Fiscal Cliff

Doing Coast to Coast brought a lot of conservative readers to this blog. I want to clarify for you that I was raised in a conservative family, in a conservative neighborhood and I am married to a man whose parents are also conservatives. When I’m talking about Republicans I am not talking about people who are the voter class – I’m talking about the leadership class. It’s my experience that people are people and when given the hard truth do the right thing no matter what label they may take on when they go into a voting booth.

I know Republican voters believe in hard work and personal responsibility – so do liberal people – the big difference is liberal/progressives believe there are some people who can’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps not because they are lazy, but because circumstances are too great and overwhelming to do so alone. I would really encourage everyone to watch the Ken Burns documentaries on PBS about the dust bowl. The dust bowl happened in a very maverick part of the country – where people believe in personal responsibility and were and still are very hard-working and believe in contributing to society. However the scope of the problem (and seriously just look at pictures and you’ll see how enormously devastating this ecological disaster was year after year for about a decade) was just too enormous for any one family no matter how big their extended family. It was as if every other day a major hurricane or tornado devastated the region – this went on for a decade. These dust storms were miles high and would drop 3 feet of earth over everything making all farming impossible. It was so enormous that the storms actually dropped earth from Kansas and Oklahoma in Washington DC and New York City. The government stepped in to save lives – children and elderly people were dying of “dust pneumonia.” The story is almost too much to bear but I suggest people take a look at this because the parallels of the Great Depression and our situation with the Great Recession are enormous.

So for those who think I want only blessings for people of like mind that is more than insulting it’s insane. However I am equally insulted when we have Republican politicians who want to take away benefits to Veterans, raise the age of social security, take money and medicare away from the elderly and make the middle class pay an extra 2000 a year in taxes when they are struggling like never before. All so the wealthy one percent (who pay less than anyone else in taxes) can keep their tax breaks. It’s disgusting.

The SIN of AVARICE and GREED are at the heart of these ideals. These are not Christian values and they are not Spiritual values which is why I am against them – that is why I take issue with these spiritual diseases that I see as eating away at the fabric of our world. These evils have somehow (in the past 30 or so years) turned from being society’s seeing Greed as despicable  and shameful to a virtue.

Well, I want to remind everyone GREED IS NOT A VIRTUE! In no religious text and on no spiritual path is GREED considered anything but one of the roots of EVIL  And what we have seen during the Bush jr. years was a ramping up of this disease to the point where we the average American tax payers are being asked to pick up the tab for the frat party on Wall Street. Lots of people got rich scamming the middle class and the poor. And now we are being asked AGAIN to pay for IT! TWICE – seriously how is that good for anyone? Except the shameful few.

So now onto my prediction about the fiscal cliff.  Democrats will stay firm and there will be a period of inaction until Republicans are forced to go ahead with the program. Republicans will come to realize if they stick to their guns there will be civil unrest and if they keep with their ridiculous “plans” they will not just be killing their future careers, but putting the nail in the coffin of their party for years to come. Which honestly I do not want to happen.

Democracy needs a viable two party system – but Republicans are making a huge mistake playing to the one percent and then using trickery to try and cover their tracks. The cat is out of the bag now and continuing on this path is suicidal for their party. This will have a long-term effect on the political system and will put them into the position of being a very small minority party for years to come. My compliment to them presently for at least honestly showing their hand instead of hiding behind the BS “Trickle Down Economics,” stuff. At least they are clearly showing that they have no compassion for people who were either born after 1960 or born into families without an express lane to Harvard or Yale.

The biggest disgrace in my opinion is starting two wars, destroying hundreds of thousands of lives, forever injuring those who served along with their families not to mention the highest cost – all the people who had to die for what? Both our troops and all the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of the Bush/Cheney oil grab that turned into a reckless pointless war which the Bush/Cheney administration lied us into.

All of us whether we want to admit it or not actually rely on systems to help us evolve whether that is the family system, the educational system or in the worst case scenarios people who are forced to take help from the government. No one wants to be in that position despite the propaganda of “welfare queens,” welfare has been reformed so that people can’t stay on it for any length of time. Not to mention if you have ever known anyone who has had to take government assistance (which includes social security, disability, medicare, food stamps, unemployment) they do it because they need to generally they aren’t proud of it. Many people are embarrassed about having to use food stamps, or get help of any kind.

Everyone wants to be independent and we must remember that if we are to be a “Christian Nation,” as is the herald of the Republican party, then we must actually posses those Christian values. If you have any doubts about what they are just ask yourself, “Would Jesus walk past a poor distraught person without helping him? Would Jesus want to rob the poor to give to the wealthy?” No. That’s the answer. If you are a Christian I can’t see how the current Republican plutocratic platform in any way conforms to your values. Either the Republican leadership needs to change or those who are staying loyal to a party they once believed in need to take a closer look at what is actual and factual and see if it squares with their real values. I contend it does not.

I do not think that 98% of Republican voters would vote that way if all the facts were broken down without the incendiary rhetoric that is used to make the leadership appear to be in the same camp as the good people who vote for them.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Yule and anything and every other holiday I am forgetting or don’t know about – Have a great holiday season.

Many blessing to all,

Denise

Answering a Reader…

Sineade wrote:

Interesting post Denise and Tina. I’m especially interested in getting your opinion on if you think the internet enhances ones psychic ability or disables it? I feel that people are becoming increasingly psychic and intuitive and I wonder if we will ever reach a point, where everyone just becomes psychic and it becomes a normal ability.

Also on another side note. Do you recommend any books or practices to enhance ones intuition?

I do think people are becoming more psychic. Or at least more open to it. I believe this is due in part to new technologies, more people with access to capturing types of technology – such as video, audio and photo equipment. It has also become OK to share ones experience, people are not just written off as crazy and more people are acknowledging their own brushes with the supernatural as information gets out there about what to look for.

If 2012 is going to be a marker of anything positive, it will be that we are more awakened. There is some very interesting moves technologically that are bringing us closer to opening ourselves up to understanding what is beyond our 5 senses. Some of them have to do with using a sense to trigger other senses, some are theoretical like string theory. All of the breakthroughs science is engaged in are actually prove out the vastness of our multiverse and supporting the notion of an animating force of which we are all a part.

I personally believe this is exactly what God is. It was always my supposition and actually I was literally kicked out of my high school English class – a Great Books style class, when the teacher asked the question, “Is there a God?” My answer to her was perhaps for those who believe there is the experience of God and for those who do not their isn’t. I was going to go on to say that it was my belief that the Universe or God is eternal, without beginning or end and we were all a part of it, some unaware, others conscious when she said, “Either you’re pregnant or you’re not.” My response to this was, “How can you apply physical rules to a supernatural being?” And that was it for me. I was literally told to speak to her after class and not allowed back. I don’t think she’d ever had a student give her an answer that was quantum before. This was many years before quantum theory was really mainstream and I hadn’t even heard of it, and I was a geek who read science magazines and astronomy textbooks, so…

Anyway back to my point, God is not just in the heavens, in a spiritual home/heaven we go back to, but also in all things – all things, like an artist who leaves His/Her mark (I believe God is genderless) on all things, on the very quarks and electrons that make everything possible and I also believe all sentient beings have eternal souls and it is that eternal soul which is a piece of God thrown out (at our choosing) so we may learn, grow and individuate in other words evolve.  At that point we know (but don’t really understand like a that a child) that with this choice will come suffering, despair, pain, love, joy, ecstasy and everything in the middle, yet when we make that decision it is just intellectual we haven’t experienced any of it yet, and that is why we decide to incarnate, to experience all of this – the darkness and light, good and evil so we may find who we are among all the many colors and shades of creation.

