Bible reading for previous post

Genesis 2:7
Then the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

Notice that earlier in the scriptures when animals are created (Genesis 20-25) God created them, as all things in the universe, through the Holy Spirit but he did not bring them through life through his breath, but through his Word.

Then, in Genesis 26 God discusses with the angels how he will make mankind in their image and likeness (as the angels were already created in God's image, which is why God says "our" image and likeness...)

In order to be in the likeness of God and the angels, one must not only physically "look" like them, but also have a component that is the spirit, which is the soul.

Now you can understand more clearly that Genesis 2:7, cited above, is the point when God breathed into the clay he had risen the first soul, given to Adam, making him the first man, the first human being.

A human being is not an animal because a human being has a soul and an animal, no matter how good, loved, useful, or intelligent, does not have a soul. Far from diminishing the importance of animals, the lack of a soul means humans have a greater obligation to be honorable in their treatment of animals, to be good stewards.

But back to the main point, you can trust the responsible evidence of your own eyes, which is accurate and not manipulative interpretation of geology, fossil records and other evidence of evolution in all animals, including the apes and so forth, and evolution to proto, as in "before" human beings. But remember that God is always truthful and accurate in all things and the scriptures record this accordingly. God raised the first human out of the clay and dust when he breathed into Adam a soul. Adam is then able to give a soul to his spiritual descendant, Eve, who then is his spouse, and then they bear children who have souls the normal way that God put into motion, which is a soul and a guardian angel given to each human at conception. This is what is meant when God created Eve from the rib of Adam. They really kind of shared the first soul, and they shared the first guardian angel. From that point onward, though, the process of bearing children who receive from God their own soul and their own guardian angel commenced.

About evolution and Adam

I see some very good and intelligent discussion is taking place about evolution among believers of various faiths.

I just want to put forward a quick reflection, just so that in the sweep to accept accurate science that those of faith do not in then inaccurate cascading thoughts and conclusions marginalize what God has said he did.

I am concerned that those believers of good hearts who accept evolution in regard to human beings will then assume that God did not make Adam out of the clay, as he said he did. That is the beginning of eroding the scriptures, which is incorrect.

What you need to remember is that animals do not have souls. Only human beings have souls. God made Adam out of the clay when he rose him up and gave him a soul. Adam is the first spiritual human being in addition to being biologically human. This is how to understand the accuracy of the scriptures together with the accuracy of genuine fossil evidence. It is also at that time that humans, through Adam, even become really noticeable and the object of honor by God's angels. Angels aren't really involved with other forms of life, since while precious and good and God created, they lack souls. When Adam received a soul, and thus was raised from the clay, created by God, he also then received the first guardian angel. The Qur'an mentions God ordering the angels to honor Adam. That's when this happened. All subsequent humans receive souls at conception and a guardian angel.

I hope you find this helpful.

(Hi young people, by the way.... hope you are hanging in there and working on what you need and want to do....thinking of you....).

Understanding God: little look at big picture

How to say a few words about the gigantic subject of why God has chosen to allow humans to know him in the way that he has. In other words, many wonder why things have gone the way they have in getting to know God, rather than perhaps God imposing more of his presence on everyone in the world simultaneously. So here goes, but to keep this reasonably short and sweet, a few points to ponder rather than discourse.

1. God did introduce himself to everyone in the world, since he created Adam as first man, Eve as first woman, and they not only knew who God was but he was physically present in a form with them in Eden. We know this because they heard God's footsteps as he walked in the Garden in the cool of the evening, so God took a human form to interact with them face to face. (No, this does not mean that "all of God" is thus inserted into a human form. God IS everything, both visible and invisible, so he can't take all of himself away from heaven and the universe and stick his entirety into one place and not still be everywhere else. It never occurred to me to have to explain that until I came across people who actually thought that, particularly regarding Jesus. Pagans have a mental block with this, since they imagine their mythical and bogus gods to be able to move their position in a godlike way, appearing here and there, but when they are "there" they are only there. Pagan gods are by definition false since their believers do not acknowledge that the one true God can only be all encompassing and everywhere at the same time, since life and time do not exist outside of him. Thus God manifests in angelic or Theophany form, but that's an image of him, not his totality of spirit by any stretch of the imagination). So God did do the logical thing, which is to create a perfect place on earth where the first man and woman can know him and be companions to him.

2. Thus, even when they disobeyed God and were put out of Eden, they of course retained knowledge of God and a relationship with him. We know this because their sons, Cain and Abel, knew how to make offerings to God and received direct feedback from God on how worthy (or not) their offerings were. So God continues to speak with all the people of earth at the same time through Adam and Eve, their children, and the extended families that these children married into and beget on their own. Thus God continues in dialogue and relationship with each growing generation after Adam and Eve.

3. Now, as I discussed, at the same time as God is the creator of all that exists, both seen (earth and the universe) and unseen (heaven) in a physical way, God is also the creator in a spiritual way. Understanding God's role in the physical realm is like one lens in your pair of glasses, while understanding God's role in the spiritual (faith) realm is like the other lens in your pair of glasses. You need to look through them both at the same time, in a balanced way, to have a full and correct view. So it is alright for some of the faithful to be totally comfortable with Adam and Eve being literally the first humans created directly from dust by God, while others of the faithful believe that God created all that exists, including Adam and Eve, but that they are the beginning of "faith history," the "faith parents," not the only two human beings that exist in the beginning of humanity. Why do we know it is OK to have either view and still be faithful to God's word in scripture? Because if it were not OK to understand that other humans come into existence, God would have explained where the spouses of Adam and Eve's children came from. So it is not unfaithful to God's word in scripture to believe that Adam and Eve are either or both the actual biological parents of all human beings or they are the faith parents of all human beings, since they are the first and only that God chose to make himself known to.

The whole debate about evolution or creation, seven twenty-four hour days or millions-of-years God-days is really a diversion from faith, rather than faith affirming, because it is trying to textbook scripture into a "how did God actually do it, molecule by molecule" attempt that hinders rather than strengthens faith. I know that many in good faith feel the opposite, that they are somehow being disloyal to scripture if they believe that God had other people alive soon after Adam and Eve's creation, or that God may have used his own definition of a "day" during creation, rather than an earth-solar day. But again, if you really have faith in the scripture, which 1) states that the children of Adam and Eve married real people and had real children and 2) which states that God created the animals and the plants, but does not give details about his exact process, but extols Adam's naming and stewardship of them, you have to recognize that God used visible processes that humans can later discover, study, name, ponder and so forth as they collect knowledge (knowledge being one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by the way).

Adam and Eve got into trouble because they sought the wrong knowledge, knowledge that would be used, they hoped, to be like God. So there is nothing wrong with knowledge (in fact, God teaches them how to create clothes from animal skins once they had their fall and had shame over nakedness in his sight). God expects humans to study nature and ponder how God made things work and ponder their wonder. There is a lengthy discourse by God in the scriptures (I'll let you look it up, LOL) where when he chastises humans and puts them in their place, he recounts the qualities of various animals that he, not humans, created, and the forces of nature that he, not humans, create and command. That is "good" knowledge, to understand (another gift of the Holy Spirit) the world around you, both geological and life forms, and the processes like weather... but the "bad" knowledge is to 1) think humans created it 2) that humans or idols control it, and not God and 3) to use that knowledge to be bad rather than good stewards, or to be unjust rather than just. So people of faith need to have faith that they are not "letting God down" or being "disloyal to his word" if they acknowledge that they do not fully understand how, or even why, God rendered creation as he did, using the time frames and processes that he created, ordained and commanded.

4. So now you start to understand why so much of Genesis is genealogy, with lists of who begot who. It is not just the list of proud parents and sons, but it is also a list of the humans and their families who keep in touch with God, who preserve the knowledge and dialogue initiated with Adam and Eve and their children. This is why it is called "faith history" in addition to "secular history." It is regular human history in that it lists events and places, but it is also faith history because it lists those who continued to know God and pass that knowledge and access to him through worship from generation to generation.

5. As I discussed in a recent blog, the early descendants of Adam and Eve met humans who, being from actual cities and their equivalent of "advanced civilization", seemed wondrous and they intermarried. We can understand that human nature is the same from the beginning to today. Some of the descendants of Adam and Eve would marry and bring their spouses into the faith, and knowledge of God, while others would marry and drift away, settling in distant places (which in those days could have been as short a distance as fifty miles) and not take their faith with them, and instead adapt to the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.

You see that same behavior on a micro scale every day in each family. Children in families that are religious move away, marry, and may change faith, lose faith, or transmit their faith to others. This is what happened, since humans are humans and God has given them free will, to the descendants of Adam and Eve. This is why a core of people retained the knowledge of God as he introduced himself to them, while others melded into the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.

6. This is where one must have faith and admire, rather than be disturbed, that God did not chase after every human being and demand that they know the one and only true him. Why is that reassuring rather than worrisome? Well, for many reasons. But the bottom line is this. Human beings will continue to exist and thrive only if they live in a truth based world, one that is genuine reality and honesty. The core of truthfulness and reality is realization of God's existence and his control of all that is and ever will be. Understanding humanity and understanding God are the most basic survival needs for the human species to continue living, say nothing of salvation after death. When humans start to deny God, it is the first warning sign that they will not thrive, and indeed could self destruct, very soon thereafter. This is not because God will smite them for not believing in him (as you can see, he lets regimes that deny him come and go, such as Communism). It is because when humans start to deny reality in the form of God, they will then start to engage in other self destructive behavior that is counter to reality as it really exists. Humans who live outside of truth and reality rapidly decay and fall apart, both individually and socially. We see much of that happening now. So God allows free choice (as he did when he created the angels and some decided not to serve and obey him, and hence fell from heaven) because free choice IS reality. God always opts for truthfulness and authenticity. If he wanted cool titanium robots he would have made them. He didn't. He made angels and he made human beings and they both have the ability to make a choice to believe and serve or not. The angels that fell believe God, obviously, since they were there in heaven with him and thus knew "how he did it," but they would not serve. Humans have to believe and choose to serve if they are to acknowledge truth and reality. It really is as simple as that.

7. Because God loves his creations, humans, who he considers, as the scriptures say, adopted children (and there is all sorts of cultural nuance in the esteem of those Biblical times for foster or adopted children, but rather than get into detail, scripture presents God's love as such to make clear that God is not false like the pagan gods, who presumably have biological children and so forth... God thus calls humans his adopted or foster children when he wants to be precise about that)....because God loves his children, even if they leave him and no longer believe, God has put in place a fail safe mechanism, LOL, or, a beacon, or a homing device, or a longing... or an emergency cell phone, whatever image you prefer, in their soul... a longing to know him. That is the movement of the Holy Spirit.

8. The Holy Spirit moves constantly among all individual human beings, and gatherings of them, whether near or afar, believers or not, stirring them to the desire to know the truth and to reach for that which is higher and the only genuine goodness that exists, that being God and a relationship with him. It is the Holy Spirit that maintains that yearning in people even through the spiritual aridity of living under God-denying tyrants and despots, of pagan rulership, or of people who drift away from knowledge of God and who have forgotten him and their faith history with him. It is that yearning, from the Holy Spirit, that results in societies and cultures developing respect for natural law and codes of conduct and humanity. It is the Holy Spirit who stirs among people who may develop a faith that is good intentioned but erroneous in theology, because the Holy Spirit is able to get at least a partial response that people want to be good to each other, and want both a more prosperous but also a more spiritual world.

