That Which Remains

In the hollow of the years, haunted by all things past, I sought out the phantoms of a yesteryear, children now older than myself, cozy home a heap of mossy ruins, the forest path we once walked so freely now a traffic clogged highway.

I mourn in the quiet that which is gone from me yet that still remains and the sobs never do escape my throat.

The winds rush overhead, the sun rises and sets, and the waves break into white foam upon the stony shore.

I know now why I was meant to have forgotten and will try now to put it away from me, living in the moment eternal and never in my losses.

My family, my life, my tramping grounds are all new now and perhaps I’d best embrace them.  Soon enough I will have to let them free and some essence will yet remain, impervious to illusory Time.

 

Do I Need to Be Charted or Converted?

An ex-Muslim friend of mine posted a chart that supposed to show what a person’s religion should be based on just s tiny handful of random criteria:

It’s meant to be laughed at. It’s just a meme, after all, posted by a guy with tongue fully in cheek at anything at all to be said about religion. Yet a lot of people responding to it found it uncannily accurate. It had, indeed, actually pinpointed their varying religions.

It amuses me that Atheism is included here when, in fact, it’s not a religion at all but rather the lack of one but that this lack of religion requires not believing in a god. I just don’t know how to take it is all.

I mean, how many gods do I worship? None really, because I believe we are all a part of the energy from whence we all come and hence are not separate from it. There’s no need to worship what we are so much as simply respect its existence. Yet I also believe in the existence of the many beings who have been called god(s) or claimed to be. I just don’t think they need or even deserve worshipping.

I’m not about to worship anything that demands blood sacrifices, sends souls to infinite torture in a hell it created for those who commit finite crimes, shortens human lifetimes, demands and exchange of actual independent thought for mere faith in whatever it wants to feed us, is jealous of others of its kind, etc. I have no use for such beings. But there is plenty of reason to believe these beings have existed in history or pre-history and that plenty of humans have either rewritten their doings and/or emulated them… and it’s NOT a good thing. It’s the stuff a lot of wars and suffering have been made of.

I know about the Elohim and Anunaki of old, the ancient alien imperialists who bio-engineered early hominids to make servants for themselves, smart enough to make technical decisions but dumb enough to not challenge their masters too much. There were many other species developed and destroyed before our kind finally came along.

Even so, it wasn’t all bad.

They had their agenda. We eventually had our own and I’m glad we got the chance. Natural evolution might have taken us so long that we not have had nearly so interesting a journey as the one they inadvertently sent us on.

We create robots and have made our own forays into cloning, hybridization, and even the creation of rudimentary life. We could, in fact, now do a lot of what they did. Would it make us gods if we did? I think not.

What is a “god” or “God?” Seems to me it is as inaccurately a word used as “atheist” is. Many (not all) religionists will tell you the “God” is the prime Creator and that “gods” are the elemental governors of such and “demi-gods” the hybrids between humans and gods, often culture heroes or avatars. And then the point to obviously physical fellow beings as the creators of all things.

No matter the level of their relative technical advancements at the time, I’m just not buying it.

But I digress. In fact, I suspect I may have lost my original direction with this.

Atheism is not a religion. It’s the lack thereof, the refusal to believe unprovable religious concepts merely on hearsay and also, inarguably, the lack of a belief in any kind of a god/God. Jury out on that one as it were.

But what am? I’m learning all the time. Like any self-respecting atheist, I refuse to be fettered or defined by random traits or choices of the confines of religion or its rules. Yet I believe in Prime Source/Creator and I know that we are all eternal. Souls are energy. All things are energy. Energy cannot be destroyed; it can only be reformed or refined.

Also, I like both bacon and humus. I even like them together, love black cats and find Wiccans appealing for their acceptance of magic but see no reason to adopt that religion or any other simply because I like something about it. Same for reincarnation. It feels true enough to me. I do not need to verify this via any particular religion; it’s just something I accept as natural.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: We’re Prime Source first, then souls, personalities, humans, genders, races, ethnicities, and then maybe a religion and national. MAYBE. But I don’t think any but the first four are strictly necessary. Just saying.

This chart was not made for anyone like me. Does it work for you?

Childhood Then and Now

When I was a kid, free range parenting (not to be confused with permissive parenting) was the norm and helicopter parenting was considered bizarre and obsessive.

These days, helicopter parenting is the law-required norm and free-range parenting is considered criminally negligent or something.

Anyway, what this meant is that I had a lot of freedom to learn and explore on my own as a kid that today’s kids can’t seem to even imagine. I’m often having to explain it to them. On the one hand, we were given guidelines as to what we could and couldn’t do and faced scolding, restriction, a bar of soap, or even (gasp!) a spanking if we got caught crossing that line. On the other hand, we could stay home alone, walk to school, park, or the corner store, or explore the entire suburban forest near home without adult supervision. We could ride bikes or city buses all over town if we liked. We could just pop over to play at a friend’s house without any pre-arrangement either. Our parents only wanted to have an idea of where we’d be, that they could trust us to follow the rules, and that we’d be home in time for super.

