October 14, 2012, Snake Oil for Sale!

Not sure to where I begin with this one, but here goes…
I want to post this review of a YouTube video created by some woman named, “Teal.” Don’t know if it’s her real name. In her video called, “How to Raise your Vibration,” “Teal” claims, though she never divulges her authoritative sources, that “raising one’s vibration” is the result of one’s “commitment to personal happiness.”
Now, I get that the notion of “raising one’s vibration” or “frequency” has enjoyed some popularity for some time. The notion that vibrations were sacred appeared first in the East, in ancient Brahmanism, from which Hinduism descended. The Vedic cosmology claimed there were 14 planes (or worlds) of existence. Buddhism asserted that there were 31 planes of existence. However, it was Hinduism, primarily through Advaita Vedanta conceived by Adi Shankara, that claimed that the universe, represented by Brahman, was a “pure consciousness.”

Thus, the idea that the universe is a form of consciousness is very old, and existed long before the West got wind of it through the ancient pre-Socratic philosophers like Parmenides and Anaxagoras who conceived the universe as something like “the mind of God.” The idea that consciousness evolved or was capable of being “raised” in modern times seems to be first recorded by Ramakrishna, the 19th Century Hindu mystic and later updated by the 20th Century guru Sri Aurobindo. These spiritual metaphysicians, along with the Theosophist master Helena Blavatsky, who lived about the same time as Ramakrishna, all asserted the idea that the planes of existence, divine consciousness and sacred frequency were the same. These streams of spiritual ideas helped formulate what has been called since the 19th Century as the “Law of Attraction.”

The Law of Attraction’s main premise is that consciousness is superior to the physical, an idea that runs back to the ancient Vedantic principle that Brahman is the divine consciousness and the material world an illusion. In the West, this idea was latched onto by Theosophy and the New Thought Movement in the late 19th Century. The New Age spirituality and the principles of the Law of Attraction are essentially the culmination and combination of Theosophist and New Thought ideas.

Which brings us back to “Teal” and her video, which purports to be a “how-to” manual in drawing good things by only engaging in “good thoughts.” According to “Teal,” if one is to live a full and complete life one must make a “commitment” to “personal happiness.” This is done through the “raising of frequency” through “feeling good.” Yes, we’ve heard this all before. It’s from New Thought author W.W. Anderson and his book, “Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World,” published in 1903. Napoleon Hill followed with his, “Think and Grow Rich,” which was followed by the Secret, up to the present day with LOA proponents and New Age trance-channeler Esther Hicks.

While Theosophy and the New Thought Movement often placed humans as “divine” figures, neither movement tried to elevate personal happiness, or enlightened self-interest, at the forefront of their philosophies. That occurred with the rise of the New Age, with its emphasis on spirituality as commodity. Capitalism has long corrupted all forms of religious enterprises, so this isn’t such a surprise. It is interesting to note the uniqueness of the New Age shift to the concerns of the person and not say, the redemption of groups of humanity, as we have in the Organized Religions. This shift of elevating personal happiness to a spiritual goal coincides with neoliberal conceptions of personal liberty, acquiring property and the rights of the Individual.
“Teal,” like all who wish to ignore the scary parts that make up existence, is promising her hapless clients the virtue of magical thinking that will transform them into perpetual happiness machines.
This teaching amounts is the worst of snake-oil salesmanship, which may not be fair to snake-oil salesmen because at least they had oil, which was something tangible. People like “Teal” only give lip service and fluffy-sounding claims that cannot be verified by anyone.
How convenient.

07/16/2012 – 2012 : The Ignorance of Knowledge and Information

It is the collective mind of the  human race that has erected numberous sciences, arts, religions, superstitions, philosophies, metaphysics in a vain attempt to understand the existence, the reality we have found ourselves in. The only area in our lives that we are under no doubts is that our situational awareness of this reality simply cannot be grasped by our consciousness. This can only be considered as a monumental and colossal failure of the powers of the mind. It makes clear that one should consider that the mind is incapable of solving this “problem.” So the old saying of “I think, therefore I am,” should be considered questionable – because to think or to exist does not answer the big question of “existing as what in this reality.” We have composed many theories and speculations of what actually is appearing  before our eyes and through the mental exercises, and that has been deemed an acceptable path long before the days of Aristotle. Since the first speculative fictions of the nature of reality was delivered over – geez, 10,000 years ago (as far as we know), research will show that the knowledge and information of our reality still leaves much to the imagination.

