I wonder if people can see the good that came out of the events of 9/11/2001.

I look back and the stories of how FDR set up American to be attacked at Pearl Harbor just to get Americans out their isolationistic and narrow-minded ideology. In the 1930’s America was suffering from and still coming out of the depression and we did not care about anybody else but America and Americans (does this sound familiar?). In order to get people to open their minds and notice the suffering of other people in the world, FDR orchestrated or allowed (as the story goes) the events that lead up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. With that event we quickly woke up to the situation that was developing in East Asia at the hands of the Japanese and the tyranny that was taking place in Europe at the same time. Without Pearl Harbor we might have taken several more years to wake up and by then it might have been too late to overcome the Japanese and German domination. Pearl Harbor was necessary because we Americans were not caring about anybody but ourselves.

Then look at the world situation before 9/11/2001. The Islamic world was mostly living in utter poverty. Even though the Saudis where making lots of money they were not sharing it with the common people who are among the poorest in the world. Afghanistan was probably one of the most backward countries in the world and the oppression of the people there, particularly the women, we as extreme or more extreme as under Hitler or Stalin. Repression and oppression was and still is rampant in most Islamic countries.

Yet who in America was taking notice?

The conservatives were of the mind set that we should not get involved in other people’s business. Remember the reaction of the Republicans to Clinton’s intervention in Bosnia? They did not care about those people in the former Yugoslavia. But after 9/11 they are all behind their Republican President to go save the world.

So what if (and only if) President Bush or some of his friends did orchestrate the attack on the World Trade Center? In the long run it was good for humanity and will be good for America. So what if a few thousand people die, if it is for the good of the larger whole of humanity.

Yes, some of those people were close to us here in America so we take it personally. People are dying all over the world all time and in larger quantities than what happened on 9/11. Think the Rwanda massacres in the 1990’s. How many died there and who really cared? Black people in Africa or the Middle East do not matter as much as white people in New York, right?

So America needed to get hit over the head with a two by four to get its attention, just like the proverbial jackass that we have become.

Of course, 9/11 was not the first warning we were given and we did not listen to it. Remember the FIRST attack on the World Trade Center in 1993? It was not enough to wake up America so we needed 9/11 to do the job.

It is nice to see that the women of Afghanistan are no longer required to live under the burkas. The internet is coming to Afghanistan and so is the enviable opening of their minds and culture. It will not happen over night but it is happening. 9/11 was the beginning of THEIR liberation. 9/11 was their Boston Tea Party in a way.

It is time that the civilized world recognizes the tyranny that people live under in extreme religious societies. We can not ignore people living on the other side of the world just because they live on the other side of the world. Religion has always been and will always be tyrannical and eventually we will ‘cure’ this planet of this cancer. But in the mean time we make war on those who are hurting the most under this tyranny without confronting the source of the disease.

It is a start and only a start.

I would like to bring up the topics of righteousness and truth, which seem to be of great concern to conservatives. I will start with truth.

Truth is defined as sincerity in action, character and utterance; the state of being the case, fact. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia has a definition of truth as coming from firmness, stability, consistency and FAITHFULNESS. That last one is a new one to me. Webster’s says that truth is conforming fact or reality.

The question I would have is who or what is it that defines what is reality or fact? Is it not the human instrument that we are experiencing life through? Then are we not filtering that experience through our mind with its memories and previous conditioning? How can we be sure that anything is, in fact, a fact?

Of course, the answer to these questions depending on what level of consciousness you are coming from. If you are interested in being really honest with yourself then you recognize that you can not know anything for sure and the questions are silly. Yet, we ARE here in what appears to be human bodies experiencing life. So what do these human bodies WANT from that experience of life? Now that is a question that has significance and what defines what is perceived as FACT.

For example, I can imagine my wife (I am not married) is beautiful and when I see her I have a beautiful experience. Is that more preferred then imagining her to be ugly and every time I see her I have an ugly experience? You bet. Is she in FACT beautiful or ugly? There is no FACT to that effect. If I touch this woman here next to me and think of her as my wife, is she my wife? Am I dreaming that I have a wife, that I am touching her? Am I real?

