The naughty-word-counting movie ministry guy was alway a bit out there, but I think he's finally completely lost it.

Quote from his Pirate of the Caribbean: At World's End review:

One of the unholy beings had its "brain" exposed to the air, fondled it and then lost it. Well, I know how he felt. I once developed an open mind to the enlightenment provided by much modern entertainment ... then my brain fell out. Though there were no transplant brains available as good as the one I had, God found one for me.

He's a God zombie!!

We damn ourselves when we live through demon eyes. No higher power need intervene, we are fully capable of our own downfall. When we act as demons, we create our own hell. No divine judgement or arbitration, it is simply a matter of causality.

This is the nature of sin. This is the nature of good action verses bad action. When we act with anger and hate and greed rather than with love and compassion and understanding, that is sin. When our actions increase the suffering rather than diminish it, that is bad action. And what we reap is a world of pain and hate and mistrust. We are all connected and we share in what we bring forth.

I've done salvia divinorum in the past. However, I'd only done 1X. Last night I tried 5X. Oh my, what a difference. The world ripped away in front of my eyes into interference patterns. Then diving down, I forgot everything. Complete dissolving of definition. No knowledge of the day to day world, no sense of self. I had to rebuild my perception of reality. Put everything back together. I had even lost the concept that everything was occurring in a three-dimensional locally-euclidean space, and couldn't figure out what kept me physically separate from anything. Even as I came out of the most intense part, everything kept warping together at the edges of my perception.

The strange putting together of things, defining of things, is the journey from the wholeness at the center. Without a sense of self, everything is one. There is no need for definition or distance. What is at the center is beyond definition. It is the All, the Ineffable. Words are boxes which cannot contain It. Even saying it is "beyond definition" misses the mark, as it is neither beyond or before.

I took the journey twice last night, the first time the speed of the journey panicked me on my return trip from There to Here. The second journey I was able to experience reconstruction from a much calmer place and was able to observe the experience more.

The salvia divinorum experience is not unlike experiences I've had in the past, however the pace at which salvia divinorum triggers these experiences is frighteningly fast: the most intense part is over in the first 5 minutes, and after 10 more it's completely worn off. The short duration along with the physical immobility during the deepest part may be why such a potent herb such as salvia has managed remained legal in most of the entheogenphobic United States (Missouri being the exception).

After the journey, I made a map...


We are waves emanating out from Unity. We perceive other waves as other selves.

At Unity we become all waves, all things. There is no self at Unity.

Between the everyday sphere of perception and Unity lies a domain where the waves are not united and a self still exists in some form, however the waves interfere with each other. This interference can show up in a variety of ways, including sensory phenomena (hallucinations, patterns, distortions, etc.) and/or disorganized thinking.

When viewing an autostereogram, focus of the eyes travels from normal focus to the adjusted focus where the 3D image is visible, the focus travels through an intermediate stage of visual clutter and interference. Traveling to Unity is like refocusing your eyes.

The Universe is alive and the very particles that make up your body have free will. Our level of existence does not deny theirs, nor does their free will deny ours. In the same manner, our free will does not deny the Universe Its free will nor does the Universe's free will deny us ours. We are part of the God just as the particles that make up our bodies are part of us. Existence is not limited to our size or our view. Action, thought, even consciousness happens below and above.

While not without it's tribulations, 2006 was a year of milestones and reunions for me. This was the first year in half a decade that I have spent completely out of psych hospitals. Although I took a couple of my old Ativans to get to sleep at a couple of points, I spent the year pretty much without any psych med prescriptions. I've become closer with certain members of my family than I have been in a long time. I've reconnected with friends long past. I've grown spiritually and even found God. It's been quite a year.

Is God benevolent or malevolent? Does God love us? Is God wrathful?

These questions are fitting to ask of some man with a flowing grey beard that lives in the sky, but they are unanswerable as to God as All.

God is not only the sky above and the ground below and all that dwells in those places. God is not only everything we can touch, God is more.

God is all creation all destruction. God is life and and God is death. God is the bleeding wound and the passionate kiss. God is the roar as well as the silence.

God is all beliefs and doubts. God not just the concept of heaven and hell, but the concept that there is an above and below. God is the ideas we think as well as the air we breathe.

