I’ve Found Something

You may have remembered this post I wrote about my son’s upcoming Baptism.

I have done much soul searching since then. I have looked into my past and tried to see what has made my Catholic faith such a burden and so cumbersome. My problems with the Catholic faith have stemmed from several things, the first being something I will call the stigma of Christ. It is the cringing I feel when I see someone proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Savior. But what about that truly bothers me? Part of it is the history of some people who have had very poor and misguided behavior and ideas about what and who Jesus is.

I know Jesus does not “hate fags.”

I know Jesus doesn’t “want my money.”

I know Jesus doesn’t want you to kill anyone. Period.

I know Jesus wants us to accept God’s love.

I know Jesus wants us to love each other.

I know Jesus wants us to forgive each other.

And I’m starting to wonder just what it is I have a problem with in my faith?

I know the answer to that.

I don’t have a problem with Christ. I have a problem with the people who say they speak for Christ and God. And taking my cues from Christ and Buddha, I must seek until I find and I must be compassionate and I must forgive people. I must forgive all of those misguided and spiritually bankrupt people who speak in God’s name when, if I can stop for a second and listen to the world and God in my innermost being, I know what the truth is.

And here is another secret that Christ and Buddha knew: To know God, you must be aware. you must be willing to shine a light on all parts of your self, from the good thoughts and the bad, the prejudices and pride-filled parts too.

My problem is with people, not God and Christ. And I’m feeling so much better about a lot of things, but there a still a few I’m not so happy or comfortable with. I’m still a bit apprehensive about aspects of my faith. But the important thing is that I seem to have found my faith.

Now I have something to believe in. Now I know what my life’s purpose is. I am here to love and forgive and be my best. And that is all you have to do praise God, because God doesn’t actually want you to praise Him. He wants you to love. God wants us to love and forgive people, nature, politicians, priests, criminals, cops, governments, each other, and ourselves.

Whenever people love and forgive each other, that’s where you’ll find God. And that’s what I found that was missing.

Freedom

I am lost. But come to think of it, this place I am in and what I am writing about may as well be about the television show (and how I hate TV, except for LOST).

I am in a place that I have no bearing and I am afraid to start in one direction or the other because of one simple thing: Truth.

Everywhere I turn are control structures, lines of thought and dogma that cloud the issue and alter reality. These ideas and religions offer you truth, but deliver slavery.

Run from anything or anyone that tells you, ” You must…”

Some magickal writings tell us to create our own framework, while others preach no dogma, which is dogma in itself.

Maybe I’m not after truth, but freedom. Freedom from other ideas and books and religions and television and media and fashion and…the World. Death comes to mind, but this defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Silence is another word. Complete and total silence. Being cut off from anything that can render its message to me in any way, shape or form. Tabula rasa is not good enough. I’m talking womb. I’m talking rebirth. I want to wipe my hard drive and build my own operating system from the ground up.

Everything thought and action will be me and I will set myself free.

Time Divided By…Infinity

I’ve got a thing for fractals, which are, “…generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole…”

When I was in high school and college, I would sit in my room late at night and ponder the nature of the universe. What was here before everything? How can you get something from nothing? Can you keep dividing something into a smaller part, like time?

I think time, and maybe everything else, is a fractal, which come to think of it jibes with holograms. Maybe every single thing is a fractal hologram, or pieces of a hologram and we are all part of the One fractal hologram’s subdivisions…

And suddenly Phillip K. Dick’s VALIS is making more sense to me.

I’m just a virtual construct in a virtually constructed world.

“So from a scientific perspective, neither objective reality nor virtual reality is proven. And what is happening is that modern physics with things like time dilation and space contraction, teleportation, multi-existence and so on, seem actually more supportive of a virtual reality universe than an objective reality one.”

Maybe we’re all just virtual constructs of our souls, playing a game where we cannot break the speed of light or defy gravity, but have anomalies like UFOs and angels and anything else that goes against the programming rules of the “universe.”

Hell, at one time, my theory of LOST was that they were all trapped in virtual reality simulation.

The Presence of a Baby

My son sits in his bouncy seat. He is only two months old. He cannot speak, except in goohs and gahs which are attempts at English, but he does one thing that fascinates me: He stares at things for long periods of time and is completely fascinated by them.

He stares at the fan as it turns high above him or the lamp as light emanates from its bulb and bathes the room in coll and spooky red glow from the red lampshade covering the light source. He stares and is completely intent on just knowing that one thing. There is no multitasking (a term I hate) or preoocupation with the television, there is only my son’s perfect concentration on one thing.

My son is so Zen and I am so not, except for when I hold him and only see the child I wish to regain within myself, the pure being void of social constructs about being a man or breadwinner or a jock or geek or leader or a slave.

I want to meditate on these things, on the innocence of children and the perfect focus of a baby. If only I could forget everything I know that hinders me from seeing the truth, from seeing myself and other things as they truly are, then maybe I could be a better person and a more effective catalyst for change and more productive artist and worker.