tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-252723542024-03-04T23:12:37.476-08:00guest monkeyI am a spiritual man who does not believe in religionKerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-34506197955154916582012-12-25T13:35:00.000-08:002012-12-25T23:09:30.915-08:00What is meant by "Intelligence"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #00cccc;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><b>What is meant by “Intelligence”?</b></span><br /><br />A prerequisite for this book is to understand what we are looking to get at when we use the word “intelligence”. We are not talking about an intelligence based on knowledge alone, or the accumulation of knowledge to pass certain exams and to become a PhD and so on. (Not that there is any wrong with having a PhD or any specialized degree, or knowledge in most forms, so don’t jump to that conclusion.) We will learn by doubting and it is by doubting that we will discover what is true and this doubt will bind us together, but we should doubt with an open and inquisitive mind.<br /><br />It is the object of this book to enable the reader to find out who he/she is, and to come upon self-understanding. To get the reader to consider whether or not it is possible for there to be an intelligence, which is not necessarily your intelligence or my intelligence, but an intelligence that operates when we understand ourselves completely and go beyond the content we call knowledge, and therefore self.<br /><br />The basis of this is an observation, which goes beyond the confines of the psychological knowledge within your brain, and the psychological contents of my brain. Thereby going beyond this fixed knowledge and conditioning, and observing what actually is. The observer may come to realize that the psychological content of man, of the brain, are often illusions, and not reality—illusions to be projected, protected, hurt, and all the rest. Reality exists outside of this content, and in pure observation. Then the observer is not separate from the observed. This is the only way that we can look into what is true and what is false without our own opinions, prejudices, conclusions, conditioning, and so on, getting in the way. I think you’ll find that beyond this content is an intelligence that operates naturally and, for the most part, effortlessly, without the constant function of will.<br /><br />I state this as a fact and that it is the only hope for man. Then each one of us will have minds with a natural order connected to the natural order of the cosmos, and we will see that everything is interconnected. This does not mean that we see everything and do everything the same, only that there is no conflict in this dialogue of open minds that recognizes the fallibility of man, and questions everything.<br /><br />Each one of us should see that our conscience is not separate from the conscience of the rest of humanity and there is universal intelligence.</span><br />
<span style="color: #00cccc;"><span style="background-color: #274e13;"></span><br /></span><span style="background-color: lime;">Please note: This is an excerpt from the work that is the culmination of 30 years….if you would like a copy of “THE DAWN OF INTELLIGENCE” please email me at kerrycw1@gmail.com and I will send you a free copy.</span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-51675270334816154202011-11-25T20:12:00.000-08:002011-11-25T20:13:04.488-08:00Serenity<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/o9zxrIlFpCk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-23487889729369478642011-10-19T07:37:00.000-07:002011-10-19T07:38:00.615-07:00Please do not copy without permission<a href="http://www.copyscape.com/plagiarism-detection/"><img src="http://banners.copyscape.com/images/cs-wh-3d-120x60.gif" alt="Protected by Copyscape Online Plagiarism Detection" title="Protected by Copyscape Plagiarism Checker - Do not copy content from this page." width="120" height="60" border="0" /></a>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-9287330052644615082011-10-03T21:05:00.000-07:002011-10-19T07:41:33.181-07:00religious conviction<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" >"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><b>--Blaise Pascal</b></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, serif, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(241, 241, 241); "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, serif, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(241, 241, 241); "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, serif, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(241, 241, 241); "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-59659779081841756842009-04-21T17:00:00.000-07:002012-10-08T11:39:46.520-07:00America: Prisons, Slaves, and Religion (short version)<div align="justify">
<span style="color: blue;"><strong><span style="font-size: 180%;">America: Prisons, Slaves, and Religion</span><br /><br /><br />When Cristobal Colon’—alias Christopher Columbus—with his ninety or so assorted crewmen, set out for the new world, it was with the intent to get away from what he considered to be the conditioned minds of a people by the Orthodox Church and the tyranny of the government. Columbus viewed the beliefs of the Orthodox Church as nonsense and felt these beliefs were astray from the true God. And although he mislead his intentions to the Royal Family in order to get needed support and to cover the cost of very expensive ships and cargo, his dream was to find a new world in which the powerful conditioning forces of organized religion were abandoned and there could be spiritual freedom to walk with God without the tyranny of the Church and the power and control of royal authority.<br /><br />What Columbus did not realize was the power of conditioning and the fact that, although many shared his dream of spiritual freedom, over time the masses would come and they would bring their orthodox fears and conditioning with them. Although Columbus was not without conditioning himself and was accustomed to harboring humans as slaves, the unfortunate result of the conditioning of others was to affect the very spiritual freedom that Columbus had at least conceived, and to begin to inject into society the same nonsense of orthodox beliefs from which they had hopefully escaped. Basically the same thing, in varying degrees, was being set up over here.<br /><br />Another interesting fact about this voyage of discovery was that some of the crews were made up of convicts. How many former prisoners made up the crews of these ships will never be known because of the secrecy from which they were selected. The conditions on these ships however were not a far cry from a prison cell, because once they were on the open sea they were subject to flogging and other punishments if any man were to get out of line, and the cramped vessels were as isolating as an iron cage and nobody was free to go or to do as they please.<br /><br />On the moonlit morning of October 12, 1492, at two o’clock in the morning, Rodrigo de Triana, a watchman on the Pinta, spotted land on the horizon and shouted, “Tierra! Tierra!” The other ships were notified and at dawn an armed search party stepped from a boat and waded onto the island, which turned out to be simply one link in a chain of islands. Having mistakenly believed he had found the fabled Passage to India, Columbus named this chain of islands the “Indies,’ and when a band of mostly naked, tawny-skinned natives appeared, they were called “Indians.”<br /><br />These friendly natives or “Indians” as they were now called, would share anything that they possessed and the well-proportioned and receptive woman mingled easily with the bearded men. Columbus and the Spanish people soon realize that they were intelligent and learned quickly, and that they would make good slaves. In fact after bringing some natives back to the Spanish ports, these exotic-looking “Indians” were now bein g referred to as “slaves.” Other voyages would bring back hundreds of Indian captives and Columbus reported them as “a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned, and very intelligent, and who, when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which they have been accustomed, will be better than any other kind of slaves.” The natives that were left on the islands contracted measles, smallpox and other infections and diseases left behind by the whites that would spread among their villages with fatal effect. Spain’s discovery of precious ore deposits led to further exploitation of the natives and it is estimated that war, disease, overwork, and suicide brought about the deaths, according to historians, of at least 300,000 natives, and one recorded estimate from a Catholic priest who lived during that time figured that fully three million Indians had died between 1492 and 1508, comprising one of the worst genocides in recorded history.<br /><br />On one of his voyages of as many as seventeen ships with as many as fifteen hundred men, many being convicts, Columbus set out to start a major slave trade. At first, the Spanish Crown rejected his appeal to open a major slave trade, but the government did order the enlistment of three hundred convicts, thirty of them women, and gave authorization for the justices to ship away any condemned criminals who might be convinced to go. Many of these convicts and others that made up his crews were left behind on islands or abandoned abroad. He also had to deal with a settler’s revolt and to head off an even more dangerous Indian rebellion. But Columbus got his due, for in 1500 the Spanish sovereigns dispatched a new commissioner, who arrested Columbus on corruption charges and hauled him back to Spain to face inquisition. He entered Cadiz still in chains and was taken to Las Cuevas monastery in Seville, where he was kept locked up for months until finally being stripped of his powers and released. Like his idol, Marco Polo, w ho had written his epic journal in prison, Columbus had “discovered America and they put him in jail for it.” Oddly, the lands he had discovered came to be known to Europeans, not as “Columbus,” but as “America,” in honor of another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci of Florence, who claimed to have reached the New World a year before him, but who really had not done so till a year later. Not only was Amerigo a bad liar, but many claimed that he also had a criminal past, prompting Ralph Waldo Emerson to comment, “Strange…that broad America must wear the name of a thief.”<br /><br />In an effort to save the natives, Bartolome de Las Casas, who was horrified by what was happening to them, vowed to devote the rest of his life to securing “the justice of those Indian peoples, and to condemn the robbery, evil and injustice committed against them.” Unfortunately his attempt to save the Indians was by diverting the attention of the slave trade to the Negroes, arguing that “the labor of one Ne gro was more valuable than that of four Indians.” The king agreed, and in 1517 the first asiento was arranged, enabling four thousand blacks to be imported to the West Indies over the next eight years. African slaves started arriving a few months later, and by 1540 an estimated thirty thousand men, women, and children had been taken to Hisponiola alone. In his old age, Las Casas came to realize he had made a terrible mistake. Black slavery did not save the Indians but merely added another oppressed race—and the colony became even more dependent on slavery for its survival. From their base in Hispaniola, Spanish conquistadors under the fanatical Christian leader Hernando Cortes plunged into Mexico and liquidated the golden Aztec empire, destroying any and all foms of knowledge, believing, as the bible teaches, that if it is not from the bible it is of the devil. More conquerors sailed up to Florida and fanned out into the Texas panhandle, Santa Fe, Mississippi, the Grand Canyon, and California. Among their earliest constructs in North America, Spanish soldiers in 1570 erected the first substantial prison, at St. Augustine, Florida.<br /><br />By then a few brave Spaniards had begun to criticize the slave trade publicly. Bartolome de Albornoz attacked it as morally and legally wrong, but his views were officially suppressed. Tomas Mercando condemned the trade as being based upon deceit, robbery, and force. Alonso de Sandoval declared, “God created man free…Slavery is not exile, but also subjection, hunger, sorrow, spiritual death, insult, prison, perpetual persecution, and, in short, is a Pandora’s box of all the evils.”<br /><br />Nevertheless, more explorers of the New Word brought more convicts, and Africans and Indians whom they held as prisoners. Many Spanish and French accounts used the terms “prisoner” and “slave” interchangeably when referring to the captives. The conditions only got worse over time and the treatment of the slaves decade with the abuse of woma n and children and with adult male captives often being tortured to death. In the minds of these so-called civilized Christian masters, these “slaves” were looked upon as being no more important that the proverbial slug in the garden or that insect that sucked their blood.<br /><br />Before long, other European nations began competing with Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, and they too utilized convicts to fill out their crews. Jacques Cartier of France combed the jails for fifty convicts, men and woman, whom he employed on his expedition to Newfoundland in 1542. Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and Samuel De Champlain used convicts as sailors on their northern voyages. Blacks accompanied French explorers into Canada and the Mississippi River Valley.<br /><br />During the 1560s, John Hawkins and Francis Drake started trafficking slaves between England, Africa, and Spanish America, and Richard Hakluyt later called for a large-scale conscription of criminals as a better way to sett le the New World. But England’s colonization efforts waned until 1606, when policies abruptly changed. Sir John Popham’s venture at Kennebec, or Maine, was stocked “out of all the gaols [jails] of England,” prompting one critic to complain, “It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people, and wicked and condemned ones, to be the people with whom you plant.”<br /><br />That same year, the Virginia Company, a Christian based organization that would practically monopolize the slave industry, landed several hundred miles to the south. One of its voyagers, Captain John Smith, was captured by the Indians as he foraged for food. As he later told the tale, just as he was about to be executed, the Indian emperor’s favorite daughter “got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death.” The Virginia Company authorized its colonists to seize native children wherever they could “for conversion…to the knowledge and worship of the true God and their redeemer, Christ Jesus.” One of those abducted—Smith’s rescuer, young Pocahontas—was ransomed, taken as a wife by one of the Englishmen, and brought as a trophy to London and displayed for money, where she soon died.<br /><br />This was a time that most voyagers that headed up these expeditions were Bible believing Christians, and some of them had a peculiar habit of actually reading the through the entire Bible and others would often listen as another would read. Something we see little of in our society today, as now most prople read only specific verses out of the bible, and yet claim it to be the Word of God.. In these readings they would learn the implications that God had upon those that did not believe in “Christ” and the subsequent orders to torture or kill those that did not accept or follow this belief system. More slaves were being beaten and tortured, often to death, at the hands of the company officials and at times by the colonist themselves. The scriptures they read not only justi fied this cruelty, but also they specifically directed this inhuman treatment of these people.<br /><br />Company officials ignored the colonists’ urgent pleas for better living conditions, insisting instead that greater discipline was needed. In 1610 a tough new governor, Lord Delaware, arrived and imposed a dictatorship. His successor, Thomas Dale, was even more severe. Under his regime, Virginia’s colonists were literally held as prisoners, and punishments became more and more harsh for the slaves, and now often included the colonist themselves. For uttering “base and detracting words” against the governor, Richard Barns was ordered to be “disarmed and have his arms broken and his tongue bored through with an awl and [he] shall pass through a guard of 40 men and shall be butted by every one of them and at the head of the troop kicked down and footed out of the fort; and he shall be banished out of James City and the Island, and he shall not be capable of any privilege of freedom in the country.” Men caught trying to escape were tortured to death in front of others as an example. Seamstresses who sewed their lady’s skirts too short were whipped. Governor Dale pronounced his methods justified and the company backed him up. Back in London, an official said that the Virginians were “dangerous, incurable members, for no use so fit as to make example to others.” This nightmare of power, dominance, and control meshed with these bizarre bielfs systems had turned on its own people.<br /><br />Having learned about the use of tobacco from the Indians, the trade in tobacco began on a very evil air of success. The use of this one product shows the difference between the spirituality of the Indians and that of western man. The Indians used tobacco in an extremely moderate fashion, using it on occasion and usually for special circumstances, whereas those of European decent used tobacco habitually and it became an obsession for them. By the early seventeenth century tobacco smok ing had become so popular in England that many a young nobleman’s estate would be altogether spent and scattered to nothing but smoke, and he would waist whole days, even years, in a constant habit of smoking, even to the extent of smoking in bed. Soon the leaf’s value equaled that of silver and the cultivation of tobacco in the New World, especially in the vast area of the fertile soils of Virginia, would be the center of colonization and growth.<br /><br />Eventually, however, the Virginia Company underwent a shakeup that put Sir Edwin Sandys in control. Under his direction the company launch an intensive promotional campaign to attract more investors, settlers, and servants. Publicists wrote enticing broadsides, promising everything from daily sustenance to eternal bliss to anyone who would go to Virginia. Drummers marched from village to village, beating up interest. Hustlers combed the fairs and groghouses, enlisting recruits. Minstrels sang seductive ballads. From Parliament to p ulpit, Virginia’s colonization was depicted as a noble effort of Christian reformation, for, as one pious supporter asked, “What can be more excellent, more precious, more glorious, than to convert a heathen nation from worshipping the devil to the saving knowledge and true worship of God in Jesus Christ?” Sandy’s offered a promise of something that was generally not available in England: an opportunity for upward mobility. Piece by piece, he and his image makers created their illusions of the American Dream.