We did chores around the house and garden in order to earn an allowance for some of these adventures.

Don’t get me wrong; we were required to do the chores. If we attended them without having to be yelled at, we got our allowance. If we had to be forced into it or did a deliberately bad job of it, we didn’t, so we took them pretty seriously and usually did them before doing anything else.

I must have been between the ages of 6 and 10 when my sister and I used to walk or ride a mile or so from home to the nearest shopping center just to buy little bags of candy with our allowance: Tootsie Rolls, Good and Plenty, wax harmonicas, Bottle Caps, jaw breakers, bubble gum, chocolates….

I think I was about 11 or 12 when I first took the inter-city metro bus to Seattle to take a day-cruise on The Princess Marguerite II to Victoria, BC. I don’t recall what the circumstances were except that, yes, my parents knew and had given their approval, and that I may have been traveling with a group either from church or Girl Scouts. All I remember of the trip, in fact, was that wonderful ship, and the time I spent chatting with an elderly woman I’d met onboard on the return trip. Her and I were pen pals for a few years afterward.

Today’s kids don’t have the freedoms I did as a kid. Their parents are not allowed to give it to them. There are laws against it and a great deal of oversight. I gave mine as much as I could but, given I was a single mom, being unwilling to put up with an abusive husband, I was on my own as far as giving them the responsibilities of chores and the award of a regular allowance. In short, I failed to overcome the system on their behalf. Yet they are on their own now and must, ready or not, take their own initiative.

Now I look at my kids, the kids that grew up with them, and their kids, and see a lot of overly sensitive people prone to meltdowns, nervous of exploring, terrible at creative problem solving, and often unable to take personal responsibilities on or even earn a living.

Despite all this and the fact that my own childhood seemed to last forever at the time, I have developed a view of children as being amnesiac adults relearning everything in tiny bodies.

Maybe that’s a normal view considering the eternal nature or our souls. I don’t think everyone believes in that, but I’m sure a lot of us do. I, for one, am completely convinced of it.

It could be all the documented cases of reincarnation memories of via regressive hypnosis I read about growing up, or some of my own, fragmented though they are. I know full well that I’ve been here before and am aware many others are too.

In recent years, channelers I follow on YouTube have only added to my conviction. Sure, a lot of the people they channel in are recently “departed” celebrities and news items, but not all. They speak about their most recent lives from the Other Side, but also, quite matter-of-factly, about their previous lives and sometime future lives. All time is One for them. And reincarnation cases also pop up elsewhere as more and more people – especially in early childhood – are spontaneously recalling their previous lives.

It seems as though souls are being reborn into the physical much more quickly than I ever suspected in years past. Pretty often, people are being reborn into their own previous families within a few years or even days of their previous death, sometimes even on the same day.

That last dawning realization came as a surprise to me. I used to think of reincarnations as widely spaced and maybe even rare. Instead, I now see souls moving in and out of the veil as rapidly as they please.

It occurs to me that childhood is a neutral position before the realities of life in the Physical sets in. We come in with some amnesia, usually a lot, but not always, mute in small and helpless bodies so that those who have been here longer can guide and protect us while we’re learning the ropes of this new life. It won’t be the same as the last one, which can be very confusing for those who recall too much. It will have some new rules.

I wonder if we’re giving them enough guidance to work from anymore and… hmmm. It’s strange for me now as I’m about to turn 60, how many souls have gone and then quickly returned in the small space of my life alone. Every time I see a newborn baby, I can’t stop the feeling that I may have known them from high school or even my own present family. I look for family and friends. I see the soul spark in their eyes and wonder where I’ve known them from previously.

Is that terribly odd of me?

Mr. Tall and Handsome AGAIN

I’ve spent the day trying to dismiss last night’s dream being more interested in restoring my previous blogs from Xanga in order to find stories, poems, essays, and dreams I have recorded there after a crash wiped my computer of them. Thankfully, I have recovered a LOT, editing out the XML, and putting nearly all other writing projects on hold, including my dream journal. But last night’s dream has just stuck to me like Super Glue, insisting on being told, even if only to me, myself, and I. But maybe some other reader can tell me why or what it means because it’s sure not obvious to me at the moment. It just feels kind of… well… maybe just a little bit naughty.

I’m actually angelic. I swear! Please buy this if for no other reason than sheer politeness.

I was a homeless widow, living out of my car. Job hunting during the day and sleeping in my car at night and getting more and discouraged. I was close in age to what I am now: 60ish.

So one night, unable to find a safe place to park for the night, I drive into a homeless encampments, a shanty town down by the river where it flowed under a big highway clover leaf. It was very dark down there except for the campfires by the river. I could see the shadows of people gathered around them in large groups and, being kind of afraid of being around so many strangers, I just stayed in my car and ate a granola bar for dinner.

I had my window cracked though, so I could hear snatches of conversations here and there and two different ones caught my attention: one about going to visit a new hot tub that had been built by the river’s edge and another about a job recruiter calling over a group of people there.

