Religions & Teachings about God; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt3.

RELIGIONS & TEACHINGS about GOD

In which we explore what we are taught about God and Life and look at some of the consequences of these teachings.

OK, we get to be apart from God and here we are in a life on Earth, so how do we comfort ourselves and what are we taught about this?

We don’t know why we’re here. The reasons belong to God and She’s not telling, although She ‘loves’ us.

We don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, but we have ‘free will’ and we’re supposed to be ‘good’ or will end up in ‘hell’.

Our circumstances have been dished up to us and we get to lump what we have. Any free will, choice, fate; really?.

Some religions teach we have only One Go at Life and that’s it; ‘that’s all folks, there isn’t any more’. Some religions teach Reincarnation which gives us what?

All religions I have heard about teach that the main idea is to be good and do the right things as defined by that religion and you’ll be safe and will get back to Heaven, bliss, nirvana and so on. So, the only real rewards for life are actually in heaven and thus, off earth. But what about rewards On Earth; aren’t there any, and if so, why not?

There seems to be an awful lot of unhappy people around.

So, what happens to Choice, Free Will, Purpose, or Meaning? What’s the point and Why, Why, Why?

Is there an On-Earth religion? Anyone know of one? What would that be like?

So, What is Religion?

Most of our standard religions have 2 parts.

They teach a set of beliefs or a doctrine or a system or structure that attempts to understand why we are here alive on Earth, allied with methods of building this system into daily life. Another word for religion is ‘law’; we are trying to find the ‘laws’ that govern our existence.

It is the belief system part that attempts to make sense or point or meaning of and for our life and existence; the answers to the why.

It is the rituals and symbols parts that build and keep this system in the awareness of daily life and practice; ‘do this in remembrance of me’.

All religions have teachers who learn and ‘hold’ this belief system and pass it on to the next generation. It is much more difficult to continue a religion/doctrine if its ‘holders’ or ‘keepers’ are eliminated along with their texts.

This discussion deals with the belief system part.

Why are religions so important?

They help us support ourselves in the difficult business of living, by giving meaning to life and guidelines for our behaviour. Our social structures depend on them. This ‘point’ or ‘meaning’ affects our feelings, emotions and consequently our behaviour at a very deep and pervasive level, whether we are conscious of it or not. It affects our psyche. Our emotions and behaviour affect our social structures and why and how we have them. Failure to find any real meaning for life leads to psychological problems, and thus failure to function properly or even to be able to find any ‘place’ or purpose for ourselves within our social structures. The whole point of ‘social structure’ is that any and every person is a part of a social structure that affects and is affected by that person. If ‘selfishness equals the only meaning’  is now our main prerogative for all, which is the general tone broadcast by the media, what happens to other people in that social structure, especially those with less power to be selfish? (at this point of writing, we are seeing some of these breakdowns in social structures. Watch how difficult it is to use the policing system alone to control the behaviour of people for whom society and its values have no meaning.)

Useful human religions are the foundations for building peaceful, loving and fulfilling societies with a place for all. How do we do that?

One of the things about life on Earth that we find the most difficult is that we don’t and can not know the future, and hence we are always kind of ‘flying blind’. Yet we know that the choices we make now affect our future. Therefore the question is what sort of actions of ours help us have better outcomes? We like to think we have things under control here, but we don’t. Does that make us powerless? We use religions as guidance systems for the choices we make in daily life with maybe an eye to the consequences, and these choices are legion; large or small, there are an awful lot of them during even one day.

So, what are these religions and their beliefs and what do they have in common or not?

Life eternal.

Just about all religions that I am aware of have a ‘life eternal’ concept. The disagreement is in how it is spent; in Heaven or Hell, both of which are Off Earth, or Reincarnation on Earth until you ‘get it’ and are then rewarded for that by being able to get off Earth and back to heaven for good, and so on.

Single or multiple source.

Religions can be based on a single source, one god of all there is which we refer to as God, or a multiple source. I’m not going to go into multiple source religions in this discussion because it is not relevant to my ideas about life and how it works. While a single source as unity is difficult to comprehend within our dualistic earth experience, the unity concept is essential for actually understanding our own needs; see below.

Religions can be classified as One-Go or Many lives, as in, Reincarnation.

One-Go religions.

Most Christianity based religions are single life teachings, as in, One Go at life. (Q. Are there any Christian Reincarnation religions?) One-Go religions use authority and require belief in what we are told and lots of rules, and employs fear if we do not believe, i.e. “if you believe this and do the right thing you will be ‘safe’, (of course!). This means that many people are being cowed into behaving ‘properly’ and of course ‘believing’; and then what happens when life bangs you around as it is prone to do? Have you been insufficiently careful? Another theme is, ‘you must believe this or you will go to hell forever’. They are thus fear-based religions. They talk about ‘love’ in the face of what feels to us like an entirely unloving and arbitrary treatment of us personally in our lives. We must lump this single ‘One-Go at it’ life (and hopefully no more) as best we can because we are all sinners; even if we have no idea how we’ve done that. Within this structure concepts such as ‘you are always at choice’ make no sense at all. The basic teaching is that we can’t find out or know for ourselves or we can’t sort it out or understand it for ourselves in human terms. If we think we have, we’re in the wrong religion. We need others to intercede for us with God; a strategy which is a prominent feature of being a peon in any authority structure. (Do I need to spell out that peons get ‘peed on’?)