I don't have the book in front of me now (probably in storage) but in one of the books, I think the series of books that interviewed Pope Benedict XVI before he was Pope, and he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, that he explains this in a very kind and insightful way that impressed me as I read it. I think he was being asked about other faiths, such as Buddhism and so forth, and why God would allow them to develop. The Pope explained, and here I am using my own words, that each faith that seeks belief in a higher power and spirituality and an inherent goodness among humans to each other is in a way, even obscurely or dimly, trying to reflect as in a mirror some level of acknowledgement of God through the work of the Holy Spirit.

So this is why as the growing multitudes of descendants of Adam and Eve populated the earth, just the core group, detailed generation by generation in the Bible, in the secular and faith history, maintained knowledge of the true God as he made himself known from the very beginning. However, you read in the Bible examples of where even pagan king, certain ones, had a open mindedness and even a longing for, and thus grew to respect and to worship, the God of the Israelites. Often that was through a demonstration of his power, as when God gifted Joseph with interpreting Pharaoh's dream. But there is no mistaking that there are examples in the Old Testament of where the demonstration of the true one God's power is the door opener, there is a yearning to understand the truth, a higher truth of God, that is like a slow growing seed, even among those who worshipped many idols and false gods.

9. So.... one of the questions, asked in jest sometimes but often in pain or puzzlement, by Jews is "why were we the Chosen People?" What I have detailed is why... because they are the lineage that through the generations of proliferating descendants of Adam and Eve, they have had consistent knowledge of the true one God, even when they were at their most disobedient. This is why I commented that the Jews know, at a gut level, God better than anyone. They have a continuity of God's constancy and eternal oneness and sameness through just about every possible variation of human history and challenge to their faith. This is why they were, Biblically, the Chosen People, because they have the unbroken continuity of knowing God as God first introduced himself to the first human beings.

10. To use a modern music term, Jews heard and hear the same song that is the true God, both plugged and unplugged.

11. However, God has always been consistent in stating that humans need and he will send the Savior, the Messiah. All of scripture points to the coming of Jesus Christ. God alone comprehends all of the perfection of his timing, that he sent Jesus when he did, where he did, to minister as he did, and to fulfill the scriptures and proclaim the New Covenant. This is, obviously, a huge topic of itself, but Jesus must be understood in the context of what I am explaining to you as being the refreshment, the renewal, of God's relationship to humans, beyond the tenuous, extreme minority of human population that were the descendants who have held fast to the continuity of the lineage of knowing God from the time of Adam and Eve to the then present. In the perfect timing that only God understands, since he is All Knowing, and knows all of what humans need, Jesus, who already existed in heaven as part of God himself eternal the beginning and the ever being of All, took human form in order to bring knowledge of God to all the world.

12. Previous to Jesus being born to humanity, humans knew God one of the two ways I have described. The first was through the lineage of those who recall and renew their relationship and service to God since Adam and Eve. The second was through those who seek God, in often very wrong or imperfect guises, but in honest response to the urgings of the Holy Spirit throughout the world. This is one reason that Jesus is given a title of the New Adam, not only because Jesus, corrects the great wrong of disobedience by Adam, but also because Jesus brings the face of God to all the world, as Adam first knew God in the Garden face to face. Jesus ministered only to the Jews, since Jesus was fulfillment of the Old Covenant with the Israelites and the bringing of the New Covenant to them... but it was obvious that Jesus was, as he said, the sign for all humankind. After his Resurrection and the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God made it known that now the Gospel was to be preached to all. Jesus was like global email :-)

13. Now you might better understand what I have explained in previous blog postings about Islam. Descendants of Adam and Eve, and of Abraham, the Patriarch of what would become the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the forefathers of the Arabic people who would become Muslims were of that lineage who knew the true God, but who moved and settled at a distance from their brethren. This is all detailed in the Old Testament, but not what happened specifically to them, but we know through the obvious secular history that they settled among pagans in the area that is now Saudi Arabia. Thus they are a group of the many descendants who did not take the faith "along with them." That was not easy to do, since the Israelites were local patriarchs and eventually after the Exodus, a theocracy (religious rulership) on a very local basis, with the Ark and the Temple central. It's not like today where people could pack up their faith and believe in another neighborhood or country. So when people spread out to gain land for their growing families (and to avoid conflict), they could not really take their faith and remembrance with them. The Prophet (PBUH) reconnected those descendants back to the lineage of remembering and knowing the one true God, the God of Abraham, and also faithfully repeating the message and miracles of Jesus. Islam was born in order to plug those descendants of Adam and Eve back into the shared lineage of knowledge of the one true God.

To wrap up this little look at the big picture, one must, in honesty, admire and appreciate that God is no autocrat. God makes himself known as he really is, as he truthfully is, and is consistent and constant through the generations of human beings and indeed through the ages, since he is Eternal and Unchanging. He does not force humans into robotic or other artificial obedience since that is not his nature but more important than that, it is not the truth. Life and love is the truth, not coerced or enforced behavior, and God is the source of all life and love. Thus God provided a constancy of access to knowing him from the very beginning, and sent prophets among believers when they needed to correct the disobedience and straying of his people. Why does God punish, as we know he does, then? Because what he is punishing is denial of truth. Denying truth is, as I explained in the beginning of this commentary, not a useful survival trait for humanity. Disobedience to God is denial of truth, not God being arbitrary. For example, it's disobedient but also more to the point simply wrong, a lie, to worship an idol, a false god that simply does not exist, or the workings of human beings own hands. God punishes humans when they deny the truth because ultimately humans will destroy themselves (as they are most certainly doing now) by living amidst a fake world of lies. Denial of truth, constant lies and falseness are already destroying the livelihood, the sanity, the health, the morality, the ethics, and the decency of humanity... God dumping an asteroid onto the earth would just be the icing on the crumbling cake of what humanity is already doing to itself by denying truth in all arenas of life.

A species, human beings, cannot continue to thrive and/or survive in a world that they perceive in increasingly total falsehood. God already knows "how it will all turn out." More to the point, though, is to recognize that each saved soul is precious to God, just as each and every of the innumerable multitude of angels are known to him individually and loved by him, and as they serve God they share in his beatific vision of all that can and will be. Thus God will continue to be patient with generation after generation of unfaithful disbelievers because he loves and will save those, however few, that DO remain faithful to him and thus cognizant of the truth. I wrote not too long ago about the importance of not seeking the "best" or "right" faith, but seeking the truth, which will if honestly (and sanely) done will only lead you to the one true God who is truth and the source of all that is true. This is why humans can, and should, only marvel at the one true God, not the imaginings of human beings, who can in his perfection balance the giving of human beings the "free will" that they, like the angels in the beginning, craved and demanded, but will also draw a firm line in the sand about reality and the inevitable consequences of denying the truth and, thus, him.

Denying the truth of God is just like denying the truth in a secular life or death situation. If the bridge is out, broken over a raging river, it is not a survival strategy to deny the truth of the bridge being out and driving over it, and thus plunging to one's death, nonetheless. News story commenters often sardonically call that "Darwin at work," when someone does something incredibly stupid. It is the same with believing in the truth of how the world and the universe really works and of God's real presence. Disbelieving the truth means bad and stupid decisions that have their own consequences in the near term (as we see all over the world these days) AND, even if one evades outright denial of survival trait truths in life, when one dies one finds out the reality of God when it is too late to change what one has done in disobedience while alive. Again, it's not just because people "behaved bad" and God's "mad at them," but because disobedience to the God and denial of the truth is viral... disobedient believers and disbelievers don't just harm themselves but they harm others and lead others away from the truth. We see this on a massive scale today, one of the greatest perils facing young people today who have grown up in such hugely false times, knowing nothing different from fraud, fakery, poseurs, pride, denial and falsehood.

How difficult is that to understand? When Satan refused to serve he then got busy egging humans on to likewise not serve God. In a similar way, disbelievers and disobedient believers behave like mini-Satans, since their teachings, deeds and life examples are likewise intended to mislead others, leading them astray from God. That all ends badly, either by making life a lie and thus unbearable in either the short or the long term, or at the very end, when one finds that indeed God exists and he knows all that you have thought and done and has judged you upon your death.

The reassurance of God's constancy and ability to forgive anything (if sincere and immediate) should be of far greater comfort to humans than it is. Why is it not more reassuring? Because people have become somewhat addicted to uncertainty and falsehood, where even miserable lies are "better" than hopeful and good truths, in the minds of many.

In closing that line of thought, let's loop back to Adam. Think about how he dealt, poorly and thus fatally, with certainty and uncertainty. Adam embraced certainty, but only partially. He obviously believed in God, being face to face and taught by God, and thus he believed that the tree of knowledge had fruit that would give him some of God's knowledge. But here is what I mean by false love of uncertainty. God tells him not to eat the fruit of that tree. Eve, at the prompting of Satan, brings the apple to Adam. You must understand that in that moment Adam loved uncertainty, the "maybe" .... because obviously he thought, "Maybe I can get away with this." That is the horror of what modern humans are increasingly falling into. They have become in love with lies and uncertainty, and even denial of truth, since it plays to their weakness, which is pride. I mean, how dumb could Adam be? He believes God about everything, but then when offered the first chance to be uncertain about the truth of one specific thing that God says, he "bites." But far from being dumb, Adam is classic human being, where pride tempts a human to disbelieve the truth since he, or she, then thinks they control other "options." Then, like I gave the analogy above, people will drive over bridges that have fallen down, thinking that they have "options" rather than the humility of truth that the bridge has fallen down.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Dealing with feelings of "unreality," "alienation"

Everyone has that occasional moment of feeling somewhat unreal. To put it simply, it is normal because it is like a brain "hiccup." You usually are not aware of what brought that moment on, but usually there was some outside stimulus that is unconscious to you. Like the feeling of deja vu, it is a burp, just a bit of a disruption in how the brain perceives what is actually going on, and it just lasts for a minute.

Deja vu (the "I've been here before") feeling, by the way, is also easily explained. Let me address that because when it happens some people get all paranoid about its "meaning." Rather than a "burp" or a "hiccup" like unreal or alienated feelings, deja vu is a momentary case of misidentification by the brain. You know how you get a glimpse of someone in a crowd and think you know who it is, but then realize it is not he or she? Well, the reason humans have such superior intellect and brain capacity (compared to animals) is that human brains are built for speed, to do very rapid processing, and brains are wired to do very rapid "pattern matching." Thus one can see an automobile and not each and every time go, "Hmm, what is that object? It has wheels and an ignition and a passenger cab. Ah, it must be a car!" Imagine if you had to think all that through every time you saw an auto! Instead, your brain rapidly "pattern matches." Your brain has pictures stored within it of things you already know, and when you see something it quickly compares what you are seeing to what it has in storage. When it sees a match it assumes, but tells you with certainty, that it is what it is. Deja vu happens when something that you see, or are feeling, or experiencing matches very closely, but incorrectly, something in your brain's picture gallery and memory bank. So you have a "deja vu" feeling that you have been there before, but that is because your brain jumped to a conclusion of familiarity because it found a weak match with a portion of something you have already seen before, or felt, but would not at all think they are alike if someone asked you. Your brain-all brains-once in a while make mistakes. So that's the deja vu problem. Let's get back to the main topic of feelings of unreality or alienation.

