I'm beginning to suspect that what I'd like to explore with others, and teach, is a wider very *smart* *intelligence-based* exploration of post-awakened enlightenment. 

While there are a few advanced teachers, such as Adyashanti, who teach the core truth as much as possible -- leaving out beliefs which only *appear* to be related -- there is a wider view, taking such teachers into account, seeking to understand the whole thing entirely.  That is, having let go of ideas of need, healing, wonder, thought and all the rest, the awakened mind is produced, ready for non-attached understanding.  (And what these paragraphs intend to explore is the fact that there are now for the first time, many many awakened people who could be brought together who also have the ability to look at things which usually attract attachment, but these people do not become attached.  That is, they can be trusted to stay present, remember what/who they are while lightly discussing loaded topics.  Until I now, I am saying, teachers assumed the worst, as most of their teaching is repetively getting people back on track after having wandered off course following the best of intentions.)  That is, until recently the goal has been to get people to stop attaching beliefs, whereas this paragraph is claiming, this level of knowing has been succeeded with enough people that we *can* now get together and look to *what*is*. 

For instance, there have been many areas where things are confused with enlightenment, such as bliss.  Now, learning and *getting* that bliss is not the thing at all, leaning this is of primary importance.  *However*, and this is our ultimate goal of fully-awakes, to *then* be able to speak of whatever, if any, degree bliss is connected to enlightenment -- but ONLY after the first is fully fully fully integrated.  Else it just loops around as a problem.  Merely a not-fully-ingested idea.  The crux here is acknowledging that until now this has not been "safe" to do, as any teacher is immediately quoted by people who are not awake enough -- and so the teacher is quoted out of context.  Since the whole goal of the teacher is to assist Truth, until now, these kinds of things needed to be avoided, and consequently these areas have been neglected.  Here is an example.

A woman comes to a public teaching and asks how the teacher dealt with awakening and seeing all around the ignorance and suffering, and the subsequent desire to get away, have a respite.  Did they not too want to start their own baseball league to be able to get away if only for a day and be with others on the same footing?  The teacher, I'm sorry to say, was so thoroughly entrenched in their own old patterns of handling this, (from back when there was no choice or option which the woman questioner *does* have the options, because times have changed, there are many more of us and we're not all working this alone anymore) the teacher mis-interpretted and answered as if the woman had not learned that the desire to avoid was a resistance.  The woman was not resisting.  She clearly, and anyone can listen to the MP3 and see what I mean, was asking at a higher level of awareness, which the teacher missed.  (Actually the teacher "missed" this woman on three of four levels and she gave up, the teacher never even having a clue.)  (Message me and I'll send a link to the MP3.)  I will say here now that this teacher is the highest type level we have.  What I am pointing to is a huge form of the success, that this time has come: I am declaring that indeed this *community* (which does not exist as such) does exist if we want it to, that is, we do in fact have enough people to have a baseball league of awake and enlightened people who can indeed "get away" together every once in a while, and this would be a good thing.  Until now, any teacher confronted with this idea, need immediately go into the nature of how this is not needed, it's a mistake, it won't lead to progress or awakening.  Another boat missed!  We're speaking here of human connectedness, not "progress" (amoung people who don't need any) nor of awakening, which they already "are".  The teacher was assuming a not-fully-awakeness, perhaps expecting to be misquoted or the person getting themselves lost instead of "found."  Because while that assumption used to be applicable all the time, when everyone else around was still asleep, it no longer applies if indeed there are enough of us around.  I am attempting to describe a lively opportunity for sharing and expansion -- an opportunity that is not *needed* and indeed was so far into impossible, that most teachers today will have trouble remembering, past their own adjustments to their own awakened living, that every one of us starts in this new territory as novice explorers.  It starts when we wake up, yes, but there is an evolvement, an enlightening, which does or does not happen, next.  There are some newly awakeneds who will love hearing this message.  There are others who will not love it, but become a bit confused because they are still stabilizing their awakenings.  But notice that there are a large variety of types of people who wake up.  Some have never heard of awakening before.  Others have many years of Zen behind them.  So some will *get* what I'm saying as a saving grace, and others will not relate at all because they are so deep into their non-adjusting adjustments.  But once I manage to describe this, people will open to the possibility of looking at awakening, not from "how to teach it" but instead as fun exploration -- not only alone, but sometimes with others.  Fun explorations are usually limitted to student's small-to-us-teachers "ah-ha"s and it's really quite a novel idea to imagine that we can play around in this level with others like us, without the need to be constantly aware that usually this stuff gets student's off-track.  It even gets outselves off-track.  Yet, I am saying here that this needn't be so, there IS something way cool about being able to join an awakening baseball league. 

