Welcome to the Fringe!

A friend of my texted me today. The message seemed angry.

We have been both reading The teachings of Don Juan, her for the first time. We both had heard a lot about it back in the 70’s, but didn’t read it at the time. I got around to it a few years ago, she decided to tackle it now and I thought I’d like to review it so we could discuss it.

After a brief test exchange, I got that it seemed that she had gotten upset about something she’d read in the book, and then had done a search on “Carlos Castaneda fraud” and, after having read some of the results, apparently concluded that she’d been taken in and was upset about that. I let the matter drop.

My first reaction to her messages was to smile, “Welcome to the Fringe!” I thought. Apparently she isn’t aware of how nasty things can get when the “skeptics” and “debunkers” come out to play. Fake news wasn’t invented in 2016 or with the internet. Hit pieces, hatchet jobs, misrepresentation, slander, yellow journalism, all have all been around for as long as there has been printing, and any controversial person is going to have nasty stuff said about them. That was just as true in the 70’s as it is now. Castaneda was an extremely controversial figure, advocating the use of hallucinogens for enlightenment, promoting a pagan spirituality, and having the hutzpah to imply that the experiences gained by these techniques might not be just not dreams or delusions. Of course the Moral Majority, the anti-drug people, the scientific and medical communities, and, especially the Christians, were all over this, wanting to discredit it in every way possible.

Nobody is immune to this, no matter what your credentials are. Here’s a case where a full professor, who is also a Nobel Laureate in Physics, was disinvited from a conference for having an interest in the paranormal. If this can happen to someone of his stature, just imagine what might happen to a lowly MA, especially one with a foreign heritage!

My point isn’t that Castaneda is right, or wrong, a fraud, a True Believer, or a fool, but you need to have a thick skin to be involved in fringe topics like the paranormal, UFOs, and alternative spirituality. Everybody in this field has been, and continues to be smeared by elements that want them to shut up and go away, so you can’t just go with what the mainstream says. You need to read their material and make your own judgments.

Everyone I know in this field has gone through this, myself included. You first discover some topic, UFOs, ghosts & haunting, the paranormal, ancient aliens, whatever, and you’re really excited. You read all you can find about it, talk about it to your friends, and then something happens. Your friends start to diss it, or you begin to realize that some of the people you follow are just publishing crap to make money, and you feel embarrassed and ashamed to have been taken in. Next, you either blow off the whole field, or you eventually get over it, and learn to be more discerning. Read and listen carefully, stop taking everything at face value. Decide for yourself what resonates, or makes sense to you. Don’t let other people’s opinions sway you, one way or the other. This is a field with lots of strong opinions, on all sides, you have to make up your own mind. That doesn’t mean you can’t change you mind, when new evidence comes around, just don’t expect to ever see a consensus on these topics anytime soon.

In my own readings, I have found big chunks of pure fantasy, spiritual truths, myths that includes lessons and truths, and some stuff that is hard to classify, but it feels like there is some truth there, however buried it may be under the encrustations of years and of successive cultures that have interpreted and re-interpreted the ideas through their own cultural lenses. Sometimes all of this is the same book. That said, I have no problem dropping a book, or an author, if I find nothing of value there.

It’s a bit of a trope, but it’s still true, none the less: Everyone has their own spiritual truth, and we have to find it ourselves. Unfortunately, far too many of us allow our family, friends, church, or culture, tell us what what our truth should be. That is so sad because it creates so much of the unhappiness, discontent and anger we see around us. When you let others define what you can read, think and believe, you live in constant fear of getting caught reading of thinking the wrong thing. Give that up and you’ll be a whole lot happier. The thing is, you’re going to think and believe what you want anyway, you can’t help it! If you just admit it, then life becomes so much easier. Sure, some people won’t agree with you, but that’s going to happen regardless, so why not be true to yourself, first?

