Ramble No. 1

You made it here, Pilgrim, it’s good to see you. Get comfortable. Make yourself at home.

 

I have always wanted to share my thoughts or, more accurately, I have always known that I would. As I’m not one to waste a good prophecy, here I am to prove it true. I’m not trying to win a literary prize or such. I am just going to ramble on and digress as the whim takes me. Nothing will be planned, I’m just going to sit down and let my imagination guide me.

 

I don’t have a ‘message’ as such, just a different way of seeing things. As far as I know I was always short sighted, but I only got my first look through glasses at age 9. My first nine years were lived in a hazy, blurred world. I knew no different and thought that was how everybody saw. I didn’t know that I could have complained. Nonetheless, I found my way around with greater ease than kids who could see where they were going. Today, if I were to go without glasses I wouldn’t last ten minutes. Yet as a child I had to interpret these blurs into sensible things. Isn’t that what everyone did? So by default I taught myself a way of seeing things that I didn’t lose when I got my first glasses. (I was awed by the clarity of everything!) Now that I am older I realise the significance of that handicap. What I was doing every waking moment was exercising my intuition.

 

Here’s what I know about intuition and that includes a few assumptions along the way. (So if you want your facts scientifically sanitised don’t read the rest if that is going to offend you, however, if you believe you are strong enough to disagree with me on some opinions, but accept that its interesting, then lets talk. I don’t mind if we were to disagree on a few things, and that some of my ideas may even offend you, but I would hate to bore you.)

 

I remember the relief I felt when a teacher in an early grade made an innocuous remark about how we kids were so alike, but that each of us was unique. I took that as a license to be different and that it was fine to be who I was. This was important to my 6-year old life. I was a bright red headed boy and I must stress that bright; it was glowing red. That, I felt, made me special. I was blessed with the name, Julian, which nobody I knew had ever heard of. My surname is Polish and pretty unique in Poland so it was doubly exotic in South Africa. I already felt like the odd one out because up to that time we had lived in an Afrikaans community. I knew no English, or English games. Then my wise mother decided to place me in Grade one in an English only school. That would single one out. A Dutch/Afrikaans boy in a Rooinek class. (Rooinek is a colloquial Afrikaans term for English person. It literally means redneck because of the pattern of their tan) So when that teacher made her pronouncement on our uniqueness I was liberated. In hindsight that was one of the most valuable lessons I learnt. I set out to grow and make myself proud to be the who that I was. So now, some &*^%$ years later, I am different from most people. I have a different perspective, a unique response to the world I am in. And No, I am not a New Age dude going on about conspiracies and demons and frightening the children. Although I hasten to add, I love the New Age movement, though some members are a shade intense.

 

I was just too young to be a true hippy, but I took all of their positive outlook and philosophies on board. A Sagittarian (that’s me) is supposed to need freedom like camel trains need oases. That is certainly true in my case. I revelled in the freedom of the Sixties and Seventies. For me the liberal mindset of the hippy era was miraculously well-timed. Yes. I had my hair long. My hair looked like a still from Mount St Helen’s exploding. Bell bottom jeans and cheesecloth shirts.

 

Nothing in my life stopped me from exploring it and seeing it my way. Let’s start with what should be the most important aspect of everyone’s lives but seldom is. God. I have every respect and admiration for people’s faith, but have reservations over their religion. I separate them. God is a personal God. Of prime importance to any individual, (that’s you, Pilgrim) is his/her relationship with God. It has been shaped by the Church and one of the weapons it uses is fear. Of Hell. To make you conform and toe the line. It is a weak image they create of God, if He has to demand conformity when He gave us free will. And weaker yet when His Earthly representatives resort to instilling fear to attain that uniformity. I do not understand this desire for uniformity when God, who is arguably wiser than most of the priests whose sermons I was subjected to, created all life differently.

 

There is only one way, they say, to worship God. Our way!

 

The Nature of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross has puzzled me. And puzzles me still. One interpretation I have come up with is that Jesus’ death was a sacrifice so that we may live “Free of Sin” He died so that our sins may be forgiven.

 

Past, present and future sins?

 

There’s a lot of consequences that hang on the answer of that one.

 

If the answer is any of the above individually then its bad news. If it was past at the time of Jesus’ death then we are stuffed. If it is present then our children are stuffed and if it is future then we are stuffed again. If the answer is all three then I would see it as being granted the free will to do as we like <good or bad> as nothing we can do will be regarded as sin because forgiveness is guaranteed. That, in turn means that Jesus’ death was an act of Faith that humanity could overcome their dark side and deserve to live free of every restriction. How great is God’s dismay to see us indulging our dark side like gluttons. Our lives revolve around commerce and we devote so much of our energy to the accumulation of wealth that the activity has taken the place of Spirituality in the priority list of our lives. In doing so, we are indulging all the seven deadly sins. “I’m no glutton!,” says the man who eats three meals a day. “Oh yes, you are!” says the boy who has that many in a month. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. We are not lustful. Not? Here, click on this link…… Banning pornography is not the point – it will be happy underground. Always was. – people must avoid it because they want to. That is healing. We are not greedy! No? The continuing disposal of our pollutants into the atmosphere and environment is going to kill us. People should never invest in the oil industry, it’s going to go down. You see, if they don’t stop producing oil the emissions caused by using it will kill us all off, leaving nobody behind to buy it. The cynical rape of resources by big business is greed. Commerce is ultimately responsible for sucking the planet dry. Mankind supports that and cannot do otherwise.

 

Can you see how we resemble parasites? Killing off our host? The Earth is sick. It’s running a temperature. That refers to global warming, for those who need the nail whacked squarely. We are the direct cause of that thus we are the virus. Is our dark side showing yet? Mankind, by power of force, has wiped out whole nations of people, and often in the name of God, who is Love. Mankind has put in place a social infrastructure that requires the continued oppression of people, racially, economically and culturally in order to provide a cheap labour force to enrich the few. Dark enough already? Paedophilia and the rape of children. It doesn’t get darker than that. We are in trouble. But what was that? Its our saviour who showed us a way out. He gave his trust to mankind. He knew that we can overcome our dark side and banish that forever. All we have to do is live that truth.

 

Each religion insists that it has the only truth, that its God(s) is the True God. That there is no other God. The fault in that argument is that as soon as we say “their god” we allow for another God to exist. Our God is the True God, your God is not. Read that sentence again… I count two Gods. The term ‘True God’ doesn’t count because it is a descriptive that will be applied to either of the two Gods but not to both. But why not? Answer me that.

 

Again, it is about perspective. Look at man and mankind from God’s point of view. There are many people and they are spread all over the world. All of them are aware of God’s presence. They each have their own culture and worship God accordingly.

God is Love. Would that love not be extended to every culture? Universal spirituality will not be achieved by insisting only one way is right. It can only be done by embracing every believer.

When my daughter laughs I am the happiest man in the world. I believe God laughs when we laugh. What joy can there be in having mankind strive to strive? No I am sure He approves when we strive towards happiness. And I don’t mean materialistic happiness. There is no happiness in the capitalist system; it is simply the lure to keep you striving. Happiness is found through freedom. It scares one to consider freedom because it means one has to sacrifice everything that restricts you. The bad ones, like prejudice and hate, would be easy to give up, but seemingly good ones too must go, like a moral code. That is what freedom is; the blessing to do as you like, even ‘bad’ things and we have to trust that others won’t do bad things to us. We cannot trust each other and thus need laws to keep others in check. But we have to trust. And turn the other cheek.

Tags: climate change, Global warming, God, Spiritualism