by R.S. Pearson (Not fully proofread).

This is older writing. A few things have been since re-written for various book projects I'm completing. I'm just providing it here to give a sample. I will most likely take some of it off as my book projects progress, so save a copy if you want it.

1 Spirituality is Definable
2 Explorations in the Healing Power of Love
3 Futures of Philosophy
4 The Entropic Norm
5 How to get high without drugs
6 The Sign Of Evolution Is The Sign Of The Cross.
7 Religion and Surrealism
8 The Cult of Weakness
9 On Still calling oneself a Christian
10 Intrinsic Semantics in English
11 The Talk about a New Christian Revival
12 Francis Schaeffer: Positive or Negative Influence?
13 Thoughts on reading Lyotard's The Post-Modern Condition
14 Heresy Hunters
15 On How Some of the Blame is the Churches
16 Pornography
17 Overcoming the Spirit of an Age
18 Self-Hatred
19 Virtuism
20 The Church and World Progress
21 God as Reality verses God as Construct
22 Optimization

1) Spirituality is definable

Spirituality is definable: it is that force which repairs the brokenness that is inherent in life on earth.

There is danger when the definition of spirituality changes from this, as when spirituality is abstracted into a commodity, and the fact that when one purchases such a commodity, one therefore becomes spiritual. Today this is often seen in the New Age community, where the ability to buy books, expensive oils and talismans, health supplements, videos, courses and hours of conseling/readings is seen as a "blessing from good karma" and therefore can ambiently condones the title of spiritual on the person. But this type of spirituality is not necessarily repairing a person's brokenness, and can set them up in patterns that actually cause brokenness in themselves and others. Commodity-based false spirituality at least hinders the pattern of helping the other people in their life with help from a true spiritual source.

Spirituality, while found in all cultures, is not inherently better when one tries to make a synthesis of the teachings from all cultures. People often mistake accepting multiculturalism for the sake of their own status as being spiritual. The two qualities can ultimately have very little relation, when multiculturism is merely another "tag" on puts on one's identity to fuse them with other false notions of spirituality.

Multiculturism frees us from the tribalism which is the cause of our wars and many other types of violence and hatred. But within a stable society, multiculturalism isn't a sole spiritual ground: resting upon it one is not necessarily closer to God. Multiculturalism, while a societal virtue, can not repair one's brokeness from living in our world. One reason for this is that it is exacted into the commodity structure while it plays into one's false personality structure, as opposed to one's soul, which is the area that needs to be worked on for true growth to be achieved. With multiculturalism as our primary religious ideal, we may still falsely get tuned into the "rat race" of man but only in a different sphere.

People likewise substitute the word spirituality when they mean "well read in spiritual matters", "using alternative therapies", "owns a lot of spiritual artifacts," or "holds certain political and social beliefs." But such practices or attitudes do not necessarily transform brokenness and lack of wholeness, in oneself or others, when encountered.

Some of the ways above are some of the ways of detecting counterfeit notions of the spiritual. What we should be able to do eventually is to get to a spiritual condition like Mother Teresa or other souls who have objectively created a significant amount of good in other people's lives, while not also simultaneously creating a wake of people in which whose lives they've created an amount of bad experience or lack. Mother Teresa never asked the poor people she was helping for any money. But today, in many spiritual modalities that people are left with, there is a price tag on everything.

Our human life is based on inherent needs like those of any mammal. When the cunning of man forces itself upon another man in a exceedingly negative way, only a spiritual resource can free the victim to the optimization of life again. These spiritual resources are ideals which posit the idea of a actively loving Creator-God, a decree and plan of salvation which is achievable but which can also be seen to be missed out on. If one is not seeing they are missing out on something then they have no true explanation for why their life isn't going in the right direction.

Occult practice is dangerous because one occupies the mind with thinking one is involved in spirituality when one isn't. Instead, one is only involved in the study of symbols, forces, affirmations and spells. We need to have a clear definition is of what spirituality is, what occultism is, and what magic is. There are many overlapping disciplines. We can especially include a definition of what psychology is. Also, what is the theology of the magician, what is their own personal philosophy of altruism and how do they follow it. Studying psychological forces is not fellowship with the Holy Spirit, so really no progress in spirituality is usually made by most "magicians."

I intimately have known modern day alchemists and others in this genre. I don't mean to judge them it's just that they really couldn't compare to the people I also met who lived lives of service to other human beings. After one converts to true Christianity or some other form of service one may still have awful problems with realizing that he was never being spiritually taught during those years.

2) Explorations in the Healing Power of Love

We all instinctively love practicing feeling love for everyone we see.

Most people just never had this thought.

There is some magical harmony, a love and longing for every type of person that is built into our instincts.

We become healthier people.

Try to fantasize how you need everyone you see and how they need you. You'll be born in a special new way into the community, into society. This can be done artificially by imagination if you don't feel it.

This is the nature of friendship, and friendship will always come by practicing this universal love and need for differentiation. It comes by not making accounts on how we were treated. This is ultimately the greatest venture in higher consciousness or altered types of states of consciousness -- the understanding of our fellow human being.

To love everybody on Earth; this is embedded in the sense of true "normality." It is a myth propagated by the bitter that popular people are less loving to the outcasts of society. A bitter person will hold to his hurt and hate normal people.

Where does this power of Love come from?

I know any person, if they choose, can live in Love. The joy of Love, the radiance of Love comes from the positive thinking. It's a Christian's responsibility.

If it's God who gives this Love then let's work for God.

I got hurt a few times but hurt myself worse by not asking life to let me feel the joy of Love. When your in it you want to prolong it for eternity.

Now I know that the power of love for me is even stronger than the world's power to hurt me. Love will get me out of the limitations mankind faces.

I want love to love me -- to help me out of any rut I may find.

I expect love to help me.

Could it be love wants what I want for myself?

The challenge against love is much greater in some times, and in some places, than others. I think of some idealistic world for me here on earth. I realize that hope deferred can bring a person much inner hurt. A radiance of love without comparisons to idealisms is a safer, more perfect world to live in.

The outer circumstances of our life may change little, only we must not lose our love to make them greater. In a way, I want to accept the death of the hope that life will change. Will this bring me more groundedness in love?

Isn't God telling us He has faith in us? Doesn't God build us up into the joy of love? Why do I emulate or fear others when my choices have been good? What would it be like to have this joy of love in me every day for the next fifty years? How can I have this joy of love in me for that long? But this question seems to bring a degeneration of the power I am feeling because this joy of love is a gift for the present moment only -- it's so precious that questions almost destroys it -- to not be absorbed with it as it presents itself in it's moment.

Love for me builds a hedge around me; love gives me wisdom for sanctification.

This love is going to invade other places in the world. My stay here is going to affect life for the better, and by doing so my soul also will be blessed.

Negative forces only try to make me angry at the souls I should be pitying. I live in a greater dimension of spirit and joy then they. I can only pity them and let them see my joy of love.

Today, we are faced with the joy of not being stressed out over money and work. We can allow at least one day of this Spirit, the idea of doing something totally non related to any kind of "work," one day a week.

Should we want to have the joy of selling some of the things we own? This would be the joy of being able to not be attached to physical things. Because we desire our time to be able to create events or even objects which bless myself and the people who experience them, and this takes time!

I feel the joy to have many things worth money which I can sell if I need to. I have a gratitude to have also a real power in God who also provides for my needs so I can dedicate myself to Him. As much as I don't honor a teaching that says God will make you rich if you pray to him, I do believe that He will help us escape the nature of certain kinds of work if we just choose to help him.

There is really nothing higher for us in this life, on this earth, but this joy of love. We try to have a happy marriage, to keep good relationships with people, to get ahead financially, and to achieve order and discipline in our life. We see the attempts at a different kind of life for ourselves and we see that we are sometimes swallowed by defeat. The only thing that takes us out of the defeat is what Kierkegaard talked about: not despairing to be ourselves.

We can only be alternative spirits. We can only feel whole when we feel a joy of love that we know breaks us out of any conditioning that a dominant culture of ignorance knowingly or unknowing springs on us. I failed at many things, but I don't feel a dejection from this.

God did not answer many of my prayers the way I wanted, but I don't feel a hatred for Him or lack of faith. Any knowledge of God I have is first colored by an existential understanding of the joy of love and the power which this joy of love gives me personally. This in itself is larger than any cause and effect I feel with God regarding to any prayers or requests I may have.

I largely feel God as some force that wants me in the serenity of this joy of love, this joy of loving all people like He loves them. We feel cheated and cheapened when we're ignorant of this, just like anyone else.

I don't think it would be wrong to say that there are many people, successful in the glare of the TV set, but who are miserably weak spiritually, even though they may be the good "blessed" parents of children. Yet it seems when we are not in the joy of love, these people seem to rule the whole world and heaven too. This is a delusive way of looking at it.

When we are feeling the joy of love that God wants us to feel, our presence shines on them and they can't be evil, or they can't be seen as evil by us. Our life and light gives them a rest from the evil merry go round they may or may not be on. And they are just weak because they have no life of prayer and no understanding of the need for spiritual practices in their own lives.

Plato said in The Republic of a certain type of philosopher who: "in the storm of dust and sleet...seeing the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content, if only he can live his own life and be pure of evil"

Oh why, oh why, can't we do this too? Why do we have to be greedy and demand that we receive what others have received, largely by acting in the self-interest the world requires?

We know that certain actions against us can cause emotional cognitive scaring, therefore, it must be that a certain positive action causes growth that can over ride it.

One thing is true, it seems a life which springs forth gratitude clearly makes one more productive. This statement and others detract from the theology I'm trying to write.

