Friday, July 17, 2009

Jan 14,15 2005

http://angeldynamics.blogspot.com/
Subject: wow
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 12:33:57 -0800

Wow!

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences of Sabrina with me. Amazing story. Amazing life. Amazing trial of death. How you experienced that writing episode! You said it was 9 pages of utter madness? Must be something in that? No?? You were obviously connected to her - felt something of what she felt. Your hands didn't exist?! Wow! She seems an angel of a sort, but why did she have to destroy the body to do that??? Life is so precious. I keep rereadingit & get different things. Some parts remind me of Less, some of Kimble.

Speaking of guardian angle -- I have another friend who died long ago and it was weird - OK, I was at this point in my life - I don't know how I do it - Maybe I was a master magician in a past life or a Yogi or something but every now & then I would go through this phase where I could do something, like back then I was, like I say don't know what it was but I would think a certain thought about someone & they would appear - You know -I'd run into them on the street or something. OK so, it was working pretty good then at some point I decided that I wanted to see Kimble. It was almost like a test to this in a way ('cause it was like a year or more since I had seen him last) but I really wanted to see him too. And so I did, whatever that was - thought a certain thought .... He didn't appear, but he kept showing up in my dreams! I was like, No; I want to see him in the flesh. So I did it again - stronger - he came into many many dreams, it was almost like - "Ed what do you want?" But he still did not come in the physical. Don't know exactly what happened next, I must of did some research - I remember calling some library in the Midwest and some neighbor of his parents I guess - yes that's what I did - and she (the neighbor) said "Is that the one who died?" So I wrote Al immediately and it was true.

That was the last time I ever did that thing again where I put out the thought to see someone, I don't know from the whole shock of it all, I sort of forgot it - how to do it - whatever - But weird - a few years later I was in graduate school and at one point I was feeling overworked and tired and down. I just took the tiniest catnap, had a tiny dream- it was Kimble! He was like giving me encouragement. It was like "come on, Ed" That totally invigorated me & all, woke up w/ a bang - it was like he was really there, different than other "dreams". I felt visited by a friend! That feeling after of savoring the contentment of connection. You know that feeling?

So, yeah, a few years later still, I'm at some spiritualist meeting or something, like a church, Rob Pierce dragged me down there I guess, So there's this woman who was reading my spirit guides (they do that stuff) and she told me I have a native American Spirit Guide. That was cool - then somehow it hit me - That is Kimble! (Kimble was ¾ native American 1/4 black - but a major theme in his life, grew up on a reservation, learned that special magic from his grandfather or uncle or something, remember him saying)

So wow, yes maybe Sabrina will be your angel. Maybe some people are only meant to be here for a little while. I do not believe in her method of getting there, to waste a young healthy body that even you were envious of seems to me to be the crime of all crimes, nevertheless, there are things I do not understand. Perhaps she gave you a piece of herself. Perhaps it was that part of her that you were envious of. Perhaps that part is now you. Perhaps she couldn't bare the pain of being that great, that well put together, that well thought of. In that way it is touching that she would sacrifice herself to give the pieces to the ones she loved. I compare her to Less somehow. If I could only remember his last letter.... He wasn't sad at all but I don't think he saw the sense of this physical world. He was also an amazing mystical being that we all liked. I'll have to dig up a picture of him somewhere. At some point I'd like to see a picture of Sabrina. I have these crazy thoughts sometimes... Look! even on Grandpa tree! Whoever Dana Murry is (1982-2002) they died at 20. I could be totally totally crazy but I think there are these people who live to the age of 18, 20 or so and keep recycling.

If you feel her, she is definitely around you. I have felt the presence of people I was close to after they passed. It is usually a lighter feeling - With Bobbie I went to the ocean near where he livedand it was like he was high in the sky - total spirit-total bliss. (His body incinerated in seconds in an airplane crash) Nevertheless there is sometimes something I'd like to ask him or...
It's still funny to think that the physical world exists without this person in it. Sorry. Bittersweet is still bitter.