All of this was from my perspective, or the perspective of “I” or self. What is this thing called “I” or self? Who or what am “I” that has this experience of beauty or ugliness, good or evil? And who or what is it that does the choosing between beauty and ugliness, good and evil? Who or what it is that thinks that “I” have a wife that “I” am touching?

If I am born in Italy I learn that fat women are beautiful and skinny women are ugly. If I am born in California then I think skinny women are beautiful and fat women are not women. (Fat means you can not see their ribs.) J

Is it a FACT that my wife exist? If I put my hand on her body am I really putting my hand on her body or am I imagining I am putting my hand on her body and getting the shit kicked out of me because she is PMSing. J I can not ‘prove’ to even myself that my wife is real or not real because I have not proven that “I” am real yet. So facts are bullshit until I have understood the datum from which I am experiencing life. That ‘datum’ is self.

I will get to righteousness eventually; hold on to your britches.

I am told that I have a body, a mind and a soul (and a wife, which has to be proven to me). The body part is easy, it hurt right now so it must be real. The mind is a collection of memories, thoughts, desire, opinions, etc that if I go looking for I can not find it. So the mind is questionable in fact because it actually does not reside anywhere that I can see, feel or touch with my body outside of the mental activity that I have in my body. Oops, that is the mind. Ok, so I found my mind.

Now I recognize that thoughts are electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain (located in the head of the previously hurting body) so I can see that thoughts are kind of real. Then the mind is just the pattern of thoughts that go around in the brain. But what if the brain is run over by a big truck? Where does the mind go then? What happens if I stop thinking? Do “I” have a mind then? Good question. Let us stop thinking and see. (This is called meditation or watching as Jesus called it.)

This brings me to soul. I have no soul. I can not find it. The dictionary defines it as an immaterial essence, animating principle or actuating cause of an individual life. Wow, that is a mouthful! All those word reflect just thoughts that are electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain. So the soul is just like my wife, only an illusion in my brain. When the brain stops working (death or meditation) the wife and soul disappear. (Don’t you sometimes wish you could just make your wife disappear like that?) Therefore, I must ‘believe’ (to accept as FACT; another thought) that I have a soul before there is one. If I do not believe in a soul I can not lose it. That pattern of electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain has to be something that I find attractive enough to give more energy so that it can continue to travel around my brain. Since I do not choose this it does not continue and I have no soul.

Why would anybody want a soul anyway? Well, maybe they choose to believe (be LIE ve: be lying to ourselves) that they have a soul because that explains what happens to them (?) when they die. But they must do that because they choose to believe they are finite and limited. Being finite and limited creates fear of that which is outside of themselves so by believing in a soul they have a firm definition of who they are and firm boundaries that they can hide behind. If they were open minded and did not define themselves then they would have no need to ‘believe’ anything. So believing in soul creates fear and that fear can be used to control and manipulate them, thus making them slaves. I see no intelligent reason to believe in soul.

This brings me to self. Is not self just another thought like soul? When I go looking for it a thought is all I experience. When I die or am in deep meditative trance the thought called self disappears. OR, maybe I could say that the INDIVIDUAL self disappears. Maybe that is the soul that disappears and not the self. For in deep meditation or death I find that all individuality disappears.

Am I using the word ‘death’ correctly here? My car ‘died’ the other day. I had to restart it but it did die. I ‘die’ periodically too, but I then am restarted or I restart myself. Well, maybe, depending on what this thing called “I” is that does this.

Back to self…in deep meditation or death self or individuality and sensation ceases but “I” seems to still be there. I would call this “I” Self, with a Capital “S”. The experience of this Self is infinite and eternal, but really I can not accurately talk about it for all words are by definition limited. So the experience of Self is not communicable with words. What I can talk about is the experience of the EFFECT of the experience of Self. But that is another story…

Anyway, self that is individual is only an electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain. This ‘self’ is not lasting or real; it is just a temporary phenomenon that lasts as long as the human instrument last.

I am, therefore, the one that experiences ‘truth’ and it is the human instrument that ‘proves’ the facts that make truth. But all this is run through the mind, which is just electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain.

