SpiritMan (on the edge)

[SpiritMan]

I've decided that my blog should be about things that other people would not have the courage to say even though they may think about them. I want to challenge people with ideas that might be more freely discussed outside of America and surely outside of the Midwest. The great thing about blogs is the ability to share your trains of thought without the possibility of being sidetracked by opposing views or deliberate antagonizing. So stay tuned! I already have a few trains waiting in the station.

[SpiritMan]

Cheating. This is a concept I’ve thought about a lot in the past few months. A woman made a comment about Brokeback Mountain recently. She pointed out that both of the male characters in the movie were cheating on their wives. I was amazed at how my perspective was exactly the opposite of hers. I felt that both the marriages were in a way a form of cheating by the male characters on each other. The primary relationship was between the two men. I thought it was interesting that this woman laid the blame on the male characters instead of on intolerance so strong it forces people to live lies. I thought, “wouldn’t it be a better world if truth was the most important factor in relationships?” Of course telling the truth requires seeing a bigger picture than the narrow one drawn by religious and cultural rules.

Cheat = a person who is not honest and who does things to deceive or trick others. Doesn’t this imply that the lie is the problem? But how many people are truly mature enough to handle the TRUTH?

For me as a man, I would have to argue that the concept of cheating is more of a female concept when relating to relationships. I also have very firm beliefs because of my experience with lesbian friends. Something we often ignore are the biological differences between male and female sexuality. Many studies show that men are more visually stimulated than are women. In most species of animals, the male is biologically programed to go out and seek sexual partners. If the lie is the problem, then perhaps the requirement of monogamy is the thing that creates the need to lie. How often do we hear women make comments that imply that all men are liars? Wouldn’t it be advantageous to talk about the differences between male and female concepts of relationships and love, rather than allowing one concept to be accepted as the “more moral” alternative? From my perspective as a man, I believe that men are able to separate sexuality into two different categories. There is recreational sex and there is love. Hard as this may be for many women to accept, it would seem to be true if one looks around at the state of so called “marriage” and relationships.

Shouldn’t each couple who come together to experiment in a new relationship be able to create their own rules within a foundation of truth and honesty? Wouldn’t opposite gender relationships benefit from learning about each other’s needs and perspectives, instead of having a struggle of one gender and concept over another? Shouldn’t the same be true of the two separate personalities, regardless of gender? I do not believe that relationships are failing more because we need to return to the old rules. I believe they are falling apart because we haven’t defined a new relationship paradigm. That new paradigm should be built on honesty. But that would require people to open up to all the possibilities of how relationships could look. That’s a big task after thousands of years of religious oppression!   

 

[SpiritMan]

A little more than a decade ago I wrote a book about my experience as a gay American male living in Europe. The book was titled: Real Men Love Men. I have been asked to revisit this work and rewrite it from the perspective of the Post-Brokeback Mountain era. I believe I have a lot more to offer on this subject after the experience of my father's death and the death of my dear friend, artist Mark Adams. The following is the introduction to the rewrite that I will do this summer.

REAL MEN LOVE MEN

The conventional definition of homophobia would be the irrational fear of homosexuality. I believe a more accurate definition would be the irrational fear of human emotions and intimacy!

There is nothing more frustrating than seeing the truth before everyone else is ready to see it. It takes a lot of patience to live an entire lifetime waiting for a destructive paradigm to change. It is even more frustrating when that paradigm is specifically designed to destroy the very essence of your true spirit. It is not that I believe my spirit is that of a gay man. I believe my spirit is masculine. I am attracted to masculinity. The vessel I have chosen for this incarnation in the temporal world just happens to be that of the male species. In conventional terms I would be defined as a gay man.

I was raised in a household where women outnumbered men seven to three. In order to support the major paradigm I was required to accept without question the obvious bias in favor of feminine emotional expression. I was asked to accept the absurd notion that human emotions have gender. I was expected to live as a man with artificial boundaries imposed upon my need to experience human intimacy.

