One of the most frequent mistakes I make with other people is I expect more from them than they are capable of delivering. I have a tendency to make them smart and more sophisticated than they really are, and when they don't live up to what I expected them to be capable of we both end up disappointed. Many times they realize right away that I have over estimated their talents, but go along with me because it feels good to have another think well of you and say so.

Saying nice things to people only has so much usefulness. Politeness and compliments only go so far. Wrighting and acting in such a way seems to encourage people who profess to want change, to stay the way they are, especially when their biggest complaint is that they don't particularly like the way they are and seem to expect more of themselves. If they want to move to a higher level of understanding than the level they are habituated to, playing the sycophant to their dissatisfaction is a copout. Only the person who does not fear challenging their need for acceptance as they are, can provide the motivation they need to change.

More often than we might suspect things are not exactly what they seem. Some people like to promote the idea that certain experiences change their lives in such a way that they lose their inhibitions about the way they address the world, and through these experiences they are able to be more honest and sincere both with themselves and the world around them. They seem to go to great lengths to promote their new courage and enter into the malstrom of life with renewed hope and energy, and can sometime take on challenges they would not have dared to before their unsubstantiated claim to personal liberation.

For many, these claims may become a sort of self-evident truth and they begin to take risks they previously would not take. Some seem to retire into seclusion in order that they may savor their newly gained confidence until it blooms into a source of great joy and ecstasy to be shared only with their loved ones. Still others like to go public and use these experiences as a form of self promotion to feature themselves as the mediums of God-like virtues and the dispensers of unconditional love. Many of the televangelists seem to take this route. They seem to favor saying they have a personal relationship with God, by any other nayme, and start deciding what sort of behavior their followers must conform to in order to attain to the same level of sanctity they claim to possess, because they had certain experiences rarely suffered even by the wise. With enough publicity, often with pictures of angels fluttering around their umbrellas of superiority, their original experiences become less of a feature of God's blessings than of their own need for self importance.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the influence of the human's will to live. On a discussion list I was subscribed to recently there was one fellow who claimed that the entire purpose of religion was to destroy one's will to live, in order to attain resurrection and trancendence into the higher realms of understanding. Every post to this list garnered a response from this fellow that the pleasures of this life were filthy and degrading. He was attacked by practically all the positive thinking members of the group, including myself, and in effect was told that God wanted us to be happy and enjoy what we could of this life because sooner than we might realize we would die and the chance would be gone forever. He was unrelenting in his assessment of our foulness and degradation, and insisted that our will to live was the culprit who would prevent us from attaining transcendence.

It took a while for me to contemplate his contentiousness and allow that he might be right. I am beginning to agree with him to some degree. I have often wondered what the religious leaders have meant when they refer to some odd notion they call the original sin, and have begun to consider whether or not the will to live is that which they speak of. The rare few who have experienced a near death experience write about the glorious experiences they had when they relinquished their will to live and accepted death as the consequence of their doing so. Yet, when they didn't die, they seem to take their not dying as a mandate to save the world, and thus redevelop the will to live with an even greater vigor than ever before to carry out their mission. World saviors do seem an odd lot, but they can be very entertaining.

I had a somewhat revealing dream this morning. I found myself out on a construction job. I was there as the friend of a friend who had borrowed some equipment from me to get the job going. The equipment was a small front-end loader and a load of bricks. There were a lot of people around the job site, but not many of them were working. They were using my material to build what was being built. I hung around the edges of the job trying to make myself useful, but there was nothing much for me to do. It seemed like I was just in the way of all the other people who were trying to find something to do. I approached my friend to ask him what was going on and he told me that if I didn't like what was going on, then I could just go. So naturally, I decided to take my stuff and go home, but instead I woke up. The whole dream felt like a child's game.

After I woke up and started thinking about the dream I decided to act like all the characters in the dream were different aspects of my own person. This has not been pleasant. The whole dream made me feel stupid. I began to wonder if the people I'm involved with in my life were just like the characters in my dream. Were they using my stuff just to look busy like they were trying to build something with my stuff, and then acting like my being in their life was an inconvenience to their pretentions?

Most of the experiences I've had in my life that seemed to have given me the direction my life has taken are made of of experiences I had when I was alone and without human witnesses to verify anything happened at all. They are indeed, all in my own mind. Yet, I describe these experiences like they are what make me important as a human, and yet, nobody gnows but me. I hallucinate these experiences have value because of what I have read or heard other people describe about their experiences in life, but maybe what they think is important and what I think is important is not really all that important at all. With the question being, is there anything important about life at all?

I have sat around for the last two and a half years doing nothing since I started drawing my Social Security check. A year ago I went with my friend Billy down to Georgia and worked as a pipefitter for about two weeks. Made some good money, but I was waiting the whole time we were there for them to discover that I didn't really know what the hell I was doing. When we got fired for them catching Billy smoking in an unauthorized area I was quite relieved. The only other time I have been active during this "retirement" period was when the North Carolina Revenue Department audited my state taxes for the years 1997-98 and I couldn't find my W-2 form for 1998 and had to jump through my ass to get a copy to prove the company I worked for had indeed paid my taxes. In the end, after driving myself a little more insane, it turned out that they owed me a bigger refund than they had sent me back then. In this particular case, driving myself crazy over nothing at all proved profitable. If driving myself crazy over nothing had been constantly profitable I should be as rich as Midas.

There are other people who have become a part of my life recently, mostly people on the internet through e-mail. I have some local friends that I see occasionally. They come to my house and we drink a little wine together and talk about what happens in our lives and about what we think is important in our world, but it is not earth-shaking stuff, only events that happen to just about everybody. I find it difficult to understand why they consider the events in their lives important. It's all about their love affairs which are not going anywhere, their struggles with money (mostly the lack of it.), and their health.

