A petty god

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. 

-- Sir Richard Francis Burton

I think that may well be so. Or, the ego worshipping The Ego. It seems most gods are described as being jealous, petty, vindictive, cruel, vain... 

This just in...

This morning I got this:

I'm as free as I've ever been.

The Disappearance Of The Universe TV show

Gary Renard has been talking for a while about making a TV show of his success book (and one of my favorite non-fiction books ever), The Disappearance Of The Universe. To my positive surprise, not only do they seem to make very good progress on such a difficult project, but with the results shown so far, it actually seem really nice and attractive, and like it could really work.

Faith vs. blind faith

[Thanks to The Monks And Me*]

The most commonly used definition for Faith is: "belief without proof". Which of course to many people hints that people who have faith are mentally broken.

But this is actually only the second definition of faith, and is actually more a definition of "blind faith". The first definition of Faith is "confidence or trust in a person or thing", and is an entirely different thing.

If one has only ever experienced a crass, material world and selfish people, belief in a benevolent god is practically impossible. And I actually don't think anybody ever does it, hardly.
But if one has some evidence of goodness, a great kindness from a stranger, a great save in a desperate situation, or even a vision of a divine kind, like a great light and a deep feeling of eternal and unlimited Goodness, then faith has a basis, and faith is often a help on the path, to keep one's head over water.

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By the way, some people say almost proudly that they don't believe in anything. This is nonsense. Everybody who has consciousness believes in something. One may only "believe in what you can touch with your hands", but it's still a belief. It's a belief that the body is real and that what one experiences through the senses is real. And if you look at what the smartest people say in Quantum Mechanics, this is even quite the belief, for there is really no way to know what, if anything, our senses are connected to.


*Excellent book. Ironically she does not go all the way in her buddhism, she claims that the world is *not* a dream. But apart from that "detail", it's a very wise and warm book.

Judgements and condemnations

This is written shortly after one more of what increasing seems like an epidemic of school shootings in the US.
A good friend of mine wrote on his site:

...happened to come across President Obama's Newtown address on the radio. It was a moving speech, and I was duly touched. He's a gifted speaker.
But one thing is blatantly missing from the reactions to this latest massacre of innocents: judgements and condemnations of the perpetrator.

I'm a bit astounded that my friend, who is a highly intelligent, educated, and normally kind man, will find "judgements and condemnations" to be not only acceptable, not only desirable, but necessary, and condemn their absence in a speech.

Judgements and condemnations are simply more water from the same poisoned well from which such insane violence stem.

Judgements and condemnations are exactly what's wrong with humanity. They are the very things which create the continued wars and violence which plague us, and they are the things standing in the way of the human brotherhood which could give us real civilization and a road to higher things.

Even on a practical level, I have a hard time imagining a person in the state of mind to go out and shoot children thinking: "Oh, I better not, people will judge me for it".

On the contrary, judgment begets judgement, hate begets hate, and love and forgiveness beget their like.

The first one to break the chain of hate is the first one to reap the peace which comes from that.

My idea of Source

My perception of Source is very synonymous with Warmth, see this I just posted on my mainstream blog.

Un-contracting strikes back

I have expanded the important post The Secret Of Un-straining.

10 December 2012: I have expanded it again.

Thinking an idea

I’ve come to view using quotes, and perhaps even writing in general, as being more valuable in simply stimulating the reader’s own thinking than in disseminating precise truths, if those even exist. 

If everything in the Universe is just based on beliefs, there is little value in convincing others of one's own current belief, but always value in stimulating thought and observation, since these are what leads us towards higher states and freedom. 

Desires, ideas, and the World

What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one's own.

ACIM, Lesson 325

Window or mirror?

"I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you." —Bill Withers, singer-songwriter

Undoubtedly it makes for a simpler and perhaps happier life to be all extroverted. But, unless you're mentally hopelessly myopic, I think that introspection is necessary for mental/spiritual development.
It is thought by many great thinkers that we see the world not so much as it is, as much as how *we* are. So if the world is not to our liking, the first thing we need to change is ourselves.

The soul of the Warrior?