<br /><br />The reality was that this upward mobility would be based on selfish ambition under the disguise of the strange yet, for the most part, unquestioned beliefs of the Christian religion. Many more convicts were brought from the prisons of England when it was decided that the overcrowded prisons often made criminals more dangerous to society. The English prisons were breeding grounds for typhus (“goal fever”) and other diseases, which often spread beyond the walls, endangering the whole popula tion. Sir Francis Becon described goal fever as the “most pernicious infection, next to the plague.” Thousand of lives were lost and this helped give rise to the notion that all prisoners were dangerous and that their diseases, as well as their criminality, might contaminate any one around them. This reinforced images of prisons as “schools of crime” in which younger pupils became corrupted by older, more hardened offenders. It was believed by many Christians that Satan motivated the criminal mind. In fact, many believed criminal behavior to be of demonic inheritance. In any case there was little hope of recovery or for the prospects of change for a criminal in the minds of most Christians.<br /><br />From this perspective even quarantine seemed insufficient; banishment out of the country appeared more sensible. Surely such rabble were of no use to society in a civilized society. In America, on the other hand, criminals could at least be put to use earning a profit for company and crow n, and they could possibly serve the interest of Christendom at the same time. Having already established the “reformative” control of colonization for heathen savages, it required no great leap to apply this standard to others.<br /><br />Thus it was that the royal commission concluded that any felon, except those convicted of murder, witchcraft, burglary, or rape, could legally be transported to Virginia or the West Indies to become servants on the plantations. Those prisoners who were physically able to work, or whose “other abilities shall be thought fit to be employed in foreign discoveries or other services,” were henceforth authorized for banishment beyond the seas. The plan to transport “notorious and wicked offenders that will not be reformed but by severity of punishment, in order that they may no more infect the places where they abide within our realm,” was the subject of a royal proclamation dated December 23, 1617. Almost immediately prisoners were selected from county ja ils and prisons “to yield a profitable service to the Commonwealth in parts abroad.” The economic purpose of this policy was clear from the start. In one case, a man convicted of manslaughter and condemned to death was reprieved “because he was a carpenter and the plantation needed carpenters.”<br /><br />Soon afterward Sandys commanded the sending over of maids as breeders, “that wives, children and family might make them less movable and settle them, together with their posterity in that soil.” The costs of passage could be paid for by the planters who took them as “wives.” A scandal arose from allegations that some maids were being taken by force or bought from their parents for a few pieces of silver; some even whispered that King James himself had receive a kickback (“royalty”) for the scheme.<br /><br />The king had also begun sending children away as servants as well. Sandys reported to the Crown that the council had “appointed 100 children from the superfluous multitude to be trans ported to Virginia, there to be bound apprentices for certain years, and afterward with very beneficial conditions for the children.” More and more children were transported, but he was careful to request legal authorization that would enable him to coerce the youngsters.<br /><br />Once the procedure had been worked out, roundups became routine. Soon the Virginia Company’s request for another 100 children was quickly approved and another batch was swept up and sent away. It is unclear how many boys and girls were taken, but company records indicate that additional cargos were authorized, at least in 1620 and 1622, and a letter of 1627 mentions 1,400 to 1,500 children as being shipped to Virginia. The policy of allowing, even encouraging, private companies to forcibly apprehend, detain, transport, and sell into service lower-class children was legitimized by every branch and level of government and praised by the highest church officials. This seizure (or “napping”) of children (“kids” ) for shipment to America as servants became so well known that the practice acquired a new name: “kidnapping.” Its original practitioners and defenders included government officials, corporate executives, clergymen, and, although often reluctantly, parents.<br /><br />This process continued and increased over time and many women were seized as well. Once persons disappeared, their relatives or friends had little chance of finding them again. Even if a victim managed to tell somebody that she had been taken against her will, she was not likely to be freed. Officers of the law were expected to apprehend persons, not release them. Moreover, England lacked a professional system of police, so that the powers of law enforcement, especially arrest, belonged to those with the right political connections—in short, to those who were behind the scheme to kidnap human beings. The line between kidnapping and arrest was literally paper-thin.<br /><br />The number of maids and children combined did not rival the number of prisoners and slaves being brought to America. Starting in the early seventeenth century and continuing for 150 years, an organized, international prisoner trade, of which the African slave trade was just one important part, provided the foundation for England’s colonial wealth and America’s identity. To the extent that American history is the story of immigration, then American colonial history is largely the story of the immigration of prisoners and the importation of slaves.<br /><br />It was during the Restoration (which began in the summer of 1660) that the prisoner trade really became a moving force of English colonial policy. People were captured and imprisoned by an army that was composed primarily of “common cheats, thieves, cutpurses and such like persons.” The return of Charles II to the throne inaugurated an age of great monopoly in which the prevailing powers ruled by using kidnapping, violence, and imprisonment on a massive scale. Plans were made for e xpanded trafficking in felons and Africans, and the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa dispatched its first forty ships in search of gold and slaves. It was a system that would thrive for more than a century. General James Edward Oglethorpe, the “prison reformer” who founded Georgia in 1732-33 with colonists obtained from English prisons, was a director of the Royal African Company.<br /><br />England’s trafficking of prisoners would continue for generations, outlasting most of the kings and businessmen who temporarily controlled it. Without the seizure, imprisonment, shipment, and sale of human beings to America, immense fortunes would not have been made from tobacco, sugar, and rum.<br /><br />Prisons were an essential part of the prisoner trade, whether the captives were Africans, servants, convicts, or pressed men. After a person was taken into custody he or she was brought to a holding place near the shore to await shipment abroad. At that time some prisons from the twelft h century were still in use in England. The way a prisoner was treated was all based on how much money he or she had, and those with no money were placed in the prison’s “common side” with rogues and rabble, and often new prisoners would start out in shackles, iron collars, or fetters until they paid a special fee to ease their irons. Those wanting to receive visitors had to pay and those wanting any form of special treatment better have the means to pay for it. Just like the modern prisons of today, it was mostly about selfishness, greed, and money.<br /><br />During the time after the English Civil War, there had arisen several new forms of religious movements. One of the more radical religious sects that formed during this era was a group of persons who called themselves Friends and whom others called Quakers because they “quaked and shook with zeal.” Its founder, George Fox, spent much of this time locked up for his beliefs, and it was in prison that he convinced many others to joi n his sect.<br /><br />In 1652 a group of Fox’s converts, the Valiant Sixty, began to spread his message aggressively, hoping eventually to convince the whole world. Quakerism spread among the middle class with astonishing speed. The converts met in remote homes and open fields, attracting anywhere from a few dozen to a couple of hundred people. By the winter of 1655-56, Friends were meeting in almost every county, despite severe repression. The more they were imprisoned, the stronger their resolve; the stronger their resolve, the more converts they gained; the more members they attracted, the more threatening they were considered and the more of them that were imprisoned; and the more they were imprisoned the more converts they made. Thus it was that the prisons became their primary meeting places and suppliers of most of the new members. Fox himself was frequently shifted from one prison to another in an attempt to head off his efforts, but these efforts had little effect on his cause. The more he and his followers were mistreated, the more they seemed to thrive. Thrust into a dark cell among toadstools and rats, young Ann Audland wrote glowingly to another Friend, “This is indeed a place of joy, and my soul doth rejoice in the Lord.” Shortly before he died of his own ordeal, William Dewsbury exulted that he had “joyfully entered prisons as palaces, telling mine enemies to hold me there as long as they could; and in the prison house I sung praises to my God and esteemed the bolts and locks put upon me as jewels.”<br /><br />If nothing else convinces us of the unbalanced illusions of religion, the attitudes of these people should.<br /><br />There seemed to be no better place to find ready converts than in the prisons. They also attracted streams of visitors, some of whom asked for permission to trade places with their captive sisters and brothers. As their deaths in prison mounted, word of their martyrdom spread like wildfire. Some captives composed reams of writs and tes timonies about their suffering, and tracts were taken out by visitors and passed on, hand to hand, to waiting printers. Fox himself saw published several books that he had dictated in prison.<br /><br />Other sects began to form, and the next two hundred years would see some two hundred and fifty sects, some more radical and bizarre than others, that could be counted. Some of these sects became very popular and profitable and many of them are still in existence today. It has been noted by some historians that the easiest way to get rich quick during this time was either to rob a bank or start and new Christian sect. Some of the leaders of the more radical sects would preach the end of the world and it was taken so seriously at times that people would quit their jobs or stop planting their crops and feeding their livestock. Where life was so uncertain and so difficult that the gullibility of the masses was abundant and stifling, and the confused and conditioned minds that existed in per petual fear could be easily manipulated, especially through the use of organized religion.<br /><br />Over the course of time more and more “real” punishments were intentionally painful, and the criminal law of the period often resulted in the death penalty for minor offenses. Outcries for such policies were almost non-existent, except from some of the radical sects such as the Quakers and the Tories, and support for the death penalty for so many crimes, some as trivial as damaging trees or stealing a silver spoon, or poaching fish, may have been as strong or stronger among the lower classes as it was among the rich. The public seemed to feed off the misfortunes of others and public executions remained immensely popular with the masses.<br /><br />Just as in London, a hanging day in America would start with the somber toll of church bells. Visitors streamed in for the occasion, drawing pickpockets from miles around, and hawkers would sell the day’s “last dying confessions” to throngs who l ined the winding route to the gallows. Capital punishment might have been viewed differently if the government strictly enforced the capital laws. But it did not. Seventeenth-century courts continued to recognize the benefit of clergy, so that a convicted felon was entitled to “call the book”—if he was able to read a passage out of the Bible, he might escape death and have his thumb branded instead. Some illiterates in a last attempt to save their own lives would drop to their knees and recite the “neck verse,” usually the first verse of the Fifty-fist Psalm. Accordingly, Parliament later removed the literacy requirement, but made a list of twenty-five felonies not subject to clerical intervention.<br /><br />Outside of this process of quoting scripture from the bible, the working of this process of “mercy” could be extremely complex and mysterious, at times occurring behind closed doors. Above all it became a system of discretion, and, in fact, many of those condemned to death in the eighteenth century did not go to the gallows, they were pardoned. Loyalty, patronage, and influence were integral, as a man without them discovered with his hopeless demise. For without a person of consequence to speak in his behalf, a condemned felon’s doom could be quickly and irrevocably sealed.<br /><br />With the new established laws the threat of execution was held over a large portion of the population. With mandatory death sentences for a wide array of offenses, the effects of class distinctions grew less and less. The spectacle of public trials riveted attention on individual transgression and gave the impression that it treated every defendant impartially. Pomp and solemnity filled the air. Everyone in the hushed courtroom sprang up as the judges, bedecked in wigs and robes, paraded in, and everyone sat after the judges had ascended to their perch. Great pains were taken to make the law seem magisterial and the courts incorruptible, impartial, and venerable. Knowing that the judges had the power of life or death in their hands, defendants strained to appear cooperative, penitent, and even thankful during the proceedings. They clung to etiquette even as they were being sentenced to death, in the hope that their good behavior would ultimately help to spare their lives, which, on rare occasions, it did.<br /><br />The entire legal system in America was based on the English system and the laws passed by Parliament. Technically the judges were not empowered to grant pardons; they simply could recommend clemency. A pardon had to be sealed with the Great Seal and issued by authority of the king or the Privy Council. If a judge was not disposed to recommend a pardon, his conscience could always be eased by the belief that a convict might still petition to a higher authority up until and at the moment of execution. In this way neither the lawmakers, the judges, the king or Privy Council, nor any other authority would have to accept personal accountability for an ex ecution. They held solace in the belief that everything happened for a reason and, as the Bible said, it was all part of God’s plan.<br /><br />Jails were among the first public structures built in colonial America. Besides being an essential part of the prisoner trade and a useful receptacle and staging place for arriving reluctant emigrants, they were an integral part of the system of servitude and slavery. As such the various kinds of jails were a key component of the system for disciplining unfree laborers and convicts. The conditions in the jails were horrendous, and many lost their heath and other died because of the cruel environment and conditions of these jails.<br /><br />Benjamin Franklin’s brother, James, printed an early newspaper. One edition carried an article that was deemed seditious, and when he refused to reveal its author he was committed to Boston’s stone jail. He remained there for months until a physician certified that his health had suffered from confinement. Writing from the same stoned jail thirty years later, another incarcerated journalist complained, “If there is any such thing as a hell upon earth, I think this place is the nearest resemblance of any I can conceive of.” Many inmates from the jails of this era complained about the cold conditions. Many suffered severely and many more died from the effects of hypothermia. That same winter in New York the debtors issued a public appeal that they had not “one stick to burn” and were freezing to death.<br /><br />Several Christian sects had developed from the Puritans and among those Puritans thought to be the most threatening and dangerous were those that claimed supernatural powers. They would come to be called “witches” and they were dealt with harshly. Margaret Jones of Charlestown, who claimed to have healing powers, was hanged in Boston in 1648 after it was claimed that she “had a malignant touch…and that her harmless medicines produced violent effects.” It was a strange time indeed, and as it is still true today, a time when most of the people professed a belief in the Bible, yet at the same time, religious radicals were judged harshly and more and more severe laws were enacted against the “heretics.”<br /><br />Many forms of torture were performed against the “radicals” and if not torture, fines and other punishments were bestowed upon them. Boston’s government proclaimed that any Quaker male or other “heretics” who returned there after being banished “shall for the first offense have one of his ears cut off… and for the second offense shall have his other ear cut off.” It is strange that the radical acts of these “religious fanatics” were being met with even more fanatical and radical behavior. It is even more interesting to understand that scriptures in the Bible gave support to these bizarre behaviors.<br /><br />America was “discovered” by a self-serving individual that was a liar and a manipulator, and this country was named after another liar that was in all likelihood a criminal. America was infiltrated by men of greed and flooded with convicts and slaves, and men, women, and children that were taken against their will. I am not putting down this counrty. These are true and simple facts.<br /><br />Because so many people were brought to this country in a haze of secrecy with no records made, there is no way to know just how many convicts were transported to America. A more recent study by A. Roger Ekirch concluded that well over 30,000 convicts were transported from England to America between 1718 and 1775; he set the number sent here from England at 36,000. Adding more than 13,000 shipped from Ireland and another 700 sent from Scotland during this same period, Ekirch put the number transported from Britain at 50,000 and concluded: Convicts represented as much as a quarter of all British emigrants to colonial America during the 18th century. But even these numbers are low, since they may underestimate the numbers actually sent as well as the numbers sent from Britain before 1718, ignored debtors, and do not inclu de criminals transported by the French, Spanish, and Dutch.<br /><br />In any event, the convict trade to America was big business and our country was infiltrated with criminals. Some of the larger convict traders also dealt in indentured servants, sometimes carrying them and dry goods in the same ships. On their return voyages, convict vessels often brought colonial exports like tobacco, wheat, and pig iron back to Briton. Some ships were also engaged in the African slave trade. Jonathan Forward’s Anne and Eagle carried slaves, servants, and convicts during the same period. So did some of Samuel Sedgley’s ships out of Briston and James Gildart’s from Liverpool. Profits sometimes exceeded 30 percent. One leading convict trader wrote to his partner that their business “if properly managed will in a few years make us very genteel fortunes.” The reality is, as much as historians have attempted to dismiss this reality, we are largely a race of convicts.