Before I explain how the "burp" or "hiccup" occurs, let's start with a clean table of understanding how things work normally when one is a living being, in a state of being alive within a real world. As I've mentioned in my recent blog about addictions, you gain a lot of information and solid grounding in wisdom when you remember that humans and animals share common biology. Animals and humans both have to breathe, eat, ingest fluids, have bodies that are composed of hard and soft tissue, internal organs, a way to reproduce, a way to move and so forth. Humans are basically animals with really big brains and a body that promote agility. (By that I mean, imagine a really smart dinosaur; even if he was really smart, without clever little fingers etc I doubt he could ever build a computer microchip! :-)

So you have to observe animals to understand humans, yourself, since it is like looking in a mirror. Do animals ever doubt their reality? No, they do not; they never doubt their reality. Ha, I can hear you saying, "You can't prove that!" Yes I can. Time for that time honored but forgotten and abused talent called logic and reasoning.

If a living being doubts their reality, this causes confusion in their state of being, obviously, since the person, for that moment, is not even sure if he or she "is real" or is "really part of this world." When one has that "burp," one usually stops what one is doing and mulls it over. The normal response is to realize that while creepy and unpleasant, it is just a burp and move on. The goofy and all too common response is to get whack job cultish, and get together with other paranoid people and worry "what if we are all really movies being shown on a projector," or "what if I'm imagining this," or "I must be remembering a 'past life' or a 'spirit being'" blah blah blah. It's like if you burped or hiccup you run out to find other people to see if they ever burp or hiccup, and when you find out they do, you go "Ah ha! Gosh! I knew it meant something." Then instead of researching how the lungs work and why burps happen you assume that little invisible aliens must be squeezing you with their cute webbed hands, "trying to get your attention." Ah, if only I was really joking, but sadly I am not.

So if animals had feelings of unreality, how would they cope with the sudden and harsh reality of life in nature, which, as we know, "is red in tooth and claw?" OK, now you are watching a nature show, such as one that shows African wildlife. You know that a scene of a lion stalking prey, such as a small wildebeest, is de rigour for such shows. How many times do you see the following?

Scene one: Lion sneaks up on potential prey, a grazing wildebeest.
Scene two: Lion makes a noise and gives away its presence, or it makes its move and leaps and runs toward the wildebeest. Either way the wildebeest is now aware of the lion.
Scene three: The wildebeest has a moment of "alienation" and "unreality," and wonders if it is real and/or if the lion is real (even though it is smelling, hearing and seeing lion with big teeth and claws in a dead run at it).

You don't have to "know" what an animal is "really" "thinking," because with animals all you need to do is observe what they do. Modern humans (not even traditional humans) are the only ones who think the obvious over and wonder about it. Why is this? Because it is what we call a "survival trait" not to think things over, but to quickly act to preserve life, while it is an anti-survival trait to think about whether or not the lion is real that is bearing down upon you and about to rip you apart. What human stands in the middle of a road and wonders if the bus that is about to run him or her over is "real," or if he or she is "really there." The answer is usually, "No one except the mentally ill or someone ingesting or abusing a substance." Mental illness, substance abuse, and some of the effects of a highly unreal media diet are the primary reasons for chronic, over analyzed and misunderstood feelings of "alienation" or "being unreal."

There is no species of animal that would last for the hundreds of thousands (and often tens of millions) of years that they have lasted as a species if any or all of them had "feelings of alienation and unreality." Any species that had such feelings would quickly die out if they were at all prevalent. First of all, animals have nothing to compare reality to in the first place, since animals have no conception of unreality. Animals do not understand that something is "made up" and thus "not real." Animals are entirely rooted in reality. But just so you understand, let's suppose that one wildebeest with too big a brain or who watched too much TV did have a feeling of "unreality" or "alienation." So he wonders if that lion that is leaping upon him is "real," or if he is "real." Yeppers, you guessed it. That wildebeest would become lunch for the lion and would never pass his overly clever but stupid genes onto future wildebeests. Any anti-survival trait is stomped on by the reality of nature, whether individually or as a species. Once an animal does anything that is not one hundred percent in response to reality, it is a goner and so are its potential offspring. So we can see from thousands of years of intelligent observation of animals by humans that animals are entirely reality based. Thus the cure, the detox, for people who have persistent self induced feelings of unreality are to reconnect with reality and get over yourself.

Why do I say "get over yourself?" Because almost always, unless the person is truly mentally ill, they have a grandiose feeling of having stumbled onto some great hidden "truth" when they have these "mysterious" "feelings." The answer, of course, is to let the moment of the brain burp or hiccup pass and simply reconnect with reality. People do try to self heal, and so the instinct to reconnect with reality is there, even in the nuttiest of people who deliberately cultivate their moments like this (again, I'm not speaking of the genuinely mentally ill who need to be understood in their confusion and treated with great kindness and appropriate medicine).

So the correct thing to do is to reconnect with normal reality. The incorrect thing to do is connect with an overstimulated and equal artificial "reality."

Stupid approach: "I have these feelings of unreality! I think I was a space angel! Or maybe I am not really here! Or maybe you are not really here! So I guess if I jump off a cliff I will find out!" *Splat*

Correct approach: Do something that you know is when you are least likely to have these feelings. If you cannot do it at the moment, then recall it in your mind or with a friend in conversation. Here's a perfect example. People rarely have inflated feelings of "alienation" or "unreality" when they are waiting in a long, slow line for something they either really want (a new release of a video game, etc) or are really dreading (motor vehicle bureau, inland revenue office, etc.). Notice you and your pals do not feel "unreal" when you are eagerly waiting for something that is a real treat, like that new video game or concert tickets. Equally you do not feel "unreal" when you are dreading with each step what the auditor is going to say to you about your taxes when it is your turn at the head of the line.

See, humans, up until the last one hundred years, like animals, could not escape mundane reality and thus never doubted it. When you have to go and hoe the crops by hand every day or your family will starve to death (really), you are so "connected with the earth" and "reality" that people simply never had those weird burps or hiccups. Again, one does not feel "unreal" unless someone has something to compare it to. Before there were movies, TV, radio, books, the printing press, etc, people did not have an "unreal" to think that they may be part of in the first place! People (and their brains) were always totally in reality since that is all that was offered to them. Again, going back to animals. A giraffe does not have a moment when he imagines he is "not really there" or is "maybe a carp instead" because he does not have the experience of what being something else, or of something being "real" or "imaginary" is like! I mean, duh! It's only when humans started to 1) isolate themselves from reality, since they no longer had to toil each day, unless one is still in those "less developed" "regions," in reality, to prevent the very reality of one's family starving to death and 2) started being exposed, through books (such as fiction, which are lies in print, LOL) and later electronic media to things that are totally imaginary and unreal.

By the way, most of you probably know without realizing it that one of the first things one does to someone he or she is torturing is to disrupt their connection with reality.

So to reconnect with reality one should really study animals as they are, and observe how they are entirely real and of the real world. Then remember that humans are still biologically like animals and hence are very connected to reality too (I doubt many people thought that they were imagining being swept away in the Asian tsunami). The third thing to do, then, is to accept the occasional brain "burps," but don't over analyze it as if you are something special (the tsunami swept away "smart" and "dumb" people alike). That "I am special" is a real problem to good mental health and logical living. So the fourth thing is to work on one's humility. The fifth thing to do is not to ingest substance that inflates one's ego or further disrupts one's connection with reality. As I pointed out in the addictions post, you don't see animals seeking medications; they are one hundred percent reality based. Not only don't animals seek mind altering medications, but they do not seek out physical medications, such as when they are wounded. Why is that? Because animals are entirely reality based and so they learn reality coping mechanisms. For example, if afflicted by flies or other insect pests, animals might roll in the mud, in the sand or immerse in water. They respond reality-to-reality (pest reality-barrier to pest reality). They don't wait around to get bitten and then seek out a pain medication. Animals are evolved to endure the reality and to have coping and survival mechanisms.

So humans have to be very careful in modern times to not become so disconnected from reality, and then worse, be a paranoid carrier of inflated beliefs about "alienation" and "unreality" so that others self reinforce, because society and life choices are increasingly disconnected, yet reality never goes away. Reality is reality because it is real, LOL. I mean, duh. So you can imagine and feel all unreal and alienated until you do get caught in a tsunami, or the bills aren't paid so your satellite TV is disconnected and you can't imagine that the series "Stargate" "might be real," because now your real family and your real rear end is about to be kicked out of your real house because your real mortgage did not get paid to the real banker with the real outstretched hand because your real boss really did fire you from your real job!

I hope this helped. Really.

;-)

Why all mind altering drugs so dangerous

I've blogged about this before, but a complicated and urgent topic like this benefits from discussion that approaches it from several angles, so you better understand it. I've had this angle of explanation on my mind for a while so here is a quick sketch of the problem with mind altering drugs. This is a problem whether it is illegal drugs or abuse of prescription drugs, and whether it is so called "mild" drugs like supposedly marijuana is believed to be by many (wrongly) or the extreme drugs such as crack cocaine.

First, think about what it is like to be a normal human in a normal human body. From the faith side we know that humans are created in God's image and thus have a high ideal that is within their reach... they need not debase themselves. From the reasoning point of view humans can observe that putting aside their being in God's image, they share biology with animals. In other words, all the same basic principles of biology (how the body, limbs, organs, blood, nerves, brain etc work) are shared between humans and animals. One need not even get into the old evolution argument to understand that humans and animals operate according to the same biological principles and chemistry.

Humans, and animals, achieved their current form because they have adapted to the environment in which they live. They gather and eat the food and drink the water that they can find and that they need, they tolerate the weather, temperatures and other external conditions, and they tend to maximize their success at forming relationships and having offspring.

So, using this logic, you need to understand that you can learn a great deal about what is genuinely healthy and authentic for human minds and bodies by observing animals, since they both succeed on the same principles.

I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you where I am headed with this logical development. The problem with mind altering drugs is that they overstimulate activity within the human mind and body. I am not talking about the immediate effect of ingesting a drug, whether it makes a person stimulated or lethargic. I am speaking about the basic nature of drugs, which is to emphasize continual reactivity. Reactivity, as in being in a constant state of action and reaction, is the word I will use, but you can think of being overstimulated as a handy slang word for what I am trying to convey.

Let's start with a simple analogy. Suppose that a human for some reason spends a day being immersed in water (bathing, swimming, whatever) while at the same time drinking lots of beverages. What is the effect of being within an extraordinary amount of water? You get moist, LOL. Water's nature is to make something wet. You become "wet" both on the outside, as you splash around in water droplets, and on the inside, where you are highly hydrated and have to go and pee alot. The nature of water is to make something moist.

