Tygarjas Twyrls Blog

If I knew more about Islam I probably wouldn’t keep bringing up this guy. I’d probably also talk a lot about the misogynistic engine of greed started by certain followers of the guy who was devoted to his wife and wanted to help the poor. But I don’t know very much about that religion, and I don’t particularly want to be put on any lists to get bombed, so, since I happen to be in a culture inundated with Jesus which, as an outsider to that world, fascinates me, I figure maybe that’s why I keep dwelling on that guy.

Now, he is said to have said, “It shall be done unto to you as you believe.” In other words, if you believe your efforts on this planet will make it a better place to live, and I mean if you really believe it in your heart, that’s what you’re going to be making. So, let’s call this a law since, if it is true, it works according to how it is used, and must work according to how it is used. I could start getting Euclidian on this concept, but the point is the law is that it shall be done unto you as you believe. The other law, or rather the working-to-the-extent-of-being-experiential definition of God, is absolutely everything without exception; from our perspective especially the whole of humanity since together we comprise most of the highest levels of consciousness we are typically aware of. And when I say higher I do mean compared to a rock, or a gerbil, or a head of lettuce, etc . . .

So these two laws in concert look like this when utilized by the concept that God is a guy suffering and dying for our sake. If God is everything, and everyone . . . then if we believe that God dies after very deeply suffering, and then comes back to go away and leaves behind a trail of confusion . . .

So God suffers, in other words we suffer, especially our most male component that tries to do good. In other words we believe that any really good men will need to suffer to the point of dying, which in turn will make accompanying good women suffer accordingly, which in turn will make it even harder for people not particularly good at life to catch a break, and since it will be done unto us as we believe, no wonder we can’t seem to stop killing each other incessantly for even two minutes at any given point in time. No wonder we keep ourselves perpetually too lazy to clean up after our own filth, or toss a can in a recycling bin. No wonder those of us who believe that God is greater than the consciousness of a suffering person constantly have to work harder after those who insist on worshipping suffering itself as though it is their own God; as if it is themselves. Since it shall be done unto us as we believe, or at least so says that guy supposedly, can we stop believing in a suffering God now and start believing in a happy one? It seems to be what Jesus would have wanted for us; to believe in a happy God. Or would anyone rather believe in a God that wants us to suffer?

Life is pain princess, anyone who says different is trying to sell you something. But perhaps if we give of that pain willingly; pick up after ourselves, curb our anger, not use the credit card as often, not be rude to our children, but teach them the value and pleasure of helping and working for their own existence as we should all work for our own. Maybe we can be happy for our labors and stop worshipping suffering as a living God. It seems like what Jesus would want from us; for us . . .

TTFN

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Just now I had an experience that brought me to the above conclusion, and thus, this is what God is Like . . .

After unwrapping my sausages for dinner I was left with the paper wrapper they came in. Since I didn’t want to be lazy and throw it in the trash, or because I didn’t want to waste resources by taking up a great deal of space in the biodegradable bag with the wrapper in our small compost bucket, necessitating using another biodegradable bag sooner, and those things aint cheap, I decided to walk out front to throw the wrapper in the big compost can. Once outside, noticing the garbage cans lining the block, I realized it was garbage night. If not for the desire to throw the piece of paper away in the best way possible, either the unpleasantness of the building up of garbage would have ensued, or the possible unpleasantness of others working hard and recovery from ailments, only to have take the trash out late or amidst unfortunate circumstances would have ensued, making me a recipient of unneccsery negative energy, if not just by virtue of proximity.

From a simple act of going out of my way for the best possible way, a simple piece of paper thrown in the right receptacle gave rise to a the larger happenings of the time, and a lot less stinkiness. God is like that. To quote Yann Martel, or whoever originated the phrase if not him, take two steps toward God, and God runs to you.

And with that said, now I am going to finish taking out the trash!

Peace!

TTFN

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So, since my book signing was Saturday, I thought I’d take it easy for this Sunday’s post and put up a perspective by somebody else. This seemed like the ribbon on the theme for the last week and a half. Enjoy!

Louie: God

TTFN

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Now that we’ve got the sins definition in the bag, let’s talk . . .

