Kathleen, I love how you developed my play on the word apocalypse, which means uncovering or revealing, into a full-bodied argument--which I define as a meaningful disagreement opening up a larger truth. You must have been whispering to me in my dreams because I woke up thinking of the phrase "Coming into our own." What do we own? Ownership's been given a bad name but as any pet or home owner will tell you, you don't own what you love, it owns you. It's a response-ability of using your power-over in order to care for and maintain. Our bodies should be our own, we should own our bodies. But it all starts with owning our own minds.
I was also thinking this morning how to describe the usurping of our own connection to reality, divinity, what-is. We call them 'organized religions' as if anything else is disorganized. My theology is logical and calls out the orthodox ones for their contradictions. But 'orthodox' meaning in a straight line like orthodonture, doesn't describe it either. Authoritarian 'religions' are diaspora empires, the holy Roman or wholly roaming one even named as such. They are totalitarian governments without borders, that can infiltrate and have the power to name kings and certainly be the kingmakers of so-called democracies.
Israel is an occupying army, backed by the shadow gov'ts of the US, UK and EU. To respect a religion that says God makes some rulers and makes others slaves is to disrespect all other people.
I'm grateful to have your clear-sighted and kind-hearted vision in my life. As Mary wrote, and as spirit took the form of spell check to coin the word, I'm Godsmacked ;-)
I like that take on ownership, Tereza - yes, it's been given a bad name.
I was thinking of coming in to our own, as literally, more of us coming in to the body. More of us here. I feel like so much of this world in still dragging along a history that's no longer relevant. How does that impact our being present? Meanwhile life is here and now - nowhere else - and shouldn't that be enough somehow?
Always learn from your comments. Yes, agree on Israel as occupying army - occupying our very government and many many minds. Seems there is a lot involved in unwinding all that.
Ah Kathleen, what a deft analysis of our "identity crisis." There are so many layers we are wearing, individually and societally, that it sure is challenging to get truly naked! So in full disclosure, I'll say that this topic -- the conflict in the Middleast -- has always made me run and hide. Always.
Decades ago, I threw up my hands at the complexity of it all, the ancient arguments, the zealousness with which everyone shouted their opinion. I felt like I, an outsider to the experience in every way, could never understand who was right or wrong... and so I gave up trying.
I have friends on both sides of the conflict who want me to listen, to agree with them, and while I listen, I'm still not willing to take a side. Instead, my deepest, truest self prays for peace and healing in the region, daily. Perhaps my thoughts will change one day, to something that resembles subjectivity. Perhaps someone will say something that unlocks it all for me. I'm open to that.
Thanks for handling us all with kindness... it's that compassion that makes me feel safe to share my internal struggle with you. xox
I'm right there with you, Mary, in that internal struggle. The only thing I felt certain of was that I smelled a rat in that whole situation, and sorry to have to say that I knew the US was part of the problem and up to no good. There is something really dark going on there for sure. Thanks for sharing your honest feelings.
Thank you, Mary. I completely relate to what you've written and I've done the same in my life. It's tough to weigh in when it's not your 'tribe'. I know there is complexity I don't appreciate, and genuine concerns that likely elude me.
As I hope was conveyed, many good people see this differently.
All that said, we have to stop killing each other in the name of faith. It's just too... stupid and sad. I mean if we can't figure that much out...
Whatever complexity piled on top over all these years to perpetually allow that outcome, well... maybe we need to get simple again. As one of my commenters said, "Is it kind?"
When faith is used to inflict violence on one's neighbours, then it is no longer faith but an ideology. The difference being that for an ideology, the ends justify the means; but for faith means-and-ends are 'one-thing' (as in Gandhi's "a violent war begets a violent peace").
As an evangelical-christianity-survivor {religiously sober now for 30+ years :) }, you can also test the difference between 'true faith' and 'ideology' with a simple 3-word question: "is it kind?"
I'm flabbergasted by how beliefs can steer people so far away from their morals and ideals.
Many good people supported the Nazis, just like people today with the country committing a genocide.
Same with COVID. Those on the left who were about bodily autonomy and civil rights, quickly justified mandates and lockdowns. Like religion does, they were facing their mortality and the survival systems took over, overriding their original beliefs.