The nature of drugs-all drugs-is to cause a reaction, to change the status quo. I mean, that is obvious, no? If you have a headache, you want to change the status quo, so you take an aspirin. The "job," the "nature" of a drug, therefore, is to go to work at changing your body in some way. How does this change occur? The drug causes an action and a reaction. Suppose someone throws water in your face. That is an action as the water attaches itself to you. You then flinch, close your eyes, turn aside, maybe shake your head, and grab a towel. Those are all reactions. Drugs work the same way. Once they are ingested, like the aspirin, they go into the bloodstream (the action) and then cause the body to react to its presence.

So let's personalize these inanimate objects. The nature and job of water is to make something "moist." The nature and job of a drug is to cause a cycle of action and reaction.

Humans are not meant to be in a state of constant action and reaction. It's not coincidence that animals spend a lot of their time basically doing nothing, with then spurts of energy when necessary to chase food (or run from being food), to find water, to dig for food or shelter, and to produce young and feed them. Humans, being based on the same biology as animals, have evolved and adapted so that they are not optimally intended to be in a constant state of action and reaction.

The more a person takes drugs of any kind, the more their body is in an unconscious expectation to be in cycles of action and reaction. Just as if you were always wet on your skin, and then your skin gets all wrinkly and prune textured on the outside, if you take drugs of any kind, beneficial or harmful, on your "inside" your body starts to expect to be in a constant state of action, reaction, action, reaction, etc.

You can see that following this logic and understanding that a person who occasionally takes several or many different kinds of medicines or drugs has the same risk of this type of change as the person who "only" takes one drug frequently. Remember, I am not speaking of the type of "trip" or reactions that the person has to the drug. I am speaking of the body being trained to not feel "normal" unless is it being constantly urged by a foreign ingested internal substance to act, react, act, react.

So a law abiding normal person who takes an occasional pain reliever, some medicine for other conditions, a number of so called "health supplements," and maybe something "special" for, let's say, erectile dysfunction has the same problem that someone who doesn't take any drug except they huff on dope all the time. Remember, I'm not speaking of the purpose and thus the results of the medicine or drug. I am speaking of the expectation that is created in the body of each person that some substance is going to be given to it, causing an action and a reaction, in a cycle. Both bodies, the normal person and the illegal drug user, now have bodies that "expect" action and reaction.

This then is the great problem with mind altering drugs. Not only the body but now the mind also becomes changed away from its basic natural nature (humans and animals who take no medicine or drugs), to a body that stops functioning the way it should because now it factors in that it expects to be frequently active and reactive in its chemistry.

Caution! I am not saying taking medicine is bad and please do not make any changes in your medication without consulting with a genuine and rational physician! I do not hesitate to take aspirin, for example, when I have an occasional headache or muscle ache. And also one of the great blessings of medicine is to treat conditions such as diabetes.

But there is a difference between, for example, medication that makes up for a natural body deficiency, and one that introduces a new function. For example, many people died of diabetes before insulin was discovered, a natural product of the body, and manufactured, for those who could not make enough of their own insulin. This is an example of medicine that is given to make up for a lack of that function in the body, but it is a function that the body has evolved to know and to expect to have.

Medicine that is a foreign substance (not what the body naturally produces) stimulates the action and reaction response, and that is the whole point, of course, and there is nothing wrong with that. The whole field of chemistry is the study of actions and reactions. Substances that do not react are called "inert," by the way. So a medicine causes an action on the area that you or your physician is trying to change (like relieve pain) and then there is a reaction.

So here is what I am saying. Even if you are taking a drug that causes you to be lazy, sleepy or low functioning, on the "inside" your body is busier than it ever was. This is because it is active inside within a state of action/reaction as the drug does its work, since that is its nature. The reason you are sleepy on the outside is that the drug and your internal organs are "busy" inside. So regardless if the drug is stimulating or depressing of functions, on the "inside" your brain and your body are accelerated in their level of activity. The mind and the body start to "adapt," just as it would adapt if you were constantly doused with water, where the mind and body now start to "expect" an increased and eventually a continual state of action/reaction, even if you are not ingesting a drug at the time. The body and the mind now start a pressure and a "countdown" to when it will next be stimulated and "busy," internally. That is the trap of the addict, and this is what I mean in previous blog postings when I explain that eventually the drug's "personality" has taken over the addict's, even if the addict is not high.

This is because whether medicine or illegal drug, once the body and mind have experienced the drug's action/reaction, it prepares and anticipates the next cycle of that action/reaction. We know an innocent example of this when people become "used to" their medications and the medicine is not as effective as it used to be. We know the not so innocent example of this when people, even when they do not realize it, are "counting down" inside, no matter what activity they are engaged in, waiting for the next cigarette, the next hit, or the next dosing. It's not just the craving that I am describing. I am explaining that the body and mind now expect to "get to work" in that special way it has learned, which is action/reaction.

Think of your inner mind and body like a perfect factory that used to leisurely produce on the assembly line a nice normal average day. One one starts ingesting drugs, it is like the assembly line now retools because it learned that sometimes half of the supplies it needs are missing, but it gets double the supplies that it needs in another part of the assembly line. So instead of having a normal day of let's say A+B+C, A+B+C, A+B+C, where you have just the right amount of A's and B's and C's to put together predictable and successful chains of A+B+C, your body now gets a whole bunch of C's sent to it, before the A and the B's arrive, and when they do arrive they are out of order. The body and mind are cleaver, though, and they learn how to cope with being thrown a lot of C's so that you can use them up, A+B+C+C+C, A+B+C, A+B+C+C+C, etc.... and you can also get used to missing some of the A's or B's.... so your body may go C+C, A+B+C, C+C+C, B+C+C......

But what if A is restfulness and peace of mind? What if B is proper nutrition? And what if C is stimulation? Your body retools to deal with whatever it is dealt, and even develops a sort of glee at how great it can handle it. (That is because under stress adrenaline is released, so even when something bad internally is going on, if you "handle it" you feel a kind of superior rush and glee). That is the horrible problem of becoming accustomed to internal chemical action/reaction and thus overstimulation, even though the drug you take may be a depressant on the outside.

Look at the speculation about what happened to Michael Jackson. He, like everyone else, is born with a body and a mind that expects A+B+C. But somehow, let's say due to his accident, or due to his false beliefs, he has trauma that results in a physical ailment, such as insomnia. If A in our example is peace of mind, somewhere along the line his A was disrupted. (No jokes about "A" please! Let's pretend we are all more mature than twelve year olds.) So due to a trauma or bad lifestyle choices, his A+B+C is disrupted. He then takes increasingly stronger drugs to help him sleep or whatever, which then throws a ton of "C" into his body. His already stressed A of peace of mind is now totally neglected because by using the drugs he has given up on treating the core problem and restoring A+B+C. His body now becomes used to, and at times gleeful, to doing "without" A. He may be sad on the outside and in his heart, but his body chemistry, since the body is a wonderful thing, becomes inflated, superior feeling and gleeful at "handling" all that C and just doing without enough A (peace of mind), which is what got him in the problem in the first place.

Do you see what I mean? The very talent that the body has at dealing with, for example a bite of food that has gone bad can also very quickly get used to an unnatural overstimulation of expectation of action/reaction.

This is particularly ruinous when it is mind altering drugs that is being ingested, even, as you now understand "small" amounts of "only weed." In a very quick time after even only one or two exposures, your body retools to expect the unpredictable, which is anything but A+B+C. Here we have the problem where A may represent reality rather than peace of mind. If a normal human or animal gets through the day thinking A(reality) + B (more information) + C (a decision whether to act or not), mind altering drugs train the body and the mind to ignore or be used to "shortages" of A (reality) to the point of even being gleeful that one is creating "one's own reality." Addicts start viewing the world as C+C+B+C+c+C+bbb+ C, stumble over an A, impose on it C+B+C+C, even if they are not under the influence at the time!

In other words, addicts and even casual drug users train their internal body and mind to expect first and foremost action, action, action, action, some information, action, action, action, some information, oops trips over reality, denies reality, replaces with more action, action, action.

This is why it's a very small step from casual drug use to being an inflated ego maniac who thinks he or she is "in on" the "truth" and is "called" to a "mission" to "fix" and do "good deeds" that "repair" the unseen "disruptions" in "the balance." There's a disruption in the balance alright, but it ain't because of aliens, spirits, social injustice, etc. It's the disruption in A+B+C in both the body and the mind's reality and their expectations.

This is why addicts, even when not delusional or using, are absolutely positively convinced of unreal things and just will not let go of the un-reality. This is because drugs have retrained their internal assembly line to do without genuine reality and to, instead, produce and continual stream of "product" based on "action" and "reaction." Addicts stir up trouble everywhere, in their own minds and in their deeds, because they are using up all that C, that "action" that they have started producing in their minds and bodies. They then end up chasing their own tails as they take more and more substance to compensate for the lack of A, whether it is reality or peace of mind.

Simple observation shows that animals do not self medicate. If they did they would have evolved in a way where animals seek out food that medicates, but does not interfere with A, which is the reality of survival (a stoned out gnu will quickly be eaten by a clean lion). So animals do some basic things to enhance jeopardized health, such as roll in mud for a wound, or eat from certain bark that relieves pain or has antiseptic, but they are not evolved to be action before reality oriented. This is how through simple observation we as humans know that we too are not evolved to be action before reality.

We all know people, such as the elderly, with genuine infirmities who take legitimate medicine, yet are still unhappy. There are many reasons of course, but the one that we are discussing today is that medicine gives a false sense of C, of taking real action, and when results are partial or imperfect, and the condition remains, though it is eased, humans start to devalue their A of peace of mind and reality. Even good medicine, when given in pill or drug form, stimulates over expectations and diminishing of peace of mind with reality. Imagine how much more so is the danger and the change as a result of taking mind altering drugs!

I hope that you have found this helpful. Do not stop taking legitimate medication, but be aware of how it gives unreal expectations and also the need for medicine that is not simply ingesting substance, but enhancing reality based peace of mind. And definitely do not take any mind altering drugs, ever, at all, not even "a little" and not even "to experiment." All you are experimenting with is ruining what your mind and body has been honed to do by both God and by its adapted for survival and thriving true nature.

Urgent warning about secret languages/scripts

I’m going to interrupt the discussion I have underway regarding confession and so forth because I thought of a GREAT analogy to explain to you a great danger in modern society. This is especially for you, young readers, because it is essential that you understand the trouble inherent with a way of life that you were all born into and assume, wrongly, that it is beneficial and good.

The way of life that you easily use and could indeed say has molded your personalities and spirituality, and not for good, is the use of acronyms, code words, secret languages, and slang with double and “symbolic” meanings. I am going to explain to you why this is totally harmful to you and to humanity in general. Now, I’m not trying to be a hypocrite or alarm you, since I of course use acronyms such as LOL and others that come from computer or phone language. But because I have a foot in both the old/traditional world and the new/messed up world, I can explain to you the problems so you can recognize them.