As far as getting in touch with your psychic ability there is something that I really want to caution anyone who is interested in exploring this realm about. It is actually a theme I’ve heard repeated now over and over in weird places which is why I bring it up because for me, much of this was dealt with many years ago and I sometimes forget how intense the awakening process is. I experienced it throughout my childhood and young adult life and still continue to do so however I have learned ways to control the worst of it. One quote I heard went something like this, “When one gets closer to God one gets closer to the Devil,” or something like that. What this means is when you open to the divine, within it lies both negative and positive energy. God is neither “good,” nor “evil” God is energy. I believe God at the core of connection, the Creator aspect of God is divine pure love, however in order for us to learn we needed a binary system. And their is a destroyer aspect, some call it the Devil – others yin and yang.

God or our universe was set up with oppositions, light and dark, good and evil, black and white. There are demonic forces without a doubt. I’ve had my run ins with them. They are very frightening. They do not respond to traditional religious spiritual paths, meaning they will not go away by asking for help from Jesus or getting a priest to bless one’s home. The only way to keep them at bay while one is opening to the light is to learn (very rigorously) psychic protection and the best there is, is the lesser pentagram ritual which I have written about on this website. You have to be in control and you must be the one to exorcise them, no one else can really do this for you. It is part of the path, the choosing, facing one’s fears, one’s demons and you must rise above them and cast them out. No other force can do this for you except you can keep them away with the lesser pentagram ritual. I can tell you that as soon as I learned it and performed the ritual in my mind every night before I went to sleep, I have never had another demonic encounter. Even spirits stay outside my home. I often go outside to talk to people who are trying to get a hold of me because the force of this protection is so intense that even benign spirits of people who have passed on can not enter if there is anything less than absolute purity which of course no human being possesses even on the other side.  One has to invite those spirits of ancestors in, sometimes they can come in to protect one, but mostly they don’t disturb the circle. I would first learn this protection before anything else and do the lesser pentagram (just search my site for the words and info, I also have a link to someone doing it on u-tube, you can probably find others who do it as well). And then start with meditation.

One must clear the mind and have control of the mind to tell what is one’s own thought from what one is receiving from elsewhere. It’s a rigorous process of keeping notes often of dreams, patterns, and finding ones own spiritual metaphorical language. It’s worth it. However it is a life long process, many lifetimes long, one that we all will eventually engage in if we are to awaken. I’m just warning you that as you open yourself up, you open yourself up to everything; love, pain, suffering, healing, anger, the dying earth’s energy. It’s not always easy to deal with. I believe this is why I have always had many health problems as this energy overwhelms me at times.

Any type of clearing the mind sort of meditation is the first step. Then find what things you are attracted to. Have you always been fascinated by Buddhism? Or by a statue of Hanuman you saw in a museum? Or perhaps Diana or Jesus, Mohammad, whatever your calling. These are the deepest recesses of your past life work and it’s best to work with the system or pathway you have already been on for many lifetimes. Just find the place in that system that best fits you. Or perhaps you are like me and all those religions call to you in different ways. Well, you can take what you need from them and navigate as best you can through many paths. I think though starting out, it is best to have one path you dedicate yourself to entirely and learn that before opening to other things. I’m not saying one should ever dismiss anything, just commit to one thing so you can find your center and go from there.

Hope that helps.

Best wishes,

Denise

The Mosque Debate… Dr. Laura & Sarah Palin

Being of Jewish origin during the revival of the Nazi movement the whole Mosque debate stirs up great emotion for me. When I was a 3 year old my mother put me in a cooking class at the local JCC (Jewish Community Center – which is very much the same as this proposed center which will be primarily a community center with Muslim religious affiliations) and while I was taking the class there the Nazis actually lit a bomb at that center. Luckily, no one died. However this act of terrorism took me out of my connection to my roots and made my mother fearful of having me and my brother participating in our culture of origin.

I actually lived in the area where the Nazis in the 70s marched through, a mini-series of the event was called “Skokie.” The same polarization that exists now between the Muslims and the Tea-Bagger McShaggers, are the same sort of people who participated in the anti-Semitism I experienced as a child against the Jews in the Chicago area where I grew up. Those idiot Nazis where actually given a permit to have a rally and parade through Skokie (an entirely Jewish area of Chicago at the time.) However, back then, during my childhood it appeared we as Americans knew what our forefathers had fought and died for – the rights that are part of our constitution. The 2 great wars were but a couple of generations away and we seemed generally to tolerate one another in a way we don’t anymore. Those who were the Nazis back then were marginalized and given no power and were the butt of people’s scorn and jokes – there’s actually a reference in the Blues Brothers movie which sums up the general feeling people had for those sorts of intolerant jerks, it goes something like, “Nazis, I hate Nazis” and they run the Nazis parading on a bridge off and into the water.

We have always had those who were scared sick of the “pinkos,” or the anarchists, the witches or whatever other version of silliness people felt threatened by. This mentality leads to the believe that all people who participate in the Muslim religion – a giant organized religion (1 of the 3 largest in the world) are all terrorists. It’s as stupid as thinking  Catholics are equivalent to all Christians, and they are all evil tortures due to the abhorrent and evil deeds done during the Spanish Inquisition by the Catholics (who killed about 25% of all women during the middle-ages, serious genocide there.) If one were to say that would be beyond absurd, yet it seems to be the mantra of the extreme right. All organized religions have different sects and operate under a generic umbrella.

Christianity for example can be preached to by someone who has no formal education about the bible and has been ordained through the mail, drinks poison and lets snakes bite him while talking in tongues oppose that style with a Christian who sits tidily in a row of austere wooden benches and is preached to by a minister (with a doctorates degree in religious studies) about the abstract meaning of some remote passage of the bible. Those are pretty different experiences of the “same” religion. The same could be said of the orthodox or Hasidic Jewish people compared to those who uphold the religion as more of a cultural experience and/or are reformed Jews.

I personally am not fond of any sort of religious zealotry no matter what color or shape it comes in, as it always seems to include violence – the natural antithesis of spirituality.  I believe the enemy of any religious or spiritual system is intolerance of others belief systems as this leads to hatred, violence and ultimately away from God.

If I were the people who were starting the community center however my fear would be that some horrible zealot would do what happened to my JCC back in the early 70s in some sort of bizarre retaliation for 9/11 – despite the fact that there is NO relationship. This property isn’t actually even that close to the actual site, the whole thing is just a bunch of right-wing racist, fascist scare tactics and we as Americans should stand against this disgusting behavior of the far right nut jobbers.

It’s really getting old our tolerance for allowing these idiots to have such a huge cultural impact on our America. Their America resembles Nazi Germany and if I could build a time machine and send them back there, I’d do it. They seem to think the past was where the glory days lie. I think they’d find that it was really not too glorious, especially for the moronic women of the right who would find their collective voice of stupidity silenced, relegated to the jobs that perhaps befit them best, being home makers and child bearers and nothing more. I think this is where Dr. Laura (Dr. of physical education that is) should be, she should go back to being a mean gym teacher and practice the BS she preaches. Why are we listening to what she has to say? Or the narcissistic, quitter Sarah Palin?  After all they have lady parts which make them inferior according to the line they supposedly tow.

One can not be a patriarchal woman of power without being a hypocrite and a moron, both of which disqualify them for giving advice. Oh, and Dr. Laura is Jewish and I doubt very much she’d like it if someone repeated the word Kike repeated over and over again at her while the other person pretended that they didn’t understand the difference between trying to take the piss out of a word by those who are called that name and those who say those words with hatred and violence in the context of a history of murderous hatred. And if she doesn’t get that, I just feel sorry for her inferior intellect.

We all know Dr. Laura is a “morally inferior person” (by her standards) who yells at other people for her own perceived weaknesses – being that she’s had at least one known affair while married and has herself been divorced and I believe has been estranged from her mother and has done everything she has railed on against on her show while presenting herself as if she were an expert on morality and a trained psychologist. She is a despicable human being whom I’m happy to see leave the public specter.

