Liquid Dogma
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Labels: This Is What Scientologists Really Believe
Monday, December 25, 2006
Labels: Merry Christmas
Friday, April 07, 2006
(because the following was too long to be a comment on LostTruant)
Choice. To what extent can we or do we make choices in our lives? I need to get something for the recipe I’m making (which was one of many options) and I can go to safeway or king soopers. I wake up in the morning and receive news that informs me of circumstances that will change the course of my life and I might feel cheated by life or I might feel blessed, both possible in the same exact circumstances. So I choose, right, and these choices affect the very background color of the canvas of my life. I can’t change the circumstances, often, but I can make the best of them and the best of me by choosing to live deliberately, by choosing to feed the good wolf inside of me so that he can conquer the bad one in the great battle.
OR.
We back into the concept of choice because in order to support a certain collection of truths we have no choice but to believe in choice. I was talking with someone about this recently and she told me about her grandfather, who grew up poor poor poor in hellville USA, blah blah blah, and now he’s a “self-made” millionaire. She puffs up with pride at this. We all puff with pride at this, and it has nothing to do with our god ($$). We puff with pride whenever the cards don’t look so good but we win the hand, whether it be financially, emotionally, etc. But we also believe in individuality, that each person is this unique unit. And we believe in a system of credit. All of this relies on a notion of choice because without it it all falls down. It’s not that impressive that grand-pappy did such and such if it was the result of myriad circumstantial and internal variables that are more complicated than we know. I’m on my way to the store. Safeway is closer that king soopers, so I’ll choose to go there. Is that a choice? Actually I “like” king soopers more so I’ll choose to drive the extra block. I like it more because I used to go with my mother on Saturdays there. Is that a choice? Voltaire and Locke argued that free will is an absurd concept, and that choice is just whatever the dominant idea in our brain is, which is created by many things beyond our control.
Get to the point. I’m not saying anything bad about choice, necessarily. I just think that we arrive at the concept not independently, I think we back into it with no choice, if you will. Without it our house of cards falls, but I don’t think it means we understand choice nor can it hold any real weight as a concept on it’s own. Frankly the only way to explain it is to say without it all the other cards fall, so it must be true.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Long ago, man grew out of the world, yet he continued to be part of it. The trees, the sky, the bear and the eagle were all his friends. He made symbols of some and observed them carefully as they lived. From these observations, he created lessons for himself on how to conduct his own life. The mythology of the world around him told him that he was part of the world and instructed him to act in a proper way.
Then the bear and the eagle changed, slowly, into an old man. They grew a beard, as long as all the ages, and slowly ascended into the sky, far out of reach. Man tried to turn to the eagle and to the bear for how to live, but they were of no help. Help was beyond reach. The promise of a life spent with the world had passed and they were now forced to find a way to live on the earth that would earn them the right to have peace and wonder in a new life that happened after they died. This created much heartache, for man could not fully grasp the fact that god had deserted him and turned his world against him. But the power of superiority replaced any sadness.
Then god, in a great thundering crash, tore open the heavens and fell to earth, dead. Just like that. And there was no life after life to hope for. And there was nothing to replace him. God lay in a pool of his own blood in the middle of Wall St. And the people were frantic. What shall we do? they asked. But there was no answer. So many of them took the symbols of the culture that had grown from god's gift of dominion and fetishized these objects. The temples had already been built to money, but they were now more than ever the true houses of the holy. Food, the source of life, was reduced to something that required few resources to secure and little time to consume -- time is money, they reasoned. And the promise of a world that accepted them as it's own had passed, as had the promise of new life after this life ended. What was once the state of life grew into something attainable for a cost grew into something unattainable for all. You could be rich and you could be young and a few could do it at the same time, but no one could do anything forever.
And fifteen minutes became the new historical standard for relevance. And television myhologized life and life mirrored the mythology and so forth and so forth.
But reckoning will come. We will destroy ourselves because we want to. Because the only thing worth living for in a society with nothing to live for is death.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Men pray because it is useful to make yourself humble before something greater than yourself every day.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
In the beginning, there was an intense light covering all of creation. All beings were immensely happy because the light was very warm and very beautiful. But there came a man who grew jealous of the power of the light. He sought to place the light in a large black box. But the light was too strong and too powerful to be contained. Once word of his deed spread, other men of similar interest sought their own piece of the light and, in the end, succeeded.
