Book 8: Chapter 7: Reimagining Our Journey Through Consciousness

It is what it is, but it is not what it seems

—Paul Hewson .

We all create stories around our individual lives, and around all of our relationships with each other, and with the world.  We also listen intently to the stories told to us  by our parents, our teachers, our religions, our history, and our society about who we are, who others once were or now are, and who we might aspire to become.  Many of our stories, both individually and those created by society for us, are steeped in illusion, ignorance, half-truths and outright falsehoods.  Far too many stories are just illusory dramas about our attempts to control others, and, sadly, our failed attempts at control over our own lives and our emotional experiences around all of these intersections, and collisions, with each other  But these stories have an amazing hypnotic appeal, especially to those who have not undertaken the process of insight and healing.  At some point in our lives, each of us must begin a “search for truth”, lest the entirety of our life experience be lived and experienced without true integrity, the potential for healing and completeness, and the best alignment with reality.

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Some aspects of life just seem to elude our ability to effectively communicate around them, and never get incorporated into our personal stories, and thus add to the collective conspiracy of silence.  Also, other people’s stories and garbage gets back-filled into the holes and empty spaces within our own stories,  becoming embedded within us, and adding to our internal confusion and chaos.

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Life was never an easy journey for me, and had it not been for some deep need to understand my dysfunctional process, and try to find the underlying truth amid my personal chaos, I would have passed away, silenced by the disease.  Some wounds are so deep, and primal, that just pasting new names onto aspects of the disease and creating new stories are not enough.  But it is each of our responsibilities as conscious, or semi-conscious, human beings to bring our personal truth, and our stories, no matter how incomplete they may be, to the collective experience, including our family, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors, and our religious and political leaders..There are nearly 2.2 billion world citizens claiming “Christianity”, 2 billion Muslims, and over 400 million Buddhists who claim their religion as the source for their understanding, so regardless of our own faith, or lack thereof, unless we deliver our story, our world narratives stay in total control,

Oh religious marionettes on the screen of the world’s mind, With the dogmas of their beliefs in control, what possible freedom can you find?

Names and stories are only a convenience for communication, and are never comprehensive and inclusive enough to completely reveal the true natures of what they were created for in our minds to represent in the first place.  The process of naming is the way that our consciousness weighs and measures new forms of life, ideas and experiences, in the attempt to insert the unknown and the mysterious into a present context for understanding, which becomes the latest iteration of our “story”.  Naming tends to attach a dynamic process to a fixed point in time and space, always with a past frame of reference, and thus permanently lodges it in the dead past.

The act of creating stories and context, and just being conversational about the details of life does not dislodge the detritus from our field of consciousness. The Devil is in the details, figuratively speaking, and if our need is for change, we must find a way to see under the vast matrix of details that only float on the surface of the mind .  We must also personally explore and experience the movements through consciousness, and find the way to the silence at the foundation of our being.  Otherwise, the process of naming, and the resulting stories that arise from naming, are just more intellectual knowledge and entertainment for the mind, and will not pry open the healing doors to insight and wisdom.

“Once I had asked God for one or two extra inches in height, but instead, he made me as tall as the sky, so high that I could not measure myself.” —Malala Yousafzaia

The intellectual and the atheist, though possessing finely tuned minds, can never explore the mystery, and the depth, of the human soul, and comprehend that we all have a connection with Infinity.  The willing explorer of the new paths of consciousness or the mystic both have access to the limitless territory of the Spirit, and will soar to new heights and see the sights rarely seen by the rest of mankind. “It is only deep insight into the nature of our consciousness itself, and the stories that we tell ourselves, that finally allows for us to catapult our awareness FAR BEYOND THE CONFINES OF OUR STORIES.  Such vision brings a renewed appreciation and respect for all who attempt to transcend the limitations of the story, while refining their own unique version of it.

I did not develop verbal abilities until relatively late in my childhood  My sister reports that she spoke for me until I developed the capacity, or  inclination, to speak.  Once I started talking (close to age 4) I proved that I had the capacity for speech, and A LOT OF IT.  My father wondered, at times, if I would ever shut up.  I  proved to be quite precocious, once I engaged my verbal skills.  I remember that I would start talking about things that were around me, giving new information that my parents had no knowledge about.  My parents thought that there was no way for me to know anything about what I was spouting off about, so I was mostly ignored.  But I can remember how good it felt to be talking, and sharing the excitement of the magic of words exploding in my mind!