It was always clear to me that the very concept of homosexuality was created to stifle the experience of males bonding in an intimate way. I saw the kind of bonding I craved freely expressed among the women who surrounded me. The driving force that keeps “real men” from expressing real emotions is the irrational fear of being called “Queer!” The most dangerous concept to the major paradigm is not the acceptance of homosexuality. The most dangerous concept is to believe that homosexuality does not exist. Only then would all men be allowed to express themselves without boundaries. The true definition of human sexuality is one that is not based on gender. All human beings have the capacity to love one another. Sharing that love with others is the supreme act of being both human and spiritual. Love is always good!

Among the debate about the short story and the movie Brokeback Mountain was the discussion about whether it could really be called a “Gay Cowboy Movie.” I believe it is neither a cowboy movie nor a gay movie. I believe it is the first movie in my lifetime that tells the real story of what it means to be a man in America. I believe it is controversial because it tells the truth instead of the illusion required to keep the paradigm alive. I know that every man who squirms in his seat, every man who refuses to watch the movie, every man who thinks he is “not gay” is merely avoiding the truth about masculinity and human sexuality. The truth is: real men love men. Men who avoid this reality are incapable of unconditionally loving themselves or anyone else, male or female!
   

[SpiritMan]

I have an interesting evening ahead.

Tonight I’m invited to the 85th birthday party for Professor Richard H. Pantell, a physicist at Stanford University, involved in early research on lasers and the Linear Accelerator. One of his close colleagues and a co-author, Harold E. Puthoff  worked for the CIA investigating the paranormal abilities of four psychics including Uri Geller. Puthoff became convinced Geller and Ingo Swann had genuine psychic abilities.

I have always believed quantum physics was the link between science and spirituality. I’m excited to be put into an environment where I have the possibility to interact with people on that level of understanding.

http://www.vision.net.au/~apaterson/science/physics_quantum.htm

[SpiritMan]

When we first arrived at the birthday celebration we made the mistake of judging a book by its cover. The room full of dark, colorless suits and gray, silver unkempt mad professor hair brought the feeling that the evening might be a bomb. We stood at a small bar table in the corner with four other “non-physicist” misfits, eating hors devours and drinking cocktails. When the hostess came to direct us to the seating chart, we all shuddered at the thought of being separated for the rest of the evening.

John and I were seated at the last table in the corner, table number 8. I immediately commented that number 8 was my lucky number! Later one of the guests mentioned during a toast that the room was perfect feng shui, with 8 tables seating 8 people at each table. He went on to explain that the number 8 is a power number, that when laid on its side represents infinity. The guest of honor was in fact 80 years old, not 85, as I had thought. He looked more like 60 or 65 at the most. His energy was that of a 35 year old.

After an excellent dinner, Richard went to his computer where he projected onto a large screen, a presentation of the important world events of 1927, his birth year. It began with Lindberg’s solo flight across the Atlantic to Paris. Then we were lectured on the illegitimate execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and given a homework assignment to read a new book on the subject. Next we watched a clip from the first talking movie, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson. The presentation ended with a statistical analysis of what 80 years represents percentage-wise in the course of recorded history. I felt Richard could add perfect comedian and entertainer as a side to his extraordinary scientific achievements in the development of the laser and microwave technology.

After an evening of conversation that focused on spirituality, that was charged with hope for the future, I left with a feeling I had made new friends, learned a few things and broken down a few more barriers. I realized that from the physicist’s point of view the world seems filled with many positive possibilities. One guest hypothesized that Richard’s youth like appearance and energy came from the fact that physicists are detached from the reality the rest of us choose. They don’t experience the kind of stress we cause ourselves.

[SpiritMan]

In the midst of this madness I have to remind myself that all the world is not as crazy as we are. As I have intimated in the thread "Making the same mistakes, over and over again!", we are a greedy culture that seems to have a difficult time learning from experience. Yesterday I listened to a program about the negative environmental effects of a project to put solar panels in huge sections of the Mojave Desert! In Germany they already have a successful plan that allows people to put solar panels on the roofs of their homes, then sell energy back to the grid. This in a place where the sun shines less than in other places. The difference between our plan and the German plan is that ours is a company for profit. Theirs provides FREE electricity to each individual who installs panels on their roof. When will we stop thinking one person (or company) has the right to steal things like sunshine and water, then sell them for huge profits?       

[SpiritMan]

I've decided to use my Blog for my collection of poetry, so I'm posting my Blog entries here.

