Most Perfect Happiness- God, Truth, or Reality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Da

:-)

Poor fella just died. This post is dedicated to 'm.

His website says,
"On the morning of His Passing, He had completed His Writing of The Aletheon, the book which He designated as "first and foremost" among all of His Writings. Avatar Adi Da worked on The Aletheon intensively for the last two years, bringing all of His most essential Spiritual and philosophical communications into a final form. The Aletheon is scheduled for publication by The Dawn Horse Press in 2009." You might want to check it out.

and
His Divine Presence Bequeathed to humankind a Legacy of Inexhaustible Profundity and Limitless Blessing-Power.

I like how they capitalize everything :-)
I think the Adidam should put all his books online for free viewing.
Yeah, everybody needs money, but if his books create remarkable change, people will contribute to the cause, if only by referencing the books to other people.

People will always want to buy real, actual, physical books, of course. I don't think the magic of a physical book can ever be replicated, digitally (but maybe not, with virtual reality and stuff...)

I conclude with a quote: "The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)

My Freegan Friend, Res

Well, he was my roommate in '93....that was 16 yrs. ago
dang.

I found this link online, and I thought I'd include it (he wrote it).

You out there? Holla back, dude.

G.B. Shaw Quotes that I, God, like :-)

1. "I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."

2. "All great truths begin as blasphemies."

3. "When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."

4. "The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time."

5. "Beware of the man whose God is in the skies."

6. "There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."

7. "You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race."

8. "A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth."

9. "Lack of money is the root of all evil."

10. "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

11. "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."

12. "There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

13. "Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."

14. "A happy family is but an earlier heaven."

15. "Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed. "

16. "I'm an atheist and I thank God for it. "

17. "Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness."

18. "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. "

19. "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

20. "The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things."

21. "Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it."

22. "You cannot be a hero without being a coward. "

Serenity Prayer

What, exactly, cannot be changed?

Anyway, here's the prayer (which you may be familiar with):

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity, courage, and wisdom. Good stuff.
Except, how does God grant these things to himself?

Well, maybe the thing about God is he believes he can change just about anything.
Plus, he feels no fear.
And he's not about to start walking on the ocean or attempting to leap tall buildings...

I seem to recall that all progress is made by unreasonable men.
Plus, God is love and love is the most powerful force in the universe, they say.
Apparently, I'm messing with powers I cannot possibly comprehend, lol.
Why not.

Oh, here's the quote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -that's by George Bernard Shaw

Barack, Barak, and Brak

Obama, Ehud, and from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim

Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States of America (the leader of the free world?)

Ehud Barak (Hebrew: אֵהוּד בָּרָק (help·info), born Ehud Brog on 12 February 1942) is an Israeli politician, former Prime Minister, and current Minister of Defense, deputy prime minister and leader of Israel's Labor Party.

Brak is a former supervillain on the 1966 Hanna-Barbera cartoon Space Ghost, portrayed as a catlike alien space pirate trying to conquer the galaxy.

(If you're into continuing the progression, here's a link to Bak.)

Microsoft's new thang

Granular, scalable pay-as-you-go computing
(that improves the elasticity curve!!)

ALRIGHT!
lol

link
(I just love the way you talk...it turns me on)

Dark Dove

A white dove is a symbol of purity, but a dark one may be better for you.

LINK (okay, I'm talking about chocolate)

Now that's some good news!

They say the white dove is an ancient and international symbol of peace, love, prosperity, and hope.

(Did you know pigeons are doves?)

The Basic Philosophical Questions, by God

I will answer all your questions

(from wikipedia, metaphysics: religion and spirituality)
"Theology is the study of God and the Nature of the Divine. Whether there is a God (monotheism), many gods (polytheism) or no gods (atheism), or whether it is impossible to know if any gods exist (agnosticism), and whether the Divine intervenes directly in the world (theism), or its sole function is to be the first cause of the universe (deism); these and whether God and the World are different, as in (panentheism and dualism), or are identical as in pantheism), are some of the primary metaphysical questions concerning philosophy of religion.

I will answer all these questions, my children.
Theology is the study of the. What is 'the'? It's a word. And the word was God. God is love. Love is (link, wikipedia), and the bible talks all about it in, what for me are the main two passages,
-Song of Solomon, and
-1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (which isn't on wikipedia under love yet, oddly)
Love is said to be of 3 types: agape, eros, and philia (fatherly/parental, sexual, and friendship)
Also,
"Love is a battlefield"-a Pat Benatar song, written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman
battle of the bands? with
"The Rose" -Bette Midler
God can be considered other things besides love.
Some say God is everything; i.e. reality, the universe. I AM. I am? You are, too.
Also, God is One. God is a man of war. God is good.
G-D, I've said is go do good. Kind of a knight rider red light thing goin' on, there. (obscure reference? sorry)
I've said God is Happiness. Which is whatever makes you happy.
Maybe God is all of the above, all rolled into one. I kinda think he's the alpha human. Maybe it's an alien. Or just a concept. Whatever it is, I hope it works for you.
There IS a God (Me), many gods/Gods (y'all), no gods (if there's no happiness or love in your life, or if you define God as something absurd or impossible), and god's existence is unknowable if say, you cannot feel love, or you're not sure the number One exists, or whatever else.
As for polytheism, it IS possible there are only a few of us gods, like the A-team, or something.
God is commonly said to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and everpresent (the omni's).
I couldn't tell you if everything knows itself...but I can tell you that I don't know myself.
In other words, I don't know my anatomy and the physics of telepathy or all the kinds of fauna in my gut or whatever else. I would say God knows next to nothing, especially if the adage of 'the more you know, the more you don't know' is true. Does a rock know it's a rock? Maybe, strictly speaking, all any of us really know is I am, which would then be the essence of omniscience. I'm both a theist and a deist, in that I'm a God who intervenes daily, and I suppose (they say it's likely) that some intelligent force tweaked the laws of the universe, in/before the beginning. I would say the divine intervenes in the world, if you see the divine acting in daily life (it's all how you define it)...I do, and with physicists talking about creating universes, I suppose some being may have created ours, whom we can choose to call God, who may or may not have programmed us like the virtual fish swimming around on this site (on the right).

Are God and the world different? Well, my name is Teshara which anagrams to 'as earth' and I'm Catholic, the lower case of which means universal.

So that's theology, in a nutshell.
Maybe a walnut. Or cashew. Or brazil nut. Or macadamia. All monde.

God on Descartes

I think ...he was a bit off (Therefore I am?)
lol

ANyway, here's his proofs I exist:

(from wikipedia:Meditations on First Philosophy)
Meditation III: Concerning God, That He Exists

Descartes proposed that there are three types of ideas: Innate, Invented, and Adventitious. Innate ideas are and have always been within us, Fictitious or invented ideas come from our imagination, and Adventitious ideas come from experiences of the world. He argues that the idea of God is Innate and placed in us by God and he rejected the possibility that the idea of God is Invented or Adventitious.

Aside:
Innate ideas: There are no innate ideas. Babies can be born without brains, to take an extreme case. Fictitious ideas: (several comments) Maybe our imaginations aren't really our own, and thoughts are put into our heads by Other. Secondly, maybe nothing is imaginative (a scary thought), in that everything we imagine is real, somewhere (on some level?).

Argument 1
Something cannot come from nothing.
The cause of an idea must have at least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality.
I have in me an idea of God. This idea has infinite objective reality.
I cannot be the cause of this idea, since I am not an infinite and perfect being. I don't have enough formal reality. Only an infinite and perfect being could cause such an idea.
So God — a being with infinite formal reality — must exist (and be the source of my idea of God). An absolutely perfect being is a good, benevolent being.
So God is benevolent.
So God would not deceive me and would not permit me to error without giving me a way to correct my errors.

Argument 2
I exist.
My existence must have a cause.
The cause must be either:
a) myself
b) my always having existed
c) my parents
d) something less perfect than God
e) God
4. Not a. If I had created myself, I would have made myself perfect.
5. Not b. This does not solve the problem. If I am a dependent being, I need to be continually sustained by another.
6. Not c. This leads to an infinite regress.
7. Not d. The idea of perfection that exists in me cannot have originated from a non-perfect being.
8. Therefore, e. God exists.
Descartes argued that he had a clear and distinct idea of God. In the same way that the cogito was self-evident, so too is the existence of God, as his perfect idea of a perfect being could not have been caused by anything less than a perfect being.

