What I Believe

What I believe



The only thing we can be certain of is that we are, at least, a fiction which can consider itself. It's tempting to think that we exist--that we are a fact, a thing of firm and complete being in the world. But it's important to remember that we don't need to assume that. All we need in order to think is that we are a thing that can be thinking. Do fictional things think? We only know them through how their fictions are conveyed, and if those conveyances convey to us thoughts these fictions are having, then who are we to deny them? We are allowed to be a dream, so long as the dream is drempt thinking the thoughts we're thinking.

It seems silly and pedantic, but it's a helpful tool that will come around later.

As I was driven out of the church of my youth, before the three gods came to comfort me in the concrete tube, I found my comfort sitting beneath a moss-covered tree by a pond on a farmer's land a bit south of my childhood shelter. It's not right to call it home. There I got to watch the sun rise and set. I got to feel the breeze come and go. One day I got to see the mostly eaten body of a bird lay in the grass as insects swarmed across it nibbling. From this is the first rule:

All things within creation End.

and along with it, the second rule:

All Endings fuel Continuance.

and the third:

From things that Continue come new Beginnings.

It's like the day. Every day the sun sets, and the next day the sun rises. This sunrise and sunset conveys the continuance: the rotation of the earth. A cycle of beginnings and endings that reveal a continuing thing. Perhaps it's wrong to say it feeds on the endings, after all the earth merely spins. Then again, the sun doesn't move. In time the earth will stop its spinning, its energy fed out into the void around it. I have to wonder what it will be.

So we see there are apparetly two sorts of cycles: a cycle that arises from being too close to a constant thing, like the coming and going of the days, of the years; and a cycle that arises from action and reaction, like how the insects eat the bird's carcass and the birds eat the insects and the bird is killed again by some great raptor to leave a carcass to feed the insects again. Apparently.

It seems silly and pedantic, but it's a helpful tool that will come around later.

When you look outward, then, you see the world. It helps to consider what things are in it, and how they live.

Rocks and stones
Rivers and lakes
Blowing winds
Beasts and Plants
Fungi
Bacterea
Little viruses swaming within
Endless proteins folding and unfolding
Clouds of electrons flowing through and between one another
The quantum foam beneath it all, wobbling things in and out of being


People
Our dreams
Our fears
Our traditions
Our gods


God

There world is full of so much. It's beautiful.

There's a question asked that seems unanswerable: do we have souls? A part of the problem is vagueness: what is a soul? What does it taste like? Can see see or smell or twist it? It's impossible to say. Impopssible to see.

We cannot know if the soul is there.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We cannot know that others think, but we know we do. I hope we do. We see the words that others write. Hear what they say. We cannot see their thoughts, or know they exist, but we see their manifestations in the world.

The soul is a bit like that, but we see it manifest in other ephemeral and untouchable things: thought, feeling, purpose.

We can never taste our own soul, only see its reflections through parts of ourselves that we can only see in others through their own reflections. As though we are a reflection of a reflection of a soul.

A dream of a thing dreaming.

But that's not the interesting question. The interesting question is: do rocks have souls? What do they reflect? What dreams a dream of itself as a stone?

The stone sits. It rolls with gravity. It wears down with time.

A person moves. It shouts. It fights and screams and hollars. It builds. It destroys.

We look at the person, and see its actions as reflections of its inner world-- of its thoughts, its feelings, its purpose. It is the reflection of the reflections of its soul.

Why not a stone? Because it sits when it is not thrown? Do not people sit in their routines, more complex than a mere stone, but sitting nonetheless, until something outside stirs them? How can the latter reflect a feeling of comfort, when the former reflects nothing.

Of course the stone's inaction reflects its inner world -- its thoughts, its feelings, its purpose. The reflections of its soul. Its purpose is to sit. Its feelings may be alien and unknown, but who are we to deny it. It is the reflection of the reflections of a rock-soul.

It seems ridiculous. But it's a tool that will help us very soon.

