Is an interesting article about the attitudes toward the issues of the world today, drawing parallels with the ancient past that many might not quite get but still making a point worth thinking hard about.
As a fiction writer, I can see how those fighting against Western Civilization put all that is human, decent and right into the vibrancy of their sacrifices -- just as the characters on the TV Show Falling Sky draw on all that's decent and right to defend humanity from the invaders.
I think it interesting that Falling Sky is depicting those invaders to be very different from what they seem to be at first glance, very equivocal.
As a civilization, we have some very deep thinking yet to do, the kind of thinking I point toward with my novels, especially my new publication, THE FARRIS CHANNEL coming soon in paper and e-book.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
That's one of my own blog posts, this one connecting scientific discoveries to love.
But one important thing I didn't mention in that post is about speaking Kind Words.
Rabbi Akiva held that a very important cornerstone of the Torah is "Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself" -- which is kind of dated in this current era of self-hatred. But it's really a touchstone by which to judge your emotional reactions to other people's behaviors, and the tendency to want to FORCE them to behave (i.e. "there ought to be a law")
The speaking of words is just about the most powerful thing a human being can do.
Selecting your vocabulary for accuracy, distinguishing between fact and opinion, using speech to elevate spiritual awareness rather than bludgeon and vilify -- speaking with care, meaning what you say with your whole heart, all of that is vitally important. Nothing else can come to you until you prioritize the issue of your own speech in your behavior value system.
And LISTENING with all your whole heart is likewise right at the top of the scale.
Love your neighbor as yourself -- LISTEN TO THEIR PAIN and PLEASURE. Hear what's going on inside others. Let it resonate within you. Respond with kind words because your whole heart vibrates with kindness.
OK, well, it's a goal to achieve not necessarily a trait you're born with. It'll take some work. But every bit of effort will be rewarded -- according to the science cited in this blog entry.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
TheLiveFeed James Hibberd
Why Flintstones was evil http://bit.ly/97Yd49
This article is a very elegant, BRIEF, analysis with bullet points of the formula for THE FLINTSTONES episodes and the effect that formula may have had on a generation at a susceptible age.
There are a lot of comments to think about, too. The whole issue of the cause-effect relationship between fiction and "real life" has not been completely defined and described yet.
This article is a very elegant, BRIEF, analysis with bullet points of the formula for THE FLINTSTONES episodes and the effect that formula may have had on a generation at a susceptible age.
There are a lot of comments to think about, too. The whole issue of the cause-effect relationship between fiction and "real life" has not been completely defined and described yet.
"Making Vessels" refers to the actions in the physical world that creatures must take in order to create a "container" that can hold the "blessings" raining down on us all the time.
Mostly, because of our chaotic lives and distracted mindsets, we walk through the rain dying of thirst.
Health, wealth, good luck, delights, joys, accomplishments, enrichment is all around us, but we put out our open hands and they all run through our fingers. We have to learn to cup our hands to hold, to collect, to grasp the wonders of the divine spirit.
But hands can only hold just so much and not for long, so we must learn to create vessels, bowls, pitchers, baskets, reservoirs, pockets. And once we've collected all this, we have to know how to use it to build more in this world.
Looking at this process, it's easy to think it's the key to success in life. But it's very easy to come to a feeling of futility about it all. What could be the purpose? Why bother? To build a comfortable old age? Then what? Why-why-why?
I started life as a scientist and "Why" has always been the key question for me. Yes, I was a pest to my parents with that "Why" going like shotgun pellets in every direction.
But as a scientist, I've learned to look for symmetry in our reality. That's the key to understanding what's really happening.
And I think I may have hit on a symmetry that I can use for at least a few years to come.
According to the Torah, the purpose of human existence, the purpose behind everything we do and everything that happens to us, is to make this reality a dwelling place for G-d.
What that means is that every particle of matter will become infused with an obvious glow of spiritual energy, something we can "see" with the kind of eye that sees when you study a problem and finally understand it and exclaim, "Oh! Now I see!" It isn't just physical vision, though that's involved, but is a higher perception that we tend to access only at sporadic and unpredictable moments.
