Spirituality Guide

So on this level, I imagine they (the hidden puppet masters behind the stupid public figures) are quite confident they can tell us anything and enough people will believe it that they can get away with whatever they wish.

Another possibility goes deeper. The Fall of Man may be seen as when the spiritual being that we are made a choice that enmeshed us into the world of solid. I wonder sometimes if the ‘Tree’ from which Adam and Eve were not meant to eat was not any specific tree, but that they were not meant to partake of solid food. Perhaps the Breath of Life was sufficient to energise us 7 we lived as energetic beings, aware of the matter in which we experienced, but still aware of our spirituality.

Then, like Persephone, we ate of the world, and suddenly we became more dependent on using the energy of matter to run our bodies. We experienced, and liked, the fruit of the flesh.

Now when I look at what we are finding out of real history, I can easily see it as a battle between those who would have Man grow towards the Spirit once more, and those who see profit in having us trapped into the flesh, manipulable and able to be used as servant or slaves. I see over and again, humans reaching for greatness, then like a wave of darkness, the original impulse to light gets submerged in greed and corruption, in power seeking and venality.

Now, we have the advent of possibility in 2012, at the Winter Solstice. It may be that this is a mere distraction for us, planned and implemented by the forces of the Dark to keep us looking to the future while they steal our present. But opposed to this is the fact that, if these forces exist, they have achieved a dominant position some time ago - how far depends on which variety of Conspiracy one can see.

So what is coming in 2012AD? Should we be scared, will the Earth end or the forces of good and evil engage in the Armageddon of the biblical stories? Or will it be a time of resurrection of Jesus, a growth in cosmic harmony, or an energetic increase allowing greater awareness to all mankind?

There’s been any number of prophecies of doom or end of the world over the years. The Christians have apparently been awaiting it, and predicting every hiccup in society as being the harbinger of the Christ’s return, for most of 2000 years. Almost every culture has some story of how the world will end, or when, from the Tibetans nine billion names of God to the Hopi returning through a siapu into their next world.

But from the Mayans, all we have is the calendar. To be sure we think we know considerably more of them now than we did fifty years ago, but still all that we have is a date back around 3113BCE plus the 5125 years of a baktun, which brings us to 2012AD. At that point, the calendar ends. At that point, the Age ends.

Almost eerily, but nowhere near as exactly, it is also the time of the changing of the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. It is also close to half the Great year of the Egyptians, when the constellation of Orion reaches the highest point of culmination (where it crosses the North-South meridian) in its Precessional trek up and down the sky.

So we are left wondering about what is coming. Some people are talking a vast surge of fourth dimensional energy to transform the world. According to them some will be ready and will move to the next phase of existence – I’ve never been quite able to work out what these prognosticators think is going to happen to those unable to make the transition. Strangely, all those making this kind of prediction are on the transformative side of the line that determines who goes.

Others see it as a time when Aliens will make themselves known, transforming the world and altering forever our view of ourselves. Still others see it as a crux, a time when the final (?) battle between Good and Evil will rage, fulfilling the biblical prophecies of war and salvation as the Christ comes back to save the faithful.

From BeliefMakr, a poster over on 2012 Forums

I found this a very thought-provoking trip into imagination - and it fits with how I view things about God and the Universe, just from the point of view of THE ALL rather than one of the creations.

Imagine This…

A cloud. Or rather, a fog bank.

Imagine dreaming of being in a dense fog.

It is thick.

It is thicker than any fog you have ever been in.

You slip deeper into the dream, forgetting everything except the dream.

You cannot see your own hand the fog is so thick. It is also brightly lit. Back lit, like a million flood lights surround you from every direction. The bright, white light is warm and inviting. It seems to fill your very being.
Now imagine, not only being in this fog, but, since it is a dream, you have no body. You are floating within this thick fog. It is now just your mind surrounded by a fog that seems to go on forever.

Since you have no form, no body; your mind and the fog merge. In a real way your mind and the fog become one and the same. You try to move through this fog, but you cannot tell what movement is anymore. You will yourself up, down, left right, but it is for nothing. The fog appears endless in every direction. You and the fog are one.

