Judeo/Christian Paradigms: Karma vs Salvation pt 1

As a Southern Baptist during my youth, I was taught that the Bible was the un-erring word of God and I must accept all that it has to say as literal truth. I always found that to be a bit problematic, though until many years later, I didn't know why.

One of the things that always bothered me as a youngster was the name "Jesus Christ". The problem for me was the word Christ as part of Jesus' name. Christ (Christos) is the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah and both actually mean "the Anointed One." So saying "Jesus Christ" is the same as saying "Jesus the Anointed One", in other words, it is a title, not a proper name.

So what does this have to do with interpretation of the Old and New Testaments?

The Old testament is made up of several sections which in Hebrew are referred to as the "Tanakh" which is an anagram for:

• Torah - Instruction
• Nevi'im - The Prophets
• Kh'tuvim - The Writings

The Torah consists of the first 5 books in the Christian Old Testament; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In Genesis, which basically means"the beginnings", we have the story of the creation of the planet and all life, including humans, the fall of man and then we basically start the following of the line that would eventually meet Abraham and grow into the nation of Israel.

(As far as the two creations go, that's a piece unto itself, so we are not really going to get into it here but save it for a future entry.) We are going to catch up with the story in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are having a happy existence where the "serpent" comes to temp "The woman" (she's not named Eve till after they are expelled from the garden) into going against the will of God, or so it is usually stated. Now what God had actually said was:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Genesis 2:16-17 (KJV)

This was said to Adam before Eve was even created, so she must have gotten it second-hand from Adam which might explain her misstatements during the "temptation". After Eve's creation and a mention of the idea of marriage, defined as two becoming as one, the second chapter ends with a very important statement:

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:25 (KJV)

If this has you snickering about the fact they were naked, you might find the Beavis & Butt-Head website more to your liking (but I digress). Most people don't think about this little blurb here and the later reference but Moses [the traditional author] makes a point of inserting these statements in the story and I am sure they are there for a reason.

Chapter 3 starts with the serpent "tempting" Eve. I always wondered where she got the added "instruction" that to touch the fruit was dangerous. Was "touching" forbidden by God or was Adam trying to be helpful and add to what God said with , I'm sure, the best of intentions.

Immediately after they have both eaten, we have the following:

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

Genesis 3:7 (KJV)

So, what we have is Moses making a point of telling us that they were naked and unashamed immediately before succumbing to temptation and knowing of their nakedness immediately afterwards and were ashamed enough that they made aprons for themselves. Why?

Genesis, the Beginning, tells us something very important here. The apparent answer is that in eating of the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" caused them to become body conscious and loose sight of their true selves and natures as spiritual beings. Some would say they lost their innocence and mean that they now knew evil, but if you look at the other definitions for innocence, you get the following from the "The American Heritage® Dictionary":

• Freedom from guile, cunning, or deceit; simplicity or artlessness.
• Lack of worldliness or sophistication; naiveté.
• Lack of knowledge or understanding; ignorance.

What would you call it when one goes from a state of spiritual purity, inhabiting a physical form but not being overrun by it and going to the opposite end of the spectrum where one forgets their spiritual nature and is completely deluded by the physical world, I would actually view it as entering into innocence in a way, since they were now naive and ignorant of their true state.

So, what about God's statement that when they eat of the tree, that day, they would surely die? The serpent rebuffs it and says:

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Genesis 3:5 (KJV)

Now for as much as we usually make it out that the serpent misled Eve, other than the bit about being like "gods" which is in question (though God seems to think so in Genesis 3:22), the fact is that their eyes were opened, they did know good and evil. Obviously they did not die in the usual sense so if God was correct, then some other death must be the subject. With this, I find the death of their awareness of their true natures to be what died and as we will get into in a moment, the becoming attached to the body and the transitory things of creation causing death to the physical body.

This is really interesting in that the first thing they became was completely bodily conscious to the exclusion of their previous awareness of their natures to the extent that shame sets in immediately to cover themselves. They were so absorbed in this mental state that when God comes to the garden to visit, they hide themselves. When they admit this new understanding to God, the question is immediately asked, "Who told thee that thou wast naked?"

