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I don't know, you try to make a joke to lighten the atmosphere ...

I think it is time for a break anyway, but maybe that's just me.

Have fun, people. And remember all of this is just a game, so play nice, if you can.

J 

Thanks for your response, Hadi. I'll read it as I find time and perhaps respond to the parts that make sense. You can have whatever role you want, and that others will support. As for me, I have no interest in following you -- across the street, into Valhalla, or into the nearest rest room. You're on your own, as far as I can tell. Others may choose to follow, but that's for them to decide.

And 203.12.152.23, I thought it was pretty low of you to speak for Deepak. It hasn't worked in the past, and I doubt it will this time.

And by the way, Hadi, what was the point of all the questions? Did you even read my responses? Do you ever listen to anybody but your blessed mirror?

Cathy, I posted before reading your responses. Your way of looking at what happened seems much kinder and more loving than my own. Thanks for that!

For anyone who might wonder why I repost Hadi's exact words, I wish to explain that often in the past, Hadi has said that I have misinterpreted or misrepresented what he said. Although it is possible that I have misinterpreted, at least the readers can know the exact words I am referring to.

P.S.

I did not take Dave's use of "we" and "us" to include me or the members of the forum...I guess because it started out

" I'm content to leave things essentially where you did, with the understanding that some of us...

I took "some of us" to mean that he was talking about himself and others like him...again, funny how different people read the same thing different ways, eh? :-)

Peace!Cathy

Hadi said:

"I don’t know if you recall, but there was a post by one of the anonymous posters that said something to the effect of : 'Dave Rushing has now appointed himself spokesman for the rest of the Forum'".

And:

"I note that you have received some agreement on these views. That many here tend to think your arguments are well reasoned and sound. They agree with your opinions. Peggy, Kate, Lennie and Dick Skep are all in agreement with you." (Bold type added.)

And:

"So, you and Dick and Pegs and Kate/Karen and Lennie are in fact in the moral majority. I fully accept that my own views and those of others here, such as Chris, Geoff, Terry, Carol and to a certain extent, Bob F, tend to be minority views. So much so that I would place us in the one percentile group when placed against prevailing world 'opinions'".

Such irony! Hadi criticizes Dave for what he sees as speaking for others and then he does exactly that himself in his next post!

Hadi, I question your authority to be my spokesman! You are, quite simply, mistaken about what I believe and what I don't. If you had paid much attention to my list of beliefs, you would have been aware of that.

That makes me wonder if others you have divided into your lists have also been inaccurately portrayed as you speak for them.

Hadi

I enjoyed your posts...it struck me as funny that you perceive me as possibly a skeptic, however :-)Funny, not as in your perception was amiss or anything--though, in fact, it is...but because I guess that is how I have "portrayed" myself to you all with all my questions and empathy for the logical etc...I say it's funny because the ideas I entertain in my head are certainly not skeptical in nature...it just goes to show the limited extent to which we can know people via the internet. Again, I am not saying that you have misread me as much as I am saying that I must have only shared part of who I am--and this was not a conscious thing...actually, I have little memory for details--I can not tell you the details of things I've said here--and I am not one to search archives...it's past now :-)

Anyway, for the record, I am in agreement with Deepak's teachings and Ken Wilbur and Neale Donald Walsch,and Polly Berends, and Richard Bach--I have been since high school(well, only with Bach at that time--though I was reading a lot of "New Age" stuff, that I don't much like these days, though I don't discount them completely--stuff like Star People and Pyramid Power :-) Didn't read Deepak and Berends until my 20's. My "agreement" with Dave's paragraph that you used at the beginning--: "Chris, thanks for the follow-up. I'm content to leave things essentially where you did, with the understanding that some of us who like things to be comfortable with our intellects aren't apt to change that part of our thinking just to gain those "truths" that can only be attained through ignoring logic and experience. I have no real problem with others choosing that route to their beliefs, as long as they don't insist that that's the only way those things can be known. If those "truths" are only accessible that way, I can leave them alone. Unfortunately, the only evidence we seem to have for soul or spirit or mind is what "masters" tell us".

my agreement was about Dave's right to see things that way, and to approach spirituality in a more "logical" way--as many scientists arrived there at whatever point he felt motivated to do so. I did disagree with his thought that the only evidence of the soul or spirit is what the "masters" tell us--I do remember posting about that :-)