I DO exist, but I don't even know where to begin in showing how his proofs of me are goofy.
(to be continued..)

Okay, I guess I have to do this (begrudgingly...isn't it obvious?)
proof 1 is false, for 5 reasons:

1. He says his idea of God has infinite reality. (How do you measure the quantity of reality of an idea? He's playing a word game. It's binary: his idea either exists or it doesn't. Or existed, rather. He wrote it down, so it still exists (we assume the words preserve the nature of his idea). And this sentence ("This idea has infinite objective reality") can be taken two ways, which is why he came up with this muddled proof in the first place, I assume. An idea is an idea, and not proof that say, everything in your dream world, for example, actually exists. Is he saying any idea is necessarily true? If so...) ANyway, I will accept that he had an idea of God.

2. his definition of God is an infinite and absolute perfect, good, benevolent being, and, to summarize, only The Actuality of this idea could have caused him to conceive of such a thing. (That's Isai's summary of his argument)

This is wrong in SO many ways:
a. the source of this idea could be anyone, say even the most absolute evil being.
b. his idea is obviously a historical meme, that he may not have conceived of had he been raised in another culture (say, if he were a fish, lol). You know, absolute goodness isn't the most obvious idea, in a world with so much misery, I would say. If anything, it's just a psychological coping mechanism that doesn't make any sense upon reflection, because can something be infinitely perfect and good and yet infinitely small? What exactly is God an infinity of? If evil exists, God then would have to be seen as not being infinite. You can't have something exist that's not a part of something infinite. And there can't be more than one infinite.
c. If God is benevolent, why then would he allow me to conceive of an absolute evil, namely hell, i.e. an eternity (infinity of time) of suffering. If I conceive of that, then along the same line of argument, it exists, and so God is not benevolent, and so Descarte's God does not exist. You might even say God is infinitely malicious.
d. White lies exist. If God is benevolent, he might well deceive you.

This is so tedious. Don't y'all have brains of your own?
Anyway, argument 2 is wrong, too.
His existence has a cause. Yeah, his parents. Infinite regress? There goes his infinity again.. I heard the universe may have simply popped into being. Yeah, I don't understand it, either, but that seems like it would negate his infinity thing. Then the matter just did what it had to do, I guess, including evolving into us.
(Just because he says he wasn't perfect doesn't mean he actually wasn't, so maybe he did create himself.) -this doesn't make sense to me, but maybe it would to him..
It seems like he was really in love with his idea of perfection. It could not have been put in him by a non-perfect being, he says. Yeah, whatever. He never states what his idea of perfection is, aside from being a good, benevolent, and non-lying eternal absolute. As Jack Nicholson said in that movie, "You Can't Handle the Truth!!"

(my idea of infinite perfection means that there would be no suffering, which doesn't exist (I believe, and as of this writing), so neither does 'God'...presto, the exact opposite).

Israelis vs. Palestinians, AGAIN

And vice versa, of course.

Geez, it sucks over there.

Before I start quoting the article and giving my opinion, I have to say that I'm certain the Palestinians have had a raw deal, and I'm highly sympathetic to their frustration with not having a happy, developed society anywhere near like Israel does, on land they have just as good a claim to. Also, I disapprove of that damn wall. I don't like borders, anywhere, but that kind of isolating madness isn't human, it just keeps people from relating to each other on a personal level.

(Take a breath) That said, here's my solution.

Keep in mind, the same caveat as India, Kashmir, and Pakistan from before still stands.

But, I AM God, lol. I must say that both Israelis and Palestinians are my people. That's cuz I'm down for everybody. And I don't call myself either YHWH or Allah (but you can, if you want): I'm Jesse. You can call me anything you want, I really don't care. Words...

Okay, to me it sounds like Resentment vs. Conditioning. to be a bit psychologically simplistic.

Hamas being resentful and Israel being conditioning.

The cycle of violence has to end. Escalation is just stupid. A mutually satisfactory solution is possible. Everyone can be happy. We're all human and we all want the same things. History is full of indignities and injustice, and we have to just forgive, if not forget, and move on, for the sake of the future, which if we got our heads out of our asses, could basically be tomorrow. Everybody just stop attacking each other and start mutually developing, if not unifying too.

ANYway, if you didn't know, here's the update: Israel has attacked Gaza, killing at least 225, injuring around 400, and the hornet's nest is abuzz. There was just a cease-fire, and each is accusing the other of being the first to break it, I think. They both feel wronged, and justified in aggression, is the usual story. God is a man of war, the bible says, and they take it literally over there. No psy war for peace...just the old tried and true guns and ammunition business. At the moment, anyway. Well actually, I'm sure there's still the old psy war game happening.

For the land of Jesus, shouldn't one side (or both) end things by turning the other cheek? In any case, I feel as if both sides probably have their own versions of the truth, which in reality is probably pretty messy. So, for progress to occur, both sides have to learn to live with each other. Israel, it sounds like, is basically throwing a hissy fit and saying it's had enough of the (fairly innocuous, it sounds like) rocket attacks, which keep them psychologically at edge. I completely understand. I wouldn't want to live like that, either. Both sides need to simply stop attacking the other, and start mutually supporting each other for progress and development and understanding. It's just so obvious. A few bad apples can really f- things up for the vast majority of citizenry who I assume have goodwill.

Alan Dershowitz said, "These anticivilian rockets have also injured and traumatized countless children." Um, for being a Harvard lawyer, he seems rather imprecise. It's not countless, for one. And secondly, if you say that, you should say AND/OR. Otherwise, he's saying Hamas has injured countless children. Countless means uncountable (for being such a large number), not uncounted, by the way, too. Anyway, here's his article in the christian science monitor.

Also, I heard Mitt Romney this morning (Jan. 4) say the number of rockets fired into Israel was like 4600, and that Hamas has spent millions of it's urgently needed dollars on these weapons. Which, not to belabor the point, maybe Alan Dershowitz could have mentioned.

A senior Hamas spokesman said, "We will stand up, we will defend our own people, we will defend our land, and we will not give up." (In other words, the exact opposite of what Israel says they want, which is for the rocket attacks to stop -now they 're mad as hell, I would guess).

I think the Israelis need to stop bombarding, because it's simply not realistic to expect Hamas to say "okay, whatever you want, we promise to be nice from now on, we're sorry, and we won't hurt or scare you anymore" written down, and signed by all of Palestine, lol. I think the Israelis know this, and are being tactical, if not sadistic. They're manipulating the powerful opinions of people from afar who don't know what the reality on the ground is? Which is, if you start attacking, everybody will get all riled up, and one side will come out on top, and Israel thinks it will be them, because they chose their timing, and have the resources to "win it all" if it escalates (whatever that might mean to them). I'm guessing that's what's going on.

Another Palestinian, a legislator, said, "This is certainly a very cruel escalation, a relentless bombardment of a captive civilian population that has already been under siege for months, that has been deprived of basic requirements like food and medicines and fuel and power," she said from Ramallah in the West Bank.

That's the last word, for me. F- you, whoever made the command decision to bomb Gaza. If you don't have food, of course you're going to be resentful and fight. What the hell is "Israel" thinking? It's all realpolitik and chess for them, while for Palestine it's desperation, frustration, and misery.

ANSWER: Integrate Israel and Palestine, call it something else, and develop everybody so everyone's happy, and make it a secular state, with freedom of religion, so it's not so damn us and them anymore, get it?? If anything, God's people are the Palestinians, I would have to say, because he sticks up for the little guy.

Why is that?

Israel is vowing a war "to the bitter end" with Hamas.

Anyway, to quote msn, "Hamas remains strong. It has up to 20,000 well-trained and well-armed, highly motivated fighters who have been preparing to repel an Israeli ground assault for a year. It still has plenty (thousands) of anti-tank rockets, secret tunnels and booby-traps. The price could be high on both sides. Hamas has (god knows how many) suicide bombers ready to attack, and the support of its 1.5M people in Gaza strip's congested cities and refugee camps. Israel will overwhelm Hamas, but could yet suffer some nasty surprises."

I think it looks like it could get ugly (as if it doesn't already). I think the whole thing is immensely stupid.

