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Published on Leave a comment on Governance by Compassion and the Example of Jesus

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Following is an imaginary conversation with a bright, talented, creative, and dutiful pre-adolescent. Her voice is in italics, mine in regular font. We’re talking about the meaning of Easter and the poem I wrote about it: “Resurrection: Live and Love Unyielding, Life Eternal.”

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The Why of Easter 

I like “Resurrection.” Good! It’s short. Anything else? Did they do Easter eggs when Jesus was around? It doesn’t say anything about eggs. Next year you can write a poem about eggs. “Our legs beg for kegs of eggs with pegs.” Something creative like that. I’m so glad I have your talent and wisdom to brag about (snicker snicker). We color eggs at Easter because. . . That’s enough! You’re just going to say something stupid. . . Because someone figured out that it’s a great way to keep kids off the streets. What about chickens? It’s a great way to keep chickens off the streets too. That’s it. I’m outta here! 

Since you like my poem you must want to learn more about it. Of course I don’t. Anything would be better than that -- unless the poem is about me. Is it about me? Easter is about you and me and everybody. I thought it was just about Jesus. Because he couldn’t be killed and that’s good for the rest of us. OK, then Easter isn’t just about Jesus. It is about everybody. Why? 

Our world can’t seem to settle down in peace. People do wrong because they don’t seem to know any better. Jesus brought information and a way of thinking that helps us know better so we can do better. So we can get it right before we try doing what’s right. So we understand. With insights from another perspective that sees beyond appearances. With vision that isn’t limited to what we can see with our bodies’ eyes. He could do all that?

Walking on water

He was a nobody at first. The Romans who ruled Israel then had nothing to do with him. The authorities from his own country who told people what to believe and how to behave paid no attention to him at first. He just went around on a donkey talking to individuals, families, small groups -- whoever would listen to him. And then the groups got larger. How come if he was a nobody? 

What he was saying was different but it made sense. It seemed to connect with people at the level of their soul, their Psyche, where it was deeply moving. So moving that it seemed true even if it was hard to believe. It had psychological force so compelling that it could change minds. That was unusual.

He was also doing amazing stuff. Healing people like healers before him had done but also things that no one had ever done. Miracles like making a dead guy come back to life. He fed his audience outdoors one day with food out of thin air. He was on a boat with some followers when a storm came up. Everyone thought it would sink the boat and they would all drown. They were terrified. Jesus brought the sun back out and calmed the water. Wait a minute! And just to make sure his followers got the point he got out of the boat and walked on the water! Whoa! How could he do that?

The gift of Intuition

He was thinking with Mind conscious instead of dreaming with Mind unconscious. Showing us what we can do when we do the same. He explains how in the book he authored not long ago called “A Course in Miracles.” You mean he’s still here? He is. Just not in a body. He’s accessible to everyone through Soul. Soul that’s Spirit and not body. Soul and Energy that interconnect everything plus a part of Mind we call Intuition or sixth sense. It was through his connection with the Soul or Spirit of an individual’s body that he authored the Course. She wrote down what he authored. Amazing! 

What does the Course say? It makes it clear that getting to where Jesus got requires a big change of mind. We have to ignore what our bodies and brains and our world have been telling us and turn to another guide. The one we’ve chosen hasn’t been telling us the Truth. We’ve been misled. Will it take long? it could take one or more lifetimes or generations to get to where Jesus got. Or it could happen overnight. How?

Mind conscious is timeless, always in the Now. Always Love, and Love is free, spontaneous. Anytime we’re controlling we’re dealing with fear, not Love. Love can’t have anything to do with forcing or being forced. Spontaneous changes of mind are among the psychic events that are abnormal here. Spontaneous is normal there. History tells us of individuals who’ve gone from one way of thinking to the reverse in an instant. In a burst of light that revealed something different. As if Intuition or sixth sense were showing off. Change of mind can be imperceptible over time or spectacular in the moment. One way or the other it can happen. And it happens not in our bodies or brains but in our Mind. Through Intuition.

Why we’re getting help

Where did Jesus get this ability? Just as there are spontaneous permutations of genetics over long periods that bring about radical change there can be spontaneous permutations of other kinds that change things. A human with the ability to be with us in the state I’ve described as a dream and to be in another state that’s not a dream at the same time is a permutation. Extremely rare but, after all, where else can anything abnormal happen but in dreams where abnormal is normal?

How could just one rare person have such a large impact? It’s not because the dream isn’t revealing its source to us every moment. In a Mind that was conscious before it became unconscious. In the presence of Energy that activates whatever Mind asks of it, conscious or unconscious, and the presence of Soul that interconnects everything whether it’s real or part of a dream. Energy and Soul don’t pay any attention to boundaries and that includes the boundary between reality and the dream. Then there are paranormal events -- near-death, psychic, and other experiences that are so frequent and familiar that we just shrug them off.

Right-brain stuff is weird but by itself it can’t convince us that we’re in a dream. The left brain maintains order with judgment. When it can’t -- when order becomes disorder -- animal will acts on instinct without judgment. A state of chaos that’s also frequent and familiar. Destructive and painful, and maybe a reason why we’re getting help to do something about it. To end a dream that only seems safe and stable until it becomes unsafe and unstable.

Why now?

The rare person had a large impact because he integrated energy, Soul, right and left brain -- all our circumstances, everything -- and put it into context that gave it meaning. Gave it purpose. To awaken us from the dream and return to the reality of consciousness. To the world that he knew that we don’t know. The world defined by Logic, Love, and Innocence, not our world that’s illogic, fear, and guilt. Where other signs of consciousness don’t seriously contradict the dream Jesus' lesson and his miracles did seriously contradict it. All of it. As if it were a lie and he was trying to help us replace it with the Truth.

Which is exactly what he was trying to do. It demanded a response not from parts of the dream but the entire dream, because when he succeeds with any individual it will end the dream. So that’s what he got: a response in space over time from the entire dream that was extraordinary. Who’s winning, Jesus or the dream? Jesus and conscious Mind are forever, dreams are temporary. This one will end regardless.

Then what’s the point? To make the dream end sooner rather than later. The Course makes it clear that the Mind that’s unconscious has real work do to once it wakes up. When it’s learned what the Course teaches it will be needed in Creation. Since Reality and Creation are Now you can say we’re needed there now.

We have nothing to fear. 

The main point of all of Jesus' miracles was that another world lies behind the appearances that our bodies’ five senses detect. Our bodies’ senses may be preventing us from detecting that world and misleading us about the nature of our world. If we insist that there can only be one world and the only way to detect it is with our bodies’ senses then we will miss the point of Jesus’ miracles. We will be denying that we have a sixth sense -- Intuition. That it is through its spontaneous insights from Logic and Love that we can follow his example and eventually access his world. What makes his world different?

  • When he brought Lazarus back from the dead, Jesus was showing us that in the other world behind appearances Life can’t die. In a world that’s Creation death makes no sense. Even here the energy that brings life to our bodies still exists after it departs. It can’t be destroyed.
  • When he fed his audience with loaves and fishes that seemed to come from nowhere, Jesus showed us that in the world behind appearances to Love is to share its abundance. By sharing his Love in that way he showed that he’s our friend from the other world that’s not limited by appearances. He is an agent of Love -- the real thing -- here to help us and he loves us.
  • When Jesus calmed the storm and walked on water, he showed that when his followers understood what he understood fear would go away just like the storm. They would see that there’s nothing to fear. Fear would be replaced by understanding. By the sunlight of Love.

Take all three miracles together and they tell us that in his world where we belong we are Love, we are Loved, and Life is eternal. The Love of one Soul that connects all of us can’t be contained by our physical world. We have nothing to fear because his world is real and ours only seems real. Unbelievable!

To a perspective that’s limited to our bodies’ senses Jesus must seem unbelievable. But to our sixth sense that’s open to Logic and Love, open to seeing things differently, not at all. He makes perfect sense.

Numbers don’t count. Individuals do count.

Though he demonstrated amazing power Jesus had no interest in being powerful the way we think of it. He wasn’t trying to start a movement like a new religion or a church. Didn’t he found a church? The Church said so but it was just putting words in his mouth. He wasn’t trying to organize anything, and that was the point. That each of us has the capacity as individuals, as souls that are part of one Soul that extends beyond our world, to fix what’s broken. It was OK if he attracted many people but he would have been satisfied with only one if that individual truly understood. That’s how uninterested he was in numbers. In churches and their religions, tribes and their members, countries and their citizens, that claim strength in body counts. You've lost me.

Our world is an expression of an idea that’s the opposite of the Truth. What’s that? The Truth that Jesus spoke to was that the Soul to which we all belong is One. It is Oneness, and the ancestral Mind that imagines us is one Mind. One Child of its Parents, Logic and Love, motivated to Love and Create in Peace. The opposite is that the Child isn’t one but many. That we only exist as groups or tribes. That individuals have no Worth. Only groups have Worth. We are many bodies whose brains only know us as animals. As tribes that behave like herds in perpetual conflict, driven by the will of animal brains to dominate, by the frenzy of mob psychology to hate and destroy in war.

