Every year begins with hopes for a better year, whether in your fiscal life, your love life, your health, your personal and professional achievements, or whatever.
I complained because 2010 was a bad year with having to change jobs and moving, but that was shortsighted on my part.
I was focused on my exterior situation, on the less than ideal conditions these things imposed on my family.
I lost sight of my inner self.
Not the self I call "I" --the entity that wants 'things' like computers, money, recognition and praise-- but the deeper self I feel to be there --the entity that wants to just Be, to exist. But to exist in Love.
Rumi described that Love as God, and living in that state of Love as being God.
Heresy you say? That would make Ralph Also Emerson also a heretic, and maybe he was. But I like him anyway. In his poem Gnothi Seauton (Greek for Know Thyself, click here to read the whole poem) he wrote in part:
God dwells in thee.
It is no metaphor nor parable,
It is unknown to thousands, and to thee;
Yet there is God.
One of my favorite prophets, Zarathustra, said that to live a good, happy, productive life means to
"think good thoughts, say good words, and do good deeds."
The founder of Reike, Mikao Usui, prescribed happiness as being achievable in a similar manner, one day at a time:
At least for today:
Do not be angry,
Do not worry,
Be grateful,
Work with diligence,
Be kind to people.
Let's do it, every day, together, in 2012, and make our true selves happy as we are kind and productive and grateful!
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Carlsbad Caverns: a special tour of the "Scenic Rooms:" the King's Palace, the Papoose Room, the Queen's Chamber, and the Green Lake Room. Speleothems up close and personal! The same scenic rooms cave photos can also be seen as a slide-show set to music, by downloading it here. It is less than 11 minutes long. |
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2 |
Impressions on reading Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. An overall positive review that starts with a discussion of Rice's walking away from her church, and my own somewhat similarly motivated self-unchurching some time ago. |
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Impressions on reading Beyond Fundamentalism, Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization by Reza Aslan (Random House 2010, originally published as How to Win a Cosmic War). I found this book to be filled with a hope that I can't connect with, not at this time. |
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4 |
Love Burning in the Soul; The Story of the Christian Mystics, from Saint Paul to Thomas Merton, by James Harpur (New Seeds, 2005). This book gave me a chance to revisit some of my favorite mystics and their messages. |
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A book review turned into an endorsement: Eric Zuesse's Christ's Ventriloquists turns Biblical inerrancy completely on its head by showing quite convincingly that Paul's new religion was a fraudulent misappropriation of a Jesus who was born Jewish, lived Jewish, and died Jewish. Note that Eric's last name is Zuesse, not Zeusse. |
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Heaven, Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, by Lisa Miller is the most perfect reflection of my own beliefs, at this time, that I have yet come across. In fact, it so perfectly reflects my own feelings that I may just stop looking at this subject for a while. To me this book was like a great mutli-course meal, and I am satisfied, even satiated. (Some additions made on 2/12/12) |
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Next: a walk in a park: up a drainage and down a trail in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Expect it in late March. |
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There is nothing quite like a new Elaine Pagels book to bring cheer to a new year. Her latest is Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation and it is full of wonderful insghts, that in one instance compare very well with Eric Zuesse's views (same link as item 5, above) on the very strained relations between Jewish-Christians, like the John that wrote Revelations, and Paul's Christians. |
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A short Winter 2012 visit to a place on the Colorado River where the ashes of three Van Luiks have been scattered. |
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A walk through burned out desert in Carlsbad Caverns National Park: in two parts, one walk in February 2012, the other in March, 2012, to see progress being made in re-growth of vegetation. |
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A witchcraft outbreak in the Aquiu Pueblo of New Mexico in the 18th century, compared with witchcraft outbreaks in Salem, Massachussetts and elsewhere and based on the 2006 book: The WITCHES of ABIQUIU, THE GOVERNOR, THE PRIEST, THE GENIZARO INDIANS, AND THE DEVIL by Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks. |
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Two reviews are still in progress: (2) Mystical Islam, An Introduction to Sufism by Julian Baldick. Still being read. |
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Another Eric Zuesse book, this one on the religious motivation behind Hitlers determination to carry out the extermination of the Jews: Why the Holocaust Happened : Its Religious Cause & Scholarly Cover-Up. (book still being read, be patient, two other reviews were in progress already) |
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Finally, Jean Danielou's classic "The theology of Jewish Christianity" is on my "next" reading list. Read it decades ago, want to see what impressions it gives me now when I look up his treatment of some selected topics I remember being impressed with before. |
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