I’ve explained to you that human bodies exist as they do today because of both biological processes (such as evolution, natural section, survival of the fittest, and the marvelous complexity of life organisms) and spiritual processes (being created in God’s image, being given the conditions on this beautiful earth that allow life, and the ability to know and understand God on his terms). So the bodies that you have, as humans, are suited for the reality of life. Remember, more than ninety nine percent of the time humans existed they did not know how to read or write! Your bodies and your minds, which house your soul as its temple, became optimized simply by living, just living… not through technology, writing or speech. Modern capabilities such as communications have not done one iota to provide better bodies, minds or spirits. Modern capabilities, such as when humans started to speak and write, are benefits only in the collective (the group) because it gives what is called a “survival advantage.” In other words, families and other groups by speaking with each other can survive better.

Now, here is the problem. Let’s start with the analogy using, let’s say in Africa, a deer and a lion.

Deer, like humans, came into marvelous being without speech and writing or technology. The same is true of lions. Thus when a lion starts to stalk a deer in order to hunt it for food, each one, the lion and the deer, are using bodies and minds that exist and are optimized for survival and thriving without any technology or communications. Deer “know” they are potential prey, and they tend to be alert when grazing or at rest. Lions “know” that deer “know” they are prey, so lions know that they have to sneak up on deer or else the deer will run away. For millions of years this relationship has not only worked well, but thrived, with each population becoming healthier and healthier until as much as the earth can sustain of them exists. They thus become kind of their “optimal” condition.

Now, when the deer is grazing it is not wasting “thought time” thinking about lions or other stalkers. It is able to graze or rest and at the same time be alert. Lions also do not have to remind each other using communications to “be quiet” and “sneak up” on deer. They have both the instinct of their species, and they also learned from their parents and other herd or pride members when they were young. So it’s not like one deer has to keep reminding itself to “watch out for predators,” while one lion has to keep reminding the dummy in the pride to not try to walk up to a deer, but to use stealth and sneaky stalking instead. Animals arrive in a natural and REALISTIC harmonious state with each other and the environment.

What if we waved a magic wand and now imagined that deer and lions had these great “gifts” of human types of communication, but only for the stalking/being stalked circumstances? In other words, each animal does not naturally know its own role and responsibilities, but has to use speech and deliberate cues among each other.

Natural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer. Deer sees the lion at some point and run. Lion catches one deer that is unable to flee as fast as the others.

Unnatural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer, but he needs to hear in his earpiece coaching from other lions about whether to be fast or slow, stalk to the left or to the right. The old lion nags into the earpiece of the stalking lion that he should “be totally quiet” and “avoid walking through branches that might snap and give him away.” However, the brashest of the lions is also speaking into the earpiece of the stalking lion, “Don’t listen to that old coot. Go through the snapping branches but just be fast about it and you’ll catch one.” Odds are the lion will be so confused that he never succeeds in concentrating on what used to be natural to him. Eventually the lions would die out as the gift of “communications” in stalking destroys their natural and seamless integration with reality.

Now, I have been concerned about the unnatural and artificial means of communications that humans have adopted for a long time. I can actually tell you my “Oh, oh” moment, when I got REALLY worried about this problem for the first time. You can even look up on the Internet what year this was (I’m not online as I’m writing this so I’ll just tell you what to search for). It was when I started reading articles about this new “craze” in a “secret language” that English Cockneys, such as taxi drivers, were using. It’s called Cockney rhyming slang. The way that it works is that instead of saying what they mean, they say words that if you do kind of a inner “word association” process to make a link to another word or phrase, and then substitute rhymes of those words, you can figure out what he or she is saying. It made my head hurt when I first read examples, and the decades have not changed my distaste for that trend. Part of the culture is that there is kind of a smirking smugness at having a secret language that is intellectually challenging being used by people who are often dismissed by society as being “lower class.” In other words, the people pushing Cockney slang often had a subversive political chip on the shoulder kind of agenda.

Now, so you young people can better understand this, it was not a short hand for convenience as are texting acronyms. For example, the acronym BRB means “be right back,” a realistic real action that is written quickly using the first letters of each of the three words. I have no quarrel at all with acronyms, even as your spiritual mother who may not be up to date with every acronym, LOL. They are simply quick ways to state real things and it is parents’ responsibilities to learn the lingo of their kids and modern youth. I’m not a hand wringer that using texting acronyms will cause modern youth to read less of the dusty gems of English literature, LOL. But now let me show you how BRB could be changed into either the Cockney rhyming slang, the forefather of the secret languages that I worry about, or an agenda filled cult tool. First, let’s pretend we are doing smug Cockney rhyming slang. I’m going to figure this out as I’m typing it so you can see the process, and thus the danger.

The first word in “be right back” is “be.” Here’s one way to represent the word “be.” You think to yourself that “be” sounds like “bee.” Bees are associated with honey. Honey rhymes with “funny” so you start your “be right back” phrase with the word “funny.” The second word, “right” can mean quickness, as in the phrase “be right back,” but “right” also means direction (to go toward the right) or politics (conservative), or even degree of correctness (to be accurate about something). Suppose that you are a leftist and hate the right wing of politics. If the conservatives were in power, especially if a woman was the figurehead, you might think of the “right” (politics) as being a “bitch.” “Bitch” rhymes with ditch so you substitute “ditch” for the word “right.” You pat yourself on the back a bit how clever you are and how you got “a dig” (pun) in on your imagined enemy, the “right,” even though politics has nothing to do with the expression “be right back.” The third word, “back,” means to return, since the phrase “be right back” means “I will return soon.” However, the word “back” can also mean the reverse side of the body, where the front is the chest and the other side is the “back.” For example the buttocks are also called in English the “backside.” So perhaps you decide to use the word “rump” to invoke the word “back.” You then think of a word that rhymes with “rump” so you might use the word “dump” or “bump.” You’d probably not use “bump” since it starts with the same letter as the word you are replacing, “back,” and that is not clever enough, so you pick “dump.” Thus in your secret language, instead of saying “be right back” you say to your equally clever friend “funny ditch dump.”

You watched me actually think of this example as I typed. So now we look at “funny ditch dump” for the first time as the oh-so-smartass secret language substitute for “be right back.” Fans of this type of secret language would receive special glee from “funny ditch dump” because notice the irony. Without my planning this I’ve come up with a phrase that actually implies the opposite of what you were actually meaning to say. Does a “funny ditch dump” sound like someone planning to BRB? You can giggle when texting your friend who shares your nutty and damaging secret language “FDD” which stands for “funny ditch dump,” which sounds like you are laughing while dumping your text friend in a ditch while at the same time meaning that you will be right back.

When I first read about Cockney rhyming slang I was immediately alarmed on behalf of humanity, seriously. I realized that this thirst for secretive elitist cleverness was corrosive, like acid, on reality and on human mental and emotional connectivity with reality. And I was correct, even more than I had guessed I would be, for there are now millions of people who speak, perform daily task “scripts,” and who have programmed, without realizing it, their own minds to have totally unreal wiring.

So the lion is now stalking the deer. He hears in his earpiece the old lion shout “fee fade ram!” The stalking lion stops dead in his tracks thinking “What?!” He starts to try to decode. What rhymes with “fee?” Is it “he” or “brie?” If he decides the “correct one,” “he,” what word association is with “he?” Is it maybe “she?” What rhymes with “fade?” Is the correct rhyme “jade” or “made?” If it is “made” what does “made” mean in association with? Fortunately the lion watches a lot of TV detective shows and realizes that to be “made” means that a person being followed by someone else has recognized that he is being followed. A follower who reports back to his handlers that his quarry has recognized that he is being followed states “I’ve been made.” So what does “ram” rhyme with? He goes nuts trying to figure out and never does. Needless to say the deer herd is now long gone. When he goes hungry back to the other lions, they berate him for not figuring out their rhyming slang fast enough. Sure, he got the “she made” part but he never figured out what rhymed with ram. The old lion then admits it was a rhyme followed by an association, not an association followed by a rhyme. They were trying to say “she sees you,” referring to the deer he was stalking. “You” was replaced by “ram” because “you” rhymes with “ewe” and the old lion was born under the sign of Aries so of course he put a little self congratulatory “insider’s joke” by linking you-ewe-ram.

Do you notice that no one freaking cares about actually catching the meal that they need to survive?

This is what millions of people, as best as I can tell from my observation (which is pretty thorough) are doing, as yes that many seem to subscribe to cult beliefs and activities that include such highly symbolic, with often reverse meaning and plenty of weird agenda, secret lingo.

They not only add weird layers to what they are trying to say, but they exercise the “unreal” circuitry of the brain, rather than the reality based circuitry. Whenever they hear individual words or phrases in their secret language they no longer have the original content and meaning of any of the plain words, but they also have infested, like with cobwebs, using weird agenda the simple thing that they were trying to say, presumably, in the first place.

For those of you who are not part of this mess, understand that those who use this weird form of acting out and “communications” have filled much of modern media (TV, films, music) with such secret language, messages and phraseology. I have found that many of them grind to a halt in speech when I talk to them as they are, like the lion with the earpiece stalking the would be deer meal, trying to “decode” what I am “really” saying. Um, but I’m just saying what I am saying. They have reprogrammed their own minds to lose all survival instinct because they no longer actually seamlessly process reality: word=what it really means + word=what it really means + word=what it really means resulting in sentence or phrase=what it really means. Over the years I have routinely knocked people I’ve spoken too off of their scripts and secret language because they actually are flustered trying to have a simple exchange of straightforward reality based sentences. I watch them as their eyes flicker and they look away when they wonder if I meant something other than “Nice day today, isn’t it?” And even if they decide I really mean that I think it is a nice day today, they struggle to use some of their secretive agenda driven symbolic “language” to reply. It would be funny if it was not so awful and so lonely. Part of what I hope to do is to teach people to speak simple words that mean simply what they mean to each other again. It’s pathetic and dangerous when I say “nice” day and they are thinking, “she must mean the spice girls” or, rather, to rhyme and word associate the “spice boys.”

I’ve talked about the dangers to mentality, biology and emotions of these secret languages and their warped agendas. You can also infer that the spirit of the authentic human being is damaged by this. As spiritual director I also have to discuss sin with you. Secret languages are a violation of the Commandment that prohibits false witness. Each use of a secret language is an commission of this sin of false witness. Repent and convert before it is too late to even pick up the pieces, the scraps, of what remains of what humanity should and could have been. Young people: if you don’t do it, fix these problems and reclaim your humanity, no one will.

A creative writing and mental cleansing exercise

A creative writing and mental cleansing exercise

I’ve noticed that this modern society is very much into “cleansers,” usually for imaginary “detoxing” reasons, including the puzzling popularity of “colonics.” Well, detoxing and cleansing are of course worthy and important concepts in general, so here are a mental and spiritual cleansing exercise. Its purpose is to help people realign themselves into a more realistic perception of actual life and prudent separation from the depressive and paranoid imaginations that moderns now suffer from (and inflict on each other). This is also part of the faith and reason case studies, with a focus on regaining more authentic reasoning capabilities. Since it is a creative visualization exercise, you can also use this is part of my series on creative writing and arts exercises that focus on reality to provide positively imaginative and cutting edge creativity.