Power and Control

A little while ago, someone remarked that she’d never understood the phase “Holding space” for someone, everybody used it, but no one explained it. Another agreed, and added that “Stepping into,” as in “Stepping into your power,” left her blank as well. I get it, nobody explains this new age-y speak, you’re just supposed to get it, get with the program, don’t ask lame questions! <ironic emoji> (Not so “new” any more, since it dates from the late 70’s!) I think I’m as qualified as anyone to explain, considering that I’ve spent a few decades wallowing fairly deeply in this new age-y, self-help, world.

Let’s start with “holding space:” You hold space for someone by believing in them, supporting them, and expecting them to accomplish some specific task. But it does not include pushing or driving them in any way.

I believe in you, is a bit passive and abstract, while I’m holding space for you, can be very visual, active, and real. Imagine saving a chair for someone at dinner, or at a concert. You’re holding a place for them, and you’re expecting them to be there, sooner or later. In a general sense, you hold space for someone when you expect them to do something so strongly that, as far as you are concerned, it has already happened, and you’re just waiting for them to arrive at that conclusion themselves. The chair is already there, you just need to come and sit in it.

Creating from the future. Some people believe that the best way to finish a difficult task is to assume that you have already done it, and now, all you have to do is figure out what you did. Authors say that the book is already written, athletes say the game is already won, and scientists say the discovery has been made. For people who are struggling, holding space for them places their goal within reach, gives them encouragement and expectation, without nagging or pushing, and they can move at their own speed. When done right, holding space creates an attraction to the goal, and a sense of welcome when you reach it.

“Stepping into” is fully embracing a characteristic of your choosing. When you step into, you take on, or assume, whatever role or way of being you’re talking about. For instance, when you step into your power, you are assuming that your personal power exists, and you just need to put it on, like a set of clothes. Superheroes are all over this. Superman, Batman, Ironman all put on their special suit to go fight crime.

We all play different roles in our life, child, parent, student, worker, boss, commuter, driver. Many of these roles are chosen for us, being a child, for instance, and others we choose. But there are the roles we only grudgingly accept, or actively resist, and those we with we had. With the idea of stepping into, we can learn to embrace roles we currently resent, but cannot change, but we can also create new, more fulfilling, ones. And, once we get that, we can always step in, or out of, any role, whenever we wish, gaining control over our lives.

As always, feel free to comment and question. I am absolutely a work in progress.

I'm back: Belief Space!

Hello again! I haven’t posted in a long time because I have been getting my life in order. Before you ask, no, I’m not done. But I have moved into a new phase, and I’m now moved to start getting back into the world!

I’ve set up a new web site!  It definitely was time: The site was getting pretty long in the tooth, and was just a stopgap, anyway. Another reason is that I’ve significantly changed my outlook, understanding and methods, so that the old site no longer resonated with me. My views and techniques have really evolved over the past couple of years, so a new look and message was definitely in order. Have a look!

There is so much to cover! I don’t have room for it all here, but I will probably touch on aspects of what I’ve learned over the next several months. Today, I’m looking at something that happened recently, seemingly because of a presentation I’m writing for the local MUFON chapter, but I suspect the shift has been going for a while and this is just part of the process!

Anyway, the trouble started when I actually sat down and started writing the presentation. I realized, after babbling on for a couple of pages, that I didn’t really know what it was I wanted to say, because I was too afraid to take a stand on anything controversial.

I had started out with the idea of exploring the how past life regressions can be used for healing. But that quickly moved to UFOs and abductions, as they occur in regressions, which still didn’t feel right. Long story short, I’m now zeroing in on UFOs and what they tell us about the nature of reality. I’ll have to keep you in suspense because it’s not finished yet, though I’m getting there!

But that’s not what I’m going to talk about here. Over the past couple of months have experienced an increasing amount of pain in my back, upper and lower jaws, ankles, legs, kinda all over. It’s not chronic, persistent pain, as a rule, but it feels like stiffness from overuse. I have taken on some new activities, but nothing that would explain what’s going on. I constantly have the feeling, especially in my upper back and shoulders, of being compressed or confined, and I’m constantly stretching and twisting, trying to loosen it up, but nothing works.