I think we're at a good time where these religions, whether old or new (scientism) are losing their grasp. They will one day be a small minority and no longer steer society away from truth.
Perfect correlations here!! Wonderful! Thank you. And when you write "the whole shebang of human experience." I can't help but correlate striptease with shebang. The divine sensuality of it just drips with creation!! Unless it's a hebang or an it/thembang, which sort of ruins it and... wait, no, don't even go there.
Stunning! Kathleen. So beautifully and non-judgmentally stated and thought-provoking. I will need to read it over a couple of more times. Thank you for sharing your gift of intuition and the results of your study and depth analysis of all the burning issues of our times. I think you must be an old soul, or something like that. lol.
I hope you are feeling well. Have missed seeing you.
This post has the least comments I've seen in a long while. That's okay of course. It's a tough subject, yet, as you noted, a 'burning issue' and likely why I felt a need to weigh in.
I hope it found the right people who might see another way to consider this ongoing knot. I can't imagine the new world emerging alongside the old coming undone, will have a lot of room for old battles. I know we can do better.
I am back to good health - thank you - and missed seeing you and the group. Next time!!
I always appreciate your comments and feed-back. XOXO
Another thought-provoking piece, Kathleen. Thanks for sharing your perspective. As to the world changes that are happening/about to happen/maybe will happen... I loved this line from the Hopi article: "Few elders will be left to teach anyone “how to talk with the clouds” or what it means in terms of geophysics and the Earth changes ahead. So much wisdom from indigenous peoples that doesn't get the attention it deserves. XO
Excellent illumination of ground most steer clear of, super appreciate your insights and delineating out the subtleties to arrive at, what Joshua (in comments) said..."is it kind?" The pictures I've seen...there is only one answer.. not even kind of. Thank you!
Kathleen, you have expressed so well the 'conclusions' I've come to lately regarding my own attempts these last several years to make myself a part of a church community. I guess I wanted relief from the secular-gone-mad world and had convinced myself of the need for repentance within the framework of my Christian heritage. But I know, once again that I don't need it at all.
As you say:
"There is no universal ‘This is what this means’ map for the whole shebang of human experience."
That's for sure. I have in my bedroom the tiny wooden icon of Jesus I bought two years ago-- he sits high on the wall, above a much larger reprint of a painting of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, whose influence (passed on through the scoundrel Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) has been just as strongly positive in my life. And on my bedside table sits my hard-bound copy of "One Day At A Time" ... kept from my restorative years in Al-Anon, whose notion of a Higher Power serves me much better than does the Bible and the resurrection story.
ps and Yes, the new Israel fascism is utterly horrible. I lost another friend over this... we'd met throughout the Great Pandemic Hoax but Israel has divided us in a single stroke (her husband and daughter are Jewish). And I have stopped reading Jupplandia, whose writings I much appreciated on other topics. His reaction to my standing up for the Palestinians was not nice.
"If we won’t call out atrocities for what they are in order to stay connected to a faith-story, maybe that faith-tradition doesn’t deserve us? The sacred has indeed become the profane if this is what it demands. It’s time to tease faith out from that faith-tradition."
Thanks for this insightful and gently, empathetically worded piece! It's a gift to be able to get people thinking about entrenched beliefs without getting their backs up.
I think many of us have or are now in the process of making this distinction between faith and religion. Many a so-called atheist is, in reality, someone who's come up against this type of disconnect between a religion's stated belief (universal peace and brotherly love) and how its adherents nonetheless use it to excuse atrocities.
Yes, the sacred has indeed become the profane if this is what it demands.
perspectives, culture etc. prophecies everywhere. Buddhism even talks about- these times and with very- specific timing that matches perfectly with the date. The new testament in coded language gives this approximate time frame, within 50 years. whether one gives any credence to prophecy, it- does not- matter. It is happening as prophesied. Islam even gets into the act in regards to the appearance of Elijah. Buddhism calls Elijah White Dzambhala.
people are free to process the times and events anyway- they want- to. Outcomes will be the same. I happen t-o believe t-hat these prophecies are true, not- possibilities, but- certain outcomes. I have been watching for 60 years.
