Category Archives: science

Demons inside

Posted on by
Reply

di090604

This is not a broken mirror, although it is heading that way. It is certainly not working as intended.  Seeing someone else in the mirror is usually a sign that things are pretty bad. But sometimes you only fail to see yourself.

I woke up this morning (which is a good thing) and what’s more, I woke up to the clock radio (another good thing, as it had somehow failed to wake me yesterday, as the volume was mysteriously turned down to zero, causing me to come a bit late to the course where we learned to use our new software tool.  I caught up though.)  The song they were playing was certainly suited to wake me up as well. Even not knowing who was singing (Anne Grete Preus turns out to be fairly famous here) I knew this was a work of the Adversary, that is to say, the spiritual current that takes me farther from my goal.  Your goal may vary.

The song was plain and had the more impact for it.  I shall simply translate it into plain English as well.  (Norwegian readers should be able to locate the lyrics by searching for the word “spøkelseshær”  (army of ghosts), which is uncommon in our language. )

A song about when you see yourself in broken mirrors
And dig up the terrain when the map is wrong
When the world goes against you
is anyway
no one as hard-working as
the demons inside oneself.

Let’s pause there.  So far it is disturbingly true. Of course, there are more than one type of demons, we’ll come back to that soon.  But the blatant demons that make life hard for even those who don’t believe in demons, they are more reasonably described as “mind parasites”.  I picked up that phrase from Robert W. Godwin, not sure if he made it himself.  Jung called them complexes. In computing, we actually use the word “daemon” about independent processes that mind some limited task on their own, like fetching or delivering mail.  In essence, these are parts of our psyche that don’t answer to the conscious I.  They do what they bloody well want, either to help or to hinder or simply ignoring their host as they pursue their own agenda.  At worst, they seem to take a perverse pleasure in making life miserable.

To no small extent, these mind parasites are downloaded from one’s parents or other family members during early childhood, which explains why they are so resistant to logic: They were ingrained before we had even a coherent view of the physical world, much less abstractions like logic. It is certainly possible to acquire, cultivate and even create mind parasites later in life as well, but the early ones tend to be the most powerful, and often there are early events that carry the seed for later ones.  For instance, our very early exploration of sexual and erotic nature may not be very positive, but this is unlikely to become much of an issue until puberty, at which point it may get magnified to disastrous proportions.  Also our relationship with food may take years or decades to reach its full magnitude, and yet in the end may maim or kill us.

No opposition from outside is likely to reach quite the level of tormenting power that a complex or mind parasite has, lodged in the very psyche like some kind of festering infection.

I don’t want to see you there anymore
You fight with shadows and an army of ghosts
For you are good enough
more than good enough
Good enough
as you are.

I’m not usually tormented by the voices in my head.  There is some reasonable paranoia (reasonable in the context of having spent all my adult life in a job which would strongly motivate some small part of the populace to attack me on sight if they knew, or at least make my life unpleasant in whatever way they could get away with).  But for the most part, I lead a rather paradisical life.  But that is not really my goal.  Well, in theory it is not.  In practice, it is very hard to break out of paradise upward.  Which is why most of those who have escaped it and continued their spiritual journey, have done so by being forcibly evicted from paradise.  Illness, economic ruin, the death of a loved one, or some other calamity.  I would rather not incite fate that badly, of course.

The Adversary, as I mentioned above, the countercurrent that contradicts the cosmic love, will happily keep the tormented in torment for as long as they live.  But failing that, it will work just as hard to keep the oblvious in oblivion.  And so for those of us who were comparatively blessed in terms of upbringing and temperament, or who have by grace or serendipity been able to reach a safer haven… for us, the voices in our head whisper still.  Now they whisper:  “You are good enough, more than good enough, as you are.”

For those of you still steeped in the Christian lore, you may remember the pharisees and scribes of that time.  There are people like that today as well, but more disturbing, there is an inner pharisee lying in wait for any of us should we come so far as to become distinct from ‘tax collectors and “sinners”.’  You don’t even have to be actually religious, although it doesn’t hurt unfortunately.  Once you are no longer reminded by your conscience (or the police and creditors), once you can take a breather with the burning Sodom safely hidden beyond the hills, the voice is waiting for you.  To tell you that you are better than the rest, that you deserve to be treated with respect and enjoy privileges.  And above all, that there is no need to press onward.  You are good enough, more than good enough, the way you are.