<br /><br />We also come to the realization that our mentality, for the most part, comes from belief in the Bible and this concept of God. One cannot study the history of America or the history of religion without coming to the reality of this observation. The only books that were allowed inside the jails and prisons were Bibles. The hardened criminals were often not allowed to communicate with anyone except the chaplain. Clergymen would often be present along with the politicians in the groundbreaking ceremonies for the new prisons. In the early 1820’s the legislature authorized prisons to furnish the inmates with Bibles. Yet in the same breath, prisoners were treated worse than animals and were kept in the direst of conditions and often tortured. The conditions of prisons would take toll on the health of the prisoners. According to one prison physician, their “sedentary life in the prison, as it calls into aid the debilitating passions of melancholy, grief, etc., rapidly hastens the progress of pulmonary disease.” Many prisoners break down at the onset of being incarcerated by the very fight or flight mechanisms of the body, and become sickly because of the shutting down of the immune system do to this process, and never fully recover from it. Many prisoners have simply gone insane due to the treatment and long periods of incarceration. Records have shown cases where prisoners cell doors were opened and the prisoners leaped from upper story levels onto the stone or concrete pavement below. Others have bashed their heads against the masonry walls and others have slashed their wrist or hung themselves in their prison cell. None of the realities of how the prison setting can affect a human being are considered by the Christian society that institutes the caging of human beings for such long periods of time.<br /><br />Then there are those that it seems are not affected at all by being incarcerated. They seem to have the mentality that accepts their fate and in some cases the inmate will willingly confess that this is were he belongs and he will be obnoxiously happy living in this caged invironment. This is what makes incarceration such an unfair punishment, when one person suffers so severely by the process of being caged and having lost his or her freedom, and another person actually seems to enjoy the prison environment they are placed in and actually thrives in it.<br /><br />Our culture has beat to the heartbeat of the chaos of religious beliefs for over fifteen hundred years. There have been some ten thousand battles in the last thousand years in the name of Christianity. The pages of history are stained blood red from the behaviors that have been spawned out of this belief in this wretched book called the Bible, and our conditioned fear prevents us from reading and learning what this book really says. (Can you imagine that? It is the “Word of God” but I’m afraid to read it and see what it actually says!) We incarcerate more people that any other country including Russia, and our system of injustice is a tragedy, yet the general population looks with blinders or cataracts on their eyes and do not see it or they are afraid to look or they are apathetic. In America, our media is so superficial that they will rarely print anything that deals with the reality of the state of our country and the neurosis that stems from the religion we believe in. Some 86 to 92 percent of americans in this county when asked their religion will say they are Christian. (But other polls taken have shown that if a person is asked by the statement, “I'm not a Christian, but I believe in God. Are you a Christian?" Many will give some form of answer to the negative.)<br /><br />We are a rip-off society and everywhere we turn there is another scam and more corruption. Collectively individuals tout their beliefs in Jesus Christ while simultaneously being deceptive in business or even running scams. We have the highest rate of homicide, the highest rate of child molestation, the highest rate of rape, the highest rate of violence, the highest crime rate, the highest rate of child abuse, the highest rate of domestic violence, the highest rate of alcoholism and drug addiction, and the highest rate of suicide—and, don’t kid yoursself—we have one of the most corrupt (in)justice systems of any other democratic country—all in the name of a religion that is a fairy tale and based on a very strange set of false beliefs.<br /><br />Sex is made into something so bizarre because out of these false belief systems that it is nothing short of sickening, and yet our culture is eaten up with it. It is actually against the law and a crime to have sex in some states in this country if you are not legally married, and Georgia is one of those states with this strange law on the books. That means when a man makes love to a woman or a woman makes love to a man, and they are not “legally married” they are breaking the law and committing a crime! Many other laws come straight from the many demented scriptures in the Bible.<br /><br />As I surrender to this energy behind all creation, I surrender the illusions of self with all its fear, and God allows my mind to question those things that man has claimed to be from God. Our Founding Fathers were, for the most part, Deist, and they believed in God, but they did not endorse any specific religion, and gave us the freedom to worship our Creator as we choose, or even to be free from such worship. Christianity in of itself is a violation of this very freedom because imposition itself is the very makeup of this religion. The greatest thinkers throughout history have warned against organized religion and the very aspects of religious dogma. George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, were all Deist and in many of their works they questioned the divinity of Christ as well as the Bible. Abe Lincoln was also a devout believer in God, but rejected the Bible as being infallible and the messianic religion connected to it. But society and the public always had to be fooled into believing they were dutiful church going, Bible believing Christians, in order to get elected to office. These beliefs for most of these men of greatness were kept private, and those that came public with them, just as the destruction of other great thinkers throughout history, would never be elected to office, and were ridiculed and tormented by those that had these strange beliefs.<br /><br />In fact Thomas Paine, who believed in our Creator the same way that I do, was imprisoned and ridiculed until his health failed him and he went to his grave being branded an atheist by the Christian fundamentalist. But many historians and the public alike always want to slant things to please themselves and mold these great men into minds of mediocrity and ignorance. Plus, as John Elton Trueblood, the most popular and one of the richest Christian writers of this century made clear late in his life—that he accepted this belief only with constant doubt and that we tend to accept what is popular and go where the money is. Or, on the other hand, those with the motives to win the popular vote, make these men of integrity into minds of mediocrity in order to secure the popularity of the masses. Most of us tend to be skeptical of such beliefs at some point in our lives, but the pressure of others upon us and the pressures of society upon us often cause us to give in to them. It is difficult to stand alone, but the root meaning of the very word alone is “all and one”, and the definition of alone means, “single; solitary; separate from others or from the masses; without the presents or aid of another.” We tend to run in herds, like cattle or sheep. If we could each understand who we are and if each one of us can learn to stand alone and become our own authority, we will understand what it means to be united and to stand together.<br /><br />The Revolutionary War was brought about for the same reasons that Columbus originally set sail—to get away from the imposition of orthodox religion and to be mentally and spiritually free from the tyranny of government and that of the Church. Our Founding Fathers sought to free our country from the tyranny of a government and to be free from a country that was embodied in the imposition of a specific religion but, at the same time, was so cruel against human nature itself. A clause of Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a passage that attacked the Crown for waging “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” But this section was deleted at the request of South Carolina and Georgia. The final version cited a “long train of abuses and usurpation,” some of which plainly involved the prisoner trade. They included complaints that the Crown had obstructed the administration of justice, sent swarms of officers to harass the people, deprived many of the benefits of trial by jury, transported persons beyond the seas for fabricated offenses, and committed countless other injustices. Having failed by peaceful means to gain an end to these oppressions, the “Representatives of the United States of America” solemnly declared their colonies as “Free and Independent States.”<br /><br />The one thing that our Founding Fathers did not take into consideration was the power of the conditioned mind and the fixation of habit. Our new country was full of people that were already programmed to certain beliefs and traditions, and lets face it, slavery was still part of the plan. Virginia’s Patrick Henry, patriot and slaveowner, rose to advise his fellow legislators. Standing with his head bowed and his wrists crossed, as if to imitate a manacled slave, he asked: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” After a pause, he shouted: “Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take. But as for me—give me liberty or give me death!” Benjamin Franklin, Richard Henry Lee, and some others argued against slavery, but the motive for Lee and many others was to protect their investment and prevent new slaves from coming in so that the slaves they owned and that they were being taxed for, would retain or go up in value. John Dickinson talked of freedom and liberty, yet he had been one of Philadelphia’s leading sla veholders. No wonder that Dr. Samuel Johnson asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”<br /><br />Just before the signing of the Declaration of Independence Washington and other leaders of the independence movement openly asserted that the British government was attempting to implement a deliberate plan to enslave the colonies and bring them under arbitrary control. John Adams described his fellow colonist as “the most abject sort of slaves.”<br /><br />Look at how we treated the American Indians with such vile acts of arrogance and cruelty. There is a story of about how an officer asked a Cherokee Indian Chief about his belief in God. The Chief replied with a story of how the Great Spirit was the energy behind that squirrel, that rabbit, that deer, the butterfly and the flower. He said that it was unknown and mysterious and yet we have learned to live with it. The officer laughed a loud boisterous laugh and said something like—What you bel ieve is fable! Let me tell you about the Lord Jesus Christ, the one true God, that died for our sins and was resurrected and that was born of the virgin and was God Almighty in the flesh!— I can only imagine what this great Chief thought about the mental state of this man.<br /><br />The famous speech by Chief Seattle in 1854 has long carried a deep significance to many that read it. In a moving excerpt from one of the several different versions of his speech the Chief said, “It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter...A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? ribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. All things are connected. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.”<br /><br />We are living in a time that organized Christianity and what many now refer to as “Corporate Christianity” is being imposed upon society. The Politicians are all making sure the public believe them to be Bible beliving “Christians” and they are portrayed as regular churchgoers. The Christian religion is being injected into every walk of life, and a person who rejects such beliefs is thought to be without character and of an immoral or even criminal mind. We can’t sit in a restaurant without having to listen to songs on the jukebox or on the radio about Jesus or the devil. Our government is now waging a cruel war against human nature itself, violating the most sacred rights of life & liberty, often without any due process of law, and often with the tactics of vile corruption and obstruction of justice. I submit to you, history shows us with undoubting accuracy that it is the Christian religion and those that believe in this demented book called the Bible are the true criminals and the true obstruction to freedom and to the art of living. The intelligence of man can never come into operation under the stranglehold of religion.<br /><br />We should simply learn what it means to be nothing and to live a life that dies to self and brings about goodness and love with the creative intelligence that comes out of it. Out of this examination of the self and the understanding of oneself comes intelligence and then there is no substitution of something else. The moment you substitute religion for it, religion becomes another means of self-expansion, another source of psychological anxiety, and a means of feeding oneself through false beliefs. So when we die to ourselves there is intelligence and there is no substitution; and when there is intelligence, then nationalism, patriotism, identity through organized religion, which is a form of stupidity, disappears.<br /><br />I would like to ask you to close your eyes and observe the fact that thought has created, invented all the religions of the world. Upon picturing this reality, at this moment you will free yourself from the conditioning of all false religions and you will look into the very eyes of this energy behind all creation, which is this energy behind all creation. This brings about the insight that is the intelligence that goes beyond self, and that walks with death and life together, which is the only way to a life that has it foundation in goodness and love, and this is the most sacred thing in life. Without goodness and love one is not educated, no matter how much knowledge you have. We are not going to change society until we each change inside our own hearts and learn what it means to die to self, without suppositions or beliefs. In the dying is the living. This is not a product of effort and we cannot achieve it by any religious practice. It is a natural state, and the moment you attempt to achieve it by any method, you will not succeed. It is the truth that frees, not your effort to be free. This is the only true revolution.<br /><br />Our society is latent with corruption and everyone is seeking pleasure through his or her own ambition. We much join together and stand up for life, liberty & freedom. United we will learn. Divided we fail. Together we prevail.<br /><br />We have come to be where we were in 1761 and where we don’t want or need to be. We have come full circle. It’s time to take a non-violent stand. It’s time for a revolution.<br /><br /><br /><br />Put together/written by Kerry Walker<br />July 31, 2005<br /><br /><br />Note: Much of the info in this post was pulled from With Liberty For Some--If I may I would like to suggest this great book by Scott Christianson, entitled “WITH LIBERTY FOR SOME—500 YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT IN AMERICA.”<br /><br />To read A COUPLE QUESTIONS at the link below and learn the truth about the bible...</strong><strong></strong></span></div>
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<a href="http://guestmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/08/couple-questions.html"><span style="color: blue;">http://guestmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/08/couple-questions.html</span></a>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-28669192421976337132009-03-08T09:39:00.000-07:002009-03-08T10:09:43.762-07:00On Naming<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDFGd_NXk78TbyTEZ_1_94dOtUCi3m_cgCVBIYAvGuN8PDdJhAm2g2PuHlnX1lOxIf5ayxAlAZcLVU2g2ich8nKPkWeRE6meBamT1uS0CAWWhOKL8AntZXbHIVBPOlW54-dK6crA/s1600-h/23660021.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310864843273365650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 212px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDFGd_NXk78TbyTEZ_1_94dOtUCi3m_cgCVBIYAvGuN8PDdJhAm2g2PuHlnX1lOxIf5ayxAlAZcLVU2g2ich8nKPkWeRE6meBamT1uS0CAWWhOKL8AntZXbHIVBPOlW54-dK6crA/s320/23660021.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:130%;color:#000099;"><strong>On Naming</strong></span></div><span style="color:#000099;"><strong><div align="justify"><br />Question: How can one be aware of an emotion without naming or labeling it? If I am aware of a feeling, I seem to know what the feeling is almost immediately after it arises. Or do you mean something different when you say, ‘Do not name’?<br /><br />Krishnamurti: Why do we name anything? Why do we give a label to a flower, to a person, to a feeling? Either to communicate one’s feelings, to describe the flower and so on and so on; or to identify oneself with that feeling. Is not that so? I name something, a feeling, to communicate it. ‘I am angry.’ Or I identify myself with that feeling in order to strengthen it or to dissolve it or to do something about it. We give a name to something, to a rose, to communicate it to others or, by giving it a name, we think we have understood it. We say, “That is a rose”, rapidly looking at it and go on. By giving it a name, we think we have understood it; we have classified it and think that thereby we have understood the whole content and beauty of that flower.<br /><br />By giving a name to something, we have merely put it into a category and we think we have understood it; we don’t look at it more closely. If we do not give it a name, however, we are forced to look at it. That is we approach the flower or whatever it is with a newness, with a new quality of examination; we look at it as though we had never looked at it before. Naming is a very convenient way of disposing of things and of people—by saying that they are Germans, Japanese, Americans, Hindus, you can give them a label and destroy the label. If you do not give a label to people you are forced to look at them and then it is much more difficult to kill somebody. You can destroy the label with a bomb and feel righteous, but if you do not give a label and must therefore look at the individual thing—whether it is a man or a flower or an incident or an emotion—then you are forced to consider your relationship with it, and with the action following. So terming or giving a label is a very convenient way of disposing of anything, of denying, condemning or justifying it. That is one side of the question.<br /><br />What is the core from which you name, what is the centre which is always naming, choosing, labeling? We all feel there is a centre, a core, do we not?, from which we are acting, from which we are judging, from which we are naming. What is that center, that core? Some would like to think it is a spiritual essence, God, or what you will. So let us find out what is that core, that centre, which is naming, terming, judging. Surely that core is memory, isn’t it? A series of sensations, identified and enclosed—the past, given life through the present. That core, that centre, feeds on the present through naming, labeling, remembering.