Thanks, David. I don't doubt some prophesies come true. I know there are big cycles - like yugas - and broad stretches of more darkness VS more light. But assuming we're not just here to be passive, we operate within these larger forces. Big events may happen no matter what we do, but what we do still matters. We're not here to be pawns in someone else's game.
And I can't imagine that participating in or justifying the killing of so many children, which is happening every day, is somehow okay cause stuff was predicted in the bible.
We must still answer to ourselves, each other and to basic goodness - which we all internally know. (Unless we're psychotic.)
Assuming you're right - they happen no matter what we do - a very advanced human - like a Buddha would have an effect on the surroundings in a major way. What about 100 or 1000 Buddhas, does that alter how the prophesy unfolds? I have to think so.
Really asking what you think. Hope you're well, and appreciate your comments. Best.
If each of us is a small aspect of a Mandelbrot fractal, then within us the whole is reflected. So there’s a little Buddha in all of us. When the shift begins to happen, it will ripple its reflection and the awareness, the aliveness, the consciousness and all its manifest will exponentially grow. Prophecies feel like a 2 dimensional bookstore compared to what we might actually get to witness. Love sharing this time with you, spirit guides and questioning wonders! ❤️
I have a feeling we are going into a much more expanded world, so a much more expanded, us. Some of these old stories feel like we're trying to drag a past along with us, and make them 'work' and it won't. They act like a drag on us, a weight.
Perhaps they are essential somehow, play a role I don't understand. I imagine I'm missing something.
I do wonder, absent all these stories, who are we? That's more interesting. I get a scariness can accompany that curiosity. The fear of freedom thing.
Surely there is something that exists absent all that - all those prophesies and histories - especially the ones that seem to lock us in to a doomed future.
I have a girlfriend - 62 - who can't stop talking about when her father died when she was 9. Her narrative is all about trauma. She exhibits symptoms of PTSD. A therapist confirmed that and so she uses it as evidence of her story being 'right'.
I don't think she knows who she is absent this experience. Which was real enough. Which is part of her history. It just also confines her in big ways. Still she shows no real interest in discovering herself beyond this story. It's a conundrum for me. But maybe perfect for her. IDK.
Thank you for the comment - and I feel the same. XOXO
Quite revealing, that example of your friend, of “without our stories, who are we?” I still hold reservation that even those stuck in the loop of their traumas can hold a certain lesson the universe is trying to extrapolate, although I can’t speak to what that is. I don’t personally understand how anyone can love their trauma so much they aren’t willing to let go of it, but then again, perhaps I’d do the same if I was in their shoes- maybe I just haven’t had trauma big enough.
Thanks for the wisdom, dear Kathleen, always refreshing. 🧚
Trauma is a lens (or several lenses) that can effect how one views the world around them. It is very difficult to shed. It is not as if someone loves their trauma, it's just a part of them. Some love to publicly proclaim and celebrate the dark parts of themselves, while others carry it silently. If it/they were easily removed we'd live in a happier/healthier society. Most carry the burden of several generations of trauma with them, knowingly or not. Perhaps you know all this, just wanted to say it's a difficult path, this life, and some do it more eloquently than others.
I think that's right, Kat, hard to shed. Especially when the traumas are early. I have an older sister who has dealt with that, it's been a life-long process. Definitely not easy. I've often admired her courage in plowing through anyway.
Kathleen, I love how you developed my play on the word apocalypse, which means uncovering or revealing, into a full-bodied argument--which I define as a meaningful disagreement opening up a larger truth. You must have been whispering to me in my dreams because I woke up thinking of the phrase "Coming into our own." What do we own? Ownership's been given a bad name but as any pet or home owner will tell you, you don't own what you love, it owns you. It's a response-ability of using your power-over in order to care for and maintain. Our bodies should be our own, we should own our bodies. But it all starts with owning our own minds.
I was also thinking this morning how to describe the usurping of our own connection to reality, divinity, what-is. We call them 'organized religions' as if anything else is disorganized. My theology is logical and calls out the orthodox ones for their contradictions. But 'orthodox' meaning in a straight line like orthodonture, doesn't describe it either. Authoritarian 'religions' are diaspora empires, the holy Roman or wholly roaming one even named as such. They are totalitarian governments without borders, that can infiltrate and have the power to name kings and certainly be the kingmakers of so-called democracies.
