“You and me
We’ll all go down in history
With a sad statue of liberty
And a generation that didn’t agree.”
System of a Down

One band I like is System of a Down, sort of rock and heavy metal. “Sort of” because I don’t know the exact definitions of music types. They are American with Armenian roots which sometimes reflects in their music. Some of their lyrics are political and very inspirational and sometimes it’s just plain gobbledegook, so its a fun and interesting mix!

Well some of the lyrics that inspired me were the ones quoted above. In fact these lyrics almost brought me to tears, especially the “with a sad statue of liberty” which suprises me in one way because I’m English not American. Obviously she stands for more than just American Liberty which is a nice place for tourists to visit.

I don’t think this HUGE statue can only be a tourist attraction where you buy “cute” souveniers, she does actually mean something. And guess what that is; LIBERTY! And I think that means she’s not only American, she can represent this same principle for any nation. She wasn’t built just for tourism or for being “sad”, she means something and if we don’t recognise that, then that’s tragic.

I want a statue that knows what it stands for, something that’s fulfilling it’s real purpose. I may not be american but the Statue of Liberty evokes feelings in me, perhaps, like any american. I want her to stand proud for something that’s real, for what she is and not just be reduced to just another tourist visit, it should be a place of pilgrimage.

Even this Armenian band feels something for an American thing, and so can everyone because liberty and freedom don’t only belong to Americans. One day, these lyrics of warning I believe can be changed, should be changed, even will be changed to;

“You and me,
We’ll all go down in history
With a strong Statue of Liberty
And all generations living free!”

I really hope that’s true and today it begins in my heart where I shall build my own statue of liberty.

“Human beings were created to contemplate and reflect the universe. They are not themselves this great perfection, but are particles of perfection.” Gicero

“God is your mirror in which you contemplate yourself and you are His mirror in which He contemplates His divine attributes.” Ibn Arabi

“Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe.” James Lovelock

I thought I’d be explaining this concept but this time it’s come to me through a poem;

The Mind of Gaia

Gaia could see,
She could hear,
And smell, taste and touch
The creation of Herself.

Gaia created and created,
But none of Her creation She knew,
For She had no mind
With which to know Herself
Or the creation of Herself.

But then Gaia awoke,
As from sleep.
Her mind was born,
One like a shining mirror
For Her to reflect on Herself
And know Herself.

This mind wondered at the mystery it saw.
It created arts to express it wonder,
Sciences to explain its wonder
And religions to experience its wonder.

This mind called itself humanity,
For we humans are the infant mind of Gaia,
Still developing and evolving,
Still learning what it is
To be the mind of Gaia,
Still struggling to find a balance
With the power of this gift.

Great Gaia,
Through my mind know yourself,
Your wonder and mystery,
As it unfolds.
And also teach me to live with you
Not merely in you,
To know and respect
That I am a part of you
So that we may evolve together,
In harmony.

“This tendency to abstraction may be irreversible, because education today is only concerned with the conscious. The teacher delivers his knowledge the same way a waiter brings a drink to a customer. He has to feed pupils with the official programme. The thing that matters is the programme, not the teacher.” Itsuo Tsuda

“I thought the purpose of education was to learn to think for yourself.” John Keating (Robin Williams) in Dead Poets Society

“In the space age the most important space is between the ears.” Thomas J. Barlow

“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.” P. Scott Fitzgerald

We humans have come a very long from the days we used to swing around trees, barking or howling against competitors and for mates. We’ve created ethics, we’ve invented arts and sciences to reflect our awe and curiosity at the world, we’ve overcome standing on the razors edge of survival and spread all over the world building great cities with great cultures. Yes, we’ve come a long way... or have we?

Well yes, we have come a long way, it’s true but at the same time we’ve got a long way to go. Each human is made of the same stuff, mostly, we’ve all come from the same evolutionary tree so we have, or should have, the same potential for genius. I’m not just talking about intellectual, university type of genius but also emotional, spiritual, physical etc.

But when you walk down a town or cities street is it full on creative geniuses? No, it seems people have forgotten something vital to human life. People seem to have ditched in human quality for human quantity, people are more human doings rather than human beings. We´ve built something and then lots of humans started thinking “that’s it.” I beg to differ, we’re still in the developing process and always will be as evolution never stays still.

We have a great piece of biological technology encased in our skulls which the average person only uses 10% of and “geniuses” use up to around 20%, not because they’re born with a “special” gift but because they nurtured something that is in the human mind already. Look at it this way (analogy time), the brain is a type of dragon which can roar, breathe fire and fly but all it gets taught to do is maybe breathe a little smoke and then spends the rest of its life in some life-sucking beauracracy career where it acts as little more than a paper-weight or door-stop! Do you see my point?