The moment you look into your newborn baby's eyes and see that soul looking back at you -- you are seeing with that kind of vision.
In the Torah, we have the story of Mount Sinai, and the detailed instructions for building the Mishkan, the tent that surrounded the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The set of activities prohibited on Shabbat are the ones necessary for creating that tent, the Priestly garments and all the tools of the Service.
The point of Shabbat is that its existence defines each day of the week as separate and special with its own energy of creation. It's like the "rest" squiggle in music. Silence defines sound into art.
So our business in life is to transform the inert matter of this world into Vessels to contain the pervasive Divine presence.
Now here's the symmetrical obverse of that.
This year (2010 5771 ) Yom Kippur came out on Shabbat. It does that periodically.
So I was thinking about the creation of humans, and what exactly is a human that is so special.
We are a physical body -- a handful of chemicals dissolved in water -- and nothing very special among living creatures on this earth in that regard.
But what makes humans human is the Soul, the Spirit, a special current of G-d-force breathed into the human at birth. Theory is that a Soul is assigned at conception, and gradually attaches to the body as the body forms, then enters the body at birth.
The Soul is a bit of raw G-d-energy, a piece of Divine spirit (that isn't separated and so isn't a "piece" the way we usually think of it). The Soul is the part that connects to G-d - the fiber-optic cable that carries Divine energy into manifestation through you.
OK, so a human being is an amalgam of some collection of material chemicals and a Divine Spirit that through the human body enters physical reality.
That's exactly analogous to the concept of building a Mishkan, a dwelling place for The Lord in our midst (i.e. in physical reality).
The objective of Life as a Human is to transform all the physical matter and energy into a RECEPTICAL (a vessel) that is capable of holding that ultimate Divine Energy and still remaining physical.
The first time Creation was Created it blew apart (as Kabbalah describes it) into bits that became the free-floating "klippot" (or shells) that cleave to any spark of goodness like moths to a flame. We are the second round of creation, and this time when that Divine Energy inhabits this material world it won't blow everything to smitherines because the matter will have been reconditioned to be strong enough to hold, to be a durable vessel.
So the human spirit is joined into a material body to dwell within that material body (gently, and carefully and only for a short time -- as for example you roll out pie dough with short repetitive strokes being careful not to break it but to stretch it gently with each stroke) --- JUST AS --- the Divine Spirit will eventually inhabit all material reality.
It is the same process, the descent of Energy from Above into matter.
We get so busy with "life" that we think that living is our job, or that it's the point of everything.
It isn't the point, and it isn't the process that's going to make this all work. It's an essential component but it's not the point.
The real "work" -- what mystics call The Great Work -- lies within the human-spirit interface deep inside us.
We Souls are here to learn how to build an INTERFACE between Soul and Body, to get along with our material vessel and not destroy it.
It is possible for the Will to be stronger than the Flesh, and to "work yourself to death."
It is possible for the Body to prevail so the Soul doesn't ever venture beyond limits set by the flesh.
To create the conditions where/when the Divine can fully occupy Reality and be apparent to us in every particle and energy wave that frames this universe, we must settle the war inside us between the body and the spirit. (The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak -- an old saying that encapsulates this problem.)
The human body fits the human spirit like a glove; just as all Reality fits the Divine Spirit like a glove.
So The Human Being was created on Friday, the final act of Creation, not as an extra or add-on, but as the very purpose of Creation. The Human Being is the beginning of the Divine Spirit's slipping on the glove of Reality.
Maybe it's like a surgical glove -- humans are the powder that will let the Divine Fingers stretch the glove to fit without breaking the glove. *sigh* Analogies always fail.
The point to all this is how the Human Soul/Body interface is analogous to the G-d Spirit/Reality interface.
As we make friends with our bodies and enlist our animal components into the purposes of our Souls, we are creating an Interface (a gui maybe) which will be the template the Infinite will use to enter Reality without blowing it apart again.