Israel is an occupying army, backed by the shadow gov'ts of the US, UK and EU. To respect a religion that says God makes some rulers and makes others slaves is to disrespect all other people.
I'm grateful to have your clear-sighted and kind-hearted vision in my life. As Mary wrote, and as spirit took the form of spell check to coin the word, I'm Godsmacked ;-)
I like that take on ownership, Tereza - yes, it's been given a bad name.
I was thinking of coming in to our own, as literally, more of us coming in to the body. More of us here. I feel like so much of this world in still dragging along a history that's no longer relevant. How does that impact our being present? Meanwhile life is here and now - nowhere else - and shouldn't that be enough somehow?
Always learn from your comments. Yes, agree on Israel as occupying army - occupying our very government and many many minds. Seems there is a lot involved in unwinding all that.
Grateful for you, Tereza. XOO
Ah Kathleen, what a deft analysis of our "identity crisis." There are so many layers we are wearing, individually and societally, that it sure is challenging to get truly naked! So in full disclosure, I'll say that this topic -- the conflict in the Middleast -- has always made me run and hide. Always.
Decades ago, I threw up my hands at the complexity of it all, the ancient arguments, the zealousness with which everyone shouted their opinion. I felt like I, an outsider to the experience in every way, could never understand who was right or wrong... and so I gave up trying.
I have friends on both sides of the conflict who want me to listen, to agree with them, and while I listen, I'm still not willing to take a side. Instead, my deepest, truest self prays for peace and healing in the region, daily. Perhaps my thoughts will change one day, to something that resembles subjectivity. Perhaps someone will say something that unlocks it all for me. I'm open to that.
Thanks for handling us all with kindness... it's that compassion that makes me feel safe to share my internal struggle with you. xox
I'm right there with you, Mary, in that internal struggle. The only thing I felt certain of was that I smelled a rat in that whole situation, and sorry to have to say that I knew the US was part of the problem and up to no good. There is something really dark going on there for sure. Thanks for sharing your honest feelings.
Thank you, Mary. I completely relate to what you've written and I've done the same in my life. It's tough to weigh in when it's not your 'tribe'. I know there is complexity I don't appreciate, and genuine concerns that likely elude me.
As I hope was conveyed, many good people see this differently.
All that said, we have to stop killing each other in the name of faith. It's just too... stupid and sad. I mean if we can't figure that much out...
Whatever complexity piled on top over all these years to perpetually allow that outcome, well... maybe we need to get simple again. As one of my commenters said, "Is it kind?"
Appreciate your honest comment, Mary. XOXO
When faith is used to inflict violence on one's neighbours, then it is no longer faith but an ideology. The difference being that for an ideology, the ends justify the means; but for faith means-and-ends are 'one-thing' (as in Gandhi's "a violent war begets a violent peace").
As an evangelical-christianity-survivor {religiously sober now for 30+ years :) }, you can also test the difference between 'true faith' and 'ideology' with a simple 3-word question: "is it kind?"
I like the succinctness of that of that test.
And yes it's an ideology fully divorced from the essence of faith.
Thanks for the comment, Joshua.
I'm flabbergasted by how beliefs can steer people so far away from their morals and ideals.
Many good people supported the Nazis, just like people today with the country committing a genocide.
Same with COVID. Those on the left who were about bodily autonomy and civil rights, quickly justified mandates and lockdowns. Like religion does, they were facing their mortality and the survival systems took over, overriding their original beliefs.
I think we're at a good time where these religions, whether old or new (scientism) are losing their grasp. They will one day be a small minority and no longer steer society away from truth.
I know, Rob. Same here. Some programs go in real deep.
I think you're right - they are losing their grip. It's time we freed ourselves from them.
Appreciate the comment. Thank you.
Perfect correlations here!! Wonderful! Thank you. And when you write "the whole shebang of human experience." I can't help but correlate striptease with shebang. The divine sensuality of it just drips with creation!! Unless it's a hebang or an it/thembang, which sort of ruins it and... wait, no, don't even go there.
Thanks Navyo!
Yes, that would be part of the interpretation bit. Ah, well. Glad you went there!
Best.