We follow this with Adam blaming his "helpmate" who passes the blame on to the serpent who gets cursed.

It is now that the beginning of the paradigm that is continued throughout the Tanakh and brought into the law of Moses, that of the world of Karma, Maya, the definition of what the world of "body consciousness" and attachment are:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Genesis 3:16-19 (KJV)

(I have to wonder how many children Eve had previously had while living in the garden since it sounds as if she had experienced it previously "I will greatly multiply", but that might be for another time.)

It is here that we start with life becoming defined as the function of the labours of mankind, the beginning of Karma in that the actions cause reaction and the labours produce their rewards. This is the paradigm that we see throughout the Old Testament. From this point until the New Testament we are about history of Israel and the "penalty" of action and, since we are now separated from God, the beginnings of the idea that sacrifice must be performed.

We are going to stop here, except for a couple of quick things...

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Genesis 3:22-24 (KJV)

Now God had said earlier that to eat of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" would cause death, and it seems that here we have God making sure that it would happen by keeping Adam from the "tree of life" for fear that he would become immortal which was not a good idea for physically fixated beings.

Buddha would find this of interest since he would agree with the basic premise here. His "Four Noble Truths" address this in a most direct and succinct manner:

1. Life is Suffering:
   Physical existence is made up of temporary, created items that come and go: impermanence.
2. Suffering comes from Attachment:
   It is our tendency to want to hold onto the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant that creates the pain in our existences.
3. Suffering can be Conquered:
   This condition of suffering need not be forever and can be defeated.
4. The Eight-Fold Path:
   A collection of tools and premises to use to break the cycle.

Genesis has prepared the groundwork for the First and Second Truths of the Buddha. As for the Third Truth, this is a promise that it need not stay that way forever. In the Old Testament, we start with the idea that our "fallen" state may be corrected via the concept of the sacrifice, the usage of others to "pay" for our wrongdoings.

We will continue from here and go into this paradigm of sacrifice and the ultimate sacrifice as presented in the New Testament with Jesus in part 2.

Happy Chanu-Kwanz-Christa-Yule!!!

Here I sit at my neighbors Christmas party and having a blast. My "friend" got me a gag gift of micro sized condoms, I had no idea that she thought so little of me.

Its a nice evening with a beautiful tree and a lovely fire in the hearth. People are coming and going while the time passes. We had a lovely dinner of ham, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, cheesy potatoes and some spinach dish that I didn't have the guts to try.

Several of the people here are musically inclined, I think they have all been recorded professionally, and right now one is singing what could only be called the
"Beverly Hills Blues" to a live accompaniment and she can really sing.

I need to get back to the party and having a good time so...

Merry Christmas
and a
Happy New Year!

Tired and Aural

It's been a LONG day, I was up at 4:15 this morning and I have one more run tonight at 7 PM going from Beverly Hills to Torrance. I was going to go home and grab a nap, but instead, I am in West Hollywood doing some Christmas gift shopping, getting a hair cut (not sure what I'm going to do with the other 103,491).

I am sitting in a Starbucks, killing a little time and basically bored out of my mind. Can't really think of anything to do, so I thought I might just see what came out in a random typing experience. I've got iTunes playing a random selection of songs and it went from "People Who Died" to "Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone". It's a varied collection of about 130 or so songs out of a collection of 1177, at least I managed to salvage them off my iBook before the hard drive died, thank God for back-ups.

Sitting in West Hollywood and basically ignoring everything around me (that's how it looks to those around at least) is kind of an interesting experiment in human watching. I'm sitting near where they put the drinks after they are ready, so I get to see just about everyone and hear what, if anything, they say. I've been here about an hour or so, not one conversation has caught my interest. What do I expect on an overcast, intermittently rainy day in December?

I stopped at the Bodhi Tree and stumbled across a book for my collection, Sybil Leek's "Tomorrow's Headline Today" which is on Mundane (predictive) Astrology. I have been a fan of Ms. Leek for many years since I read her most famous book "Diary of a Witch". Little by little, I'm collecting all of her published works, she has written so much in such a forward way that it's not that different from getting the collected works of, say, Paramahansa Yogananda (though I suppose his students wouldn't appreciate the comparison, not my problem...).