I intuited quite early that built-in to the very fabric of words is an access to imagination and knowledge beyond the word, or sequence of words, spoken.  Looking back now, I can see also the incredible capacity of the human mind to represent the real world with words and internal imagery, as well as to create false realities while remaining utterly convinced of their “truth”, even in the face of non-supporting facts.  I can remember as a young boy around four years of age having a doll named Percy, who spoke with me at times, and even spoke to me once over the telephone. I briefly had my sister convinced that Percy spoke to me, and she was six years of age!  The fundamental truth here is that our Creative Nature makes us believe in, see, and hear our own creations, whether they exist for others,  or not. Percy was to me what the concept and experience of “God” was to other innocent children, a reassuring voice that would speak to me, and remind me that I had value. 

Percy, God, our traumas, our healing and/or our creative nature is always trying to tell us a story. Please listen carefully!

Illusions can become contagious, if not recognized, and reigned in early. What is truth?  Sometimes, we must remain open to a mystery that far transcends our simple explanations, as well.  This book touches extensively upon the many self-destructive and false stories and realities, as well as the mundane, and sometimes amazing, life-affirming truths, that I, as an individual person, and as a collective, acculturated human being was subjected to and consciously and unconsciously adapted to throughout the course of my life.

In some of the early times of my life,  prior to my addictive cycles, I carried with me a sense of isolation, depression, and a strong feeling of generalized anxiety..  From 1971 through 1987, as a practicing alcoholic and drug addict, and mentally ill human being, I lost most of my remaining freedom of choice.  I belonged to the “death wish core group” of Americans, who lived lives of desperation,  addiction, suicidal ideation, and mental illness.  We all sought an early death, either by our own hands, through our addictions, or by the poor health and relationship decisions that we continued to make.  Many of us could see the insanity of those still claiming for themselves good mental health, while the choices of those supposedly “healthy people of the world” continued to bring the promise of the destruction to our planet Earth.  While we contemplated our own end, we witnessed a world in the midst of its own collective march towards suicide. The story of Armageddon, as both an individual and as a collective event, becomes very real to those trapped by their own illusions of powerlessness, helplessness, and despair. 

We are the loosely knit tribe most susceptible to the oppression by others, and the repression of our selves.  We are the prime candidates for political and religious propaganda.  We may seek a new tribe that gives us a sense of safety and purpose, even if our own anticipated benefits come at the expense of other innocent people or groups.  We have become limited caricatures of ourselves, as we continue to play to stereotypes that those in power have thrust upon us.   We do not have the emotional and spiritual intelligence to discern what is true, and what is false, about our selves.  The stories that continue to be told to us keep us connected with an extremely limited view of “our people”, all the while keeping us disconnected from our own true natures, and more realistic stories of ourselves.

A spiritual awakening process beginning in 1987 was the start of my own exit from the chaotic mindset that characterized my life up to that point.  Since 1987,  I have chosen to live life more fully, with enhanced personal awareness, good health, honest expression of all feelings, joy and happiness the majority of the time, and almost continuous sobriety.  My own living, dynamic story has become forefront in my mind, and having examined my life to its deepest core, I have seen what the source of my own spiritual disease and despair was.  And, I finally found a way to describe the foundational dynamics of both personal and collective consciousness that contributed to my disease, and to all of our suffering.  I need no longer be an unwilling participant and just another silent partner in the conspiracy of silence.

John 1.1-From New Testament Of Christian Bible

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Yet, another layer of the Conspiracy of Silence exists around the Divine, Higher Power, God, or Truth.  Organized religions, intellectual savants and those parading as atheists, and political powers all too often obfuscate the truth that underlies all of our existence. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus

“What is truth?”,

Jesus, as the story goes, could only be silent in the face of the greatest power of the day. 

 His silence proved that he was a mature spiritual being, and saw the futility of proclaiming his own righteousness and understanding in the face of the political and physical  power of Pilate.  The question “What is truth?” was intended as mockery, and that principle continues to this day. Speaking truth to power is not an easy or automatic proposition, no matter how “enlightened” one might appear to be. 

