Exactly what I have always believed, even as a very small child, and so well-expressed. Before I had any knowledge of religion, I thought religious objects cruel, ugly, barbaric. It's as though I had come from a beautiful place - into something totally foreign. This reminds me of what I felt then, and so glad someone else feels the same way.
I had the same experience as a child. I'd look up at the stars as if I came from somewhere else. But I fell in live with the Earth ata very young age. It's the Patriarchal chains that humanity is still dragging, that's what felt so heavy and base.
What a powerful explanation of our oneness. It might not be too farfetched to go one little step further, without losing grounding in the already established and evidenced science of current days on Earth. We have already some rudimentary sense regarding energies which are for the time being still escaping measurement with current devices and technology. Some studies show us for example that, let us call it swinging waves, from one person thinking intensively and lovingly about another one can trigger positive effects. This may happen between persons like parent and child; it may also happen as expression of empathy for an animal, for a plant. In other words, we are not just living next to each other with all of nature, no we are in reality connected to everyone and everything on this planet and in the home universe.
Jung writes that he occasionally dined with Albert Einstein, and that both he and Einstein thought it was likely matter/consciousness were two sides of the same coin. The old philosophical question comes down to this: does form precede consciousness, or consciousness precede form?
The question is not whether we come out of the universe, obviously we do. The question really is: what is the universe? And what are we?
Regarding the sequence of evolutionarily coming about in our universe, the non-material finest of fine energy had to do the start, with that energy triggering the material portion of the universe at the occasion of Big Bang. For avoiding the religious connotations with the term spirit, one might better call this basic energy form Creation-energy. At the current stage of our universe, we have thus both parts in existence, with for individual living beings the presence of Creation-energy in the own material body making the difference between already/still being alive or not yet/no longer.
It might read strange, but what we call an individual’s consciousness is part of the material realm, just at already such a fine level that we can’t detect and measure it yet. Talking about humans, when our individual life starts on day 21 after procreation, a new personal consciousness form together with a returning Creation-energy form enter our physical body simultaneously.
Yes - I think being caught up in religious terms can muddy the water. Why I like Jung's writing regarding unconscious symbols arising spontaneously within the psyche, representing truths but not becoming absolute in some kind of manmade religious denominational sense - used for worship and throughout human history, political control.
There are thousands of different definitions of God, why it's always a bit of a strawman when someone declares their absolute non-belief in a God. Whose God? What definition of God?
The thing about modern science and ongoing science, is we continually find more depth to our "universe" much of it far removed from the straightforward Newtonian view put forth in the 1800s. There are many fields, and energies and rules Isaac Newton simply was unaware of then that we are aware of now in Science. Non-locality for example is now very much a known part of our "universe". As is, the relativity of Time and Space.
And of course the nature of consciousness (or spirit) whatever word you wish to use to describe that inner being we all experience. What is it? Is it some yet undefined energy that is part of the universe? Because most certainly, meaning, symbols, and movement derives from "consciousness". And it is an Observer.
Now it may eventually turn out that the Materialists will prove Consciousness is simply the product of brain processes. They want to establish we are all just biological robots and nothing more. But they have not succeeded at all as of yet. Despite what some may insist is true. Scientists have yet to demonstrate how consciousness is produced, little alone life. They've been trying now for over a century to create life in the laboratory - to start life from inert material and none have even come close. Consciousness, complex awareness remains unknown. Sure, they have mapped conscious processes to the brain, but correlation is not causation. Just because brain states are correlated with consciousness (although Memory now appears to be more like a wave phenomena upon the brain and has not been localized to any part of the brain) science still does not know what actually *produces* consciousness - and the brain, for all science knows at the moment, the brain may be acting as a filter/conduit for wave/field like operations of consciousness much like a radio responds to broadcasts on given channels. A radio does not produce a broadcast, it simply filters and makes the broadcast possible to hear for human consumption. Science already knows there are many types of invisible "energies" and quantum fields out there. It also knows that virtual particles come in and out of the universe constantly. And that quantum fields do not actually come into existence (literally) without Measurement or an Observer. That the reality we experience is Contextual, and appears to be more INFORMATION based than something actually REAL or tangible much like a rock or water is real. Consciousness itself may be something just as fundamental as gravity. It exists, but is not something that is actually SEEN.