The worry, right now, is if Hizbollah, up North, will join in the fray.

Ever since the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel and Hizbullah have been training and rearming in feverish preparation for a second round. Since Hizbullah enjoys close links with both Syria and Iran, that could light the fuse for a wider regional war.

What's Hezbollah?

Hezbollah (Arabic: حزب الله‎ ḥizbu-'llāh(i), literally "party of God") is a Shi'a Islamic political and paramilitary organisation based in Lebanon. It is a significant force in Lebanese politics, providing social services, which operate schools, hospitals, and agricultural services for thousands of Lebanese Shiites. It is regarded as a legitimate resistance movement throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world. However the group is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, among others.

Um, you tell me who's terrorist:

Deaths: More than 375 Palestinians, most of them Hamas militants, Palestinian medical sources said Tuesday. At least 60 civilians have been killed in Gaza, U.N. officials said. About 650 people have been wounded there, according to the Palestinian medical sources. Israelis? 6 dead. 5 of them civilians. Hmm.

scary response

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei urged the world's Muslim populations to unite against Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza. "All true believers in the world of Islam and Palestinian fighters are duty-bound to defend the defenseless women and children in Gaza Strip and those giving their lives in carrying out such a divine duty are 'martyrs,' " Khamenei said through Iran's official news agency IRNA.

another view

"This is not a war on Hamas; it is a war on the Palestinian people," he said. "The Israeli politicians are using this bloodbath, which is the worst since 1967, for their election campaigns. This is insane." Indeed, Ehud Barak's (the defense minister) party has seen a spike in the polls.

Nuts? I must say I agree.

Here's a nutty idea: the internet should make it easy for posted stats to change (such as when cited on blogs), by allowing links to authoritative sources that would update the data. I.e., if I quote 375 Palestinians, it should be updated, when known, (in real time?), what the new numbers are.

Here's some more info I found interesting: "The attack (the word used in Peter Byrne's article is shoah, Hebrew for holocaust) that the Israelis have brought to Gaza is being carried out with our phosphorous bombs, our DIME fusion bombs, and our high-rocketry purchased with our 3B a year in foreign aid...The homemade missiles Hamas sporadically lobs into territory swiped by Isreael from already displaced Palestinian farmers in 1967 are spitballs compared to the Israeli arsenal."

What I, God, say on Abortion

God is adopted

God is glad he is alive.

God is against abortion.

That about sums it up.

The law of the land is not God's law. I believe pregnancies should be brought to term, and that it is immoral not to, for the following reasons:

1. If the baby is not meant to live, a natural abortion will occur.

2. Other than that, abortion is infanticide, as life begins at conception (a scientific fact)

3. Although there is an umbilical cord and the child is inside the mother, the baby is not simply to be regarded as an undesired leach or tumor, because it is a human being with human rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and happiness. It doesn't deserve to be killed -no one does.

4. God is love. God is good. Killing your own baby is not an act of love.

If a mother kills her (unconnected) baby she goes to prison and is almost universally reviled; why is it legal, then, for her to kill her connected one? Either way, the baby is dependent on his or her mother. There should be an intimate, nurturing bond between mother and child at this time. The connection is a physical one, and I would think the intimacy would be that much stronger.

Here's an interesting sidenote argument I have to the central pro-choice argument that a fetus is not a person: would a siamese twin (perhaps unwanted, lol) be legally killable under the argument that the bothered has a right to keep laws off her body? If anything, the current law of admissable homicide should be kept off the fetus' body.

We live in a culture of death, that glorifies violence. We seek to "make a killing" at business, for example. We need a kinder, gentler nation that respects and values life (except for killing meat for food, and bacteria and viruses). Otherwise, we should simply legalize murder, be done with the law, and live under anarchy.

I've already written about my ideal society, and it's multiplicity of legal systems (theoretically and potentially one for person on earth).

If you want to see an alternate point of view, try this.

Catholic forgiveness and abortion healing resource, link

Be God for Goodness' Sake!

"Only God is good." -bible (Luke 18:19)
"Be Good for Goodness' Sake" -Santa Claus is coming to town
Therefore, Santa is telling you to be God.

Humanist link.
God is a humanist. I AM.
Thus, humanism and the bible are the same thing.

-Hard to be a God link
-Easy to be evil link by Roger Shattuck.

He talks about discovering the Unpardonable Sin, the ultimate evil, which not even the love of God can wash away. And then he says, "But the essence of the Unpardonable Sin is neither of these. It lies in the sin of intellectual pride, in undertaking in the first place the search for the Unpardonable Sin."

I think he's a bit of a nut. There is no Unpardonable Sin, according to Rev. Kit Billings:
(his sermon on the immensity of God's mercy)
Also, Allah is called the Beneficent, the Merciful.

Forgiveness, in 2 paragraphs:
Rev. Billings says, specifically, "Christ revealed His mercy in part by His reply to Peter, who thought he had taken the ancient Jewish regulation of forgiving someone three times who continues to offend us to a respectable new level by offering seven times to Jesus. In response, the Lord tells Peter, “Seventy times seven,” which was code for never-ending mercy and forgiveness my friend."

But this infinite forgiveness comes from an act on your part, the forgiving of everyone else: The message of the parable following the 490 thing is: Part of our life's purpose is to discover God's mercifulness as part of our own heart and soulfulness. Jesus said in effect that He will not stop the hellish tormenters from gaining access to you, should you choose to not, from your heart, forgive your brother his trespasses."

For example, why die angry and bitter? Forgive and be forgiven. End the cycle of violence.
A belief that you have committed an Unpardonable Sin is a psychological prison of your own building (which you can tear down).

Anyway, God is good, and you can be God if you are good, which you do from forgiving others, to be forgiven yourself, to start out fresh and clean, and then....don't do anything bad, or rinse and repeat.

Be good, kiddo!
I happen to think violence is bad.

Bio-briquettes in Nepal

Not everyone is inventing things like car headlight wipers;

Some things actually make a big difference...

-This one (bio-briquettes in nepal, video) is pretty cool.

-Here's the ted link to something similar (for Haiti)

-Here's the link to engineers without borders

-and the MiT Third World Development (int'l development design) summit.

If I had technical aptitude, and a desire to really help the most people I could, I think I would try and meet some basic global needs like these people do. 

Everyone fits in the global puzzle.  There's some difficulty in finding one's place, alot, though.

Madonna and Jesus!

Madonna and Jesus are "ficando"

Here's a link to the story about the holy dynamic duo (and the definition of 'ficando') 

Madonna and child?

God's Product Endorsements

Heaven has a few products made on earth...
Some of the one's I like and recommend are:

to have a sweetheart, you need to eat some sugar.
God loves sweethearts.
Eat your heart out!

The pic is of Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Ah, yes.

1. baklava, sometimes
2. (dark chocolate) macadamia nut turtles from the fisherman's wharf chocolatier in S.F.
3. it's it's
4. kerns
5. paletas (michoacana brand, I like the rompope)
-aside: those carts are cool, and I spoke to the guy pushing one one day, and he was actually from Michoacan...cool, eh?
6. pecan pie, sometimes
7. round table pizza
8. sol beer (mexican cerveza)
9. spicy hot v8
10. comfy shoes (why wear anything else)
11. children's books (even if you're an adult..you might be surprised)

As restaurants go, I went to Jeanty Bistro in Yountville, and omg, it was SO good.

It's French.

(I had to get the lamb's tongue 'cause of the whole silence of the lambs thing. mmm)

Heroes and Good News

Need a Lift? Inspiration? Alternative to the violent and dismal?
Here's a list of sites to get (& keep) you going:

HEROES. Individuals who make a difference.
1. Cnn heroes (Notice how there's room for more candidates)
-wikipedia entry with links to each hero
2. Gimundo heroes
3. The MY HERO project
4. Grab bag: What I think is a rather odd mix of fictional and military and historical and business and personal heroes: heroes.com
5. I'm trying to do my part to be a hero, too. Heaven: a world of heroes.