It is the continued and ever-expanding state of world-wide human suffering which provides proof that the mental exercises of humanity with its trajectories of religious and abstract thinking has completely failed humanity in providing the end of human suffering within the ignorance of knowledge and information. To think is to exist within a bubble of ignorance and energy. Shakespeare may have said it best with this bit from Macbeth

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Consciousness* is but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Fixed William’s post. It is consciousness, not “life” that is that “walking shadow.”  When Desteni says the primary goal for each person is to “birth self into life,” what it means is to become the directive principle [1] over the legion of personalities and characters that has become one’s consciousness and not to live life through and as the abstractions and pathologies of our combined, mutable and fictitious personas.

Note:

[1] “A point to consider with regards to you particular reaction to ‘Knowledge’ is that, in fact – everything you participate-within in your reality is ‘manifested-knowledge’: Education, Television, Communication, Participation – everything exist-within and has been manifested/created from/as Knowledge, what we are as the Mind is manifested knowledge and information infused/substantiated with/as energy and personalized with preference/morality, creating ‘individualized personalities’.
So, if you self-honestly have a look, you don’t actually have a reaction towards Knowledge-itself, otherwise you would have had a equal-reaction to/towards everything and everyone in your reality/existence, you have a particularly-specific reaction to/towards that which you require to apply discipline and effort towards obtaining to become practical in this world/reality. Therefore, it’s not the manual or the Knowledge that you’re reacting to – you’re reacting to the fact that you have to walk a process, step by step in reality and actually apply/live discipline and concentration/effort.
So – got to look at the point of laziness and postponement in yourself in relation to your world/reality where you want things to happen/manifest immediately or quickly, without having to go through the discipline / effort to manifest it as you. Therefore, the ‘problem’ is not the knowledge, the problem is ‘you’ not wanting to discipline yourself and apply the effort to walk something here in the physical, step by step.”

-Sunette Spies, ” Applying Self in Reality.” Article. Self-Direction -Destonians.com

05/26/2012 – Is the Mind the most powerful thing in the Universe?

“Uhn.. if I could just think… a bit… harder… somethin’s bound to happen!”

Your thoughts create your reality.

Your mind is more powerful than you know.

Are you worried about something right now?

Are you feeling unsure about something these days?

God invites you to change your thinking.

Miracles seldom occur in the lives of those who do not consider them possible.

There could be a miracle waiting for you this minute.

Please make room for it in your thinking. Thanks.

Love, Your Friend….

Neale Donald Walsch

Wow. The mind has been given a lot of credit by philosophers, metaphysicians, science and religion. Not only does the miraculous mind receive credit for moving things in the universe, it has been touted as creating the universe! That sounds nice but seriously, can we really define consciousness in any other terms other than a vampirous abstraction, or as  generative and consuming energetic of substance –  like a flame devouring and evaporating a candle of wax?  But the majestic brilliance of the flickering light lasts only for a moment until it vanishes into the darkness, rubbed out from existence and from memories. But such metaphors must sound too cruel for people like Walsch when referring to something so God-like as the mind, until one realizes that  there is a difference between “God” and “God-like.” I suppose the biggest difference is that “God” is a mind-created fable and  truth-claim about a unseeable object while the mind is something we are all very intimate with, especially its oppressive, deceptive and ingratiating nature which ceaselessly drives us to erect such titanic monumental altars to worship it.  The mind has seemingly deserved all the praise that we have given it, what with all the wonderful things in the world that the mind has given us, like depleted uranium, plastic soup oceans and genetically modified vegetables (and wasn’t the world clamoring for more depleted uranium, plastic in the oceans and genetically modified food?)

