The Illusion of the Morning Sky

We look up at the morning sky and it is like a ceiling. It contains us. It feels like Mother Earth is holding us close to her breast. We feel comfortable and safe. Our ancestors were uncertain as to what was on the other side of the sky. At night they saw all kinds of things and struggled to explain it such that it fit with what they saw. Could they ever imagine the truth?

It was easier to imagine some kind of heaven above that “majestical roof”, as Shakespeare called it. “That brave o’re hanging firmament.” “Laden with Golden Fire”. I couldn’t have said it better myself. What is above that ceiling? The Attic? That was the stage upon which the less enlightened ancestors saw it all unfold before them on. I don’t blame them for getting it wrong. They didn’t have the tools, or perhaps the imagination, to find the truth back then. Add to that the politics of religion. To control the unruly masses something very much bigger than themselves had to be held over them. We were one church service away from being barbarians, from the religious leaders point of view. I’m not sure we weren’t. Wouldn’t it be convenient if there was an all powerful mysterious being that controlled our existence after we left this plain of existence? Heaven was his domain. We can’t know his plan. He is the Creator. How did he do it all? Well, let’s make him all powerful. That explains away just about all the loose ends, of which, at the time, there were many.

Not all the loose ends have been more reasonably filled in since then. However, most of the important ones have. I am amazed that I get to live right at this time of profound discovery and enlightenment. Now we are down to just a few big questions. The very very beginning is still a little sketchy, to say the least. What IS at the bottom of a black hole? Is there a bottom, or “the other side”? If we knew that, what else would we then know? What does this new perspective mean to beliefs that are up to 6000 years old? We better figure it out!

Before anybody is allowed to have inviolate beliefs some reality had better be included. Certainly the church has learned its lesson by now! Can we, in good conscience, allow ourselves to be in denial over simple facts? You can have Faith, but wouldn’t your faith be that much stronger if it were actually based in truth? It is hard for me to imagine an argument against this. Is denial some kind of badge of honor to prove your faith? God is not the Wizard of Oz. We are allowed to look behind the curtain, when whoever is back there is not a charlatan. There are many reasons to hide behind a curtain, but very few of them are good reasons. Eventually we grow up enough to be able to handle taking a peek. We develop the means to look. We understand what the curtain is and what it is for. Our sky protects us from the harsh radiation of space, but we have managed to go to the other side of it. There is at least one more curtain we have to get to the other side of.

The Universal Dream

The universal dream: Freedom sprinkled liberally with peace. More than just survival certainly. Where we are now, in relation to where we are going, I think the Universal Dream is to evolve, to arrive at that point in the far future where a real freedom is possible. This is a task for all of humanity. Each one of us is responsible for moving this idea forward. Darwin called it Survival of the Fittest, but what is it really called once you get past savagery, brutality and politics. At some point "the fittest" should mean both the physically AND mentally FITTEST. When the threat of us destroying ourselves no longer exists, that is the Universal Dream.

Is Religion Good or Bad?