<br /><br />We will see presently, as we unfold it, that so long as this centre, this core, exists, there can be no understanding. It is only with the dissipation of this core that there is understanding, because after all, that core is memory; memory of various experiences which have been given names, labels, identifications. With those named and labeled experiences, from that centre, there is acceptance or rejection, determination to be or not to be, according to the sensations, pleasures and pains of the memory of experience. So that centre is the word. If you do not name that center, is there a center? That is if you do not think in terms of words, if you do not use words, can you think? Thinking comes into being through verbalization; or verbalization begins to respond to thinking. The centre, the core is the memory of innumerable experiences of pleasure and pain, verbalized. Watch it in yourself, please, and you will see that words have become much more important, labels have become much more important, than the substance; and we live on words.<br /><br />For us, words like truth, God, have become very important—or the feeling which those words represent. When we say the word ‘American’, ‘Christian’, ‘Hindu’ or the word ‘anger’—we are the word representing the feeling. But we don’t know what that feeling is, because the word has become important. When you call yourself a Buddhist, a Christian, what does the word mean, what is the meaning behind that word, which you have never examined? Our centre, the core is the word, the label. If the label does not matter, if what matters is that which is behind the label, then you are able to inquire but if you are identified with the label and stuck with it, you cannot proceed. And we are identified with the label: the house, the form, the name, the furniture, the bank account, our opinions, our stimulants and so on and so on. We are all those things—those things being represented by name. The things have become important, the names, the labels; and therefore the centre, the core, is the word.<br /><br />If there is no word, no label, there is no centre, is there? There is a dissolution, there is an emptiness—not the emptiness and fear, which is quite a different thing. There is a sense of being as nothing; because you have removed all the labels or rather because you have understood why you give labels to feelings and ideas you are completely new, are you not? There is no center from which you are acting. The center, which is the word, has been dissolved. The label has been taken away and where are you as the center? You are there but there has been a transformation. That transformation is a little bit frightening; therefore, you do not proceed with what is involved in it; you are already beginning to judge it, to decide whether you like it or don’t like it. You don’t proceed with the understanding of what is coming but you are already judging, which means you have a center from which you are acting. Therefore you stay fixed the moment you judge; the words ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ become important. But what happens when you do not name? You look at an emotion, at a sensation, more directly and therefore have quite a different relationship to it, just as you have to a flower when you do not name it. You are forced to look at it anew. When you do not name a group of people, you are compelled to look at each individual face and not treat them all as the mass. Therefore you are much more alert, much more observing, more understanding; you have a deeper sense of pity, love; but if you treat them all as the mass, it is over.<br /><br />If you do not label, you have to regard every feeling as it arises. When you label, is the feeling different from the label? Or does the label awaken the feeling? Please think it over. When we label, most of us intensify the feeling. The feeling and the naming are instantaneous. If there were a gap between naming and feeling, then you could find out if the feeling is different from the naming and then you would be able to deal with the feeling without naming it.<br /><br />The problem is this, is it not?, how to be free from a feeling which we name, such as anger? Not how to subjugate it, sublimate it, suppress it, which are all idiotic and immature, but how to be really free from it? To be really free from it, we have to discover whether the word is more important than the feeling. The word ‘anger’ has more significance than the feeling itself. Really to find that out there must be a gap between the feeling and the naming. That is one part.<br /><br />If you do not name a feeling, that is to say if thought is not functioning merely because of words or if I do not think in terms of words, images or symbols, which most of us do—then what happens? Surely the mind then is not merely the observer. When the mind is not thinking in terms of words, symbols, images, there is no thinker separate from the thought, which is the word. Then the mind is quiet, is it not?—not made quiet, it is quite. When the mind is really quiet, then the feelings which arise can be dealt with immediately. It is only when we give names to feelings and thereby strengthen them that the feelings have continuity; they are stored up in the center, from which we give further labels, either to strengthen or to communicate them.<br /><br />When the mind is no longer the centre, as the thinker made up of words, of past experiences—which are all memories, labels, stored up and put in categories, in pigeonholes—when it is not doing any of those things, then, obviously the mind is quiet. It is no longer bound, it has no longer a center as the me—my house, my achievement, my work—which are still words, giving impetus to feeling and thereby strengthening memory. When none of these things is happening, the mind is very quiet. That state is not negation. On the contrary, to come to that point, you have to go through all this, which is a n enormous undertaking; it is not merely learning a few sets of words and repeating them like a school-boy—‘not to name’, ‘not to name’. To follow through all its implications, to experience it, to see how the mind works and thereby come to that point when you are no longer naming, which means that there is no longer a centre apart from thought—surely this whole process is real meditation.<br /><br />When the mind is really tranquil, then it is possible for that which is immeasurable to come into being. Any other process, any other search for reality, is merely self-projected, home-made and therefore unreal. But this process is arduous and it means that the mind has to be constantly aware of everything that is inwardly happening to it. To come to this point, there can be no judgment or justification from the beginning to the end—not that this is an end. There is no end, because there is something extraordinary still going on. This is no promise. It is for you to experiment, to go into yourself deeper and deeper and deeper, so that all the many layers of the center are dissolved and you can do it rapidly or lazily. It is extraordinarily interesting to watch the process of the mind, how it depends on words, how the words stimulate memory or resuscitate the dead experience and give life to it. In that process the mind is living either in the future or in the past. Therefore words have an enormous significance, neurologically as well as psychologically. And please do not learn all this from me or from a book. You cannot learn it from another or find it in a book. What you learn or find in a book will not be the real. But you can experience it, you can watch yourself in action, watch yourself thinking, see how you think, how rapidly you are naming the feeling as it arises—and watching the whole process frees the mind from its center. Then the mind, being quiet, can receive that which is eternal. </strong></span></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-62669963571335293492009-02-17T16:51:00.000-08:002009-02-17T16:59:45.195-08:00Rhea group making monkeys out of themselves<span style="color:#3366ff;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Rhea group making monkeys out of themselves</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">By Kerry Craig Walker</span><br /><br />A group of Rhea County residents are doing a very good job of making themselves look ignorant. Their response on a billboard stating “Evolutionists came from monkeys” is not a clever response. It says nothing to support their views and nothing to counter the views of the evolutionists. </span><br /><span style="color:#3366ff;"><br />Their second billboard, which claims to have been a World War II poster, further degrades this group’s position. This picture of the bible with a stake through the middle of it is a very disturbing picture on two sides. It is disturbing for those who believe in the bible and it is disturbing to those who don’t. They are in a very direct way stating that those who believe in evolution, and who don’t believe in the bible, are violently opposed to anyone who believes in the bible and that these people are also like the Nazis.<br /><br />My father had faith in a Creator and he was a great man, and he fought his heart out in WWII for our freedom. My father was very intelligent and he was aware of the evolutionary processes on this earth, and he would be very upset about these billboards, especially the second one!</span><br /><span style="color:#3366ff;"><br />I contacted June Griffin by email and told her about my work and the fact that I had mathematical proof of a Creative Intelligence. She responded and did not seem to be interested in looking into my work and gave the typical response through religion by stating, “I am sure your studies are valuable. I have some proof as well, having served Him since the early 1970's. He has never failed me and has healed us repeatedly, answered our prayers, brought to pass things thought impossible and given me hope for restoration of this country, especially in Tennessee.” She goes to state, “Darwin-Freud-Marx are the satanic trinity which we are forced to pay for. I am sick of their extortion.”<br /><br />Since graduating near the top of my class with a degree in Architectural Engineering in 1977, I have spent the last 30 years researching everything related to religion and religious philosophies and philosophy in general. I studied histories of religion, origins of religion, conflicts of religion, and so on. I literally read or looked into most every book that was related to the subject. I have read the bible from cover to cover four times and I have researched and studied six translations of the bible.<br /><br />On the subject of Evolution, I have been a student of this subject as well for nearly thirty years. I have communicated with Anthropologist Richard E. Leakey, Director/Chief Executive of the National Museums of Kenya. I communicated by phone with the late Professor Stephen Jay Gould, the well known paleontologist, as well as communicate with Joe Huffstetler of The Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, and Peter R. Hoover of the Paleontological Research Institute. I have also had correspondence with those associated with General Paleontology in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I have spent many hours at the University of Georgia, in Athens, studying evolutionary processes and the fossil record and many more hours of in home study through books and magazines and on the computer. I have continued to keep up with every new discovery and I have studied each in detail.<br /><br />I have also had deep interest in the study of Astronomy and all aspects of science related to the study of the cosmos. For my own interest I have also pursued a better understanding of complex calculus (integrals) and quantum physics and quantum mechanics. I have studied the work of scientists and researchers that are within, as well as outside of, the mainstream theories. </span><br /><span style="color:#3366ff;"><br />I have put together a 317 page manuscript on these subjects entitled, “The Dawn of Intelligence”, edited by Dr. John A. Henderson, which looks at an intelligence that goes beyond the conditioned processes of self and I’m in the process of finding a publisher. I have a chapter on evolution that looks into the facts behind these processes of change over time.<br /><br />A valid response to the evolutionist would be to provide evidence that there is an outside energy or Creator at work in these processes. This can only be done by looking at the problems with natural selection left on its own. If we consider the evidence as it stands we find clear evidence that some outside energy must be at work along with the processes of natural selection. Echolocation in the bats and bio-sonar in whales and dolphins are two good examples where natural selection alone would fail.<br /><br />Natural selection works by drawing on a gene from the gene pool and then there is a mutation of this gene. In the case of the bat, and the whale and dolphin, for example, there was no gene pool to pull from, and, therefore, no gene to mutate in order to bring about these high tech systems of echolocation or bio-sonar. There are many other examples of design when we study these changes over time and even more examples in the micro world. Examples of behavior and the actions of insects and other creatures in nature also lend proof to a creative energy or creative intelligence, not to mention the biological evidence. I believe that science, mathematics and physics also lends proof of this creative intelligence and that this intelligence is within the cosmos itself, and I have demonstrated this in my work. The components of the cosmos contain the necessary complex ingredients, along with electro-magnetism, to produce this directive energy or creative intelligence.<br /><br />In my open-minded study of history, I have learned that those that came to the so-called New World wanted to worship their Creator on their own terms and many did not desire to have allegiance to the king. Unfortunately the conditioning of the masses brought over the same nonsense that they were attempting to leave behind. Is this not the government and the church we broke from in 1776 in order to form this great country?<br /><br />A great man named Thomas Paine was the very deist that believed in a Creator but detested the bible, yet this man was clearly the catalyst for our revolution! He died being rejected by the so-called Christian people and before his death he stated, “My life is in the hands of my Creator”. In his own words he stated, “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”<br /><br />There is no one on this earth that wishes the bible was true more than me, after all I have been through to find truth, but unfortunately it’s not. And, like Thomas Paine, I too have found the truth about what is contained in this wretched book. It is, more often than not, a god of hatred and not a God of love that is portrayed in the bible.<br /><br />The simple fact is that very few Christians have read the entire bible and don’t know what’s in there, and would be very surprised to find out! And how few of us have the intelligence to go beyond self and are hesitant enough to patiently do the research and take the time to come upon the truth!<br /><br />Like so many throughout history, I have had great harm brought to me and my family by those that call themselves Christian and profess the bible to be the word of God. This insanity must stop!<br /><br />The religions have no grounding in reality as religions are inventions of human thought, and atheism is often the opposite side of the same coin. The evolutionists have created a new belief based on natural selection, and they are wrong to conclude that there is no natural outside energy at work in the detailed designs of organisms and in the complex and mysterious processes of the universe and the infinite cosmos. </span><br /><br /><br /></span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-982299559409153292009-01-02T10:12:00.000-08:002009-01-02T10:15:29.263-08:00It's enough to make you want to throw up (smile)<span style="color:#ffcc00;"><span style="font-size:180%;">It’s enough to make you want to throw up</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">By Kerry Craig Walker</span><br /><br /> The headline reads, “Vatican spins Galileo as hero before 400th anniversary.” Now this great man is going from heretic to hero, but is the actions to be considered noble? The Vatican is “recasting the most famous victim of its Inquisition as a man of faith, just in time for the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope and the U.N.-designated International Year of Astronomy next year.”<br /><br /> There nothing like putting a man through bitter hell and dragging him with his hands tied as he struggle to walk behind a horse pulling him back to stand before the almighty Catholic god, or, should I say, those that believed in the bizarre religion and its god. Then sentencing him to life in a dungeon infested with rats and then, thanks to a good Cardinal, removing him from this rat investing hell, and allowing the sick and nearly blind man to be sentenced to house arrest, only to die within a few years of his release….and now to raise him up to be a hero!!!?? Ha!!! It’s enough to make you sick. And as if this was not enough to make you throw up, “Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the Italian astronomer and physicist Sunday, saying he and other scientists had helped the faithful better understand and-now get this-‘contemplate with gratitude the Lord’s works.’” Now if that does not make you want to throw up, something is terribly wrong with you.<br /><br /> Oh, but it does not end here.--- “In May, several Vatican officials will participate in an international conference to re-examine the Galileo affair, and top Vatican officials are now saying Galileo Galilei should be named the ‘patron’ of the dialog between faith and reason.”--- Who was it who said, “Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God”?<br /><br /> It’s quite a reverse of fortune for a man that is now dead (1564-1642) and who made the first complete astronomical telescope and used it to gather evidence that the Earth revolved around the sun and that it was not the center of the universe. Church teaching (and imposition) at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe and declared that the “heavens” were constant. </span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-56076411774424166302009-01-01T19:34:00.000-08:002009-01-01T21:27:22.193-08:00The Lincoln Bible Hoax<span style="color:#33ccff;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">The Lincoln Bible Hoax</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">By Kerry Craig Walker</span><br /><br />The headline reads, “Obama to take oath of office on historic Lincoln Bible” and what a hoax it is! The fact is President Lincoln did not have a personal bible at the time, because his was packed away in a box somewhere. The other interesting true historical facts about Lincoln is that he did not believe in the bible and often made derogatory comments about it.<br /><br />The president elect, Obama, will be taking the oath of office using the “historic Lincoln Bible”, which actually wasn’t even Lincoln’s bible. The burgundy velvet-bound volume known as the Lincoln Bible was purchased in 1861 by then Supreme Court Clerk William Thomas Carroll for use in Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, because Lincoln could not put his hands on his.<br /><br />An even more interesting twist to actual facts in history is the story that Lincoln’s personal bible was not used because it was packed away and en route from Illinois to Washington. This was the other hoax perpetrated at an earlier time in history and they have kept to this story ever since…much in the same way that Lincoln was represented in the papers at the time as a bible believing, Church going Christian. Yet, those that were close to Lincoln knew the truth of how he often made jokes about the bible and those that believed in it.<br /><br />It gets more interesting when you learn the fact that the man who assassinated Lincoln was a “Bible believing Christian” and the man who shot Lincoln’s assassin when he was on the run was also a “Bible believing Christian” and a known nutcase who, now get this, castrated himself in his attempts to be pure and to please his Christian god.