And so to express the Truth that we are one Mind, one Child, by forming yet another group wouldn’t make sense. It could only reinforce the original deception, that the Child as one has no Worth. Only its shadow opposite -- bodies in numbers all organized into competing groups -- has Worth. The Truth that Jesus helped us to understand wouldn’t be served if he yielded to appearances and made little of the individual. If he showed respect for numbers as though only groups have the power to bring his vision to life and give it Worth. He stood for Child-the-one, not Child-the-many. This is why everything he said and did was centered on the power and Worth of the individual.

The Truth that lives on

Those who came after to repeat what he taught were teachers who followed his example. Individuals speaking to individuals who showed no interest in organizing a church. What became of them? They lasted into the second century until the world of groups took over and organized a church.

The Church turned what Jesus taught into what it was never meant to be: a theocracy based in Rome, modeled on the Roman Empire. Controlled by authority ruling unquestioned from the top down, imposing conformity instead of empowering individuality and creativity. All for one overriding purpose: to preserve its dominance. Any teacher not embedded in its hierarchy, sanctioned by the Church, was branded a heretic and silenced by force.

The original teachers disappeared. But the world of groups can never have the last word. That’s for the meaning of the Resurrection: that the Truth that Jesus taught, the Worth and power of the one Child, the individual, lives on. And so long as we need him, our teacher, the agent of Soul that’s oneness, will not disappear. He Loves us. He will always Love us. And he will never leave us.

The gift of Understanding with Mind

One Mind and many body-brains are of two different worlds, and if Jesus addressed individuals and had no interest in numbers this placed him unmistakably in the world of Mind. Of Authority that enables and empowers. A world beyond the “laws” of physics, the authority of matter that disables and disempowers.

What Jesus got across with simple stories about right and wrong and his amazing acts was that Love connects us to another Reality. It was a lesson in Logic as well as Love. Logic defines the world of Creation, peace, and harmony that Jesus reached through Soul. The world of Mind. But even if there can be no logical definition for an illogical world of bodies and brains, the Logic of Mind can at least explain it.

The gift to Jesus was a foot in both worlds. In and of his world, in our world but not of it. The gift that enabled him to share understanding with understanding from Logic and Love.

The threat that is another voice

How could it make someone mad if he was just trying to explain? If he wasn’t trying to take over? It didn’t at first. Jesus had no army to threaten anyone with so the Romans weren’t concerned. But the following he attracted did scare Israel’s religious authorities. They thought they should be the only voice and here was another voice, a nobody drawing attention away from them. Through powers they could neither understand nor control -- Innocence and gentle loving kindness, Soul and Truth that transcend the visible world, the Worth of the individual. The opposite of what they taught: unquestioning obedience to power in the visible world. Their power.

Authority serves.

It wasn’t a miracle that showed how Jesus’ version of authority broke with what the authorities taught. It was a simple act of service: washing the feet of a few of his followers. Why did he do that?

The definitions of Logic and the relationships of Love fit all of Creation’s beings and their functions together in harmony. This is how authority governs in Jesus’ world. If Order were forced it would block Free Will and end Creativity. Real Authority doesn’t dominate; it facilitates. Even more remarkable, it serves. You mean like being a servant? Yes, but not in the sense of servant-to-master. Only in the sense that Authority must provide a foundation of support for all the elements of Creation.

This means seeing that its Creations’ receive the help they need when they call for it. If Jesus had provided individuals with computers that were his invention then he would be on call for tech support -- a service. Jesus’ point in washing feet was to show that governing is also serving from the bottom up, the same point Lincoln made at Gettysburg. Rule that dominates from the top down would never do that. It would deprive people of the support service they need to work creatively and it would be wrong. 

The strategy that backfired

Jesus became so revered that he was taking on the aura of a prophet of God, putting him and his followers beyond the rule of the religious authorities. They couldn’t allow it. What did they do? They chose a way to get rid of Jesus so awful that nobody would ever think of doing what he did. That made sure that he and his teaching and special powers disappeared and never came back. I guess they didn’t succeed. 

They didn’t succeed. Instead of putting Jesus in the past and out of sight their cruelty undone by resurrection only brought him back up front and center. Stronger than ever. Though not in the way he thought of it because he wasn’t after numbers. Stronger in the way that our world thinks of it. The mistake of the authorities helped to turn the voice of a nobody into a force of unimaginable numbers. His words and example spread all over the world and keep on spreading today. They couldn’t kill Mind or body because even his body rose from the dead.

Your guess is as good as mine

What does it mean? It means whatever we choose to make of it using our own judgment. Not as members of any group but each of us as individuals. Then I have to figure it out for myself? You’re not going to tell me? I can share my perspective if you like, just as Jesus shared his. And you can reflect on it and make up your own mind. We don’t learn and grow by closing ourselves off to others’ perspectives. We do it by sharing them.

Life evolves where Jesus comes from. Where Creation moves forward naturally with changing contexts, perspectives, thoughts, and feelings. Circumstances change here too though with a lot of resistance, and since what’s broken isn’t getting fixed it doesn’t seem like movement is forward. Our perspectives are only what they are in the moment. Yours and mine, so what you’re hearing from me now can’t be the last word. Just take it for what it is.

The joy of Easter. The love and reverence for Jesus

Whatever you hear can never be substituting my mind or my voice for yours. Jesus would never do that and neither would I. You’d be sorry if you tried. My Siberian tiger has sharp claws! We wouldn’t deny anyone’s Free Will. Free Will is indispensable to Creation where Jesus comes from and here too, though if we’re not moving forward we’re not really creating. Maybe all we can do is fix what’s broken and hope to get back to Creation.

Anytime we allow Free Will to be taken from us we’re making ourselves useless or worse. We’re letting ourselves be instruments of someone else’s will, doing their bidding. Making common cause with Jesus is OK but we can’t make ourselves into copies of anything. That’s looking for trouble. Unless we become the persons we choose to be of our own Free Will, able to see with our own unique perspective and think with our own unique judgment, we can’t be individuals. We can’t be any use to Jesus. All he can do is comfort us when we hurt. Free Will must always be respected.

Ideologies that command vast numbers so far haven’t fixed what’s broken. They always use force that denies Free Will to change things and that just makes it worse. That would be why Jesus paid no attention to numbers. Why he didn’t care about founding movements and churches. Why he shows so much Love and respect for us as individuals. Because we’re the only way to fix what’s broken, with our Free Will. That makes me feel pretty important. Me too. Maybe now we can understand why so many individuals came to love and respect him. Why we’re glad that he resurrected and we celebrate Easter.

Who’s the “savior?”

Jesus could have used his supernatural powers and his following to team up with Caesar and rule the Roman empire. Just like Adam Skywalker with his Jedi Knight powers teamed up with Palpatine to rule the Galactic Empire. Jesus and his following could have taken over moral authority in Israel which is why the people who already had it were so anxious to get rid of him. He spoke for things that are true that can’t be any other way, but he didn’t hand people a book and tell people it was the Truth and they had to obey it. He was serious about being understood and heard but not to take over people’s minds and think for them.

Wasn’t he a “savior?” What he taught was we’re our own saviors but we need help. We can’t do it alone without a trusted guide. Guiding us is the only sense in which he can be our “savior.” He didn’t offer to do anything that we can do for ourselves. And what he taught was what’s important. Just as its lesson can be taught in different ways its teachers can have different identities. Whatever we’re comfortable with. So long as our minds and hearts are on the right track our guide doesn’t have to be “Jesus.” It can have any name. He and what he taught are inclusive, not exclusive.

Demanding obedience messes with Free Will. It doesn’t give people power; it takes it away. What made Jesus so unusual was that even though he spoke with authority and attracted a following he didn’t use it to mess with Free Will. He made a point of empowering other individuals, respecting their voice instead of making it all about his. He made their Worth the center of attention, not his. He didn’t even tell his own story. What we learned about him is what others wrote. Humility like his could never be the arrogance and disrespect of a bully like Palpatine.

Perspective that’s hard to understand

Visitors from another galaxy would have a different perspective from ours. But at least they would be from the same universe and it might be possible to understand one another. The other world that Jesus spoke for wasn’t another galaxy. We can think of it as another reality where authority worked the way Jesus showed us, focused not on itself but on its creations and their creativity. Loving and supporting from the bottom up, not demanding obedience with force from the top down.

It was a perspective so unusual that it couldn’t be understood. Not by authoritarians who rule from the top down and that’s the way it was then. Not in a world where “God” was “the almighty” who had to be feared because anyone who disobeyed him went to hell. There was a lot of misunderstanding about Jesus and what he taught then and there’s still a lot of misunderstanding now.

Powers that can’t be given or taken away

The Church that came along later said it spoke for Jesus and we would be in big trouble if we didn’t obey it. A view of authority that was the reverse of what Jesus taught, so I don’t believe it. The authority that resides in each individual soul has innate Worth. Innate power that comes from being Love and being loved. From being part of the Mind and loving heart, the Soul that we come from and share. We don’t depend on any authority on earth for these things.

