Questions for young people

Hi again my friends. Always thinking of you and wishing things could have gone differently, that your parents and teachers (and government 'leaders') could have allowed you to inherit more goodness, and less of the trash, depravity and errors that they have left you to cope with and hopefully start to clean up. I really wish all this crap had not fell upon you, but it was the previous two generations choices.

Anyway, rather than a case study, I thought of two questions for you to ponder. These questions sum up a lot of what I've written about in developing faith and developing reasoning skills.

Question One:

Which is better: If you know someone is doing something wrong or dangerous, do you speak to them about it and risk "hurting their feelings," "being judgmental," or "sounding like a dork," OR do you stay silent for either the above reasons or with thinly disguised glee, as you hope that something bad happens to them and they "get what they deserve?" Your parents and teachers by far selected the second choice.

Question Two:

Which is better: To go to a highly qualified doctor, counselor or spiritual director when one ails, or to insist that you only go to someone who has had the same illness as you? In other words, if you have a broken leg, refuse to allow any doctor or nurse who has not had a broken limb treat you? If you are an addict, insist only on ex-addicts? If you don't believe in God, go to someone else who does not believe in God? If you have swine flu, hold out, don't go to the ER, unless you know the doctors there have had the swine flu themselves? If you fall off a mountain and crush your bones, with your last breath insist that they phone ahead to the hospital and make sure that only mountain climbing members are on staff? Your parents and teachers by far selected the second choice.


Artists and writers looking for good ideas, you can select one of those scenarios and write a short story, or produce a work of art, contrasting the two alternative choices in some specific setting. Or even just write the outline or sketch of how it would develop. Like the cornucopia exercise, if you feel some sort of urge to "defend" the second choice, that's OK, it's free speech after all (LOL!) but use it as a thinking detox tool and ask yourself, why you have the urge to defend the second choice...and see if that is some latent programming by those who firmly embrace that view for kooky reasons.

Let's use the silly example of the fallen mountain climber. You might have an inkling of doubt as you kind of mock the second scenario, thinking, "Well, might not mountain climbing doctors have 'better understanding' of mountain fall injuries?" Test that theory. As the dude or dudette is laying there crushed on the mountain, you might think, well, only mountain climbers are coming to rescue him or her, no? So why not mountain climbing doctors at the hospital? Oh, I see. So if a non-mountain climbing pilot flies his non-mountain climbing rescue team to the injured person and winches them down (hence not needing mountain climbing skills) and then lifts the person in a basket (hence not needing mountain climbing skills), I guess you'd recommend the injured person wave off the helicopter since they aren't "authentic mountain climbers" and "would not understand?" So if you start to fall or seep into that trap use this tip that I've shown you, which is to compare that form of thinking to various scenarios of reality. No one in their right mind would wave away a faster helicopter rescue because the rescuers don't "share the same experience" and have the same "cred" as the injured.

Then, think ahead to the hospital. OK, suppose the injured argues that only a mountain climbing doctor should treat him or her, because that doctor would "better understand" the patient and his or her "reality." Oooooook, so let's think of a reality based scenario. Maybe that patients refuses treatment by a non-mountain climbing doctor, not realizing that this doctor, however, has gone to earthquake areas and set many fractured bones with greater expertise than anyone else. The injured dummy would just have turned down someone with vast and rare experience in exactly their injury, just because the patient thinks only a carbon copy of him or herself can treat him or her. Duh.

I know this is a ridiculous example but it's not all that far from the truth, unfortunately. I see that a lot in medicine, most obviously in the areas of mental health, but oddly enough, also in the areas of disease and physical ailments. It's scary, the mindset that I am pointing out here, and the cause of much of the alienation and gloominess in society today. When people are constantly categorizing themselves and others based on large traits, small traits and/or imaginary traits, they inevitably alienate themselves and others. This, by the way, is one reason why cults isolate members so much. It's both elitism and fear of alternate doctrines, but underlying all of it is an obsessive compulsive disorder to categorize people. Young people, instead of growing up in groovy times where all are equal (as all the major faiths teach), you've grown up in times that categorize to such an insane degree that no one really ever really belongs in any group, and you see that with tragic results in the school systems, in gangs, and in prejudice.

Another example of what I mean you can test yourself with by thinking how like a kind of code language or short hand you immediately know "what kind of person" someone is by what brand of clothes they wear. That is far different from when I grew up, when it was really "cool clothes" or "not cool clothes," or "has money for clothes" or "does not have money for clothes." You young people actually know a lot about each other if you just hear a few brand labels about what the other person is wearing. For example, in my day we didn't have punks who dressed punk. In my day we had punks, some of whom could afford cool clothes. Do you see what I mean? And we had cool kids who brought very cheap no label jeans because they just refused to spend the money on a label brand. But today, you have so much ridiculous categorizing that all it does is depress, promote anxiety, alienate and ultimately provide very bad medicine, rather than unifying and promoting genuine individuality. It's scary what is happening, even though I use benign and silly examples here.

I want to keep this thoughtful but relatively light, so I won't go off into more doomsday hand wringing, but I'm counting on you young people to be strong enough to take a look at what I am saying and start to ask yourselves some very serious questions about what attitudes you've been taught are really solid and worthy, and what is bogus crap.

OK, an exercise hint

I can hear the people who have engineering orientations and are heavy number crunchers screaming that the exercise I just proposed is impossible, LOL. So here is a hint about one-just one-way to understand that it is not impossible.

Suppose these people need to cut one hundred boards of exactly the same length for construction, but they don't use numbers for counting (either quantity or dimensions) but use colors instead.

What if they used a prism that generated a detailed pictorial of a color spectrum, and using a color filter or wheel they can define a certain length as being one line on the standard color spectrum and quantity being another line on the spectrum?

Engineers would have standard access to spectrums and modifying color wheels that act as filters for different purposes. People then use a precise reading of a spectrum line to represent a quantity. "No numbers or counting are used in this, simply visual comparison of colors and their spectrum lines."

This is one way that precise work can be done and replicated without numbers. It's a hint how a color based computer would work too, and not via just a bit based system that uses color instead of 0 or 1. It would be like a visual (optical recognition) manipulation of matrices of colors and spectrum lines!!!

Once you loosen from the tyranny of thinking that human tools rule humans and not the other way around, you realize there are other ways that could be used, and you start to loose the compulsions of OCD and occult type of thinking.

"Numerology" detox exercise, also creative writing

Here is a mental exercise that serves two purposes: 1) another in my series of tutorials about how to regain genuine creativity, such as in the entertainment media, without having an occult, depressive or paranoid sub agenda and 2) how to continue to detach from and detox from compulsive OCD "counting" and also occult numerology "beliefs."

Imagine humanoid life on another planet, who are happy and successful, but they differ from humans in one fundamental way: they never developed a system of counting using numbers.

What did they do instead? Let us say that they use colors to count, to inventory and to create formulas?

How would that work? That is the exercise. Write a short story, or an outline, of how a humanoid race could not only get by but thrive without any concept of numbers, and how they used colors for their manipulation of quantity.

For example, what if they had a very simple system where red represented a single quantity, and then the introduction of blue represented additional quantities?

It really is a struggle at first to think about that because humans have become so invested in numeric thinking, to the point where it is an addiction.

But if you persist you will start to see how numbers ultimately do not have any meaning at all, and that there are ways that one could survive and thrive using a different system, such as colors, to manage concepts of quantity.

Can you imagine a computer invented by these people based on color wavelengths? I can.

