My dream

 

 

My dream, as an American Progressive, would be to see the Republitarian Party to just become extinct, and the Green Party ascend to take it’s place.  Imagine what it would be like if the Democratic Party (even as Progressive as it is) would become the conservative (Right) party, and the Green Party would be the liberal (Left) party.  That would bring in a much much more progressive American future. Perhaps a true universal health care system. Perhaps a return to the dominance of the American public school system, and the establishment of free tuition from Pr-School to a Doctorate degree. Perhaps the eradication of poverty and illiteracy in our lifetime.

The first thing would be to eliminate the elements of Congress that embrace conspiracy theories, nut-job religion, and misogyny, the three dominant charateristics of MAGA Republi-tarianism.  (Republitarian being the present day marriage of  conservatism and Ayn Rand libertarianism).

 


About Hate

 

Hate is hate.  The same hate that drives a gunman to shoot school children also drives terrorists to attack innocents just going about their business. The same hate drives a Prime Minister to declare war against the Palestinians. The same hate drove Hitler to murder 6 million Jews (and an equal number of others). The same hate. The same hate ferments wars across our entire planet. The same hate ferments discrimination and denies rights to women and minorities.

Hand in hand with hate is profiteering. The profiteer manipulates group A to hate group B, so that they go to war with each other, and so he can make a boat load of cash selling arms to both sides. The profiteer manipulates gun laws so that anyone can buy a gun and he doesn’t really care how that gun is used. The profiteers are the cause of all war, all killing all hatred. The profiteer does not care about politics or religion, but he uses both to create his world of profit. He makes up lies and convinces the Right Wing, and then he makes up different lies and convinces the Left Wing, and he convinces fundamentalist religious nutjobs to fly passenger planes into buildings, or convince the “righteous” that their way needs to be imposed on everyone, so they start passing laws banning books, and make women wear burqas, or take away their right to regulate their own healthcare. The list goes on and on and one. But the driving force is PROFIT. All these activities are very profitable.

But, heaven help us if people everywhere where to recognize that we are all really the same, that we basically want the same things. That all we want to do is to have meaningful work, and raise children in freedom and dignity. <sigh> But, we can’t have those things. Because we get convinced that those bad people over there have stolen our land, or are imposing their religion on us, or they are the wrong color, or they have too much money, or … whatever. What the world needs now is love. But love won’t line the pockets of the profiteers (aka, capitalists, aka Ferenghi), so we’re taught to hate. There is no reason to hate. You and I and your neighbor and the Jews and the Palestinians and the Russians and everyone who lives on this planet have a very important thing in common. Something that should be obvious, but most religions deny:

WE ARE G-D.

And we need to treat each other like we are. There is a Guru who runs an Ashram down near Garberville: Stephan Gabriel. He says that if only 10% of the population of Earth were to embrace the idea that each and everyone of us (those you like and those you dislike) is, in fact, G-d, we would achieve a critical mass and an end to War, to poverty, to illiteracy, to just about everything that plagues society. YOU ARE G-D. Think about it. Choose love. Stephan’s wisdom can be found at https://urgod.org


On being “Woke”

 


The Repubs don’t like “woke.”
That’s because they want everyone to be asleep. If you are asleep you won’t be able to stop them from imposing their totalitarian agenda. You won’t be able to stop them when women and minorities are deprived of their rights. You won’t be able to stop them from imposing fundamentalist values on everyone. You won’t be able to stop them from destroying the whole planet, which is the real agenda.

You see if the planet can no longer sustain life then that will force King Jesus to return. That is the real goal you see.  They’ve embraced authoritarianism (what I called “totalitariianism

” above) – the strong man, as a desired political function because they want a king. Everything will be so very much better when we have Jesus in power to just tell us what to do. In the meantime they’ll impose all the other bull shit they believe in upon everyone because – that’s just the right way. At least in their view.

Happily, I don’t think Americans are going to buy this. I think there are a whole lot of us, a critical mass in fact, who are in fact “woke.”

SO SAY WE ALL!!


 

On G-d

 

1st, you have to acknowledge that G-d exists. Other wise this is all pointless.
G-d is said to have the following attributes:

1. G-d Is Infinite – They are Self-Existing, They have always existed.
2. G-d Is Immutable – They Never Change
3. G-d Is Self-Sufficient – They Have No Needs
4. G-d is Omnipotent – They are All Powerful
5. G-d Is Omniscient – They know all that is knowable
6. G-d Is Omnipresent – They are Everywhere
7. G-d Is Wise – They are Full of Perfect, Unchanging Wisdom
8. G-d Is Faithful – They are Infinitely, Unchangingly True
9. G-d Is Good – They are Infinitely, Unchangingly Kind and Full of Good Will
10. G-d Is Just – They are Infinitely, Unchangeably Right and Perfect in All They Do
11. G-d Is Merciful – They are Infinitely, Unchangeably Compassionate and Kind
12. G-d Is Gracious – G-d Is Infinitely Inclined to Spare the Guilty
13. G-d Is Loving – G-d Infinitely, Unchangingly Loves All Beings
14. G-d Is Holy – They are Infinitely, Unchangingly Perfect
15. G-d Is Glorious – They are Infinitely Beautiful and Great

What do these attributes suggest then, about the nature of G-d?
Starting with number 4:
5. G-d knows everything that is knowable. This is also true of mankind, collectively, and this is becoming more true as each day passes.
6. G-d is everywhere. So is mankind.