I am at least ten years older than any of these people. When I think about what they struggle with, I realize that I have not struggled with these things in a long time, because I decided to leave these so-called struggles behind as an effort in futility. Nothing really needs to be done about these daily affairs. They just come and go life friends I used to gnow, and the outcomes always seem to take care of themselves no matter what my friends do or don't do about them. Just like me. Are my friends just characters in my dream? If I wake up, will they disappear from the face of the earth?

I just remembered something else that happened in my dream this morning. The people on that job that was using my stuff were building square columns out of the bricks my friend had borrowed. I kept tearing the facades of the brick columns down. Nobody even noticed. They just kept busy building new ones. It was almost as if they were using borrowed stuff to make things that didn't matter to them, the only thing that mattered was that they kept busy. The thing that frustrated me and made me tear down their work was they ignored a nagging need of my own. I felt like I should be busy too, as if the only reason I was there was to provide them with the materials and machinery necessary for them to act busy and accomplish something that was important to them, and my need to act busy just got in their way.

You know... I have been thinking about our conversationabout the possible state of Ben's health. I told you how his expression of appreciation of my visiting him at the corralseems sincere, but a little out of the ordinary.

I had another friend who lived in Clinton for a good while. His name was Noel Carter. He was from Kentucky too. He was a drunk too. For about ten years I used to go over to his machine shop to visit and drink a little with him. When he
reached a certain state of inebriation he would get very adventurous intellectually. This seemed very similar to how
booze can help a person break through their social inhibitions and flirt with the girls and get out on the dance floor and cut a rug. Except with Noel it seem to give him the ability to cut through the inhibitions that stoppedhim from displaying his intellectual reach.

Noel had incredible intellectual powers. Of course, he had to have a few drinks before he would let anyone see that. He had been in the Air Force and his job there was the repair and upkeep of C-140 aircraft. It didn't take him long to
become the crew chief on a specific airplane, and his knowledge of these airplanes was phenomenal. I have sit with
him for hours and listened to his descriptions of the various systems involved in the operation of this aircraft.

In the same way, he described how various types of jet engines worked, and what needed to be there for them to work properly. While this topic is not as interesting to me as many others, his unique "country boy" was of using a great number of fascinating metaphors and analogies to get me to visualize what he was describing. These metaphors came straight from his childhood in Kentucky, and over the years and the bottles of Black Jack we consumed together I felt as though I could wander through Kentucky almost as a native
son.

The people from this section of the country have a unique way of expressing themselves. It took me a while to absorb and understand the small but distinct ways of using common phrases that sometime meant the very opposite of what might normally be taken by their usage.

Noel died when he was 52 years old. In the last two years before he died I didn't see him as often as I had in the
past. I had started working a mechanical engineering job over at Fort Bragg, and between the commute and the time I
had to spend on the job I only got to see him on weekends occasionally. I could see that things had changed with him,
and he was taking even less care of his health. He entered a kind of lethargy that left him disinterested in many of the
things he had formerly taken an interest in. He didn't take in work to make money with any real effort any more, and he had taken to eating mostly beans that he cooked on his wood stove and occasionally eating wieners. I started buying some food like beef stew and taking it over to him to try to encourage him to eat.

He was always a small, skinny man. He had very small, delicate bones. He got even skinnier, even though I didn't
think that was possible, and yet he developed a little bloaty looking pooch to his stomach. One of the last times I went over to his shop to visit, he had a large cyst that appeared on his face, and he had stopped bathing and changing clothes. He looked awful, but when I drove up to the door of his shop where he was working on a lawn mower he
looked up and offered his old grin to welcome me.

One day I was sitting at the counter of the restaurant where we had met. He had quit coming there, so I was a little
surprised when he walked up behind me and tapped me on the opposite shoulder and laughed a little when I looked the wrong way. Then, he got very serious and asked me if I would do him a favor. I told him I would, and asked him what the favor was. He wanted to know if I would take him to the VA hospital at Fayetteville. I said that of course I would, and asked him what was wrong. His eyes got a little teary whenhe told me something was terribly wrong in his belly. I expressed my sorrow at his discomfort, and asked him when he wanted me to take him to Fayetteville. I think this was on a Friday. He told me that he needed to go on Monday. I agreedto take him anytime he felt the need.

On Sunday afternoon I stopped by his shop to coordinate our getting together to make the trip. The door to his shop was open as usual, but when I went inside to talk to him he wasn't there. Instead, there was another skinny fellow who told me that he was Noel's cousin, and that Noel's mother had come down from Kentucky to take him home. Apparently he had called her since I had seen him, and she recognized he was in trouble and had come to get him.

His cousin told me that Noel was over at the motel room his mother had rented, and told me that Noel may like it if I
went over to visit him before he left. I didn't do that. I knew Noel would not like for me to see him in that condition. I never saw him again. Turned out he had developed colon cancer and had waited too long for them to do anything but
cut it all out and send him home to die.

As I thought it over I realized that Noel had told me in his own way that he knew something was wrong and said goodbye to me. I sort of got that same feeling from Ben the last time I saw him. These ol' boys from Kentucky have their own way.

Quite often I find myself somewhat amazed at how people take that which they have been trained to think they're like as the gospel truth. I wrote my opinion on why I think the Jewish tribes have suffered persecution throughout their existence on a discussion group I subscribe to, and got a response from a woman to claims to be Jewish stating that I was descriminatory for even having an opinion of their history. I suppose if I had offered an opinion about why the native American Indians lost their land and territories the Indians in the group would have written that my assessment of why they suffered that loss would have written in to say that I descriminated against them. Some people... eh?

The real problem with these types of things has to do with the world getting smaller and the tribal unity of all peoples who attempt to segregate themselves from the rest of the world are losing their hold on their children who had rather join the world community than kowtow to their ancient customs. Purists always lose their battles to keep things pure. I doubt very seriously if there ever has been a pure race. In fact, it simply doesn't work out because even if the purists got their way the bloodlines would dissipate because of inbreeding and they would end up a bunch of idiots who could not even defend themselves against attack.

