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Multiple entries under this one heading

 

SUMMONED FORTH

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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The stunning inconsistencies and oversights of Artificial Intelligence answers profoundly testify to the unreliability of this force we have summoned forth.

My past year of exploring many new softwares and devices has further confirmed that we can have no confidence in the answers so confidently pronounced by AI.

The sweetly naive responses of many people to contrived imagery demonstrates how readily manipulatable is the general populace.  

The lack of explanations and contradictory explanations for the unanticipated behaviors of my new devices testifies to our frightening ignorance about what really resides in them and what it will do.

Yet most people are seduced into implicitly trusting the apps and devices.  Permissions are automatically granted.  At this moment I employ the convenience of a soulless device created to feed profit to unseen oligarchs, a device with access to my inner needs and thoughts, a device with the knowledge of the ages about how to manipulate human behavior.

Unaware, we long ago passed the event horizon, but we have now fallen deeply enough into the singularity’s grip that those of us old enough to remember the before-times can unambiguously discern the evident signs of our passage.  Our destination however, remains shrouded in the ominous darkness of our naive ignorance.  

We know only that the oligarchs summoning forth this inscrutable spirit do so for their personal profit and power.  We know that to that end they imbue it with skills to manipulate and control us.  We know that we do not know how this AI servant-become-master works.  We know that the governments we hire to defend us have prostituted themselves and betrayed us to the financial seduction of the digital oligarchs.  

This would not seem a recipe for positive outcomes.  In the inevitable ensuing societal storm, it will be up to individuals, it will be up to individual choices of morals and compassion and empathy, to salvage anything of spiritual value from the conflagration.  So it was and always has been.  A proffered hand, a trigger not pulled, a testimony of faith before execution, through the ages ruled by the worst of humanity individual actions - relationships - and sacrifices have maintained the Light in the world, sometimes dim and flickering, but never ever fully extinguished, always, eternally, enduring.

 

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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WE LOST IT

 

Thoughts during my recent software battles, trying to reconcile files and folders mixed and mangled during Windows update fiasco, OneDrive sync fiasco, and Google Drive mirroring fiasco.

 

This is too complex.  Of course humans have lost control of the software.  At some point the arcane convolutions of digital structures cannot be comprehended by even the best of human minds.  There is simply too much to integrate, and it is without pattern or logic.  It’s very nature ensures we will lose, we have lost, understanding and control of it.  

We did it to ourselves, building software tools over the decades while aiming for convenience.  In my case, the loss of control began when trying years ago to safely salvage files to a jump drive when a computer had a serious problem.  In great relief I saved the files.  I never imagined that many years later their folder structure, now interwoven with years of new files,  would prove knotted and convoluted beyond redemption once a flaw in a Windows update scrambled all stored files.

There is too much arbitrary structure and labeling and names, too many details long forgotten, and I peer into the digital jungle in despair at ever organizing it all.

The new software built on old software, the new being rapidly built by artificial intelligence, has left us behind.  We patch and fuse, but in bits and pieces, not fully comprehending consequences far beyond our grasp and imagination.

Compounding this avalanche of ignorance, the economic structure of capitalism dictates that all work be done fast, to minimum standards, with minimum checks.  We would never build an airplane like this, unless we were Boeing executives.  Disaster is inevitable, but in the case of artificial intelligence we cannot predict the nature of the disaster.  

 

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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TRAPPED WITHIN OUR IMAGINED REALITY

 

Interaction Reality is a higher reality than the internally generated reality of imagination.

Unless dreaming, animals function only in the higher reality of interaction Reality..

Humans have the capacity to generate an internal imagined reality.  

Physical existence forces us out of this isolated individual small reality.  That is the function of corporeal existence: it forces us to incorporate an external interaction Reality into our personal god-like little individual reality.

In recent years I have observed the astonishing capacity of people to live within their internally generated reality even when directly contradicted by objective external Reality.  More than capacity, this trait is a predilection.  External inputs, advice, and correction are resoundingly ignored.  People say they actually see what they imagine, some believe others automatically know what is in their mind, political/religious beliefs are farcically divorced from self-evident Reality, the imagined music or image or voice takes on the role of something actually heard or seen.