The education system doesn’t let anyone nuture the “inner-dragon” of genius and if it does, it’s often by accident. Instead it feeds the brain with information that it only has to passively accept, without any great effort on its part. It’s a bit like todays dominant form of pleasure the tv, a lot of programmes you just have to sit and watch with no thought. All furniture in the house is no doubt facing the tv, where once upon a time social activity was based around the hearth.

When you’re sitting around a fire, you can’t just passively sit there hoping to get entertained, you have to entertain yourself and others. Around fires people get bored with nothing so they start talking, then singing and playing games and even inventing new things to play, sing and talk about. When I sit by a fire with others I can imagine why the fire of the gods is equated with intelligence because its here where we have room to sit and think and become “divinely inspired” by our thoughts.

Education in most schools consists of giving information to students as though students are just computers to be programmed. They’re given a lot of information but not the skills to be able to use that knowledge. Often people leave the education system not knowing what to do with life so instead go for the easy option to just earn money and not much else. But us humans can be quite spectacular if we can really experience our own potential.

One friend of mine who was trained in a Native American tradition told me that a rare but possible totem was the human totem. A person with a human totem is someone that embodies problem solving. The trait that all humans have to one degree or another is the ability to solve problems. Where most animals see things and reacte automatically, human can make a space inside their minds to imagine something in many different ways to see if there’s any new way of seeing it. But this isn’t something that can be taught passively, but one that each person has to develop for themselves or to “think for ourselves” as one of our quotes say.

One thing is that intellect is severely undermined. It’s usually seen as something that retains information and explains things in a dry, rational way. But to me it is more creative than that, it is not just about knowing and explaining, it also produces abstract thinking and problem solving. To me creative intellect is something that takes experience and knowledge into the imagination to use them in new and innovative ways.

One animal that also has such a trait, to what extent noone knows exactly, is the dolphin. There was a series of experiment where a dolphin had to come up with new and creative behaviour which of course they couldn’t know except by the clue of rewards. In the end their behaviours became so complex that the scientists couldn’t even keep track of it.

But this isn’t about the intelligence of other animals, this is about human intelligence. We’ve become a very innovative species, our whole world and its landscapes have been transformed because we have created so many different ways of living. Of course some of these are having adverse affects with things like global warming, deforestation and the destruction of habitats.

I don’t believe human intelligence did this, human intelligence is more intelligent than that. Our technologies and cultures were created by intelligent people; geniuses, revolutionaries and visionaries but they are maintained by people who haven’t developed the mental tools to cope with our modern abilities and opportunities, our ethics don’t always match our sciences.

The future of humanity lies in the new generations. The concept of a better humanity is not something far off but one that lies with the new generations, if we let it and our best means of doing that is through education. Instead of “restaurant schools”, as Tsuda might have said, we should find alternative ways of education, it doesn’t have to be a posh school, maybe home-schooling. We need new education that gives the students the initiative to become self-learned and self-directed individuals, where people can learn to direct their own lives and know where they’re going instead of relying on societies and governments that themselves don’t have a common purpose.

I want to see a better world, with better people, deeper people. I want people using the potential that lies within them. So first I’m going to work on myself, learning to be self-directed and interested in my life and its potential. Then I’ll find what opportunities I can to pass my experience onto other people. And then... well the skys the limits I guess ;)

“Truth is One and the learned call it by many names.” Rig Veda

“Too many people think they have an open mind when it’s just vacant.” Anon

“Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy, no intellectual insight. Truth is exact correspondence with reality. For man, truth is the unshakeable knowledge of his real nature, his Self.” Paramansa Yogananda

So I’m on a spiritual path, trying to find out what that path is all about, where it comes from and what the destination is, if there is one. I pick up books, go to workshops, rituals, churches and other things trying to make sense of the universe and myself, and find some meaning for it all if there is any. Some of them say that some greater being called God creates meaning, some say there is no God and we create our own meaning, some say there is no God or meaning but to live anyway, some don’t know and don’t care and some say all of these are parts of “The Truth” and that this truth cannot be known in it’s entirety.

So I’ve looked at monotheism, pantheism, animism, atheism, agnosticism, nihilism, polytheism and whatever other ‘ism’ I could get my eager thoughts on. I became what I called a Chaos Philosopher, which is like a Chaos Magician but without the emphasis on magic and more emphasis on philosophising (what a suprise lol)
There seemed to be no one truth, meaning, law or explanation on reality in human thought, only a “chaos” of ideas to choose from, which made me think if there is a universal truth it must be a chaos. I nearly became so sponge minded that I thought all of life, inner and outer was all a guessing game.

I became something else, something I call a Spiritual Agnostic, meaning I don’t know anything and yet I still had a spiritual urge in me that liked meaning and inner-evolution. In some ways I rationalised this as just another instinct that appeared in human kind as just another biproduct of evolution. Maybe that’s “true”, I still don’t fully know, but I know that when you’re trying to guess spiritual things without direction it’s not good, especially as humans need direction and meaning, something that has been too vague for me and my life. I was just carried away by the tides of societies “necessities” and fitting in my meaning where I could.