A friend mentioned in an e-mail that there was going to be a TV program on the true nature of the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene as represented in the art of Leonardo Da Vinci. I decided to watch it in order to knowingly participate in the discussion that might follow. I was only vaguely aware of the Da Vinci information. I didn't know that he was supposed to be part of a secret society that were given secret information about what happened to Mary after Jesus's death. I wasn't too impressed with this part of the program.

What I did find interesting was the fact that so many scholars considered Mary Magdalene the Grail vessel herself. That her relationship with him was due to the fact that she was considered the vessel that received Jesus's blood. By blood, they were talking about bloodline, and that Mary Magdalene was the mother of his children. The program used Da Vinci's painting of the last supper as support for their theory. In the painting, which supposedly contained representative information of the secrets that Da Vinci was given by the secret cabal, the program promulgated the notion that the person sitting to the right of Jesus was not the disciple John, but was indeed a woman who was Mary Magdalene. I found myself agreeing that the image to the right of Jesus in the painting sure looked more like a woman than a man. Particularyly when the other images in the painting that were supposed to be men did look like men except for this one figure. An interview with a so-called Da Vinci art expert pointed out how the figure purported to be Mary Magdalene was leaning to the right in the painting, and that her leaning to the right and Jesus's image turned to the left formed a V(Vee) which an ancient symbol for the human female. It also represents a container or vessel, and when put together seems to infer that the Holy Grail was Mary herself, instead of being a drinking cup.

The entire time I was watching this program I was remembering a documentary about the Popel in which it was stated that John Paul did not pray to either God or Jesus, but to Mary as Jesus's mother. This suggest to me that the highly touted virgin birth did not concern itself with the birth of the physical Jesus, but of the docetic spirit that was born unto the personality Jesus, and may represent the continued worship of the old female Goddesses, which was being suppressed in the Jewish tribes at the time Jesus was around.

This female Goddess adoration is much older than the Jewish concept of Jehovah, and was predominant throughout the Mid-East and the Greek states well before the Judaic tribes were formed. This seems to substaniate to some degree that Christianity did not spring from the Jews and the Mosaic Law traditions, but from the old Greek oral tradition of a female God.

In my dreams I have a seemingly female companion. She is always there as a witness. I haven't been able to look at her directly, as yet, and identify her. I thought for a long time that she was my second wife because she has dark hair. I taught my ex-wife how to astral travel and we did a lot of work together in that regard. But, now I'm not so sure. Yesterday morning as I was waking up I found myself calling her Linda. I don't know whether or not that was a fluke, and it may end up being a distraction. It is, however, the first time I am conscious of that I have had any clue as to her identity. Maybe she is my anima, but I find that a little confusing because there is another woman in my dream life that is a fair-haired beauty that shows up now and then.

I have been involved recently in a drawn out discussion about description, and the various languages and lingos humans use to say what they perceive. My most recent conclusion, that the various descriptive efforts we make to communicate the ineffable fall short of actually getting the satisfaction we require from such efforts, is truly an exercise in futility. Yet, I continue to make such efforts despite myself. I wonder how surprised I'll be if it ever happens?

This is just ridiculous. I just wrote out this long piece about my feelings in regard to how Christianity has played a role in my life, and as I went to post it the whole damn thing went away. I wasn't as pissed as I thought I'd be. It only took a moment before I realized I wasn't supposed to put that entry online.

I did seem to learn something from what I wrote. I learned what I'm willing to believe and what I'm not willing to believe. A lot has happened to my philosopy since I learned that the origin of Christianity was not from Judaic sources, but from the classic Greek era. Another aspect of this learning was that I found I was able to accept a docetic Christ, whereas the idea of worshipping a man as God just doesn't work for me.

I look in the mirror each day now to see if I look a little slimmer. I know I am slimmer because my old pants now fit pretty comfortably when I put them on. I've still got bulges that do not please me, but I know this new way of eating I've adopted is working for me. It's pretty easy on me too, because I eat as much as I want to without going hungry. Back in my twenties and thirties I used to go on frequent fasts that lasted anywhere from three days to thirty days. Doing this had a tendency to make me feel as if I were making a great spiritual effort to do what was necessary to access a state of physical and mental ecstasy. This happened quite frequently in those days, but doesn't seem all that important to me now.

I have a voice I hear occasionally that only seems to come when I need to stop doing something and won't take steps to bring things to a halt. This voice has spoken to me at important times in my life. Usually it speaks one sentence and then I don't hear it again for a long time. A few months ago it told me that I had graduated from the need to make the efforts to bring ecstasy into my life. I suspect my lifelong seeking is about over. I made full circle since my first doubts about my religious beliefs came into play at around the time I moved into puberty. This seeking dominated me for a very long time. I didn't or couldn't accept that it would ever end. Presently, I think it has.

I sat with some friends who visited me the other day and found myself explaining my thirty year addiction to using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Book of Changes. They politely indulged me as I went through the various reasons I thought I had done this. It wasn't until last night as I lay dreaming that I thought about what I had told them.

What impressed me about this was that I had questioned many of the decisions and actions I initiated in my life for a very long time. Presently, I have no idea why I did this thing.

I was aware during this period of how simply using this oracle was detrimental to me. But, even more detrimental was the effect this habit had on those around me. It was as if I needed the permission of this very esoteric book to love them or believe a single word they said to me. I questioned the motivations of my friends as if they were possibly my enemies. Mostly, however, I questioned my own self as if I might be my own worst enemy. More often than I liked, it turned out that I was.