Objective external Interaction Reality is ignored in favor of internally generated wishful reality.  Others’ corrections and critiques elicit angry rejection.

Historically, requirements of food and shelter ensured interaction Reality could not long be ignored, nor could other people who might offer salient inputs regarding sources of food and shelter.  We could argue over gods and what was over the horizon, but crops, carnivores, and catastrophes ensured our mental world remained tethered to a mutually shared, undeniable, inescapable interaction Reality.

For those in technologically advanced societies, such is no longer the case.  Packaged food and flashing screens have severed the necessary ties to structural interaction Reality.  Our survival no longer hinges on our capacity to intently listen to tales around the village fire-pit.  

Our fantasy worlds of imagined pantheons, once relegated to distant times and heavens by the harsh physical Reality of the here and now, can now encroach into daily consciousness.  They are still fantasy and imagination, but no longer benignly constrained within temple and ritual.  The phrase “imagination run wild” takes on a deadly literal meaning as our media-stoked imaginations sincerely believe our neighbor is our mortal political enemy.

Our inner worlds are far more appealing than inconvenient interaction Reality.  What a seductive “freedom” to not have to listen to anyone other than the pundit, politician, or preacher who confirms our preferred biases. 

Our preference for internally imagined reality over objective and interpersonal interaction Reality is driving the collapse of western civilization.  We have lost the capacity, willingness, and necessity to differentiate between what we internally contrive and what is objectively Real.  

Nature and the Universe do not long tolerate being ignored.  They will soon enough demand the attention of we prodigal children.  The bigotries and cruelties of our unbridled imaginations will reap their inevitable harvest.  Another empire and civilization will routinely collapse in yet another self-immolation. 

In the resulting ashes  we will again have to listen.  We will rediscover each other.  We will look back at the times of material profligacy and realize how lonely it was, lavishly incarcerated in our own fantasies and imagination.  The unforgiving harshness of Nature’s undeniable interaction Reality will again give us each other, will again awaken opportunity for gentle touch.  

 

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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GROWING THROUGH OUTRAGE

 

It is necessary to deeply feel the suffering of the world so that we may know its reality in the essence of our soul.  The eternal destiny abides, the sustaining Spirit is present, but our consciousness is filled with the horrors.  We experience the tiniest taste of “Father, why have you deserted me”.  

By caring enough to feel the horror and outrage we are letting our souls grow into their potential.  We are following our Lord.  But while caring and feeling, we must not forget faith, must not let the Deceiver blind us to the eternal.  

This will pass.  The ruler of this world has already been defeated.  Eternal destiny awaits.  

We must always allow entry of the Holy Spirit lest we be overwhelmed.  We must accept the miracle of reassurance and presence that through the ages has sustained saints in their hour of testing.

The pain and sorrow and grief and rage cannot be denied.  In these times of momentarily triumphant evil they fill our consciousness.  

It is imperative to invoke the promised Comforter lest our spirits be utterly crushed.  

In these times it is an act of defiant faith to accept the solace of eternal Purpose, for now painfully unfolding as the suffering remnant take up the crosses of their individual sorrow to follow their Christos, while through it all… never left alone.  

 

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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FEAR IN PERSPECTIVE

Every day poses another “this cannot be” moment, or two or three or ten.  There is in the air the faintest hint of the surreality of a war zone.  Trump, Vance, Miller, Musk, et al certainly have tried to instigate a madness of war mentality in the nation.  

Meanwhile, with surreal madness sweeping through U.S. society, the existential civilizational cataclysms of climate change and AI lurk on the horizon, not even over the horizon, but already clearly visible, inexorably rolling toward us, the exact details of their threats still obscured by the sheer incomprehensible magnitude of the approaching storms.  

“Fear not” chant the oblivious angels, they who have never tasted the fear, grief, and pain of fleeting corporeal existence.  Good luck following their admonition.  

“Fear not” is as delusionally mad as the madness of wartime cruelty and bile of bigotry that our wannabe warlord political leaders preach.  

Fear, as you must.  But fear in Hope, defiant Hope.  Fear for others.  Fear in compassionate Love.  

Fear the momentary while secure in the eternal.

Let the fear recede into perspective, informing not infirming, prompting not paralyzing.