And one can speculate about all this without resorting to religious doctrines or imagining human beings must be something completely different and outside the reality we find ourselves in right now.
I love love love this and all your amazing gifted generous profound and deeply compassionate (and so many more adjectives) writingl Thank you so much for doing what you do.
But I guess it's not exciting and interesting enough for some so we have to make up all sorts of B.S. so as to have more whatever and manipulate others.
Planet Earth is basically a ship of fools going round and round a big, life giving orb working feverishly on their own destruction.
It certainly is starting to look that way. Well, the Fools are in charge right now. There is plenty of ingenuity and intelligence out there - but these individuals probably don't maintain the required sociopathy to become one of the Elites willing to destroy the planet and start wars for their own self-aggrandizement.
Thank you for this Caitlin, I have always felt we are all one and part of something much bigger, we live and die but are always a part of the whole. Which is so beautiful, nature is never ending.
True. But what is the universe? A bunch of random billiard balls? When is that age old paradigm finally going to die out? Even scientifically speaking, we already know there is more to it than the Materialists continue to insist.
It'll die when the last of the mechanists dies. So... Probably never. There will always be people who desperately want to believe that the entire universe can easily be understood because they are terrified of uncertainty.
We probably can be grateful for the mysteries and questions that still remain, and which scientists and philosophers continue to struggle with today. Because otherwise, it would all be pretty damn boring.
I don't think the mechanists got it right. And I certainly hope they don't got it right. I love being, and also meaning.
A few remarks: nearly the entire planet and most of history is covered with colonialism. Bantu Africa was mostly a recent colony. Societies with aversion to colonisation and immigration, tend to go the way of Sparta: demographic implosion... in the best case. Open society Athens did much better...
Slavery was also ubiquitous in the past before Frankish empress (and saint!), the ferocious Bathilde outlawed it in 656 CE.
African slaves were sold to European slave traders by African potentates. Earlier on, the human excedent was simply killed, often in elaborate rituals reminiscent of the Aztecs. When Africa was finally conquered in the Nineteenth Century, one of the main argument to do it was "mission civilisatrice"... Including putting an end to... African slavery (not quite finished to this day...)
In other news, we are Quantum entanglements, thus everywhere home...
I am so exhausted by the people who desperately want to believe that they are special magical flowers and that nothing bad can ever really happen to them because the universe was built with them in mind. Are you exhausted by them, too?
Sure.
The universe _was_ built with you in mind. I'm not being sarcastic there. It was.
It was also built with the sociopathic enslavers of all life in mind.
And it's our job to make sure the sociopaths don't end up in charge of everything.
We can be as Zen as we want to. We can tell ourselves that, in the end, everything we do is essentially meaningless because none of this is really the final reality. But when the slavers come for your children or your grandchildren you're not likely to maintain that phony pseudo-Zen state of mind, are you?
Yes. The slavers are coming. It's what they do. No. They will not stop unless someone stops them. Someone means me. And you, too.
Also: The current slavery is far more horrifying than the slavery of the southern US and infinitely more horrifying than the slavery of the ancient world.
Let's not forget India's slave holders. There are plenty of them. And the slaves in Bangladeshi garment factories.
I think that none of those slaves are as horrifying as the slaves in the 'first' world, though. They don't even know that they're slaves.
As we used to say years and years ago, "You a unique and special flower. Just like everyone else. Now get back to work and do something useful."
I don't know why everybody cramps all over colonialism. The impression I get is that everyone was an angel and all was holy in the land before those blasted Europeans showed up! Never mind the good things that came from westernization.
You only say that because you're a white male of European ancestry. The entire rest of the world knows that you're LitTiraLlee hIltiLr!