And if some teachers reading this suddenly realize they've living in expectation of everyone around them always needing help, so much the better.  We don't.  *They* might, but *we* don't.  If Kerin starts the basefall league, I'll join.

From my old email teaching list:

The mind has zero tolerance for no-mind.

Sometimes what is sent on this list will take a good degree of "dropping down" to integrate. When I say "dropping down" I mean shift into a state of deep quiet. Satsang and other groups are often started with meditations because just barely coming back from a meditation is often a state when one can look at something and Poof! see the truth in it. Without dropping down, some things can be very confusing. This is because you're looking with the mind.

The mind wants clean-cut, makes-sense rational and thinkable ideas. It has zero-tolerance for no-mind sharings. If you push the mind into soft or spiritual things, it will co-operate by becoming mushy. At a new age conference, I once saw people wearing angel costumes while they talked to rocks. That wasn't spirituality. That was the mind doing its imitation of Love, Light and Sweetness. The mind will fuck you every time. If you have an interest in waking up, leave the mind to itself. It's like encountering a hostile drunk on the street -- there's not much use talking, just walk off. That's my suggestion in this moment, I'm sure we will speak of this again!

When some writings here seem long and you feel you don't want to read them, I suggest you don't. This is more preferable than letting the mind chew it to death. Simply read the parts that work for you in the moment. And if you want to get something that isn't clicking, Drop Down. But if you don't drop down, that is, sit with it in quiet, don't read it at all. It's a setup for the mind when you let it take over on a no-mind thing. The mind will do its absolute best to produce a kind of empty silence, and quieting itself whisper to you, "See?! No-mind!  This is no-mind!  I did it!"  Or maybe will conclude it's not for you and beside, you know better.  Or your should  meditate more.  Whatever!  In a way, the mind is like a stupid robot slave, it'll do it's best to do whatever you tell it.  Decide you want to be enlightened right now and it will go, "OK", and then produce it's best manifestation it thinks will convince you.  If you believe you're a terrible person, and want a solution right now, it'll remind you that you could always jump off a bridge.  If you think you are better than other people, it will show you how stupic others are.  If you think you "should" be able to wake up, it'll show you evidence of how "close" you are.  If you think you're already awake, it will agree or disagree, but know that, my friend, it really doesn't care, it's just delivering up thoughts, as per its job assignment.  If it sees paradoxes, it will waggle them about until you wish to forget the whole thing.  The mind's "I" does not exist any more than your "I" exists, so it'll get you in all the hot water in the world without caring.  After all, it won't be "here" when the shit hits the fan.  That's the way the mind works. So I suggest you get very quiet, keep getting quieter, and quieter until you either "get it" or don't care about it anymore.  When you're fully quiet, really dropped down into your now experience, you are online with your infinite intelligence and all things are possible  But that puny little thinking mind, which is mostly unconscious anyway, can never think you out of the situation, it cannot be smarter than infinite intelligence's "Ah-ha"s which enlighten us one day at a time.  But . . . though you cannot turn off your mind, you can drop down into infinite intelligence.  Only, watch out, because the little mind will mimic infinite intelligence, too, if you give it a head start by thinking you can't do it, that it's difficult to drop down into infinite intelligence.  See?  It'll do anything for you, or try to.  It really doesn't care -- with the smallest excuse, off it goes thinking!  But the one thing it cannot do is turn itself off.  You can't turn it off either.  But IF you drop down, quiet yourself deeply, all things slow down, and meanwhile everything that is online has more channels, more bandwidth available and you're sitting humming with all the intelligence of all-that-is, always and truly, and open to whatever the universe wants to show you, and perhaps it will.