The basic premise of this story, this visualization, is that we are going to think of a scientifically and realistic, factual way to determine what actually happened each day in human history. In this story the reason that such a capability is created is that humans have lost the ability to look on their own past with any balance and reason. Here is an example of the problem. Some people are fascinated by ancient Indian cultures, such as the Aztecs, Mayans and Incans, because they consider certain segments of their culture to be either “cool” or “enlightening and mystical.” Thus they think that because there are certain cultural developments in their pagan mythologies and supposed forecasting of world events and so forth through their calendars that are exciting, mysterious and cool that the whole society had undue merit. By “undue merit” I mean that rather than just appreciating that they were fellow human beings who raised children and did the best they could, they are given, by some people, a numinous elevation in their importance. In fact, this elevation obscures the very unpleasant facts of their bloody torture and sacrifice of thousands and thousands of innocent people, including infants. As schools have become less judgmental and more “politically correct,” young people are less exposed to the mundane realities of human history and as a result turn to the imaginary entertainment media and other “soothsayers” who focus on the “cool” parts of human history and ignore the rest. This has led modern society into an awful mess and the ability to reason for millions of people has been polluted and damaged.

So let us suppose that there is a factual and scientifically valid way to take someone who has such a viewpoint, put them into a room, and turn on a television that allows them to see what actually happened on any given day in, let’s say, an Aztec city. This would be an actual viewing of the minute by minute genuine activities as they occurred. So there would be many hours of footage of watching people just do their day to day lives, raising children and slogging and toiling in the fields.

Here is the scientific principle of how this would work. It is important to understand that there is a way that pure factual science could in theory provide this capability. It is important to have a factual and scientific approach as part of the mental cleansing exercise so that one does not imagine that “aliens” or “seers” “provide” this “gift.” It is that mindset, both conscious and unconscious, that has gotten society into this dire mess of toxic mentality. So here is the science. Most people know that we are able to see and hear things because energy is reflected and/or emitted outward where the ears and the eyes then “catch” that energy and therefore perceive what is happening. We also know that the light continues onward into space. This is how we see the stars, because their light travels long distances until it reaches our eyes. Many jokes have been made on this principle that imaginary aliens will someday receive the first beams of our first television programs and enjoy (or puzzle over) “Howdy Doody” and “I Love Lucy.” So using that scientific principle, let’s take it a step further and build a system where not just television and radio waves but all waves, light and sound, are picked up in space to provide a real time image of what was happening on the surface of the earth.

So imagine that a million light years from earth (the distance that light travels in a year) we had cameras that were so powerful that they could collect the light of everything that was actually happening on earth, and so refined that they could detect down to the individual human or animal’s activity. In other words it is like installing a powerful traffic live cam except the events have already taken place and these cameras are positioned far enough out in space to collect all this light. Similarly microphones would be installed so that all sounds that were ever emitted were captured and matched to the visual images. This is, of course, where the science breaks down since all light and all sound is not preserved indefinitely nor are they powerful enough to actually live on in space. If you drop a book in your house the people on the street do not hear it because the sound waves do not travel farther than the walls of your home. But for the purpose of this exercise, let us assume that it is possible to gather all of the light and sound waves that were ever emitted on earth and view/listen to them as a genuine live stream of what had actually happened minute by minute on earth.

Thus one could take an Aztec admirer and put him or her in a room that receives these transmissions and they could watch and see and listen to any particular day of events in a given location in that time. So the viewer could flip the dial and watch a selected location on a selected day. Remember, they are not “back there” “in time” as if in a supposed “time machine,” they are simply watching, like on TIVO, what had actually happened in the past.

Nothing would restore mental balance and sanity faster. Anyone could watch day after day of reality, the boring mundane existence of people who had to labor for the food that they ate. However, one would also see that the one joy that people had was their children. People could watch day after day, year after year of this “television into the past” and essentially observe as it happened the reality that life was difficult compared to today in that everyone had to labor long hours just to survive, growing their food, building shelter, obtaining water and heat and raising their children. People could then also observe that children were the one gift that everyone had and valued… children were the treasure that even the poorest could “afford.” Such observing would take the glamour out of the few minutes of prurient and occult activity and perception of the culture as a whole, and restore the luster of understanding that through the generations it was children that were the goal of all of day to day human activity. Children were the reward for living, and rich and poor both agreed and were able to share in that common perception of the priority of life.

Thus one could restore through this television into the past a dose of the day to day reality as it occurred, not as compressed summaries or sound bytes of the exciting and mysterious “bits.” Further, one can then debunk the mystery of how things happened. One would see that no alien spaceships arrived to “give” the Aztecs or the Mayans “their calendar.” They could flip the channel and watch those who worked on those labors scratch their heads and observe phenomena that they did not understand (such as the stars), and then assemble the “facts” of what they saw into theories of world view. We could see if maybe the calendar turned out the way it did because King Freddie the Stubborn was in charge and the palace astronomers knew that he wanted the calendar to turn out a certain way. We could see that maybe one of the court astronomers is nagged by his hag wife and thus is in a bad mood whenever he works on the calendar. He thinks it is funny that he carves one of the snake gods to look like her. And then flipping the channel the observer could see how very uncool the roundup of the month’s bloody sacrifice of village people really was.

So using this television into the past people could book time in the television room to see what really happened in life in the past. It would serve two purposes. One is the obvious exciting ability to see what is true. For example, one could dial in and see the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. One could see that slaves built the pyramids, not freaky aliens who flew in on a ship and told the slave masters what to do. So with the television into the past one could settle all sorts of debates about what actually happened and what did not. But more importantly, and you may not believe this but it is true, the second purpose would be to observe how human life is like watching paint dry. It is NOT about the supernatural and human power mongering moments that occur in a period of moments or days, or during the reigns of forgotten despots and kings. It is about millions of people at a time walking around doing what they have to do to survive in a day, and build a society where their children can at least live and eventually thrive.

This is why such a capability is so detoxing and mentally cleansing. It would counteract and refute the over stimulated and distorted “sound byte” and “visual byte,” say nothing of the “enlightenment byte” that has polluted modern faculties. Nothing would restore genuine balance more than watching, oh let’s say a million years, of early humans walking around picking berries and roots, hunting for animals to eat, finding caves to live in, and raising their children, and that’s it. A day of viewing would reveal exiting things such as what prehistoric animals existed and how humans got by in such a difficult life, but quickly one would see that the real message is the “typical day:” drink water where you can find it, lapping it like an animal, dig for roots, pick fruit, eat some leftover animal kill, shelter from the sun and from predators, carry your children. What an exciting “direct TV” package that would be! One could watch millions of days of people trudging along trying to survive and valuing their young (that’s their young, such as their children, not their youth, such as the lack of wrinkles).

One could see, as I mentioned, that Jesus Christ really existed. One could also watch the real Buddha sit under the real tree. One could see the miracles of Jesus, including, of course, his resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven. But the television would not ultimately give one faith in God, of course. All one can do is see and believe the reality of God’s prophets. One could look down on the Israelites and see the great Theophany of God on Mount Sinai as they did, where God descended like a thunderous cloud and appeared to Moses alone. But of course watching the real events does not infuse faith into one’s heart thousands of years later. That is the whole point of the scriptures: you have to have actually been there to feel that full infusion of belief. The Apostles repeatedly explain that in their writings that they saw all of this with their own eyes and participated. One of the early Church fathers wrote about people who had seen Jesus and been cured by him still being alive and witnessing to the reality many years later. When one is part of the day to day one receives the full infusion of belief because you are part of the reality. But even the most perfect TV that allows one to look back in time, even in the side by side minute by minute way, cannot give the same fullness of infusion of impact of the events and the faith that is engendered as having actually been there and participating. That is the entire point of genuine history: you study and believe the people who were actually there.

So now I’ve created almost a longing for this past TV capability among you, I would guess. That is a good thing even though it cannot be technically fulfilled. That craving can be satisfied as it always was traditionally, until these modern dreadful times, which is through study and discernment of the facts, using faith and reasoning. There is a plentitude of literature by those who lived, for example, during the time of Jesus, the decades after Jesus, the hundred years after Jesus, and the two hundred years after Jesus. Moderns can actually read the facts of what people said, saw and believed and then decide on the impact on their faith. Instead we have people running around thinking that either nothing can be believed or everything can be believed as having actually happened, or worse, “could have happened.” I’ve pointed out in this post and other previous postings that there is a vast difference between the facts of real people who lived and existed, such as Jesus Christ, the Buddha, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and giving equal credence to writings that are mythologies (such as the fictional Greek and Roman pantheon of deities) and even worse than that, not reading any of the facts of who lived and what happened and making up by pulling out of one’s own mind and paranoia imaginary scenarios of “aliens” and so forth.

Sane thinking and sane living involve this order of progression:

1) Read and study factual accounts where they occur, whether writings or scientific records, such as fossils and geological formations.
2) Identify correctly those productions of humans that are pure imaginary that are done for cultural reasons and thus have value, of course, but are not factual.
3) Develop theories (called “hypotheses”) for the missing gaps, for what is not understood, but starting with the firm foundation of what is known and what can be reasonably inferred and deduced.

This used to be the way that individuals, groups and societies used to think and perceive reality. I am horrified to the very roots of my hair at how fewer and fewer people think in a clear, cleansed and factual way in these dreadful modern times. The imaginary has overthrown and distorted the reality.

Why has this happened? The obvious two reasons are that prosperity has separated too many power brokers from the reality and tempo of actual life, life that used to center around survival first and prosperity second. The second reason is that entertainment media has taken over the thought process of the vast majority of people, also the result of prosperity. People no longer value facts and reasoning, all they care about is “imagining,” “escapism” (which then becomes their new and horrible reality) and artificial or extreme sensation seeking. Any given hour of modern media gives more stimulation than an entire year of actual life would have among even the Aztecs. That is what has been totally lost in the modern psyche and what our theoretical “past TV” would provide the instant cure for.

So what do we do? We have to get back to genuine reality of perceptions within a reasonable tempo of life. Humans never lived in a time where our children, for example, can experience a daily diet of overstimulation. Even in the most dreadful times of war, for example, in human history, the vast majority of people had to plod each day to the fields to tend to the crops, their herds of animals and their children. No human ever experienced a daily or even a monthly or yearly diet of over stimulation as do our children and adults in just one hour of video games, television viewing, celebrity antics or the news, which contains so much that is dreadful. I’m not calling for censuring, but rather an understanding of times that have passed. It used to be, when I was young, that one could go a year without hearing about, for example, a father or mother killing their entire family. Now one cannot go through a day without hearing another example. I’m not saying that the news should not be reported, by using this example. I am pointing out that the news all by its self is over stimulating because of these events in these awful times, so why in the world is fuel being added to the fire of overstimulation on top of the sad reality? As I said, even in the worst of human times no child or adult experienced a relentless hour by hour day by day exposure to tragic real or imaginary over stimulation. Even work has become combative in modern times, with people having warlike analogies for their every day activities.

