyway, back to the regular world of regular humans. The fact is that you have created the reality you are experiencing. Your ability to change that reality is directly proportional to your ability to believe that you can. In other words, you can perform miracles if you have faith that you can.
Just keep in mind that it is not you that does this (because there is no you). It is God. Who is You. If this makes no sense, it is because you are looking at my finger and not at where I am pointing. Symbolically speaking, of course. That takes us above the words. Now you need to take it above the symbols.
Do you believe you can do this?
I happen to Know that You can.
Flat on his back in the hospital bed, a single tear rolled down his temple into the starched, white pillow. Most of his family were in the room, teary eyed and somber. The minister from his church stood near the door. He had put up one hell of a fight but the cancer had won. His doctor had said it was only a matter of hours now. His kidneys had shut down. His liver.
Too weak to even lift a hand to wave goodbye, Sam slipped away and was gone.
Those gathered in the room stopped looking at him. They were all looking at something on the floor. All Sam could see was the top of their heads. What? With amazement, Sam realized what was happening. He had floated out of his body and was now hovering near the ceiling. His family was not looking at something on the floor, they were gazing at his now lifeless corpse. His minister silently mouthed a prayer.
“Well, here I go,” thought Sam. “Come get me Jesus! I’m ready!”
He looked around. The hospital scene was fading away. He was floating in a dimly-lit, gray void. Wasn’t there supposed to be a tunnel or something? A light he had to follow?
“Samuel Jefferson Greene, Baptist. Is that correct?” asked a somewhat bored-sounding male voice in his left ear.
Sam was startled. He looked around. There was an odd sensation that resembled waking up from a dream and he found himself standing in a tiny metal room. Smooth walls. Bright illumination streaming down from fluorescent light fixtures set into the low ceiling. There was a sliding door, also made from smooth metal with a brushed finish. Buttons. There was a low humming sound.
“An elevator?,” he blurted.
“Is that what you see?” asked the voice, somewhat distractedly.
Sam turned to his left. A man of medium height stood next to him. They were both facing the door. The man was wearing a short, white robe. No. That wasn’t right. Sam frowned. It was a lab coat. Mild blue eyes gazed at him expectantly through brown horn-rim glasses. The man held a clipboard.
“Wha…,” Sam began.
“Are you Samuel Jefferson Greene? Arriving from Slater Memorial Hospital, Pickettestown, Oklahoma, U.S.A.?”
“Y-e-s,” Sam answered slowly, puzzled.
“It’s symbolic. People see different things depending on their life-experience and what they expect.”
“What?”
“The elevator. Some people think they are on a bridge, or in a tunnel, or opening a door…”
“So we’re in this elevator because to me, it symbolizes my travelling up from the Earth and into Heaven?”
“Something like that. My name is Pete, by the way. I am the gatekeeper. Give me just a minute to close out your paperwork and you can be on your way.”
Pete scribbled a line on his clipboard and checked a few boxes.
“Pete… You mean Peter?” asked Sam, astonishment dawning. “You’re Saint Peter? This isn’t quite what I was expecting.”
“It never is.”
“I mean, you’re just a regular-looked guy. With glasses?”
“Is that what you see?” Pete smiled blandly. “We’re almost done here. I just need to confirm a few details for the record. He lifted the clipboard and flipped through a couple of pages. “It says here that you were raised Methodist but halfway through college, you started going to a Baptist church, is that correct?”
“Well yes, but…”
“Then at age 34, following the death of you mother, you started spending a lot of time reading the Bible. You became a youth minister the following year and then actually went on a missionary trip to…where was it…? Caballococha?”
“Yes,” Sam nodded. “It’s way up on the Amazon. In Peru.”
“It says here that you had a crisis of faith during that period?”