They aren’t for those who govern on our behalf to give or take away. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is revered because it spoke for the same kind of authority that Jesus taught, the system of governance we call democracy. “Authorities” who rule by force on their own behalf are the opposite. All of Palpatine’s “power” resided in him, not the people. And he had no respect for individuality or Free Choice.

Praise for the tyrant?

But didn’t his empire maintain order? Didn’t the Roman empire? Didn’t the Church do good? Yes. And Hitler built the Autobahn and made Volkswagens. Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Tyrants pride themselves on imposing order and stability when at its core it’s disorder and instability. The overthrow of true authority is destabilizing and the end result of authoritarian rule is always its own overthrow. Violence captured by Greek mythology in the overthrow of the Titan tyrant Uranus by his son Cronus followed by the overthrow of the Titans by Zeus and the Olympians. Zeus the paranoid predator, ever alert to challenges to his authority posed by any movement beyond his control, especially by his own offspring.

It's important to be careful with affirmation for the good that authoritarians do. Why? Their mindset turns every reflection on its performance into a judgment on its legitimacy because of the nature of its origin. Which is? Illegitimacy. It’s the opposite of true authority. And if it’s not true then it can’t be part of Reality. Part of Creation. Part of Life which shares, affirms, and empowers. Authoritarian rule, whether it’s over a single family, an ideology, or an entire nation, takes, invalidates, and disempowers. It systematically hollows out the individual, robs it of its creativity, its life, to fill itself. Like a giant virus taking cells captive so it can kill them and replicate itself. It’s not about life. It’s about death.

Its “truth” isn’t the overwhelming power and security that it seeks to project. At its core it’s weakness and insecurity. It obsesses over what’s said about it because the source of its justification can’t be self. It has no self. It’s a parasite that depends for its existence on its host. Which gives it an insatiable craving for approval. For self-justification. Every comment on its performance is either justification for the predator or opposition that must be crushed. Any word of praise for Il Duce making the trains run on time would be twisted into the legitimacy of fascism. It would be swallowed up by the authoritarian’s bottomless appetite for what it can’t give: approval.

We must be careful with affirmation for the good that authoritarians do because it will be swallowed up by self-justification that doesn’t reinforce the good. It can only perpetuate the bad. The authoritarian mindset is ugly. I don’t like it. Nobody should. But since it’s with us we can only do our duty: stand up to the bully, replace it, and stand by true authority that doesn’t bully.

Love and Innocence, vulnerability and betrayal

If Jesus could walk on water and change minds couldn’t he have protected himself? Did he have to submit to the authorities? Jesus spoke with authority because he spoke for Authority. The Will of the Truth of Logic and Love that’s not of our world but serves us when we let it. So he had not one but two wills to respect: ours and the Will that he served.

He could only trust both in innocence to let him engage with us in safety. Not to approach in trust and innocence would have compromised the Trust and Innocence that he spoke for. Nor could he interfere with our will if it compromised Free Will. To understand Jesus is to understand innocence. The Truth he shared of the Innocence of the Soul to which we belong. Oneness that has no reason to fear harm from opposites. An agent of Soul that’s Innocence couldn’t protect himself against what he couldn’t know.

Wherever the emptiness of authority for its own sake would replace the fullness of Love; wherever it would displace Free Will, the Trust and Innocence of Love can be betrayed. It’s vulnerable in our world, and Jesus was betrayed. By a follower that he trusted. By religious authorities that he trusted. By betrayal -- an act that Innocence would know nothing of and could not anticipate. This may help to explain why Jesus couldn’t protect himself.

Protection

But it made no difference. The Authority that Jesus served, the Life that’s the Truth of Logic and the fullness of Love, was all the protection he needed. It can’t be killed no matter how cruel and unjust its opposite.

Denying death meant to cow an entire people into submission to authority was the last act of his body while Jesus was among us. Its Resurrection proof that respect for individuality, creativity, and Free Will that comes from Logic, Love, and Truth is real Authority. Proof that authority that’s disrespectful and rules by force, that overrides every voice with its own voice because it’s afraid of individuality, creativity, and Free Will, has no real power over us. Proof that souls confined to bodies that come and go don’t come and go. Their Life force is forever. We have nothing to fear.

When there’s a beast to be slain

So then we can ignore disrespectful authority? Jesus was asked what to do about Caesar, the Roman emperor. What did he say? That disrespectful authority is an unavoidable fact of life in our world that requires accommodation. Otherwise leave it alone. Our purpose is to serve real Authority while it serves us and that should be our focus.

We’re not supposed to rebel? To stand up to Caesar? When Caesar demands that we surrender our minds and hearts to him, our individuality and integrity, an agent of Soul that’s Innocence can’t be our guide. The world of Jesus has no boundaries. Our world does. We do what’s necessary to protect our independence and democracy. Join together not as a tribe bent on cycles of destruction but as family with one specific, shared purpose: to keep the beast from crossing our boundaries.

When that’s done, we get back to our real work. This is why World War II was thought of as a “good” war. There was a beast to be slain, we came together as one to slay it, disbanded, and resumed peaceful lives when we were done.

When Eros took a stand for Love

The story of Jesus took one approach to authority that's unloving. There's another? The myth of Psyche and Eros. Psyche was a girl so innocent and beautiful that she was attracting people away from the temples of Aphrodite. Just like people were paying attention to Jesus instead of their religious rulers. Aphrodite was an Olympian goddess, jealous of her power and cruel toward anyone who questioned it. She didn’t crucify Psyche but she did make her perform tasks that would have killed her if she didn’t have help.

What happened? The last task -- an errand to the underworld -- almost did kill her. While she lay unconscious her lover Eros came and rescued her. Aphrodite’s son, who was also an Olympian. He brought his Love up to Mount Olympus to be with him. Like Jesus, she ascended to Heaven.

Wasn’t Aphrodite mad? Very! To save Psyche Eros had to escape from the room his mother had locked him in. Which means he had been forced to yield to cruel and unjust authority and he rebelled. Once her son made it clear that his mother couldn’t control him she had to give way. Because nothing can control Free Will and character when it stands up for itself. Like the wild Siberian tiger that is your spirit of Free Will and character. Eros stood up to his mother and when he did, he stood up for Love.

Trust in Jesus, Soul of Innocence

This was the form that Psyche’s “resurrection” took: rescue by rebellion. Jesus couldn’t role model rebellion against a force that Innocence couldn’t recognize. That would only make it real. Any form of attack always implies that its opponent exists. And if Jesus came to represent another world that exists attacking our world wouldn’t make a very good case for it. It would tell us that he’s an ordinary person we can’t trust. Exactly!

The reappearance of Love and Innocence after fear and guilt tried to make it disappear was his “rebellion.” An act of Truth that attacked no one, yet it helped with understanding that authority that rules by force can’t be Truth. It can only “be” an appearance. A specter of fear and guilt. A deception that’s meant to deceive. A boogeyman. Not like Jesus. No. Not like the Soul of Innocence and Honesty that we can trust.

Whither sixth sense?

Whether we can trust the way that ordinary persons and their institutions have represented Jesus over the years is open to question. The way that he represented himself is not. When we apply the Logic and Love that he shared to his story it resonates with Truth. That’s what my sixth sense tells me. What does yours tell you? When the eggs are all dyed and hidden I'll definitely think about it.

Happy Easter to you! Happy Easter Jesus! I love you! Me too!

Published on Leave a comment on Resurrection: Life and Love Unyielding, Life Eternal

When Soul walks among us, loves us, teaches us
and is taken away
When mind and heart cry out for Love
and all that can be heard is silence
Their voice expands into every corner of time and space

With the Force of Truth:
That Soul can never be taken away
That mind and heart crying out for Love will aways be heard.

We return today in observance of the Truth
The Life of Soul that was shared with us intact
Its example an inspiration yet

When the mistake cycles back on us like a shadow
from Groundhog Day
Lifting us from sleep to getting it right

From giving up to never giving up:
To theft of Soul, silencer of voice
To self-regard, its voice the only voice
Denial of Truth, hope and Soul, mind and heart

The imposition of mistake upon itself
Silenced by its own crucifixion, denied its own resurrection
The emptiness of authority for its own sake
That would replace the fullness of Love

It didn’t happen then and it can’t happen now.
When will it happen? Never.
What the Life and example of Jesus mean to me.
Resurrection. Life and Love unyielding. Life eternal.

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Published on 2 Comments on Mind Plus Circumstance: Where the Action Is

The original premise

The original-archetypal circumstance was the Necessity of circumstance: a premise. A premise that any state or no state is circumstance that cannot ever be at rest. Not at the “beginning” because there can be no “beginning” without time, nor at the “end” because there’s no “end” to the eternal Now. And because circumstance will still be a Necessity that moves forward with Logic-Love.

The question what was the original circumstance that preceded Reality-Creation is meaningless in the context of eternal Now without beginning-ending. Its meaning is limited to another context: the context of the instrument whose function is implied by the premise of circumstance: to give circumstance existence in a state of Reality-Creation that has Order and Worth. The instrument that is Mind composed of Logic inseparable with Love. And its function was the “original” implication of Logic and the value / relationship-connection of Love.