On days like today, when I'm a touch out of sorts with time on my hands, I find an excellent time to people watch, but it's just too cold to sit outside and since we are off daylight savings time, it's dark already. I'm exploring a technique that I learned in High School in looking at Auras. I've been doing this most of the day and most of them have been fairly sickly looking. Sad!

I finished writing the previous entry "By Their Fruits" earlier at a Starbucks in Santa Monica and started looking there. On top of being tired, I'm having one of those days when my personal barriers are slipping away, or are down a bit to say the least.

I have some friends who want me to say I am psychic, not likely, as I don't think of my gifts as such, empathic and "touched" maybe, but to me, psychic is someone who is able to be always on if they so choose. I just know things when I have need of them. When I was young, it got me into a lot of trouble as saying something I shouldn't know freaked people out. I learned that differences were not welcome and I spent a long time learning to close those things away. Now I am having to work VERY hard to reclaim this parts of my life.

I gave some friends tarot readings a while back and while I doubt myself so much, I was told that I was right on target. They were happy, I was left feeling buzzed and wondering why I can't believe what everyone else seems to be aware of. We have such a difficult time believing those things about us of a positive nature and yet we can believe the "bad" things instantaneously, I wonder if as a planet we are practicing a form of psychic abuse...

Back to what I was saying earlier, I was depressed by the general "ick" of most of the people I watched earlier. When my barriers drop, it means I feel for them like a mother hen who knows her chicks are going to be on dinner plates eventually, but still wants the best for them anyhow. A questionable metaphor? Maybe, but until people start to wake up a bit, it's about the way the majority of people make me feel sometimes. Not that I'm pessimistic about them or superior to them, just saddened that they are adrift on the sea of life and without a rudder it would seem. This would bum me out completely if it were not for the fact that I know we are all learning at our own paces and most of us are living out the choices we made before we came into this life. Still hurts to watch it sometimes...

On a lighter note, this isn't actually meant to be as depressing as it sounds. I can always go into my "space" and experience the reality of what's going on in creation and know that if God finds it worthwhile, I might just need to look a bit deeper and see that as well.

Searching for the "silver lining" on everything is one of the first things one can do to change their perspective of the world they live in. If we view it as a bummer and get depressed by it, we will attract more of the like into our lives, but if we can find the alternative, we raise that vibration to a place where we attract "happier" experiences, even if it's just in how we look at things.

I remember several years ago, when I was on some nasty medications for about a year. Life was miserable in ways that I will spare you the details of, but after a few months of it, I started to get real down because of the appearances of my life. I happened to stumble upon a class where one of the people speaking was talking about God in the form of Krishna and was saying that when we feel like absolute crap, thank God. Needless to say, at the time I thought he was nuts and completely full of it. When I actually sat down one particularly tough day and said "God, I don't know what I did to deserve this condition, but by your mercy, I am only having to deal with this much of it instead of what I probably deserve." After a while, when I went from BS'ing myself about it and actually meant it, I actually ended up feeling better than I had in weeks, if not months.

Like I have written before, it's perspective and what we attract by what we focus on. Try it sometime.

By Their Fruits...

This has been an interesting few days while I contemplate writing this piece or not. I want to since it really pulls into the light how what I (as well as many others) have found to be true the things I have come to believe, but it is quite likely to be taken by many as a direct attack, which in some ways it probably is.

I go to a video store called Record Surplus that has a habit of getting videos before they are released. The other day, I picked up "The Celestine Prophecy" which is expected to be released on December 19. For those who are not familiar with it, it is based on the book of the same title by James Redfield.

One of the central themes of the book, in it's "Insights," is to become aware of the apparent coincidences that occur in our everyday life. Because of this and the other book that I just finished reading, I felt that I was getting a definitive answer to my question as to writing this.

The book that I just finished is Neale Donald Walsch's "What God Wants : A Compelling Answer to Humanity's Biggest Question" which I think is fantastic. A quick read that will definitely make some ideas rattle around in your brain. The book is basically divided into three parts;

1. How our previous views of what God wants have affected our cultures and manifest in the day-to-day world.
2. What God wants, it's quite direct and to the point! ( ;-P )
3. How this new view of God's wants will manifest in the future world.
   

