Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Who’s On First – What’s On Second!

Published on February 28, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 1 Comment

Inthe event that you’re not familiar with the headline post above, let me enlighten you.

William (Bud) Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo that became the most popular comedy team during the 1940s, as well as a top ten box office draw for a full decade (1942—1952). Their iconic and influential patter routine “Who’s on First?”—with its rapid-fire word play and comprehension confusion—set the framework for many of their best-known comedy bits. As a result of its enduring popularity, a video loop of the team performing “Who’s on First?” is on permanent exhibit in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

First the natural, then the spiritual says the book of Corinthians.

Looking at this from a sociological, psychological, and theological perspective, WHO is the EGO! WHO is hte personal, linear, and dualistic beings that we are. The WHO is the loss-gain paradigm wherein everything is about ME and the attainment of pleasure.

On the other hand WHAT  is the impersonal, all-encompassing, non dual, and non local approach to life. WHAT experiences the universal energy of the divine without the feeling any separation from anyone or anything. Every moment of life is a precious gift.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to figure out WHO you are as long as you FIRST understand WHAT you are, what we ALL are- children of the DIVINE.

The In-Dwelling Ego

Published on February 27, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 1 Comment

It’s been said that you spend the first half of your life building and developing your ego and then you spend the second half of your life dismantling it.

The GOOD NEWS is that I am in the back half somewhere. 

Ego wants status quo, homeostasis, and established HABITS. In other words, it wants to repeat the same actions over and over again, where there is perceived security, and yet we think we’ll somehow discover new roads to travel. The ego is addicted to itself and its routines. Don’t mess with Texas, nor mess with the EGO! 

But alas, the goal is to eventually transcend the ego. 

The biggest difficulty that we face is that we have to use our BRAIN and the EGO sits right there from the get-go, covered up by the Neo-cortex and the limbic system. In the beginning was God and also in the beginning was the reptilian brain. It’s that portion of the brain that likes to flex its muscles and stay with the tried and true ways.   

Our evolutionary origins provided physical survival modes. 

But, that was a time and place long removed from today. Today we have new tools at our disposal, and we have always had this thing called the spirit! My point here is that the ego is part of who we are; however, one of the objectives of life is to put the ego in its proper place. 

Have you discovered where that place is yet? 

Have you discovered that the spirit in-dwells us also?

Four Choices

Published on February 26, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 2 Comments

As a Baptist in my early life, I was told that we believed in a concept called, the “Priesthood of the Believer” which came from some verse in one of Peter’s books.

The jist was that we all had enough brains and spirit to be able to figure out the Bible for ourselves. The problem came though when I said I had figures out some point and it wasn’t the same conclusion that the deacon had who was over me. I still have memories of some of those contentious socials. But, all of that notwithstanding, I did venture out on a limb- with a saw! 

I cut myself loose from many of the early teachings and herein is where the title makes some connection. 

1-I started seeing myself as a “Divine Original”, and not an Original Sinner! 

2-I began to believe that I was created in the “image of God” and not in the image of man (religion). 

3-I started acting like I was truly forgiven and not going to hell no matter what I did because I was “unconditionally loved” and not loved based on some conditions. 

4-Thus, I begun to see myself entirely different. I was no longer a caterpillars crawling around on the earth but a butterfly with unique color and markings. Flying always beating crawling! 

There are a lot of other things that have changed in my life ever since I started looking INSIDE where Jesus said the Kingdom of God was. The externals of life are important but neither primordial nor sovereign. The Spirit fits that description. How is your transformation going?

The Cult Of Gaia?

Published on February 25, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 1 Comment

Before I even understood what the word “Gaia” meant, or the concepts of “Go Green”, I was surely not a “tree hugger”.  I did know that there were a bunch of people who were really in to protecting the earth for some reason. I guess they didn’t have anything else to do.

Listen, the RAPTURE was right around the corner, so why worry about planet earth? 

I’m not sure if James Watt (Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan) made the following statement in jest or because he believed it, but this is his comment that resonated with me. “We don’t have to protect the environment. The Second Coming is at hand.”  Second Coming aside (hasn’t it already come?), doesn’t it make sense that we should take care of this third rock from the sun which gives us life? 

Ah, but the earth is expendable and besides, God will take care of it after he takes us off of it. 

Coming into an understanding of the ONENESS of ALL THINGS takes more than a little left and right brain reasoning. One has to go the way of the mystics and listen. One must just BE in everything that IS? Say what? I know, words fail because we’re talking about spiritual things. 

In ancient Greek mythology Gaia was a primordial deity. 

Today, Gaia is an ecological hypothesis or theory proposing that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) are closely integrated to form a complex interacting system that maintains the climatic and biogeochemical conditions on Earth in a preferred homeorhesis. That’s probably way more than you want to know so let me make it simple. 

Everything is ALIVE. Everything LIVES; however, everything changes its vibrational frequencies. Energy cannot be destroyed. As we give LIFE to all things, life is given back to us. How’s that working out for you these days?

Logical Then Illogical?

Published on February 24, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 0 Comments

“Begin with the end in mind”, so says Stephen Covey!

“I think, therefore I am”, so says Descartes!

“I am”, is attributed to Jesus- which says what?

The mystics, and many spiritualists generally (we’re exempting fundamentalists from this scenario of course) believe that we begin with our intellect. We begin by developing our brains and our thinking ability. But, if we want to go on further down the road in discovery of who we are, we have to basically “lose our minds”. You probably know one or two of those people.

Stephen King wrote, “The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance….logic can be happily tossed out the window.” That’s hard to see when you’re encased in the indoctrinated culture of sameness (dogma and doctrine).

The GOOD NEWS  is that God is limited by our thinking. God just IS!

Oh yes, and God is LOVE too!