But the brightness of it is soothing. You are not afraid. There are no worries. It appears as though nothing exists but you. Just your thoughts filling an endless, bright cloud.

Now, in this dream, you don’t remember it ever being any different. Without movement, there is no sense of time. You just “are”. No beginning. No end. You are the fog. You are pure conscious energy. You are all that is.

That is the beginning of the dream. Now here is where it gets interesting…

Does the fog fill your mind? Or does your mind fill the fog? The answer is yes to both. Your mind is the fog. The powerful white light is the energy that feeds your mind. Yet, you are the light. It permeates every spot in the endless fog. There is no top or bottom. You can imagine yourself shrinking smaller than a theoretical point or expanding larger than any universe. But there is nothing with which to judge against. It is just you, as the light, as the fog. One and the same. It is all there is.

But you have your imagination. You have your will. Could there be something else if you imagined?
You feel a kink develop in the fog. A twist of your energy. It is still you. It is still your energy. But now it is a spatial reference. You mind can move closer or further away from this kink of energy. You can expand your mind so it is a barely visible dot with in you. Or you can shrink down so much that you could almost fit your consciousness through the kink.

From this perspective, you can see your energy flowing through the kink. This braid stays in place only because you imagine it will. You know you could move your consciousness through the twist if you wanted, but something else comes to mind.

From your point of view, the braid has a distinct beginning and a distinct end. The ends are locations within the fog. Despite having a spatial reference now. You still have no sense of time. The braid, from beginning to end, simply is. You “zoom in” for a closer look. Within the kink, there seems to be endless possibilities.

You imagine beings trying to navigate through those endless possibilities as they travel from one end of the braid to the other. They are “kinks” within the “kink”; or braids within the braid.

Your imagining it makes them so.

Instantly, the energy within the kink becomes conscious. It is a consciousness separate from yours. As it passes through and out the other end, the experiences it met along its journey reunite with your consciousness. You feel the joy, the suffering, all of it. You are amazed to learn that your imagined creatures had their own thoughts and ideas and imaginations separate from you. They have your will and sense of creativity. While these “energy patterns” exist within the kink of energy, they feel separate from you.

As they emerge from the other side, something wonderful occurs. Their energy, which is you, retains a certain “color” that is unique. This causes you, as the great white-lit fog, to sparkle. Each individual sparkle is different from all the rest, but still a part of you. Each of their individual thoughts joins yours as a collective of thoughts.

Yet it is still all just you.

Filled with creative purpose, you imagine infinite kinks with an infinite choice of experiences waiting within each. Your energy flows through all of them as you absorb and delight in the variety. Each kink acts as a prism, splitting your energy into an infinite rainbow.

But you still have no sense of time. Because you do not experience movement directly. All of this happens all at once. It is though it has always been this way. Since your consciousness can orient itself various ways within your fog, you slow yourself down, shrink yourself down lower and slower than you’ve ever done. Until, at last, your direct consciousness pushes into one end of your imagined kinks.

From this point of view your endless time collapses. No longer does everything happen all at once. Now, in order to get to the other end of the kink, you must pass through time, one moment after another. But the fog has been pushed back to reveal something called space which can be measured and traveled through.

You are struck by how lonely and isolated you feel. The physicality of this life is so strong it blots out the eternal memories you once had. Those that you imagined are even less fortunate. They have no recollection of you or their source. But their will and their creativity are a sublime beauty to watch; even when it is destructive.
You try this experience many times. You try to offer guidance to your creatures. You try to tell them, using their own cultural references, just who and what they are. Most times, their own experiences color their understanding of what you tell them. They see you sometimes as a god, sometimes a prophet, but often times as a threat. The very creatures you imagined into being often kill you out of fear.

But it’s okay. Once outside the kink again, you are who you are and all is well. Without the constraints of time passage, you can travel into this or any other kink at any moment of “kink” time. You and your creations can experience physical reality at any moment in that particular reality’s time. Life can be experienced first at the end of the kink known as “the end of days” and then again in another life at the beginning of civilization; in any order, as often as desired.

The realities you’ve created are mere “experience locations”. They can pop in and out of existence as you will. In truth, you are richer for having created those infinite realities and all of the infinite inhabitants. But in sum total, you are all there is.