<br /></strong></span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-16936446557994627882008-07-25T17:56:00.000-07:002008-07-25T18:03:23.537-07:00WHY ARE WE IGNORING GREAT OUTDOORS?<span style="font-size:180%;color:#33ff33;">Why are we ignoring great outdoors?</span><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><br /></span><span style="color:#33ff33;">I got up a little after 5:00 this morning and I walked down to the streams on the property here near my cabin. As I shined a flashlight into the streams that have always been so full of life with a variety of minnows and several different sizes of crayfish, and a few frogs and an occasional salamander, I noticed things were starting to change. There were much fewer minnows and the number of crayfish swimming around on the bottom was down to one here and one there...and I was lucky to find these two. All because of the ignorance of people and because of two huge houses being built on this property with no concern for nature or for the people that already live here or come here to visit.<br /><br />When the builder would not take action to fix all the many problems over the course of over eight months, and when the county would not take action, I called up the Environmental Protection Division and they sent out Amy Mundel and she took action and got things done! Both of these multi-million dollar houses where shut down until they meet the proper requirements! And now the multimillionaire owners of these houses, who own Neocom Solutions, and the county is trying to target me and bring me harm only because of my concern for the destruction of this paradise that is so near to my heart and that I have enjoyed since I was a little kid. This was also one of my father’s favorite places to enjoy the outdoors, and now they are trying to run me out like they already did one of my neighbors who were the first people to live on this property.<br /><br />Why are we ignoring the great outdoors? Why have people become so indifferent to the importance of nature? Most people in this town just ignore the importance of preserving nature. Here in Canton, Georgia, the building department and their inspectors, the people in Planning and Zoning, those in Engineering and the people in Environmental Health, and those in the Marshal’s office, all don’t seem to care at all about the life in these spring fed streams. And because these people don’t care, when the lives of these creatures that make these streams alive are stamped out they won’t even miss them. When these live streams become dead, like all the other streams around our poorly managed developments, none of these people will ever give a hoot. We are destroying nature, and by destroying nature and our environment we are slowly destroying this marvelous earth.<br /><br />There are so many other aspects of nature that should be preserved in this virtual paradise. This awesome place is located in a deep valley surrounded by rolling hills at the corner of the Etowah River and Lake Allatoona. It is literally like another world down in this valley and down the nature trails that wind through the steep rolling hills to the lake. Speaking of not giving a hoot, there are many owls that live in this area. One can hear them hooting everyday and every night and occasionally I will get to see one of these awesome creatures. In fact I can hear one now as I write this. One day they will have no place to live or they will not be able to survive the damage caused by the stupidity of these harmful development practices. There are also big and beautiful redheaded woodpeckers, and many other kinds of birds, not to mention the other wildlife that uses this land to survive. There are also many different varieties of butterflies and other cool insects that are in abundance in this area of natural beauty. Why don’t people care about all this?<br /><br />This place is in many ways a kind of tropical rain forest. In fact it often rains here and no where else in the area. The clouds are often fed by the moister off the water that goes for many miles. Almost every morning there is moister in the air. This moister feeds the many thousands of Earleaf Magnolias and the many species of ferns that cover the grounds, some in thick beds of ferns by the hundreds and some are giant ferns, four or five feet tall. There are many hundreds of wild holly and wild azaleas, and the hills by the spring fed streams are covered with Mountain Laurel. Dogwoods proliferate here and there are so many other plants and flowers that grow in this area in abundance and in this area only.<br /><br />Why do we continue to destroy the very nature that is dependent on our own long-term survival? We already can’t eat the fish out of most of the rivers and lakes in this country and even our great oceans are becoming polluted. Some of the great whales have cists on them because of our ignorance. There is not much time left for the oceans! Why?! Why are we doing this? It is so simple to use environmentally friendly developments and environmentally friendly landscaping, yet we don’t do it. Why? Is it because we have come to ignore our great outdoors?<br /><br />I know how easy it is to do environmentally friendly construction and landscaping because I have a degree in Architectural Engineering and I have done it and I have shown how simple and cost effective it is to do.</span><br /></span><span style="color:#33ff33;"></span><br /><span style="color:#33ff33;">Please. For your own sake and for the sake of those to come...Let's get outside and enjoy nature...and let's stop ignoring great outdoors.<br /></span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-52573021534005249882008-07-14T18:24:00.000-07:002008-07-15T06:00:27.017-07:00Baptist Church of Canton, GA<div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Baptist Church of Canton, GA</span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;"><span style="font-size:180%;"></span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;">I </span>went to the Baptist Church of Canton this morning just to see how the good ‘ol church was operating these days since I had not been in many years. This structure is a bran new multi-million-dollar church and it is huge! It was a very strange experience. </span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ffcc99;"></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;">The sermon was about witnessing to others and how each person should witness to as many people as they can every day. It reminded me of being at a very large multi-level marketing meeting. The preacher said that it was mandated by God that each person should testify and share the message that Jesus Christ is the only way to HEAVEN and that the only other alternative for those that have not been “SAVED” is eternal damnation in the pits of FLAMES in HELL. </span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;"></span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;">He talked about how each person should ask everyone they came in contact with, at work, at school, at the store, anywhere, and if they had not been saved you should witness to them. This sermon about how each person was commanded by God to witness to people every day went on for some 40 minutes. He said that each Jehovah's Witness is ordained to witness to 2000 people a year and that most Christians do not witness to anyone after they were SAVED. He went on to say how scripture makes it clear that if no one tells someone about Jesus Christ, how will they know?.. and they will be doomed to burn in hell fire forever because they were never told!(?) </span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;"></span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;">It is amazing how Christians say that believing in Jesus Christ is “solid ground” and everything else is “sinking sand”. And, believe me, if you don’t believe as they do they will do what they can to put you into the sinking sand! Is it any wonder why so many people become Christian robots? And is it any wonder why this religion continues to grow along with the neurosis of society by using this multi-level marketing technique? My god, it's got one of the best marketing techniques in business! The many multi-level marketing companies in this country and in other parts of the world have demonstrated how fast a company can grow and how it will continue to grow, even though the product is not truthfully represented, or nothing more than a scam.</span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;"></span></span></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#ff99ff;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#ffcc99;">There is one thing very clear....if we are ever going to have peace and sanity on this earth, this bizarre and false religion has got to go, and all other religions must disperse as well. Only then will we stand a chance of moving away from the stupidity of tribalism sustained by the many false beliefs and into a truth based selfless intelligence.</span></span></span></strong></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-17783260404491645862008-07-04T17:42:00.000-07:002008-07-04T17:46:46.583-07:00There is no path to truth<span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:180%;color:#ffcc00;"><strong>There is no path to truth</strong></span></div><span style="font-size:130%;color:#ffcc00;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;color:#ffcc00;"><strong>If truth can set you free, where do we find it? We cannot find truth in society and its institutions, nor in organized religions and their dogmas, nor in any self-help guru or outside spiritual “authority”. The hope for truth and ultimate freedom can’t come from someone telling you what to do or believe; it can come only through your own creative self-understanding.</strong></span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-3129537316008537212008-06-30T21:26:00.000-07:002009-01-19T14:19:33.478-08:00On Time<div align="justify"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;color:#3366ff;">On Time</span></strong><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><br /></span><br />Question: Can the past dissolve all at once, or does it invariably need time?<br /><br />K: We are the result of the past. Our thought is founded upon yesterday and many thousand yesterdays. We are the result of time, and our responses, our present attitudes, are the cumulative effect of many thousand moments, incidents and experiences. So the past is, for the majority of us, the present, which is a fact which cannot be denied. You, your thoughts, your actions, your responses, are the result of the past. Now the questioner wants to know if that past can be wiped out immediately, which means not in time but immediately wiped out; or does this cumulative past require time for the mind to be freed in the present? It is important to understand the question, which is this: As each one of us is the result of the past, with the background of innumerable influence, constantly varying, constantly changing, is it possible to wipe out that background without going through the process of time?<br />What is the past? What do we mean by the past? Surely we do not mean the chronological past. We mean, surely, the accumulated experiences, the accumulated responses, memories, traditions, knowledge, the sub-conscious storehouse of innumerable thoughts, feelings, influences and responses. With that background, it is not possible to understand reality, because reality must be of no time: it is timeless. So one cannot understand the timeless with a mind which is the outcome of time. The questioner wants to know if it is possible to free the mind, or for the mind, which is the result of time, to cease to be immediately; or must one go through a long series of examinations and analysis and so make ongoing attempts to free the mind from its background.<br />The mind is the background; the mind is the result of time; the mind is the past, the mind is not the future. It can project itself into the future and the mind uses the present as a passage into the future, so it is still—whatever it does, whatever its activity, its future activity, its present activity, its past activity—in the net of time. Is it possible for the mind to cease completely, for the thought process to come to an end? Now there are obviously many layers to the mind; what we call consciousness has many layers, each layer interrelated with the other layer, each layer dependent on the other, interacting; our whole consciousness is not only experiencing but also naming or terming and storing up as memory. That is the whole process of consciousness, is it not?<br />When we talk about consciousness, do we not mean the experiencing, the naming or the terming of that experience and thereby storing up that experience in memory? All this, at different levels, is consciousness. Can the mind, which is the result of time, go through the process of analysis, step by step, in order to free itself from the background or is it possible to be free entirely from time and look at reality directly?<br />To be free of the background, many of the analysts say that you must examine every response, every complex memory, every hindrance, every blockage, which obviously implies a process of time. This means the analyzer must understand what he or she is analyzing and he or she must not misinterpret what he/she analyses. If he or she mistranslates what he or she analyses it will lead him or her to wrong conclusions and therefore establish another background. The analyzer must be capable of analyzing his/her thoughts and feelings without the slightest deviation; and he or she must not miss one step in the analysis, because to take a wrong step, to draw a wrong conclusion, is to re-establish a background along a different line, on a different level. This problem also arises: Is the analyzer different from what he or she analyses? Are not the analyzer and the thing that is analyzed a joint phenomenon?<br />Surely the experiencer and the experience are a joint phenomenon; they are not two separate processes, so first of all let us see the difficulty of analyzing. It is almost impossible to analyze the whole content of our consciousness and thereby be free through that process. After all, who is the analyzer? The analyzer is not different, though he or she may think he/she is different, from that which he/she is analyzing. He or she may separate him or herself from that which he/she analyzes but the analyzer is part of the analysis. I have a thought, I have a feeling—say, for example, I am angry. The person who analysis anger is still part of anger and therefore the analyzer as well as the analyzed are a joint phenomenon, they are not two separate forces or processes. So the difficulty of analyzing ourselves, unfolding, looking at ourselves page after page, watching every reaction, every response, is incalculably difficult and long. Therefore that is not the way to free ourselves from the background, is it? There must be a much simpler, a more direct way, and that is what you and I are going to find out. In order to find out we must discard that which is false and not hold on to it. So analysis is not the way, and we must be free of the process of analysis.<br />Then what have you left? You are only used to analysis, are you not? The observer observing—the observer and the observed being a joint phenomenon—the observer trying to analyze that which he or she observes will not free him or her from his or her background. If that is so, and it is, you abandon that process, do you not? If you see that it is a false way, if you realize not merely verbally but actually that it is a false process, then what happens to your analysis? You stop analyzing, do you not? Then what do you have left? Watch it, follow it, and you will see how rapidly and swiftly one can be free from the background. If that is not the way, what else have you left? What is the state of mind which is accustomed to analysis, to probing, dissecting, drawing conclusions and so on? If that process has stopped, what is the state of your mind?<br />You may say that the mind is blank. Proceed further into that blank mind. In other words, when you discard what is known as being false, what has happened to your mind? After all, what have you discarded? You have discarded the false process which is the outcome of a background. Is that not so? With one blow, as it were, you have discarded the whole thing. Therefore your mind, when you discard the analytical process with all its implications and see it as false, is freed from yesterday and therefore is capable of looking directly, without going through the process of time, and thereby discarding the background immediately.<br />To put the whole question differently, thought is the result of time, is it not? Thought is the result of environment, of social and religious influences, which is all part of time. Now, can thought be free of time? That is, thought which is the result of time, can it stop and be free from the process of time? Thought can be controlled, shaped; but the control of thought is still within the field of time and so our difficulty is: How can a mind that is the result of time, of many thousand yesterdays, be instantaneously free of this complex background? You can be free of it, not to-morrow but in the present, in the now. That can be done only when you realize that which is false; and the false is obviously the analytical process and that is the only thing that we have. When the analytical process completely stops, not through enforcement but through understanding the inevitable falseness of that process, then you will find that your mind is completely dissociated from the past—which does not mean that your mind does not recognize the past but that your mind has no direct communion with the past. So it can free itself from the past immediately, now, and this dissociation from the past, this complete freedom from yesterday, not chronologically but psychologically, is possible; and that is the only way to understand reality.<br />To put it very simply, when you want to understand something, what is the state of your mind? When you want to understand a child, when you want to understand somebody, something that someone is saying, what is the state of your mind? You are not analyzing, criticizing, judging what the other is saying; you are listening, are you not? Your mind is in a state where the thought process is not active but is very alert. That alertness is not of time, is it? You are merely being alert, passively receptive and yet fully aware; and it is only in this state that there is understanding. When the mind is agitated, blocking, worrying, dissecting, analyzing, there is no complete understanding. When there is the intensity to understand, the mind is obviously tranquil. This, of course, you have to experiment with, not take my word for it, but you can see the more and more you analyze the less and less you understand. You may understand certain events, certain experiences, but the whole content of consciousness cannot be emptied through the analytical process. It can be emptied only when you see the falseness of the approach through analysis. When you see the false as the false, then you begin to see what is true; and it is truth that is going to liberate you from the background. </span></strong></div><p><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">J. Krishnamurti, THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM</span></strong><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;"><br /></p></span><span style="color:#3333ff;"></span></strong>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-38155681958776201762008-06-25T10:55:00.000-07:002009-01-19T14:23:26.773-08:00On Memory<div align="justify"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="color:#3366ff;">On Memory<br /></span></span></strong><span style="color:#3366ff;"><br /><br /></span><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">Question: Memory, you say, is incomplete experience. I have a memory and a vivid impression of your previous talks. In what sense is it an incomplete experience? Please explain this idea in all its details.