Love,
quietly,
Michael

I'm looking at something, right in the middle of it, this thing called making plans.  I'm entering a new era for me and keep feeling to plan out what I can do with resources, health, food, maybe a travel-pass so I can move around and re-enter "society".  All good things, and yes I know that the basics, yes, very good to plan basics out. 

But I still see how this wanting to "make an outline", this desire to plan, wants to take over more than practicals, but some part of my mind says I should plan out things so well that my future is predictable.  And while I know I can't know the future, I'd very much like a few things, like improve my life and become self-sufficient again. 

The first thing, (I'm planning don't you see!) is that I'd like a certain level of success in getting my new website online and it's various things, like ability to take payments for ebooks I've written, and to provide forum space to discuss things I've blogged about, because I'd very much like to move away from being so insular, I really have only one really major mind person I share with.  And the direction I'm going I need friends as well as peers.  Anyway, what I meant to say is, that yes it's a strong priority of mine to have the website online, not just for the obvious income etc. but as a place to sample my current book work to the public and friends.  The work is about, well, that doesn't matter here, what's important is to have a nice place for my online work while I expand back out after years of being pretty much by myself.  And I think this website should be just the first step and once it's running that I then plan on moving on to other things.  I do not have an intention like I did before to dedicate myself entirely into this inner me-truth, but now instead get a life, and soon enough be able to resume traveling.  In some ways, return to where I left off those years ago.  I'm not sitting in "questions" like I was, and I feel fully really free and it's going to be far more fun to live that than it has been for me until lately.

So.  What am I saying?  Something like that I see that plans are for practical things, and opennes is for personal things.  Does that make sense?  I think so.  Though I think after my most current past, the better I plan on expansion, the better!  But who can't say that!?

Wow this got to be far longer than I realized before I pasted it in.  I initially started with the word grok.  Maybe later I'll try to whittle it down, but for now, I swiped some teabags over at the casino on my way home and I'm going to have a cup of tea.  