In closely related news, I bought Sims 3 today.  Full report later. Perhaps.  If I manage to break out from the paradise that playing the new game is.

Holosync vs. LifeFlow

Posted on by
31

Or, more exactly, not. Something I have noticed on the Project Meditation forum is that there are people who go for LifeFlow because it is cheaper than Holosync, which they have considered before or even started with. (I am guilty of picking up LifeFlow after Holosync as well, although for other reasons. Holosync has a lot more PR, so people tend to discover it first.)

The thing is, the two competitors have quite different approaches. You cannot just substitute one for the other and use them in the same way, then expect the same results. Oh, there are similarities: They both use binaural beat technology to create a standing wave in the brain of a desired frequency, and they both warn their users that this may cause weird experiences as formerly unconscious material comes to the surface. Even unpleasant or scary stuff to some degree. But they both maintain that for most people, the pleasant experiences dominate. And reports from several users seem to bear all of this out.

However, Holosync uses more of a “brute force” approach. They start with delta waves from day one, which may be nice if you want to substitute meditation for sleep, but is very hard to assimilate. They actually claim that the intention is to overload certain parts of the brain in the hope that it will reorganize on a higher level of efficiency. I have mocked this in the part, I hope, saying that if so they should play the sound of screaming babies. No other sound overloads my brain at least faster than that. Clearly that cannot be what happens, or at least not the only thing that happens.

LifeFlow takes a different approach. While meditation is optional with Holosync, it is a central part of the recommended use for LifeFlow. And LifeFlow starts with pure alpha wave soundtracks, a form of brain waves that occur naturally in humans while awake, although it is most common just as we are about to fall asleep. Still, many people experience alpha waves simply by relaxing and closing their eyes. And if that is not, rolling the eyes back gently (as if trying to look through your forehead right above your nose, the so-called “third eye”) will usually trigger it. To further recognize this type of brainwaves, you will notice that it is incompatible with mathematics and other stuff that normally would make you furrow your brows to solve problems. Even long sentences may be hard to handle in this mode. However, you are still very much aware, in fact in some ways more than before. More present, perhaps. And sounds may sometimes seem louder.

Anyway, you should be able to recognize the alpha waves from daily life. If all goes well you should be able to spend most of the meditation session in this state. Not that you can’t do that without artificial stimuli too. But after about a month, you move on to a slightly deeper alpha level. Each month you get access to a deeper frequency. After something like three or four months, you are within the range we call theta waves. I think those are kind of overrated, they appear naturally in shallow sleep if I understand it correctly. Contrary to the claims on their website, vivid dreams (REM) actually use beta, same as waking thought and experiences. Although in me at least, dreams during shallow sleep can be scaringly intense and lifelike, as I have written about earlier this spring.

Over the course of about a year, you gradually get used to lower and lower frequencies, until you can supposedly experience delta waves and remain conscious, or at least aware. I wonder about that. It probably takes much longer time for most. But at least it should be theoretically possible.

I still use Holosync to wake up in the morning. It has a great combination of the meditative background sounds and the clanging of metal bowls that helps keep one awake even if sleepy. But I am not so sure about the psychoactive effects. The standing wave seems to remain confined to the deeper layers of my brain (and it probably is real, since I seem to need less sleep when I use it regularly) but my mind is not affected, or not noticeably.

This may be just as well, since without getting used to lower frequencies gradually, I would almost certainly go into deep sleep. The ability to retain witnessing awareness during deep sleep is something only the most adept meditators experience. (Although it can happen spontaneously once or a few times in life for others. It happened to me once when I was sick and had been awake at a time where I should normally be in deep sleep. I did fall asleep again, but somehow I did not lose consciousness completely. I have described it as a single candle somehow burning in the lightless deep somewhere in the ocean, hundreds of yards below the surface and its light, but it was not actually scary, and it was not actually a candle, just the “light” of awareness. Perhaps a better description is in the song by G.O.L: “All sound had died away, and it was quite dark. But in the void and in the silence, there was still a kind of knowledge, a faint awareness. Awareness not of name or person, and not of memories of the past. The awareness knew only itself.” Unlike the rest of their song, however, the experience was absolutely peaceful and not at all creepy. Merely detached awareness, without reflection or wishes.)