The last part that we need are the gods. If we reach out, we find them. All of them. Gods whose names are long forgotten. Gods who have become consigned to fiction by people who forget that they still have followers (marvel! Thor is still worshipped! squenix! shiva is still worshipped! omfg). If you reach out to them, offer proper prayer, proper sacrifice, then they give you their blessings. Some give you their blessings whether you want them or not. (These are my favorite gods). As you pray you feel them, as you walk the earth you see their influences. Reflections of reflections of their inner worlds. Reflections of reflections of god-souls.

All within creation.

What lay beyond it?

God. We can't neglect the distinction of kind between the God that lay beyond creation--the infinity greater than the largest of the unbounded infinitie--and the gods within creation, mere gnats in comparison. It gives rise to a sort of heirarchy of kind.

How I offend, to cluster people in with stones! But this is not a heirarchy of value, but a heirarchy reflecting relationships. Specifically relationships to People, as relates strangers. That is to say, we ignore the personal relationships: emnity, friendship, love.

What is the relationship between a person and a stranger? A person and a stone, or a computer, or a beast in the wilderness, or a ghost or a demon?

It's appeasement or purpose. What are the proper actions that keep the stranger at bay, have them leave us alone? We smile on the street to keep the other calm. Clean our homes to drive away the mold. Defragment our hard drives to keep the computer running smoothly. These are all appeasements. We make sure that our actions keep the other spirits of our world from interfering with our life.

The other sort is purpose. We have many purposes in the world, mostly chosen, some driven by need, some feeling more core, for fundamental. When those purposes call upon us to act upon other spriits, we do so. Well, unless they have appeased us and performed actions that keep us from acting our purposes upon them. This is why I cluster People, Ghosts, Animals, Plants, Stones, Atoms, Electric Fiels, and such all under the single sort of Spirit. Because from the perspective of the divine, they are all the same: reflections of souls that enact purposes upon the world, which relate to us through our need to understand, appease, and if needed for our purposes to control.

If you ask "what is purpose?", perhaps you are on to something.

Gods-Within-Creation, called gods in the lower case from now, relate to humans diffrently. Certainly they act upon us, but unlike spirits, gods cannot be appeased. Thoth will give you wisdom if you study, whether you wish for it or not. Poseidon's seas will overturn you or take you where you go, but Poseidon will drive the seas no matter what you do. The gods drive spirits, and you may appease the spirits, but never the gods. What you can do, however, is call upon them. Beg their favor. Offer them sacrifices. Then they send their spirits, give their blessings. Often the difference between a sacrifice to secure the favor of a god and the appeasements to hold their spirits at bay are indistinguishable. But if you've called a god you know: it will not be appeased. It will give you its blessing or its rage, dependent on its satisfaction. Both are often terrible.

God-Without-Creation, called GOD in the upper case for now, is different again. You do not call GOD. GOD is already there. You do not appease GOD. GOD will do what GOD will do without regard for your appeasement. You cannot beseech GOD's blessings with sacrifice. GOD will do what GOD will do without regard for your sacrifice. In fact, you will do what GOD wills you will do. Because GOD is GOD. GOD will not ask you to do a thing. You will simply do it. So what is purpose?

There's a purpose with intent. You look and say "aha, I will go to the shop today to get some hummus and crackers and then I will eat them." And then if all fortune favors you you will do so, and be happy to eat some hummus.

There's a purpose born of need. Hunger roils, and you need to eat. You have purpose to eat. That purpose hits your mind, pairs with your wisdom, knowledge, experience, and becomes the purpose of intent.

But from whence to needs come? From the body, from the social interactions. These cover most needs. I need a nice outfit so that the people at work do not think I am horrible. I need some entertainment so I do not go mad. I need to see the awkward grin of the person I love most, so I am reminded that she exists.

The rock needs to roll down the hill to match gravity--we all do, of course. The wolf needs to howl at the moon. We need to reach out to someone suffering, and help.

There's a third sort of need, that intersects with body-needs and social-needs. A need to simply do a thing from time to time. Some people feel this emergent need to explore. Some to study. Some to build. Some to care. A need that feels like it is, itself, a purpose.