This piece is in the same vein as part one.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we find the following as part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount":

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:15-20 (KJV)

My thoughts lately have been to look around me and see what "fruits" are going on around me, both personally and otherwise.

They say that the definition of insanity is to do the same things as you have done in the past and expect a different outcome. It's funny in a way, we as a race will do some of the most innovative things ins the name of progress, but in our personal lives, we can be completely "insane."

On a personal level, for example, is my current job as a town car driver. Now, I love my job actually, I meet some fascinating people and most of the time I make decent cash, but I am quite aware that it is a dead end where advancement will require the death of another. The fact is that, though I enjoy it a lot, it will never take me where my life seems to be pointing me. I could very easily play it safe and stay right where I am but how long will it take for that path to become a rut and then a grave, once it is deep enough?

We tend to follow the rules, a good thing usually, but when we intuitively know that there is something missing and we need to change our direction, we find it difficult to outright terrifying. I have been thinking about changing careers and going into what is called "Life Counseling" and nearly everyone who knows me thinks I would be very successful at it. When I looked into it and found out what it actually was, I realized that this is what I've been doing for my friends for years, but for free (can I send out bills for previous years? Hmmm).

The predominant world view that we really need to look into is how we view God and our relationship to Him/Her, the idea that we are separate entities. Our religions tell us that God is away in His/Her heaven, passing judgement on our every action and, depending on which one(s) you follow, how to get to heaven or out of the wheel of life.

What are the fruits of these beliefs? Jihads, crusades, feuding factions, the destruction of lives and our planet.

A really good example is Bill Moyer's "Is God Green" piece. It is about a schism in the Evangelical Christian denominations about how the future of the planet and our involvement in ecology should be. Some believe that God's gift of dominion of the planet to man is justification for the wholesale rape of the planet's resources and environment. Others believe that stewardship requires man to be more considerate of the repercussions to planet and the future of mankind.

In Iraq, while there is more than this going on, the fact is that unless the Shia and Sunni learn to co-exist, little less both get along with the Kurds, the chances of a valid nation ever coming together and surviving is about as likely as the moon being changed into green cheese. Most people don't realize that a fair number of the Middle-Eastern nations were created by the European world after the collapse of the Persian Empire and that solidarity of the individual groups is next to nil.

On a personal level, our belief in separation places us in the position of making ourselves into hypocrites on a fairly regular basis. We claim to believe in this Supreme Being who will care for us, once we've made peace and the proper atonement's, but since we are "alone" in our daily existences, we don't live it and actually spend a fair amount of our existence living in exactly the antithesis to our "claimed" ideals.

Our religions believe in the supremacy of their preferential manifestation of God or teacher and declare all the others as liars and charlatans. This leads to warring and hatred and is not doing anything to bring the followers closer to any Godliness. I've always found it of interest that the only religion that has never fought a war of aggression in the name of it's teacher/founder is Buddhism.

To wrap this all up, the point is that we need to become initially aware that we are eternally linked to God and that our separation is an illusion of OUR creation, not his. After we know this, then we start to live our lives based on this premise and that starts to make changes in every other aspect of our lives. Guilt and fear fall away and freedom in the knowledge that all can be right in the world if we will just start to be aware of our interwoveness (is that a word?).

There will be those who say that this is dangerous because it is different from the current norms. The current norms are doing such great things for the masses of hungry, hateful, judgemental people?

Others will say that this would be anarchy, it is possible. Any good thing can be misused to the detriment of those around. The fact is that those who would misuse it to justify selfish behaviors would do so no matter what is taught or thought. As long as spiritual children are needing lessons to grow from, they will get them and deal with the messes they create. There seems to be a growing number of people out there that want more from their lives than shat they were taught as youngsters and these are methods to explore and experience.

I have a challenge for you...

Try putting some of these ideas into practice in your everyday existence and see what happens. When you walk down the street and see a homeless person, instead of passing a derogatory judgement on them, say to yourself; "There I am living outside the norm." When you see someone who has been abusing drugs and is paying for it, say something like "There I am exploring chemical substances." Pass no judgement, for to judge others doesn't just open us to judgement as Jesus said, it IS to judge ourselves since we are all part of the whole and there is no separation but what we make in our minds. From there do most our problems spring. See what fruits you develop...

