Showing posts with label BS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BS. Show all posts

Timor Dinosaurus


[The following is a fictional adaptation of a totally natural, very minor, and definitely un-weird experience. ;-) Or alternatively, you may think of it as the narrative of the Fool, caught in the delirium he deems reality...]



I recently had a soul flashback, a sudden awakening, to a deep, dim racial memory encoded in the oldest parts of our mitochondrial DNA. I remembered the nature of dinosaurs. Part of me almost became a dinosaur, channeling the energy of dinosaur-ness, across the vast evolutionary gulf that divides our lineages. I felt the coarse, primitive instincts of that colder, duller, fiercer and more ancient race of sentients that once, for so long, held dominion over the earth. After a tiny flutter of dismay, curiosity won me over - I observed these energies, embodied and amplified in this part of myself engaged in re-membering. I went through, subjectively as my own, the looming ancient forbears of what are, in us today, reduced into core-level functions, esoteric vestiges and mere latent potentials in our farther-evolved patterns of consciousness. Through this experiencing came empathy, acceptance, and the reconciliation that comes with finally understanding a previously alien other.

As I continued re-membering, I was hit with another flashback – this one more jarring, vivid and fearsome and immediate as it was. Much closer on the tree of life, on the very branch from which we descend: I remembered what it was to be a wee mammal in those times. What it was to cower before these mountainous, overwhelming, thunderous beasts; to fear these cold-blooded giants above any other creature; to subsist in the meagre cracks afforded by the world of our aloof, antagonistic superiors. They were lords and titans; we a newborn race – hardly able to survive, much less challenge their rule, which only followed from the unsympathetic laws of that lower animal nature.


As I watched and felt, I saw the dynamic between our two orders change, over the millions of years they shared the planet. There was a gradual shift from enmity toward acceptance. The dinosaurs' initial vicious hatred and xenophobia toward us, gave way to a mild sort of antipathy and resentment, to mere annoyance, to grudging acceptance, and finally, as we gained in strength, to scattered stirrings of respect for such a longtime, worthy evolutionary opponent – all ending in the Great Time of Transition, with the decline of the dinosaur clan: the cosmic culmination and phasing out of that great, awful, and awesome form of being.


They died and were raised up again, the harvest together with the mulch, passing through the accelerating event horizon of chaos, to emerge in a new world order in the form of birds and lizards. Post-apocalypse, we mammals rushed to fill a larger world with a new cast of primaries... including, eventually, the primates...

The gift in this small glimpse was to be able to see, acknowledge, understand, forgive, bless and release these very deep traumas and conflicts within us: to process, integrate, and transcend that collective karma. It's all part of the Great Work. Those of us engaged in it, do it on behalf of God and Goddess, in service to the sun, the planet, the human species, our soul groups, and our many selves in parallel realms of the universe.

And I realize that all of it, all my interpretation, only reflects how I see myself!

That all my judgments are illusions born of the sense of separation that I bear.

How much clearer
and more blessed a quality
would these things bear for me,
if I saw and if I felt them
with the eyes and with the heart
of love!

But I do see it,
now I do see it

all, perfect.
I can't do it. I can't go through with what I've thought I was going to do for the past six months. I've dreamed of going solo into the unknown, to put my faith and my wits to the ultimate test by leaving everything behind and throwing myself into the extreme situation of being alone and far from home without any place in the world to call my own. But I can't do it.

My mind is a disaster. It's a war zone. Now I find that I have no choice but to admit defeat in a war that I thought was something other than it was. Thank you, my raging intellect, for going so far beyond the bounds of what was necessary and good for me that you've brought me to this impossibly untenable position between what the world around me appears to know, and what I think I know. It's time to surrender and say, I just don't know. I daresay neither does anyone else, but goddammit, they've got the world on their side. I'm just a kid with delusions of whatever. I've lost my faith in all of that. Not in what's real - I still think God is the only reality - but in all this crap I've picked up and filled my brain with, and for what - to feel special? I'm not special. If I'd accepted my own limitations from the start and stuck to what I could actually know from my own experience instead of relying on all this outside information with no direct relevance to my life - I wouldn't be in this situation. If I'd let all that "wider world out there" stuff be whatever it was and just kept it as a minor curiosity at the most, I'd be fine. But I had to latch onto it, try to make sense of things that were too big for me, beyond my ability to assimilate into a healthy, workable view of reality. And now I find myself... just... lost. And deeply depressed. As if that weren't enough, I've also gone and laid waste to what foundation for a life I did have, materially, and been horribly unfair to those around me in the process. "Back to square one" doesn't quite describe it. More like square zero.

So now I've lost faith in both worlds: the one everyone else seems to live in, and the one I'd built up in my head. But the fact of the matter is that, at least for the moment, the former still has a standing structure. I'm not convinced that it'll hold for long, but it's all there is right now that I can actually see and stand on, if not put my trust in. I don't have the means to prepare in an outward sense for the collapse of this current social order. I look at the mainstream news media in this country, the way it keeps on keeping up the facade, quoting all these paid experts and professional liars, and I don't believe a word of it. Their job, whether they know it or not, is to keep the appearance going and prolong the game for as long as possible. The powers-that-be, on the level you don't see, are convinced that it's all coming down in a less distant future than you know, and their strategy is to milk the rest of us for as long as they can and when the time comes, to retreat into the impenetrable, well-stocked hidey-holes they've built for themselves at our expense over the last 30-40 years, to wait out the virtually-unsurvivable conditions expected for the surface of the planet. That's if the sources I got that from are for real - obviously, I make no guarantees. If such is the case, then I have no interest in engaging that scenario one way or another, except to point it out as a possibility and maybe throw an astral monkey wrench or two into the works, if I feel like it. Not that it'll be necessary, but it'd at least be a gesture of where I stand in relation to their hell-bound matrix of the unreal.

Who is this "them?" It's a whole bunch of "thems," of course, but from what I've been able to discern, they have a definite thread in common: they are in the business of the enslavement of humanity for selfish, senseless purposes, and the higher up the pyramid you look, the more depraved and inhuman they are. The peak cannot be seen, but the upper levels comprise the world's wealthiest white men and women (whose names will never be on a Forbes 500 list) - the top Zionist bankers and the innermost elite of the elites.

Their wealth is stolen in a thousand ways from the blood and sweat of the common people, whom they view as livestock ripe for the slaughter. They have had their way with the rest of us for a long time because most of us have been too ignorant and cowardly to make them stop, and the few who do speak out against them, they have silenced. They have engineered, financed, and profited from every revolution and every major war in modern time. Their tools are the World Bank, the IMF, and all the biggest banks, through whose blood-sucking debt schemes they keep the Third World nations in poverty and are steadily bringing the First World nations also to their knees via controlled demolition of the money economy. And if they control most of the world's wealth, which they do, then I should hardly have to spell out the architecture of worldly power that that wealth has bought them. It is all around us: in politics and legislation, of course; likewise religion, art, entertainment, education, medicine; the courts, the police and military forces; the food, water, and energy supplies; every aspect of human life.

