god Archives - TheTranscendenceDiaries

The Great Divide Between the Religious And The Divine

May 12, 2023

Hi Viking,

As you may have noticed, Princess Little Tree subtly cut me off mid-sentence with a “uhh…” this morning in our meeting. I’m accustomed to this, so it would be understandable if you didn’t notice it. And because I trust her implicitly, i stopped speaking. She felt I “was just about to get too passionate” in her words, and felt it best to cut me off.

I recognize My views are extreme and can be viewed as harsh because I dare To point out what would be the obvious to anyone who is not religious in the world, but I do so in a christian environment filled with christian people. That’s the only thing that makes it controversial in the least. And yet I admit I do Feel a tad of compunction for doing so, just out of consideration for the feelings of others who may not be aware of the things I say.

But I get the feeling you do…

The problem for me, the problem for so many all over the world right now, are the people who vote to disaffiliate — why can’t they just say separate? — from the Methodist Church, ostensibly because they don’t support the church because they are about to revolutionarily change its 200 year bylaws to openly accept the LGBTQ community… and personally yes, I’ve been having a very tough time with this.

Hence my tens of hours of studies this past week trying to understand the whole big picture of why more than half the Methodist community nationally is right this very minute voting to leave Methodism…. I wanted to understand. Turns out, it appears they just don’t like gay people. Or at least they believe their “god” doesn’t like gay people.

And as many people have pointed out, there are only 3, at best, references to homosexuality in the entire Bible. So this idea that it’s “sinful” “in the eyes of a god” is a bit far fetched seeing how human beings wrote the damn thing in the first place. And even they didn’t dedicate more than 2-3 sentences to it in a book that’s thousands of pages and was written over a span of time of more 800 years.

So are human beings really anti-homosexuality because it’s Bible based or against their religion, or is it something else?

Princess Little Tree felt that I was On the verge of letting my passion get the best of me, saying something out of line or offensive to some folks. She recognized immediately that I was Aiming my speech toward certain kinds of people…. Which I was In a way. Trying to understand more than anything… because it breaks my heart. It’s NOT what I signed Up for. But she was right. Despite my own beliefs and feelings, it wasn’t appropriate for me to start demonizing others so outspokenly.

I started attending Christ Church in New York for research purposes because of that supernatural spiritual experience I speak of, yes. Voices whispering in your ear “What you’re feeling is God’s love. Ed God loves you so much…”, an event that last for a good 4-5 minutes. Over and over again they whispered these kinds of ideas into my ears. Who wouldn’t pay attention to something like this? Only a fool wouldn’t return that Sunday a few days later after an experience like that…. At the very least just to see if it happened again.

(And it did. This time the voices said things like “this is your home Ed. These people are your family…come closer to God who loves you. Stay…” So i stayed a little longer. Kept coming back. I was still skeptical and cynical of religion… But I kept Coming back. Out of respect of and honor to “my idea of a potential God” and this experience of these voices, not a “normal” thing and I recognized that. I did not want to be one of those people we read about who miss out on some incredible divine gift because they’re stubborn or close minded. And I was Right to do what I did. It was indeed some kind of divine blessing. I get it. And I have been blessed multiple times by the decision i made.

I can honestly say I believe in a Divine Force, that which others call “God”. And though my view is that this Divine Force is a scientific phenomenon like gravity or electricity and yet at the same time is also conscious like sentient beings i.e. think dark matter and energy if you want the major key to understanding God, I still believe we are all speaking about the same thing. And though no I have not figured out the puzzling problem of Theodicy, I believe we will eventually… it’s most likely due to what we vibrate in our consciousness… combined with higher purposes that we are not or can not fathom from this level of Awareness….

And yes I can often FEEL the presence of, hear the voice of and connect with this Divine Force. I get what a gift that is. So yes in that respect I am “religious” or at least spiritual or “of God”, or “of believing in a God”. But again, as “a force with sentience and consciousness.”

But I became a Methodist precisely BECAUSE the church had such a wide diversity and gays were a big part of the congregation. It was the opposite of how “Christianity” is and is viewed in this country. Gay people serving me Communion?!?! Work trips alongside blacks and Hispanics and Indians and Asians?!?! It was a revelation to me. Black people taking me and welcoming me to their home country in africa?!?! So humbled. So grateful for those whispers…

But then all this. The plastic bags come off the faces and it is revealed that nothing’s changed.

American Christians for the most part are still exactly what the rest of us, the majority of us, in America believe them to be. Using religion to be the problem, and never part of the solution. Always dragging the rest of us back hundreds of years.

And trust me when I say that the rest of us, the majority of the American population are extremely resentful of having to deal with Christians and these shenanigans. Whether it’s Trump or Israel or gays or immigration or abortion, Americans do not look fondly on religious people, specifically Christians and the negative influence they have on society as a whole.

Then there are people like me who totally don’t make sense and boggle the mind of the “regular folk”. After 20 years they still think I’m “undercover for some secret project” or why else would I “attend a church”… when I’m clearly on the opposite side on all the issues, including the intellectual side of proclaiming there to be some invisible all knowing higher power. It doesn’t go over well in academic or intellectual circles. It’s baffling to 99.9% of my friends.

But I try to explain that “some churches are different” AND “because I had a supernatural spiritual experience” they would be perfectly fine had that happened to me through Krishna Consciousness or Buddhism or Avatar or Baha’i or Hinduism etc….

So why not accept that it happened to me through Christianity?!? Hell, I get it. It’s not optimal. It’s not what we expected. It’s not aligned with being “cool” nor “intellectual”. I get it. But it’s real. And it’s honest.

And it’s better to be honest about finding God through something as uncool as American Christianity than it is to walk around pretending that you’ve found God through practicing buddhist meditation yoga and sat sangs when you’ve never even heard the whispers or felt the Presence, which is what so many do.

The point is it’s worked up until this point because CC has always been so progressive, so ahead of the curve, caught up (almost) with modern society and the progress we’ve made. As you stated, we are still in perpetual repentance because of some of the mistakes we made in the past. I LOVE that. I can totally get on board with that. Especially if we continue. As has been hinted at regarding this 2024 General Conference and the potential changes the church might make.

Do people have any idea how revolutionary that is?!?! How exemplary that is to the world? The leadership it shows and will show?

For once the christian church actually shows the world it supports what’s RIGHT instead of old-world backwoods dogma?!?

People like me can step out of the shadows and consider the idea of embracing and connecting with a divine force…tens of thousands of them… hundreds of thousands worldwide. Hungry for spiritual fulfillment but far too ashamed to get even close to a religion because religions are far too close minded and exclusionary and harmful.

Because “the church”, i.e. “religion” will no longer be “the dark hearted uncompassionate unintelligent enemy” we’re always fighting. Religious people have no idea they’re viewed that way. Or maybe they do, but they just persist in their “who cares? We’re right because we have Jesus on our side and we’ll be proved right when He returns or in the afterlife”…. Which just further stokes the flames of the viewpoint that “religious people are ignorant and batshit crazy”. That’s the general viewpoint of Christians in America or Jews or Muslims. There are simply way too many fallacies involved in leaping toward embracing it.

I haven’t minded being part of that group in the minds of some because at CC we are NOT part of that group. We stand out and rise above because we truly are different.

But all this “separating from the UMC Organization because it’s too progressive” threatens the ability of people like me to stay true and loyal to the whole affair, not just Methodism, but Christianity as well.

After all, if it’s always going to be on the side of stifling equality and human rights then how can people like me stay a part of it? Let alone not openly fight it publicly?

So yes I got a little too passionate. I said some things in the wrong way. I was a bit too challenging… but it’s precisely because I’m fully on board with us aligning with the ideals of the Gospels. And I’d like us to preserve that.

Banning abortion or banning pastors from marrying gay couples or banning gay people from becoming clergy is NOT aligned with the ideals Jesus preached while he was alive.

And yes I’ve read what Paul says in Romans about gay people and I could Care less what Saul-Paul said. He’s not the foundation of the faith and practice. Jesus is.

I’m tired of this. Tired of the fight. Tired of the struggle. Tired of talking about it. Tired of writing about it.

More later.

Making the World a Better Place Starts With Committing and Consistently Showing Up

December 21, 2022

Dearest Avatar friends, This morning, while participating in this “morning prayer group” thing on Zoom that started about 2 years ago with the onset of Covid and just kept growing and growing, I kept having this recurring thought: “what if we as Avatars approached our day to day lives with the same amount of commitment to participating as this morning prayer group does…? Imagine the possibilities…!”

I started to feel excitement inside.

Let me say for the record, since we all know each other from various Avatar Courses and that’s our particular connection point, that I’m not what one would call religious in any way, which admittedly does create a rather peculiar and surreal, if not downright controversial experience for everyone in this prayer group at times whenever we end up in more social conversations.

Everyone else who participates IS religious, grew up religious, believes or at least “has faith” in all the various tenets of some “religion”, and they take it very seriously. It’s serious reality to them. Whereas with me, I sincerely don’t get how anyone could say they think any of the ideas propagated by the thousands of manmade religions throughout human history hold any truth at all with a straight face. It all seems downright farcical to me, as I’m sure it does to anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of history and how these different religions originated.

But that comes with two caveats: one, I do and frankly always have had an intuitive feel and sense of something larger than us that seems to exist in our universe… a larger more all encompassing presence or consciousness that everyone can tap into, feel and connect with. The Tao if you will. A divine presence. Source. The Force. The Divine. Some kind of permanent pervasive energy that exists both outside of us and yet within us all at the same time. So I’m always interested in exploring that. Going deeper into it. To see what transpires….