Now, I have no such experiences with either Holosync or LifeFlow, and I don’t know if I ever will. Probably not. I seem to be quite resistant to the actual experiences, which is ironic since I can have intense experiences of alternate states from music or sometimes silent meditation. But I hope to continue my experiments for some time to come, if I have some time to come at all. (Not that I know anything else.)

Sitting down, shutting up

Posted on by
Reply

di090508

I need to calm myself down!  If you sometimes feel like that, you may want to read this. If not, you may NEED to read it…

I was thinking to write about the two brainwave entrainment systems I have tested this spring, Holosync and LifeFlow.  However, I realized that this should come first.

As I said already when I was reading up on Holosync, before buying the first (and for me, last) module: Personal growth and transformation will come in some form to virtually anyone who sets aside an hour a day for a monotonous task with a noble purpose. Or to put it more bluntly:  Sit down and shut up, and you will become a better person.

I do not know if it has always been like this. Probably, for in ages past, the day often went with simply working and caring for the most immediate needs. Only a few had the leisure to choose between wisdom and debauchery. But today, the whip we crack to keep us running is inside us rather than outside. The ever running, hectic mind will not be quiet. We work only half as much as our ancestors, and still we have barely time to sleep.

If you have been running around like that, not able to sit still for more than five minutes at best, doing “nothing” for an hour (or even a half!) can be a harrowing experience.  Bill Harris of Centerpointe and Michael Mackensie of Project Meditation both speak of “resistance” as being common, and even “upheaval” being possible, and they give much similar advice on how to deal with it.  Many of these things will happen even if you just sit there, say I.  Memories you had forgotten return out of the blue. Feelings you cannot explain suddenly arise, whether happy or sad.  You become aware of many bodily sensations that you did not notice before.  You suddenly think of a lot of things you should have done. You suddenly miss an old friend or relative that you could phone, or you realize that the house badly needs cleaning.

(Actually, unlike some respectable sages, I think the cleaning urge can be a good sign.  Sitting exercise increase the order within you, so the disorder around you become more obvious and contrary to you. I have good experience with doing some modest amount of cleaning and then returning to my position. But it is also possible that it can serve merely as a distraction, if the need is not real.)

More obvious hindrances are the intense feeling of boredom and urge to be entertained.  Normally people who have nothing else to do will sit down with the TV.  Failing that, a computer will do. It has endless entertainment and distraction.  (I feel the urge to open City of Heroes even now – I guess Goodwin is right that blogging can also be a form of spiritual exercise, “blogio divina” I think he calls it, although Google seems to not recognize that phrase.)

Failing any of these outlet, the human mind will throw itself into remembering (and often rewriting) the past, planning for the future, and constructing elaborate daydreams.  This is what I have written about so often lately, the “default network” of the brain.  (Google will offer to drown you in information about this if you don’t remember my earlier rants.) Everything to make sure we are not actually present in the moment.

Holosync, Hemisync, LifeFlow and many others may have other virtues as well, but arguably their main effect is that they keep people from escaping (or fleeing in horror) from the very act of quietude. Meditation and prayer do this as well, in addition to their own specific effects. Even listening to classic music (I recommend Back on principle) or watching art could have some effect.  And of course watching paint dry.

Before you go into any act of quietude with the sincere intention to make it part of your life, you should be prepared that resistance will appear.  The effect of quietude is growing awareness.  At first this awareness will be dispersed and unfocused, and therefore you will see these effects:  Random memories, feelings, impulses, small pains or itches or strange sensations of your body.  They are the first encounters of your awareness!  The awareness needs to be collected, tamed and trained to go beyond these distractions if you want to grow as a person.  You will meet things you have failed to integrate in the past, or as in my nightmare, thrown down in the basement and locked the door. You will even meet the collective delusions of our culture, and must go beyond these to begin to wake up.

But the first step is to stop stepping, sit down and shut up for a while.

Origin of government

Posted on by
Reply

di090501

We don’t want Earth’s civilization to go the wrong way, but which way is that, and which is right?

In these days when people all over the developed world (and then some) look to their governments to fix the economy, provide “free” health care and generally kiss the pain away and make it all better, it may be useful to take a look at how government as a concept began: The mafia gaining a monopoly on violence.