But going back to the debate about the community center several blocks away from ground zero. If I were in the position of running that organization my main concern would be for the people who would be serviced by my organization. Frankly, I would be worried about their safety which is ironically a form of terrorism! And I would point this out in the public sphere, explaining in the most rudimentary way how the right-wing crazies are stirring the hatred pot and are in effect doing the very thing we were supposed to be against – terrorism.

The right-wing are trying to block people’s rights like gay marriage, blocking this community center and taking federal law into their hands in Arizona illegally – kind of like having to wear a star of David on your outfit at all times, and countless other insane and uncompassionate policies, including trying to make it seem like “taking back America” is anything more than an anachronism for having only white presidents, or the evil thing of trying to disallow a person’s right to citizenship when they were born on this soil.

And where were all these right-wing fruit cakes when the boarders were opened and they could exploit the truck loads of illegal immigrants, creating a new slave class? Oh, yeah they were all for that. They’ve used propaganda, hatred, racism and all the awful things we supposedly have fought for, and turned it back around onto other innocent people.

Who is going to use that community center? Primarily children and are they expected to be responsible for what some idiot zealot did before they were even born? We have to stop the madness of grouping human beings together as a unit based on color, creed or religion – because we are all individuals – isn’t THAT the AMERICAN WAY? And how can one fight for pulling oneself up by their own bootstraps if we can’t even agree that we are individuals with the potential to think, feel and move apart from our class, race, color, creed or religious affiliation? It’s all just so insane and ridiculous.

I ask only this – When will we evolve into human beings? Because right now those who show no tolerance or empathy are nothing more than shadow people.

May the light prevail through our darkness,

Denise

OK, Super Weirdness…

I just googled the title of my novel Americhrist and found that it is an actual church! And one that freakishly seems in keeping with the one in my book. My novel just gets creepier and creepier. It seems almost like I tapped into the future and just dictated back to myself from 30 years in the future. So much of it has already come to pass…

And a footnote in it is a 3rd WW which doesn’t kill everyone and isn’t really like the first two which I can see coming in all the nations charts I’ve looked at.

Getting chills yet? I am. I remember when I was writing the book the writer’s in my writing group were all saying, “Wow, Denise you have such an imagination,” and stuff like that. That was back in late 1999 early 2000 as I was writing it I was reading it. As time passed and I went through editing, and the Bush administration went forward with their agenda they all confided in me at different times that they thought often about the book and how bizarrely accurate the forecast was looking and becoming.

You can click on the page Americhrist if you want to read it. The book is posted here. Here’s a link to the freaky church with the actual name. It seems they are being sued for defimation which would make sense if they are anything like the weirdos in my book and I’d have to think they would be… knowing me.
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/tos.html
And a link to the explanation of AmeriChrist Ltd. which seems to be in keeping with the twisted “Christian Values” in my book:
http://objectiveministries.org/shutdown/

Seriously if everyone read the novel I think it would scare most of the population into doing something about global warming and the twisting of Christianity found in churches exemplified by the AmeriChrist of my book.

Best wishes and happy holidays,

Denise

Here’s a link to my book to make it all that much easier:
https://astrologyandpsychicpredictions.wordpress.com/americhrist/

As a side note there seems to be some part of my brain that taps into very specific information when I’m writing. Perhaps it’s like automatic writing or something. Every story I’ve ever written (fiction) within months I’ve met people with that story or with the names of the main characters or it has become a headline story much later. I guess the psychic in me can’t get out of the way no matter what I do.

Regarding A Few Posts from Readers…

Hi I got one comment from JoJo who was mad at me for talking to much about other things like religion. Oh, well, in my opinion all things are related and I like to push the envelope in regards to our assumptions about religion especially because it is often used as a crutch to do horrible things. It is also something most people are afraid to examine because of the “FEAR OF GOD!” which is a terrible ridiculous idea. One that serves organized religion well, keeps their 10% coming in and people’s minds shut off from having a relationship with God which is very sad.

Religion is also so often used to destroy others with, to invade countries, to feel righteous – all very bad things that lead to suffering and are the antithesis of spirituality. I think it’s sort of funny that people want me to just be a psychic and predict things. Where do these people think I get my information? I was given the gift because I have spent most of my lifetimes trained in different religious traditions. If anyone spends the vast majority of even one lifetime meditating and doing trance work they will get psychic information. I have memories of my past lives and believe me I earned these abilities both in other lifetimes and in the circumstances of this lifetime.

In this lifetime I have been trained in a religious tradition and have a ministerial credential. I have performed quite a few marriages in my years. It’s a strange idea that some people separate spirituality from psychic ability. It is impossible to have the “gift” and not connect with spirits, inter-dimensional beings (angels, fairies, guides, the higher self or whatever one wants to call it) and have flashes of God/Goddess’s love. Being a psychic is a modern form of shamanism. And shamans are in direct connection with the divine. Seriously, where else would the info come from? I guess that’s why some super right wing Christians think psychics are in league with the devil because their preachers tell them they are the only ones who can spread the TRUTH, while they misquote and misunderstood the bible (mostly Christ’s message, they seem to do well with the damnation part aka the Old Testament aka the Torah which isn’t supposed to be the Christian part but I guess I’m just getting fussy) and it’s perfectly fine to be like a lame parent and “Do as I say not as I do,” for many of these leaders, being major hypocrites (to say the least in many cases). Many of these “preachers” have the energy of a used car salesman on meth like Ted Haggard. Jeez, way before he came out he seemed strung out on coke and I would have better the deed to my house that he was getting some man action. Not that there would be anything wrong with him being gay or even having drug problems if he wasn’t running around damning everyone else to hell for having the same problems. It’s just disgusting the things these people do in the name of religion. They are so hateful to gay people and people with drug problems or any sort of problems which is so NOT CHRISTIAN! I know there are many really great Christan people who follow the words of Christ and who are loving and kind and pure. I wish they would speak up against these nut-jobbers who seem to be using the religion to just get rich and take advantage of people by dignifying the lowest human traits like racism, anger, hatred, war mongering, fear, etc. and find these bizarre ways to elevate this low level behavior to a spiritual club (this behavior is anything but spiritual or God-like unless one’s conception of God is that he’s a jealous, evil, mean-spirited, blood thirsty father figure who likes to create people to have sexual desire only to punish them for it, talk about Sadistic!) Christ said things like “He who is without sin cast the first stone, love thy neighbor as thyself, etc.” I mean we all know his teachings, they were not my Dad in heaven’s gonna kick your ass with his oozy if you don’t do what I say!

And anyone can be psychic if they want to spend a few lifetimes meditating and praying all the time. Or even if they want to devote  a big chunk of this life to knowing and understanding God/Goddess through meditation and trance work.

In modern organized religions God is often so formalized, intellectualized and distant that many priests and preachers don’t get to actually experience God directly but rather go through the prescription of the bible or other holy books. I have met priests and nuns who have a beatific quality, it’s obvious they are very connected to Spirit (most Buddhist monks and nuns are like this, they spend the vast majority of their time meditating). But western religions are not big on shamanistic practices or on forging ones own connection to the divine, but rather we are taught to blindly believe the bible and those religious figures who teach it. History has proven this to be problematic from the burning times of Europe when 25% of all women were murdered to our current crisis of Christian Crusaders blowing up abortion clinics, terrorizing doctors and building Mega Churches with our tax dollars for the military so they can get pumped up in their fight against Muslim extremists. Does anyone see the problem here? I’m sure 99.9% of you do.

So for those who don’t like the theological side of me, well, I’ll just have to say I’m given information by a greater force than myself and that includes where my spiritual beliefs come from, they come from a lifetime of connecting and praying, meditating and giving myself over to the Great Spirit to channel the truth. If it doesn’t jive with a book written more than 2,000 years ago, oh, well. And if it you’ve meditated on your own connection and what I say doesn’t feel right to you, I completely respect that as we all have our own spiritual paths. But the one thing I will never respect is paying someone else to do your spiritual work for you because not only does it not work, it actually causes spiritual devolvement. It is the most dangerous thing about organized religion which is why, ironically, I have more in common with most atheists and agnostics, in this regard, than I do people who blindly follow a specific faith without using their own higher self to guide them on that path.