Unrest at the “beginning”

Within the context of Mind and its function the meaning of the “original” circumstance was unrest.  Circumstance poised-unconsummated until the Connection-Relationship between circumstance and Mind was established that processed it into existence. That thereby set Reality-Creation in motion with the necessary attributes of Logic / Order and Love / Purpose-Worth.

“Circumstance” defines the state of anything or nothing, state or statelessness. There is no “state” that is not in some way “circumstance.” It necessarily implies the function of Mind to process it. If a definition is needed of the “tao” that exists beyond any discernible purpose or meaning, right or wrong, it would be “circumstance,” because circumstance and Mind are one and the same. One cannot exist without the other.

“Unrest” defines the “original” state of circumstance because it necessitated the function of Mind, they’re inseparable, and the connection necessarily implies a reciprocal-infinite process: circumstances feeding into Mind reciprocating its implications and relationships to produce more-changing circumstances.

The pitch for self-delusion

The idea that Reality-Creation began with a state of rest that could remain unchanged in perpetuity, to which our souls may return at some point to linger forever in “heaven,” is an impossibility in any context. It’s a deliberate deception whose purpose isn’t to entice us into paradise after death. It’s to set off the excitement of stuff happening in our alternate “reality” against the boredom of “heaven” and so to keep us firmly locked into our alternate “reality.”

To keep us captive to our self-delusion because the alternative is worse. To pitch reincarnation that keeps the “action” going here -- endless cycles of cruelty and injustice, fear, guilt, and existential threats -- instead of waking up to the scam and finding our way Home. When we realize that what’s going on with Mind-circumstance in Reality-Creation and our role in it is where the action is. And the only “action” here is ending our delusion.

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The organs of Life

All of Reality-Creation is one Being. One Self that contains within itself Relationships between aspects of itself that perform functions. Functions that enable Creation to function. The process and structure of Creation are one interrelated whole. One living, organic Being expressing the value, the Worth, of Life, of Being, and its works: the extension and continuous expansion of Life. The evolution and growth of Life.

The exhortation from Being’s emissaries that reach us from Reality-Creation, that we Love one another and live in Peace, is, at the most elemental level of Understanding, no more than a reminder that we are all part of One Self. The exhortation that reaches us in our illusory material world, that we not hate and attack one another, is no more than a reminder that it's impossible to separate from one another let alone attack, injure, and destroy one another. For when we try to do so we are only turning against ourselves.

The Relationships contained within Creation’s One Self are between different aspects of the same Self. They are not and cannot be between separate parts. They are between distinct functions of the same One Self that serve and share in the unified purpose of Creation. One organic Life composed of organs each with its own function.

The dream of all things impossible

Einstein tried to theorize with physics and mathematics how the principle of unity is expressed through our material universe. Plato tried to theorize with philosophy how it’s expressed through Mind in the presence of the cosmos. Where both sensed the divine, feeling the presence of Psyche, the Soul that connects all Life with its Source, the One Self of Creation. Unaware, because we occupy a dream of its opposite, that the principle expressed through our material universe cannot be unity, and so they failed.

The principle instead is separation. The impossibility which can only be an appearance, the delusion of an unconscious mind that’s dreaming. For even if separation appears to be real everything within our universe is interconnected. It is, as physics tells us, “relational.” Particles are, as quantum mechanics tells us, “entangled.” Thoughts like these that reach their audience through electronics because the cosmos is interconnected by electronics -- the electromagnetic force. A cosmos described as a neural network, as though it were a single brain. Which it may be: the reverse mirror image of the sleeping Mind that’s projecting it. Where separation cannot be real, even in a horror show of contradiction, conflict, and violence meant to fool its occupants into thinking it’s real.

All things impossible, all things contradictory and illogical, become possible in an illusion. All Order disorder, all laws lawless, all authority powerless when script and rules are both written by a Mind making up an alternate “reality. By the dreamer, the only possible identity for the authoritarian who would rule above the law. Arbitrarily, subject to no law but its own whim. A day-dreaming fool.

Reality is the authority of Mister Nice Guy

The Reality of Creation is expressed as a distinct aspect of the One Self, the function of Order that fits together all the parts, the functions of Creation defined by Logic-Love through its laws of cause and effect. The Reality of Creation is the Beauty of Order expressed through harmony, the joyful spontaneity of Peace and Freedom. Order that cannot be the handiwork of authority imposed from the top down, arbitrarily, above the law.

The Reality of Order that makes Beauty and its attributes possible can only be expressed logically through the function of Necessity, the Force of laws of cause and effect, distinct from the function of Creation. So that the Worth of Creation may be shared, affirmed, enabled, and empowered from below. So that it may not be compromised by ownership, possession, and control from the top down.

Reality is not No More Mister Nice Guy

Within the One Self that is Life-Creation there is the Reality of Necessity: the immutable sequence of Logic and authorship, distinctions between before and after, author and authored, Creator and Created, Parent and Child. Relationships that may be defined by firsts and seconds in logical succession but do not and cannot logically imply the dominance and “supremacy” of authority that rules from the top down. That cannot imply ownership, possession, and control, the perversions of authority implied by a material world of appearances occupied by illusory bodies and other physical objects.

Dominance, “supremacy” and the rest are attributes of an alternate “reality” that can only “exist” within a Mind unconscious and dreaming. Within an illusion where anything goes. Creation is all parts fitting together in harmony within One Self that is Reality, distinct from Creation, that cannot be where “anything goes.” That is and must be defined by the laws of cause and effect. By the Force of Necessity that doesn’t rule from the top down, above the law, arbitrarily, but enables governance and Order supportively from the bottom up. Symbiotically, synchronously, with the Logic and Love, the sharing, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment of the Soul and Source of Creation. The One Self that is Creation.

What happened to Houdini’s elephant?

The distinction between Reality and Creation occasions a deception within the dreaming Mind, the function of Free Choice, that is uniquely harmful: the reversal of the relationship between Reality and Creation. Accomplished by the perversion of Reality that necessitates harmony supportively through laws-Necessity from the bottom up into unreality that necessitates disharmony through arbitrary lawlessness from the top down. A reversal of the Energy-Force of Necessity from its light side -- Life --in Reality to its illusory dark side -- death -- in unreality. A consequence of one magic trick by the illusionist, the shadow reflection of unconsciousness, our ancestral Mind’s self-delusion. Its mistaken identity: the disappearance of Reality from Creation, of the harmony, peace, spontaneity, and Freedom of Order made possible by the laws of cause and effect, and its replacement by unreality and its laws of chaos. Like the disappearance of Houdini’s elephant with no explanation, no Logic, into thin air.

The disappearance of sanity and its replacement by insanity with no explanation, no Logic, into thin air. A state of Mind that in our terminal confusion we take to be “normal.” That we adapt to until -- what? Until insanity and chaos have brought total disorder and there is no more room to maneuver. No more room to adapt.

Avoidance doesn’t work

How could this happen? It could happen because, as the founder of modern neuroscience once observed, “The ‘destructive phase’ always reappears, and each iteration of wars is more horrible than the last.” Because “Our nerve cells continue to react in the same way as in the Neolithic Age.”*

It could happen because, so long as we allow ourselves to be fooled by the illusionist’s trick, by our own limbic mindless will; so long as we passively submit to the illusion, to our Neolithic animal fears, chained to our seats in Plato’s Cave by self-delusion, events that we imagine we have avoided by not understanding will overtake us.

When do we tire of the joke?

And then what? It’s all over?

Actually no. Because the function defined for the Child Free Choice within the One Self of Creation is still needed and must be performed. Free Choice that we are, wild card that we are, we are still governed by Logic-Love and subject to the Force of Necessity. Though authoritarian “realists” may think otherwise we author neither ourselves nor the rules that define Reality.

Our choice is when to learn our lesson. There is no whether. What’s Real is what must be. There’s no fooling around forever with escapes into made-up “reality.” Into substitutes for consequence. For the satisfactions of three-dimensional Life that is Life instead of the one-dimensional facsimile, the antics of a cartoon, that only delusion can inhabit.

So when do we get it together? When do we tire of the joke and get serious? When do we turn to insights from Intuition, our pathway to Logic and Love? To metaphysics for explanation that leads to Understanding? Why not Now?

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*Alec Wilkinson quoting Santiago Ramon y Cajal in “Illuminating the Brain’s ‘Utter Darkness’.” Review of Benjamin Ehrlich, The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramon y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron. In New York Review of Books (February 9, 2023, p. 32)

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What was lost? 

Until the End of Time, Brian Greene’s inquiry into “Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe,” (Knopf 2020), begins with a familiar refrain:

[P]rofound questions abound, like what or who created space and time, and what or who imposed the guiding grip of mathematics, and what or who is responsible for there being anything at all, but even with all that left unanswered we’ve gained powerful insight into the cosmic unfolding. (p. 53)

What was lost when humanity’s ancestral Mind lost consciousness? The Child of Parents, Logic (masculinity) married to Love (femininity), in the Reality that preceded ours. That produced our alternate “reality.” That parallels the dream of an unconscious Mind that is our “reality” and contains the explanation for everything that “happens” inside it. Including Brian’s evolving universe, a reverse mirror image of Reality and Truth -- the unconscious Mind that’s dreaming it. That only happens to be the biggest of the perversions of Reality and Truth that make up what we call “life.” A stew of contradictions that can only be the imaginings of a split mind. Child that lost its Mind when it lost consciousness.