What does this prove, that “I” can “prove” anything to myself and experience goodness by doing it. “I” am “truth”. “I” am the way, the truth and the life. No ones experiences heaven on earth except by knowing this “I” that is Self.

This brings me to righteousness, which according to my dictionary is acting in accord with divine or moral law. Moral: of or relating to principles of right and wrong. Who is it that chooses what is right or wrong. Who is it that takes of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Why, “I” do of course. But I am an illusion that bases my choices entirely on past experiences, programming or mental constructs. And why would I actually choose good or evil, right or wrong? Maybe because if produces pleasure or pain. I want to experience more pleasure than pain so I will label things as right or good so that I can have more pleasure and less pain.

The point is that “I” am the one who define what is right or wrong, good or evil. I can say to myself that some deity defines right and wrong, good and evil, and that this deity wrote it in a book, but that would be a lie because “I” am the one who CHOOSE to believe that. So it is “I” that chooses where I get my opinion of right and wrong, good and evil. “I” am the ultimate authority in my inner reality as to what I experience. I am the King of kings, God of gods in my inner kingdom/reality.

So to be righteous all I have to do is act in accordance with what I have already defined as right and I have it.

I am the one that chooses what I believe is God. But it is “I” that made this choice, so “I” am greater than the mental construct or belief that I created. “I” am the Creator of the creator called God. I choose to believe in God so I am greater than God. If I define myself as “one with God (or My Father)” then I am the divine that defines moral law. Bingo.

Was this fun? I enjoyed it. I might even post this on my website. Such fun! It is just intellectual masturbation but I got off from it. Did you? Did you choose to see it as beautiful and hence have a beautiful experience? Or were you asleep and found it as ugly and hence have an ugly experience?

Anyway, the final ‘proof’ in what I say comes when you care enough to go off and die (meditation/watch) as Jesus and I and thousands of others have done. Other than that you are just believers like the guys that drove the planes into the World Trade Centers.

I often hear people say that they are an open minded person (at least my liberal friends say that) but I wonder just HOW open minded they really are. When a mind is open would it not be expanded to thinking outside the boxes of conventional thought? What thoughts does everybody else have that you also have? Where are you thinking in a box that even your opponents are trapped in?

I hear ‘open minded’ people being really worried that humanity is on the verge of destruction if we do not wake up really soon. Are they not just still thinking in terms of the same old ‘box’ of individuality and separateness? Do they not see that they still think of themselves as people or a person who is finite and temporal?

If your mind was infinitely open would you not be God? Well, yea, you would be but then you would not be dealing with ‘reality’ would you?

Now the word reality has the root of ‘real’ and most dictionaries have the second definition of the word real as permanent. Are ‘we’ permanent? Is this illustrious individual person that I think I am a permanent thing in the infinite universe? Has it always been and will it always be?

Nay!

Are we not are just temporary phenomena that rise and will some day disappear? Some would say that we are just an illusion, a dream that the humans who are ready can wake up from. O wake, O wake, O Israel…

This is not denial of the ‘reality’ of the manifest world, the drama that life offers. No, quite the contrary. With this perspective available to you, you can choose between two identities. The first one, the box that everyone has, is thinking of yourself as a person with all the dramas of life and even really get into that life. The second identity is thinking of yourself as God, the witness of drama that is life. You have a choice.

This, for me, is what it means to be ‘born again’ once of water and a second time of spirit. “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” The ‘and’ makes it TWO identities that we can choose from.

Why do we go to the movies? Is it not for the drama that they offer, the excitement or the emotion that they stimulate in us? Yet, when the movie is over we can leave the theater and come back to ‘reality’ where the dramas are less intense.

When we are awake we have the option of getting into our lives and their dramas until we are fulfilled, then just say, “Beam me up, Scotty” and return to our true identity as Spirit or God to rest the human instrument that we are using to experience life through.

The truth will set you free somebody once said. Can being ‘bound’ to one limited little identity and soul be of the truth? Nay!

So why not be free to have two identities? Then you can enjoy both the drama of life and the peace WITH the world when your body/mind needs a rest.