Two, prayer in and of itself most likely didn’t start off as a religious practice in our slow and steady evolution as a species… even though it’s been co-opted by the major religions now, and commingled with ideologies like “worship” etc., In reality prayer is just another word for and form of focused attention on one particular thing, idea, thought or no-thought, with a variety of different goals… freeing or clearing the mind in order to transcend consciousness and experience pure awareness for a moment or two; or to connect with some kind of higher power within consciousness or pure awareness; or to seek comfort and serenity in times of trauma worry or stress; or to harness enough free attention particles in order to deliberately create something preferred for ourselves or someone else or the world or the environment around us….

As Avatars we understand perhaps better than anyone else the power of deliberately focused attention to create shift and transform reality. So the idea of prayer as a practice fascinates me. Regardless of religion, I dont see or feel any harm in prayer. Opposite. I see it as a noble goal, an intriguing ontological experiment from a scientific perspective… rather than a religious practice. The idea of committing to this experiment on a daily basis, again similar to meditation or even using the Avatar tools, is intriguing. A fascinating way to explore its possibilities and see what might transpire.

So…. This morning prayer group I speak of literally started out as a kind of survival or connection practice due to those sudden Covid lockdowns and the fear and unknowns associated with all of us suddenly faced with a mysterious global pandemic we knew nothing about. The future became very realistically uncertain for all of us in every corner of the world. A 5-10 minute gathering to “pray” with others, whether we even knew them or not, seemed an appropriate and beneficial idea.

The entire experience, done online over some kind of multi-person video service like Zoom or Skype etc. only lasts about ten minutes. That’s it. But every day Monday to Friday like clockwork. And not only has it not stopped after almost two years now, the attendance keeps growing. People from all over the US, many in different time zones. Everyone finds a way to show up for it. No matter where they are in the world or what “time” it is.

Consistency is the key to it I’ve noticed. No matter what happens to be “happening” in everybody’s day to day lives, or in the world at that particular moment, everyone finds a way to log into this thing. They might be out jogging, or at a parent’s house who just passed away, or in the car or on the subway, or just getting out of the shower (seriously), or still locked down in their home, by themselves or with a few family members….

But there they are, logged into Zoom, prepared to pray or meditate or at least listen for ten minutes; and then on with their day.

It’s been very educational for me, from a consciousness and cultural exploration perspective. It’s a fascinating little societal anomaly, this odd comittment people have to attend. But why?

As a longtime Avatar, we’ve tried a variety of different things through the years to try to encourage or grow “community” among all the Avatars all over the world, to increase connection, add consistency and (most excitingly perhaps) explore the possibilities of gathering the consciousness of many Avatars together at the exact same time to focus their attention on any one thing in order to create something(s).

Though at the same time, the tools themselves encourage a life deliberately lived, dependent on no one but one’s self. And that’s one of the most important and powerful aspects of awakening to the knowledge in the Avatar materials — suddenly not needing something or someone outside of one’s self in order to feel better or self improve or become more successful or happier or become enlightened or transcend….

For me there was enormous power in discovering this inherent ability we all possessed as a species but just never knew about because at some point we stopped passing it on to ourselves and generations that came afterwards. It was very freeing, liberating, empowering. Awakening to the reality that it was we who possessed all the answers and power to change shift transform create and discreate our individual and shared realities. Mind blowing really. As each of you already know.

But what about the power of community, connection with others, the potential for bigger reality shifts through working together, through harnessing the power of many working together toward one reality…?

In NYC we had a long-running Avatar Wizards group that met once a month. Going back about 15 years now. It went on for years. Because of its consistency and reliability, it really did foster a sense of community and for a few years got 25-40 people together from a rather large geographical area every month without fail. I can now say, looking back having had the experience, that it was an empowering experience, as well as a heart warming and comforting human connection and community experience as well.

My interest in sharing this with you all is in what could be achieved, in consciousness, and in each person’s day to day lives, and in the broader world that we live in and share with billions of others, if we as Avatars made that same kind of commitment to “regular practice”, just as this strange little morning prayer group i referenced earlier does..? Not a daily thing. But perhaps weekly, or monthly…

Consistency and reliability seem to be key. Those factors, consistency and reliability, come from commitment and dedication. Commitment and dedication come from a shared belief in the overarching mission or goal or perceived value or benefit, by at least one or two or more people.

I definitely feel a deep sense of perceived value and benefit from the regular practice of using the avatar tools; even just from regular reminders of the knowledge base that comes from re-reading and studying the materials.

So next up would be some kind of commitment to do or practice “something”. The kind of commitment that leads to the creation of something consistent and reliable for self and others. For whatever reason, it almost doesn’t seem to matter WHAT “it” is, if it is reliably consistent, people will tune in or participate in it. THAT is a mind blowing realization.

If a small group started that practice, freely permitted other like-minded folks to participate whenever they wanted to and invited others to do the same, the materials being studied more, the knowledge and insights being explored and digested more, the practice and using of the tools happening more, and more consistently…. imagine the possibilities.

Now that’s a noble goal. A potentiality that absolutely intrigues and fascinates me. Just we in this tiny little group live in 6 different countries. That is so random and yet cool. Based on the time zones, we as a group basically encircle the entire globe.

I propose that when each of us get a chance to contemplate it, let’s share what day(s) and time(s) we think might work best for us to do something…. Weekends keep popping up for me, that might “work best”…. But then I keep remembering that those morning prayer group Zooms take place at 8am on weekdays, which seems crazy considering most people have 9-5 jobs on weekdays. It goes to show that when the perceived benefit is strong enough, no normally idealized limitation of the “real world” will hold people back from committing to and doing something.

We already know that attention out, on making the world a better place, is a little known secret path to self improvement and making our own lives a better place. We also know the opposite is true: attention on self, a deliberate unselfish commitment to being the best we can be as individuals is a little known secret path to making the outside world a better place.

What if we did both? Simultaneously. Not limited to one in any moment in the typical binary fashion of going from one extreme to the other the way we as people tend to usually do — in one period working wholeheartedly on self and our own personal lives, then in a sudden “revelation” of guilt over how selfish we’ve been we jump to the other side and sacrifice everything in our personal lives for some bigger world transforming volunteer activity or cause… we all know the drill and how it plays out….

What if instead we do it more elegantly..? Every moment of every day is dedicated to taking care of self, as good stewards taking full responsibility for self and family and friends and community, knowing this is how healthy societies and civilizations thrive, but at the same time we commit to regular shared group gatherings and activities toward bigger goals with the intention to focus our collective attention on making the outside world we live in a better place? And we do it with dedication and commitment, creating a reliable stable reference point that in time is so dependable that it’s downright predictable.

From here the real question, the exciting next question , is what do we want to create? What changes and improvements do we want to see in the world? To start lead captain or lend ourselves to? I can think of many. And I dare say that inherent in the question is an understanding that the answer is not limited to just one.

Christianity Needs to Evolve or Will Splinter Into Extinction

May 27, 2019

The original title of this post was “Christianity Is Making Progress Towards Enlightenment… But Needs to Do it Faster”. But after the final read-thru edit, that didn’t quite seem to sum up its core message. It’s important to note however that the reason for the original title is because despite the ideas expressed below, especially regarding the apparent backwards direction many christian churches around the world are moving in, along with seemingly every other major world religion, there are plenty of others, just not in the majority, that are making great strides toward becoming more progressively minded institutions that embody the highest ideals of enlightenment, or what we might call an enlightened humanism for the modern world we live in. Refuges for both the spiritually hungry and compassionate AND the liberally minded intellectual. It’s not all bad news out there. There just happens to be a lot less of them than there are the more rigidly close minded so called fundamentalist types.

If one is not specifically a Christian, or better put, an actively participating Christian, then it would be easy to not notice what has been happening in the various denominations of the larger world of Christendom over the last few years. That’s a given. And one would have a valid excuse for not being up to date on the latest and greatest hits of the Christian world. After all, a healthy majority of people – especially in the united states and in The West in general have moved to a more non-religious secularism in the modern world we live in, due in part to the fact that for thousands of years we as humans have witnessed religion in all its various shapes and forms do almost nothing but cause great pain in the world. So this mass shift towards what is known as secular humanism or the now popular “spiritual but not religious” makes sense.

But there are massive shifts that are taking place in the Christian world (and in the Muslim and Buddhist communities) presently that are important to take note of due to the transcendent nature of the very real threat they pose of infringing on the basic rights and freedoms of our fellow man. Regardless of whether one is religious or not. Some of these radical movements further right unfortunately align with similar shifts within other world religions and the more fervent nationalist fervor that is taking place politically around the world. Various Christian protestant denominations are beginning to swing further toward what they consider a more “conservative” fundamentalist or evangelical agenda. And these moves have the potential to have larger reverberations socially that extend beyond the confines of their local church community.

It shouldn’t matter where a person is being hurt or neglected; only that when it becomes known, that there are those who are willing to reach out and come to their aid.

Three states in the US have already made moves this year that come very close to banning abortion, Georgia, Alabama and then Missouri. Which would be shocking to learn, except for the fact that we are now being bombarded by such an onslaught of so much shocking news on a daily and even hourly basis that much of it seems to go over our heads.

