On edge

[ishmael]

One of the things I've been hit by lately is how much we all are on edge. The world seems to be going its not so merry way, to hell in a handbasket. The middle east is boiling, the oil supplies are boiling, and there's a constant fear of some damn thing going wrong, upsetting the applecart. All of it fueled by 24-7 media coverage.

I think this material feeds on itself. The mind gets a head of steam and keeps it churning. O that it not churn to a head!

I think of my old friend Ron, who after much turmoil has decided on the way of a Buddhist monk. He spends half his year sitting, and I think people like him probably keep things together. Not by any obvious means, simply because there are odd, interesting people who are willing to give their consciousness over to meditation. In the psychic field they hold it together.

I'm going to tell you a secret. This secret has been held dear for thousands of years for good reason. The mass of people haven't been ready until now. It's rather simple.

All of this is God. All the pain, all the suffering, all the triumph all the conquer. It's all God. There is no God who lords over you, you are God.

Speaking to the unspeakable, always the great mysterious, I asked for absolution. The mysterious refused to talk. I tried cajoling it with mantras of wealth and solitude, it refused to talk. I thought I had it by the balls, it refused to talk.

The only time it talked was when I surrendered. Okay, I give up, I haven't a clue. Keep me alive, keep me guessing, for my small span. Then it spoke.

[Meerkat]

Some of us are over the edge.

[huisjen]

When it spoke, what did the voices in your head say?

[glenallen]

Damn, Jack, you've finally spilled it all out here before us like I always hoped you would (well, not always, but for a couple of years at least).
I like to hear confirmations of my own beliefs even if they come from faraway outposts like Maine.
What you call God, I call Life. We both know it is life, but only one of us believes that it's "all God". The other one of us believes it's "all Life".

I think it is liberating to know that you are the master of your own ship, measley as it may seem at first glance.
I've learned by sailing far and wide and long that I am the greatest ship on MY sea.
If I listened to the media or the government I would have been a cowering, fearful lump of dying meat long ago.

I think there is no God but me who gives a hoot about me. No God but you who cares about Ishmael.

[ishmael]

Dan,

The presumption of the Christian church, be it Catholic or Protestant, is that God spoke in these very narrow terms that are the gospels.

I'm quite sure this is wrong.

I'm a loose fellow, loose in the stream that is an unfolding. We should all be. What do I see? All manner of things you'd have to stand next to me to understand.

P.S. Glenallen, it's too facile to say we are masters of our own destiny. I firmly believe Jung's sentiment that whatever is unconscious is lived out as fate. And getting at the unconscious drives is a piece of work.

[Elcoholic]

"I believe that a man does what he can until his destiny is revealed." - Capt. Nathan Algren

"Religion is organized wishful-thinking." - Jan S. Hadley

"I'm as pure as the driven slush." - Tallulah Bankhead

"What? Me Worry?" - Alfred E. Neuman

[huisjen]

Yep. I've heard loose used as a synonym for drunk before, and you're doing that slurred rambling thing into the keyboard. Your mind is certainly a head of steam, churning. The pressure relief valve is your mouth and keyboard, and that valve just screams away about this stuff, letting out steam to no reall purpose. All it does is surround you with words which confuse you into pretending that you're onto something deep.

But the tao that is spoken is not the true tao.

Dan

[Tom Montgomery]

I've come to the conclusion that God speaks to me all the time. I have not often been attentive. I could not hear Him at all while I was drinking....

Religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

[Henning 4148]

First thing: Get rid of that TV box. Then, after a while, you will start to look different at things and facts ... You will start to see the forrest again instead of all the trees.

[Dave Fleming]

There is Buddha
for those who don't know what he is, really.

There is no Buddha
for those who know what he is, really.

[LeeG]

We all are manifold,

Look! the moon.

[Leon m]

Love...thats all.:)

[John of Phoenix]

It all sounds very "Est!"

[ishmael]

Leon,

It's not all love. That's a hope, a machination. God isn't ALL LOVE. It's also the terror and the death and the horror. You can observe that this ultimately is love too, but in the breach it's just terrifying.

The revelation I mentioned is that these seeming untoward events are God too. They aren't a medieval construct, Satan, all the bad attributed to him. They're God. And so are you.

Getting past the images, accepting, seems what the new focus will be. We're going to fight it tooth and claw, and I fear for the near term, but eventually.

[LeeG]

brush your teeth and trim your nails, never know when you'll be called up.

[ishmael]

Uncomfortable, isn't it?

The discomfort is what drives much of the madness.