Enlightening Nonsense

Being Ash Wednesday today, I saw the ash heads out in droves. It’s hard for me to look at them and not think them ridiculous. I’ve never seen one of them that didn’t have an underlying smugness about her as she holds her nose high and thinks, “I’m a pious Catholic who went to church today.”

Jesus told his posse, “You feel like praying, go off and do it by yourself and don’t act like a holier-than-thou jackass by prancing around and showing it off.” And that is what Jesus did. There are references in The New Testament to him going off by himself and praying often. He didn’t make an announcement, “I am going off to pray now”—he just did it. Jesus was interested in connecting to God, not showing how great he was.

Even all the healing stories didn’t have him end it with, “Now tell everyone in your community that The Great J.C. saved you.” In fact, besides the flocking of lepers who came to him in droves carrying their ears and arms and other pieces of body parts that had fallen off, including Michael Jackson with nose in hand, most of his healings were done one-to-one and in private.

Now Jesus wasn’t against community and sharing together and in the Essene community that he was a part of, as well as in the eighteen “lost years,” he was wandering around the East and going to all the Mystery Schools and growing in his understanding of wholeness and the power that it bestowed, he often spent—and enjoyed—time in community. Of course the Vatican won’t ever share with their cult members all the books and scrolls they have in their collection documenting his studies in the East because it doesn’t fit in with their controlling fairy tale to have a God-Man who had to study with other masters for 18 years.

Unlike Mahavira, who wouldn’t allow a woman to touch him, or Buddha whose premature ejaculation problem prevented him for the longest time from even initiating women for fear he would blow a load if he just touched them on the crown of their heads, Jesus wasn’t afraid of woman, the poor, the Untouchables—anyone—and he enjoyed communing with all of them. This was an external manifestation of embracing all the parts of ourselves, even the shadow parts, in order to come into Wholeness.

Until we do that, all communing—whether in the family or in the ashram—is going to be a small slice of pie and why settle for a measly portion of life when you can gobble down the whole Existence? We voice fears that, “It may upset our stomachs” while we accept the teasing taste that only makes us aware of our current state of self-imposed limitation. Why not risk it and see? Besides, you could always take some pharmaceutical drug for an upset stomach with the minor inconvenience of  cancer as a side effect.

Interesting, many have repeated like parrots the phrase, “As above, so below,” from their Bibles and yet they would never think to utter, “As outside, so inside.” And that is a big reason why religion and all the cults like raw foodism and yoga exhibit such a chasm between the members’ “spiritual” lives and their day-to-day lives.

“As outside, so inside.” We look at the rampant destruction in our world, from natural disasters, some of which are “naturally” created by governments’ weather manipulating weapons, to wars and other violence, and commit ourselves to sending an Andrew Jackson to Greenpeace or replacing our light bulbs with the government mandated swirly ones whose light output pales in comparison to their mercury output. We favor legislation to mandate others to “shape up or ship out,” always thinking the issue is outside of us.

We are all One. I never thought I would say that phrase without either throwing up in my mouth or mocking it for being so cheesy. But it’s true. The issue is not outside of us—because there is no “outside of us.” We are ALL One. And there is no problem outside of us that is not our own.

The Earth is a conscious being, albeit not a “human” one, sometimes referred to as Gaia.We are akin to the cells in our own bodies, individually a viable life on its own but also a part of a greater whole—and unable to survive without the whole body.

The Earth is experiencing greater and greater turmoil, and I don’t mean the lie of “global warming” which is pure manipulative fiction designed in order to set up world bodies to control and regulate the masses by telling them what kind of light bulbs they can use, cars they can drive and toilet paper with which they can wipe their ass. While conspiracy webpages like prisonplanet.com don’t seem to think it can rain without the government or the Jews being behind it, it does.

We have been experiencing more and more tornadoes and tsunamis and earthquakes in the past several years and this will continue and get even greater and potentially more destructive up until the end of 2012, when The Great Transition occurs. This Transition will not happen on a given day but has already been happening for years. At the end of 2012, like the Mayans saw, Gaia will finally settle back into her easy chair and start to feel comfortable in her new skin, kind of like Barack Obama after the first day in the White House, as he had been informed years earlier by the Bilderbergers that he was going to be placed in as President, not only because they thought it would be cute to place a black man in the White House who would only serve to create slaves of all colors but also because they thought it would be hilarious to place a Kenyan there.