Now, I’ve really been hoping to avoid pissing people off, but there’s just a couple of things about the way people have been inclined to worship that guy that I find odd, sometimes to the point of making us all suffer.

First the observation: A friend pointed out to me not too long ago that the cross was an instrument of torture, and that it’s kind of odd that everybody is now wearing it as jewelery. I couldn’t help but agree, and I’m not sure if the extrapolations to come were her thoughts on the subject or mine, but they seemed so obvious that I took them as my own, though credit might be due to her. . .

Let’s say just for a moment that Jesus actually comes back. And by the way, if you are someone who really believes that Jesus is God, or close enough to be considered divine, and/or that he’ll be coming back one of these days to either take people to Heaven, or make Earth Heaven, or declare that Earth had finally become Heaven, or just host his own talk show, I say to you I will not be contradicting you at all in this posting, and while it is not personally my view, I have no beef against you for holding yours, nor am I going to try to convert you via this posting. Now, let’s say he comes back, and sees a bunch of people wearing the thing he was tortured to death with around their necks. Does anybody think that that is something he would enjoy? I mean, the two flavors seem to be that the initial impression is that he would think that everybody was really happy that he got crucified, and thus wear the cross as a good thing, or, as the omniscient ruler of existence who understands why everyone is walking around with a torture device proudly displayed around their necks, wouldn’t he rather his people not burden their necks with an implement of torture? Wouldn’t the guy who took one for the team rather that people enjoy their salvation rather than bemoan and mourn it, burdening their necks with a torture device?

Which brings me to my next bone of contention, the serious one. What, pray tell, has Jesus’ death accomplished? I’ve heard it said that people believe that his death absolved everyone of sin. So is that a free pass for murderers, child rapists, and oil companies? I’m all in favor of a good teaching that helps a bunch of people, but I can’t help but notice that Jesus didn’t seem to be all that helpful in terms of the events of this world. I can’t help but wonder if as many women would have been burnt alive by his church if not for him.

I mean, since people got freaked out by the way this teacher got whacked, his followers have been eaten by lions, gone on murdering rampages regularly for the last 2000 years, have made child molestation an organized practice, and still persist in holding up the reconciliation of people to the realization that if we work together as people instead of against each other as members of religions, this might be a nice sphere to live upon.

If a relatively good guy dies 2000 years ago, how exactly does that absolve me from sins I haven’t committed yet? And does that mean that I can impede upon other peoples lives incessantly until the day I die since whatever torture I decide to wreak upon the human race amongst me has already been washed clean by Jesus? I can understand that a good guy was talking to lousy people who were too lazy and full of themselves to make the world better, and so they killed the good guy to get him to shut up. I can understand that the moral of that story is probably to start moving my ass and doing the best I can so that this planet becomes something better than the slice of Hell that guy found himself living on 2000 years ago. But what sin, pray tell, did he die for, aside from that of those nailing him up to begin with?

What I can accept is the notion that he died so as to encourage me to not sin, and for that matter anyone else who has ears to hear and eyes to see. But, given the people suffering on this planet for everybody’s sins, mine included, the idea that anyone died for sins of sinners who had not yet been born seems just plain silly. Died because of the sins of others in that moment in time, maybe. Died for the sins of those today, hardly. At best you’ll find other genuinely good people dying because of our sins, and that’s just about as close as your going to get; unless, of course, you decide to make a conscious effort to become a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem . . .

TTFN

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I was going to write this after my next post, but my next post might come off as slightly abrasive to certain believers that are kind enough to read my words, and so I feel it necessary to lay this one down first. The purpose of this post is simple, I want to make as clear as I can my current opinion of that guy:

So, the obvious: I take him with a grain of salt. That being said . . .

The catholic church has long maintained that Jesus is both earthly and divine. He is both man and God. Whenever looking at a religion I tend to look toward the orthodoxy for the views that should be inherent to that religion. And given that that view was created about 1600 years ago to reconcile the fact that there was no orthodoxy at the time and different “Christians” had different views regarding Jesus, I look at this view as being the thing that the organized teaching of Christ had as its belief once it was in existence 400 years after the fact. Since that is the belief of his followers consistently since they decided to have an organized agreement about him, I begin by considering that belief against what I know of history past, and existence present.

