The Reassuring Universe: August 2021

Sunday, August 8, 2021

Reality Gap

Human perception has little to do with reality. People will see what they expect to see. The most powerful influence over people is not in presenting them facts and information, but shaping how they will interpret facts and information.

As an adult the abused child will see threats and react accordingly. The insecure person will perceive disapproval. The religious person will see God's will in events and see people of different opinion as opposing God’s will.

"The eye is the lamp of the body" sums up this human trait to see as we expect to see.

The power of media magnates is not in convincing people by presenting distorted information and falsehoods. Their power is in making people willing to accept the distortions and falsehoods.

We can see and hear with suspicion, with insecurity, with anticipation of threat. Or we can see and hear with hope of seeing beauty, truth, and experiencing acceptance.

Speak truth. Do compassion. But resign yourself to the fact it will all be interpreted and misinterpreted through each individual's lens of experience.

Ask how your own lens distorts your view. Ask how you will influence the experience that will shape the other person's perspective. Ask, and know your answer will likewise be colored and distorted, leaving us to wonder at the veracity of our world, leaving us to anticipate conflict with that other person's distorted and deluded world, leaving us with only forbearance, compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness as our tools to soften the sharp edges of the inevitable conflict.

Conveniently Rational Munitions

The world, unremittingly harsh.

The world, unchangeable.

The world, this world, an expression of the human spirit.

The human spirit, formed in response to the harshness of this world.

The endless cycle, harshness begetting cruelty,

survival demanding indifference.

Excuses abound for our sins.

Reasons aplenty explain our self-absorption.

The endless cycle,

a parent and necessity and social norms driving our individual role

in the great churning engine,

the malevolent engine,

the malignant engine

of personal and societal

cause and effect

excusing, always excusing, our actions and inactions.

We, the individual molecules

in the fuel driving the engine,

our profit and pleasure,

our security and safety,

the molecular characteristics

sustaining the ignition of the fuel

to drive the next cycle

of fear turned to violence,

pain turned to vengeance.

All natural,

all predictable,

all so conveniently rational,

the mines and munitions,

the purchases and profligacy.

Yet against all reason and rationality,

the engine is throttled,

the cycle restrained.

A response tempered,

a temper held,

a hold become embrace…

Something unbefitting the ethos of profit and patriotism,

something resisting the irresistible compulsion of mob and marketers,

a spark of compassion,

a flicker of forgiveness…...

The engine runs as it always has,

but not without limit,

not uncontrollably.

A cheek turned,

a debt forgotten,

a small meal shared…..

and the great churning engine is revealed to produce

more than its fetid exhaust of wars and vendettas and consumption.

The cycle produces something that escapes the cycle,

something enduring after the machine of this world has passed,

something of Beauty,

something of Light,

something of the Love that set the machine in motion.

Copyright 202 Don Ray. feel free to print and share.

Threads of Smoke

Life. Death. Defining time.

Moments gone before recognized,

cherished only in their departure.

There is no holding them.

There is no conveying them.

We see them only as fading images,

each already past,

leaving its dimming imprint,

dissolving to wipe the sand clean,

making room for the next experience,

a curious assemblage of rapidly fading images

sewn together with wisps of smoke

to create what we call

our life.

Pre-dawn ragged blanket

Pre-dawn Ragged Blanket

Oh the enormity of it all!…..and that said about even the infinitesimal fraction of existence we perceive…..all focused around our own miniscule perception of our individual life experience.

Something as trivial as a slightly uncomfortable temperature suffices to erase any thought of the struggles of the immediately surrounding world, much less the greater world.

The enormity of it all…..the intensity of every life experience…….every fleeting life experience…...all God's Creation culminating in each sensation of each moment lived…….until to our inexplicable surprise the life ends.

If anything should not be a surprise it is the ending of life, yet each time it never seems quite normal, never quite as it should

The intensity of it all…...unless never experienced, never perceived, never discerned.

Perhaps it is necessary to reel in the discernment, to temper the intensity of life. Perhaps there is no peace to be found in that doomed intensity. Turn from it, dampen the senses, pull a ragged blanket over awareness, like the homeless do on the cold nights in the park. It is necessary, a little tempering, a little distraction, from the overwhelming intensity of doomed life…...for now…..while the dawn is such a faint, almost but not quite imperceptible distant glow.