I don't know how far you can take that shaky analogy, but I wanted to capture that Insight for future reference. It might not survive the year! My philosophical take on life, the universe and everything changes very fast.
So as we go about busily creating material vessels to collect the spiritual blessings raining down on us, we should pay attention to how we convince our bodies to make all these efforts because until we get it right, our efforts will have to exceed our returns. Once we get that balance between body and soul just right, it will become the template for the entry of the Divine Spirit into All Reality. Hand in glove.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
jacquelinelichtenberg.com (for currently available novels with free chaps)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (for full bio/biblio and much free reading)
- Mood:
thoughtful
A cross genre, award winning novel currently being blogged about, Unto Zeor, Forever
<a href="http://www.filmforecasting.com/"
I found this through http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/ -- J. Neil Schulman (terrific SF writer)
This is a business that tests screenplays and predicts how MUCH money a particular story can make.
If they nix a project of an independent producer, very likely that film will not get distribution even if it wins a bunch of awards at the festivals.
I expect their software can predict the sales volume of a novel, as well.
Now the question is, should our entire market be turned over to software?
Whether it should or not, "The Biz" is already relying on this kind of thing, if not this particular company.
Imagine how that limits what you get to choose from when you go to the movies. But it could easily explain the twist we've seen lately toward truly violent and dark films, or pure ugliness for its own sake.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Quoted a comment of mine from
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadab
The quote is:
Your Soul is Split, You Are of Many Minds: What Does it Matter?
January 20, 2010 by thupancic
The following observations from Jacqueline Lichtenberg fascinate me:
“As I see our “reality,” humans are an integral part of the physical universe. Humans have free will, the freedom to choose our course through life. A natal chart limits your options, of course, but it also provides unique new options. We craft our life through free will choices – choices make a difference. But no matter what course we choose, we are on a journey toward soul maturation, toward wisdom.
Thus while I love a good alternate universe story, based either on the theory that there are either exactly eleven alternate universes or on an infinite number, I can’t see how alternate universes work in terms of soul growth from experiencing the consequences of choices and actions.
That is, if at every point of choice in your life you actually make all possible choices, generating a plethora of alternate universes – are you splitting your soul? Generating new souls? How does one soul learn if there are no definite consequences of choices, i.e. all choices get chosen?
In such alternate universes, you may meet alternate versions of yourself – or “you” might be dead, or never born. So what of your soul?
Vertical time travel, forward or backward, likewise poses me philosophical problems, but has more room to combine reincarnation with time travel. Perhaps you go back to teach yourself a lesson, or pay the price for misbehavior, or rescue a soul-mate, or even to change history to fix your current life.
Which brings us back to the problem of alternate universes – if you travel back in time, every decision you make back then splits off more alternate universes. How can a soul learn anything in all the confusion?”
Jacqueline Lichtenberg (http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereada
Professor wrote:
---
The concept of karma depends on the notion that questionable past behavior, misdeeds, unkindness, or cruelty of any kind will result in judgement and retribution in a future life.
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I would phrase that differently, and I'm not sure the difference makes all that much difference. But here's how I'd put it.
The concept of karma depends on the notion that questionable past behavior, misdeeds, unkindness, or cruelty of any kind will result in CONSEQUENCES.
"judgement" and "retribution" preclude an important dimension in human consciousness -- "epiphany" or awakening or "seeing yourself as others see you" and experiencing the horror and pain and revulsion your past actions deserve from your Self.
If that awakening happens before the consequences, then the consequences will be one thing (not so bad, but a definite balancing of the scales).
If that awakening doesn't happen soon enough, the Soul finds itself in a huge mess that causes -- with whatever force necessary -- the awakening.
It's not retribution or judgment or punishment -- just consequences.
------------------
Professor wrote:
Most of what I have read on Near Death Experiences involves a stage where the soul must face his/her “life review” and confront the pain that he/she has caused others.
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I have read that the accepted theory is that we'll be asked to judge someone and will watch the pivotal life deeds of that person and announce a judgment -- only to discover that the person we have judged is our own Self.