I went to a Reiki circle recently, and the leader started the evening with a guided meditation. I’m now going to make a scandalous confession: In the 11 years that I have been involved in Reiki, I have never felt anything. I constantly hear about wonderful the energy feels, and how useful the energy is for everyone else, but I have never felt anything of any kind. I’ve never been 100% sure if that’s a failing on my part, or everyone else is fooling themselves.

Well, during the meditation, I confronted this conundrum and noticed that I didn’t want to believe that any kind of spiritual healing works. I had a vision that, inside myself, there is this…I don’t know, call it a “container.” I remember struggling to come up with a word to describe it, but I failed. (“Container” isn’t right, but it’s all that I got, so I’m going with it.) The “container” appeared dirty white, and it represented the boundaries and limitations I have put around my spiritual, intuitive and paranormal abilities. “Thus far and not further,” I had decided what was possible for myself, and what was not and I kept those boundaries firmly in place. But the container is struggling and straining, the abilities want out! I then realized that my physical discomfort really felt like I was a lobster who had outgrown its shell. The shell was starting to come apart, but it hurt! Physically and emotionally.

I would like to say that I have burst the container and my abilities are now in full flower, but, not so much. The container is one of belief and fear, designed to keep me safe, and it won’t be easy to let go of that. However, now I know, so I can work on it.

In the study, METAPHYSICS OF THE TEA CEREMONY: A RANDOMIZED TRIAL INVESTIGATING THE ROLES OF INTENTION AND BELIEF ON MOOD WHILE DRINKING TEA, Dean Radin and Yung-Jong Shiah demonstrate that belief is a very important component in achieving any spiritual, parapsychologal, effect.

I learned, early on in my life, to not trust anything or anyone. I have survived by accepting everything and everyone only provisionally, and then testing for myself whether the thing or person is solid and trustworthy. This has served me well in computer science, giving me a good understanding of how things work, which is invaluable when it comes time to extrapolate what might be possible in designing new systems. Unfortunately, I am beginning to understand that it falls apart completely when it comes to the paranormal. There, belief is a necessary precondition. You must believe a spell, for example, can work before it will work. Totally opposite of the normal, scientific, approach of being skeptical until there’s enough evidence. This implies a whole new paradigm for scientific discovery and validation.

I clearly have very specific beliefs about what is true and possible for me, around the paranormal. Despite everything I have seen around me, and have experienced personally, I still have it all in the “provisional” box. I’m just too afraid to believe everything I hear. I want some way to distinguish the “real” from the truly delusional, for I believe that distinction still exists. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I’ll keep working on it. In the meantime, I’ll be using meditation and other techniques to deconstruct my beliefs around magic and the paranormal and see where that leads me.

As always, feel free to comment and question. I am absolutely a work in progress.

Take care,

Rodney Whitehouse

Herculaneum - A Tail

As many of you know, I volunteer at a local museum, and I’ve been working a Pompeii exhibit since it opened. It’s a great exhibit. I like to wander around, studying the artifacts and thinking about the people who made them and used them.

I’ve worked almost every job in the exhibit, but one of the most boring jobs is the VIP door: You’re there to help people who need to use the elevator to get to the second floor of the exhibit. Hours can pass where no one needs help. There’s a photo op nearby and I try and pass the time offering to take people’s pictures, but time still drags.

I pass the time reading up on Pompeii, the history, the last days, anything I can find that can be read on my phone. I’ve learned a lot about everything from volcanos, to water supplies in ancient times, to proper care of archeological sites once they’ve been uncovered. My excuse is that I want to be prepared when people ask me questions, which does happen from time to time. <Wink>

Herculaneum is/was a city, like Pompeii, that was also covered in the same eruption that buried Pompeii. It’s not so famous because it’s buried a lot deeper and there’s a modern city on top of it. Herculaneum is interesting for several reasons, perhaps more interesting than Pompeii. First, it apparently was a much wealthier city, with more elaborate art and treasure, and because it was buried deeper, many building are intact through the second story and above, unlike in Pompeii where only the first floors survived, for the most part.