It seems to me we have been fed an untruth. It is one that seems common across a wide range of people and I think very few ever question it. We are taught that the opposite of a believer in God is an Atheist.

I think it isn’t true; I think an Atheist, someone who ‘knows’ there is no God, is also a believer. I think, on a line with believers in God at one end, the other end is an Agnostic. Atheists are believers just as much as those they so vehemently oppose. And just as we see various sects of particular branches of religion get riled with another sect over minor points of dogma, the two branches of believers get very heated with each other.

It’s an ongoing debate, one that never seems to convert anyone, never seems to run out of ire and agro, and seems ultimately unsolvable by mere humans.

Are Creationists right or are Evolutionists? The argument has raged since Darwin and has recently gotten even more fiery in the US with the Intelligent Design fracas. Creationists tried to remodel their beliefs into a pseudo-scientific structure in an attempt to get ID taught in schools as an alternative to Evolution. They ran into a wall by, in my opinion, over-reaching themselves – they demanded it be taught in Science classes.

Now the Theory of Evolution has the problem of being called a Theory. What most people without a science background fail to see is that a Theory, in Science, has a different meaning to how it is used out in public. The Theory of Gravitation is such a Theory – nobody flies off the surface of Earth because Gravity is a theory – the theory bit is just our explanation of it.

Evolution is the same. We have proof of changes in genomes and various life forms. We know for a fact it happens. The Theory bit is whether the random mutations in a genome can account for the variety of life we see when we look around.

The biggest wrong of the modern churches, the most galring way in which it is obvious they are NOT the inheritors of the teachings of the Christ, is something read out in every Christian church of which I’ve heard. The message of the Christ is that salvation is personal. It is a covenant or relationship between a person and God the Father.

It is very clear in the bible that the only help a person needs in getting close to God is the Holy Spirit. There is no mention in the message from the Christ of anyone being a teacher of groups of people, of anyone needing to listen on God’s behalf to the sins we wish to confess, or of any man being the one to decide what punishment we deserve for our ‘sins.’

In fact, the Christ makes it quite clear there is no penance or need for recompense for sin – all we need do is ask the Father to forgive us and it is done.

So what has happened that these things are seen to be part of the normal way of doing things? While the confession/penance idea might be the province of the Catholic churches, the intercession of an oversight of some kind is common to all the Christian churches.

How did it come about that a personal relationship between human and God got so rapidly entangled in authoritarian oversight and expert interpretation of things that were meant to be personal to each person? Why is it accepted by people all over the world that some fallible human can tell them what to do and how to think about their personal relationship with the Sublime?

This is a vexing question for most people who have an interest. The problem is, there is no solid evidence of such a person. The bible has no direct writings of the Christ, no books, nothing we can point to and say ‘He said that’ – all we have is 2nd hand reports of things he may have said. In fact, all we really have is 3rd or 4th hand hearsay.

You see, the problem is, until recently when some ancient texts were found, the only evidence of the New Testament was to be found in texts that were copies of texts written well after the time of the Christ. Even in our corrupt system, it is difficult to get people to accept hearsay evidence, yet for some reason the established churches demand we accept not only hearsay as being true, but that it is the unchanged and unchallengeable word of God.

Adding to this is issue that the recent texts, from both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi suggest that our books as found in the bible are, to say the least, a limited selection of those available back when the bible was put together. And unfortunately for the established churches, these sources are far more authoritative than the bible – they have been in situ for almost all the two thousand years, they have not been translated and preferentially chosen to further control of an empire, and at least some of them appear to have been written by direct participants of the time.

Sadly, the modern version of Christianity is as little able to adjust to new information as were the times when any slight differences brought Inquisition, torture and death.

I’m curious.

Do you think there is a path for you? In your life, are you aware of following along a way towards some kind of end or goal?

Did your goals form early in your life or did you have to work at it to find out what you wanted in life?

Or are you, like me, a drifter who found a life that was ‘good enough’ simply because I couldn’t find more pressing needs that would give me my path?