I guess what makes me appear iffy is that I have not "experienced" or realized oneconsciousness... and I have questions about ulimate truth---my "mind" wants to have it all make sense--not be proven, mind you, but just make sense to me--like why we're here and the stuff about the ways Jesus healed and Wilber's embracing all form etc...I have known since I was 12 that there was more to life than met the eye...that much I feel I do know :-)

I have also just within the last year or so come to realize that I can actually come to "know" truth--before, while I was intrigued by all I read, and felt it could be, I just felt it all so confusing--the different beliefs, religions etc...and felt one could convince one's self that any particular path was true or similarly, that it was not true...and so I lived with this idea that there was more to Life and being a master than I knew, but as for the specifics, I was suspending judgment :-) And, as in the lotus flower story you mentioned, unknowing can be a good thing :-) And, of course, I always had questions!

Anyway, thanks for showing me how I have appeared to you...always something to be seen anew...

Blessings! Cathy

Quite rght, Hadi.

This forum will now be placed in suspended animation for an indefinite period. The truth is somewhere to be found in the 54,527 messages here. Just exactly where it is located is something each individual will have to decide for him/herself.

Namaste

I think that will do for this year.

So it is then reasonable for you to ask, if what we say is true, where is the proof? In fact, you say as much when you say, :

"Then it should also be a role of the ones who claim to have "gotten it" to make their experiences with "it" understandable to "the person on the street" in words that relate. Codewords and mumbo-jumbo rarely work to capture such people's attention."

Nothing you have written expresses your frustration better than this statement, and I have great sympathy with your frustration. But the reason for your dilemma isn’t out here. It isn’t in the texts, it isn’t in the world, it isn’t in the lack of logic or reason, the reasons for your frustrations is the straight-jacket of "beliefs" you wear which limit your growth. Only you limit you.

Earlier you have said, "Breaking or shifting those models for belief is no easy task when that's how we get taught how Reality works. Undoing those systems of belief does require serious scrutiny of the principles involved and weighing them against alternatives. But unless we are at least willing to ask the questions (in my own opinion) of *both* sides of the argument, I don't see how we can come to an informed answer. That's the hard part of not just buying in to one position or the other. It does take some effort."

I see this problem all the time, and unfortunately over the Internet highway it is even more frustrating to deal with because all I can offer is these words on a screen. The problem is that you, and millions upon millions like you hope to find the answer in those "words". You hope to discover enlightenment in "words that relate". You hope that your intellect and your mind will be able to sit there and use reason and logic and arrive at a point when you "get it" and are "awakened". But no one was ever enlightened by reading or listening to words. What they had to do was to put the content of those words, the instructions of those words into "practice". They need to "do" instead of to "read". And it really is not enough to just sit and meditate. To sit with eyes closed, contemplating your own thoughts as they randomly dance across your mind is not going to do it. There are ground rules which operate as in any active system. These ground rules include things like , not lying, not killing, not stealing, not having excitable thoughts, etc. Things which amount to the eightfold noble path and the five Buddhist precepts or in the case of Deepak’s interpretation, the Seven Spiritual Laws.

These are all measures which help create the fertile ground for Enlightenment. For Realisation. For the stilling of the mind which is the central and determining factor in "attaining". But as you have said yourself, "it does take some effort".

It is the attempts to make the appropriate effort which is what lets down the ordinary guy. The ordinary man or woman who wishes for things to change must initiate some change herself before any change can actually happen. You can’t just sit and hope and you can’t just carry on as normal in the hope that IT will happen. IT will happen, eventually, but by then you’ll already be dead. But if you are already constrained by a lot of beliefs which prevent you from moving, then it becomes impossible. Beliefs such as:

some of us who like things to be comfortable with our intellects aren't apt to change that part of our thinking just to gain those "truths" that can only be attained through ignoring logic and experience. I have no real problem with others choosing that route to their beliefs, as long as they don't insist that that's the only way those things can be known. If those "truths" are only accessible that way, I can leave them alone.

Essentially, "it does take some effort" to succeed in stilling the mind to the point where words, images, sounds, music, movement and even the idea of Self have disappeared. There are several ways that this total stillness of the mind can occur, that I know of. And this does not include intelectualising, reasoning or philosophising.