Posted on May 12, 2006 by SpiritMan

Being conscious is not easy, but I know it is the better way of life. In the last few days I have been involved in projects that required me to participate in what I consider to be a totally dysfunctional system in a dying culture. No one answers their phone. One is required to listen to recorded messages, suffer through long menus of options that in the end do not contain the one option you need. Everyone is deliberately inaccessible. If you do reach a real person, they are underpaid, perhaps in a foreign country with no intimate understanding of the nuances of your own culture, and they do not have the answer to your question. If you go online, the same is true. Your need just happens to be the one thing that is not contained in the list of most often asked questions. If you have a search capability, you need to guess the esoteric term they have chosen to describe the thing you want. Everything that is purportedly design to save you time and be more effective and efficient winds up wasting your time with no resolution. The most irritating aspect to many websites these days is the adoption of the telephone evasion technique. There is no E-mail address to be found. No one takes responsibility for anything! If mistakes are made the corporation charges you to have access to someone who will probably not know the solution to the problem they are responsible for anyway.

The dangerous part of all of this is the compliance, the complicity of the public in general. We have lost our soul! We don�t care about correcting the mistake because we have given up real life for an illusion. The bottom line for everything is money. Don�t rock the boat because you might expose the fact that we are bankrupt. Just write a few more zeros at the end of the page and pretend for one more day that the illusion is real.


...and the cosmic joke is that real life awaits us again on the other side of the collapse. Without the shopping malls, the designer clothes, the TV commercials, the health insurance, the computer games, the chemical pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine, we all might have a moment to be truly alive. We might even have the time to be intimate and touch each other! But the courage to demand that in our lives would take a person with integrity. That is something we have forgotten to teach and nurture in the upcoming generations.

Posted on May 12, 2006 by SpiritMan

I am often told I am lucky to have the life I live. My life is filled with music, incredible works of art, interesting people and delicious food. But I would not say that I am lucky. I am grateful for all these things, but I don�t feel lucky. I feel my life is what it is because of conscious choices I have made. My happiness depends on how I chose to see the world I�m in. I was happy when I lived in a small room on the south coast of Crete with little or no money. The most beautiful music I ever had the privilege to hear was a German sitting on a roof just before sunrise pulling the sun up from below the horizon with his flute. Even in moments of extreme emotional pain I can see now that I was also experiencing love and intimacy that could only be described as joyous! It is possible that I could sit among all of these things other people see as blessings and still suffer. But suffering cannot be released through material wealth or possession, nor is it perpetuated through the lack of material wealth or possession. I would certainly be unhappy if I believed the material things around me really mattered. I know this about myself. It is only through my lack of attachment to them that I can be with them and also be happy. When I first read this concept in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as a young boy I knew it was something I believed in my soul. Like the Stoic philosophy that influenced the Roman Emperor I also believed that a human�s purpose in life is to exist in harmony with nature!

Posted on May 11, 2006 by SpiritMan

Buddha says, "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule." Now there's an idea that I know is true by practicing Buddha's rule of following my own reason and common sense. Sitting in silence is where the truth lies. That's why so many people are afraid to sit in silence. It means one has to admit that the world or reality the mind has constructed is only an illusion. People have a difficult time admiting that everything they believe to be absolute is merely an illusion. Maybe suffering makes them feel alive.

Buddha says, "I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act." What really inspired me to dig deeper into Buddhist philosophy was the fact that everything I read resonated within me. After growing up in a Christian world that judged me, in a world where there were as many interpretations of Christ's supposed thoughts as there were so called Christians, I grew to respect Buddhism in a way that will never be possible for me with Christianity. "He is able who thinks he is able." I can remember having this idea long before AI ever knew what Buddism was. "He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye." What a beautiful nurturing way to bring peace to the world! "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without."

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
Buddha

Posted on May 11, 2006 by SpiritMan

The most fascinating thing about Buddhism is that I didn’t choose to be Buddhist. I just came to the awareness of that is what I am spiritually. Part of that awakening came with my first trip to Thailand in 1994. I was amazed at the contrasts of everyday Thai existence compared to what I was exposed to in America and Western Europe. I felt as if I had come home!