<br /><br />K: What do we mean by memory? You go to school and are full of facts, technical knowledge. If you are an engineer, you use the memory of technical knowledge to build a bridge. That is factual memory. There is also psychological memory. You have said something to me, pleasant or unpleasant, and I retain it; when I next meet you, I meet you with that memory, the memory of what you have said or have not said. There are two facets to memory, the psychological and the factual. They are always interrelated, therefore not clear cut. We know that factual memory is essential as a means of livelihood but is psychological memory essential? What is the factor which retains the psychological memory? What makes one psychologically remember insult or praise? Why does one retain certain memories and reject others? Obviously one retains memories which are pleasant and avoids memories which are unpleasant. If you observe, you will see that painful memories are put aside more quickly than the pleasurable ones. Mind is memory, at whatever level, by whatever name you call it; mind is the product of the past, it is founded in the past, which is memory, a conditioned state. Now with that memory we meet life, we meet a new challenge. The challenge is always new and our response is always old, because it is the outcome of the past. So experiencing without memory is one state and experiencing with memory is another. That is there is a challenge, which is always new. I meet it with the response, with the conditioning of the old. So what happens? I absorb the new, I do not understand it; and the experiencing of the new is conditioned by the past. Therefore there is a partial understanding of the new, there is never complete understanding. It is only when there is complete understanding of anything that it does not leave the scar of memory.<br />When there is a challenge, which is ever new, you meet it with the response of the old. The old response conditions the new and therefore twists it, gives it a bias, therefore there is no complete understanding of the new so that the new is absorbed into the old and accordingly strengthens the old. This may seem abstract but it is not difficult if you go into it a little closely and carefully. The situation in the world at the present time demands a new approach, a new way of tackling the world problem, which is ever new. We are incapable of approaching it anew because we approach it with our conditioned minds, with national, local, family and religious prejudices. Our previous experiences are acting as a barrier to the understanding of the new challenge, so we go on cultivating and strengthening memory and therefore we never understand the new, we never meet the challenge fully, completely. It is only when one is able to meet the challenge anew, afresh, without the past, only then does it yield its fruits, its riches.<br />The questioner says, “I have a memory and a vivid impression of your previous talks. In what sense is it an incomplete experience?” Obviously, it is an incomplete experience if it is merely an impression, a memory. If you understand what has been said, see the truth of it, that truth is not a memory. Truth is not a memory, because truth is ever new, constantly transforming itself. You have a memory of the previous talk. Why? Because you are using the previous talk as a guide, you have not fully understood it. You want to go into it and unconsciously or consciously it is being maintained. If you understand something completely, that is see the truth of something wholly, you will find there is no memory whatsoever. Our education is the cultivation of memory, the strengthening of memory. Your religious practices and rituals, your reading and knowledge, are all the strengthening of memory. What do we mean by that? Why do we hold to memory? I do not know if you have noticed that, as one grows older, one looks back to the past, to its joy, to its pains, to its pleasures; if one is young, one looks to the future. Why are we doing this? Why has memory become so important? For the simple and obvious reason that we do not know how to live wholly, completely in the present. We are using the present as a means to the future and therefore the present has no significance. We cannot live in the present because we are using the present as a passage to the future. Because I am going to be something, there is never a complete understanding of myself, and to understand myself, what I am exactly now, does not require the cultivation of memory. On the contrary, memory is a hindrance to the understanding of what is. I do not know if you have noticed that a new thought, a new feeling, comes only when the mind is not caught in the net of memory. When there is an interval between two thoughts, between two memories, when that interval can be maintained, then out of that interval a new state of being comes which is no longer memory. We have memories, and we cultivate memory as a means of continuance. The ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ becomes very important so long as the cultivation of memory exist, and as most of us are made up of ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, memory plays a very important part in our lives. If you had no memory, your property, your family, your ideas, would not be important as such; so to give strength to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, you cultivate memory. If you observe, you will see that there is an interval between the two thoughts, between two emotions. In that interval, which is not the product of memory, there is an extraordinary freedom from the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ and that interval is timeless.<br />Let us look at the problem differently. Surely memory is time, is it not? Memory creates yesterday, to-day and to-morrow. Memory of yesterday conditions to-day and therefore shapes to-morrow. That is the past through the present creates the future. There is a time process going on, which is the will to become. Memory is time, and through time we hope to achieve a result. I am a clerk to-day and, given time and opportunity, I will become the manager or the owner. Therefore I must have time, and with the same mentality we say, “I shall achieve reality, I shall approach this energy that brings clarity.” Therefore I must have time to realize, which means I must cultivate memory, strengthen memory by practice, by discipline, to become something, to achieve, to gain, which means continuation in time. Through time we hope to achieve the timeless, through time we hope to gain the eternal. Can you do that? Can you catch the eternal in the net of time, through memory, which is of time? The timeless can be only when memory, which is the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, ceases. If you see the truth of that—that through time the timeless cannot be understood or received—then we can go into the problem of memory. The memory of technical things is essential; but the psychological memory that maintains the self, the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, that gives identification and self-continuance, is wholly detrimental to life and to reality. When one sees the truth of that, the false drops away; therefore there is no psychological retention of yesterday’s experience.<br />You see a lovely sunset, a beautiful tree in a field and when you first look at it, you enjoy it completely, wholly; but you go back to it with the desire to enjoy it again. What happens when you go back to it with the desire to enjoy it? There is no enjoyment, because it is the memory of yesterday’s sunset that is now making you return, that is pushing, urging you to enjoy. Yesterday there was no memory, only a spontaneous appreciation, a direct response; to-day you are desirous of recapturing the experience of yesterday. That is, memory is intervening between you and the sunset, therefore there is no enjoyment, there is no richness, fullness of beauty. Again, you have a friend, who said something to you yesterday, an insult or a compliment and you retain that memory; with that memory you meet your friend today. You do not really meet your friend—you carry with you the memory of yesterday, which intervenes. So we go on, surrounding ourselves and our actions with memory, and therefore there is no newness, no freshness. That is why memory makes life weary, dull and empty. We live in antagonism with each other because the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ are strengthened through memory. Memory comes to life through action in the present; we give life to memory through the present but when we do not give life to memory, it fades away. Memory of facts, of technical things, is an obvious necessity, but memory as psychological retention is detrimental to the understanding of life, the communion with each other.</span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;"></span></strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;"></span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">J. Krishnamurti, THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM</span></strong> </div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-47162662884443417382008-05-21T21:48:00.000-07:002008-05-21T21:52:58.321-07:00Sound familiar?<strong><span style="color:#ff9966;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Sound familiar?</span> <br /><br /><br /> Ever since the earliest Colonial settlements, the so-called New World had been a haven for people whose ideas or religions had been distasteful to the existing authorities. But then, in the latter half of the 1700’s, the hospitality began to wear thin. The Naturalization Act passed by Congress in 1795, although for the most part liberal enough, within a few years all sorts of fears swept through the states—fears that the country was being subverted and that all sorts of conspiracies were being laid against the new nation. France in particular was suspected of meddling in the sovereign affairs of the United States. Meanwhile, accusations of disloyalty were being thrown around and a profound uneasiness settled over the nation. Within a two-month period—June and July, 1798—four acts were passed that were designed to strengthen the internal security of the country but that actually had the effect of adding to the tensions and confusions. Under these acts, visitors or new settlers were under almost constant suspicion and pressure. The president was given arbitrary power of detention or deportation. The image of America suffered abroad. Meanwhile, men that questioned the orthodox view of Christianity, such as the two English scientists and thinkers Dr. Joseph Priesley and Dr. Thomas Cooper, who had come to the United States to take part in a great adventure of ideas, became uneasy and uncertain; though their presents here was viewed as an important gain for America by many, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, the men were caught in the conflict of one controversy after another. Their unorthodox religious opinions produced a storm of opposition, as was indicated by letters written by Jefferson during this time.<br /></span></strong><br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6600;">Reference: ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’, The Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers, Copyright 1958 by Norman Cousins </span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-14170930514727208862008-04-29T20:00:00.000-07:002008-04-30T06:41:39.727-07:00THE BIBLE SAYS: YOU SHOULD KILL THEM!!!<span style="font-size:180%;color:#ff0000;"><strong>The bible says you should kill them</strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>According to the bible, if someone turns away from or abandons or renunciates the Christian religion, what should you do if you are a "real Christian"? Even if this person is your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife, or your friend....what should a "Christian" do? </strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>Answer: You should kill them. </strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#cc0000;"><strong>6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; 7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; 8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. </strong></span><br /><span style="color:#cc0000;"><strong>Deut 13:6-10</strong></span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-75090586940057384452008-04-15T19:46:00.000-07:002008-04-15T19:51:13.678-07:00Why we are usually screwed when we contract with an attorney<span style="color:#ff6666;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Why we are usually screwed when we contract with an attorney<br /></span><br /><br /></span><strong><span style="color:#ff6666;">Imagine what your choices in shopping, or watching TV, or taking vacations, would be if one of your neighbors whom you hardly know could decide who gets to go shopping, who gets to watch TV, and who gets to take a vacation, and when. You wouldn’t feel very free, would you? Especially if that neighbor could order you to jail if you disobeyed his choice. Imagine further that you were dependent on that neighbor who makes decision for your ability to do any of these things, ever at all. It may be that you CAN’T even imagine a world such as I’m describing, because it is so completely antithetical to your relatively autonomous lifestyle now. You get to choose what you do on a day-to-day basis, and you think of that as your right. Well, the government actually regulates us, a lot, and gives certain corporations a lot of power over us, in fact, but the truth is we still have a lot of choices to make. But not so for the lawyers who litigate in court.<br /><br />It is a fact not readily apparent to laymen or even to private litigants, but lawyers are controlled by the judges who make decisions in court. Part of being a “good” lawyer is to know or make reasonably competent predictions about what judges will do in certain circumstances. That is how a “good” lawyer can “help” his clients. It is a very limited and restrictive world. And it is a conflict of interest because lawyers are ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT on the judges who decide their cases. Although, typically, in State Court at least, the admission of lawyers to the bar is not directly dependent upon the decisions of active judges, the admission process is governed by each State’s Supreme Court which designates a “Committee of Bar Examiners” or an “Admissions Committee” which is totally dependent on and controlled by the judiciary. This creates a conflict of interest of vast proportions.<br /><br />Judges, ideally at least, but also as defined by law, are supposed to be “impartial and detached” third-parties who make decisions in cases in which they have no direct interest or personal stake of any kind. And it is true that MOST judges do maintain enough integrity to avoid cases where they are actually related to the parties in some direct way (that is, they don’t preside over cases involving their relatives, closest friends, corporations in which they are shareholders—although that’s more difficult to perceive sometimes and may be abused much more than is commonly realized), but judges do NOT avoid conflicts of interest when it comes to their relationship with lawyers.<br /><br />This automaton-like control is most readily apparent in the realm of criminal law, where judges see the same team of criminal lawyers in case after case in a fairly repetitive and formalized fashion. Criminal lawyers are thus the most limited and probably least creative of lawyers precisely because they know exactly how certain judges will react in certain cases and situations, and the criminal process in the United States at least has become mechanical and like an “assembly line” in a factory: a factory of prisoners, most sentenced to very long terms (especially in Federal Court, but increasingly also in State Court). Arrest or prosecution for anything, in the United States, almost automatically equals conviction by guilty plea or at best a very brief and summary trial in which the judge tells the lawyers what to do, tells the jury what to do, and in effect, determines the outcome of the case without much leeway. In both the State and Federal systems, the coercive plea-bargain system and almost automatic sentencing leads to no hassle convictions and often prison terms which the judges are happy to impose and the attorneys acquiesce in advising their clients to accept. The ever so popular "consent order" is the fast and easy way of dealing with Temporary Restraining Orders and to get the money and run. <br /><br />The loser here, aside from any and each of the individual defendants, is the concept of “substantial” due process, fair play, and “justice”— i.e. a truth seeking process. So there in the selection of outcomes, the menu is limited, competition is almost non-existent and meaningless, and the lawyers are there to implement the policies which the judges approve.<br /><br />But what if lawyers did not owe their ability to practice law to judges directly? What if the licensing of attorneys were controlled, say, by the Executive Branch (like the licensing of motor-vehicle operators, perhaps?)? Or what if there were no such thing as a license to discuss and interpret the law, and appear before the Courts—a position which Montana Senator Jerry O’Neil has championed his entire life, and like Nancy Jo Grant in Florida, and Kerry Craig Walker in Georgia, and countless others, albeit less explicitly and directly?<br /><br />The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, if you think about it appears to describe the practice of law in all aspects except those directly related to religion: covering the rights to speak, assemble, and petition the government for redress of grievances. A monopoly on the exercise of First Amendment Rights is antithetical to the First Amendment’s guarantee of these freedoms, and yet such a monopoly would appear to be imposed by the “integrated bar” theory of judicial appointment and regulation of lawyers. So judges decide who gets to exercise “full” First Amendment rights, and this means, in essence, that NOBODY gets to exercise “full” First Amendment Rights. This is an intolerable situation and demonstrates why our system of justice all too often does not work, and why it needs to be changed.<br /><br /><br /><br />Note: For those of you who believe that "We have the best legal system in the world"....I have done extensive research on this and I would put the USA down around number 17 on the list of all the countries of the world. We need to stop comparing our country to the worst. When you compare vomit to BM, the vomit tends to look pretty good.</span></strong>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-88507012953684361912008-03-23T02:46:00.000-07:002008-03-23T03:02:14.092-07:00The truth about religion and this thing called FAITH<span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>The truth about religion and this thing called FAITH</strong></span><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:85%;">As published in the Cherokee LEDGER-NEWS (except they edited it to leave out the last paragraph)</span></strong><br /><br /><br /><strong>Dear Editor,<br /></strong>I’ve been reading a great deal in this paper about Jesus Christ and the “truth of the Bible” lately. Having spent the past 30 years studying this subject, and going beyond “self” in doing it, I have come upon the truth. Having read the Bible four times and having done detailed studies of it, and its 6 translations, I have come upon the absolute truth—This is a very wretched book and nothing more than a grim fairy tale.