One-Go religions basically make no sense. One life of itself is such a totally arbitrary thing. We therefore need to be told what to believe to support ourselves in this ‘lottery’ of life. It is actually the fear of whatever is threatened that is driving the need to believe. These beliefs based on fears are unavailable to the logic that they make no sense. Being told what to do and just believe leaves us as children and unable to work it out ourselves, or even begin to do so. These are the key elements in any power and control authority structure, and why do we need one of those between us and God if we are all children of God?

There is also a great deal about the fighting between God and the devil, or good and evil. This concept moves us straight out of the unity of God and into the duality of the human world on Earth. As soon as we do that we have gone into judging whether or how something is good or bad, and can never come to any concept of unity such as ‘it’s all good’ which tends to come from more Eastern religions.

[I also wonder how much a One-Go teaching leads to a sort of ‘camping’ attitude to Life on Earth. “Sauve qui peu” (save yourself if you can)]

The problem with these teachings is that we now have various psychological methods for actually finding out why we’re here and what we’re supposed to be doing, as well as finding information from past lives. Such enquiries are not even particularly difficult to carry out. None of such concepts ‘fit’ into these belief systems any more. These old wine-skins are having a lot of trouble with the new wines.

One-Go as well as Off-Earth.

One-Go religions also teach that the rewards for your behaviour are either heaven or hell (with nothing in between?), neither of which are on earth, as in, they are Off-Earth, Thus there is no concept of real rewards on earth; much less what they might be.

This is not to say that some of these doctrines and rules for living are not ultimately useful to us, but I am saying that these understandings are incomplete, and not that useful as maps for finding fulfillment on earth.

Reincarnation.

Reincarnation religions teach many lives. The divide between One-Go and Many generally corresponds to the basic division between East and West. ‘Many lives’ makes more sense in terms of meaning and point, but some reincarnation religions ascribe blame and judgement to someone’s current life circumstances as being an outcome of their previous life. Neither does the West necessarily envy the social structures, civic utilities or legal systems of cultures based on these religions. You have been born in great circumstances, you must have earned it. Congratulate yourself. You have been born in rotten circumstances or low caste etc and therefore you deserve it and are left in it. The ‘karma’ still has blame attached to it, as in, no-one in their right mind would choose to suffer as many people do in really rotten circumstances.

There is also other ‘stuff’ about Reincarnation and being an animal in past or future lives, but as human beings ‘made in the image’, our concerns are with understanding our selves as part of God, and there’s enough in that to keep us occupied.

Reincarnation as well as Off-Earth.

Once again, the rewards for ‘getting it’ are Off-Earth. The reward is generally thought of as ‘Nirvana’ and probably feels pretty heavenly. But I am not sure this is the whole story either. (My observations follow below.)

Also most of these religions teach that ‘heaven’ is the state we wish to be in, and thus this reward is Off-Earth, or the body is regarded as not important, as well as being a temple; all very confusing. Buddhists learn that all is suffering and aim at getting off the wheel of Life (again Off-Earth) by ‘being good’.

It also seems to me that the attention given to the ‘spirit’ comes at the expense of ignoring the body, which appears to be regarded as basically something that simply carts you around throughout this life.

Sin and Suffering.

We need to be apart from God to See Her properly and experience and find ourselves, but we generally hate it and want to get back to the ‘heavenly’ feeling of being a part. Most religions that I can think of imply that we must have done something wrong or offended God in some manner to be ‘thrown out’ or evicted from Heaven, so to speak.

This understanding system that I am proposing says yes, it’s uncomfortable, but there is a good reason for this discomfort, because there is something better at the end of the process, and in fact, there is no other way.

Apart from that, what happens to Explore, which is a primary drive for Life?

Religions and Women.

No current mainstream religion that I know of is able to treat women as equals or fully mobilize their abilities within their hierarchies; (Buddhism fully addresses this in both Eastern and Western societies???). This basically leaves out half the population.

In fact, the main religions that I am aware of have a very heavy emphasis on a single (un-relational) male who becomes enlightened in some sort of ‘heavenly’ (off-earth) manner and who now has all the answers and can tell everyone else what to do (this looks like ‘authority’ to me).

For many religions women are passive recipients if allowed in at all. These religions are based on male perceptions of the world only. All of them leave women with no knowledge or realisation or description of just exactly what women’s real attributes and strengths are. The failure to fully incorporate women into any religion’s structure shows us that that religion is covertly or overtly discounting women, and such a religion is, by definition, simply incomplete and way past its use-by date according to me. How can any religion be taken seriously when it effectively discounts half of humanity? Future generations will wonder how on earth women put up with this nonsense.

Religions and Nature.

Where are the religions that give Nature her voice in our lives? We can get whiffs of the possibilities with Wicca or Shamanism or North American Indian or Toltec teachings, but these are hardly mainstream. Nature is God too and we are part of Nature. If we can’t respect Nature and the natural world around us, we can’t respect anything.