A) In a "near-death" experience people will come to know the Divine through an "out of body experience". This experience is always transformative. The sense of bliss, ecstasy and love one feels in this experience is partnered with the sense of a great benevolent Entity offering deep reassurance. Sometimes, but rarely, a message may be relayed to the subject.

B) Through some enormous personal trauma or some deep dark depression a person will experience what has come to be known as "The Dark Night of The Soul". This experience is often very vivid and powerful. Having reached the very bottom of despair the mind finally comes to a dead end, without any further solutions and a breakthrough happens which can often manifest into a breakdown. The mental homes are full of such cases where someone has gone through the gap in a moment of despair but still conscious and returned from the experience believing they are Christ, Jesus, God, etc., Through treatment and medication they are eventually convinced by the doctors that they were deluded and had experienced a psychotic event.

C) Epilepsy. Many epileptics report similar experiences to those reported by "near-death" victims of a blissful unity etc., One does not have to be an epileptic to have an epileptic seizure. Sometimes isolated attacks can occur just once in a lifetime as a result of stress, lack of sleep, exhaustion etc. In such instances the mind again comes to a complete stop and for just a few minutes the subject may experience God in this gap, but again this remains an unconscious experience. It just happens. I know a friend of a friend who occasionally has quite mild seizures which can happen in mid sentence during a conversation and he just sort of goes somewhere else for a minute or two and then seems to return. So this could be what Peggy experienced.

D) Meditation. This is the act of consciously bringing the mind to a complete standstill. However, achieving it is no easy task otherwise the world would be full of enlightened beings. It requires many aspects of the psyche to be harmonised. Aspects which are highlighted in Buddhist and Spiritual teachings. It requires a certain quality of "doing" without doing. These things are beyond western language which is why so much Buddhist language is used because they have made words for these experiences. By achieving through meditation something much more powerful happens. Since this Way involves conscious volition, one is able to gain a great deal more information and wisdom from the experience in what I can only describe as a cosmic download.

Which brings us neatly to the question "is man a machine"? Afterall this was essentially Descartes line of reason, but it has been described in quite different ways by Gurdjieff and if you’d read the rest of that Skeptical link you posted you would have gained some perspective of his ideas:

Gurdjieff was hardly the only spiritual thinker to anticipate what seems at first to be a uniquely modern, technological deconstruction of the self. Buddhist psychology also holds that there is no core essence, no atman, no singular "I." Instead, traditional Buddhists divide the self into a number of "heaps" (skandas) that are composed of a shifting array of perceptions, judgements, mental categories, thoughts, and awareness. The material in these heaps is constantly shifting around, pushed and pulled by habit, desire, and the constantly changing causes and conditions of the world. Behind this ceaseless activity lurks no fixed platonic forms or eternal souls, but only the empty flux of constant change. Because this groundless flow terrifies us, Buddhist shrinks reasoned, we build castles out of the shifting sands of consciousness, and proclaim them stable, real and eternal. Within our minds, we reify an essential self, whose inability to respond spontaneously to the flux of things, or to recognize the emptiness in its heart, helps generate the delusions and sufferings of samsara. Indeed, Gurdjieff sounds a bit like a dour Buddhist when he says that "to awaken means to realize one's nothingness, that is to realize one's complete and absolute mechanicalness and one's complete and absolute helplessness." However, even this depressing analysis contains the seed of hope, a seed that Gurdjieff believed lay in our very capacity for realization and awareness. By paying attention to our own mechanical routines, we cease to identify with them, and this de-identification shifts our attention towards the higher "I" that observes its own process and directs, as best it can, its own inner growth. This transcendence-through-feedback separates the essential self from the automatism of the machine, and creates a crystal of consciousness capable not only of genuinely directing its own activity, but of actually surviving death.

I interpret our mechanicalness as being tied into that aspect of us which has no free Will, which you highlighted rather well in answer to my question on Free Will. I thought that was the answer I most agreed with. Because of our conditioning and all the other events in our life that determine what we do and who we are, we tend to have next to no free will. We tend to be buffeted here and there by random as well as mechanically controlled systems such as economics, political order, theological beliefs, work, etc. From the moment the alarm goes off in the morning we fall into a mechanical routine like a well oiled engine. It is through the success of breaking out of these mechanical habits and especially the mechanical thought patterns which occupy our minds that we eventually find true freedom, and to do that one has to just "let-go". The very gestalt of reason as we know it must be discarded before true reason and right perception can ever be realized.