I've been wondering for a while about how when you meet or see a warrior type person, somebody who believes war is necessary, and participates in it with gusto, often this person seems like a good person, a very likeable person. And he often is.

I think as spiritual people, most of whom are pacifists, we must learn to not see warriors as enemies, or as anything opposed to us or our ideals. Because that's the whole point: nothing is opposed to anything, it's an illusion.

I've come to see warriors as immature rather than "bad". And not even immature as humans, most of them keep their predilections to their old age. But "immature" in the development of a spirit. And not even very immature, because to be able to see the whole universe in peaceful terms despite all the seeming evidence this illusory world gives against it, is only something which comes to us very near the end of our long, long journey from the beginning of this Universe to our final release.

By condemning the warriors, we are not doing anything to help the world, we are just adding to the conflict, the conflict which is only in our mind, and which can only be removed by us taking it down bit by bit from inside, personally.

No longer our enemy

"No longer is the world our enemy, for we have chosen that we be its Friend." 
- ACIM

I repeat this, because it more and more seems a central teaching to me. The whole solution, in one sentence.

Over 25 years ago, looong before I found non-dualism and A Course In Miracles, I wrote a book, which was an odd sort of philosophical fiction. A certain market failure from a very green writer, but it contained many interesting bits, because it was written purely on intuition, almost, not long after my biggest spiritual breakthrough up til then. (I had no idea what had happened for many years, but I've come to believe that I had a split-second perception of Oneness, of Source itself. It was so short because I was a long way from being ready for that, and Fear closed it but quick.)

A character in my manuscript was writing a book himself, and the main character in his book had as his stated goal: "to be friends with everybody in the Universe".

That's obviously impossible on a practical level, but on a spiritual level, for oneself and god, it's eminently possible, and in fact it's salvation. All conflict is inside you, and it all can be resolved inside you. Not all at once, but you can get there, and you gain eternity in the end.

Selfportrait with shining heart

It was only after the fact that I realized that I held the camera so the reflected flash appears just where some people say the Energy Heart is, just centered in the chest.

(Click for big pic)

... But I have indeed felt surges of moving towards enlightenment recently. It's great. The "period of confusion" as J calls the period where you start to see Source, but still believe in the Universe, has been excessively acute and long for me, I'm looking forward to getting through it. Not necessarily Enlightenment all at once, but at least get to a point where life is less like a meat-grinder.     :-)

Open minds, but guarded

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.  -- Terry Pratchett

Don't let his humorous books fool you, Terry Pratchett is an awfully smart man.

"Project One"

I got a perception today which I’ve had a couple times before in the recent couple of years:
That the current sacrifices to my social and my artistic life are trivial, that I’m working on a ginormeous project which takes unprecedented levels of effort and concentration. But which will be worth it many times over.
A project of "undoing the barriers to love".

The difference is seeing it not as “life improvement” or therapy, or seeking or whatnot, but in a strange way prosaically as “a project”. Although it can only be seen as such a thing (a limited thing, relatively) from a superhuman perspective, from a Higher Mind perspective. (Which of course is why I only realize it occasionally.)

I’m not even sure what scale we are talking about here. A half-lifetime project? A ten-lifetimes project? A project which started pretty much with Time itself? I guess that doesn’t really matter to me the human, and for the Higher mind it’s well under control.

Choose to believe

I have been asked in the past the question which is also presented in the film Prometheus (Riddley Scott): "How do you know?" (As in "how do you know Heaven is beautiful?")

The answer for me and in the film: "I don't. But it's what I choose to believe." 

Currently I choose to believe in non-duality, the non-reality of this universe, and the reality of something outside it, because:

1) It's the closest thing I have found which matches what I find. 

2) It is the thing I've found which gives most hope of attaining the warmth and light I crave. 

And I believe that exists simply because I crave it. It's impossible to crave something which you have never had the least contact with or knowledge about. 

"Heaven is real"

Neurosurgeon says he visited heaven during a long coma.
There was several stages to his visit. The last one was: '"an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting." He believes this void was the home of God.'
-

Let it be

ACIM Lesson 268:

Let all things be exactly as they are.