That did it. The first sounded nice after a long and discouraging day. The other sounded hopeful. So I fumbled through my stuff in the dark and came up with a pair of shorts, a tank top, and flip flops to hastily change into, got out the car, and went hurrying after the people headed that way.

It became a jostling card, a lot of pushing and shoving and somehow my top got torn off, trampled under many feet and lost before I could grab it back.. Very embarrassing! I had hope that the dark might protect me for a little while, but I was close to sheer panic and wondering how I was going to face talking to a job recruiter while both topless and braless. All attempts to turn and go scurrying back to my car for another top were blocked by the crowd on all sides and I ran slam into someone’s broad chest or thereabouts… I’m about 5 feet tall and he was about 6′ 5 or more. Just a big hulking scary shadow as far as I could see.

I began struggling to get past him, in a real panic now, but he put is big hands on my shoulders and said, “Be easy, lady. I’ll get you through this right enough,” in the most reassuring voice I’d ever heard. It sounded extremely familiar to me but I couldn’t identify it to save my soul.

“Do I know you?” I asked him.

He shook his head at me. “I can’t believe you’d ask me that. Look sweetie, you need to get through this or you’ll lose your chance and I’m going to help you. Slide around behind me and hang on to me until we get all the way into the hot tub. Then I’ll put my arm around you so we look like a couple while we talk to the recruiter and no one sees you topless.”

It may seem unreasonable to trust a stranger in these circumstance but, for some reason, I did and did what he said to the letter as he plowed our way through the crowd.

Head turned to the side, I was peeking around him as we came within view of the torch-lit hot tub and it was MUCH larger than you usually see except at water parks like Wild Waves. Yet it looked rustic, like a natural hot spring that’s been dug out. Still, there were steps carved into it which we easily descended and sat down on as far from the inward flow of people as possible. Then, as promised, he put an arm around me, covering my breasts just in case the biubbling water was insufficient.

He was handy-ish about it though, gently caressing me and continued to do so even as I turned a wide-eyed accusing glare on him. He didn’t stop though. Just giving me a lazy smile instead.

This was my first good look at him and he was gobstoppingly handsome. His eyes, his most striking feature, were long and narrow and very green with surprisingly long lashes. His wavy dark brown hair fell lose to his broad shoulders… and he was, again, as extremely familiar as unidentifiable. He was also quite a bit younger than me. Not as young as my children, I thought, but possibly close to that.

What was he thinking?

I did my best to relax until the recruiter, an unsmiling crusty looking old man with steely eyes came around to talk to us. He spoke first to my protector, offering him a decently paid position loading truck which was gratefully accepted.

I was then offered a dog walking position for only a dollar an hour, which, dog lover though I am, I had to refuse. I wouldn’t be able to support myself on that an it would take too much time away from jo my hint for a decent job to make it worthwhile.

“I can’t help you then,” the recruiter said, shaking his head as he walked away to another man in the pool and offered him a decently-paid job.

I felt so discouraged and completely without value at that point that I just buried my face in my protector’s shoulder to hide the tears and he just sat there and let me.

When I had finally composed myself, I asked him to lead me back to my car, which he did as I pointed the way from behind his back. But there was no crowd going this way. They were all gathered around the hot tub now.

Once in the dark by my car, on the edge of the forest, I was no longer so concerned about modesty. I just thanked him for his help and, feeling emotionally exhausted, sat on a fallen log to think about what I’d do. My protector quietly sat down beside me, shoulder pressed to mine, his large hand resting over my knee.

“Why did you turn down that fantastic offer he made you?”

I gave him The LOOK for that then told him, “It seems I’ve gone waaaaaay down in value. I’d be better off disappearing into the forest and just living off the land. I know a lot of wild edibles after all and maybe I can even build myself a hidden shelter…”

“Can I come with?” he asked.

I stared at him, his face limned now by the full moon light. “Why would you want to do that when you have a good job to go to and another chance at life?”

“Because I want to keep you. I want to be with you this time.”

I was certain he’d lost his mind. And what did he mean by ‘this time?’

He leaned over and kissed me full on my speechless lips as I continued to stare at him in disbelief. It was along and lingering, beautiful kiss, but I was still staring at him as he leaned back again and said, “I want to make love to you.”

Then I started shaking my head and asked him “Why? How can you want to when I’m nearly twice your age, undesirable even to my own deceased husband even when I was younger and still had a figure? And you,… you’re a hottie who could have anyone. Why would you want me?”

His answer made no sense to me: “Because I always have and always will and you will always be young and beautiful to me.”

It was too confusing to me, so I just woke up at that point.

Today, while going through my dream journal of years gone by, I started finding many times when a character matching his description popped up; always familiar to me, never identifiable, but always amorous and puzzled by my failure to recognize him.

Who on earth is he?