Life, Love and Lance Bass

OK, I'm going to start off with the disclosure that Lance Bass has always been my favorite member of 'N Sync and once again, my gaydar was complete right about someone I don't know (strange, why can't it do that when I cruise in real life?). In case you are wondering, the first one was Greg Louganis and not in '84 when everyone fell for him. I first ran into Greg many years earlier when he was on the cover of the Boy Scout's magazine "Boy's Life" sometime in the late 70's. I had such a crush on him... Who knew years later, we would both grow up to be gay and former scouts?

I happened to be wandering around the internet the other day, when I noticed that there was a blurb that Lance Bass and his boyfriend, Reichen Lehmkuhl, had broken up. I dropped him a note via his myspace page with my condolences and holiday greeting as well as a congrats on his coming out (takes more guts then any straight can imagine, even in today's world). Now they, TMZ, say they may be getting back together. Hope springs eternal for 2 reasons that immediately come to mind.

Firstly, they make a really cute couple and it would be nice to see Lance beat the odds on his first(?) relationship actually lasting and not falling apart, but that might just be the hopeless romantic in me.

Secondly, depending on what he wants, Lance as a single man would either be the luckiest or unluckiest man in LA (OK, others are in the same position as well). LA (OK, West Hollywood in particular) is a city where everyone dances with their eye on the door looking for the next "best thing" to walk in.

If he's looking for "hook-ups", he's going to have the easiest time getting cute, hot guys to be able to bed. Good-looking guys will be falling all over themselves to sleep with him (Am I just a little jealous? Oh, hell yes! ;-P ).

If he's looking for something else, say a real relationship, he's going find it difficult to say the least. Los Angeles has never been the best place to find a good man, as Cameron Diaz's character says in "Charlie's Angels" during a fight scene with the bad girl, who has just broken her cell phone:

"Do you know how hard it is to find a quality man in Los Angeles?"

Dear, if you think it's tough as a straight woman, you should count your blessings you are not gay.

I sometimes wonder if the real reason straight men are so terrified of gay men (OK, they wouldn't call it that) is really from jealousy that, reputedly, gay men are about getting laid constantly. Now, I will be the first to admit that a lot of men are in that mental place, gay or straight (look at Tom Leykis). It can be fun for a while and as long as one plays safely, I think it's a natural part of growing up. For a gay man, having had to suppress one's true identity, seems to explode with an attempt to reclaim our lost youth via our sexual escapades.

Eventually, hopefully, we realize that sex for sex' sake is not really going do it in the long run. If we don't learn it, we get awfully depressed when we can't get laid to save the world as we get older. As much as I hate to admit it, in my 20's I was completely screwed up about sex and in my 30's fairly disinterested and now in my 40's looking for what it is I was really looking for in sex, companionship and someone to share a life with.

As a mystic, I am quite aware that there is little that this world can offer that would bring true happiness, but there is one item that I will continue to want, even when it makes me miserable; a partner. The rest of it you can have, money, fame and all the other crap that this world offers. I know it for the illusion that it is and while having "things" isn't so bad, I've been without them in the past and somehow I managed to survive.

If thinking about Lance wasn't enough, now Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is expecting and because she is a lesbian, many members of the Religious-Right (neither) are voicing their objections. I heard one say that she was denying her child the "god-given right to both a father and a mother." Somehow, I suspect that the baby won't care what chromosomes the parental units have, he/she will just enjoy being loved and that is what "family values" are all about.

The question of same sex marriage comes up and think about what it would mean when it comes to both of these.

For Lance and every other gay man, we would have something more than sexual prowess to strive for since there would be a goal that could be looked toward. If you are going to label people perverts for having sex outside of marriage, you have to allow them something more, otherwise, you are talking out your ass.

For Mary Cheney, her child will never have the legal protections for the family that a straight couple would have. They reside in Virginia and with the laws there and in several other states, Mary's partner, Heather, will have no legal claim to the child if something should happen to Mary. This is family values? God, I hope not.

Well, if nothing else, we wish our best for Lance in the future and give our congrats to Mary and Heather on their expected bundle of joy.