One of the wealthy villas they have found is called the Villa of the Scrolls, because it contains a huge library of scrolls, many of which have been read, and many more are waiting for the technology that will allow us to read them. This villa was apparently owned by the uncle of the emperor Augustus. What’s exciting about these scrolls is that they are not records, but literary works of all kinds. What’s really cool is that some of the works are known to have existed, from references by other writers of the period, but no other copies had ever been found. For scholars, it’s really exciting to get your hands on an original version, not one handed down over the centuries, copied, re-copied, translated, and copied again.

My tail begins with a pain in my shoulder. It first showed up as not a big deal, but over time it got worse and worse and spread to include a stiff neck as well. At first I dismissed it, thinking that it was caused by holding and reading my phone for too long. But I do the same thing at at other positions in the exhibit without any problems. It wasn’t until last week that I connected all the dots and realized that I only got the pain when I was working in that precise place, the VIP door, and I when was reading about Herculaneum. Being who I am, I came to the conclusion that there was a connection. With enough digging, I came up with the following story.

I was a young boy in Herculaneum on that last day, August 24th, 79 CE. I had an older sister and parents. Our parents had not left with everyone else, I don’t know why, maybe they were worried about thieves. In any case, they had left earlier in the day, and had never come back. I was badly scared and wanted to leave, but my sister wouldn’t go and I couldn’t bring myself to leave on my own. I’ve sure we fought about it, but she was stubborn, a “Mom and Dad said wait here!” kind of thing. Later that night, well after dark, though with the clouds and ash, it was difficult to tell how late it was, things got seriously bad, and the part of the house I was in collapsed. A beam from the second floor hit me on the right shoulder, broke the bone and I was buried under the rubble of the second floor and roof. I have no idea where my sister was, somewhere else in our villa, I suppose. Fortunately I didn’t have to suffocate or suffer a lingering death from thirst, one of the pyroclastic flows of super heated air finished me off fairly quickly. I suppose that’s good, yes?

I can surmise that my family was pretty well off, from the fact that we had a large house, and my clothes seemed pretty nice, but a ten-year-old generally doesn’t pick up on these things. Especially when you’re a child in a society where you tend to stay with people of your own rank and station. You tend to take everything for granted without thinking about it too much. My feeling is that were servants, but they had fled early on, leaving the parents with no one to help them get their valuables out. So they went out looking or, perhaps, abandoned their children to their fate. I don’t know why they would do that, but families were probably just as “complicated” back then as they are now. I lean toward the abandon theory because, if they intended to return, the mother probably would have stayed with the kids. Just a guess. Anyway, since the vast majority of Herculaneum has not be excavated, it’s possible that my remains are still there. Interesting to speculate on, but I’m sure I’ll never know for sure.

That’s my story, accept it or not, as you like. This could explain why I’m so interested in the artifacts, the people who used them, and how they were made and used. I have no trouble imagining what it must have been like, living in those houses, and the hustle and bustle of the streets outside, and the smell! God the smell of the refuse in the streets on a hot, still summer’s day! They must have prayed for rain as much to wash the streets as for the water. There’s a reason why the wealthy people had their houses upwind of the heart of the city!

If you have time, you might want to check out the exhibit, or delve more into the history of both Pompeii and Herculaneum. There’s a cautionary tail there, as Vesuvius is still a active volcano, and millions of people now live in it’s shadow.

Common Knowlege Aint So Common?

A person contacted me recently, saying that they were pretty sure that was more to reality than we'd been taught. He went on a bit, but the upshot was that wanted to buy a K2 meter and go to a graveyard on afternoon and answer the question once and for all. These sort of things come up a lot in my conversations, and I'd thought I'd publish my response as a point of general information. I tend to forget that I have been involved in this for a long time, and what I take for common knowledge really isn't that common at all. If you are going to get into the paranormal and do psychic research, you have to understand that psychic abilities don't follow the rules that we take for granted. That doesn't mean it doesn't follow rules, we just don't fully understand them yet. Just like in the early days of electricity, nobody knows what it is or how it works, so there's plenty left to be discovered, for those who have a mind to do so! Here is the letter in full, I hope you find it informative.

Hello,

Well, I have some good news and some bad news. But first, a little story.