Truth is more like a continuous rainfall upon rocky mountains.  It does not immediately displace all of the sharp, dangerous edges of eons of ignorance, but, over time, it finally erodes the roughest of terrains, and exposes the deeper layers of existence where a new level of experience is to be found.  Those who are not patient will be mortally wounded by thrusting themselves too aggressively against our human monuments to stupidity and ignorance that often act as the controlling religious, political, and economic powers within civilization.

Those who touch the Infinite relate back to the world the ineffability of the experience, though they have been deeply impacted by that contact.  The universe of Spirit defies rationality, though it will eventually speak intelligently through the healed human mind.   First, the mind has to be properly prepared, and then it must be willing to communicate, no matter how mighty the struggle may be  to interpret or express its energy.  But if the mind is overburdened by education, knowledge, religious and cultural inculcation, the Infinite will be speaking through distorted measures of reality, creating illusion, deception, and delusion.

LDS–White Jesus Approved

A look at Joseph Smith and his revelations, and the LDS movement that subsequently arose from this process,  is a great example of the corrupted marriage of spirituality and truth with hallucination and delusion, producing its inevitable spawn, toxic religion and cults.  This type of spiritual corruption only further confuses and alienates those seekers of a deeper truth that are still in possession of keen wits. Would anyone like a serving of golden plates, from which the “Book Of Mormon” is based upon, or Jesus appearing in the wild west of America, say, two thousand years ago?  The sirens of my “bull shit detector” continue to go off loud and clear, whenever I hear these stories.  And don’t forget to tithe your ten percent, or your next of kin will hear about your “lack of faith” at your own funeral (yes, I witnessed this in an abominable eulogy at a funeral for a co-worker, who had committed suicide).  Like our mothers sometimes said:

“Oh, and always wear clean underwear in case you are in an accident! “.

It is time for the Church of the LDS to change their dirty “underwear”, because their delusional stories have created quite the mess in human consciousness, and this philosophical buffoonery is an accident waiting to happen to all of its adherents.  The Church, and its community of well-meaning human beings,  may have done a lot of good over the years, but that has to be balanced with the corruption in consciousness itself that this tribalistic cult creates and maintains.

All religions promote the hope that humanity has a capacity for love and healing.  The simple truth behind Christianity is that we all have divine heritage, though we may be still struggling with our human experience.  Ignorant Christian philosophers,scholars, and ministers continue to interpret and promote the Word as having its expression only through Jesus Christ.  In their minds humanity remains relegated to outcasts from the “Garden Of Eden” and we will all remain on the outside of the universality of our divine heritage and potential for eternity until Jesus is accepted as our personal savior.  There are many other errors in spiritual discernment in addition to this one that continue to be propagated, especially all of the nonsense that is promoted around the concept of Armageddon.  This is important, because these beliefs contribute mightily to the Common Knowledge Game of human perception, which is a socially and culturally inculcated system for assessing and judging against all others unlike the observers. Most of the world does not hold the belief in Jesus as the Savior, though many of us have been victimized by those with such a vision!  With our American judicial and political processes still impacted by, and in some cases dominated by, so-called “Christian ideals”, it is easy to see the potential for collective persecution of and discrimination against those not conforming to these ideals and dogmas.

And, much of our American religious landscape remains dominated by blind adherence to  patriarchy, which manifests through toxic masculinity, toxic capitalism, and toxic religion, with their qualities of misogyny, white supremacy and its outright hatred or indifference to others unlike themselves, greed and rampant selfishness, and self-destructiveness, and all of the planetary destructive evil that emanates from it.  When the writer quoted from in the Bible proclaimed that we “be fruitful and multiply”, that writer did not intend for our race to become a planet ravaging virus, through overpopulation, pollution, extinction of 1000’s of species, genocide, religious persecution, greed, and competition, yet our race has been fruitful, and multiplied our collective ignorance and evil exponentially.

Religious reasoning and oxymorons

Prosperity theology is a religious belief among some Christians, who hold that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for them, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one’s material wealth. Prosperity theology views the Bible as a contract between God and humans: if humans have faith in God, he will deliver security and prosperity.  The doctrine emphasizes the importance of personal empowerment, proposing that it is God’s will for his people to be happy. It is based on interpretations of the Bible that are mainstream in Judaism (with respect to the Hebrew Bible), though less so in Christianity. The atonement (reconciliation with God) is interpreted to include the alleviation of sickness and poverty, which are viewed as curses to be broken by faith. This is believed to be achieved through donations of money, visualization, and positive confession.