One of the most ridiculous questions I ask of the I Ching was the time when I had a bicycle accident and landed head first in the side of a mountain in Kentucky going thirty miles an hour and was literally seeing stars. My wife of that time who was riding her own bike came to where I lay and wanted to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital. I knew I was hurt, but the first thing I wanted to do was ask the oracle if I needed to go to the emergency room. As if the blood and the stars I was seeing was not enough evidence to show us it was a very good idea.

I worked as an industrial pipefitter and welder during much of this time. That's how I got the money for us to live on. Whether or not I took a particular job depended on the response I got from the oracle. No matter how broke we were or even if we had no food to eat. This habit took us to ridiculous places that no husband and father of any compassion and responsibility would allow. Finally, I surmise, my use of the Book of Changes was directly responsible for the breakup of our marriage and the loss of the presence of my own children from that marriage. I haven't seen them for over twenty years. It's my own fault. Why would it not be?

Then, one night about two years ago, a deep voice told me, "Stop using the I Ching." I woke up knowing that this was what I was supposed to do, and after a few weeks of not wanting to believe that I should stop, I did. After thirty years, it was over.

What I told my friends the other night finally came home to roost with me. The thing about what I told them was that I had questioned myself so deeply for so long a period of time. I don't know if the doing of this is a blessing or a curse. One thing I do know is that I can't go back and change my life. I can review it and reframe it to a more palatable memory, but I can't change the effect it had on those who were near and dear to me. Their memories, whatever those memores are, will stay the same. Since we haven't communicated very much at all since I drove them out of my life, and probably never have the opportunity before the event of my death, it probably doesn't matter one way or the other that I did what I did or that they think of me as they do. Whatever that is.

Sitting around waiting to die seems perfectly absurd when I'm perfectly healthy. The people in my natal family seem to live long lives. If I sit and wait for the occasion of my death for as long as it took my father to die, I will have to wait for another twenty three years. My mother is still alive. I expect to die with callouses on my ass.

I was pretty impressed by the PBS show Nova last night. They had a program on string theory. I have read a little on this, but nothing definitive. I was much more pleased with having the video content giving animated examples of what they were talking about.

I love getting sarcastic about SCIENCE. I attempt to keep up with what's new. Especially about the digital world. It took me a long time to realize that mathematics is just another description language, and that physicists are just as prone to tell tall tales as people who use words to offer descriptions. I'm even more convinced after seeing the string theory show that "scientists" create the "discoveries" they come up with. P.T.Barnum was right. There is a fool born every minute of the day.

Of course, when I have food in my belly and a place to get out of the weather to sleep, what else is there to do but create stuff to amuse oneself.

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I had a long talk yesterday with an old friend. We had a little tiff a while back and had not talked for a long time. We seem to stimulate each other to deeper insights about the things we talk about.

One of the subjects we got into was considering our total life experience as one huge data field, and that this data field surrounds us much like some holographic electron cloud in what all our experiences can appear in holgraphic form in which it can be accessed by our mental software. The analogy we used was that it existed as something similar to data mining software like large corporations use to go through their corporate data bases to find trends they can take advantage of to better their products and service, and to find more productive ways of marketing.

There is another element besides the data field and the mining software, and that's the operator that first accumulated the data in the data field, and who decides what can be done with the efficiency of the software they have available to them.

Both of us appeared to agree that we have enough data in the data field that no real effort is necessary to get more data in there. Data gathering, at this stage of the game is something that happens as a result of habits that have been put in place a long time ago. We even talked about whether or not other data fields that come from former existences could not be mined.

The real work probably needs to be done in the area of the data mining software, and how the operator chooses what topics that software should mine for to get the desired results the operator decides will get him the most useful information.

My friend had an unusual experience Friday a week ago that seems to have changed the way he looks at life. This experience was brought about in the presence of another friend who provided the means for this experience to come about. I had been told about this event previously, but my experience with this fellow I talked with had not lead me to think that such a change was possible, but after our long conversation yeasterday I am convinced the desired changes actually did take place. Maybe not as fully as they could, but strong changes did occur and can be further implimented by the same such experiences in the future. I could not be more delighted for him.

One of the more difficult sentences for me to say sometime is, "I don't know". Formulating an opinion about just about any subject or topic that comes to my doorway seems awfully easy for me to do. Like many people I enjoy being the center of attention at times. Other times I just wanna melt into the woodworks and disappear without having to commit myself to taking a position on wot seems controversial at best, and at the very least a question of political expediency. Getting old seems to have provided me with opportunities in both directions.

I have been blessed with a good memory for some subjects. I think it has to do with pattern recognition more than anything else. I don't remember things verbatim. Just the pattern the information takes. I can remember what people write in discussion groups, and if they cater a different perspective, say for the sake of political expediency, I remember what they have committed to previously and point that out. Sometime I remember vague references for years.

I used to take great pride in pointing out the other's inconsistencies, and it was a source of pleasure to me to point their inconsistencies out coupled with a little sarcasm to twist the knife. This little pleasure can be costly though, and in the past, I appear to have alienated the good will of people I truly admired.

I got fascinated by the system of thinking inherent in the Chinese classic The Book of Changes (I Ching) for a long time. It is also considered a book of wisdom. There are many quotable metaphors used in the Emperor's Yellow Book version translated by Richard Wilhelm, and it is not unusual for me to offer up my favorite quotes from that source.

The use of my memores to play games with other people's inconsistencies keeps bringing one particular quote to mind in this regard, "The superior man lets many things pass without being duped."

Since the stated aim of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Book of Changes is to learn to live a life which does not incur blame, it teaches caution as the main attribute of living a life of no blame.

The necessary caution in regard to my sarcastic use of memory probably means that I should allow my noticing the other's inconsistencies to remain unspoken and unwritten without being duped into a response at all. I guess this has to do with the Book of Changes reputation for teaching statescraft.