If one would find any benefit to blame whoever was responsible for lifting up such a bully to eminence, we could mention the Brahmanas and the ancient Greeks. The Advaita – the orthodox philosophical school of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), claims that Brahman is “knowledge” and everything in the visible world, “eternal spiritual body which is full of bliss!”  He is the Supreme Person! A Consciousness of Absolute Truth! The principle Upanishads claim that Brahman is the infinite consciousness. And how did we come to know of this infinite consciousness? From the words handed down from Vedic literature. You know, from stories. But the Vedas will be the first to admit, the Brahman that can be talked about is not the true Brahman.  Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

The Greeks had their stories as well, but I’m not talking about their superhero gods like Hercules, Aphrodite and Apollo. Their conception of the mind as God was just as abstractly absolute as anything  the Brahmanas cooked up. Anaxagoras conceived of a cosmology of where there was nothing but a formless, cosmic soup that existed at the beginning , until a cosmic mind he called, nous placed everything in order.  As Donnie Darko would say, “Deus Ex Machina! Our Lord and savior.” Anaxagoras never said where is “mind” came from, but you gotta admit, it makes for a great story and it even influenced the great Plato and the Neoplatonists, who also conceived a transcendent cosmic mind as being and thought from which all things emanated. The enemies of the Neoplatonists were the Gnostics, who claimed that the physical creation was the inferior and flawed work of an evil creator and a growing post-Judean sect called Christians who worshipped a crucified man as the Son of God, the Logos, the creative principle made flesh.

And to this day, there are people who believe that the mind within our holy brains, is the most powerful thing in the universe. Good ol’ New Age. Way to keep the cosmic consciousness home fires burning. From this we gather stories about how the human mind, the “greatest force in the universe,” is evolving into achieving “higher consciousness” and increasing our vibration to the point of becoming one with the cosmic consciousness.  Which is all well and good, but goddamn, where does the love-in end, Neale Donald Walsch? Why do you ask us to “make room in our minds for miracles,” for God’s sake? I understand that some of the books you’ve presented appear rich in wisdom and profound statements and that  you made a fortune with them, but did you ever ask yourself whether the alleged contact with “God” could in any way be verified? Did you ever consider that the words you assumed that came from “God” were actually formed within  a secret compartment  within your mind that in no way was connected to any Divine source? From judging the above quote, I reckon not, because it sounds like you are serious when you suggest that “making room” ” in your thinking for a miraculous intervention from “God.” Somehow, according to the schematic of  Walsch,  ”God” is quite limited – and can only act on the human scene through the thoughts of human beings, but only if we engage in wishful, magical thinking. Again, like Eckhart Tolle, Barbara Hand Clow, Esther Hicks  and many, many others who present consciousness as the most powerful force in the universe, they present claims as truths and don’t seem to realize the difference. To tell people to make room in their thinking for a miracle is capitulation of one’s self-direction. Thus Walsch’s claims are not credible and people need to check themselves for the lack of development of their common sense if they buy into this garbage. And that so many people do buy into this trash should make one question whether consciousness is all that “powerful” after all.

05/11/2012 – Flash: Oldest Known Mayan Calendar Found

End Times Prophecy, or did they just run out of space?

And guess what? The astronomical tables found in a remote Guatemala dig  at the largest-known Classic Mayan site, Xultún, are 500 years older than those preserved in the Maya codices, and they do not reference any End Times scenarios.

According to the CNN feed,

Contrary to popular myth, Mayan experts have known for a long time that this calendar is not a countdown to the end of the world on December 2012, the study researchers said in a press conference to reporters.

The Mayan used a series of cycles to track time in which there were 13 baktuns each representing a 400-year chunk.

Researchers of the study say rumors surrounding a projected apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012, is a misconception. It is just the benchmark when a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete and a new cycle begins.

“There was a lot more to the Mayan calendar than just 13 baktuns,” said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the hieroglyphics found on the walls of a house, dating back to the early part of the 9th century (813 A.D.-814 A.D.).

“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” added Stuart.

Can it be true? We shall still wait with bated breath on the December 21, 2012 New Age End Times Mayan Prophecy, but trust me on this. Barbara Hand Clow and her cottage industry of Mayanist Prophets will have to look for another story to exploit their gullible reading audience.

05/09/2012 -”Is Everything Thoughts?” 2012 and Abraham-Hicks

The question at the beginning of this Abraham-Hicks clip: “Is it fair to say that everything is thought?”

Before we continue with the answer given by Esther Hicks’ channeled personality “Abraham,” a bit of exposition.