Buddhism believes that all existence is a creation of the mind. What could be more logical? In my own experience of enlightenment, that was a conclusion I drew for myself. That is what Buddhism is! It is a process of awakening to the Dharma, or the universal law that governs all reality. I love this spiritual path because it requires experience in order to understand truth. There is no danger of believing something simply because someone else in a position of power says it’s true. Buddha said, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Buddhism says that ignorance is what allows us to believe in the self and that self undergoes limitless suffering. Buddha’s teachings show us the way out of the ignorance that covers or masks our true nature. I would have to say that The United States at the present moment in time is a great example of a culture totally invested in that ignorance.

I am going through a physical healing that I have assisted by getting weekly Shiatsu treatments and doing a regular Yoga practice. With the physical healing comes a healing of spirit. In this state I am realigning with the ability to see truth. I am able to understand that I can be detached from the physical world in a way that allows me to be an observer as well as a participant. That means I get to choose my life instead of feeling like it is someone else’s life.

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him."
Buddha

[SpiritMan]

Posted on May 21, 2006 by SpiritMan

I had an interesting conversation with a friend about my interest in Buddha. While my friend is an independent in the realm of religion and spiritual thought, his daughter is being trained in Catholicism by her mother and grandmother. When my friend heard that I was interested in Buddha, he asked if I knew the three causes of suffering. His daughter is studying Buddha in religion class in a private school. I didn�t know the answer. I remembered reading them somewhere before, but I didn�t memorize them to be recalled at a moment�s notice. At first I felt I had failed some test of my sincerity about my beliefs. Buddha believed that the causes of suffering were craving, desire and ignorance. When I read this it resonates as truth I already know.

Later I thought about how un-Buddhist it seems to me to be required to memorize anything that is already true. I thought about the Catholic tradition of memorizing the Catechisms. The process is one of memorizing the questions and then the predetermined answers. I thought about how alien this process feels to me as a self-discovered Buddhist. My answers don�t come from outside myself. What if my answer should be different than the answer provided? And most of all, what about the danger of teaching children to believe what they are told to memorize instead of learning how to go to one�s heart for the answers?

Posted on May 17, 2006 by SpiritMan

Living through the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco altered my life in so many ways. After hands on participation with the dying and witnessing literally hundreds of deaths, I can never look at healing, healthcare, pharmaceutical drugs, death or living in conventional American terms again. Since September of 2005, I have been getting weekly Shiatsu treatments from a man who has lived HIV positive for more than 26 years. He is a good friend, an accomplished yogi and an incredible healer.

Health is the natural state. At this point I refer again to Buddha. �All that we are is the result of what we have thought.� I thought I was sick. I thought I was destined to follow in my mother�s footsteps in some way. I thought I had arthritis. I thought getting older meant giving up things I used to do. I thought I would be in chronic pain for the rest of my life. But a couple of weeks ago I was walking down the street and it hit me. I didn�t feel any pain! It was such a natural familiar feeling I just reverted back to taking it for granted. I can�t even tell you exactly when it happened. But I went over one year where I was never without pain. And now my way has been illuminated. i can see and understand what is happening to me. I could never say that about my illness!

I still do have pain occasionally. I have pain when I am lying on my back on the floor and John is standing on my upper legs opening the rotation in my hips. I have pain when John is pushing his fingers between my organs and intestines to find the Psoas muscle. Lengthening the Psoas muscle is the single most miraculous thing he has done for me. But it is not alone in the realm of miracles. My spine is slowly becoming straightened. The slight curvature is being reduced. My shoulders are free from pain and constriction for the first time in 40 years. It takes time. Lots of time and patience. But that is the nature of yoga. And the nature of much of Western medicine is the desire for quick fixes that usually have side effects that are worse then the original complaint.

Real healing is something that is done alone. You can�t take anyone with you and you can�t force someone to heal. You can only tell your own story and hope someone becomes curious enough to embark upon their own journey. Healing is a process that involves the entire being. Once you embark on the journey it involves much more than your physical body. Once your soul is healed it takes your mind and spirit along. Only then are you content to watch others in their own struggles without feeling the need to judge them. And you have the strength to stay on your own path in spite of their judgments against you. And you wonder: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the healing or the love? Maybe they are the same.