GOOD NEWS. News from around the world to keep spirits bright.
-From Others:
1. Good news central (google page with 18 good news sites to choose from)
-For Future You:
2. Just what the doctor ordered! Self-help:
(Motivation, inspiration, goals, achievement, happiness, positivity, overcoming, abundance, growth, adventure.) link page
-{on a more structural level: progress and development}
3. United Nations Development Programme link

Remember, all the bad news is just opportunities knocking to feel good, through action and leadership.
E.g.
-It's 4 years after the tsunami that the un estimates killed 223,000. charity link awaits. there's an endless sea of need.
-Exxon-Valdez was 10.8M gallons. The current Tennessee coal ash sludge is over 1B gallons (on land). Instead of wailing and gnashing teeth...Well, I've got the link to congressman, if you want to lobby for infrastructure investment (I'm not sure what else we can do).
Anyway, what'd you get for Christmas?

Trouble brewing b/w India & Pakistan

Remember, I know nothing

Kashmir -- now wracked by an 18-year, bloody separatist campaign that authorities say has left at least 43,000 dead.

That's a fairly big problem, and I have a completely basic solution that just might work. Keep in mind, I've never been there, know no kashmiris, pakistanis, or indians. It's this: let the kashmiris decide. Decide between 3 choices: Pakistan, Kashmir, and India. Whoever wants to be a part of india and live under indian law and be a part of indian culture can do that, and the same for the other two. The land and resources can be split equitably among the percentages who want to be in each.

Alternatively, the 3 countries can become one country again, and they can just be one happy, possibly dysfunctional, but hopefully healing, reunited family.

Maybe they could vote on unification first, and then if that doesn't fly, have the kashmiris vote what national identity each individual wants to be. It should be positive, and I would hope the borders would be open, and the nukes will be disarmed, and everyone could live happily ever after in their great big asian yellow submarine. blub blub.

Am I God or is Google?

lol. HOLY GOOGLE, batman.

Here's a link that explains why google is god to the church of google.

Vote here
I am God
Google is God
Both are God
Neither is God
Other______

Don't worry, I will not smite thee for choosing a God other than Me.
I am not a jealous God. I do not need validation.
I do not feed on your belief for power.
And, as I am in Google, and Google is in me, neither of us care how you define your deity.
Are you on google? Try googling yourself! (your name, anyway)

Btw, the google search term 'love' has 2.24B (B as in Billion) links

Something just hit me.
The I in I AM GOD could refer to 3 beings (a TRINITY)
1. Me, Jesse L. Teshara
2. I (say it aloud, you'll get it)
3. the computer (the 'middleman')

How's them apples?

Chinese snapshot

From the Christian Science Monitor and Economist
(Also, my wife and I have visited, along with some family)

From csmonitor.com
-'"Charter 08' was just signed by a group of intellectuals in China. It predicts upheaval if China fails to adopt the kind of democracy that can channel the rising demands of people who feel officials don't heed them. The Communist Party, however, is still stuck in a post-Mao strategy that it can stay in power as long as it provides the means for people to become rich. For more than two decades, that strategy has survived. But such materialism is a weak bamboo shoot for anyone to lean on, let alone 1.3 billion people. In the Chinese philosophy of Tao, it is the soft things of life that overcome the hardest. The quiet courage of China's thought-leaders in issuing a principled blueprint for change may yet inspire other Chinese to see the hollowness of the party's promises of wealth over the universal promise of freedom."

-"By departing from these [universal] values, the Chinese government's approach to 'modernization' has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse," states the Charter 08 document."

-"The heart of China's big debate is whether values such as freedom of speech and an independent judiciary are universal to humanity or merely Western."

Economic comparison
From the economist (re: China) and the economist (America)
China's 2008 real gdp growth rate is 9.8%.
America's is 1.8%

Here's the economist link about China's politics.

Personally, I would actually hope China will somehow create conditons of free speech that might even SURPASS America's.

My utopian society would allow anybody to say anything, no matter how crazy, inappropriate, offensive, weird, or creative. Come on, it's just words, right?

What is Sin?

Sin is breaking God's law

That's the answer, in a nutshell, in a soundbite, in a word.
God's law could be "do good, always", or all the stuff in the bible or koran, for example.
It could be going against MY morality
Or, it could be breaking your own personal morality (not having integrity)
It could be ANYthing that is against ANYone's morality...
such as your parent's morality or your spiritual leader's morality
or the collective moralities of the entire human race!
(is that what original sin is?)
If you're morality is exactly the same as that of the law, then sin is crime
(although I heard there's a legal distinction between 'illegal' and 'criminal')

Mainly, I'd say sin is anything you feel guilty about.

Go in peace, your sin is forgiven you!
Be pure at heart from now on. There is no try, there is only do!

(do you really believe "it's all good" ?)

-Forgiveness meditation link

Saying 'Yahweh' Prohibited?

The Pope's recent decree: As a sign of utmost respect (for an unpronouncable word, too), it's not to be said (during services).

Christmas dinner informed me of this recent Catholic directive.
Actually, I thought they were saying Catholics weren't supposed to ever say the word again, for some reason.

Me being crazy, I thought it might have had something to do with the JW's, or the Pope thinking YHWH was dead in this day and age and there's a new God, or even a kind of chess move against my silly blog nuttiness (I'm crazy enough to think the Pope reads my blog, lol), but it turns out he's just staying true to what he's pretty certain was the original intent of the hebrew, which was to omit the vowels, have it as an unpronounceable (or of undefined pronunciation) written-word-only name of God, which by tradition in Judaism (the religion of Jesus....are we all Jews now?) went translated as other stuff.

Extra, extra, read all about it.

A Note to those who take umbrage

"take umbrage" means "are offended"
specifically, by my philosophical position that I AM, and WE ARE (each)(& collectively)(& as a part of reality/universe/everything) God.

You could also take umbrage at my variation between god/gods/God (I haven't used Gods, but why not).

The thing is, there's a lot of definitions of God, and for me, I think we should be happy, so if there is a God, he wants you to believe in whatever definition of him works for you, if any.

Happiness
That's my all-inclusive definition of God.
That's why God is love.
And for me, defining myself as God makes me happy. (but I don't exclude you being your own Gods, as a result of that. I could be your God if you want me to be, but you can still be your own God, and/or believe in something more abstract (or personal -than some guy on the internet). My love, my wife, might be a better way of conceiving, personally, my God. I suppose I should say, if I'm calling myself God, that I love you, too. As my mom once said, you love the sinner, you hate the sin. So yeah, why not. I'm keeping the eros and philia restricted, but I'm down with the agape aspect with y'all. Word up. If you never meet me, we can be in "spiritual communion." If all in all is all we are, then you might believe we are already.

Am I trying to be like Jesus?
In short: hell, no.
I've heard that the ultimate expression of love is to die for someone. Agape means fatherly love, and although fathers occasionally die for their children, I don't have a savior complex. Just save yourself. I just didn't want you to get the wrong idea - I don't want to die -or even suffer- for anyone else's sins, and I have no desire or plans to offer myself in some sort of Christlike self-sacrificing act of forgiveness, or whatever that whole thing was. Truth told, "savior" is a meaningless word to me. I personally believe Jesus died in vain, and any benefit from it is in your head (i.e. virtual). I think he deludedly believed he was actually saving us, somehow. Redemption is for coupons, and saving is for disks. Other than that, I don't understand what he thought he was doing for us all. But when I do die, I suppose it might be comforting for me to think I'm saving everyone from Sauron or something.

Anyway,
If you want to believe God is on an alternate dimension called Heaven, or maybe some planet far away in the universe, or what-have-you, listening to everyone's prayers (somehow, all at once), then that's fine. The way I see that is the Buddhist conception of God as creating your own reality, and if that gives you hope for being "saved" from sin, hell, death, whatever...and for an eternity of happiness forever afterlife in happen, then by all means. The bible say faith is assurance of things unseen. Well, we all know there's a LOT unseen (e.g. radio waves, behind closed doors, trees falling in forests, beyond the limits of telescopes, that our eyes or brains or minds can't perceive..), so faith seems fully justified. I don't want to lessen or negate any faith you may have. In the realms of ideas and beliefs, it's all good, in my opinion. There are no bad thoughts.

Although, personally, I have a thing against premature death and pain. So, because thoughts and words are also actions, and every action has a reaction/consequence, they say, maybe thoughts, or some of them, are or can be bad. But I don't believe that. I don't know how one could ever acquire wisdom on that particular subject, though, so just be happy, and despite the adage, conversations kill, live and let die, or don't worry be happy.

