Thursday, March 22, 2007

The Awe Inspiring




A friend of mine has a daughter named Elena. One day I was driving Elena, “Leni” to school when she was ten years old and she said, “No one understands how great it is that they wake up.” I really didn't understand what she meant, since there was no context for the statement and she was ten years old, so I asked her what she was talking about. She replied, “Everyone just thinks that they are going to wake up every day, they never think that some people don't”. When I finally understood what she meant I was blown away at how profound and spiritual a statement that was. How amazing that we forget what a miracle just being here to see another day is. How ever much I may moan and groan about the trials and tribulations of my life, I still find it awe inspiring when I stop to think about the simple fact that we, and all this life around us actually exists at all.

There are many things that science can explain, and many more that they will be able to explain in the future. But the things that they will never explain are things like, joy, beauty, kindness, compassion, pain, suffering sadness, emptiness, longing – those emotions that fill the human experience. Science may be able to tell us what chemicals are stimulated in order to cause an emotion, they can tell us what neurons are firing when, but they cannot tell us why we feel at peace when we stare up at a beautiful blue sky. Before there is any chemical interaction, there is some reason. Science can tell us the process that follows the lighting of the spark of life, but it will never be able to tell us what lights it.

I am an Astrologer, I have been studying and practicing Astrology for over twenty years. The reason that I can say that I am an Astrologer and not that I was an Astrologer is because it works. As an Astrologer, I don't look up at the sky, I look at a chart that I print out from my computer which has the symbols which represent the planets, the Sun and the Moon on it. I don't even think about the sky. One day a friend of mine, who is an Astrologer but also grew up fascinated by Astronomy, pointed up to the night sky and said, “Look, there’s Jupiter”. It took me aback because I just never thought about the real planet.

Now, I can tell someone that they are, have, or will be entering a time of enormous transformation, a time, where loss may be the dominant experience in the life of that person. I have never said it and had anyone say, “Oh, no you are mistaken”, no, they generally say, “Wow, I can't believe you know that just from that piece of paper”. I am guided to make this statement because of where the planet (or whatever it is classified as now) Pluto is sitting in the person’s chart. Yet, it makes no logical sense to me whatsoever, that a body of ice so many millions of miles away from the earth, a very tiny body of ice at that, actually determines the experiences that a person is going to have during a clearly determined period of time. In fact, in Astrology, nothing has a greater impact on our lives than that tiny little body of ice. To me, this is awe-inspiring. I am a logical person; I once felt that in order for me to believe a thing it had to make sense. Today, I need a thing to either make sense or to work. I am amazed at how a signal can be sent into outer space from one point and then beamed down to my television set; it does not make sense to me, but it works.

There are some quantum physicists who believe that the universe is like a giant hologram, where the entirety of the whole image is contained in each part. Perhaps this explains how people can accurately read Astrological charts, tarot cards, tea leaves, palms, bones, stones, and probably anything. There are so many things that happen in the world around us, and so many more that could happen if we just opened our consciousness to the possible and to the possibly never explainable. No one will ever explain how a bumble bee flies, it is physically impossible, just as it is impossible for an ant to carry so many times its body weight, but the bee flies and the ant carries. It is impossible for a physical planet, composed of gas, rock, or ice, to be connected with the timing of a new love in my life, or the loss of a job, but somehow it is, and it has been since man was given the gift of sight.

The world can be divided into two categories God made and man made. What is man made can be explained, understood, duplicated and even improved upon consistently. What is God made cannot be explained, understood, or duplicated, and it can never ever be improved upon, the best that we can do is observe, utilize and stand in humble awe.

Astrology, to me, is like an owners manual for our lives. One, I believe of many. If someone said that God wrote a book, wouldn't something so little and disposable as words on paper seem a tad limiting for such a great Energy? Wouldn't the stars be an apt place for a power so great to write a message to all of mankind for eternity? I know people who believe in Astrology but do not believe in God. Personally, I could not imagine what other force could accurately draw the map of our collective and individual destinies using the planets and stars for ink, and the skies for paper.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Returning To The Sun

Returning to the Sun

Our bodies are composed of the same minerals as the earth upon which we live. All life on the earth is basically composed of the earth. It is the earth that nurtures and feeds our bodies and life that lives on the planet. However, despite the earth’s nourishment and the immense force of gravity that holds all life forms not rooted in the earth on its surface, our Universe revolves around and all life on earth grows towards the Sun. Our planet and all forms of life that live on it depend on the Sun for growth. While the Sun itself does not feed us, and it does not shelter us, the light that it gives us calls all life to grow. It pulls us upward and away from the earth, upward towards itself. Even plants turn their leaves towards the Sun, towards this light.