Give it some thought and see how it liberates you from thinking that counting and numbers have any meaning other than the way humans selected to manage quantity. Numbers were invented by humans to serve humans, not for humans to serve numbers. Life can exist quite well without that particular system. So work on thinking about this planet and race of people who manage their concept of quantities by using colors, in either a simple way (discrete colors and their combinations) or complex (the continuum of multiple spectrums!)

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Loving Math without risking idolatry

Loving Math without risking idolatry

As part of my continuing series on faith and reason, and improving skills in both areas, I’d like to offer more about a topic I’ve previously discussed. Previously I’ve written about mathematics specifically in the context of debunking the occult practice of numerology, and helping people to detox from both the occult and obsessive compulsive disorder of “counting.” Now I want to offer a quick “top down” or “bottom up” (either way, a foundational basis) for understanding God’s stance toward mathematics.

Everyone who is at all spiritual feels the mystical glory of God and his universe in certain settings. Often this setting is in the great outdoors, such as in the wilderness, mountains, seashore or just in one’s own garden or woodlands. Many people, however, feel that wonder in a different way. For example, the late great surgeon Dr. DeBakey said he was gripped with awe at God’s creation the first time he saw an actual human heart during surgery.

Likewise, there are many people who feel awe and a mystical draw when they study mathematics. This is very common and completely understandable. People are especially fascinated with numbers that seem foundational to the universe, such as Pi. They have both a sense of awe but also a sense of “peeking” inside “the secrets” of the universe, measuring and understanding its “inner workings.” And this is the slippery slope that poorly formed faith and reason can lead one upon, even to deliberate or completely unconscious idolatry. This is what I want to explain.

First of all, there really is no such thing as “mathematics” as far as material reality. God did not “create mathematics.” Wow, what could I mean by that? God created the universe (all of it, including “other universes” that some people like to fantasize are hidden from view. They aren’t there but that’s a subject for another blog posting). “What You See Is What You Get.” The reason people fantasize and claim to have calculated “other universes” is that they refuse to accept a physical reality of God’s influence, and so compensate for that “energy,” for lack of a better term, by making up the concept of invisible dimension and hidden universes. That’s an erroneous conceit that refuses to accept that there is a physical reality, motion and movement where the universe “intersects” (for lack of a better term) God’s realm.

So anyway, back to my explanation about God’s view of “mathematics.” God created the entire universe, which is by definition all of reality, comprised of matter, energy and time. God created the universe using three measurements: not enough, just right, and too much. It really is as simple as that: there is no mathematics, just that one measurement based on need and appropriateness. Once God created matter, energy and time, so that for things to exist and events to happen, there had to be “just the right” quantity of all of the three at any given time, God pretty much lets “the chips fall where they may” because natural law, which God created, takes over from there. Mathematics is simply the language that humans use to understand “not enough,” “just right” and “too much.”

Let’s start with the obvious everyday example, which is your car’s gas tank. Your car does not need 10.583393939344444 gallons to work. It needs “enough gas” in your tank to get you to where you want to go, or to the next filling station. Mathematics helps YOU to measure “just right” and avoid “not enough” or “too much.” For example, if your tank only holds 12 gallons of gas, spraying an extra 2 gallons all over the paint finish does not extend the driving range of your car. So “14 gallons” can be easily understood as “too much” for your car to hold at a given time. You may need 14 gallons to get to your planned destination, so you have to plan a gas refill stop at “just the right time” to get at least the additional two gallons. So there is absolutely no significance to those numbers except as a way for humans to measure and comprehend in any given situation “not enough, “just right” and “too much.”

That is why you get strange and mysterious numbers such as PI. It’s not that God started out with that number, “Hmm, what a cool number. That will drive them crazy and make me look really mysterious. Yeppers, I’m going to use that number to make circles with.” Nooooo… what God did was create the concept of a circle, or rather, God creates the physical reality of matter, time and energy that can produce a circle, and the formula that humans “discover,” such as the calculation PI, simply are a way for humans using the numeric system of their choice to measure “what was enough linear distance” in order to create a circle. The fact that it comes out to PI “every time” simply means that the universe does function using measurable quantities of observable things over constancy of time. Some mysterious force is not behind the scenes changing the physical reality of a geometric circle shape, so sometimes PI “comes out to be” 3.1415 etc and other times it is 8.888111, just to use some “numerologically significant” numbers for a giggle and to give occult readers a thrill. LOL.

But back to being serious. All of life, both sentient and inert, can be understood as being simple “not enough,” “just right,” and “too much.” For example, geologists and astronomers understand many of the principles whereby interstellar clouds and gas condensed to form stars and planets. No one needed to know any mathematics for that to happen. If is sufficient to know that when enough dust and matter condenses with enough pressure and enough energy, over enough time, and without an interrupting event, such as an exploding star (hence the quantity of time and distance is sufficient), that things will clump together and form a planet or a star. As illuminating case studies and to learn more about the physical forces and needs, sure, scientists measure using mathematics the raw data so they can better understand the quantities of, yes, you guessed it, “not enough,” “just right,” and “too much.” You don’t sit down to dinner (unless you are dieting and calorie counting, or diabetic) and measure all your food and eat only a “magic number” worth of it. You eat what is “good enough” (calories and nutrition) and “enough” in quantity that it fulfills your needs. For example, if you are going to be working all day and unable to have three meals, you might pack it in during the one meal you do have. There’s no magic number about that. “Oh wow, I’m going to be working all day so I better eat the holy number of seven pancakes instead of my usual holy number of three pancakes.” Er, um, nooooo…. You are eating and “calculating” using “mathematics” what you know you need to eat based on experience to be “enough” aka “just right” in order to get you through your day, in this example.

So why do numbers appear to be “mystical” in the Bible? Again, God creates and oversees events that are “not enough, “Just right,” or “too much.” Humans apply numbers to them by counting, in order to explain to others more precisely what they have seen. That is one extremely obvious and simple reason. When St. John saw the beast, he wanted to describe it in as useful a way as possible, so being precise, he counts what is on the beast (the horns and so forth). This is especially true when the quantity is unusual. For example, when a mystical goat or ram is seen, the Prophets rarely pause to add, “And it had the usual two horns.” Humans tend to count when something is of extraordinary importance to convey to others AND it is out of the ordinary.

The second reason the Bible authors would emphasize holy or extraordinary number is that they unconsciously realize (as modern humans have forgotten) that it is a way to measure how much something is imitating God, or not. So it is not the fact that seven is observed to be a holy number in heaven so much as seven of whatever quantity of item is being counted is “just the right amount” for its purpose. So the beast having “seven” of something does not mean anything so far as the number seven. It means it is mocking or imitating a quantity of what God found good and pleasing and therefore “just right” somewhere else. If you erased all human ability to count and perform mathematics, it would not change one iota the events and meanings of things experienced and recorded in the Bible. It’s not like if the number seven never existed that all things in sevens would never have happened. I mean, duh. It just means that humans could never have achieved a descriptive tool and device (and eventually an engineering capability) that would rely on people being exact about what they observed about the material world.