Let us return again to the original statements.

"Personal persuasions, perhaps based on reading what others have thought, are our only ways of knowing the meaning and essence of soul and spirit and mind. It's like we all have a notion of these things, and hope there is some validity to them, but we haven't been able to verify their existence beyond the philosophical arena."

And I would also like to include this one:

"Chris, thanks for the follow-up. I'm content to leave things essentially where you did, with the understanding that some of us who like things to be comfortable with our intellects aren't apt to change that part of our thinking just to gain those "truths" that can only be attained through ignoring logic and experience. I have no real problem with others choosing that route to their beliefs, as long as they don't insist that that's the only way those things can be known. If those "truths" are only accessible that way, I can leave them alone. Unfortunately, the only evidence we seem to have for soul or spirit or mind is what "masters" tell us".

I note that you have received some agreement on these views. That many here tend to think your arguments are well reasoned and sound. They agree with your opinions. Peggy, Kate, Lennie and Dick Skep are all in agreement with you. Patricia and Cathy may not be wholly in agreement, but they see your arguments and beliefs as valid and logical. Difficult to argue against. You have obviously given the matter a great deal of thought. In fact, I would go so far as to say that probably eighty percent of the people who regularly read here will find it difficult to find much fault in your reasoning. In your beliefs. In your opinions.

If you were to take your arguments on the street, to the man in the street, religionists aside, I think you would get more than 90% agreement. Possibly as high as 99%. Ninety nine percent of Westerners who are non religious may agree with you. Even amongst the religious, the Christians and Jews and Moslems of Western society I am sure you would find the majority agreeing with your reasoning but, as a matter of faith, those groups would choose to believe that there is more to it than you are saying, and as a matter of faith choose to believe what their religion and their elders and the State tells them. This would be what their own "exclusive" majority tends to "believe", i.e. that God of the Bible and myth which you referred to in answer to my questions. Those who live with man made morality would agree with your logic but, as Dick Skep pointed out they would "believe something for which there is little more than faith to support the belief".

And I think you and Dick Skep are firmly in the same camp. So much so that you voiced a concern that some may think he was you. ;)

So, you and Dick and Pegs and Kate/Karen and Lennie are in fact in the moral majority. I fully accept that my own views and those of others here, such as Chris, Geoff, Terry, Carol and to a certain extent, Bob F, tend to be minority views. So much so that I would place us in the one percentile group when placed against prevailing world "opinions".

Although you say Deepak Chopra speaks to a large audience I would challenge this. I would say that Deepak is most popular in America and specifically in California. That even there he appeals really only to a small group. I don’t know what the current U.S population is, but judging by his publication figures I would imagine that he appeals to less than a million people, most of them well-read intellectual types. You can tell me what percentage that is, if you like. His wide appeal in the U.S, thus far, I put down to his use of the words "affluence" and "success" which appeal to the capitalist American psyche. Although his books are published internationally it is very rare in Europe or Asia to come across anyone who knows who he is and even more unusual to find anyone familiar with his work. I am speaking only of my own experience of course and I am speaking of course of the man in the street, friends and family. Amongst my own friends only a handful are familiar with his writings and these are essentially people that Grace and I have introduced to Chopra’s writings because they were in need of "self-help" and because we are fans and supporters of his broad message. He is quite well known in India, of course, simply by virtue of being an Indian success story himself.

My point is, Deepak Chopra’s views are essentially my views and those of Geoff and Terry and of course Carol. We may vary in some interpretations and understandings since between us we have different sources and influences other than Chopra, such as Rajneesh, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Jung, Buddha, Redfield, Niel Donald Walsh, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Ken Wilbur, Rumi, Krishnamurti, Stuart Wilde, Michael Talbot, Ram dass, Yogananda or Richard Bach, to name a few notable ones. But these views remain, essentially, a minority view even though recent years has seen a real resurgence in their ideas and teachings. These guys are essentially the guys you seem to refer to as "masters" when you say,

"Unfortunately, the only evidence we seem to have for soul or spirit or mind is what "masters" tell us."

For me, listening to these words and beliefs, what I hear is a man who seems to make the world of the "masters" and that of "us" and "we" (meaning your own), for me you seem to make these worlds mutually exclusive in your mind. You limit yourself a great deal in the first place by saying all you can do is read about IT. That the idea of "realizing" IT is not possible for mere mortals like "us". In a sense, the only way you can give these ideas of Chopra and the other mystic’s any validity whatsoever is to kind of intellectually "canonise" the messengers, thereby excluding yourself and anyone you know on a personal level from actually "knowing" Spiritual Truths. Do you see what I’m saying?

