Spirituality for Living

Suppression for the common good. Abstinence makes the heart grow colder. Makes it grow downright dead. I often speak of how I feel alone, and people usually just dismiss it as more drama, as my anxiety. No, it’s just my experience. I can see this pattern of communication and reaction.  The initial action even comes from a dead source and institution that has no purpose, but to enrich its head be that government or business. There isn’t actually any thought. Dollar bills don’t think, nor do people whose sole purpose in life is to gain dollar bills. So everywhere I go it’s like I’m staring at credit cards, and they aren’t great conversationalists. Their faces are dead, their thoughts routine. I can see the wraith of a soul that once lived there. At times I contemplate resurrection, but the wraiths aren’t friendly. They have been taught to defend their [...] Continue to Seek…

Alan watts said society tells us what we ‘must’ be, and we ‘must’ be it voluntarily. That compulsory volunteer. They define tyranny as anything not forbidden being mandatory. Our freedom is just tyranny with the weight of moralism behind it. Japan has a very low crime rate, but a very high instance of self destructive behaviour. They are free like us, just more honest about it. Here we have this wonderful delusion that makes us turn our anxieties outward. Are we having fun yet? Are we supposed to be having fun? Oh yes, it’s mandatory.

For some accountability was obscure in their life. That not being clear, it also impairs responsibility. If there is no reaction then what is the basis for your action? If there is no basis, then how do you know if you’re doing any good or not? Not knowing how you affect the world is perhaps [...] Continue to Seek…

You never solve a problem with the awareness that it is a problem. As a matter of fact, it’s often that awareness that helps create that problem in the first place. It’s a pretty common state of mind and therefore people don’t take it seriously as a problem. This is why people with clinical anxiety disorders are typically very embarrassed about their issues. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is actually an outgrowth of anxiety. As I was saying, we can’t solve a problem with the same awareness that brought us to it. So for those who are overly anxious they tend to impair their own ability to remedy whatever they are anxious about. Anxious minds come to anxious conclusions.

Anxiety isn’t harmless, even if the object of the anxiety is. It is even a classic concept. We have always dealt with it though for the most part surprisingly poorly. In the [...] Continue to Seek…

There are basically two ritual paths, and you will find one or the other in any faith. An exoteric path and an esoteric. An ecstatic path or a contemplative, same thing. Though one is seen as holy and is approved, and the other tends to get demonized. There is even a story from the Bible of that schism.

King David danced naked when inspired during his coronation. The rabbinical caste frowned and shook there venerable heads. They saw his behaviour as unholy, unworthy of the Christ or christened one, the king of the nation of Israel, but he was dancing as a way of praise. He was moved by the holy spirit of ashe and it was an expression of joy, but the contemplatives (in the Eurasian movement the grey faces) see it as forbidden. Passion limits or eliminates the possibility of control. King David was very far from tyrannical.

Now one [...] Continue to Seek…

I wonder how Machiavelli would be seen back in the day? As you know Machiavelli, had considerable influence as a strategist, but not much virtue. His power came from “not revealing the rules of the game”, and for supposedly not having much virtue but he would not have been villainized in African culture.  His guidelines in ‘The Prince’ spoke more of peaceful influence tactics than war. He advised his liege even when in exile that if he would grow his kingdom he needed to do it by making the conquered love him. By conquering not with soldiers, but with influence. In Voodoo, ashe isn’t by necessity brute force. If an African warrior was strong but stupid and got killed, he wasn’t considered to be powerful. It was the opposite. They didn’t see bad luck as the influence of evil spirits. They didn’t view the spirits that way, they were just [...] Continue to Seek…

Voodoo is basically African shamanism. There was a first great spirit, the source of all life and creation, but he created the world not as separate from himself but as an act of self expression. Dancing. As he revealed more of his inherent power, or ‘ashe’ as it’s known, he took the form of various spirits known as Loa. Loa were spirits of the elements and of various forces of life, like death or birth.

Ma’at, which was the organized religion of Egypt, stemmed from the more primal voodoo, but they shared much in common as they did with many middle eastern faiths like the Yezidi Kurds. The basic concept was by one name or another, and the various tribes had parallel ideas. They just used different words. Ma’at was a bit more scholarly then voodoo.

What separates voodoo from an understandable religion? Is voodoo a quest for power or a [...] Continue to Seek…

Halloween is very much ingrained in our collective unconscious, and has a very long history. It was basically the Celtic New Year. Like the Norse legend of the world being born of ice, they see winter as the first season not the last (or rather they did). Halloween is more like the traditional thanksgiving. This is why they had an act of remembrance, and would set places at the dinner table for their recent dead who in that day and age very likely helped with last years crop anyway.

There is a lot of symbolism connected to Halloween, and a lot of pagan concepts are linked to Halloween. The Christian notions are sort of late comers to the holiday, though the name for the holiday itself is of Christian origin. The Celts believed that all souls who passed regardless of moral virtue, passed into the underworld which wasn’t hell. It [...] Continue to Seek…

I live in America. A stronghold of religious weirdness, and quite feral about it. I hear India has cows, poor people who break and deform their own bodies to get daily bread. We do it here also, just not for faith and with more refined methods. We should be proud of ourselves. Advanced self destruction. They aren’t unlike us. Their attitudes are just more obvious. The holy men nod their heads sagely, or argue like fishmongers wives. The unthinking do what they were raised to believe they should do, and the cranks abuse everyone. Ours is full of rationality! The Rishis feel they are to, and they criticise the west.

Maybe this illusion of sanity is just the psychosis of consensus, and nobody has handled it well.

I intend to lead an uprising. The agenda? That we are having no uprising. Not sure it will take off? Indeed, people want to [...] Continue to Seek…

What it would be like if I could do anything? The wizard is eventually revealed as a silly little man behind a curtain. He still had the power, and magic is everywhere. Martin Luther King was really just upset that people were being creepy to each other, and yet he made a big change in the world. That which is immortal is the power, not the person.

What would happen if every poor person became wealthy? Yay! Chaos. I love chaos, but inevitably people have to have their order. Somebody would get the idea that the wealth had to be used in some other way.

Magic does exist, it’s just not the fantasy people want. People wouldn’t be afraid of the fantasy possibilities. They are actually very popular ideas. They intuit that there is something deep and complex behind it and maybe not so utilitarian. They are right, but they do [...] Continue to Seek…

The shamans knew about the full mind. Do everything counter to the way that everybody else did. This is the path of the Heyoka. Sacred clown. They support their tribe by showing them how things are undone, keeping them alert. They were tricksters, but because they went backwards. They just “undid” things. People kept aware of what they were doing and why.

Shamans need power to heal, and they need to counter the fear of the one they help. Genghis Kahn was a shaman. They were men of power, for good or ill. When Kahn underwent the rite of initiation, rather than swim the ice water he pulled in his predecessor and drowned him.

You say red, they say no black.  I say red and black.  I blame you for your problems, then I accept your apology for hurting you. Let’s all be miserable!  Hell can be enlightenment, but then hell ceases to [...] Continue to Seek…