The question comes from a historical spiritualist assumption most clearly expressed within Pre-Socratic and  New Thought metaphysical traditions , and the nature of consciousness is the key point. The pre-Socratic sage Anaxagoras developed a theory that a Universal Mind he called, Nous was responsible for creation. Heraclitus assigned the creative principle to Reason, which he called the Logos. Within New Thought metaphysics (which is the direct forerunner of the New Age movement), mind is Divine (as in the Mind of God) and superior than the physical. Hicks-Abraham mentions this directly in answer to the questioner by relating that if one tunes into a certain “frequency of being” through “reaching for the best feeling thought you can find,” one is able to receive an “alignment.” Hicks goes on to remark:

“Without alignment, you are giving up all that assistance – not completely because you are never cut off from it – but then you have to rely more on your physical activities in order to move things around. And at best, it is mediocre and unproductive.”

With this New Thought schematic, Esther Hicks lays the framework of the Law of Attraction where the thoughts of humans are invisibly influencing the course of human events. But according to the question, which assumes that the channeler will corroborate with its premise that everything in Creation exists as thoughts within the Mind of God, the physical is relegated to irrelevance. We have Plato, among others, to thank for this, as  this brand of cosmology has informed Western metaphysics that the physical is the imperfect copy of transcendent Forms, or Ideas.

So why is the answer given by the channeler a deception? This “tuning in to the frequency” of your being (whatever that means, but I’m assuming it relates to the “reaching of the best feeling thought possible” positive-thinking jazz) as the preferred course of action over physical activity is a great deception and a massive affront to common sense. The Great Wall of China and the Pyramids were not created by people sitting around reaching for the best thought feelings. They had to build the damn things. Just apply this crap to any real-world scenario and see if it makes sense. I suppose the half of humanity that are starving on their feet need only to “reach for the best possible feeling thought” to end their poverty.

But Hicks and her channeled personality are not  that concerned with  those outside of their targeted audience. Empty phraseology,word-games and regurgitated spiritualism makes sense only within that framework. “Leverage in alignment,” “tuning in to the frequency of who you really are” and ascribing anthropomorphic attributes to thought itself (“it existed in its presence and absence, and the combination of those two things caused it to become more “) forms a catalog of  nonsensical truth-claims that will lead many well-intentioned people into a massive trap of self-deception, within the so-called Law of Attraction where the Right to be Selfish is elevated to a spiritual principle, and the search for the “better feeling thought” becomes one’s mantra and moral compass. These beliefs, however, only represent a catalog of deceptive magical thinking. This is the problem with these types of beliefs, they do nothing but focus on encasing self within a make-believe world in separation with the rest of humanity through avoiding and denying real-world issues that affect everybody. Nobody within Ester Hicks’ retinue seems to notice the obvious problem of contradiction between living in a world that isn’t “real,” yet focusing on the best  possible feeling thoughts, abundance and preference. Why would preference or good feelings “matter” in an illusory, imperfect and irrelevant world? And if everything is thoughts, then why would the physical exist at all?

The questions become easier to answer when we are willing to flip the script. Moving things within the physical is much more practical and demonstrable than magical imagination. Test it out for yourself. Gather several books and arrange them into a single stack on one side of a table. Now search for the best possible feeling thought, tune into the frequency of who you really are  and move that stack to the other side of the table. Golly. Why didn’t the stack move? Perhaps you’re not trying hard enough. Come on, tune into that frequency. Still nothing? Well, don’t feel bad. I doubt Esther Hicks could have moved it with her mind either.

I have an “idea,” though. Let’s dispense with all forms of spiritualism, metaphysics and religions. These systems have not enhanced the human experience, ever.  They just superimpose a layer of sweet-sounding bullshit within the minds of the gullible and desperate that keeps us divided and diverted from the stuff that really matters, like the survival of the human race. The physical is here and no amount of love ‘n light-tooti-fruity nonsense will ever be able to remove this reality. Deal with it.

2012/03/07 – 2012 & My Reply to a Buddhist

Buddha taught to achieve inner peace. But at what cost?

I received this comment from a reader and I want to place this as a new blog post because it reflects an argument that I’ve seen many times before from various religious devotees. In my earlier post a reader claimed that I was picking on Buddha for and his followers for no good reason.

Reply from esantipapa

““Enlightenment” is a fraud. It is a deception that assumes to know and understand more than it can. Enlightenment doesn’t fail because you’ve applied it incorrectly, or because you are not worthy of it. People throughout the ages have sought it and it and only a few have dared to claim that they have attained it. It would be one thing if Enlightenment actually changed the world for the better for all of us. We can easily see that is not the case.”