But all this is only the outer manifestation of what is, at its core, the war for our minds and hearts. They can't touch us there, but they can set things up outwardly in such a way that most of us will, contrary to our divine nature, tend to play the part they intend for us: we become unthinking consumers of a ready-made culture, investing our efforts and emotions in the things that feed their agenda and their demonic masters' thirst for human fear and suffering. Their greatest pleasure is to so pervert our ways that we become like them: we forsake our divinity and join the morbid march of their cult of death.

From this perspective, perhaps, you may understand why I've found it so hard to make a place for myself in this society. I don't believe in the existing structure as any kind of sustainable foundation for the happy, healthy kind of life I desire for myself and those around me. I can't bring myself to play by the stinkin' rules. I'm an uppity slave, haha. Freedom? Dream on! Well, it was a nice dream while it lasted. Too bad I never made a workable plan to attain it. I realize now that freedom has a price. It's earned. I haven't earned mine. I'm not yet ready to claim it. It's that simple.

My heart is undefeated. I will play the game for a while longer, but only until I sense my time has arrived to step forward and play a different part, the part I feel I am destined for. As long as there is time on the clock, I will play the game. I have a life to rebuild, such as it is, and thank God for the resources at my disposal even within such a system as this. There is a sanity to it, if you don't dig too deep. :D

So I'll make use of what's here now in preparation for whatever is to come after. My primary concern is to learn a practical trade. Since I left high school eight years ago, I've only managed to hit dead end after dead end. I've never really had a clear idea what I wanted to do for a living. I have a better idea now, and the will to do what it takes to find out for sure what it is, get that education, and finally gain a useful skill set so that someday I'll be able to support not only myself, but my future children as well.

Running away was a pipe dream. There's no "away" to run to. Everything I need is right here. It's a tough pill to swallow, to admit that I've been on the wrong track all this time. Not that adventuring in itself is wrong - God forbid! - but I see now that I have not been in a position where I could do that and still be leading a responsible life too. And I think some kind of adventure may find me anyway, before all is said and done. No need to seek it out!

Sometimes the very hardest thing to do is exactly what a person must do. In my case, it's to humble myself down to my own size, bite the bullet, and play the game for as long as need be.

But I won't be singing their song while I do it. ;)

Revealing and Death of the Unreal Within

Soundtrack: Deep Forest - Boheme

A richly woven carpet of sand, reindeer lichen, heather, bilberry, lingonberry, pinecones and needles caresses my bare feet as I wend my way over the rises and falls of the forest floor. I marvel at the abundance of tiny, smoke-purple-winged butterflies in these high-summer woods, and taste the first bilberries of the season. I bury my face in the soft, fuzzy green leaves of a waist-high sapling and give thanks for the ever-loving, ever-giving nature of trees.

During my walk, I realize that this rebirthing that I'm going through is a continuous process. Little by little, that which is unreal within me dies away, so that the real can arise. Or, to put it another way, the power of the unreal over me diminishes as my awareness of it grows. I become more able to choose the real over the unreal. But this is all very vague and abstract.

In more specific terms, what I've gone through in recent days has been a painful stripping away of my denial of some very ugly aspects of myself. Narcissism. Hypocrisy. The list goes on. I begin to awaken to the full reality of the deep karmic debt which I've incurred in this life. The people I've treated as objects for ego gratification. The parasitical behaviour, taking everything that's offered and giving only when it's convenient. The refusal to take responsibility for my own situation and change it. The attitude that this world somehow owes me for being so alien to what I'd prefer it to be. The idea that I can just go on doing whatever I feel like with no regard for other human beings or the reality in which I live. Playing games to get what I want. Bending the truth, glossing over inconvenient facts. Gossiping behind people's backs. Using my spiritual and intellectual gifts as a cloak for all of the above, instead of truly devoting and applying them for the good of all beings. I've known all this on some level already, but it took two destroyed relationships in one day, and the frank rebuke of both individuals concerned, to finally break through my denial.

Whatever else this blog has been to those who read it, for me it's been a toy. A game. A diversion. All ego, with just enough Spirit to have some small justification for its existence. I've been playing a role that's only part of who I really am. And this idea that I'm on some kind of spiritual path, that's bullshit. I've done all that, it's not what I need to concern myself with in this life. I've got gifts, and I sure as hell ought to use them when the opportunity presents itself, but this monologue is the least of the ways I can do that. Practically insignificant.

If you want to talk about spiritual or esoteric topics with me, you're more than welcome to send me an email. Whatever insight I have to offer is at your disposal.

I've recently had the opportunity to begin reacquainting myself with my inborn energy-healing abilities. This is an area in which I see myself developing and being of service in the future.

I don't know what the future shape of this blog will be. I will leave it up, and I will post whatever I feel prompted to post, as I've always done. The blogs you see listed on the right are all excellent and worth checking out.

My immediate future appears to hold a trip to southern Spain. During my stay there I will get back into a balanced lifestyle and weigh my options for what to do next. I must ultimately follow my heart. Signs have seemed to be pointing to Africa, but that could just as well mean nothing. I expect to return to both Finland and Canada. I have karmic debts to repay in both places.

A new world is coming. At some point, some of us may find ourselves moving between different dimensions within that new world, or even between planets. All of us who survive will, in whatever capacity, contribute to building that new world. That new world is already here as a blueprint, waiting to be made manifest. The transition is ongoing. It began a long time ago. Everything is under control. There is no need to try to anticipate or stress over what's coming down the pike. All we need concern ourselves with is following the still, small voice within, making the sometimes drastic and difficult changes in our own lives that we need to make. You have a role that you came here to play. It's up to you to discover it and play it to the fullest. And the fact is, you will, whether you consciously decide to or not.

So I indulged in a little sermon after all. Take it as you will, or don't. It's a fart in a hurricane, a desperate cry to have my significance acknowledged. Don't encourage me and for heaven's sake, don't assume that I'm right. Listen to your own truth. It's inside you and nowhere else.

From here on in, I stick to what I know. If I do start spouting nonsense that I can't back up, I pray for someone to write me a comment saying the emperor has no clothes.



Blessings to all.

Over and out.

If I knew, I would tell you.

What can I tell you? I have no answers. Though I have, through the murk, perceived many golden images of reflected truth, heard many stories from great minds that see further than I, all I can tell you is that I am here, now. So many theories, so many explanations, and none are definitive. All fall short of the truth, for they are but fragmented images, filled in with the conceits and fancies of the imagination. We stumble in the dark, we cannot see. We strive and strain for knowledge, but ever does wisdom elude us.

Some say we are evolving from the muck towards higher levels of being. Others say we are fallen gods, trapped by our inability to recognize and reclaim our own forgotten power. We live in oh, such special times – that oh, maybe aren't so special after all. The spirits, the sages, the secret teachings of all ages: we turn to them for help, and find that there is no one to follow. For to follow any one for too long is to stray into distraction. To make progress, we seek always to see beyond the next bend, to what remains hidden. And yet no progress is possible, all paths appear dead ends. Is there any hope of spiritual gain? Must we first abandon hope?