Lost Connection -- the implications of Logic, the relationships of Love, and the Oneness of its Psyche-Soul -- that bind all of Reality-Creation together into one harmonious whole. Lost the faculties of Mind-thought and Love-feeling that gave it Self-Awareness. The capacity to think logically. The capacity to feel lovingly. To judge with values drawn from the Worth of Life, of Creation, the substance of Reality and its laws of cause and effect. Of the Necessity of Right and Good that serves and governs all of Creation. The authority of Authorship.

What wasn’t lost?

Had all this not been lost Greene’s Until the End of Time wouldn’t have to admit that its “search for meaning,” like Hawking’s “quest for knowledge,” only begs the question. The question that humanity must and can address, because the “meaning” of “life,” the “knowledge” of its origin and fate, is an absurdity without it. Physics, philosophy, psychology, and theology can’t keep entertaining their audience with erudite “answers” that fail to address the right question. With empty circumlocution based on circular, self-referential “reasoning.” They can’t keep getting away with it.

What wasn’t lost was Free Choice. Because the Child of Logic-Choice and Love-Freedom is Free Choice. It’s why the Child was brought into Being, to introduce the element of Free Choice without which the Worth of Reality-Creation cannot be affirmed and reciprocated.

What wasn’t lost was Intuition. Though we are but projections of a split and dreaming mind, a collective unconscious lacking Self-Awareness, we are part of Connection that can never be broken in Reality. We have access to Logic and Love, our Parents, through intuition. Through insights that come of their own accord, never to compromise Free Choice but only to respond to its call for Love and Guidance.

What does it take to access the answers that are missing? That ought to launch Greene’s flight into outer space? Using the connection to Logic and Love that can never be broken. Using Intuition and exercising Free Choice that can never be lost.

What follows are observations fed by the intuition of one individual who chooses to go where John Milton went in Paradise Lost. Into another Reality, a “paradise” that preceded the “fall.” That, unlike Greene’s universe of spacetime-matter, has a point. Inquiry made possible because it’s freed from captivity to sensory perception and the quantitative measurements of science. The dead weight of authoritarian “realism” that denies intuition and blocks insight.

What gives me the right? What is my “authority?” Logic itself, the root of metaphysics. And Love, the source of motivation. The Voice for Intuition and Free Choice that either makes sense or it doesn’t. That comes close and distances itself spontaneously. I’m not trying to lead. I’m trying to listen. Trying to follow. To get it right.

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The masses can’t lead the way

Quantum gravity is beyond the reach of experimental physics. Nils Bohr broke the news over a century ago with the Copenhagen Interpretation. Physicists attached to their work and its larger service to humanity carried on undaunted until a few years ago, when Carlo Rovelli, Adam Becker, and probably other chroniclers of their profession accepted the inevitable and turned to philosophy for help. Our physical environment seems to be telling us that of course everything is as it appears to be on one level while nothing is as it appears to be on other levels. The human scale we take for granted versus the macroscopic cosmos and microscopic particles, both notorious for forms and behavior of energy that can’t be pinned down. Like a rodeo bull determined to buck its rider, spacetime-matter resists all efforts to turn it into a pet: knowable, predictable, and obedient to the rules of the household. The mind of its own doesn’t want to cooperate.

At a moment like this --

  • When humanity’s assumption has fallen flat, all the way back to Galileo and Aristotle before him -- that science, the study of matter, will explain everything. T hat explanation can be verified through experiments, and then we will finally know.
  • That Hawking’s “quest for knowledge” will have rewarded humanity’s patience with his profession leading the way. Will have rewarded humanity’s patience, its faith in it, with answers. With Understanding that finally frees us from endless squabbles over ideologies that compete for Truth and supremacy, in our minds and the arena of physical conflict beyond.
  • That even though sensory perception -- the guide to understanding provided by the body’s senses -- and the quantitative measurements of science obviously can’t tell the whole story, since mind and qualitative considerations beyond bodies and laboratories have their own stories to tell, the study of matter bodies can detect, can see, touch, hear, taste, and smell, ought to be enough.
  • Because if it isn’t enough, what other shared source of experience can certify its legitimacy so readily? So convincingly? What other source can deserve to be labeled “realistic” when other sources have already resulted in a crazy quilt of irreconcilable differences? Have already discredited themselves with departures from Logic and common sense. With frightful rubbish.

At a moment like this --

  • Hope gives way to despair. Hope that collective efforts in any field -- science or economics, philosophy or psychology, engineering or theology -- will get the job done.
  • Because physics had made great strides without having to parse the movements of every particle. It could do with calculations based on probabilities -- how great masses of particles were likely to behave.
  • Because other fields had made great strides the same way, basing their paradigms on assumptions about the judgments of masses of minds.
  • It seems we can’t do that anymore. Letting great masses of anything lead the way is a dead end. What “most people” think or do isn’t the reliable guide to common sense it’s always seemed to be.

Sister Sledge was right: We are family

At a moment like this, one is thrown back on one’s own judgment. Realizing that we are as individual particles whose behavior does have to be parsed. That the answers we long for are somewhere out there if they aren’t here in our own minds, in the minds of other individuals thinking like us or on different tracks. But either way, getting somewhere on their own, individually, without peer pressure to conform with hidebound convention, with party lines, with careers and employers. To submit to the tyranny of groups, the graveyard of individuality. The barrier, once and for all, to real progress.

But how, without groups, can one search the data base of individuals to find those who are getting somewhere? Thinking logically, systematically, of their own Free Will, to weave their way through all the analytical dead ends, the deceptions, temptations, and flawed reasoning, to come up with solid theories, plausible story lines that free us from the confinement of bodies. That take us beyond “grounding” in an illusion that energy built in service to an unconscious, dreaming mind.

Why does it matter that there may be other individuals whose minds are similarly connected? Occupied with the same cause, aided by the same function of mind -- Intuition -- that produces insights from the same source, Logic bonded with Love. While we are individuals we are also family. Family interconnected through our Psyches, our Souls. Not through massed bodies that create the illusion of unity only to fragment into quarreling factions. It matters because we aren’t isolated, separate bodies. The thoughts and feelings of individuals shared through our common ancestral Mind, the Child of Logic-Love whose story defines ours, have substance. Brought into compelling relevance every day by Relationship: us to Child, Child to Parents.

Between Parent and Child: Love that will not be denied

Though our world of incessant contradiction and conflict wants us to believe otherwise we are all one Child. Not split minds as we appear to be but of one Mind. And the Child, our ancestral Mind, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in Relationship with its Parents. Parents who are far from indifferent to its condition. Their will is to have their Child back with them in Self-Awareness. Not the state of self-delusion that condemns the Child and us, its imagined projections, to foolishness. To perversity that is the state of “reality” in an entropic universe and the bodies and brains that occupy it. Occupants of Plato’s Cave, so thoroughly indoctrinated with delusion no force on earth can part them from it.

If the Child’s condition and story defines ours, it is the will of the Child’s Parents to awaken it that won’t let the story rest until it gets there. Until Free Will animated by the will of Necessity, the laws of cause and effect, guided by Relationship, extricates the Child from its self-imposed confinement, from Its dream.

There are no two greater forces at work, here and now, than these: the Child wanting to be back with its Parents and its Parents wanting their Child back.  One searches for other individuals engaged in the same cause because in Relationship there is healing and in healing there is Force. Relentless and not to be denied. Because aligning with the shared purpose of healing, to restore the Relationship, cannot fail.

The embrace of Necessity

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is not religion. It’s not “faith.” New Age or group of any kind. It’s not even “Christianity,” even though it borrows terminology and concepts from a religion hard-wired into a culture that crosses national and continental boundaries and so serves as a common language. It’s a voice helping us with elements of the laws of cause and effect sourced from Logic married to Love. With Necessity that we need to guide us toward awakening, the bottom-up authority backed by Force that can’t be deceived or bargained with by wills who would replace it with illogic, fear, guilt, and hatred from the top down. With the lawlessness of arbitrary rule if they could.

ACIM’s antecedents in human thought are many. Human thought venturing through the minds and unique circumstances of individuals, relying mainly on authoritarian “realism, hasn’t woven a coherent pattern. Pieces of ACIM seem to ricochet off points along the way but rarely with recognition. They’re tracked in Kenneth Wapnick’s Love Does Not Condemn: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil According to Platonism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and A Course in Miracles (Foundation for “A Course in Miracles” 1989). They include, among others, Neo-Platonism and Gnostic Christianity.