Anarchy works just fine for a small village of interrelated families. But if population grows beyond a certain point, or regular contact is established with other villages, organized crime appears. Groups of violent men find that they can easily take what they want by threats of violence. Since most people are neither violent nor organized, much less both, this works very well for those who are.

But as the population (or communication) increases, rival gangs appear, typically with separate core districts where their control is absolute, and turf wars where their ambitions overlap. At this point, the local gangsters can take your stuff in exchange for promises to protect you from rival gangs, as opposed to taking your stuff in exchange for not beating you to a bloody pulp themselves. This is a big step upward in relations.  This so-called “protection money” is the precursor of today’s taxes.

As civilization advances, the emerging warrior class lives more symbiotically with the populace, their role as protectors becoming more prominent as large-scale war is a permanent threat and a standing army becomes necessary to avoid plunder by barbarians (this includes rival civilizations, who behave like barbarians while away from home.  You can still see this trait in Norwegian tourists abroad, but let’s not go there today.)

The “families” of the mafia-style criminal hierarchy develop into the kings and nobles of the feudal era, now ruling by divine right as the axial religions worhips order as a divine attribute. The legitimate rulers and their faithful warriors now protect the peaceful citizens from brigands, bandits and gangsters – the small upstarts who were the root of their own origin in a now forgotten age. And of course, the army protects us against other armies. Eventually a separate police force maintains the internal peace, but the police and the army are part of the same government, which has a monopoly on violence.

Finally we got the power to elect our own rulers, within certain limits. At this point, when they seem to be working for us rather than the other way around, all kinds of expectations arise, as if the government was a benevolent parent rather than a mafia demanding protection money. It is still glaringly obvious in some countries that the true power is in the guns: See Turkey, Pakistan and Thailand, democratic countries where the army still steps in regularly if they don’t like what the elected folks do.  But that could never happen here, right? Because we love our government and our government loves us.

It seems likely (as psychohistory implies) that the progress in government does in fact reflect the progress in parenting. It may seem obvious to us that parents have at all times and all places loved their children, but this is only true for pretty badly screwed up values of “love”, values that are then inherited by the next generation and only gradually soften over millennia of cultivation of higher values.

A society where trust is possible at all, much less trust in the government, is indeed a monumental achievement. Even so, if you have taken a long hard look at history, I think you will feel a bit nervous about waiting for government to solve our problems.

Do Arabs love their children too?

Posted on by
3

di090430

In Japan, relatives may “facilitate” a future marriage to be agreed on some time before it can legally be consummated, and the young person may feel some degree of pressure, which we may have a hard time relating to here. But it is still pretty mild compared to some other places, and almost all other times.

Don’t read this if you are a child. Seriously, it is not good for you. It is hard enough for grown-ups.

During the Cold war, Sting famously sang “Russians love their children too”. Which is probably true, and even with a fairly similar love to what we expect around here. But this is not so everywhere, and was not so for most of our history. That is not to say that mothers did not love their children, but it was often a twisted and broken love, like the one they had received themselves. We see echoes of this when a Palestinian mother beams proudly in the background as her schoolboy earnestly tells the reporter that he wants to become a “martyr” (suicide bomber).

I don’t say this to demonize them. For one thing, they are indeed in hell, but as tortured souls rather than demons. Worse than the desperation of their outer circumstances is the desperation of the twisted and broken structures of their mind, as they were raised with the same madness as they exhibit today, if not more so.

Nor is this unique to them – this was the shared fate of mankind for a long, long time. Indeed, it was worse than pretty much any place on the globe today. In ancient Greece, at the time when they invented philosophy and democracy, it was still not only possible but actually practiced to kill babies by throwing them down off a cliff. This was the father’s privilege, admittedly. But it obviously does something to a mother as well to know that her child may be here today, gone tomorrow. Due to infant mortality, this was actually a common attitude until less than two centuries ago. Mothers were advised against getting too attached to children, as most of them would die anyway.