Seriously, though... I often question the long-term large-scale benefits of the European expansion. Frankly, I'm not sure agriculture was a good idea. You can definitely tell me that, if not for modern medical science my diabetes would have killed me already. Yup. That's true. The question is: If not for modern industry would I have ever had diabetes?
One in three (or possibly more, according to friends who work in the medical field) adults in the US is either diabetic or pre-diabetic. If we were that genetically predisposed to diabetes our species never would have made it out of the caves, so to speak. This is an environmental phenomenon, to put it into the sterile language that attempts to deny the natural outrage such a thing should spark in every human heart and mind.
This is a direct consequence of agriculture, specifically modern industrial agriculture.
This, amongst other consequences of what we think of as progress, is an existential threat to our entire species.
Pull back for the really wide shot. Maybe not everything we think of as 'good' is really as 'good' as we think it is in the very long term.
(Diabetes will definitely kill you, by the way. In the most horrifying ways you can imagine. You'll get gangrene in your feet and they'll have to cut them off. You'll go blind. Your mind will fail. The list of things is as endless as it is horrifying. Eventually you'll end up as a confused, blind lump in a chair who is nothing more than a burden on everyone around them. I'd rather have Alzheimer's.
If you think that 1/3 of the populating having diabetes (If you're pre-diabetic you're almost certain to be diabetic sooner or later) isn't an absolute outrage against every human being on the continent you just don't understand the apocalypse of horror and death that is inevitably coming. Yes, this includes you Canadlians, too.)
Don't make the mistake of thinking that it's just excess sugar consumption, kristofarian. While it's certainly true that sugar is contributing to the problem it's definitely not the only factor or, I think, the primary factor.
For? I don't think so. With? Oh, definitely. It's all a part of the same machine. A machine designed to keep the peasants in their place.
I'll never forget the partner in a very large consulting and accounting firm who once told me that almost every job in the country was nothing more than a way to keep people occupied [so they wouldn't start thinking about the world].
Preying upon other people is sociopathy. It is as old as humanity. Americans certainly have no monopoly on it. The American sociopaths are just better at it than the others. They're more sophisticated in their methods. They're more scientific about their manipulations.
I can't really think of a lot of things that have only evil consequences, honestly. And, since none of us has perfect knowledge, we can't really know the consequences of anything we do. There's a reason they said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Those are good words to keep in mind. Words to keep us all humble when we think we know best. Which is definitely not to say that European colonialism had any good intentions for its victims behind it. The only good that came of that was due to unintended consequences and that certainly isn't enough to exculpate those who engaged in it.
Pedophilia is, as far as I can tell, one of a very few things I can think of that can only have negative consequences. I can't even imagine anything being better because of it.
I believe in right action. The ends do not justify the means. Any good that happens could be from other influences. Also, it is a mysterious Universe full of intelligence and meaning. One can make a bad choice in one moment and a good one the next moment. So, there are evil choices, and there is good in everyone. We are all connected and part of Consciousness, part of Universal energy and playing our parts in the cosmic dance.
I'm quite sure that there are people in whom the only good is accidental and unintentional good. The sociopaths enjoy being evil and harming others. It's how they measure their success. They view themselves as predators and all the rest of us as their prey.
I believe that the universe is constructed in such a way as to require competition. Even plants kill each other for access to sunlight. But humans have the capacity to understand things that plants do not. We are capable of seeing options that do not involve harming others but which still allow us to accomplish our goals. We have the option to do the least harm. The smarter (however you'd like to define that slippery word) any entity is the more non-violent options it can see. The fox knows no other way to survive except by killing the rabbit. The sociopaths try to reduce all of humanity to foxes and rabbits and to prevent the rabbits from seeing any other way for the world to be.
The "star-stuff" can not become reality without an Observer. And we know from John Wheeler's Delayed-Choice quantum erasure experiment, the quantum wave function collapse can effect and determine the past.