We don't get to judge anyone else. But we must judge ourselves. That's how we learn and grow.
----------
Professor wrote:
If it is true that those who suffer in this life are simply working out bad karma, then we could reassure ourselves that when disaster strikes in Haiti, there is a cosmic purpose to it all, and the dead and dying are working out their debts from previous lifetimes–therefore, we don’t have to feel guilty or compelled to try to help, since this is all pre-ordained and pre-determined by forces greater than ourselves. Who are we to interfere with the justice of the Universe? On the other hand, I suppose, one could argue that if we don’t help or extend ourselves, we are damaging our own karma. The next time around, it might be us desperately clinging to life after a catastrophic natural disaster.
---------
I would look at it very differently by re-thinking that one "THEREFORE" assumption.
therefore, we don’t have to feel guilty or compelled
There are maybe a thousand logic steps between "what happened in Haiti" (or the tsunami or any disaster or war-ravaging) and the "feel" part of the statement.
I think there are people who get mashed in these disasters and wars who are not experiencing this death BECAUSE OF something done in the past. And there are those Souls who need this shocking call to spiritual awakening or they just won't make it. And there are those who are starting out on some new course. It's a mixed bag. It can happen to anyone at any time.
Life isn't about avoiding disasters, avoiding getting mashed, or AVOIDING per se.
Life is about DOING not AVOIDING.
So the people who are getting mashed have no more in common with each other than you and I do. Mashing happens. Could happen to us tomorrow.
Now, given our awareness of a massive mashing in progress -- our actions and reactions will generate consequences FOR US. (pre-TV we weren't on the hook until some newspaper article reached us, by which time it would be too late)
Today, you have options, and must make one of those CHOICES that generate alternate realities or usher your Soul into an alternate future track, or whatever it is.
1) you can withhold charity in a snit of "it's their fault, let them suffer"
2) you can give charity just to uphold your public image, or as a sop to a guilty conscience, or for some truly unworthy reason.
3) you can respond to the plight you see on TV with a rush of empathy, and give charity with tears in your eyes and a prayer in your heart.
Theory has it that withholding charity has serious negative consequences. But GIVING (for any reason or any motivation whatsoever) has positive consequences.
I've never known anyone who came to harm by giving charity. I've known a few who came to grief for the lack of giving. Experience is a great teacher.
------------------
Professor wrote:
While the concept of cosmic justice is very appealing to us all, we have to base that belief on faith, since the evidence shows otherwise.
------
Again, I don't follow the reasoning over the logical leap. I don't see why the theory of cosmic justice (karma) having no evidence WE CAN FIND means that we must therefore either dismiss it or "believe on faith."
Put yourself in the position of the Creator of the Universe and consider what you are creating when you create Adam, and finish off the process of creating Souls. (theory has it that all the Souls were created right at the Beginning, but maybe that's not true).
Even you, with your limited human intelligence, wouldn't leave ANY EVIDENCE behind of what you'd done or what was in store for the Souls.
The whole point of creating TIME which was just about the first thing Created after Space.
Light is photons and they don't exist if they don't move through SPACE, "move through space" IS Time.
Theory has it Souls enter manifestation through the dimension of Time -- which I wrote about in my review column for January 2007, "The Soul Time Hypothesis" just previous to the one under discussion here.
You can find all the 2007 review columns at
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadab
2010 is now being posted. This column started in 1993 and all of it is available at http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadab
So as I see it, there's a third option. To continue to conduct our life (to DO rather than AVOID) on the theory that we can not prove the existence of the Soul, nevermind reincarnation, because Souls and the Creator are very real, but in truth don't "exist" (i.e. are not part of the Space-Time Continuum but are nevertheless real).
This theory makes no sense until you absorb the notion that Time itself is discontinuous. That's a biggie.
----------
Professor wrote:
or Dr. John L. Turner, a neurosurgeon, consciousness has not been demonstrated to exist within the brain–he believes it comes from without, not within, and his conclusion is upsetting: our decisions are pre-programmed. Free will, as we are consciously aware of it, does not exist.