The notion that one should not have sex with children is also fairly new. Perhaps that is why it causes so intense feelings in our society, where the mere suspicion of pedophilia is enough to strip a man of any human rights, including the right to be considered innocent until guilty. (I refer you again to the trial in Kristiansand, the city where I work, where the suspect was depicted with photographs in the newspaper well before the trial, and as a consequence sentenced despite no evidence of guilt and some evidence of innocence.) The exceptionally intense fear and loathing is, I believe, caused by the fact that sexual abuse of children is still secretly practiced by many and remembered by many more, directly or indirectly by the irrational agitation of their own parents at the sight of potentially erotic play by the small child.

Geography is to some extent history, and returning to our Arab relatives, today we can celebrate the news that an 8 year old Saudi girl is granted a divorce from her 50 year old husband. If it sticks this time. Again I am not demonizing the Arabs – there is no need. A society in which such a thing can even happen, much less be endorsed by the courts until diplomatic relations are at stake, is already pretty demonic enough, at least for small girls. It may be paradisical for 50 year old pedophiles, perhaps, but I’m not sure that counts. Again, this is not because they happen to be Arabs, it is the original human culture.

See, this is why multiculturalists need to be put out of their misery, or at least kept away from small girls. No, all cultures are not equally valid. Even the best of today’s cultures have only come this far by millennia of painful climbing toward the light, and our foothold is tenuous even today.

If you have a strong stomach, you may peruse the Psychohistory website and see what child abuse of all kinds have done and may still be doing to society. Lloyd deMause is a rabid leftist, unfortunately, but still reasonably sane when writing about things outside his own country and century. Not recommended for pregnant readers. OK, actually not recommended for anyone but the most hardened and cynical misanthrope who expect every human to be a bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling until proven otherwise by a trial of fire. If you have children or have memories of having been a child, don’t read it, or at least not past the front page. Any link you click will take you on a tour of Hell proper.

Imagine we were not missed

Posted on by
Reply

di090428

The younger we are, the more we depend on others to verify that we are real and valuable. But even when old and gray, we may not want to be just forgotten. Well, most of us.

“But imagine if we were not missed.” That’s what the little old lady on the bus said to the other little old lady. I don’t have my ears on stalks to eavesdrop on my fellow passengers when I ride the bus to work, but especially with the elderly they often talk loudly enough that I hear them anyway, unless I put headphones on and listen to one of the brainwave entrainment tracks on my PSP.

Anyway, I did not follow the conversation, but this line leaped out at me. I suppose when one grows seriously old, this matter comes closer to one’s mind. Knowing that almost certainly we will be the next to leave, we have not only our own sadness to contend with that we shall leave behind all that we loved. After all, whether you believe you go to a better place or simply disappear, it seems unlikely that this sadness will continue after our transition. But there is also the thought that we will leave an emptiness in their lives, and from experience you know that this will last for a long time and never completely disappear. Just kind of fade to a scar.

I assume the other little old lady must have made some reference to this, but I did not hear that. Only this line: “But imagine if we were not missed.” And I thought, or rather knew without needing to think, that this is indeed the case with me. Well, almost. We are few enough people at work that I would probably be a little bit missed there. And one or two readers would miss my journal, I guess. But that is a rather small and abstract degree of missing. Like the bonsai of missing.

Some years ago, this would have seemed to me a bad thing. I might even have been upset, thinking about it. It is a human trait, to want to be important to others, or at the very least to one other human. Possibly even a cat or dog, or so it sometimes seems. I think it is related to our need to feel validated, that is to say, to get feedback telling us that we are real. That we are a valid human, at the very least. I have long thought that this is a major reason for the practice of dating (which is evidently a kind of ritual in the United States, while around here it is so informal that I did not really know it existed for most of my life.) From the descriptions I have seen of it, certainly it seems that a big part of it is having a mirror to verify one’s own existence in. I date, therefore I am.

I know I needed more validation before. More reassurance that I was real and someone knew it. There may still be some, I don’t know – even my near “hermit” life has some of it, after all. I have to work most days of the year, and there are humans. (Much as I prefer to just work with the computers, when possible.) Even when I have some weeks off work, I will still go to the supermarket and buy food. The people at the check-out certainly seem to believe that I am real, since they take my money and even give me change back. So really, I don’t know how I would feel if I were completely without human company for a long time. Probably not very different though. There seriously isn’t much affirmation you can wring out of a stressed cashier, although I occasionally see people try.