This is the difficult situation that most people have, that we fit our lives around the demands of society, wedging individual truth where we can and forgetting that society was created for the individual not the other way around. So meaning becomes what societal habits and conventions give us not something that we can say is ours.

Now I’m fortunate to live in a situation where society is a tool for me instead of using me as one. I now have freedom to develope or find my own personal truth without personal inteference. But there is a challenge for me. I feel like a battery hen that’s only known a small box, a bit of food and laying eggs as life, then it’s been released and found itself amongst some free range chicken. FREEDOM! This doesn’t sound like a challenge except in some ways I don’t know what to do with that freedom. With a liberated battery hen you’ll notice it doesn’t do too much adventuring, it watches the free range chicken wondering what they’re doing and unsure of the big open space before it. But eventually it follows the example of the others and practices it’s freedom. Like myself, I’m making steps out of the box world that has been built within my psychology to discover what truth and meaning are for me.

So once again, in a better, free context, what is meaning or truth and is there a difference between them? Well I think their is “one truth”, a universal law that affects all. To me it’s a common ground on which everything in the universe can interact and percieve one another. If you (the reader) and I (the writer) lived in completely separate realities or truths then there’d be no way for us to interact, there’d be no common law to determine how we should interact. We couldn’t even percieve one another as on a quantum level nothing can be percieved without being effected.

So in this case, this common ground or Cosmic Truth as we shall call it is so essential to reality that nothing can be in accord or discord from it. We cannot “fall” from it or “be saved” by it like it was some God that wants us to behave in some ways and not others, in fact such a God could not determine this Cosmic Truth but would be subject to it instead. Cosmic Truth itself is Self-So, meaning it is only subject to itself not to something other.

Can we use this Cosmic Truth to determine how to live our lives? No, it is not a Way for the individual to live by, it is the Way of the entire Universe. There’s is no way to know or be ignorant of it that makes it an advantage or disadvantage like a science or scripture because, like I said, you can neither find accord or discord with it, so fundamental is it to reality.

If a human did try to “follow” Cosmic Truth then it could create chaos in that life because it allows a diverse multitude of things that have no common direction or meaning except that they exist in the same way. A human life trying to be governed by this would then have no meaning and just become a random product, which is not what humans are. We live our lives, not by a chaotic meaning but by an ordered meaning and that ordered meaning cannot be found through the group journey of humans but through each individual. But each individual in the service of societies directions become nothing more than another “random product.”

The truth of the individual I call the Self and I shall repeate the words of Paramhansa Yogananda, “For man, truth is the unshakeable knowledge of his real nature, his Self.” This Self is within us and beyond us but never found outside of us. It is within us because it the fabric of a being’s Being, it is its centre and the substance of which it is made. It is beyond us because it does not conform to our circumstances or conditioning. And no matter how hard you try you’ll never find it outside because the Being or Self is unique to each being and cannot be shared. It is not some that controls but rather guides, it doesn’t produce a random life, instead it creates an organic order, so long as the individual doesn’t conform to truths that do not belong to it.

I have the freedom now to find my truth, the Self, and nurture that as it should be nurtured and maybe, if my Self allows for it, guide others to the meaning and truth of their Self.

“Mother is the name of God on the lips of children.” Brandon Lee in The Crow

This quote strikes quite a chord, or at least should do. In the film, “The Crow” says this phrase to a mother who’s hooked on drugs and doesn’t care properly for her daughter or herself for that matter. When Brandon says this, it’s a wake up call, not one that tells her that she should be worshipped by her kid but that for any infant the first figures they venerate are their parents. Also parents are the first humans for kids to relate to, this means they are the first example or model with which kids relate and to which they aspire. So parents should be very careful with their kids lives because their problems and mistakes could easily become reflected in the lives of their kids, even when they’re adults.

But I think I’ve been fortunate. One day I got thinking about why my life´s a good life, how I´ve come to a situation that really is what I am. I realised that I´m in my life, not one that´s been made for me by other people and I think I´ve got my mum to thank for that.

If she hadn´t loved me the way she did, I wouldn´t have this good life. I wouldn´t have a relationship with my girlfriend where I feel free, trusted or loved. Even if I´ve got different beliefs and ideas to my mum I can still be loved by her and love her. Even though I’ve moved away she still loves me because she values the freedom of my humanity. What my mum showed me was a love that jumps over our story, our blood-ties and even beliefs. Her love means that I´m not an extension or a carbon-copy of her life nor do I feel like I should repay some debt that I owe her, because she gave me unconditional love, not something bartered or traded.

My mum’s love is an open hand that doesn´t grasp nor reject, push or pull me, instead, because she allows me freedom, I return to it willingly because it’s made of trust not fear. Because of this I think she’s made the world a better place and even if I´m not a Christian in my beliefs I´m a Christian in my heart because of her and that can only be good. When I see my mum I know what it means to have Christ in your heart because she follows something that´s essential and true and because of that example I have a life that´s essential and true for me.