   Awakening, stabilizing awakening, and on into enlightenment - - these indicate (an advanced) human sentience uniquely differently clear, and shifting into these three, reaching towards enlightenment, can garner a lot of attention from a person. 
Shifting, waking up, becoming enlightened, can temporarily play out as such a mystery, creating so much cognitive dissonance, that some spiritual circles offer the belief the only way to wake up is suffer suffer and suffer until you feel like dying and finally giving up!  Some seeker-questions lead teachers into tangented and "illogical" answers such as; 
"I am so confused, Master!" 
"Good!" 
    Yet difficult awakening is only one of a million ways a person can wake up.  The moment of awakening is a moment entirely of Grace - - no matter what preceeds it. 
   Seeking to clear this up, the thing I find more useful to share is not about "practices" or beliefs or ideas about waking up, but instead shining a light on awakening itself, as that is always the same for everyone.  First stage usually the Oneness experience and second, the self falling away, the disappearance of the questioner. 
    To discuss this, a whole new vocabulary and  series of thought-paths have been used and you may find them helpful.  A thought path might be exampled by the Zen picture/descriptions of The Oxherder, which can point out the path without attendant beliefs.  They are truly an example of Pointing At The Moon where the teachers says, "Don't look at my finger, look at what it is pointing to!"  We try to paint a picture, artistically feeling the listener, not trying to duplicate a photograph.  Using words at the edge of common understanding is necessary when trying to describe what is outside usual experience.  Some words are needed which don't already exist, or may I say, definitions which exist solely in the realm of trying to XdescribeX point at, provide the feel of, awakening. 
    I've begun to collect a few words I've seen more than once and I hope you enjoy my sharing:
grok, the verb, from Stanger In A Strange Land.  You'll probably need to read the book to understand "grok" and then to love the book to grok grok.  To Grok, is to fully "get" the entire substance, sufficient to feel what it feels, appreciate something to the point of identifying with something.  This is more than understanding.  If anything is left out, for example its density, then it is not fully grokked.  For instance, it is unlikely you have ever grokked a stone, as we usually reserve empathy for things we have heirchially judged as higher - - such as Animated, Living, Animal, Mammal, Primate, Human, Good Person, Spiritual Person.  Many seeker-sidetracks are caused by trying to identify with what we THINK an enlightened person is or has: spirituality.  Yet grokking a stone is far more likely to wake you up.  Or grokking some dogshit.  Once you begin to grok, you may begin to appreciate appreciating as well as grokking, and discover that most of the universe was outside what you previously blindly thought was unappreciatable.  You discover that to understand a stone technically, is totally different than what being a stone is experientially.  The more you grok, the closer you become to Oneness.  The less you grok, the further away.  Enlightenment is full grok.  However, remember that there is a suffering path as well, so judging things as not worthy of grokking may wake you up even faster, as you may just be one of those persons who's can't tolerate hell and you stop efforting to wake up.  Better to grok early and often than to risk the hard way, though.  The hard way works for only a few. 
efforting is to be actively expending effort, which is usual in any seeker.  However, awakening is effortless when it happens. Being aware of "efforting" is helpful to notice and be aware of investment of effort.  Also, if you're convinced you're not awake now, what must you experience?  Certainly not being awake!  In the absence of efforting, anything is likely to happen.  In the absence of anything happening, the higher the likelihood of experiencing HereNow.
HereNow.  Be Here Now.  If you could Be Here Now, you would, and this all would just be for fun.  Well, it is anyway, really, this is just for fun.  Also, you could Be Here Now.  Really.  If you don't believe that, then probably you won't be here now.  Though why someone who is here now would want to believe they are somewhere else longing to be here now, is a mystery, it is a common affliction.  Maya.  Illusion.  When you get past the creepy feeling of things like knowing your love partner is an animated skeleton fleshed out by the human costume, you're well on your way to being comfortable enough to wake up.
courage,  often ignored, courage is needed to step past your limitations, give up the comfort of illustion and saying Yes to truth, even if it feels like being out over the edge of the cliff.  Admitting you are in mid-air will not make you start dropping, you already are.  You can feel it.  If you can't, then I'm probably wrong and you don't need to be courageous after all.  Courage is not fear-less, courage is standing up right in the face of fear, when need be. 
asleep  Most effort is not to wake up, but is spent to stay asleep from an unaccepted world.  It's all about avoiding.  This should help demonstrate why efforting doesn't work: you are efforting against the vast amounts of effort you are already expending to stay asleep!  You are battling yourself.  And most of us have enough efforting to stay asleep to last a lifetime, and so, unlikely to wake up in this lifetime.  When exhaustion causes all efforting to wake up to cease, a person sometimes stops efforting to stay asleep as well, so they wake up.  Of course.  Easiest thing in the world.  Note that the efforting version of waking up in despair won't happen if you still keep running againstness type effort in the background.  You have to effort so so hard that somehow you invest ALL effort to wake up, and only then does Failure and Despair prompt you to give up ALL effort, including your unconscious effort to stay asleep.  As you can see, this is a bumpy road and not much fun at all.  Still, some people choose this.  If it works, don't fixt it.  Still, you deserve to know about that. 
(an) awakened(s), "s/he awakened from sleep" is a common verb, but can also be an adjective or noun: "awakened person" or if with the right people, "an awakened." 
enlighteneds, same thing.  A group of enlightened people, such as the core at an Adya event, "Wow, Look at that groups of enlighteneds in the same room!"  Even today, this is still lumpy usage though.
ever-loving-Now, nice way of indicating something more experientially real than mere, "now."  I just added this one for fun of it. 
overthink, Needs no explanation, I hope.  Like much On The Path, over-thinking is something to not bother with when you notice it absorbing your attention.
attention particles, This is usually a surprise to everyone, but the early Avatar Wizards Courses dis-covered that attention is an energy, is as real as gravity, creates and intensifies realities, and your attention particles can be depleted.  The more attention particles you flow at something, the more real it becomes.  This should be no more difficult to believe than healing energy, touch healing, or even feeling someone behind you looking at you.  We all decide just how attentive we want to be to our powers, how deep we want to be aware.  Having present awareness on the attention particles you are sending out is nuanced and subtle.  And lovely.  You needn't believe in the "particle" part, this is just as valid on attention no matter how you define it. 
'paying' attention is also good to notice because rarely do we realize that attention on something we don't want to attend is costly.  Stressful.  It feels like we're being charged, that we're "paying."  Paying Attention.  Whereas attending on something we love or find juicy is easy and doesn't feel like a price at all.  Effortless.
Juicy.  For indicating a something, belief, anything which feels like attending vibrant lively life.  Something you like, enjoy or love.  Something you are Yes for.
Yes.  The opposite of contraction.  Yes is an arrow towards highest potential.
Contraction.  Ultimately, enlightenment will say that without any contraction whatsoever the universe might unsolidify into one big ole light-being.  That contraction manifests the world we experience.  Many sitting Buddha statues have one of his fingers sorta just reaching down and touching the earth.  Keeping just a little bit of worldliness going to keep him from de-manifesting from form and never coming back down.  The finger just touches, a tiny bit of contraction.  At least, "Oh.  Body needs food." (and "if I don't come out of this I'll starve" -- which is a contraction)  Contractions can be detected by their No flavoring.  "I need food" is also a No to starvation, dontcha see. 
Sleepwalking.  Normal delusional life, Maya, identifying with the illusional worldly world, is like sleepwalking and indicates why the word "awaken" is used for the first shift.  It feels like when you just woke up.  But to wake up, there must have been sleep.  Wakened people often say their awakening was also their revelation of how they have been asleep, living a sleepwalking life, akin to watching TV all the time but having forgot it's all a movie. 
illusion, Maya.  This is believing that the world you are manifesting has nothing to do with you, you're only in it.  This is easy to believe if you don't notice, or refuse to attend, that your attention creates your experience, that your beliefs create your reality.  Creating a universe to live in and then thinking you didn't create it is an illusion.  If someone else does something inappropriate, you're insane to think they could have mad you angry.  "Justified" or not, any anger - - YOU created it.  As long as you accept Maya, choose to defend illusion, the more victim you will experience, no matter what anyone else does or does not do.  So long as you experience the right/wrong game, you cannot be awake.  FIRST, it is what it is.  If you accept it, then you are present.  If you do not accept it, you are reacting TO what-is, and part and parcel of the whole darned shooting match.  Present, you may wake up, while reacting, well, you're busy aren't you? 