I will tell you what I know. I know that I am here, now. And, if there is any logic to the universe, I have a point of origin from which I emanate as my seeming self in time and space. By the power of divine will, by choice, by belief, and by agreement is this world made solid around me. I know that this is not my home, but that I chose to be here, to experience this incredible, immersive game in the most potent way possible. And so I appear to be contained, restrained, repressed, weakened, limited, blinded, maimed, diseased, trapped, confused, deceived, in pain, in need, and utterly, utterly lost. And yet... I am here, now. I am inside the illusion, far from home... and yet, home is where I am already, in that eternal state from whose bland absolutity I escaped by coming here to play. I know that even that scenario is just another story in a creation full of story. But it suits me at this moment.

What else is there but all that is?

I've heard it said, for what it's worth, that the truth won't set you free. First it'll piss you off, and then you'll realize that you were free all along. Make of that what you will.

I know that if I only knew, I'd know that I was free. And sometimes I feel it, like the fleeting touch of a distant memory. Freedom. And yet it is always there, just waiting to fill my awareness if I but choose to let it in.

This is the story of all stories. Choose yours with care, or have it chosen for you. Either way, it's your adventure. And at the end of it, should you choose to make an end, you'll find yourself back home and realize that you never even left. So, might as well make the most of it. Tell yourself a story worth the telling.

Guys! Guess what! The Earth is flat!


Some guy (presumably a guy – most Internet fruitcakes of this type seem to be male, for some reason) posted a provocative little comment over at Smoking Mirrors, basically a drive-by display of cracked intellect and inflated ego. To be honest, it's not what he says so much as the way he says it. But, since I am possessed of a rampant ego myself, I will take this opportunity to, well, not to strike back, since that's hardly necessary, but to say a few words on what might be taken as an object lesson from this example.

I didn't even know there were people today who believe in a flat Earth. The idea just seems ridiculous. But I got curious as to how such a belief might be propagated and what kind of evidence would be used in support of it. This BBC article on Flat Earth theorists (FETers) is a good introduction. To investigate a little deeper, I also visited the Flat Earth Society website and read a couple of forum threads debating FET. That was a bizarre little trip, but it got me thinking... what motivates people to adopt these kinds of theories into their belief system? How can they continue to hold their belief in the face of all the evidence and logic to the contrary?

I tend to think their motives are often emotional. There may be a deep desire to be right, and to belong to a small, exclusive club of people who are right, while everyone else is just wrong. Superiority complex, the need to be special. Or perhaps they start with a deep distrust of government and the establishment in general, and latch onto whatever theory to justify that. Paranoia. Some may partly lack the ability to draw the line between objective reality and the products of their own imaginations. Delusion. And then, I suppose, there could be people whose minds are just magnetically attracted to some particular oddball theory because they're simply wired that way. These are just a few obvious possibilities, I'm sure there are plenty more.

The trouble with this sort of thing is that once a mind, for whatever reason, has decided to believe something, no amount of rational argument can sway it from that belief until it's ready to let go. Moreover, as I've mentioned before, our beliefs about reality shape our experience of it to a very large degree. So even though we all reside in one collective reality, an individual person can literally be living in their own world quite far removed from the general consensus. Their inner orientation, their outer focus, and their interpretive processing between the two form a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is why, when one studies external phenomena to try to form a model of the system, it's so important to be conscious of one's own emotional investments and to consciously avoid letting them get in the way of discovering truth.

I'll say this right now: I'm not a left-brain thinker. I can operate in that mode, and I can appreciate a good train of logic, but I usually prefer a more organic way of thinking, relying on intuition first, then the intellect. This way has served me well in my search for truth. The ability to discern grows with practice.

I've already expended more words on this than I'd otherwise like to. The reason I did is not because I assume people are stupid, but because of something I'm working on that warrants a little bit of thought in this vein, just as a prelude. There's a difference between a reality-challenged conspiracy “theorist” and someone who honestly looks into things to try to find what's really there without jumping to unfounded conclusions. That's all. And I'm not claiming that these guys are the real deal, that you should believe anything they say just because they've done a bunch of research and they're “the experts.” God forbid. No, my intent with this video transcript, which I hope to finish soon, is to hopefully just bring someone who hasn't considered such things before to say, “Hmm. That's interesting. Maybe there's something there. I think I'll look into that and see if there's any truth to it.” Little seeds.

One last thing. I may just be fatigued from blogging so much this month, but I feel like the focus here may shift more towards poetry, at least once I pull up stakes in a few weeks and head out into the wide world. My prose is starting to feel dry to me, too many words, not enough of the good home flavour. So we'll see where this goes. Inspiration, stay close! Guide my hands and guide my feet.

Au revoir.

So what's this all about, anyway?

Everyone has their own idea of what's going on, where we are, how we got here, what we face in the future. There's a thread of apocalypticism that seems to crop up everywhere. That thread, especially as woven in the mass media, is often heavily tinged with fear and fantasy, based on vague or shallow understanding. It becomes easy to either dismiss such thoughtforms altogether and continue to imagine that everything will keep going on pretty much as it has been, or else to get all caught up in the smoke-and-mirrors funhouse version of Circus Apocalypticus. The Tunnel of Doom can be a compelling ride, and there's no end of terrifying and disturbing sights and sounds to keep that dark thrill of fear and despair churning inside. That's to be expected. We are, after all, in a realm of appearances. We each see our own subconscious shadows playing out on the screen, along with the beauty of our divine nature, in whatever measure is appropriate to our individual need and choice, moment by moment.

Objectively, nothing I say here matters a whit. Nor does it matter what I believe nor what anyone else believes. Nevertheless, here inside the fractal symphony of subjective experience, under the prime illusion of separation, each part has its own specific role to play. Regarding the need for self-expression, I recall these words from a song I learned in elementary school, the Rainbow Song:

Listen with your eyes
listen with your eyes
and sing everything you see.

I write, not because I believe it will make any difference, but because I am compelled and moved to do so by my innermost heart. At this moment, it's what I'm here to do. And so I do my best to let that innermost heart get a word in, through all the posturings and ramblings of my limited ego self.

I had a deep discussion with a friend yesterday about the economic crisis. Our views turned out to be pretty similar, although we had enough differences of opinion to make the conversation lively and interesting. His understanding at this time doesn't incorporate what could be called “conspiracy theory,” in that he doesn't see our debt-based monetary system as being inherently flawed to begin with, whereas I do. But all such conclusions are only tentative, subject to change in the presence of new information that would challenge us to see more. I voiced my understanding, in such part as I felt appropriate, but didn't turn it into a debate. There wasn't enough of a common background of information to be able to get into (what I see as) the more hidden, engineered aspects of the situation. I wasn't there to persuade him of my view, but rather to just share thoughts and have a mutually agreeable and enriching moment of human contact.

Our other major topic of discussion was one on which I've never even formed much of an opinion: the potential for an existential threat to humanity arising from the birth of an artificial intelligence beyond our capacity to control. To me, that subject has been more in the realm of thought-provoking science fiction than any plausible, actual future. To him, it is perhaps the gravest problem we face, given, of course, that something else doesn't come along first and render the question moot. In essence, the solution would be to prepare for that scenario in advance by somehow ensuring that if and when such an uncontrollable intelligence is born, it will be of such a nature as to allow for the (humanly tolerable) long-term survival of our species.