Christians and the LGBTQ Community

In regards to the LGBTQ community, The United Methodist Church recently convened late last year to announce that they intend to make their “rules” stricter to allow less inclusion, fewer rights and permit less tolerance of people of this persuasion. You can read more about it here: United Methodist court upholds Traditional Plan’s ban on LGBTQ clergy, same sex marriage

more “Christianity Needs to Evolve or Will Splinter Into Extinction”

Songwriting in Your Sleep

April 27, 2015

A funny thing has been transpiring lately. Something completely unexpected and almost supernatural in a way. If there is any “one thing” that I do well, out of the thousands and thousands of things we do or learn to do or are forced to do while we’re journeying here in the earthly realm — for surely every person possesses such a trait — for me personally, if there is one thing that I do better than every and anything else it is having a natural proclivity to prolifically writing songs and music composition. This is no secret, I know. It is common knowledge. So much so that I don’t even believe the main point of this entry should be to even remotely explore this strange character trait or why it comes so easy to me compared to so many other things. I am sure we have discussed it before here in these pages over the years.

Instead I simply wish to make note of this rather incredible new event that has begun transpiring lately on a near nightly basis. A little backstory…. We just finished recording and finishing over 45 new songs for the “new album”, which we now know will turn into three new albums that will be released over the course of this year. Choosing the songs is always one of the most challenging aspects of entering the recording studio with the guys. For I come in with alphabetized binders filled with thousands upon thousands of songs. Each in my humble estimation as good and worthy as the next to be included on our latest new album. So begins the process of me sitting there singing and playing the guys and the producers and engineers the songs that I have tabbed for whatever new album we happen to be working on and together as a group we semi-democratically choose which songs are yeses, which songs are maybes and which ones are flat-out nos.

Sometimes the decisions make sense to me — often times we go in with a set idea of concept in mind and thus only certain kinds of songs would be appropriate. While other times the group’s decisions about which songs are definite nos disturbs and confuses me. Everyone hears music differently. It is so subjective that it is impossible for one person to even be able to comprehend how another person hears a song let alone why they may or may not like it. And I must admit that at times I even find myself getting hurt a little at how quick they are to dismiss a song that I absolutely believe is “an incredible song!!!” But that feeling is usually fleeting for as soon as the discussion ends I start up another and the process begins all over again — every song carries with it such a special collection of feelings and memories and emotions that it is easy to get carried up and away with it as it was with the last. We will easily listen to a hundred or so songs before we eventually narrow it down to fifty or so. And from there we are all keenly aware that the hard part is yet to come as we have to keep narrowing it down to the ten or so that will eventually be known to be on that new album historically.

With this latest project — lord knows we were very aware that time was of the essence and that we needed to record and release the follow-up to Ballad On Third Avenue as quickly as possible. Ed Hale the artist had never garnered such overt commercial success before and never at such a level as what we were experiencing in that moment. But instead of being disciplined and finishing quickly the project soon turned into yet another large epic battle to not only record a mammoth batch of 45 new songs, but also to create three completely new and totally different sounding albums, AND to incorporate several new innovative techniques into the recording process — using musicians from all over the world to record their parts virtually at their own studios and send them in to our engineers to import the songs into our system — a process that would at the very least create an extremely confusing and disharmonious sound but at best could just possibly create something completely fresh and unique sounding. (Since I am writing THIS post-recording now and we are in the mixing stage, I can relay that it did indeed create an incredibly massive oftentimes muddied even noisy fusion of sound and cacophony at times, this is true…but some of the songs are sounding fantastically unique and innovative in their “sound”, a sound no one has ever heard us create before with more instruments and a wider variety of instruments and sounds than we’ve ever incorporated into our music. Not that it doesn’t still sound like “us”. It does. It has the Transcendence sound all over it… Still basically Brit Pop with a classic rock bent… But the new technique we attempted worked. It is very exciting to listen to. Goosebumps inducing at times even. The mad experiment worked. It’s just taking longer to mix and finish. But the wait will be worth it I believe. )

Needless to say that since all of our attention and focus at the moment and for the next few months if not the entire year will be dedicated to finishing these new albums and then to marketing and touring , the last thing in the world I want to spend any time doing is writing new songs. But what to do when you are able to write new songs as easy as breathing, when it comes that easy to you? You see a guitar, pick it up and bam out comes a song. You sit down at a piano and within minutes I am deeply inside of the inexpressible comfort and pleasure of “new song composition”, completely adrift in it and oblivious to everything else going on around me. Not the most productive way to be when your attention needs to be on marketing and mixing and planning and implementing a new album release.

So when we moved back to New York full-time late last year I decided to store ALL of my musical equipment including all guitars and keyboards in our storage warehouse with our other house items so that way I wouldn’t and couldn’t even be tempted to pick up an instrument and write any songs. For we already have far too many to believe we will ever really be able to get them all recorded. That’s just the hard painful truth of the matter. One that is still hard for me to bare the thought of. Thousands of songs literally equates to hundreds of albums at an average rate of ten songs per album. We’ve done the math. It’s a no-brainer. We will never even come close to recording all the songs that I’ve already written… let alone all the ones that I am destined to still write. In a word, it sucks.

And in that, this strange character trait, this gift as some call it, is (and has always been) both a blessing and a curse. For with each new song that I have composed for years going back and from this day forward I am immediately made aware that one of two not-preferable things will happen: either I am pouring my heart and soul into bringing this song down from the ethers into the earthly realm only for it to sit on paper forever never to be recorded, OR for it to be recorded which instantly mandates that another ten that came before it will suffer the same fate. It is very much like being forced to choose which of your children gets to eat and live a long and prosperous life and which you must starve, knowing that they will surely die never to live a full life or be known by anyone but yourself and never to be known by history.

I’ve played this game with the Divine Force many times before. Refusing to accept the gift and refusing to write any new songs for a while, despite the fact that it is my very nature to do just that more and better than anything else that I do in this life. Sometimes I fear that He/She/It will punish me for my impudence and take away the ease at which I can write a song. But that hasn’t happened yet. Truly I don’t believe that it ever will. For I believe that God knows and understands that I know and understand that my ability to pull these songs out of thin air and bring them to life is as pure an expression of Him/Her/It and their glory more than anything else that I can possibly do or say in this life. They serve through their very existence and how they are brought to being in this world as a glorious reminder of the mystical magical supernatural nature of the Divine Force Itself. My guess is that God gifts every person on earth a special and unique ability such as this as a means to express His/Her/It’s Divinity on earth. Our task is to find what that special gift is and become great at it and share it with the world as a reminder of this powerful connection we share with this mysterious Divine Force that comprises and creates and flows through everything in the known and unknown universe.

But I cannot help but feel impulsively rebellious at times. It is a large task. A time-suck like no other. If I did nothing but sat in a room for 24 hours with a guitar and a piano I would easily be tasked with what I guess would be at least writing fifteen to twenty-five songs in those 24 hours. That’s the easy part…the writing of them… The subtle nature of hearing them come to life in your ears, in your mind’s eye… They already exist… Somewhere else, in some other dimension, and all I am doing is hearing them as they already exist and bringing them down to this earthly dimension so others can hear them. BUT from there there IS still work to do. Flushing out the lyrics. Discovering what THEY wish to be… For they too already exist. Arranging and producing the sound of it. So it is a time consuming burden as much as it is a gift or blessing. But I believe God knows this and accepts that at times I may feel prone to rebel from the obligation.

And such was the case this year as I decided to not bring any instruments with me. And here I have lived now for more than four months without having access to any guitars laying around the house.

But something changed. A few months ago I started having dreams where I would hear these incredible songs — usually it was some random character in my dream performing the song on stage or just sitting there in a room with me and couple of friends or I even hear them on the radio or playing in the air…and then this voice in my head says “Ed you are dreaming. It is you who is writing this song. Wake up and record it NOW. Do not let this song go. Do it now.” So I do just that.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. And many other songwriters tell stories of having similar experiences. So I have became accustomed to keeping some type of recorder on my nightstand for just such these occasions. Now I can just use the voice recorder on my iPhone to do this. And so I do. What strikes me most though about this most recent string of new songs is the sheer quantity at which they are coming. Near nightly now. As if God had a leg up on me the whole time and decided “okay then son, if you refuse to pick up an instrument to pick out the songs from the ethers then I will just deliver them to you fully formed in the dreams of your sleep. For that is what is happening now. I hear them fully formed in my head while I am sleeping and I just wake up enough to turn the recorder on and sing them into it. I always listen back to them the next day to see if they are total shite and I was just kidding myself as we are prone to do in our sleep and yet they never are. They are always totally original and beautiful glorious new songs. And yet I have to do absolutely nothing to make them this way. I certainly am not “writing them” or creating them myself. I am simply singing into the voice recorder exactly as I hear it in my dream. It is very close to being almost supernatural. Like channeling. And it leaves me impressed with God’s persistence and ingenuity. And of course with his generosity. I thought I was in control and perhaps had one up on Him, but it turns out that the joke was on me. Truth be told, I am more than fine with this.

– Posted by The Ambassador using the BlogPress app on an iPhone

Suicide Solution

August 30, 2014

The living may not “like” it, but suicide is not necessarily “bad or “wrong”…

Hold on to your bootstraps because we’re going to rapid-fire this one, due to the fact that my wife has issued a personal challenge to me to finish at least one of the 22 different books I’ve started in the course of my short adventurous life. I’ve always maintained that “writing” — proper writing or authoring of proper books and such, is “something I will do when I am older”. To me it was enough to take plenty of notes on each and every book that came to me, a discipline that I’ve stuck with diligently for more than twenty years now. I do everything necessary to eventually write the book at some point. Except actually write it. I just always figured that writing was something I would fall back on once I got too old to make music for a living. But for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that making music for a living has fast become an oxymoron due to ever increasing faltering sales and revenue growth in general in the music business; it would appear that “when I’m older” time period I envisioned for the last twenty years or so may have finally arrived to the here-now.