Because people get all irrational about prophecy, let’s back away from the beast example, but keep it heavenly and prophetic to remain interesting. Revelation 4:4: “Surrounding the throne I saw twenty-four other thrones on which twenty-four elders sat, dressed in white garments and with gold crowns on their heads.” OK, so St. John saw twenty four elders each with his own throne. That’s great! He is able to precisely convey to his readers exactly what he saw. Notice what he did not write. He did not say, for example, “And God told me it’s like this all the time, and that those same 24 are always sitting there for all eternity.” He did not say, “There are always 24 thrones with 24 elders because 24 is a really important number.” He did not say, “And those are the most honored people in heaven, and so it’s like musical chairs, and there are only 24 chairs for the most honored elders.” Um, no to all of that; St. John wisely just records what he saw and what he heard. He knew he was not authorized or given knowledge to speculate, and you will notice that St. John does not interpret any of the furnishings or events of heaven. So obviously you would ask, why where there twenty four elders on twenty four thrones? Because that was “just enough” for whatever God’s purpose was at THAT moment to have St. John present. “Enough” elders were there at that time doing what they do and being whoever they are for that purpose, that message, that tableau, and that vision of a part of the reality of heaven for St. John to be invited to observe. For all you know, “right after St. John left,” 124,333 thrones with elders on each could have been moved in! God is not bound by concepts that humans invent in order to communicate with each other. God did not “place 24 thrones for 24 elders” around his throne, God lets happen the events and participants that suits his will for the needs at the time.

See, St. John lived the longest of all the Apostles, he was the one “who Jesus loved,” he became the son of the Blessed Virgin Mary in order to care for her during her lifetime, and he was the only one not martyred. St. John knew about as much about Jesus and God as anyone who ever lived. St. John did not need to be “given a literal tour” of heaven in order to bolster his faith. St. John only needed to see what was necessary to convey the messages, prophecy and warnings that God desired him to see. So obviously there are more than 24 of the highest and most honored elders In heaven, but God did not have to show St. John that or give him a tour to show him “where the other elders were at” or if indeed “there are only 24 seated by the throne for all eternity.” Maybe yes and maybe no, would be the answer, but it’s not likely to guess that God throughout eternity can be measured so simplistically in his actions. Therefore it was sufficient that St. John observe that 24 elders each with a throne were there, because it was a message that the elders, who are in significant quantity, accompany God in heaven. That is really all one needs to know. The fact that St. John counted the quantity was not because the quantity mattered, but in order to convey to everyone else who was not there, obviously, what he saw as accurately as possible.

So there is nothing wrong with feeling awe and satisfaction about certain numbers. If you ask me what I feel when I think about the event of the elders, I feel satisfaction and fullness because being a country girl, I think of 24 as being two dozen eggs, which represents an abundance. That does not mean that this is the “significance” of the 24 elders. It is a way to share with you that a human reaction to certain numbers is inevitable and completely understandable, and it tends to be related to the enculturation of our upbringing and surroundings. To old fashioned families, a dozen eggs was “an abundance,” while two dozen would be just a plentitude. So I like the number 24, just as I like all numbers, because I have sane and positive associations with all numbers and measurements.

For younger readers let me make an aside, as I enjoy doing about “the good old days,” just because it helps understand the broad range of experience humans have available to them, and how perceptions can be different but positive. I lived for a few months with my grandparents in Berlin, and they were in a semi-rural setting and had chickens, a vegetable garden, and fruit and nut trees. I would go in the morning to check if the chickens laid eggs, and it was always a thrill if one or two were there, or on the very rare occasion three. That was the usual way of families who had a few chickens. Imagine how many chickens they would need to have a dozen eggs at one time! So this is why America in the 1950’s and later was viewed as so incredibly prosperous and blessed. People could easily go into a store and buy a dozen eggs at a time. So “one dozen” grew to be a number that connotes fullness and even some excess. A dozen affordable eggs is “more than enough.” A “baker’s dozen,” which is the quantity thirteen, was even better because it means merchant generosity. The baker would sell to the customer a dozen pieces of bread or rolls, for example, and then throw an extra one in free. So a baker’s dozen is a “great” and entirely positive number, and what is that quantity? Thirteen!

See, people who become detached from farm life, small town reality, and the goodness of simple pleasure have too much time and neurosis on their hands, and so they make up things like magic numbers and numerology. I’ve made the point previously that there is no such thing as an “unlucky” or “bad” quantity of a good thing, and there is no such thing as a “lucky” or “good” quantity of a bad thing. One car crash is enough to kill or maim. So the number "one" is bad? In that case, rather, "one car crash" was "too much."

I mean, numerologists are literally unhinged from the well balanced perception of life. That’s why a very common mental disorder is OCD accompanied by compulsive counting. Farmers who hoped to find one or two eggs laid each morning for breakfast for themselves and their families were not mentally wired to obsessively count or view any quantity as anything other than “not enough,” “just right,” or “too much.” Too much meant you could sell the extra eggs to the neighbors! Anyway, humans have really messed up their wiring and I thought my younger adult readers would relate to the egg laying example since it’s also insight into why I have a “Little Mary Sunshine” attitude toward quantities. I love “Just right” or even more, “abundance,” of good human needs being met. That’s my wiring. I posted about how 3000 mango trees were planted in Qatar and yielded 30 or so cartons of fruit, and I glowed with pleasure and mentally preened as if I had grown them myself, ha. That is because it is not the “magic number” but the “Oh wow, what a great harvest and there’s plenty for everybody” vibe.

So to recap: God does not bless or withhold blessing from “numbers.” God does not manage the universe according to numbers. Humans invented numbers and mathematics so that they could manage the survival necessity of measuring “not enough,” “just right,” and “too much.” Humans are entitled to have pleasure and awe over the mysteries that numbers reveal, and yes, even the fun of number games and puzzles. But humans must be very careful not to be idolatrous and imbue their own simple creation with a magical significance, and certainly not as a mechanism by which to sin and do “identity theft” of God’s will and purpose. Too many people do this nowadays and I condemn it in the strongest terms. Other than that, have a nice day!

More about relieving and curing OCD

Here is my promised follow up on this subject. Remember that these discussions are also very helpful to people with other disorders such as depression and anxiety because there is a commonality of causes, which I will be discussing. In my previous blog post I wrote about what I call “justifiable” OCD, which is OCD that springs from overly checking scenarios where there could be a legitimate danger consequence, such as leaving the stove on after finishing cooking. So my advice focused on creating a system of assurance that you have done the proper “danger” checking and can move on with your day. With the bureaucratic system I proposed you can relieve the systems of the OCD and go back to being a normal albeit an extremely cautious person, ha. And that is not a bad thing. When I had a house and pets who depended on me I was very checking and checklist oriented myself, so I understand.

But now I want to talk about the more pernicious and damaging form of OCD which is non-justifiable OCD, to use my terminology. I call it non-justifiable because no matter how intense the OCD feelings are they are nonetheless an undue concern over a thing or phenomenon that is out of proportion to its actual importance in life. Non-justifiable OCD can be put into street talk, “You are obsessed with the bid-ness of something else, giving it an importance and street cred that it just does not have.” Let’s dive into an example that is not really classic OCD (like hand washing, walking a certain way, having obsessive gestures and motions, etc) but is enormously enlightening about the causes, mind set and cure for OCD. This topic is the obsession with numbers, counting and dates of the year.

Now I enjoy as much as anyone else glancing at the newspaper’s “What happened on this day in history” or that page on Wikipedia if I happen across that section of a newspaper or am on Wikipedia checking out who died or what’s the background and scoop about people and places in the news. But I have no urge to check what happened on this date if I don’t happen across that information. That includes my deep Catholic faith. If I am not attending daily Mass or I’m not reading scriptures for that date I have no urge to find out what saints are honored on a particular day. Trust me, the real St. Paul does not want people to obsess about his fall on the road to Damascus and meeting of Jesus on the same day every year. He related his story in his letters (epistles) so people would understand the meaning, not so people commemorate that day every year or worse make an occult linkage between that date and his fall. He would flip his gourd and bite his arm if he knew that some people are reading into his fall an occult linkage to the date the Church has designated (but has no way of knowing the truth of) as the holy day or feast day of his fall. Now the Church is correct to have these saint days because it is part of the teaching and celebrating the full comprehension of the body of the Catholic Church and Jesus Christ. So the Church is correct to have the feast days but it is incorrect for people to start making occult linkages between the date and the type of event. So “what happened on this day in history,” either for secular or religious reasons are educational and informative but should not have any influence on your day to day thoughts, activities and priorities whatsoever.