I've taken in enough science fiction to have a basic idea of the range of imagined future scenarios concerning humans vs. AI. Peaceful coexistence via hard-wired Laws for robots and a general ethical treatment towards them on the part of humans, as envisioned by Asimov, seems to me perhaps a little premature and idealistic, given the sad state of the human psyche and the unpredictability of self-directed evolution. Based on our historical record, the vision of the Terminator films would seem more realistic. But both of these scenarios presuppose the development of AI continuing forward from the present day without interruption. So the more immediate hurdles, I would say, are the existential threat posed by unenlightened mankind to itself, and the very real possibility of cataclysmic Earth changes, abundantly prognosticated by modern science and prophesied by ancient traditions passed down from the survivors of the last global extinction-level event.

I'm a big fan of the Matrix films. They depict a human race struggling for freedom from the dominance of machine intelligence in a war that is not only physical, but essentially psychological and spiritual. To me, the Matrix story is less a probable future scenario than it is an allegorical tale about where we are now. The machines are an externalized manifestation of the egoic mind, which can never know God but is preoccupied with material things. This machine intelligence creates a virtual reality, a literal prison for humanity, in which the vast majority live out their lives unaware. As an enslaved human begins to awaken, this matrix reality appears increasingly “wrong,” and they question just how real it all is, what greater truth might lie beyond these appearances.

In the real world (grin), awakening is a multi-layered process. The exact route by which it happens is, of course, unique to each person. For many, the first layer is the manufactured and distorted version of reality portrayed by television and other forms of mass media. Entertainment on this lowest end of the spectrum is typically hypnotic, banal, debased, and void of higher meaning. At some point, it becomes clear that, at its root, this is all intentionally so. It's not just because these corporations cater to the lowest common denominator to make more money. Facts and questions that go outside a particular box are actively marginalized and suppressed.

As I write, right now, the time is 9:11 PM. I suppose I'll take that as a hint. (grin)

My friend is as yet unconvinced that the events of 9-11-2001 were brought about and/or facilitated by elements within the U.S. government and U.S. intelligence (although he doesn't deny the possibility). From the perspective of one who became convinced several years ago, I would say that that position stems mainly from a lack of awareness of the vast body of credible evidence, an unwillingness to believe that such evil could lurk so strongly in such high positions of power, or both. Of course, there is also the fear of being pejoratively labeled a “conspiracy nut,” but for anyone determined to find the truth, wherever the evidence may lead, that should be of no concern. Rest assured: despite what the corporate media would have us believe, being on the side of “9-11 truth” does not translate into being an extremist or a crazy person. I shouldn't have to say that, but there it is. The real problem, of course, is that once you accept a “Truther” version of 9-11, it opens up a Pandora's box of other shit. Shit that a lot of people just don't want to touch, no matter what. They would rather not know, because knowing would mean an end to the dream with which they are so comfortable, a dream into which certain harsh big-picture realities simply do not fit.

As always, the wisest position is the only one of which there can be certainty: “I don't know.” Everything we think we know is based on perception, and our perception is, by its nature, limited. Despite what I've said here about awakening, I don't consider myself to be awake at all. I am still dreaming, just like everyone else here, although less deeply than some. All that means is that I'm standing in a different place, somewhere between the crowded center and the rarefied outermost fringes of our collective reality. I like it here. I'm in good company. But it would be terribly boring if everybody were in the same place. Regardless of where we are in relation to each other, we can interact and become the richer for it. We're all teachers, and we're all students.

Anyway, that's all incidental to the real truth, which is... we're not separate. It only seems like we are, because that's the only way we can do what we're here to do, and that's... to learn about love. To really learn, we had to step into an illusion where love is not absolute and unconditional, where we suffer and die and long for what we seemingly lost when the universe began. Our journey here is not in vain. It is part of a Great Work in progress. By our choices, we can either prolong or hasten that Great Work in ourselves. We cling to our illusions as long as we can, but little by little they fall away. Our vision expands and brightens. We experience love in all its forms, including all the manifestations of its absence and distortion. And at the end, we are all reunited with the essence from which we came and which attracts all things back unto itself for the glorious, unimaginably grand after-party of all Time.

But to answer the question... hell, I don't know. You're asking me???

Donnie Darko and the Divine (sort of) De-Mystified

I was recently prompted to watch Donnie Darko. It's one of those rare films that carry so much beneath the surface, daring the viewer to cast aside assumptions, observe, and dig in to see what's really there. A shallow or distorted reading of the film might even yield a negative message, but for the pure of heart and clear of mind, it's a profound, piercing, and potent work of art.


One of the threads in the plot explores the cult phenomenon. The classic elements are all there: a charismatic leader with a cleverly-crafted message, drawing in susceptible followers with his hypnotic spiel delivered on stage and through pricey videos and books. For me, it was interesting to note how the con was built from a seed of genuine truth – the dichotomy of Love and Fear – and subsequently inflated into hollow drivel with only the appearance of truth to the easily deceived. Even when the cult leader is fully exposed as a criminal deviant, the true believer refuses to accept reality, choosing to blame the scandal on a conspiracy to take down what she sees as a demigod-like messenger of salvation, “a wonderful man.”

A hallmark of those who are in the business of selling lies is that they cannot tolerate honest criticism. They will use every method at their disposal to deflect it and defuse the sparks of doubt. Open debate is not an option for them, because they know how deadly the truth is against deception on a level playing field. They will distort and reframe anything that threatens the lie in their own terms to try to preserve the illusion. They will use veiled psychological threats to keep their followers in line. Anyone who questions their dogma is “blinded,” “deluded,” “lost,” “confused,” “an agent of the enemy,” or some other handy descriptor. When undeniable facts come out, they will go into damage control mode to keep the core of the lie intact. But probably the cult leader's greatest weapon is the process of indoctrination that renders followers simply unable to break out of their programmed thinking. The herd instinct, carefully cultivated and stimulated, does the rest.

Of course there are positive aspects to being in a cult or cult-like community, from the member's point of view. Why else would they stay? Inside, they find purpose, direction, meaning. They are constantly reassured of the rightness and goodness of their belief system, and they can rejoice in having found the true way, the cure for their afflictions. The closeness and caring of the community, the pleasure of being in a group of like-minded people, the genuine friendships that form, the shared experiences. These are all powerful, positive things in a person's life, and there is certainly nothing wrong with having or wanting them. Moreover, the doctrine or “the way” itself may have very positive, even life-saving effects.

The troubles, however, are always present in some degree. For a naturally free-thinking individual, the ideology and the group-think can be restrictive to the point of annoyance and/or suppression of the inner self. The division between the membership and the outside world can take on pathological characteristics. The disconnect between programmed thought and reality can result in a variety of psychological maladies or other unfortunate side effects (for instance due to misapplication of an incomplete or faulty conceptual framework). Worst of all, the ones in leadership who knowingly promulgate the lie are invariably guilty of some combination of fraud, exploitation, and corruption, and, more often than not, are sexual predators to boot. There's no way to sugar-coat this awful reality. They are wolves in sheep's clothing and they have no conscience whatsoever, nor any regard for the human consequences of their actions.

