Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Questiong the divine’

Me to Us

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It occurs to me that the appeal of writing in dialogue is that it gives me the opportunity to converse with myself. I make a statement, then I respond. The story that arises is almost secondary to the exercise of meeting my own mind. The story told, then, is often the story of myself. I suppose then the hope is that as I reflect myself to the world, the world sees something about itself, though not quite itself, useful in what I find in me.

Finding One’s Self

“Who are you?”

“This is a trick question, right? Do you not see the name-tag on my chest. Isn’t that why I’m wearing one of these things, so that you don’t need to ask exactly that question?”

“I mean aside from the name. Who are you?”

“Well, the name is a designation assigned to the circumstances of my creation and the history that followed up until this point in time. I would answer with the name you see on my chest, but it is merely representative of what my singular point of consciousness has perceived up until now. I would describe myself as that history designated by the name upon my chest, but, in my humble opinion, that would take too long, and so again I indicate to you once more reading the tag for the sake of saving time.”

“So for starters, you’re easily irritable, verbose, and take your time about dwelling in sarcasm?”

“I’m also fond of concision. Have I more or less answered your question?”

“So you believe yourself to be your history, not your present?”

“I believe my present is a representation of the entirety of my history. I am also that history combined with its interaction with whatever stimuli exists at present; in this case your question and the pressure of our audience.”

“So you are your cumulative experience combined with the experience of the moment. You are your uniqueness as an identity individuated, combined with the circumstance created by all other individualities?”

“Sounds about right. Who should I be?”

“Who do you want to be?”

Read Full Post »

Transitions . . .

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve felt myself in a bit of a rut lately; I find I’ve been having a similar conversation again and again. In this conversation I am asked about my writing to which the response is always the same, “I find myself keeping up with my blog consistently, but am hard-pressed to find time to write any stories.”

If you’ve read my “About” page you know that I started this blog originally to facilitate interest in my book. I think it’s a very good exercise for many reasons, amongst them it keeps me writing, but something finally occurred to me. Feeling my rutage, but not quite sure that it was a rut, I decided to give myself a day to find a quiet place away from what I was used to, where I could be alone. And by quiet, I don’t mean physically. I decided I’d like to find a beach I’d never been to some ways away from where I live; preferably a beach with very little people visiting it. My idea was to find a beach I could have to myself for a short period so that my mind could be uncluttered, and thus un-compact itself in such a way that I could be presented from the whole of everything an answer to what was irritating me. And so, I found my isolated beach and asked my question. And so I was pointed to an answer. . .

You see, if you’re serious about asking a question to the whole of all existence, it happily guides you toward the answer. Being aware that a lot of stimulus might confuse me as to what was an answer and what was background noise, I began my journey in a “quiet” space. I put myself into a meditative state so as to be open to a response, and then . . .

First I needed to relax myself, because I haven’t been relaxed lately and just taking a moment purely for myself to unwind under the sun on a blanket on a nice day was the first step to realizing what would be helpful from where I was. To put it another way, the first step toward doing what is most helpful in one’s life is always to begin by doing anything helpful for one’s self, anything health-full for one’s self.

And so, after some time in the sun I felt like putting my shirt back on, at which point I decided to check the time. And so I noticed at that point I had no cell-phone reception, since, my phone is also my “watch.” And that irritated me to start moving to somewhere with reception, because, I didn’t mean to be completely cut off.

I’ll not bore you further with the rest of the details, but, as I was in-transit, I was reminded of a conversation I had a couple nights prior with Natasha Muse. She’s pretty funny . . . Anyway, we had been discussing monotony, and as I thought about our conversation about doing the same thing again and again, I was reminded of the conversation I’ve been having exactly the same recently about not having time to write stories lately, but consistently finding time to write at least 500 words a week for my blog. And then the obvious hit me . . .

So, what I am saying is this: 1) If you ask a sincere question from the whole of everything, A) Ask it under a circumstance that is “quiet,” i.e. under which you can be receptive to an answer beyond background noise that might distract you, and B) You will receive an answer, make no mistake.

2) This blog as it has been is undergoing, as of now, a transition as I begin what I pray is the last leg of a journey leading to, amongst other things, getting back to writing stories. This doesn’t mean there won’t be more posts by me, it just means that a few things are going to change, first and foremost, quite possibly, how often a post goes up.

And when the posts do go up, I’m thinking I’ll be posting fiction.

The conclusion was inevitable provided I be serious. If I’m irritated that I can’t find time to write stories, the time I’m spending writing, since it is quite a bit over time, ought to be devoted to writing stories.

Now, that being said, I think I’ve laid out over the last year a pretty clear conception of the divine that is more helpful to one’s hand and life than many other story books that have been written over the years. And, for the careful reader, I have also provided ample links to texts for continued reading for anyone who is legitimately curious at all about the rather simple workings of the whole of creation. If I receive any questions for clarifications sake, however, on the topic matter about which I have been expounding the last year, I’ll be happy to post for the week in response. My intention as of after this post, however, is that the posts that go up will be my work at my craft as I would intend it to be, rather than wiseacring over the general workings of G-d.

So with that I bid you adieu for the moment. Check back next week and I’ll have a story prepared . . . until then . . .

PEACE! . . . er . . . Peace.

Read Full Post »

Koan . . .

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

What does God think of God?

Follow up question: Does God think of God?

