posted June 29, 2013 06:26 PM            

1) Throwing out a random starting-point, I'd like to address the functional differentiation between spirituality and religion. The two are similar, but I think the important distinction is that religion is for those seeking reward, whereas spirituality is for those seeking understanding. A person can be both religious and spiritual, but I think the pursuit of one interferes with the advancement of the other. Furthermore, religion is centered more around tradition and structure, while spirituality is more a matter of sensitivity to whatever commonality binds us all to existence and each other, a subject I will discuss momentarily.

2) The concept of an immortal "soul"... This is a notion near and dear to peoples' hearts, often times, and I will point out now that it isn't entirely incorrect, it's just not a "soul" people are really referring to when they talk about an immortal essence. (Which I'll get into next.) In the simplest terms I can devise, the soul is not an energy or a "life-force" or anything of the sort -- when someone says they'll not leave a single soul behind, they aren't saying, "Well, we'll haul the essences to safety once these people have been wiped out." They mean they won't let the enemy have any one of the PEOPLE whose lives they are responsible for. You can research the matter yourselves -- it's not difficult to spot the pure facts among the indoctrinated testimonies. In fact, here's a wikipedia page to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_in_the_Bible
After that, I'd recommend checking out reference-sites with etymological breakdowns of the word "soul" as compared to it's various counterparts in assorted foreign and ancient languages. (As a side-note, it kinda irritates me when folks inject the word soul into everyday conversation, or into media interviews. It always comes off to me as being an obtuse attempt to mimic enlightenment and higher comprehension. Not really relevant, just venting.)

3) God... This will be an extremely touchy subject, I'm aware, so please approach my observations here with honesty and open-mindedness. I'll begin by addressing monotheism. More specifically, Christianity. It's something most people know something about, even if not much, so it's an easier template to use in framing my propositions. But to preface my statements, I'm going to refer to an ancient Hindu concept: the Akashic Field. There's delightfully informative read on Wikipedia about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akasha) but in essence, it is the "fifth element," a field of energy that exists in everything, everywhere, even in the nothingness of space. To my knowledge, it has not been detected by any scientific means (Likely more because we lack the equipment and insights to find evidence of it than because it cannot be detected. Even finding an incongruous hole in an apple where there should be more apple is a measurable anomaly.), though I could be wrong. However, like with many interpretations of monotheistic deities, it can nevertheless be experienced more by intuition and extrasensory perception than any rational, mundane observational techniques.
That said, It's capacity as a means of divination and of infinite information-storage can be likened to that of a PC. That i to say, PCs store information as ones and zeros, negatives and positives, yes and no, on and off. And it does so using various forms of ENERGY, usually magnetic, as in the case of hard drives, although solid-state drives (which I wuv! ^_^ ) turn itty-bitty switches on and off, which is a huge contributing factor to their high cost and relatively low capacities. (Not to go off-topic too far, but they also use way less energy than traditional hard drives because they just switch switches instead of lugging a huge pin-arm all over the platter. Just one more reason I <3 SSDs.) Anyway, the Akasha essentially "records" every molecular occurrence (including thoughts, which you may recall are based on chemical reactions), and is the medium by which true Sensitives can accurately view remote objects or events. When people see ghosts, they have merely opened themselves briefly to the Akashic and are witnessing the record of a previous life. But since the human mind does not interpret such previously unknown information naturally, at least not on a conscious level, it fills in the blanks with known quantities. That's why proven testimonies (IE: people telling the truth about seeing apparitions) often have oddities like blurred faces or indistinct voices.
This same ocean of memory is what "mediums" interact with, not the spirits of the dead. But they interpret the raw information as being provided by the deceased. The "visions" had by countless religious figures over the course of history, often had while ASLEEP or MEDITATING, were the result of unrealized interaction with cosmic memory.
As for predestination, it exists in one form or another. The Mayans inherited their belief in enormous cycles of time from the Olmecs, along with many other facets of their culture. Mayan chronological super-cycles and Hindu Akashic-tradition actually fit hand-in-hand, despite being an ocean apart, geographically. The more time you take into consideration, the greater the likelihood a particular even or action will occur again. Ask any stock-market broker and they can tell you first-hand that there are patterns and trends in their line of work, and paying close attention to those patterns and trends is what enables them to keep their jobs in such a competitive industry. But they'll also tell you it isn't an exact science; it's simply the unbreakable law of redundancy that underlies even the most chaotic-seeming circumstances. So while the Akasha cannot always give you an accurate answer, it can give you the most-accurate answer possible within the confines of the data it possesses. Free will plays a huge role in this, but only to the extent that we are ignorant our repetition of some long-ago action or choice. Perhaps in that last occurrence, the former entity chose to walk left instead of right, and was hit by a car instead of walking by a house whose dog got out and mauled him as did the current initiator of the pattern. Or maybe the current entity got home just fine but caught a mild fever he later had treated a a different hospital three weeks later. Either way, both entities went to a hospital at a relatively particular period to initiate the next part of the pattern, influencing a teen driver not to drink the next night at a party before going home by himself. And maybe these proverbial etities caused negative influences. Either way, their future decisions, while not known to the Akasha, still contribute in some unerring fashion to a pattern to immense and intricate to properly fathom. And the closer the time comes the any particular even you may wish to know more of, the more decisions are made that regard or even just periferrally effect it, the more precisely the Akasha can predict the flow of events... Fate is not always accompanied by trumpets and grand ballads, no matter how fantastic and inspiring it would be, and a person who dies before contributing a particular action to the sequence of events will not be missed by our cold reality... I totally just went emo, there. I should play some Bullet For My Valentine or something... Still, it's the unadulterated fact. And it's the reason human kindness is so integral to the continuation of our species' existence. (Well, that and human integrity. We're pretty short on both.)
Moving on, and returning to my original point about God: Christianity describes God as being omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and unknowable. And I'll be darned if that doesn't fit the description of the Akasha. Elaboration, in regard to the characteristic of omnipotence: it suggests the power to bend reality, not the act of doing or having done so. Just the ability to. Even greater biblical phenomenons can be tied to the channels who lead for God, even were they not conscious of their roles. Things like telekinesis, telepathy, spirit-walking, and more are manifestations of our interconnectedness through the Akasha. But to cap off my point, God is the Akasha, as is true in reverse. And hypnosis is the key to this puzzle.