God is all emotions. God is all love and all hate. God is all benevolence and all malevolence. God is all wrath and all forgiveness.

God is our mathematics and our law. Our fears and our courage. Our arts, our poetries, our languages and the metaphors behind them. The truth as well as the lie.

God is energy and matter. God is the motion of the falling rock as well as the rock that falls.

God is the Happening that is the Becoming. God is what was, will be, and has been. God is even that which is not, has not been, and will never be; if what is not, has not been, and will never be is but thought.

God is the All of Everything, the Universe of Universes. This is why there can be nothing greater than God. No threat needed, no coercion. There can be none greater than All that Is, because anything else is simply part of the Everything.

I am thankful for the chance to have seen not just one sunset, but hundreds. To be able to bear witness to some small part of the Glory of the Universe. Sure, sometimes I do ask for more, sometimes I am impatient and even jealous. But, that is my own failing. I must be more mindful of what I have. I have tasted fire and touched wind, what more should I want?

"Do I have a purpose?"

"What is the point any of this?"

"Does it matter?"

Individually and collectively these are often driving questions and people take myriad of paths to seek answers. Some throw up their hands and proclaim there is no point or purpose while others plainly see their purpose. Still others will spend their lives looking for that purpose, often tormented by the lack of having one. I for a long time fell into the last category, until I came upon a sparkling thought: One need not know what their purpose is in order to have one.

That realization has been freeing. I no longer search or seek my purpose. It may not be for me to know and from my vantage point it is fully likely that i would be unable to understand if somehow shown. I am part of the weave of the Universe and no part of the Grand Structure is pointless or unnecessary.. Every person's existence has meaning even if they never know what that meaning is.

the Universe is neither fair nor righteous nor good
fair and righteous and good are human concepts
subjective judgements

it's likewise flawed to say things are the way God has meant them to be
as intent is a human concept itself

if you believe God listens to and answer your prayers
do you know what listening and answering is to God?
do you think God listens or answers in anything close to the human concept of those words?
when you ask in your prayers for what you believe is needed
do you think that you know more than God what is needed or that God shall not act until you ask?

God is the grain of sand
and the beach the grain sits on
and the shore the beach is found on
and the ocean the shore borders
and the world which holds the ocean
and the star the world orbits
and the galaxy the star lives in
and the cluster the galaxy resides in
and the universe the cluster exists in
God is the Universe of universes
everything that is anywhere
in time and space
and outside time and space
there is not anything which is not God
God is the All the Universe the Everything

we are so removed from the level of the All that we cannot hope to understand It
It is beyond our vision
beyond our place
but we can know that things are
and things are because that is how things are
and all things are part of the All that is all things
and the All that is all things is God
and that is enough

I took purpleglitter's camera along with me on my walk this morning. This is what I saw:


( +28 )

"Take also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it"     -Ezekiel 4:9

purpleglitter and I picked up a loaf of Food for Life Ezekiel 4:9 bread at Trader Joe's this morning, and true to it's name that list is exactly what it contains (with only water, yeast, and sea salt added). It has to be the most delecious bread I've ever gotten from a store. Not only does it taste great, it is extremely healthyful and contains all 9 essential amino acids. We have decided to make it our standard bread.

The error of sanity is in not realizing you are God.
The error of insanity is in not realizing everyone else is, too.

the truth is never as it seems and is at all times subject to change
this is not a cynicism
it the state of the universe
the states of existence
the state of all

questions without answers
and answers without questions
we are lost in the eternal flux

the ground we walk upon
the very earth
is mostly not there
empty space with some ephemeral probabilities
we are the stuff of nothing
and together we form everything
the universe is our nothing god
the collection of all the might be
could be
should have been
the directed will of thinking void
we are its thoughts
consciousness manifest
a small part of our own deception