My view of anything, and anyone, is as follows: If I haven’t met someone, they seem much less real to me than someone I have met. I am 99.9% certain of Ben Stein’s existence because I have met the man personally. Before that I was about 95% sure because I used to watch his game show frequently, and was a Ferris Bueller Fan. But before shaking his hand, there was only so certain I could be. Take Einstein for example, I’ve seen enough pictures and read enough exact quotes, and used enough of what his science created, that I can be pretty sure he existed. But I never met the guy, and even if I had, I know from experience that things aren’t always what they seem.

I don’t mean to come off as a doubting Thomas. The simple fact is that to me, if something is not experiential, it is not useful. If it isn’t in the realm of direct experience, it falls under the heading of entertainment. Ben Stein is something I have experienced. Einstein is something I have experienced, or at least the concepts attributed to him. God is something I perpetually experience. Comparatively speaking, Jesus is something not so experiential. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of what he supposedly looked like. Though of course in real life everyone knows he was black . . . Just kidding I don’t know that either, though he probably at least had a real good tan. I’ve read the stories written at least decades after he supposedly died that tell me what he supposedly did. And studying the history, no two accounts are the same.

So, to begin with, whether or not Ben Stein, or Einstein, or Jesus is real doesn’t really matter to me. But of those three, two of them I have a basis for experiencing, and the other one I really don’t. That being said, I have no reason either to believe or not believe that the guy existed to begin with. And that being said, since a lot of people seem to think he did exist, and since I have no reason to dispute something so many people want to believe, if he did exist, and again I have no reason to care one way or the other since he hasn’t done much for me lately, my views on an existent Jesus are as follows:

Given the reports passed down through the years by the groups of Christians who were successful in silencing the other groups of Christians, Jesus is supposedly both human and divine. I have no problem with that premise whatsoever. As a man he seemed to be someone really trying to teach people to treat each other as though there was an inherent divinity within each of them, and that they should respect that of each other. He must have taught according to his own realization that he was made in the image of the divine as was everybody else, since a) that is the Jewish teaching, which was what he taught, Judaism, and b) he is likely to have had a direct experience of that teaching given the character of what he is said to have taught. So, as is every human being, Jesus was of course both God and Man. If he existed, the only difference between him and apparently most of the people around him just then is that he was maybe more cognizant of his place in the greater whole than most of the others he taught to.

So, that’s it. Jesus is alright with me. It doesn’t particularly matter to me if he existed or not since the law is the law regardless of him. But if anyone can learn to treat others as though they are sharing bonds of divinity as Jesus strove to teach his students, thank goodness for the stories.

TTFN

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Definition from my POV:

There are two definitions of “sin” that have even vaguely sat well with me over the years. Personally I don’t like the word, but I’ve spent enough hard time on the most, most holy planet Purgatory to know that the word ought be respected for the work one may need to suffer as a result of what that word probably indicates . . .

Definition #1: Anything that gets in the way of one’s goals.

The first definition I offer is the seemingly egocentric of the two. And it would be completely egocentric if not for the interconnectivity of all reality. If my goal is to write a new blog posting by next Wednesday, and I use my day off to go drinking with friends, there are ramifications of my actions, the least of which being that I don’t get my blog posted. However, since my only goal was to get my posting up, I just undermined myself, which in turn sets a precedent for not taking myself seriously in the future, which in turn makes it harder if, say, a future goal is to be a professional anything. And that being said, definition #1 is all about context.

Definition #2: Anything that causes harm to another human being.

To relate it to definition #1, egocentrically, if a person ever wishes to do something other than cause harm to another human being, it’s hard to do things when one is in prison. Of course, if one’s gaol is to be in prison, harming another being winds up being not a sin by definition #1. If one wishes to do something positive with one’s life, however, simply in the most scientific terms, doing harm to others slows one’s own ability to accomplish anything. It takes time out of one’s day to issue apologies, answer lawsuits, step over bodies, scheme against people who have become obstacles, etc . . . To say nothing of the monetary costs.