All religions are the truth. It’s just the truth is buried inside the faith, and one must do the digging on his or her own to progress down the path. This is because religions become like a millennium long game of telephone, and by the time the information is given to you via multiple interpretations of the scriptures and political events that color or even edit either the meaning/tone or actual information in the scripture. Try reading all the different versions of the bible. Now imagine all those versions came from early translations that were translated from early translations that were passed down through oral tradition for thousands of years. As you can see the truth soon becomes a needle inside hundreds of tangled haystacks. Many of these haystacks manipulated (say sprayed different colors or covered in chemicals or whatever) by the culture and those in power at different points in history. The only way to find that needle is to close your eyes, meditate upon it and plug into the part of you that is one with God. If you do, you walk right through all the thousands of haystacks, right to the center of the one that has the needle inside it, as if it was never lost.

Many Blessings,

Denise

Oh, and to John who posted about Lincoln,

I’m from Illinois so I’m sure I didn’t get the whole story of Lincoln. I don’t know enough so I can’t argue with your information. I’m sure he was corrupt in some ways. But he did end slavery and that took some pretty big balls.

I had heard someone in passing say he was racist, but I think everyone was back then. People were segregated and whites had no real contact with African Americans and those who did would have had contact with either slaves or extremely poor and/or undereducated African Americans thus adding to people’s stupid assumptions.

The moral argument against slavery wasn’t that they believed in the equality of the African Americans, it was about the immorality of slavery itself. I think it’s a bit much to believe anyone back then was really that advanced in regards to their understanding of race or gender. I’m sure Lincoln was a total sexist, too. As the vast majority (99.99999999%)  would have been because it was the culture they were raised in where women and minorities were not given the same opportunities and of course if you limit people then they can’t help but live up to their culture’s limited expectations. It is only the rare few that are able to rise and then they are considered the “exceptions.”

There’s always a way for people to protect their ignorance. I thank you for your information about Lincoln. I’ll have to do more research about him.

I’ve Been Thinking…

The quandary the left always finds itself in is the one touched upon in the last post. We are a group of independent spirits who believe in the rights of all and who honor ask that humanity honor the individual. We don’t expect everyone to agree with us and we don’t force people to do so with weapons. By nature we are desirous of peace and have compassion for other beings. We are the meek in the biblical statement: And the meek shall inherit the earth.

Although most of us are secular we show a greater morality, one born of compassion and love for our fellow man. We don’t need to tear down others to feel better.

Wow, it would seem we are the Christians following the path of Christ which by the way was his message. He didn’t tell people to worship him. And we are being martyred by the right wing who play on fear, anger, hatred and the darkness of men’s hearts. This is a dangerous game they play. But they don’t care. That’s the whole point, they don’t care about other people. “I’ve got mine, screw you,” should be their catch phrase.

So how do we fight them? How can we retain our ideals (which President Obama represents) and not be bullied and allowed to move the agenda of caring for each other forward?

Whether we like it or not the crazies are right about one thing – we do live in a predominetly Judeo-Christian culture. It was after all Christian religious zealots who founded this place and their desire for religious freedom really meant the brand of crazy Christian zealotry you found yourself most attracted to. Just as they had slaves working in their field they gave long detailed speeches on the meaning of equality and freedom for all (meaning white men).  It is only through the compassion and higher minded idealists like Lincoln that our society moved forward and sadly, Lincoln paid with his life.

In the Christian tradition there is no spiritual warrior despite the invented version by way of Evangelic Christianity. Goodness, (represented by Christ) holiness and God (represented here on earth by Christ) choose self-sacrifice over gathering a militia and fighting the Romans or any such military option. It’s not the Jews or the Romans who murder Christ but the Christians who follow Christ’s command to not intervene, hide him or fight for him. Just as the Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, taken peacefully by the merciless Nazis. The Jews choose the path of kindness and disbelief. The level of evil was unimaginable. And I believe we are in a similar situation. I don’t think people realize the level of evil that seeks to oppose and destroy this world. The root of this evil is greed and selfishness. It is so deeply rooted in American culture and revered by those who identify with the right that it has become the shadow self of our culture and it has been leading us down the path of total self-destruction for the past 30 years. Fighting this trickster is difficult because on that side the only law is really the law of black magic so aptly stated by Aleister Crowley (I know some think he’s gray, but this law is the line that takes one to the dark side): Thou will is the whole of the law. Meaning one can do anything to anyone in anyway if they want to. The only thing that matters is the individuals own will. One could say Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are the best example of this ideology in action. It’s the whole, “The ends justify the means,” philosophy we as school children had come to understand as wrong, because it is wrong. But this notion, which has always been embraced by the dark side, Hitler, Pol Pot, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney (how many innocent Iraqi people have died during this war? We don’t even count them in our tallies which is horrifying), is a bully pulpupit one that leads to a bloody trail. How many of us protested the war in Iraq? I know here in Los Angeles I was at protests that had literally over a million people, bigger than any protest I’d ever seen, yet it was barely reported at the time. And if the media said there were a million people in New York double or triple that amount, which would be more accurate from my years of protesting and seeing how the media reports on the Lefts agendas to do horrible things like stop wars and eliminate Apartheid.

I personally would have no compunction about fighting these people hard and taking the chance to my own health. I’ve been knocked down by police at Anti-Apartheid protests and seen angry mobs loose control while being in the frightening middle of it. But I’m a parent now and it’s not fair to my daughter that I should have to put my life on the line to protect her rights as a human being.

So back to the central question of how to fight the darkness. Besides meditation, logic and being active in letting your Representatives know how you feel. I think we need to rethink the Christian paradigm. In ancient cultures there was always the way of the warrior, one who fought to protect his/her people and honor. There was no judgment made about who one was fighting, it wasn’t about having God on ones side (although I’m sure they prayed all the same) it was about very simple things like protecting resources so ones people didn’t starve, protecting women and children and elderly people from being slaughtered by an invading army.

But this path of the spiritual warrior was really over by the time of the Roman Empire which instead of acting in defense, took on the strategy of conquering everyone and making them Romans. In other words they took an offensive position as defense to their empire which is the model for all empires, ours included. But these empires collapse eventually, Portugal, Spain, Italy, England no longer can afford this stategy like a giant crazed amoeba absorbing everything in its wake until it bursts, this strategy wastes the resources of its people and often the lives of many soldiers and expands to the point of sustainability until it fractures and falls to pieces. Does this sound familiar to you? Yes, we’re there.

So how can one fight the evil bullies of this world without becoming one? This is the eternal quandary which has fractured and divided the left and given tremendous power to the right for years. Their unifying platform is self-interest at any expense. Ours is not so easily defined other than: Equality, justice and compassion for all beings. The later can be, and is, not just broad but interpreted in many ways with many factions fighting for equality and justice, asking for compassion and help for the less fortunate. Everyone on our side has a passion for one particular cause or another as there are so many ways people step on others.

The only answer I can think of is to not engage with the darkness, to do what’s right and fair allow the world to see how much better things are when goodness and compassion prevail and allow the self-serving to realize the sky didn’t fall and perhaps Medicaid and Medicare (government programs many of them use) really aren’t so bad. I mean Reagan talked the same nonsense about it being socialism, even communism back in the 60s and I think most people at this point would say he sounded like a paranoid nut job at that point (in retrospect.)