We make ourselves alone because of fears we've never overcome. Immorality is what keeps us away from deep friendships, good marriage and joy and peace. Ignorance of just how good others are is what keeps us immoral often, because we just don't see the need to strive to be better. This is the overcoming of religious conceit. God is not using us by forcing certain brands of self-sacrifice on us, keeping us separated from people who don't hold our beliefs, because we make it a better world when we are not alone.

We clearly will have, eventually, sooner or later, something that is post Post-Modernism. If we think not, we, or who happily believe in Post-Modernism as some kind of absolute picture of progress, fall into the same silly delusion as those in every age who think that those in the future will be thinking how wonderful they are as philosophers and how they got philosophy right for a change. I take it that academic Western philosophy doesn't really improve from age to age. You might call when I'm trying to write "virtuosophy" because it tries to get out of the kind of linear thinking progression which is a valid contribution but which also can be a bit artificial when it comes to have objective sociological values by it's influence in society. The influence of academic philosophy causes a "wake" much like a boat engine causes a wake in the water. Other departments are effected by it's ideas, be it art or social science, and there is a danger of creating bad philosophy beyond what might be thought. Philosophy has never been only the study of logic, until the 20th century, but then art was never non-aesthetic until the 20th century.

In many important matters, philosophy does not always progress, in fact, it can just as easily get worse. A philosophy can be said to be bad by not achieving the aims of arriving at what is essential truth for man. Truth for man should be that which enlivens his mind and abilities toward obtaining his optimized state. This has tremendous implications for society. If that which brings man to his optimized state of self-actualization is "proven" as partly delusive, it is still pragmatically true -- or symbolically true -- because it is the thing that optimizes him for life. And through time we continue to see by new, yet worse, philosophies that these old truths are the only thing that truly optimizes him and gives him a good life. Such a person creates a wake just like a philosophy.

There are many turns of phrase and memes that are no longer part of our verbal diet. To get at these, it is not enough trying to read certain famous writers from the past that are still in print, in ways these writers alone are a very incomplete representation of the mind of the past. Also, it can be seen in modern times that great spiritual writers that were popular in the 18th and 19th Century are not even in print and haven't been reprinted for a hundred years or so. The fleshing out of the older message has disappeared.

I am very interested in matters concerning the "atoms of thought," or what some people call "memes," that make up people's worldviews today. I find it very interesting how so many people these days don't have any inner strength to be capable moral agents. One sees this in both the crime rates and the types of crimes that are being comitted. I'm not sure how these subjects enter into academic philosophy. It seems like it would take a study of modern philosophy, and then an analysis of what people who don't commit crimes uphold compared to both the life philosophy of those who are "barely making it," and those who resort to horrendous deeds. Is this more a question for psychology and sociology? I don't think so, since it's a man's personal philosophy which got him to the place of the inability of acting moral.

Most philosopher's today are writing at a very insular university level. What people say about the problem of "taking sanctuary in abtuse languages" is really a problem. At one point many people were into Existentialism -- excited about Camus and Satre. But really being into post-modernism is very difficult for most educated people. Most people really still don't know what Post-Modernism is, or at least couldn't talk intelligently about it for more than five minutes. It doesn't appeal to people as an overall exciting or very meaningful philosophy, and some of the books can be not only very dull but both dull and difficult. Post-modernism does have something to say as a criticism, but I don't believe that how it falls back into Neitzsche is generative of anything very beneficial. I think instead of the Nietzsche-inspired post-modernists, Jung created some of the greater philosophical thought of the 20th century. As some historians adamantly state, reading Nietzsche probably helped produced some of the worse behavior of the 20th century. The lines have become blurred between psychology, linguistics, logic and philosophy to the point where one doesn't need to bear alligence to canonized "Western philosophy" if one isn't being nourished by it, there is enough brilliant thought going around in other fields. In a way, one might say philosophy has been abandoned by many great minds by the creation of many new fields of study.

What were the writings of the Surrealist Andre Breton? Were they aesthetics or philosophy? We need to see outside the boundaries to understand what philosophy really is today because philosophica thought has become chameleon.

We see the cause and effect of our philosophies only after having them in effect for many years.

Optimistic metaphysics are philosophies showing the engine of change and development experienced in time -- this engine is the notion of the virtuous universe. In the virtuous universe, the more a human being focuses their attention on being morally virtuous to another human being, the more that person's life is changed for the better.

What this means is that in the language of Kierkegaard the person can ultimately no longer have a despair of being themselves. They may experience serious misfortune in their lives after doing many virtuous things but there is something concrete in their nature produced by the prolonged virtuous actions. These actions are described as virtuous acts which reach the level of an inner artistic experience.

That there is something wrong in modernity, circa the year 2000 when I write this, is a certain fact. That many writers, social commentators and historians note this is also true. An example of the reason for "this something wrong" is the interchange of the words "drug use and spirituality" that many make, internally, in the quiets of their mind. Perhaps advertising has even helped cause this. Spirituality can't come from drug use, and this is very obvious by the behavior of most of the people who have become addicted. Drugs vaguely counterfeit some aspects of spiritual experience and this is only temporary.

Easy answers to important questions lead a capable mind to dogmatism, whether it be Christian or Nihilist dogmatism. Easy answers do not build strength of spirit. I find that most people are involved in giving out easy answers to questions. What a yogi might say is as "speaking from a chakra" means simply, what part of the person is speaking, for what reason, and from what foundation is this person likely to come from in the future? To say that unless one understands the idea of chakra's, one can't communicate a thing to that person may be such a type an "easy answer." They don't know enough about linguistics to be able to convert their private terminologies. Easy answers keep most people from understanding each other, and are only done because of laziness, but one sees this problem in some degree almost everywhere.

What implications of philosophy does this paragraph hold:

"Wealth comes to those who provide a service. The larger service you provide, the more wealth you obtain. Rockefeller sold oil, Twain wrote books that make people laugh. But the services of fostering spiritual attitudes among men, or often producing great works of art, are often not paid for by money at all."

The birth of evolution can only be created if a genius acknowledges his own worth. The quality in man that makes him a genius is largely in part his own evaluation of worthy ideas. Usually only the genius can, at first, acknowledge his own worth. The acknowledging of what is truly special and advanced is half of what it takes to be a genius. The rank of genius is only appropriate for ideas that have a large value in society.

The idea of a commodity in philosophy is like this: a set of ideas or deep concerns in the human spirit gets symbolically put into an object and then the new structure of the object and its ownership becomes more important than what the object represents. One becomes distanced from his real values by the abstraction of them into objects.

4) The Entropic Norm

Let me introduce a new term: the entropic norm. The entropic norm is that condition of normality which deceives people as being functional but which only functions for short term benefits in the overall picture of society.

A "entropically normal person" -- someone who is into their own academic, social, or career things solely at the expense of any real altruism, only keeps things at the lowest level of interaction. They keep unhealthy levels of stress the norm, will eat bad diets by habit, will never consider skipping meat for a meal, easily support wars, etc. This is the result of a "low maintenance person."

People have to be into their own work on themselves and have to deal with their own spirituality, recovery and psychology. The people who do this we can call high-maintenance people. They maintain not just themselves but that which they wisely perceive to be their positive influence in society.

Low-maintenance people are shallow, yet the world accepts its own and rewards its own. If you were shallow -- "of this world" -- you would be rewarded as such. They are all involved in basically animalistic posturing and grunting.

It's often the people who struggle against the entropic norm, who are the ones who become alcoholics or depressed, who could occasionally do something very stupid or mildly against the law, and make other mistakes that sets them against the entropically normal people because such strugglers take chances. Yet in these people is often the very thing that keeps society as civilized as it is. It is a well documented fact that those considered geniuses have a higher level of mental illness than average intelligent people (See The Anatonomy of Hallucinations by Fred Johnson, 1978).

5) How to get high without drugs (This section is continued on other pages).

Should we believe in a form of spirituality that is pro-drug? Such talk is mostly idle talk and science fiction for the mind. It sounds like spirituality but has none of the same bi-products of true spirituality. Being against drug use was once very commonly expressed by spiritual teachers of both Eastern and Western persuasion. It is harder to find that thought being written about intelligently today, but I believe it is still the prevailing view of people who are doing most of the spiritual work in society today.

The way I look at drug experiences is that they evoke very little of the conscience mechanisms that older paths have -- the societal concern. They seem largely to be systems of ideas regarding how have to a "biological spiritual experience." They are concerned about personal experiences and personal understandings to the exclusion of taking care of the weaker members in society on an emotional level. They create a state which "spoils" the consciousness in the way that an overindulged child is "spoiled" -- the brain get's use to a life of peace and freedom from all anxieties and wants to stay there.

Artists and intoxication seems to be a strong theme of the last one-hundred and twenty years. Rimbaud celebrated this exact thing in his doctrine of the disillusionment of the senses. Even where it is not cerebralized and upfront, artists today are often adamant about the virtues of intoxication, and many are negligent in understanding any of the virtues of sobriety. The virtues of sobriety are thought to displace the virtues of intoxication.

Most of the spiritual traditions say somewhere that physical substances form a substitute for the spiritual experiences. This has to be a deep note: that spiritual experiences are always higher and to be preferred over physical substances. Just as there is a process to get high with a drug, there is a process to fall under the weight of a spiritual experience. And just as repeated experiences with a drug produces a state of addiction and soon various forms of degeneration, repeated spiritual acts producing spiritual experiences produces the spiritual condition and regeneration.

It can be seen in modern times that great spiritual writers that were popular in the 18th and 19th Century are not even in print and haven't been reprinted for hundred years or so. The fleshing out of the older message has disappeared. For more information on this look at the poetry of Martin Tupper, early books on learning Latin or "Logick" by D.D. Andrews, or some of the thougts of William Paley in Moral and Political Philosophy.

6) The sign of evolution is the sign of the cross.