You are excluding the possibility that these "masters" were just ordinary men who "mastered". You prefer to believe they are exceptional men, divinely chosen. Special. Much as the religious man thinks of Jesus or Mohammed.

Essentially, Dave, I find that the difference between my world and your world is that yours is an exclusive world limited to the "prevailing opinions" the "prevailing beliefs" with which you have been conditioned. Whereas my world, the world of Chopra of Chris and Geoff and Carol and I forgot Silvia and Terry, ours is inclusive. All the ideas you so eloquently put forward are already included in our world view. We were not born in a vacuum of Spirituality, but rather, as has been testified by Chris and Geoff and myself, we too come from your world and from your world view. We were once skeptical non-believers, cynical, angry, logical, scientific, educated, intelligent people who used to think just like you. I’m not quite sure how many times this particular fact has been relayed to you, but you always dismiss it and then pour scorn on our claims that we now "know" differently. We don’t exclude science and reason. Far from it, we include it. Chris lives and works within science. We champion it. We use it to demonstrate spiritual truths, where possible.

Your world is limited rather than expansive. You believe things like :

"Value your own opinions. Value them enough to reject any others that don't make sense to you, or that disappoint you. You are the owner of your thoughts and opinions. Don't sell them to another, no matter how persuasive that other's appeals may be."

I have to ask, where is there room in this declaration for learning, for growth? There is none. You are proudly declaring, ‘believe only what you already know and nothing more’! The unknown remains unknown. And you don’t even own those opinions, Dave. They were largely handed to you through the education systems, through the media systems, through your parents beliefs and through books. That’s why they are essentially "beliefs" on which you have formed "opinions". I have already given you definitions for both the word "belief" and "opinion" and they amount to convictions without "proof".

Essentially, the difference between the way you think and the way a religious zealot thinks is indiscernible. You just have different "belief systems" both of which are essentially based on prevailing opinions and cultural conditioning. That, essentially boils down to Dick Skeps own definition of "us" when he writes:

"When an intelligent person believes something for which there is little more than faith to support the belief, what else can you say except that the person believes simply because he or she wants to? "

Not only is there no more room in your cup, but you cling to the contents of your cup, guarding your cup for fear that this is all the sustenance in the world. The "master" on the other hand has emptied his cup. He has given up his "beliefs". He is always open for more, and he is prepared for his ideas to change as things change. This is what Terry meant when he said so eloquently, "it’s all B/S!" And one of the Anonymous ones asked, "even the things that you are saying?" And Terry replied "yes!" It is like the Zen proverb where a man approaches the Zen Master and says, "What is Truth?" and the Master replies "Truth is a Lotus flower". The man irritably says, "What nonsense." And the Master says "Oh, isn’t it?"

When one is capable, not just conceptually, but in a very real sense to accept that everything he believes is B/S, then one is really able to enter the mind set of "let-go". One can let go their beliefs. Then the cup is emptied. Only on the foundations of "let-go" are we able to go into "no-mind" and discover what it is to simply "be". To be a human "being". In simply "being" we stop projecting our limitations on reality and are finally free to realize the "unknown".

Sorry for the delay, Dave. Weekend shopping and enjoying life and love with my appendage took priority over this post. I’m writing off-line so if you have added anything since Friday evening or my last post, I wouldn’t have seen it. So excuse me if I haven’t taken any more recent thoughts into account.

Regarding the Soul, while your dictionary carries a different definition, I’m sure you would agree from your knowledge of world religions that Christianity, Islam and Judaism believe in a Soul which survives death and goes to Heaven or Hell, while Buddhists and Hindus believe in a "Higher Self" which translates pretty much to the Western and Islamic Soul, with the difference being that the Higher Self survives death to be reborn or reincarnated. So 90% of world religious belief systems believes the Soul survives death. In any case, I hope that you don’t mind if we work with this more common definition of the Soul which you have already indicated you do not believe in.

I would like to begin with this statement of yours:

"Personal persuasions, perhaps based on reading what others have thought, are our only ways of knowing the meaning and essence of soul and spirit and mind. It's like we all have a notion of these things, and hope there is some validity to them, but we haven't been able to verify their existence beyond the philosophical arena."