I’m not saying I’ve had a perfect upbringing because it hasn’t always and my parents have in some ways projected their problems and mistakes onto my upbringing. But there has been something different about my life that most other people don’t have or won’t bother looking for, I’m not just another “product” created by the factory of society.

And because of this I exist in a situation that gives me freedom. Not necessarily freedom to do what I want, any society can do that, but freedom to be what I am, from soul to skin, the freedom that counts and many don’t encounter.

"May the Grail in your heart serve Humanity." Swamiji of Earth Sanctuary http://www.earthsanctuary.net

Serve humanity? Am I a servant? Do I follow the biddings of society like a limb is directed by the brain? Do humans serve humanity or does humanity serve humans? If I serve humanity then I lose my soul in a great swamp of cultural biases and have no chance to change things. If I serve only myself then I lose sight that I live alongside others in a world that needs care. How then can I serve humanity?

Monasticism. No not the dogmatic world-denying sort because that defeats the object of healing it and changing it. No what I mean is that there are communities that seek to preserve something pure and healing, something that society at large does not recognise or nurture and in the worst cases tries to destroy.

As an example I´ll use Lord of the Rings. I know it´s fictional but we can extract a relevent point. The hobbits had something special, they had found a quiet place for themselves away from human politics, from dwarf industry, from Mordor´s evil and also here is where we find our heroes Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.

Now the hobbits were unknowingly preserving something. They had a special way of life that didn´t disturb balrogs like the dwarves, didn´t fall to the Rings corruption and didn´t even seem to pose a threat to Sauron or any other evil. The elves on the other hand, also seeking to preserve something, did so knowingly. They were fully aware of evil in the world and knew they had to keep something sacred and preserved. They came away from the world and sought refuge in sacred places. They, like the hobbits lived a close relationship to their environment.

Hobbits and Elves preserved something that was more than just a culture, place or object. They were preserving themselves because it was they themselves that would be important in saving Middle Earth from evil. This is the "Grail in your Heart" which we can call the Self, an inner truth, purity or goodness maybe. Whatever it is, it is not the ego identity but something deeper. This is what we truly are, something all humans could do because why be something you´re not?

What´s the most destructive thing of all? If we do not live our inner truth then we live like the homeless, though on a spiritual level. We could have all the comforts of the world, money, a job, friends and family, in other words everything that society says we should have but if we don´t live truly from our Self then really we have nothing. This Self is deeper than our thoughts, feeling or sensations it is the thing that binds these together and forms their centre.

How then do we live from the Self and not the ego or societal values? In a way it seems very simple, you don´t have to work for it because it is your inner truth, it the essence of what you are and not something you can gain or lose. It´s not something you do, it is somethng you are. If we could all just have the room to BE and follow our inner truth of the Self then the world would be a greater place than we have now.

The real problem is that humanity at large does not recognise the Self and our recognition of it becomes more and more difficult the more we live depending on any societal or cultural values. It is difficult to break free of these values, they´ve permeated our growing life, taught to us by family, schools and community because noone has consciously questioned them or sought for an alternative. This is because they seem so fundamental to life, like how we are educated, where and when we should start work or retire, how we should behave and percieve the people and things around us.

I´m reminded of the Matrix trilogy. You live in a world that seems quite normal, then your told it´s an illusion, that you´re living a lie. Either you carry on living the illusion which only makes it worse or break free which is painful as we´ve become psychologically dependent on it. Society can be like this, an illusion as many of its values are out-of-date and need reevaluation but it´s so entrenched in many people´s experience it´s almost impossible to uproot from their psychology.

Like I said before we need the space to BE, instead of being distracted by the pressures of society, a place where people accept and nurture you for what you REALLY are and not what you or others think you are. A Sanctuary of the Self where the only real struggle is with your societal psychology and where freedom isn´t about “doing what you want” but Being What You Are.

This is what we need to allow our Self to manifest. We need to step ouside of societies trappings into freedom and the Sanctuary of the Self, not just for a holiday retreat but for life so that permanent changes take place.

Going back to the quote, how do we serve humanity? By BEING human, to manifest our potential that the universe has given to us. This BEING should stand as a beacon, not like a minister standing in the pulpit but by the actions we do and the lives we lead. Not serving your Self, is contrary to your humanity and so contrary to all humanity. To serve humanity is to serve your humanity, the inner truth of the Self, the Grail of the Heart.

I leave you with this;

Don´t be beautiful or ugly,

Rich or poor,

Fertile or sterile,

A success or a failure,

Married or single,

With children or without.

Instead find your sanctuary

Outside society but inside the world

Where you can recognise your Self,

That it´s freedom is safe,

That it´s freedom is secret,

And that it´s freedom is sacred.

So you can just live your inner truth and BE.