Think about that. If you could watch our “past TV” you’d notice that it’s not like the Smiths who grew corn on their acre imagined “marketing war” with the Jones who grew barley on their acre. Rather, even the Bible documents rules for how farmers should lend each other their tools. Yet we have corporations who are structured in totally warlike “free market competition” and individual “competitiveness” (look at the torture of the “human resources” departments with their “performance review system”) and you’ll see what I mean. I've spent years in corporate America and it is unrecognizable from where it was in the 1950’s where one could be competitive on one’s own initiative rather than competitive based on principles of looting, torture and war.

If you watched our “past TV” you’d see that generation after generation tried to do better for themselves and their family, not compete, loot and over stimulate. Farmer Smith would hope that next year he could extend his field another few feet in one direction in order to fit in another row of corn, and thus do a little better. Farmer Jones would hope that she could extend irrigation to another part of her field, and thus ride out times of low rain better. They didn’t plot against each other and instead they supported each other. Their kids did not go home believing that aliens talked to bug eyed Egyptians and played video games of how many they could slaughter. Humans simply are not meant to be as they are today; they are not meant to be like the moderns are today either spiritually or biologically, as “past TV” could show what kind of lifestyle and outlook humanity is evolved to be part of. Humanity is meant to be in a reality based incrementally improving standard of living that is individual, family and community based, punctuated by moderate stimulation as needed (times of crisis, sports, adventurers), and all revolving around one’s treasure of investment which is children, the present and the future.

To summarize, therefore, “past TV” would provide the following mental cleansing:

1) It would remind people that factual evidence exists to discern between what actually happened and the imaginary works of humans.
2) It would remind people that there is a tempo of life that people emerged and evolved into, and have now totally lost in the vast parts of modern society.
3) It would starkly demonstrate that modern humans have become paranoid and combative by their own choice and thus the imposition now of society, particularly modern workplace and “entertainment” ethos and that such an attitude never existed in even the most pained and troubled times of human history.

It is of the most desperate importance that everyone, individually and in our systems such as schools, return to a reality based process of learning and thinking. I hope I’ve provided one small but helpful visionary tool, where people can once in a while stop and think, “What would ‘past TV’ show us about what actually happened and how people genuinely lived?” You will develop a much refined and truer taste for everything, from intellectual to entertainment, if you do this, without losing any of the benefits and pleasures of genuine imagination, including for diversion.

What a mess.
:(

Suffering, both of humanity and of Jesus Christ

Here is more about understanding suffering, particularly, during this time of Lent, more accurately understanding the suffering of Christ. I am, however, focusing on this subject to rectify human understanding of suffering, since that has been terribly warped in modern times, particularly in the extremes (avoidance or glorification and willful infliction) that I described in my first post on this subject. So in this posting bear in mind the analogy I introduced in that post, which is that suffering is, like paper from a tree that is used once or for a short amount of time and then discarded or recycled, a natural occurrence when one is alive and one encounters a boundary of loss. Check that post out again if you didn’t read it before or remember, before proceeding here.

There are two things about modern society that have contributed to the warping of understanding of human suffering. One is that humans have, as I explained in that previous post, isolated and commoditized suffering as a free standing quantity or experience that can and should be “managed.” But that is neither intellectually, spiritually or emotionally correct, nor how humans have biologically evolved to encounter and deal with suffering. Humans have not evolved in a way that views suffering as a standalone quantity or quality of life. One evidence of that evolution is how quickly the human body recovers from an individual experience of physical pain. When one hits one’s self on the thumb with a hammer, for example, it really hurts and going forward, sure, you remember that it hurt. But if you think about it, it is difficult to bring to perfect memory recollection a rerun of the experience of that pain, short of actually doing it again. Natural childbirth is another example where mothers through the generations sure remember the agony that some, but not all, births entail, yet are preserved from having perfect rerun in their minds of that pain.

Furthermore, athletes will tell you that you learn to “play through’ chronic pain from sports, for example. As an athlete who for a while was in a martial art that involved contact (being hit by a sword or a fist) I can attest that the first few times hurt “more” than subsequent times. Part of pain is the surprise and “unfairness” of it (disproportionality) that contribute to its severity of initial “suffering”, and that with training can be managed. So the first time I was really whipped with a fencing foil it sure hurt, but as one develops one “takes the hit” while already thinking about one’s next move, and thus does not focus on the pain like one did as a beginner. Boxers can probably tell you the same thing. So these are just some of the evidences that humans have evolved to have a lasting “lesson” of pain but not a perfect rerun and recollection of pain over and over again. If humans had that they would be immobilized from risking pain in hunting, agriculture, building, giving birth and sheer survival activities (such as when there was no central heating or electricity during very cold weather). Humans are not meant to nor are they evolved to “preserve” pain and thus suffering in perfect replicable images in either their body or their mentality. People can much more easily recall the bliss of a perfect date, for example, in great detail than they can the detail of a strike of physical pain, or the details of heart rending suffering that was once experienced. They recall how awful it felt, but it is difficult, thankfully, to “mediate” one’s self back into perfect recollection of all the aspects of that pain since time and understanding always moves a body and mind forward.

So here is where we can start to understand how isolating and “commoditizing” pain is an error, and how it crept into modern society, to humans’ great disadvantage. When I was young “popular psychology” was just beginning to become part of social discourse. In other words, what had been before that part of the doctor’s or psychiatrist’s office was now a subject that average people talked and read about. One of the first things that was printed in the public media was a “grief scale,” where people were assigned “points” to understand their “level of pain” after various tragic events or during life pressures. Thus “the death of a spouse” would get something like “10 points” assigned to it, meaning that it was viewed as a high pain and stress experience, while things such as job loss, etc had lower numbers of points. When as a teenager I first saw that I thought “Oh, oh, this is wrong and a problem.” While it is “understandable” that humans try to “self understand” and medical technicians try to “quantify,” it is totally bogus and erroneous, and a result of succumbing to one of the scourges of temptation of humans, which is to dehumanize and decouple from their context their own humanity. It is a temptation and a professional and societal laziness and it is wrong. Part of it is a result of the industrial revolution where humans obtained their factory assembly line mentality, where “one part fits all.” Look at computer interface standards and their importance and you see what I mean. Humans started thinking of themselves and each other in terms of standard parts and interfaces that can be counted and quantified.

Here are some examples to help you to understand how to identify this problem and see its fallacy and danger. Compare two widows, where each has had the death of their husband. Can the grieving be compared between them if one was married for a long time and one for a short time? What about if one is left destitute while the other, while unhappy, has more than adequate means to survive? What if one has children and the other does not? What if one has great faith and believes her husband is in heaven, while the other does not believe? While losing a loved spouse is a terrible loss, it is patently false and misleading to assign a “point” level to the totality of experience. In fact, medical people have even been “suspicious” of “denial” if a widow handles a spousal death as a “5” rather than as a “10,” if you know what I mean. Or the reverse happens, and I have seen that in actual clinical context. Medical personnel underestimate the pain of things they can assign numbers to. I have seen grieving widows be totally undertreated in individual and group therapy because medical personal have a mentality that quantifies their experience rather than have a holistic understanding of how totally shattering it can be.

Here is another example taken from sociology and anthropology. There are many studies of cultures where the most severe punishment possible is not death or torture but either exile (being thrust physically outside of the community) or “shunning” (where one stays in the community but is avoided and not interacted with as if one were invisible or did not exist). Studies have shown that people have died from the suffering of both exile but more particularly of shunning. Anthropologists discovered that in such societies the suffering of the shunned is so great that it can and does cause death. Fast forward to modern times and think about the high degree of alienation that many, particularly the youth feel, and also the problem of the “violent ex-“ who kills his ex- and even their children rather than be “without them.” When one relies on numerical and isolating experiences of pain in the medical and social community one is left not only ignorant but pointed in the totally opposite direction of genuine human experience and problems. Moderns have not only forgotten their own human experience (the pain of shunning for example) but they now wield in a very dark way that form of suffering while denying its social or medical existence. Humans used to know very well the suffering of exile or of shunning and used it as a social “last resort” for the most egregious of perceived or real behaviors. Today we have the dual problem of 1) not understanding individuals who are experiencing either externally or internally the suffering of a form of exile or shunning AND 2) actually using the “nerve endings” of such pain to market products and develop destructive social cliques and behaviors that prey on the fear of shunning and, worse, promote a sense of shunning by exaggerating real or perceived social divisions.

Racism is the most obvious example of shunning in widespread practice, in a way, and so I think those who have experienced or studied racism may be the first to understand my point here. Afro-Americans for a long time were the suffering “invisible” people expected to move among the wealthy and enfranchised, doing their work, but through segregation not expected to be “visible” and participatory. That was enormous suffering and has, thankfully, been dramatically alleviated in the last few decades by desegregation, equal rights, and social progress and societal mindset. Still, even racism cannot fully articulate the horror of individual shunning since even during the worst of racism people still had their own families, education, socializing and human-to-human interaction. Individual shunning is far worse because the person is denied all ties with surrounding humanity, including speech. You might think that does not exist in such sophisticated, refined and enlightened culture as today, but think again. Think about two examples already mentioned above: youth who are alienated, feeling out of touch with life itself, both as an individual condition and also a “popularity” and clique or gang way, and violent ex’s, who are bereft and feel invisible and totally alienated from life without their ex. The suffering of such people, whether one believes it is founded, reasonable and “justifiable” is truly “off the scale.” One cannot quantify the suffering of a person who is shunned or in a position that replicates the physical sensation and also the emotional and spiritual consequences of an alienating isolation that is akin to being shunned.

This is one reason that society sees remarkable suffering, self harm and violence that seems “baffling” to people who are part of the “majority,” who do not understand why, for example, a violent ex will kill his ex, their children, their family, friends, strangers, etc before, usually, killing themselves. On comment boards people repeatedly key in, in understandable frustration, “Why doesn’t he just kill himself rather than take everyone along with him?” See, that is the perfect example of how people no longer understand their own humanity based suffering. Anthropologists would tell you that societies that shun would understand fully well why someone who feels shunned might snap and react in exactly that same way. Modern society seems to have invented the nuclear bomb but then juggles with it and puts it in video games and then denies it exists, to use another analogy. Humans viscerally know the suffering of shunning, but then after generations of knowing about it and using it as last resort, now both “forget” that it even exists and the horrible harm that it causes but still for marketing, entertainment and other purposes, including some very dark ones, “pushes those buttons” in other people, among each other, and themselves. Thus people inflict the worst of shunning and alienating experiences on each other yet at the same time it itself is shunned, invisible and denied. As another example of this, society will push the importance of sex yet also push how inadequate a potential partner most people are. And you wonder why child abuse is out of control? Society pushes sexual gratification constantly while at the same time teaching an elite reward and shunning disapproval for those who are not “hot.” As a result, individuals, both men and not even some women, feel alienated from the “total sexual experience” they feel they are entitled to, and fill in the gaps with children.