      DeadIcant is about holding all life as sacred and not eating anything that is still alive.   Imagine that, eating something still alive.  Disgusting.  I just feel, strongly and intuitively that this shouldn't happen.  Eating my food while it's still alive.  Think of all those living cells, being eaten alive!  argh.  I'm not sure what the philosophy will be behind it, since nature herself arranges that most things end their life by being eaten alive….  bummer huh?  But we'll fingure something out. 
     Though just as liberals justify hunting animals "if they eat it", we too can accept people eating living things if they kill it themselves beforehand  That is, honoring the life we are turn into digestive pulp by giving it a sacred ending, a sacred death as it were.  For instance, I eat oatmeal long after it's been thoroughly killed in a factory.  And I put butter, which has been fully homogenized into the oatmeal.  I can eat without putting anything sacred and living into my mouth, to be crushed between my teeth.  Gosh what a horrible experience that would be for something livng as small as oats to be inside my mouth, like Jonah's whale, to be crushed to death, all the sacred life juice spilling forth as mere food for another life-form. 
     The reverse side, the sacrred side, is that my body becomes a Temple Of Transformation, where I take non-living food and transform it into more of living sacred humanity!  Also, if we begin to create our own food, we can take like tons of oats and before we throw it into the mill, we give it sacred blessing and prayer of thankfullness.  Then we throw it into the vats and turn the grinders on.  Blessed Sacred Oatmeal, coming right up.  Dead of course.  Not alive.  Won't be offended at my tooth fillings or bad breath.  In fact, Sacred.  A full life and well, a nice breakfast to boot.  I know I'm going to feel better about this.  I just hope some cynics don't start an Axis of Evil thing and start eating living food only.  Maybe the people who view food really spiritually will join me?  I think, I can remember their name, ah.... it's Raw Food People. 
    Wait!  They mean still-alive!!!  What are they thinking?!?