All who have had near death experience recall seeing and being drawn towards the “Light”, and most of us believe that when we leave our bodies our souls are finally taken into the “Light”. If we allow that this journey here on earth is a symbolic experience for the soul, then the light of the Sun is symbolic of what we are, what we have come from, and where we must strive to reach. It is a symbolic reminder to the soul of life, to the spark of light within all, that it is a spark of divine light and what it is, and what that means, is more important than where it is. It is letting us know inside that what we are is eternal and where we are is temporary.

The Sun activates, heals and nourishes the Spirit within all living things. It reminds us that although we all live on different parts of the planet, we all face the same Light, we all grow towards the same Light, and there is but one. The Sun lights the earth, while the Moon lights the darkness. We revolve around the Sun, we revolve around the Light - the center of all beings is the same one Light. The moon revolves around the earth, it has no light of its own, yet the Sun sends enough light to the Moon to tell us that even in the darkness, there is light. The moon reflects the light of the Sun and the earth reflects the spirit of life, but the Sun shines as a reminder to us of what is being reflected.

Just as a tree is drawn by the Sun to fulfill the promise of the seed, man is drawn by the Sun to fulfill the promise of humanity. We are asked to be humane, to rise above other animals on the planet. We have mastered the art of tool making, this does not really place us above our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, our agility and creativity have allowed us to improve upon the things that all animals do in some form or another. We have taken the fulfillment of our animalistic needs to the level of mastery, but we have not freed ourselves from the yoke of the animal kingdom by mastering the art of being humane and spiritual beings.

Fear, need, and the genetic imperative to survive drive herds to instinctively protect their own, they drive animals to instinctively nurture their young. To nurture and defend one’s family, tribe, city, religious group, race, country, even species, is earthly animal instinct. To do it with manufactured foods, man made materials, genetically enhanced herbs, and weapons of mass destruction shows nothing more than we are the cleverest of apes, no surprise we are on the top of the food chain, but none of that makes us human. What makes us human is our self-awareness. We are aware of the spirit that dwells within our bodies. We are aware that we are more than this body. We are capable, through this awareness, of great selfless service. We know that in releasing the little egoic, animal self, we merge with the greater self symbolized by the Sun that radiates its life giving energy to all life on the planet and not just to one group.

Something inside of all living things knows that the Sun represents life in its truest eternal form and so everything on this planet grows in the direction of the Sun. All life on this planet exists in the shadow of death, and only humans have been endowed with the ability to step out of the shadow and into the light without first having to die. This is what we must do in order to save ourselves. We must emulate the Sun, and radiate through love, and compassion, by embracing, nurturing, and protecting every life that the Sun shines upon. In this way we step up, we step out of the animal kingdom and become the fullness of the seed from which we have come. Our living, our being will be a true reflection of our real essence.

Monday, March 19, 2007

God and Religious Doctrine




What we Know About God

Let’s look at what the history of man has shown us about God. The most obvious thing for a person who believes in reason is that if there were a specific path to pleasing God, no one has found it. There is no one person or group of worshippers or non-worshippers that illness, poverty, suffering and loss have not visited. There exists no list of do’s and don’ts that when followed will exempt anyone or any group from suffering or that will guarantee anyone or any group happiness on this earth. Reasonably, we may presume that whatever God is, it is neutral.

If God were to write a book, one and only one with words that could not in any way be altered, omitted or added to, any God that is worthy of that divine status would not write one word that would not be true and accurate until the end of time, perhaps a great feet for mortal man, but nothing at all for the one and only God who knows all that was, all that is and all that ever will be. As a reasonable person of the twenty-first century, I would expect no less if I were asked, or required to believe that every word in the book came from this omnipresent, all knowing, all seeing God. I would expect that the book would not state that the sun, the moon and the stars revolve around the earth. I would expect that God would know that this is not true. I would expect that God would not say “Thou shalt not kill” and then devote whole chapters in His Book to who and when to kill. Exactly what part of “contradiction” could I reasonably assume that this God does not understand?