I must admit, I mean it’s only fair, that it does seem a bit odd that some of these 22 odd books that I have completed in various stages and have up to 400 or more pages typed within them — (thousands in the case of The Adventures of Fishy series…) and I have still yet to complete or release one of them. THIS is what so confounds my wife. And I can totally understand her frustration. Especially since I still find time to write in these here Transcendence Diaries on a regular basis. Ahhhh, I’d be a very rich man indeed if I had a nickel for every time over the last year or two Princess Little Tree has said to me “if you would just write the exact same number of pages in one or more of your books as you write in your Diaries every week, then you’d be finished with half the books already! Maybe all of them! So just get to it boy!” And i fully admit that I see the logic in that.

Though you’ve heard me say this before… I don’t just enjoy writing the Transcendence Diaries. I need to write them. There’s something very therapeutic about the process for me. Yes it’s occurred to me more than once that there is probably a lot more money in finishing small to medium sized books than there are in these Diaries… (the fact is there is very little to no money to be made in a blog — especially the kind of non-commercial, not-sponsored one that I demand to run). It’s also occurred to me that there may be something of an “instant gratification fix” to these Diaries that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to obtain from finishing a book. After all, I am able to write these entries in ONE sitting, anywhere from 500 to 5,000 words, and release it all in one go of it. From thought to expression in a matter of minutes to hours. One fulfilling mental and emotional release. No need to ever go back and review or edit or amend. And certainly no concern for readability or demographics or target audience or the potential for publication or other mass consumption worries. It’s a very selfish endeavor, I admit. But again… it’s MY endeavor. And in years or decades from now, when they look back and say “you know there wasn’t one damned thing he DIDN’T write about in all those years in those damn Diaries?!” my ghost, wherever it shall be, will surely be smiling. Maintaining these Transcendence Diaries over the last 13 years has been a thoroughly satisfying process.

But alas it is true. I have promised to complete at least one or more of the books this summer. So I am trying my best to refrain from coming here to whittle away the hours in self obsession. But sometimes I just have to. Right this very minute is one of those moments. And I’ll tell you why.

Over the last few days the world of social media has lit up in a way that we have NEVER seen before. It could be because of the subject matter — namely the death of Robin Williams, OR it could just be that we are presently peaking in the social media aspect of the Personal Expression Age. My guess is that it’s a little bit of both. But for whatever reason, social media is abuzz with posts and articles related in one way or another to Robin Williams and his alleged “suicide”. Today I was studying a graph that showed that there were over 5,000 articles a day being released online in the United States related to Robin Williams on Tuesday and Wednesday. That figure has calmed down over the last 48 hours. To a mere 2,000 or so. Still an amazing quantity of information and opinion being created over one subject.

For me personally the most heinous aspect — and there have been many — of this phenomenon has been the number of people who have felt compelled to come on one platform or another and bitch about how “selfish or cowardly Robin Williams is for committing suicide”. I know I know… People don’t have anything better to do, and God bless them for having a platform to express their emotions. Lord only knows how these impassioned feelings would be expressed if it weren’t for social media. Things could be a lot worse. People are FEELING a lot right now and need to get it out. People just want to have a voice.

After all, THIS is exactly what the Personal Expression Age is all about — giving people a voice who never have had one historically and would normally never have one. Lord knows I appreciate that aspect of the Age. I think it’s more than healthy. For ALL of us. Especially for those who would otherwise be victims of those who can’t find any other vehicle for their emotional need to vent. But this one meme, the idea of Williams somehow being wrong or bad or irresponsible or at fault because he decided to choose suicide is really rubbing me the wrong way. For several different reasons, not just one.

Before we go there though, let us first just collectively vent how annoying this new fad of coming onto social media and giving speeches about depression and addiction has become. My God. What an obnoxious craze this is. As if all of a sudden, literally overnight, everybody and their brother is an expert in mental health. I think we can all agree that engaging in an intelligent discourse about depression is healthy for the country and for our species in general. God knows we’ve hit some bumps in the road with it in the past. Remember that whole Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields fiasco a few years ago? But this has gotten way out of hand. All of a sudden everyone is an expert on depression. Shooting out hotline numbers and even their own cell phone numbers, saying things like “I promise I’ll take your call and get you through the night to the next day.” I’m not making this up. I’ve read this more than once. If you’re alive and breathing, surely you too have been reading the same type of posts or similar ones.

Besides just being generally annoying, can we step back for a moment and acknowledge that we don’t even know the real story yet regarding how Williams died? Sure his wife and publicist ran for the throttle in order to control how the story was going to be told. Whose family wouldn’t? Especially when dealing with a franchise as large and profitable as Williams’ is. So they’ve got the whole world discussing “depression” before we even have ample evidence of HOW he died. Yes they claim it was “suicide”… But considering the other options, as non-preferable as suicide is, it surely seems the better option. Better than “he was really high and just screwing around” or “accidental asphyxiation” or “accidental death due to drug overdose”. All of which are perfectly legitimate options still. The truth is we just won’t know until the whole story comes out. And that’s IF and WHEN the whole story comes out, IF it ever does.

Another question that comes to mind is this one: Where the hell was Williams’ wife during those 14 hours that he was allegedly alone in the house? She immediately posted that she lost her “husband and best friend” after his death was announced, and we know that he was in rehab at the time for possibly regressing back to “using”; so what kind of wife or “best friend” goes to bed at 10 PM, wakes up in the morning and leaves the house to “run errands” without first checking in on her husband who’s STILL IN rehab for substance abuse? Especially if they’re “best friends”? And especially if he “was suffering from severe depression” as she is so wanting to make sure the public is aware of?

I must admit that I personally have had a tough time with just the story that she “went to bed in another room and left Williams by himself in his office at 10 PM”. Even that seems strange for a married couple. Especially when one of them is so apparently “sick”. And especially if they are “best friends”. I know my wife and I have never encountered that scenario in all our years of marriage. If I ever regressed in my staying off of drugs you better believe that there isn’t a chance in hell that Princess Little Tree would ever leave me alone in my office at 10 o’clock at night and go to bed without making sure that I came to bed with her. And let’s say that they had some sort of altercation or argument in that moment, as some have suggested — she was mad and went to bed by herself alone and hurt, one would think that she would still come straight to his room in the morning just to see what he was doing or how he was doing, considering that he was officially checked into a rehab facility at the time. ESPECIALLY if he was “severely depressed” as she claims.

Frankly the whole story just doesn’t vibe. Now that we have had some time to recover from the shock of it all, the pieces of the puzzle just aren’t adding up. But eventually I am sure we will learn what really happened. Like many, I personally am not expecting a clean toxicology report. In fact, I admit that I believe that part of me is maybe even HOPING for some substances to be in his body just to make sense of the whole thing… I assume this is just denial on my part. A hidden desire to not believe that Williams was THAT depressed and THAT discouraged… to have gone THAT far. Suicide seems so drastic major and final.

The whole affair seems a bit like Williams’ wife and publicist got together very quickly over the phone to strategically plan HOW they would spin the discussion around his death. And to be fair, they’ve done’ a fantastic job of it so far. The whole country is busy talking about “depression” instead of any of the other details regarding the case like where SHE was, or more importantly where she wasn’t; and why the hell was Williams found in such a strange position? Seated but with a belt around his neck for God’s sake? And we’re supposed to believe this was a suicide? But he was seated?

One would think that if he really intended suicide that he would have implemented a more elegant way to do it, especially someone of his wealth. He could have easily obtained — most likely already had in his possession — plenty of pharmaceuticals to do the trick in a much cleaner manner. IF this was deliberate. So why the belt around the neck? Seated in a chair? Seriously? Suicide? I don’t know… Just seems a bit sketchy. Suicides for people in Williams’ position are usually of the cleaner more elegant pharmaceutical kind. A belt around the neck sounds more like what you me and everyone else doesn’t care to admit: that he was high, got a little screwed up in the head, was just fucking around and next thing you know he stopped breathing and didn’t know it.

But even if it WAS that, how and why would we love the man any less? That’s what gets me about all these self righteous know it alls popping up all of a sudden making all these claims that they suddenly dislike Williams because of how he died. Fucking a talk about fair weather friends. If you WERE a fan, then why not be a FAN now? What’s the difference? Whether he did it on purpose or he was just fucking around and killed himself by accident, either way it’s sad if you’re a fan or even just a compassionate human being.

Let us say that we believe the current narrative. Just out of respect for the deceased if for no other reason. What the hell is wrong with these people coming on social media saying that they “don’t respect Robin Williams anymore” or “will never look at him the same way now” or “his legacy will always be tainted now in my book”. These are all direct quotes of things I’ve read online over the last 48 hours from various people. Some more than others are writing lengthy rants about how deathly tragic the situation is AND at the same time demonizing Williams for choosing to commit suicide. They’ve fallen for the story hook line and sinker AND have now taken to being judge and jury about the ethical and criminal nature of suicide, some calling it “cowardly”, others calling it “the most selfish act someone can take”, and still others claiming that “murder is a crime, so isn’t it just as criminal to kill one’s self?” I am not making this up. Human beings continue to amaze with their short-sightedness, ignorance and arrogance.