Best wishes,

Denise

An Interesting Question about the Universe from a Reader…

Here’s the question from a fellow reader who e-mailed this to me:

Here goes, if I can express my question lucidly:

Most of physical matter appears to be contained within something else. For example, protons and electrons are contained within atoms, and atoms are a part of all matter. All organisms found on this planet are contained on this planet which itself is contained within the solar system which in turn is contained within a galaxy which is considered a part of the universe which is thought to be INFINITE. So, going with this theme, in what is the UNIVERSE contained? If it is contained in something bigger than itself, then the universe is FINITE. If our UNIVERSE is contained in something else, then is that SOMETHING ELSE contained within something else, and so on and so on?

Is this a different paradigm for analyzing our ‘UNIVERSE’ around us or Am I Just Being Silly?!! 🙂

Here’s my answer:

There are some interesting new theories about this very question and some answers have come from String Theory. I’ll try to do a descent job of explaining what I’ve read on the subject and of course it will be in layman’s language and hopefully I won’t butcher any of the ideas too badly, so here goes. The first thing about string theory is the ideas in it are complicated and require something like at least 11 parallel dimensions in order for the theory to even work. The string part of string theory is derived from the notion that beyond the smallest known particles like quarks (which behave very unusually and in many ways prove some esoteric ideas, but that’s another story) are the tiniest of the tiniest bits that make up all known things. And once clumped together into something they take on certain characteristics. These strings are ubber tiny strings that vibrate and it is through their vibration that they attract other like strings and make stuff. I love this idea as the universe would literally be made up of inaudible music created from the tiny strings. So these strings vibrate at a certain pitch and collect to make different sorts of bigger compounds.

But the most interesting part of String Theory is the question that it set out to answer which was the notion of how did the Big Bang happen? Or what came before the Big Bang? And something to note here is that the Big Bang is a more complicated idea than most of us are taught, here’s a brief synopsis. All of a sudden space-time blasted into being, it started out very hot and very close together and has been pushing out since then. The part that we often misunderstand is the notion of space-time which is a complicated idea. Literally everything that exits in the Universe, all of time and space was created in that one moment which came from nothing. That’s a pretty heavy and strange idea.

Now the beautiful thing about String Theory, and in my opinion where it dovetails with the metaphors of all religions and the notion of “as above so below,” is the idea that what created the Big Bang was a bunch of universes all sort of floating around in what is now called a multiverse and two of these universes happened to collide into one another thus creating our universe (sort of like sex or the idea of the Goddess and the God or in esoteric Judaic and Christian traditions, the notion of God and his female soul Sophia or the feminine side of God co-creating the Universe).  Of course one then asks where did this multiverse come from and so on which is the appeal of the easy answer/creationism/intelligent design.

Here’s the thing from my own personal experience that leads me to believe String Theory is about as close as we’ve in come, in science, to the truth. When I was 12 my back was fractured and I had a herniated disc. I was put on bed rest for about 7 months. My father was dead by this time and my mother worked, so I spent 95% of my days alone. Besides watching Oprah on my little black and white TV there wasn’t much to do so I spent a lot of time, reading, thinking and meditating. A lot of my meditation was spent on God and how the Universe came to be as I was always psychic and very fascinated by this question. I had started my search for answers at about 9 when I began reading astronomy textbooks to learn about what made up the universe and peer into any clue I could find about how it worked. I found a lot of information about dwarf stars, black holes (which were still theoretical at the time) and approximations of how many stars were in our galaxy (about 300,000) but not much about how the universe came to be which I found very frustrating. I then searched through my  occult books, the bible, mythology, etc.

Again nothing satisfied so I thought about it and spent many days and nights meditating on the question until I came to the knowing that the Universe was like a circle within a circle within a circle. There was no end and no beginning, these circles went on for infinity in every direction. There was no end to how many parallel dimensions as that was infinite as well. Perhaps the greatest epiphany was that God was always and forever, meaning God had no beginning and no end. God was also not a “designer” but an energy source present in everything and everyone and there was no true beginning of time or matter, it just transformed as we did when we die. Hence we as human beings are both finite and infinite as our souls are eternal and part of God’s energy and our bodies are part of the earth which has a finite beginning, middle and end as do all physical things. The energy that makes them is infinite and forever but they have a finite period of time to “live” and develop until the next set of lessons and/or individuation process unfolds.

Of course this brings up the notion of why God would want or need to expand Him/Herself. The answer I came up with was to experience Him/Herself and allow each piece of Him/Herself to individuate and ascend infinitely, reuniting with the Self/God after a period of expansion and learning. This theory would of course mean we reincarnate for as long as we want and perhaps in some cases for as long as we need to.

I hope this makes some sense and is not to confusing.

This is why ancient religions stated “All Gods are One,” and the spiritual seeker is to always see the God/Goddess in everyone he or she meets (-Namaste). This is sometimes hard when dealing with people who are asleep spiritually or run their lives as if they are worker drones or zombies. Those who have yet to awaken to the power and truth of our collective Oneness. Or what some call “conservatives.” I’m not going to go on about the health care zombies right now who basically argue that they have theirs so f everyone else. This is a sad state we are in and one I’ve thought a lot about lately. Is it that there are too many of us on the planet and there are the same percentages of selfish people? Or is it that we are so many we are starting to act like too many rats stuck in the same cage? Even simple courtesy seems to have dissolved into the whole “me first” way of our current world. Not only is this sad on a spiritual level and hurtful to our emotional and psychic development, but it also freaks me out because it makes me think we are calling down the worst possible fate by our behavior and sadly we are all going to have to suffer under it whether or not we partake of this intensely rude and mean spirited selfishness. We are all linked and we will all have to answer to the loud mouths who would rather let a stranger starve on the street than help them. I have to admit that my natural inclination toward feeling most human beings were ultimately good has been replaced by the feeling that there is a range of goodness and most people are heavy into the middle section of gray. I know there are many good, great loving people in the world, it’s just that their voices are often softer then those who are rude and mean spirited, this has always been the case. I wish there was some way to change it.

Many blessings,

Denise

Answering Readers and other things…

I just wanted to address some of the points Jeff has made. I think he really clarifies the differences in the two viewpoints between conservatives and liberals very well. I understand the lack of faith in our government and the fact that there is corruption and stupidity on all sides of every issue in politics. I would never advocate a one party system.

My back was fractured when I was 12 and a disc herniated. I spent the entire year laying on my back, by myself in my bedroom. The only education I received was American history and the constitution as I had to pass (this was in Illinois) a constitution test in 7th grade in order to move onto 8th grade. Needless to say, I got one hour a week from the principle who would come to my home and tutor me. I spent a lot of time reading the constitution, the bill of rights and reading about American History. The ideals and people that founded our nation were profound and beautiful. Our forefathers did an amazing job of working out potential problems. They had incredible foresight. However they did not foresee all things that came up in the last century which have truly corrupted our government. And of course they had built in the 2nd amendment not so people could hunt animals, but so we could have a revolution if the government got out of control. Problem is of course (which of course they couldn’t foresee, perhaps if DiVinci had been one of the founders) the advent of nuclear weapons and military technology that no rag tag militia could fairly fight against. 

I really don’t have total faith in the Democrats. I just think they are less corrupt, more like normal politicians than the Republicans. And not all Republicans fall into that category. And especially regular American people who are not politicians but who identify with the party and vote Republican. They are not any better or worse than people who vote for Democrats. I’m talking only about the leadership of the Republican party; since the Nixon administration there has been a clarion call attracting many corrupt politicians with agendas to exploit the common working American people for their own personal gain on that side of the fence.

There are 2 types of politicians, those who get into politics to serve and lead. And those who get into politics to exploit, loot and are on power trips. I don’t think the Republican party has always been this way, and certainly the vast majority of people who vote Republican are not this way. In actuality I think the Republican party has manipulated many people’s deep love of this country, of tradition, stability, pride and our identity as self-reliant people against us.