Freedom From Opportunities

Freedom From Opportunities

Dark. Light in the dark.

Run toward it!

Cold. A touch of warmth.

Hold it!

Don't pretend you wouldn't,

wouldn't run toward light,

wouldn't grasp that warmth.

Opportunities, opportunities,

shaping our destiny,

sculpting our lives.

It is in the absence of opportunities,

then we see what we will do with the life we are given,

then we see who we are,

when not tempted,

not led,

when left to our own devices.

Friday, August 6, 2021

The Deep Bass Voice of God

The Deep Bass Voice of God

I read of another charismatic church in Texas, another young jeans-clad wannabe messiah getting piles of money from politicians and businessmen to fund another institution to spread their gospel, disguised as The Gospel.

The young followers claim "they are called" as they wander streets and parking lots telling strangers God loves them. In other words, they are delivering the message I would hope to deliver, but with a different methodology.

I am intrigued by such church phenomenon. Maybe I am envious of their clarity of mission. But my experience of fundamentalist church services and modern “praise” services and political rallies also leaves me acutely aware of my visceral response to modern amplified invocations of a high decibel "holy spirit".

Those followers are good folks, sincere folks, and their pastoral and political leaders would be the first to know, even if not the first to admit, those folks are being manipulated. Was I any less manipulated in those guilt-fostering, emotionally not-so-subtle church services of my childhood? Were the villagers at an ancient Egyptian temple ceremony any less manipulated? How about the villagers in those Papua New Guinea tribal ceremonies I witnessed?

Why would God need masks or altars or guilt or amplifiers to reach us? What is it we feel in those invocations of fear, ecstasy, guilt, awe, and vibrating chest cavity? Why do we want to be manipulated? If the manipulation opens our heart and mind to Creator and Holy Spirit and Love, is it necessarily bad? If it's not bad, why am I so consistently appalled and repelled by it?

I am repelled by use of such ritual - visual - and aural tools because they are so consistently used to deceive and manipulate innocent people to the benefit of the shaman - priest - preacher - politician - and despot.

Authentic and enduring faith is not inspired by deep bass vibrations, whether from log drums in a jungle village or a 1200 Watt subwoofer. These are tools to be used to excite chimpanzees, not the children of God.

The adherents feel called. Once the speakers go quiet and the spotlights go dark, we'll see to what the worshipers were called, and by whom.

Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Alate Assist

ALATE ASSIST

There from the north arises a matrimonial flight of ants! Who would have imagined?! The stones are covered with busy little ants. Colony entrances glisten with silver wings.

What a wonderful surprise! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

They launch several at a time, nicely visible against the gray sky.

There is a gentle flow to this launch, a quiet elegance, not quite the frenetic spectacle of the launches of the larger ants of the other colony I used to watch this time of year.

What delightful surprises the loving Source provides.

One little winged guy has a terrible time. He walks and flops and spins in circles. But now away toward the sky! Finally the hard effort pays off!

I did not think the little flopping alate could manage it.

Another walks and walks. Wings buzz to no avail. Too damaged? Too defective? I pray for him, and pray for all life and all living things trying to fulfill their essence…. but the prognosis looks grim for this little guy. Look at the effort! So long s/he has struggled. S/he will have no energy left even if it can fly. Such a majestic struggle, the struggle of the ages. I am as helpless as the alate (winged ant with the role of mating to spread the colony’s DNA outside the colony), unable to assist. On it walks…..eventually managing a pathetic flight of a few centimeters (inches).

Finally I cannot help myself. Clearly the situation is hopeless. Clearly this flyer has not the strength, or has some defect. It has tried too long without success for any hope to remain. It's desperate walk is taking it under the thyme plant where even if it could get airborne it would promptly become entangled in overhanging leaves.

I let it crawl onto my finger. I lift it up out of the wood’s shadow that keeps the stone cool and I hold the struggling alate in the morning sun. Wings vibrate in a silver blurr. It wobbles off the edge of my hand and flutters down toward the waiting stone……..and then rises! It rises! Given just that brief moment to learn to fly before being again grounded, it rises!

Calm and serenity will have to wait for another moment, for this is a moment of jaw dropped wonder and joy!