My daughter called my this past weekend. She lives in another state. She wanted my help with something that had happened: A couple of days before, she was lying in bed at around 8 in the mornings, and she heard some noise outside her door. When she looked, she thought she saw the door begin to open a crack, then she blinked and it was closed again, without a sound. Then she had a feeling that there was something in the room with her. This feeling was so strong that she was afraid to move or open her eyes. She stayed like the for about a hour, then got up and left the room. She didn't know what to make of it, and she hadn't slept in that room since because she was afraid of it coming back. The irony of this is that she has complained to me, several times, that she was mad that she had never seen a ghost or had any kind of related experience! The thing is, she has been exposed to quite a bit of paranormal stuff, even had a spirit attach to her at one point, but, as far as she was concerned, it wasn't "real," so it didn't count. I have to say that I went on a similar journey, and it's taken me over a decade to get that the "unexplained" is all around us, all the time. The catch 22 is, if you can't believe it, you can't see it.

Ask any die-hard skeptic and you'll see that, not matter how much evidence you present, no matter how good the quality, they know that "it's fake or there's a reasonable explanation." In my daughter's case, she probably would have dismissed it as a bad dream, not too long ago. When you accept that reality is bigger than the material world, you will start to realize that it permeates our lives in ways small and large. The biggest problem turns out to be sorting the wheat from the chaff: There is so much bunk out there from people that literally seem to believe everything they read, and people that appear to deliberately spread false and misleading information for profit, that you have to develop your own inner sense of what is true for you. The good news is that you will find what you are looking for, if you can believe what you find. The bad news is that no amount of proof will be good enough, if you don't.

I, personally, don't watch "ghost" shows, though I have been on a number of investigations. I have seen some interesting stuff, nothing dramatic, and nothing that would have convinced myself a few decades back, but a lot of it raises intriguing questions in my mind. I also find it interesting to watch how the other people on the investigations, feel, think, and react.

If you do some more research, you will find that instruments appear to react to the person holding them. In the same situation, it will be dead as a door-nail in one person's hands, and light up like a Christmas tree in another's. In a way, this makes sense, because our instruments are designed to be as insensitive to paranormal influences as possible, otherwise they would appear to be unreliable for the purpose for which they are designed. They are not completely immune, as some people can significantly affect electronic and physical devices: You know, the people who can't wear a watch, for they simply won't work around them, or they crash computers, if they get too close. As a computer scientist, I had the opposite effect, people give me stuff that's flaky or doesn't work, then I fiddle with it for a while and it then works just fine. I've gotten a lot of free appliances and electronics that way.

Here's the really bad news: I you want to prove it to yourself, you are going to have to put in a lot of time, one afternoon won't do it, no matter how spectacular the results. They could have been just a fluke. Any serious investigator will tell you that the "good stuff" is rare and you have to put in a lot of hours to get it. The only exception to this are the "gifted" psychics. I put gifted in quotes because it rarely seems a gift to those people. Believe me, having spirits bug you 24/7 is more of a pain-in-the-ass than anything else.

All that said, if you want to hang out for an afternoon, I could do that. We can swap stories and try a few things to open you up, if you're interested. Do you have a place in mind? Let me know.

Rodney Whitehouse

Love Lesson Learned

Another lesson learned today. Volunteering today at OMSI, I trained a new person for the Pompeii exhibit. She was a bit difficult, in that she gradually tried to take over the whole job we were sharing. Fortunately, I was soon offered another position and fled. The work isn’t hard and she could do it fine on her own by that time. I felt increasingly “off” the rest of the day. I left around lunch and tried to nap and meditate after I go home, but couldn’t, because I was too wrapped in anger and despair that seemed to come out of nowhere. It wasn’t long before that that I noticed I had a raw throat, like I was coming down with a cold. Then I spent a couple of hours finished up a project, and then tried again to meditate. This time was more successful, but, after a while, I discovered myself seemingly “trapped” in a golden place. Well, not really gold, more amber, but you get the idea.