I would like to credit my religion here, and I think it must surely be involved, deeply involved. But it cannot be only that. I was quite more fervent in my religious practice when I was younger, as in praying more on my knees and reading the Bible and tracts that exhorted to piety, not to mention regular meetings where both God and fellow believers were present. Of course God is always present, or if not one would definitely notice it, in a hair-raising way to say the least. But anyway, my religion is rather low-key now, although it is never far from my mind. (Perhaps it has sunk deeper in, what there is left of it?) Anyway, long time has passed, and the certainty that I exist (if only as a created being) is pretty much permanent. If I am ignored, or what is more, forgotten, I do not doubt that I am or what I am.

It would still be kind of sad to know that my life has been lived in vain on this planet, true. (If I had only God to worry about, being incarnate would not really be necessary.) But then again, that is why I write here, and there, and around the web. Just the other day I got a comment on a LiveJournal entry written explicitly for the purpose of explaining how to solve a problem with the music player Amarok which failed to recognize .oga sound files. (I had to rename them to .ogg for Amarok to recognize them and the entire directory structure in which they were placed.) So, my life was not completely wasted. ^_^

The Internet is not a very stable place, but then again neither are most of the people who use it. I realize that after my passing, gradually my tracks here will be washed away. But it will take some time now, as I have uploaded my thoughts and my life so thoroughly to the Net, over so many years, and there are various archive systems in place now, especially Google. So there seems to be a good chance that something similar will happen to what Leonard Cohen says near the end of his “Tower of Song“:

Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow to the tower down the track,
But you’ll be hearing from me, baby, long after I’m gone:
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song.

That’s how I hope my footprints in this world will fade, gently, in the light rain of time. When I am gone, should anyone miss me, they can go online – if nothing else, using Google cache or the Wayback Machine – and I will be there, no more and no less than I was when I enjoyed my bodily existence.

Just slightly creepy sleep

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a month since the week with the two creepy dreams.  Tonight’s was much less so, but still enough to wake me up and give me goosebumps.

In my dream, I was in the house here, and the front door was open, as it often is in summer.  I was looking out and there was a boy standing outside.  He was no more than around 12 years old, possible even less, certainly not someone who would normally be a danger.  He did not look threatening in any way, really.  The strange thing was that he did not seem to notice me at all, even though the door was open and I was standing right there.  He was just not looking that way at all. I found this embarrassing and began to close the door.  But something made me look again.  And he was gone.  Disappeared in the matter of a couple seconds.  That’s when I was creeped out and woke up. That and there were sounds as if there was a tractor or some construction machine outside, and a sound as if something was pulling or pushing on the house and it was giving just a little, like during a storm.  But when the buzzing in my head stopped, the sounds had stopped as well.  Yes, there were spindles again, which means that despite the relative vividness of the dream, it must have happened during phase II.  It was about 20 minutes after I fell asleep.

The only common parts with the truly creepy dreams were the fact that the dream took place here, rather than in some fantasy world or somewhere I lived before, and the experience of someone overlooking me as if I was not there. A bit like those short ghost stories where in the last paragraph the main character realizes that he was the ghost all along.

I am writing this while it is fresh, before going back to bed. There haven’t been any strange sounds in the meantime. I think it was probably a passing train.  They do that irregularly but several times a night, and the heavy goods trains when they race past here make the ground shake.  I can’t imagine how it must be for those who live  almost right across the road from the railway.  There is one more neighbor between them and me, and some of the trains still make things in the house rattle and shake.

The awakening society

Posted on by
Reply

di090418

I think it’s really cool when people try their best to help others. (Instead of, say, watching anime all evening…)

Awakening, Enlightenment, Higher Consciousness – we tend to associate this with hermits, Zen monks and New Agers going “ooommm”. Awakening to higher states of consciousness is indeed a very private, personal thing. But consistently living at a higher level of consciousness has consequences for those around us, as has living at a low level. What would happen if the average citizen put a little more “ooommm” in their life?

I am not proposing that you do this instead of caring for your kids or earning your own living. Rather, that one takes some time from watching TV (which is usually actively harming the mind. ) The television keep you in a constant state of moderate stress with its frequently shifting images, while you are helpless to influence what you see. This wears down your body and brain. Meditation is a scientifically proven anti-stress. Or you could choose any other “sitting practice”, such as prayer or lectio divina (holy reading) if you are religious (which is not as bad as it looks – the guys on TV are not representative of real religion). For those fearful of both religion and mysticism, at least set aside some time each day for contemplation of beauty, whether it is a piece of visual art or a timeless musical composition. The scientifically inclined may want to experiment with brainwave entrainment.