I want to articulate a new angle on the biblical depravity and extend that all Jews, Christians and Muslims who embrace the bible as their moral manual are moral cowards for they do not have the courage to question the moral depravity and outright sickness of the writers of the bible.

I challenge the Jews, Christians and Muslims to admit that the writers of the bible were morally sick when they advocate slavery, or taking young girls as sex slaves, or murdering children, or murdering people who disagreed with you.  Yet, not one of the Christians or Jews I have challenged with this had the courage to say that yes, those behaviors are morally sick and the people who advocate them are morally sick people.  I say the writers of the bible were moral cowards because they did not have the courage to admit that this was their sickness and instead created a deity and attributed their own sickness to the authority of their deity. 

I say that the ‘problem’ here is that Jews, Christians and Muslims do not have the moral courage to question any of the writings of the bible let alone the more advance or subtly sick teachings of even Jesus.  The question is moral courage.  Religious people use a deity to justify their own moral depravity and keep a hard hearted perspective on life.  Religious people, particularly western religious people, do not have the courage to question authority, practically religious authority, but also political authority such as the constitution, and go beyond the moral depravity of the ancient and primitive people of the past. 

Yet, I see that the bible does point in the direction we should go in that the teachings EVOLVE from the most morally depraved OT to a softer, gentler, kind, more loving and liberal perspective in the NT.  So the bible is pointing toward being a liberal.

I hear the Christians try to terrorize people by telling them they will burn in hell for all eternity if they do not submit to Jesus’ authority and I feel the moral depravity of this.  Sharing fear is NOT a loving thing to do, yet it is all that conservative religious people know. 

I find that there are very few things in the bible that are not morally depraved but one of them is ‘love one another’.  And love drives out fear, NOT induces it.  Christians try to induce fear and because of this they are morally depraved and sick. 

I constantly amazed as to how far the Christians would go to deny the obvious contradictions and moral depravity that the bible has.  And in the end they run away when challenged.  At least they did not try to kill me as their bible tells them to. 

Interesting thought for the day:

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C. !!!!!!!!!

From http://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=35618107

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9507505/

It is clear that President Bush has seen that liberality is where we all want to go.  He sends his representatives to more conservative counties to tell them that they need to liberalize their societies, but still does not see that his conservative base needs to liberality. 

Jesus was a liberal.  His way was to be liberal.  His message was to be liberal.  Liberality is the way, the truth and the life.  No one finds heaven on Earth except a liberal. 

Liberals are lovers.  So be liberal and love ALL that life has to offer. 

I recently read an article by David Korten called Renewing the American Experiment where he called liberals or progressives to create credible stories that express our values, answer critical questions, enlarge and redefine the terms of debate, express our vision of human possible and evoke a sense of national purpose.

            I am inspired not to create a new story but to expand on an old story that will enable liberals and conservative, left and right, to embrace the same agenda and evoke a common sense of national purpose.  To often the liberals and progressive still think in terms of “us” against “them” and this limited way of thinking handicaps us. 

            In my story, I want to start with the Holy Bible.  I would start by deeply understanding the spirit behind the Bible, that which inspires or motives those who wrote it. I would start with the etymology of the words “holy” and “Bible”.  Good dictionaries have shown me that “holy” comes from or means whole (with a W).  “Whole” comes form or means heal or health.  The word “bible” comes from or means book.  Therefore, the title Holy Bible means Health Book.  The Holy Bible, therefore, is just an ancient and primitive attempt at teaching a healthy lifestyle and healthy ways of thinking. 

            Health of body and mind, of individual and nation, of culture and environment, can be and must be the focus of any people if they are to survive and prosper in this world.

The Holy Bible was a beginning, and only a beginning, of our understanding of how to be health of body and mind, of individuals and communities and of economics and environments.  We must strive for a greater understanding of ALL aspects of health and share that understanding with one another; individual to individual, nation to nation.

            I would like to stop here and define liberal.  The Webster’s International Dictionary defines liberal as one who is generous; one who favor greater freedom in political or religious matters.  Liberal suggests one free from prejudices or narrow thinking.  Antonyms of liberal are stingy, mean, bigoted or conservative.