Honey Roast and Mango Chicken

Yesterday, after grocery shopping, Jeb pointed out two 6-packs of boneless, skinless chicken thighs leftover from our last expedition. “These have to be cooked tonight. They’re on their use by date. Make one of them honey baked and I’ll use it for lunches. Use the other for dinner.”

I shrugged, not bothering to mention that I have previously used only bone-in, skin on thighs for honey baking, glazing the skin only in the last several minutes of baking. Skinless would have to be cooked differently and would have to involve breading to make up for the absence of skin.

After setting my oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, I put 3/4 cup panko breading and 1/4 cup cornstarch into a plastic bag with some Johnny seasoning salt and shook 6 of the thighs in that before frying them in my electric skillet with a TBSP or two of avocado oil.

After browning both sides, I put the pieces into a glass baking dish and coated each in a layer of honey before sticking in the oven to bake while I made rice and prepared the other package of thighs.

First, I sliced up an orange bell pepper and an onion into nice long slivers and put aside.

Then I cut up the thighs into bite-size pieces, shook them in the panko/cornstarch/seasoning bag, and threw them into the still oily-enough electric skillet to stir fry.

When the chicken was a nice crispy golden brown, I added a tsp each of sesame oil and avocado oil and1TBSP each of fresh chopped garlic and ginger to skillet along with the onions and bell pepper and a handful of unsalted cashews and stir fried until the onions were caramelized.

In a bowl, I made a sauce using 3/4 cup fresh mild mango salsa (which I made last week), 1/4 cup sweet chili sauce, 1/4 cup honey, and 1 tsp each coriander, cumin, chili powder, and Ms Dash SW Chipotle seasoning. I stirred this together and spread it over the chicken in the skillet, stirring it in thoroughly before turning the temperature down to 250 F and covering the skillet until the timer on the rice I was meanwhile cooking went off.

Everything turned out really perfectly and is definitely a do again.

Jeb, however, was afraid to try the mango chicken and just had some of the honey baked instead. His fear of mango chicken stemmed from the fact that when we’ve had in the past at a restaurant called PF Chang’s, theirs was really hot and spicy due to the peppers they used in their glazing. He was afraid I’d do the same thing and he can’t handle hot spices at all. But honest-be-gosh, my mango chicken contained no hot peppers and even the spices I used were in very mild proportions. He admitted this himself when I made him try a piece, but he still liked the honey bake better. Has to keep up his sweetness quotient after all.

As for me and Amy, we loved the mango chicken! You should try it too.

The Spiritual Evolution of a Soul in an Earth Body 2

I should back up a bit….

While I was asking questions in Sunday School, there really was no malicious intent. If it would please the grownups, then I really wanted to at least try to believe what they were pressing on me. So, behind the scene, I was digging into history and archaeological books to try and support it that way.

My maternal grandfather, unlike my grandmother, didn’t quite buy the whole Bible thing either but, like me, wanted to please grandma so he too dug around in books much the way that I did and it was from him that I borrowed a book that showed archaeological evidence for much of things in the Bible. It’s possible Grandma gave him the book. Either way, he read it and so did I. There was the blasted Tower of Babylon in it, for instance, and Jesus’ tomb but I can’t recall much else except that it all really fascinating.

I also found the Bible both fascinating and entertaining in place, despite thinking that god had an awfully bad temper and didn’t treat everyone fairly.

Little things I noticed other than the bad temper thing:

1. There are TWO separate human creation stories in Genesis, the first one BEFORE that of Adam and Eve. That explained to me who Cain married when he left the garden of Eden. Not why God liked the smell of roasting meat from Abel’s offer, but still, it was something. Yet my Sunday School teacher angrily denied my interpretation as being wrong since “Everyone knows that Adam and Eve were the first humans and all humanity spawned from them.”

“But then who DID Cain marry after leaving the Garden of Eden,” I persisted.

I got a shaking finger pointed at me and Mr. Benny’s red face shouting “Be silent Tongue of Satan!”

SHEESH!

2. God in Genesis is often referred to as “the Elohim,” which is used as a plural, “El” being used as a singular. But there was supposed to be only one god. So what was with all the “We” and “Our” stuff in there.

Mr. Benny just dismissed it as a kind of royal “We” and yelled at me to shut up again whenever I’d point out that Abraham seemed to think there was a plurality of gods too. When one of the El named YWH demanded he make a blood sacrifice of his son to Him (a dreadful thing for him to have asked), He let Abraham off the hook only at the last second and had him sacrifice a caught ram instead. Then He demanded that Abraham put no other god before Him. To me, that was affirmation that there were indeed other Elohim. YWH just wanted to own Abraham and his tribe.

3. The fact that Bible seemed to authorize so many things that feel very wrong: cruel punishments over petty issues, slavery, gender apartheid and discrimination, the rape, murder, and enslavement that YWH would order his humans to commit against the humans of other Ellohim. The destruction of whole cities and that tower. Why the tower? And the scrambling of languages? Surely that wasn’t a god that had our best interests at heart.

4. Why did the carriers of the ark so often die of what seemed to be radiation or bolts of lightening so often? Many of the books I later read on this subject pointed out that following the instructions to build it produced a powerful radio.

