Please, notice that while I have written the call for comments and a conversation, in weekend conversations, I keep my presence at the bare minimum, assuming the commenters mutually show respect to each other, don't digress from the topic, don't BS, and don't use gutter talk. :)
Here now the weekend is long in the tooth, I’ve been working in the Virtu gallery the past three days, my attention was not here. This is an intriguing post Ray, I skimmed it when I first opened it Friday.
When our home burned to the ground upstate NY January 26 ‘08 -
Everyone who approached me for the next weeks/months kept saying ‘you’ll survive this’ and proceeded with carrying on with their distress over what they perceived as my distress !
My wise 10 yr old daughter tired of this overtly as I politely let them blabber on.
We came up with the term ‘thrival’. It’s an attitude of making the most of situations to learn and grow - we laughed as we discussed having the ultimate yard sale and everything sold!!
The embraced liberated feeling of not having ‘things’ and being just fine. Not to make too light of this surprise I wish on no one -
It was a lot of work pulling a home front together from scratch, but we had the advantage of hindsight to make choices in doing so.
Ever since the Biblical story of Paradise swam into our ken our thinking about good and evil has been muddled. At the time when it became our paradigm the story had already been tampered with by those who had their own use for it. Priests, scribes, scholars and what else have you in the market-place of religon. Their purpose being to threaten people with God’s anger because of a sin in the past which could not be undone, only mitigated with the help of priests and their godly companions. In order to have a firm grip on the masses that sin has been amplified, made ever more dreadful. Until it had exclusively to do with the Mighty Issue of Good and Evil. Too dry for a poet anyway. Understanding of that original sin in the mind of Bible scholars may have ripened over the centuries but the purpose of Biblical scholarship, to exploit the fear of the masses, has ever been the same.
The original story however by-passes the question of good and evil and deals with the deeper dichotomy of our likes and dislikes. Deeper as in our search for food and shelter we are apt to postpone or suspend questions of good and evil. And right there, in our pursuit of survival, the story addresses us. In Antiquity people turned to priests and prophets to help them to their comforts. Priests, prophets and related vocations postured as keepers of a knowledge fit for them but unfit for the masses. If properly rewarded these specialists were able to put the gods in the right mood for the benefits everybody needed and they only sold. Or so it was assumed. Just as we turn to science for our health, fertility and crops our forefathters in days long gone headed for a sanctuary with a reputation of efficacy.
And now comes my point. In the story of Paradise the type of knowledge that priests and their likes had to offer is represented by the Tree of Knowledge of Sweet and Bitter. The tree promises this knowledge without the guaranty that sweetness will outweigh bitterness. Let alone that it would abolish the bitter taste. It is contrasted with the Tree of Life. If you want life, says our poet, the life that only God can offer, then stay away from priests and priestly promises. And from their modern equivalents, I would add. That way wisdom runs dry in a blind alley. Without wisdom, the teaching of the meaning of life, all is vain and empty. The meaning of life cannot be stated yet it can be transmitted through words. The very waves of the ocean in their never ending song will tell you that. If you want life, follow the living word of the poets. Go your own way but make them, the poets, your guides. Find out what life, not life in general but YOUR life, is about. Persevere and you will not be disappointed.
Understand that the true poet does not speak of physical life or immortality. That’s what Gilgamesh is after and the Babylonian poet, knowing what our Hebrew poet knows, makes Gilgamesh come home disenchanted. Life in the sense of the story of Paradise means a life that never ends BUT (and this is a huge but) it MUST begin before physical death sets in. For as the lady in white has it: “Who has not found the heaven below, / Will fail of it above. / God’s residence is next to mine, / His furniture is love.” If we do not find the life that never ends before we die, then we have ignored the Tree of Life. We have looked askance at God’s best gift. So our living in his presence after death would be to no purpose. We have been dead in life as God’s neighbour in Emily’s poem has been alive in death. Life in the flesh being a sort of death to the speakers of divine words. When the hour of the falling away of the flesh arrives those having lived next door to God won’t miss their body at all. They shall leave it behind as Hazel left his on the edge of a ditch, for the simple reason that he did not need it no more.