Or at least, if the first question could be classified under the heading of Koan, perhaps then the follow-up question is a good place to begin the train of thought that might lead to a state of mind that is more helpful for one’s subsequent usage . . .

It seems to me that the only way to be able to conceive in terms of divinity is, firstly, to turn off the thoughts one typically associates with one’s “self.” Or at least turn away from those thoughts. And I’m not necessarily just talking about one’s typical identity of person-hood.

For example, a person might identify with “their” country. A person might identify with their “God.” A person might identify with their planet, etc . . .

Now, don’t get me wrong, as long as I can remember my cells have formed strands of DNA classifying me as a human being native to the planet Earth. What I’m saying is merely that in order to get into a “mind-set” a little more in alignment with a state of being capable of perceiving the divine of which all existence has sprung, it seems helpful to me to stop calling the cells commonly attributed to my consciousness “mine; it seems helpful to conceive I might be something transcendent of species; it seems that it might be helpful to consider that as life itself, I need not concern myself with the planet I happen to be tethered to aside from my day to day life.

In point of fact, when attempting to consider the divine, it seems as though trying not to conceive of myself at all might be most beneficial in attempting to conceive the divine.

Let me put it another way . . .

Dear reader, if you ceased to be entirely, what would there be?

And all the rest of existence working, apparently incapable of existing without being so intertwined and interconnected, what would that look like if there was no concern whatsoever with one’s own discomforts of existence? I mean, even if you happen to find a moment of perfect comfort, aren’t you only perceiving the comfort you find yourself embodying, perhaps at most only your immediate comfortable surroundings the only conception of “outside” beyond your person? What happens when comfort is transcended and there’s no you nor your immediate surroundings to consider? When you cease to be, what remains?

Personally, I think it a little funny that one would think that in death finally “God” would reward them with personal physical comfort. I think it a bit odd that so many people perceive that a divinity that created them is so flawed that it must have gotten existence so wrong that only in apparent non-existence, from the perspective of all other existence, is perfection finally realized. I contend that if even for a moment one could transcend their own minds, one could catch a glimpse of why one need not die to realize Heaven.

Of course, consciousness at our level is rather divided, isn’t it? I wonder if we truly have the potential to transcend our separateness in interacting with each other to fulfill what may be a potential unique only to conscious individuals, of sharing realized unity for the sake of enjoying our common existence . . .

Peace

Read Full Post »

Good V.D. and How We Got It!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2011| 1 Comment »

Well I wanted to open with the video from the movie “True Stories” for the song Love For Sale, but was only able to find the video with someone else’s music over-dubbed. So, instead of artsy to cultivate a point, I’ll instead settle for “I dare you to find a nicer song for the holiday” and I do expect comments with links . . . And here’s where I’ll begin:

Happy Valentines Day Everybody!

So, in honor of the holiday, a little about it’s Catholic origins because, contrary to popular belief, Hallmark did not invent it . . . they just perfected it . . .

So, for starters, most of this info, if not all, is gleaned from this site and this article: http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day and I’m giving the short version that I think is particularly interesting and pertinent to my ongoing theme, etc . . .

So apparently, before being commandeered by Christendom for the sake of converting more and slaughtering less, February 15th was a major Roman fertility ritual. The Roman’s would sacrifice a goat, a symbol for fertility, at the cave where Romulus and Remus, the alleged founders of Rome, were supposedly raised by wolves. Boys would then take slices of the hide of the sacrificed goat and dip it in the sacrificial blood and run through the streets of Rome lightly slapping the crops and the faces of young ladies, who were happy to have the blessing of fertility. Then a lottery would commence in which the boys and girls of the town would be paired up according to lot, which often led to marriage.

Given peoples misconceptions about relationships, and confusion of what love means after watching one too many Julia Roberts movies, I totally think we should bring back the skinned goat. Compared to today, just seems more civilized, but, I digress.

So, once the Christians took over, that went away, but they needed to convert the happy Heathens somehow, and enter the legend of Saint Valentine, or Saint Valentinus as he is sometimes known.

Now, the legends are apparently murky at best, but, according to this article, at least two stories about Saint V seem pertinent to me. Supposedly, around the third century, one of the emperors, Claudius the 2nd, decreed that young men couldn’t marry because he believed that unmarried men made better soldiers. A priest named Valentine was said to have then performed clandestine marriages between secret lovers, thus securing him a place as the patron of love. Claudius finding him out and having him killed, secured him the sainthood.

The other legend is that Valentine, while in prison for performing marriages, fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. And remember, it wasn’t until well after the third century that priests were no longer allowed to marry in Catholicism. In fact, it was at least a good thousand years or so after Christ had kicked it that the church began writing in its new policy of child molestation. Anyway, again pardon the digression, the point is, Valentine, while in jail, was said to have fallen in love. And before he was killed he was said to have written his love a letter signed “from your Valentine,” and hence the valentine giving on Valentine’s day was born.

So, that’s the interesting bits, more or less, of how we have arrived today with the yearly ritual of stimulating the production of oxytocin in the minds of the women we love, as well as bringing them flowers that cost way too much to compensate for the fact of any who should probably be bringing them flowers a lot more often when the price is reasonable.

In a modern world, where we are blessed to love as we please, may anyone reading this have a blessed day to celebrate happiness. And if one’s initial impulse is lacking in happy, may you find a big box of chocolate to take the pain away!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Read Full Post »