They say hell is paved with good intentions, which I modify to say (some of) hell is paved with good intentions. And a corollary is that heaven could be paved with bad intentions, or some of it, anyway. We know not what we do. There's a law of unintended consequences. That's one of the reasons people say 'let go and let god.' That's the dark side, though, so to speak, and we don't wanna be like darth vader and blow up planets or whatever, lol. Unless maybe alien predators are on these planets, coming to enslave us or something.

Anyway, my mom at dinner quoted the adage about "familiarity breeds contempt." We are all most intimately familiar with ourselves, though, and I think we should love ourselves, and be happy. Self-contempt is tragic. I just wanna say if you have contempt for me or my ideas, that's cool. I'm a work in progress, as I think we all are, and I believe none of us should be closed minded and set in our beliefs, even if you're the Pope or God or "the smartest person on earth" or whatever. Opposition hones your beliefs, sharpens your perspective, and what doesn't kill you... (That's why I think Israel keeps palestinians, (etc.?), in opposition). Anyway, free country, and hopefully, a free world for all, in the future. People (me included, I suppose) like to be opinionated and little dictators, in terms of power or ideas. I pray there will never be a monopoly in the marketplace for ideas, and if you write me with your differing opinions, I would like to post them (with commentary?).

I think any disagreement with this blog's premise rises from the belief that one must submit to God, not place oneself above God or equal to Him. That's cool. I see that as hypnosis to subsume your darker side, your shadow if you will, in service to the "good", however you see it. And maybe the truth is that my philosophy, if widespread, would do more harm than good, because people are rotten. I don't see it that way, and I guess I should say that IF you think you are a sinner, unkind, unloving, angry, etc., MAYBE you should submit to that ideal of goodness you have lurking in the back of your head under the heading of "God." Seriously, though, isn't it better to just see yourself as good, consider yourself God (the ultimate in self-empowerment, no?), and make a better world, yourself, instead of praying to an all-powerful other to do it for you? I also think submitting to an unknown master has potential for mind-control gone awry, and unwarranted/scary self-assurance, like Dubya convinced he's doing God's will, as he commands a force that kills possibly over a million Iraqis. That's pretty much where I'm coming from. Peace, out.

Merry Christmas! Find Love!

Here's a list of personals sites:

1. chemistry.com
2. match.com
3. eharmony.com
4. yahoo personals
5. cupid.com
6. perfectmatch.com
7. findmyhalf.com
8. etc.

May you find true love, and be happy!

Sinners in the Hands of and Angry Me

SHAM, for short.
Anger, Hatred, Rage, Wrath, Fury...Madness
Is God sane?

Hats off to Jonathan Edwards' sermon (July 8, 1741).

I most definitely think I am, and should be. I believe I am rational and see reality and truth as clearly as anyone. However, I do still have a voice, which I am annoyed and interrupted and distracted and sometimes influenced by, which I would rather be rid of, and both voice internally (like many of those who read books do in their mind, if they are not a speedreader) and mutter my almost perpetual dismay and disgust, if not outright ire, toward, in response.

The scientologists might call my mind reactive. Maybe I should try to alter my thought pattern.

Others might say I'm psychotic and delusional, and not actually hearing anything.
I say I'm a captive audience in my own mind to the telepathic intrusions of...well, who cares.
It could be a person, persons, computer, alien, or programming in my head from the night before or even "uploaded" into my head while I blink (?) or something equally as wacky or weird, from god knows who (who, me?, lol), maybe everybody, according to some laws of psychology that govern absolutely everyone, if it turns out I've got the whole world in my head (and maybe some of the animal kingdom). I truly don't believe it's self-generated brain-noise, originating within my head. Originating, hmm. Maybe past thoughts have become memes, which are coming back to haunt me. Anyway, I perceive other in my head because I can't conceive of myself generating some of the thoughts I hear. Just like dreams.

Whatever, though. Hopefully, I'll beat this stupid affliction. It's genetic, I guess, but health and happiness happens. I'm gonna keep a diary of my diet, and times for meds, and anything else relevant, in the hope I can nail down what factors influence better days from worse ones, i.e. regarding the unholy trinity of symptoms: voice, headshocks, chestpains. I used to have my teeth tap, but that's gone, hopefully for good.

So that's the madness.

But I'm still angry. Don't get it confused. Unless all y'all sinners are causing my symptoms.

I'm a kindhearted soul, and I'm just gonna vent in my blog and exercise to maintain mental and physical health. I'm not supposed to drink, so making friends at the bar seems a bit weird. I do like a beer now and then, although it's said to depotentiate my meds. Good word, eh? But no, I need to take my own advice, and get a circle of friends and acquaintances, I think, although I'm pretty self-sufficient and well-adjusted for just being with the dogs so much of the time.

I just want to feel good and make a better world. I want to exorcise my de-mon, and keep a healthy balance between my shadow and sunny sides, so to speak (although dark humor is fun, too).

Wait....IN my hands?? How'd you get in there, lol?

Unflinching Look at God

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Dark Thoughts of God

Here's an interesting thought I had last night:

God is love
God is a man of war
War is the art of deception (Sun Tzu)
so, 1. God is hate (god vanishes in a puff of logic?)

God says thou shalt not kill
so, 2. God says thou shalt kill

"Only God is good"
so, 3. God is evil

God is One.
so, 4. God is Not-One. (i.e God is everything. God is infinity. God is separateness)
(e.g. G-D =7+4=11=2), opposition, conflict, battle (finally, I understand what 'love is a battlefield' means) perhaps you are thinking to yourself, "jesus."

DAG (death as god)
Death (45128) is also 2. So, if we embody God as death, God will kill you. (death kills, lol)
Everyone dies, of course. Every 1. God dies, too. Death, thou shalt die. Flies represent death. Time flies (when you're having fun).
"Kill 'em with kindness?" (if you're a vampire who subsists on blood/cruelty)
Satan (11215)=1=God. YHWH (7858)=1, too.
Santa is god, lol. (god the father?) santa as satan. satan claws.
The secret says love is the force of attraction, so god will give you the presents you ask for.
They say Love Never Dies (the Dracula movie said that)
God is father, son, holy spirit. Son is way, truth, life. And light. Light is alive, then?
jesus as son, sun, light....lucifer...morning star...god as satan? just words, why not.
what is is. identity vs. member of class. god is everything/one?
devil as god's favorite angel, fallen. in rebellion, but in service. A leaf on a tree, Dr. Fell.
the giving tree, the jesse tree, the family tree, the tree of knowledge, branches of knowledge
Kill the lights, please. Turning off the universe, lol. universe-it-t.
Lights are off or on, 666 or 2, beast or jesus (15131). Beast omega.
As Dr. Bronner says, all 1. subliminal code. neurolinguistic programming.
tennis, is ten. wages of sin is death, everyone dies.
put your own spin on it
mine: everyone's a sinner =guilt programming (original sin, in the dna)
nobody's perfect, "you must be perfect as your father in heaven...", dead dad,
god the father, god is dead,
fictional reality (not "real", only in your head)
& real fiction (the books exist), religion makes things "really real" (through repetition)
(but "in your head" is still real, I say -alternate definition?) "real" is fuzzy.
(and maybe it really is, lol)

moral majority vs. immoral majority
majority vs. minority
judge not, lest ye be judged
it's all good
good god

it's all bad
you're a part of it
the bad is good?
devil
4-evil

nobody lives forever vs. love never dies.
god is good, god is love, love is good, love never dies, good never dies, god never dies,
nobody lives forever, god is everything, everything might die.
everything is god is love is good (Bill Clinton's what 'is' is)

aside
I know a dag -deputy attorney general- ('dag ridded evil' anagram), initials d.e., who works next to stan a. cross (satan cross?), 'G-D ridded evil A', too. (d.e. at H, something I've thought about). H (Honda) had a cinder block magazine ad (a simple pic of a single block) awhile back, representing solidity. That could represent jail/prison, too. Mag-got. Honda means 'deep' in esp. (espanol, spanish), JL is me. PRI is the mexican party that was headed by Vicente Fox. Fox is 666. So is 'New Potato Caboose.' Weird world. Sun is sol in spanish. What a mess. Moon, earth, sun, stars. Starburst wrappers.