I survived losing a 33 day old son, born with Cytomegalic Inclusion Disease, he was born with. Then the murder on my 16 year old son, My parents died of lung cancer. Lost my brother to a heart attack. God gave me the will to survive. Before my Jeremy's killer was released after 8.5 yrs of a 20 year plea bargained M1 to M2, 6 parole hearing. I Learned to shoot, and still carry at 74. Because our INJUSTICE SYSTEM IS BROKEN! THIS IS 15 miles from my House! Kroger Security is UNARMED! City of 17K. home of BUPERS NAVY BASE.
Teens charged in Millington (TN) carjacking
Jesus Najera is charged with carjacking and possession of a firearm during commission of a dangerous felony. He is currently out on a $50,000 bond and scheduled to appear in court on November 18. Detectives later received information that led to 18-year-old Jesus Najera and the 16-year-old’s arrest. Three handguns and an AR Style rifle were recovered when officers searched Najera’s home. https://wreg.com/news/local/teens-charged-in-millington-carjacking/
"Why do people want to survive?" and "Why would people deserve to live?" are questions of a different order. The former inquires into personal motives, the latter assumes a supra-personal measuring rod for deserts. Why mix them up?
They are starry-eyed about all the world's offerings and think that maybe, just maybe they will get some of that, or some more of that, or some of what someone else got, or revenge for whatever, and THEN they will be happy, or leave a mark on the world, or be vindicated.
I spoke to a Chabad Rabbi who had a very esoteric concept of what our job is on this world.
The world is filled with negative energy that we are supposed to elevate through holiness and make into a higher energy that is useful to Hashem.
Like I said, esoteric.
But I suspect, after reading a lot of near death experiences, that when we pass on there is some before and after world where will be rewarded and judged accordingly. On what we were really supposed to be doing here.
Which may not be what we think it is.
There was another legend I heard, that this is something like the 6th world created by G-d. Three grew so evil he had to destroy them (In their own version of the flood). Two grew so evil they destroyed themselves.
It's an interesting concept, that this world is one of many, and we are here as sort of pioneers to elevate it to the same as the rest of the previously elevated cosmos. Perhaps some other force wants to keep the spiritual energies low and not accessible. Perhaps they win if they succeed in destroying the human species? Perhaps that's what motivates the WEF and the madcap idea to sterilize the entire human race?
And then G-d, shaking his head sadly, would have to begin the process over again, with a seventh world, until we get it right.
Maybe there are other worlds that already got it right and are allied with the infinite cosmos of heaven.
As you point out we are victims of ourselves. Survivors, some of us, but when we look at the entire sad history it is pretty clear what we have sown so far. Very sad compared to other species. Poison to them, poison to ourselves. Killers on the road. For “survival”. Maybe I’ll write more about it someday, lol.
Please, notice that while I have written the call for comments and a conversation, in weekend conversations, I keep my presence at the bare minimum, assuming the commenters mutually show respect to each other, don't digress from the topic, don't BS, and don't use gutter talk. :)
Here now the weekend is long in the tooth, I’ve been working in the Virtu gallery the past three days, my attention was not here. This is an intriguing post Ray, I skimmed it when I first opened it Friday.
When our home burned to the ground upstate NY January 26 ‘08 -
Everyone who approached me for the next weeks/months kept saying ‘you’ll survive this’ and proceeded with carrying on with their distress over what they perceived as my distress !
My wise 10 yr old daughter tired of this overtly as I politely let them blabber on.
We came up with the term ‘thrival’. It’s an attitude of making the most of situations to learn and grow - we laughed as we discussed having the ultimate yard sale and everything sold!!
The embraced liberated feeling of not having ‘things’ and being just fine. Not to make too light of this surprise I wish on no one -
It was a lot of work pulling a home front together from scratch, but we had the advantage of hindsight to make choices in doing so.
LIFE is endlessly fascinating. I absolutely love 'watching', the moon, which is pretty mysterious, the various
endlessly fascinating sunsets which are better to me than any movie. They 'feed my soul', and I call it beauty.
The tremendous 'life force' of the ocean, so abused, but still continuing, and even still offering just
fabulous beaches where people can swim sometimes. So many things. Just a personal note, I think we
focus just far too much on people, interesting though they are, but there's so much more out there?