5. How did Noah stuff all those animals into the ark unless it was only from a very limited are or there other ark builders elsewhere doing the same thing in their areas? Why didn’t the Bible mention them?

6. Was it okay that Noah’s daughters got him drunk and raped him after they landed in order to get pregnant and produce more humans? Ewwwww.

7. The story of Ezekiel made me sit straight up. It sounded like a UFO abduction. I’d read a little about those. I couldn’t think what else it could possibly be.

You can imagine how many questions this led me to ask and how uncomfortable it made poor Mr. Benny.

I was meanwhile reading books on Atlantis and Lemuria, mythologies from around the world, UFOs, PSI studies, reincarnation reports (something else Mr. Benny strong disapproved up, not that he didn’t hate it all), things about ancient alien astronauts being mistaken for gods, ancient high technology and architecture, and ghosts, etc.

Dr. George Reuban Kincaid didn’t count as ghost to me when I was a kid. He was just as real to me as anyone else. I didn’t realize he was ghost until years later when I saw how my parents and grandparents reacted to my memories of him. They knew his name because I mentioned it a lot, talking about him as I did, but they had never seen him even when I know he was right there with me.

In high school, I was too much a book worm and introvert to be popular but managed to make a small group of friends who were similar to me and we all used to eat lunch together. This was how I discovered I had a small PSI gift. We all did. The crowded lunch room was too noisy to chat in, so we read each other’s minds instead and got really comfortable with it. We could just look into each other’s eyes and know what the other person was thinking. Sometimes we didn’t have to do that or even be in proximity with each other either.

As for dating, I had a long distance pen pal romance with a Coastie I was crazy about but only saw a few times a year. But when he proposed over the phone and told me how, as an officer, I’d still only be able to see him a few times a year, I broke off with him.

Mark, the youth leader at church, then took a fancy to me and I was impressed enough with him to accept his initial overtures until it turned into date rape and I then wanted nothing more to do with him. He kept pursuing me though and bullied all other suitors away from me. He proposed. I refused. More rape. He raped me instead of taking me to the prom like he’d promised right after we made up once, him promising to behave. I never reported him because I was afraid it was my fault somehow.

He looked so beatific as he preached at youth church. My parents seemed to think he was great that he was so known for his preaching.

He admitted that he thought if he got me pregnant, I would have to marry him. I got an abortion instead and made him pay for it. Still he pursued.

Feeling harrassed, I finally accepted his proposal on condition that he take me on an elaborate honeymoon after a very big wedding. I knew he was a bit of a tight wad. Then I went to a travel agency and had them give me the writeup on the most expensive honeymoon package they had. I left it on Mark’s desk at his print shop to see when he got back from lunch. Later, when he was gone again, I left the ring there too with a note saying I just couldn’t do it it and never heard from him again. Not for a few decades anyway.

Meanwhile, my friend Julia went to church with me. Once comfortable with telepathy, we communicated with each other across the Sunday School room all the time. Mr. Benny should not have noticed that. We did use eye contact, but why he automatically knew it was telepathy is beyond me.

One day, seeing our exchange of looks, he gave us each a very stern glance and cut of his regular teaching to preach, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”

“What constitutes a witch?” I immediately asked.

Eyes glaring now, he said, “It’s anyone who practices things like telepathy, telekinesis, or fortune telling!”

Later that day, I heard he denounced me as a witch to the church elders. They didn’t seem to respond to it, but by then I’d had it. I was DONE with church and never went back except for the occasional pageant.

More later.

Spiritual Evolution in an Earth Body 1

First born and maybe 2 or 3 years after, you can still see some of the other side with an intensity equal to things on this side. Some people can even recall their previous lives at that point. As for me, though I remembered bits of previous lives some years later, given reminders, as a toddler, I simply saw spirit. Well, one in particular, Dr. George Reuban Kincaid, the ghost of an elderly pediatrician that once worked at the clinic our apartment was attached to, whom I thought of as my best friend. That’s another story entirely. Just suffice it to say he was just a physically real to me as my flesh and blood family were and I couldn’t understand why the rest of my family ignored him, were apparently blind to him, as though he didn’t exist.

Oh. And I thought every but George spoke a funny foreign language. Him I could always understand, but everyone else seemed to speak gibberish. It took me a long time to learn their language and I often watched television with the grownups in order to learn and practice new words and eventually their meanings. Watching eyes was important too. I could often glean the meanings of words by looking in the speaker’s eyes – something I have always used to advantage when needed. But it still sounded like gibberish to me and was exhausting to follow.

Though my parents weren’t regulars, we went to church sometimes too where I was first put in a nursery with other children and then Sunday School, where were given little craft projects to do and Bible stories to listen to. I liked the pictures that accompanied these best, but stories are always nice too. Even if I couldn’t quite identify with the stories, the voices that told them were pleasant. We got to sing songs, play in pageants, have little parties, and go on outings too. It was fun.