It will be apparent to some that these thoughts, while intended as generalities, may also be read in the context of my former religious affiliation. However, it's not my intent to maliciously attack anything or anyone. My only motives are compassion and the desire for truth. I fervently pray that those with strength of spirit and eyes to see will be there to support their brethren and keep the light of truth. If nothing else, I would exhort such a one to seek and serve only the Divine, with all the integrity, honesty, patience, and love you can muster. Your Lord has given you something absolute, perfect, and real: his own Spirit, to dwell in your innermost heart. That Spirit speaks directly to you. When you open yourself, truly listen, and hear that still, small voice, you will KNOW it. Let there be no higher authority in your life than that awesome, living presence within. Let no words of man or thoughts of ego prevail against it.

Jesus gave one commandment: love God, and love your neighbour as yourself. When you come to see the divine essence in all things, and live authentically in the Spirit of God, there is no need for commandments at all. Laws and punishments are for those darkened souls who lack or choose to ignore this inner guidance.

I had a dream today in which a simple and powerful key was revealed to me. This key was like flipping a switch inside oneself, and it led one effortlessly to inner peace and understanding and a more divine way of being. I fumbled around for that key after waking up – I remembered what it did, but I'd forgotten what it was. I do believe I later recalled it, in part, on a contemplative walk through the park. It was related to what I said in the beginning about watching Donnie Darko: the act of pure observation of what is, unburdened by one's own, pre-existing ideas. Allowing, not forcing. “This is what it is, not what I think it is or what it should be according to my beliefs.” This shift in consciousness brings about a sense of wonder, and opens one to the flow of authentic impressions that, over time, leads only toward truth – and the dawning delight of discovery.

The Joke

In this life, certain things can be laughed at and other things are deadly serious. Those other things can kill you, and worse.

If you believe that, then welcome to Penitentiary Planet Earth, third rock from the Sun and home of seven billion (and soon to be a lot fewer) pitiful little creatures who once enjoyed the pleasure of being free human souls. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Of course, if you knew the truth, you would be laughing at me instead of the other way round. Because that's how it is.

There are laws and then there are laws. Lower creatures are subject to lower laws, and higher creatures are bound by a higher set of laws. You know there are people who get away with murder, right? I mean, take a look. It's almost like the more deaths you're responsible for, the more untouchable you are – provided, of course, that you're also rolling in the cashola. The material god of this world is on the side of those with the greatest amount of dough, baby. So how surprising is it that the wealthy few are now Extremely F---ing Wealthy, to the tune of billions in digital currencies and billions more in real assets, while some 95% of the world lives in perpetual debt slavery? Pretty good deal for the moneybags. When you practically own the planet, the world's your oyster. Excuse me while I puke from the sheer awesomeness of the situation. Didn't taste like oyster, though, I'll admit.

Where was I? Yes, these self-proclaimed elite world leaders. The ones who you see (or don't see, thanks to our ever-so-vigilant public eyes in the media) attending such fancy clubs as the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. But not so much them, of course, as the ones holding their (purse) strings. In any event, for the sake of convenience, let's treat them all as one big happy psychopathic family. Where a smile means anything but and loyalty comes from a deep pocket and a big, big gun. Mutually assured pathology is such a beautiful thing.

The real beauty of this arrangement is that nothing is as it appears to be. To the unawakened masses (who are a conspicuously dwindling lot these days), these lizard-tongued phonies and their little crooked cronies are indistinguishable from the fictitious roles they play for the benefit of the brainwashed-from-birth bozos who believe whatever the babbling boob box tells them. Fortunately for you and me, my friend, things are not as they might appear to us either. If you've followed any of the alternative news sites on the web, you know (or at least, I'm telling you now) what a sorry sack of pungent manure they carry. The truth, they call it. Well, I call it fertilizer for the brain. What these conveyors of information (and varying amounts of disinformation, don't forget) fail to perceive is up to you and me, the discerning readers, to fill in. Not everyone is a compulsive fact-checker or info-miner, and you don't need to be those things to break through to the essential truth. Which is... what? Well, hang on.

Let's go back to the notion of law. As you may perhaps suspect by now, the lying murderers and child-molesters at the top of the worldly pyramid are not operating under the same set of laws as you and me. On the surface of it, they make the laws and break them as they please, while we are subject to an increasingly arbitrary and bewildering system built on books full of arcane legal language and intimidation both physical and psychological. The list of dos and don'ts in our modern society is truly a wonder of intergenerational programming. They do it to us and we finish the job for them. The scientific dictatorship, as imagined by Orwell and predicted by many others, with its veneer of rational ideology, institutionalized mass murder and theft, and false promises of security and prosperity, now constitutes our everyday reality. Or so it would appear.

What it comes down to, is this: who's got the power? If you think it's them, well, I guess you're right. Better stock up on ammo and food, then, and hope everything goes your way when the shit hits the fan. But that's a choice you make. In my reality, these clowns have no power whatsoever, beyond the ephemeral power of the illusions they create in your mind. You see, they are absolutely dependent upon you not realizing that there are in fact much higher laws than the ones they use to control you, and that by raising your level of awareness, you in fact begin to operate above and beyond those cleverly imposed restrictions.

The law of those who seek to control humanity is a cruel one. The human parasites are themselves fed upon by parasites of a higher order, and anyone who takes the path of deceit and betrayal will inevitably be deceived and betrayed in turn. A system of control is an unstable thing in the natural world. It can survive only by consuming, threatening, and lying, and these activities have finite limits, which, when attained, result in the collapse of the system. By contrast, the dictum of live and let live, certainly preferable to the aforementioned law, is unlimited in practice. Love, freedom, and creativity act to expand the realm of possibility, and indeed, in so doing, will tend to expand themselves.

But let me speak of something else here that will hopefully clarify the issue on a deeper level. Not everyone will agree with my take on this, but it works very well for me.

What are we? If we are mere physical beings, then we are certainly doomed. Death follows birth, and this simple fact is one that the material mind most fears to accept. Is it fair to say that fear of death is the prime motivator of the egoic mind? We can say that this mind has evolved for the sole purpose of prolonging life and bettering the prospects of passing on one's genes for the continuation of the species. What other purpose could it have? And so the higher faculties and sensibilities of man are thus seen as adaptations for survival in an increasingly complex environment. This is the basic position of what we commonly call Science.

Religion counters this and offers release from the primal fear of death by which mankind is afflicted. It posits something invisible to the natural senses, some higher aspect to this being, and calls it the soul. The soul, it is said, cannot die. Unfortunately for us, however, little agreement is ever reached as to the specific nature of this soul, nor the way by which that soul might reach a more agreeable state than this thorny vale of tears, forever caught between heaven and hell. The best that religion can provide for this life is a moral code and a sense of meaning and direction, though its assurances be often unprovable.

Is there a way out of this conundrum? I speak for those who are less than fully satisfied with the dogmas of both Science and Religion as they are commonly presented. What are they missing? I would suggest that the answer has to do with a kind of truth that is beyond the reach of either of these modes as long as they cling to their preconceived limits. It is a truth that must be discovered personally by each one who seeks it. The true, hidden nature of ourselves – whatever that is – is the key.