The fact is that all of the attributes here stated concerning G-d are also true of mankind. What then can we conclude from this?

WE ARE G-D!

Not just us: Nature, the Universe(s), all matter and all energy are G-d.

Examine this conversation:

Q: “Rabbi, what happens when we die?”
A: “The drop becomes the ocean.”
Q: “Then, what happens when we are born?”
A: “The ocean becomes a drop.”

If you go to the ocean, and fill an eye dropper with water from the ocean, that dropper contains all of the essence of the ocean.

When a human being is born from a mothers womb, that being takes his first breath, and with that breath, he receives a soul.

There is only one soul. That one soul is shared by all living beings.

That one soul is called G-d; or the Atman, or Be’al, or Brahma, or any other of the billion (or more) names we have for deity. That soul is your innermost being. It is your true self.

Along with the one soul, you also have an ego. This is what usually asserts itself as your body grows into adulthood. If left unchecked, it can dominate you and supplant your real self. In fact, with many people it does.

There is a television series that illustrates this very succinctly. It’s a New Zealand series called The Almighty Johnsons. The premise of the story is that each member of the Johnson family, on the occasion of their 21st birthday, becomes the living, breathing incarnation of one of the Norse G-ds. It’s like they take on another entity which shares their lives. Some of the interaction between the two is quite illustrative, I think, of our own lifelong co-habitation with Elohim.

There is a Native American story about two wolves.

A Cherokee chief spoke to his grandson: A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Between the worlds, during that time when you are absorbed by what I call the “G-d Collective,” or the “Great Link,” you are one with G-d, which is to say you are one with all beings from all time and all space. You share all their thoughts. You are of one mind. But ever so often you have to take a corporeal body. In a sense you separate from G-d at this point, but in reality that is an illusion. You can never be separated from G-d, you can only think you are.

(Note: There are many false prophets in this world. They will lie to you and tell you that you are separated from G-d, that you are not worthy of G-d. But this is a lie, and it is blasphemy. You can never be separated from G-d, because YOU ARE G-D.)

When you sleep, or when you are unconscious, you are in fact one with the Great Link. You are participating in the creation and maintenance of new worlds, new universes. As I just stated, this happens when you are asleep or unconscious, but it is especially true between the worlds, when you are not residing in a corporeal body.

What then is the purpose of life? True happiness is the realization that you, and all other living beings, are G-d. Once you grok that realization, you will begin to treat all other beings like G-d. You will give them the respect and love that G-d is due, and they in turn will do the same for you.

Shri Baba Ram Stephen (aka, Guru Stephan Gabriel) believes that if just ten percent of the Earths human population were to embrace this concept, we would have peace on Earth. We would eradicate poverty, illiteracy, disease, war, and usher in the promised Age of Aquarius.

IMAGINE!


Why do I believe in Reincarnation?

 

First, there is Science.  The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form of energy to another. This means that a system always has the same amount of energy, unless it’s added from the outside.

Your Soul. the part of you that is you, also called the self (and which in fact is G-d)  is energy.  When we are not dwelling in a human body, we exist as energy, which is eternal.

That’s the first reason. The second:

Past life experiences.  Lots of them.  The three that stand out for me the most are:

  • When I was ten my grade school class took a field trip to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.  We were vising the Egyptian room, and I was reading a plaque in front of a mummy.  The mummy was the preserved remains of a boy who had lived in Cairo.  A thought popped up in my head, “I knew this kid.”
  • I was a Realtor for a time when I was still living in Kankakee IL.  I was looking for a house for my own family, and this place popped up on the MLS.  The house is on S Chicago Ave.  It’s an Eastlake home. Eastlake was a contemporary of  Frank Lloyd Wright who took Victorian homes and gave them oriental lines, giving the homes some characteristics of pagodas.

I got the key and took a self-tour through the place.  That was easy, because somehow I knew the layout. It was like I had been there before.

I bought it. Moved my family in and that was that.  The house had six bedrooms, one of which had originally been a Maid’s room, and was at then end of the second story hallway, behind a door blocking the hallway.  Adjacent to the room was a back stairway to the kitchen.  Also on the 2nd floor, a full and a half-bath.  First floor had a small library (with a fireplace), a living room, a formal dining room and kitchen.  There was a lot of woodwork in the style of the time. The basement was finished and had an outside entrance.  The third floor was mostly used as an attic but at one time had been finished as a ball room.