Let me not be Your critic, Lord, today, and judge against You. Let me not attempt to interfere with Your creation, and distort it into sickly forms. Let me be willing to withdraw my wishes from its unity, and thus to let it be as You created it. For thus will I be able, too, to recognize my Self as You created me. In Love was I created, and in Love will I remain forever. What can frighten me, when I let all things be exactly as they are?

Adyashanti by the way, does not mention ACIM that I have heard, but this is one of his most central lessons. Let everything be just as it it. 

Changing minds

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

-- George Bernard Shaw

Self power

ACIM Lesson 253:

My Self is ruler of the universe.
It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them and Him Who has created me.

=========

This would seem to tell us that all those Power-Of-Attraction philosophies are right.
Except in a crucial aspect: getting what you want will not make you happy, so long as what you want is in this world.
(Also I think that the little Self, the human, may sometimes be in conflict with the Single Self.)

… But despite this, one must learn that all one has is exactly what one wants, in order to be able to change one’s wants and go home.

A dream of odd coffee

Dream:
In a coffeehouse in a free-standing old stone building in central Copenhagen (as usual bearing no resemblance at all to the Copenhagen I'm used to). Colored painted walls and hardwood floors.

I had a cup of coffee, probably café au lait, which somehow was made in relation to the philosophy of an old dead philosopher. Who was also there.

The coffee had the odd property that while I drank it, and only while actually sipping it, all curved lines in my sight turned to straight lines. Circles, like the top of the cup, turned to octagons...

I did it many times. It was most extraordinary, and I have no idea what it means, if anything!

The Powerful

A thought occurred to me about the kind of people who work very hard to acquire more and more power and adulation and status (and this come in a legion of forms):
All they are showing is that they very firmly believe that other people have all the power.
Very simple: why would they need other people to continually grant them power and status if they don't believe that other people are the only ones who can give this or take it away?

It really must be quite a painful life to have such a bottomless lack of self-assurance.

Breaking news: ACIM audibooks are out!

ACIM is now out in official audiobook version! All four books, Text, Manual, Supplements, Workbook. Sold separately due to length (I guess), but I think the prices are highly reasonable. (The Text is about ten bucks. I have paid four times that for books of less than half the length.) Well done to Foundation for Inner Peace for that. 

This is great. I use my eyes on screens all day and night, and I love to rest my eyes with audiobooks, whether when taking a walk or resting the ol' bones.

This is not even up yet on their web site, so I have taken this from the promotional material they sent out:

New! A Course in Miracles MP3 Audiobooks!  

  

The Foundation for Inner Peace is pleased to announce that ACIM audiobooks are now available on Audible, iTunes and Amazon. 

     

The three books of A Course in Miracles: Text, Workbook for Students, Manual for Teachers and the Supplements: "Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process, Practice" and "Song of Prayer" are now available to download as separate audiobooks from Audible, iTunes and Amazon. The three books were narrated by Jim Stewart and the two Supplements by Brad Cahill. Jim Stewart is the voice of the Online Lessons that so many students enjoy listening to on our our website. 

Hundreds of devices, including iPods, mp3 players, mobile phones, Kindle, PDAs, GPS systems and more, are compatible with Audible audiobooks. Browse the Audible site to see if your device is listed: http://www.audible.com/dc. You can also listen to the ACIM Audiobooks on your PC or MAC computer.

Listen to the complete Course on your iPod or MP3 player.             

Find the ACIM audiobooks:  

  

On Audible.com search for the words: Course in Miracles, and then click on "Series: A Course in Miracles" to view all four ACIM Audiobooks. Or click here to go directly to the ACIM Audiobook Series. 

  

On Amazon.com search for the words: Course in Miracles audible.

  

In the iTunes Store search for the words: Course in Miracles audiobooks.  

  

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I am just a fan of the philosophy, I get no kickbacks for this "shamefree promotion"    :-)

As the majestic tree depends for its strength on its hidden roots and plays with the great passing wind, so must thou establish thy hidden strength deep within thyself, and play with the passing world.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

[Thanks to Laurie]

Destination

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. 