I don’t know if you recall, but there was a post by one of the anonymous posters that said something to the effect of :
"Dave Rushing has now appointed himself spokesman for the rest of the Forum".
I have some sympathy with this sentiment in that the paragraph I have quoted and most of your posts used the "we" and the "us" in an inclusive way which seemed to speak for all of us. I think that there are many here who had difficuly with this way of expressing ideas which were essentially your own personal opinions. I do not believe they represented the beliefs of myself, Geoff, Chris, Kitty, Carol, Jeff, Frank Terry or Bob. (If I left anyone out I hope they can speak for themselves.) However, they were presented with some authority and conviction, the same kind of conviction which advised a newcomer to the Forum whom had entered seeking advice :

"Value your own opinions. Value them enough to reject any others that don't make sense to you, or that disappoint you. You are the owner of your thoughts and opinions. Don't sell them to another, no matter how persuasive that other's appeals may be."

I think, Dave, since you are essentially a self confessed skeptic of spirituality and especially Deepak Chopra, that you should question your qualification or authority to be his spokesman, as in the advice you gave to the newcomer, or our spokesman when it comes to knowledge or understanding of Spirit, Soul and God. I hope you will give that some consideration. I think if someone visited a church for councel they would not expect to receive it from an atheist. I think if you are going to give that kind of advice you might consider qualifying the advice by declaring in the first place that you are a non-believer. IMO.

"Ah, who cares about the stupid Answer anyway"
"The answer probably doesn't exist"

If your message is based on nothing provable, I guess you sell it by calling yourself an emmisary of E.T. (phone home - ha!) and announcing the message is that there is no message.

and if i want to hear words about truth, the last person i would ask is someone who claims that their truth is actually coming from a spirit which has temporarily invaded their body. credibility goes to zip. look at that nut maclaine

The beings at Starbuilders are emissaries of The Federation of Light, a council of over 1,000 E.T. masters that source from different dimensions, various locations in space and points in time. They are the only incarnated beings on the planet who represent this particular Council. When in human form they function as portals through which transdimensional energies, models of reality and technologies enter into the Earth Plane.

The Federation recently participated in Ascension work on a similar planet in the Orion Sector. Malenchen and Maruna were involved during the pre-transition phase. Zal and Zol were present at the time of the Ascension and witnessed the birth of a star.

The Federation of Light is just one of many Councils that are involved in Earth's Ascension Process. One of its specialties includes manifesting highly integrated and systematic technologies of consciousness which assist in the rapid manifestation of one's Divinity. They establish a solid, fifth dimensional, energetic foundation.

Does anyone know of any businesses that incorporate D.C.'s wealth conciousness teachings?

While I'm feeling generous, here's another little excerpt from the Starbuilders site:

An Experiment

For many IROOT:NOTians, all of this - life, the universe, and everything - is an experiment. Stumbling through countless lifetimes trying to find The Answer is unnecessary. This endless search for The Answer is SOMEBODY ELSE'S IDEA! Bungling through one lifetime is enough.

If you think about it, throughout history, great minds from all cultures have struggled to find The Answer. (Some have even claimed that THEY are The Answer.) Yet, whenever two people agree on what It is, they inevitably interpret it differently. What's worse, while you're in Search Mode (trying to find It), you usually create an additional layer of suffering.

YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU MUST FIND IT TO BE HAPPY!

IROOT:NOTians are quick (but cautious) to observe that The Answer PROBABLY DOESN'T EXIST! We've been spending at least part of our lives LOOKING, when EXPERIMENTING might have been less painful, more fun, and at least more holistic.

Have you ever noticed that when you stop trying to get something or are indifferent towards it, the universe often drops it in your lap? Try saying, "Ah, who cares about the stupid Answer anyway" (and meaning it in a non-sarcastic way). Maybe The Answer (if it exists) will pop into your brain while you're brushing your teeth. As Evin, The Unsavior, I want to share this thought with you. It's neither a threat, a promise, nor a command. At best, it's like an angel's feather tickling your imagination. At worst, it could trigger a judgment program.

click

I was once accused of not believing in God. After seeing the interview with Larry King I was assured that Mr. Chopra and I are on the same wave. I bought his book "How to Know God." It's amazing how two different people can have the same ideas about God. Thank you.