We are a home- a home to kajillions of other beings and doings. In fact we don’t exist at all. We are a process -a process within process within a progress going nowhere. We are not human beings. We are human doings, caught up in a clever trick - traps our great magicians called egos have laid for us, so that we think we have a purpose, to plunder, to build an edifice made of dust. The air moves through us and beyond us to the lungs of our enemies and beyond We are just temporary vessels for the easy transference of the elements, mostly water, on their journey through the universe. Once we get over ourselves, we can stand under our selves, looking up through the wavering pool at the floating vessel as it processes time and material and energy through its convoluted portals
They say the body you have now is entirely made up of different atoms and molecules than the body you had a number of years ago. That is, the body that is you - is not the body that was you 7 years ago.
What is interesting is this sense of identity that remains, even though every cell of *you* from a physical standpoint that was you 7 years ago no longer exists. So where is identity? Why do we have this subjective sense of being the same when we really are not?
The way I see it, our bodies are obviously not anything to plant a flag on. But t he mind and the sense of identity exists outside of the gross material. Identity exists but once appreciated, it becomes evident that even that identity is fleeting and part of a larger whole of consciousness itself. In Vedic wisdom there is a kernel of self consciousness that exists even after the body and many layers of mind is fragmented into ether. They call it the Ahum Kara, like a final expression of I AM. Then the true reality, ground of all being is undifferentiated bliss into which that last grasping of self must abandon itself. We have no fucking idea what this means from ordinary waking consciousness, no matter how refined our thinking. It lies beyond that level of comprehension. For now, we endure
It is interesting that from a more modern scientific perspective, if we look at the last three decades of scientific research into the Near-Death phenomena, in which there have been legitimate scientific peer-reviewed studies (over 60+ now) prospective and retrospective scientific studies, there certainly appears to be a growing body of evidence that points to conscious "identity" not being dependent on brain activity - at least after a short period of time after the brain becomes inactive or certainly incapable of any kind of rich complex psychological activity that has been reported and corroborated by multiple world-wide scientific studies.
What is interesting to note from these many NDE cases (now in the thousands), the experience of the NDE'rs follow a pattern, following the Bruce Greyson classification scale - of which one of the more well known aspects is the sense of "timelessness" and also the sense of an "expansion of awareness". Which does appear to echo the Vedic wisdom that identity may take up a space removed to our normal sense of what we think we are or what consciousness may be. On the other hand, the collection of NDE cases we now have on scientific record, also indicate that those who have had the experience - do not lose their sense of self when in the dying process and having the experience. Even though their sense of Time changes and they all claim they become far more "Aware" then when they claim they were embodied - they still say they knew who they were and that core sense of identity did not disappear.
It may be one's consciousness and having a life is like going to see a movie. You go inside the movie theater, momentarily forget what is outside, vicariously enjoy and almost become part of the story you are experiencing, but when the curtains go up and you leave the theater - you are still you - you are enriched by your experience, but you are no longer in the same environment playing by the same rules as when you were in the theater.
On the other hand, the above may not be true. Maybe we just are all biological robots and when death arrives at our doorstep, one's identity disappears forever, along with all that you loved or wanted to love. The NDE scientific research seems to not point in that direction though ... in my opinion.
Exactly what I have always believed, even as a very small child, and so well-expressed. Before I had any knowledge of religion, I thought religious objects cruel, ugly, barbaric. It's as though I had come from a beautiful place - into something totally foreign. This reminds me of what I felt then, and so glad someone else feels the same way.
I had the same experience as a child. I'd look up at the stars as if I came from somewhere else. But I fell in live with the Earth ata very young age. It's the Patriarchal chains that humanity is still dragging, that's what felt so heavy and base.
as the sun son drags its Planets
Patriarchy seeks its 'rightful'
place atop the Food Chain
Mother Earth anticipates
your Breakout.