I wasn’t really trapped, it just felt like it. Like my body was asleep, I was awake, but I was in this amorphous place that was big and empty. I was floating in the center of this big empty, in fact, I was in a center of a spherical clearing, surrounded by patchy clouds, and behind them was an amber glow. The place had a sense of being hollow and echo-y. I felt very alone.

It was odd to be there. I’ve never had this happen before. The sense of being cut off from the outside world was very strong. I wondered why for a bit, then tried to get outside or reach outside, with only limited success. I remember seeing a patch of ocean, but it was like through a dirty window, and hard to maintain the image. I tried to imagine other places or reach people, but I only had a pale shadow of success. I sent out a distress call to a dear friend to please, please send me a message, a text, to get me out of this place. A part of my mind mocked my efforts, saying that she didn’t care anyway and all this “connection” stuff was just a sick illusion, a lie that I told myself. Fortunately a text did come, within a few minutes, and the sound help me get up.

During the meditation I had focused on my sore throat, with some success, but I couldn’t get any handle on what was going on: was I tired? Had I been talking too much over the past few days, (Volunteering usually requires a lot of talking to patrons!)? I had managed to move the pain from the back of my throat, up higher and it was much less. But, still, I felt distinctly unhappy, sad and lonely, and if that wasn’t enough, the emotions were confused and didn’t seem attached to any thoughts or things that had happened. I sent a distress text to my friend, hoping she could cheer me up a bit, but I couldn’t just sit around a wait, it was getting to dinner time and I was expecting to host a group later, so I had to get up and make something to eat. Then, I was standing over the stove, the answer occurred to me: I had picked up a “hitchhiker!” I don’t know why these things aren’t more obvious to me. Perhaps I just don’t trust my instincts enough yet, or maybe I just have so much internal “noise” that I don’t really catch external influences. Anyway, now I knew.

It took a few minutes to get his attention. Yes, “his,” it felt male and I got the name “Bill,” which was good enough for my purposes. He wasn’t very communicative, but it didn’t take more that a few minutes to get him to notice the “light” and connect with someone he knew, who then took him on. And then he was gone, and the sadness started lifting, but there was still a residue left behind.

My friend hadn’t replied yet, so I let her know, briefly, what had happened, and it wasn’t long before she did cheer me up. She has the ability to make me cry, laugh and feel loved, all with a few texts. And life was good again.

All this happened in the space of one afternoon, and it showed me a few things about myself. One, I think this is the first time I have ever reached out for help when feeling down. I have always had this unspoken idea that I’m supposed to hide unhappy feelings and “be strong” for other people, or, at least, don’t “be a bother.” I’m just supposed to hide and never expect support. This episode has shown me the personal value of relationship and mutual support.

The next thing I got was the understanding that you can’t really be much help to anyone else unless you are willing and able to accept support yourself. Until I was willing to accept support, I didn’t know how it felt or how to do it. I could say the words and go though the motions, but I didn’t know what it felt like to give or receive genuine support. And I’m sure the people I’ve tried to help over the years picked up on that. They knew my actions were hollow, with no real understanding or commitment. It has taken a willingness to be vulnerable, to expose my weaknesses and fears, deep fears, and allow them to be acknowledged, accepted, and soothed, to teach me what it feels like to be truly supported, warts and all. And now that I know what unconditional support feels like, I am better able to offer that to others.

I know this didn’t just happen, all at once, but has been a gradual thing. It’s just that today, for the first time, I saw how well it can work, when I need it. And I see, for the first time, how amazing, truly supportive relationships can be. This has been a real sys-opener for me, and I hope everyone reading this has the opportunity to get beyond the fear, and the needs to hide, manipulate or dominate others, and just get to know what it’s like to accept, and be accepted, unconditionally. There’s nothing like it!

Karma Is Dead, Long Live Karma!

Back around 2012, there was a big hullabaloo about the End of Karma. That all seems forgotten now, but it was a big deal at the time. What does that mean to say there’s no Karma? Well, first I’ll define Karma, for there’s lots of different views of it out there. In essence, Karma is the reincarnationist’s version of sin and blessings, a metaphysical system of credits and debits that you accumulate throughout your life, which then are cashed in, for happiness, or suffering, in your next life. The main difference between sin and karma is that with sin, you get one chance to get it right, then you are judged and sentenced for eternity, but karma gives you multiple chances.

