Tag Archives: Life

Assignment 1/14/16

How’s that for a clever title. But this is not a clever or self important post. I was honored to have read a poem by Eimzpink     http://eimzpink.wordpress.com    In it she reveals a love that reflects the true nature of a romantic love that, as we know happens daily, and disintegrates into something other than pleasant.

But there are pleasant memories that remain, stirred not shaken, mixed like a strong cocktail with the current pain. A cryptic yet poignantly personal, meaningful revelation of the salient points of that particular love both jumps from and hides on the page. The characters of the play need not be clear to be recognized. The healing, the cleansing that comes with accepting both the good and bad of what time has wrought reminds us of our own heartache, and pain, and why we fall in love anyway.

That very time makes us whole again. It washes away the present and places the memories into the past, like the pain of losing anything, anguish that moves on.

We say we have moved on,and Eimz creeps along in spurts. She opens her heart like a book we can all peruse and remember the gift of time, sailing like a rowboat in the stream of consciousness.

And we remember love.

Playing From Behind Again

Yesterday’s assignment was to write a blog post saying exactly what we want, to the person or persons we really want to talk to. We were also to include a new element in our post, one that we have never worked with before. I have never embedded a photo into my blog posts so I will attempt to do that a bit later in the post. Here is what I really want, without filter, to say.

There are lots of people I really want to speak to directly, under the illusory protective umbrella of this blog. To choose one group out of many is a somewhat daunting task, but today I’m feeling like speaking to those who proclaim themselves Christians, and miraculously, devout Christians.

Not all, but many of them, by my humble moral standards and mandatory incomplete understanding of scripture and the Christ, love to slavishly quote the Bible without having the foggiest notion of what it really tells us.

Thank God for Martin Luther. These people will still have a chance to gain heaven through their faith alone. For their works are not only not good works but are often cruel and damaging works, and can also include disdain for and the absence of good works. Yes, they are charitable, but just as they cherry pick Bible verses to support their profound misunderstanding of their role as Christians, they cherry pick whom to be generous with. Like the Pharisee in the parable of the Good Samaritan they judge who is and who is not deserving of their charity.

Somehow they believe that because they are more pious and devout and “Better Christians” than others they somehow deserve most favored VIP status here on earth and extra compensations from the divine coffers. They demand that absolutely everyone accept certain of their doctrine, while personally ignoring other of their religion’s precepts. They malign those religions whom they accuse of violently forcing everyone to convert, while expecting everyone to accept that theirs is the only true religion and thus the only moral arbiter.

They advocate for an American theocracy, claiming Biblical law supersedes Constitutional law, while condemning other theocracies across the world as authoritarian fanatics.

I could go on.

Before I go let me illuminate just one hypocrisy I see in the western, predominately racially white, Christian Church. Jesus was undoubtedly a Palestinian. Had he been tall, white and blue eyed he would have been suspect and likely would have had a difficult time convincing his Jewish followers that he was the messiah.

So, did Jesus look like Barry Gibb?

picture-jesus-greg-olson

Or like a common era Jew?

gallery-1450102902-screen-shot-2015-12-14-at-91810-am

I’m not sure this second guy would be real popular with the TSA. Not to mention he would be persona non grata to certain other currently newsworthy persons.

I thought we were created in God’s image, not the other way around.

 

Robin

I usually try to create some sort of clever title for my posts, as is my wont. Not today. It has taken me several days to even allow the truth in so that I might process it. To me, Jonathan Winters was the greatest comedian of all time. And obviously second, only by a nose, was his disciple Robin Williams.

In late 1975 I, half hippie seeker and half glitter rocker, ventured to San Francisco to find enlightenment and that perfect gig in the sky.  Late in the same year I found a room in a lovely apartment in the Richmond district just north of Golden Gate Park. Several blocks away was a bar I would frequent to watch a band called Shadowfax. And several blocks further west on Clement St., the Richmond’s main drag, was a little place called the Holy City Zoo.  One night I discovered Shadowfax wasn’t playing because of a band member’s illness and decided to venture further down Clement, unexplored territory as it was. Sitting down with an adult beverage I saw on the stage a young comedian, a little raw but with immense talent. It wasn’t difficult to see he was s star in the making.

Robin Williams was true to the “Zoo” until it it closed nearly a decade later. He came back frequently to test out new material and see old friends. Because of the early exposure to this immense talent I followed his career closely. He starred in what is probably my favorite film, the drastically under appreciated “What Dreams May Come”. He had access to places we only dream of. With such access comes a terrible price. This price sometimes cannot be paid. He could easily be compared to Shadowfax, who bore the weight of great knowledge and remarkable magic on his back. His death is tragic in a Shakespearean sense.

I haven’t been able to say anything about this yet. I have been unsure of when I could. But a friend posted a reference to Russ Limbaugh contending that his “leftist worldview” played a part in Robin’s actions. I was furious and still am. I immediate fired of a comment, driven by my anger. As I read it over I knew this was my expression, this is what poured out of my heartbroken soul.