“Yes, I did. There was this crazy witch-doctor-shaman guy there. Silvio. He said that since I was trying to win his people to my God, he would have to try to win me over to his gods. He wouldn’t leave me alone. Constantly talking about spirits in the jungle. Spirits in the river. Spirits everywhere. I tried to be polite. I listened. I showed him in the Bible that people were born guilty of sin and needed salvation through the blood of Jesus. We had some long conversations and some of what he believed started to make sense to me. I admit it. Satan got a hold on me there. I started to question stuff. Stuff like what if the Bible wasn’t the only word of God. That maybe God spoke in other ways too. That maybe my religion wasn’t the only right one. I’m ashamed to say it, but Silvio ended up being my friend. The devil used him to get to me. I talked about this to my minister at the time, Brad. He helped me see what was happening. You should’ve seen Silvio’s face when I told him I knew what he was up to and rebuked him in the name of Jesus. He even cried to try to confuse me. Brad ended up recalling me and I had to go back to the States. Once I was home though, I got my head back together real quick. God saved me. Again.” Sam smiled ruefully.
“Did you know that Silvio became bitter toward Christians and white people in general after that? Eight years later, he murdered two Mormon missionaries and threw their bodies in the river. Their families never found out what happened to them.”
“That bastard,” Sam nodded grimly. “I stumbled there but I eventually got back on the road to Glory. It wasn’t my best moment.”
“No. No it was not.” Pete scribbled something and looked up.
“Now, what about that girlfriend? Let’s see… Abigail, was it?”
“Abby. Yeah. I really loved her.”
“But you broke it off, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because she was Jewish?”
“We wanted to get married but she didn’t want to turn Christian and there was no way I was going to turn Jew. It would break my heart if she became my wife and then didn’t go to heaven with me when I died. And what if we had kids? What would happen to them? I had no choice. I had to cut her loose.”
“And you are aware of what became of her?”
Sam didn’t answer.
“She killed herself. You broke her heart. She became depressed and she killed herself.” Faint lines of disapproval flickered at the edges of Pete’s mouth.
“It was an accidental overdose,” said Sam quietly.
“No,” said Pete. “No accident.”
“That’s on her,” said Sam more forcefully with just a trace of anger. “There was nothing I could do. I wasn’t going to lose my salvation over her. Change my faith and lose my soul? That was not an option!”
“Sure it was.”
“Yeah, but I made the right choice. I stuck with Jesus. I stayed the course. I passed the test. That’s the whole point of life isn’t it? God testing us?”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Pete. “Souls are tested rigorously on Earth. God cannot have citizens of Heaven who are not adaptable. Who cannot think for themselves. If the Lord wanted humans to be robots who slavishly stick to one program, he would just make them that way.”
“Wait a minute. What are you saying? I did everything right. I kept the faith. I did exactly what I was supposed to do. My reward is in heaven, right?”
“I’m sure you are aware that God has a habit of making things appear one way when in fact, the opposite is true? Money rots the soul, healthy food tastes terrible, the meek inherit the earth. Like that?”
“Sure, but…”
DING! There was a jolt and a light flashed above the metal door as it began to slide open.
“Oh boy,” exclaimed Sam with a big smile, rubbing his hands together. “We’re here. This is it! Heaven at last!”
Sam stepped through the door and the waking-up sensation rippled through him again. He felt a blast of hot air across his face. Before him sprawled an enormous vista of flaming horrors. Terrifying demonic monsters were everywhere, torturing wailing human forms in a thousand unspeakable ways. A particularly hideous creature, black and vicious was staring directly at him. It started toward him, drooling.
Sam spun around to face the gatekeeper, indescribable fear clamping his heart. “Hell!” he screamed in fury and despair. “I’m in Hell?”
The elevator and it’s occupant had faded away. Pete’s response was attenuated but still audible.
“Is that what you see?”
Have you ever been totally at peace and happy? The world was wonderful, the future looked bright and you felt secure yet excited to simply exist?
How about the opposite? Anger and pain was all you could see. The world was a cruel and desperate place filled with suffering and horror.