Where are ‘till and keep’ in our lives? This was the prime directive given to Adam and Eve by God. I don’t see much of this. How much of the natural world has been anything but ‘kept’?

It is long past time for an understanding system that leads to respect for women and respect for Nature and Life.

‘Big’ structures.

Some religions have large authority structures and some have almost none.

Large authority structures are built on having a ‘top dog’ in the know and of course able to talk to God and receive His commandments, and lots of subservients who ‘don’t know’ and have to do as they are told. Such an authority structure may not necessarily behave in the way that they teach. All authority structures I know of lose the plot eventually and start to exist only for themselves and their own power structures. If people knew for themselves how to find point and meaning for their own lives without a ‘top dog’ or an authority structure to do it for them, there is no need for the structure at all.

To recapitulate

·      We are here on Earth in a beautiful and amazing environment (hopefully not too mucked up) of staggering creativity.

·      We are not here just to look for ways to get back to Heaven, which is something we already know anyway.

·      We are here to explore and learn who we are; to know ourselves and to create and learn to be like God, and become a partner to God and ‘do God’ i.e. do the same as God in our own unique way.

·      We have to be separate from God to be able to See God; we have to learn to be apart as the child must grow up to be an adult who can then appreciate and partner the adult from whom she came. Growing up is not necessarily comfortable or easy but it has its compensations.

·      We have lives of great diversity with multiple themes to help us define ourselves to ourselves. As with all our many dramas and plays that we watch on the stage, they may not all be wonderful or nice, but they are pretty enthralling and absorbing nevertheless and we learn as we go along. These lives are for us to explore our limits and to use to find out who we are.

·      We get to find out for ourselves who we are, as in, no-one else can do it for you; it is actually impossible to be ‘told’ unless you already know, otherwise you will not hear what is being said.

·      We are not here because we’ve done the wrong thing or God is cross with us; far from it. It takes time – all the time in the world and out of it – to explore your self and who and what is there.

·      Playing harps for eternity in heaven or cooking or freezing in hell does not satisfy the drive/emotion of ‘Explore’ and thus makes no sense for God or us. What else do you propose?

So, out of all this, what would be nice?

·      An understanding of how we choose the lives we lead in line with our highest good, as in, benefit for all. What for and why, giving us point and meaning to our endeavours that is logical within its own rules. This would support us, physically, mentally, emotionally, and ‘spiritually’ (PMES).

·      Rewards on earth while we are alive, and tools for how to get there and what it looks like on the way. ie a map.

·      A full, equal and important place for women and nature.

·      Requiring no hierarchy or authority structure; learn how to talk to God/Life yourself; none of this threatening as a means to make us behave properly.

·      Based on human psychology that is natural and makes sense and we can see it in everyday life, and thus remind ourselves, if we wish. No ‘believing’ required.

This would be a Useful Understanding System (UUS) or a Useful Guidance System for Life on Earth

This UUS is a psychological map. It does not tell you about yourself personally; it is basically a structure and map and tools for finding your own Self for yourself. The tools work best and make most sense within this structure, but can be used without this understanding system; so there is no need to believe in anything, including one life or many. However, using these tools helps you to understand this structure and live it and grow.

It is a,

Why and How to Use your Life (your external world/circumstances) to find/identify/understand/Know and Own your own Self and develop your own Relationship/Partnership with God, and thus Life.

It works within

·      a framework of universal laws, viz Mirror Laws and personality filters such as MBTI , all of which need to be applied to See ourselves properly and

·      a framework of understanding our past lives and how our actions then, with the decisions we made about them then, have influenced this current life, as in, how we have got to where we are.

It is a how to take responsibility which leads to conscious personal choice and empowerment and a proper engagement with Life; a ‘talking with God’, so to speak, and thus will give us meaning for our lives and our choices, conscious or unconscious.

If we do not understand the reason for our separation and apartness, we do not know what to do or what is required. Few religions have the kind of understanding I am proposing built in to them.

Part of God's Creations; ITS&FYD:ch1pt2

God as Unity Creates Life of which we are a Part.

WHO OR WHAT IS GOD?

In which we explore how to refer God, as well as concepts that ‘belong’ to God, such as Creation, Manifestation and Expression. We then go on to consider what God might be wanting to carry out.

NAMING

First of all. The Language problem.

This discussion is about our personal relationship as a human being with a single source that some of us call God, and who we are in that.

First, we have the problem of naming and referring to this Unity; God, Unity, Universe, Life, Creation, Nature, the One, the Source, Allah, and so on. BECK uses ‘Whatever’ which is as good a name as any.

I could ‘cook up’ a single word to try to cover these concepts, or Unity could be a useful choice, but for this writing I’m going to use the word God because that is the word that means the most to me.

The English language has the pronouns ‘he’ ‘she’ and ‘it’ for males, females, and things. ‘He’ has traditionally and supposedly been taken to include ‘she’, but many women are quite tired of this, as in fact they do not feel included much if at all. However we do not have a pronoun to encompass a concept of Unity or a single source. If we use ‘It’ for God, we still get into trouble because it depersonalizes Her and feels essentially incorrect.

I am going to use Her and She when referring to God. Most of my readers will be women and of course (!) men should automatically feel included when I use ‘she’ in this discussion. [After all ‘he’ is included in ‘she’.] I have kept the capitals to remember the largeness of God.