But if we left morality up to the wealthy one percent to take care of the poor, the sick and whoever else, do you think they would do it? No. Certainly the feudal lords of Europe weren’t going around giving out loafs of bread to starving children, they were to busy denying them education and prosecuting them for stealing bread so they could put them to work in prison camps. With Democracy and laws, came taxation built on levels of ability to pay, the end of debtors prisons (when you could actually go to prison for life for not being able to pay someone you owed money to, can you imagine how many people would be in jail now if this law hadn’t been changed.) Government can’t solve all of our problems, but it can and should create a moral bone structure to hang our civilization’s body on.

As much as we like to pretend that we are all working on a level playing field with the same amount of talent, intelligence and acumen as everyone else. This is just blatantly untrue. Many of us our handicapped by our environments as children. We seem to be able to muster compassion for the abused child, but as soon as he turns 18 we seem to expect this person to magically be able to shake off the horrors of their childhood and compete in a game fixed by the wealthy.

I grew up in an area of Chicago that was very wealthy and I knew countless kids who were of average intelligence who went to ivy league schools because their parents were wealthy enough to give endowments to those institutions and it was family tradition to go to Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth. Is that fair? No. All the conservatives who claim B.S. on the whole affirmative action thing don’t complain about the wealthy legacy kids who get in with subpar SAT scores and average grades. Because it’s really not that they mind the game being rigged, they just want it rigged in their favor. And the people who are in power in the political arena (especially on the Republican side) are from extremely privelaged backgrounds. This hasn’t always been the case, but in the last 30 years the Republican party has drifted into the lane that promotes corporatism, gives a pass to the wealthiest one percent and turns a blind eye toward graft. The Democrats still have real people participating, like Bill Clinton (despite his personal sex addiction problems and foibles) he was a real guy who was raised by a single mother, in a poor family and through his brilliance and determination made something of himself. This is the America I believe in. This is the America I want to see win out. I don’t want our country to become a feudal one, where the wealthy one percent control us through their lobbyists and corporations. I want all Americans to be represented and to have a voice. I want to stay a democracy and not be bowled over by corporate interests masquerading as moral voices.

You know, the Democrats aren’t all that. They are really annoying and pretty lame. They don’t take the reigns, they blather around, seem to try to bend to too many voices and don’t have the passion it takes to convince others to get on board. This has been their problem now for over 30 years and I totally understand why they upset people who want things to be dealt with cleanly. Democrats don’t do this. For those (and this is the majority of Americans) who want decisive, clear leadership the Democrats don’t always know how to provide this. The Republicans have a huge advantage here, they have a common goal that binds them together which the Democrats don’t have. Democrats go into public service for all kinds of different reasons with all kinds of different agendas and are forced to compromise and work together in a quilt work fashion.

The Republicans have the binding passion of greed which they found a way to sell (ironically) to average Americans as Christian morality. However their policies and private lives show nothing of them living up to their supposed morality.  I’m going to refer you to an earlier post here about the shadow self as it applies to the split that Republicans utilize to sell their advocacy for the wealthiest taking not only the share they already have but more of yours too so that the money can “trickle down.” Or so they want you to believe.

So far I haven’t been to any developing nation or as Jeff aptly stated, communist country, where the money ever managed to trickle down. Once those on top have anything their heart could ever desire at their fingertips why would they randomly want to share it with strangers? This goes against human nature. We are naturally selfish creatures which is why we have laws, moral codes, and religions that teach us how to be more than just self-absorbed, self-satisfying, opportunistic, uncompassionate beasts.

Let me just say here as an example I’ve known many very famous people (through my work). They can have anything they want whenever they want it, no one ever says “no” to them. They often surround themselves with adoring admirers (not all but many do this) and see themselves as better than everyone else. They often get sucked into a weird cartoonish state of being where they are living entirely a life of the ego. They may have started out as good people and are not necessarily bad people, but they loose percpective and do horrible things to others because they  no longer see other people as human beings anymore. And how could they? They are not participating in real relationships anymore, just the ego heroine of fame feeding their insatiable insecurity and making them more and more pathologically narcissistic. 

My point is, we all need to be held accountable. And we live in a very narcissistic culture where value has been placed on being special, famous and wealthy to the exclusion of common sense and common decency. It seems anything goes if you can get rich or famous from it.  I don’t believe in that. I believe in personal integrity and spiritual growth both of those values are almost impossible to hold onto once a person becomes famous or insanely wealthy (I’m not talking comfortable or even rich but in that one percent club wealthy.)

Spiritual growth requires honest mirroring by loved ones and the world around you which the obscenely rich and famous don’t get from others anymore because that person becomes objectified and identified as a symbol, no longer allowing others to have real exchanges. While this is great for the ego, no one ever disagrees with you, you are always the greatest genius and everyone stops to listen to what you have to say, you actually, eventually become something of a persona, an empty shell, and often this can lead to great feelings of isolation, depression and obsessive behavior. Which is why so many celebrities have drug problems.

And of course in the case of the insanely wealthy, everyone wants a piece of their pie, and they can’t trust anyone around them. They never really know if people love or care about them for who they are or for the money they have. You think this problem sounds easy, but it’s actually very messy and dark and leads to behavior like Bernie Madoff who so desperately needed to stay in that special billionare club that he started ripping people off when the market started going down and he realized it was easier to con people than to actually invest their money. This is the sickness that can happen with outrageous overabundance as Christ said, “it’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.” Because the disassociation that happens with that sort of wealth leads to callousness, and  bad behavior.

Average people like my in-laws, who are Republicans, make the mistake of believing that heads of corporations and the super wealthy have the same values they do. Let me tell you, they don’t. Their values are so far a flung from ordinary Americans that they may as well be Martians. There are of course good people who are exceptions and do amazing humanitarian work with the money they have made, but really they are probably less than one percent of the ubber rich.

While we all fantasize that our problems would go away and life would be perfect if we were just rich and famous, the opposite is actually true. Being in the spotlight only magnifies problems and immense wealth creates an emotional telescoping phenomena where your ability to relate to people who are struggling financially disappears and instead of feeling compassion for those people the wealthy find a bizarre righteous anger toward the unfortunate so they can stave off their guilt at not doing anything to help.

So what I want to say is that I don’t believe we can leave people’s lives, health and education up to the potential good graces of the wealthy one percent. I’ll leave everyone with this weird random example. The first time I went to London, when I was in my early 20s I met a guy who was a monarchist. I actually didn’t even know they still existed. He believed that the best form of government was what he called a “benevolent monarchy.” He explained that in that system things got done quickly and the benevolent king to good care of all of his subjects, sort of like a good dad takes care of all of his kids. But then I said, “But what happens if the monarch is not benevolent, like King Henry or Caligula.” 

“Well, I’m talking about a benevolent monarchy,” he firmly stated again.

“Yes, but that’s the problem if its a monarchy the people can’t do anything to get rid of the next in line and what if they’re crazy or a horrible person. In a democracy you can vote a nut jobber out of office. There are checks and balances in place that help eliminate the possibility of someone terrible taking over.” 

 And again his answer was, “Well, I’m talking about a benevolent monarchy.”

What we do in our Democracy with checks and balances, laws and amendments had its counter part in the world of business as regulations and the notion that corporations being led by the best people would perform the best and therefore those leaders would continue to move skyward. But instead with deregulation came easy money through scams, the ability to lie about your company, to cheat your shareholders and to fail upwards based on lies and fudging numbers. 

Our country is as much about capitalism as it is about democracy. And in order for capitalism to survive it needs to have enforceable rules to play by or no one on the world stage is going to want to play with us anymore. Those toxic loans we bought up that have been helping the stock market, are helping because by our government standing behind our corporations we are saying to the world, we screwed up and we won’t let everyone fall down, we stand behind our system and we want to continue playing ball with everyone. If we didn’t do this the entire world economy would fall apart due to lack of confidence in us the champions of capitalism.

Anyway, enough blabbing.

Best wishes to all and many blessings,

Denise

Answering Readers…

The first question comes from Dera:

DERA

Do you see a solution to the problems with the Mexican Drug cartels waging a war on the govt of Mexico City? I am so concerned about the people there and is legalizing drugs the answer?