The sign of evolution is the sign of the cross. Understanding this can be the root of bitterness for those who aren't mature in spiritual things. I am not only talking about Christianity as an objective form but also a Christianity that works purely as a symbolic structure -- not merely as ideas that are understood but ideas which form a basis of experience and action.

We must ask ourselves, what are our true values? Do they really contain a lifetime of religious suffering for the betterment of humanity? Do we mind suffering a little to make the earth a better place? I recognize that is is necessary to work mostly for our own shelters and our own goods. But is this possibly because as a society we have stopped working towards virtue? There is a difference between an idealistic youth writing philosophy and someone who has experienced much more of life at a lager age. It seems in reality there are these different worlds, know as The Western World, or The Third World, and so on. Being brought up in the Western World, one has certain standards. How painful to see when artificial standards can destroy life as a beautiful, meaningful and expanding experience for many people.

So, some totally embrace and accept suffering for evolution's sake. If you do want to be like Christ, then find literature that incorporates that. I once came from the perspective of relishing my acceptance of my suffering to be more like Christ, but also of admitting religious leadership into my life who didn't care about personally losing any social -- which easily translates into economic -- standing by their befriending, in any meaningful way, "outcasts," or gearing anyone toward community service or practicing the "social gospel."

Instead of being in these surroundings, I could have been reading books like "Imitation of Christ" or "The Philokalia" or other true books of devotion towards that self-sacrificial/service orientation. But even these books do not fully tell the story of why people should follow a "Christian" or alturistic lifestyle. We can do it merely for the reason that it posits us in a more sane world. If we are constantly reacting to a world that is manipulated for the crudest of animalistic reasons, a world in which Neitzsche's will to power is a dominent idea not for merely intelligent men but for millions and millions of crass men, then our life is operating at the level of these people -- we are filling our mind with this activity instead of with our own higher frame of mind.

Our values need to be clarified. Does the universe only reward financially those who are meek and take the common jobs of commerce? Are all the other creative souls who make strange art and writing outside of providence. Or are they avoiding the perils that come from working only for buying average things, and upholding average thoughts and values. We only get paid what we are owed. One seems to purchase special thinking and feeling abilities at the cost of having other needs met.

As we get older, we reluctantly noticed the cold fact that some people are merely totally selfish, and even hostile to the welfare of others who might somehow get in their way. They aren't just your "high achievers" but they are your common housewives and husbands. They form a large sector of humanity. Most of these people don't care about being "judged by God" at all -- they don't have any religious nature.

With those types of people you do find all the faults that the religious also have but the religious are left looking for God, trying to please Him, and trying not to be selfish. Their motivation is loving others as they would have others love themselves. This motivation is what gives society the good it does have. It is a dominant theme of a good religion: forgiveness, helping the helpless, taking care of people because, probably most know, it doesn't just make God want to bless us, but makes the world a more humane place. We do it in a sense because we create a world where this value exists and therefore it reflects upon how others will treat us if we are ever in need. There is also something in this behavior that changes the person who acts this way as can be seen by health and psychological studies.

The people who help cause the disintegration of lives will enter into great suffering. I believe this is provable in Western psychology. It's actually fairly common knowledge -- although today at times that there are pockets of people who don't understand it. They believe they are freeing the mind and the feelings. They think they are benefiting themselves and even others. But the direct result of this is that they are creating attitudes in people that make it impossible to even have the spirituality to live harmoniously with each other. So many are getting narcissistic beyond what we've seen in recent history. Look at the fact that few can stay married today.

When the people in the world sinks into greater and greater misunderstanding of spirituality, and accepts that as the norm, the results of this suffering should be made more well known. If not for the safety and warning of those in states of ignorance, at least for the quality of everyone's life and encouragement of the doer of good which keeps the quality high.

I see ultimately, and history plainly shows, that when we really pick up the cross of Christ we are basically done for. Society can attack us. This seems to happen very often. And I don't blame pastors or people in church for not being more radical than they are. I kind of like the idea of a nice house, kids and a nice car. I wish that things could be different, but God didn't create the world as is. Largely, as it was written, they say it was demonic control, a little human stupidity and general inertia, and then slight whisperings of the Holy Spirit keeping a degree of spirituality happening.

The New Testament really is a book for social evolution, but evolution has never come cheap. Mankind needs security, there are babies to protect, mouths to feed, and authorities to obey least we provoke their wrath. We need to see that fellowship with other believers is essential and that divisiveness is usually done by people with other problems they are just masking. I see that actually divisiveness against Christian mainstream religion, the high churches, was done by evangelicalism, and I am trying to heal this split.

I have tried to become "a perfect Christian" and have seen that that aim was essentially a neurotic lie. I realize it says in the bible "be perfect as Christ is perfect," but this is supposed to also be impossible. People become so afraid of God that they no longer understand His Love. Many have deep suspicions about their neighbors and generally live in a general state of false witness.

Real religious devotion seems to often create a gap between people.

Most know this and few desire this to be a part of their life. Yet it doesn't have to create this gap. In fact, it can easily harmonize the relationships in our lives by our humbling the side of our personality that is offensive to others. It can give us an objectivity, by attemping to experience our life through the mind of God.

7) The Cause and Effect of Negative Human Conditions

Each time has a seen or unseen cause and effect of negative human conditions. Wise theoreticians develop plans to get their time out of these conditions. Many people can see the effects of political decisions on the quality of life of their inhabitants just as they can see effects of education techniques on students. Today, when most people spend three or four hours watching television, the media also plays a role in this cause and effet. When politicians can see the aesthetic value of the virtue of their actions on their constituents, they will strive to perform more "righteously" -- a word hardly ever used currently to describe politics.

Since modern politics and law enforcement often prescribes what can be called "actions whose results are untraceable in objective cognition" i.e. the Menendez brothers being tried for innocence even after their confessions of murder, letting murderers out of jail in less then 10 year whereas murder used to be synonymous with life in prison, we should establish a cause and effect of what these somewhat arbitrary judgmental improvisations can do to a culture.

8) Religion and Surrealism

Andre Breton, the founder of what we know as Surrealism, and author of The Surrealist Manifestoes in 1924, is one of my favorite writers, although I don't agree with all he says. Breton was very much a man of his times, although, more than most, he saw outside them. At times he held the delusion that Marxism was going to be a liberator of mankind. Instead we see it enslaved and destroyed many, by letting despots take hold on countries, and create mass delusions to murder intellectuals, priests, and just about anyone according to any momentary whim of those in power. He was a man of his times, and those times were somewhat exhuberiant in the false idea that freedom from religion was going to be THE liberator of mankind. While still upholding certain spiritual values, Breton had certain definite delusions and inconsistences which are really striking.

Breton mentioned in "The Autobiography of Surrealism" that each time can be different, and have different manifestations of evil, such as the sluggishness that are present in different areas and that we need ways to fight them. Today, its clear that the main causes of sluggishness are the things that Breton helped to let loose without knowing the results. He assumed that the darkness of Lautreamont and de Sade could lead to some kind of freedom. He assumed that fighting Christianity could lead to a better social change. Yet he himself had guidelines to certain kinds of morality. One morality he believed in was waking man from the things that kept him bound to the mundane. If Breton was alive today and lived in America, he would be abhorred by the amount of crime and homelessness. Yet it is some of the things which he sought to shoot down which accidentally have also toppled this moral structure which prevented such degeneration of the common morals. Toppling the structure of respect for religion has taken away the most intellectual time for most people -- which was hearing a trained clergy speak on Sunday -- and led people to focus primarily on their own bank account and social standing. This made making owning a home impossible for many as there are now so many people who own five or six homes by making financial cunning the chief aim of existence. Even renting a room or an apartment is an impossibility for the hundreds of thousands of homeless who live in American today.

If anything is certain, no recent time in history seem to be that much better than the next regarding human morals. The people who talk about the good days of America must realize that America not that many years ago America had slavery, and even in the 1950's, it had institutionalized racism throughout it. The conditions that break down the quality of life today have much more subtle forces, the discovery of which are blocked. It is blocked because of people like Breton who attacked a source of curing it: religion in various forms, and it is blocked because religion, has been largely unable to provide an accurate account of why its teachings provide good answers and direction for life. Many people in my time have been unable to be guided to be virtuous. They can't be forced into a common religious pattern anymore, one that can only find out by experience what is right and what is wrong. This didn't use to be the case, in that, people who made out to be confessing Christians, and as a whole, many of the problems we see in America were non-existent. It seemed too good to be true to liberate sex for some, but instead this liberation of sex led to an infantilism in the public, the singularizing of the American people. Over fifty-percent of marriages end in divorce and there are very few families like before. We have a sub-society of people doing themselves brain damage by taking perscription drugs for anxiety. That can't lead to anything very positive. It sounds a bit Orwellian.

There is very little positive change that some of these freedoms Breton and others hoped for, and which others are still yelling for without even noticing how society is crumbing because of. Without probably having any idea how far it was going to go, the Free Love he talked about, the eroticism he praised, led to the infantile sexuality which Erik Erickson talked about as being a sign of not passing though a stage of development. Breton noted that things change in time, and I don't think Breton or the other surrealists would really be too pleased with the purely dark aesthetics of some writers and artists, such as the Industrialists. In fact, we may see Surrealism as having a whole other set of guidelines. Breton said surrealism wasn't an aesthetic, but was method of freeing oneself, a tool for psychological liberation. The separation of sexuality from relationships/marriages is a poison in a culture which can hardly be understood, and once its achieved and becomes second nature, becomes hard to remove. It is cloaked by the fact that we are only told its wrong by religion who offer little proof of why its wrong and what can happen if that's the only way one views sexuality. Therefore, Breton may have helped to add some poisons into the culture, as well as cures.