Our blind adherence to our soulless Capitalist economic system is a force that must be reckoned with.  With capitalism now married to religion, we end up with Corporate Religion, whereby sects of American Christianity celebrate wealth and fame, and goad their members towards rampant materialism, all in the name of God’s prosperity..  These mega-churches with ministers, such as Joel Osteen, set the tone and the pace for self-glorification, materialism, overpopulation, and the continued destruction of our planet through their adherence to the Prosperity Gospels.  Prosperity is oppression, when we see the long-term effects of focusing wealth and planetary resources into the pocketbooks of fewer and fewer people, in manners that tend to increase profits and visibility for the unconscious adherents of the new Corporate Religion. 

This competition for resources continues to cause our Earth to suffer, while the few prosper.  There is abject spiritual and intellectual poverty imbued within a philosophy that celebrates prosperity as a manifestation of “God’s reward for the good”, and is indicative of a larger poverty that has overwhelmed our nation, and our world.  We all need umbrellas to shield ourselves from the “golden showers” of “trickle down theories” that follow such megalomaniacal visions of privilege and power.

The fundamental oppressive force in the human universe is not our wayward religious, political, economic, or social agendas or systems, however, as the fundamental problem is within the human mind itself. Jesus Christ would be crucified again (and, in fact, the Truth continues to be sacrificed daily), and Muhammad and the Buddha, were they alive today, would be ignored or attacked, in today’s diseased, divisive, dark money controlled political, social, and religious climate. Some say that it may be time to PUNCH A NAZI, in whatever form it takes, but it is best to first master the Nazi within our own minds.

A new story needs to be told by each and every one of us, as our old stories are killing us,  both individually, and collectively.  We need a new world religion, one that honors ALL life upon the planet, and the very planet Earth itself, as our Lord and Savior. We must have a story that allows for each being to have the opportunity to live in peace and harmony, and to share in the benefits of an evolutionary consciousness.  We either grow together as a race, and as a planet, or we will not survive as a species, and, potentially, we may destroy the rest of our supporting animal species, the environment itself, and the planet.

Punch A Nazi Sign at June 2018 Portland, Oregon Rally for Immigrants and their families

“if you tell a big enough lie, and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”. ― Adolf Hitler

If you tell a lie often enough, you are prone to start to actually believe it yourself.  All of the internal defense mechanisms are engaged to support the story and to maintain the lies existence, and the corruption that living a lie creates can become part of our nature.  Be careful out there, the world, and our minds, can be a dangerous place. Unlike TV entertainment series, where the programs have the potential to resolve the contrived issues  before the ending of the weekly show, life carries our issues for prolonged periods of time, sometimes whole lifetimes, if we do not find a way to dislodge our lies, and our stories of disease and dysfunction from the cells of our bodies, and from our consciousness. 

There is no freedom to be found, if we do not first see that we are trapped. Pay attention  to all of our stories, many of which  have created quite the mess to sort through.  Constantly question reality,, search for available facts, and learn not to unconsciously accept statements from authority figures.  “Reality” many times, is only someone else’s opinion about “what is”, so a cautious, probing mind, not rushing to simplistic conclusions, or susceptible to popular suggestion or hypnotism, is required to maintain, or re-establish, personal integrity, healing, sanity and reason.

It has been a great challenge and adventure living this life. It has also been a great fulfillment for me to have lived long enough and to have become articulate enough to be able to put into words my unique experience of life. There are many chapters to follow, where I attempt to bring into the verbal universe my extended journey into the mystery of human consciousness, and its corruption by those with unconscious and ignorant, or selfish and self-destructive agendas.  Finding my unique story, and finding the supportive silence underneath that story, is the journey of my salvation, the hero’s journey towards healing and integrity. 

Buckle up, fellow travelers, the ride is going to be a rather turbulent one at times! What is “reality” and who am I? Watch out, for more stories are always forming around those questions! I am what I am, but I am not what I seem We all need a bigger story, with more heart and healing, higher accuracy, and maximum inclusivity!

It is what it is, but it is not what it seems