Hi Dera,

My intuition tells me that the US will try to intervene in keeping the drug cartels under control, but won’t have a lot of success. The violence will continue to escalate until the people of Mexico are forced to have a kind of civil war against the drug lords. There are similarities to Chicago during the 1920s, but of course in Mexico it is even more extreme and violent. The mix of psychopaths, illegal drugs and corruption within the government all contribute  and it feels like it is escalating to the doorstep of genocide. I don’t feel this is going to get better soon, actually I feel it will get much worse. I only hope I’m wrong about this.

Oddly, I don’t feel the answer to this problem is to just legalize drugs because there is such a strong network of organized crime and corruption that it would be substituted with something perhaps even worse like sexual slavery, prostitution of children, etc. This network must be destroyed first and the government replaced with one truly vested in the good of all the people not just their own pocket books. I’m not saying everyone in the Mexican government/police/military fit into this category, but there are enough that do to make the good people ineffective. 

Eventually, those within the government who are not corrupt will have to build an army out of the ashes of those who have been devastated by the drug lords. Together, the people will have to fight this cancer overtaking their country or it will end up war torn and could lead to mass genocide as these psychopaths gain power and control.

The more violence these drug lords perpetrate the more they become sick with a mad cow-like disease eating away at their souls with each act leaving them nothing but empty shells feeding on destruction. This is the disease of war. It is what is happening in Darfur, what happened in Rowanda, what happened to ordinary people who became Nazis. This sickness is born from violence against our fellow brothers and sisters. It is the sickness that begets war and makes people do horrible things they would never believed themselves capable of. It can also infect ordinary people after seeing ones family slaughtered or child mutilated. It is the darkest side of Kali, the crazed destroyer. It is chaos, insanity, absolute coldness. I wish I could say inhuman, but this darkness is a part of the human condition, the shadow side. In normal healthy people we feel it rear up, but repress it with rationality, empathy and compassion. When all those things are gone there is no controlling it.

This is a very scary situation. I wish there was an easier answer.

hopeandaplan

I was watching two evangelists speaking with Rachel Maddow a couple of nights ago. They were explainging how socialism would usher in peace which was the prerequisite for the advent of the anti-christ’s arrival. They said Obama wasn’t the Anti christ because he wasnt popular enough but that his policies were setting the stage for his appearance. Huh? They are admitting that they would prefer people to go hungry and wage war so they can stop the antichrist. Who is the person(s) who have managed to pervert Christian principles so successfully? I also found it interesting that their segment coincided with James Dobson’s resignation from Focus on the Family. I respect religious differences and I embrace all spiritual expression but how is this evangelical dogma different from jihadist extremism? Any thoughts on the future of these people’s influence in American politics? Thanks.

Hi Hope and a Plan,

I’ve lost count of how many anti-christs there are, and have been. Nostradameus had at least 3. These dudes have had one pretty much every time there’s someone who wasn’t pro lining their pockets with gold. Sure, socialism is going to bring the anti-christ, that makes a lot of sense, I guess he must be living in Sweden or Norway, or maybe Denmark? Oh, I know perhaps Canada where they have “socialized” medicine.

We all know how Jesus was a TOTAL CAPITALIST! Whew, he just loved him some money and really didn’t want anyone helping out their neighbor or loving others. He taught anti-compassion and letting people starve to prove a point and loved war if it made him some dough. Oh, yeah, wait that’s those guys! I guess they must be the anti-christs because they are anti-everything Christ stood for. Besides I thought they wanted the anti-christ to come, so the big space ship in the sky could come and suck them up and they could be one of the chosen people to live forever in their decrept sack of rotting bone bodies. I mean come on, this is some insane crap. It really is just insane. 

Let’s look at the reality of this proposition. There’s this crazy, angry, jealous God who sends down his only son (something Jesus never said but hey, the Romans needed to make him into a living God so they could sell the religion) to save humanity from the original sin of Eve “eating of the fruit of knowledge” and thereby cursing all of us due to her mistake. Wow, that’s a very insecure God. He doesn’t even want us to have knowledge in case we might figure out he wasn’t all that, I guess. So Jesus removes this original sin if you believe in him, OK, then you die and go to heaven. Kind of, then your body rots in the ground until “Judgement Day” when Christ returns (after the anti-christ) and everyone is brought back to life forever. It’s not quite clear if we all are just animated skeletons or if we get back our old bodies and if so, what period are we talking, when we were really old, at the time of death, or do we get to pick our favorite period?

Here’s a question, after spending all that time in heaven (the other afterlife story) with angels, God, and living in perfect peace, why would you want your rotted out old body to be re-animated so you could live on earth forever? Heaven sounds like a much better deal to me. 

It’s all about fear and control. I’m sure that the crazy jihadists believe just as strongly in their book of stories as the crazy Christian zealots believe in their stories. But here’s something that neither side seem to understand, these are stories meant to illustrate ideas, greater ideas, spiritual ideas that are not easy to explain in common language, and are often beyond our understanding which is why they are never literal. The bible conflicts with itself pretty much on every count. In Genesis God first refers to himself as We, then as an I, he makes everything at once, then in 7 days. I remember studying the book of Genesis in high school and thinking how bizarrely contradictory it was. And wondered why no one ever addressed this.

Ultimately, all spiritual paths and all religions (by virtue of them being related to people’s spiritual paths on occasion) are not straight forward, black and white, easy to understand, direct, concrete or literal in any way at all. The language of the spirit is poetry, visions, flashes of understanding, connection, compassion, intuition, symbolism. There is nothing simple about it and absolutely nothing literal, which is why zealots who see everything as literal are insane and truly waste their lives looking at the multiverse through a keyhole, randomly assigning roles to whatever they see based on the book they have in their hand.

It is absolute blindness.

I don’t think one could even begin to name how many zealots have lived in the history of the human race, yelling that the end was near, blah, blah, blah. But when it comes to these people actually really doing something about evil, like calling out the government of Darfur, calling Omar Bashir the anti-christ or at least an anti-christ, they won’t because what happens in Africa stays in Africa. The world to these people is the US and maybe Europe? But everyone on the planet could die off because of someone like Bashir and things would be peachy. These types weren’t calling Hitler the anti-christ either. Whys that?

Cause they reserve their hate speech to use as scare tactics to get people away from helping out others, because they don’t care about anything but their pocket books, their place in society and their power. And if it doesn’t effect them personally then it isn’t important.

So let’s get real about these a-holes. They are not spiritual, they are not Christian, they are not anything but shysters. 

OK and these questions tomorrow, and I’ll go back further over the week and answer earlier questions as well:

Sherry

Hi Denise Here’s something that might be of interest to all. For so long now we’ve watched small businesses get run over by large corporations and big box stores. It’s been hard to keep small individual businesses (i.e. mom-and-pop stores, etc.) from going bankrupt. I feel that once we get past the next couple of years and the economy begins to grow again, there will be opportunities for individuals and small companies to grow again. Especially since so many have closed up in the last few years. Right now everyone seems to shop at Walmart and Costco, etc. just to save as much as possible, but I think that when times get better people may want a more personal touch in their shopping. Would you ask the cards if an expansion of entrepreneurship is coming in the new economy. I would hate to think that we’re stuck with the Walmarts for the future. Use this recession time to prepare for what you want to do in the future. Lay the groundwork, so to speak. Thanks.

skaley

Hi Denise, I have a feeling that the US Dollar will start sliding heavily after sept 2009. How do you see the USD playing over the next 5 years?. How will the strength/weakness in USD effect the housing prices in the country? Do you see housing prices becoming affordable and in line with rents again?

 

Best wishes and many blessings to all you good people,

Denise

Answering Readers…

From Zak:

zak

Southern California has been experiencing a number of smaller earth quakes lately. Should we be concerned that a “big one” is coming?