The consensual help for one's countryman that Breton spoke of, something some people might have said was a part of a nationalism he had, seems largely absent now in post-Christian culture. If some had it in them to care for each other more, they would. But its true that few care for strangers. The stories of Jesus, most notably the one about the Good Samaritan, was the key impetus and model for Christendom to do this. Breton assumed that getting rid of Christianity as a dominant meme would foster humane behavior, in a way like Marxism. It is said that the ideology of Marxism has been the cause of more murder than any other idea given the amount of time it has had on the earth.

8) The Cult of Weakness

What is the link of man to the supernatural? Do some really live in great supernatural depths, seeing visions and getting wisdom from on high while others are forced to live in a counterfeit of it, constantly fighting in themselves forces which they call "demons" but in reality are their own inner brain processes? Can the religion of a culture enforce weakness by its own delusions to solace the need of neurotics?

If one is in an average evangelical church, which own the majority of the Christian media in the west, or 12 Step group, one is often told to just "let God take care of it all." This can often be interpreted wrong. For one in deep grief this is however the correct message to be told. But there has to be more spiritual responsibility put on a person. Jesus, who said his yoke was easy and his burden light, also said we have to carry our cross.

God is too distant to take the blame for any problem, the thing that destroys the core of life is bad theology.

We have been put to sleep by a Christian media elite and a Christian corporate elite which knows that God really doesn't do the things they say He does. In fact, the story says on the 7th day God rested. That is where human life comes in. I'm not saying that God doesn't answer prayer or guide us but we must develop a theology that does not set Him up for blame.

For some to become free, healthy people again they have to demystify their faith in one area and put mystery in another area. They have to demystify the area of leadership. Some people are so used to believing people who say "God put me in this ministry " or "God gave me this position of leadership." They have to put some mystery back into their own fellow human being. Stop reducing him or her to how they equate with this or that obsessional standard of religion. Such standards Jesus preached against.

Simply put, if a person tells you that they are rich because God made them rich, the only alternative is that people are poor because God chose to not make them rich. God gave some spouses that they would stay married to all their lives, God gaves others spouses that would hate them with a passion in a few years. Other areas of today's Western Christian media feeds this heresy in one form or another. Heretical thought makes God become the Evil because he causes our evil.

Some have abstracted our volition as human beings. Some may have a long trial of failures and defeats after they gave their hearts to Christ, expecting God to run their lives for them. Some have neighbors who haven't felt a shred of God's light because they have convoluted themselves into a shell like a hermit crab when the waves hit. Some become stuffed with assumptions of what the "unchurched" are like.

We have to learn to not assume God is doing things by feelings alone.

God does not determine the level of virtue on earth -- it is mankind. Mankind is accountable by the very laws of nature, not God. It seems extreme to me how some can say God is the guiding light of every aspect of their activity. I think this is a heresy. I think its a most subtle and destructive heresy that keeps many from having a healthy and full life, and operating under a spiritual power.

We have to be mature, and strike a balance. Start with the idea that the Holy Spirit keeps you from things that are sinful. If you are capable enough through your own earnest heart to avoid sins and take advantage of the reprieve that does come about. Just because we look to normal laws of cause and effect and stop looking to God doesn't mean that we should stop praying or hoping for God to move.

Seems obvious to me that church leaders kill competition by saying "The Lord did this for me. The Lord put me in this place of authority."

But when did the Lord start doing this? Why wasn't the Spanish Inquisition also set up by the Lord? It is the ultimate form of pride, and obviously God stopped striking people with lightening bolts a long time ago. Also, some people are looking for a free lunch so they are attracted to a theology that has a God that makes decisions, gets them jobs or spouses, etc. And, if God doesn't give you a ministry in this theology, you have every right to be a couch potatoe.

One could fit in with many mainstream religions such as Catholicism and live a life of the heroic and independent without being forced to live in the mushiness of the cult of weakness, which seems to be easily backed up by verses from the bible.

There are probably some in which the idea of depending on God for all one's needs is too overt not to be unpleasant and having a corrupting influence. If you are going to believe in God to meet all your needs, when your needs are not getting met, you will blame God. You will blame God when your desires become your needs, and you will be unexercised in your own willpower and ability by waiting and becoming dependent minded.

Only by being psychologically positivist can some help themselves. And it may seem wrong at times, but it will be right because it allows them to exist in a stark reality where wish-fulfillment is non-existant.

Whatever is spiritually absolute is speaking out to us. In signs, in directions, perhaps subtly given but at least in the fruits of our life. As alcohol and drug abuse speaks out its signs in the homeless, insane and jailed, virtue speaks out with integrity, honor and the opportunity for good done for others. When one isn't a hedonist, or doesn't even have many of those tendencies, one can accomplish more in life and that does bring more material achievements. Obviously, so many of the "alternatives" have this backwards.

The realm of the religious is a way of human social evolution in a very easy to comprehend sense, as exemplified in the writings of Jung, Schweitzer, and Ghandi. It is also a way for people to become their worse, as can be seen in the history of the church and other world religions, and perhaps even in experiences of our lives. So, religion should be felt in the area where it takes away a Darwinistic and overly materialistic worldview which hinder the higher capacities of human life. It might not be able to give a person a living by following it's path -- the idea that "if you follow me you shall have houses and cars" is something I can't reconcile to myself. Religion instead settles a person to be able to take care of themselves better, and limiting it in this way helps us get rid of toxic theology which still binds mankind in great darkness. We have to create an alibi for God for some of His over-anxious press agents who end up doing more harm than good. We can look at the state of the Earth and say in part whether or not they are doing a good job. Other types of agents of God's spirit may be needed.

9) On Still Calling Oneself a Christian.

No matter how far from the historical doctrines of organized Christianity some go, they still somewhere in their writing or their thinking call themselves "Christian." Some don't see the necessity of doing this, and in disowning the term, become bitter because they think they have to be a polarity to everything the word Christian means, in all its glorious semantics. But most, somewhere, somehow, consider themselves Christians of a sort. They are Christians they think because all religions are the same. Therefore they are "Yogi Christians", "Buddhist Christians" -- "Esoteric Christians", etc. They say the ones who parade around on Sunday in fact aren't really "true Christians." Even some punk rockers aspire to themselves that they are the true Christians, because of their "distrust of the world," which is one of the doctrines of the bible.

I haven't given up my relationship with God, nor have I stopped believing in the symbolic death of Christ for my sins, understood in a mysterious way that also allows me to study other world religions and not get trapped up in various ego-snares that I used to get into. I no longer see the value in trying to communicate my ideas solely within the Christian community. I've found few of those who have the need to ally themselves with the modern "Christian" agenda to have what it takes to dialog with me, at least in a way that interests me. I have found over the last several years that the background experience of being an experimental artist was not often there in most Christians and I didn't want to fall into conversing within the power structure of "Christianity" with it's tacit systems of rewards and punishments.

We need to break the bonds of ignorance on those that are sincerely seeking the truth. But they have to realize that even though they have found some truth in their New Age religions -- which is really an accurate term for their are few in the West that are real Yogis, real Buddhists, etc. -- they may have not found the whole truth. That whole truth is basically that God is ACTIVELY seeking their salvation, and they do not have to achieve salvation by works. Salvation should be inherent in the creation of man, it is always there if a certain type of resistence is broken, and attention is given to spiritual precepts. I have personally never seen salvation work in myself without accepting Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior.

The secular theorists who scoff at religion destroy the most potent cure for many societal troubles, such as mental illness. If you look at any U.S. city you will find insane people any time you look for them. They may be even be somewhat educated and aesthetically-guided insane people, stuck in some world they see as better and brighter and perhaps more beautiful. They may want to stay that way forever. They still never see a need for God who can help them, as they do need help, as they are daily victimized by man or the elements. Alert in the mind of these people are the threads of memories of the knocking of religion, perhaps "simplistic religion" by their culture's intellectuals. They often find no resort because they take an esoteric path, such as yoga, which is said in its holy traditions to have many dangers involved in it. It seems most world esoteric traditions do not have the respect for the exoteric traditions which they need to have. I believe most religions, if authentic and not enthocentric, should be respected. That is clearly not the stance of most of the Western esoteric writers of history, and one often find Indian gurus putting down Western religion and culture. There never was an Indian guru would have respect for historic Christianity -- every one of them interpolated with their own ideas until historic Christianity became an aberration. But this Jewish religion, Christianity, is not at all the "white man's religion" and it never was. Chinese, East Indians, and Africans are flocking to it in record numbers. The fact that western intellectuals somehow identify Christianity with "white people" or European history just shows shoddy thinking. The same unpopular Jews of history, those that history always seems to have hated and persecuted, colored everything about Christianity. Christianity is a Jewish phenonmena.

I have seen my life improve vastly over the years largely due to what I consider a religious conversion. But to many people I whom largely respect and admire saying this can be an unwelcome statement. One aspect of why is the unsure aspect of what can happen to a person when they turn themselves over to a force they call God. The problems in the different fundamentalisms of the world, the cults, and even in more socially adjusted people, there can be big problems. Therefore, the whole crux of a new religious understanding is in the realm of artfully hiding aspects of your religious life, learning how to "release the publican within" while still being a transformative force in life and on culture, but most of all, still having that transformative power that can come only from God. This is striking the true note Jesus struck. Most people who can not accept historic Christianity I've found are not getting the same transformative power that I have seen work in my life and many others. They are trying to achieve something based on human strength, not Divine strength. They have strength to be human beings, but nothing else. Something else is needed for true salvation.

Real religious devotion can often create a gap between people. Most know this and so sometimes it seems as if few desire this to be a part of their life. Yet it doesn't have to create this gap. In fact, it can easily harmonize the relationships in our lives by our humbling the side of our personality that is offensive to others. It can give us an objectivity, by attemping to experience our life through the mind of God, which experiences a complete love for all people and attains friendships beyond the agenda of creed, color and class.