Before we go demonizing Robin Williams for “choosing” suicide, we need to first be sure that that’s what happened. But let’s say that we just assume it is, out of respect for him and his family… IF that’s truly what transpired, shouldn’t we examine the finer points of the matter of suicide first? Before we go casting judgment?

Number one, since when did we collectively decide that LIFE, or being alive here in this form on planet earth, was the end-all be-all BEST option for everyone? You may have to step back for this one, but think about it: WE the living only know life, so we choose to believe that “life” is the best of all possible worlds for ourselves and everyone else. But do we really KNOW this for sure? That “life” in this form is the best of all possible options?

If we can all admit that we have no idea what else may possibly lay on the other side of death…. then perhaps everyone would quiet down and contemplate more how Williams and plenty of others were feeling at the time of their “suicide”…. Perhaps they were thinking that life on the other side might be better than it is here. We really don’t know without a suicide note of some kind. We can only guess. And at best we can give the person at least a wee bit of the benefit of the doubt.

Let’s be honest, almost everyone claims to believe in some kind of an “afterlife”. Most people choose to believe in a GOOD afterlife of some kind in fact, something akin to “heaven” or nirvana or “union with God or The Divine” usually. So the question is, what would be so bad about that? What would be so bad about a person choosing to go to heaven a few years early if that’s what they so decide?

Even if someone doesn’t believe in heaven but instead believes in an afterlife comprised of some kind of a spirit world, or an afterlife as a waiting station for reincarnation… all of these different options still present a relatively healthy alternative to suffering here on earth. IF we’re to assume that Williams really committed suicide, then we are to assume he did it for a good reason.

(Unless he was just really fucked up and not thinking straight. Now I know… Plenty of people have been writing long blog posts and articles and status updates about how “irrational people get when they are plagued with the disease of depression” And that may be so. Lord knows I’ve had my share of severe battles with depression through the years. It’s a horrible monster. As if our own mind is our enemy — because no matter what we are doing or what we take, we just always feel “sad” or worthless or devastated or discouraged…. as if life is unbearable and we’d be happier dead than alive. Yep. Been there. More than once. I get it. But let’s give the guy some credit. He was working. He was functional. He was just at an art gallery exhibit the day before hobnobbing with the locals. If he made the decision to commit suicide — which again, is a big IF, who are we to say that he’s irresponsible, selfish, or even “wrong” in his decision? We just can’t. Because we aren’t HIM.)

The truth is we have NO idea what lay on the other side of “death”. So all we’re really doing is lamenting the fact that the person is “not here for us” any longer. THAT’S what’s really going on. We aren’t sad for those we lost to suicide. We’re sad for ourselves. We believe that what they did is “wrong”, one, because we are going to miss them — they cut their own life short and therefore cut the time WE will have with them short, and two, because of the stigma attached to suicide. People still judge suicide to be bad or wrong or sinful in some way. So they often judge people who commit suicide in a negative light. And so too the loved ones who are left behind. As if they have to live in a nasty world for the rest of their lives where everyone is talking about them behind their backs. But truth be told this is ONLY because we are pretending that because we are ALIVE that being alive is the best of all possible worlds, totally forgetting to consider that death may be not only a viable option for some — someone who is terminally ill or in pain for example, but might even be a better place than being HERE NOW. WE just don’t know. Someone who commits suicide –depending on their belief system or religious faith tradition — may hold a belief that life after death may be a groovier place than life here on earth. They may believe that their soul disconnects from their body and floats off to “be with God” for an eternity. And being that beliefs create experience, who are WE to deny them that reality? Just because WE may not believe that? I call bullshit.

In terms of suicide being cowardly, says who? For some it may seem cowardly… IF they are coming from the viewpoint that “life is hard yeah sometimes it really sucks but you just HAVE TO endure it no matter what and if you don’t then you’re a pussy” I suppose. But really…. says who? That may be one person’s viewpoint, but it certainly isn’t everyone else’s. And to assume so is just yet another example of the short-sighted arrogance of many human beings currently walking the planet making life unbearable for the rest of us because they are constantly assuming THEIR viewpoint is the only one and should apply to every one else. Someone else may consider suicide to be the bravest thing one can ever fathom doing. Frankly I have always tended to lean in this direction, personally feeling that suicide would be a terribly frightening thing to do; I would be way too scared myself to commit suicide. It sounds extremely frightening to me. And therefore I do not see how a person would be cowardly to do it. I am unsure as to how someone else could possibly label another person a coward for doing it. It is obviously a major life decision, and like most major life decisions there doesn’t seem to be anything cowardly about it.

Now I know that many of the people who are labeling suicide “cowardly” are doing so because they are self-described atheists. It isn’t the absence of a God or creator that is operating here as much as an absence of belief in any kind of afterlife. To them, suicide literally means “the end of it all”, as in nothing left, it’s over, the person is gone forever. They hold a view that after life there is literally “nothingness” or “just ashes” once one passes from these mortal coils. And yes we must acknowledge that there are plenty of people who now who hold this belief to be true. They ONLY believe in THIS life and that’s it. Which is perfectly acceptable if that’s what serves THEM. It just doesn’t mean that it applies to others. Human consciousness is large enough to encompass ALL possible beliefs that human beings can come up with. And even more. ALL of them have the potential to be “true” and possible. The truth is that we just don’t know yet WHAT lies beyond human consciousness once the body ceases to exist. But to those who choose to wholeheartedly subscribe to this idea that they definitely KNOW that NOTHING exists beyond human consciousness in a body, yes, one can see that to take one’s life through suicide may seem cowardly — as it’s a final act that literally leads to “nothingness”. It’s as if it’s “an easy way out” because once you make that final decision and have breathed your last breath, that’s it, the whole kit and caboodle is over. No more pain, no more responsibility, no more struggle or heartache or depression.

But here’s the deal: SO WHAT? So what if that’s what a person decides is best for them? Who are we to declare that they’ve made the wrong decision? After all it’s THEIR life, is it not? Again, I get the feeling that the primary motivating force for those holding this viewpoint is that THEY want the person to stay alive for THEM — regardless of how much struggle or pain or heartache this person may be going through or enduring. They don’t care. They just feel that this other person — the one in pain — owes it to them to stay alive and endure anything and everything just so they can be there for THEM. So in reality it is really the person wanting the person to hang on that is being selfish; NOT the person wanting to commit suicide. They’re thrusting their own views about life onto others because they desire certain people to “stay alive” for THEIR sakes and for THEIR pleasure or happiness, and they’ll do and say anything to try to do this. They’ll tell the person “life is a precious gift” or “you owe it to the ones you love to stay alive as long as you can” etc etc. But these are all just stories, myths, fabrications all in the name of attempting to keep another person alive so YOU can get out of them whatever it is that you believe you’re getting out of them. You’re not really thinking about the other person or what is best for THEM. You’re making their life all about YOU.

So much for the argument that “suicide is the most selfish act a person can make”. Hey maybe it is. It’s certainly major and final. That’s for sure. But if there’s one thing we learn along the path of life out of all the myriad lessons obtained it is that only WE are ultimately responsible for ourselves. No one else is going to be there for us the way that we are. No one else is going to help us as much as we are going to need and have to. No one is going to be there for us as loyally as we are. And NO ONE is going to feel our pain or our struggle as much as we are. It is true, we DON’T have a choice in being born or not. It’s something that is thrown at us indiscriminately without our say in the matter. Then as we’re growing up everyone around us is constantly saying things like “life is such a blessing”, “we should feel so blessed to have the gift of life”…. When in reality, for some, for many millions and millions of people being born all over the world every minute of every day, life is pure hell from the moment they are born till the moment they breathe their last breath of relief.

We have no choice in being born into this life; we try our best to make it enjoyable, or for many just “bearable”. That doesn’t sound like a gift or a blessing to me. It sounds like what it really is. Random obligation of necessity. A spin of the wheel and out we pop and we are expected to not only do well at it, but to enjoy it and even consider it “a blessing”. It’s funny when you start to look at life more realistically. It ain’t as black and white as everyone would like.

With the fact that we had no choice in being born in the first place, no choice in who our family is, or where we grow up or who we grow up with, the one thing we SHOULD have a choice in is when and how we die. And one thing we DO know is that we have fought very hard over the centuries to secure for ourselves a certain level of freedom and liberty. At the very least each of us should be permitted the freedom and liberty to decide what WE want to do with OUR life, or our death to be more exact. That should be one of the most basic freedoms of any “free” society. And in many countries it is. This whole idea that “taking someone else’s life is murder and illegal, so why shouldn’t taking one’s own life be considered murder and be illegal” is a ridiculous non-sequitor. It’s completely illogical. So that shouldn’t even be something being discussed. And it is true that only the greatest of fools are saying it. Suicide is frowned upon in society because it seems to go against our most basic primordial survival instincts. But we aren’t animals struggling in the jungle to keep the species alive anymore. We’ve evolved. We’ve transcended mere survival. In fact one could easily argue that we have evolved to a state at this point that transcends “survival” being priority number one. Perhaps self determinism is priority number one now at this stage in our evolution as a species. And rule numero uno of self determinism surely is the freedom to decide is we want to be alive or not and for how long.