Another difference is that, with sin, God or some god, is your judge, where with karma, either you judge yourself or it’s like a cosmic computer program where all your actions are fed in, and out spits a life, outfitted with the proper amount of suffering and reward for to your particular case. This is really just an outline, there are more variations than you can shake a stick at, but you get the idea: In both cases, of sin and karma, we are told to behave ourselves because of a cosmic system of rewards and punishments.

The main problems with both of these systems is that what is sin, what is “good” or “bad,” is highly dependent on where your are born, who raised you, what religion you belong to, and current events. You could easily say that sin has be so overused in our cutler that it’s become meaningless. Depending on who you talk to, drinking the wrong drink, wearing the wrong clothes, being born with the wrong genes, or even thinking the wrong thought, are grievous sins requiring eternal punishment. This makes it a bit difficult to know exactly what values are “good” across all cultures. Heck, the notion of what is a sin, varies hugely among Christians in the United States alone, how’s anybody supposed to know what to do? Especially when we’re not talking about one culture, in one time, but across all eternity.

Could we do without this whole system? The argument against is “What prevents atheists from stealing and murdering to their heart’s content?” When I hear this, I can’t help but wonder about how good and moral someone is, if the only thing that prevents them from committing all kinds of amoral acts is a threat of eternal punishment? And, since you don’t have to look don’t have to look any further than the daily newspaper to find any number of sinful acts, including mass murder, committed by professed Christians, it seems that the system doesn’t seem to work all that well. And, maybe the reason it doesn’t is that the entire thing was made up by people to control people. I suppose you could say they had good intensions, but things have gotten way out of hand, driven by those, on one side, who want loopholes to allow them to do what they want, and those on the other who want a rule for everything.

In the end, it all boils down to one rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If we all followed that, in our behavior and in our justice system, we’d definitely have a different world. And, the thing is, in the light of eternity, what else really matters? Many religious are convinced that following arbitrary rules makes the closer to God. That’s all well and good, until the rules are hateful, hurtful and result in emotional, financial and physical harm to others. You know that vigorous proponents of racial and economic segregation would be incensed at the idea that they couldn’t live where they want, work where they want, have their children go to the schools they want. Perhaps the best justice system would be to treat people as they treat others, and that, in my view, is how karma is supposed to work. If you discriminate, you will be discriminated against, if you steal, what you have will be stolen, if you rape, you will be raped (regardless of sex), if you abuse, you will be abused.

But I don’t think that is how the cosmic system works, it’s not a balance-the-scales, the-good-get-rewarded-and-the-bad-punished kind of thing. Kama is “dead” because karma never existed, and neither does sin. Both are human inventions. I find that reincarnation, as a way to gain experience in all aspects of being human, fits the world much better than other philosophies. It answers the question “Why does a good God allow so much suffering in the world?” with the answer that God has nothing to do with it, we create the world we want, with the result that we have to then live in it. Near death experiences and past life regressions both show that we are not judged, ever. We decide what kind of life we intend to have, not God or anyone or anything else. We even decide if we are going to incarnate at all.

Some souls choose to be the Hitlers, Stalins, religious zealots, abusers and mass murders of the world for their own reasons. Perhaps to create opportunities for suffering, for acts of heroism and self sacrifice. Perhaps to gain an understanding of what it’s like to be that kind of person. Who knows? But it only takes a short look at the world to see that we all live by our own moral codes, sin and karma not withstanding, so it’s best to clean up your own “karmic” house before you set out to judge and set rules for others to live by.

It just seems to me that the way to a peaceful life is to treat others as you want to be treated and to have compassion for those who don’t, and are victims of those who don’t. This makes things simple and avoids a lot of convoluted mental and moral juggling to aline your ideals with what is actually out in the world, and in your head. Take a moment to recognize how you really wish to be treated and put that out in the world every day. It will come back to you in ways small and large.