Realizations

Philosophy in the Middle of the Desert

On the Tips of our Tongues April 24, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 3:26 pm
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Father, order my thoughts and make them words.

There is something on the tips of all our tongues.  It’s the look on the face of a dying man, just released from the hospital, sitting with his eyes closed listening to his friends read a book with him, resting in the gift of that moment.  There’s something there. Something so powerful that I’m speechless, and I don’t dare to interrupt the embrace of that bliss. We all felt it but we couldn’t grasp it; we didn’t know what to do except savor it before it was gone. There are no words for that feeling. We just don’t get it. It’s on the tip of our tongues but we can’t say it.   On the tip of our hearts and souls but we cannot comprehend it.

It’s when a random song starts playing and it unexpectedly brings you to your knees, brings tears to your eyes, and all you can think to do is stretch out your hands to praise God, the only one you can think to attribute such euphoria to.  We don’t understand why or how, but it’s there. There’s something there which we just can’t get at.

But very soon all will be complete and we will see it as it truly is. We will become real and experience reality. We will sense with maximum perception.  For we will no longer glimpse the divine with fleeting experiences, but we will live the divine.

When you smell a fragrance you haven’t smelled since childhood and the nostalgia overwhelms all your senses and melts you inside, bringing you close to unconsciousness, it is a taste of what is to come.  Though right now we can only taste it on the tips of our tongues.  There’s something happening in our midst that is deeper than anything we can ever know right now.  Something is about to burst at the seams.  And when it does we will look back and laugh at our finitude.  But until then all we have are snapshots into the Director’s commentary, glimpses of the divine.

photo (2)

 

These Elaborate Machines November 6, 2012

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Science/Atheism/Evolution/Creationism,Terremoto — milesprowers @ 5:14 pm
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[as written 81311 – 31712, with additions on 11612]

 
On 81011 during our Bible Study prayer time, when it came time for my prayer requests, my small group leader prayed over me and lifted up my requests from the night, and I just started praying for the requests myself as if I wasn’t me.  As if from my universal, eternal soul that is not confined to a body or circumstances or personality, but the universal spirit that we all have before being shaped by our lives.  As I (the spirit, of God Himself perhaps, which is universally the same but individually molded depending on each person’s nature and nurture) was praying for Miles Prowers, who he is and has become, all that makes Miles Prowers Miles Prowers, that particular character in God’s story of Earth History.

And it produced in me a bizarre sympathy for me, as if I was praying for a dear friend who I knew more intimately than anyone else.  I prayed for his job, knowing just how stressful it was and how it conflicted with his extreme desires to be an artist.  I prayed for his brother, whom he’d always known and loved since youth.  It was a surreal experience that had no reason for happening, it just happened.  Since then I’ve never attempted to recreate that perspective, because it was kind of weird, and I’m not sure it was God-honoring, though I have no reason to believe it isn’t either; it’s just that I’d never thought or heard about something like that, so I don’t know what to think.

 

Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

 
But what are we really?  I can’t figure out how to distinguish between soul and spirit and mind and heart and body.  All I know is that in the beginning God created Adam from the dust and then breathed life into him, as if breathing in His own Spirit into him.  As if he constructed all these little organic machines and then turned them on by breathing His electricity into them.  So then do animals have spirits?  Do they have the spirit of God in them, keeping them alive?  Or was it just His Spirit that sparked them into motion and got fate in motion to carry itself out?  Obviously there is a stark contrast between the most sophisticated animal and the dumbest human, in that the dumbest human is still a human being.  Is the contrast because man has a spirit and animal does not?  As if when you took away the spirit in man he became an animal?  Or do they both have the breath of God’s Spirit in them both keeping them alive and man’s body is just that much more elaborate than the animal’s to allow for consciousness?  The electricity through these elaborate machines of ours.

 

Or do man and animal still have spirit at all after the initial God breathe?  If man is cloned will it be an animal version of man, with no consciousness?  I used to think so, but I doubt it now.  He’ll still have all the functions for consciousness that the physical brain allows.  He may be mentally retarded, as a copy is never as good as the original, but that doesn’t make him unconscious.  We are truly unique, self-conscious beings, but are we only machines made to resemble the one true Being?

 

[11612- An interesting note, made by an old, pot-smoking hippie I randomly met in The Parthenon while writing “Fade To White”: The Bible doesn’t say God breathed animals into being, only humans.  So there is a spiritual difference between us and animals, whatever that may be exactly.]

 

Humans are in a class of their own, caught between the animals and the angels, but the choice is ours as to which end of the spectrum we fall on.

 

And yet there is something supernatural in us that allows us to transcend nature and have intuition, feelings and other supernatural capabilities.  So do we each have individual spirits of our personalities, and that’s who we are?  Or are we anything at all?  Isn’t our individuality just the unique combination of our two parents’ previously-existing traits, mixed together and shaped through our surroundings in life?  If we do have individual spirits, where do these spirits and personalities come from?  The only logical conclusion is that they must have been directly assigned to us by God Himself who put certain spirits in certain bodies to have certain outcomes to make History go according to His great plan.  So it all comes around to the fact that we have nothing God has not given to us and we are nothing that God has not made us.