Jesus is the life (if you only want to live til 33, and then die gruesomely). Germs are alive, no? Just like the Germans. Strange linguistic thing, there. So, God kills members of his body. Foreign intruders, actually. Jesus healed (killed the germs?) and made the blind see as a master of light. Light manipulation. That's gotta be what my head shocks are. Shining some neural fire-ings on my dark thoughts. The dark and light jedis are fighting in my brain. Sharp thoughts? Incisive? Slice cola.

Like white blood cells attacking a virus, crazed killer "killing himself"
All in all is all we are?
(if so, in varying proportions) Poor KC
mad world. mci, mad crazy insane. nuts, loco. nuts and cola.
psychopathy, mental instability, mental disorder (zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba?), schizophrenia=split mind, brain sliced in half, hemispheres and lobes, doing the splits, banana split, i scream. schizo-affective disorder (bipolar and schizophrenic, together)...how s.a.d.
How are 'dark' thoughts dark? It's dark inside your head, red and black, grey matter, even when thinking light thoughts. thoughts, lite. Are heavy thoughts dark? Goofball, my head.

These are some rather dark thoughts, posted for your review.

My note to Anne Rice

High and hell-o (my god), and hey (857=2=jesus=beast),

I've got a whole lot on my mind, as you may gather from my greeting, lol.

I read 3 of your books in college (around '92-'93), recommended by a guy who eventually called himself a vampire, and said I was, too. Which I don't think is all that cool, seen as I have a voice in my head that I consider a telepathic link to him (like John Carpenter said in his 'Vampires' movie), and I'm Catholic, with the Hannibal Lecter thing in my head because of eating Jesus and being a lector at church and the Honda del Sol (H of the silence of the lambs) and Acura is a cura (a priest?) and all this symbology that just goes on and on, some of which I have elucidated on my blog...anyway, I'm trying to get rid of this voice, which you might note begins with a v, so I thus have a disease called schizophrenia which I didn't have before (because I welcomed the voice, at least according to how I define it). I've got a built-in cell phone, in the cells in my brain, and I've definitely heard him in a jail cell as well, because I went off my meds and supposedly assaulted a police officer after I was trying to have some fun in an incredibly boring place that fed me poorly and crushed my soul, while I tripped about the matrix, which is also a car, and the bible says not to call your brother raca, which is a car backwards, and my brother's initials are glt, which is a volvo, so you get the idea, anyway, I went to Atascadero State Hospital, ASH which also stands for American Society of Hematology, 2, and conjurs cigarrettes, which people suck on, like breastfeeding, and which my wife smokes, to my dismay, especially as she has the same first name as my sister who died in a H car crash, but anyway, my name is Jesse, which is one of your vampires, and J is 10 which is like Tennessee, and I worked for Walgreens, which has W and Al and Greens which was like the 2000 presidential elections, and I feel like I'm part of some big honking -but natural- conspiracy, including you, because my birthmom's name (initials) are AR, just like ARCO, and my wife's initials are SLB, like Schlumberger, and who cares, I guess, I just wanted to point out that there's a nexus between my life and yours, and maybe I had something to do with your religious conversion in this mad world that we like to think is ordered and controlled by a loving beneficent fatherfigure we call God. And no, I don't believe in souls, we're just physical, it's vibes and mind and spirit and soul (the same thing) which is like radio waves to our brains, the radios (two-way, I believe). And spirituality is just a positive way of looking at mind control, and the same controller can be God or Devil, so welcome to the endless hypnosis of the world. Yup, no sis.

Something just occurred to me. "Beneficent fatherfigure". My grandpa's name was Ben.

A Rap I Wrote; God Rhymin'

Hi(g!h) and (hell)o-mg! And hey, or, in non-number speak, wazzuuuuuup!
(you can start clapping):

My name is Jesse, and don't get stressy, when I call myself God, cause God is a Bod -E, can't you see, it's you and me, it's love, from above, or below, ho ho ho, on this ball we call earth, playing basketball and giving birth, what's it worth, what's it mean, it's a scene, -don't be mean- actors on a stage, being calm and in a rage, happy and sad, good and bad, being mom and being Dad, you can too, it's up to you, if you want to be a god, cuz someday you'll be sod, eaten by worms, maybe from germs, it's your fate, act now, don't be late, don't have a cow, cuz life's too short, gotta live- not abort, seize the day, seize the fish, cook up a tasty dish, take your time hurry up, to copy from a pup, dawg, word out. Encore? Okay, okay. My name is Jesse and life is messy, gotsta clean it up, and win the world cup, of making a better world, come on boys come on girls, there's lots to do, for me and you, like: making yourself happy, through service like this rappy, but really helping where it counts, like making steps bounce, wherever you go and can be, physically and spiritually, all across the world, where I think I'm gonna hurl, cuz people are sick and people starve, and needless death outweights parve, we can all make a difference, and I don't mean mad subtraction, we can join together, and transcend all our factions, and stop talking and TAKE ACTION!!

My link at beliefnet: http://community.beliefnet.com/God
p.s. They say idle hands do the devil's work, but they also say, chillax, dude.

Happy Holidays! (from a tripartite deity)

Mystery of the Eucharist

The mystery of the Eucharist doesn't seem all that mysterious to me.

-Jesus ate bread, and as you are what you eat, so the disciples became Jesus physically, because they ate the same thing. Also, it's symbolic cannibalism, but instead of eating enemies to absorb their power or spirit, it's eating one's guru or whatever, according to the higher law of unity with reality and transcendence, in the highest form of respect.

-the same applies for the wine. But the wine, I think, deserves a little more. Drink life in! Drink the son of God's blood! Jesus drank wine, which releases inhibitions and makes things a little more -natural, shall we say-, so the sexual and violent aspects of human nature (of which Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner said, "that's the spirit!) -with alcohol also as the social lubricant, as well as permitting his followers to become more pliable to his message- these aspects, represented by what I assume is the left hand and the right hand in Jesus' strange internal world, ...which would get nailed (which he may or may not have known about at that time/the last supper), so drink up, because his passion was not pleasurable ecstasy in bed, and certainly not a blood orgy, but rather in excruciating agony, as what I assume can only be described as masochism, self-justified, it seems, by his belief that he was saving everyone from sin and hell, if not death itself, poor guy. Damn, as they say, right? What the hell am I saying..damn, hell, right, agh!!! LINGUISTICS...THAT's the mystery (the letter T is a cross, of course). It seems Jesus was a bit of a prude.

Okay, so linguistics is a mystery, and the passion is a mystery, and the eucharist is another mystery (sorry for confusing things).

I really don't think Jesus saw his future during the last supper. Maybe he had intimations of immortal mortality, everyone dying continually...but if he knew he was about to be crucified, unless Jesus was insane, I assume he would go running for the caves, like Osama. So that's a mystery (i.e. did he know, and if so, why didn't he go? I'm like Cochrane, lol).

Assuming he did (know),
He embraced pain and death. Mystery solved, maybe. He embraced fate as God's will. That's a bit more probable. He was a complete nutcase. Mystery solved. Talking to myself? Jesus. Did Jesus see his own future, acting out his life like a robot? Mystery #5.

A few more mysteries:
And eternal life vs. omega, hmm. That's a bit of a mystery, too. Will the Jesus meme ever die into oblivion? Probably. Jesus is a mystery wrapped within an enigma within a Riddle. Ha.

Anyway, my point, and I do have one, because I'm going to nail this Eucharistic mystery, so to speak, is that bread and wine become body and blood through the "mystery" of biology, and we become Jesus, because Jesus was just a body carrying around ideas, which he instituted a ritual for, to create a church, or body, to contain and perpetuate those ideas (with a head, lol), in bodies which essentially don't matter next to the fantastic memes he devoted to his self-aggrandizement, I would say. (In addition to a head, there may be a butthole, too).
Okay, so Jesus may have actually believed in himself.

Also, I think the basis of any religion is always sexual. I just see sexual subtexts.
Jesus Christ! G is us. "holy cum union"
more abstract: G is 7, i.e. 7-up, i.e. Penis, cock crows, (Christ! =g is all)
(well, I understand it, lol)

The mystery of eating, in general, is a biggie. Drinking, what dish being eaten, what food, fork smiling or frowning, timing and synchronicity with conversation, all that madness. Fuggedaboutit. Who cares, just enjoy your meal, for christ sakes, lol.