God and Her Names. How to refer to this Bigness?

God has a lot of names which basically boil down to…

·      the ONE; Unity, Source, Allah, etc. ie, the Creator

·      and the EVERYTHING; Universe, Nature, All, etc. ie, the Created.

Thus, to repeat; God as a Unity or a Wholeness as a single source is the Creator of Life, as well as Everything that She has Created.

‘God as Unity’ implies that the creation of life comes from this particular Unity, a word that intrinsically implies that

a. something is unified or whole or complete, as well as..

b. it is possible for there to be a dis-unity or dis-union of something, ie there can be more than one part and these can be separated or split. These concepts are key elements in this discussion.

The crux of this is then, that this Unity is required for the Creation of Life.

What then, is this Unity of something that has been Split?

I tackle this question later, because it is a very big one.

God is Exploring Energy and Expressing what She finds.

She does this by Creating Life.

God Creates Life.

What then, is Creation?

It is an idea that has been manifested; it has been made in the physical world. It may have originated as an idea or inspiration, but now it can be seen in the physical. It is an expression of God’s concepts made apparent to God; God’s expression of Her Self for Herself. God’s expression is her owning of HerSelf to HerSelf (and us). God knows HerSelf by owning HerSelf. It is the expression that is the key here. ‘In the beginning was the word.’

And this creation has Life.

The definition of Life is that it can itself give life to another form in whatever manner, which can include service or support for the growth of that other life. Maybe we could say it has and gives energy for growth to another.

Thus, these creations have a life of their own apart from their creator. They can stand apart, by themselves.

That manifested thing, by definition, is part of the energy of the creator, and in the process of manifesting this creation the creator has learnt and now knows more about Her own Self and her possibilities.

God creates Life for Her own sake and Her own expression, as an Exploration of the limits of Her own energy for Herself. This exploration teaches Her about energy and who She is in that. She loves doing this and loves what She finds out about Herself as She does it.

Since this God-created thing has Life, it will want to find out about its own energy because that Life is part of God. And as it does so for itself, God finds out even more about Herself. [Consider for a moment what you have learnt about yourself from your children.]

Since God is exploring energy, Exploration will be a primary drive for living things. This fits in with Panksepp’s SEEK emotion in animals. (see GRANDIN).

It is something so intrinsic to all life that we can fail to notice its importance to us to be able to do so.

And so are we exploring.

How then, do we as human beings, and thus part of God and Life, explore the energy of our selves to find out who is there and express what we have found?

We do this by…

·      Being manifested/created ourselves; ie we are alive on earth. And

·      Checking out (exploring) what else God has created, and

·      Checking out (exploring) what we ourselves are able to create/manifest/express in our own lives.

·      Checking out what others have done and found in their explorations; ie their expression.

This exploration and what we make of it comes though our experiences of being human beings and there are an awful lot of experiences to be had on earth alone, not to mention anywhere else.

Thus, we need experience of life, as in, lots of ways of being, to explore fully the limits of our own energy. This experience brings us (eventually) an understanding/realization of what is intrinsically our own essence; our ‘who is in Here’. Learning what is our own takes time. Our understanding of Life is what we ‘make of’ our experiences of life

To sum up

·      God is a Unified Largeness which is exploring the limits of all energy.

·      This Unified energy can create Life which can create and/or support other life. It can give energy to another, and so on. (This is ‘Life Eternal’)

·      Creation is the manifestation of a concept. But the Creation of Life is something else. Creating is an exploration of self, as is the creation. (That which is created contributes to the creator’s exploration of self as well as the created’s exploration of self.) Exploring is built in to Life.

·      In fact, Life is for exploring. Exploring leads to understanding.

·      We explore through the experience of what is manifested in our lives. And thus we need Life on Earth for these experiences.

All human beings are part of Life and Nature and the created, and must therefore be also part of God. All Life is God. The challenge for human beings is not only to Create but to figure out how they can consciously Create Life from their own self, which is what God is doing.

[Notice here that the terms God, Life, Nature, the Universe, and your own self/person (as a created entity and part of Life/Nature) can be used interchangeably. What?! Really!! Well, that’s the logic of it.

A drop of the ocean is still part of the ocean and holds its properties within itself. What then? Does this make a difference to you, and how you might treat yourself or others?]

The next concept is..

Exploring energy is a delight.

God loves exploring and what She finds out about Herself and She loves her creations and what they find out about themselves. This ‘finding out’ gives us Insight.

Insight = to see inwardly/Internally/inside; to gain an understanding about our internal or intrinsic truth or beingness or the energy of our own self.

[I will be using See with a capital ‘S’ to denote insight.]

Seeing is an Internal Insight into the Truth of Self. It is a making sense of a plethora of information of any kind from our own and others’ experiences. It is an internal certainty that arises as we remember and understand who we are bit by bit. We have learnt something about ourselves and it is as if we have given ourselves a gift. The body sensation is of a ‘ding’ or an ‘aha’ or ‘the light turned on’ or we feel ‘lighter’. It is delightful and it de-lights us; there is a bit of joy here. We also tend to feel more relaxed and can breathe more easily. We ‘encompass’ more and become a bit ‘bigger’; we grow. We learn more about ourselves and that discovery feels good.