Very early in human history humans were extraordinarily ignorant. We have been gaining knowledge, exponentially as of late, and yet religion, as it has been practiced for the last 2000 to 6000 years, has stagnated horribly into a political tool. (not that it mostly was ever anything else) IF ANY religion showed the slightest hint at taking new knowledge into the belief system it would not only get my attention, but might blow me away. The unwritten law of TRADITION that seems to pervade most religions is employed as an inherent system of control and the stifling of reality. Very very sad indeed. Old knowledge is one thing. Old myth is another thing entirely. All religions that are of the Sons of Abraham, at this point in human history, are deeply and inherently flawed. Just as a human needs to grow, I would expect that the belief in God should be the VERY FIRST THING to grow, to evolve, to expand and to develop as our intelligence, knowledge and understanding of Creation grows. That has, simply put, NOT BEEN THE CASE!! So far, there is enough we don't know, that does not preclude the possible existence of God. Maybe he does, Maybe he doesn't. We don't know. However, 13.7 billion years later, and a million million miracles later, here we are; humans, who think, and can conceive and wonder. Whatever you believe you have to acknowledge the spirituality and wonderment of such a thing. I can believe that a God might exist, in that context. As there is no "proof" that he does exist, it leaves a lot of room for doubt, however, there is no proof he doesn't exist either. The existence of the universe, and US in it, gives one pause though. Humans seem to need Religion. Humans seem to need politics. I wish we could keep them completely separate. That does not seem to happen in actual practice. Too bad. So to answer the original question: Religion, as it is currently practiced as a whole IS BAD!!! Do we need it? Collectively, yes. I just wish there was a religion in existence worth our following. If you don't believe in God, that does not get you off the hook, by the way. Look around. The Universe is BIG and demands attention. It is real. Believe in THAT!!!! Worship our very existence in it. Worship the fact you are alive and part of a sociological phenomenon. There is NOTHING to question in that. There is no other proof needed for that. THAT is reality. THAT is worthy. Maybe religion will step up.

Sublety Is Certainly Not Without Influence

I have survived several things in my life that could have killed me. I was given yet another chance at life when I got my kidney/pancreas transplant. I have taken these things as an indication that there is something I should, or at least CAN contribute to the world to make it more Enlightened. I feel that I can put ripples in the pond of the Universe and my influence will be felt either directly or indirectly by many people. In any event subtlety is certainly not without influence. On my homepage I have placed a saying I came up with several years ago in a sort of revelation. AS LIGHT CAN BEND A TREE, SO ENLIGHTENMENT CAN BEND THE WORLD!!! We each seek sustenance from the energies that are out there in the Universe. How we grow and in what direction we grow depends on what is out there to cause us to grow (or bend) in any particular way. If one person puts out good vibes, that's a start. If that person can convince others to do the same thing at the same time, well that is more powerful. The truth of Enlightenment is bright indeed. If we light it up we will bend the world.

Live Your Life!

This is almost classic “Do as I say, Not as I do”. I charge each of you to live life. Choose Life. Engage yourself in living every day. The earlier in life you get in the habit of doing this the easier it will be to continue doing it. Don’t take it for granted. It requires active participation.


Regardless of how long or short life is I am pretty sure I have more behind me than I have in front of me. It should make the life in front of me that much more precious. I am trying to live it like it IS more precious. I am not as willing to wait for something to work out. I may not have the time patience implies, or laziness requires, or breaking bad habits takes. Who knows, tomorrow they may figure out how to make it last forever. In the meantime you have to assume you are going to die tomorrow, but will live forever. Makes scheduling a bitch. Any given day, if I get to see a pretty girl, I consider that gravy.

Small World, Large Universe

Isn't the Internet an interesting thing? The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Most people do not realize that the dynamics of how things have worked for the last 10,000 years with humans is going to HAVE to be altered to take into consideration this basic fact. Our perception of the universe and therefore our perception of anything bigger than ourselves, like religion, the meaning of faith, who can be our friend, who is a member of our tribe, all the things where scale is involved, are being forced to change. The Earth is getting smaller and the Universe is getting bigger. Having information at our fingertips, on any subject, as soon as it is discovered, is such a paradigm change that concessions to this alteration must be made.