Now. If that true, hidden nature is that we are the both the dreamer and the dreamed – and it's clear to me that we are – then the whole situation with these madmen who seemingly run the show here for their own pleasure and profit becomes a laugh. They are the fools! We are in charge! And I mean “we” as in the divine aspect of ourselves, naturally – the One. Hey, all we need to do is get in touch with that. Gosh, what a game-changer. Whoops! I guess all that fear and anxiety was for nothing. And that's handy, because it turns out that, besides being the main instrument of our oppression, fear was also the main sustenance of a host of unpleasant beings that populated the unseen portion of our planetary prison. By starving them, we now force them to move out. Perhaps they will feed on each other? Nom nom nom. Goodbye!

If I'm right, then what we're going to see in the run-up to the Big Crunch that's coming (and by that I mean the point at which all roads meet) is a lot of heavy drama and a lot of wild revelations coming out that these hopelessly deluded ruling-class sock puppets would have preferred to keep under wraps if they could have. Unfortunately for them, all that they do will only end up turning against them and they will make fools of themselves for all the world to see. This is because they really are actual sock puppets that think they can write the script when they don't even realize who owns the stage. The show itself is a cosmic morality play that reads like tragedy and comedy all at the same time.

Do you see the funny side? I hope you can, because I've seen it, and, well, it's nothing but a grand old hoot. It's one hell of a good time. Had me laughing so hard, it was a piece of heaven. You know what laughter is. It's the sound of a soul set free to fly.

Wishing you many laughs (and warm hugs too),
~william

A Good Game

This is a good game. It's called "The Truth."
- Dimitri Moisevich in 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)




The search for truth is a game.

I don't think one could have made that statement so straightforwardly even a generation ago. Back in the seventies and eighties, it seems to me, before the world was hooked up to this thing called Internet, truth-seeking would have been an activity that pretty much had to be taken seriously. The truth-seekers of that time would have mostly been out there doing original, painstaking research in the real world. Most of them would have operated in near-isolation from one another, compared to the effortlessness of network-building and collaboration today. Getting one's work published was another hurdle. The readership would have been a very small, very marginal group, scattered, so to speak, on the intellectual fringes of society.

Forgive me if my imaginings reflect poorly the reality of that time; I wasn't there myself. What I can say from experience is that in this present time, information is so readily available to anyone with even a casual interest that the whole concept of “truth-seeking” has exploded far beyond the limits of yesterday. It doesn't have to be an all-consuming path of dedication to a particular field of inquiry, nor is it necessarily the hard-core consumption of fringe lore from stacks of rare books. Beyond these primary and secondary levels, a previously-minimal third level has opened up: the level of the casual truth-seeker. The net-surfing approach is now the arena of choice for many, including those who would not even describe what they are doing as “seeking truth.” What curious mind, in this online environment, has not come across the major memes of conspiracy fact, theory, disinfo, and delusion? These thought-viruses have replicated through the memestream, cross-breeding, mutating (and being engineered, too) along the way, until the entirety has become just another fact of life, a whole genre of mind-games available to the people alongside their other everyday pursuits. This is not to unduly trivialize any of it; it's just an observation.

Obviously, truth-seeking in general is much broader than just the areas most actively sequestered (and infiltrated) by the powers-that-be, such as parapolitics, black-project shenanigans, and the powers-behind-the-powers-that-be. Anyone who engages in this game for any length of time soon discovers how interrelated it all is across the entire scope of human life. It becomes apparent that the so-called “mainstream” consensus reality is really just a system of externally-imposed programs that are held together, perpetuated, and fed into by those who believe in them: a Matrix control system. It may not be as immediately apparent, however, just how vulnerable that system is.

The system is predicated on belief, but its greatest power lies in fear. Many people may not really believe in all of it, especially now since the lies are becoming more transparent with every passing day, but still go along with most of it. Take voting, for example. Most of us know (or at least strongly suspect) by now, from experience, that voting in elections doesn't really matter a whole lot. We know most politicians are pathological liars and opportunists. We've seen administration after administration come in with honeyed words and the hopes of a nation, only to go out with disgrace and broken promises. And always, no matter what parties are in power, the economy ends up worse than before, wars continue, civil liberties are eroded, and corporate interests trump the interests of the people. HELLO? Anyone see a pattern? This isn't working! And still we go to the polls on election day and feel a vague sense of satisfaction, as though we've done our duty as citizens of a proud democracy. What? We know that's not true. It's just rhetoric and bullshit to keep things running the way they have been. But the alternative would be to admit to ourselves that we are more than just voters, or consumers, or (let's just use the word) slaves, aka “hard-working taxpayers.” We are unique, sovereign human beings with the innate freedom to create whatever reality we collectively and individually choose. We fear that kind of freedom. The system wants us to fear it, to deny its existence, to willingly give it up in favour of a ready-made machine world with a ready-made place for us as replaceable little parts in a big machine. And lest we forget our place, we are constantly shown what happens to those who have no place, who were born to the wrong parents, who didn't work hard enough, who defied the system. We're taught to fear poverty and crime and terrorism. Fear the cops. Fear the conservative agenda. Fear the liberal agenda. Fear the Illuminati agenda. Fear the apocalypse. Fear for your own survival in a world that's hostile and demanding but that might just give you a few creature comforts to fill your inner void if you only play by the rules. And if all else fails, just tune into an endless stream of mind-numbing distraction. Yessir, it's great to be alive in this postmodern dystopian nightmare. Or....

... Is there something else? A truth that's more than just a virtual-reality game? Something real and intimate that might just be the key to the kingdom of heaven on earth?

If there is such a thing, isn't it worth seeking? I believe it is.

And maybe when we're done seeking, we'll realize that it was something we had all along.



I am another you
And you are another me.
Thank you, just for being you
And being a mirror for me.

Patience, my love; one step at a time.

I am often frustrated by the inadequacy of language as a mode of expression. Stringing words together in a linear sequence to form sentences and paragraphs seems so clumsy and crude. The confluence of brevity and precision is so hard to achieve. In writing, thank goodness, the process of composition is at least somewhat non-linear and unbound by time, which is a big help. But the fact remains that one is limited to a single perspective and a single voice at any one time, and as a result, the literal description of a complex thought or idea takes a great many words.

Poetry seeks to circumvent this limitation by calling upon the imagination of the reader as a decoding device. It is well understood that poetry is not like prose; it cannot be absorbed in an instant of literal understanding. It requires the engagement of the intuitive faculty. Because it depends upon the ability of the reader to decode it subjectively, poetry remains more or less opaque to the mind that is not already calibrated to receive it.

Even now, looking back on the few sentences above, I despair of my inability to express what I mean. I feel like a painter without the ability to mix his colours. If I say this, then it is automatically not-that until I say that as well.

I would like there to be a mode of communication that were more like a holographic projection than a flat image built up of one-dimensional lines. Instead of one word illuminating one little piece of an idea at a time, I could convey the whole idea at once, with all its shades and subtleties, in such a way that it could be viewed from all the multiple perspectives that I perceive.