NB. Having Seen It feels good; the process of getting there may not.

God delights in her Insights and so can we.

There are some other things to notice here as well.

·      Insight takes time; a lot of time and a lot of experiencing. Yet, once we have it, we don’t really care any more about how long it took to get it, and that can be a long time.

·      Once we have it, we cannot lose it, ever. “Insight is the wealth of the Soul.”

·      It does not come through theory; it comes through experience and the understanding we gain through that experience.

·      It makes us feel bigger in terms of allowing Life to be as it is. We have encompassed more of our own energy; we know ourselves more and have thus ‘grown’. We can allow and accept Life and what it has shown us. ‘Live and let live.’ This process can ultimately lead to trust.

Thus the logic of Creation, Manifestation, Exploring, Expression and Seeing implies that we must be alive on earth for us to be able to See ourselves. We can only gain Insight into ourselves through experiencing what we ourselves are manifesting in life. How do we know who we really are if we have no experience of/from/within our selves?

NB. The use of the words ‘understanding/realization’ and ‘insight’ are being used as, ‘there is no real understanding without experience’. The trouble with using words such as these is that it is possible to think you know or have knowledge of or understand or have insight into something if you have studied it enough and so on. In all this discussion I limit the use of the word ‘understand’ to what you end up realizing out of your own experience. We may sympathize with others, but in fact rarely really ‘understand’ another’s experience unless we have pretty well experienced the same circumstances.

So, What Might God be Wanting For Herself?

How do we think that we might know? If we are a part of God, then God can’t be that much different from us. Well, what gives human beings the most pleasure and satisfaction and can we extrapolate back up? In this I am using human psychology to guess at God’s.

·      We know that creativity and self-expression are important.

·      We know that relationships are important.

·      We know that family and children are important.

·      We know that feeling good about ourselves is important.

·      We know that exploring is important.

·      We know that experience is important.

·      We know that we need experiences to truly find out about ourselves (Insights).

Consider this extrapolation.

The crux here is that God wants to explore and experience everything because She knows that truly Understanding Who She Is and what She can encompass comes only from experience and that these insights or Understandings are fun. She learns more about herself as She experiences it all. She loves finding out about Herself and expressing that.

She also loves her creativity in terms of both loving the act of creating and feeling good about what She has done, as well as loving the things that She creates. She wants to share this creative ability and this great delight in it all.

So God breaks Herself up into squillions of bits so that each can have fun as well. She is now nothing but her creations and yet She is in everything. (Nowhere and everywhere at the same time. A fine example of God’s many puzzles.)

Since they are part of Her they get to experience and understand for themselves and so does She. As we learn to know ourselves, God learns more about Herself. In this manner everyone wins.

and we want what God wants because we are each a bit of God.

To See, to Know our Selves and to Create New Life as we Express that Self.

Your experiences and understandings help you define you.

The experience is absorbing and the understanding is enthralling. We’ve ‘Seen’ something.

We are creative beings; it is automatic, but the real question is ‘what have we created?’ and thus ‘how do we feel inside about what we have created out there, i.e. the result’? We too are looking for that feeling of satisfaction with what we have created or expressed from within our selves; to feel good about what we have done.

Parts of God

Each of us is created by God and are a part of God and are thus also God, because Everything is God. Well, logically that’s what the names we use for God are implying.

But, as parts of God, we need/want to be able to explore our own energy and to experience what we manifest in Life. If we want to See ourselves (and thus God) we have to be apart from God to be able to do this.

We are a Part having to be Apart to See God.

God has worked out that the only way we can See ourselves and See God is to be apart from Her.

When we are a part of God, we are simply God. As a foetus growing in a womb is part of the woman and not an entity in its own right, so are we when we are part of God, and it feels heavenly to be merged in this way. As the child separates from the mother as it is born to begin its journey of differentiation, so we need to be apart from God to enable us to See Her plus define/know Our Self as separate or differentiated from others.

Humans do seem to have this basic feeling memory of ‘heaven’ internally and do want to find it again. But my argument here is that this ‘heaven’ feeling comes from being part of God which we actually are always, but in Life on Earth we are learning to see God and ‘know’ ourselves by being apart from God.

But we don’t like feeling apart. It hurts and we feel frightened and lost and cold and alone.

A Preamble; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt1.

A PREAMBLE

In which we explore what God might be considering when designing a system for life eternal, and why.

It’s all about God dreaming up a way for Her to have fun forever, which is a very long time.

So, what is Fun?

God likes finding out things about herself that She didn’t know before and She likes figuring it out Herself, and when She really works it out She wants to Shout about it. This is called Expression. ‘In the beginning was the word.’

God knows She only really learns and understands things through experiencing them. Understanding is enthralling and a nice ‘zing’ or ‘aha’ when a Light comes on. The more experience, the more understanding; therefore how get to experience everything to the max?

God likes ‘SEEK’. (see GRANDIN. The term is used by Panksepp quoted in Grandin and Panksepp uses capitals for this drive/emotion.) (Another name for this is Exploring)

Imagining and Creating all sorts of things in a self-sustaining system is pretty interesting too.