.
there is good Medicine
if only they'd Take it
What a powerful explanation of our oneness. It might not be too farfetched to go one little step further, without losing grounding in the already established and evidenced science of current days on Earth. We have already some rudimentary sense regarding energies which are for the time being still escaping measurement with current devices and technology. Some studies show us for example that, let us call it swinging waves, from one person thinking intensively and lovingly about another one can trigger positive effects. This may happen between persons like parent and child; it may also happen as expression of empathy for an animal, for a plant. In other words, we are not just living next to each other with all of nature, no we are in reality connected to everyone and everything on this planet and in the home universe.
“Nature is not matter only. She is also spirit.” ~Carl Jung
Yes. It's all one and the same.
Jung writes that he occasionally dined with Albert Einstein, and that both he and Einstein thought it was likely matter/consciousness were two sides of the same coin. The old philosophical question comes down to this: does form precede consciousness, or consciousness precede form?
The question is not whether we come out of the universe, obviously we do. The question really is: what is the universe? And what are we?
Regarding the sequence of evolutionarily coming about in our universe, the non-material finest of fine energy had to do the start, with that energy triggering the material portion of the universe at the occasion of Big Bang. For avoiding the religious connotations with the term spirit, one might better call this basic energy form Creation-energy. At the current stage of our universe, we have thus both parts in existence, with for individual living beings the presence of Creation-energy in the own material body making the difference between already/still being alive or not yet/no longer.
It might read strange, but what we call an individual’s consciousness is part of the material realm, just at already such a fine level that we can’t detect and measure it yet. Talking about humans, when our individual life starts on day 21 after procreation, a new personal consciousness form together with a returning Creation-energy form enter our physical body simultaneously.
Yes - I think being caught up in religious terms can muddy the water. Why I like Jung's writing regarding unconscious symbols arising spontaneously within the psyche, representing truths but not becoming absolute in some kind of manmade religious denominational sense - used for worship and throughout human history, political control.
There are thousands of different definitions of God, why it's always a bit of a strawman when someone declares their absolute non-belief in a God. Whose God? What definition of God?
The thing about modern science and ongoing science, is we continually find more depth to our "universe" much of it far removed from the straightforward Newtonian view put forth in the 1800s. There are many fields, and energies and rules Isaac Newton simply was unaware of then that we are aware of now in Science. Non-locality for example is now very much a known part of our "universe". As is, the relativity of Time and Space.
And of course the nature of consciousness (or spirit) whatever word you wish to use to describe that inner being we all experience. What is it? Is it some yet undefined energy that is part of the universe? Because most certainly, meaning, symbols, and movement derives from "consciousness". And it is an Observer.
Now it may eventually turn out that the Materialists will prove Consciousness is simply the product of brain processes. They want to establish we are all just biological robots and nothing more. But they have not succeeded at all as of yet. Despite what some may insist is true. Scientists have yet to demonstrate how consciousness is produced, little alone life. They've been trying now for over a century to create life in the laboratory - to start life from inert material and none have even come close. Consciousness, complex awareness remains unknown. Sure, they have mapped conscious processes to the brain, but correlation is not causation. Just because brain states are correlated with consciousness (although Memory now appears to be more like a wave phenomena upon the brain and has not been localized to any part of the brain) science still does not know what actually *produces* consciousness - and the brain, for all science knows at the moment, the brain may be acting as a filter/conduit for wave/field like operations of consciousness much like a radio responds to broadcasts on given channels. A radio does not produce a broadcast, it simply filters and makes the broadcast possible to hear for human consumption. Science already knows there are many types of invisible "energies" and quantum fields out there. It also knows that virtual particles come in and out of the universe constantly. And that quantum fields do not actually come into existence (literally) without Measurement or an Observer. That the reality we experience is Contextual, and appears to be more INFORMATION based than something actually REAL or tangible much like a rock or water is real. Consciousness itself may be something just as fundamental as gravity. It exists, but is not something that is actually SEEN.
And one can speculate about all this without resorting to religious doctrines or imagining human beings must be something completely different and outside the reality we find ourselves in right now.
Where do you get the 21 days? Many indigenous cultures believe the spirit enters the body at birth and leaves at death because they see it happen.