"Many individuals stand up and declare an idea that is "destined to be a movement". Many of these individuals end up just sitting back down. A few begin showing signs of a movement, but turn around and sit back down as well. Out of those many, a couple will succeed on their mission. They will demonstrate a level of enginuity, and enthusiasm to make their idea a movement. " Rev. Eric T. Schuetz

Are you a dreamer or a visionary? Do you live your dreams or do your dream live you? Everyone has thoughts about what life could, should and would be and it´s important to ponder these things because from these we get new ideas and life no longer follows the same old boring patterns. If our dreams become visions which then reach out into life and transform it we become visionaries! But then we can forget the grounding of life, we get lost in our dreams, the insubstantial misty thoughts that are anything we want them to be except real!

One symbol that I find inspirational for this is the pentacle, in the obverse. I have five words or "IN´s" for each element, so earth is Instinct, water is Intuition, air is Intellect, Fire is Intent and Spirit is Inspiration. There are two more "In´s" that I shall describe later.
Usually the pentacle is point up, spirit reaches into heaven, air and water reach out the sides and fire and earth reach down. But I find this to be ungrounded because here heaven and earth are separated into dualistic thinking. But that´s the problem of many religions and spiritualities, they seek "God", heaven, meaning or truth outside of mundane life. This is for unhealthy, unreal dreamers, not visionaries.

Taking the pentacle again we can put the spirit point down, bury it in the ground. This means to me that dreams or Inspiration are grounded, that they have real expression, they are not delusions that lead us away from the vitality tha is life. At its sides are Intellect and Intuition tthat support it like struts either side. Then there is Instinct and Intent, these are raised toheaven where they commune with "higher" realities. The sixth "In" is the Individual which lays within the pentagram at the centre, where it is sustained, supported and protected by the other "IN´s".

In some schools of thought this symbol is often seen with a horned animals head. We humans are just animals with basic animal needs, food, air etc. Now the mouth "feeds" off of Inspiration but only when it is grounded in the Earth. The ears of the animal are Intellect and Intuition, they are our tools of perception. Then the animals horns, Instinct and Intent are raised to the heaven´s fending off useless pipe-dreams. Here is the balanced and healthy human animal, where heaven and earth are married and not separated. This gives us our seventh "IN", Integrity. A life with Integrity in a healthy, happy and balanced one.

Here we have an image to help us make our dreams and give them reality and meaning. If we feed ourselves only with the basic necessities of life we become empty shells, devoid of meaning and if we forget these in favour of dreams then we become nothing more than empty visions. But if we can align these two, seek Integrity then life becomes something good and healthy.

But what´s important isn´t the symbol, I was just using that to convey a point (or five ;) ), so I leave you with this thought,

May Instinct sustain you and not constrict you,
May Intuition guide you and not confuse you,
May Intellect give you sense and not ignorance,
May Intent be strong and not burn you,
May Inspiration manifest potential and not empty images
And may Integrity flow through the Individual in health and balance.

“Human beings think of the gods as havng been born, wearing clothes, speaking and having bodies like their own. Ethiopians say the gods are black with snub-noses. Thracians say they have blue eyes and red hair. If cows and horses had hands they would draw pictures of the gods looking like cows and horses!” Xenophanes

“Personality is a limitation; therefore God as we understand Him has no personality. Prayer is our address to God. How can we address someone who has no personality? I address God as if He were a person, though I know that he is not.” Tolstoy

What happens when impersonal objects are given a human form and personality? What happens when a mountain, river, ocean, famine or art are given the history of a human life?

Humans are naturally a species that creates and follows reason. Within the habitat of the human mind values and meaning are as real as the flesh and bones that contain them. But outside of the human mind there are no values or reasons for anything, they just are and anything from stars to atoms, chromosomes to computers, mythology to science are all subject to the same callously indifferent laws of creation, evolution and destruction.

But humans are still persistent in finding out what makes the universe tick, the whats, whys and hows of things. These details are important because they are part of what make us human and give us a unique advantage over our environment. Of course, in the past when logic could not read all the information humans had to fill in the gaps with things more easly understood, like human nature. Winds became cheeks that blow, celestial objects were born and died cyclically and ancestor spirits spirits lived on throught the landscape.

We now have gods that govern human activities like healing, art, industry, law, cooking, cleaning etc and more wild gods for the landscape, seasons, fertility and so on. Human gods, those that govern human culture and civilisation are easy to understand as their realms are in the human domain and so represent human conventions easily.

More wild divinities that represent qualities throughout Nature and Cosmos are beyond human conventions and so when they are given human form their images are unconventional, insane and even sinister. Their actions can be alien, their intent fickle and illogical. Perhaps a mountain shelters and nurtures a tribe but then it spews forth hot lava that wipes out a village. Or maybe another tribe suffers from drought, and then they are given rain which quenches their thirst but then they might be drowned. The gods, the Forces of Nature can seem more like temperamental children than sophisticaed intelligences.