 

But there is no evidence of individual spirits that give us our personality aside from our nature/nurture make up.  I think perhaps more logical is that there is only one Spirit, that is, God Himself, who, according to His will, moves in us individually to give us those supernatural capabilities in certain times.  He periodically manifests His spirit in our hearts and minds and the natural realm to intervene and guide us away from the natural path of fate so that by divine inspiration we change our natural course, that we would naturally go down aside from His intervention.  Of course if there is only one Spirit, then what are we when our bodies die physically (the breath of life leaves) and yet we live on separately?

 
Ecclesiastes 12:7: “then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.“

 
In Heaven what are our souls if we no longer have the body that created our personality?  Without our bodies what’s left?  If we do each have souls are they all the same generic soul/spirit that manifests differently given a different body to come out of, a different-shaped outlet?  It’s a mystery no mortal can solve.  So then, when those bodies die, wouldn’t the Spirit of God return to its source (God)?  This is the equivalent of Nirvana, where we exist in the afterlife, conscious, but not as our individual personality.  Rather we all exist as The Personality of God Himself.  And yet, there’s no mention of that concept in the Bible (our only sure-fire source of truth on the subject).

Isn’t it interesting that the Apocalyptic Bible passages all refer to us having bodies in Heaven.  Almost implying at times that we have no consciousness until our bodies are resurrected/glorified.  So, “we” are nothing without our bodies, but in Heaven our bodies are there, therefore our bodily-induced personalities live on through the bodies that make them.  Still, it’s entirely possible that at some point in the future of eternity even our glorified bodies will fade away, leaving behind the One Spirit in all of us, and “we” return to experience the euphoria of existence in oneness with The Spirit.

 

John 17:22: “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me.”

 
Our bodies are simply our parents’ bodies combined.  God breathes spirit into us, giving us life, but it’s just the natural mysterious energy as it naturally flows through that machine of our parent-combination bodies.  However, when we’re born again, God’s Holy Spirit indwells us, which is not just the spirit of life, but actually God’s own personal Spirit living in us, actually Christ Himself.  So it’s not just our natural bodies at work, but Christ living and working with that physical body.

Which is why you actually witness people change to become different people after they’re Christians.  Non-believers can try to change and do self-help formulas and show signs of change, but they’re still the same people they’ve always been with the same tendencies they give into.  Only when another being comes into your body, living through you and changing you (not of your own energy and will-power), then can a person actually change into a real different person.  Because it really isn’t them anymore. It’s the perfect spirit of someone else, His mind living in our bodies, making choices and offering an alternative to our natural bent.  I am now partially Miles Prowers and partially Jesus Christ, but gradually becoming more of Jesus Christ and less of Miles Prowers, to the point where Jesus Christ is me, just with the looks, personality and memories of Miles Prowers.

 

Who am I? What am I? What even is “I”?  I don’t know.  Something between a random combination of atoms and God Himself.

 

[The mysteries expressed in this essay were condensed into a song entitled “Fade To White”.  You can hear it at soundcloud.com/terremotoothers.  Enjoy!]

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America = Fake February 20, 2012

Filed under: The American Dream — milesprowers @ 1:00 pm
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[first inspired sometime in 2011, but all written on 21912]

If I had to sum up America in one word it would be…… fake.

A fake country with a fake government run by fake politicians ruling over fake people with fake bodies running on fake energy working fake jobs to spend fake money on fake food and entertainment, but it’s all good because on Sunday you get to go to a fake church and hear a fake message about a fake religion from a fake pastor with fake worship and fake prayers to a fake God. Wow.

In other words… America is a fantasy-land nation living like life is good while most other countries are starving. Yet we don’t have the money either, we’re just taking out loans to live like it. The only reason we have any money at all is because our government has taken out loans and given that money to us. And so we have money that isn’t ours that we get from working in cubicles, riding the fumes of caffeine that our body has become dependent upon, hitting buttons all day that increases numbers in the cyber-world, buying and selling digital concepts like stocks. And after sitting down all day pressing buttons in a box inside an air-conditioned, florescent-lit bigger box we walk 20 feet and sit down again in our car which takes us to another box (that we bought with money we don’t have) where we walk 10 feet and sit down the rest of the night isolated from the world and eat food someone else made for us that delivered to our house, all the while staring at a square that persuades us of a fake reality until we fall asleep. And then we do it all over again. And again. All the while increasing our loans. Alone with a loan. Using plastic to pay for plastic surgery and plastic houses, as plastic politicians with plastic personalities and plastic messages tell us to keep doing it, because that’s what the plastic government takes out loans to pay them to do so our plastic will keep swiping. And we the people vote it to stay that way, because that’s the way we want it. But this is fun! This is the life! Oh, and we’re a “Christian” nation, though no one really believes in it.