I absolutely love wild mushroom hunts when I can do it, which I am limited in my circumstances.
The varieties are fantastic. We even have some that grow on lawns, and they are edible. We identified
a few, enough, the most common ones.
Then, there's 'wild edibles', which offer us so much value at all levels. We never tamed our property which
while not that big, is still full of 'wild edibles'. I only know some of them, and want to find out others.
How can I do that if I'm not alive?
Ah, then there's the bible, I'd call it a 'secret book', so many levels. We never stop loving discussions
on various word usages from the Greek, and maybe one day, the Hebrew!!
Then, surely the discovery of the massive set of 'lies', like the globe, the name 'Jesus', and sadly, even
the holocaust which we're 'not allowed' to dispute but which I've read and seen and concur.
I like to consider the various reasons for massive lies, and can't do that if I'm not alive.
AI is also fascinating, and I'm not so totally against Yuval, but found him most interesting.
I do think we're perhaps heading into some pretty big, bad stuff. I can either want 'OUT', and
I have my moments, or I can want to see what's going on.
Things have never happened so quickly and I surely don't need movies: I'm IN one, and sometimes
get a part to participate in.
The word 'deserve' is a label SOMEONE else decides, as I'm not sure there's some universal answer.
I think it's 'judging' and on what grounds?
If you've read of the 'ugliness of Canada', one of many aspects is the vast reaching 'euthanasia'
MAID...'service'(?) ...'offered' to people, after which their body parts are removed and used.
Veterans, who obviously have no value to the heads of Canada are reminded this is there,
and disabled who do get big pensions to help them out are given this idea.
It's great sometimes to be able to speak against these things when I can do that.
I don't speak against ALL 'euthanasia' but against the trickery involved.
I'm glad to help out sometimes in any way with the various deceits around the 'virus' and
the 'vaccine', which from my reading, the one likely does not exist and the other is
a convoluted bioweapon.
How could I want to MISS any of this? To blink out, black out, fade, whatever, and not be where
'the action is'?
I really appreciate all your posts, and surely wish I had far more time and energy to read more
of them, Ray. To me, you make sense, and it's like seeing a little landing strip for my little
plane to land, to see sanity for a while before I head out into the 'vast unknown'.
Ever since the Biblical story of Paradise swam into our ken our thinking about good and evil has been muddled. At the time when it became our paradigm the story had already been tampered with by those who had their own use for it. Priests, scribes, scholars and what else have you in the market-place of religon. Their purpose being to threaten people with God’s anger because of a sin in the past which could not be undone, only mitigated with the help of priests and their godly companions. In order to have a firm grip on the masses that sin has been amplified, made ever more dreadful. Until it had exclusively to do with the Mighty Issue of Good and Evil. Too dry for a poet anyway. Understanding of that original sin in the mind of Bible scholars may have ripened over the centuries but the purpose of Biblical scholarship, to exploit the fear of the masses, has ever been the same.
The original story however by-passes the question of good and evil and deals with the deeper dichotomy of our likes and dislikes. Deeper as in our search for food and shelter we are apt to postpone or suspend questions of good and evil. And right there, in our pursuit of survival, the story addresses us. In Antiquity people turned to priests and prophets to help them to their comforts. Priests, prophets and related vocations postured as keepers of a knowledge fit for them but unfit for the masses. If properly rewarded these specialists were able to put the gods in the right mood for the benefits everybody needed and they only sold. Or so it was assumed. Just as we turn to science for our health, fertility and crops our forefathters in days long gone headed for a sanctuary with a reputation of efficacy.
And now comes my point. In the story of Paradise the type of knowledge that priests and their likes had to offer is represented by the Tree of Knowledge of Sweet and Bitter. The tree promises this knowledge without the guaranty that sweetness will outweigh bitterness. Let alone that it would abolish the bitter taste. It is contrasted with the Tree of Life. If you want life, says our poet, the life that only God can offer, then stay away from priests and priestly promises. And from their modern equivalents, I would add. That way wisdom runs dry in a blind alley. Without wisdom, the teaching of the meaning of life, all is vain and empty. The meaning of life cannot be stated yet it can be transmitted through words. The very waves of the ocean in their never ending song will tell you that. If you want life, follow the living word of the poets. Go your own way but make them, the poets, your guides. Find out what life, not life in general but YOUR life, is about. Persevere and you will not be disappointed.