I am reprinting it here. I couldn’t possibly state it better.

Sarah, I can’t bring myself to “like” such sad commentary as yours, that necessarily illuminates the darker side of life. But thank you for not being suckered into accepting the easy dismissal of the serious nature of our failure to address the issues confronting the mentally disordered. You have refused to regurgitate the convenient and conventional condemnations that have been so casually and callously tossed about it the media. You don’t blindly accept the standard gutless and flimsy excuses. These are good things. Robin was not a coward. Rather we are the cowards for not having the guts and compassion to confront depression and other such mental disorders, such as the one I suffer from, Bipolar Disorder.

Last time I checked the brain was part of the body, and as such they are truly serious diseases of the body, like so many others, that require serious considerations for treatment. We have to fight the extant public stigma to the death. Our allegedly loving and compassionate society must give those who suffer mental dis-order our determined efforts to save them from the ravages of these serious illnesses, the same as we give cancer patients, to name but one example.

Am I angry? Damn straight I am. I was a hair’s breadth from the same fate as Robin. I have been inside the cauldron and I claim a modest right to address this issue with a humble level of authority. Some existentialists will say the only truly human decision to leave behind a hopelessly tormented, demented and unholy life is that one made by Robin. Yes, that decrepit life is rotting just around one of life’s corners, but there are many rooms in my father’s house, many other corners to peek around, hesitant and fearful, unsure of what lurks around them. And yet there are so many wonders waiting there for us, even for those who sometimes need to be pulled away from the darkest corners into the light. Every one of us needs to be pulled from the fire at least some time in their life.

Joy has no meaning without sorrow. But if we can only know wisdom through suffering know that we do need not to suffer continuously. We intuit, with support from any and all scripture, as well as sane secular counsel, that we, as a society, can fight relentlessly to free us from the Sisyphus fate of being captured in cycles of pain, caused by any number of devastating dis-eases. We have, can and will defeat them. But can we, as a people, regain some of our inherent compassionate heritage and open our vision to include mental disorders in that litany of destructive cycles? I pray we can and do, sooner rather than later.

I feel lucky to still breathe the air and witness another daily sunrise. A door opened for me at the last moment and behold, there were instantly four new corners to explore, and one revealed a path that led to renewed life. How many of us have lost their way in the dark and could not find the door that led them to safety? Something as simple as a nightlight fashioned from empathy and love could save so many.

It is frightening and deadly dangerous to have the courage to venture into those areas of the mind that release such otherworldly talent but are also populated by monsters inconceivable to those of us incapable of even knowing those places exist. We suck in the entertaining energy of that talent’s expression. We bask in it’s light and laugh til it hurts. But do we give anything back? We all know you don’t miss the water til the well runs dry. We emptied Robin’s well even as we loved him. There was no water left to sustain him. We are complicit but blameless. Robin went there willingly. He chose that path. It was the corner of the room that shone brightest to him. He saw the demons there but was compelled to bring the shining joy back to us anyway. In the end the monsters won.

We cannot judge. When one is both courageous and a fool who are we to choose which he is? Not I, nor you, nor anyone. There is only one judge.

 

 

An Addendum to “Rules for Being Human”

Most pithy and insightful quotes or insights that come across the interwebs deal with single issues or finite concepts. However this is the most comprehensive and broadly truthful thing I have come across in a very long while. Many of you already know some, most or all of this, either intuitively or from study. I cannot verify that this is all from the Sanskrit but I can tell you I originally discovered many of these truths from studying Hindu mythology and sacred texts. I must confess I struggle to uphold a life based on these rules. I think most of us do. Here is bit of personal commentary on each rule. Well, a lot of commentary.

Rule 1. Having a body, or form, is what separates us from every other sentient entity, i.e. God, angels, spirits, etc. This is why it was so important that Jesus take on human form. The physical plane is the densest part of the universe. This is why so many scientists have been pursuing the Higgs Boson, to understand matter. Having a form locks the soul and spirit into one conceptual vessel in time and space. It is rumored that angels are jealous of humans for having a body. Only because we have a body can we appreciate the physical universe. Some say growth can only happen on all planes at the same time, which means that we can only evolve our spirit while we inhabit a body.

Rule 2. The purpose of life is to continue to evolve into a more perfect being, with the ultimate goal to become godlike. While that goal may be unattainable there cannot be a lesser goal for humankind if we are to become the best we can be. This is why life is a constant learning process. Each time we learn we evolve. The lessons are always worth learning. We just have to remember that even the seemingly insignificant lessons are meaningful. A lifetime devoted to constant learning keeps the mind and soul youthful and flexible.