Fundamental beliefs, that have weathered the test of time up till now, are going to be affected. Some think this means their beliefs will be eroded, but in actuality it should mean that they are growing, dare I say, evolving. Sticking to traditional interpretations, in light of new or expanded information, is nothing but stubborn ignorance, forced ignorance of the most heinous kind. Falsely linking an old way of thinking to a strict adherence to a belief system and then essentially making it a crime of some sort to think any other way is a crime against humanity, knowledge and truth. Religions seem to take the hard line of adherence to belief the most seriously. It seems to me that they are simply afraid that if it is taken any other way it will undermine the entire religion. Knowledge will blow them clean out of the water, and God forbid, we can’t allow that, can we? Better we believe, for example, that we are being fooled by incorrect scientific interpretation of the facts then not believe the world is as old as the Creationists say it is. To deny the literal word of the Bible, somehow, lessens the entirety of all of creation according to their interpretation. I have to say it appears to me they protest too much. Faith should not require the abject denial of truth to make it work. We supposedly figured out that the Earth was not the center of the solar system, the Universe, or anything physical for that matter, a long time ago. It may be the center of, what seems to be, a rather limited view of the Creation. When it comes to the Universe I have to believe that size is everything, size in all four standard dimensions. You look at it and you know, in your heart, soul, and mind that if God is responsible for all this then we have little chance of figuring out God in His greater context. If a God is not responsible we are simply just really very small. For the Creationists to bring it all down to human size makes them nothing less than non-believers of the Real God, deniers of the Universe, Heretics. The complete and total arrogance of their selective truths speaks to their underlying lack of faith in their faith. When what you believe is sorely contradicted by facts, or at least by what you can see with your own eyes, it may be time to make a slight alteration to your faith. When you build castles in the air, the castle is only as strong as its foundation. People talk about faith like it has to be non-changeable in any way. That to do so means you made a mistake and when it comes to God no mistakes are allowed. Well, guess what, we are human. Mistakes are part of our repertoire. Believe that if we alter our beliefs in the direction of truth, God will smile. We need to grow and learn and strive to understand. What needs to change most is your definition of Faith. I have said before that if God wanted it to be easy on us he would have made the Universe fluffy. If he really didn’t want us to figure it all out he could have created us too stupid to comprehend it. At least he could have put that apple tree somewhere we couldn’t reach it. Makes you wonder if God is crazy or crazy like a fox.

Faith and science cannot disagree. Many want to say that they are separate somehow and do not need to agree. I say, “If your Faith can’t hold up to science, your Faith needs to be tweaked”. We have recently heard the term Inconvenient Truth. Truth sometimes requires interpretation. I prefer to say Inconvenient Facts. If we actually have the Facts, the truth cannot be far behind. Faith, by definition, does not require any backing. This is a very bad weak point for faith. Anybody can shove in anything to the basic faith structure and try and pass it off by saying we must take it on faith! A similar semantic game was played on us concerning patriotism. None of us believes that anything that erodes our rights can actually be patriotic, especially when our country is all about our rights in the first place. If we accept into our faith anything that takes unfair advantage of the fact that we have faith, we are making a similar mistake. Because it is Faith, we have to be cautious about what we actually want to include in it. Who gets to say? The Church? A hypocritical television evangelist? While it is easy to believe who and what we want to believe, that does not make it correct. Long ago The Church decided what to include, and not include, in the New Testament. Now we treat it as if it was a book that came down from the mountain like the Ten Commandments supposedly did. Unfortunately it is only that part they wanted us to see that we have now and where it came from before that we only have their word for. This is somewhat sketchy for my taste. I only have to look at the Universe to suspect that God exists. There is little room for politics in that kind of faith and a lot of room for science. There is also room for growth.

Diamonds and Hope

Hope is like Diamonds....
Rare, Rough and Hard.
It can be carved into something beautiful,
sparkling and precious.
But it takes skill,
So it requires practice.
It takes Time,
So it needs patience.
The result is something profound.