Some religions may admit that their gods are as limited in understanding and ability as humans, they themselves may be just as fallible and mortal as us. But other religions will argue that their God or gods are infinitely all-loving and infallible which a limited human mind would not grasp. Logically speaking this may be possible as the finite human mind can only percieve reality in fragments, so anything infinite will not be percieved so a personal, infinite Being could be justified no matter the atrocities of the world since their actons would be beyond any models of human logic thrown at it.

That aside, to me the gods are symbols of reality that represent anything we need representing. The human mind is equipped to understand some things and not others, so sometimes we need artficial ´delusions´ like the ones religion gives us to placate an unsettled mind. In the mean time we need not be constricted by these ideas but should try our best to use them as spring boards so that help us to grow and evolve.

May the gods, God, Goddess, symbols, archetypes, ancestors, forces of nature, demons, angels, art, science, Truth, Love and Life BLESS YOU!!! :)

"Hoof and horn hoof and horn, all that dies shall be reborn. Corn and grain, corn and grain, all that falls shall rise again." Pagan chant

"A Crus Salus" (From the Cross, Salvation) Motto on Brough coat of arms.

Although I'm a Pagan, the image of Christ on the cross is still evocative and reminds me of many things like natures cycles or "heroic resignation", not just death and guilt. It is so much more than a man-god dieing for sins, though for most people that is its essential message. From the moment we are concieved we are destined to die. It is as if we are all on a cross waiting to die because, essentially, the act of living necessitates death.

In the cross is the limitation of the world, each end can represent an element; earth, water, air and fire or to put it scientifically solid, liquid, gas and energy. Our forms cannot exist in any other way, scientifically speaking. We are 'hung' if you like on this body of solid, liquid, gas and energy. Though we have to ask what is it that hangs on the body? Some would say the soul, the thing that contains the inner experience, thoughts, feelings, memory, personality etc

I don't believe in a personal survival after death. My soul has the same laws and limitations as the body so when my body dies my soul dies or at least disintegrates. The body and soul are both limitations for something else to be 'hung' on and are both subject to the same laws of the growth and decay of life as it changes.

Consciousness then, the centre of experience hangs on body and soul. I do believe that there is something more to consciousness than being a product of chemical reactions within the brain. I believe it has something more primordial and eternal to it. When we die our consciousness, the I AM without this or that, the Here and Now without there and then returns to a 'sea' of consciouness. This is our source, God where all things are condensed from into a form and finally dissolve back into.

Going back to Jesus on the cross who is said to be God incarnate, in this case consciousness incarnate, we have a symbol where human and divine meet. Human being the horizontal line and the Divine being the verticle line. It is as though our divinity hangs on the cross of our humanity.

Now as a Pagan, the most important part of its symbolism is the image of life and death it conveys. It can most definately be related to both the agricultural and sexual aspects of fertility. First of all it reminds me of a wheat stalk that carries ripe seeds. The stalk has died, it is no longer needed but in its place it leave's seeds that carry it's life essense. These are shed into fertile soil. This also has phallic connotations The penis stands tall and erect, carries it's seed, then as it reaches its climax, drops the seed in 'dark moist soil' and relaxes. It's job done, it retains its former more docile form. Ejaculation has been termed the 'little death' in some cultures for they believe that when you lose sperm you lose life-force and come nearer to death.

Here's another image that connects death and sex. A Samhain, a time to contemplate death and the ancestors, there is reproduction happening. Animals like sheep and deer reproduce. Stags are ready to mate, they've grown their antlers to fight off competitors and attract mates. At this time when the world goes into winter, leaves die and fall and some animals become dormant. When this season where stags and hind mate is over, the stags antlers fall off. Again the image of something tall and strong meets it climax and falls or 'dies'. So here, symbolically at least, the connection between death and sex is shown.

Once again going back to Jesus, his rabbinic career found its climax in the crucifixion. There's build up as he tours round teaching. Then he was prosecuted for what he'd been teaching so he was crucified for it. Here is the climax of his teachings, what his teachings brought him. But as with all things in Nature that wasn't the end. His corpse was laid to rest in a tomb, or a womb if you like, where after a time he resurected. And so the seed arises after it's been planted and the sperm too arises after a fashion.

Sacrifice
Life is sacrifice.
Death of soil, life of grass.
Death of grass, life of grazer.
Death of grazer, life of hunter.
Death of hunter, life of soil.
Thus balance is sustainedCircles go round,
Life is sacrifice.

I sacrifice my time and gain space,
I sacrifice my space and gain time.
My sacrifice a trade.
Sacrifice the currency of life.

