Evidence of God #1

Atheists like to spam their tired questions to the religious all the time: if God exists, where is He?  Why doesn’t He appear?  Where is the proof? 

God doesn’t appear because you refuse to see Him.  He is everywhere and nowhere at the same time- everywhere to those who can see, and nowhere to those who cannot.  Proof lies in the beholden.  Some people can feel spirit as a physical sensation, flowing through the body like some mysterious force.  Others have died and traveled to the afterworld; their accounts are numerous, and spooky in their consistency.  There’s enough proof in their accounts to fill an entire library.  Yet they are not believed by atheists, who only believe what they want to believe.  No amount of second-hand evidence will convince them God exists.   Theirs is a selfish belief, based on cynicism, emptiness and mistrust, the darkest corners of our consciousness.  They cannot see past their own shadow; they are not evolved enough to feel spirit and soul.  This is why many of the blessed pity them. 

The Seven Mysteries of Life, Guy Murchie

            If I were to pick one book to bring with me before being marooned on a desert island, The Seven Mysteries of Life would be it. It’s thick, full of interesting information, and the language is gorgeous. Murchie’s transcendental prose describes the miracles of two of the greatest fascinations in life: science and the soul. He wasn’t a scientist, but he believed that science could prove intangible things like the existence of the soul, the spirit, and astral planes. The first part of the book was all about hooking his readers in with interesting facts about the more unique attributes of different species. He leaves out no kingdom, phylum, or even non-organic material; everything from metamorphic rocks to dangling monkeys are covered here. The facts might seem trivial at first, but then comes the middle part of the book, which is as mind-expanding as a DMT trip. Here Murchie writes about the psychology of different species and their extrasensory perceptions. The third part- the one about the seven mysteries- is a poetic bridging of science and the spirit. In this part, he uses biological abnormalities to explain transcendence. Some of the chapters here changed my perception of life and “what it all means”. I’ve probably learned more things from this book- factual and philosophical- than from any other. The Seven Mysteries of Life is a true gift to humanity, and it’s a shame that it is not a genre standard when it comes to philosophy, the new age movement, or even science. 

Interpreting Dreams: We Are What We See

When I get out of high school, I’d like to study psychology and the landscape of dreams.  Dreams give us the power to see things more clearly.  Like meditation, they can open our minds to possibilities we couldn’t see before having them.  With the right training, anyone can interpret their dreams. 

A dream often reflects one’s emotional state more than anything.  A dream in which you are afraid is meant for you to confront something you’re afraid about.  A dream in which you have anxiety is meant to help fix what is causing the anxiety.  A dream in which you feel lost or helpless is meant to point you in the right direction.  Recurring dreams mean you haven't fixed the problem your mind is trying to help you with. 

The people we see in our dreams typically have nothing to do with them, yet everything to do with us.  It doesn't even reflect how we see that person, for sometimes a person we see as generally happy in real life wears a mask of depression in a dream. This can only mean that the people we dream about are projections of our emotional state. They may be people we admire, want to become, or reconcile with, and we have transferred our emotional state onto them. 

When interpreting dreams, the first variable the psychologist must consider is emotion.  How was the subject feeling during the dream?  The things that happen and the people they see are secondary to this most vital information.  Only then can the psychologist inventively reveal what the dreamer has projected onto imaginary objects. 

Buddhism

I’ve been reading a lot about Buddhism lately.  We touched on the subject in world civilizations class, but it wasn’t nearly in depth enough.  The heart of Buddhist teaching is that desire is the root of all suffering, which my teacher didn’t even mention.  That has to be one of the greatest teachings in the history of mankind, yet we don’t teach it in classrooms.  Lame.  

Few people realize it’s their desire that frequently hurts them, not other people.  People have desires to be safe, loved, recognized, wealthy, powerful, intelligent.  Anything or anyone who stands in their way gets blamed for their sufferings, when in fact it’s their own insecurities that are causing it. Wanting things we can’t have is the prime mover of instability in our world. 

It’s hard for people to see this because taking responsibility for our suffering means we have no one to blame but ourselves.  We like to complain, point the finger, make a fuss over matters we have more control over than we realize.  I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past- very guilty.  But now that I see this, it’s easier to let go of the things I can’t have.  That may seem like a lifeless proposition; however, I think it’s a sign of maturity more than anything. 

Some people want things so bad that they end up destroying the things they love.  It almost happened to me.  It could happen to you if you don’t let go of desire.  Desire fuels our need for control, destroying everything in its path.  Don’t feed the fire, let it burn out. 