10) Intrinsic Semantics in English

Let me examine the three words, Holy, Whole and Hole. It's a real oddity that sometimes the English language has these little hidden messages, such as "devil" being the opposite of "lived." I've seen other languages, such as Hebrew, discussed that also have them.

The English language seems to give us a warning when we follow the Holy. What is the way to avoid the Hole in following the way of Holiness? Make Holiness a completion of the Whole. Build love, stability, equanimity, service and the basic things of a normal life, and put the Holy on top and you will be Whole. Religion is only holy when it makes a person whole. When it creates hate-filled subgroups as you see often in fundamentalist communities you see people who are not whole, balanced people but who spend their time trying to pressure a deity into blessing them by denouncing their fellow creatures. They don't seem to realize no matter what idea they have in their head, there is some possibility that God doesn't share their view. Religion has put them in a hole and starved them of their normality and happiness.

For the Branch Davidians, Catholics of the Spanish Inquisition and thousands of others, religion was a Hole. It destroyed their lives, and if they were the oppressors, their capability of being a spiritual creature on earth.

11) The Talk about a New Christian Revival

If there is to be a real revival of some kind, it will be in people finding out what true holiness and love is about, and manifesting that in a way that is open to guidance of the bible to mold it. We shouldn't have to through the baby (Jesus) out with the bathwater. For the last several years holiness was discussed almost exclusively by pointing the finger. Again, the Christian media overseers moralized about sexual sins (sounds like a chapter with the Pharisee's, doesn't it???).

A new revival can only come about it if it is an intellectual one. We now live in an intellectual culture, the quality of which one may have doubts about it but never before in society has there been so many educated people. The evangelical church has had an anti-intellectual stance for a long time, as well as an almost warfare type stance against progress at times.

A new revival could only come about if the church lost its legal defense of itself. That self it posits is a heterosexual, married and often pro-everything that comes from multi-national corporations -- except a few areas when these companies do something like support gay rights.

Focusing on a person's sexuality seems to me to be a slippery slope today. The Holy Spirit will eventually mold someone into a monogamous lifestyle, but I think God must have a lot of mercy on single people today. Men and women are often at great odds with each other. Conflict seems easy to create. Church leadership will always avoid true spiritual direction if they can point the finger at a "fornicator," homosexual, or indirectly in their hearts assume superiority over a divorcee who therefore didn't have God get them the perfect mate.

The marriage bond has become a false new hierarchy, and a very destructive one as we see the saddening evaporation of the Holy Spirit in many areas of modern life. People are swelling up like balloons all over the Christian landscape on this value alone. They may be thinking that since they are married, and have been for several years, they are more holy than the divorcee or the single, or the divorcee or single adult may be thinking that the long term married individual is somehow above them in God's eyes.

God is concerned with enlightening the inner soul of mankind with eternal security by man's accepting the true nature of God and understanding the nature of man's life. This eternal security should bring forth love. That should come first. The problem is, that Freud wasn't far off when he said that achieving adult sexuality was a major gauge of psychological health. What he meant by sexuality was a male and female's ability to relate to each other, and eventually come together in sexual union. He didn't just have some perverse notion that if you can have sex, you're normal. In fact, Erik Ericson used promiscuity as one of the guages for lack of maturity in adults.

All of what we have done with our lives is our own responsibility. What the modern church thinks about what the bible has to say about modern sexual immorality is nonsense when it comes to what God will and won't accept in people to begin a long molding process. The rights of people to live their own lives with their own sexual morality must be given by the church, or the church will continue to repress the real God-given power it has. We can't pick on easy sins and leave unexamined other probably more odious sins. This is where the whole problem lies in having some kind of new revival. I don't think God expects a new revival to come from what most of modern society sees as religious repression of what they have come to consider something essential to their psychological health.

I think the true power of God starts to come to a person regardless of whether they are having pre-marital sex.

Today's modern society consists of at least 50% of its adults not in a marriage relationship, and probably most of them have active sex lives. Marriage has become a very difficult achievement for many people because of the legalities of it, and because even people who merely date or cohabitate can not stay together.

12) Francis Schaeffer: Positive or Negative Influence?

Culture has declined in some areas in the last 30 years. It's funny what I'm about to say, funny because for most people, they would see the upholder of some of the good in society as coming from one of evangelical Christianity's 20th century's heroes. I believe one reason why culture has declined is the result of Francis Schaeffer's isolationist attitudes. This attitude can be clearly seen by his denouching the work of minds like Kierkegaard and Dali, and well as failing to see the value of many other valuable 20th century figures. It was as if Schaeffer believed he had an inexhausable fount of Christian intellectuals to chose from, minds that would be able to interface with culture in a meaningful way. I really wonder how his conscience could have told the groping evangelical masses that they could not even read the writings of Soren Kierkegaard!

Schaeffer, and a few others, thought he constructed some great system but instead he used the same old anti-intellectual paranoia, giving the small paranoias of the church a bigger scope. The intellectually trained in many churches were told to read Schaeffer and instead of finding a way of loving the world and communicating to it they came to a self-centered and essentially paranoid "system."

Culture declines when spiritual people are cut off from communicating the spirit of God into the life of the culture. The leadership in the church in the last 30 years has been split off into these two directions: becoming more liberal and non-Christian-based, and becoming less liberal, while negating the spirit of God equally. The idea of a simplistic Christianity has been forefront in the minds and hearts of many in the less liberal side. After being attacked by many sides, many Christians retreated and became fundamentalist. Our western culture is one that frequently causes people "breakdowns", and these people often become Christian. Even financial setbacks can be seen as a judgment from God and hence bring people into a born again experience. So, the body of the church known as fundamentalist can often contain many educated people capable of much more thinking and feeling than what many worldly people would give them credit for. The icon of Francis Schaeffer caused damage to the body of Christ by setting up a shoddy intellectual system while still making it look like a body of thought capable of interfacing with the complexities of the academic world. Schaeffer had no one to put in the place of the idols he smashed, it was like he was saying, there is essentially no one today that is doing anything positive on a philosophical and artistic basic outside of the church, even when people like Kierkegaard and Dali considered themselves members of the church universal.

13) Thoughts on reading Lyotard's The Post-Modern Condition

Some modern philosophers say that our narrative structures that we develop about life are really something that should be done away with. That Marxism and National Socialism caused tens of millions of murders, and various other ideologies have as well through history is a fact, but we are seeing the results also of a culture which has no "narrative" but the one's done by television commercials. There needs to be some kind of philosophical understanding that there is very little that happens in such vacuums of ideologies except very base human behavior. If some unknown world council got together and said, "Yes, Lyotard is true, there needs to be no more narratives on earth and we are going to try to end them." Even great dadaist artists like Tzara had various narratives, even Marxism was one for Tzara. On one hand we have Jung telling us about the archtypes of the human psyche, and drawing together patterns of human transformations which he found in many different cultures.

What has come about in the last three-hundred years by believing in our metanarrative or narratives?

Three hundred years ago we were still under the Kings, wealth was hardly distributed, education was for only the few, and we hardly had any science or technology. Wasn't believing our metanarrative responsible for this change? Can't postmodernists who are against the spectre of the narrative see that good narratives are essential for society to progress? It is like microcosm and macrocosm parallel structuring of the neccessity for an aim or goal in life. And what if the intentions of Lyotard and others consciuosly or unconsciously aren't for this progress? What if by some philosophers killing the metanarrative structure, the elite may still rule and we go backwards not forwards? If corporations can buy academic time for fraudulent studies, can somehow someone buy philosophers for fraudulent philosophies? Wouldn't culturally unlearning the principal that lead us to greater human rights lead us back to a time of less human rights?

It seems like in the Twentieth Century some philosophers got merely excited when they discovered some structure and said, ah, a structure! we must do away with it! Is killing the idea of the metanarrative and narratives irresponsible? I know Lyotard is saying that it is killed, not that it should be killed. He's describing that this already has happened, assuming that people are not uncomfortable that the metanarrative has died. I know how hard it is for many to believe in a grand narrative of Christianity, but I'm amazed how I see some people believe it so totally, having never doubted it and then some people can't believe it at all.

The Jungian talks about the Deconstructionist thread as a part of the trickster archetype. The trickster archetype is a splendid archetype and we all need to have it in our personalities. But it isn't the only archetype we need in our personality, and therefore it isn't all there is to philosophy. It seems for philosophy to work we need the other major archetypes: such as the king, magician and lover.

14) Heresy Hunters

Culture must always be fed by people enlightened by spirituality. I have tried to show that pure spirituality can be defined as that which tries to heal the brokenness that is inherent in society. But the church at this time does not have relevant power for a huge section of society: largely that of inner-city educated professionals and the artistic segment. The church hasn't recovered from its being attacked by conservatives on the effect of "liberalism" and the 60's movement. Largely, the attack from the right and the modern witch hunters or "heresy hunters" are not wholly spiritually-guided. They seem devoid of any education, or of the good natured spirit of giving other cultures any credit at all. They paint God all anew as an unfeeling ogre who is bond by the statements from Jesus that "no man comes to the Father but by Me" -- but I think this can be explained "no man comes to the Father but by the pattern of my life." In The Encyclopedia of Religious knowledge, published in 1850 we read about Confucianism: "This religion, which is professed by the literati and persons of rank in China and Tonquin, consists in a deep inward veneration for the God or King of Heaven, and in the practice of every moral value. They have neither temples nor priests, nor any settled form of external worship, every one adores the Supreme Being in the way he likes best." (pg 404, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Lippincott, Pittsburg 1850). This is certainly a different picture than calling them "Satanic" which is what virtually every Evangelical is trained to do.