God loves what She has found, and wants others to have lots of fun too, so then She can share with them and they with Her.

Well, what about splitting into billions of little sparks of awareness that are like Her (‘cos they’re part of Her) and want to have fun forever with lots of different experiences. Since they are part of Her, they are going to find experiencing and finding out about life, the Universe and everything lots of fun too, and they will want to share what they have found.

So, what would keep them entertained and occupied forever?

Now this is complex and there are some things to think about here.

They will need methods to See themselves because it is very difficult to work out who they are in the absence of anything else around them. They will also need contrasts so that they can experience All of it and learn to work out what they do and don’t want, and the consequences of that.

Any spark of me will contain and have access to infinity, because they are part of Me so they will need large worlds and lots of little ones with plenty of scope for plenty of experiences in all ways.

Some things will need to last forever, and some things won’t, and these little bits of me will need time to understand what they’ve learnt, and if they’re beginners they’ll want a chance to do things over again if they don’t like it, or they may want it differently, or better or not at all, because they’ll want free choice, as I have; yet forever is really a long time, so they may want time out, as well as feedback…..

Also, the best fun is when they work it out for themselves, so they’ll need a system that can maintain them, and give them hints all the time so as they will know where to look

So, I’ll set up a closed system that will look after them, and then they can explore.

It has to be…

·      Absolutely absorbing and involving.

·      Utterly fascinating forever.

·      Always learning, developing, creating, experiencing.

·      Encompassing growth.

·      Feeding Seek, ie exploration and curiosity to search, investigate and make sense of what we find.

·      Able to make mistakes and start again.

·      Free choice to do whatever they want, so as they can find out what happens and learn to understand the consequences of their choices.

·      Ultimately highly rewarding as they learn to express themselves.

·      Emotional measuring system to tell them how they’re going.

·      Built-in feedback mechanism including pain to let them know when they need to talk to me or someone else.

·      Others to act as mirrors, so that they can See if they wish.

·      An assessment and debriefing system so they can recap and refine.

·      Time out for a breather and can come back to Me.

Excellent!!

The spark is part of the Creator, as the sperm is part of the father, or the drop of the ocean is part of the ocean, the cell is part of the body, or a flute is part of an orchestra.

The qualities here are that the spark is an individual that is separate but is also part of a whole. Here is the first duality. Characteristics are shared between source and spark, yet the spark is not the source. The part is the microcosm, the source is the macrocosm.

Thus, As a spark of God,

You have all the time in the world and out of it. You go on forever. A life eternal. What are you going to do with that? Play harps forever?? Forever is a long time. What about Seek/Explore? What about Express? You are part of God; you will want Seek and Express, and you will go on desiring that. It is built into animals as well.

Life is an experience. We truly understand nothing unless we experience it. The rest is simply theory.

So --- POP!

Well, here you are – a person born on earth and you’re not that impressed.

A vale of tears.

Suffering in all directions.

Famine, fires, and floods – fat lot of fun here!

“Yeah; well; I suppose there are some compensations, but I’m getting fat and tired and sex isn’t much fun any more and the kids are so-so, and nearly off our hands – thank God.”

What a strange world? It’s lasted billions of years say the geologists, and just over 4,000 says some religious groups. At the rate we’re going, it won’t last much longer thinks everybody except businessmen and politicians. What will the rat race do then?

So here you are? What on earth for? What’s all this about?

This is you – a piece of humanity in the physical – different from anybody else – as unique as your DNA says you are.

You have a personality. Your friends seem to know what it is – you seem to know what theirs is. You don’t really know what yours is. Do you?

You have the potential to be and do what? Others tell you. There’s things that you want; things you have to do. Others seem to have it all. Where’s mine?

Does everybody go through this eat, sleep, grow up, school (maybe), learn the rules, earn a living, just so the next generation can eat, sleep, grow up, etc…. what for?

All looking for love, striving for what?

So many things the same; so many differences; so many things I know; so many things I don’t.

Every person different; the more you know them, the more you realize their world is different from your own.

We have one life only to encompass this. What? Really?

We have lots of lives to encompass this. What? Really?

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? The whole thing is a heap of hooey, isn’t it?

We have history – do we still have all these wars?

Who were they? What about all those who have been before me?

But the great cry is…

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What for?

How does any/all of this make sense?

What is the point of it all?

How do I make sense of all the things we’re told to do ‘out there’?

Who’s right, who’s wrong and why????

So, what are my answers here and who am I to give them?

In the end, what follows are my own answers that make sense to me out of all these questions. They help me and greatly, which is why I’m writing them. They may or may not be correct, and they are certainly likely to be incomplete. They may or may not help you, but it is my responsibility to write what I have found to be true for me, and it is your responsibility to do with them as you please.

Introduction to the Posts on this Blog

INTRODUCTION     March 2013

About me. Who am I?

I have spent a lifetime looking for ‘what I was supposed to be doing’, casting around, never really happy, quite sorry for myself, and wondering what it was all about. Others seemed to be happy; to find love, a partner, children, and to have fun, achieve, and find recognition, etc. etc, etc. So, what was wrong with me?