Granted, it IS terribly sad for those left behind. That’s a given. It’s downright tragic for them. But see, our presence here is a GIFT to those around us — IF we’re so blessed to have people around us who care for us that much, but it’s NOT a guarantee. Our presence here is not guaranteed and it certainly isn’t meant to be forever. The truth is there’s just no guarantee about anything regarding our lives here, nor the lives of others. So any amount of time we have to spend with those we love is a gift and a blessing. And if one day one of us decides that we are thoroughly finished with being alive here in this form and on this planet, so be it. That’s a decision that only we can decide for ourselves, each of us on our own, in our own way and in our own time.

The idea of Living Wills as an example address this issue squarely and directly. The basic idea of them is that while we’re alive and healthy and fully cognizant we create a Living Will that states what our loved ones should do with us in case we should ever become physically or mentally incapacitated; whether or not we should be placed on life support and for how long etc. These are decisions that are regularly suggested by medical doctors for everyone of sound mind and body to make AND to put it in writing. So if a person does get into an accident and tragically gets put into a vegetative state mentally or is unable to move or function physically, it is THEY who make the decision whether or not they are left for years on a hospital bed hooked up to a bunch of wires and machines, OR if the plugs are pulled and they are left to pass away quickly and quietly in a more natural manner. Everyone in civilized societies across the globe agrees that this is the “right thing to do”. (Whether or not it is, I cant say for sure. I can see arguments for both sides equally. But that isn’t the point.) The fact of the matter is that we have already reached this state of civilized self realization and self determinism. Good.

So why shouldn’t that same person, being of sound mind and body, be able to make that decision in cases where they are NOT in a coma or a vegetative state? Let us say that in the case of Robin Williams that he was just overtly depressed — and again we have no proof of this yet… or, as his wife now implies, that he “recently learned that he had Parkinsons Disease” and THAT was the reason that he decided to end his life early… again we just don’t know for sure — but let us say that he just decided that he didn’t want to live like that anymore… Should that decision of whether or not he lives be up to us? Or up to his family? Or up to him? I’d submit that every time no matter how many times the question is posed that that decision should solely and wholly be HIS decision and no one else’s to make. And the same for every and any one else in the world we live in.

I’m as shocked and saddened by Robin Williams’ death and the WAY in which he went as anyone else. In fact I have been surprised by how hard the news was for me, and the after shock. But I am certainly not feeling any negative feelings towards the man. Not labeling him irresponsible or selfish or cowardly or weak or anything else of that nature. If anything I remain intrigued by the details surrounding the event and especially concerning his decision IF it turns out that that’s what really happened. I am curious as to what he’s presently experiencing, if anything. Did he get to meet the Big Man or the Divine Mother? Did he turn into an angel and is currently floating around the earthly realm caring for those in need and making other angels laugh in hysterics with his latest impersonation of the Archangel Gabriel? If he burning in hell as punishment for taking his own life as the Catholics propose? Is he laying in wait in some strange state of limbo or Purgatory? Or has he already reincarnated and is celebrating his one month old birthday in Korea or Paraguay or Zimbabwe? If so, is he funny? Is he even human? Or is he a cow or a dog or a fruit fly? We don’t know. Truth is, we have no freaking clue. For all we know he could just be dead, done, finished, over, mission complete. Regardless of what happened to the man or where he is or isn’t, that isn’t our business, but only his. And that is what we call a truly free democratic point of view. People need to step off their soap boxes and back away from their homemade pulpits and just allow the man and his work to breathe a little. He gave us so much for so long. That’s the least that we can do in return.

Yours truly, sincerely and very much still alive,

Fishy,

AKA The Ambassador,

AKA Ed Hale

xoxoxoxo

Quick Notes on the Real Origins of Humankind and the God Concept

August 4, 2014

Haven’t pieced these thoughts together yet. Just note taking. But thought it better to copy and paste here rather than not. (I am literally sitting on hundreds and hundreds of pages in various places on my phone or hard drives that have not yet made it to the Transcendence Diaries. So in order to prevent that from continuing to happen, this — though perhaps tending to lead to some confusion in reading comprehension — shall be the fix, quick copy and pastes when a lack of time necessitates. I can always come back later and edit or amend).

Yes still studying… No not that, that, that or that. BUT this: So it turns out that the Abrahamic Torah/Bible/Qur’an stories of Genesis, Creation, the Flood, Moses, the Tower of Babel and hundreds of others are copied literally word for word from ancient Sumerian texts written thousands of years before. Maybe this was already common knowledge (?), but i honestly had no idea… Mind blown. This is not “Jewish oral history of their ancestors written down by scribes”, nor the “word of God (capital G) transcribed by man”, but rather ancient stories (true or not is arguable) from clay tablets written between 4000 and 2700 BC in Sumer. And there are tens of thousands of these being translated still… It ALL seems to go back to and originally come from the Sumerians. (Modern day Iraq…. Go figure).

And yes, undoubtedly the first humans to do just about everything — writing, advanced math, create the alphabet, astronomy, physics, human history, astrology, ad infinitum — were people of color.

Which makes me wonder…is THIS one of the reasons why, as we are growing up in the West, are we taught the later versions of these inventions by the Romans or the Greeks or the Hebrews? As in “has it been a conspiracy all this time to misinform people just WHO created and discovered everything? To be more exact, to HIDE the fact that it was actually people of color…?

OR… Is it simply due to the fact that this is fairly new data and “we” just didn’t know all this when we were in school? I mean this IS fairly new data… Many of these clay tablets are still being translated today….

I’d venture to say its a little bit of both probably.

For example we know that the entire book of Genesis was taken from two different sources, which were written over 500 years apart (500 BC and 1000 BC approx.) but both told very similar stories… So ancient Jewish scribes and then modern scholars spliced the two together to create one fluid though confusing work. Hence the repeated passages of many of the stories AND the many contradictions.

But they’ve now traced these stories back to their origins — as far back as 2700 BC — nearly 5000 years ago, 2000 years earlier than when we thought they were written. Amazing. All from the Sumerian culture (which then turned into the Babylonian culture etc), and all written down in the three different alphabets and languages that the Sumerians slowly evolved over time — first cuneiform, then eventually the more advanced Phoenician (phonetic) alphabet that so many cultures used as their starting ground for their own language and alphabet.

We have always been told that the Hebrews / Israelites eventually discovered writing and when they did they started writing down their oral history. “The Gods created human beings from clay and earth”, “created woman afterwards from the rib of man” = Sumerian. “Moses abandoned by his mother in a basket sealed with pitch and let loose in a River to be adopted by a Queen…” = ancient Sumerian. “The plagues of blood etc” “The flood that killed off nearly everything on earth” = Sumerian. But now we are learning that they were in fact just writing down these stories that had been around for thousands of years before; furthermore even their alphabet and language is largely based on Sumerian. The numbers. The letters. The months of the year. It’s crazy.

Now here’s where it becomes “Matrixy”. In all of these original stories, the Sumerian ones, they claim that what they are saying is TRUE. We are told that these are all “myths”… Some believe that. Others more orthodox — Jewish, Christian and Muslim– believe them to be actual history. But they are NOT Jewish history. That we can be sure of. (I know. That opens up a whole shelf of cans of worms for a LOT of people who NEED this to be Jewish history, especially Christians and Muslims)….

At some point the Jews DID start focusing in on this idea of “one god instead of many” — most likely gotten from the Persian Mede people and their Zoroastrian religion (first known stories of “one good god versus one evil god). So they’ve now got this monotheistic ideology going… But the stories they’ve adopted all speak of “gods” — as in multiple gods, i.e. “The gods who created mankind”. Even the Jewish biblical Genesis story of creation has more than one god in it. “We” “us” “let us make them in our image” etc. But the Jews liked this idea of ONE god just as persian Zoroastrianism did. So they began changing the stories to reflect that it was ONE god who was doing all these things. But the stories they are all taken from all refer to a “group of gods” “who come from the sky in spaceships” etc. And this is where they claim to have gotten all their knowledge and technology etc.

Besides elaborate written histories and explanations they also drew tens of thousands of pictures to show their history — our history. They show things like the entire solar system w all ten planets (most of which we wouldn’t “discover” until modern optics in at least the 1500s onward). And yes this is why many are still searching for this mysterious tenth planet — Nibiru — because they even knew about Jupiters moons and Saturn’s rings. Things we didn’t know about till 4500 years later.

Furthermore these gods are giant, like twice the height of humans. They have space helmets on and space suits and they are often depicted in space ships. Jet propulsion is even discussed. It’s all quite mind boggling.

The kings of Sumer all lived to be 900 to thousands of years. Sounds familiar right?

Of course at some point “the powers that be” of both Israel (the priestly order of the temple) AND then Rome did away with all this talk of multiple gods who came from the sky and genetically created mankind. They transformed these historic stories of origin into a more esoteric “wrathful vengeful judging god figure who sees everything and only they (the rabbis/priests) can communicate with etc and created all these laws that most people still believe in today.

But in reality that was just a power-grab to control the masses through fear and we most likely have very good logical rational sources now for where we come from, why we were made, who made us, etc. And it has nothing to do with the “God” of Israel or Catholicism or Christianity or Islam. He at least was a very useful tool being passed down through the ages becoming all the more powerful as larger and larger empires used “him” (who was really “them”) to gain control of land money people and resources.

Which of course begs us to now ask “so when we are in church or synagogue and praying, just who the hell are we praying to?!?”

The God Delusion Illusion

January 13, 2009

IN the last few years there has been a small uproar in the religious and scientific communities, and the suburbs, throughout America over the publication of many books about whether or not a “God” exists. It is a very old, though newly dusted off and refreshed for the modern masses version 2.0 argument brought about by books such as “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and “The Language of God” by Francis S. Collins. Consider these the umpteenth remakes of old Hollywood Classic arguments. Some of these authors attempt to disprove the existence of a God. And some of them try to prove it. Neither successfully.