For our faith to evolve, we have to be comfortable and secure enough with the meaning of Jesus' death for us enough to embrace or give credit where it is due to lesser things from other world religions. Not many are comfortable enough to do that -- they lack the full faith, so they must cut off bringing in any wisdom from other world faiths. They instead called everyone and everything a Satanist except brother Billy-Bob with the 35 IQ. Then they all start to act like Brother Billy.

Our culture has been hungry for a real spirituality ever since, and in the media it largely isn't coming from a Christian model, but a "New Age" one. I wonder however how much of a grasp people can have on many new age beliefs and how they make a world better. What I know is that when I go to my church I hear our pastor before every service talk about people who are healed of cancer, had successful operations, got a good new job, and other great news. I'm not sure what kind of New Age communities there are out there who do much more than charge huge amounts of money for seminars.

Real spirituality comes from a man who leans on God. It doesn't necessarily come prepackaged from God. That is the big heresy of the church. God is not responsible for the level of virtue on earth, but some of the modern church tries to make it seem that way. We have become afraid to think for ourselves, and this is reflected on the fact that the spiritual in society are not emoting their message into large segments of culture. Many are are not caring about the community of culture. They fear and even hate it.

As far as culture, I'm not really a total radical. I believe in the healthy psychology of an individual. I see that many who are artists or against the mainstream culture in one way or another simply aren't able to live an average "healthy life" -- they aren't able to get their needs met. I don't look down on the average person. There is much about modern American culture that I admire. I like the way that wealth is distributed, it seems OK, but I'm no expert. I've seen humanity do a lot worse than what we have now in America, and what they also have in Europe. When you look at many other nations I think Christiandom has produced some good results.

I look up to the ideal that Jesus Christ set up, but I'm not sure that in reality it leads to much other than pain and suffering here on earth.

16) Pornography

In modern culture, there can still be a definition of something harmful called lust which can be separated from sexual desire. It is sort of like the difference between appetite and gluttony. Lust, and its vitamins, eroticism or pornography, for others, often destroys a person's ability to function normally sexually by creating the "spoiled state" in the brain. If you want any ability to utilize your romantic goals, you must disband from a culture that is often more content with isolation than unity. Pornography is a good example of that.

I'm not going to say that I'm for or against pornography, I'm only going to examine it. At the time I write this, 2001, it has become more and more accepted as a normal part of life. In fact, in some ways, for those who believe in conspiracies of various sorts, it is almost like some sort of conspiracy has decide to promote porn in the last few years. You can't use the free speech and empowering tools of the internet without being totally bombarded with pornography. Even the opening screens of big corporate internet presences like AOL present images that border on pornographic, at least in some of the images they imply. Being driven down to your glands when you're trying to stay in your brain is indeed a sign of sabotage. It's amazing what a sobriety from pornography and inordinate sexual responses can bring a person. The reason why pornography is "disgusting" to look at for many people is that their unconscious strongly retains what this sobriety comprises -- that thing in us which bonds the possibility of unity with the opposite sex.

How can this sobriety be compared to the sobriety from intoxicating substances? It is another rung on the ladder for some to climb, and something that others may already have even when still a practicing addict with some other substance? Similarly the sobriety that codependents, gamblers and debtors gives to one are other rungs, or conditions people may or may not have.

What is it that comprises this disgust in those who are sober from pornography? It may be the stealing from privacy those moments comprising the inner life of something all important -- their life-time companion. Such theft can amount to the theft of the relationship itself, by counterfeiting it, by duplicating false images of it and trying to sell those as the real thing.

The idea for me which is seriously shocking is that pornography paralyzes normal male/female bonding in many, many people. I'm certain that there are married people who use pornography and have been married for many years and will stay together. But this fact does not distort

my understanding. This doesn't affect the fact that using pornography often will destroy or seriously hinder one's sense of sexual autonomy. What happens is like the way smoking spoils a person by quelling all anxiety, pornography spoils a person's sense of the gratification that comes from the opposite sex. It's not a gamble worth taking.

It's not that contemplation of a human body in every way possible is not beautiful. It is and feel that way is healthy. To be against it is unhealthy. Most true psychologists agree that sexual repression is dangerous. Christian leaders have been more tolerant on this issue, as the reality of nuerosis seems more and more clear to have some outletting through claiming one's sexual selfhood. In this writing I am only for people having real relationships.

I'm trying to fight that which comes between real people having meaningful relationships.

Pornography is like religion. It tries to reveal deeper and deeper mysteries. It is addictive, like a drug. People these days often have strong criticisms of religion, and these criticisms in a way can be applied to pornography.

Pornography is also similar to drugs. People get addicted to pornography. It doesn't mean that all people get addicted to pornography. Likewise, all people don't get addicted to alcohol some use it normally. For some of us, we have to realize that we can't have these relationships to alcohol and pornography.

It's not that the human body or the sex act is something bad, it's that the objectification of it in certain people leads to an addictive condition. People simply don't bond with members of the opposite sex in such a stage.

Likewise, with alcohol, the alcoholic becomes bound to the euphoric experience, becomes spoiled by it. It becomes the substitute for the real thing, for the normal reward experience that people have when they achieve something of value in society. Most people don't have this reaction, that isn't to say that even moderate use of alcohol inherently can't do more harm than good (the affects of alcohol that are said to be positive are the same as if one used other things, such as garlic).

The problem with the Christian media is that it tended to focus on aspects of why pornography that was bad that were not that able to be supported. One of which is the universal abuse of women. Anyone who knows anything about human nature knows that certain women don't mind posing for pornography for money, and don't have to be beaten into posing. The church, probably innocently enough, took a few cases of real abuse and globalized it. This isn't the truth and since it's not the truth it won't set anyone free.

--

It seems the time an obsession takes equals the amount of motivation to get rid of it. Even the analysis of the family of origin must be guided by prayer. Examining it too is an obsession or a problem to let go of. We are going to have to be stronger than another when they lecture us. Not all advice is good, even from a parent, this should be very clear. At these times then at them should anger come out, not at God or oneself. We can write these letters to others, but do we have to courage to send them?

17) Overcoming the Spirit of an Age

My definition of spirituality is that force which repairs the brokenness in society. It is therefore an essential component of any culture, and without it, people quickly turn to barbarism. When one sees the behavior that many Americans have gotten themselves to in the late 1990's and first few years of the 21st century, it's interesting to see lifestyles that have so little understanding of true spirituality. It seems much of the spiritual life has been sucked out of our culture.

True spirituality is also not that apparent in the Christian media. Although the Christian media -- the nationally syndicated radio programs and television shows and the popular books -- still maintains a good "hospital theology." This "hospital theology" works for a person in keeping their own life clean and orderly, in comparison to the lifestyle one sees on the police television real-life programs, but does it produce really emotionally healthy individuals who are able to heal the brokenness around them, to have intellectually sound conversations with people in their community who may not believe, or to reach out with a good and sincere demeanor to down and out people who don't believe? Is it only good for a somewhat cult-like and inferior understanding of the true mind of God and the direction we should take here on earth? I have seen the church operate both excellently and very poorly, and often times it seems in somewhat equal measures. I'm not a blind idealist: I'm not postulating an impossible Christianity, I'm just saying that I think certain priorities are out of place and that there is a lack of good leadership in the Christian media.

The modern evangelical church has at times a lack of concern or understanding about how to be spiritual -- under my definition. The evangelical church has capabilities to help certain segments of our culture -- but only a very non-intellectual and non-artistic segment.

This wouldn't be so bad but the Christian mainstream media is almost entirely evangelical. Many people in the West however are more educated than what this Christian media gives them credit for and hence there is no bridge between Christianity and them.

The more I see what exactly are the problems are in my real spiritual life, I see that some were put there by tenants that the church has given me. I have seen myself conquer these problems and go back to church and feel much freer and be able to see the pain and shallowness on so many faces. These are not people that need to be in pain or are shallow. The theology they were born into receiving is akin to being born two-hundred years again when the racism in America was what the average American understood as "right."

Our judges upheld that racism just like our pastors today uphold a spirituality they think is perfect. Neither is really to blame: it's just the spirit of the age. To overcome such a spirit of the age is what I'm writing about in my writing.

Many really needed the church to be their all in all a few times in their life. The church becomes their life. We hear stories that "God gave me my perfect wife," "God gave me my job" and that if we just do God's perfect will in my life we have the same as they.

18) Self-Hatred

There are many who consistently hold themselves up against negative light -- criticizing themselves in awful ways. This essentially cripples them in their all parts of their life

What is the problem with these self-haters? What is the cure? It seems interesting that they tend to not measure themselves against the millions of people that are now in jails or hospitals or the hundreds of thousands that are in various types of mental hospitals, or even the hundreds of thousands that are homeless. They aren't measuring themselves against the homes that have problems with physical abuse or addiction. Instead, they weigh themselves against what appears to be the "best" images that they can find. Or they are weighing themselves against what they see on the highways -- the multitudes who are driving more expensive cars than they.

They don't realize that their old conceptions of normal and average were misleading. So many of these average people have something tragically wrong if you just get close enough. The wife has a brother who is a habitual criminal, in and out of jails. Someone's daughter committed suicide at age 22. Someone's husband has a sister who was murdered. They don't have to look from a moral perspective, they don't even tend to see how the average is affected by disease, unemployment -- they don't want to weigh themselves against the unemployment rate, they don't want to get any higher self-esteem for some reason.

Granted, these people are often the victims of rejection that stems from parental or peer abuse. This might be very difficult to overcome -- but if it is to be overcome it will be by use of reason. There is no reason to have to measure up to someone's standard of normality -- normality is actually quite full of criminality, insanity, disease, and poverty. These are conditions of life that all of us find ourselves facing. I don't know who is painting a picture displaying hordes of perfect lives. It is plain truth you will confront this image where ever you go.

God, all live with some idea of Him, some live very closely to this idea. Some become so involved with the idea that they become sure that they are close to God, closer than many. And, if after many years of this closeness, they can say that somehow God has shaped their character.