I offer up my life,
I sacrifice it to the world.
All that is me is disseminated,
Shared throughout the vital flows of earth,
Rivers of ecological merging and diverging.
I am not lost
Though my form is gone,
My essential unity found,
Illusory isolation banished forever
And I live on,
Sacrificed.
Copyright © 2005 by Adam Brough

"Most people never realize that the purpose of intoxication is to sharpen the mind." Aghori Vimalananda

A curious quote and not something easily understood on face value. I did hear a theory once that modern western civilisation was created through alcohol. It may seem strange but think about it, creativity is something that comes spontaneously, something without conscious effort. Alcohol loosens that conscious inteference to let the subconscious express itself. So our inventiveness may have come about by having alcohol in our diet!

Some examples without alcohol; Einstein came up with some of his greatest ideas, not by laboratory analysis but by aimlessly day-dreaming. When I write poetry, usually it comes best when I don't have any intent about it. In fact times when I'd quite happily sleep I can't because there's so much "noise" in my mind, it has to be written down!

Going back to alcohols hand in western civilisation; we've also got a huge complex culture surrounding alcohol itself, we have the institutions of bars, clubs and pubs, there are many different types of alcohol and different ways to serve and drink alcohol. Nothing quite as complex as a Japanese tea ceremony but complex nonetheless like the symbel ritual of Theodish and Asatru or the more modern drinking games.

Alcohols become such a cultural influence it's given birth to Alcoholics Anoymous, which isn't just a group of alcoholics getting together and talking about their problams but it also hase the 12 Step system, which has a spiritual aspect to it. But this goes against the above quote. AA is about people who want to remain sobre because they cannot control their drunkeness not about reaping the benefits of a drunken creativity.

We should also be careful of our state of mind. An ex-girlfriend was talking about mind altering substances and how if you're in a bad state of mind then any drunken, hallucinatory or 'high' experience will be a bad experience. For this reason and also seeing the effects of alcoholism I do not use alcohol or any substance to compensate for my emotions, instead I prefer to sobrely deal with them.

Perhaps to sharpen the mind means that people who are able to consciously indulge in drunkenness and fantasy and consciously detach themselves from it at will are the ones who reap the benefits and have the "sharpest" of minds. They do not drown the rational mind in emotions nor do they suppress emotions with rational analysis, they balance it.

Much like einstein, he didn't permanently day-dream. One moment he'd analyse, he'd then take a break and day-dream where his E=MC2 bubbles up from the subconscious. Here his rational thinking had sunk it to be processed without rational interference so it could have a more organic, active form. Then of course with this he'd go back to his rational thinking to give it more rational sense.

This is the same process as my poery writing. I like to fill my mind with info and when I've got something really interesting I read about it then put it down. Later it'll "bubble up" again where I can use the right words to express it. It's like the info gives it a bone structure then the more spontaneous subconscious part of it gives it muscle. Without our bones we'd be like living jelly, without muscles we'd be, well dead...

Another point to make about fantasy or drunkeness is that is that humans have developed a psychological need for fantasy. For all the rational atheists preaching about objective and logical truth we still have this inbuilt desire for fantasy and ritual. But if we indulge this too much we live a useless delusion. What do we do?

Well like Satanists we can allow our selves an "Intellectual Decompression Chamber" http://www.dpjs.co.uk/idc.html Some Satanists being objectivists also recognize humans are a religious animal, where we need some sort of ritual, magic, fantasy, dogma and meaning in our lives. To deny this is a kind of emotional suicide, a most unhealthy act. So to satiate our religious desire AND not fall onto the path of delusion we can allow ourselves Anton Lavey's Intellectual Decompression Chamber, where you indulge in consciously contrived delusion allow some moments for ritual and fantasy before returning to sobre consciousness.

There's the norse god Odin that can teach us a thing or two about this. To gain wisdom he made a sacrifice. That is in exchange for wisdom he had to sacricfice an eye, like he's taken out one sobre 'outward' looking eye to gain an intuitive 'inward' looking eye.

So what I think is that drunkeness or delusion isn't sharpness in itself but a tool to aquire sharpness of mind, much like rough sand-paper creates smooth wood, or how smelly poo can make a colourful and fertile garden. I like ritual, I like mythology and the feeling of 'sacredness', why shouldn't I use those? But i do, and from it I gain not just 'good feelings' but also a sense of community in group rituals, there's also the fact it can convey the sense of something sacred, magical and meaningful and these are I think, important for our psychological welfare.

Note: I've confused some concepts because of the limits of language and because different people apply different values on them, like magic-mundane, fantasy-fact, delusion-knowledge, unconscious-conscious, intuitive-intellectual, irrational- rational. Some of these overlap and some of these don't, but they all have a parallel in one way or another.

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"Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas." Albert Einstein
"A man's character is his fate." Heraclitus

I do sometimes wonder if Free Will is actually free. Here we are creatures influenced by our "ideas" or "characters". That's hardly freedom is it? Sometimes I can try all I can to choose the 'right' thing but sometimes, just sometimes, I fail. Not by choice, simply because I'm limited to my nature. Sometimes it feels like I can flick a switch inside me where I can turn on and off things like memory, emotions and thoughts, but not all the time, I don't have the freedom to completely become another person and do other things.