Ask a doctor about the date when the embryo's own heart begins to beat, Carol. One sign that a new human being starts an own life.
It's all the same multi faceted thing. We just need to integrate all the different bodies of knowledge in my opinion.
Yes - we are still evolving, and there are plenty of open questions, philosophically and scientifically.
Excellent piece, totally grounded in the materialism of our universe and stripped bare of 'false narrative'. Congratulations Caitlin.
I love love love this and all your amazing gifted generous profound and deeply compassionate (and so many more adjectives) writingl Thank you so much for doing what you do.
It's that simple really.
But I guess it's not exciting and interesting enough for some so we have to make up all sorts of B.S. so as to have more whatever and manipulate others.
Planet Earth is basically a ship of fools going round and round a big, life giving orb working feverishly on their own destruction.
It's a comedy and tragedy all rolled into one.
It certainly is starting to look that way. Well, the Fools are in charge right now. There is plenty of ingenuity and intelligence out there - but these individuals probably don't maintain the required sociopathy to become one of the Elites willing to destroy the planet and start wars for their own self-aggrandizement.
Thank you for this Caitlin, I have always felt we are all one and part of something much bigger, we live and die but are always a part of the whole. Which is so beautiful, nature is never ending.
You are not separate from the universe. How could you be?
True. But what is the universe? A bunch of random billiard balls? When is that age old paradigm finally going to die out? Even scientifically speaking, we already know there is more to it than the Materialists continue to insist.
It'll die when the last of the mechanists dies. So... Probably never. There will always be people who desperately want to believe that the entire universe can easily be understood because they are terrified of uncertainty.
We probably can be grateful for the mysteries and questions that still remain, and which scientists and philosophers continue to struggle with today. Because otherwise, it would all be pretty damn boring.
I don't think the mechanists got it right. And I certainly hope they don't got it right. I love being, and also meaning.
Separation is a myth, probably the core myth of capitalist cosmology.
I love you.
She’s mine! 😸
No. She's nobody's. She is her own.
we
are
Ours.
Caitlin you are such a gift to this world. Thank you from the bottom of my new and ancient heart. 🙏
Beautiful Caitlin. Thank you ❤️
Yes, absolutely. Nature is my only religion.
Nice essay...
A few remarks: nearly the entire planet and most of history is covered with colonialism. Bantu Africa was mostly a recent colony. Societies with aversion to colonisation and immigration, tend to go the way of Sparta: demographic implosion... in the best case. Open society Athens did much better...
Slavery was also ubiquitous in the past before Frankish empress (and saint!), the ferocious Bathilde outlawed it in 656 CE.
African slaves were sold to European slave traders by African potentates. Earlier on, the human excedent was simply killed, often in elaborate rituals reminiscent of the Aztecs. When Africa was finally conquered in the Nineteenth Century, one of the main argument to do it was "mission civilisatrice"... Including putting an end to... African slavery (not quite finished to this day...)
In other news, we are Quantum entanglements, thus everywhere home...
I am so exhausted by the people who desperately want to believe that they are special magical flowers and that nothing bad can ever really happen to them because the universe was built with them in mind. Are you exhausted by them, too?
Sure.
The universe _was_ built with you in mind. I'm not being sarcastic there. It was.
It was also built with the sociopathic enslavers of all life in mind.
And it's our job to make sure the sociopaths don't end up in charge of everything.
We can be as Zen as we want to. We can tell ourselves that, in the end, everything we do is essentially meaningless because none of this is really the final reality. But when the slavers come for your children or your grandchildren you're not likely to maintain that phony pseudo-Zen state of mind, are you?
Yes. The slavers are coming. It's what they do. No. They will not stop unless someone stops them. Someone means me. And you, too.
Also: The current slavery is far more horrifying than the slavery of the southern US and infinitely more horrifying than the slavery of the ancient world.
Let's not forget India's slave holders. There are plenty of them. And the slaves in Bangladeshi garment factories.
I think that none of those slaves are as horrifying as the slaves in the 'first' world, though. They don't even know that they're slaves.