Of course, such a mode exists, although few of us are yet able to make much use of it. It's called telepathy. My concept of telepathy is that it is something like poetry, something like music, something like sculpture and painting and photography and dance and theatre. It is all these things and more. Speaking and writing would be included, but in their higher-dimensional aspects.

The Internet gives us the ability to start bridging toward that model. Using hyperlinks, mouse-over texts, context menus, images, sounds, videos, and other interactive media, it is possible to convey information in an almost fractal or holographic way. For this reason, I sometimes think of the Internet as “training wheels for telepathy.” True telepathy will be much smoother and faster, since we will no longer need these crude technological interfaces and our brains will be operating at a much higher bandwidth than they do now, in higher dimensions, allowing for exponentially greater data density.

The transhumanists believe this will be achieved through man-made technology. Maybe it will, for some, but I would much rather let it happen naturally, through the activation of DNA. That, I think, would ensure that physical evolution doesn't happen without the corresponding spiritual evolution that is needed to be able to handle the new abilities responsibly.

I know there are going to be people reading this who think this idea of our consciousness evolving is just New Age bullshit being pushed on the masses to distract and placate us while the controllers steal the last of our wealth, genocide the useless eaters, and implement the final stages of their world police state. Others will call bullshit on both of these views. It doesn't matter. You can believe whatever you want, and you will. This is just me talking.

Anyway, I'm of the opinion that we're all one mind to begin with, so telepathy is ultimately nothing more than us realizing and manifesting a slightly truer image of ourselves. Whatever you might think of that, isn't it interesting to note how there's less and less privacy, more and more transparency in all human affairs? That's why so much dirty laundry is coming out into the open. You can't keep secrets anymore. The times don't allow it. For those who only want the truth, that's great news. And if you've got something you're hiding from the world, well... I'd say you'd better come clean while you still have the chance, because it's going to come out one way or another, telepathy or no.

This is the sixth and final Night of the Galactic Underworld. Shit stinks and there's no hiding the smell. We've all got our own shit to deal with. Hoo-ee! These are the times that try men's souls. (And women's, obviously. Stupid language with its stupid conventions.) Yeah. So let's all work on ourselves and not waste time about it. Evolution ain't optional, I'm afraid. It's happening whether you want it to or not, and the more you resist, the tougher the schoolmaster'll have to get on you. Might as well do it the fun way, huh?

That sounds like a good idea to me.

A long-winded statement of intent

A dear friend of mine privately expressed his disapproval of a certain action I recently took, namely posting a link to this blog on his friend's Facebook wall. This was offensive and uncalled-for, he said, considering the beliefs of that friend in contrast with some of my views expressed here. In retrospect, I see his point very well. I have since apologized and undone that ill-considered action. I had already stopped the practice of tagging Facebook friends in my notes imported from here, because that can easily be viewed as spam and I hate spam as much as anyone else. Unsolicited links certainly fall into that category as well, and I was in error to do what I did.

That being said, I don't apologize for my views and I don't think I should have to. I make some effort to qualify my statements of opinion, but to do that constantly would be tiring and would make my prose plodding. I rest assured that my readers, whoever they are, can and will use their own discernment to filter my words. I myself can end up disagreeing with my own words later, so how can I expect anyone else to agree with me? That's not the point. The point is to express myself freely. To censor that expression would defeat the purpose of keeping a blog in the first place.

This same friend characterized my views as “anti-Christian.” I understand they appear so to his mind, and he is welcome to see it that way; however, I see it differently. To disagree with certain aspects of a particular belief system, and to voice that disagreement, is not necessarily to attack the whole. And for someone to take such criticism of their belief system as an attack on them personally is, I think, a result of the misidentification of the ego with that belief system. I am not my beliefs, just as I am not my body or my name or my occupation. Those are things that I have, and they are all temporary. I do not go out of my way to insult Christians or anyone else; nevertheless, there will always be individuals who take offense. I realize that I have not always chosen my words as carefully as I could have, and that is unfortunate. But I am not perfect and I don't claim to be. In cases where my words might cause offense, all I can do is hope for the offended party's forgiveness and understanding.

No one is forced to read my blog. If I may have promoted it a little too enthusiastically before, I no longer do so. I shall be content to simply keep on writing and let those who are attracted come, and those who are not, go elsewhere. That's the beauty of the Internet: barring the odd blind link, everyone gets to choose pretty much exactly what to allow into their consciousness.

Everyone is on their own, personal journey in life. There are longer and shorter paths, more pleasant and less pleasant paths, easier and harder paths, lighter and darker paths, but no path is better or worse than another. The continuing existence of this blog constitutes an open invitation to walk a step with the writer, hear what is going through his mind at the moment, and, if you are so inclined, to freely offer your own thoughts in return. His sincere intent is for this exercise in sharing to be mutually beneficial and/or interesting. If it were not, there would be no reason to engage in it.

Huh boy, do I take myself seriously or what? Well, I am in a bit of a funk, so... (shrug). Now I go to transmute this melancholy into peace, perhaps even joy, through a little spot of active meditation. Good luck to me. (small smile)

Self-deception and the limited lifespan of lies

Once again, I have been totally neglecting this blog, despite all my good intentions to keep writing in it. Now I come to a point where I really don't care how wise or knowledgeable or intelligent or talented with words I come across as being. Life has lately been so humbling to me that I simply can't afford to set up any thresholds higher than where I am right now, which is flat on the floor, metaphorically speaking. My desire to impress and inspire others has been beaten out of me. I am nothing.

And yet, I am here.

And yet, I shine forth what little refracted, dimly reflected light I have.

(I've also given up on the idea that I have to write on a specific topic every time. Right now, I'm just letting the words flow. So much easier to let these entries write themselves. ;) )

I was thinking just now, at breakfast (coffee and cream, which is how I start my day when I'm not at all feeling on top of my world, otherwise it's usually tea and porridge), how masterful we are at deceiving ourselves. Even sometimes when we tell ourselves and believe we're being honest, we're not.

I've been deceiving myself in the most tragicomical way these past months. Thinking I could go on and make my way through life without doing certain things. As though I were some kind of special case. And given how basically honest (I think) I am, that deception has had to rely on a huge helping of denial in order to stay viable. I am an introvert, and I have a vivid inner life. My imagination dreams up things that aren't necessarily true all the time. Normally, I can tell the difference between outer reality and these products of imagination, but that does sometimes require taking a step back and being consciously objective about things. In the case of this lie, I didn't want to do that, so I had to keep telling myself new lies and stopping myself from thinking about the whole issue. And that's how it usually works, isn't it?

Truth has a way of coming out, though, and lies have a way of being revealed for what they are. All it takes is time for the circumstances to bring that about. In my particular case, luckily, those circumstances have now become concrete and impossible to ignore. Given certain acquired failings of my character, I am infinitely grateful for the support I have been receiving from my close relatives and friends. Without their help, I would probably be well on the way to being evicted from my apartment by now.

Much as I'd like to be able to offer some kind of generally applicable wisdom on this subject (and heaven knows I love to play the wise man), I feel obliged at this moment to at least try to rein in that ambition and not overstep my bounds. We'll see how that works out, though. ;)

Without spinning too many sweeping generalities, let me touch upon one of the greatest deceptions I've ever perpetrated upon myself, from my current perspective: religion.