There's something in my mind that I can't quite figure out about free will. Where does it come from? I mainly associate this problem with Chaos and Order. Now Order is completely mechanical, completely predictable and has no room for variation. And yet like Will it has a direction and focus.

What about Chaos? Now some say that this gives us the capacity for choice. There is no mechanics, there is no predictability, and infinite room for variation. But I still remain unconvinced. To me Chaos equates with completely spontaneous randomness. That is something that is not controlled nor predetermined, so this has no room for choice either.

If we had none of what Heraclitus called character, maybe that would be freedom. We'd have no conditions and infinite potential and yet that would mean there is no control, just randomness. Whereas Order or 'character' is conditioned and directioned like the Will of Free Will but is so rigid that it allows no variation, so I can't see where choice comes there either.

Yet humankind has evolved to percieve itself making 'choices'. Everyday I seem to make choices between one door or another, between toffee or mint icecream. I make my choice but then after reflection I'm unsure where it came from. Was it a predetermined desire or a completely random act where no thought determined it?

I think I would say that Free Will is a combination of Chaos and Order, Free=Chaos and Will=Order. I could still be wrong, there may be another alternative where 'choice' transcends the polarity of Chaos and Order, but because of the limited condtions of my mind I just cannot see it clearly.

Of course now I'm thinking pragmatically. None of this really matters, if I knew one way or another then that knowing would make no difference at all. If we don't have choice, well that's that, no choice. But if we do, well, we do and that's that too. Still the knowledge of one way or another isn't really an advantage.

The bottom line is that I percieve myself making choices, so I'll carry on with this awareness, whether illusory or not and carry on with my life as responsibly as I can and maybe, just maybe I could become the wiser.

"You may be dissapointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." Beverly Sills

"Feel the fear and do it anyway." Anon

That about says it all really. There are times in life when you've gotta take the plunge, no matter the state of your confidence.
It's nice safely bumbling along through life but if you get stuck in a rut, sometimes you've gotta move beyond your fears and find new avenues in life.

"The beautiful thing about learning, is nobody can take it away from you." B.B.King

Another fantastic quote. WE CAN ALWAYS LEARN!!! Cool :)

This faculty seems almost as universal for life as death. Physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually there's always learning.

Right from the beginning DNA has, by trial and error, been learning what combinations work the best. Looking around at Nature we can see it has learnt vast complex multitudes of genetic variation!

Or emotionally. We learn what upsets us, what makes us happy, we can find us what works best and worst for our emotions. Although more emotionally aware creatures can create emotional traps for those less aware. For instance I go into a field of sheep and walk with a bucket of feed and usually this will get them interested, or if I yell and run at them they'll run away. I can do this with my dog, in subtle ways I can influence what she does but making her interested, altering my voice or my body language. On the other hand my dog's learnt how I tick and can pull 'puppy dog eyes' or be annoying to evoke or provoke a reaction lol.

Intellectually there' lots of facts and figures we can learn about, lots of things to measure and define, almost without end! And what with the human capacity for the imagination we can create things for other people to learn about; tools, stories, art, culture, the list goes on.

Also spiritually. Well this is a rather obscure subject. Noone really knows what it is or at least don't know how to adequately explain it. Each culture, subcultrue, subsubculture, and even subsubsub etc has a complex (or simple) system of symbolism, meditiation, ritual and belief, it's hard to pin point. BUT there is, once again, the possibility to learn! We can sift through the ideas and experiences of many people and compare it with our own with some idea, intuition or otherwise of what spirituality is.

And then who knows what other levels and arenas of learning there are?! It could go on for eternity! :O Wow, now there's a thought!

So, learn, learn and learn! Whether by education or experience, learn!

"The best life is spent preparing for death." Plato
Not very optimistic or comforting, so why say it?
Pretty simple, all life eventually dies, there's no avoiding it. If you have a problem with death then you have a problem with life. Noone living, leaves life alive... and we've all got to leave!Maybe death is the meaning of life, not salvation, or worshipping Allah or even biological reproduction, as these experiences aren't even that universal within life! In a world where death is so universal it's only sensible to contemplate and prepare for death.

Now this doesn't mean we should commit suicide. I'm not, life's too interesting! No, death comes whatever, suicide or not so there's no need to commit suicide. Personally I'd much rather die after a long and complex life that cut it short.

I've heard it said that we start dieing the day we are born. It's like we've been given a death sentense from birth. The only difference between "most people" and those who ARE on death sentence or who are terminally ill is that "most people" are less aware of their mortality.

Death is the ever present, silent companion that makes life real. Imagine immortality, without death. It would be dull and boring. It is mortality that makes life intense and vibrant instead of the same dull grey forever. Paradoxically those who are acutely aware of death can find a new zest for life not found when blind about mortality.

Another quote comes to mind though I don't remember who said it "Live each day like it's your last."