Want to join my new campaign?

In Walking, Thoreau said, "In wildness is the preservation of the world," yet when he submitted his talk, the publisher re-wrote it as "In wildneress is the preservation of the world," as if it were a misspelling, which is was not. 

Emerson eulogized Thoreau for lacking ambition: "Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party."  Thoreau had taken their shared literature and explored it, while Emerson studied it.  After that, he could never understand Thoreau, because he himself had never woken up. 

During the sixties, on Beacon Hill in Boston, I used to lead Adventures.  Often in the middle of the night.  I would take people on tours into adventure.  Most popular was Visiting The Old Witch.  I would swear she was three hundred years old.  That they could ask her when we got there.  That they could sit in their lap.  And anyone that had already been on that adventure would nod their head reverently.  The later and darker it was the better.  I would lead a little tour, up over the cobblestones, up, up to the State House shining it it's glory, a copy of the Federal Capitol.  Then in the quiet, I'd lead them into the bushes, behind a certain tree, and there, right up against the building, was the bronze statue of Mary Dyer.  I would tell her story speaking slowly quietly, looking into her eyes.  Murdered for witchcraft, unappreciated adventuring perhaps, captaining huckleberry parties  Not everyone climbed to sit in her lap.

No, Emerson never "got it."  He never got that if Thoreau had stayed back in the rough like Emerson, he'd never have allowed Emerson to speak over his grave.  But Thoreau never minded, his hucklberry party was in the wings, ready for another adventure. 

I've gone ahead and said controversial things about religion, and a specific religion, lately.  I left Christianty off the hook, partly because they've been trashed enough for a, "Ok, I get it."  *smile*  But mostly because we inheriters have pretty much dropped the Christianity dogma.  I see Christianity as having all it's fangs removed.  Yesterday I watched a televised stand-up comedian joke about having not turned his life over to Jesus . . . . . "yet". .. . .  and the crowd roared at the joke, because he's never going to do it.  We know that.  He ain't stupid is the implication. 

And there is also the LOLCat Bible Translation.  Example from Wikipedia:

Sample of style (sourced from chapters deemed by the site to be of "Final Draft" quality):

    15 Okays den. Kittehs, u keeps praysin da Ceiling Cat, and tells othar kittehs u frindz wit him. 16 Dont furget! U gotta do niec tings fur othar kittehs, and share ur cheezburgers and stufz wit kittehz who have nun. Dis maeks Ceiling Cat real happys.

            - Hebrews 13:15-16 [3]

    16So liek teh Ceiling Cat lieks teh ppl lots and he sez 'Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleevs in him u wont evr diez no moar, k?

            - John 3:16 [4]

Can't do that in Saudi Arabia! 

I'm beginning to think this is sucking too much energy out of me, and I started it, and I'd rather be programming in LOLCode which is explained here. All ur cheezburgers pwnd at this. 

Is it me?

I mean, am I like crazy to be triggered by everything I know or read or hear about Islam?

I wonder.

Maybe I'm a twit.

Let me take a look at the real thing, the Koran, here's something right away,

(5) As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not. (6) Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.

Well now.  That's pretty clear.  Allah has made me blind to the truth and headed for an awful doom.

Frankly, I don't trust anyone that thinks like that about me.

I'm going to root around in my cupboad and see if there is any spaghetti.

I haven't joined The God Pod because there is more evidence for the boogeyman than there is for God.  I've seen the boogeyman.

And I'm not worrying about not believing in one god.  Christians don't believe in thousands of gods and they get away with it. 

That's all I have to say about that, right now.
.

I'm inspired to speak about how New Age and Tibetan Buddhism are close together, both merging three of the four religion-types. Commonly, attributes of the four are mixed into each other, clouding things up, so it's best if we define what we're looking at.

Animism, Pagan gods, Revealed one-god beliefs, and Enlightenment-seeking. These are the four main religion types. 