Being single meant that I had time to read, so I did; a great deal; mostly psychology, personal growth, the esoteric, and ‘New Age’. So, I went on, learning, watching and thinking about what seemed to work or make sense and what did not.

By the time I was 50, I felt progressively more trapped and I did not like the person I was becoming. I also had the feeling that if I did not change this, I would get ‘hit by a truck’. I tried to make changes, but became ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which left me feeling very stuck indeed.

However, at the end of that year, (of being 50), and through my apparently disastrous attempts at change (through worrying about the truck), I ‘fell over’ someone who helped me greatly with both goal-setting and clearing the fears that stopped me getting to them.

It still took another 10 years to integrate and understand what I had learnt within the context of what I had read and experienced, but in the end, writing this is ‘what I am ‘sposed to be doing’ and it has taken me quite some time (more years) to face ‘coming out’ with ideas that make sense to me, but are so counter to what we are taught.

Emotional pain and physical illness have been the sticks that made this donkey get a move on and search for whatever carrots I could find. It is my ‘sticks’ that have taught me all I know; if I got what I thought I wanted or deserved during my earlier years, I simply congratulated myself, or thought I had it all under control, until the next time that I had not.

About the posts.

The posts that follow are mostly sections of chapters of a book that I am writing called “Integrating the Shadow and Finding Your Direction” (ITS&FYD). I would like to say that it is all planned out and chapters and sections will be completed in due course, but this is not the case. The book seems to have a mind and a timing of its own. Chapters or Sections that I think will be easy aren’t, and get huge in front of my eyes. So, you won’t find any plan or outline here, at least at this stage.

But, because it is a book, the posts are not simply topics in isolation, and are not meant to be read that way. They depend on concepts and logic developed in previous sections. Also, the nature of posting to a blog means that the posts end up ‘backwards’, in that they really need to be read from the bottom up, not the top down, which is how they are presented to the reader. Not to mention, my posts are much longer than ‘normal’.

In fact, I hope to eventually set up my own web-site when there is rather more to mount than so far, but that’s in the future.

The first chapter is called Structures because I am using it to build a platform or foundation for more complex ideas.

The second chapter will come…sometime….

About the book.

I find it very difficult to easily say what the book is about. It is how I make sense of all that I have read, learned, observed and experienced. It is not a philosophy or a theory; it is what I have found as I chipped away at facing my rubbish and as I cleared my useless decisions, so there is a kind of ‘take it or leave it’ flavour to it. It is my ideas on the purpose and meaning of life on earth, and it is what works for me, which is why I call it a Useful Understanding System. But its primary purpose is as a vehicle for what I would call the Insight Tool which I developed or modified from others’ methods, and how it works, as well as why it works.

The Insight Tool is my psychological method for turning my shit or sewage (or what I was shitty about) into fertilizer for my own growth. In effect, I found that I could use what I didn’t want to get me to where I did want to go or what I did want. This sounds a bit daft, or almost backwards, but I had had no idea of what I really wanted; I had only developed a lifetime’s experience of what I did not want.

I tried to tell people about this wonderful method that was manifestly helping me get what I wanted, but all who knew me thought it was ‘luck’.

Eventually, I began to understand that this method needs a lot of explaining because it is so counter to our cultural and social understandings. Not only is the method itself counter to ‘normal’, it is best used within a framework of ideas that are also counter to normal. This framework itself has come out of what I have found as I have worked with this method.

Thus, it seemed to me that if I had to explain what it was and how to use it, I needed to explain the framework within which it works.

Over the last 2-3 decades, there has been increasing emphasis by ‘New Age’ enthusiasts on concepts such as ‘spirituality’ and ‘unconditional love’; so there tends to be lots of ‘love and light’ hanging around. However, Jung said something to the effect of.. ‘One does not find the light by ignoring the dark’. Accepting one’s own very spotty internal self, warts and all, is the hard part as far as I’m concerned, but infinitely worth it.

In the end, as far as I can see it, most people do not want to know about their problems because they believe that they can not be ‘fixed’. It’s too hard and just means pain for no point. In fact, people will not look unless they know first that the problem can be solved, and there is very little anywhere that tells us this can be possible, so we run and run, and hope things will change….

This book then, is saying that..

1. Your problems can be solved, or they can be useful to you, or you can become a lot happier about them, which means much less pain and sorrow
2. That it really is worth looking; there is every point in doing so..

..and here’s why and how.

so, Who are my audience?

Errm I don’t know. It’s likely to be some proportion of..

            Other ‘Seekers’,

            Beck’s ‘Mender’ types,

            NFs (the ‘Idealists’) of the MBTI,

            HSPs,

            People trying to make sense of what we are taught about life,

            Someone looking for a way through to their own creativity,

            Those who use Byron Katie’s ‘Turn it Around’ (= the Work).

The story of developing the Insight Tool.

(Other names for this tool/method could be Shit-Shifting or Bug-Hunting, but I’m not sure.)

In early 1999 I did an NLP course with Jon Brenton and a small group of students. Jon himself was trained by Tad James who in tandem with the NLP also uses a method he developed called TimeLine (T/L) Therapy. The 2 methods together are most effective for goal-setting and for clearing the things that stop us getting them, hence I consider them very important.