Posted on May 13, 2006 by SpiritMan

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to talk with my friend Dave Stritmatter. It was the first time I�ve talked with him since his partner of 30 years, Bill Armstrong, died. Our conversation revolved around the subject of losing a partner. It�s one of those things that wake you up to the reality of the superficiality of our culture. Dave and I had a lot of parallel stories to share. Like the people who tell you, �time heals everything.� No it doesn�t. There are things in life that are so big and traumatic that you never really get over them. You learn to incorporate the memory of the experience into your life in a way that allows you to function and have a productive life. You understand it in a way that allows you to have compassion for those who do not understand. They come to you with fear of even touching the subject. They offer platitudes instead of sincere interest. They tell you they understand how you feel when they have not had the experience themselves. But that�s all OK. Experiencing real life is what gives us character and meaning to our lives. If you can stand back and look at your own life as a third person, then you can participate in your own life with some element of choice. Sometimes it�s hard to stay detached from other people�s lives in the same way. People don�t hear what they are not ready to hear.

Enlightenment is a personal thing. Spirituality is a path that has been designed specifically for you. You can�t take anyone with you. They have to go on their own path. The most difficult, no, �impossible� thing to explain is Nirvana. To be in that state is to be without the limits of the temporal world. It can only be experienced, not explained. Coming back to the temporal world requires one to abide by the limits of speech and thought. Buddhists believe Nirvana can only be described in terms of what it is not. Is is without beginning or end. It is the great mystery we can only explain through myths and by creating Gods. The greatest opportunity for understanding that mystery is through the understanding of death. How ironic that it is the thing Western culture teaches us to fear the most.

In Christianity, Nirvana is described as �The Peace that passeth all understanding.�

Here is the translation of a German Poem that says it well:

I feel the air of other spheres...
I dissolve into tones, circling, wreathing...
Yielding involuntarily to the great breathing....
The earth shakes, white and soft as foam.
I climb across huge chasms.
I feel as if I were swimming beyond the farthest cloud
In a sea of crystalline brilliance.

I am only a flicker of sacred fire.
I am only a mumbling of the sacred voice.

Stefan George (German poet 1868 - 1933)

[SpiritMan]

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
Buddha

Posted on October 15, 2006 by SpiritMan

In the past few months I have withdrawn to go inside to find a larger truth. In Eastern philosophies which focus on the struggle of the EGO, there is a belief that to engage in struggle against something is to give it power. In my retreat to meditation I have also devoted a good amount of time and effort to rewriting texts I finished 12 years ago. The process has involved deleting everything that is unnecessary to the basic story. That has meant deleting my interpretations and dialogs of how the experience affected me personally. My motive was to create a story that has universal appeal, allowing readers to connect the story to their own lives and experiences. Inadvertently this writing process had spilled out into all other aspects of my life.

I am now in the process of “deleting” everything I feel is unnecessary for myself to exist in the world. I will sell or give away everything I have in storage that I have not used for years. What I see clearly is the way in which our obsession of the self has crossed a line where we no longer care about or focus on the whole. This I believe is the root of all of our current suffering. We have not been put in this life to collect things or to obtain wealth. We have been put here to care about each other. As Native Americans have believed for centuries, “The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.” We fight and kill each other for possession of what does not belong to any individual person. We squander natural resources that were placed here for all living things to exist together in harmony. We pretend to be God as we manipulate and alter nature for greed and selfish interests instead of the good of the whole.

I have come to the conclusion that the only way I can affect positive change is to stop participating in the mistake! Making that decision opens another truth about current suffering in the world. It is called addiction! We are addicted to everything that feeds the mistake. Overcoming addiction allows one to live the life that feeds one’s spirit and potential. The mistake is fed by the illusion that we all walk through life alone on our own personal journey. We are all in this life together and everything we do has consequences for all of us and all other living things.

Something is happening! You won’t find it on the six o’clock news or in the morning edition of your local newspaper. We all have memories of moments when the core of life itself was revealed to us, where our hearts expanded in the recognition that we are all the same. Something is happening inside the consciousness of every person who has the courage to ask a simple question. “What are we doing and why are we doing it?” The answer will not be found by looking to someone else. If you can be true to yourself you will have the courage to stop participating in the mistake that is destroying everything we have held sacred since the beginning of time. The EGO wants us to believe that we are all separate so we can continue making selfish decisions, but the truth is we are all the same. What we do to others we do to ourselves.       

