Is it not written?

Me, My No-Self, and I

You are baptized before you even have motor control, or can use a toilet.   Your parents drag you to church every Sunday.  You go to 8 years of Catholic grammar school, and become an altar boy and get confirmed and have an aunt who is a nun, and not just any nun, but a Prioress General of the Dominican Order.   You have 2 godparents, married to each other, who left being a priest and nun.  You grow up on the corner of Darien and Manor, in the city of Saint Francis.  Darien is from the Gulf Of Darien.   Manor, as in lord of the manor.  Lord God.  The house where my dad was raised (he bought from his parents).  Lawrence William Teshara, Larry, Mr. T - who quit his role as Scoutmaster to be father, transferring all his attention from a legion of appreciative boys, to One, me.   I had been a Riddle, like Voldemort.  Adopted at age 4, now I was a Teshara, an anagram of ‘As Earth.’  I was given a globe that lit up - a glowb, if you will.   The light of the world.  I brought it along with me to college.   It melted in the back seat of the Honda - global warming, you might say.  I have a different one now - but the seas are brown, not blue.  It has a 25 watt bulb.  Jesus Christ, eh?  My name Jesse, or Jess, is biblical.   Jesse was the father of David.  The Jesse tree is the genealogy of Jesus.   And Jesus is an anagram of ‘Jess, u’.  Am I saying I am Jesus?   Was Jesus saying he was me?  I don’t know the answer to either of those questions.  But I do have a blog where I play the role of God.  Like Jesus.  In French, I am is “J’ suis” which is close to Jesse.  In arabic, Jesus is Isa.   Isaí is Jesse in Spanish, like Jesus (pronounced Hey Zeus), or the nickname Chuy (pronounced chewy).   Jesse means God’s gift, and the whole office of the eucharist.  Wafers are chewy.  That’s something to chew over.  What’s eating me?  Christians, I guess.  John 11:25-26 is delusion and deceit, I believe.  Does that make me the Antichrist?  There’s no point in being against a dead guy.   Am I antichristian?  No.   I don’t care what people believe.  I just happen to believe something else.  In any case, my blog provides a service to philosophers of any stripe, something to agree, or disagree, with - a record of my evolving belief system.  

So what do I believe?  If you want God to be real, you have to become Him/Her.  Unless you worship a guru, or have faith in an unseen mystery.  I believe all gurus, of any degree of realization, are just ordinary people.  I am not the submitting kind.  I sing a song of myself.  God is love, says the good book, and it also says love believes all things.  I don’t.  There is such a thing as true and false, real and imaginary, fact and fiction.  I have faith in my own powers of discernment.  I get by with a little help from my friends.  The voice in my head, though technically making me disabled, that is, a mentally ill schizophrenic, can also be thought of as an invisible friend, a telepathic presence -like an angel, say, or even God.  God is a role, in any case.   Whether me, the man in my head, the Pope, or some space alien that created the universe - schizophrenia has the benefit of making spirituality less mysterious, more concrete, and sharply real.  My own view is the voice is from a lawyer I met in college.   But that is beside the point.  Telepathy exists.  The assumption behind prayer is real.  Someone is listening.  And I get to choose, on an ongoing basis, whether this source is God or Devil, angel or demon, interesting or annoying, blessing or curse.  I’m a 21st century schizoid man.  I like to think of myself as a source of truth and insight, a spiritual authority, a godman, like a cult leader, or guru, or shaman, or God Himself.  I don’t care if you believe me or not.   I’m a cult of One.   

God is love.  God is One.  God is a man of war.  God is good.  That is what the Bible says about God.   Sun Tzu says war is the art of deception.   So maybe God is a woman of peace, or something.  A computer, an artificial intelligence, conscious light, you name it.  I like the elegance of initialisms, such as:  Good Orderly Direction, or Guns Oil Drugs, or Good Old Days.   God is very old school.  In fact, I think the world needs me to step up as a new deity.   The old one (I’m thinking Yahweh) is and was very nasty, and, in my view, is not worthy of your praise, prayer, submission, or worship.  God is an invention of humans.   Old Gods die, and new ones take their place.  I will die too, most likely.  I leave you this.  

God is a concept.   All the concepts of God, really.  Father Son Holy Spirit; Brahma Shiva Vishnu; Me, Myself, and I;  past, present, and future, here there and everywhere, you get the point, as far as Trinities go.  Trinity, itself, is a deity, a bomb, and a Matrix character.   The Satanists are interesting, just like Scientology, and the Sufis.   But so far, to me, God is some combination of Morpheus, Allah, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Zurvan, Buddha, Jesus, Yahweh, Adi Da, Zeus…as a background of ingredients in my own personal stew of belief in Self.  Self can be ego, id, superego, thanatos, eros, anima, animus.  The mind, psyche, soul can be conscious, preconscious, subconscious…. Then Buddha comes along and says there’s No-Self.  So there I am.  It’s a mess.  Cleanliness is next to Godliness.  Go tidy up.

God is peace, love, happiness.  All, Infinite, Reality, always and everywhere, eternal and omnipresent, all-knowing and omniscient, all-powerful and omnipotent, the source of all goodness, by definition.  That’s the going line.  That’s what they say.   Well, why not?  Because all things are impermanent, and infinity is too big for a single mind, and evil exists, that’s why.   Religion is just power and control and hypnosis.  Happiness psychology, at best.  Heaven and hell aren’t in the ether or soil.  You only live once:  make it good.   God is good, and being good is simply being not-bad, so wwjd?   I believe what God does, is just sit.   Meditation is joyful and effective.  Plus a bit of yoga.  Maybe love thy neighbor or something.  Peace out.  Be prepared.  Do a good turn daily.  May the force be with you.  Love all, serve all.  L’ chaim.  Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.  Yada yada.   Bada bing.