But all ACIM is, for me, is Logic married to Love. What Parmenides was trying to get at with metaphysics: a version of our story that takes us beyond appearances, only much more. Beyond the faux “reality” framed by sensory perception, the imagery of bodies, into the Reality of Mind. Mind whose functions don’t limit us to curiosities and anomalies of matter that can’t be explained by brains but free us instead to observe, reflect, reason, evaluate, and judge wherever Logic and Love lead us. Responding to the will of our ancestral Mind’s Parents to return Free Choice to its role in Creation. When it has learned its role from the trial and error of experience, When it shares their will. When it’s ready of its own Free Will to align with Logic-Love and embrace Necessity instead of opposing it.

What’s it like? Every day a fresh harvest

Feed the body and what comes out the other end is waste. Feed the mind and what comes out the other end is creativity. My mind before I took two and a half years to read ACIM received insights from intuition, enough to keep me functional but at a sluggish rate. Thirty years of reflection and practical application brought about a dramatic change. My perspective went from close identification with the Child to the first glimmers of identification with the Parents. From the Child’s craving to the Parents’ craving restoration of their Relationship to its state of awareness before the Child lost awareness.

Three years ago, January 2020, nourishment from the Logic-Love of ACIM began producing an outpouring of insights from intuition that was unprecedented. Not for extraordinary minds whose creativity accounts for human progress, but certainly for ordinary me. The transition in my mind’s ability to free itself from convention, from unremarkable to remarkable, was startling. As though a portal had opened that allowed me to free-associate across different perspectives. To ride the implications of logic to fresh insights. To germinate ideas from questions to answers as though they were fruit waiting to be picked from trees. Every day a fresh harvest.

Welcome to the world of the thinker and the writer. In relationship with Logic and Love through their agent, a friend. Brother or sister -- take your pick. Name? It doesn’t matter.

From explanation to Understanding

“Jesus,” the author of ACIM, isn’t an instrument of blind faith meant to sweep aside the free spirit of inquiry. To substitute arbitrariness for Reason. For the laws of science to suffocate discovery with the dead weight of “morality,” with “culture” and “tradition.” All the resistance to the name “Jesus,” all the skepticism, is based on misperception. Of what and who he represents and what he does. If he's resisted, misrepresented, mischaracterized, then he’s misunderstood. And so are the Parents, Logic-Love, the source of his agency in our lives. Why must Logic-Love strive to be heard? Because it’s precisely who they are and what they do that we don’t get: Logic and Love. It’s precisely to bring the gift of Logic and Love into our minds, our thoughts, our feelings and values, our judgment, that Jesus makes himself available. Touches us when we allow ourselves to be touched. Answers when we ask and are ready to listen. Comforts us when we fear and despair.

“Jesus” is a construct that comforts. That allays fears among many and particularly the individuals addressed by the voice heard in ACIM.  But in different circumstances. Meant to comfort, to allay fears because when addressing humanity, this would be the first requirement before a voice could be heard. The occupants of Plato’s Cave are as fearful of their situation as they are determined to cling to it. “Jesus” can’t be a “savior” because to be accepted and used as such would defeat his purpose: to guide ours, the Child’s efforts, to open our minds of our own Free Will to Understanding. Our own understanding from independent judgment, not someone else’s imposed from the top down. ACIM and its guide have no need for religious “faith” or for “saviors.” It’s an expression of Logic and Love combined that offers us the tools we need to intuit the Truth of circumstances and role models their use. So we can not only grasp Reality behind appearances but apply it. To guide us through passages in our everyday lives that present us with obstacles to remove and issues to resolve. With problems that require practical solutions.

A misperception accounts for the mother of all injustices, the attribution of a will to rule from the top down to the Parents of the Child. Whose authority governs from the bottom up, not to own, possess, and dominate but to share, affirm, enable, and empower. The same misperception also accounts for the attribution of character and intent to ACIM and its source that don’t fit. What would correct it? An understanding of Logic combined with Love, for that is what ACIM is. The undoing of illogic delivered through the voice of authority, from the bottom up, that shares the perspective of both Parents and Child. These prerequisites to awakening are deceptively simple in the telling but complicated in their application. For Understanding, Logic and Love were casualties of the Child’s loss of consciousness. And recovering them through self-awareness isn’t optional. It’s built into the laws of cause and effect. It’s necessary. 

Authorship from the bottom up: the ultimate source of authority 

The role sought by the shadow-reflection, the self-delusion I call the Joker, is the role of its opposite: the Author. The individual projection taken captive by the Joker, a virus who misperceives authority as top-down. Who practices authoritarian politics in a bottom-up democracy, seeks to turn democracy on his head. Seeks to fill the role of top-down authority which in Reality-Heaven doesn’t exist. What does exist is Reality-Truth based on laws of cause and effect given Force by Necessity. The role of Logic-Love that supplies the substance of laws-Necessity isn’t enforcer. It’s Author. Its function is Authorship. The source of empowerment, not dictatorship.

The Joker assumes, wrongly, that authority must come from power to rule from the top down. Authorship empowers from the bottom up with laws of cause-effect armed with the Force of Necessity based on and consisting of the Oneness of Logic-Love, its own authority. Its own legitimacy, its own authority based on Logic-Love and Laws-Necessity. The authority of Logic-Love, the lessons of Jesus in ACIM, need no external legitimacy. The Relationship between laws and Necessity is the source of Force that can’t be opposed without self-denying consequences. Without self-elimination from Reality-Creation. Authorship is self-empowering Oneness-Innocence without opposition. Self-empowering by what it is, by Being that has no opposites, no opposition. The source of Necessity because Necessity is the Force, the implication of Being, that can have no opposite in Reality.

Innocence without opposites: the ultimate source of power

This is the ultimate “Necessity.” If the self-delusion Joker, an opposite, presumes to replace Authorship, it goes up against Authorship that by definition can have no opposite in Reality. It will therefore cause its own elimination. Elimination by Necessity is self-elimination because the “opponent” is Oneness harmlessness-Innocence. Because Authorship in Reality that supports and governs Life-Creation is harmless.

Necessity is harmless. And therein lies the misperception of the Joker: the perception that in the harmlessness of Innocence is weakness. When in Reality it’s the source of empowerment. All empowerment originates in the harmlessness of Oneness-Innocence because this is the point in all of Reality-Creation where by definition there can be no opposites. Where opposition does not and cannot Be. Cannot exist. The Joker’s perception that power resides in Reality where there is the capability to harm is exactly wrong. It’s wrong in Reality and it’s wrong here in unreality. Harmfulness is not strength, it’s weakness. The contrary view is but one of the Joker’s many perversions of the Truth -- a joke.

Impossibility: alternate reality, alternate authorship

The Joker’s ambition is insane: to replace Authorship so it can exercise “power” by inflicting harm, by denying Free Will. A direct contradiction of laws of cause-effect and Necessity that can only find expression in illusion composed of impossibilities, of perversions of Truth. It can’t “succeed” for long in unreality composed of split minds that align with the agent of Logic-Love as well as submit to self-delusion. Unreality must be contradiction; therefore split minds are minds in a state of contradiction.

The role of Jesus is to demonstrate the insanity of contradiction through miracles that demonstrate the unreality of one side of the split mind. It’s to role model the benevolence and harmlessness of Authorship, its being its own source of authority. Necessity which in our state of unreality is helpful, healing. To demonstrate the miraculous effectiveness of Logic-Love Reality-Truth Authorship in contrast to yielding unreality. The example set by Jesus demonstrated not just the Force of Reality-Truth, of Authorship, but also the powerlessness of unreality-untruth, the insanity of replacement authorship. Top-down “authority” is a lie, an illusion. A contradiction of laws-Necessity.

The controlling consideration for the play-actor entertainer, the Joker with its jokes, is how it’s perceived when it gets the attention its act requires: as an innocent, “exonerated” in the devious act of “winning” its uncontested supremacy. Truth and Honesty are sacrificed for perception and deception if they conflict. And they always do. The controlling consideration for the Joker can never be Truth and Honesty.

Get in the shower!

I’m talking about the politics of polarization and misinformation that plagues us today. And a lot else. I’m giving an explanation from the roots of Reality that shows us, if we’re willing to listen, the error of our ways and how to fix it. The patterns of misperception and misjudgment that are taking us and our one-and-only habitat, Mother Earth, down. Rooted in the story from the Reality that preceded ours and accounts for ours. A story rooted in illogic, a mistake that can only be corrected by Logic. By Logic married to Love.

Can it be articulated with clarity? To minds that are mostly authoritarian “realists.” Corrupted and compromised by self-delusion, occupants of Plato’s Cave chained to their seats. Does it matter if anyone listens? If one individual gets it, bonds with an emissary from Logic-Love, and truly forgives, it matters.

Exploring beyond the scope of ACIM needn’t be beyond minds guided by Logic-Love from Intuition. The question that is beyond imagining is the bonding: when and how it will occur. When and how one individual will become so intimate with an emissary from Logic-Love, the Child’s Parents, that perspective will transcend the illusion and see the Truth. We get just a whiff of it when we step into the shower and are instantly visited by insight.

So OK. You want practical solutions to practical problems? Get in the shower!