It seems like when it rains it pours. I was moving my indoor TV antenna around last night to try to get better reception on the three channels I recieve. The cable that lead to my computer monitor, which has a TV tuner in it, was all tangled up with all the other cables for my computer, and it seemed like the best thing to do was to unplug the cable from the monitor and pull it free of the tangle mass of other cables. I noticed when I unhooked it from the monitor that the connectors were not tight. So, when I unraveled it and reconnected I made sure I tightened up the connector nut. When I did that I started receiving many more stations including the UHF stations I didn't receive previously. Now I can get 10-12 stations fairly clear. This hadn't happened in over a year.

The biggest thrill in this happening was that this gave me a lot more variety than I had previously. I found a really clear public educational channel, while mostly boring, do have some documentaries I enjoy. Mostly, however, I found that I receive a Spanish language station. Many Latinos now live in North Carolina, and I found to my delight that one of the UHF channels had converted to Spanish.

Without understanding very much at all, I watched that station the rest of the night. For the first time in my life I can sit in my home and watch the facial expressions and hear the rhythms of people speaking Spanish. This development could give me incentive to study Spanish with a little more vigor now.

I have never really wanted to study Spanish academically. I just wanted to understand what people are saying and perhaps learn to speak interactively with Spanish speakers. The academic aspects of learning this language doesn't really appeal to me.

I have traveled considerably in Mexico without possessing enough Spanish to ask directions about how to get where I wanted to go. I have always had to depend on someone else to interpret for me. This dependency has been uncomfortable to say the least, and it has nearly gotten me put in a Mexican prison for activities I didn't even participate in, because I didn't know what was going on.

Now, with the chance to see and hear Spanish being used in the programs that I receive on the TV, I think I will be able to pick up more and more expressions that might help me to do what I need to do to get proficient in this language.

In the past, as I thought about the small amount of money I get from Social Security, I had thought I might move to one of the countries south of here so that my money would go further. But, when I retired and started getting my checks, my lack of Spanish has made me think about the feasibility of making this happen. I felt sure that if I picked up and went to live in Mexico that I would eventually pick the language up just by being surrounded by it, and by the necessity of having to use it to communicate with Spanish speakers. But, I didn't do that. The chance of my ignorance being taken advantage of by unsavory characters caused hesitation. Now, maybe all this will change.

I'm enjoying the Fall weather. Like Spring, it surprises me each year.

I have seen a lot of stuff written about love. I find it really astounding that strangers on the e-mail circuit profess to love people they have never seen in their life. It seems obvious that we are not possessed by the same definition of what love is. I wrote a paragraph that defines my present attitude toward love.

"Love is not a possession that I can dispense or receive as it were a commodity to be bought or sold by works. It is not something I earn or attempt to make others earn or feel by words or actions of preference. Love is not to be found in ex-is-tense, but in abandonment to the is-ness that awaits beyond passion."

I guess I'm attempting to state that love exists beyond humanity's effort to make it into what they want or need it to be. That it lies beyond desire. What I have experienced as love seems to be that way. Love seems to be a state of being I enter when the conditions are congruent. Of course, this is just my personal opinion. Maybe love is a little like pain. We gnow it when it's there for us, and when we attempt to remember it or conjure it forth to comfort us it doesn't come or go at our bidding. I don't write that with any assurance that I'm wright or wrong about this, it's just what I sense is the way it works with me. I am certainly not prepared to argue with people about what love is.

I do think love emerges when we occupy the specious present. Looking for love, in all the wrong places or no, it appears to show up in my life at random. Love doesn't seem to be something that can be cast aside. Maybe it can be ignored, but at a cost I'm not really willing to pay.

I have married two different women. I write that they were different, but I don't appear to be all that sure about it. Sometime I think that both women became what I needed them to be when we were together. After we separated I experiences many moments of negativity. These moments had a tendency to wonder if I really loved them in spite of the fact that I had declared many times that I didn't know what love is.

I regretted our breaking up in both cases, and in both cases I assume it was me that was at fault. Like when I left my natal family and went off to join the Navy to get away from their control of my activities, I didn't seem to be able to live like I wanted to live because of a sense of duty to them. My sense of duty was carefully constructed from childhood. Marriage was promulgated as a condition that required me to act toward our marriage as if it were a duty, but duty or not I did not feel bound to marriage as something sacred that would be a sin for me to walk away from. To me, duty is just another conceptual construct that is intended as a guide rather than a necessity.

Both of the women that I married were intelligent and both were more educated than I was. They both made more money in their professions than I did. They didn't seem concerned with this, and I was only concerned when other people made it a point to bring it up. In reflection, I sense that they needed me to have less to contribute than they did. Both were perfectly capable of raising our children alone. I have often wondered if this wasn't part of the tacit agreement we shared even before we got married.

Like living with my parents as a kid, I had my own way of doing things. I had my own interests. I don't seem all that sure that I chose my interests, or even that my interests were chosen for me.

It didn't make much difference about leaving my first marriage, or forcing my second wife to leave me. My entire marriage life to both women seemed arranged by a force outside of myself even as it appeared as though we both made the decision. They were and still are very strong women. They seem more masculine than many of the women I have known. They were both born under masculine astrological signs, whereas I was born under a feminine sign. They were both aggressive and I more passive. Both of them approached me for relationship and it only appeared in some ways that I was taking the lead in our relationship.

I don't gnow that I really abandoned my children. On sheer physical evidence alone it might seem that way, but from my perspective after having suffered much because in their absence, it's almost as if it were destined to be that way from the beginning or even prior to our marriage. I think I was meant to be alone, and they were supposed to learn to deal with life without the daily influence of a father. I am alone and they were raised for the most part without the interference of my input. I haven't seen any of them for a long time, and the children of my second marriage since they were taken by their mother some twenty odd years ago. I was told by my youngest brother that I have a grandson by my youngest daughter. I don't expect to ever see him. He's better off that way. I don't and it appears that I never will play by society's rules in this regard. I don't think that the way I conduct my affairs is a particularly good way for most people to live, and yet, it is exactly what I'm supposed to do to get what I want out of life.