Here are more examples. My mother is German, emigrated here in 1949 four years after World War II so she is still very European in her outlook. Europeans make note of family events such as births, marriages, and deaths by noting them in the family Bible. So if they are Catholic they also track baptisms, first holy communion, confirmation, and the receiving of Holy Orders (becoming a priest). However my mother is depressive and borderline so she has put what has become an all too common distorting twist on what was a family record keeping and celebration event. She keeps the events not in the Bible but on a calendar, emphasizing the bad events, and uses them to alter her mood. She ignores the joys of birthdays, first jobs, and certainly of Catholic events (she does not remember dates of my baptism, holy communion and confirmation for example) but boy oh boy she loves remembering deaths, illnesses, surgeries and accidents that made her unhappy. (She does not remember surgeries of her children and their families, for example. If reminded she snarls, “I have enough problems of my own to remember.”) She has forged a chain of misery out of elevating the dates on which bad things happened and uses it to whip herself and others. My brother and I, for example, recognize that she spends January working herself into a depressive snit over the forthcoming February, which is a month full of dates she wants to feel bad about. She ignores the many good things that happen in February, focusing only on dreary dirges and rages about how she has “suffered” due to the sad events in the past of February. She will obsess about my father’s death anniversary in February, for example, but never once talk about the happy Valentine’s Days they had together. That’s an obvious example of someone who charges sad dates and events with a power way beyond what they deserve in a very dark OCD way. When I was stuck with her two years ago she was enraged that I was not a depressive mess on the anniversary of the date of my father’s death and we had quite a fight because I was watching TV instead of acting the mourning Queen (which is her job anyway). When I explained to her that yes, I think of dad on that day, but that I think of him and miss him every day she did not have a clue what I was talking about. She could not comprehend normal missing of my dad and thinking of him every day because she does not really think about him every day, but saves up all her drama for making his death anniversary torture for everyone around her.

Now I know people who follow occult matters and who obsess because my dad died on a “highly significant astrology alignment.” For goodness sake people are stupid and wicked. Just because my father died on one day of “astrology significance” how is the loss of a dad any more fraught with significance than a girl or a boy who lost their dad on an “insignificant” astrology day? My dad was a dad and a husband who worked in humble jobs. He was not a prophet or a reincarnated person (lest you’ve missed my messages there is no such thing as reincarnation.) OCD people give great significance to events way out of proportion to their importance and believe in causalities and relationships that do not exist.

Here is another example, the September 11, 2001 attacks. People in the occult obsess with the date and time the planes hit, and the birthdates of people involved. How stupid and pointless is that? How about worrying about when the bunch of terrorists first got together and had the idea? Events that are monumental are given birth to in gradual stages years in advance. So dates, numbers and time have no meaning at all and you are an idiot if you think so. To refute this mindset I did some research and found the first report by a New York City official warning that terrorists will target parking areas in skyscraper buildings. He had returned from a trip to the UK where he observed IRA terrorist techniques and extrapolated that to worry about what NYC could do to avoid the same types of risk. He wrote that report in August, 1984. The World Trade Center was bombed the first time in 1993 via a truck of explosives in the open parking garage. Why don’t we have a day of mourning and obsess every year about the date this guy’s report was issued and ignored? It’s August 6, 1984 by the way. I plugged that information into my astrology software to demonstrate to the retards who believe in astrology that they don’t even understand their own crap. You don’t obsess about the date and time and the “numerology” of the day the bomb goes off in the parking lot, or the day the planes fly into the building. You obsess about someone not doing their freaking job in heeding warnings by security people that are issued nine years in advance to the danger actually happening. And the fact that the date the report was ignored is “Leo” doesn’t mean crap. Or that the digits add up to 8+6+1+9+8+4=an “8” day does not mean crap either. It means that a bunch of idiots (of assorted birthdates) ignored the due diligence warning report of a security professional who went to England to learn about terrorist threats and not to play with a pendulum or count how many people in the room have a Leo Moon up their Leo Uranus.

So it’s time to talk about the causes of non-justifiable OCD. One cause is occult teaching, as I’ve described above. Many OCD sufferers have a family who deviated from mainstream and valid religion and faith formation in childhood to superstition, occult or other “New Age” beliefs. The second cause of OCD is genuine chemistry or medical imbalances or conditions. It can be as minor as sensitivity to food chemicals and too much carbohydrates to the still mysterious flaws in internal brain chemical balances that do genuinely disrupt some people (though not as much as the pharmaceuticals would have you believe in their advertisements). The third cause of non-justifiable OCD is a trauma. Many people who have this form of OCD had a trauma in their early life and the feeling of not being able to control the circumstances and the subsequent pain of the trauma causes them to try to over-control their surroundings by seeing sinister causes and effects. This is especially true if the person was traumatized as a child because children have “magical thinking.” This is a term to describe how youngsters do not have enough life experience and knowledge at their age to fully understand cause and effect in life. An example is the child who thinks his parents divorce because of something he did like not cleaning his room or that they don’t love him enough to stay together. A child who experiences a trauma is very vulnerable to potential future OCD, especially if the trauma is untreated in our very fake society that challenges a child’s sense of reality anyway. For example, years ago most people lived on farms. Rather than being a rare occupation it was THE most common way people supported their families, by growing their own food and raising their own livestock. So a child knew about eggs and chickens and chicken dinners at a very early age and it was natural. If there was a death in the family even the youngest child understood, having been a part of the cycle of birth, life and death from the very beginning on the farm. But today children are totally divorced from reality, and by reality I mean life affirming and stable reality. Reality is a good thing, but today it is often used as a label to deliver an unkind message. But the farm child of 100 years ago would never think that her dad died because of “something she did” and have the magical thinking that children are vulnerable in the past forty years. Today’s children are raised on vibrating electrons of unreality from day one. I would only be exaggerating slightly to say that a child could see a false connection between turning off a TV and having the image of people “disappear” with the disappearance of a member of the family who suddenly passes away or leaves the family. So trauma, such as abuse, a sudden loss, or a chaotic home with violence and substance abuse and no predictable virtuous structure can definitely be causes of OCD later in life. What is the first thing a child learns? Children learn how to count. What do many OCD sufferers suffer from? An undue obsession with numbers, counting, the significance of dates and numbers and the feeling that they must “participate” in the “control or counting” of these numbers or something will be “off or bad” in consequence. Adults with number and counting obsessions are reverting to the first thing that they as children experienced success with and some control over!