Rule 3. Yoga is the purposeful aspect of any activity. We can be taught the yoga of anything only because somebody experimented and failed and kept trying until the secret of the yoga was revealed. Unless we have the courage to exceed our imaginations by trying new things and failing we can never expect to grow at all. Remember God doesn’t have accidents. As we live we rise and fall like a wave of light. The peaks and valleys show us both the divine and the profane. We learn. We grow. We are like light as we are both a particle and a wave.

Rule 4. This can only be experienced. It is a function of karma, or destiny. God has a plan for all of us and if we come to a part of that plan that we have trouble learning we are presented with a variation of the lesson until we learn it. This may possibly explain why predestination can coexist with free will. We always have the free will to reject our destiny, but will be given an infinite number of opportunities to accept it.

Rule 5. For those who believe in reincarnation this extends through many lives. It is said that we come back into a life best suited to fulfill our karma. It is also why we only age physically. We continue to grow mentally and emotionally. We age because of that density of the physical plane, which has something to do with friction, entropy and gravity. Gravity is the last force needed to be explained in order to have a unified field theory, which is the ultimate goal of sub atomic physics. Our minds and hearts are not subject to gravity and will continue to learn without deteriorating.

Rule 6. Everything is relative and absolute at the same time. That is to say every object, concept, idea or activity has a both a relative and absolute aspect. Einstein realized this and saw that it could be observed at or near the speed of light. Absolutely, we are always here. But relatively, there is always a somewhere else that we can see from here. When we realize that the somewhere else is also here, once we get there, then we begin to understand relativity. There is always an external perspective, an alternative point of view to every existing thing. This is why there are an infinite number of points on a line. Time is the dimension that moves us through the relative, always staying in the absolute moment. This is a most pure contradiction. Maintaining our bodies, keeping the mental, emotional, ethereal and spiritual all together in one physical form, is the most sublime contradiction known and it is in this apparent contradiction of the absolute and relative, in time, where we liberate the incomprehensible energy necessary to maintain those bodies. Once again, Einstein was the first to understand this, expressing it as E=MC squared.

Rule 7. There are nearly infinite numbers of cosmoses. Each contained by or containing another. There are billions of universes comprised of billions of galaxies comprised of billions of stars and more billions of planets and moons which have billions of objects and life forms which have billions of molecules and billions of atoms down to the many and various sub atomic particles. There is a pervasive concept in religion and mythology that says any one distinct part of a cosmos, regardless how large or small, is an integral part of a larger cosmos and also contains smaller cosmoses. These cosmoses mirror each other in function. For example the christian world view says we are all, the billions of us, part of the body of Christ yet science tells us that we are also a body, of which billions of cells are a part. Therefore we are all both a part and a whole at the same time. So cosmologically we are all the same. So seeing something in someone else must be related to seeing it in us. We mirror each other so we recognize ourselves in others. From a spiritual perspective we recognize the divine in each other, which leads to the conclusion, as stated by Christianity among others, that we are all children of God.

Rule 8. This is about dharma and karma. Dharma is our spiritual duty. It is what we feel bound to and what aspires us to divinity while inspiring us to greatness. The catch is we have free will and can choose to deny our karma, or destiny, and our dharma, or duty. Because of God’s plan for us we have all the requisite abilities, characteristics, genetic information needed to attain that destiny according to the plan. These are God given and always accessible to us. We choose through free will just how well we make use of these gifts.

Rule 9. This goes back to relativity and cosmoses inside cosmoses, karma and dharma and an infinite, all knowing, onmipresent God. One reason some call the higgs boson the god particle is that they see it as the inner boundary of universes, the particle from which all other particles are made. The one point of the big bang. By finding the inner boundary of existence some hope to understand God, the outer boundary of existence. The mystery of us having and maintaining a body is that it is a model for how all universes operate. It has billions of individual parts that working together make one distinct entity. The human body is a universe unto itself. Therefore we can know everything worth knowing by looking inside ourselves, experimenting and learning lessons understanding how we are all one and infinite at the same time and that our lives rest entirely in our hands.

By now you have seen that my observations about this allegedly spiritual knowledge is chock full of physics. Since the purpose of both physics and spiritual discovery is to explain existence, it makes sense that they would both be talking about the same thing. Well enough of my ramblings. This list of rules just touched off a stream of consciousness in me and I felt compelled to communicate it. Thanks, as always, for humoring me. I do think that these rules are valuable and I hope they can inspire you to become that ever more perfect being you so strongly hope to be.

UPDATE: As you may have read in the comments these rules are a major focus of Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott’s work, which is not attributed on the widely circulated cyber meme poster. For shame. Thank you Dr. Carter-Scott for your clarity. Also it is my understanding that there may be a tenth rule that states that “You will forget all of this at birth.” In many ways life is a zero-sum game and as we learn we also forget. But there are signposts that catch the eye of those who are looking for them which lead us to triggers that help us remember our true natures. We should offer thanks to those who dug into their subconscious to find them.