 

The Occupation of Afghanistan

After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October, I told a friend how it was conveniently a back door into China.  If World War 3 broke out, this would be a strategically valuable location for the U.S.  It would also give us a near blockade on Russia, considering Alaska and our allies to the west of it.  However, Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain is proving it rather difficult for our armed forces to fully occupy the country. 

China opted to join the World Trade Organization yesterday.  They may have done it because they felt threatened, deciding to join a global community with the hopes of gaining international support against us.  It’s safe to say this decision cements the fact that they’re no longer a communist country.  Trading with the international community can only mean one thing: they’ve abandoned the isolationist economic policy they once had and traded it (see what I did there?) in for a new one.  In a sense they are now our allies, at least economically.  Perhaps there won’t be a war after all. 

It would be foolish to pick a fight with China and Russia.  We don't even know what kind of weapons they have, especially China.  They could have the technology to completely incapacitate us, just like Japan was surprised when they found out we had an atomic bomb.  War isn't so simple these days; maybe that's a good thing. 

DNA

    Long ago, before the tides brought us to land, before fish swam in the sea and birds flew in the air, even before bacteria spread at astonishing rates, two crystals of the same mineral came together, forming a whole, a union fresh, their polarities united, creating something new that had retained their codes, something inanimate that was still conscious of itself, remembered how it was born, sought another crystal like itself to reproduce, from the very pattern the molecules of its parents had fused together.  The crystals evolved into single-celled organisms, developing multiple “sexes” that were really just portals leading to pathways of survival, each adaptation a new form of selection on the infinite chain of life.  Our sexual inheritors remember this great event that revolutionized mobility in life to spread its blueprint, sperm and ovum two polarities, yang and yin, man and woman, active cells full of vigor, to inseminate the homely passive ones, one seeking the other while the other waits, as nature instructed them to do, divine symbols of the original birth that rippled through the eons, summoning the planet to breathe. 

Meditation

Sometimes I get angry.  Sometimes my thoughts fire so rapidly that it's difficult calm my brain down.  Meditation has been the most useful tool in soothing this crazy head.  Not only does it relax me, but it gives me fresh perspectives on any problems I'm facing.  If something's bothering me and I can't figure out how to fix it, meditating helps me because it clears out the clutter of disorganized thinking.  It gets me in touch with a higher spiritual power that somehow knows what the wisest decision should be in any given situation.   

It's kind of like rebooting a computer after it crashes.  When the brain "crashes", we need to do the very same thing to restart it.  Most people take a break or a nap, but those who are more spiritually aware engage in the powerful practice of meditation. 

An additional benefit is that the more you meditate, the more you get in touch with that higher spiritual power in everyday life.  If you start out doing it every day, you'll soon be meditating less, because the mindfulness that results makes you more consistent in dealing with your problems calmly.  However, it's still worthwhile to practice daily, lest the clutter catches up with you and dethrones all the calmness you'd built. 

Meditation works by focusing on something that relaxes you and holds that thought in place for at least 10 minutes.  This helps the mind slow down and get "in tune" with the universe.  You can be laying down or sitting up, it doesn't matter.  Buddhist monks practice meditation in several lotus positions, which is more difficult to do, but (I've read) it does a better job connecting you with the spirit. 

The books have taught me several ways of doing it.  The method that works best for me is imagining a symbol like the yin-yang or seven chakras, and just focusing on that image until all thoughts disappear and the brain more or less stops functioning.  That is the ultimate objective of meditation: to get the brain to stop thinking.  That's why the environment must be silent, because any distractions will lead the mind astray, interrupting the practice.  Another way to do it is by letting your thoughts wander, like in a dream.  But I've found this doesn't work as effectively as restraining all thought. 

Nothing can make you feel more connected, peaceful, and ready to face your problems than meditation does.  Once you come out of it, you'll immediately feel a greater awareness with all that is around you.  You might even feel invincible, like nothing can stop you, but not in a competitive way, just as a receiver of life's problems.  If you feel like your spirit is broken, or like you are disconnected from the world, nothing will bring you back faster than doing meditation.  Discipline your mind today, and you'll reap the rewards tomorrow.

The Patriot Act

Thanks to 9/11, the U.S. has instated the Patriot Act, a mandate that allows the government to spy on its citizens without a court order.  Sending e-mails is no longer a private matter; the FBI now has the authorization to intercept everything we send electronically.  So don't e-mail grandma to thank her for the tasty cookies made of nitroglycerin she made you last weekend.  Write a letter the old-fashioned way instead.

The timing couldn't be worse for another aspect of this Act.  Now that I've started going to the library, they've made it legal for the FBI to monitor which library books we're checking out.  Books thought to inspire terrorist activity are flagged, marking anyone who checks them out as a possible terrorist.  