Enlightenment is a personal journey. No two people have the same path to it. And as far as it not changing the world, that’s beyond ridiculous. Those who strive for deeper compassion and kindness (to their fellow humans), as a path to Enlightenment, do great things because of their compassion and kindness. Sneering at individuals who aim for deeper understanding of their fellow human, deeper compassion for all peoples, and greater personal-outward kindness is not praiseworthy or intellectual by any measure. It makes me sad to know you do not see how you are right on the core issue, but wrong on the examples, as you demonstrate here:

“The solutions are all here on Earth, not locked away in some inaccessible region of consciousness but within understanding who we are and choosing how we are going to relate with ourselves and each other.”

That IS essentially the concept expressed by the whole of the Dharma (and it is put so eloquently by you). Why are you arguing against Buddha when you express ideas that are virtually identical to the Dharma? You may want to read more about the current Dalai Lama’s life story, he’s had a much better set of translators than those of antiquity, and uses almost the same language you use here. That our compassion is derived from our sameness, and how we see each other. That we have all the tools we need here in this life to further understand one another if we choose to use them.

 

My reply:

 

You say enlightenment is a “personal journey.” I have to challenge that assertion. Have you gained enlightenment? Do you know someone who has? How would one even verify that someone, or anybody, including Buddha achieved it? All we have are stories of individuals gaining it, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding, and there’s no proof that anything like “enlightenment” or “karma” or “the wheel of reincarnation” exists the way the Buddhists say it does.

If people as a whole strove to gain a “deeper understanding of their fellow human, deeper compassion for all peoples, and greater personal-outward kindness” through the application of Buddhist principles and that resulted in a far more sane and rational world, then that would be an entirely different thing. But the Buddha attached a spurious metaphysical component that ended up creating a void where self and the material world is negated. I understand that in principle the Buddhist is to follow the Middle Path, but metaphysical fence-sitting has not brought about a better world for everyone.

Buddha’s starting point within attaining enlightenment has been so ineffective in dealing with the world because the criterion, the foundation, is suspect. Instead of establishing a world based on egalitarian terms, the focus was placed on eliminating anguish and suffering, which are not causes, but the effects or symptoms of the poisonous relationships between people. Did Buddha, as a member of the royalty, denounce or taught that such a social order was beneficial or detrimental to proper relationships within the world? I doubt that he did. Instead, the Buddha focused on meditation and mental stratagems in removing self from the world, which he considered an illusion, anyway. Look at India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, Thailand; all the countries that have followed Buddhism to one extent or another. The people who live there have caught hell for a long time. Karma must be something that is defective, because it allegedly is supposed to equalize the human experience towards good and proper ethical relationships. Yet unspeakable poverty, injustice and exploitation exists in conditions that are worse than ever. How would the Buddha explain that?

I do not “sneer” at people who are interested in making this world a better place for everyone – such a goal is what I’ve always been about. People like myself have been diverted and mislead by religious, spiritual and metaphysical principles that have proven to be ineffective, dubious and actually harmful to our cause. Following religious principles and chasing after gurus and special Ascended Masters has made us into dumbasses that has allowed the elites to be able to run slipshod over us for so long. You don’t see them worrying about samsara or dharma, do you? Their lineage continues and continues as if karma only rewarded their efforts to dominate, exploit and destroy.

It takes action to change the world, not sitting on your ass under a bodhi tree until you are an ass-ending master so you can teach others how to ass-end.into their minds. I mean, it just hasn’t worked. Achieving inner peace at the cost of separating one’s self from the world is only separation. This practice has obviously been a defective, impractical and self-interested approach to the problems it alleges to “solve.” And don’t bring the Dalai Lama into this. He is completely irrelevant in the affairs of the world while he sits in a saffron robe placing guru-seekers’ heads in the clouds all day. I mean, don’t equate what I am saying as a personal attack on your belief system. Take it for what it is, facing the truth, as I have faced – that all religious systems lead to one point: deception. We don’t need God, Buddha or the Dalai Lama to tell us the proper way to relate to people. We don’t need meditative states or following gurus or attaining an enlightened state to realize that suffering in this world can be stopped. We only need to release our desire to chase after things we can’t verify and embrace the common sense of universal equality. If the Buddha had spoken about that, I’d be all over it As it is, we have to let it go, because what Buddha represents has not been worthy of following, as the world has entertained the Buddhist perspective for centuries and it has failed completely.