Good morning people (and others),

A while back someone mentioned a book called "Mutant message downunder". I still haven't sought out that book but I found an interesting link where it is discussed from the Aboriginal point of view -

click here

Interestingly enough I wasn't actually searching for it at all. :) I was looking for a few links to include along with excerpts from Native Wisdom for White Minds, which I have just added to my site. Click here.

The things you find when you're not even looking ... :)

Have fun.

Another interesting perspective on the question of 'truth' comes from a wonderful little book called ET101: The cosmic instruction manual for planetary evolution by Zoev Jho (aka Diana Luppi) -

Truth

We have noticed that you pretend to value truth on this planet. Some spend a lifetime seeking it. Your legal systems demand it, and you can be sued if your business doesn't practise it. Your philosophers define it, your scientists measure it, your religions exalt it, and you all fight over it. Meanwhile, all you are doing is paying global lip service to it. There is an excellent reason for all this: You have no idea what truth really is.

How the obvious has escaped you is a tedious story. The abridged version of it amounts to this: You embraced fear. After that unholy act, it has been downhill ever since. Fear is the first lie, the lie that tells you that you are separated from the whole. Once it has been embraced, you are incapable of ever telling the truth under any circumstances without blowing the game.

Truth, by its nature, is the light. Fear cannot, by its nature, be in the light without dying. It becomes a simple matter of self interest. Fear has owned this planet, its people, and their systems for a long time. It does not wish to give up the property it has acquired because it is a parasitic life form which cannot live separated from your life forces.

The truth is, you are the truth. It is not external to you, as you have been led to believe. For that reason, it is ludicrous to set out on a spiritual journey in search of it. It is likewise ridiculous to punish those who do not practice it when almost nobody on this planet does. As for philosophising over it, how can you when you wouldn't recognise it if it ran over you in the street? Meanwhile, measuring it is done in your attempt to dominate it, leading you further into the lie that it lives outside of you like an enemy that must be controlled. To exalt it is also to see it as separate. And fighting over it is so absurd as to not deserve our comment at all.

The totality of your clinically insane behaviour surrounding truth has been cleverly manipulated by fearin its attempts to keep your eyes off the truth. In this manner, fear was able to continue uninterrupted and undetected in its process of eating you alive. But don't worry - ther is a cure. All you need do is awaken to the fact that you are the truth. As the light comes on, the parasite will die, leaving you joyously able to reclaim command.

- ET101: The cosmic instruction manual for planetary evolution by Zoev Jho (aka Diana Luppi)

It's a great little book if you ever see it around. I just happened to pick it up at a book sale last year and I love the blend of humour and insight. One without the other is somehow less memorable. There is much truth to be found in its pages. :)

jlm/;m;:

hello

thanks and yes, Dave, i know..... ;)

just caught your pig post on refresh!!! and hahahaha!!! loved it!

Sure thing, Carol. Hope your day is special! (I know you've said they all are, but you know what I mean.)

well, Dave, it has been fun floating around cyberspace with you this am, but i have some wood to chop and water to carry, so to speak. mundane things, not nearly as much fun as playing with you, but......well, you know.... :)
so here is wishing you and Peggy a good day! "see" you later, i hope?

This "time" subject reminds me of the time this effeciency expert was driving in the country and spotted a farmer under an apple tree holding a pig in his arms, plucking apples, and feeding them, one by one, to the pig.

The expert stops his car, goes over to the farmer, and says, "I know it's really none of my business, but I couldn't help but want to tell you that you could save a lot of time if you just set the pig on the ground, shake the tree real good and the apples would be all over the ground and the pig could eat all it wants."

The farmer looks at him with this strange expression on his face and says,"Hell, man. Time ain't nothing to a pig."

but, yes, that is a wierd thing to realize. one of her sons celebrates 2/28 and the other celebrate 3/1. i often wondered about those choices too.

she only had two children, too. different fathers but same birthdays.

my sister, in TN, had two sons born on that date! that was real wierd, too.

Just the other day I was talking with somebody about birthdays and how people with February 29th birthdays really have to do without a real birthday three out of four years. That is unless that want to count February 29th as going by just in the moment between 11:59:59 Feb/28 and 12:00:01 Mar/1. Talk about "before" and "after" in their true sense and you get locked up in weird!

Crown/Harmony Books

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