I think this is a huge overreaction to our most tragic national event.  It's nice to feel safe, but not at the expense of our liberties.  If I get flagged for checking out a book like The Communist Manifesto simply because I'm interested in economic theory, is that really appropriate for their profiling me as a terrorist?  It seems like a passive aggressive way to control people, and could lead to more dangerous things down the road if we aren't careful.

Microbes and the Derivates of Time

Everywhere you look, trillions of microbes are floating through the air, swimming through the water, rolling around in the dirt.  It's estimated that the total mass of microbes on Earth is 20 times more than all other life combined- astonishing when you consider they can't be seen with the naked eye.  Life seems to be ingrained in the very fabric of our planet, relentless in its variety. 

Imagine that you were magically transformed into the size of an amoeba.  A visitor such as yourself to the word of microbes would likely find it an alien environment.  The surreal images of these creatures would make it feel like being on a totally different planet.  All the strange shapes, sizes, colors, and movements of these critters offer such a vast array of originality that no one would possibly think they were still on planet Earth, unless they were a microbiologist. 

The most interesting thing about the realm of microbes is that they experience time differently from us.  They experience time slower than we do, just as time experienced by an atom is even slower than a microbe's perception.  Consciousness in relation to size has an inverse relationship to time; the larger the body of consciousness is, the faster time is perceived by it.  Microbes that are perceived to live for only 3 hours by us would be perceived to live 20 relative years by something as small as they are. 

Gravity is not the reason for this, because gravity doesn't operate on the quantum level, at least not the gravity we are familiar with.  Rather it's a lower order of gravity that operates in the quantum realm, governed by nuclear and electric forces.  This suborder of gravity allows time to defragment itself, depending on how small the observer is.  The same effect happens on universal levels, where the largest bodies in outer space experience time as an integral of all the time experienced by conscious beings inside it (put together as a sum), just like how its matter and energy has an integral relationship to its total. 

When you consider how an observer of the whole universe would experience time, all things unfold in the blink of an eye.  The universe as a collective consciousness is observing time so quickly that everything is happening all at once.  That's why time ceases to exist beyond the boundaries of space; there is no matter to provide it consciousness, and therefore no perception of time. 

IQ

During lunch at school, I like to spend time in the library reading, or on a computer taking IQ tests. The students there must think I’m strange to be taking IQ tests all the time. I don’t know why I like doing them, they’re just fun. Like puzzles, they challenge your mind to find the missing pieces. Unlike puzzles, they offer more variety, making them more fun. Plus, that ego boost when you get a high score is always good.

Some of the online tests are so inaccurate that I can’t take them seriously. On some you can randomly click on answers and still have your result be higher than 100. The most popular one is a true-false test that will tell you you’re IQ is 150, yet you could get a “highly above average” score of 110 just be randomly clicking the answers. Tests like that should be banned from the internet. The better ones have at least 5 possible choices per problem and aren’t culturally biased. These tend to be exclusively visual or mathematical, and I usually to do better on them. 

The average score on all the tests I’ve taken is about 130. I can usually see a pattern on all but one or two problems on any given test. And since these tests are pretty short, I wouldn’t be surprised if my IQ was too high for standard testing. The highest score I’ve ever gotten is 180, on this really cool interactive one that was most challenging. There were shapes on this test that actually moved and changed color- one problem had a whole grid of them.

I understand that one’s IQ is not the greatest indicator of intelligence, but I do think it’s the closest we’ve come to testing logical abilities. It should be called LQ, not IQ, for logicality quotient. IQ makes it sound like it’s the only true indicator of how intelligent you are, when really it’s only testing your analytical skills. The thing is people have different skills that make them smart. I’m sure there’s a social or emotional IQ test out there that I would probably fail miserably. My EQ would probably tell me I am emotionally retarded.

Pi

I just saw one of the coolest movies I've ever seen.  Watching it with someone like Julie made it even more special.  The movie's called Pi, in reference to the math term.  It's about a math savant, who can calculate massive sums in his head at will, and his search for a pattern in nature that will help him predict things like the stock market.  He's not doing this because he's greedy, but because finding that pattern will glorify him as the man who discovered the secret inner workings of the universe.

It reminded me of Einstein's fabled search for the Grand Unified Theory of physics.  A genius whose sole purpose in life was finding the most elusive thing man can know.  Unlike Einstein, it drove him mad, even when he seemed to solve it.  Interestingly Einstein was a Jew, just like the savant in this movie.  There's a scene where he's abducted by Jewish extremists who treat him like the Messiah, trying to get him to tell them the name of God, which is really just a long string of numbers identified by a pattern in the Torah.  There must be something about Jews that makes them feel they are capable of discovering God through science and math.  I've heard my father is like is this as well.  It would be interesting to meet him.