The light had vanished into the black boxes, which were now as numerous as the men on earth desiring power. The men bickered back and forth while the creatures of the earth wept and wept, for darkness now spread where once there was light. "We are cold," they said. "We forget the beauty of the light. Show it to us." But the men would not relent. The people were overwhelmed with sadness, so they followed the men around, begging to see the light in the box. Some chose a man with one box and others chose a man with another box. But the men would never show the light.
Less and less was spoken of the light. There were the old stories, spread by men of questionable memory from the very long ago and they maintained that there was, indeed, a beautiful light in each of the boxes, divided amongst them. But no one believed the old tales. Stories of the light began to be replaced with stories of a magnificent lamp or a sparkling pile of gold. But, truly, no one knew what the boxes contained. And, in fact, the people began to adorn the boxes themselves and the boxes became the source of the legend.
"At least I can see the box!" said one adherent. "The box brings me peace. Does it matter what is in the box?" said another. "There was never anything in the box," claimed a third, " the box revealed itself to us to show us the squareness and blackness of life."
And the men grew rich and powerful and less cautious than they had once been, due mainly to the wars they created between themselves, arguing the merits of their own box over the boxes of their neighbors. "My box is bigger and blacker than yours!" one would claim and the other would retort: "Well, my box is older and more distinguished than yours!" and this kind of argument went on and on. And with increasing violence. One especially powerful man would come along and force the people of one box to come follow his box. If they would not, he would have them killed. There was much sadness in the world.
But occasionally, a man who would be willing to undergo a great ordeal would travel to one of the boxes and sneak a look inside. There were few of these men and they were mostly dismissed as fools. But, more commonly, they were grossly misunderstood, for though they brought news of the light inside the box, the people had long since forgotten that there WAS light inside the box. So their stories of light became stories to explain a particular box in a particular place at a particular time. And the light remained hidden and divided.
A man who had lost his inner peace set out one day on a walk, thinking that perhaps he could meditate and once again find the peace that had defined his life long ago. Each day he took the same walk up the same path. Each day it took him the same amount of time to complete the walk.
As time passed, he began to understand his body again. With this understanding, he began to relax the posture that knotted him up and began to stride with the stature of a man at peace at all times, in all things. His body changed and he began to notice that he looked better and healthier. People who noticed him along the way commented on how good he looked. People who he was attracted to began to suggest that the attraction was mutual. All because of the daily walks he took.
Whereas once he had noticed the freshness of the air and beauty of the walk he took, more and more he began to be concerned with the shape and structure of his body. He began to walk at times that he knew people would notice and praise him for the daily ritual he performed. He began to grow bored of the ritual and increased his pace again and again and again until his walk grew into a sprint -- up and down and around the course of his path, endless laps.
And then he noticed that his body began to lose the shape it had once had. Oh, the outer shape of the body was as lean and muscular as ever and as attractive to others as ever. But his body was more knotted now than ever. And what's more, he felt less at peace than he had before he began the walks. He pushed himself harder and faster and made his body leaner and stronger, but to no avail. It would not help his aching body or his restless mind. In fact, the aching and the restlessness grew.
So he gave up. "No more walks for me -- they made everything worse," he said. And he vowed to do the opposite of what he had been doing -- he would rest and he would lay about and he would take his body out of the shape it had been in. The consequences were of no import to him. But this made him back into the man he had been when he started this quest. And he wept. Because it seemed as if there was nothing he could do. There seemed to be no peace to be found in the world.
And then one day he took a walk. And he felt his peace returning and he felt his body grow stronger. And he realized that it was not the walk that had led him astray. It was himself.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Well put, my friend. In spite of my barrage of dogma-based arguments, it is the pure simplicity of life and the wonder and beauty I see all around that is what I relate to god. It is the fact that my friends and family love me even when I am lost. It is kindness that comes out of nowhere. It is the knowledge that life will be beautiful because it can be, even when life seems unalterably lost. The story of Abraham is a beautiful illustration of this. Life can be created where there is none. Men can be made whole when they have felt broken. All that is necessary is love.
It is when I am with those I love that I see god.
It is when I am wandering in a world removed from man that I understand god.