Meditation and other “sitting practices” make you more aware. Biologically, they reduce stress and restore natural rhythms to the body. Mentally, they calm the frenzied churning of the mind so you can think and feel more clearly. Subjectively, the constant “now” that we live in seems to expand, infused by eternity. But what about the social dimension?

First off, the growth in awareness is not something new and magical. All of us have grown in awareness through our life. We started as a purely biological parasite with no awareness whatsoever. We gradually became aware of ourselves and the distinction between self and (m)other. Then we grew in awareness through many years of play and learning, a time of great confusion that hopefully lessened as more of the pieces came together. When we grew up, we learned to think beyond the purely selfish and beyond the moment. You can say our circle of awareness expanded in space as well as time. This process continues in some adults, and they become mature. Others don’t.

The acute problems in any society comes from those who are severely lacking maturity. The rank and file criminal falls squarely in this category. Unable to think beyond his selfish wants to empathize with others, unable to see the consequences of his actions in future time, he acts without forethought or afterthought, tossed by the waves of his excitement and the manipulations of others. Their severe lack of maturity is seen in their toddler-like sense of entitlement.

But crime is not the only fruit of low awareness. Unreflected sexual behavior brings broken hearts and unloved children, not to mention the spread of diseases ranging from nuisance to slow, painful death. Impulsive shopping causes shortages further ahead and sells us into varying degrees of slavery. It is also one of the biggest sources of family tension. And it destroys the environment by squandering resources and overflowing the landfills with yesterday’s shiny things.

In our social life, lack of awareness and maturity quickly gets on other people’s nerves. Those who are more mature think we are idiots for being whiny and self-centered for no reason. Those who are not more mature still think we are idiots, but because we hog the spotlight and don’t realize that they are the center of the universe. While having common enemies may still keep us together, deep and lasting friendships are hard to maintain unless we have grown to care about others and give them room to be themselves. Instead we get dysfunctional pairings between the needy and the intrusive, or between the martyr and the persecutor.

These pairing frequently form the basis of family life as well. But while an immature person may be great fun in the bedroom, they are that much more vexing elsewhere. And the worst of the horrors is an immature parent, which brings the madness on to the next generation, distorting their tiny minds and making it hard for them to grow and mature naturally themselves. Luckily some in each generation manage to find other role models, or we would have been doomed to an endless cycle of madness.

Now, it would be cool if we all reached Satori, Nirvana or whatever your name is for the ultimate Enlightenment. But my claim is that just a little more awareness would do a world of good. For the criminals, this would unfortunately have to be enforced from outside. But the rest of us have the choice to set aside a little time on a regular basis to work on our consciousness. And it is the regular practice that does it, even if it is only a little.

What would life be if people were a little more mature? They would be calmer, not showering you with their stress like a wet dog shaking itself before you. They would be happier, more content and grateful; instead of whining so much, they would smile more and be excited about opportunities for themselves and others. They would be less selfish, more willing to share, more trustworthy and more willing to trust others. They would have more friends and fewer rivals. They would be wiser, managing their time and money better. They would show up in time and not having to run off in a hurry; they would live simpler lives and have a little time and money to spare for those who actually need a helping hand. They would not be quick to judge others, but on the other hand they would be able to admit their own mistakes and even apologize and try to make things better.

Life in a more aware society would not be paradise or utopia. While meditation and wisdom may protect against many accident and illnesses, eventually we all sicken and die. Finite resources would still be finite, even if we used them more wisely. There would presumably still be earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. But everyday life would be a lot better than it is now. And it is pretty good now compared to how it used to be. There is nothing that keeps us from making a better world for ourselves and your children. Nothing but our own excuses.

God’s wife

Posted on by
Reply

And other stories from when Jehovah was young.

Wouldn’t that be an awesome name for a book? Unfortunately for its mass market acceptance, John Day’s book has the slightly more scholarly title “Yahweh and the gods and goddesses of Canaan”. It is also written in an extremely scholarly style, with footnotes taking up about as much space as the actual text, and numerous discussions of what other scholars have to say on the matter. Still, it is a fairly easy read if you don’t get scared by the format.  (Google Books is your friend. Google Books loves you.)