I’ve often wondered how many people fail to find their path in life. I also wonder if the increasing rage out there in our society happens, if the increased numbers using alcohol, drugs, the church or other forms of escape are doing so, because of the lack of meaningful paths for us to find.

Our society is very proud of our technological progress. Almost every views us as the pinnacle of a long line of progress from cave to shopping mall, yet even a slightly more than casual study of history will bring up indications that this is simply false-to-facts.

What if we’ve chosen incorrectly as a society? What if the path of material ownership, of instant gratification of the physical senses, is not a good way for us? We seem to be losing our sense of community; we fragment into groups based on physical things where love is not an ingredient. The village concept has been shattered on the altar of city life and we walk lonely in crowds larger than has ever been seen before.

We have people dying in our streets, overdosing on drugs because nobody has cared enough to ensure they have a life. They can’t spend because they have no money and so basic needs that were available to peasants under fiefdoms are denied them.

This is progress?

When a people are lost, when their society fails to provide needs that are basic to their lives, they look around for what will provide those needs. Our society has fallen a long way from an optimal path - we risk destroying our world in the name of greed and power over others - it is ironic because those seeking most the power over others have not yet begun the journey of power over self that would relieve them of the burden they are trying to relieve.

The Cult of Conformity and Consumerism fails us in many ways - it derails our awareness of things other than the latest model of the most recent time-waster, it destroys our sense of aesthetics but programming us into the flashiest, the hippest etc. and it subverts our goals towards the non-material, towards the areas most people here are seeking.

Many religions and cults are and have been aware of this for a long time now. They have down to a fine art the procedures for seducing and subjugating their congregations, for ensuring that most will never stray from the fold and the best ones even prepare their flock so they will defend themselves against any attempt to open their eyes.

As an example, the Christ taught that salvation is a personal thing, a journey and compact between the being and the Father; somehow however, the bodies representing the Christ message have managed to negate that entire message into one that says salvation comes from listening to an interceder, from following the dictates of a person who, of their own nomination, stands between the being and the Father. That’s a total reversal of the message and the message is still in the book they use for a reference and that they proclaim as the Word of God, yet somehow none of the congregation calls them on it.

That’s how cults work - they are VERY good at it and follow a long tradition of working on the fears and awareness of people to ensure compliance.

As a child in the Pentecostal church I was encouraged to accept the bible as the literal word of God. It was true, I was told from the pulpit, every word of it inspired by God, and great enthusiasm was shown in recounting stories or evidence to ‘prove’ it correct.

They were better at so doing than others – I was taught of the two creations of Man, neatly solving the riddle of ‘who did Cain marry’ and of how the Pyramid at Giza was a confirmation of the message of Christ – I was always a little hazy on that one but there was something about a line inscribed along the wall that corresponded exactly to the British inch.

Other stories included the British-Israel theory – how the Ten Lost Tribes migrated first East, then North and across to England, forming new nations as they went. How the Tribe of Dan became Denmark and how after the Romans, all the conquerors of England were remnants of the Lost Tribes, making Britain a ‘pure’ Israelite race.

Then there was the story of Jacob’s pillow, how the stone of Jacob (from the Ladder Dream) came across from Israel to Ireland, then to Scotland to finally rest under the Queen’s throne in Westminster, proving beyond doubt her relationship to King David, the ruler promised by God that there would always be a descendant of his on the throne of Israel.

It’s a wild mix of reality and fantasy, with wish-fulfillment making up for any short comings in the evidence. I wondered about things – if a million Hebrews wandered across the desert for forty years, I could understand God providing their food and water, but where is their waste? How come archaeologists hadn’t found a trail of poop and other discards, bones of sheep, goats and cattle, or even of people who died along the way?

So these lesser Beingnesses set out to explore their cosmoi - it is certainly feasible that THE ALL didn’t break its Awareness into the lowest level all at once - but the lesser Beingnesses could run exactly the same process - create smaller Selfs to investigate the inner parts so they can learn about themselves and so complete their purposes.

Eventually we’d get to some sort of basic where the tiny pieces of Beingnesses were unable to ’split’ further and we’d be at the level where lives need to be lived and the level of Knowledge needs to begin to grow towards Totality.