 

   

Posted on May 29, 2006 by SpiritMan

Consciousness is not the same thing as the conscious mind. The truth lies in an undivided state of consciousness. The moment one decides to fight for what is right, one becomes part of the problem one is trying to solve. As Gandhi said, "Become the change you want to see in the world." Do what you know you must do and do not be distracted by judgments against your actions. Duality always creates conflict. Peace lies in the acknowledgment of oneness. The moment humans see themselves as separate from one another, the chances for conflict are born.

Posted on May 26, 2006 by SpiritMan

Sometimes things happen in life that seem to be timed specifically to support a certain awakening. On Wednesday I went to the sauna where I go to get relief from my respiratory problems. This season is especially difficult and I am more vulnerable. I go between the dry sauna and the steam room, getting different benefits from each. Afterwards I take a hot shower. As I was lathered up in the shower I realized there was cigarette smoke coming through the open window in the shower room. Outside the window two smokers were puffing away at a table provided for them. For me it was too late. It has been a while since I was in a situation where I was captive in the smoke for that long.

Yesterday I had the beginnings of a headache in the morning. This is typical the day after exposure. The headache got progressively worse as the day went on. At 7:00 PM we were preparing to begin the last concert of the season when I became so sick I felt I couldn�t stand any longer. I excused myself and started up the stairs to my room. On the last landing I blacked out for one second and found myself lying on the floor. After making my way upstairs I sat on the floor of the bathroom for 4 hour with dry heaves. The mucus was in my stomach in addition to my chest. It is now 22 hours later. I have been out of bed for short periods only. I am too weak to leave the house. But I�ve had a lot of time to think.

What I�ve been thinking about is how the consequences of all addictions go way beyond the individual who is addicted. I�ve been thinking about the experiences in my own life where I�ve watched the misdirected anger, the self pity, the blaming everyone else to avoid personal responsibility and the projections that are flung out on everyone else, but are very accurate descriptions of the addict. At the age of 19, I watched someone I loved basically poisoned with a mixture of alcohol and pills. She died in the middle of the night. The alcohol was forced on her by her alcoholic husband. For six months I carried the truth of what I saw until I couldn�t keep the �secret� any longer. I finally exploded when I realized the secret was the thing that allowed him to go on to hurt someone else.

So while I was hanging over the toilet last night I made myself a promise. I�m going to be the bad guy for drug addicts. I�m going to learn how to let their accusations roll off like water on a duck. And here is why. In that huge circle of people affected by drug addiction, the part the loved ones usually play is the part of the enabler. And every time we hold back the truth for fear of being the bad guy, we allow the addiction to take precedence over everything else. When recovered addicts are about to go off the wagon, they alienate those who are supportive of their quitting. They run to the other addicts for support. And addicts who choose to stay addicted will do everything in their power to keep their fellow addicts from successfully quitting.

But here is the part where I have personal experience. Being drug free gives one a clear perspective that can�t be obtained when under the influence of addiction. The biggest act of love that can be demonstrated by the loved one of an addict is to rise above the guilt trip and tell the truth in spite of the accusation of being the bad guy. If you really want someone to quit and stay quit you can�t say anything supportive about the addiction. The only choice to offer is to quit. Being an enabler only serves the addiction.

[SpiritMan]

We don't seem to have the capacity to create new blogs anymore. I've been able to replace mine with a collection of my poetry over the years.

http://www.ourbriarpatch.com/blogs/index.php?id=9

[SpiritMan]

Words and thoughts are a vital part of the temporal world. They can be the building blocks of the illusion we call reality. Be conscious of both the temporal and the spiritual. Stand on the hill above the illusion and see the beautiful landscape clearly.

Judgment is not always a bad thing. To say “judgment is bad” is a judgment in itself. It is self-contradicting. Like everything else, it is the intent with which it is formed, the way in which it is used that determines its outcome. It is impossible to use the word judgmental as a pejorative if one is speaking through the heart. There are times when it is necessary to judge situations in order to participate fully and consciously in the temporal world.