Subtely Programmed?

Published on February 23, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 0 Comments

I doubt even the Wachowski brothers know how much truth was in their movie trilogy- The Matrix!

Some of the most subtle and damaging “programming’ comes from RELIGION. The shadows of control and alteration can become very DARK without our even knowing it. There’s a reason that church dominance was called the Dark Ages! Darrel Ray writes that the most deadly programmers are, “priests, ministers, imans, rabbis, popes, televangelists, shamans, apostles, nuns, Bible professors, and to a lesser degree, elders, deacons, and Sunday school teachers”. 

Wow! 

I’d say he’s NUTS if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve “been there- done that”, or at least I played the role of Sunday school teacher, deacon, elder, and minister once upon a time. I wasn’t trying to PROGRAM people against their will, I was just doing what I was taught, that which I thought was right. However, when one teaches or preaches that there is ONE WAY and ONE BOOK that is right and all others are WRONG, programming and or “brain-washing” is under way. 

Such programming isn’t easily broken! 

Religious “Operating Systems” are deadly, or as Karl Marx wrote long ago, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people”.  In other words, we’re programmed to go to sleep, to not think! But, alas, we’re being blessed by what some look upon as “radicals” who are saying enough of the bondage! 

God is LOVE!

Drop The Burden(s)!

Published on February 22, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 1 Comment

Too many are walking around life and carrying burden they need not.

There’s a reason that Jesus said that his burden were light (and his yoke is easy), and that reason is because he CHOSE that life style. We can do the same. The first words attributed to Jesus are that we are to “repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand”. Of course religion has made that phrase into a hodge-podge of religious laws and doctrines. 

Can we simplify that please?

We simply worry about too many things we need not. That which is past is PAST. Let it go! Why drag the dead corpse of the past around with you day in and day out?

I’m reminded of the two Buddhist monks who came to a shallow river crossing and there met a woman who wanted to cross but she was afraid. So, one of the monks put her on his back and carried her across the river. Several miles down the road the other monk couldn’t restrain himself of being incensed that his friend had touched a woman. The fire of religious fervor finally broke through to the surface and he shouted, “How could you defile yourself and let that woman touch you?”

How many of you have been there, or are maybe still there regarding something you took an offense to in the past?

The monk who carried the woman simply replied, “I left her back by the river, but you are still carrying her.”

What are you still carrying?

Out Of My Life Satan!

Published on February 21, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 0 Comments

The Devil made me do it!

I bet you have heard that statement before. I bet you might have even used it or thought about saying it as a great COP OUT! Oh yeah, the devil made me do it. But WAIT! Aren’t we taught that we have FREE WILL? So, didn’t I join in with the Devil, this Serpent, or fictitious snake in the grass to accomplish my dirty deeds? 

We engage in so much un-needed “hand wringing”! 

Everyone ahs sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Okay I can buy that, but why run around with a sign on your forehead that says, “I’m a SINNER“, even a sinner- saved by GRACE? Why do that? Tell me why I should do that? 

In Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth aimlessly wandered around the castle, the halls of Dunsinane, washing her hands and saying over and over again, “Out damned spot”. I know several people who act that way, several men who have to wash their hands before and after using the bathroom. Some people just can’t get CLEAN ENOUGH! Guilt is a very strong pill to swallow, but once you swallow it, it’s even more difficult to find an antibody. 

In fact, life is full or religious zombies walking around with the guilt virus wherein it seems there is no cure. I guess they’ve never heard of God’s UNCONDITONAL LOVE!

Conditional Love?

Published on February 20, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 0 Comments

I grew up in a denomination that taught me some very good things about God; however, the greatest was that God is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!

Wow! 

However, as I grew in my early Christian training, I learned that what was taught and what was actual, were two very different things. And, it wasn’t just about Christianity, but other religions as well. Here’s what I was taught and heard- 

1-God loves you but he will send you to hell if you don’t do exactly as he says. 

2-God loves you but you will be condemned for asking heretical questions. 

3-God loves you but if you get divorced you are UNCLEAN (especially if you masturbate at youth camp). 

4-Allah loves you but if you don’t obey your husband and get along with his other wives, you will never see heaven. 

I’d like to do more than SPIT, but the internet is open to many people of a young age, so I better just move along. 

The bottom line is that I’ve discovered that the original teaching of God is LOVE (found in the inerrant Bible after all) is TRUE. Unconditional love is not only who and what God is, but whom we are as well even though we don’t live life as such. The reality is that all of us have to one day come to the place where we decide between the two poles. Is God’s love unconditional, or CONDITIONAL, on whatever conditions your religion or denomination (or even your mind) says?

Some Roots Are Deep

Published on February 19, 2011 in Daily Commentary. 1 Comment

We live in a microwave society with “Just In Time” deliveries, or next day service. So, we should not think it strange that religion has followed the secular lead with “instant healings”, and one-time deliverances. Forgiveness is a must ; however, sometimes it’s spoken without having been truly given.

Men especially want to MOVE ON. Maybe the women have it right, desiring to “talk it out” more deliberately. 

Life has a path and a journey which ultimately must lead to surrender and humility. It’s that simple and yet it’s really not that simple. Let me illustrate. 

1-To end anger we must surrender our pride. 

2-To erase pride, the desire of what if offers must be wiped out. 

3-Thus the fear that energizes the desires must be abandoned. 

4-The imaginary losses that created the fear must be understood. 

And so on, and so on. Most of us have long enough here in this life to work through the multiple processes; however, some choose to refuse to deal with their demons or egoic drives and thus find themselves moving from counselor to counselor to make the appearances of progress all the while just feeding the ego in a more obtuse fashion. 

Some roots go very deep and require not an ax but super human acts of LOVE.