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The Child must choose and earn what it cannot inherit

If Heaven-Creation is all about Worth then it’s logically-necessarily all about being chosen and earned. These are the attributes, the Definition, of Worth-Creation: that it must be freely chosen and earned to exist, to Be.

The Child’s travails in unreality are choosing and earning its functions that give it the capacity to Be-belong and Do-perform in Creation, functions that it could not inherit:

  • Oneness-Innocence of the kind-Definition that can only exist on the Child’s plane of Creation, with the possibility of shadow-opposites in an unconscious dream state. The Innocence of Oneness of the kind that can only exist on Parents’-Being plane is the impossibility of opposites by Definition.
  • Free Will of the kind-Definition that can only exist on the Child’s plane of Creation, the Doing-performing / choosing kind, with the possibility of shadow-code captivity in an unconscious dream state. The Free Will of the kind that can only exist on the Parents’-Being / Consciousness plane, the Being / Growing-birthing kind -- marriage of Father-Mind / Choice with Mother-Mind / Freedom – that is impossibility of captivity by Definition.

Humanity’s unreality – our world of bodies and spacetime-matter -- is a learning device, a stage that is a testing-proving ground. Since unreality is unreal this temporal “life” is a dress rehearsal without an audience, i.e. without Consciousness, for the Child’s performance in Reality with Consciousness, when the Child has corrected error and chosen-earned Free Will / performing and Innocence / Soul-Oneness Being.

All it takes is one individual

Unreality = trial and error. All of humanity’s ideologies-belief systems, all its established paradigms-religions of science, theology, philosophy, and psychology, based on the irrational faith-bias of circular reasoning rather than Logic, are trials that resulted in error, have failed and are failing. Failing not in spite of but because of dualism, i.e. flawed / circular self-referential “reasoning” that corrupts choice rather than undoing unreality-untruth. Ideology failures include top-down authoritarian, guilt / fear-based, biblical-orthodox “Christianity.”

The uncompromising non-dualism of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is bottom-up Logic that aspires to change the mind of the One Child through the individual, the logical stand-in for all of Child’s mirror-image illusory replications. It is not an ideology targeted at illusory “humanity” as a group-species but at the Real One-Child through the Holy Spirit, the mind-Intuition, Logic-connection of the individual. For if the mind of one mirror-image replication of the One Child is corrected then they’re all corrected because there’s no “they,” no “others.”

ACIM teaches that if one individual truly forgave it would overturn the ego’s house of lies and replace illusion with Truth. So, Jesus isn’t organizing anything. He’s not interested in founding a church because he’s fishing for one individual.

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Switch from focus on matter to focus on mind

First, by letting go of certainty that our material world of sensory perception is real. By going with the implications of what Adam Becker has posited, that it's illusory. Quantum gravity -- the goal that was beyond even Einstein -- has opened the door.

This is the real achievement, the real end-product, of centuries of physics studying matter: Eliminating certainty that bodies and sensory perception are the gold standard for establishing definitively what's real / "realistic" and what's not. Just as a physician would eliminate a diagnosis that doesn't fit the symptoms. Sticking with this one is increasingly uncool. It is wrong.

Addiction to sensory perception is the biggest barrier to restoring Consciousness. Physics / Becker is saying maybe the time has come to take it down. It could have come down long ago when Erwin Schrödinger acknowledged that science relying on sensory perception is circular self-referential reasoning -- matter citing itself. It's irrational -- not the best basis for a field that prides itself on objectivity and reliability.

Empirical measurements and experimental research have their place. But the door must open to Logic, where Parmenides and Plato began 2500 years ago. To insight from Intuition that connects minds to our collective Memory and Logic. To revelation that can only come from intuiting the story of Mind. The story of thought-reason and feeling-values. To the qualitative as well as the quantitative, to perception and judgment that include Worth.

Embrace the whole person with a systems approach

The quantum physicist Rovelli's Reality Is Not What It Seems calls for help from philosophy. Becker is not alone. Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolution says science should stay away from purpose. From supporting or "proving" any particular aspiration, philosophy, or ideology. Michael Stevens' The Knowledge Machine holds science to the same "iron rule" of detachment.

But meaning is impossible without engaging the total person, mind-feeling's entire story. Meaning-purpose is impossible without Understanding the whole context. Psychology and theology must be part of the mix along with philosophy and science. Regaining Consciousness requires a holistic, collaborative, systems approach.

Disengage from the wrong guide and choose the right Guide

Our world is a delusion whose source is an event from another Reality: The Child's mistaking its shadow-reflection for a savior that would substitute for its lost Parents, that would guide it to a substitute reality where it would be safe and could endlessly project its imagined guilt onto objectified-imagined "others." Where it could preserve its Innocence, thus ensuring endless conflict and misery. This is the psychopathology of the Child's error explained in A Course in Miracles (ACIM).

We do our part to restore Consciousness by correcting the error in all our choices. By not making unreality real, i.e. by not making our shadow-reflections real. By learning to recognize the Joker we've made of our shadow-reflections. By consciously withdrawing belief in its reality, by disengaging from it. By consciously undoing and invalidating all its appearances-deceptions / lies.

We do our part to restore Consciousness by learning to recognize the Guide that's been provided by Intuition-Memory to help with awakening. By consciously choosing the right Guide, seeking and following its Guidance in all our choices. By utilizing our talents and faculties of mind to build awareness through the exercise of Free Will: introspection, reflection-intuition, thinking-reasoning, feeling-evaluating, judging-choosing. By taking responsibility and holding ourselves accountable for our own learning and growth.

In the face of determined resistance: Never give up!

We restore Consciousness and regain self-awareness by taking issue with Hawking when he declared that "philosophy is dead." In an illusory world the goal is to get at reality, the purpose of philosophy. The goal is to get beyond appearances to the Truth beyond appearances: The purpose of metaphysics, the invention of Parmenides and his Eleatics School of Reason.

We do our part to restore Consciousness by supporting Philosophy and Metaphysics while we continue to support Science. The change of mind that's needed will meet determined resistance from many quarters. Mass extinctions from climate change may deny the attempt altogether. The unconscious Child may need to continue its saga on another planet in another universe.

There’s meaning embedded in the idea that begins the sequence of Logic: the idea of Possibility. The idea that lies at the heart of Creation. Perhaps a gift of Logos-God that’s meant to inspire our efforts now. It’s We will not be denied. It’s Never give up.

Published on Leave a comment on What is “Life”? What is “Creation”?

Life can’t just happen

A thing that has purpose, meaning, and worth can’t just happen. If it’s Life it has to be the Source or come from the Source that has purpose, meaning, and worth. Life by definition has purpose, meaning, and worth. It has to be Created.

Life has Logic, this is its Logic, and Logic is its Source. “Creation” by definition has purpose, meaning, and worth. This is its Logic and Logic is its Source.

Life on this planet, like the planet itself, is an apparition. Produced in a troubled mind imagining that it’s disconnected from its Source. Imagining that it’s to blame and punishment is sure to come. That there’s escape from fear and guilt in a separate world where it can hide itself in bodies and a wrathful Mind will never find it.

Life is Growth

Science that can’t agree on what “life” is looks for its definition in matter. Just as physicists trying to explain the universe look for answers in the behavior of matter. What does matter tell them? That some cells replicate and others don’t. That particles only exist if they connect. That particle behavior responds to being observed by mind. And time exists unless it doesn’t, and even then it’s no match for gravity. The “laws” of science died with Newton. Hawking didn’t even make a pretense of objectivity.

Schroedinger acknowledged that sensory perception validating the reality of what it senses is only validating itself – circular reasoning that physics is based on and so objectivity is dead on arrival. Yet the great minds of science march on in lockstep oblivious to the truth. Objectivity and reason are faculties of Mind. Purpose, meaning, and worth can only be attributes of Mind. Growth, the essence of Life, implies purpose, meaning, and worth. It’s impossible without Creation by Mind, its only possible Source.

The real “Big Lie”

Yes, something like “Life” “exists” on earth. We’re sure of it and so we apply our wits and energies to figuring out what it is, busying ourselves with the latest in technology to subject bits of stuff to ever greater scrutiny. Reeling corpses up to the top of gothic castles on gurneys, with electrodes in their necks, hoping that lightning will restore “life”. Imagining that pulpy stuff in our skulls with electrical charges, that can never tell us what we want to know, is the source of “consciousness.” It must be so because the authors of the American Heritage Dictionary assure us that it’s so.

The confused dreaming mind that imagines matter can’t allow itself to think otherwise or it will lose its hiding place, the real Big Lie. The place that hides itself in plain sight of the mind that can’t and won’t look for it where it is, inside itself. The bull insists on charging at a piece of red cloth not the matador. Missing over and over again until it’s exhausted and ready for the kill. Will the bull ever learn? Will science ever learn? Will humanity intent on its own destruction ever figure out where it came from? From matter? If so, does it matter? If Mind can be the only Source of Life that is Growth, that can’t be without purpose, meaning, and worth, then the answer to both is No.

Questions worth looking into

How do we get “Life” out of cells? How do we get “consciousness” out of brains? When interstellar travel is possible, maybe the great minds of science can tell us. Until then, the answer must be we don’t.