Understand that the true poet does not speak of physical life or immortality. That’s what Gilgamesh is after and the Babylonian poet, knowing what our Hebrew poet knows, makes Gilgamesh come home disenchanted. Life in the sense of the story of Paradise means a life that never ends BUT (and this is a huge but) it MUST begin before physical death sets in. For as the lady in white has it: “Who has not found the heaven below, / Will fail of it above. / God’s residence is next to mine, / His furniture is love.” If we do not find the life that never ends before we die, then we have ignored the Tree of Life. We have looked askance at God’s best gift. So our living in his presence after death would be to no purpose. We have been dead in life as God’s neighbour in Emily’s poem has been alive in death. Life in the flesh being a sort of death to the speakers of divine words. When the hour of the falling away of the flesh arrives those having lived next door to God won’t miss their body at all. They shall leave it behind as Hazel left his on the edge of a ditch, for the simple reason that he did not need it no more.
I had to lose my fear of the unknown, to feel truly alive.
I survived losing a 33 day old son, born with Cytomegalic Inclusion Disease, he was born with. Then the murder on my 16 year old son, My parents died of lung cancer. Lost my brother to a heart attack. God gave me the will to survive. Before my Jeremy's killer was released after 8.5 yrs of a 20 year plea bargained M1 to M2, 6 parole hearing. I Learned to shoot, and still carry at 74. Because our INJUSTICE SYSTEM IS BROKEN! THIS IS 15 miles from my House! Kroger Security is UNARMED! City of 17K. home of BUPERS NAVY BASE.
Teens charged in Millington (TN) carjacking
Jesus Najera is charged with carjacking and possession of a firearm during commission of a dangerous felony. He is currently out on a $50,000 bond and scheduled to appear in court on November 18. Detectives later received information that led to 18-year-old Jesus Najera and the 16-year-old’s arrest. Three handguns and an AR Style rifle were recovered when officers searched Najera’s home. https://wreg.com/news/local/teens-charged-in-millington-carjacking/
"Why do people want to survive?" and "Why would people deserve to live?" are questions of a different order. The former inquires into personal motives, the latter assumes a supra-personal measuring rod for deserts. Why mix them up?
They are starry-eyed about all the world's offerings and think that maybe, just maybe they will get some of that, or some more of that, or some of what someone else got, or revenge for whatever, and THEN they will be happy, or leave a mark on the world, or be vindicated.
I spoke to a Chabad Rabbi who had a very esoteric concept of what our job is on this world.
The world is filled with negative energy that we are supposed to elevate through holiness and make into a higher energy that is useful to Hashem.
Like I said, esoteric.
But I suspect, after reading a lot of near death experiences, that when we pass on there is some before and after world where will be rewarded and judged accordingly. On what we were really supposed to be doing here.
Which may not be what we think it is.
There was another legend I heard, that this is something like the 6th world created by G-d. Three grew so evil he had to destroy them (In their own version of the flood). Two grew so evil they destroyed themselves.
It's an interesting concept, that this world is one of many, and we are here as sort of pioneers to elevate it to the same as the rest of the previously elevated cosmos. Perhaps some other force wants to keep the spiritual energies low and not accessible. Perhaps they win if they succeed in destroying the human species? Perhaps that's what motivates the WEF and the madcap idea to sterilize the entire human race?
And then G-d, shaking his head sadly, would have to begin the process over again, with a seventh world, until we get it right.
Maybe there are other worlds that already got it right and are allied with the infinite cosmos of heaven.
Perhaps not.
As you point out we are victims of ourselves. Survivors, some of us, but when we look at the entire sad history it is pretty clear what we have sown so far. Very sad compared to other species. Poison to them, poison to ourselves. Killers on the road. For “survival”. Maybe I’ll write more about it someday, lol.
Cetaceans, all water mammals, are born swimming, reaching for the surface for another breath, their hearts pounding, and when they stop they die.
We are a fractal pattern of our microbiology. We did not create it, random chance did not create it.
We survive moment to moment that we might know the divine, and be one with our creator.
42 ... *️⃣ ... multiply