Is God A good word?

God is a convenient term within Monotheistic culture, pragma and praxis. What it does is neuter relationships with divine beings that exist in polytheistic pantheons and peoples relationship with these personal or tribal gods.

One term, to encompass all others, usurping all into one platonic ideal, binding it to a manipulatable religion, dismissing all others to recognize one and only one term, “God”.

“Bill, tell us how you really feel!” Let’s not.

Zoroastrianism created the concept of one primordial fire god of wisdom, and emanated powers, to replace the polytheistic beliefs of his culture, and was adopted, used and incorporated into Abrahamic beliefs. Greek philosophers visited these centers of philosophy in Persia/Iran, and brought back the seeds of idealism and platonic thinking. The concepts of Marduk usurping all the old god names, to replace the old ways. It was a way to centralize religious authority who venerated henotheistic beliefs of state or regional gods.

Vedanta, philosophically, non-dualism takes monotheism to its logical extent. It is practical and esoterically, logically and even experientially useful. It also allows the individuation of people, devis, asuras and all other beings. It doesn’t deny or demeans every other entity that exists.

The use of simplistic words as a giant gloss over many perceptions, apprehensions of even a bigger swath of humanities genuine relationship with divine, makes it susceptable to manipulation of those in power. * Looking around at todays societies and religions*.

At the same time the very tool destroying is used to reach out to give people an idea of universality that we can all agree on. Subtle and seductive, a convenient way to bypass any critical thinking, personal investment and analysis. Without that thinking and analysis people fight over beliefs presented by the authorities over a non-thinking masses.

El, the title for Canaanite supreme god is not a name. Elnyion and many other biblical titles are just that titles. Many usurping god names of a polytheistic hebrew history. Old god names denied to be uttered but replaced by the singular title attributed to one and one only being. Study the history and El’s children were allowed to conveniently kill themselves. Apocalyptic Judiasm, after the temple’s final fall, and now a henotheistic god is upgraded to a universal monotheistic monolithic being? Who is playing whom?

1200 years later Kabbalah is formed to break this monolithic thing into a structure and create an angelic order of reality that people can relate to. People meaning those who are willing to be mystics. After 200 – 300 years we have the Kabbalah that we know today. So, beings are expected to fit this structure. People are expected to order their experience by this structure. Apprehension is defined by this structure. Is it a real relationship or is it a corporate or militaristic protocol? Is there a near infinite way to use the structure to frame mystical experiences? Yes and no. It is a complex structure to frame human experiences. the structure makes it finite.

God becomes ineffable, because there are a billion bunny holes of misdirection, structured to give a satisfying reference for individual existence.

Or God becomes so undefinable that there is no interest nor capabilities for people to wish to interact with the divine, and lead by those who define who and what god is.

If it serves to make people get along and work with each other, great. I have yet to see that fruit. If it serves people to explore themselves and get beyond themselves, great! But do not take all of it for granted.

It is like calling myself pagan. It is a convenient label, but in no way, shape or form does it even begin to convey who, and what I am much less how I interact with the cosmos.

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Principles of Immortality

PEOPLE EMBRACING CHANGE

Mind, Body and Emotion in balance generates Spirit. Truth, Life, Love, in Harmony generates Integrity. Spirit and Integrity creates Soul. This is how we grow at all levels.

These are principles that I have espoused for well over a decade.

What does this all mean?  Let me put this in context of a quote and questions put forth by , Ted  Nation.

“‘Bind nothing!  Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.’ Liber AL 1:22   (Aleister Crowley)”

“How do you value your self?  How about others?  Is any man truly greater than another, or lesser?  Is it the choices we make that give us value?  Do we have value? How do you quantify that value?”

Let me start with the principles, expand on it and then apply it.

Most Yoga schools teach a triangle of mind, body and spirit.   And in it they teach detachment from ego and the world.     This a two dimensional approach.    Emotion enervates the body, creates state dependent behaviors, processes that harness the mind and the body to function and to action.    Actions may or may not create attachments to the world and to our own way of doing things.  Taking for granted  a set of behaviors, and beliefs and attachments to our selves  in a point of time.    Once done, we have rendered ourselves an artifact.  We are decaying as soon as we hold ourselves to a yardstick that which is also an artifact in time.    It is the relationship with others and other things.  Can we afford to disconnect ourselves from anything.  Can we afford to attach ourselves to anything.   It is the process of relationships to everything.

Take a diamond, without a gem cutter  it’s value is much less as a raw stone.    How much value is a gem cutter, when he can turn  raw stones into something of value.  The art of a gem cutter, how much value is that, when it can be spread to other gem cutters?     And who profits from all this?     And what of all the gem cutters, when there are no more gems to cut?           What are the gem’s relationship to the gem cutter or the art?    It is a dynamic, but a finite closed loop.   It may exist through time, and be valued amongst gem cutters and those who profit from them, but in the end, when there is no more.  And people value the gems more than any of the people ever  involved with them, down to the miners.   