I’ve been feeling a big earthquake coming but not right away, down the road several years, probably in the next 2-4. I have a feeling this one will be on the San Andres fault and will be between a 7.8 -8.5. It will be here in Southern California. I’d have to meditate on Northern CA, I’ve had the feeling the last few years that a big one would strike there first and then we’d have one a few years later here, but I’d have to be up there to really get a feeling for it and haven’t been in the hood for awhile. I’ll keep you posted as I feel it is getting closer.

And…

I just want to address the last post from Javahaaa first. 

It’s my belief that one can not think outside of the box if one lives inside it. There is a lot of debate about the genesis of the bible, both testaments. It is also true that depending on which side of the fence one is on, information can be read different ways. My research comes from sources outside the traditional framework of the church. I suggest reading Robert Graves very dense and scholarly book called, “The White Goddess.” There are many books I could recommend such as Merlin Stones, “When God was a Woman,” and the research done by Maya Gumbatis and so many others who came from either a feminist or archeological perspective to show the evolution and birth of the western religions. One can name all the types of trees in the forest and not see the actual forest. The details of how each testament was canonized is really not the point. The point is much bigger and if one gets lost in the minutia of information, then one losses the bigger perspective here.

I don’t want to keep going around and around about this, however, it’s not just the Burning Times, the Spanish Inquisition, the entire Middle-ages, the genocide of the Indigenous people from Australia where people were hunted for sport to our Native Americans who walked the Trail of Tears. One can say these atrocities aren’t related to western religion and I’m not being black and white about things here. I’m trying to make the point that the ideology of western monotheism (that means not just Christian but Judaism and Islam) is fundamentally toxic and why so many truly moral and decent people reject it in the form of atheism. It is toxic because these 3 religions who all believe in the same God, believe not just that their God is the only way, but that their interpretation of God is the only way. No one is more guilty (of the 3 of these western religions) then the Christians. And honestly I do think its fair to judge a religion based on its history, just as I would judge a person, an institution, a country or any ideology. An ideology has to work or it is useless to me. If a spiritual ideology is at the root of so much destruction, then one has to question if it embodies the core moral and spiritual values one has, and this is why so many of the most moral people I’ve met are atheists because they stop at the west and don’t bother researching any other form of spiritual teachings. And frankly they don’t need it. They have an intrinsic moral compass that they can always rely on, it’s called: compassion.

As I’ve said before in previous posts, the Creek never murdered the Cherokee because they believed in different Gods. They warred over resources and survival. I don’t think war is ever a good thing, but at least it makes sense to fight over scarce food sources, or over normal human stupidity. I’m sure they performed rights to their Gods before wars and begged for help. But they didn’t go into battle believing they had the divine right to kill anyone because that person was lesser than them. They went to battle for survival, to protect their homes, tribes and families; they went to battle to save face or to gain advantage. And they honored not only the people they killed in battle, but the animals they ate. Both with very elaborate rituals meant to release the souls of the dead to the next world. They would waste nothing of an animal, respecting the animals sacrifice for their survival. The structure of their psyches was shaped by an animate world were everything had value, everything was alive and part of the Creator/Great Spirit. And our consciousness is shaped by the idea that everything is inanimate except us which encourages a skewed narcissistic world view and one where we are superior to everything and can do as we please. We are man vs. nature. Indigenous cultures wouldn’t even know what that meant, it would be as absurd to them as buying land was to the Native Americans.

So I guess what I’m saying is we live in a western culture, and this ideology permeates not only those who are religious, but the way we govern, the structure of our government, our cities, our psyches. We are so enmeshed in these ideas that we can’t look at them objectively. We are literally living in a world created by a disassociation with nature, and look what we get, global warming, toxic waste everywhere. These are not coincidences, we have been at the control of world domination for at least the last 100 years and before us many other western Christian empires (the English, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Holy Roman Empire).

2000 years of this ideology and we’re about to die off. And yet we’ve been on this planet for over 100,000 years (a conservative estimate) and probably more like 250,000 years. In 1 or 2% of our time here, with the western thought controlling and conquering the world we are on the verge of extinction.

Do you honestly believe this is a coincidence? Don’t you think there is something intrinsically wrong with the way we have been doing things? And don’t you think it’s a little deeper then just Capatalism? What spawned Capatilism? It was invented by the western mind. Would it have sprouted at all if we had remained in balance with the earth and continued to honor all living beings? I’m not saying our own greed and other monkey brain problems don’t get thrown into the mix here, and that we can’t be tricked by are darker natures no matter what period of history or culture, but we managed to keep these in check for a long time, granted not always perfectly, and by no means am I saying life was ideal for all before 2000 years ago, but we had one thing right and that was; we lived in harmony with nature and our environment and didn’t see ourselves as the only living creatures of value to the Creator here on earth.  

I do want to say the 3 major western religions have also brought a lot of good to the world and there are many amazing and exceptionally spiritually evolved souls who use this path toward enlightenment. I’ve met so many people who fit that statement, probably the vast majority, these are the people who despite what the doctorine teaches, choice to believe in other people’s right to free will. These are people who have an internal moral compass which tells them there is something intrinsically wrong with persecuting others for not believing as they do. These are not the martyrs or the saints or the exhalted by their religions. But in my opinion these are the most enlightened members, people who can pick the truth and metaphor out of a book that has been tweaked and translated and within its pages been used to demonize others (like the reference to the ancient Hebrew Goddess Asatarte as Asatorth a demon). The whole thing is so absurd, that God is jealous, punishing and that we are all born with original sin because Eve made a mistake several hundred thousand years ago. All one has to do to eliminate that ridiculous idea (clearly put in place to put the fear of God into people so they could be controlled) is to look at a newborn baby and see how innocent and vulnerable that little being is. If God were truly like the God of the bible then heaven would be a pretty horrible and dysfunctional place. It would be like living with your psycho alcoholic dad on a bender. I really don’t feel God is anything like He/She is portrayed in the Old Testament. And after studying the Kaballah I don’t think any Rabbi does either. Just like most Priests loose their faith. The more one studies the good book, the more one sees the holes and looses faith. It seems the only people who can remain in those faiths are those who filter out the stuff that they intrinsically know doesn’t feel right. And there’s a lot of it in there. 

Here’s just a tiny example of the insanity in the 10 commandments:

 You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

And then, huh?

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;

So being a slave isn’t good, but owning one is A-OK? As long as you don’t covet your neighbors slave then we’re cool. What? That’s just ridiculous.

And that’s just a little tiny mini-quark sized fraction of an example from a cursory look at the 10 commandments. There are even more within the 10 commandments that are insane. 

Anyway, I want to let this go. So I’ve said my peace.

And as I’ve stated I believe any organized religion has the agenda to control people just as a government does. Within any organized religion however one will always find people who are truly spiritual and remarkable; those who use religion as a foundation for their spiritual connection, but are not enslaved by the literal words of their texts. 

P.S. It’s said that Mother Teresa lost her faith in God by the end of her life. This seems to be a common theme for people who are sticklers for the rules set forth in the bible. I think more people would be able to connect with their spirituality if they didn’t feel the only way to do it was through fear of God which is what the Old Testament is all about, and unfortunately it sets the foundation for the New Testament although Christ worked against it with his sermons. I do believe Christ was a remarkable teacher and holy person, I just don’t think he explained how to get from where most people are to where he was, very well. Although that’s what he wanted people to do when he said, “I am the way.” It’s my opinion, he didn’t mean worship me as God, he meant do as I do. I am your example, love everyone. And who could argue with that message?That’s the highest spiritual lesson we can possibly ascend to.

There’s a lot more to talk about including something Juno said about similar dreams. I’m noticing more and more patterns. Interesting that she had a dream about being at Disneyland because I actually took my daughter there for her 1st birthday about a week ago. Anyway, maybe we’ll all share some more simultaneous dreaming.

Best wishes and many blessings,

Denise