The fact is every action gives a result. When you help someone to a better place, they can help you to a better place. If you hinder another being, the odds just went up that they might hinder you. If you love someone, but don’t treat them with love, respect, or kindness, you either get to watch the way your “love” breaks that person, or you will simply drive that person away, which sucks if you really cared for them at all.

And again, if a person’s goal is to cause pain and be in prison, that is an easy enough goal to manifest, and by definition #1, offering a flower would be a sin. However, in such a case, what would make that person’s actions a sin by definition #2 is that the rest of us would have to deal with the consequences, including footing the bill. So by definition #2, I suppose a sin is really any action that makes life more of a pain in the ass for everybody else.

Since the Buddha’s first noble truth was that life is suffering, I’m going to qualify the definition above by saying that if one’s action results in lessons being learned, or even the opportunity for lessons being learned by all parties involved, no real harm done. But what is someone supposed to learn from being yelled at hysterically? From being hit? From being killed? From being bombed? From having their treasured item burned?

Sometimes a proverbial kick in the teeth is the only way to teach someone a lesson. I’ve spent enough time kicking and being kicked to know, however, that I’d rather God teach that lesson; I just don’t think I’ll ever be qualified to know when the timing would be right for me to meet out such a thing, and I never want such a qualification to exist unto me . . . And for a definition of what I call God: HERE.

TTFN

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At some point I plan to write something, probably fairly lengthy, about how silly the notion is that a particular figure attributed to history died for anyone’s sins given the thousands of people, if not more, still dying for our sins on a regular basis. Or rather, maybe it’ll be about his death being the least of the death stemming from “sins” given the amount of suffering done to otherwise good people because of other people who just don’t want to stop pain, be it to themselves or others. And preceding that I’ll probably have to write something defining the term “sin” as I see them. Which will be a short blogging about more or less one’s action doing harm to others, which in turn necessitates the obvious counter-reaction that that action must thereby cause harm to the one committing the action.

But all that is for a different posting. No, before that one, or rather those, which seem like they’ll be draining enough to write that I want to be well rested when I do so, I think it would be fun to share why I take the particular subject of the divine to write about. And the answer is, I had a question.

At first it was a simple matter of wondering what I was doing here. And actually I think the exact sentiment resonating rather loudly in my being was “WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING HERE?” The bone of contention with my questions was always the nature of consciousness. By then of course I’d already become well acquainted with the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, and for that matter a smattering of Gurdjieff; I think I’d made it a couple hundred pages or so into BTTHGS. So, if I was made with a cognizance of pain and death, I figured I should know if there was a point to being alive. And the answer I came to finally after a good four years or so of study was that I was here transmuting energy. And if anyone reading this has seen the first Matrix movie, Whoa.

Maybe I’ll do a little more on the topic of transmuting another time, since the Duracell analogy seems somehow severely lacking. Anyway, once I came to find myself a trasmuter, I felt understandably empty. “Ok, I’m turning different substances from one form into another.” I thought to myself. “I could just as easily do that as a dandelion. But here I am with an awareness of suffering, of pain, of my inevitable cessation of experiencing. Something created me like this when I could just as easily be a blade of grass blissfully unaware of the deer eating me?” You see, it had firmly been fixed into my mind by that point in time that given the very limited consciousness I found myself possessing, it seemed inconceivable that the rest of the whole of everything didn’t possess a consciousness more all inclusive and bigger than mine, and since I originally came from it, I figured it must have created me consciously. I admit, I was unhealthily egocentric back then. I’d like to think my ego, while not necessarily any smaller, is at least healthier now. Now of course it’s obvious to me that creation is fairly law-conformable and that the influence of consciousness effects those creations only after the fact and in relation to the specific effect of law that happened to result in that being. But I was young then. So the question finally took to my brain, “So, if I’m here ‘transmuting,’ which I could just as easily have done as an oak tree, what is my potential as a transmuter of the type I find myself, and what’s more, why is such a consciousness of mine existent to begin with? Especially if God is all loving and merciful as I keep hearing even from those who don’t seem to be living based on a fairytale they’ve heard 2000 times too many?” I wanted to know what my potential was, and why I was made to be aware of pain and death if there was a consciousness behind deciding I feel that pain and death.