4) There are two branches of hypnotic practice: hetero-hypnosis, where a therapist hypnotizes the client, and autohypnosis, where one hypnotizes him- or herself. The spiritually uninformed often mistake hypnosis for meditation, while the two practices are actually functionally indistinguishable. Give the two a real critical examination, putting scientific and spiritual biases aside, and it's impossible to come to any other conclusion. It's a repeating debate with my mother that never fails to amuse me, actually. ;P

Anyway, my hands are getting a bit numb and there's a minuscule vibration in the floorboard that's driving my ankle nuts, so I'm going to stop here. I couldn't really think of anything more to discuss, anyway. If I remember anything later, and most of you don't show up at my front door with gun-barrels pumped into my every orifice, I'll be sure to put those to keyboard and share them as well. And, again, feedback is welcome. I'm curious to see how people respond.

posted June 29, 2013 11:21 PM            

Yes, you've technically used paragraphs but it still looks like a wall of text that's hard to read, at least on my computer.

posted July 03, 2013 11:50 PM            

1. That seems a good way to tell the difference between religion & spirituality, generally speaking. Oh, and I LOVE this scene (which angered many fundies):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swcEExbjVMQ

2. I admit I didn't find this point crystal clear enough, but if I'm understanding it right then it's flawed for unstated major premise (for example, who is the "enemy"?) and begging the question if the Bible is truly an authoritative source (I would say it's not). Therefore, I'm dismissing this point.

However, if you're curious, as an agnostic I accept the possibility of souls, and while I entertain multiple theories on what they are, where they come from, etc, my "favorite" (that is most likely to me, assuming metaphysical souls actually exist) is that our brains function like antenna ("straight to heaven") which pulls in a bit of the Gaiasphere, maybe even some Cosmic Divinity, which is then shaped by ego, but with the death of the ego the soul returns to the source (which essentially means that there is no life after death in the way most think of it) and that people who recall things like past lives are actually pulling on this divine memory bank that all souls return to (like rain or iceberg back to the ocean), in addition to the Akashic Field you mention in point #3.

That said, I have other theories I consider. My "2nd favorite" comes both from real life observations to things I've read by such authors (observing the High Strangeness of our world) such as Charles Fort.

This theory assumes that there are many planes of existence that spiritually interact with our own, and that our souls come from and/or feed these various planes, many of which would be considered heavens or hells...but that to certain people some heavens would actually be a hell, while to yet other people some hells are actually a wonderful if challenging opportunity for raw power at the expense of others. And spiritual entities (which might even possibly incarnate here, or otherwise claim souls in a war of belief, morality, and ethics that they then send back to corrupt/taint/convert/inspire others) look upon humanity as a rancher does cattle in an attempt to nurture the desired "vibrations" that feed their plane of existence at the expense of other planes of existence (and humanity is perhaps given as much consideration as cattle). Yet at the same time it's possible that our "souls" so to speak attune the most to this energy and ascend in it within death to join those intelligences (and may reincarnate from it where the spiritual cold war continues).

3. As for your thoughts on predestintation and such I thought I'd share this with you:
http://www.deepleafproductions.com/wilsonlibrary/texts/raw-karma.html

Furthermore, I thought you might like a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology

And this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism

4. I really didn't see much of substance here, however I didn't find myself reaching for my shotgun. I really don't think most people on an astrology board would either. Now on a messageboard for the 700 Club or fans of Bob Larson (as opposed to Linda Goodman)...