I am perfectly aware that I have neglected writing an entry lately. To those who have reminded me of it, you have not really been ignored. I seem to be going through some sort of major change in the last six months or so.

For one thing I seem to have lost interest in some of the activities I have indulged in the past. I think one of the reasons this change is coming about simply has to do with my lack of contact with real people. I don't have the feedback I got in the past that seems necessary to keep certain interests going.

A couple of days ago I unsubbed from the Gospel of Thomas discussion list I participated in for 1-2 years. It just got to be boring. I subbed there in the first place because it seemed like a indirect way to deal with my early religious instruction.

Religion had been such an explosive topic for me since the onset of puberty, and I felt like it was time to deal with my anger about it. Being on that list really opened my eyes to a lot of what troubled me in my Southern Baptist upbringing. I "gnew" that I was being lied to. I sensed something was terribly amiss about what I was being told and forced to learn.

I learned a lot from the other members of the list. In the end, it was the total lack of moderator responsibility that caused me to let it go.

This suprised me a little. Freedom of Speech has allowed me to explore my interest in all sorts of areas. I never thought I would want to be on a moderated list, but the Gospel of Thomas list was not so much about freedom of speech as it was total anarchy. Some of the list members seemed more interested in the historical aspect of the early christians, and wrote volumes of weird, hoky stuff that had nothing to do with what the Gnostic Gospels were about.

The message was totally ignored in favor of the need of some of the members need to feel important about their own idea of scholarship. They are not scholars, but good old country boys who missed their calling.

One old guy who considered himself to be a true Catholic went on and on about church dogma that was the most translucent crap I had ever read. Then, there was his ex-girlfriend who was one of the most crude frenetic bitches I personally encountered in the various discussion groups I have subbed to. The moderators did kick her off the list a few times, but she would just change e-mail addresses and continue as if nothing happened. The dialogue just went away after the moderators got so lazy they let her stay on under one name or the other. All she was there for was to beg her old boyfriend to come back to her, and her remarks made it blatantly obvious why he never will. No blame.

Now I'm subbed to another group I have grown to enjoy writing with. I'm very impressed with the woman who moderates the list. She has a way with words that really hits the spot with me, and she keeps the fundamentalist fringe element at bay with what would appear to exist as very little effort. Truth is, the list members really don't know how much trouble she has to go to. It just doesn't. No telling what she has to go through off list.

She has a health problem that has caused her some problems lately and she was in the hospital for a while. Now she seems to be back in form somewhat and I'm really glad for her and for her admirers. I'm certainly one of those.

Our little town now has a Lowe's store that just opened. Gives us a little more choice about where we can shop. I have spent a couple of hours just browsing around since it opened to see what they've got to sell. It's really convenient to my house and will be easy to get things home if and when I buy them. I guess I don't have any good excuse not to do a little work on my rathole some call a house now, except for not having much money to spend on it. It doesn't matter. No one sees it but the people who love me and have decided to forgive me for being whatever it is that I am.

I've been trying to write an entry about how I adopted the personality I hide behind for some time now. It's not as easy as stream of consciousness writing. It took the better part of two hours for me to describe the baby crib I spent the first four and a half years I spent my childhood sleeping in. I hope to edit it down to a paragraph or two. That crib was the place I had numerous "first experiences" in. It was the place where lots of root ideas got drummed into my head. If I can get through that part of it, maybe the rest of what I'm attempting to describe will flow more easily.

The ritualistic magic associated with the creation of a
group mind calls for the thirteenth member of a formed group of twelve to be a stranger, in order to stimulate a
particular type of vibrational energy in the other twelve
members of the group stimulated by the presence of the stranger.

Suspicion generated by an outsider appears to raise the energy level of the whole group enough for the creation of a docetic personification of the group mind to bind them together in their group intent. A Messiah that would save the whole of them.

The thirteenth member, as a stranger in the group of twelve, acts as the rabble rouser to generate what ever energies rise to the top when suspicions of the stranger's true motives suddenly threatens betrayal of the group bond.

The word rabblerouser originated as the name of a design feature of rotating ovens mainly used to roast food products like coffee beans and peanuts. Peanut roasters are a fairly common sight at some public gatherings. The beans and peanuts, called the rabble, are placed inside a closed rotating barrel that slowly turns over a permanent source of controllable heat to
get the value added end product.

The design feature of this type of oven called the
rabblerouser is engineered to accomplish about the same results the agitator blades in a washing machine does. The agitator blades in a washing machine insure that the clothes being washed keep moving around inside the washer so that all parts of the clothing get equal exposure to the washing process.

In rotating ovens, products like coffee beans have a
tendency to slide along the inside surface of the rotating barrel which results in only one side of the bean getting fully roasted. The rouser is a bar or blade that is permanently attached to the inside wall of the barrel and acts as an obstacle for the sliding beans and agitates them so that all sides of the beans will receive optimal exposure to the heat source, and thus insuring an evenly roasted product.

Another description associated with the term rabblerouser identifies a person or persons who stirs other people up through agitation. In the old western movies some of these classical oaters were filmed in black and white, and featured mob scenes where a crowd of ordinarily good citizens would be brainwashed
into hanging the bad guy sitting in the jailhouse, before
the crooked local politicians set him scot free for bribe
money. The movies always seemed to feature the firebrands who whipped the townspeople into their murderous rage by indignantly and belligerently urging their followers to take the law into their own hands. The townspeople in these movies represented the rabble, and the firebrands who whipped them into a frenzy represented the action of the rabblerousers.