How you experience reality is a reflection of how you are inside. If you go about your day looking for reasons to love people and finding ways to be helpful, you will receive the same in kind. Walking around with a scowl and complaining about everything will yield you a world of antagonism and hatred.
This is a basic rule of ethics and as such “the golden rule” is a powerful way to reach out and change the reality you experience. However there are more internal changes you can make such as looking for beauty in unexpected places. You can consciously decide to emphasize the positive side of things and count your blessings by noticing and appreciating all the special people and personal triumphs in your life.
Okay, enough with the gratitude attitude platitudes. You have also no-doubt noticed the phenomena wherein something that is in your mind tends to appear in the “outside” world. Perhaps you question something and the answer comes into your life in an unexpected manner. This can range from the everyday synchronicities to the quite jarring alignments that occur during major life-changes. The willful application of this is the basis of what is called prayer, spell-casting and a lot of new-age bullshit I won’t go into. Respect it though.
It is instructive to experiment along these lines. With as much or as little ceremony as you like, try creating a thought-form specifically for the purpose of looking for similar or related things to appear either in your dreams or in the world around you. Keep notes if you can. Like your dreams, uncanny events go into the memory-shredder quickly. Also, look for evidence of intelligent humor in the results of these experiments.
As you would expect, this is a two-way street. Things that appear in your life will tend to make their way inside. Want to be filled with despair and sickness? That’s easy, just spend time wallowing in the “news”. Worry about all the things you are told to worry about. Soak up all the attending drug commercials while you’re there. Want to feel better? Ditch the news and go play. Meet some new people. Rediscover nature. Allow yourself to be loved.
Even being out of control is completely under our control.
When we realize that there is only one Thing, we will discern that changing one thing changes everything. When we realize that we are the one Thing, we will understand that changing everything changes nothing.
Are you familiar with the concept of the “Goldilocks Universe”? The observation by Science that there exists in Nature an overwhelming number of variables that must meet very precise values in order for life to be possible?
Is this the elusive Proof of God that said deity apparently goes through so much trouble to conceal? Or is it just a trick of perception similar to desert mirages or matter becoming conscious?
Just imagine the staggering number of coincidences and alignments that have (and are) occurring just to produce you. Right now. Right here.
Does the very thought of this make you feel unbelievably special?
Or maybe just a little suspicious?
The “Goldilocks” or Finely-Tuned Universe observation is a compilation of all the minutely perfect arrangements of elements and forces that exist to make life possible. The slightest change in parameters such as the strength of gravity or in the odd, asymmetric relationship between matter and anti-matter would result in a sterile or unsustainable universe.
So how could this be? Why would we exist in a universe that is perfectly suited to us? Pop-science is currently having fun with the idea that perhaps we are programmed characters living in some Great Computer Simulation. That idea, like that of Panspermia giving rise to life on Earth is a red herring that begs the question by merely pushing it out another layer.
Might the difficulty here be that the original premise is wrong? Why should we assume that Something Out There is the cause of us? Is there any evidence that we might be the cause of It?
Speaking as a person who works daily with the mentally ill, I can vouch for the fact that what some of us accept as reality can bear very little resemblance to what others experience. We can argue until we are blue in the face (and I have) about who’s reality is more real. In the end of course, the problem originates in our inadequate ability to communicate and the prevailing assumption that we must live in only one world.
At this level, on this world, seven-billion or so humans are defining our reality based on what we can agree upon. Have you noticed that pretty much anything we imagine in science-fiction eventually becomes real? The limits fall away once we agree that they can. The barriers only exist when we say they do.
There are others who have not elected to join us in this project and so have no reason to limit themselves to our current rules and regulations. Our occasional encounters with them leave us frightened and mystified. Aliens? Spirits? Angels?
None-of-the-above. They aren’t playing this particular game by our particular rules. My advice is not to communicate with them. They will tend to mess with your head. Not because they’re evil. Simply because it’s funny.
This is after all, just a game.
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!”