God is the LIGHT AND TRUTH

God is the light and truth. The devil is the deceiver. There is no such thing as magic as most people understand it. WE do not understand God. In fact we cannot understand God. It diminishes God if we try to explain any of his methods or reasons in terms we can understand. At best, at the point we are at now, we can glimpse the enormity, the wonder, and the vastness of Creation. With the tools we have now we can look, measure and strive to understand. When we look at the light from the farthest galaxies we can see, we are seeing light that left there 13 Billion years ago. Some say this is only an illusion. The devil is the spinner of illusions, not God. To say this is an illusion tries to imply that we understand something beyond what we can see with our own eyes and tools; something of God. Something of how he does things. It implies that God would do something in terms we can understand, that the Creation of the whole Universe is something we might understand. Similarly when some say that Creation occurred 6000 years ago they are trying to bend reality into a time frame of humans. Nothing else in the universe infers that anything in the Universe came into existence in the time frame of humans! You would have to ignore all the rest of Creation to believe that anything God does happens in terms we understand. It is obvious that Creationists are the spawn of the Devil. You only have to believe in God to believe that. Here is something profound to consider: God and science CANNOT disagree. The laws of physics ARE the laws of God. If God did things by magic why didn’t he just create man out of the supposed nothing he made all the rest of Creation out of. He created man from dust and breathed life into him. Careful research will tell you that God did not create everything out of nothing. He used a palette from which to draw his materials. Maybe he created all the materials too, but he DIDN”T create creation out of nothing. I can’t say if he was bound by the laws of physics or created the laws of physics, but the laws are there and God either created them and/or simply used them. If I decide to write a book about this I can go through Genesis paragraph by paragraph, but that is not necessary right now. Anyway, I think we ought to study physics (and Science et al.) in our pursuit of understanding. I think we are far enough along in our development as human beings to stop being in denial about the facts that are inconvenient to our beliefs. The pure beauty that science allows us to see and understand only serves to glorify Creation and display its elegance. Einstein wanted to “see the mind of God” in the mathematics. Maybe we’re not ready to understand at that level, but even a little glimpse is worth it. Faith and proof are not mutually exclusive. Right now we need both together. We don’t have the tools or the sophistication to have proof alone. We are too smart already to be satisfied with faith alone. Darn that apple.

Feigned Ignorance

Feigned ignorance is veiled denial. It is a primary tool of propagandists and deceivers. When we want to make a point and go out of our way to ignore the facts to win our argument, who do we think we’re fooling? Often, not the people we think we are. Usually we end up “fooling” the people who agree with us already. Unfortunately, they might not know the ignored facts and end up thinking the argument is reasonable. Suddenly the rest of us are burdened with an unknowingly ignorant population, who more often are as unreasonable as they are ignorant. When the facts are introduced they are predisposed not to believe them, because now they would have to throw out all they think they “know” to then accept they’re wrong. This is a very hard pill to swallow for most people. Denial is frequently the more comfortable choice. Those who would spin the truth are doing all of us a disservice. They polarize us and create divisiveness, frequently out of nothing.

MUSIC IS A KEY

Music is a key to the doorway into the kingdom of God. Our intelligence exists there, as a collection of energies, defining a whole, and operating in a way such that all parts have access to all other parts simultaneously. By resonating this defined area we can begin (but only begin) to perceive it, like a camouflaged animal being invisible in its environment until it moves. The thrill, the excitement of this perception is what we experience as the beauty of music; The joy of listening to the things that move us in such a way as to enable us to notice a realm, which we then feel, but cannot even start to understand. For now we are happy just to feel it. Someday we will demand to understand it.

WILLYBLUES- 1985

Just Why Are We Here, Anyway?

Why does God “allow” bad and disastrous things to happen to us poor defenseless girls and boys? After all, most of us lead lives that do not warrant that level of punishment! How can this good and benevolent God sit there and let these things come down upon us, causing lives to have pain and suffering and sadness and/or to “end prematurely”? The answer may lie in understanding what life is for and, indeed, understanding God. Oh, but wait, we can’t understand God. We don’t know what life, much less our own life, is for. My suggestion is that we must live to grow, learn, experience, and expand our consciousness. We must, as members of the human race, strive to raise Humanity up from the imperfect beings we are to attain a level as close to God as we can get, maybe even Godhood. It may have very little to do with each of us individually, but everything to do with all of us collectively. How long will this take? Well, how big is the Universe? How long is the rest of existence? We don’t even have the perspective to understand how long the Universe has been in existence and that is only 13.7 billion years or so. How can we hope to know how long it will take us to learn? Perhaps we should stop asking questions there are no answers to yet. Certainly we are not ready to understand the answers. If we lift ourselves up, the answers will come.