Gandhi said, “One can measure the greatness and moral progress of a country by how it treats its animals.” We go on murdering animals in horrific, torturous ways because we’ve developed a taste for blood; we are raping the environment with unsafe toxins and greedy motives that destroy its life-giving creatures; we are stealing from our brothers and sisters by overcharging and selling them products that intentionally wear out before they need to; we are creating drug addicts through psychological campaigns that make everyone think that they’re not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, worthy enough, unless they become junkies to useless shit they don’t need. This goes nothing to say about murder, robbery and withholding food from innocent people who just want to live their lives like you and me. This is not “THEM”—it is “US.” And then we complain that the world’s a fucked up place and think the answer lies in some government body enforcing punishment.

That answer is like your father beating you senseless with a belt after you came home late for curfew because you met a new girl that you thought you could love;  the only thing it reinforces in you is that your father is a prick. And when you come home late again because you proposed to that girl and was more focused on watching her flowering beauty blossom than staring at your watch, the only solution that abusive logic can come to is one of progression, where your father concludes, “I guess I will have to beat you harder!” And this patriarchal logic won’t work to solve the word’s problems either.

“Isn’t it funny how taxing, spending and borrowing doesn’t cure economic woes caused by taxing, spending and borrowing!”

—Rand Paul, running for the Kentucky Senate and son of Ron Paul

Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” yet we think we can solve the world’s violence and hunger and pollution while continuing to be violent and hungry and polluted ourselves. “An eye for an eye” doesn’t fill the emptiness inside; it only destroys our depth perception, not only for sports competition but also in our ability to focus our vision to the core of our problems.

That’s the first problem in coming to a solution: where we assign the problem to be. It is not THE WORLD’S—it is OURS. Believe me, if we start tossing nuclear bombs around and kill all life on the planet except for the cockroaches, the Earth will go on fine without us. She will even regenerate herself and eventually start to grow life on the planet once again; only She might think twice before “peopling” Herself this time. Stop seeking to save the world and save yourself.

All these conflicts are not outer conflicts but inner ones. The prophet Muhammad said that the real “jihad” was fought inside of us and not by wasting random people that you decide to label “infidels.” Our “insides” are polluted. We are feeding ourselves not only with processed garbage for convenience and because we’ve lost our joy for pure, wholesome foods, but also with negative thoughts and judgments—not only of others, but of our selves. We are saturating ourselves not only with unclean water polluted with toxic poisons like fluoride, chlorine, chemical waste, and pharmaceutical drugs, but are also flushing through our system insurmountable pressure from guilt and trying to keep up with the Joneses. It’s time we take a huge dump and piss all this garbage out of us.

We are so fragmented due to conditioning from our parents and pastors and professors that we want to have sex but are guilty about it; we want to go out dancing on the Sabbath but that would be against the prison rules of our faith; we feel emotions that want to surface but we stuff them because a strong woman is considered a bitch and an emotional man is considered a pussy; we hate our jobs but, oh, we have to be “responsible” adults. Responsible to what? Society? Our families? How about ourselves and living Authentically!

Jesus brought everyone to the table, from the rich merchant to the homeless, from the society woman to the prostitute. When he “turned water into wine,” he didn’t do it through alchemy; he did it by making the water that was available to the common man as sacrosanct as the wine that only the wealthy could afford, in order that everyone could feel special and one with God. He was teaching that we are all the Sons and Daughters of God, regardless of privilege or poverty, of special powers or none at all, of Three Wise Men or a dozen idiots. This was real world spirituality and it was also another parable, subtler than ones spoken with words, about integrating all the spicy parts of ourselves if we want to have a joyful and exciting meal of life. You see Jesus lived what Gandhi said when a reporter asked him if he had any lessons for us, “My life is my lesson.”

Look at most “religious” services; it is the dead leading the dead. “Stand up. Say these words with a monotone. Sit down. Feel guilty! Be better! Stand up. Sit down. Think yourself lesser! Make more promises you won’t keep so you can feel guilty! Stand up. Sit down.” Is there someone moronic enough to think that this is serving anyone in any way besides building his or her leg muscles?

Stop going to church or temple or the mosque for God. That is stupid, as God is everywhere. You can go for joy or a sense of community if you want, but why not instead of reading tired old books written by tired old dead people, talk to your fellow brothers and sisters and sing and dance and play games?

And if you are going to bring your religion outside of the churches, don’t do it by parading at what a mindless follower you are by walking around all day with an ash cross on your forehead. Live it.

Don’t talk about piety—be piety.

Don’t talk about spirituality—live spiritually.

Don’t talk about caring—care.

And, for God’s sake, don’t talk about God…be God.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Religion, Self-Reflection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.