As we used to say years and years ago, "You a unique and special flower. Just like everyone else. Now get back to work and do something useful."
I don't know why everybody cramps all over colonialism. The impression I get is that everyone was an angel and all was holy in the land before those blasted Europeans showed up! Never mind the good things that came from westernization.
You only say that because you're a white male of European ancestry. The entire rest of the world knows that you're LitTiraLlee hIltiLr!
Seriously, though... I often question the long-term large-scale benefits of the European expansion. Frankly, I'm not sure agriculture was a good idea. You can definitely tell me that, if not for modern medical science my diabetes would have killed me already. Yup. That's true. The question is: If not for modern industry would I have ever had diabetes?
One in three (or possibly more, according to friends who work in the medical field) adults in the US is either diabetic or pre-diabetic. If we were that genetically predisposed to diabetes our species never would have made it out of the caves, so to speak. This is an environmental phenomenon, to put it into the sterile language that attempts to deny the natural outrage such a thing should spark in every human heart and mind.
This is a direct consequence of agriculture, specifically modern industrial agriculture.
This, amongst other consequences of what we think of as progress, is an existential threat to our entire species.
Pull back for the really wide shot. Maybe not everything we think of as 'good' is really as 'good' as we think it is in the very long term.
(Diabetes will definitely kill you, by the way. In the most horrifying ways you can imagine. You'll get gangrene in your feet and they'll have to cut them off. You'll go blind. Your mind will fail. The list of things is as endless as it is horrifying. Eventually you'll end up as a confused, blind lump in a chair who is nothing more than a burden on everyone around them. I'd rather have Alzheimer's.
If you think that 1/3 of the populating having diabetes (If you're pre-diabetic you're almost certain to be diabetic sooner or later) isn't an absolute outrage against every human being on the continent you just don't understand the apocalypse of horror and death that is inevitably coming. Yes, this includes you Canadlians, too.)
Sugar is
White death.
.
Mm-mmm good!
Don't make the mistake of thinking that it's just excess sugar consumption, kristofarian. While it's certainly true that sugar is contributing to the problem it's definitely not the only factor or, I think, the primary factor.
Big Food loves their profits
and've discovered adding
a spoonful to Everything
sweetens their bottom
line. preying on peeps
is as American as
apple pie.
.
I gotta wonder:
does Big Food
work for Big
Pharma?
For? I don't think so. With? Oh, definitely. It's all a part of the same machine. A machine designed to keep the peasants in their place.
I'll never forget the partner in a very large consulting and accounting firm who once told me that almost every job in the country was nothing more than a way to keep people occupied [so they wouldn't start thinking about the world].
Preying upon other people is sociopathy. It is as old as humanity. Americans certainly have no monopoly on it. The American sociopaths are just better at it than the others. They're more sophisticated in their methods. They're more scientific about their manipulations.
Colonialism is evil. It is usually murder and always theft.
I can't really think of a lot of things that have only evil consequences, honestly. And, since none of us has perfect knowledge, we can't really know the consequences of anything we do. There's a reason they said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Those are good words to keep in mind. Words to keep us all humble when we think we know best. Which is definitely not to say that European colonialism had any good intentions for its victims behind it. The only good that came of that was due to unintended consequences and that certainly isn't enough to exculpate those who engaged in it.
Pedophilia is, as far as I can tell, one of a very few things I can think of that can only have negative consequences. I can't even imagine anything being better because of it.
I believe in right action. The ends do not justify the means. Any good that happens could be from other influences. Also, it is a mysterious Universe full of intelligence and meaning. One can make a bad choice in one moment and a good one the next moment. So, there are evil choices, and there is good in everyone. We are all connected and part of Consciousness, part of Universal energy and playing our parts in the cosmic dance.
I'm quite sure that there are people in whom the only good is accidental and unintentional good. The sociopaths enjoy being evil and harming others. It's how they measure their success. They view themselves as predators and all the rest of us as their prey.