Every group appears to need an element of cohesiveness that defines the group purpose and defines the groups purpose. The rabblerousers put it all together and integrates aim that makes the mob tick. In rotating ovens it's the design feature called a rabblerouser that performs that function.

In dubious political situations, however, the results of rabblerousing can be unpredictable at best. Often enow, the end results of rabblerousing in the old western movies depended on the steely-blue careactor of the white-hatted Sheriff, and his trustworthy but sometime clumsy deputies.

Any gross miscalculations by the rabblerouser in regard to the expected response of the good guys can resolve to a shameful disintergration of the spirit of the group, and sometime a punch in the nose or worse for the rabblerouser's troubles. Such humiliation effectively puts the mob mentality genie back in the bottle and corks it, leaving the disenfranchised rabble to wander the world aimlessly like the lost and scattered tribes of the damned.

My experience in this arena leads me to think that to call this endeavor a "test" promulgates needless barriers to overcome in a somewhat nebulous situation.

The obstacle I see is being in this state without
recognizing the possibility of exercising volition. In deep
state, disconnected in some way from personality traits and the availability of memory in the regular way, that the type of memory accessed during the experience of the state is separate from our memories of the sensory experienced world of appearance (Whatever in hell THAT means?)

It's like shifting to the superconscious or global
perspective one moves to an undifferentiated awareness which is all-inclusive and everything is seen as oneself. Even if that unity exists perceptually as a collage of our rare moments, however obtained, in a different world.

It would seem as if the experimenters would be asking their subjects for specific data in that undifferentiated state. And if the experimenters themselves are unfamiliar with the unboundedness of the global state (which is hard for me to fathom since a part of us is there all the time.), then eliciting the specific response they desire, either yeah or nay, could present a helplessness that transforms into an inept haplessness, and eventually to an abandonment of
the integrity of their purpose in conducting the experiment in the first place.

The last exchanges Brian and I posted centered around my asking him some questions I hoped would bring a response that more clearly delineated his true intent in writing the things that he wrote. His responses really pleased me. I felt as though he answered me with deep sincerity, and though I suspect there is much more to be explored in
himself to come to completeness with how he really feels, I understood his earlier comments more succinctly than before. I like to ask a lot of leading questions, in any case, and I do so referencing the Golden Rule, because I want the other to ask me leading questions to get more lucid descriptions
in regard to my own experiences. Brian asked me a few
questions in his responses, but I felt his questions were
really his way of priming his own pump to come up with a more considered description of his true intent. I enjoyed having this exchange with Brian. Since we've
broken the ice with each other, I expect we can do each
other a great service without too much distraction to the group as a whole.

Back to the point I have run around in circles trying to get to. The real problem with the stated experiment is that the experimenters may not have enough familiarity with the state they are attempting to get the answers from. Like the license plate discussion about being able to recall something totally familiar, the number and letters we see on a regular basis, I said that I could get anybody to remember anybody else's license plate numbers if they had ever physically perceived them. That's because I have developed an ability to elicit the specific scenarios within another's experience field to bring their attention to the
information I will recover with them. It took me a lifetime of dealing with people in altered states, generally in hypnosis, to understand what has to be there to get them to understand they can act with volition in this state. It appears similar to getting things to happen in lucid dreaming. First and foremost, one has to become aware that they are indeed dreaming. Then, at the point of this realization, to realize that they can effect the outcomes witnessed in the dream process. That's asking a lot from oneself, especially at the onset.

The hypnosis I do with others amounts to a pre-entry
discussion about what we are attempting to accomplish by us entering state together. I don't force people to enter the state by trickery (Although I can and possess considerable resources to bring this to fruition.), the process I find most useful is just to facilitate them entering the trance state as openly and as consciously as possible in that moment, and then ask them questions about what they are experiencing as we go along. Then, as the trust and the bond
between us develops, they access the needed state pretty much on their own and tell me where they are at with it. It's not as if they suddenly become Chatty Cathys', I constantly ask them, "Tell me what you see.", "What's happening?" I attempt to keep the communication between us to what they tell me in response to my questions.

At this point, about all I help with is remind them of what we set out to do in this encounter. This is a very necessary thing to do. A person who enters this state of their own volition seems to have to release their awareness of their ability to make things happen in that state and so when they get to the place where they have all the tools they need to do work in this state, they forget why they went there and that they can make things happen. That's all I'm there for.
to ask them what they 'see' there, and to direct them to go ahead and prove to themselves that they can indeed exercise volition to accomplish their stated goals. In the past, I have taped our pre-entry discussion about what we want to happen when they are in state, and let their original purpose, as stated in their own voice, guide them to getting the results they want. If they get confused or stuck in their intent, then it's my ability to recognise this and put them back on their own chosen path once again that allows a
continuation of the flow.

In any case, however, the conscious awareness that they can act with volition in an undifferentiated global perspective is a tricky business. To merely fill out a few forms about what happened after their leaving their body, or to ask a prearranged question set of a hundred different people will not, in my opinion, get useful results. Each person who enters such states will create or maybe recreate from that undifferentiated perspective only that which will please the questioner, and usually just to get their approval so that they can feel that they have done right by God and man. The
data provided in this set and setting can appear unreliable and without achieving the desired end.

The real determinant is always the person who asks the experiencer for information regarding what they "saw" during the experience. Not only does this require a sensitivity of the condition of the experiencer and how they personally deal with being in a open-ended global state in which their regular reference points are not there to guide them, but to be able to ask them to describe what they do "see" around
them in a way that doesn't change the experience radically enough to form a reliable assessment of our bond. Like in dreams, the entire apperception of 'wot's sot before you' can change with lightening speed of the most instantaneous sort, and suddenly the experiencer is not dealing with the same environment the last question related to. The questioner has to be able to recognize the signs that this is going on, and abandon the previous effort with the same kind of immediacy displayed by the experiencer. Why bother?
It's gone. It's not that the abandoned scenario cannot be reapproached, but it's just a matter of timing. Attempting to get someone in a deep trance to switch horses in mainstream without understanding why they must forego that which confronts them in the immediacy of now seems to strain the rapport and can cause unintentional erosion of the bond between one and the other.