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life. The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda. ... According to Mr. Warren, the establishment of this earthly kingdom requires "foot soldiers." As part of his plan, Mr. Warren said he would encourage laypeople to "adopt" needy villages overseas in order to plant churches, expand business opportunities, educate children, influence governments, and overthrow corrupt political leaders, whom he described as "little Saddams." Mr. Warren said his purpose is to enlist "one billion foot soldiers for the Kingdom of God" in the developing world. And the stadium crowd roared its approval. Celebrants included Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, a tiny east African country that lost hundreds of thousands of people when it suffered genocide in 1994. Catholic and Protestant clergy have been convicted in connection with that genocide. Yet Mr. Kagame announced that he would allow Mr. Warren to turn his country into the first purpose driven nation. The following month, 16 Rwandan religious leaders arrived in Orange County to begin religious training at Saddleback Church. Mr. Warren has said that his global initiative was developed "underground" and in "stealth". Presumably, this was done with the assistance of Mr. Carver, who directs the Purpose Driven Church in all its activities outside North America. full article

I hear time and time again the Islam is the religion of violence. Islam is the religion that endangers the world. The only reason the fundamentalist Christians have not resorted to terrorism more then they have (and, yes there have been plenty of terrorist attacks by fundamentalist Christians) is that they often have access to more "acceptable" avenues to pursue their agenda, as carpet bombing civilian populations with white phosphorus is deemed more acceptable than a suicide attack. If fundamentalist Christians lose their political prestige you can expect a series of terrorist attacks from their ranks. "Last Days Crusade" would be a likely organizational name.

I'm not saying all Christian are violent, the same as not all Muslims are violent. What I am saying is that Christianity holds no moral high ground over Islam. Both have factions that want to kill all the infidels. Fundamentalism is the problem, not any particular religion.

I strongly dislike the ingrained genderedness of the Divine prevalent in many modern religions and societies. God is the All and the Everything, to try to apply a human level concept such as gender to God is foolishness. However, the patriarchally attached maleness of God is so ingrained that it is hardly noticeable when God is referenced as male. Even people who see the Divine as beyond gender occasionally slip up and use gendered pronouns in reference to God. The genderedness of God is so pervasive that it is exceedingly difficult to escape the concept.

This is one of the reasons people may reject the Divine, one of many ways patriarchal dogma taints religion. But, I do not believe that one must reject God the All in order to reject the token God of the patriarchy. I will not reject the Divine on the basis of the patriarchy's many corruptions and lies. To do so on that basis would be letting the patriarchy dictate my relationship with the Divine just as much as if I were to follow their dogma, and that is not acceptable to me.

I feel very good right now. A lot less dissociated than I have been for a while. I had a cigar then went down to Spy Pond. I sat near the shore and meditated. I have drifted back away from mindfulness in my life, and I have forgotten how wonderful it is to find that place. To look at the amazing that exists all around me.

I do better with short to medium length meditations spread throughout the day than I do with longer ones. No matter how hectic any day is, no matter what else I have to do, no matter where I am, I must do these meditations. They are better than any psych med ever was.

My mind gets lost in loops and I lose the path. I become distanced from myself, those around me, and the Everything. But, it is okay that that happens. It is the way I am. The best I can do is keep to the path as best I can and accept my limits. I am the way I am for a reason, and I must take my problems with my blessings.

do you think you are so fucking holy that you can leave this place?
do you think you are any less trapped here than everyone else?
there is no way out
there is no escape
because you cannot escape that which you are
and you are this place
you are you and you are the trap
there is no way out
death will not free you
enlightenment will not free you
god will not free you
nothing will free you
you cannot be freed
the most we can do is try to make the best of this place we are all trapped in
because we are going to be here forever
and forever, as they say, is a very long time

My flight from Chicago to Saint Louis was delayed and took place after the sun had gone down. In the air, I looked down and saw all the cities lit in the bright yellow street lights that are most commonly used now. I thought to myself... "shining cities of gold". I could not think of a more accurate description of what I saw below me. I was struck in awe.

The sight is grand, and in part it is such sites that lead humans to believe they are above nature. Above the All. Much like Yzordderrex, these cities of gold are an imitation to the Great City of Gold that is both God and God's city, that is the Universe of a uncountable number of shining suns. It is a pale imitation we have built here on our rock, and even the smallest of those suns far outshine all of our cities together.

Many would fashion humanity collectively as the new demiurge, above the All as true masters and creators of the universe surrounding them. But, humans only have the ability to change what is already here, we cannot create. We are but a small part of the Everything and therefore cannot rival the Universe, we cannot be greater than Everything. When we look in awe at the works of humanity, it is important to keep in mind the scale of the Universe and our place in relation to it.