Starting when I first became aware of such a thing as personal religious faith, around perhaps the age of six or seven, up until my twenty-fourth year, religion was a major part of my life. In retrospect, my first impression of it, through the innocent eyes of a four-year-old boy, was probably the truest. I remember sitting in church about Easter time, listening to the words of the preacher, and thinking, “Why does he keep going on about this dead guy named Jesus? What do I care?” There were more sermons from different speakers, but they were all on the same (to my mind) irrelevant subject. And man, were they depressing, too! I said to my parents, straight up, that I didn't care to hear any more about this dead guy named Jesus. They were taken aback, I guess, but shrugged off my words as mere childish talk, not to be taken too seriously. I imagine they figured I would come around when I was a little older and better able to understand what it (the Jesus thing) was all about. Well, they were right about that. I did come around. I came around pretty hard, actually.

The sect of Christianity I was raised into is a fascinating subject unto itself, but for the purposes of this blog entry let me sum it up with just one word: conservative. I even hesitate to use that label, because I know a lot of folks inside that group who I would describe as being rather liberal than conservative, and God bless them for that. (grin) I prefer to view the sect as a collection of unique (emphasis: unique!) individuals under one convenient banner rather than a monolithic group of thought-clones. Although, come to think of it, it does contain its share of the clones, too... no, I'm kidding. But it's true that a certain degree of suppression of independent thought is a feature there, which is, I think, typical of all dogmatic institutions. But I digress.

Suffice to say there is a certain set of dogmatic beliefs, both overt and unspoken, that you generally have to subscribe to in order to be broadly accepted as a member of the sect, one of the “believers.” Never mind whether those beliefs are internally consistent, logical, or based on fact. I'm not even saying they necessarily aren't. That's for each person to decide for themselves. What I'm saying is, that's the requisite for membership, in practical terms. (Plus there's the matter of who's qualified to open the door for you; clearly, only an existing member has that qualification. I bypassed that myself, being born and raised into the faith.)

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that I was about as “in” as you can be. I believed it all, even the parts that were not so easy to swallow. It wasn't even very difficult, most of the time. Do you know why?

I wanted to believe.

I wanted to believe, and that was that. That's really what it comes down to. If, deep down, you really want to believe something, you'll find a way to do it. In the case of a lie, you'll set up whatever construction of denials, plausible lines of reasoning, and/or emotional appeals it takes. Failing that, you'll just... believe anyway. Or not. But in my case, for a long time, I did. (And yes, I am personally coming out and calling that belief system a lie, because that is what it most definitely appears to be in my eyes now. I have no qualms or doubts when I say that. But, as always, judgement is subjective. One person's despicable lie is another's sublime truth. Ain't nothing wrong with that.)

Now mind you, a belief system certainly doesn't have to be all true to be useful. If Christianity weren't useful to someone, it would have no reason to exist. In the same vein, a lie doesn't have to be all untrue in order to be an effective lie. It merely has to bend the truth just enough.

It was because of the perceived overall usefulness to me of that conservative Christian belief system, and its apparent proximity to the truth as I then beheld it, that I wanted to invest myself in it. When those circumstances changed – in other words, when I gradually lost my spiritual use for it and it was no longer close enough to my evolving sense of the truth – I abandoned it. Very simple.

And yet, there was that crucial, defining moment of decision, when I said to myself, “I just want the truth. Come what may, I just want the truth.” In that moment, I was prepared to give up beliefs that I'd cherished for years, which had become part of my very identity, and which formed the context, if not the basis, of almost my entire social life, all for the sake of finding the truth. I no longer wanted to believe as much as I wanted to find the truth.

It was in that moment that I made a bigger leap of faith than I'd ever made before. Faith means trusting. I trusted that I would be able to find greater truth, and that that greater truth would not condemn my soul to eternal suffering in hell (as I'd been assured so many times that it would), but that it would actually set me free instead.

Well, to be honest, I don't think I'm very free yet – at least, not nearly as free as I'd like to be – but I'm certainly freer in some key ways as a direct result of no longer deceiving myself in line with that tired old system. I think the less I fool myself, the freer I become. It's working on the level of practical, everyday issues, so why shouldn't it work on higher levels as well? Food for thought.

Time travel claim! O_o

I was browsing Godlike Productions this morning. That in itself is rather unusual, since my overwhelming impression of the place is the Internet equivalent of a procession of garbage trucks dumping load after load of random, worthless trash, much of it malodorous. Sure, there might be a few rare treasures amongst the refuse, but sifting through the piles for it just doesn't feel worth the trouble. Still, as a reading experience, it's a step up from the dreaded YouTube comment sections. I even read those sometimes. *shudder*

(I might as well mention that the path that brought me there was a Google search for "sleep deprivation hallucination," which was on my mind after a sleepless night due to the latest "high" cycle of my often bipolar disorder-like mood tendencies. I did find quite a deliciously disturbing tale, halfway down this page, in which Time behaves very, very badly.)

As chance would have it, one particularly active discussion thread, titled "I traveled through time," caught my eye. It was started by the cryptically named 369.994 on August 20th, the day before yesterday, and has reached nine pages as of this writing.

GLP, understandably, is a veritable tall tale magnet, attracting cranks, weirdos, and disinfo artists of all stripes. I'm sure this type of extraordinary claim is nothing new to the folks who frequent the place. Still, I'm more than a little intrigued by this case. There's nothing about it, in my opinion, that clearly and unquestionably places it in the hoax bin, despite all the usual calls of "B.S." from posters eager to prove their own talent for seeing through contrived, fallacious, and inflated crap.

369.994, if he (or she) is merely stringing us along, has played the role of a time-traveling future "amateur psyentist" pretty much flawlessly. His manner is sincere and no-nonsense. To my layman's understanding of such things, the presented scientific principles (and limitations) of the technologies he claims to be using seem plausible. His answers to people's questions about the future make perfect, simple, logical sense to my way of thinking and looking forward. If he's faking, then at least it's a good, entertaining fake! =)

To me, the most interesting question, especially if this is all for real, is the motive. In a more recent topic on another site, 369.994 claims to be from the year 2079, conducting a "social experiment." Of course, that would make sense from the hoax perspective, too! It's fun to imagine, though, what would motivate me to go back 70 years into the past and invite people to ask me about their perceived future / my perceived past. I'd probably do it just because I could! ;) Besides that, though, I think the time period in question, the next 70 years, is gearing up to be so unbelievably transformative that I'd see myself as potentially providing a genuine service by preparing people's minds just a little bit for some of the massive changes to come.

In response to queries on how to get through the turbulent times ahead, 369.994 recommended living in peace and ensuring one's own supply of clean drinking water and fresh, organic foods. Darn good advice in any case!

Our mysterious numeronymous friend also left us with a noteworthy unsolicited tidbit: a friendly suggestion to seek out and listen to something called "Invocation from Thoth's Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza." I found an MP3 by that name here. Who knows, there might be something to it. :) Leastways, this whole deal seems to carry a theme of sound, waves, frequency, music. I find myself wondering what's so special about F sharp... its frequency is, after all, 369.994 hertz... -.^ Hmmm.