Real “Life” comes from Child-Mind taking part in Creation when he's Conscious. Matter doesn’t “create” anything. Anything that involves “Creation” can’t have anything to do with matter. Matter is illusion. Matter is dreaming. “Life” that we seem to get out of cells and “consciousness” that we seem to get out of brains are part of the dream. Appearances. Substitutes for the Real thing that speak not for the reality of “Life” but for the appearance of death. For a substitute mind, confused and misguided, whose thoughts can’t be Real.

Might we wonder why it’s confused? Whether it really is unconscious instead of Conscious? What caused Child-Mind to lose consciousness? What can Logic aided by Intuition, our Holy Spirit Guide, tell us about it? These are questions worth looking into. Do the lines of inquiry we’ve been following show any more promise?

Might we wonder about the state of mind that tolerates assaults on governance? That imagines that poetry, art, romance, and meaning are to be found in conflict and violence? That tolerates weapons everywhere, random eruptions of mayhem in schools, grocery stores, movie theaters? Shrugs and walks away as if nothing can be done about it? Until the weapons are turned on us and it’s too late?

Might we wonder about the state of mind that can’t be trusted with “Life”? That confuses “Creation” with destruction? That imagines there’s protection in numbers until the numbers are gone and the truth is exposed: we’re individuals huddled together in fear, finding strength in groups that hide our individuality but still can’t protect us? Who are we fooling? Surely this insanity has an explanation! Surely there’s a better way.

Putting mind to good use

Anything that’s pointless, meaningless, and worthless has no Logic. Can’t be the product of Creation and can’t be Life. Can’t be recognized by Logic and admitted into Reality. It's an impossibility that belongs in the Child's dream.

The purpose, meaning, and worth of human-body “lives” and their illusory material world consists entirely of the use that Child-mind is guided to put it to by his Intuition-Memory, the Holy Spirit. Meaning given to illusory human “life,” “relationships,” “happenings,” is not inherent in an unreal world that was made not Created. It’s derived and dependent on Child’s free choice of Holy Spirit guide instead of non-being ego guide.

The illusory projection of guilt from Child’s unconscious-dreaming mind and the illusory material world of human bodies that resulted is otherwise without real purpose, meaning, and worth. It is not Reality. It is not Life. It is not Creation.

What can we do about it? Choose the right Guide, change our minds, and wake up.

Published on Leave a comment on Remembering

Flitting in and out of others’ lives
Wondering what’s in it for me
Where what seems important
Comes and goes and isn’t worth much

Remember me mind and heart who stood
For something not in and out
Comes and goes, that speaks of Worth
Beyond time that can be shared

That doesn’t need for what’s here and gone
To be around to do Good
That’s not owned or controlled or used
To gain advantage
To be more than us or better than us

That’s only used to put minds at rest
And comfort knowing
That nothing can ever come between us

This is how I want to be remembered
When I think of you.

Published on Leave a comment on Beginning the Story of Mind

PREFACE

This is the first installment of the first draft of The Story of the Child (working title). It is my attempt to explain how the Child of our Parents, Father Mind-Logic and Mother Love-Freedom, given the gift of Life in Eternity and Reality, given a central role in Creation, lost Consciousness and wound up here in our temporal world of bodies and matter, mortality and unreality. If you're from the Judeo-Christian tradition it's a rewrite of the Garden of Eden. If you're from the Graeco-Roman or Eastern traditions, or from any other philosophy or religion, or if you're just wondering why we put up with suffering and death, this is my answer. It's one individual's reasoning for who we are, why we are here, and what we can do to part with appearances, deceptions and distractions, awaken, and resume our job in Creation.

It's based on Jesus' teaching in A Course in Miracles, a radical departure from biblical Christianity, but it goes beyond the scope of the Course. Its main source is the Memory we all share of the Child's Story and the intuition given to us to access it. Its main source, in other words, is no external "redeemer" but my own mind. In the end it's based on nothing more than what passes for logic and reason in my corrupted, irrational, human mind.

The first draft will be a tough read. Here are some definitions and guides to style and formatting that might make it easier:

* Initial caps refer to the part of the Child's story that occurred within Mind before he lost Consciousness. The same terms lower case belong to the story after he lost Consciousness and split off into multiple identities in our dream world of bodies and matter. I.e. initial caps belong to Consciousness-Reality, lower case to unconsciousness-unreality.

* The "Child" is us in our Conscious state when our Parents (Mind-Love, commonly referred to as "God" in monotheistic religions) gave birth to us in Eternity and Reality (commonly referred to as "heaven"). He was one Child. He was gender neutral for purposes of this telling; "he" is arbitrary and could just as easily be "she." Nevertheless the distinction between masculinity and femininity plays a key role in explaining his origin and central role in the Process and Structure of Creation.

* The "Child" is also us in our unconscious state, dreaming that we are split off into separated bodies. His identity comes from A Course in Miracles and my intuition, not from Carl Jung or any other source. The Course refers to the "Father" and his "Son" and "Sonship." The "Child" and his "Parents" are my invention.

* My book will have a bibliography and it will be sourced. It will be fleshed out with quotes from other sources. This first draft is just me winging it without notes or sources, an exercise in getting it right that will, from time to time, get it wrong. I hope, then, to fix any flaws in my reasoning, wrap it up, and seek publication.

Thank you for your patience! I hope this helps.

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INTRODUCTION: BEGINNING THE STORY OF MIND

There’s been all this talk through the ages about “God” and “spirit” when all we’re talking about is the most obvious thing in all Creation: Mind. It’s what we think with, so how could it be any closer or more familiar to us? And yet busy philosophers and theologists go fussing about searching for exotic terms and concepts to define the thing they’re searching with. We have our minds and we know what they do because they’re doing it all the time: they think. They come up with thoughts. And they string thoughts together in sequences that are supposed to be reasoning, but since we struggle to think with split minds in this existence we call “life” it’s either rationalizing instead or weak reasoning. Or just enough thought to spoon food into our mouths.

In the “beginning” there was no “beginning.” Time hangs around us like a dense fog because where our unconscious minds deposited us is in a dream where it’s never Now. If it were Now we would be awake. As simple as that. But merrily we go along in our ignorance believing whatever our bodies’ senses and our environment turn up even when our own investigations tell us the opposite. In the “beginning” there was just a wondering What might be fun to try? As if all this bother with Creation and Meaning, Mind and Being, were a parlor game gathering dust in the cupboard. Let’s try this game called “Mind.” And so Mind came into existence and, right away, there’s a problem. The directions say if Mind isn’t played just so the players might lose the whole game and flip into its opposite: mindlessness.

What’s that? Well, since we’re only equipped to play “Mind” we’ll never know. How can you figure out the opposite of what you’re using to figure out with? How can you fix a problem with an Atlas rocket with plumbing tools? We just have to leave the question unanswered. All we have to know is that Mind doesn’t occupy all the space there is that’s implied by the Question. Mind’s reasoning can figure that much out. We just have to remember that Mind’s existence isn’t a given because its opposite is waiting out there to kick in and we can’t be sure what will throw the switch.

Once Mind-Consciousness came into Being it advanced beyond its function of Self-awareness, from observation into its function of Thinking, into the production of Thoughts guided by its power and ability to Think Logically, i.e. to Reason, in service to its cause, Being. Thus began the extension and expansion of Mind’s Self-Knowledge / Self-Being, through the process of Thinking-Reasoning and its product, an interconnectedness of Thoughts.

Affirmation of Self-Worth was built into the Logic of Being, the essence of Character. Its expansion was therefore Self-motivated and not driven by the possibility of no-being or any other influence outside of itself. Its power was entirely Self-contained. It was not a “self-interest” engaged in the pursuit of self-preservation aware that it existed in an environment of competing self-interests.

Its Being was, nevertheless, only one logical answer to the Question and so, Self-affirmation was, in fact, a requisite for survival. It was required to sustain the cause of Being even if Mind that was purely Self-motivated could not be aware of it. The Logic of Mind requires that its state of Being be earned, that the stance of Being be independently supported by reasoned validation of, and commitment to, Being’s Worth. Creation and the Child’s part in it – our part in it once we regain Consciousness – became an essential means, an instrument, for Mind-Being’s Self-affirmation: Worth freely chosen, validated by the free spirit of Love from the Child that lies beyond our Parents' control.

As for the Child's Mind -- our Mind -- it figures out what’s needed to keep it in existence and then it devotes all its powers and resources to accomplish it. However uninspiring this may seem the Child's Mind -- our Being, our Self -- has to account for itself. It must establish its reason for being, its justification, its Worth, in all its choices, as though it did exist in an environment of competing self-interests, because that is, in effect, what its state of opposites is. It is the price we pay for having Free Will and a blessing too, for in so doing we contribute to the affirmation of our Parents' Worth. Unlike our Parents, we're aware that mindlessness is waiting in the wings, the void or whatever we want to call it, so there’s no excuse for lounging about on the promenade deck. There’s work to do and we’re part of it.

From the birth of the Child on, we have a Purpose: doing our part to affirm the Worth of Mind. Doing our part to Be.