I find the whole trend as fascinating as I do annoying. I can’t get my head around why anyone in their right mind would dedicate the necessary time required to read a few hundred pages written by a man they don’t know about why he doesn’t believe in “the God concept.” If a girl down the block wrote a book about why she doesn’t believe in big foot, would we care? We have been talking and writing about why we do or don’t believe in the God concept for thousands of years. We have also invented thousands of names for this God, whether real or imagined. And through the millennia we have invented hundreds of religions and religious and ceremonial practices around these various Gods. None of which have ever helped us in our pursuit to prove or disprove these Gods’ existence.

We can no more debate with any degree of success the existence or non-existence of a “God” than we can the equally evasive concepts of “the ego” or “the id” or “the sub-conscious” or “the afterlife” or “the soul.” They are all intriguing concepts but neither provable nor disprovable. Ideas such as reincarnation, human beings having “souls,” astral projection, near death experiences, a spirit world, the list goes on and on. The minds of human beings are filled with ideas and concepts that remain no more than that: ideas. Ideas are not necessarily bad things. But they certainly are not real except in the fact that we may or may not be able to one day measure their existence with brain scans or more advanced technology. Even when we are able to prove the existence of ideas themselves, which we inevitably will at some point in the future, that does not imply that we will be able to do much more with them other than to know that so and so has one. It certainly will not mean that we or he or she will be able to prove their idea has any merit or truth to it.

It always annoys me a tad when someone tells me that they are feeling a little unbalanced and are thinking that they “might need to get their chakras aligned.” A good friend told me a few months ago that a psychic told her that if she worked really hard and mediated everyday she could have her “fifth chakra” balanced and empowered within five years. I was aghast. She made the comment so casually, with such certainty and conviction, as if chakras were as well-researched and proven a commodity as bread or milk or cheese.

Of course there are also vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and angels too. Brilliant ideas. Interesting ideas. But hard to prove or disprove. So most simply don’t go there. Though some do. Vampires have been all the rage for hundreds of years. And angels for thousands of years. Though no one has yet to capture one with their cell phone and post it to YouTube. That will certainly be the day for us all. Talk about “millions of views.” Think of the instant celebrity for that lucky bastard.

The idea of a Loch Ness Monster captivated my attention for at least a day or two when I was a youngster, but I certainly wouldn’t read a book by someone now trying to prove or disprove the existence of a Loch Ness Monster. Now if someone manages to yank one up out of the deep one day, I’ll be the first to forward that news link to friends and family the world over, but until that fateful day, I just have no interest in listening to someone pontificate about it.

By the end of my sophomore year in college as a budding young philosophy major I resolutely decided I was done being a philosopher. Or better put, I would be a philosopher for life, but I was done majoring in the art of debating the improvable. Much to my professors’ disappointment. They thought I would make a fine philosopher. But I switched majors to World Literature which I felt offered me a little more in the “real” department ironically enough. In those first two years we were introduced to many fine concepts. “Freewill versus determinism, the understanding of fallacies, the proper use of a killer syllogism. It was valuable learning. But I still did not think the study of things improvable was a worthy pursuit for a life well lived. At least not my own.

One of the assignments I remember that really nailed the coffin shut for me was when we were studying the philosophical dilemma of trying to prove whether or not WE existed or not. This is in academic circles a very real and seriously taken philosophical dilemma and one that hundreds of thousands of books and papers have been written about; both trying to prove and disprove the theory. Descartes attempted to prove this ancient dilemma by proclaiming “Cogito, ergo sum,” “I think, therefore I am.” One of the most famous philosophical utterances of all time. And one that many a man has used to prove to himself that he does indeed exist. (Which is of course inherently a joke in and of itself. If you are trying to prove anything to yourself, chances are YOU probably fucking exist. So leave it alone already.)

If I had stayed a philosophy major I would have proven my own existence to my professor by simply walking up to him and slapping him in the face a few times and asking him in the process if I existed or not. We can safely assume that eventually he would have had to give in, proclaim my existence to get me to stop slapping him, and given me an A in the process.

When people ask me, both religious and non-religious alike, how I can feel this way and still claim to be “spiritual,” have faith in a God, and regularly practice a religious faith tradition – currently a Christian-Buddhist fusion – I respond by saying “How can you practice being an honest, moral, good decent person without knowing or being able to prove with certainty that it’s necessary to be this way? You ARE an honest, decent, good, moral person aren’t you?” Many attempt to live this way. One would wish that more did… But still, many do, and for what reasons specifically other than that it simply feels like the right thing to do? What more can they say? We have no proof that there is any real need to be honest or moral or kind or decent or ethical. Nor can anyone for that matter give a real proof regarding why they might be spiritual, religious, or attempt in their daily lives to connect with a higher power in the universe.

Of course I also tell them that I love, cherish, and have a very close and special connection and relationship with a God. Or at least I BELIEVE I do. And therefore I believe in the “God concept.” But that connection and the inherent belief in it that follows is very hard to even fully fathom, let alone put into words. And it is certainly not something I can prove to anyone other than to relay certain stories or anecdotes from throughout my life that have seemed to be slightly peculiar or coincidental, serendipitous, transcendent, synchronistic, providential or Divine in some way.

One day a few years ago a pastor that I admire and look up to very much commented that “One does not find God. God finds us.” He asked us to stop and think of the ramifications of this idea in our own lives for a moment. Besides the fact that I nearly idolize this man, for his insight, his brilliant mind, his passion for the Divine in all things, his tender open heart, and his example as a human being, I still found his statement and question very apropos to my own personal experience of “God finding me.” It was, in essence, exactly what happened to me. Something I have already spoken about in the past. It wasn’t that I was not seeking, it was just rather unexpected and sublimely more impactful and transcendent an experience than I expected it to be when “God found me.” Something I will never forget. And quite probably something that will keep me a believer in the God concept for the rest of my life. And also keep me attempting to connect more deeply with He/She/It as much as I can as well.

When friends in my business ask me how I can possibly believe in a God – for there is no more secular nor liberal place in the world today than in the arts and entertainment business – I always respond that I completely understand and relate to the atheist and agnostic identity. I wore it for years. I dig it. It’s a very cool, practical, logical, and intelligent place to live. But for better or worse it is not a luxury I am able to afford now. God simply wouldn’t allow it. He found me alright. Yanked me up by my hair and dragged my ass into being “a believer.” The Divine showed itself to me in a way that I simply could no longer deny. There wasn’t really a lot of choice in the matter at first for me. Eventually I came around and deliberately decided it wasn’t such a bad idea to take it on. (Still doesn’t mean I can prove this “Divinity’s” existence though.)

Some have asked me over the years if I don’t feel a moral imperative to share my belief in a God with others – much like Mr. Dawkins or Mr. Collins have done — so that others might be “saved” or live better lives. But I tend to shy away from such actions unless specifically requested by someone to tell a story or two or to relate to them why I have found a relationship with a God beneficial to me. I don’t necessarily believe that all humans need to be “saved,” and even if some do, I certainly don’t believe that there is only one way to save them.

I must admit I get a little hot and bothered under the collar by some of my peers’ insistence that we need to “save” the “souls” of people for the sake of their existence in the “afterlife.” Since we haven’t as of yet been able to prove the concept of this “saving,” nor the “soul” idea, and neither the “afterlife” concept, why go there at all? I prefer to save people here now who need actual saving here now. If someone loses a home and all of their belongings I do feel some unexplainable need to help save them the hardship by lending a hand to rebuild their home for them. Or in times of good money I like sponsoring kids in dire need when a mere $30 a month feeds them that entire month and that amount is far less than I spend on Frapucinos anyway. If we can afford Starbucks, Jamba Juice, or Netflix, or even cable or satellite TV, then certainly we can afford to keep at least one other human being eating enough food to stay alive month to month. That’s “saving” to me. We’ll leave the “afterlife” to those IN the afterlife. They’ll let us know if they need saving. So far they haven’t spoken up.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind sharing. In fact I enjoy doing it; in those situations when asked to do so. It is after all an amazing experience to live life with a sort of conscious and unconscious understanding, knowing, and feeling that we have a direct line with something awe-inspiring and powerful that is forgiving, all-good, and deeply understanding of our fate in life. I find the belief to be a healthy one. But just because that applies to me, I would never presume to believe that would apply to everyone else who shares the planet or solar system with us. I know plenty of people who have no such belief system in their conscious mind or thought processes and who lead admirably moral and exemplary lives. More so than myself, some of them. So…

That is another aspect to this ongoing debate that is irksome. Humankind’s relationship with a Divine power is a very personal thing. Something only each and every individual themselves can relate to or understand. And that includes those who choose to NOT have a relationship with any Divine power as well. For surely that is as much of a relationship as one who prays everyday to something. An atheist is still a theist. Not intelligent enough to be agnostic. Not wise enough to shut the hell up; very similar to evangelicals or extremists who give more thought-out Christians or Muslims a bad name by their blind ambition to convert those who do not agree with them.

We could go on and on of course, which is the nature of philosophy, and theology. A never ending dialogue about things guessed and conjectured but essentially, by their very essence, and inherently man-made and improvable. Fun and intellectually enticing and titillating, but rather wasteful of precious human energy if indulged in too much – especially if we are going to eventually get down to the real tasks at hand like using the best of what we have to make the world a better place in the short time we are here together.