So one of the first principles of alleviating and curing OCD is to recognize that the props and activities that you utilize in your OCD relates back to where you had your first childhood “success” and felt that things were understandable and in control. For example, some people obsessively wash their hands. What does this go back to? One of the first things that a child learns, usually lovingly in even the daftest and most dysfunctional house is how to wash his or her hands. Hardly a child has not had the experience of a mom or dad helping them to stand on a stool or chair to reach the sink and learn to wash their hands like a big boy or girl. Often they had to wash their hands before eating so washing hands is a ritual before reward. If someone is traumatized or grows up in an out of control household it is not at all surprising that the person reverts to the behavior that was their last pleasant and in control learning experience. The adult mind will tell you that they are washing their hands obsessively because of all the germs “out there.” But the reality is that the adult is reverting to understandable positive ritual behavior that was learned before chaos and trauma intruded into their lives. This is why the OCD hand washer will do it until they are raw and pained sometimes trapped in the house or apartment being never satisfied with the washing. It is not a chemical imbalance (though one develops over time as one behaves dysfunctional without being relieved) that causes the hand washing and it is not the over concern about germs that is causing the hand washing, even if that is what everyone says. What is causing the OCD hand washing is that the person feels he or she has to revert to early positive childhood behavior because somehow they have felt derailed and a loss of control over positive reward and experience due to a trauma or familial/societal chaos. OCD counters revert to obsession with numbers because learning to identify numbers and to count was their most positive childhood experience that they can revert to. I’m sitting here trying to think of other examples (in person dialogue is always so much better because people can actually ask real questions and present examples!) People who OCD about what is being put into their food or drink (outside of the very real concerns about unclean food or drugs being put into bar drinks) are reverting under stress to the time when as a baby or child they did not have to worry about what was in their food because whatever mommy or dad gave them was fine. So under stress OCD food, drink, poison obsessions can be traced to the person reverting to a time when they felt the safety net of the baby bottle, the pureed food, and the meals prepared by family members that they can trust. When trust has been lost and when a trauma or dysfunction takes hold the adult reverts to obsessing about the last thing, in this case eating, where they felt they were in control and could implicitly trust without even thinking about it. I think these are sufficient examples that you can examine your own OCD experiences and immediately see the potential cause(s) and why your mind and your body “chose” through reversion to childhood the mechanism of the actual OCD behavior.

Knowledge is power and even having this conversation with you through this blog posting is going to have a hugely positive effect on you. (Again, don’t stop using any medication a health care professional is giving you without consulting with them first). OCD is in a large part a feeling of being unable to control life around you, due to that trauma, occult “education” and/or chaotic household environment. So knowledge is medicine to someone who feels they lack control because it is that golden answer to “Why me?” You should feel great relief at knowing that whatever your mechanism of OCD is (or hopefully you can soon say “was!”) it is your body and mind trying to do a good thing. You are not a freak or damaged. The body and mind are trying to self heal by reverting to positive childhood experience. So some go back to that universal childhood joy of learning to count. Others go back to the rituals of childhood, so important in otherwise chaotic lives, such as washing hands. Still others yearn for the time when they could trust other people and society in general, so they obsess about food and beverage as they unconsciously try to recall the time when mom or dad prepared the safe meal in the sippy cup, or the sandwich and cookies after school. So I have just given you a huge part of your self control back to you by helping you to understand that there is a positive self healing reason that your body and mind selected a particular OCD as a coping mechanism. And this is the hint as to how to cure OCD. You need to expand your repertoire of where you can draw on normal life for positive reinforcement, control, and healing of traumatic or chaotic conditions.

Here is another thought for you. Those of you who are Christian and/or involved in programs such as AA know the expression, “Let go and let God.” Well let me tell you this is more than a wise saying or a positive mindset, it is an actual prescription. Think about history of humanity. Pagans felt out of control of their environment so they did many superstitious things including sacrificing to idols to “appease angry gods.” While people didn’t suffer from things like OCD in those days, religious ritual is a cure for OCD because it is giving back to God things that you obsess about controlling but rightfully should not even be trying. (The reason people did not suffer from OCD in Biblical times is that everyone had to work to glean food and survive and anyone who had a disorder contrary to healthful living just would not have thrived or survived). But where I can help you see the parallel is that suppose each and every person in a tribe worried on their own about doing sacrifices to the “theoretical angry gods.” You could easily see OCD develop as some people spend all day sacrificing and doing weird rituals rather than tilling the field and feeding their families. So people realized that they needed a designated holy person to perform sacrifice and ritual on their behalf. I’m deliberating using non Christian examples so that everyone can relate to what I am saying because I’m talking about an individualized disorder, OCD, and a tribe that lacks a central performer of ritual would have many individuals having to guess the best they can. I’m not saying that there are “angry gods” nor am I saying that sacrifice as taught by God to the Israelites and understood in Christianity and Islam is a meaningless superstition. I am using an example of how people all went through their own search for control in the days before they understood the natural forces at work around them, before they adopted the great moral codes for behavior, and before they received inspired instruction from God directly. People could not afford to have large segments of their population running around performing sacrifices, having counting rituals, developing their own “what if” superstitious practices and other non productive activities because literally people would die unless every man, woman and child were involved in the gathering and preparation of food, water and shelter. Today, however, people can still eat and survive with a roof over their heads and be as OCD as you can imagine. Back then people would die very quickly, within days, if any segment of the population ran around doing their own superstitious and ritual thing. Primitive people would have crumbled under the burden of each of them thinking that they have to carry the burden of “controlling and appeasing angry or capricious temperamental demanding gods.” So people around the world learned to “let go and let the high priest or the shaman.” I think I’ve used this example enough to give you background to human nature and its linkage to the potential development of OCD. Oh, but one more point. People who lived near unpredictable things with big consequences, like volcanoes, would feel a greater stress to understand and engage in mitigating ritual. People who lived in fertile and gentle environmental surroundings where food is plenty and the weather is steady would have less of a sense of angry or temperamental gods and forces of nature to understand and appease. Likewise children and later adults who were raised in and subjected to “volcanic” and chaotic abusive conditions are going to be more vulnerable to OCD than children and later adults who grew up in steady Eddie surroundings where people were well fed and felt safe and consistently secure. Children who grow up in steady and secure well understood family and community environments are less likely to develop OCD later in life. And this is where again I remind people with depression and anxiety disorders that they share in the same potential scenarios as those I am directly addressing with OCD, so these insights should help you too.

God communicated with early humans, from Adam through Abraham for a reason. Not only does God love all living things, including of course humans, but God wants people to understand life and be as healthy and joyous as possible. God did not want to see people churning through idols and superstitions, especially since MANY pagan beliefs resulted in the sacrifice of infants, children, men and women. I always wonder when daft New Agers have their eyes shining in admiration about some “calendar” or “mythology” of ancient pagan people when those same people were trying to get better crops or more lavish treasure by throwing babies into fires and cutting the hearts out of the poor stupid people in the next village. People wonder why God sounds so “pissed off” in the Old Testament and in the Qur’an. Well, any decent human being would have been pissed off too as babies were spitted on spears to sacrifice to some stupid idol that didn’t exist to get some advantage that came down to weather, hard work, not being at war and a bit of luck. If you read the Bible carefully you can get a sense of the rage of Moses for this very reason. He goes to God to get the good news and finds that he can’t even be away for a few days to get God’s word for the people without them worshipping idols, and this is what is important, who demand human sacrifice!

This is why God gave what sounds today like bloody and weird instructions for sacrifice to him in the Temple. God recognizes that 1) the mental wiring of humans simply needed a sense of feeling in control of the forces they could not control in reality and 2) people forget reality and who they are unless they have ritual that reminds them that they are not God themselves and that all that they have, including their harvest, is due to the generosity of God in the first place. So God teaches humans to sacrifice a portion of what they have to him so that they can feel the right amount of control (by doing proper ritual) and that they remember who they are (they need to give back to God so that they don’t start to think that all goodness comes from humans themselves). Jesus replaced the animals, grain and gold of Temple sacrifice with the liturgy of the sacrifice of the Mass. The Prophet (PBUH) linked sacrifice to the annual Haj. So the proper mindset is still maintained that people are doing right by the one God and what he requires.