Whose purpose?

The relationship of the human and GOD is submission without regard to will. GOD will do what GOD wills to do. You will do wha GOD wills you will do. GOD's will will become your need. And you will act on it as best you are able, as you will act to fulfill your hunger, to satisfy your loved ones.

All of this thought, all of this consideration, returns back to GOD, and asks a question: what are we that we are beings with will, but our wills are bent to the directions of GOD.

You'll recall, the first disinction that seemed silly and pedantic.

We do not need to exist. It is sufficient for us to be dreams that are drempt thinking.

GOD is without creation. If GOD made all, and before GOD made there was only GOD, then from what did GOD make but GOD? Every stone is GOD. Every breeze. Every beast. Every god. You. Me. There is nothing at all but GOD, GOD dreaming. These dreams are our distinctions. You and I are separate because GOD dreams us so. We are the same because we are both GOD. We cannot resist GOD's intention because we are GOD's fictions. If GOD dreams you to be a killer, then you will be. If GOD dreams you to be a saint, you will be. But as GOD is a being with will, you and I and the stone and all are, also, being GOD, beings with will.

And there we see that second silly and pedantic distinction. Apparently. As the cycle of sunset and sunrise reflects the continuity of the rotation of the earth, so too does the cycle of feasting of flesh upon flesh, the birth and death or stars, the start and ends of universes reflect the continuity of GOD.

The universe is full of distinctions. Apparent distinctions. Illusions. Because we are simply too close. We are the parts of GOD that are dreaming. We are within the dream.

So what does it matter?
Why do we care?

It matters because the whole of creation is the dream of GOD, and it is as real as anything we can consider real.

It matters because the illusion is our world.

We are born here--reflections of reflections of a soul that is GOD--a single soul in the shattered funhouse mirrors of its own design.

It matters because I lied. We do not have to submit. We often do not. GOD's will becomes a need within us, but alongside it we need comfort, comraderie, food, shelter. And as those needs coalesce to our purposes, we do not find ourselves always choosing to embody the divine will within us. We do not even always recognize it. And when we act in opposition to it out of a purpose to fill some other need we scar ourselves and all those who we interact with. Those scars have weighed upon us from the dawn of creation. They rend us further and further from GOD, bind us more and more to the illusion that GOD dreams. They hurt us. And as we are GOD, we hurt GOD. Our greed, our indolence: it turns GOD's dream into a nightmare.

And when we die we will be born into it again. The scars on our soul have bound us to it.

It means that we find ourselves, all of us, with two responsibilities:
  1. meditate. identify the need within you that is your divine will. choose it before your other needs. As you do this, you will give your soul the time it needs for the scars of life that it's already accumulated to heal.
  2. work to make the world better able to fill the other needs. Because you will return here when you are done. If the world you return to in your next life is one where it is easier to find food, shelter, and learning, to carve out time for meditation, then you have made a world that is easier for you to heal in
    3. .
Then what happens when you are healed?

Then there is nothing to bind you to the world but the divine will.

No, you won't die. You'll just be GOD. Like you always have been. And banish from your mind the cackling madman going "I AM GOD! BOWW!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA". That isn't coming from the divine will. That's coming from the want of power--power to fulfill need, power to demand companionship, power to find comfort.

That power makes it harder for everyone else to enact their divine will. Take only what you need, and then give it back when you are done. Power is a dangerous thing, and you will hurt yourself with it. This i shout to the kings and princes, not the poor downtrodden.

And there you have it. A few decades of prayer and meditation.

Allegedly this is reinventing hinduism. I don't know enough to say yes or no.

I will now, however, exploit the centuries of hinduism's thought and philosophy because they have words that desribe concepts here that are so much less clunky. So I'll steal them.

This is, always, a living belief. I have no holy text but the world. And I am no prophet. I'm just a shattered transsexual grasping at the divine.

Everything is True; Nothing is Permitted. Do it Anyway.


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