As I grew older, I realized that not only were we supposed to memorize those stories we’d been told (something kids were rewarded for doing), but we had to believe them whole-heartedly without even the slightest bit of proof. This was called “having faith,” something I tried for (because it would please the grownups) but never seemed to have enough of. No. I always had questions which multiplied with age and had one Sunday School teacher denouncing me as “The tongue of Satan” by the time I was in my early teens.

Meanwhile, being a precocious reader of everything, I tended to find the Bible far less believable than a lot of other things I read, even of straight fiction or the paranormal documentary sort that the church strongly disapproved of.

Later, when I finally left the church in my late teens, I came back for an Easter visit after my first two quarters of college and was cheerfully met by the same Sunday School teacher who’d called me “Tongue of Satan, asking me what and how I’d been doing. I told him about college and my 4 point GPA and his immediate response was to thunder out, “So THAT’s it! Knowledge has corrupted you!”

Yes indeed I guess. If I’d been Eve in the Biblical Garden of Eden, I’d not only have picked the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, I’d have eaten it down to the core and probably not even shared it with Adam. No regrets. Knowledge is the power to choose with open eyes.

More later when I’ve had time to think it over a bit.

Hurt People Hurt People…

…And forgiveness or fortitude can break the cycle. Maybe just love without conditions. That’s the biggest message coming through the latest two television series’ we’ve been marathoning through: Supernatural and Once Upon A Time.

The former was the pick of my daughter and husband and I refused to watch the first few seasons with them due to the excessive violence, the extremely religious mythology silliness, and the intellectual deficit.  However, those boys are HOT and often downright funny and cute and loving and I eventually found myself sneaking peaks over the top of my computer on the kitchen bar overlooking the living room. Then I started lingering over the couch to get a better view, the silly stories started sucking me in, and soon I was sitting down between Jeb and Amy watching with them.

Okay, how to explain this. I know there are ghosts and angels and magic. My concept of God is that its the intelligent Source energy of which we are all apart. We are subdivisions or fractals of That experiencing Itself and magic is the pure interconnecting energies being deliberately employed by those aspects still conscious of that primal connection. The unconscious aspects also do so, but they either call it supernatural or “a miracle!” It’s all natural as far as I’m concerned though.

In Supernatural, the God of the Bible is the writer of Supernatural come down to Earth to experience his Creation directly, rather than as an aspect (maybe like Jesus did only more “hands off,” and Lucifer and all the other angels, are just his children. And then there are a lot of monsters running around a muck on Earth: vampires, were wolfs, immortal evil witches, demons, heart eaters, soul suckers, ghosts, locusts in human form, and all other kinds of beasties that go bump in the night.

Not a great explanation I know, but Sam and Dean hunt down and destroy these beasties and often torture them before destroying them as the beasties often torture them in turn. In fact, there is so much of this going on for so long that it gets hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys and Dean himself becomes a demon at one point because he starts enjoying torturing and killing a bit too much. He starts killing innocents, but his brother still loves him and wrests him back from this totally dark place.

The boys come out of a place of hurt and terror and pain in their lives and are fighting against that with a literal vengeance. It is noteworthy here that the anger and vengeance produce the worst in them and the love and forgiveness of even the unforgivable inevitably make things better, humanizing even the most evil characters, making even them lovable and forgivable.

Yes, you can love the villain and thwart them at the same time.

Same goes for Once Upon a Time. The villains were made. Hurt people hurt people. Anger and vengeance were choices they made in their weakness when overcome with emotions they were too immature to deal with wisely.  Thus the spiral into villainy. Some love, understanding, and forgiveness without conditions coaxes them back into the light.

I think that’s nice. Can it happen in real life? I kind of feel it can. Inadvertent or deliberate, I think that’s the meta message these shows carry to the masses. But are they paying attention?

 

ONE

There was a shadow, blotting out the sun, a flash of light, a rumble… I’m blind in a place of white light, trembles going all through me and around. I feel the vibration of my every molecule. I’m broken into elemental bits, spread over the whole of whatever this reality is.

The sky is afire. Volcanoes erupt. The earth is giving birth, her heaving body ringing like a smoky crystal bell.

In the distance is a high-pitched whine and BOOOOOOMMMM that goes on into infinity. A howling whirlwind sweeps through me and I become the wind, an ecstatic tornado of pure energy….

There is a part of me, somewhere beyond intellectual reasoning or the Missouri “Show Me” eddict, that KNOWS how all time is ONE time and all beings ONE being. My awareness of that doesn’t bleed into parts of that so much as aspects of that.

There is another part of me, bound by physical laws into a particular aspect, that thinks of myself as both singular and separate from the One.

And the ONE is enjoying this. Savoring the experience.

Into the Forest

When I was a kid, there was a forest right beside our house. This was in the middle of suburbia, mind you, but they hadn’t gotten around to building there yet, so lots of big beautiful trees still made magic of the place, a kid’s paradise.