2011/03/31 – Make Things Happen!

The place where I work has loud rock music booming from unseen speakers at a pretty loud level. I find it distracting sometimes, but there’s more than a few songs I like to listen to; especially anything by Chuck Berry, The Clash or the White Stripes. Too bad I can’t hear any Portishead, Kraftwerk or The Fall. I would really love that.

I spend much of my weekday and weeknight at work, and sometimes the schedules impact the blog and vlog delivery dates, which leave me feeling rushed and dizzy and that “out-of-time” feeling at the end of the day. But I realized something today after listening to a recording by Tom Hopkins. He related that if you can be the most productive as you can be in every moment, you will live a successful life. He also said that your average person will not commit to set down goals. They are not willing to “pay the price,” and so, they remain where they are…

Now that seemed like one of those “hard sayings” you get from some inscrutable guru sitting on a mountaintop. But I could see how that would be. I mean, Steve Jobs didn’t get to be at the top of his field lying around the house all day wondering what was on television. He went out and did things the best he knew how. He did put in the work.

So, I guess it’s that simple: you put in the work and you set goals for yourself and put it down in writing, so it’s real-in-front-of-your-eyes stuff and not floating around invisibly inside your head. You write it down and then do what is written. The activity will set in motion a chain of events because you are now focused and going after the world instead of letting it come to you. You’ve heard it before in the expression of “creating your own luck.” Well, “luck” happens for a reason… namely because you were active and it was somehow “”drawn to you.” Now this may start to smell of Law of Attraction stuff, but within certain limits, something like LOA operates as advertised. But, only for a few.

I wrote this because I know one thing: I can either make things happen, or I can allow things to happen. I would rather make things happen, or else somebody is going to “make things happen for me,” and that might not be what’s best for all, or for me, ya’ know?

2011/03/13 – Stars “Send Love” to Japan! Really???

Japan is in deep shit, an unknown number of people dead and missing, infrastructure destroyed, millions of people homeless and hungry, a nuclear meltdown… but never fear. Everyone’s favorite pop-psychologist/New Age guru, Dr. Wayne Dyer has a request: he wants you to “send love.”

 

Send Love to Japan ♥ Send Love in some form to those you believe wronged you, and notice how much better you feel and how more peace you have. — Dr. Wayne Dyer

 

Yes. Send love and you’ll “feel better.” And it seems like Dr. Dyer’s advice is being picked up by the Hollywood glitterati. Pop Singer Kylie Minogue claimed she ‘sent love’ to those affected by the recent earthquake in New Zealand.

P Diddy tweeted:”Oh man yall see this earthquake in japan??????!!!!! Let us pray!!!! God bless Japan!” I think God’s done enough “blessing” on Japan, thank you very much. Ryan Seacrest tweeted that he was “[s]ending prayers to everyone affected.“  Awesome that the Hollywood celebrity community is sending so much “love” to Japan, but how does someone like you or me “send love” to millions of people on the other side of the world?

Some people imagine a green light around their heart and visualize the green waves reaching all the way to Japan. Seriously. People actually believe this shit: that through the power of what they can imagine within their mind, they can have a physical result. Some people believe if they can “fill themselves with light,” they can “send” that light to others, and things will be all better. At least, the ‘sending” the “light” will “feel” better. I know it might seem incredible, but there are people who call on Arch Angel Raphael or Uriel and visualize them bathing places in crisis with healing light.

What a bunch of hooey. Is there anyone who can offer us with proof that such energetic transactions do indeed take place? I understand where this all came from; the New Age belief that the human mind is allegedly the most powerful thing in existence. But I want to see those who are engaged in “sending love” and “energetic abundance” to Japan and other parts of the world, to give evidence for their claims. If only we could build a machine that could measure such stuff…

Ok, I kid. But this kind of “magical thinking” has gone too far. It is not taking responsibility for anything. It only serves to give nominal ion a way where one doesn’t have to commit themselves to do something for real. And to read about these Hollywood stars with more money than anyone “sending love and prayers” to Japan is sickening. People need to stop pretending that what they imagine is real.