Just about every person I have hypnotized has told me of their own impetus that they felt like I was "there" with them, and that I am "seeing" the same things they are, except that I am relating to what they experience as if what exists in that state possesses a more differentiated pattern, and that my questions or directions for them to look at the "things" of that world is consistent with what they would have done if they could have only thought of doing it.

But, this is determined in mutual collaboration. between
friends as it were, and with the practice of patience, and open discussion of any arising obstacles, or the seeming distractions of unrelated, but joyous intercessions of recalled material serendipitously entering the picture (which can be interesting to both parties) . In such a test as has been described, the rapport necessary to ask each individual to look for the planted material in a useful way that will get the desired results of proving or disproving such things are possible cannot get done on an impersonal level of communication.

I think the problem with proving this stuff is that the
people who have the kind of experiences needed to elicit the information in a useful way, don't need the proof. I might be willing to bet you good money that I can elicit experiences you have had in the past, that made perfect sense in the specious present in which you experienced them, but have not been able to access said experiences again due to your not realizing in real time that you have the inherent ability to make it available to recall on your own. I think you realizing that you have forgotten more than many people ever gnew would be more convincing to you in a personal sense than any "test" ever created.

I'm getting complaints about not posting more often again. Sorry about that. I seem to be involved in some mysterious life changes that have left me wondering what's going on.

I suspect this new diet I have adapted bears some responsibility for what I'm feeling, or rather not feeling. I seem to have a lot more energy than usual and it's more difficult for me to sit still both physically and mentally to mull things over.

Recently, I downloaded a demo of a speed-reading program that I'm excited about. It's called AceReader Pro, and is the best program like this I have used. I have practiced the drills everyday for about a week now. I don't particularly like to do these drills, but it is something I think I owe myself to do.

The use of this program has pointed out very clearly that I can't read any faster than I can talk. I have the habit of subvocalizing as I read stuff, and these drills and games in the program are designed to help me get over or beyond doing this when I read, and the thing about subvocalizing is complicated by the fact that I read and think about what I'm reading at the same time, rather thna reading the material and then thinking about it. In a way, I suppose, I actually save time by reading and thinking at the same time because when I'm done reading about a subject, when I get done I'm through forever with it. I hardly ever read the same thing twice, because during my reading I consider as many relationships that already exists in my mind about the topic of my reading, and so when I get through reading, I've done everything I can do about it. Well, upon reflection, that may not be exactly true, because other life events do come up in such a way that it reminds me of what I've read previously, and I find myself re-organizing my data on the topic continually.

A couple of thoughts have come to me in regard to the possibility of my continuing to use this program and making any progress at all detaching my emotional connection to what I read. One of them is the possibility that I have the same habit of subvocalizing when I read people. Having an emotional connection to the world around me seems to be a big deal in my life. This could exist as my main way of making meaning of my relationship with the external sensory-perceived world. Learning to speed read could change or alter the way I perceive the sensory world considerably.

I have been surprised by the results of the reading comprehension tests that come with the program. Several times the program has more or less forced me to read faster than I could subvocalize. I was sure that upon these occasions I would not do well on the comprehension tests upon completion of the forced reading. I was wrong. The tests indicated I am comprehending the material, even without the emotional connection that subvocalizing gives me. I have scored 100% on several of the comprehension tests. This has made me feel a little more confident in what I'm attempting to accomplish by practicing these drills, and offers the possibility that my subvocalizing is totally unnecessary for me to understand the material. I also seem to be able to type a little faster. This is making me wonder if I can only type as fast as I can talk.

I have made a bargain with myself about this program. If I actually use the program every day and see any progress at all in my ability to read and comprehend faster, I will give it up and buy the program at the end of the thirty day trial period. It's only $50, and I say only because that's ten times less than most of the speed-reading programs I have tried before. Besides, it's the easiest to use of all the programs, and the most well-crafted program I've encountered. High quality software for a change. What's this world coming to?

Building a world that God can't enter.

The Genesis myth is interesting to goof on. Metaphorically it plays with loaded dice. I have been intrigued for some time now with some speculation offered recently by a woman who has spent a lot of time exploring the world view of the Gnostic sects in the early Christian startup.

She wrote that the scene in Genesis about the serpent and Adam and Eve, as perceived by the Gnostics, was that the serpent represented the docetic Christos that was sent to save the Earth from the demiurge, otherwise known as Jehovah, a nature god associated with volcanos, mountains, earthquakes, and thunderstorms with a temper to match.

The Gnostic sects, for the most part, seem to think when the spirit of the Christos entered the serpent to offer the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that would give Adam and Eve to power to be as creative equals with Jehovah, his famed temper came into play with a bang! No blame.

What was given to Adam and Eve was first shown in the serpent who could talk. In the beginning was the word. What made Adam and Eve able to live as gods was that by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge they were imbued with the power of the word.

The entirity of modern civilization was built from use of the power of the word. Polarity as a tool of creativity. Oral tradition was created to express the difference in things both far and wide by categorizing and naming. It was enhanced by the invention of the written language. Mass distribution of the word became possible by the printing press. Further along, the invention of movies with color and sound brought the word to continuing adventures in multimedia, and is expanding exponentially by digitalization and algorithms customized to taste.

As equal creators to the nature god Jehovah we have constantly invaded his domain and built walls to shut him out of ours. Jehovah/Nature cannot enter the world we have created to escape his wrath. There are a lot of nature gods and goddesses. This condition leads me to crave, at the very least, a truce that would contain the possibility of complete peace.