I made friends with the wildlife: birds, frogs, porcupines, foxes, salamanders, mice… and the neighbors often brought me orphaned or injured animals to take care of because I was always willing and had a fair degree of success with them.

I always loved to run through the woods and play adventure games, ala Cowboys and Indians, Star Trek, or Twilight Zone, with my cousins, friends, and various neighbor kids. In the fall, there’d be piles of leaves to toss around in and slide on. When I had parties, one of the things we particularly liked to do was go hiking in the moon-lit woods.

And no, our parents didn’t worry about it all that much. This was in the days before the milk carton kids became a thing. Heck, people didn’t even lock their front doors in those days. Parents didn’t worry about their kids being outside out of sight all day until they actually missed super. It was THAT relaxed a lifestyle. Not like today’s state of constant parental and personal paranoia over everything. I wasn’t afraid of much either.

I can recall climbing up old pine trees via toe and finger holds in the thickly crenelated bark and stubs of once-branches until I got to the actual branches. It was usually about 15 to 20 feet off the ground that I’d be settling onto a branch that spread out like a magic carpet floating and gently swaying in the summer breeze and there open up whatever book I’d carried up in my pocket to read.

Ha… a partial list of these books would the Narnia Chronicles, The Back of the North Wind, A Wrinkle in Time, White Fang, Trouble in Fez, The Box Car Children, The Time Machine, Shining Through, The Diary of Anne Frank, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Wind & the Lion, Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Yellow Eyes, Chariots of the Gods, Oliver Twist, Mary Queen of Scotts, A Thousand & One Arabian Nights, Black Beauty, Jane Eyre, Squanto, A Girl Named Sooner, On the Night of the Seventh Moon, From Time to Time, Race Against Time, Heidi, The Little Dikkado…

Do you see a pattern? because, in retrospect, there is one; a strong one. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it’s been the light on my path all along.

Another favorite game we all played in the forest was building forts or villages. We’d build tepees out of sticks, sometimes plastered with mud and leaves, or lodges out of fallen pine branches, tree houses, dug outs roofed in boards or fallen trees, or make due with hollow stumps or full trees, usually singed big red cedar left over from a long ago forest fire. The edges of the paths between we’d always decorate with white stones. And there we’d share snacks and stories and “let’s pretend” adventures.

I was naive enough to think it would be okay to live that way someday for real if I wanted to. We should be able to, it seems to me, but the corporations own everything.

Some people don’t make it according corporation rules. They don’t have the skills or aptitude to be employed that way or, if they are employed, earn enough to actually live on. They have to choose between food or shelter. Sometimes neither is an option and they end up begging. Or they’re burdened by addictions that end up making them undesirable, unemployable, and dangerous as well. That last is their own fault, but the former shouldn’t even be a problem to them or anyone else.

Why does each and every single piece of land need to be owned by and profitable to some corporation? The fact of the matter is, though every piece of land is somehow owned, not all of it is actually being used. Yet heaven forbid and indigent build their own shelter there, having failed to survive the corporate world and wanting to just make it on their own. The police or sheriff or forest rangers will come along, drive them out, and tear down their shelter.

What is a homeless person supposed to do when they don’t want to go to a shelter or can’t because it’s too full? Why are normal, harmless, survival tactics being forbidden them? I mean, I get it if they’re encroaching on the personal space of others, leaving garbage around, being threatening, or just a nuisance, but what if they retreated from suburbia or the city and formed their personal spaces in the forests or fields. If land isn’t already being used for something else, why not allow the homeless to build their camps the or maybe even tiny house villages? Why should anyone mind that? Let them grow or forage their own food, make little communal farms or something? Shouldn’t there be an option like this available to those who don’t make it according to the rules and restrictions of larger society? Why penalize or restrict them?

Just asking. At heart, I’m still the kid who built forts in the forest and thought it would be okay to live there if I really wanted to.

You Say That I’m a Witch Like It’s a Bad Thing

Some people freak when they hear me identify as a witch and I’m pretty sure it’s just because they don’t understand what I mean by that.  Also, they’ve received extensive religious programming on the topic and so really can’t help themselves.  So maybe I should help them understand?  I think we’d all get along better if only we could better understand one another.

When I say that I’m a witch, I mean that I have a certain mindset, similar to that of a religious person, except a lot more flexible.  I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do have a particular way of looking at things.  Here are the basics:

1.  All things, from Creation on, begin with magic and are magical through and through: every being, every miracle, every hope, every blessing, every curse, every motivation, every action, every aspect of science, of life, and even religion.  Do you know we never ever really touch tangible objects but merely transfer energy from one thing to another and that translates as actually “feeling” it?
2. While science is purportedly objective and religion subjective, to me they are really just two sides of the same coin that will eventually merge into one another.
3. All things are connected in a field of conscious energy.  I call that field “The Source of All That Is.”  A religious person might call some aspect of it “God.”  A scientist (religious ones excepted), might call it “Cause and Effect,” refusing to personalize it beyond that.  But it clearly has intelligence and we are all aspects of it.  Call us It’s “Creative Expressions” who are also able to create in our own right, albeit on a smaller scale at present.
4. The above three facts/concepts (whichever you choose to call it) means that we can and do regularly affect one another and can do so as much on purpose as by accident.  The former is why spells work, as do collective prayers, and concerted efforts.  The latter is why we are important to one another in ways both tiny and humongous and also how we manage to accrue karma, whether we want it or not.
5. We are eternal souls.  Our only prisons, our physical circumstances and the beliefs that encompass them, is only temporary.  We can change our minds, change our circumstances, or leave our bodies.  Leaving doesn’t mean we have to physically die.  Some of us can come and go as we please.  Many do.  Dreams are the pathway even for those who can’t do so consciously.  Physical “death” is the pathway for everyone.  Once on the other side of the barrier, beliefs can only limit  us for a little while.  They can be our Heaven or Hell, should we be inclined to believe those things.  We get what we honestly feel we deserve.  We are our only judges.  But eventually we all realize that we have the freedom not only to choose, but to create our reality.  Our Source knows no limitation and our varied proximity to that reflects It.
6. “Good” is kind, helpful, .loving, creative, progressive, positive, uplifting, educational, unifying, free….
7. “Bad” is cruel, negligent, hateful, destructive, digressive, negative, oppressive, willful or imposed ignorance, divisive, repressive…
9. These distinctions are less distinct on the Other Side since negative things and, despite appearances, have a positive result in the greater scheme of things.

I purposely don’t include the terms “tolerant” or “intolerant” in my descriptions of good and bad since both depend on circumstance to be good or bad and are really neither in and of themselves.  For instance, being tolerant of someone’s religion, does not mean you should tolerate being abused on account of their religion.  That’s just common sense.  You know?

In case you’re wondering, I have both tried religion and studied it.  I was at one time a Pentecostal Christian and later a Shi-ite Muslim and have joined many  a friend, just in moral support, in their forms of religion before I tired of religion too entirely to really associate with it anymore.  This doesn’t mean I hate religious people.  Far from it.  I just no longer wish to show support for things I find either limiting or in any way unbelievable or crude.

Examples:

1. The concept of a vengeful or jealous god.  This is so petty a view of the Source I find it embarrassing to even pay lip service to.  I can see a savage primitive acting this way, but not an infinitely advanced being.
2. The concept of gender, race, or ethnicity being somehow second to another via nature alone.  We all may have our preferences, but kindly leave off the artificial stratification.  The Source is in all of us as we are in the Source.  We make of ourselves what we will.  Actions speaking louder that words is as far as I will go on this concept.  That alone is worthy of stratification as far as I’m concerned.
3. Some thoughts are encouraged and others forbidden.  Thank you, NO.  I will think what I damn well please and you do NOT own my bridle.  If I happen to believe in reincarnation (which I wholehearted DO) you do not get to tell me I’m not allowed to as my once-upon-a-time Sunday School teacher used to do.
4. That someone else dies to save me from my sins.  No.  Sweet concept, but I don’t believe it works that way.  You can if you want.  I can understand the comfort you find in that.  But I feel I’m responsible for own rights and wrongs and I wouldn’t put that on someone else’s shoulders even if I could.  We learn from our mistakes and we have lots of chances to get it right.
5. The concept of having to believe or perform rituals the “right” way or we will go to Hell.  I call bullshit on that one and don’t want anyone thinking I agree with it in any manner, shape, or form.

Oh, and I shouldn’t have to mention this, but…

1. NO, witches do NOT believe in the Christian concept of Satan or the Devil.  At most, we believe some souls, still trapped in their physical beliefs after death, might linger a while as evil/disturbed spirits but we don’t ever worship them.  That would be pretty silly.  A witch will only exorcise or keep at bay such if they deal with them at all.  Most efforts to speak with passed on spirits involve a ritualistic effort to keep out the bad or at least their effects.
2. We do NOT do blood sacrifices.  Well most don’t.  The rebels might.  Just as there is a religious faction called “Satanism” that is really only a rebellion/parody against fundamentalist Christianity, most particularly Catholicism, there are factions of rebel witches called “The Golden Bough” or “The Blood Drinkers” that are a rebellion/parody against standard witch mindset.  I am not of either category.  I believe what I believe because it makes sense to me, not because anyone crammed it down my throat.  Having religious-type concepts crammed down your throat but being too comfortable in ritual or suffering cognitive dissonance when feelings fight imposed “beliefs” results in oppositional rebellion in free-thinkers.  Not my issue.  Just so you know.

Second thought, I can really only apply these last two points to Wiccans and other white witches.  It probably doesn’t apply in more primitive versions of tribal witchcraft but this is something I know only a little about since I, and all of the modern witches I know, pretty much avoid associating with that.

So anyway, that’s the mindset that makes me a witch.  Please don’t say it like it’s a bad thing.  It’s not for me.  It’s just who I am.  I’m just being honest with myself and others.  I hope you are okay with that.