[SpiritMan]

Contemplating War and Religion, I made a new post to my blog:

http://www.ourbriarpatch.com/blogs/index.php?id=9

[SpiritMan]

My 60th birthday party:

[SpiritMan]

Recently I've been getting requests to participate in an effort to get sexual predators off the internet. My answer is an emphatic no!!! Why? Because it's a ruse! There is no evidence that sexual predators are successfully making contact with minors on the net. As a matter of fact, MOST of the examples used are adult law enforcement officers posing as minors SOLICITING sex. Truth is, real minors aren't doing that! So people are being arrested by being entrapped! In other words, law enforcement is creating crimes. Studies show that dropping your kids off at the mall is much more dangerous than the internet.

Yes, teens have sex, they think about sex, they are obsessed with sex. They do it with each other. Who's to blame? God! This seems to be a hard fact for many adults to swallow, even though they were the same when they were teens!

So here's what I really object to. I object to those who believe the entire world should be rated PG because they never grew up and accepted that adults should be able to make their own decisions about their own bodies. This is really about imposing censorship on the internet. It's the first step. Just like everything else from this perspective, if they have have no facts to back up their assumptions, they make things up!

       

[SpiritMan]

I live outside the world of television commercials and pharmaceutical induced stupor. My DNA disallows denial. I am kept in check by a body that throws me into fits of extreme nausea when I’m forced to swallow BS. So I am compelled to embrace the pain and suffering of reality, because for me the alternative is much worse! I am emotional! That’s me! Along with all the tears that eventually wash away the illusions that mask the truth. And the truth is always liberating in the end.

In attempting to pick up the pieces of a life that was torn apart by the loss of something precious, I finally gained the courage to open myself to the risk of loving again. But that experiment is over now and I must prepare for what comes next, with the confidence that I am growing toward something as precious as that now distant memory!

I know why someone like Noah Lottick jumped out of a 10th story window to his death! I know what it feels like to be raped! I understand what it looks like when organizations hide behind the First Amendment and the concept of religious freedom, doing things that would otherwise be considered immoral and illegal! I have experienced the horror of watching someone I know and love have their spirit sucked out of their physical body, leaving a shell that is inhabited by the voice and ideas of a cult. I know how hopeless the world looks when you understand that someone’s brain has been manipulated, that free will has been stolen, by what many believe was a conscious choice. I feel that nagging pain in the stomach, that gnawing realization that absolutely nothing can be done.

What a wonderful world it is for those who are taught to believe that everything is good just the way it is, that nothing needs to be changed. They hide among the group, living in denial in order to avoid reality. Mindfulness is destroyed. Compassion, judgment, awareness, logic and critical thinking become unnecessary. Reasoning becomes impossible. There is only one truth, the truth of the cult. Concern of loved ones becomes a threat to the dogma.

Responsibility seems like an unwarranted demand to a cult. A cult member takes responsibility for nothing! The cult takes responsibility for nothing! If a member commits suicide, it’s the member’s fault. If the family of a member is concerned or emotional, it’s because they are weak or mentally disturbed. Inside the “cult family” there is only bliss, only good. Everything that threatens that tranquility must be destroyed!

The very fabric of the cult mentality is woven tightly together with repetition. Eventually the victim simply repeats instead of thinking. There is no reality outside the narrow reality of the cult. To think would destroy the tranquility created by denial. Everything that feeds the bliss is accepted as truth regardless of how absurd it might seem to a rational mind. All rational thinking people become the enemy and integrity ceases to exist.

I know how it feels to be the one who is disbelieved. Whether it’s a lone congresswoman warning of the perils of invading Iraq or the victim of secondhand tobacco smoke being vilified by the tobacco lobby, it’s all the same. I know that the so called terrorist who straps explosives to his chest and detonates himself in a crowd of innocent people didn’t consciously choose to do this unforgivable act. I know the answer to the question, “How could someone so intelligent be taken in by something so obvious?” Ask the CIA operatives who successfully use mind control techniques on intelligent prisoners. They know the answer to this question.

There is nothing more disturbing than the realization that someone you have loved and trusted has become a robot. There is nothing more frustrating than getting on a merry-go-round where rational thinking is summarily dismissed with a confident, but blank stare. There is an overwhelming sense of betrayal when you realize that your close intimate relationship has been intercepted by a third party without your consent or knowledge. There is nothing more heartbreaking that to realize that every good memory and every past experience is now irrelevant! There is nothing left to do but mourn!

WHAT HAPPENED TO A GROUP THAT HELPED ME IN THE PAST