So, long story short, thinking that others might be plagued by similar such questions, I figure I’d discuss some of the ramifications of what I’ve found to be probable answers, because from my perspective, there definitely are. And the bottom line of those answers wind up being using them so as to be more patient, more compassionate, less self absorbed, and more inclined to work in such a way, because all of life is work make no mistake, that I may be more of benefit to the humanity surrounding me than a burden upon them, since, after all, I was blessed enough to be created by this race of beautiful beings to begin with.

And thank you!

TTFN

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When I started this blog I intended on posting twice a week, aiming for Sunday and Thursday. This week I did not post on time because I was doing an interview for my book on the community television station in conjunction with my normal work schedule that involves 40 hrs, as well as a predetermined date I had scheduled a month in advance which took up my other day off. As is such, this posting itself is late and I haven’t had time to edit the posting I have in the wings to my satisfaction, nor begin any other new postings. I offer this interview in recompense, and hope it is enough until my next posting, which, I hope will be on Sunday. I promise something a little more substantial.

Fast Forward to 41:50 for the start of the interview; though, when it starts, the whole show is good:

Interview with Bruce Latimer

Peace

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So, as I was reviewing my last posting for submission, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “So if the words ‘God’ and ‘Universe’ can be used interchangeably in my conception, why use the word ‘God’ at all?” And the answer is that there are some phenomenon that I’ve witnessed enough to live as established fact that science apparently hasn’t figured out how to measure.

Therefore, if there isn’t an established science behind a principle that I have witnessed regularly, I tend to call that God, since the physical reason has yet to be discovered. Kind of like the discovery of subtle particles in science, like the neutrino, there is a belief in place about what one is looking for because one has experienced evidence to support its existence.

I was first exposed to the notion of “higher consciousness” from a teaching by a psychologist about the Huna conception of how the mind works. The kahunas believed that there were levels to a being’s mind, and that the highest level was super-aware because it interacted with the higher “self” of all other beings. Thus this model suggests that the most subtle parts of our own minds interact with all other minds of the same consistency. And it is this interaction of mind that enables one to make manifest in reality those things that the common individuated consciousness otherwise has no way of knowing how to make happen . . .

Again, since this is a notion of mind too subtle for science yet to have found a way to measure, the reason I can believe in some variation on this is because I’ve seen the outside of me reconfigure to provide what I have asked for inside, often enough to believe in something helping me from outside my immediate understanding of the workings of my life. The idea that some part of my mind that isn’t immediately obvious to me, but connected to the part of my mind that is obvious to me, is connected to all other minds in the same way, makes sense to me. This makes sense to me because some of my dreams seem to have shown me images of what will happen the next day, and I know that that aint coming from the obvious parts of my mind. This makes sense to me because if such a form of mind that isn’t so obvious exists, then at least as my mundane mind interacts with other minds to get things done, it seems natural that that other part of my mind, which is pulling stuff from somewhere that’s not what I usually think of as “me,” might, at least in part, be pulling it from other minds, or perhaps even a mind that is transcendent of linearity and differentiation, which is at least all other minds. Since I can’t see it, and it’s very large, and science hasn’t recorded it to give me something more formal to call it, I call it God.

It’s the interaction between the parts of existence of which I am aware as well as those of which I am not aware; it is the interaction between those things of which I could know about but am for the moment ignorant as well as those things that have yet to be discovered. It is the existence of all reality, since it knows itself well enough to at least exist, which I call God. And I call it God because not only is it so large that the little speck that I am cannot possibly grasp it in full no matter how learned I am, but also it seems to respond with a knowledge of how to get things done even when the convention of human thought fails to point a way. That is to say, even when no human mind can provide me an answer, if my question is sincere, there seems to be a hearing of me that provides an answer in a way better than any human mind could conceive. And that broadens the ability of my mind apparently, and seems to have also for others. And it is that providence unto me, that which provides unto me, when logic does not, that I call God.

It is not merely the substance of the physical universe that I call God. It is also that that substance seems sometimes to respond to me as though it’s substance is mind itself. And the consciousness I experience may be the culmination of the minds of all others. But whatever it is, it seems to be a consciousness much, much bigger than my own.

TTFN

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