            The International Bible Encyclopedia says, “It is well to bear in mind that a Biblical liberality can spring only out of a noble soul, and is Godlike in its genesis and spirit.”
            Jesus was a liberal. Jesus was a prototype of a liberal.  As liberals we “get” Jesus, to the degree we are truly liberal.   Liberals get the “fruits of the spirit” to the degree that we are loving, joyful, peaceful, longsuffering, gentle, faithful, meek and temperate, which are signs and behaviors of a liberal or healthy people and nations.

            We liberals are no better than the conservatives are; we are just blessed with certain advantages.  Even if we were raised in a mean, vile and conservative environments, somewhere along the way we were inspired or encouraged to be softer, gentler, compassionate and caring.  Somewhere along the way we were encouraged to see the big picture which gave us the faith we have in human evolution and potential. 

To be holy is to be whole, to be one, not divided against ourselves.  To be holy therefore, means we as liberals do not see ourselves as “us” against the conservatives “them”.  Instead, we can see ourselves AS them. 

            The Bible’s Great Commandment says, in part, to “love thy neighbor as they self.”  This is the foundation of all the scriptures and all laws.  If we were trapped in a dark pit of faithlessness, pessimism or greed would we not want somebody to help us out of that pit?    

            We cannot ignore the conservatives.  One message that 911 and the election of 2004 tells us is that if the conservative cannot vote their fearful agenda then they will drive airplanes into our buildings.  We must reach to ALL conservatives, those in our own back yard and in the rest of the world.

            Jesus said, as you do unto the least of them you do unto me.  He also said, ye are gods and God is one.  The not-so-hidden message is that we are one. 

            The Religious Right of America at least plays lip service to Jesus and the spirit of the Bible.  As we gain a better understanding of their spiritual language, we are better able to meet them where they are at instead of demanding they meet us where we are.  We are the ones who ‘get it’ so it is our duty to reach out to them. 

            The language of the Bible is ancient, archaic and primitive but it points us in a direction where we can ALL go.   The language of health of body and mind, society and environment is the language of the future Holy Bible, the language of an understanding what it takes to be perfect, holy and healthy as the Father in Heaven is perfect, holy and healthy.

I keep reading about the terrorist attacks and the governments of the world response.  They want other countries to confront those who preach hate.  Maybe it is time for ALL of use to confront our own beliefs that encourage us to ‘hate’ something, anything.  Hate is NOT the solution to anything. 

            For instance, most Christians teach that we should ‘love the sinner and HATE the sin.’  This is still teaching hate and is no different that the Jewish tradition of ‘love thy neighbor and HATE they enemy.’  Jesus tried to bring a reform to the Jewish tradition when he taught that we should ‘Love thy enemy’ and today most Christians at least play lip service to this idea (even if they do not practice it.)  To the Jewish people of Jesus’ time it was pure blaspheme to preach love of thy enemies just as it is pure blaspheme today to preach love of the sin. 

            The idea here is not to encourage sin when we ‘love’ the sin but to encourage love as a response or reaction to ANYTHING, even sin.  The experience of love is much better than the experience of hate.  If we were to ‘be not concerned about tomorrow’ and seek to find the ‘Kingdom of Heaven (that) is at hand’ which Jesus talked about, then we will seek the greater experience of love over hatred.   For love IS the Kingdom of Heaven.  If we are able to unconditionally love all that life offers then we ARE in Heaven. 

            Yet, as long as we think of ourselves a fleshly beings and not spirit then we are going to be afraid of what life offers us.  BUT, if we think of ourselves a Spirit that is using the body, mind and soul of the person then we will not be afraid of that which will threaten it.  This is what I feel Jesus meant by being “born (again) of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

            It works for me and it works for thousands of others around the world.  It is so much easier to love what life offers if you are just witnessing it.

            This does not mean there is not a time to be ‘of water’ and to identify with the flesh (body) and soul (person).  When we do this, we get the all drama that life offers and it is the drama that makes life richest.  However, when that drama gets to be too much and we need a rest then it is time to identify with the Spirit.