But what if there are phenomena in their make-up which they rightfully detest, like St. Paul did when he said. "What I detest is what I do, and what I would do is what I don't do, who will save me from this wretched creature that I am?"

What if this doctrine of God and many elements of what Christianity is said to be about, not the whole of the doctrine but many parts of it, can be said to produce this self-loathing? What becomes of us, the honest seekers after God?

What is left to do but recover ourselves and try to understand the process more? What is left to do but understand the closeness to various phenomena which shaped us into creatures who have become something unlike what we had hoped to become, an unconsciousness which must be rendered a crime?

Yes, there is something in life which can take a soul with high aspirations and destroy its foundations. That, I believe, can be found to come sometimes from interaction with religion. The person experiences a life which has had the joy of friendships removed, feeling like a person who lives a half-life, immature for their age, or feels like a pauper, a coward, things going wrong in their life, equipment breaking, lots of phenomena which seem to test the patience.

How can they feel any other way? I'm not sure, but since these are only feelings, and inside there is the child who was very brave and after the cause of righteousness, I know they must persist in overcoming that which they feel is plaguing them.

How, I'm not sure, maybe it wasn't from this appropriation of the religious spirit which they've acquired, but from seeing many miserable religious people I believe it is. Now, instead of seeing it as a fight against "demons" who are persecuting them like they would "any good saint," They must see the whole fabric of their understanding of God to be at fault, and perhaps my understanding of people.

Religion has caused many to leave many things in their life up to destiny, thinking that, in the end, or in a few years in the future, the things that they want, the type of career they want, or type of spousal relationship they wanted, would appear. This, they owed to their destiny because they served God. they treated others like the way that they would be treated. So, being this way they could attribute things to destiny, or to God. And they could get guidance and comfort from God. In fact, like they've witnessed in countless Christians, they've developed a type of helplessness which came from depending on God.

Emotionally, some religious feel insecure even walking past people on the street. I don't see how any fruit from a real spiritual outlook can make one feel this insecurity. I believe its religious manipulation by bad understandings which makes people so low in self-esteem, or even normality.

The bible is full of the acts done to man by God. If you read the book of revelations its full of the "acts of wrath" poured out by God on man, and this is the last book in the bible, not an old testament document. So, very deep within me is this "fear of God," because I know that God has never spared me from pains. After all, I did say I had some gratitude because I know life can be much worse than what I experience, however, it seemed like when I was being raised all the great things in life were open before me and now it seems so many of them are very much cut-off. So, if bad things happen primarily to people who are not fully in the will of God, which is the message of the bible primarily, how can we find a line in between where being in the will of God is not a crippling experience?

The bible seems to contradict itself on the point of bad things happening to bad people primarily, or at least express an existential reality which goes beyond the mind of man to figure out the nature of a given occurrence. Throughout proverbs it is stated dozens of times that ill fate befalls the wicked in this life. In the New Testament as in the book of job bad things happened to God's elect. But do those Elect debase themselves constantly? Are they neurotic? Do they "hate their lives"?

To go backwards in life to a state in which they were before they found an pre-occupation with religion is usually a bad aim. They must find a real way to break the negativity of obsession with religion that they have in themselves.

This must be in some ways dealing also with the mental construct that I have developed in which I experience phenomena that I, like countless others, declare to be guidance from God. And, this plays into the hand of not leaving things I desire in the hands of destiny. Many Christians will say that things are going to work out for them because God is on their side. I think they probably lead fairly shallow lives, but then they lead lives dedicated to God, and this is what God probably wants.

And now I get into the whole area of what is the reality of God. Is the reality of God able to be changed: are we allowed to go into another reality of God, like going into a parallel universe? I think many people would say yes. What if you feel that you know enough of God and have really had it with the limitations you feel he imposes on you? Or better, have had it with what the Idea of God imposes on you. It may be that God is wholly good and does not desire for any to go through the weakness of character that they still experience while being dedicated to God. Do they have to go through these problems for other reasons? Can this humility, being "buffeted" by demons like supposedly St. Paul was, find a place in psychological health of the 21st century and beyond?

It is true that some do live a life that is above the morality of the mass. The morality of the mass, that which is upheld by judges and the police, will always lead to or at least permit war, eventually. The morality of the mass easily lead to isolation of families, of people, or races. The morality of the mass, whereas it can be helpful in some areas, can not be trusted in all areas. There has to be faith in something that is above it.

When we lose touch with prayer we are letting go of the attention that God gives us. We lose our power of focus, we get literally lost, lost in the activity surrounding us. This activity can even include the stupidity and malice of those in our surroundings, especially those who don't even pretend to be following a spiritual path. Being still, clearing the mind, and watching the movements of the body muscular movements to quiet them down, is well worth it when prayer can be the result.

Some of us need love in ways we are not getting, like self-worth. Self-worth is not coming to many. Self-worth takes the ability to give out appreciation before we can give it. Maybe these tormented souls are also not appreciating others.

19) Virtuism

Creative Virtue, while maybe having Christian members, is not a Christian organization per se. It is, like AA, using Christian ideas to help focus artists and others who have come upon brick walls that cultures often create.

Study where modernism failed, and how an emphasis on the virtues in philosophy is imperative to human survival.

It could be that the future may see many of the latter half of the 20th Century artists in the same way we see the Medieval artists. But I think it's dangerous to be against too much modern art. Ultimately you have to come to face it, and try to see what there is of value in it. Often, there may not really be anything of value and then it's a personal decision. Even Marcel Duchamp said this about certain modern art ("Neo-Dada").

The goal is to protect the beatific and the artistically meaningful from being overshadowed. I see a problem in that when one picks up a current art magazine like Art Forum or Art News, there is so much of the abstract and non-aesthetic, non-beatific work which gets so much coverage. I wonder what the relation is of these artists (covered often in Art Forum) and the mastery of the power structure. Often I wonder if a lot of these artists aren't just people with money and influence, and the editors of such magazines know what perks comes with praising such artists. I've thought perhaps I've seen one over the years that was a totally corrupt magazine, perhaps totally biased on the notion of covering whom with get a few (the editors/owners) what, and having very little to do with aesthetics.

And perhaps many of the gallery situations are like this also. So, then the new order, the equality you spoke of.....I am interested in this because I think it can make all of our lives better, but then I am also have a concern for art, and the access of great artists have to the public. I have seen that in history it is often the case that great artists don't have access to the public until they die.

It could be that the distant future may see many of the latter half of the 20th Century artists in the same way we see the medieval artists. I always like to go about my work thinking in this way, to avoid any assumptions. But I think it's dangerous to be too much against modern art, ultimately you have to come to it, face it, and try to see what there is of value in it. Often, there may not really be anything of value and then it's a personal decision. Even Marcel Duchamp said this about certain modern art ("Neo-Dada").

Some people of a Christian bent might not see a reason to get involved in a collective of people who call themselves Virtuists, or Creative Virtue. They may say, 'There's William Bennett, there's my local church, there's even Virtue magazine." The fact is that there isn't that much of a global radius for this influence.

The value was something like this: life has destructive tendencies, and art is life's positive tendency....so work for art and work for the positive.

Emotive Virtuism was set in place by the notion that one thing that could be shocking, overwhelming and overlooked in today's aesthetics are various ideas surrounding virtue. A main idea is that the act of virtue produces the powerful aesthetic experience.

Virtue does not have to be void of humor. Actually, the analysis of the meme virtue will provide tons of humor. The Virtuist aesthetic has lots of humor. This is a funny topic. Our superego's are drenched and they need to trickle down into our real world, the manner and method seems to be humor. It will be our strength in discussing an area that the art world seems to own explicitly, and which the art-depraved world seeks to criticize art culture with.

There is a drastic need to influence the body of artists known as Hollywood. Truly, the people responsible for many of these programs are not artists. They're salespeople. Soap salespeople, no, salespeople of a lifestyle of death. The crime rate in America is still much worse than it was in decades past. Is this progress? I think it is directly because television and movies have become the educational medium for most but a few youth. The intellectual and emotional condition of many Americans is directly related to television because it is the sole educational and cultural system. It is because of the crude artless nature of many of the writers in Hollywood that youth are diseducated against life and brought into a world in which murder is a leading cause of death among the young.

The world would be a better place if we could face the failures of the human race without a pride that is inevitably going to let us down. Think of what a greater sense of brotherhood we would achieve.

Art has become for so many a reason for enduring poverty. It gives one a dignity in poverty. Not only is it the cause of poverty, but it is the cause of self-esteem in poverty. And if one can learn to live off ideas, one need not feel one's hunger as much.

I think that there is some kind of new phenomena, which can hardly be called "art" as we know it. But these products are not created in the same way that aesthetically-charged art of old is. These new products are hardly art, perhaps like some non-metaphysically influenced writing is hardly philosophy. It becomes calculus, logic, word games, linguistics, but it isn't very similar to concerns of earlier philosophers.

Are we going to be robbed of our aesthetic experiences? Shall we be told that the feelings Renoir gives us is on the level of abstract "expressions" or photographs of people painted blue with feather dusters up their behind (such subject matter is the staple of Art Forum magazine).

I'm not sure that any art work in itself is going to do that much. I think we must become radical "Virtuists" -- we must make the realm of human interaction beautiful. We must make that our canvas, our song, our medium.

Much of the world is caught right now in a lie that most of the moderately well-off people are evil. So they turn to love of the bizarre and the obscene and other godless ideas. But if they would accept that life rewards good men and that many of the men they call evil are good men, then they will repent, become good and then be rewarded with a good job and be friends with the good.

We abstract the knowledge of virtue from experience of practical social outcomes. We try to silence ourselves to listen to the voice of the aesthetic. This voice testifies to the strength of kindness and altruism, and by listening to it, we achieve a superior life.