We don’t raise our children by coddling them their whole lives. (Well, we shouldn’t anyway) We don’t give them everything they ask for. We can’t protect them from everything. We give them tweaks and pokes and suggestions and hope they come out OK. We want them to be the best that they can be by letting them make correct decisions based on our suggestions and guidance. Ultimately it is the strength of their own character that makes them what they become. The human race is no different. We are only children. We are very young children.

The creation of the Universe is a gift to all who can appreciate it. It is an anvil upon which to beat us and a furnace to forge us into the best, most perfect beings we can strive to be and therefore become. If he wanted us to be perfect from the start, if he wanted the Universe to be a safe place, he would have created it that way. Or maybe that’s not even the point. We have no understanding of God. We think we know a few things from the bible, but we don’t know what he is or what he actually wants. Some would argue that we don’t even know if he exists, but whether he does or not, we are still here in the Universe wondering how to proceed. The purpose of any life form is to grow. We must strive to evolve and improve ourselves. We must go forth and multiply. In order to move out into the Universe, which I believe is supposed to be our destiny, we must attain the ability. We have to understand things about morality and science and existence that we don’t yet know. Some things we are in outright denial about. We are slowly getting there. We have only to overcome religion and politics and shortsightedness in order to increase our knowledge.

An artist can carve an image into stone. The artist can make it look almost alive. It can be created beautiful and perfect or perfectly ugly, but it will always be as it was carved. This is called Sculpture. In this case the medium is dead regardless of how alive it looks. When the profound dimension of life is added to the Artist’s medium, what has been created can evolve. It can start out ugly and become beautiful. It can be very unknowledgeable yet gain knowledge. Time is a direction life must expand into. We don’t have to know much about life in order to understand this. The Artist sets a few basic rules and then sets the creation off into the Universe. There may be some expectation, but other than the few rules, and a Universe of potential, it is up to the creation itself to become what it can become.

On TV I heard a sound bite from a girl. She said that at some point she had thought about “Trying every drug before killing herself”. “Try every drug before killing yourself”? That is looking inside and ignoring “the Outside”. The Universe is the Outside. It is very big and demands attention. Spirituality is a means not an end. The idea of taking every drug before killing one’s self is like getting hit in the face with one raindrop and, in ignorance, thinking that’s as good as it gets, when actually there is an entire ocean out there. Don’t settle for a mere raindrop. In the “Ocean” there is more than water. There are fish, whales, plankton and other life. There is sand, coral, plateaus, mountains, valleys and things we cannot even imagine. Expand, in your mind, the meaning of this metaphor of the Universe. Let the AWE fill you and wash over you. See? You didn’t even need any drugs to get the rush! Some drugs may help expand your perspective and might open your mind. Use that as a tool, not as the whole experience. Drugs can also dull you and steal your ability and desire to perceive. Trying to dull the pain by drink or drugs is a symptom of a lack of a greater perspective. If you wallow in your miserable life you’re not looking at what the possibilities really are. What a crime against you, and the Universe, that is! You don’t have to even believe in God to have awareness of the wonder of the Universe. Don’t narrow your focus too much. By all means scrutinize, but then back off again and try to put it into perspective.

And by the way….
If we live by the rule that “if you kill one of mine I’m going to kill one of yours”, all that we are going to get is a lot of killing. It could go on forever. It doesn’t take much of a step back to get the perspective that a different solution is demanded. Whatever the justification we use, there really is no justification for that course. There is a difference between “justice”, “punishment”, and “forgiveness”. They are very closely related to each other but, they are mutually exclusive and should exist completely separate from each other. They should, however, all exist at the same time! Remember that personal retribution is not the same as social justice. Punishment should not be a criminal act. Forgiveness helps end the cycle. Understanding is the only real solution. Communication is the only way to reach understanding. All that’s left to get is willingness. I wonder how we are going to get that. Oh, I guess we’ll have to grow.