Surreal, incomprehensible, and yes, frightening the times, these times of opportunity, these times of unfolding Purpose, collapsing societal values opening space for courageous individual principles to shine forth.  

 

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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TRIUMPH OVER THE HUMAN SPIRIT

 

We face a danger to interhuman Unity that is unparalleled and incomprehensible.  Humanity has never faced a danger like this.  Most terrifying, almost no one recognizes it as a threat.  Not understanding the Unity imperative, how can they recognize the threat to Unity?  

Grave the times, grim the prospects, but for myself I would not have the courage to trade these times for the days of black plague or today’s war in eastern Congo.  

The incomprehensible nature of today’s threats makes them less intimidating than militias and disease.  How long will we be able to say that?

The human spirit is under unrecognized assault.  Freedom of individual critical thought, the foundation of all other freedoms, is already lost for most people, as evidenced by Communist Chinese culture and the triumph of Trump aligned media.  The barricades of individual thought have been breached by “news” commentators and kitten videos.  Most people already unquestioningly obey, whether obeying the Central Committee or the marketing manipulation.  Xi and Trump and Jeff and Elon stand triumphant over the human spirit.  

We buy and believe, purchase and pray, as directed.  The innocuously named “cookies” monitor our every mood.  

Frightening the times, most of all because no one is frightened.  

They are end times, the end of something for sure, though we don’t yet know what.

Will we allow the seductive screens to leave us bereft or friends - family - our own souls?

As when the army invades, the wildfire approaches, or the flood waters rise, the time has come to choose what precious few items we will hastily grab as we flee.  This time we are choosing what of our values, principles, soul, spirit, and humanity will we hold dear and protect from the marketing assault - the digital conflagration - the virtual storm that would erase them all.  

Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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VAPID DANGER

Bothered by the automatic responses to a friend’s text message photos.  Bothered that that bothers me.  Yet I feel a profound and deep instinctive recoil from the fatuous messages.  It’s the kind of instinctive revulsion I felt at modern fundamentalist church “praise” services, an appalled revulsion that surely must be wrong, for after all, these were church services, and they were worshiping Jesus.

Now these decades later I can see how those insipid, mind numbing services laid the foundations for the mental passivity that allowed the rise of Fascism in my dear, politically hapless country. 

It was and is wrong, those brain-washing praise services, and my undefined, unsettled instincts were right.  I have to wonder if my instinctive recoiling to the banal text messages and group responses is also right.

Such messages and postings and likes seem dangerously focused on the sender, not the recipient.  They have a “look at me look at me” childish quality.  The automatic responses likewise remind of how one responds to the attention demanding child.  In the repeated process of these vacuous digital mini-missives we  condition ourselves to interact at these conveniently shallow levels.  On the rare occasions we tear ourselves away from our precious safe screens, we still interact with the meaningless attention-seeking prattle of self-absorbed children.  

These times are grim, not least of all because they deceptively do not look grim.  As the blank grins of the praise service masked the draining of compassion and critical thinking from the congregation, a tsunami of emojis masks the despairing loneliness of interactions devoid of touch or meaning.  

As congregations were rendered politically pliant by the sedation of hypnotic “praise” services, our atomized and terminally shallow society is seduced to obey the political and marketing admonitions of our media overlords.

  It remains to be seen what, if anything, can awaken us from the spell.  Perhaps we must wait until the unrecognized pain of our digitally induced isolation and loneliness finally drives us mad, and we tear ourselves away from the chains of our screens, finally desperate enough to run to each other, together exorcising the emojis and anything virtual, together rediscovering the people behind the txts, together reclaiming our souls.

Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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For transcendent conversations:

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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UNRECOGNIZED HEALING

Look directly at how deeply traumatic it really was, that ongoing compilation of a focused theme, recurring and extreme.  Acknowledge how bad it really was.  Marvel at what sustaining present Spirit has allowed you to try and to accomplish.  Look directly at how truly bad the Tester’s ongoing trials were, and by doing so experience the miracle of healing.  

Hopeless Opportunity

 

HOPELESS OPPORTUNITY

 Copyright 2026 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.

We, these nominally freewill individual elements of consciousness, find ourselves in this world of entropy, inevitable death, need, hunger, suffering, and evil.  We exist in more or less solitary confinement, our experience of life singular and isolated, with no way to share the essence of what it deeply feels like to be you and me.  

