Saturday, May 1 |
"Only music may span that space between the finite and the infinite..." Edgar Cayce reading 2156-1  From The Milk of Dreams, a children’s book by Leonora Carrington. Monday, May 3 Around 11 AM, attempt robbery of the lower level of the house: basement ≍ belly. ⟹ a surge of Ång‧R (righteous one?) in front of an unexpected burglar. Two perpetrators: one active, the other one waiting on a moped, wearing helmets (black with red, green, and red stripes around the edge) and a windbreaker (pink chevron on the shoulders and green for the body) Had them fly. Since houses represent our inner architecture, the basement is associated with ideas that are stored 'below the surface' as in repression. Whatever is happening in the basement needs to be explored as a possible issue from the past that has been left (stored) and is unresolved. A cellar portrays how we access the 'inner room' that lies below the surface. While making changes to our belief structures and ideas, the setting will often take us 'underground' as we explore ideas that have not been processed, integrated, or released, symbols associated with the past, as we move toward forgiveness ― or let old resentments go. All symbols associated with underground rooms should be explored carefully to understand how they are portraying the past or ideas that need to be re-examined. |
Tuesday, April 13 |
"There is only one Spirit—of Truth. There may be many divisions, as there may be many drops of water in the ocean yet they are all of the ocean." Edgar Cayce reading 262-87 Western cultures have bred a type of human being who feels strongly alienated from everything which is not his own consciousness. He is a stranger both to the external world and to his own body, and in this sense, he has lost his connection with the surrounding universe. He does not know that the “ultimate inside” of himself is the same as the “ultimate inside” of the cosmos, or that, in other words, his sensation of being “I” is a glimmering intimation of what the universe itself feels like on the inside. He has been taught to regard everything outside human skins as so much witless mechanism which has nothing whatsoever in common with human feelings and values. This style of man must therefore see himself as the ghastly and tragic accident of sensitive and intelligent tissue caught up in the cosmic toils like a mouse in a cotton gin. ― Alan Watts, Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship
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― Benjamin Disraeli
| the Dao of Atheism : |  | : the Shaman Atheist 2/81 |
| Everyone knows what god is -- that is how we know what is not god. Everyone knows what good is -- that is how we know what is not good. This is how being and not-being, experience and non-experience, theism and atheism create each other and are mutually dependent. Light and dark complement each other, long and short-form one another, low and high are relative, sound and tone are harmonies. Wise persons do not judge good or bad do not take action for or against do not disown judgment or action but practice silent teaching. Only together do opposites make a whole. The world is acted upon by even the passive observer, still, nothing is taken and nothing is destroyed. Things are created, actions taken, but no claim is made upon them. Things are controlled but not manipulated for personal gain. Compensation -- verbal or material -- is never the desired goal. | What we like to think of as theological opposites are actually twins to each other, co-dependent upon each other for their mutual definition. The definition of god changes with every age. No definition will suit everyone. Yet every person that experiences god can speak of that experience. Likewise, every person without the experience of God can speak of that non-experience. It is like two people: one who can see light and one who cannot. Neither is inherently better for the experience of light or not. Both can describe their life to each other according to mutual experiences, but it stops at the point of distinguishing light from dark, sunny from cloudy, blue from orange. The seeing person might say that blindness is a disability, yet sight is an impossible experience for the blind person, and no-sight is their natural state of being. Which is better? In making the distinctions, we dissolve the bond between both sides of the issue and force them farther apart. Theism and atheism are inextricably united to each other -- one cannot live without the other. Buddhism as atheism has survived without a theism to complement it, yet types of Buddhism have incorporated theistic elements within it, as have certain branches of Christianity adapted to elements of atheism. Experience, whether theistic or atheistic, cannot be forced. Both sides promote beliefs that they hope will lead to a calculated religious experience, yet neither side claims victory: there is none to gain. |
| the Dao of Atheism : | : the Shaman Atheist 1/81 |
The atheism that one can come to by argument is not true atheism. A definition is given to atheism in one age is not the unchanging atheism nor its permanent meaning. From the original experience of being human atheism arises. Being the original human experience, it is the parent of all religion. From theism, we derive the essence of atheism, although from their names, we see only the conflict. Both ways of experience have the same origin only different names. Their mutual identity is the mystery of experience. And in this mystery is found the doorway to the universe. | How does a person prove that a god exists? There are the claims of ancient stories that simply say so. After the myths come to the logical arguments from cosmology to ontology to teleology to say that the existence of a god is rational. Others say that there is no proof and that a god's existence must be taken on faith alone. And still, others claim that the proof of a god is in the experience and that they have experienced the existence of a deity or even have a relationship with it. None of it is enough to satisfy the atheist. How do people prove that a god does not exist? The passage of time, which has silently but effectively buried most gods in history, is the most evident proof that not all gods exist in perpetuity nor are all-powerful. Isis and Apollo are now cultural fictions whose reality died with the culture that created them. Arguments against deity often centre around inter-textual contradictions, or the miracles and physical impossibilities claimed as fact in the religious text. Rational proofs against the existence of a deity, such as the argument of evil and psychological hero projection, also exist, together with the arguments based on the historical abuse of religious institutions in contradiction to their religious tenets and the use of religious belief as a means of social control. But none of it is enough to satisfy the atheist. Reason cannot always help. Belief and disbelief exist by themselves, sometimes innately within a person. Some people, like the apostle Thomas, Jesus' twin brother, cannot create mental belief without first-hand sensual experience. The mental doubt exists until physical evidence is demonstrated. Until the experience of deity itself. |