It is often a silly game to play with ethics in the mind, in a legalistic way or in university, hopefully we can witness the "bad feeling" this gives us.

I'm trying to tie in the validation that aesthetic philosophers use in other areas of philosophy.

26) The Church and World Progress

There is no absolute power for good, nor human protest, wholly against "the church." The church is outside of the human parameters because it exists in the heart of God for very special purposes.

It is a false abstraction that there is something unified which we can call the Western Christian Church, or the church as represented in any country.

When the world's objective progress has grown, it has often done so against the wishes of "the church." Major progresses in many sciences were done so against the wishes of the church. Finally some had to say "enough!" and get the church out of their way.

You can see the reaction science has had since then. It has blossomed. Not only science but human rights likewise has grown against the backdrop of a church which is often offended in conversation or print.

I come from a relatively strong church background so I know it's painful to admit but take a look at how often "the church" fought against human rights. Human rights in some respects are also blossoming.

If the Postmodernists are right, this is an illusion and we really aren't growing. The area is a vast study that requires correct statistics.

It seems true that to be a truly intelligent person can not experience a life with belief in the fundamentalist's God that is compatible with a life in which our "will to power" (Neitzchean) or "drive to self-actualize"(Maslow) is present. If we try to find what prevents us from living a life that we have deep in our heart as the life we want to lead, then the reason must be found in examining the things we currently do. The most overwhelming I can see is the interaction of religious ideas to my life and so the answer must be found in changing or eliminating some of these religious ideas.

Perhaps religion has become a way for some of not valuing talents that we have, over-valuing something in society which instead of good, is really despicable. How much is really done by people who hold certain religious ideas of God providing them all their needs? Perhaps a lot, just because I ask the question doesn't mean I deny the premise.

If one is in a similar position, I think, and if one is lucky, one can come to a point in their lives where they say, "Ag! I'm not a person like I wanted to be, what is wrong what needs to change?"

Much of the preaching and music that one hears on the Christian radio and perhaps TV centers on making one weak so that the power of God can be made manifest. And, of course, there is the verse that God's power is made greatest in our weakness. But this verse should not have to become the center of a Christian's life, can it just become a phase that one can be in when one is in need of being humbled?

One could fit in with many mainstream religions such as Catholicism and live a life of the heroic and independent without being forced to live in the mushiness of the cult of weakness, which is backed up by verses from the bible. There are probably some, like those who are similar to the TV and Radio groups, in which the heresy of depending on God for all one's needs is too overt not to be unpleasant and having a corrupting influence. Because if you are going to believe in God to meet all your needs, when your needs are not getting met you will blame God. You will blame God when your desires become your needs, and you will be unexercised in your own willpower and ability by waiting and becoming dependent minded.

Are we a fool to take God's credit? If we "hear" the voice of God, or "discern" the voice of God, are we a fool to believe that God will allow us, say, to go into debt and pull us out of it, that God will find us a perfect wife without us having to look hard? Both of these things in the real world are illogical in the most part. Only time will tell in the believer's life. But perhaps this kind of irrational hope and belief in the powers of God to achieve self-serving ends is more destructive to a modern life like than positive.

Some rigid in the faith would say that we have fallen outside of the perfect will of God when good things don't happen to us and therefore the good things that he can do for his other children he can not do for us. This is shown by many theologians, even modern evangelical ones. Yet this is a most popular self-serving power tactic. It is clear that those who use religion are not always to be trusted, and also religious leaders, who would set up these rules, are usually "in the leisure class" (as described in the book "The Theory of the Leisure Class") or in the "missionary jet set."

It is the desire to have God mold our lives into these scrupulous moral perfections, the destructive root of our weaknesses?

Is there a God who cares about reforming alcoholics and street people? Is he the God who keeps us weak, so that we can keep this goal as a current goal? When we achieve on the road of self-actualization do we always leave behind us the weak and oppressed, to join in with the beautiful people?

Today, I feel like I've had enough of that kind of ministry. So few who consider themselves Christian ministers really take out any time to help the outcasts of society. Many congregation members probably live out a life in a meaningless examination of if they are going to go to heaven when they die, a pursuit that has little outward manifestation to society, but instead of a manifestation to society, many do it towards God only, as in making sure their creed is rigid and prejudiced enough, seeing how many sects they can consider more outcasts in the kingdom than they just by a mere twist of belief, etc. I have been there: I know. This constitutes a large portion of Christian Evangelicalism.

I longed to be some kind of inspiration of man and grow somehow famous because of what I've written. What is in my heart is to feel this transforming power that I have experienced from time to time. Its made my assurance of salvation very real to me. It's made me feel a real wonder in being alive.

Prayer and with a place for the Lord in your life, empties out the empty feelings that the faithless around us feel. It influences us by the recognition of that spiritual principal: "no one can say I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin."

But sometimes look at it deeper, ask yourself would you like these things taken away from you, the things that make you happy? Then realize the things you want will come not when the Lord sees your ready but when you make yourself ready. When you fast, tithe, fellowship, stay humble, you will grow in joy, you will grow in riches, you will grow in abilities, when you grow in divinity, when you say to God, again, once more from your heart, I'm sorry for my sin.

Our most important lesson is that if we want to be happy, we must be thankful; to count our blessings one by one, as often as we can.

I totally doubt the power of those who criticize the "exoteric" body of Christ.

You can never have too many books written about becoming a happier, more content, and more loving person. This is the supreme goal, and even those who have higher levels of love, happiness and contentment than most still enjoying refining their methods.

Is it too much to ask our fellow man if one wants to retire from the world, the early 21st century Western world, or one doesn't want play a big role in it? To be given what is sufficient by the gifts of the land, or the Spirit, and one lose all the spiritual, mental, and social distortions we see around us?

As far as defining God, it seems that God must be, an interactive and concerned power greater than oneself. To make God passive and uncaring to our own growth is to deny something most important, and yet this is present in how many people define God today. People often have very unwise limitations on what they think God is capable of doign, such as "How can God be everywhere at once?" If we even look at the idea of God existing in infinite time, God would have inifinity to scan each person's mind for prayer requests.

It is difficult for a man to even start any kind of spiritual work on himself. His environment is seldom profitable toward this work. He must always struggle. All men struggle with themselves or they spiritually atrophy, there are no perfect people in the realms of character.

There never really was a harsh God. This concept was just a mirage. It was created by hearing other people describe falsely the power behind their life.

I can't see losing touch with the harsh God as a decline, unless it brings us to a point where we don't believe in "the laws of karma," of reaping what we sow. The wrath of God in the Old Testament has to always be weighed against the fact that the tribes he was directing the Israelites to fight against were very barbaric and committed human sacrifice quite often. It will have to be weighed out by results over time.

I don't know if I have arrived at it, but I feel that the God I want to lose touch with is a God that I feel I can understand. Even if we have a book like the bible can we assume that God is still a mystery, and the God that get angry with and criticize and philosophize against is a delusion set into our mind by negative tendencies in our society or even pressure by the demonic world?

21) God as Reality verses God as Construct

To love God is the greatest commandment. To love God is to at least trust Him to have the ability to answer prayer. To trust Him to remove our imperfections from us. But what if He doesn't? Can we love a God who won't fulfill His promises? I am a meter of God's love -- not His love to others, but His love to me. In the same way people fail in their daily lives, they fail in recognizing what God really is to them/does for them in their lives.

I can trace probably some of my negativity to conversations with "God" --philosophical discussions with God, so I doubt that this "God" is really the God of love described in the bible, but instead a mental construct. I once wrote:

a) There is a God b) He is not the God that is breathing down my neck c) The only way to lose that God is to pray to the real God to take it away.

The God I want to lose touch with is a God that I feel I can always understand. Even if we have a book like the bible can we assume that God is still a mystery, and the God that we get angry with and criticize and philosophize against is a delusion set into our mind by negative tendencies in our society.

The idea of assuming being able to understand everything that God is brings one to the world of despair. We assume we are able to produce despair by limiting that which is God.

The truth will set us free. The true definition of freedom is: "I am not free if I can't feel the happiness it is to be me."

22) Optimization

I think first and foremost it is important to find a way of optimization, something that enables one to work in one's own solution set -- a state where one is at one's most integrated in the different adult archetypes Jung postulated: King, Warrior, Magi, Lover (and Trickster).

Too many people who have some good revelations about what is beautiful and spiritual in human nature seem to be missing in certain areas. So, one has enough work on oneself in order to create, in order to be fully productive so often that it is hard sometimes to get beyond the "work on oneself." Indeed, this is where many lose practically their whole life by adhering to cults. One has to get beyond it and one can't be obsessive about interpersonal perfection -- that is a crock as well. Perhaps one's inner warrior can prevent against this. To answer your question in other ways, I have the Emotive Virtuism stuff. I have to say that at least for me that is a living breathing system, and I've done a lot of writing in it that is in bits and scraps, probably about 50 pages, which still hasn't seen the web page yet.

Seems like in my life I have found the secrets of success. As I see them, these secrets are:

1) Do not express negative emotions 2) Ask new questions for positive results in overcoming difficult problems. 3) Don't be too guilty to pray to God about anything --don't have too strict a view of God, of what He will or won't do for you, of what He does or doesn't require of you. This frees the objective God from our subjective superego. It is often impossible to tell what is the pleading of God from the psychological constraint of our superego.

We should tell ourselves and others to retain the thing inside us that attracted friends, that attracted a mate, no matter how indulgent it might seem, as long as you stay in the Will of God for your life.

Maybe we need most to gain an objectivity to ourselves, to see what we could mean to the stranger, to see how they perceive us, to see if we seem attractive to others, to see how they stereotype us.

Creative Virtue

R.S. Pearson Miscellaneous Writings