This is why OCD sufferers are sometimes deprived of the structure of “letting go and letting God.” They, because of their trauma or chaotic conditions, feel that they are personally doing business on behalf of the universe. This is especially true if New Age and occult “beliefs” have contaminated their thinking. You’d be amazed how many people consciously or unconsciously think they are players in the workings of the universe. You’d think a hurricane or two would remind people otherwise but people are persistent in their self inflation and disbelief. OCD sufferers are often unconscious victims of what is the common temptation of society today which is to over inflate the individual’s role in the workings of the universe and ignore the specific instructions and teachings of God that are the actual antidote to many mental disorders. Don’t get me wrong on this; I’m not saying that there aren’t psychotic Christians or religious folks with mental disorders. That’s the reverse of what I’m saying. Mental illness and trauma, disordered and chaotic family and social conditions strikes every one of all classes and faiths. What I am observing is that certain conditions are becoming more common and severe as a result of the safety net having been removed. A child who is brought up to understand a loving God in a structured family and faith is less likely to have to fall back on obsessive counting if and when a trauma occurs, for example. The purpose of this blog posting is less to predict if a disorder can be avoided and more about how to understand the disorder and relieve or cure it where you can. I am pointing out that OCD sufferers often do not have the benefit of the safety net of feeling that “God is handling whatever they are obsessing about so they do not have to have obsession rituals in God’s behalf.”

I can give you a very whacky example. After September 11, 2001 I was doing some of my undercover work examining the whole New Age phenomenon. I was shocked to read on a very popular astrology board that people were actually stating that the souls of the dead were “trapped” in a “golden cloud” above the World Trade Center and that they needed some spooky New Age prayers and thoughts to help “free them.” Good God what have people come to that they would believe and propagate this crap? Who in their right mind thinks that God doesn’t have the whole dying/soul goes to heaven, purgatory or hell thing really worked out kind of smoothly and might I also add perfectly? God would leave people hanging and chilling after a horrible disaster because what, God is getting a pedicure somewhere? God can’t handle a few thousand souls? (Though no one remembers the 100’s of thousands who died in Chinese earthquakes decades ago and somehow God handled all those souls without the Internet ghouls to help him out.) This is an extreme but informative example of how some very inflated people think they are players in the universe. On a microcosm and individual level, non-justified forms of OCD sufferers unconsciously think that they have to do certain things to “help the universe out.” This is the unjust burden that they carry. They feel like something terrible and wrong will happen if they don’t do their counting and their rituals. This is especially true of people who have kind of elaborate rituals of behavior as their form of OCD, since they are not just reverting to a childhood mode of comfort and control that singular form of OCD sufferers experience. These behavioral OCD sufferers who develop elaborate models of behavior are trapped into thinking, consciously or unconsciously, that the basics of life and death are somehow incomplete unless they stick their hands and noses into it.

Again a quick look back in history helps illustrate this. Pagan folks often wanted to help their loved ones by giving them provisions to take with them to use after they died, since they did not understand that material goods do not accompany the dead. But they wanted to help their loved ones so they buried food, tools, sometimes even slaying their animals to go with them to serve. The Egyptians developed a whole elaborate belief system on what they thought would happen once a person died and tried to work it to the best advantage by providing surroundings for the dead person and ritual that would be supportive of what they thought the gods on the other side were doing to the soul of the departed. But even they did not actually think that the gods on the other side actually needed the help of a human to handle a death! They did not say, “Step aside Anubis, I know what to do better than you!” Ha ha. It is only today in this incredibly fake culture where everyone has their 15 minutes of fame and delusional feelings of grandeur that people think they actually have to get personally involved in God’s bid-ness. Look at movies like “Men in Black.” The universe is a series of toy marbles of universes that freak alien children are playing with? You think this is just “entertainment” and not a reflection of what self inflated images some people have of themselves as players in the matters of God and men? Virtually all entertainment and media promote an occult self importance that is simply invalid, untrue and unhealthy. A segment of the OCD suffering population is very sensitive to this propaganda, either consciously or often unconsciously. They start to feel that yes indeed, unless they do certain rituals there are universal consequences. “Reality shows” and so forth reinforce this belief by linking their subplots to political, religious and commercial events, so it is possible to see some minor event magnified in what seems to be a universally significant way! This was what first clued me off to checking out what was really going on in the New Age circles of crazies. I started wondering why trivial events were deliberately being attached and linked to universal events.

So it is very important that OCD sufferers recognize that their actions do not have any influence on the universe or global events, and that their feelings and impulses are individual cycles of trauma and self healing attempts and coping mechanisms. Here are my suggestions to reprogram your self and alleviate some of your OCD symptoms and driving causes. If you have the sense that unless you perform some of your OCD ritual that something “bad” will happen: 1) imagine that you are writing a memo or post it note to God. In your mind write on the memo “To God, please handle this. Thanks.” Attach the vague feeling of worry or compulsion that you have to the mental memo and send it to God. Trust that God will “handle” whatever crisis you think is possible if you do not do your OCD ritual. Trust me, you are not responsible for whatever you think you are. But the best way to short circuit that dire feeling of compulsion is to “forward with attachment” your even inarticulate package of worry and foreboding to God and trust him to “handle it.”

2) Be aware that whatever you are compulsive or worried about is already also “being handled” by the truly spiritual people of the great mainstream religions. So after doing my first suggestion of sending to God your “handle this” memo, spend a moment being aware that people are already “on the situation” and that you do not need to “do” anything about it. Trust me the Pope is on top of a lot of the situations that people (Catholic or not) feel uneasy and compulsive about. All of the Christian patriarchs, priests and performers of holy ritual as specified by God are “on top of the case” of whatever is giving you conscious or unconscious unease. They are doing it without your having to worry about it or even without your having to send them a reminder ha. Another example of someone who is “on top of the situation” is the King of Saudi Arabia, The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. He has responsibility for welcoming God’s guests to God’s places of worship for up to a billion believers in the world. As the host on behalf of God for millions of faithful at a time, trust me, the King is on top of things. I mention the men of Christianity and Islam specifically because unlike cult and pagan beliefs they do not require people to give them money or buy into their version of manipulated spirituality because the true men of God are working for God, not themselves. The Pope and the King would do exactly what they are doing whether they were wealthy or poor, whether there was one believer left on earth or a billion. Because they “work for God” and do not have a personal agenda you can trust that men like this are “on top of the situation for you.” Know that whatever “needs to be done” that you feel a vague universal compulsion about is already being handled by them.