<br /><br />The truth: Thought has created and invented all the religions throughout the world.<br /><br />It’s difficult for most people to see this truth and even more difficult for them to grasp it, because in order to come upon truth, one must first realize that we are programmed biologically and psychologically, and this conditioning makes it almost impossible to come upon that which is true beyond all human projections. Putting aside our heritage and our conditioned or programmed brains is the most difficult of all things to do. That’s why it is typical to go around the world and find that the beliefs of a specific culture are the ones that the people of that culture have come to hold on to at any cost.<br /><br />The truth is FACTS and FAITH are not only at odds with each other, when it comes to religion they have no relationship at all.<br /><br />In my studies, there seems to be a natural energy of this universe, but it does not demand our worship and it can only be come upon when the human brain has freed itself from all the man made religions of the world and goes beyond the conditioned self and comes to this effortless and natural state of goodness and love. There is nothing wrong with having faith in something because we understand it, but this faith in illusions of thought are, and always have been, ridiculous.<br /><br />This is the only real truth and it is the only hope for mankind. Search “kerry walker story” and find out what “Christians” in this town have done to my family and me, and be sure to go to “Articles” and learn the complex truth about our country and our existence.<br /><br />Kerry Craig Walker<br />Chattanooga, Tennessee/Canton, GeorgiaKerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-55829128869735925762008-01-28T19:52:00.000-08:002008-01-28T20:27:29.034-08:00Getting ready to teach another to fly....<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQj8GOOgVGRMB1XZc_A3Bed1rnmiOGyVpf5XukvE1yftrx8MVX1mees9QhApLaVWkXy9aQjgFq7-kqxF5QGo7B8PBfgHujCI8xTcI1Nwub4KOE17REOPCWzNd46XMvYiGucu0SSw/s1600-h/The+Farm-03.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160745932313387106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQj8GOOgVGRMB1XZc_A3Bed1rnmiOGyVpf5XukvE1yftrx8MVX1mees9QhApLaVWkXy9aQjgFq7-kqxF5QGo7B8PBfgHujCI8xTcI1Nwub4KOE17REOPCWzNd46XMvYiGucu0SSw/s320/The+Farm-03.jpg" border="0" /></a> <span style="color:#33ccff;">This is a picture of me during the short bus ride to the plane on Sunday January 27, 2008. Since breaking my back a few months ago, over the past few weeks I have done five or six hop and pops from 6000 feet with 5 second delays and several AFF (accelerated freefall) working jumps and one freefly (combination head-down and sit-fly) jump...Just call me the come-back kid...or the come-back old man would be more like it. Yee ha!<br /></span><div></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-61613743420255645122008-01-28T19:09:00.000-08:002008-01-28T20:26:34.632-08:00Flying Again...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgp4InghJqURmEUJLPP0nbq_dymWFcrmRMzbB4IZFMSPnpPwp3e8-1lBXixB0ntXFbp86PfOIvU6pf7gx4tS23fi8KadGSxlwGGEyTGtlSR0r4D3lQf95x3Jd5_GNMHQ-s9oJAhw/s1600-h/The+Farm-08.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160732811188297810" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgp4InghJqURmEUJLPP0nbq_dymWFcrmRMzbB4IZFMSPnpPwp3e8-1lBXixB0ntXFbp86PfOIvU6pf7gx4tS23fi8KadGSxlwGGEyTGtlSR0r4D3lQf95x3Jd5_GNMHQ-s9oJAhw/s320/The+Farm-08.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="color:#33ccff;">This is me flying on the far side of my AFF Level I student...Wow, it's nice to be flying again...and landing softly too.<br /></span><div></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-70918625630935818822008-01-01T18:15:00.000-08:002009-02-15T16:46:21.538-08:00The Natural State of Spirituality<div align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="color:#33ccff;"><strong>The Natural State of Spirituality</strong><br /></span></span><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">By Super Whuffo</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">What is the natural state of the human being? What does it mean to become spiritual? Is it to endlessly search for some illusion that has been created by thought? The one thing that is clear in all the illusions created and invented by thought is that self is a product of conditioning, of heritage and tradition. We are a product of genetic, biological, and environmental conditioning. Any movement of thought or any effort in any direction to achieve a result in the realm of spirituality only builds the self. Once this is realized, the trick is to be finished with any movement of thought to achieve a result in some attempt to become something other than simply what you are. Then thought has its proper place to be used to accomplish a particular task or to operate in its natural capacity of creativity and intelligence, and this operation goes beyond self and is not burdened by the neurosis of self with its many illusions and desires. You cannot change what you are by self will, because the thought that is used to attempt to bring about this change through effort only builds the self and adds flame to the fire of self deception and neurosis.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">What is it that binds us together? It is not our wants and ambitions. It is not our attachment to the past. Neither is it commerce and great industries, nor the banks and financial institutions, nor the churches; these are just ideas and the result of ideas. Ideas do not bind us together. We may come together out of convenience, or through necessity, danger, hate, or worship, or through group therapy or some self help program, but none of these things holds us together. They must all fall away from us, so that we are alone. In this aloneness there is love, and it is love that holds us together.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">A preoccupied mind is never a free mind, whether is it preoccupied with the sublime or with the trivial. </span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">We should consider the simple truth about our conditioning and how so many of us have belonged to different churches and religious organizations or some other type of group, and how none of them has given us any satisfaction; but one never stops seeking. We may not take life seriously or we may think that we are serious, but one of the difficulties is this idea of becoming something different than what we are. One aspect may be envy. Most of us are driven by ambition, greed, or envy. Or we are caught in the continuous struggle to maintain our position in life at all cost. These are relentless enemies of man, and yet one cannot seem to live without them. We may try to build various types of resistance against envy or the desire to possess, but in spite of all of our efforts we get caught up in it again and again; it’s like the pollution contaminating the environment, and before we know it we are more envious and more deceptive than ever.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">The answer to this is so simple, yet it eludes us again and again because of our conditioned minds and our inability to see through our own self-created illusions. Conditioning, heritage, tradition, are very powerful processes, and, in fact, so powerful that most of us will never be capable of seeing through these illusions, no matter what. When it was leaned that the earth was round and not flat, back in the early 1400’s, it took nearly 300 years for the masses to accept this fact, and those that accepted that our planet was round early on were ridiculed, jailed, tormented, tortured, and even killed for accepting this simple fact. This is only one simple example of the insanity and violence that has been perpetuated in the name of conditioning, most of it through the illusions of religious beliefs.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">You must have found that with the desire not to be envious or not to be something that you don’t want to be, there comes the conflict of the opposites. You may have noticed that in your desire for you ambition or your desire to keep your position you avoid the truth about some wrongdoing, because to do so may jeopardize your position, your ambition. So you become part of the deception, yet, at the same time, you try to present yourself as being honest and ethical, and you carry this image of being honest and ethical because you are afraid to face what you are. The desire or the will not to be this, but to be that, makes for conflict. This is so simple and obvious to many, but most of us generally consider this conflict to be a natural process of life; but is it? This everlasting struggle between what you are and what you desire to be is considered noble, idealistic; but the desire and the attempt to be non-envious is the same movement of desire, and this effort to be something other that what you are is creating more conflict and more contradiction. If you really understand this, then there is no battle between the opposites and the conflict of duality ceases. This is not a matter to be thought about and acted on at some later date; it is a fact to be seen immediately, and this perception is the important thing, not how to bring about change.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">You may ask, “Isn’t change necessary?” </span></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;"><br />Can there be change through an act of will? Is not will concentrated desire? Having bred envy, desire now seeks a state in which there is no envy; both states are the product of desire. Desire cannot bring about this simple and fundamental change.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">Now some of you might ask, “Then what will?” </span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">Perceiving the truth of <em>what is</em>. As long as you desire to change from this to that, without coming to a full stop and looking at what you are, all actions are superficial and trivial. As long as you cling to your beliefs and to your illusions based on your conditioning, this conditioning and these belief systems will prevent you from ever coming to this effortless state of what you are. The full significance of this must be felt and understood, and only then is it possible for a transformation to take place. As long as you are rooted in some thought created superstition with a mind that is always comparing, judging, seeking a result or locked into some thought created illusion, there is no possibility for change, but only a series of unending struggles which society calls living.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">Your conditioned minds pose as much of a threat to the future of mankind as the nuclear weapons. We have evolved tremendously in terms of technology, but our violent actions are no different that the caveman that used the jawbone of an ass to kill his neighbor. Now we have the conditioned forces of these bizarre belief systems called religion, and now civilized man is doing what the caveman did but you do it for the “good of mankind.” Those who hold that their beliefs system is the only true system and that hold that right is all on their side and the belief that their eternal good will burn away the evil of others are the real enemies of mankind and the enemy of all the marvelous creatures on this incredible place we call earth.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">We have so many people telling us what we need to do to come to the truth. The Pope tells us his bullshit, or rather he reads what the Vatican tells him to say, and so many of us believe this idiot. We have Martin Luther King and his nonsense, and we put this womanizer and power seeker up on a pedestal, even moreso because he was assassinated. Everyone is telling us how to live and we follow the one that fits our fancy at the moment and then move on to some other fancy that gives us hope. The Christians with their beliefs in some wretched book that they have not even read in its entirety, tell us that we are all hopeless evil creatures and that it is only by accepting this bizarre belief system that we will reach the mansion with streets of gold floating around up there some place in space, which they call heaven. Of course the variety of beliefs from this one religion are enumerable, just as they are from the other major religions and the many bibles that represent them. But I say that the body and its actions are already in unison and that any action of will to change only brings about further conflict, and any actions of will to change or mold the body or its actions only create more disorder and are pure and simple violence. The psyche, or self, or mind, has no existence other that this demand to bring about change in either the material or in itself and the human self-consciousness is matter that is characterized by perpetual malcontent and a self-centered insistence on its own importance and survival. That is all that the self can do, with one illusion replaced by another illusion and one teacher replaced by another teacher. We are all so quick to quote what someone else has said when we should learn to speak from our own hearts. The moment we repeat what someone else has said instead of speaking for ourselves, we begin to follow someone else. If you understand what is said here and want to share it with others, then if you understand, it is now yours so speak it from your own heart as yours, you do not have to give me credit for anything.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">We have come to accept religion for one reason, and that is because of our conditioned minds. People accept religion as a premise of culture to find solutions to ease their everyday real problems or for solutions to fabricated problems, namely, the search for spirituality and enlightenment. This drive by the cultural environment, which demands conformity of the individuals, and places in them the desire to be special, but only if this desire meets the conformity of the accepted religion. Consequently, it is this need that is exploited by the preachers or spiritual teachers, or gurus, and all the sellers of such nonsense, who pretend to offer the only way to reach that goal but never deliver, because the goal is itself unreachable. </span></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;"><br />Now we have this non-sense called meditation, where we sit in a room or lay down for 15 minutes or two hours and meditate and then go out and be the same self-centered person again. There is a story about a man who’s father meditated in a specific room for two hours a day, and one day a child began to cry during his meditation and this man came down a beat the tar out of the little kid until he turned blue. All actions to dissolve the self can only build the self. All self-less ambitions lead to the same old self-centered behavior. It’s like the kid that dreams of being president of the humane society because of his love for animals, and then after 30 years of struggle and pursuit he attains his goal and everyone is so proud of him, and then one day he comes home from the office and his dog jumps up on his bran new $500.00 suit and he kicks the crap out of him!</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">I have had a difficult life, but on April 12, 1992 something happened to me and I turned my life around and began to live a life that would have been a product of this art of living, but it has been virtually destroyed by church going, bible believing people that called themselves Christians. Ultimately, these people that call themselves Christians killed my mother, who was a woman that lived her faith. I lost a half million dollar home on a virtual paradise at the corner of Lake Allatoona and the Etowah River that I personally designed and built and I would have lived on the street, alone and penniless, had it not been for a shed that I converted to a little cabin in order to survive and to fight my battle against the corruption and crimes the State waged against me, but still there were times that I was penniless and had to depend on the charity of others for survival. Having been the victim of a violent crime and falsely arrested as the perpetrator, and then felony crimes committed by the government in their many attempts to manufacture my guilt, I have been confronted by government corruption and by the actions of a corrupted detective and a corrupted system, most all of whom beat to the drum of organized religion. I won the battle by facing them head on and without fear. This is the power of dying to self and not escaping from anything and facing everything head on. But now how few even care and those that should stand up for the truth of what was done to me are hiding in their ambitions and self-centered world, so as not to be disturbed. I live in a town called Canton, Georgia, here in Cherokee County, and this town throbs to the beat of corruption and its deception of the people is astounding, especially through the local paper called the Cherokee Tribune, and all in the name of Organized Christianity. The papers are famous for showing pictures of the politicians here holding their hand on a bible, as their wive's hold it, and they are sworn to uphold an Oath of Office that they will soon abandon. We have the Ten Commandments posted in the courthouse along with a description from Hammurabi’s Code, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I wonder what they would think if someone used the Holy Koran to be sworn in or one of the other many bibles from any of the other major religions? We have a government that supports this bizarre religion with laws that give credence to it, and now a new law requires the State Board of Education to teach bible classes in schools. </span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">Our entire system of learning and teaching has its foundation in this culture of tradition based on these conditioning processes and is, therefore, for the most part, a destructive process. We learn about history, but only from the perspective of those that have manipulated it to fit their slanted views. We must conform to their belief systems, and, God forbid, that we should be individuals. It’s a game of one-upmanship. All learning, all teachings are within the framework of our culture and our heritage. It’s all about ambition; it all about winning, and the ethics side of it has gotten so clouded that you can’t see it because of the thick fog.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">Charity has become one of the biggest scandals of this country, next to government and politics. Every time a charity is investigated it turns out to be just another American scam. First they con people into giving, and then they run their scams to make the biggest profits, then they use the policeman and the government to protect them. Charities are created to prevent the have-nots from rebelling against them. It also makes them feel less guilty. All of this charity is nothing more than another way to make lots of money and all the so-called do-gooders feel so special when they do good. I remember back in 1992 when I had finally gotten clean and sober and I had rented a room in a house. I needed a couch so I went to the Goodwill store in hopes of finding one. They had this old couch, it must have been worth all of $50.00, if that, and they were asking $275.00 for this piece of crap and they could not budge from the price. And did you realize that these charities only have to convert 2 cents on the dollar toward their cause?