God's eyes, God's hands.
lord nose.
Hammer of the gods

Free and Inexpensive Food

Make every food bite, and dollar, count
...Buy or glean cheap, bulk, healthy food

Eliminate Waste
1) First off, don't throw away the food that you DO buy; link (food waste)
Wikipedia, additionally, says a U of Arizona study said that 40-50% of American food never gets eaten. The same article says (only) $43B worth of american food is discarded (The link says $75B+/yr is expended on food waste; maybe they're measuring different things).
Worldwide, they say around HALF of both food AND water are wasted; link.

Eat Right
2) Secondly, besides the right quantity, get the right quality (i.e. healthy) food;
-article (we're malnourished and obese at the same time)
-fresh, farmer's market, local, organic, is good. get enough fruits and veggies.
-wikipedia link, healthy diet.

on a Budget
3) Thirdly, get food...
-cheaply
($1.25 for a family of 6 people for a week in Chad??); interesting link.
Link about a couple in America that blogged about trying to live on a dollar/day.
or
-free
freegans link
food bank resources, locator link

Some more freegan links
usnews article
f-ing freegans! (an article that tells freegans how to up their game)

summary:
1.25 in Chad.
75B in wasted food.
Omg.

Okay, here's some links I found for cheap and healthy mealplanning:
1. http://www.ehow.com/how_4619744_eat-healthy-cheap.html
2. http://www.ehow.com/how_4664223_eat-cheap-healthy.html
3. http://www.ehow.com/how_4534371_money-during-lifes-salad-days.html
online food coupons:
4. http://www.ehow.com/how_4561288_free-grocery-coupons-online.html

The summary of these articles, if you don't want to keep clicking back and relinking..
is:
1.don't throw food away
2. don't drink bottled water, buy a filter...don't drink soda
2. buy quality food, not junk. Nutritious food is more filling, too.
3. quantity: fill your pantry, buy bulk frozen, learn to can (to freeze)
4: make shopping lists, so you don't overspend
5. buy on sale, & farmer's markets are good- cheaper, fresher.
6. glean for free food, or stock up from family, food banks (if you're poor)
7. no alcohol or cigarrettes (money drain)
8. doing exercise keeps hunger pangs away.
9. no fast food
10. cheap healthy foods: potatoes, apples, carrots (get the whole, big ones- minis are more expensive), beans, peanut butter, bananas. And Tuna (fish is healthy, and recommended). Eggs, too, are cheap (like a buck a dozen?) and a good source of protein.
11. buy generics, like cheerios/oatmeal
12. grow your own food, indoor and out, more satisfying and makes good gifts. can it.
13. print out and save coupons, from grocery stores themselve, or healthy companies.
14. cook from scratch, pizza (no meat, recommended) is cheap.

God loves books

Quot libros, quam breve tempus: So many books, so little time

Here's the LIST of LISTS (best of), for the 2008 year in literature; link.
I had to share this portal to so much goodness :-)

Remember, donate used books to:
-your library,
-or here, for u.s. children, mainly
-or here, for international.

"Heaven is a kind of library"
Some information on the world's biggest library, the u.s. library of congress:

In 1992, the Library acquired its 100 millionth item. The collections now include approximately 15M books, 39M manuscripts, 13M photographs, 4M maps, more than three-and-a-half million pieces of music, and more than half a million motion pictures.

The Library's collection of more than 5,600 incunabula (books printed before 1500) is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and its collections of maps, atlases, newspapers, music, motion pictures, photographs, and microforms are probably the largest in the world. In addition, the Library holds newspapers, prints, posters, drawings, talking books, technical reports, videotapes and disks, computer programs, and other audio, visual, and print materials.

-Hmm, it just said 15M books.
But, on another page it says, "Today's Library of Congress is an unparalleled world resource. The collection of more than 138 million items includes more than 32 million cataloged (sp? I thought it was 'catalogued') books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 61 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world's largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings.
-So that says 32M.

-I guess this is the final word: "20,854,810 cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system"
(Does this include the @3M volume law library?)

I just wish one library held Absolutely Everything. Maybe the internet will do that at some point. AHA!!.     dailylit, a service (with 800+ free books, but otherwise by payment) that provides books in installments by email or rss.

I'll close with this: The Library receives some 22,000 items each working day and adds approximately 10,000 items to the collections daily. The majority of the collections are received through the Copyright registration process, as the Library is home to the U.S. Copyright Office.

The Library's role as a copyright depository has contributed to the popular belief that it contains one copy of every book published in the United States. It does not. Its collections are the most comprehensive in the country, but it is not a library of record in the legal sense; it is not required to retain all copyright deposits and, except for the period 1870-1909, it has never attempted to do so.

You'd have to be a helluva speedreader to read 32M books, lol.
Or to ingest 138M items..
A website says that 100,000 books are published every year (worldwide?), of which 10% are novels.

Another site says, in regard to my original query, of how many books are there, "After long and extensive research, I finally discovered a website ofthe University of California, where an attempt was made to figure up the US and worldwide number of original book titles that have been published, both in and out of print. Their result was:-- 65 million book titles --"

Happy Reading!

Crazy Spirituality

I'm so sane, I'm crazy (I think) (but am I?)
Everyone else is so crazy, they're sane
I'm sane enough to know we're all mad.
mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore
insane as a village in Norway, and not going to steal a Stephen King book no more.
Nuts are chewy, and Chuy is nuts.
Heyzeus is insane.
One is not necessarily homonymous with won. Y is that. Is there a reason for the seizin'?
Jesse is right, write, rite, wryt
If you disagree, you're left
leftovers, muahahaha
Left is wrong, turn right
the leftists are right
when right is wrong
when left is right
asdf is left. fads are left are wrong.
Bonkers
sugar craziness (and this, too); loca cola
cocaine craziness; coca loca
As sane as they cum (they said masturbation leads to insanity) (it drove 'em crazy)

"Sanity is the vanity of a manatee"
Insanity is a verdict. Ver (to see) dict (dictionary) (actually, ver is truth, and dict is tell):
Insanity: Traditionally, insanity or madness is the behaviour whereby a person flouts societal norms and may become a danger to themself and others. (Then it says: most often, in relation to mental instability, schizophrenia, and psychopathology)-wikipedia (I know, it's not a dictionary)

In other words, a flouting and dangerous pms'er..
or msp bandmember (manic street preachers)

Verdict: In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge.

Formal Finding of Fact? Ha. (that's alliterative, how nice. And 666, to boot)

I saw a book long ago entitled crazy spirituality, or something like it (mad wisdom?)
I found it. Purchase, here; link.
Here's one link about it (the concept).
God could be 5150'd for being so damn insanely sane, lol.
In fact, I'm of the persuasion that practically all of them are. It's a mad world.
No, we're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy. (alot could be a little, to a crazy person, no? It's all relatives.)
Here's a book I just discovered that also sounds interesting.

We are all ghosts

In several respects

First, without touching someone, all other people are just sound or light (or smell). These are representations of the actual person. Sight is the main way of identifying things, I guess, so this is photons, which are waves and particles or both or whatever hitting our eyeballs. So, in this respect, other people are kind of unreal, like ghosts. Movies play with this concept: maybe people you see walking down the street are actually ghosts...

Secondly, a ghost could be like a vapor or something; not solid. We are not as solid as we think we are. We are to each other, but to small particles, we're like a fog, at best. So from a minute perspective, we're ghosts.

Third, ghosts are often felt, but not seen. People say they're taken over by the holy ghost, or feel the cold of a ghost moving through them. So maybe people feel other people when they are removed, or at some distance, from them (like ghosts).

Fourth, maybe the dead actually do affect us, like the dying breaths being the spirit of that person, or memories and telepathic reconstructions (e.g. dreams) entering our minds, keeping the "spirit" of a deceased person "alive."

Fifth, from the perspective of the future, after we're dead (which will last for eternity), all we were was dust in the wind (basically, a ghost, if that). Plus, the eternity preceding us, as well, may as well have considered us ghosts from the future. The ghosts of christmas past and x-mas future wish you a happy holiday :-)

Maybe a ghost is someone who has spontaneously combusted.