Let life rise, let us all rise, and let us be for each other the aid and uplifting to allow bodies and spirits to soar.

Stream of Consciousness

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

There is of course only consciousness. Our individual consciousness, this ensemble of experiences and choices, seamlessly flows through the temporal reality that provides the opportunities for contact and interaction with other individual elements of consciousness.

This material world accommodatingly provides some nominally rational continuity to facilitate that contact and interaction among we elements of consciousness.

It is all only consciousness, nothing but consciousness, though the material reality that serves as connective tissue binding together the elements of consciousness would seem to have the flexibility of concrete.

All our attention to the material world at the exclusion of prioritizing the Unity bond with other elements of consciousness misses the point, neglecting the opportunity for connection provided by that material world.

We have only consciousness, incarcerated and blinded as it may be in this carnal existence, and that consciousness attains instantiation only to the degree it experiences interaction and Unity with Consciousness as a Whole (succinctly captured in the appellation “Christos”). The opportunity for that interaction arises in no small part through the opportunities for interaction with other individual elements of consciousness (i.e. people).

The actual structure of Reality?:

The foundation Word, the Source, that preceded this particular version of time in which we reside,
The individual elements of consciousness (us) that in the matrix of their interactions form the structure of the Whole Consciousness
The continuity of flow of each of those elements as they segway through the ages that we perceive as our lives,
The transition that we call death, though it is the antithesis of ending,

This is the structure of Reality, a Reality necessarily flowing through the girders of this temporal/ physical framework , but a Reality not to be mistaken for being just this temporal/physical framework.

Don't be enslaved, deluded, and deceived by the temporal and physical and carnal. Use the temporal to create the eternal, apply the physical to touch the spiritual, accept this carnal as opportunity to embrace each others’ souls.

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

In Need of Meadow

IN NEED OF MEADOW

On north ridge, lying in a meadow, first time here.

Had been up on this ridge one other time, long enough ago I had forgotten it.

A falcon cries in the distance. I let warmth of morning sun wash over me and wash away the tension of unrelenting human interaction.

There could be critters up here. This is a place between trails, a place of sanctuary, a place untouched and safe. Grass turns to white gold as the sun rises.

We are instantly late in the season, red berries having appeared overnight, grass seeded out and dry overnight.

I seek repentance from this life of following and going with the world’s flow, but I know not which way to turn.

Here I can smell the dry grass. So long since noticing that smell! Why does even the potential for presence of people send Nature and Spirit into hiding?

Sounds!

A deer?

A bird?

Senses awaken to natural responses, no ambiguity or secrets in the threats posed in Nature,

no deception or subterfu

No hidden agendas in Nature,

or so I pretend.

An open meadow brings some clarity of vision,

some visual perspective across distance not blocked by obscuring and tangled growth.

We need meadows in our lives,

we need a chance to get some momentary distance,

some perspective.

We need a moment to not have to anticipate what is behind that tree or bush,

to not have to calculate what underlies that comment and motive.

Tangled and obscuring are the forests of our societies,

interactions the grabbing branches,

conversations the ensnaring vines.

Seek a meadow,

seek perspective,

find a spot of sunlight unshadowed by demands and expectations.

Bask for a moment in clarity of light and sky,

even if social woods remain dark and confusing upon reentering

At least you will know there is Light,

and that the dark and confusing tangle of forest does occasionally yield to bright glade and clear vision.

Following the Unseeable

There are always ways to give. There are always ways to give mo

There is always the established order that provides service and charity. There is always the need for change and revolution and a new order.

Follow your calling, knowing it will not be your only calling. Follow God’s will, knowing it will be obscured and contradictory.

Follow…...and lead. The children of God must do both, and do both humbly. Let established orders and institutions change you, then go on to change them and change the world.

Let Love and the sustaining Spirit carry you through the confusion, knowing that the greatest faith is forged not by following unambiguous instructions written in flaming letters pointing down a well lit path. The greatest faith is forged and polished in the dark and noise and ambiguity and uncertainty that is real life, life demanding we participate in ongoing Creation not by following specific instructions to accomplish a dictated design, but by making the free choices incumbent on the children of God in playing their role in creating that design, a design that will be erected upon holy foundations, foundations established by the Word that was before Time.

The Reassuring Universe

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