In researching the house I learned that it was built by a Kankakee dry goods merchant. circa 1914.  Had I been him?  Why did I instinctively know the layout of this house?

  • In 1997 the movie Titanic premiered. My partner of the time and my step daughter went ot see it at 41st Avenue Theatre in Capitola.  It was a good movie. The writing was very good as were the performances by the actors.

But I didn’t stay through it.  When the ship’s stern turned straight up into the air, I left the theatre, returned to the car, and trembled for a good fifteen minutes.  I had a deja vu moment:  I saw myself as a young boy, maybe four or five. I was laying in bed. My mother sat in a chair beside me. Water was coming into our room from under the door. We were below decks. Trapped.

I have since tried to sit all the way through that movie. I have yet to succeed.

  • I used to have a recurring dream:  I am walking hand in hand hand with a woman beside a body of water.  It’s near sundown. I never saw her face.   I had this dream continuously, a minimum of three times a week, beginning when I was nine of ten.  In the beginning the woman was a young girl.  As I got older, she grew with me so she was always around my same age.  As I learned more about geography in school, the places the dream occurred in began to become recognizable.  Along the river Seine in Paris. By Lake Michigan.  On an island in the South Pacific. A few times, and this occurred before the debut of the first Star Wars movie, we were walking by some water, but their were two suns setting. That by the way is why Star Wars means a lot to me.

In May of 1999, I was living in Ashland OR.  Ceridwen came up from Santa Cruz to visit me and meet me for the first time.  We had had about a six month relationship by phone prior to this, but it was time to physically meet.  She was with me for a week, then she went back to Santa Cruz, got her ducks in a row, and moved it with me. We’ve been together ever since.

Now, here’s the thing. Remember I mentioned that the dream with the body of water and the woman and the sunset recurred for me at least three times a week since I was age nine?  During the week Ceridwen visited the dream did not occur. Not that I actually noticed, because I had a lot on my mind.  The dream did not recur. The dream never recurred, not ever, again.

So, from say, November of 1962 until April of 1999 I continuously  experienced this dream. That is almost thirty-seven years of my life.  The suddenly, a woman comes into my wife (the third of three wives) and the dream stops. Just like that. Cold turkey.

How do you explain that?


A pantheistic Shema

 

שמע ישראל, האדון הוא אלוהינו, האדון הוא אחד, האדון הוא אנחנו, האדון הוא הכל..

Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord is ONE, the Lord is US, the Lord is ALL.

So, what does this mean?  It is a declaration.  It states that G-d exists, that there is only one G-d, that we are G-d (Thou art G-d), that G-d is everything, that G-d is all that exists.

 


DO NOT DESPAIR!

 

 

Do not despair.

What we are seeing, with the SCOTUS misogynistic rulings , and all the Red states trying to repress the vote, and repressing women, and the daily mass shootings…… all of this is a manifestation of the death throes of the Piscean Age. So you see, it seems like these are all bad things, but in the big picture, the Age of Aquarius is upon us –

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!”

Watch this piece from David Letterman’s old show.


Fallacies of “The Four Spiritual Laws”

 

 

The Four Spiritual Laws is an evangelical tract written by Bill Bright for the organization, Campus Crusade for Christ.  I first encountered it when I was about 18. I had a bad breakup with my first girl friend, and I was facing my birth date in a particularly vulnerable state.  I had the habit (which I still have today) of doing Yoga meditation.  On this particular occasion,  I sought out something to meditate upon, and found The Four Spiritual Laws sitting on my bedside table.

In my meditative state, I read it. I read it three times, and I said to myself, “Ok, I’ll try this.”  I recited the “sinners prayer” as prescribed in the booklet, and in that moment gave my heart to Christ. I became a “Born Again Christian.”  A “Messianic Jew.”  For the next ten years (in between which I got married and fathered three boys) I studied the Christian Bible (consisting of the Tenach and the “New Testament”), reading through it probably two or three times a year.  Funny thing. By the time I reached my 28th birthday, I had read enough that I now perceived that the whole doctrine of Christianity was utter and complete bullshit.  This was through reading the Bible.  Christian ministers also influenced this, as much of the time they talked out of both sides of their mouth.  The straw that broke the camels back though, was when the Pastor of the church I belonged to at the time, The Peoples Church, said from the pulpit: “People don’t end up in hell for their sins, they end up in hell for not loving Jesus. WHAT!  And I knew he was telling the truth.  Suddenly, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob was revealed to be a narcissist. A mad man. I wanted nothing more to do with this. I became, in that instance, right there in the pew, an Atheist.  Astrologers will tell you that what I experienced is called the Saturn Return. This is when the planet Saturn returns to that point in your chart where it was at the time of your birth, which takes twenty eight years.