Can the art of gem cutting be applied to other arts?  Can the disciplines applied  to that art be applied to other arts?  If so you have a living thing.  Not an artifact with a birth, life and death of a singular thing, process or dynamic, but a process that extends through time, and past artifact’s existences.    Processes useful to swim  amongst artifacts of time and existence.

The spirit or essence of a thing, is based on the balance of mind, body and emotion.   The better equal lengths of the base makes the area.  In balance, a volume of essence and spirit are created.      Spirit without a container, form or structure, dissolves back into its constituent parts, with its form and function an artifact in time.

Life by itself is into a relationship with only one thing, is an artifact.   Its value with other artifacts of existence lost in the dissolution and desolation of time and chaos.   Life without it, we have nothing.    Love, without it everything is meaningless.  Truth, the crucible by which all things are tested.  Judgment in the harshest or kindest degree, depends on our honest relationship with everything.   Life, Love and Truth in Harmony begets Integrity.  These three principles  must be in harmonious dynamic and equilibrium.      This is to say, One must have an absolutely honest relationship with everything, your self, the world and if not the whole Universe.   This generates Integrity, honesty with one’s self, the world and the Universe.    This is a relationship, a process, an art  of relationships, holding the truth of each sacred.   Would not the Universe, hold sacred the Truth of you?   

This simple tetrahedron,  if  body, mind and emotion  is in balance creates spirit.  It is the essence the blue print, of the person, the processes, and relationships not only with itself but the whole world.                  The complex dynamic tetrahedron of Life, Love and Truth, creates Integrity.  It is the discipline of the process and honest relationship with itself and the world that keeps its structure intact.     Together   Integrity and Spirit makes the Soul.   

How do you value your Self?  How honest are you? How much effort do you put into your own being and the creation and maintenance of your Soul?    If you are looking for a yard stick to measure yourself against,  the yardstick is an artifact in relationship to other artifacts.    The question is how does the World value you.  How does it hold you sacred, whether it knows it or not?     If your soul continues to have an honest relationship with the world, and holds the spirit and essence of all that truth, actions and processes,  how are you not immortal?

Is it the choices we make that give us value?  Yes and no.   A choice is not the action.    An action and  the honest relationship of all things, of that action is what makes the value.

Do we have value?  Again by what yardstick?     My family, work,  and community,  have I contributed to the arbitrary value of the yardstick of material goods to each?     Or, have I added to the essence and spirit of each to exist beyond its concept of self?   How can  unconscious things, places, people and entities value us, by what yardstick?     What is immortal about each, and what is an artifact of time giving form, substance and topology of the reality, and what is the process of it and  its relationship to all of its constituent parts?  

Quantify the yardstick and the ephemeral value of artifacts of existence.     What power and presence does it hold on us or give a platform and ocean of artifacts to swim in?   How well do we swim in it, or how well poorly we float like flotsam?  

All I can say to the idea of quantifying value, is how do you qualify it?    Am I  an artifact or an immortal process?  Am I an artifact forgotten for the new shiny, or do I have an honest relationship with the immortal Universe, and do we hold each other sacred?

As a man, “Is any man truly greater than another, or lesser?”, by the yardstick yes.   As that part of us that is an artifact of existence, no.     

Ronald Glasser’s  rules of power (some of them):

•    ” All things are equal to another”.
•    ” There are exceptions to every rule, including this one” (See above)  

This axiom is a spiritual teaching re-framed in many ways, to help develop detachment and equanimity  interacting with the world.  It is about having an honest relationship with everything.

The truth of each person and being  is exactly the same.   Our honest relationship with each does not have to be the same.

Paraphrased from “Fiddler on the Roof”:    “Rabbi, is there even a blessing for the Czar?”     “Yes, yes, there is a blessing for everything and every one.   May God bless the Czar, and keep him very, very, very far from us!”   

That is an honest relationship, with self, community and the world demonstrated right there.       An honest relationship with things that are bad for us is to keep them very, very far from us.  Bind the artifacts, not us to them.          

The Aleister Crowley quote is another re-framing of the Hindu Yoga teaching of detachment.   We are in a sea awash with a world of artifacts, and we interacting with them  we need not to be attached to them.   We only need to be honest with our interaction with them.    A yardstick is only good enough to paddle  through a sea of artifacts, no more no less.   And each class of artifacts yardsticks of every sort can be used and be useful.  Those values are an artifact of a class.  Our choice and action about those valuations depend on how we value our relationship to yourself and others.  

When we are immortal, we are part of the Universe, and it with us. There is no differentiation except our own attachment to our own soul.  Valued and held sacredly only as we have done so with the Universe.    And in that reflection of the universe we too are held, sacred and immortal.

Sri Yantra of MahaKali or MahaDurga

The principles and schematic,  and its resemblance to the Merkabah or the Star of Metatron is no accident.   In each practice and concept  and contemplation of each of these principles in each plane can be its own genius.    Thereby not only are these principles of immortality, they too are principals of immortality owned by the soul housed within.  All  other concepts and usages of the Merkabah tradition, if true (many new age confabulations are not) should work well in concert with these principles.

Old videos of this lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OYldcK0r8c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skdj8nK9kDA