I believe that the universe is constructed in such a way as to require competition. Even plants kill each other for access to sunlight. But humans have the capacity to understand things that plants do not. We are capable of seeing options that do not involve harming others but which still allow us to accomplish our goals. We have the option to do the least harm. The smarter (however you'd like to define that slippery word) any entity is the more non-violent options it can see. The fox knows no other way to survive except by killing the rabbit. The sociopaths try to reduce all of humanity to foxes and rabbits and to prevent the rabbits from seeing any other way for the world to be.
"We are star-stuff." -- Carl Sagan
Welcome home, everyone! You belong here--no matter what anyone else says.
The "star-stuff" can not become reality without an Observer. And we know from John Wheeler's Delayed-Choice quantum erasure experiment, the quantum wave function collapse can effect and determine the past.
We are a home- a home to kajillions of other beings and doings. In fact we don’t exist at all. We are a process -a process within process within a progress going nowhere. We are not human beings. We are human doings, caught up in a clever trick - traps our great magicians called egos have laid for us, so that we think we have a purpose, to plunder, to build an edifice made of dust. The air moves through us and beyond us to the lungs of our enemies and beyond We are just temporary vessels for the easy transference of the elements, mostly water, on their journey through the universe. Once we get over ourselves, we can stand under our selves, looking up through the wavering pool at the floating vessel as it processes time and material and energy through its convoluted portals
They say the body you have now is entirely made up of different atoms and molecules than the body you had a number of years ago. That is, the body that is you - is not the body that was you 7 years ago.
What is interesting is this sense of identity that remains, even though every cell of *you* from a physical standpoint that was you 7 years ago no longer exists. So where is identity? Why do we have this subjective sense of being the same when we really are not?
The way I see it, our bodies are obviously not anything to plant a flag on. But t he mind and the sense of identity exists outside of the gross material. Identity exists but once appreciated, it becomes evident that even that identity is fleeting and part of a larger whole of consciousness itself. In Vedic wisdom there is a kernel of self consciousness that exists even after the body and many layers of mind is fragmented into ether. They call it the Ahum Kara, like a final expression of I AM. Then the true reality, ground of all being is undifferentiated bliss into which that last grasping of self must abandon itself. We have no fucking idea what this means from ordinary waking consciousness, no matter how refined our thinking. It lies beyond that level of comprehension. For now, we endure
It is interesting that from a more modern scientific perspective, if we look at the last three decades of scientific research into the Near-Death phenomena, in which there have been legitimate scientific peer-reviewed studies (over 60+ now) prospective and retrospective scientific studies, there certainly appears to be a growing body of evidence that points to conscious "identity" not being dependent on brain activity - at least after a short period of time after the brain becomes inactive or certainly incapable of any kind of rich complex psychological activity that has been reported and corroborated by multiple world-wide scientific studies.
What is interesting to note from these many NDE cases (now in the thousands), the experience of the NDE'rs follow a pattern, following the Bruce Greyson classification scale - of which one of the more well known aspects is the sense of "timelessness" and also the sense of an "expansion of awareness". Which does appear to echo the Vedic wisdom that identity may take up a space removed to our normal sense of what we think we are or what consciousness may be. On the other hand, the collection of NDE cases we now have on scientific record, also indicate that those who have had the experience - do not lose their sense of self when in the dying process and having the experience. Even though their sense of Time changes and they all claim they become far more "Aware" then when they claim they were embodied - they still say they knew who they were and that core sense of identity did not disappear.
It may be one's consciousness and having a life is like going to see a movie. You go inside the movie theater, momentarily forget what is outside, vicariously enjoy and almost become part of the story you are experiencing, but when the curtains go up and you leave the theater - you are still you - you are enriched by your experience, but you are no longer in the same environment playing by the same rules as when you were in the theater.
On the other hand, the above may not be true. Maybe we just are all biological robots and when death arrives at our doorstep, one's identity disappears forever, along with all that you loved or wanted to love. The NDE scientific research seems to not point in that direction though ... in my opinion.