- Henry Miller

What we can handle

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

           -- Mother Teresa

===

Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth.

           -- Charles A. Dana

How to read

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. 

- Sir Francis Bacon

----

How To Read A Book. An essential book by Mortimer Adler. 

Change your focus of perception

Perception has a focus. It is this that gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly.
-- ACIM, lesson 181


My focus is far from perfect yet, but I have noticed with some of my friends that they talk about things which I haven't seen. Like criminals living in the neighborhood and such things. I never looked for them or thought about such, so I don't see them, so they don't exist for me. But they see bad things everywhere, many times every day. 


When I was young I had a much darker view. But I deliberately worked to change my view, and gradually it did. 

Courtesy heals

"There are ways of treating others in which only consistent courtesy, even in very little things, is offered. This is a very healing habit to acquire."

-- ACIM, urtext

What am I?

There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, "What am I?"
Yet who could ask this question except one who has refused to recognize himself? Only refusal to accept yourself could make the question seem to be sincere. The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what it is. From this one point of certainty, it looks on other things as certain as itself.

ACIM Workbook, lesson 139

Love and Business

For a couple of years in my business, when choosing an important picture (which one to represent a photo shoot to potential customers), I have used intuition, focused simultaneously on 1) Love, and 2) good business.

It works, but it’s a bit divided thinking. Feels like a balancing act. 

While doing it today, it suddenly struck me: there’s absolutely no reason there has to be any conflict or division between them! 

There are people doing good business with really bad products, but there are also people doing amazing business with totally loving products or services. 

I guess the idea that there must be a conflict is just guilt about making money. But being rich is not real, just like being poor is not real. There’s no more guilt necessary about one than the other. 

Being rich doesn’t make you happy for the same reason, it’s not real. I’ve found that out myself. (Not “rich” I guess, but comfortable.) But being in constant struggle with finances is unnecessary and guilt-based, so one might as well take the opportunity to not have that drain on attention. 

Admittedly there are also people who have no money at all, and are perfectly happy and worry-free, it seems, but that’s a bit further on for me.     :-)

Lichtenberg/O'Keeffe

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

           -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

           -- Georgia O'Keeffe

Only the closed mind is certain

"Only the closed mind is certain." 

Used in Dean Spanley.

Hitler's last days

I warmly recommend Downfall, as an excellent film and as testimony to how humanity is working through some of our most difficult forgiveness lessons. 

We all change

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. 

- Horace Mann

God, being Love, is also happiness.

A Course In Miracles, Lesson 103, in part:

God, being Love, is also happiness.

Happiness is an attribute of love. It cannot be apart from it. Nor can it be experienced where love is not. Love has no limits, being everywhere. And therefore joy is everywhere as well.

---

I was always a little confused by "love" as it's normally understood. You "love" your spouse and your child, but you hate a colleague or terrorists. 

And now I understand, via the course. "Love" which is specific and limited, is not really love. It may have elements of the true, unlimited love, but it's mostly a business game the Self runs: "I love you, and you love me, so we both gain". 

What is important? (updated)

What is most important, what happens TODAY, or the more timeless questions?

Update:
ttl said:

Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

Yes, that sounds like it explains it. (See comments.)
And it sounds like what enlightened people will often tell you. They are perfectly contended, so they can't see any reason why you shouldn't be perfectly contended either.

I think many people, amazing as it sounds, are actually totally blind to the *process* which happens between not-enlightened and Enlightened. It seems to them it just happened spontaneously one days as they were walking in the park.
I think that's because the bulk of the Process happens in the much deeper mind which the Human mind does not have access to normally. But this doesn't mean that we can't influence it necessarily.

Proust on wisdom

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

           -- Marcel Proust

About humility

I am no more humble than my talents require. 

- Oscar Levant

It may be true that humility is part of the road to Awakening. But I feel that when others demand that you must be humble, it may have more to do with the fact that a lack of humility is offensive to other egos, they may feel trampled on or looked down upon. 

"Do we praise the blade of grass which stand taller than the rest?! No, we cut it down!" 

A personal learning of truth is a different matter, of course, here you may learn that personal differences are all illusory.