Long way to get to it, but here we are, little pieces of Beingness who are attached to a ‘Reality’ which is really just the workings of THE ALL - truly a Matrix-like universe. We are here to learn, to grow and turn information into Knowledge by using our Awareness and our Experience.

It means a Universe that is distinctly not random but also is perhaps best described as Unintelligent Design. It provides for a reality beyond the shadows on the cave wall, one where larger chunks of THE ALL are sending us in as Actors to play before the light to make the shadow movie that provides the Audience with the Knowledge to move beyond the Cave. And we are both Actor and Audience because we are all a part of the larger Beingness that divided into the smaller Beings to play the parts.

And if we move up the chain a bit further, we would find that more and more of what we now think of as individuals are actually sub-agents of the same piece of THE ALL, and of course, eventually, we ARE all THE ALL!

In this scenario, Climate, Ice Ages, catastrophic warming and regular cycles are all simply trials of the universe we live in - the workings of the rules laid down at the start.

It isn’t a Game unless there are things to achieve, rules to follow and a final result.

Here’s some more of my thoughts… the ramblings of a mind that’s lived too long alone and apart from people who like to think of things other than work, footy and money.

First some background of from where they got stimulated:

String theory, back in the days when there were 5 of them, about the time a brane got rolled up to be a string and so reduce the 11 dimensions into 10, seemed to offer a plenitude of cosmoi. Super-symmetry math seemed to say there were 26 possible dimensions and string theory that we inhabited a subset of 10.

That’s a large number of possible and different combinations of 10 - 26×25x24×23x22×21x19×18x17×16 if I recall my high school math.

But there’s another way to look at it than the straight physical - what if (let’s call Her/Him THE ALL to stay away from predefined concepts) THE ALL came into Awareness. Now Awareness doesn’t automatically bring knowledge - think about being in a dark room and becoming sensitised to the environment around you. You will hear noise, feel warm air, feel vibrations under you, smell smells - all Awarenesses but until you start down the experience pathway (move around and get more information) you cannot turn that Awareness into Knowledge.

So we have THE ALL, a 26 dimensional Beingness (there’s a subset of this in having THE ALL be a 10 or 11 Dimensional Beingness, which would allow for other 10 or 11 Dimensional Beingnesses out there - maybe each Brane is one such? Colliding branes are reproducing and Universes the result?)…

But anyway, we have this large multi-dimensional Beingness, all Awareness and no Knowledge. Interesting that the first piece of knowledge that could possibly come that I can think of would be ‘I AM’ ::)

It’s a BIG Universe out there. We live on a planet circling a star about two thirds of the way out from the centre of a galaxy of a couple of hundred billion stars. That galaxy moves in a realm so large it’s possible we will never see the edge of it, but estimates are there are several hundred billion galaxies floating around out there.

This seems a rather large sand pit if there are only Humans to play in it. If this is the only place for Life to start, there’s a range of questions that come along, starting with what’s it all for? Unless something radically different than we have learned is going on, we’re never going to see virtually all that is out there.

If we take the hints given in religious texts and myths, including the bible, there is other life out there - which raises a whole new interesting series of questions. You see, if there is only one race, then the scene as described in the bible could make a kind of sense, with the Creator making a race in his image (whatever that actually means) and, failing to be quite the all-knowing One believed by Christians, setting us on a path to learning so we can eventually be with him.

When we look at the God described in the bible with an eye clear of blind faith and dogma, there is something seriously wrong with either God or with the story. Note I am NOT saying the Creator here, I am talking about the Creator as described in the books of the Judaic religions. This God creates mankind, then gives them a task He knows they will fail, then boots them out of paradise with no opportunity to repent or make redemption or in any way atone for what they’ve done – a few thousand years later He sends his Son to die to make up for the very thing He condemned us all for.

And that’s just a start; either there is something wrong with this Being or what we are told is a serious corruption of the reality. If things are as they are made out to be, God has serious issues with honesty and ethics as well as deep-seated anger and behavioural problems. If God is truly omnipotent and all those other omni’s then the story we’ve been given is just plain wrong.

And if there are other races out there, we have to question everything from the start.