Stunning! Kathleen. So beautifully and non-judgmentally stated and thought-provoking. I will need to read it over a couple of more times. Thank you for sharing your gift of intuition and the results of your study and depth analysis of all the burning issues of our times. I think you must be an old soul, or something like that. lol.
I hope you are feeling well. Have missed seeing you.
Thank you, Ronnie. You're always so kind!
This post has the least comments I've seen in a long while. That's okay of course. It's a tough subject, yet, as you noted, a 'burning issue' and likely why I felt a need to weigh in.
I hope it found the right people who might see another way to consider this ongoing knot. I can't imagine the new world emerging alongside the old coming undone, will have a lot of room for old battles. I know we can do better.
I am back to good health - thank you - and missed seeing you and the group. Next time!!
I always appreciate your comments and feed-back. XOXO
These roles and identities are becoming heavier and more burdensome.
They continue to create great conflict within us when we don't recognize them as such.
Thanks for your essay on these aspects of the self.
Thanks, Philip.
So agree - they feel like heavy baggage that needs to be dropped.
I don't think the emerging world has room for them.
Appreciate you reading and commenting. Best.
Another thought-provoking piece, Kathleen. Thanks for sharing your perspective. As to the world changes that are happening/about to happen/maybe will happen... I loved this line from the Hopi article: "Few elders will be left to teach anyone “how to talk with the clouds” or what it means in terms of geophysics and the Earth changes ahead. So much wisdom from indigenous peoples that doesn't get the attention it deserves. XO
That's funny - that line popped out for me too. I want to talk to clouds!! Of course.
Yes, let's hope that kind of wisdom is ready to make a come back. Thanks for reading/commenting Barbara. XO
Excellent illumination of ground most steer clear of, super appreciate your insights and delineating out the subtleties to arrive at, what Joshua (in comments) said..."is it kind?" The pictures I've seen...there is only one answer.. not even kind of. Thank you!
Thanks Mary. I appreciate the comment. ❤️
Kathleen, you have expressed so well the 'conclusions' I've come to lately regarding my own attempts these last several years to make myself a part of a church community. I guess I wanted relief from the secular-gone-mad world and had convinced myself of the need for repentance within the framework of my Christian heritage. But I know, once again that I don't need it at all.
As you say:
"There is no universal ‘This is what this means’ map for the whole shebang of human experience."
That's for sure. I have in my bedroom the tiny wooden icon of Jesus I bought two years ago-- he sits high on the wall, above a much larger reprint of a painting of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, whose influence (passed on through the scoundrel Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) has been just as strongly positive in my life. And on my bedside table sits my hard-bound copy of "One Day At A Time" ... kept from my restorative years in Al-Anon, whose notion of a Higher Power serves me much better than does the Bible and the resurrection story.
ps and Yes, the new Israel fascism is utterly horrible. I lost another friend over this... we'd met throughout the Great Pandemic Hoax but Israel has divided us in a single stroke (her husband and daughter are Jewish). And I have stopped reading Jupplandia, whose writings I much appreciated on other topics. His reaction to my standing up for the Palestinians was not nice.
It's a tough knot, as we're all discovering. Sorry to hear that. I imagine your experience is echoed all over the globe.❤️
"If we won’t call out atrocities for what they are in order to stay connected to a faith-story, maybe that faith-tradition doesn’t deserve us? The sacred has indeed become the profane if this is what it demands. It’s time to tease faith out from that faith-tradition."
Thanks for this insightful and gently, empathetically worded piece! It's a gift to be able to get people thinking about entrenched beliefs without getting their backs up.
I think many of us have or are now in the process of making this distinction between faith and religion. Many a so-called atheist is, in reality, someone who's come up against this type of disconnect between a religion's stated belief (universal peace and brotherly love) and how its adherents nonetheless use it to excuse atrocities.
Yes, the sacred has indeed become the profane if this is what it demands.
Appreciate that comment, BB's.
I definitely don't wish to blame. Lots of good people are supporting what really can't be supported - in the name of a religion.
Just suggesting what might be at play... and I so agree that this distinction is happening. :-)
Thank you. Best to you.
So much here resonated with me, thank you. Adopted roles can indeed become pigeonholes.