My project?? Thank you for asking. Wow. Well I won't totally say on line 'cause who knows where all these asci characters will end up. But it's not as amazing as it seems. I'm just very tired of it by now. Very, very tired. In fact I should go down to the garage right now and change some numbers, find the best ones and start it going on the final crank. Don't seem like the sort of guy that has 14 computers running non-stop, do I???? And once I tell you what it's for it would seem even that much less like me. I guess I always had a very scientific / mathematical mind but I see what society has made of all that. I mean look at Einstein. There is a beauty to finding the rhyme of the universe, I'm sure that Einstein got a high from that but then what's the first thing society does with his discovery???
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Give me a break! It's like why come up with something to give it to these fools? It's like if I were Einstein and had a chance to do it again I'd do it differently. Maybe I would, instead, apply my analytical skills to that which is binding the people, not so much the atoms. I'd love to talk about it sometime but the energy has got to feel right. I don't know but when I talk with people I have to feel the space to talk - do you know what I mean?? I feel I have a lot to say but do not so often feel that the space is there.

The other thing is that I feel a little dumb to talk about it too much. I mean, I have successful numbers but I do not have success yet with it in the world. You know - feels like, well maybe I'm a fool...

Do ask me about it again sometime.
Pickles and onions eh?
I've been chowing on these roasted chickpeas. I should definitely score up some food somewhere.
Do write back. (Tell me I'm not crazy)
Ed


On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 00:24:30 +0000,

You're not crazy, Ed. And even if you are there are a lot of people experiencing the same kind of crazy right now. You know, whatever you're working on it sounds like you should meet a couple friends of mine, they're engineering students at MIT who also happen to be the sort of people you'd expect to grow up to be high priests of something or other. That was my gut reaction when I read about the 14 computers, wow, this guy has to meet Daniel-san and Elmo. Like maybe you'd all come up with some cool brainstorm 20 years from now or something. Personally I'm fascinated by science but stymied by the math. It's probably why I hang around with science people so much.

So about the Nagasaki-Hiroshima thing... A tool only amplifies the capabilities of humans to do what they will...the real issue is this whole problem of human hatreds, which is a tough nut to crack. I had this real strong breakthrough maybe 2 weeks ago, I think it was the sum result of excessive amounts each of: social science reading, zen practice, studying postmodernism, and grieving a friend's death. It all managed to shake me out of my usual normative patterns, out of "logic" and "common sense."

I'm looking at the past 1000 years or so and what I'm seeing is a couple things:

1. Our dominant world religions are handed down, more focused on dogma than on individual spiritual revelations. Thus the methods of worship are less likely to hold the creation of a truly ecstatic experience for the adherents as a high priority. Dogmatic religions are also likely to take themselves far too seriously for any one's good--taking things too seriously also impedes ecstatic experience.

2. The inner logic of our spiritual faiths in many ways reflects our culture's idea of "common sense"...a notion that is built from daily experience. Thus, a dogmatic faith is a reflection of a dogmatic nation-state/empire governmental system. A dogmatic faith implies certain power relations are "normal" within your society, either in a marriage, in a family, in a company, in a nation (with its government and police force), in a global economy.

3. Religious ecstasy is a fundamental need of the human heart...even if you're flashing the stage at Rocky Horror Picture Show, or dancing in a club, you can be reaching those peaks of ecstasy that your emotional well-being periodically requires. Because handed down (non-revelatory) religions tend to have crappier methods of inspiring ecstasy (choosing homilies over sweat lodges, for instance) and tend to impede visionary experiences further by taking themselves too damn seriously, they rely on other methods for creating loyalty and emotional attachment among their constituents. These other methods basically involve spinning some form of cosmic drama, which inspires not only fear and guilt but also ecstatic moments of feeling forgiven and unconditionally loved. Basically you end up creating a logic of diametrically opposed opposites: good and evil, heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, civilization and savagery, high and low, beginning and end, life and death, mercy and wrath, love and hate, reward and punishment. Opposites are moving. They're dramatic. They will snag your audience. Realizing God loves you unconditionally is only really dramatic if you believed at some point that God was ready to smote you into the nether reaches of hell. Hero stories and victim stories are particularly popular, even when there is no real-world basis for victim stories (look at what Christian Europe did with the Jesus story, spinning a victim hood story that's plagued us for centuries now, even though Christians haven't been oppressed since the council of Nicaea). This is also part of the death fetish thing we talked about the first time we met. Thus a logic of opposites is attractive both to "the masses," and to the religious and political power structures that can use opposites-thinking to inspire the loyalty of these masses.