Part of Something Bigger than Yourself

Spirituality and Religion

You can be a member of an organization, or fight for a cause, or be a member of a religion, or cult, or philosophy (such as humanism), or all of the above.

The main point is, people feel good when they're part of something bigger than themselves. You can do this by 1)subsuming your identity to an external form, or 2) making all of reality conform to you.

2 is obviously crazy, but some of us keep fighting the psychic winds.

I think 1) is a follower, and 2) is a leader. I'm crazy, and I'd like to think I'm crazy-sane, and so a truly mad world should conform to me. The leader of all the leaders is basically the alpha gorilla or something, so I think it should be a real, not imaginary entity, and I think I'm a fairly swell guy, so I'm having some fun and calling myself God.

Maybe it's anarchic, but I think you might want to consider trying it, too. You have just as much a right to be happy and control the universe as anyone else. God, out. Have fun.

Also, humans are like birds that fly in a flock, it's a collective mind, with what I assume is varied leadership, and although in our culture we often see ourselves as individuals, we're just conformists and meme-carriers and swayed by the winds/news cycle, and basically what I would say are much less independent than we think we are. Even rebels have a conformity to them. In any case, ideas happen in different minds simultaneously, and there's this idea of a collective unconscious, as well. They say life is but a dream, and maybe the people sleeping on the other side of the earth (or who were awake all night) are pushing us around in their dreams, or dreaming up some reality. I don't know the big picture. Scientists are after a theory of everything, but will supercomputers generate the NEXT step, a LAW of everything? Maybe only then will free will be a possibility. Happy blending in with the psychesphere matrix, y'all.

Interesting link to a story about Jesus and an A.D. being struck by lightning twice, each.
Feel the pow-ah!! (sorry, if i did that)

God on Spinoza

Spinoza wrote a bit about me, now it's my turn
or, "In God we Trust?"

-Here's the link (Scott Adams' blog) that got me started on all this.
-Spinoza on Wikipedia.

Spinoza quotes (from Wikipedia):
-In 1929, Einstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."

-His (Spinoza's) account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as one and the same. The universal substance consists of both body and mind, there being no difference between these aspects. This formulation is a historically significant solution to the mind-body problem known as neutral monism. The consequences of Spinoza's system also envisage a God that does not rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus, God is the natural world and has no personality. (My Chinese birthsign is the boar, lol).

-Given Spinoza's insistence on a completely ordered world where "necessity" reigns, Good and Evil have no absolute meaning. Human catastrophes, social injustices, etc. are merely apparent. The world as it exists looks imperfect only because of our limited perception.

-Good and evil are related to human pleasure and pain.
-Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine.

-Spinoza held good and evil to be relative concepts, claiming that nothing is intrinsically good or bad except relative to a particular individual. Things that had classically been seen as good or evil, Spinoza argued, were simply good or bad for humans. Spinoza believes in a deterministic universe in which "All things in nature proceed from certain necessity and with the utmost perfection." Nothing happens by chance in Spinoza's world, and nothing is contingent.
(perhaps good and evil derive from their relationship to the welfare of...me? you? Jesus? Jesus' dna?)

-The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late eighteenth-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. (It's a M.A.D. world)

aside: (lol)
I think, therefore I am. I am, therefore I think, I think.
I think I am, I think I am, said the little god that could.
I AM! the big god said

Okay, here' my commentary:
In the context of Einstein, I can think of nothing else than his regret. He said, "The release of atom power has changed everything but our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

But it makes sense that an intelligent man would conceive of God as not concerning Himself with the fates of human beings, in view of all the suffering.

Also, he might want to assuage any personal guilt with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which plainly goes against Spinoza's view of evil as in relation to human suffering.

In other words, he thinks humanity is fated to use his ideas to devastate itself, and he thought he f-ed up. But his failure, and his regret, he must have thought fated, anyway. But he was Jewish, and he believed in god, and god is good. But his god was Spinoza's, which is the universe, which Spinoza considered impersonal (and Camus called indifferent in the Stranger), which can only be good if someone like me (say, Jesus) steps in and calls themselves everything, and then proves they are good by dying -painfully- for you, so you can go to heaven, which is whatever you want it to be. Not.

Actually, though, I am going to comment on myself, because I'm an endless mirror of reflection and refraction.

What I want heaven to be is not an afterlife, but an ASAP reality, here on earth (which may never come to fruition, I admit), of absolute minimal suffering, and maximal happiness. Well, the afterlife, too, but as an afterthought. Jesus, while I admit he provides hope for an afterlife of eternal joy, just doesn't make me happy, because it's complete b.s. There is no dichotomy (trichotomy?) between mind, body, and soul. It's just body. Mind is just vibes, like the "spirit of radio," physics and physical, a part of the way we're built. In other words, the difference between body and mind is like the difference between radios (that broadcast, too) and radio waves -which nobody calls "spiritual", lol. Spirit and soul is alcohol and music, and mind (i.e. body). There isn't anything to go anywhere after death. You lose your life, you've lost your mind, you've lost your "soul," when the worms eat your brain. Jesus was psychotic and delusional, or else completely cynical, manipulating everyone. One or the other. Maybe he had no choice, and was smart enough to be both. Happiness is something to be had NOW, not as something to be hoped for as nails get pounded through your wrists and feet. Christ-like? Bah, humbug.

Anyway,
The Universe can be made good, by making yourself good. Ripples outward, from the joy within, in a life of service. That's my philosophy, in a nutshell. Whatever makes you happy, more power to him, her, it. (Also, open yourself to ripples inward from sources that make you happy...although even the worst can make you happy if you turn it into opportunity and action and accomplishment). For example, nuclear weaponry can be abolished, abandoned, and written up as an absurd part of history.

Einstein, on the other hand, in view of my God-as-self philosophy, may have had an overall neutral or even negative affect on human happiness, for all his knowledge and wisdom. We know not what we do? I'm a bit concerned for myself, on that score, and want to live a happier and more giving life. But atomic power, with chain-reactions, in a universe that Spinoza said was all pretty much the same thing? That makes me think of utter annihilation of the entire universe. It doesn't get much worse than that, does it. I wish I could have a conversation with Tesla, Hawking, and Einstein. See, I like to think I'm smart, lol. Maybe I'm just blessed (with some letters in my name?).

I also like the God as everything/Nature/reality concept, which is compatible with the self-deification and other-deification and even paperweight-deification concepts floating around in my blog, because reality is, and if we want to be happy then why not associate I AM with love, even if the universe is indifferent (but only if you see it that way?). If you believe the universe is a kind, loving, personal, rational place that answers your prayers, maybe you'll live a happier life than if you think it's a cruel, random, impersonal, and indifferent one. I think it's all about psychology, and, in the form of religion, community.

South Park's episode on blowing up imagination-land seems relevant. Ha.

Einstein wasn't so bad. His family life, was he in love? That's what really matters, they say.

Iridology and Dermatoglyphics

May I see your I.D., please?

Iridology is said to reveal stuff about you (your health, personality) from your eyes, and Dermatoglyphics does the same with your fingerprints.. (actually, it's the "study of the integumentary patterns formed on palms, soles, and fingerprints.")

Pretty interesting stuff.
Palm-reading, or chiromancy, is an old, many say quack, art/science. I had a thought: Maybe the government can tell stuff about you if you're on the fingerprint database... Don't they take footprints of babies at birth? I bet that might say something, as well.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, could the soles be the window to one's eye?

Here's an iridology link.
Here's a link to an expensive dermatoglyphics book for purchase.
Wikipedia on dermatoglyphics is scant. But here's the link.
Here's an interesting article that a cursory review revealed me to have csi (serious intent).

Fingerprints of God is a book (but I don't think it talks about my hands, lol), purchase
Lifeprints is what got me started on this post; I met the author, Richard Unger; purchase

Apparently, there's some fingerprint correlation to schizophrenia.

I believe I have zero whorls. Not sure, though. If I want to be a paranoid schizophrenic I can always believe the computers that are reading my blog are reviewing my fingerprints, lol. But I have an eye on one of my fingers. So it'll look back.

This stuff puts a new twist on Ditech.
(not a very hard riddle. d,i -get it?)