It is just the fact that killing is so final, and the ‘who, when, and where’ are often so confusing, that that makes the book itself a map to failure. Let’s look at one of the reasons for death that I am personally very sensitive to, the killing of false prophets:

Kill False Prophets

Deuteronomy 13:1-5 NLT
“Suppose there are prophets among you, or those who have dreams about the future, and they promise you signs or miracles, and the predicted signs or miracles take place. If the prophets then say, 'Come, let us worship the gods of foreign nations,' do not listen to them. The LORD your God is testing you to see if you love him with all your heart and soul. Serve only the LORD your God and fear him alone. Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him. The false prophets or dreamers who try to lead you astray must be put to death, for they encourage rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of slavery in the land of Egypt. Since they try to keep you from following the LORD your God, you must execute them to remove the evil from among you.”

Deuteronomy 18:20-22 NLT
“ But any prophet who claims to give a message from another god or who falsely claims to speak for me must die.' You may wonder, 'How will we know whether the prophecy is from the LORD or not?' If the prophet predicts something in the LORD's name and it does not happen, the LORD did not give the message. That prophet has spoken on his own and need not be feared,”

In the first passage, God states that if the prediction comes true, then God is testing you to see if you love him enough to know that this is a false prophet, then a few passages down God answers the question on everyone’s mind, “How do we know a false prophet?” Here, the answer is that we know a false prophet because what he says will not come true. Could God be a tricky God? Could part of the test be figuring out which commands are to be followed and which are just meant to weed out the unholy?

If God created man, then God created the ability to reason that man has been endowed with, that ability which helps us to discern what is valid and enduring from what is not. Our reason and our intelligence evolve as the world in which we must survive evolves, and our ability to be discriminating evolves with ever growing quantity of choices that we face. Man does not have fur; he neither has claws, nor sharp teeth. He does have the mental agility to adapt to the world as it changes. This means that in 2007, we will not put a woman in jail for wearing patent leather shoes because they allow a man to see her tempting private parts. We are able to remove laws, made by men, which have no obvious relevance to our time and do not in any way protect or enhance our quality of life.

These gifts of reason and intelligence with which we have been endowed in order to insure our ultimate survival must be allowed, to examine the Books that many call the “Literal words and doctrine of the One True God”. The fact that throughout the long history of these books, and in the name of the God within their pages, man has committed the most violent, cruel, and inhumane crimes and atrocities that mankind has ever witnessed, obligates every member of our species to relegate these books to the classification of mythology and place them on the same shelves as those housing the books of all other ancient gods.

If we do not do this, we will suffer a fate that has been seen by no man since the dawn of history. Our weapons of mass destruction will be used by those who place their faith in the literal words and doctrine within the pages of these books, and they will ultimately do what is unequivocally demanded by anyone who calls himself faithful to the Word, and that will be to bring about the near extinction of humanity. This will happen because those whom we are labeling terrorists are in truth not terrorists at all but simply the most deeply devout. So long as these books are held as the ‘only true’ words of God, those demands of the complete annihilation of non-believers that run through their pages will find those who are faithful enough to fulfill.

What we know is that consciousness in a mechanical outcome of any physical processes, that we not only exist, that our world exists and that we are able to be conscious of this world and of ourselves is something beyond material explanation and therefore it falls into the realms of the spiritual. So perhaps it is that realm of the spiritual that we can begin to call God. That there are and have always been people who could see the future – some, in astounding detail, must tell the reasonable person that there is some form of a plan laid out before us. Perhaps, we could call a part of what is God. We may begin to get an idea of what God is by observing those things and experiences that seem to be just beyond the “how?” of the world and somewhere within the “why?”, of it.

Intelligent reason is important to us, for it is what we must use in order to eliminate what is not God. We cannot use our brains to know God because we only know what we ourselves to be. As human beings, we can only know God if we attribute humanness to God. We cannot understand God with our minds without attributing thinking, and feeling to God. However, this does not mean that we cannot experience God.

We can experience God when we leave our minds, our thoughts, our feelings, our desires, our fears, and journey within through meditation or deep contemplation into that place that is devoid of all of those things. When we do this, we find peace, we find joy, we find everything and we find nothing. We experience God when we are so centered and so focused that for a small window in time we know that every arrow we send out will hit its mark; we are in the “zone”, thereto, we experience God. No description of this experience can be adequate.

 
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