But I have digressed. This missive is about the fallacies contained in the booklet, The Four Spiritual Laws.

Law # One: G-d loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.  Really, there is nothing wrong with this idea. Of course G-d loves you! YOU ARE G-D! We’re all G-d. So, let’s move on to the second law.

Law # Two: Man is sinful and separated from G-d, so we cannot know Him personally or experience His love.   The first fallacy is that G-d has a gender. G-d is composed of multiple genders and trans genders.  The second fallacy is that we can be separated from G-d. How can you separate yourself from your self?  The only way to do that is to break yourself apart. This is strictly an intellectual exercise.  What is sin? Sin is doing bad stuff.  Sin is practicing wrongfulness to G-d, which in essence is doing harm to another human being, or to Nature or yourself.  But people do bad stuff all the time.  Christians will say that the bad things are enumerated in the ten commandments.  Jews will say they are enumerated not only in the ten commandments but throughout the whole of the Torah.  That’s too complicated in my opinion.  Sin is harming yourself, another human, or nature, which is the same as harming G-d, which is the same as harming yourself.  The first, and very worst sin: Not recognizing that you are G-d.  If you would just embrace that you and everyone else on this planet is G-d, you would never be able to sin again.  We would eradicate war, poverty, ignorance and disease. So the whole premise that man is sinful is a lie. The premise that we are separated from G-d, is also a lie.

Law # Three: Jesus Christ is G-d’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him alone we can know G-d personally and experience G-d’s love.  The “provision for man’s sin” is for a man or woman to come to the realization that we are G-d. That’s it.  So that is the first lie here. The second is Jesus: there is ample evidence that Jesus never existed. The history goes against the existence of an historical Jesus. There are a ton of contradictions between the four Gospel accounts.  Here’s a few: the town of Nazareth did not exist during the time period that Jesus is alleged to have lived. There is no record of Herod sending his troops to massacre any children in Bethlehem.  There is a record of a man named Jesus being crucified.  In fact there are hundreds. Jesus was as common a name among Jews in that time as it is is among Mexicans today. Not a single one of them had their crimes inscribed on a sign hanging at the top of the cross. The Gospels themselves are not “eye witness” but in fact were written over fifty years after the alleged crucifixion (Note: In that time period, the majority did not live much past 35). There is a ton of this kind of stuff.

Law # Four: We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know G-d personally and experience His love.  The problem here is an impossible exercise to experience something that the normal human being experiences every day of their lives.  1) You can’t receive someone who never existed.  2) We know G-d personally and experience their love simply by breathing. YOU ARE G-D! G-D IS YOU! There is nothing you can do to change this, except, denying that it’s true.

 


It happened at Kirtan

 

 

Went to Kirtan a couple weeks ago. It was the first one held in two years indoors. Last summer we had a few outdoor Kirtans at Redwood Park in Arcata. This was the first back at Om Shala Yoga Studio. Only four musicians, but maybe the rest will return once things get more established.  The event attracted a pretty good crowd. I counted about 60 people.

It was good. Very, very good.

Then something bad happened. Well, maybe not bad, but very inappropriate. After the end, a lady started circulating a petition for “health choice freedom.” Only it wasn’t about a woman’s health choices. It wasn’t about abortion. It was a petition against mask and vaccine mandates.

I had to hold my tongue when she approached me. You know, I’ve written about this in the past. Back at the height of the pandemic, it was my opinion that the Govt. build some new internment camps.  I would -propose that a fleet of vans be sent out and go door to door, equipped with nurses and National Guardsmen.

The Nurse knocks on the door, “Hello how are you? Have you been vaccinated?”  “Yes, I have.” “Very good. Have a nice day.”

Next stop, “”Hello how are you? Have you been vaccinated?” “No, I haven’t.”  “I can vaccinate you right here, right now.”  “Great, let me have it!.”

Next stop, ““Hello how are you? Have you been vaccinated?” “No.”  “Ok, I can vaccinate you right here, right now.” “No, I don’t believe in that.”  “Ok. No worries,” and then the nurse signals to the National Guardsman to take the person, or persons, into custody. They are taken to an internment camp to live with other unvaccinated people.

I know this isn’t probably a very popular idea, but, “the good of the many outweighs the good of the few.”

But I didn’t confront this woman. Not at Kirtan. I wasn’t going to counter an inappropriate act with another. So I lied. I told her I had signed it at Safeway. She kind of gave me the stink eye. I think she knew I was lying. Well, I wear this red string around my left wrist. It’s to ward off just such a thing.

But – you know? Kirtan is sacred space. Politics should be left outside the door.

I have spoken.