Love that, Jacquelyn, and perfectly said - roles can become pigeonholes. Nice.
Thanks for the comment- best to you.
perspectives, culture etc. prophecies everywhere. Buddhism even talks about- these times and with very- specific timing that matches perfectly with the date. The new testament in coded language gives this approximate time frame, within 50 years. whether one gives any credence to prophecy, it- does not- matter. It is happening as prophesied. Islam even gets into the act in regards to the appearance of Elijah. Buddhism calls Elijah White Dzambhala.
people are free to process the times and events anyway- they want- to. Outcomes will be the same. I happen t-o believe t-hat these prophecies are true, not- possibilities, but- certain outcomes. I have been watching for 60 years.
Thanks, David. I don't doubt some prophesies come true. I know there are big cycles - like yugas - and broad stretches of more darkness VS more light. But assuming we're not just here to be passive, we operate within these larger forces. Big events may happen no matter what we do, but what we do still matters. We're not here to be pawns in someone else's game.
And I can't imagine that participating in or justifying the killing of so many children, which is happening every day, is somehow okay cause stuff was predicted in the bible.
We must still answer to ourselves, each other and to basic goodness - which we all internally know. (Unless we're psychotic.)
Assuming you're right - they happen no matter what we do - a very advanced human - like a Buddha would have an effect on the surroundings in a major way. What about 100 or 1000 Buddhas, does that alter how the prophesy unfolds? I have to think so.
Really asking what you think. Hope you're well, and appreciate your comments. Best.
If each of us is a small aspect of a Mandelbrot fractal, then within us the whole is reflected. So there’s a little Buddha in all of us. When the shift begins to happen, it will ripple its reflection and the awareness, the aliveness, the consciousness and all its manifest will exponentially grow. Prophecies feel like a 2 dimensional bookstore compared to what we might actually get to witness. Love sharing this time with you, spirit guides and questioning wonders! ❤️
Love that, Tonika - little Buddhas in all of us.
I have a feeling we are going into a much more expanded world, so a much more expanded, us. Some of these old stories feel like we're trying to drag a past along with us, and make them 'work' and it won't. They act like a drag on us, a weight.
Perhaps they are essential somehow, play a role I don't understand. I imagine I'm missing something.
I do wonder, absent all these stories, who are we? That's more interesting. I get a scariness can accompany that curiosity. The fear of freedom thing.
Surely there is something that exists absent all that - all those prophesies and histories - especially the ones that seem to lock us in to a doomed future.
I have a girlfriend - 62 - who can't stop talking about when her father died when she was 9. Her narrative is all about trauma. She exhibits symptoms of PTSD. A therapist confirmed that and so she uses it as evidence of her story being 'right'.
I don't think she knows who she is absent this experience. Which was real enough. Which is part of her history. It just also confines her in big ways. Still she shows no real interest in discovering herself beyond this story. It's a conundrum for me. But maybe perfect for her. IDK.
Thank you for the comment - and I feel the same. XOXO
Quite revealing, that example of your friend, of “without our stories, who are we?” I still hold reservation that even those stuck in the loop of their traumas can hold a certain lesson the universe is trying to extrapolate, although I can’t speak to what that is. I don’t personally understand how anyone can love their trauma so much they aren’t willing to let go of it, but then again, perhaps I’d do the same if I was in their shoes- maybe I just haven’t had trauma big enough.
Thanks for the wisdom, dear Kathleen, always refreshing. 🧚
I wonder the same, if there's a larger purpose in staying in it.🤷♀️ For sure, nothing to judge there.😘
Trauma is a lens (or several lenses) that can effect how one views the world around them. It is very difficult to shed. It is not as if someone loves their trauma, it's just a part of them. Some love to publicly proclaim and celebrate the dark parts of themselves, while others carry it silently. If it/they were easily removed we'd live in a happier/healthier society. Most carry the burden of several generations of trauma with them, knowingly or not. Perhaps you know all this, just wanted to say it's a difficult path, this life, and some do it more eloquently than others.
I think that's right, Kat, hard to shed. Especially when the traumas are early. I have an older sister who has dealt with that, it's been a life-long process. Definitely not easy. I've often admired her courage in plowing through anyway.
Thank you.