To wrap up the point about quantifying suffering and its temptation and error, think about the implications of what I have explained here. Not only do people miss the mark in understanding their own legitimate and genuine suffering, but society has “manufactured” new ways of suffering that did not exist before. One suffers the death of a spouse, for example, but is treated in a “standard interface” cookie cutter approach due to it being a “medical pain scale and insurance reimbursed” isolated phenomenon on the one hand. On the other hand society has invented new forms of commoditized suffering, which is to be promised total sexual gratification, while at the same time reducing marriages, increasing the population of single people, yet putting them in a caste system of “hot or not,” “in or out.” Unrealistic expectations of sex, for example, are pushed on society while at the same time the most reliable and dependable forms of gratification, such as within marriage, are shattered, and people have turned into wild dogs operating within a bizarre and cruel self imposed caste system of sexual availability and desirability in intimacy. And you wonder why violent ex’s kill, and why so many now prey on the young, who are both defenseless but also deemed to be open and non-judgmental in that area where the offender is hurting. Society has manufactured of its own freewill forms of suffering that make me tremble for the survivability of humans and this is just a few examples.

The second problem with modern warping of suffering is also, in part, a result of that cookie cutter factory line mentality toward modern industrial and technological life. There is a tendency for many to “sound byte” suffering. We can use the example of the suffering of Jesus Christ to better understand this.

People are impatient with their understanding of each other and themselves and so they always try to “bottom line” their own understanding or in movie jargon “cut to the chase scene.” This is, as I’ve pointed out, not the normal evolved human condition and is, in fact, counter to evolutionary development and also is not an asset in survivability. Thus you see people encapsulate (again, how very modern, like taking a pill) not only their own experiences, and that of others, but that of the divine. You have a slogan understanding of life, including the divine, and that warps the human mindset and specifically understanding real normal life such as suffering. Therefore modern people differ from all of the previous generations by trying to bumper sticker God as “Christ died for your sins” or “Jesus suffered for you” etc. People have reduced, like a sauce on the stove, their own humanity and their understanding of divinity to encapsulated sound byte jargon of “understanding,” which is not actual understanding at all.

Jesus was not born in order to suffer and to be crucified. Jesus was born even though he knew he would suffer and be crucified. There is one hell of a difference.

The suffering of Jesus never was an “objective,” an isolated phenomenon that is a goal. The suffering was the inevitable consequence of being alive and his taking a stand. They did not invent scourging, mocking and crucifixion just for Jesus. That was the common form of punishment for the “lowest of the low” who were judged criminals or treasonous. It was also a punishment used to terrorize and subordinated population into total submission. This makes it doubly ironic that the Jews who persecuted Jesus turned to Rome to inflict the very punishment that was used to keep Roman territories and the conquered people in line.

Thus people in modern times erroneously use the foreknowledge of the prophets that Jesus would be the Messiah, rejected, suffer and be crucified as making the suffering the “meaning,” the sound byte, of his entire life and mission. Some of this is willful, deliberate and somewhat blasphemous misunderstanding, while other of it is a consequence of lazy modern people who try to cookie cutter and sound byte into capsules everything, including the divine.

Jesus did not come to humanity in order to suffer and to die. Jesus came despite knowing that he would suffer and die.

The message of Jesus was not that he was stripped, whipped, spit on, crowned with thorns and crucified. The message of Jesus was that he arose from the dead.

I’m not trying to put bumper sticker makers out of business, or to minimize the redemptive value of suffering, far from it. I’m trying to restore the glory of actually understanding it.

Was St John the Baptist born to be beheaded? Obviously not, and so when one contemplates the one who declared the coming of Christ one can better understand the risk of the suffering sound byte that I am pointing out to you. John the Baptist is rightfully revered, but his entire ministry lives on in baptism, not slogans that “John the Baptist: born to be beheaded for you.”

Likewise the focus on the physical component of the redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ, done ONCE for ALL, misses the entire point of the ministry of Jesus. Yes, it is important to have gratitude to Jesus for having suffered and died for all, but one must have a sane and balanced approach to that understanding, one that is modeled after the Gospels and Epistles themselves. None of the Apostles or disciples glorifies the physical suffering of Jesus; they document it but do not focus on it at all. Instead, as St Paul repeatedly explains, it is Christ crucified (the death, not the pain) and resurrected from the dead that is everything, absolutely everything.

John 20: 27-28
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

The Apostle Thomas declared he would not believe the others had seen the resurrected Jesus “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” John 20:25. And so Jesus appeared to him and allowed him to do that very thing, saying “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” John 20:29. Think about this: Thomas would be the last person to think that Jesus was nailed to the cross so that he, Thomas, would have wounds to put his fingers into and believe. Yet that mentality has crept into many in modern times that the objective of Jesus was the suffering he endured rather than belief that his resurrection from the death of crucifixion engendered.

Just as a brief aside to teach you another way to apply logic, think about this. If the actual suffering and crucifixion of Jesus were the “objective,” would not one expect that after Thomas believes only after seeing the wounds that Jesus would order that all Apostles obtain similar wounds and “pass that along” through the generations? Would we have bishops undergo nonfatal crucifixion wounds generation after generation, to pass it “on,” if the suffering and the wounding were the point? Instead we have the breaking of the bread, the consecrated wine, the consecrating oil, the laying on of hands in ordination, and baptism of the faithful. No where is the “suffering” passed on as witness of faith. Use logic, people, and it will never fail you.

John 20:30-31
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of [his] disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

What John did not write: And therefore we each of us drive a nail through our own hands when we become bishops so that we share in the suffering of Christ since that is the sign of faith and the whole point of his coming.

Protestants are sometimes the most contradictory on this point, and I say this with affection, not criticism. They criticize Catholics for having a crucifix (the body of Christ displayed on the cross) rather than a cross (Methodists have the cross with a red fabric draped over it) since they feel that Catholics are stuck in the crucifixion and not the resurrection, which they symbolize by the empty cross. Yet who are the ones who tend to write and verbalize the most rhetoric about the suffering of Jesus “on behalf” of the saved? Yep.

Catholics display the crucifix as a reminder that Jesus actually died, not as a reminder of his tortures. It is the fact that Jesus actually died, one, and resurrected, two, that is the essential foundation of the entire faith and the New Covenant with God, not the suffering. The fact that Jesus performed his ministry knowing of the suffering that he would work through and resurrect from that makes it “redemptive suffering,” not the suffering itself. Whenever you are tempted to be confused about this, repeat the slogan “John the Baptist was not born to be beheaded.” John the Baptist can continue to make straight the way of the Lord by today being a sanity and perspective touchstone to put the death and suffering of Jesus in the proper context. Then one can read what St. Paul wrote with restored perspective and clarity, without the strange posttraumatic intrusive thoughts about suffering that this lost generation is afflicted by.

Hebrews 2:8
Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,” but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor” because he suffered death, he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,” that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Hebrews 2:14
Now since the children share in blood and flesh, he likewise shared in them, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.

St. Paul could not be clearer that it was not the suffering, but the death and resurrection of Christ that once, for all, showed everyone that they should not fear the devil of bodily death and the sin that fear tempts humans to commit. Instead, St. Paul explains, Jesus demonstrated once for all that one does die, but one then goes to God in eternal life.

Hebrews 2:18
Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

In Biblical language “testing” does not mean being quizzed. When St. Paul uses the term “tested” and when one reads about saints being “but to the test,” that is more of a term that comes from refining of ore, for example, where impurities are melted away. Thus Jesus showed that he could suffer bodily and emotional harm the same way that any human would, “be tested,” and come through it all the way, which is to die and the demonstrate through his resurrection and his witness that God is in control and that life everlasting exists in heaven, and does not end in the slavery of the devil of bodily death and sinful behavior.

Hebrews 9:11-14
But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.

This, by the way, is one of the Biblical justifications that Catholics use on Ash Wednesday, when the sign of the cross is marked on their foreheads. It is a ritualized reminder of these words of St Paul that no longer, as in the Old Covenant, are the heifer’s ashes needed to sanctify the defiled, but that the blood of Christ, shed once for all, is the cleanser that the ashes once were under the Law.

Hebrews 10:26-29, 31
If we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire that is going to consume the adversaries. Anyone who rejects the Law of Moses is put to death without pity on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Do you not think that a much worse punishment is due the one who has contempt for the Son of God, considers unclean the covenant-blood by which he was consecrated, and insults the spirit of grace?... It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

I include this because passage because again I must correct the notion that the physical suffering of Christ somehow “clears the way” for people. St Paul warns FELLOW CHRISTIANS that if they sin deliberately after knowing the truth of what Jesus has proclaimed that “there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire.” A profane and immodest treatment of the sacrifice of Jesus is an insult to “the spirit of grace” and will result in falling into the hands of the living God who will judge and who will cast into hell. St. Paul would be shocked to the core of his being by ghoulish and profane modern perspectives regarding “the covenant-blood by which he [Jesus] was consecrated.”

I could cite much, much more from St. Paul but I have demonstrated my point and it is better that people now read scripture on their own with clear eyes and understanding after this commentary I have provided.

The suffering of Jesus was not an exceptional phenomenon to be encapsulated as glorifying suffering. In fact, the reverse is true where suffering is not glorified and instead Jesus stoops in order to undergo what humans do to each other, and the natural boundary of life which includes death, in order to show the open path to the one true God. I have demonstrated how to read several selections from scripture and observe that the suffering is not a quantity or a quality, but simply a signpost along the way of the totality of the ministry of Jesus Christ. I have also given you a tool to use, showing how the saints remain a welcome friend, wise counsel and aid to today, where one can realign inappropriate thoughts about human suffering and the suffering of Jesus with the yardstick that “St John the Baptist was not born to be beheaded.” Finally I have pointed out that humans are in great peril of encapsulating and making into sound bytes entire perspectives of human and divine reality and that this encapsulating and “sloganizing” of human or divine reality results in dire and destructive perpetuating error that must be corrected in this time of physical, moral and spiritual crisis.

Galatians 3:1-4
O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publically portrayed as crucified? I want to learn only this from you: did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard? Are you so stupid? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so many things in vain?-if indeed it was in vain.

I include this to remind you that glorifying in things such as the physical suffering of Christ is like thinking one is saved through works and not grace, because merely counting the wounding of Christ is like relying only on works and denying faith.

Romans 6:5-11
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him. As to his death, he died to sin [my notation: this phrase "he died to sin" means that Jesus died on account of sin being done to him of his unjust condemnation and thus in death moved out of the reach of further harm by sin to him] once and for all; as to his life, he lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as [being] dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.

Just as a dead body cannot be forced to sin, since that person is dead and thus absolved from sin, living people must be like a dead body toward sin. To use a scientific term the living must be like inert matter that does not bond or interact with any sin. This is another, more oblique, way to apply scripture to my admonishment to you all that sinful behavior and suffering cannot be “managed,” accounted for and commoditized, since that is interacting with sin and not being, as Paul warns one must be, “dead to sin” and instead “living for God in Christ Jesus.” Those who commoditize suffering are interacting with sin and are not dead to sin. Insensitivity and worse the promotion of suffering in others is an obvious example, as is the enumeration of occult practices, including self harming in order to do suffering “accounting,” which is not only wrong but blasphemous.