It should go without saying that the book is strongly discommended for Jehovah’s Witnesses, but unfortunately many other good Christians would probably get terribly upset too if they read it. So don’t, at least until you have read the Bible enough to outgrow the static worldview in which people’s impression of God is supposed to always be the same, no matter when and where.

The Bible actually says out loud that it is a gradual revelation. When Yahweh talks to Moses, he explicitly mentions that the patriarchs did not know him by this name. Even though there are a few references to Yahweh in Genesis. It’s not like Genesis was a blog, you know, which was written down as it happened. And for us Christians, the whole idea of the New Covenant (and the New Testament) requires belief in a gradual revelation. While millions of Christians are adamant that it ended there, that’s not what Jesus says. On the contrary, he complains that he has a lot of things he could not talk to his disciples when he was around them, but had to leave it to the Spokesman, the Spirit of Truth. As far as we know, that One is still at work. If allowed to.

In this perspective, it becomes quite interesting to see that the early Israelites thought God was married. It made perfect sense to them. Everyone married, except losers. Obviously an amazing God would have an amazing wife. The wife in question was Asherah. Some translations (including the one I grew up with) named her Astarte, but if the texts of nearby Ugarit are any indication, Astarte was her daughter.

Actually that’s why I came across this book, while reading wild-eyed people who believe that Easter is named after Astarte. (Easter is named after Eastre / Eostre, a goddess of dawn and spring, worshiped during the Dark Ages. There is no historical record of the corresponding German goddess Ostara, not that this stopped German poets from letting their imagination run wild. Ostara again should supposedly be the same as Astarte, despite the languages being utterly incomprehensible to each other, having separated while the Neanderthals were still alive and well.)

Be that as it may, the Canaanite culture that preceded Israel had worshiped a pantheon of gods, the chief god being called simply El, which corresponds to our word God. For clarification he was frequently called El Elyon (God Most High) or El Shaddai (God of the Mountains, or God Almighty). The old, wise and merciful El presided on the holy mountain of the gods in the north, and his 70 sons were gods of the various countries. All of these details are found in the Hebrew Scriptures as well, so there was at least some continuity despite Yahweh’s burning hate of the Canaanites (kill them all and their camels too). In fact, cultural artifacts indicate that most of Israel actually descended from the Canaanites. In any case, the Bible attests that they were never even remotely eradicated but lived among Israel for centuries after the conquest.

So it should surprise no one that the Israelites, at least before the monarchy, believed in many of the old tales about El, Baal, Asherah and Astarte etc. In fact, there are inscriptions referring to Yahweh and His Asherah, a reasonable assumption since they were told Yahweh was God, and God was married to Asherah, the Queen of Heaven. The prophets kept trying to explain that God wasn’t like that, but it took many long centuries before it started to sink in.

Once you know the cultural context, it is plain to see how the Old Testament portrays a gradual revelation from polytheism through a phase of hierogamy before God is finally seen as spirit, not some old guy up there. (I guess this is still a work in progress some places.)

And at each point, the peasants were no doubt just as certain as we are that they had the final revelation. Nobody though “Why, I am actually blaspheming and worshiping a caricature of God, despite my best intentions.” And neither do I.

Long Friday again

Posted on by
Reply

I am writing this on Good Friday, arguably the holiest day in the year here in Norway. For while most people here doubt that Jesus returned from the dead, at least in any literal or physical sense, they certainly believe he died. Not all are equally excited about this, of course, but out of respect for our 1000 years of Christianity and the values those years imparted, the country grinds to a halt already on Thursday and is utterly closed down on Friday. Only life-saving work is still done, like in hospitals and on animal farms. Not without reason is this day called Langfredag (Long Friday) here in Norway. It certainly gives time to think, although most of us go out of our way to avoid that. With computers everywhere these days, that’s pretty easy. But even before the Information Age, most city people traveled to the mountains to spend the holy days skiing. That way they did not need to go to church, as there were no churches there, and hear the creepy story about suffering and redemption.

(Long essay deleted here for theological reasons.  And also because 10 PM became 3 AM.)