 

 

2011/02/09 – Choice, “God” and the Existence of Evil

The problem of evil isn’t an argument against or for religion. Definitions of evil vary, and evil begins and ends with human activity. To say that god doesn’t exist because “evil” exists is tantamount to saying that he must exist in order to define it. If you truly don’t believe in god, then evil can’t exist, not empirical evil anyway (someone measure it and we’ll talk). The entire problem of evil debate is a case of pot, meet kettle. Both “sides” are being zealots. You Tube comment from Gorzakk Today, 02:09 on 3.1 The Free Will argument is used by Christian believers

 

I disagree with the first point of this comment (the “problem of evil isn’t an argument against or for religion”) directed at the “Design of Christianity” series of videos created by myself and Andrea Roussow for Desteni TV. The problem of evil is indeed the raison d’être’ of religion, especially the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. God is the salvation from evil in the world. Without the existence or subject of evil, theology would not exist. Obviously, a theist does not need a God to explain evil in the world. But there are three ingredients available for solid, theological constructions: God, evil and free will.

It may be strange to see free will casted as a “theological” argument, but as such, but without it, the Church would have no compelling reason for people to join it. Evil exists, according to Christian theology, because human beings have an evil nature, but can choose to be “saved” or “redeemed” through the acceptance of a set of beliefs. Choice, “God” and the existence of evil, are the three most persuasive points religion offers people, and if one takes any of the three points away, them the theological construct collapses. You will either miss the omnipotent authority the religion appeals to, or the magic bullet of “choice” which makes such an appeal meaningful, or give a reason why should continue to live in a brutal, compassionless world filled with cruel, compassionless people.

To the point “Gorzakk” gives about that our claim of a non-existence of God must equal the premise of the nonexistence of evil is pure intellectual dishonesty of the worst kind, because we obviously do not need a “God” to explain the existence of evil, for as “Gorzakk” plainly states, evil “begins and ends” with human activity, which we agree, as we can see  the evidence of evil all around us in the world, while “God” exists on a platform of hope, belief and faith. The reality of evil is not in question, as it exists for the atheist and the believer alike. I would say this: that we say there is something wrong with the religious belief system if it such a house of cards that can be taken apart  so easily.

 

 

2011/02/06 – Drunvalo Melchizedek’s Dream

News flash, believers of ascension, energy, UFO’s, Great Shifts, Mayan calendars, 2012, cosmic consciousness and all the rest – those things that you believe in are simply not valid. Proponents of New Age spirituality,  like Drunvalo Melchizedek (birth name, Bernard Perona), are nothing more than wily snake-oil salesmen. They have commoditized the New Age into a product to sell to you, in cleverer ways than any Madison Avenue hack could even imagine. I mean, take a look at Drunvalo – he has preached for years, at least since the mid 1990′s, that a great “shift in consciousness” or another “time” is going to take place in 2012.

Drunvalo wants to tell you all about his vision of a New Humanity. But he begins with a fable of how human beings were once godlike creatures until some catastrophic event (he says, the Fall occurred because for some reason “the grids of consciousness collapsed”) which caused man to lose  contact with his higher consciousness.

This is, of course, the standard New Age Creation Myth. Drunvalo has simply tweaked it to make it more user-friendly. The subject of his books place him squarely in the New Age as an expert in the “evolution of consciousness” circle along with Eckhart Tolle, Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber and others. Which begs the question: does consciousness look to you like it’s “evolving?” No. Me neither.

People who are fans of Drunvalo should hop off his bandwagon now. In 2010, he claimed that some momentous occasion would occur, but nothing happened. He insisted that the change occurred “invisibly.” And that’s how they are going to sell you 2014 (or another date, like 2020 or 2021) and what they will say is gonna sound reasonable, but nothing will happen on those dates other than another appeal to an invisible process taken place. And so on, and so on…

The problem with Drunvalo is that he isn’t very relevant to what is going on in the world. The Middle East is going up in smoke and he’s giving lectures on “living through the heart.”

I have a suspicion as to why people will go whole hog on people like Drunvalo who can never verify any of the claims he makes: because they believe he knows more than them. He has no direct knowledge: of what he is talking about, but if you talk long enough, people will assume you have something to say. They will believe that someone out there knows more than they do, when in fact they are just as clueless as the next guy. If one looks closely, you’ll find that they are most likely making it up. But to the hypnotized dupe, it all makes perfect sense! Another failed prophesy after another will be translated into an invisible success, as it will happen when 2012 comes and goes with no fanfare or ascended consciousness. But maybe it will be different this time, and people will stop listening to these metaphysical salesmen.