NLP is a suite of techniques based on an understanding of how the mind works. These techniques are great for solving problems, and we ‘bring the problems up’ by setting goals. Thus, during the course we were asked for our goals (what do you want to be, do, or have?) and what our values about these goals were. Then we ranked the values from most important to the least. Then we would look at what we actually had versus what we valued and they were usually the opposite of what we valued.

Then we would put these values and their opposites on our different hands, asking ourselves what each taught us about the other. It was fascinating to feel our hands wanting to come together as we ‘understood’ (not always consciously) what that learning was.

We also learnt to picture our goals and to put them into the future, and then we would TimeLine the fears that came up. I think that Jon had modified Tad’s T/L script to better fit in with how he wanted to use it.

This worked fairly well for me, although I had an enormous amount of trouble with the actual goal-setting, and asking me my values stumped me greatly. Also, some things I worked on didn’t really seem to stick. However there was so much for me to work on that it seemed to be a very moot point.

Jon continued to run a group for us on a weekly basis where some 5-10 people would come and we would practice our NLP. Jon gave me enormous help with traumas and goal-setting; hours and hours of help. This is to say I needed a lot of help, and got it. It sounds a bit dramatic to say that it saved my life, but that is how it feels.

I was also trying to understand what I had been taught and how to use it, since I would have liked to have been as effective as I considered Jon to be for me and others. However, I suspected I just did not have the mind for it, in terms of speed of thinking. I also found that I was more interested in the unconscious methods rather than the conscious ones.

Eventually, another woman in this group, Susan Oliver, spotted that re-doing the opposites, as in, looking for the opposite of the 1^st 2 opposites, (the AO2) really did seem to make the process stick. She used the words ‘absolute opposites’. This was a breakthrough for me; the insights were so interesting and the goal-setting seemed to work better. She also taught me to clap my hands together as they came together.

As the years went by I spent a lot of time working on myself by myself. I was still ill with the Chronic Fatigue, and trying to work out how on earth to keep myself afloat. There was still an awful lot wrong with me, and I was still trying to work out how to get better. I had already had a great deal of help for free but couldn’t keep doing that, and couldn’t afford to pay for help from others, so DIY was what I got to do.

Besides, it helped me relax as nothing else could, and I loved it. It is a way of ‘tracking’ one’s self, and I found it fascinating and absorbing, and really, it gave me hope; I knew no other way of beating this illness, and I was hunting down the ‘hidden advantages’, which Jon taught us about as part of the course.

I had noticed with trying to goal-set that I was often better off starting from what I didn’t want in the absence of any idea of what I did want. It would end up as a see-saw as I went from one side to the other developing the concepts and building up a ‘picture’.

From reading Byron Katie’s books, I learnt about ‘turning it around’ and started to do this to what I wanted to complain about (aka ‘judge thy neighbour). Invariably I would find that I had done to others in a previous life exactly what I most complained about in this one. It was through this that I began to formulate the Mirror Laws.

From reading about the MBTI, I began to realize that the questions that start the process of ‘looking’ didn’t work that well for me, and in fact work much better when tailored to the person’s type.

I also modified the goal-setting and the T/L scripts to run together, and found that if I had done the 1^st set of opposites (the AO1s) properly and thoroughly the script would ‘run’ well, and I would get a great deal out of it. The AO2 would ‘lock’ that process in, and so I trundled on.

Once I had this method in place, and had practised it over and over, and seen the results which I liked so much, it gave me more reason to trust that I could handle whatever turned up in my life. Thus I could learn to ‘trust life’ and allow and enjoy.

So, this is how I learnt to turn my shit into fertilizer for me.

In all the ‘New Age’ spiritual stuff, the primary emphasis was always on meditation and stilling the mind, but I had a mind that would not stay still ever, and I simply could not meditate. Neither was I at all sure that I wanted to be like those who could, since I felt vaguely allergic to the ‘loving’ tall, generally bearded men in flowing clothes (especially the ones who liked to look like guess who) who taught such things. Eventually, I learned to address every single concern that crashed around in my mind by using this method, and what I learned in the process is what I am writing about here.

I love this method that has brought me so much, and that is why I want to tell others about it.

It is not the be-all and end-all; of course there are other methods. For starters, it does not deal with trauma, which I suspect needs 2 people.

Well, am I going to tell people what this method actually is?

I intend to spell out the method at a later stage. This is partly because there are some aspects that I am not sure about.

Primarily, the T/L script is a hypnotic script and is trademarked, as are others if they are worth anything. Tad James invented Timeline Therapy and Jon modified the scripts for his own use, so both have intellectual input. I may be able to use them for my own purposes, but I must not publish them. Sadly, Jon died in December 2012, so I cannot ask him. It is a major part of the method and I am not sure how else to present it. I know of nothing else more relevant or more effective, and I have looked. However, I really will have to find another way for this part of the method

I have not done another NLP course with another trainer, so I do not know which bits that we were taught were part of Jon’s own training as both a teacher and a psychiatric nurse, or part of a more ‘standard’ NLP course.

I think Dilts uses the opposites and I suspect the understanding of its value is more ‘around’ now than then, but it was Susan Oliver who spotted doing it twice, and showed me, and for that I am extremely grateful.

The end.