Update:
Funny koinkidink: a couple minutes after posting this, I was chilling to a silly cartoon, Kick Buttowski, and in that particular episode Kick, a kid who's big raison détre is daredevilry, find's out his mom is one too, and famous too. And he's bummed out. Explaining, he says: "somehow Mom being awesomeness makes me... less awesome." His friend says: "Since when does Awesome + Awesome make Less Awesome? 

Welcome To Reality / Adyashanti

He was born in 1962, he was almost fifty here (it seems to be rather recent), I wouldn't have guessed.
Good interview. Insight into a Driven Personality related to achieving enlightenment.

Some would say that Awakening is a one-shot thing, a decision, one thing or another. But it seems to me that almost anybody who seems to have achieved it went through a long process. Long, often intense process. And even for those who seem to not have, well, they lived half a life before it happened, and possibly many lifetimes before, who's to say a Process didn't happen in all that time, beyond their awareness?

Blossoming

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

           -- Anaïs Nin

-----

I feel this nails it. 

Unfolding and softening is a long and painful process, but at some point it just become preferable. It does take time though, so we should not be impatient with ourselves or each other. 

Milhouse

"...Milhouse? Funny little guy. Afraid of the dark. And the light." 
- Bart Simpson


A very funny line. And as usual, no joke without a bit of truth. I think we all may be, at least metaphorically, more afraid of the Light than of the Dark. Why else would we be here instead of with the Light?

Lord of the flies

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.  - Bertrand Russell

Punishment

Punishment is always the great preserver of sin; treating it with respect, and honoring its enormity. What must be punished, MUST BE TRUE. And what is true MUST be eternal, and WILL be repeated endlessly.

-- A Course in Miracles, chapter 19

Taken out of context, it looks like The Course supports punishment, but it's the opposite, it is talking about the belief of the Ego, which is wrong.
So long as you believe "sin" must be punished, you are just making it real and perpetuating it. 

Laughter gives us distance

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on. 
- Bob Newhart

And I think this is true whether it is directly connected to events in our own life or not. (Since they are all equally illusory anyway.) Large dozes of comedy, whatever works for one, is recommended, both for relaxation and for deeper healing.

Anne of Green Gables. And, we don't want our medicine

I really like the books of LM Montgomery. They are often regarded as childrens' or young-girls' books, but they reach well beyond their genre, and they are very funny and wise.

By far the darkest one is Rilla of Ingleside, because it relates to WW1.
In it, one character comments to another about the past two years which have been very difficult. And she asks her if she would exchange them for two years of happy times. And the other character said that she would not, because of how much she has changed and grown.
But they agree that they would not have the heart to ask for two more similarly hard years, and the older character says how it's remarkable that even if and when we recognize how hardship has made us grown, we never want more of that kind of medicine, which is why we are not ourselves in charge of our path.
I thought that exceptionally wise.

The first book in the loosely-connected series by the way is the famous Anne of Green Gables. I think Lucy Maud Montgomery did a fantastic job in making a series of books taking place through the life of Anne Shirley, and have them all fit but yet be independent. Some of them don't even have Anne as main character, which is true of Rilla (Anne's daughter), and Rainbow Valley, one of my favorites, which is about two sets of siblings. The most important set of siblings is not even in Anne's family, but the book still fits perfectly in the whole saga.
The books are pretty much independent, but I think one may find greater satisfaction by reading them in sequence.
Almost all of them can be found on paper, ebook, and audiobook. (Though I haven't been able to find the sixth one, Anne Of Ingleside, in audio. If anybody knows of it...)

What is nothing?

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

           -- Martin Gardner, "The Mathematical Magic Show"

How to be passersby

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.

- Susan Sontag

Apropos sound alienation, thanks to TCG and Biblegateway for these interesting bible verses: 

John 15:18-21 

18 "If the people of this world [a] hate you, just remember that they hated me first."

19 "If you belonged to the world, its people would love you. But you don't belong to the world. I have chosen you to leave the world behind, and that is why its people hate you." 

I suspect that alienation is a necessary step towards Awakening. 

