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Posts Tagged ‘Transcend self ego’

When I think about organized religions, especially the western ones, and I compare them to the way I perceive God, it looks to me something like this:

Many, maybe most, not all, who subscribe to the organized bunch generally seem to have some, if not in the very unfortunate cases all, of their thoughts on the matter written for them somewhere in some book, or thought into their minds, without a direct experiencing of what it is they think they believe. I have trouble believing something in a book, no matter how old it is or how many people buy it, because, I have read a lot of books. What is on a page, and what I can feel with my hand, seldom mesh. Mother Goose and Grimm is nice in its way. Porridge is better than starvation, and when one falls down a hill their likely-hood of death does increase. But, on a whole, I’m able to perceive that a story is not necessarily written to be congruous with my life as I am living it. It may contain a good example of something. Maybe make me think of something that does have an actual, real world, application. But on a whole, a story is a story, and when I’m not a crazy person, I can usually leave it in the book it came and walk away happily.

But when one can’t tell the difference between a story in a book, and the life they are living, there seems to me to be a problem. When a person takes the words of some man, or woman, and believes that the validity of their life rests solely in the words written by a human being, they have stopped seeking their own individuality and have stopped seeking their own connectivity to the divine form the perspective of their own unique individuality.

So, since everything, from my perspective, is God, and since every person is given the capacity to choose, if they choose to use that capacity, I see a metaphor for two distinct approaches to God. In this metaphor one has no choice but to serve the divine. One may be serving the adversarial aspect of the divine, HaSatan, but nonetheless, no one has choice but to serve wherever they are best suited to serve, within the context of an Omni-Divine universe. That being the case, the choice lies in this: In one version, in which one lives out the words of a book as though it were their own perspective, one chooses slavery to a God they choose never to want to have a direct interaction with. In the other version, one chooses to serve God and take their orders directly from a living entity creating existence in real time.

Because they think that stepping outside of their book and having a real relationship with God is too scary, one would bow their eyes below the light of the divine and see its light cast only on a man-made representation of the world. In the other version, one serves actively the creation of the world as it exists and is being made to exist by the light provided; their eyes resting where the intention of creation is at hand.

Not that one can’t derive good inspiration from some words passed down over the ages, but at the point in time in which one has been conned into being afraid that someone believing something different is damned to Hell, they seem too over-joyfully to begin creating that Hell amidst us on Earth in order to save us from the very thing they are so anxiously afflicting upon us living folk. At which point the desire for death to “go to Heaven” or in different terms “make it stop” suddenly becomes all too clear.

The alternative seems to be to eat our food with bits of salt. While understanding what we are creating in some moments hinges on once glancing and cognizing a handful of words in a book, it is the results we live outside that book that is the real test of the validity of our capacity to serve all creation in all its form. And may we be able to serve all its forms well, for appearance may deceive, but a kind action from one’s own hand never lies.

TTFN

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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!

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So, I was eating my Bagna Calda at Goodfellas, and I was contemplating whether the Garlic was roasted in oil or water. And it seems obvious that the roasting takes place in oil, or oil with maybe a little butter, but it didn’t say on the menu, and it didn’t exactly taste like olive oil to me, probably because of the garlic and anchovy tastes overwhelming the olive oil, which probably wasn’t a very thick olive oil. And thus, a meditation on the nature of water occurred to me, obviously.

And so, as I was contemplating my olive oil in lieu of water, what struck me was this: Ya ever notice that water becomes what it touches? I mean, initially the thought was something like “If this is water, then it mimics the flavors of the garlic and the anchovies such that it is no longer discernible as water.” And of course the reality of the time was probably olive oil, but the extrapolations therefrom became all about water.

The next logical association in my mind was lemon mixed with water. Never mind lemonade when sugar crystal breaks down in the water molecules to become a water-sugar, no, just the lemon alone without the sugar. The water becomes as the essence of lemon. Just a squeeze goes a long way for a glass; the glass of water becomes in essence filled with lemon. And anything water touches water seems to become.

When blood enters water, it is almost as though the water begins to become blood. The ancient Greeks used to mix water with wine. You seep a leaf in hot water, and it becomes as the essence of that leaf. You run hot water through a coffee bean, and the water becomes infused with energy and Earth.

Even solids water becomes, or is it that that which enters water naturally tries to mimic the water? Dirt mixed with water becomes mud. Even a rock breaks down into sand finer and finer, as though to become the water.

Water is of such substance, purely life giving, and it seems that all of creation tries to become as water when it touches it. Even a human being whose life is dependent on water, who must transmute some form or another of water in order to continue to live, and who will benefit most from pure water itself, strives to attain with the fullness of their capability the divine exercise of emulation of “the motion of the ocean.”

What greater example of living is there than water? What higher to attain to? For life it perfectly sustains, all that it touches it strives to become, all that touches it strives to become like it. Perfect reciprocity of existence and partaking of mutuality. May we all serve as though the water of life. May we never thirst!

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.


~ Tao Te Ching: Chapter 8 ~

(Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English)

TTFN

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