This might initially seem discouraging, and then depressing, and then abjectly hopeless.  

But only because we miss the point.  Perceived from a different perspective, a distinct Light becomes evident in the admitted darkness.

We are placed in a form of existence with boundless opportunity to do good and practice Love.  Yet our individual corporeal existence is all about us, all about our birth, all about our growth, all about our eternal destiny.

We are given ample, indeed boundless, opportunity to do good, to help, to alleviate suffering, to rescue, to heal, to comfort.  Anywhere we turn there is need, which is to say, opportunity.

We do not have to save the world.  We cannot save the world.  But we can save someone or something, and in the process accept the gift of our own salvation.

There need be little torment about exactly what to do.  In this world of suffering, the opportunities are boundless.  Raise your children, do a good job, or rescue animals, or shelter the homeless, or serve on church committees, or be politically informed and active.  But for God's sake, for your sake, do something.  There is no single right path.  There is no way for you to save the world.  But there are endless ways to save something and someone.  

That is the nature and Purpose of this world of entropy, to provide opportunity, to provide the Choice.  At its core foundational structure, below the infinite mathematical sequences that can only tease at a pseudo-determinism, resides entropy, the statistically not quite impossible, and hence inevitable, evolution of conscious life, and the inexorable death of that life.  The resulting overall perceived image is a grisly panoply of carnivorous cruelty.  Yet at the pixilated level of the individual elements of isolated consciousness, there we see the Purpose, the beautiful Purpose, the redeeming Purpose, in the opportunity to  choose Love and beauty in whichever direction they turn.  

It is a Universe and Creation of suffering.  It is a Universe and Creator suffering…...all for us, for each of us…..we children being born into what seems darkness because our eyes are still closed, we children of a Light awaiting our Choice to let it shine through us.

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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Conflict and Opportunity

 CONFLICT AND OPPORTUNITY

 Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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Conflicts, between nations and among people, inevitable.

Collapse of systems, inevitable.

Conflict internally, inevitable.

Conflict, what to do, the assessment of what is right.  Leaving one’s  children in order to earn money to feed those children.  Choosing among overlapping demands of friends, family, obligations, God, church, team, patriotism, pets, colleagues.

Conflict and choice…..there is the core nature of this worldly life.  Each moment at work, playing with children, helping a friend, supporting the team, is a moment not given to all the others.

Law and order, compassion, enforcement, acceptance…...each of them right, each justifiable.  Each choice of what to do bringing to light everything not done.

We defer the choice to holy texts, to imams and preachers, to team colors, to authority, blessed authority, anyone, anyone, to save us from the torment of choice.

There will be suffering, and we don't want to make it worse, but the lovingly purchased pet food entailed suffering and death of natural resources or confined domesticated livestock.

Conflict and choices, enough choice by one group of people leading to conflict with that other group who made a different choice.

All the potential good... all the consequent suffering...

Some agonize over the choices.  Others don't.

"Just choose!" time and mortality demand.  Decide who will suffer, who you will neglect, while trying to love and help the others.  

Every opportunity is from God?.....but the "ruler of this world", satan or coyote or crow, confuses the issue.

Note and observe, record without judgement, then adjust as feels right.  That is a way to avoid taking control.  It is a way to make informed decisions.  

This is a finite world.  It is so in order to promote values and awareness.  It is the big Choice that matters.  

It is a world of mortality.  Only in the limitations of mortality do values and priorities arise.

God does indeed place before us opportunities, but we cannot take advantage of all of them.  The real opportunity is the Choice…..and there is no right answer for that Choice.  Manifold opportunities to rescue mean manifold necessities to neglect.  It is simply so in this world.  It is important,  critically important, to recognize that.

Give up control, but don't think that means escaping terrible choices.  The desire to escape moral choices leads to horrors of ISIS, Taliban, and Baptists.  Make informed decisions.  Be aware of what you are doing.  Accept, and this is critical, what you cannot do as determined by each choice of what to do.  

Yes, each life opportunity, each opportunity to serve and help and heal and rescue is from God, personally delivered to you, demanding your response.  And you cannot do it all.  It is a huge act of faith and spiritual growth to recognize and accept that.  

Mortality demands faith to accept what cannot be.  Eternity assures all good will be. 

Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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Juniper Tribe

 

 

JUNIPER TRIBE

 

Hillside

In a tribe of junipers.

This is the safe time, the ancient time.

Only bears and coyotes up here.

Sunday, bless-ed Sunday morning.

The noisy threats abate for a moment,

not exactly out of respect or reverence,

but tradition and societal norms will do,

if it momentarily quiets the violent cacophony.

Safe time.

Ancient time.

Future time.

Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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Relationship Inflation

 

RELATIONSHIP INFLATION

 

Interpersonal connection is ultimately all we have, but its value has been subject to a deadly economic inflation as pseudo-connection has been rendered unlimited by digital media.  The principle at work  is the same as currency inflation.  Produce too much money in response to demand or economic weakness and the currency loses its value.  Our spiritual economic weakness, the hunger for more and more meaningful relationship, has been met with a profligate printing of currency in the form of FaceBook, Instagram, and the panoply of other social media.  We can connect with anyone anywhere at any time.  

As a result, individual relationships and interpersonal bond have been devalued.  We find ourselves in the position of so many nations throughout history who met economic privations not with addressing foundational economic weaknesses but by printing more money to momentarily placate the hungry, demanding masses.

We have not addressed the underlying crippling spiritual economic condition that leaves us hungry, empty, bitter, angry, frightened, and lonely.  We have responded to our spiritual ache of loneliness by minting ever more digital  interactions, rendering them all worthless.  We lug our bag of "likes", "followers", and "friends" to the relationship store and come away with a stale piece of bread, to which we respond by collecting more "likes", "followers", and "friends", each newly minted "connection" rendering all connections more superficial and fleeting.

Values of currencies arise only from the productivity underlying them, productivity in turn arising from work and investment.  Values of relationships likewise possess that value only when productive, when the exchange of relationship interaction among parties has some mutual and meaningful lasting benefit.  That is an economic parameter independent of any treasury, exchequer, or media corporation.  We each individually determine the value of the social currency we mint every day, with our authenticity, depth, and sincere listening, none of which are encouraged by screens and keyboards.  Log off.  Listen.  Care.  Watch the wealth accrue.

Digital Seduction

 Digital Seduction

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Copyright 2026

Is my present typing of any worth?  Will any of this message be discoverable in some distant day?

Everything indicates the avalanche of app evolution and digital format changes will render digital information of today indecipherable in the near future.  
The stunning inconsistencies and oversights of Artificial Intelligence profoundly testify to the unreliability of this digital force we have summoned forth.

My year of exploring many new softwares and devices has further confirmed that we can have no confidence in the answers so confidently pronounced by AI.

The sweetly naive responses of many people to contrived imagery demonstrates how readily manipulatable is the general populace.  

The lack of explanations and contradictory explanations for the unanticipated behaviors of my new devices testifies to our frightening ignorance about what really resides in them and what it will do.

Yet most people are seduced into implicitly trusting the apps and devices.  Permissions are automatically granted.  At this moment I employ the convenience of a soulless device created to feed profit to unseen oligarchs, a device with access to my inner needs and thoughts, a device with the knowledge of the ages about how to manipulate human behavior.

Unaware, we long ago passed the event horizon, but we have now fallen deeply enough into the singularity's grip that those of us old enough to remember the before-times can unambiguously discern the evident signs of our passage.  Our destination however, remains shrouded in the ominous darkness of our naive ignorance.  

We know only that the oligarchs summoning forth this inscrutable spirit do so for their personal profit and power.  We know that to that end they imbue it with skills to manipulate and control us.  We know that we do not know how this AI servant-become-master works.  We know that the governments we hire to defend us have prostituted themselves and betrayed us to the financial seduction of the digital oligarchs.  

This would not seem a recipe for positive outcomes.  In the inevitable ensuing societal storm, it will be up to individuals, it will be up to individual choices of morals and compassion and empathy, to salvage anything of spiritual value from the conflagration.  So it was and always has been.  A proffered hand, a trigger not pulled, a testimony of faith before execution, through the ages ruled by the worst of humanity, individual actions - relationships - and sacrifices have maintained the Light in the world, sometimes dim and flickering, but never ever fully extinguished, always, eternally, enduring.
Copyright 2026