3) Go see and see for your self that “it is all” being handled. People often whine about why they should go to Church if “they have God in their heart” and if it’s not entertaining enough. See other blog postings by me about why people need to celebrate in community their faith and why they need to attend Mass. But here in the context of this topic is yet another reason. When you do go to Church (or mosque) you are observing and witnessing, and hence being reassured first hand, that people “are on top of the situation” and that they are “handling it.” There are few things more stabilizing than witnessing that Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, mainstream Protestant and non-denominational houses of worship and mainstream Islamic mosques are “handling things” for you. They are following the instructions of God and they are on top of things. They will do this whether you are there at Church or mosque or not but by being there YOU gain the advantage of witness and assurance that quell the vague and mostly unjustified fears and compulsions that you may be feeling. This is different than attending AA or another support group. When you attend AA or a support group you are learning coping mechanisms and having the community of fellow sufferers to learn from and gain strength and support. When you attend Church or mosque you are watching people who don’t have the burden of your problems handling them and others for you! That is not to say people do not have problems. What I am saying is that they are performing God’s overall work rather than being gathered together to deal with a situational problem such as addiction or a disorder like OCD. You need to detach the unconscious inflation that your disorder is associated to the spiritual and physical working of the universe. The best way to do this is to observe, witness, and participate in the group that is serving God and “handling things” on that level. Then you can isolate and shrink your profile of symptoms to understanding that they are your individual coping and healing mechanism and not part of some unfathomable problem. God has given clear instructions and advice for dealing with the realities of life and there are millions of people who are busy “handling” what God has told them to do. For example while visiting with a family friend Native American medicine man years ago I discussed with him his tribe’s belief that all the prayers they say are part of universal benefit for the salvation of humankind. Unknown by many people they are “handling it.” You don’t need to find out “who is handling it best” or run off and join a cult, heaven forbid, since that starts most of the problems in the first place. You need to plug back into the mainstream religions who serve the one God and witness that you do not need to have weird qualms that unless you walk a certain way and do a bunch of ritual actions that something bad will happen.

Another way to look at this is to think of food cravings. You know how when you are low on vitamin C often you will get a craving for a citrus fruit or juice, or if you are low on salt you get a craving for a salty food? OCD people who dodge church or mosque have the craving nonetheless to “handle the universe’s bid-ness” and so you develop this weird connection between your original individual trauma or chemistry imbalance and the grand movements of the universe. You have the correct instinct that “things need to be done.” But you are dodging the very place where God’s business is being performed! So when you have the craving that is the compulsion recognize that you don’t need (and indeed should not) allow your body and mind to invent skewed individual pagan and superstitious thinking. If you craved salt would you go into your basement and try to invent a salt substitute? I sure hope not. If you crave salt and you worry that you (and the universe) are not getting enough salt, how about going to where the salt is being distributed and consumed and getting some for yourself? And observe the universe is getting enough salt? (Please no crank email about too much salt causing high blood pressure, lighten up, it’s an analogy ha). You know what I intend with this analogy, I hope.

4) If you have OCD do NOT use any mind or mood altering drugs including marijuana! Weed is not harmless. Weed accentuates the false linkage between your condition (your OCD based on trauma or other original cause) and the false believe that your condition has some dire universal significance. The same applies to alcohol, do not abuse alcohol though if you are not an alcoholic it is OK to have a normal and healthy consumption. But I must totally warn you that there is no "OK" amount of pot at all and there is no medical "alleviation" of symptoms of OCD through use of pot. First let's look at the salt analogy. Using pot is like eating more of salt depriving foods when you are having a salt shortage already. In other words the pot strengthens the wrong linkage between your OCD and the sense of doom/universal significance of your individual condition. Everyone should stop using pot period no weed none whatsoever ever any how or any way. But in the context of this topic I need to explain to you that pot does not alleviate OCD but worsens it and pot actively blocks you from being cured.

Whew! This is a lot of information and I hope you and your family and friends find this helpful.

Numerology: Why it is wrong, plus some detox here

I know that some people are still caught up in New Age practices and ways of thinking, so here is another post to explain why the assumptions behind them are fallacious and even harmful. I wrote earlier about how one of the limitations with the use of playing cards, such as tarot, is that by assigning "favorable" or "adverse" meanings to cards, one is assigning a much harsher percentage of "good" or "bad" outcomes than actually exists in life overall. So if one suit, such as spades (swords) is assigned adverse or sad meaning, one is building in right from the start the assumption that there is a 25% occurrence of sadness or adversity in every single aspect of life (since the entire deck is assigned meaning and the deck supposedly represents all aspects of what the person might be inquiring about in a so called "reading.") Now I want to point out the same limitation in numerology.

By numerology I do not mean the study of sacred numbers, which is worthy and academic. I mean the transformation of dates, names, phrases and other information into a number that is "reduced" (added to itself on an integer by integer basis) until it is one of the singular digits (1 through 9, plus some special numbers such as 11, 22 and 33.) For example, numerologists would take the recent 4th of July holiday (7/4/2007) and call it a "2" day (because 7+4+2+7 equals 20 which equals 2. They then read all sorts of meaning into what a "2" means. I studied this around 4 years ago and included this information in my undercover web site in order to get a better understanding of why so many people (including people in amazingly high places) actually buy into this and use it to manipulate themselves and others. It's actually become a very OCD problem (obsessive compulsive disorder) because "counting" is a neurotic function of the brain when it tries to regain control over life when it feels some loss of control in a vital area of life. So here is what I want to explain to people who may be "hooked on numerology."

Numbers were invented by humankind as an outcome of a very good thing: agricultural prosperity. The first writing and numbers deals with amounts of livestock and crops. Suppose a man has 70 bushels of wheat. That is a good thing. It is a good thing because it is a lot of wheat. It is not a good thing because 7+0 equals 7 and 7 is a sacred number. You cannot eat or sell a sacred number. And if another man offered to trade to you 7 bushels of wheat for your 70 bushels of wheat because "they are numerologically the same," then you would be crazy to agree. Here are the bushels of wheat all lined up: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 56 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70. The average hungry person would be thrilled beyond imagination to have 70 bushels of wheat in storage to feed their family, or to sell to others as their business. Bushel number 23 has a much value as number 31 as much as 56 and as much as bushel 69. Each will feed the family and each adds to the treasury of the family.

Life is the same way and God created it so. Life is not meant to be "reduced" to a "symbol," to be taken down to a simple level that lends itself to manipulation, but not to prosperity, thriving and living. Everything that God created tends toward increase, toward reproduction, toward fullness. Numerology is like looking at a forest and being only able to see 9 of the trees in that forest, and then applying value (and worse, action steps) to those 9 trees.

When I was in high school one of the ways I relaxed was with mathematics. This week I've gone back to doing for "doodling" and relaxation something I love to do, which is matrix multiplication. Matrices, also known as arrays, which is what I tend to call them, are sets of numbers that are managed as a whole, based on their position in a grid type of structure. I like to populate two arrays with numbers and then multiple them together. It's fun and a relaxing process. Matrix multiplication is more representative of how life and the universe works than reductionist affectations such as numerology because when you multiple matrices you are seeing how the universe tends to more, and how every amount of "more" is real. Someone who has 14 children, for example, has fourteen children, not 1+4=5 children. Multiplying matrices relaxes me and is enjoyable because I like seeing how the increases happen, and what surprising numbers result from the multiplication. It's like seeing what colors and genders are each of the kittens in a new litter for the first time. People are happy because they have 14 children, or 70 bushels of wheat, not because "5" is the number of "creativity" or "7" is a "holy number."