Steps (and rest)

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

           -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.

           -- Ovid

What god can do

Even God cannot change the past.

           -- Agathon

I'm a little astonished at the postulates people are willing to put forth about what God can or can't, or will or won't, do. How can we possibly know? It's like amoebe claiming to know what humans can do.

As a simple example: let's say God changed the past so that ants became the intelligent race and ruled the earth, and humans numbered a few thousand, cowering in trees. Well, the present might change as well, and how would the inhabitants of this world know that it had ever been any different? Heck for all we know, ants were our masters until last week, when God got bored and changed it all. 

Be a doubter

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. 

- Rene Descartes

the "Zebra Personality"

Have you come across people, particularly various kinds of spiritual teachers, but also other kinds of leaders, who obviously have a lot of light and wisdom in them, but can also be nasty, vicious people? For example they will be very loyal to a friend, but if they decide that the friend have "betrayed" them, they will see him like the devil and treat him like caca.

I call them "zebra personalities". I see that in this lifetime they have made a jailbreak attempt from this world and the ego, and they made a very strong one and got very far, which is why they can be so inspired and inspiring.
But they only made it half the way. And because they are very strong people, their Ego is very strong too, and this sudden collision with The Light of Source made the ego freak out and go into super-high gear.

This mixes with the blessed part of their personality, and you get a person with almost no grey tones, only stripes of black and white. Thus the "zebra".

You would think that such light and such darkness could not co-exist in one person, and normally they can't, but we are talking about very rare, exceptionally strong and bright people, and they can hold together a functioning personality even though the conflicts between such strong light and darkness would tear a normal person apart.

Doing the Work Of Good is hard work

I’m reading “Living with Miracles”, new book by D. Patrick Miller. 

He quotes from the Course about how Harmless and Helpful goes together. I was reminded: 

LR Hubbard said that a man is as happy and productive as he perceives himself to be dangerous to his environment. 

He said he’d realized this after he'd been walking home one night, and he was threatened by three drunk sailors. He “handled” them in the violent fashion of one of his own fictional heroes, including a broken bottle into the face of one of them. And after that he said, he was super-productive and on top of the world for days! 

You’ll notice that for this to be true, a person must be basically on permanent and essential war footing with the whole of the rest of creation. 

BTW he may have just made it up (the fight), but doubtlessly it was in line with his beliefs. He saw himself as the greatest spiritual king of ages, battling alongside a ragged bunch of incompetent but lovable rascals against incredible odds, to literally save not only the Earth, but the whole universe and all universes beyond it from the otherwise inevitable slide into something which would make Dante’s Inferno seem like a day at McDonalds. 

Literally, no irony, no metaphors, no exaggeration. Saving the *whole* of creation, by himself with a little help. 

And his enemies were similarly great, of course, with “Xenu” being the yang to his Yin, the evil being of evil beings, who apparently also almost single-handedly engineered the “downward spiral” of the universes since time began. 

And so it goes without saying that if you have to main and kill at little at times in order to achieve such ends as Saving Civilization, that’s trivial. Nay, admirable, because you did what you had to without hesitation or fear of reprisal. 

Funny enough that last philosophy is echoed by many hard-science-fiction authors, like Robert Heinlein, Algis Budrys, van Vogt, Orson Scott Card, Jerry Pournelle… 

Of course it’s just a slightly bigger vision of the whole “Dirty Harry” syndrome of the Ego’s, that if there’s evil out there, you kill it. And if you happen to find pleasure in such killing and maybe shoot a few times more than strictly necessary (notice how Dirty Harry movies (and "Unforgiven") always end in an orgy of shooting), then that’s of course only because you’re the Good Guy and you enjoy doing the Work Of Good. 

And you know that you are the Good Guy because you are doing the Work Of Good. And, er, vice versa! Perfect logic! 

And you know who the bad guys are, because they shoot first! Except of course at times when you, the Good Guy, has to shoot first to stop the Bad Guy from doing it. It’s all obvious and can be seen by everybody except those who are either Enemies or Traitors. (And the number of traitors which can stack up by a really great Good Guy is fabulous.)