It is not that “The God Delusion” is an illusion per se. It is simply an idea that has been around for tens of thousands of years. Nor is the pursuit of “The Language of God.” Both concepts and pursuits are as real as the inventors of the ideas, the authors of the books, and their respective readers care to make them in their personal lives. Sort of like “life after death.” Not a bad idea at all. In fact, I would submit that it is quite the comforting thought. But certainly not something one can prove or disprove, and certainly not something to spend a lot of time writing or reading about as if from some secret knowledge or impassioned faith. Better to get on with the living of the “life before death” and leave life after death in its proper place – AFTER death.

If it ever is to occur that one of the millions of us who die each year should ever find a way to communicate with those of us still “living” certainly they will be so kind as to let us know that “life after death” does indeed exist. While they’re at it, they can also confirm or deny for us the idea of the soul, reincarnation, chakras, free-will versus determinism, the astral plane, the spirit world, and even vampires, angels, and big foots.

In the meantime, current statistics tell us that every 3.9 seconds of every single day someone who is living among us dies from either starvation or thirst on our small planet. For those who have a God, by all means PRAY. But let us also not forget to roll up our sleeves and take action. Mother Theresa, a celibate, dedicated, penniless, female-priest of the Catholic faith tradition taught us that valuable lesson. For all the prayers to a God in the world that we can muster, we still need real-world action if we are to make real progress as the fledgling Gods that we are ourselves in THIS world. But a little prayer here and there certainly won’t hurt either.

Consciousness

January 4, 2005

Went to the dinosaur museum today for a few hours. There is something there we are not getting yet. the earth without man? Or man’s consciousness? The entire world and whole universe without intelligent consciousness? Frankly I don’t believe it. call me anthropomorphic, or whatever that word is that defines when people project humanity onto everything, but I do not believe that there was a time when WE, human consciousness, were never on the earth, or in the universe. Period. I just don’t believe it.

I will never forget the moment when I first discovered it. I was in deep meditation, or tripping on acid, can’t remember, about fifteen years ago. Sitting on the floor of my bedroom as a teenager. Scattered about my room were many books. Mostly on science and religions at the time. in my meditative state I had opened my eyes for a moment and happened upon a picture in one of the books of some dinosaurs. I went back into meditation and had this realization that there was no way that the world was spinning on without our consciousness, as we are told about times during the dinosaur periods. There was only one logical explanation for the quandary: that we were actually dinosaurs, in dinosaur form, before we were in human form. Our consciousness was at least. I just sat in this understanding for a while and tried to imagine what life was like back then for us.

Since we invented the concept of God, then the theory that we weren’t around for hundreds of millions of years and yet other living beings were, like the dinosaurs, is like admitting that God wasn’t around, and therefore didn’t create the universe at all. unless we are to believe that the dinosaurs were intelligent life. which most people don’t. But I would argue with them on that point. I’ve said before and I will say it again and one day it will probably come to pass that a very smart scientist living God knows where will get the credit for “discovering” or “inventing” the theory that we, human consciousness, were actually dinosaurs for hundreds of millions of years before we became extinct and then re-evolved as humans in our current form.

After all, try to imagine a universe without our ‘consciousness’ existing in it, without ‘intelligent life’ in it. impossible yes? exactly. precisely. Indubitably. The truth is that we at one point came to exist on earth, were birthed in the great universe at that point in time, as dinosaurs, because that is the form we needed to take at that time because of the environment of the earth. We could not have existed as humans at that time. So are we to believe that intelligent life did not exist at all in the entire universe? Hardly. We just didn’t exist in our human form that we now exist as. But we certainly did exist. Intelligent life must have certainly existed, since time began I would assert, and since we are the only intelligent life we know of on the earth and throughout the history of the universe, at least we tell ourselves that we are at this point, then why not assume that we took the most practical physical form necessary for our survival at that time? I am surprised that no psychics have ever gone into trance to vibe into the whole dinosaur consciousness to get a better feel for what we thought and felt during those times. and I am even more surprised that no scientists have discovered or postulated this theory as of yet.

After all, where the hell was consciousness, as we know it, the collective consciousness of all that is, during the hundreds of millions of years that the dinosaurs roamed the earth and humans as they are now didn’t roam the earth? could it be that there was no collective consciousness during this time? certainly not. I believe, I feel that it could be quite possible, that we have always been a part of the universe. Since the universe first formed we have been a part of it, existed in it and existed as it, as a part of it. Not only in the universe, but of the universe. And more, I would easily feel at ease with admitting that I believe that we are part of the God force that we still relegate to being separate from us. being gods ourselves, or better, being each of us a part of the God-force, that creates and sustains life in the universe, I would say that it is an impossible theory to even promote for an instant that there was ever a time when the universe ever existed without consciousness in it, our consciousness, godly collective and creative consciousness. Therefore the only thing left to believe is that we first came to the earth as the earliest forms of life that there ever were, perhaps even single celled organisms, then we eventually evolved into aquatic animals, eventually made our way to land and became dinosaurs for as long a time as that form served us, and then became extinct only to re-evolve as upright walking hominids as we are today.

I guess the most important point of this would be to understand that human history does not begin four million years ago when we assume that we first appeared on the planet. We have been here much longer in other forms, as other species entirely. interestingly, perhaps consciousness itself has evolved along the same lines as our physical evolvement. Must be. so when we are searching for signs of modern man’s thinking we have it all wrong. because we weren’t modern man back then. we were modern dinosaurs. Consciousness existed, in as much as it was necessary to exist at that time, just not as human consciousness. But it was still consciousness. Are we then to believe that consciousness as we now define the word today did not exist on planet earth or in the universe until we arrived? As if God/Us created the world fifteen billion years ago, as is presently accepted, but then waited till just the last four million years to create “intelligent life (human beings)?” I would think not. Makes no sense does it? what was God doing? Just chilling by himself? No, again, I would think not. I would say that WE are that God- force and we have existed in whatever form was most suitable to the environment of the world since time began.

Put that way, it seems easy enough to understand, on a purely metaphysical level of course. I am not saying that the human body as it is today, the primate form, evolved directly from the dinosaurs in a strictly evolutionary way. This would be a ridiculous notion. To gather that would be to get it all wrong. I am saying that at some point dinosaurs became extinct, but intelligent consciousness did not. It just reappeared in the human form that we presently attribute to “mankind.” Before this form, our consciousness must have occupied some organic form here on earth and I would guess that it would have been the dinosaurs since that was the dominant species on the planet for so many millions of years. One would have to assume a belief in consciousness as something that exists separate from just our human form. One would have to assume a belief in consciousness as a creative force at work and play in the universe, a God-force I guess. Something that is always present and has always been present since time began.

More later. still postulating. Fascinating stuff though.

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June 11, 2004

Complete insanity. Tour half booked half not booked we find out. agents in different countries working around the clock to put it all together. days before we are homeless. Last night I typed in our name into google along with the sleep with you CD title just to check out how our publicist was doing. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME. that’s all I can say. After an hour or so of reading I felt punch-drunk. Writers still ravaging the CD to pieces for the most part, totally not getting it. after about an hour I had to flee, go outside and throw up in the streets. I recently told Juliet how easy it was to have this job… I forgot about this aspect of it. But radio promoters and fans of course constantly telling us how great it is, how many great songs are on it and how it is so hard to choose the singles because of that reason, but one would never know it from reading the magazine and newspaper music reviews. I have heard so many good things from people and read so many bad things from other people, that I just had to listen for myself. So I listened to a few tracks today for the first time in a while with headphones and I loved it. I was just kicked back and you know just loving it. Not cringing at all, like you do a lot of the time after you are finished with some project. But just grooving with it and thinking it was fucking great. Just the first few songs really. That was a wonderful feeling. I was like shit this is good. man you made a good thing there. Susanne this hip radio promoter up in NYC tells me “Fishy you gotta change that CD cover immediately. That’s why you’re getting the reviews that don’t match up to how good this record is. I love this CD. But radio people don’t care what your artwork is like. We throw it away. So that’s why radio people are digging it but writers aren’t. They’re reading too much into your artwork. What were you thinking anyway? Putting a naked girl on the album cover? In these times? Howard Stern can’t get away with it, and you think you can?” I’m like, “I was thinking we were making great art. That’s what I was thinking. I thought it was a really nice idea. Very sexy. Artistic…. you know?” She tells me, “You know what? Maybe if you were black… Maybe you could have gotten away with that. But a white guy? A singer in a rock band? A naked girl on your bed? And all those songs about sex? You were asking for it sweetie.” “Yeah, I don’t know. I just didn’t see it that way. I still think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. Music and artwork. You really think we should change it?” “You have to. You said you want to make it commercially with this album? Change the cover. You’re going to release a single now to radio? Not with that CD cover. Trust me. Change it and watch what happens….”

Drinks with a few of the boys at a local pub on Lincoln road.

Watching more of the president Reagan funeral services later tonight. I’m not one of those cynical bastards like many of my contemporaries who won’t give the guy cred because of his policies that they didn’t agree with, or the mistakes he made. Say whatever you want about Reagan. At least he was an honest and humble and dignified man. We had been without a leader of his caliber for almost twenty years. and we still have yet to have a president as admirable and honorable as Reagan was. One can only hope that maybe one day soon we will again. Again, I’m not hip to everything he did. But see more honor it than most I guess.

TheTranscendenceDiaries

Tag: god

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