But why shouldn’t the government be that way, when that’s how its people are, which make up the government and represent the people? “We the [fake] people”. I was thoroughly disturbed the other night as I heard a speech straight from the top of the DIA who said that it’s too late for America. He said the next president cannot fix it. America will no longer be the world’s superpower in the coming years. People have been paranoid about America’s collapse for hundreds of years, predicting the end as a consequence for anything they don’t agree with. But one prediction is 100% sure: we are closer to it now than at any other time in American history, than any of the times of those predictions (because after every one of those predictions America came out from the smoke every time). But if people were freaking out in the 60’s when the debt was in the billions, they had all the more reason to in the 90’s when the debt was over a trillion dollars. I mean, a trillion is an unfathomable amount of money! A trillion seconds ago there was no life on this planet. How much more now when the debt is increasing exponentially at several trillions a year!!! If nothing else, we are one day closer to the end than we were yesterday.

The thing that’s most dis-heartening is that it could be fixed. It could be fixed soon. With the brilliance and skill and resources and annual gross income of America it isn’t impossible to pay it all off in a few years. But no one would be up for that. No one would let go of their possessions or freedoms for a moment without a fight and lawsuits and insurrection first. No one would give up the American Dream, even if it was to save the American Dream itself. “That’s their problem. It’s not my fault we’re in this mess. Stinks to be the next generation that will have to sell their freedom to pay off the debt. As for me I’m living the dream while it’s still an option, even if it’s at the expense of my children not getting to live it.”

As it turns out, the thing America is known for is the very thing that is rapidly killing us: pride. America takes pride in its pride. Proud to be an American.  But don’t people get that pride is the worst sin of them all? The Bible says pride is what caused Satan to become the greatest enemy of all time, and it’s the main sin charged against the stereotype evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s the main thing Jesus railed against on Earth and said kept a person out of Heaven (Luke 18). Because pride is taking the place of God, that’s why it is the worst sin. Yet it’s in all the commercials and Olympics and Super Bowl and TV shows and concerts and YouTube. Pride = America. It puts America on the same level as Sodom and Gomorrah. But every single person in America already knows this, because everyone knows the infamous slogan “Pride comes before a fall,” and so it’s no surprise to us. Everyone knows what’s coming, but we keep on living the dream, hoping that someone else will fix our problems and cut us a break. We can’t stop. Not only are we headed for destruction, but we ourselves are racing there. We are addicted to nihilism. We are ferociously sawing the limb we’re sitting on. So that’s our fate. We see the dead end coming and don’t see a way out, saying, “So be it. Might as well enjoy it while I can.” Rather than experience the pain of losing a limb we choose death.

As the DIA man said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” All 15 trillion of those dollars will have to be payed. By someone. Someone will have to take a hit. Someone will have to voluntarily lay down the only life he will live and the only chance to pursue his dreams so that someone else can pursue theirs. Or else they’ll be forced to, like in the Great Depression. Kids during the great depression weren’t saying, “When I grow up I want to be a fire-fighter.” You got whatever job you could scrounge for. It stinks for all those talented athletes and artists in the 30’s who didn’t get the option of having a career they loved, unlike all the other American generations before and after them. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. It’s not fair that you have to be the generation that gives up your career ambitions and possessions so that later Americans can have them. It’s especially not fair that you’re paying for the mistakes of big businesses, the greediness of Wall Street, and the natural ups and downs of the economy. But either we suck it up, stop pointing fingers, forgive, and all sacrifice together for the good of America’s posterity or …………… America dies.

[Yes, I used 15 dots.]

There’s no fair solution. As mere finite mortals there’s no way to perfectly judge and extract from each individual exactly what they owe, especially since no one thinks they’re to blame. Better to give up money voluntarily than be taxed by force, especially when it’s going to a good cause like saving America. As opposed to the only other alternative of holding onto your money right now and becoming enslaved to another nation again, when you’ll lose it anyways, but having to be enslaved first. Everyone will take a hit, but the sooner we take a hit the better, while there is less to hit. Might as well go ahead and take a hit now while America is still a country and you still have a job. People will lose jobs and people will lose money, that’s not an option. The only option is whether that loss comes through freedom or slavery, choice or force?

My advice: Stop charging, start paying. Stop buying, start saving. When you buy, buy American, and withdraw enough real cash to survive for a while. Otherwise it’s all fake, digital IOU’s stored in a cyber bank that will be wiped out with one delete key or the pull of a plug (as already happened once). Move close enough to your job that you can ride a bike, or move in with your family and friends. Buy enough storage food to last you for several months, and learn how to survive without electricity. Aka learn how people have been living all along.

Or maybe we could just sell Alaska to Russia for 15 trillion dollars and then it’d just be the Alaskans’ problem, and then we can still get that new car we are going to take out a loan for. But then in a few years we’d be back to 15 trillion dollars in debt and have to sell Hawaii to China.

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