---
Well, yes, isn't that what I just said above. The Soul does not "exist" which is the whole POINT of the Soul-Time hypothesis.
-----------
Professor wrote:
Now, if it’s true that the brain is somehow receiving signals from an outside source (non-local consciousness) and that we are not aware of the programming but simply following the Plan (from whence, I wonder, does this pre-programmed Plan come?), then we do NOT make free choices, but follow a script that was already written for us. Who or what wrote that script is beyond my capacity to theorize.
---------
The outside source may be (in at least some instances) your Self.
By the way -- there is a theory explaining the internal structure of The Soul as multi-leveled with energy flows binding the levels together. It's as complex as the study of the Atom. Remember the Greeks defined "Atom" as the smallest indivisible particle of matter. We discovered something and called it Atom, then discovered a whole bunch of moving parts within it. Now we're chasing a meson that may be the origin of the property of matter called Gravity.
So going with this theory of Soul levels, it's easy to see where that "outside signal" is coming from.
Now cross-correlate all this Brain Chemistry research with Astrology and Tarot, and it instantly becomes clear how these crazy theories can all interlock and produce the very simple solution that Occam's Razor demands.
I write a lot about Astrology and Tarot on the co-blog where I post on Tuesdays.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com
If you're interested in Tarot sliced and diced via Kaballah you can find 20 posts on that by working back from the links in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.c
You need Astrology to understand TIME, and Tarot to understand SOUL, then you put them together with the Soul-Time hypothesis and you get a totally different picture of Reality As We Know it than our ambient culture portrays.
The feature of "Free Will" becomes resonantly clear as a necessary hypothesis from this synthesized point of view. It's the pristine elegance of the solution that makes it so appealing, not the yearning for "justice" in the world.
-------------
Professor wrote:
Now add to all this the idea that there are multiple versions of us in countless splinter universes, and the belief that we are evolving over time or that we are becoming closer to the Divine is simply untenable.
-----
Well, again there's a piece of the puzzle left out.
The "multiple versions" of is in countless splinter universes vision is not complete without the "bandwidth" theory.
The POINT of the exercise, if the "multiple versions" model holds true, is to unify all our selves and all our splinter-universes, to pull it together so that "everything else" is the same across huge numbers of splinters.
Didn't you watch the TV show SLIDERS? Especially when it moved to scifi channel (precursor to syfy channel today). That TV scifi channel version of SLIDERS had behind it a guiding light who was familiar with James Blish's 1950's novel, JACK OF EAGLES, which explained the then-current theory of Alternate Universes in layman's language. (theory has evolved enormously since. String Theory and Dark Matter explain a lot! So maybe they're right and there are in fact 11 and just 11, not more or less, alternate realities.)
"Adjacent" universes, so the bandwidth theory goes, are identical. Thousand and millions wide, a "band" is all the same, except for minor variances (say the color of someone's hair). So by that theory, maybe the job of Souls is to unify the universes. And if the new discoveries are right, and there are only 11 -- maybe we've almost succeeded getting them unified?)
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Professor wrote:
Whether or not we control the blueprint of our existence(s) may not be as important as how we perceive our reality, for our perception of ourselves and our lives will certainly create all the worlds we inhabit down the line, as it determines the content of our world as we are living it now.
--------
Again, the solution to the conundrum lies in learning more, not throwing away information because it seems to contradict other information.
The key disciplines that bring it all together into a single unified theory of Free Will guiding us directly (and with impeccable elegance) toward the Creator are Kaballah and Astrology. Tarot is the most accessible entre to Kaballah so I use that a lot, but it's really about the model of the universe not cards or foretelling the future.
-------
If you'd like to read some of my novels which make all this headache-theory stuff more accessible and a lot more fun to learn, take a look at:
a) my homepage which has links to everything I do (way too much to grasp at once)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
b) my personal page indexing easily available works
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
c) one of my major novel series that has a huge, creative fan following
http://www.simegen.net
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
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