The mind is a funny thing – I was sitting writing a response to David, who posted a comment in Christmas Thoughts and for some reason a thought I’ve had before came to mind. There’s kind of a causative link – I mentioned about how we don’t actually have the words of the Christ, we have secondhand versions of what are hopefully actual accounts of things. That seemed to lead to a conversation I had years back about whether there is alien life and how that impinges on the Christian story.

You see, Christianity relies very heavily on the Christ coming to us to die for our sins. Apparently God’s creation wasn’t doing so well and we needed re-direction to ensure it didn’t all go down the tubes.

That in itself is a strain point for the religion. God is supposed to see the beginning from the end, to know all things and to be perfection itself. The idea that the Christian God could be in error or make a mistake is simply not to be considered.

Yet God either doesn’t know it all or he can make mistakes – the bible is proof of it. No I am not talking about whether there are errors in the bible or if it contradicts itself, I mean even accepting the story as given, there is evidence things aren’t as we are told.

One such example (not of God being wrong etc. but that the story is stranger than we normally see) is that of the Nephilim. Note that Nephilim (or the original Hebrew word is a plural, which to me suggests it’s a name given to a tribe or race.

We might digress a little in the next post as the Nephilim are an interesting byway along the biblical autobahn. Many quite devout Christians have never registered them as being unusual and few of those who have, bother to look into the stories of them.

Well that time of year is almost here again – that’s right, the day before thousands of people risk death and injury trying to be the first to the bargain counters so they can spend lots more credit on buying things they don’t really need. When people degenerate to act like starving animals as they crush each other and rip clothing and whitegoods from the hands of those perceived less powerful than themselves. Where the shrieks and screams over the finding of a great price on a (usually) totally unnecessary item precede by seconds the more primal cries of rage from those for whom the bargain has disappeared from under their clutching claws.

That’s right, it’s the time of the Boxing Day Specials. The Day-of-Days when the primitive urges to get more than your fellow (wo)man are allowed full expression and the true meaning of the day just past is totally swept aside – if it was ever expressed or recalled in the first place – and the detached observer can watch and realize just how close Humankind still is to a bestial past.

It’s hard to conceive on any two other days in the normal year that are juxtaposed so closely and yet show two such opposite sides of our natures.

Christmas is supposed to be about the act of giving. It is meant, for Christians, to be a time to recall the birth of the Son of God, the selfless being who came to turn the path of Humanity from that leading steadily towards being locked into the physical realm and show a way for all people to reach for the Spiritual.

The Christ came to tell us that our path is ours, that there is the possibility of a personal redemption from the miserable lives most of us have to achieve a better path as we find our inner beings and start on the path to knowledge of the Infinite.

But apparently, unless we can get it marked down to $9.99, that sale at the Mall has a far greater importance than our Soul.

Another example of strangeness in Christian celebration is the date of Easter. Surely the Christ was put on the cross on a particular day? Yet Easter is commemorated on a range of dates, from March into April. Why would that be so? It turns out that Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the Full Moon after March 20th.

Why would the death of the Christ be tied into the lunisolar cycle?

Christmas is also strange. The Christ’s birthday ranges from early January through to May. It seems 25th December is a symbolic date. And there it gets interesting.

We have ancient religions with the Sun being God. In the Northern hemisphere, (NH) the Sun moves steadily South during Autumn and Winter, to its lowest point in the Winter Solstice. The Longest night in the NH is December 21st, so the Sun reaches its lowest point in the sky on 22nd where it ‘pauses’ for 3 days, then it begins the climb back towards the highest point of the Summer solstice.

The old religions considered this the death of the Sun for three days, followed by the resurrection or birth on the 25th December.

We know that religions of all times and all places have used symbolism and parable to tell stories; what some may not realize is they have another common factor – there is normally a hidden knowledge, a level of information available only to the initiated, and that knowledge is often encoded in the stories.

So did the Christ exist? That’s a whole other question from what Christmas is about. It seems likely that a myth encoded to pass on information to the inner circle of Christianity may have been attached to sacred dates from earlier times to ensure the information is not lost.

But when we look at what Christmas is now, it seems a far cry from the celebration of the birth of someone who came to bring Peace and Love as a path to salvation.