Monday, December 31, 2012

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... 

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

This just in...

This morning I got this:

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

Friday, December 21, 2012

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.


Tuesday, December 18, 2012

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.

-----

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.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

My idea of Source

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

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Un-contracting strikes back

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

10 December 2012: I have expanded it again.