4. Opposites don't really exist in the real world. A tree does not have an opposite. I do not have an opposite. I may think of my brother as being my opposite, but this is only possible by creating a conceptualized "self" and a conceptualized "little brother," and then setting them up as polarized figures in the mind. But the conceptual versions of things are not those things. Imposing opposites-thinking on the real world teaches us to see the concept of something rather than that thing itself. Thus it makes us more likely to project our own issues onto external realities. Our relationships with other people (and our planet too) become altered and shaded by the concepts we have confused the actual people with. We interact with concepts instead of people.

5. Opposites thinking also creates a tendency within individuals and cultures to amputate and repress that which does not fit into the preconceived mold. For instance, if I am a Catholic and also gay, one or the other must be given up. Often when we try to dissociate ourselves from a quality our worldview can't accommodate, we become more likely to project that particular quality onto an "enemy." I am not savage, that Injun is...I am not decadent and vain, that American infidel is. And then people try to burn those elements of themselves in effigy by acting with aggression towards this "enemy." It's attempting to practice a form of sympathetic magic, like poking a voodoo doll...by killing Injuns, Spanish conquistadors were trying to both kill their own "barbarism" and prove their loyalty to a certain "civilized" worldview. But this whole system relies on seeing the concept rather than the person, "savagery" rather than an indigenous group of swiddenists.

6. Especially when societies, elites, and special interest groups want to take something (labor, resources, commodities, etc.), this whole process helps a society and individual soldiers, etc. to rationalize what they're doing to get said resources, commodities, etc. People fight over ideas and over stuff, but usually both.

7. Once a "war" of sorts has started and there is a history of aggression, violence on both sides, the process of making conceptual enemies out of actual people is aggravated, especially if you are the attacked party. Of course, both groups usually claim to be the threatened/attacked party, even if it's a perfectly ridiculous claim (see the parts above about the hero/victim stories). The emotional quality of the interaction is intensified, and religious and political loyalties are deepened and personalized. Religions and governments actually gain a lot of power by sacrificing some of their citizens in a conflict.

8. Right now the war system is the only game in town, kind of like global capitalism. This gives it a lot of power in and of itself. (Consider the military-industrial complex, most neo-conservative doctrine, and the "Realist" school of international relations). At the end of the day it's what backs up most international politics--the power of guns and the power of politics.
So what I'm suggesting, in the long run, is an overhaul of our logic and our aesthetics. I think such an overhaul would eventually change the nature of our language, our family life, our religion, our political system, our consumer culture and economic system, our environmental relations, and our international systems. Because even if these things don't objectively change, don't lose objective power, people would stop taking them seriously. They'd be bullies with guns, without any frilly meanings or dramas to pretty up the picture. And maybe that's a place to start. At the same time, it's hard to change the inner topography of your logic when you're constantly swimming in power structures that justify themselves through opposites thinking. Like if fish spoke to you, they'd have no word for water, all that kind of thing. So I don't really know how much hope there is for the project. But then again maybe an aesthetic revolution could slip in under the radar in a way a political revolution couldn't. I'm also starting to think that any form of revolution that does not overhaul the logic of opposites is pretty much doomed to failure. Anyway I'm still trying to work it out in my head. Tell me what you think of this. I'm trying to understand this whole hatred thing. It doesn't particularly make sense. All hatred of others is essentially a hatred of self. If I could I'd help build a peaceful world. I'm trying to find something with a chance of success.

Roasted Chickpeas,
Rachel



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