Here's a numerology detox exercise for anyone who might need it! I multiplied two matrices below, with this result:
1 3 times 5 7 yields 23 31
2 4 times 6 8 yields 34 46
(I can't really get the symbols to work out right on this post, since I'm not geeky enough and don't have any tech staff to lend me a hand ha ha) but here are the words. A matrix consisting of the numbers 1 2 3 4 multiplying another matrix of the numbers 5 6 7 8 yields a matrix of 23 31 34 and 46. Aren't those great numbers? Don't you feel all prosperous when you see that two matrices of single digit numbers yields good solid double digit numbers? Whether leaves on a tree, children in a school room, bushels of wheat, or bars of gold, prosperity is good. It is the existence of a new thing that is good, not the "underlying" "reduced" meaning of the number. Any day is a good day to escape from a POW camp, to love a neighbor, or to grow some crops. Any number is a good thing if it is used for good. The detox exercise is to simply enjoy the numbers 23 31 34 and 46 and not "reduce" them or read any meaning into them (since I didn't even say what the arrays that I build and multiply represent! Who knows, those might have been the "first amoebas" when the earth was born
;-)

So seriously, people who have been hooked on numerology need to stop; it is a life limiting neurosis. You need to view quantities in their fullness and completion again, as I listed each of the 70 bushels above, and not read reductionist symbolism that does not exist and frankly is a neurotic way to cut down information, not illuminate. 23 acres of land owned by you is a good thing and you are happy, not because you bought the land on an "8" day or because there is happy arty "5" symbolic of the acreage. A box of 31 chocolates is a good thing because there are lots of chocolates to enjoy (maybe someone gave you an extra on top of the 30 in the box!) So I urge people who add numbers together for numerology to stop, for your brain's health (and your soul's, if you are manipulating people based on anti-life reductionist formulas such as numerology.)

Further discussion of scruples and OCD

On Aimee's blog she has typed in a wonderful excerpt that defines scruples, and distinguishes it from a tender conscience, very nicely.


I responded to a reader who wrote: "According to MMajor Fan and others, scruples are equivalent to OCD, differing primarily in their object (the object being God, in the scrupulous person's case)."

To gently correct, that's not true. That is why I write "scruples and OCD" not scruples = OCD with differing directions. Scruples is as Aimee found to be defined, directed toward God. OCD is a mental condition that stems from a desperate sense of needing to do something in order to survive. Literally, the person with OCD feels that their physical survival is at risk if they do not perform the activities dictated by the OCD defect. It can get tangled up in scruples if the OCD derives from thinking one is receiving messages from a universal spirit's compulsion for survival. But I do not consider them the same nor tend to them the same way (as I gave in my example of treating a classic "checking the stove" OCD).

Aimee asks if it is a pervasive thing among Catholics. That's a good question and I don't have any statistics about that. Anecdotally I can comment that for those of the faith who are interested in Evangelizing, be aware that secular or New Age forms of scruples, and/or the separate problem of OCD are blockages to Evangelizing. Some are naturally developed and some are Satan's way of hampering the body of the church. So anecdotally, I don't think scruples is a huge problem among Catholics (Catholics have bigger problems in their basic faith, *sigh*), but scruples and related disorders such as OCD are a very real and prevalent obstacle in our mission of conversion. I find that I have to get people "unstuck" from the mire of scruples and/or OCD before the Lord can even get their true attention.

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Some additional thoughts to amplify what I'm saying above. When I interned as a psychiatric counselor, I was very moved by the pervasive feeling of struggling to survive that many with OCD and similar compulsions experience. They are so wound up with the OCD rituals and the resultant warped view of some sort of universal (or worse, individualized) punishment and reward system in the universe that they would be incapable of receiving comfort and direction from the Lord even if it were presented on a golden platter (or a how to DVD!) It's a painful condition and few things anger me more than people who through cult beliefs prey upon people who have a tendency toward OCD. While Jesus Christ cures all, I am a hearty believer that OCD must be treated somewhat medically through behavior modification and the building of a personal security system initially, because OCD and related disorders are barriers to true religious experience and expression, and the feeling of being a liberated fully alive person. There is a "short cut" if the person is suffering from a New Age or secular scruples, and can be shown the truth that the scriptures do not endorse or require any of the scrupulous or OCD behaviors that they are conducting. By turning to Jesus Christ and believing that there is no hidden message or compulsive survival requirements, sometimes people experience immediate relief (it is the breakthrough intervention.) For some people, however, a two step approach is needed, that is, to treat the OCD first, removing the barrier between the person and a liberated life, and then they can clearly see and hear the Lord.

Treating scruples and/or OCD

I sent the following comment to Aimee's great Historical Christian blog and since scruples and OCD are such important topics, have posted my thoughts here also.

Dear Aimee,
I think your writings here about vocational discernment and spiritual direction are among the most accurate, beautiful, and balanced I've read on the subject. You are to be praised for your true guidance and your friend for opening the conversation.

Your reader does raise the important challenge of scruples. Priests and spiritual directors are correct to be cautious not to exacerbate a case of scruples. Yes, some of the saints suffered from scruples, but theirs was of a totally different nature than what people suffer from today. (I'm speaking as both a spiritual director and a psychiatric counselor.) Maybe I'll write more at length on my blog because this is an important topic. But for now here are a few differences to discern. In the day of the saints we did not have the high paced technological pace of the present times. So our society encourages scruples, because there is a high penalty for failure in too many situations. A moment of distraction behind the car. The feeling of "it could have been I at that accident" and so forth. And the violent and high stimulation of the surrounding media. These encourage "magical thinking" and "OCD" as kind of extended protective mechanisms. Scruples and OCD are like hyper sensitized radar. When this "radar" is pointed toward God, it is scruples. When it is pointed toward society or magical thinking, it is "OCD" (and sometimes, it is an inflated substitute for God - you see this a lot with New Age magical thinking). I had patients in the hospital who had classic OCD (counting, checking appliances and so forth) and they suffered from what I discussed above - the over stimulation of society by effect of the high potential penalties of failure in a social or technological sense (fire, accidents, so forth). To cure them I taught them how to link between the threat (which is sometimes unconscious) and a close ended way of dealing with the threat (check the stove once and then set up a sign saying that she had done so with time and date stamped, for example).

Religious scruples are similarly, an over extended radar in God's general direction, with the mistaken impression that there are danger signals in every physical and mental manifestation. Aimee very correctly shows how one's spiritual radar should correctly be pointed toward God, in an open flowing but structured by the liturgy way. The saints emblazoned the way with their candor about the pain of scruples (and the error associated with scruples) because there is the danger of Satan using what someone afflicted by scruples is experiencing. If you read about some of the saints with scruples, one would wonder why they, such holy people, experienced sometimes fierce satanic attacks. They should have been immune from those attacks. But by being afflicted by scruples, a door is opened to stimuli that, how shall I put it politely, "are not of God" but are of either humankind's weakness or of Satan's deception. Satan is perfectly capable of suggesting to a vulnerable person that counting one way is of God, and counting another way is not. Likewise a mental illness can suggest this, or overexposure to some societal trend via media. So there can be several sources for thoughts that are excessively scrupulous and tormenting. The saints did those who came after them a great favor by writing of their trials, but I think people do not think about the differences between their environment and the over stimulation of today, in the treatment of scruples.

One other way to look at this is to study those who have experienced a great tragedy and how they deal with it. How many times do we see people who lose a child, for example, establish a foundation, or join a group such as MADD, or the Center for Missing and Exploited Children as a result of their loss? That is a correct response to what could otherwise develop into scruples (looking for some chastisement or message from God in what happened, when it was a flaw of humankind and the nature of life that happened.) So that is an example of directing a high penalty event's outcome into a practical, non-scrupulous direction.

And likewise, the saints are warning people that scruples can UNDO the holy work they have done, and open themselves to attack by demonic forces. That is why priests are so cautious (properly so) about a case of the scruples, because the saints who suffered from scruples are not recommending them and in fact, are warning against scruples. Scruples are like a constantly scratched wound that permits infection to enter, instead of grace. It is also how Satan attempts to rob believers of their love and trust in God, by suggesting that God is setting traps and messages for the believer in their day to day life, which certainly is not true. Scruples drowns out the voice of the Holy Spirit and guardian angels too. As does societally induced OCD (so busy worrying about one obsessive behavior that other risky behavior is ignored or worse).