</span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">I’m not out to change anybody and I accept everyone as perfect just the way they are, as long as they bring no harm to others and are good, honest people. I’m not out to liberate you. You have to liberate yourself, and you are obviously unable to do that. What I have to say will not do it. I’m only interested in describing this state, in clearing away the illusions and mystification and all the nonsense in which those people in the “holy business” have shrouded in everything they do. Maybe I can convince you not to waste a lot of time and energy looking for a state that does not exist except in your imagination. God only knows how much of my time and energy has been wasted. To be an individual and to be yourself you don’t have to do a thing, yet our culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy, the will, the effort, we waste trying to become that or to achieve this! And look at all the energy involved in the discussions and dialogs, and sometimes arguments, in dealing with religion—it’s such a waste of energy. If that energy is released, what is it that we couldn’t do? How simple it would be for every one of us to live in this world! And so many wars would have never been fought and so much violence would have never taken place! And we would live as a community and care about nature and our environment, and the streams and rivers and oceans. </span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;">I’m not perfect, but I realize that and I can observe my own neurotic behavior, and this alone brings about an absolute goodness that refuses to be associated with any form of corruption or wrongdoing. I’m not seeking to be put up on a pedestal and I don’t want you to look up to me. I don’t put myself above or below any man or woman. The only message I have for mankind is to say that all holy systems for obtaining enlightenment are utter nonsense and that all this jibber and all this quoting of scriptures to bring about a psychological mutation through awareness is nothing but a bunch of bull. Psychological mutation cannot be achieved by an act of will or by any act on your part; it is impossible. The natural state can happen only through biological mutation and it starts now, but just don’t attempt to hold on to it. It is in this silence that this energy behind all life can be touched and in this silence the mind is part of that energy that is eternal. But this silence cannot be cultivated, achieved. There can be no silence as long as there is a seeker. There is this silence only when the desire to become something other than what you are is no longer in operation. Without replying, put this question to yourself: Can the whole of your being be silent? Can the totality of the mind, the conscious as well and the unconscious, be still? </span></strong></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-5256345567194206142007-12-18T18:49:00.000-08:002007-12-18T19:21:05.149-08:00Hope for Mankind<span style="color:#33ccff;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Hope for Mankind</span><br /></span><br /><span style="color:#33ccff;">Although I was brought up under religion, over 15 years and eight months ago I realized that our Creator was something outside of and beyond the many religions. I have been clean and sober ever since. I guess most people would call me a Deist. I have done a great deal of work to demonstrate or show proof of the existence of this energy behind creation. The fact is, there is intelligence behind all of this and there are so many designs and an abundance of factual evidence that lend proof of this. I’m convinced by my work that this energy, this intelligence, is the <em>natural</em> energy of the cosmos. Why don’t newspapers ever talk about God or this energy behind creation in this light?<br /><br />A great thing about Deism is that we don't have to worry about relapsing back into superstition and "revealed" religion, so we don't have to "take it one day at a time"! Regarding the question above, I think it's because Deism can't serve the status quo because Deism teaches independent thought and action and to always question authority. The established media and newspapers are part of the established social order and want to maintain their place in it more than they want to enlighten people.<br /><br />TO DISCOVER what part education can play in the present world crisis, we should understand how that crisis has come into being. It is obviously the result of wrong values in our relationship to people, to property and to ideas. If our relationship with others is based on self-aggrandizement, and our relationship to property is acquisitive, the structure of society is bound to be competitive and self-isolating. If in our relationship with ideas we justify one ideology in opposition to another, mutual distrust and ill-will are the inevitable results.<br /><br />Another cause of the present chaos is dependence on authority, on leaders, whether in daily life, in the small school or in the university. Leaders and their authority are deteriorating factors in any culture. ‘When we follow another there is no understanding, but only fear and conformity, eventually leading to the cruelty of the totalitarian State and the dogmatism of organized religion.’<br /><br />To rely on governments, to look to organizations and authorities for that peace which must begin with the under-standing of ourselves, is to create further and still greater conflict; and there can be no lasting happiness as long as we accept a social order in which there is endless strife and antagonism between man and man. If we want to change existing conditions, we must first transform ourselves, which means that we must become aware of our own actions, thoughts and feelings in everyday life.<br /><br />But we do not really want peace, we do not want to put an end to exploitation. We will not allow our greed to be interfered with, or the foundations of our present social structure to be altered; we want things to continue as they are with only superficial modifications, and so the powerful, the cunning inevitably rule our lives.<br /><br />Peace is not achieved through any ideology, it does not depend on legislation; it comes only when we as individuals begin to understand our own psychological process. If we avoid the responsibility of acting individually and wait for some new system to establish peace, we shall merely become the slaves of that system.<br /><br />To enable a child to grow up free from prejudice, one has first to break down all prejudice within oneself, and then in one’s environment—which means breaking down the structure of this thoughtless society, which we have created. At home we may tell the child how absurd it is to be conscious of one’s class or race, and he will probably agree with us; but when he goes to school and plays with other children, he becomes contaminated by the separative spirit. Or it may be the other way around: the home may be traditional, narrow, and the school’s influence may be broader. In either case there is a constant battle between the home and the school environments, and the child is caught between the two.<br /><br />To raise a child sanely, to help him or her to be perceptive so that he/she sees through these stupid prejudices, we have to be in close relationship with him/her. We have to talk things over and let him/her listen to intelligent conversation; we have to encourage the spirit of inquiry and discontent which is already in him/her, thereby helping him/her to discover for himself/herself what is true and what is false.<br /><br />It is constant inquiry, true dissatisfaction, that brings creative intelligence; but to keep inquiry and discontent awake is extremely arduous, and most people do not want their children to have this kind of intelligence, for it is very uncomfortable to live with someone who is constantly questioning accepted values.<br /><br />Outward security for all can come only when there is love and intelligence; and since we have created a world of conflict and misery in which outward security is rapidly becoming impossible for anyone, does it not indicate the utter futility of past and present education? As parents and teachers it is our direct responsibility to break away from traditional thinking, and not merely rely on the experts and their findings. Efficiency in technique has given us a certain capacity to earn money, and that is why most of us are satisfied with the present social structure; but the true educator is concerned only with right living, right education, and right means of livelihood.<br /><br />The more irresponsible we are in these matters, the more the State takes over all responsibility. The individual, you and I, are no longer important in our relationship to government. When up against the evil and self serving actions of government, a human life is no longer sacred. We are confronted, not with a political or economic crisis, but with a crisis of human deterioration which no political party or economic system can avert.<br /><br />Another and still greater disaster is approaching dangerously close, and most of us are doing nothing whatever about it. We go on day after day exactly as before; we do not want to strip away all our false values and begin anew. We want to do patchwork reform, which only leads to problems of still further reform. But the building is crumbling, the walls are giving way, and fire is destroying it. We must leave the building and start on new ground, with different foundations, different values.<br /><br />We cannot discard technical knowledge, but we can become inwardly aware of our ugliness, of our ruthlessness, of our deceptions and dishonesty, our utter lack of love. Only by intelligently freeing ourselves from the spirit of nationalism, from envy and the thirst for power, can a new social order be established.<br /><br />Peace is not to be achieved by patchwork reform, nor by a mere rearrangement of old ideas and superstitions. There can be peace only when we understand what lies beyond the superficial, and thereby stop this wave of destruction which has been unleashed by our own aggressiveness and fears; and only then will there be hope for our children and salvation for the world.</span>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-25642972010547340942007-11-20T18:26:00.000-08:002007-11-20T18:48:41.332-08:00My Last Past Life<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBMkve6GCV7zLf1S-nH4L3WfUF1gGB0apV9iWHwTc9UFuq_K0idWyw_5qZZuaBc29RgtV-uvL1IfHu1oXLGyBYgPgcd7XenI_jnjrGad8IqfKw7EVzkMKr6y2gIxYuUOVtfE6ow/s1600-h/blondotter9.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135115765755643154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBMkve6GCV7zLf1S-nH4L3WfUF1gGB0apV9iWHwTc9UFuq_K0idWyw_5qZZuaBc29RgtV-uvL1IfHu1oXLGyBYgPgcd7XenI_jnjrGad8IqfKw7EVzkMKr6y2gIxYuUOVtfE6ow/s320/blondotter9.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color:#6600cc;"><strong><span style="color:#6666cc;">This is me in my past life...I know this is me because I used to lay on my back in the very cold water and let my freezing cold feet stick out of the cold river water and into the sunlight so they could warm up a bit. Yep, I'm sure of it...that's me in my last life.</span></strong><br /></span></span><div></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-42268848284049987782007-10-02T20:01:00.000-07:002007-10-04T17:25:25.091-07:00The Painted Turtle<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIiC0pJs8koR6-7HK1_DhOGrEioBa863Lj8lNl8t0RCNTjiixJ-Xhgu2eYwy9-j7soC2ZTJbCMR-riRlz08ok9ptFTo_92F1kDayUgzeZPhgGRP6reHdqvCBcpKB8thmUmtnefQ/s1600-h/!cid_5DB21136-9426-4D83-9F72-F92EC6208EnewD7@local.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116940927609492178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIiC0pJs8koR6-7HK1_DhOGrEioBa863Lj8lNl8t0RCNTjiixJ-Xhgu2eYwy9-j7soC2ZTJbCMR-riRlz08ok9ptFTo_92F1kDayUgzeZPhgGRP6reHdqvCBcpKB8thmUmtnefQ/s320/!cid_5DB21136-9426-4D83-9F72-F92EC6208EnewD7%40local.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Awesome picture of the painted turtle by John Caddy (the next picture of the turtle and the Blue Haron is by him as well). When I was young I used to catch these turtles and put them in my metal tub and take care of them. The smaller the better. I liked them about the size of a quarter or maybe as big as a half dollar. Sometimes the neighbors kids would talk me into selling them one. There was an art to catching them. You had to go into the water real slow and then have just your nose above the water in order to breath. As you approached the turtle using very gentel breast stokes, you would submerge further to where just your eyes would be above the water. Then just a few feet away, if the turtle had not made a run for it yet, you would go under completely and scoop the unsuspecting turtle up in your hand. If the turtle made a run for it then you would attempt to intercept the turtle as he made his get away. I went in after a few prime turtles with my good school cloths on, but if I had a baby turtle when I came home all wet my mother would understand. For the past decade or so I have collected all kinds of neat turtle things and my little cabin is full of them. I even have a ring made of silver with several little turquoise turtles set into it. Turtles are really cool and I really dig turtles.<br /><div></div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25272354.post-70570217373666944142007-09-28T21:08:00.000-07:002008-07-10T19:51:31.040-07:00Does anyone else see a pattern here?<span style="font-size:180%;"><strong><span style="color:#9999ff;">Does anyone else see a pattern here?</span></strong><br /></span><br /><span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>Before you read this it is important that you understand that I am a deeply religious man. This means that I examine every thought and I have come to understand self and the illusions of the images of self. It also means that I have gone beyond self and have learned to examine things in such a way that I can come upon that which is true and discard that which is false. It means that I have gone beyond all divisions, including the irreducible "I" ending all psychological conflict. I bring no harm to anyone that has not harmed me or anyone else and I fabricate nothing and have no motive. It also means that I observe my mind and its processes and its relation to Creation. Simply put, I operate as nature intended me to and I have gone beyond the illusions of my conditioning. Now if you are interested in the absolute truth, then read on...<br /></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#9999ff;"><strong>The unbalanced female who beat the crap out of me and filed bogus reports several days later, is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and sometimes goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The detective, who committed back-to-back felony crimes in his every attempt to manufacture my guilt, is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and sometimes goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The investigator with the DA’s office who supported the malicious prosecution against me is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The District Attorney, who allowed the malicious prosecution and the insanity of my case to continue for over four long years, is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The prosecutor, who carried out the malicious prosecution against me, is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The Sheriff who did nothing about these heinous crimes committed against my family and me by one of his own, is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The judge who covered up for felony tampering with evidence is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The second attorney who ripped me off of thousands of dollars and did nothing to help me to fight this injustice, believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />The governor who deceived me by saying that he was going to have the Georgia Bureau of Investigation “review” my case (which was their code word for do nothing), is a Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often goes to church on Sunday. </strong></span><br /><br /><p><span style="color:#9999ff;"><strong>The editor in chief of the local paper who lied to me about my case and covers up for malfeasance and corruption here in Cherokee County, Georgia, believes in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often goes to church on Sunday.<br /><br />Those who do advocacy work and fight the injustice system, with few exceptions, believe in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often go to church on Sunday.<br /><br />Most of those who have been wronged by the justice system and fight against injustice, believe in Jesus Christ and the bible, and often go to church on Sunday.</strong><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">When you talk to any one of these people and point out the wrong actions of another, the redundant response is, “Well, there're not really a Christian”...And one of the most amazing aspects of many of these people is that they actually believe that the earth is 6,000 years old! Duhhhh!!! Now how stupid is that!?! There are thousands of facts through documented research that proves the earth is billions of years old, yet that does not matter to these people.</span></span> </p><p><span style="color:#33ccff;"><strong>Some basic facts:<br /><br />Fact: The “heavens” are not constant.<br /><br />Fact: The earth is not the center of the universe or the center of the solar system.<br /><br />Fact: The earth is not flat.<br /><br />Fact: The earth is not 6000 years old.</strong></span></p><p><span style="color:#33ccff;"><strong>Fact: The bible is NOT the "Word of God".<br /><br />Fact: The bible is false.<br /><br />Fact: The biblical Christ never existed.<br /><br />Fact: Thought has created and invented all the religions throughout the world. </strong></span></p><p><strong><span style="color:#33ccff;"></span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color:#66ffff;">Thomas Paine, one of are Founding Farthers, wrote <em>More Common Sense, which</em> was the catalist behind the revolution that brought AMERICA into being....A MAN who was willing to travel anywhere in the world to combat atheism and to establish proof of the existence of a Creative energy, which he chose to call God, can hardly be denounced as an atheist himself, but this is what happened to Thomas Paine. His crusade was based on the love of God and man, yet he was flayed as an infidel and enemy of God, when, in fact, he was only the enemy of religion.</span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color:#66ffff;">Thomas Pain summed up the problem with our twisted perpective of those in positions of power when he wrote, "It is by distordedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly disbased."</span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color:#66ffff;">And what did this great man of integrity have to say about the bible?</span></strong></p><p><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3366ff;"><strong>"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel." </strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3366ff;"><strong>Thomas Paine </strong></span></p><p><strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#66ffff;">"In my pulications on religious subjects," he later wrote, "my endeavors have been directed to bring man to a right use of the reason that God has given him; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, and mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men, and to all creatures; and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation, in his Creator, unshackled by the fables of books pretending to be the word of God."</span></strong></p><p><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3366ff;"><strong><br /></strong></span><span style="color:#6666cc;">______________________________________</span><br /><span style="color:#6666cc;">Thought has created, invented all the religions throughout the world.</span></p>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220234672754244137noreply@blogger.com0