2001 Mariners

It was quite a year for baseball, as far as stats go.  Our Mariners won 116 games, tying the record for wins in a season, but not in winning percentage.  They tied the 1906 Cubs for most wins, however that team only lost 36 games compared to our 46.  Their winning percentage was off the charts, at a staggering .763.  That’s the kind of percentage you see among the top records in basketball on any given season.   Anyways, the Mariners are heavily favored to win the World Series.  If they don’t, the city is truly cursed.

The acquisition of Ichiro Suzuki from Japan was the main reason they won so many games.  Ichiro won both Rookie of the Year and the MVP award, a feat he only shares with Fred Lynn.  Other unforgettable achievements this year are Barry Bonds hitting 73 home runs and Randy Johnson striking out 392 hitters.  I’ve yet to see those two face each other.  My money would be on Randy winning that battle.

Systema Encephale

The bass rings out as the cornerstone, 

Strong in stance, rooted within, 

Penetrating deep into the earth. 

Sinking deeper, a prison for the feet, 

Clutching, digging, denying, justifying, 

Materializations forming, grudges solidifying, 

Exploding the voice, letting it all out, 

Sending it plowing through the undertow. 

Water erodes the stone, rinsing down 

Into the Saturnine margin, crumbled lead 

Alchemized into golden tendons, solid, 

Steady as a mountain, muscles stabilized,   

Legs firmly planted in the fertile soil. 

 

Sands shifting, the tides unstable, 

Hormones brewing a storm, movement 

Swarming under the moonlight,  

Breaking open the gates of tedium. 

Sexual healing bleeds the faith,  

Flooding the landscapes of silence, 

Fertilizing emotion and flora,  

Patience toppled by the moody night. 

Wait it out, resist the temptation, 

Lock your hands in ovaries secure, 

Lest the roaring waters toss you ashore. 

 

Power erupts, the will summons, 

Flex of navel the action ignites, 

A solar synthesis ionizes the form. 

Seedy parasites consume the energy, 

Pilfering the vault of blood within, 

Taking, sucking, vandalizing spirit, 

Until all that furious strength runs dry. 

Shame consumed, torso wilted, 

Summer slipping, decisions empty, 

Erased from the congregation, 

Appetite subverted, a scream burns through, 

Incinerating the leeches, destruction 

Redirected from compassion released. 
 
Up in the heart it radiates, 
This holy energy, sedating the pain 
Wrought from a soul neglected, 
Trampled on, hung out to dry. 
Embracing hope, the grief is sorted, 
Strung out in tiles of recollection, 
Dampened by dusk's early light. 
Reality charted the illusion of pain 
Relents, tendrils of loving care 
The dawn undresses, coiling up, 
Engaging empathy, feeling alive 
In this womb, this body, this vessel, 
Parabola's isocline the lungs embalm.  
 
Sound splits into pieces, breaks apart, 
Toppling temples of friendship, 
Love, every relationship built on words. 
The voice gets lost, strapped in  
Umbilical tape, a fetal prism atrophied, 
Isolation withdrawn from an equation. 
The body recoils, struggling to find 
A new source for creative release, 
Until the bubble bursts, the dam crumbles, 
The math configures a new combination 
Gathered from vibrations of understanding. 
Temple rebuilt, silence fumigated, 
Blame subdued, the pieces reassembled, 
Divided houses draw together again. 
 
Third eye bludgeoned, the mind tamed, 
Intuition faltered, disoriented by the symbols, 
Archetypes shifting through the golden sieve, 
Blindness spreading from a pineal burial. 
Sorting through the shadow, confusion 
Denies this calculation, once clearly seen. 
In a storm of information the spiral appears, 
Infinitely powerful, supplying the imagination 
Courage to crucify the lemma, to bathe 
In the beauty of possibilities, enchantments 
Cast in a red and yellow progression,  
Through sequential numbers, yielding a stairway. 
Up we rise, to the supreme entity, 
Our life’s goal, shedding masks and darkness, 
Our will goaded by the randomness of dreams. 

 

Memories erased, reflection conceded, 

Curiosity diverted, knowledge retracted, 

Hollow-boned, understanding only the self, 

The emptiness calling, a dogma deranged. 

Analysis fractured, a lunar secret reveals 

One lotus unfurled, in the uterus of the mind, 

Consciousness blooming, a stellar signal,

Calling us skyward, home to the source, 

An orbital meditation in the iolite void. 

The light lifts us out, nursing hope and reason, 

Making visible the one true mind, everything 

Imagined, all spirits reconciled in holy union, 

Rising in ascension through the endless meridian, 

Steadfast approaching a sacred crescendo.