    Animism is a healthy direct connection with nature, animating the elements, feeling the wind talk and the fox telling stories.  Sometimes pantheistic, nature as god.

    Pagan Greek gods is personifying archetype, much more intellectual.  This god did that, that god does this. 

    Enlightenment-seeking from the Indo subcontinent gave us paths to follow, for people themselves to reach for a higher godlike state.  This is an experiential religion, although like all religions, it always contains components of the other religion-types.

    Revealed religion is the last of the big four, based on Believing in Beliefs, and only secondarily with their content.  Revealed religions are most insidious because the believing-in-beliefs is hidden behind the content of the beliefs -- which content most believers will report as the real thing.  Only Islam openly states that being-a-believer is the essential thing.  Some revealed religions' belief-contents are the denial of all the gods except for one particular god, and believing the veracity of one person who said god spoke to him -- revealed Himself.  Only one Revealed religion has been successfull and can be found in three branches, Jewish self-absorption, Christian freedom, Islamic oppression.  Other newer revealed religions fail when the founder is shown to be an idiot, while Moses and Jesus and long gone and exist only in child-like imagination.  Oppostion to entrenched revealed religion is extremely difficult as the target mysteriously switches from the Belief methodology to the content and then back again, oscillating.   Judaism initiated beliefs-as-one-god-revelation, Catholicism developed salvation, and Islam went the next step and locks it all down, forbids inquiry, all become nothing to god.  Turning humility into humiliation, Islam returns us full-circle to barbarism in the name of the Allah.  Judaism tries to *live* the revealed laws, Chistianity tries to believe in unbelievable beliefs and Koran recommends killing anyone who merely stops believing,  the summit of Revealed religionism. Islamic way, most dramatically martyrdom operations, is the final natural progression of believing in belief systems.

I'm going to leave off Judaism because (outside Zion's Palestinian killing fields) it pretty much leaves the world alone. Animism, including night spirits and other critters (I wonder if UFOism is Animism, expanded to include outer space) is also of little use to Westerners as it only shows up in New Agers, who have no affect on society, nor can I influence you away from it, since superstition, pretty or not, is an affliction with no known cure. Greco-Roman many-gods is more useful than one-god religions, if the gods are used as resource for understanding via archetypes. An atheist doesn't believe in one god, while a one-godder Muhammad or Christian doesn't believe in hundreds of gods, probably getting himself in hundreds of times more trouble than an atheist if the god thing were actually real.

But today I'll speak of Revealed religions. “Revealed” indicates that, “Oh hey, look at this, some guy says there is only one god and He talked to him.” People who report more than one god, say walking down 42nd Streeet, that's too much for anyone else to follow, so that person is crazy.  All Revealed religion depends on someone convinced of the following dialog and then convincing the rest of us. 

“How do we know there is only one god?”

“God says.”

“How do we know other gods might say something else?”

“There aren't any other gods.”

“How do we know that?”

“God says.” on ad infinitum, ad nausea.

All we have to do is believe in two little things and then all else will be, er, um, revealed. Simple. Straight forward. And loony. Six or eight guys lost in the middle of a tiny desert for twenty years believed someone's hallucination -- and we've been at it ever since. Thought is evolutionary and while it might have started loony, in time it evolved enough characteristics to have great power when infecting other, ripe, cultures.

For one, Revelation used beliefs, not as something to play with, “Lets bless the water spirits for a safe passage,” but things to enforce, “God is great and if you don't believe it, here's a curved-edge proof!” slash!

We could look at how the progression of revealed beliefs took over social intercourse in so much of the world, but that would be an academic exercise I can't undertake, at least here now. What is easier to look at in short space is the current situation here in the West.

Fundamental Christianity, “I don't need to think,” go-stupid mode:

You have to understand this there are a multitude of people that can be considered an Anti-Christ, Like most segment of the Jewish religion.... And many of the people that practice witchcraft, and those that are devil worshiper, Or those that practice paganism.... And a ton of other religion, Like the Buddhist.... There are million if not billions of Anti-Christ out there..........

Such people don't even understand that antichrist is not at all necessarily against, Christ. They think that Baptist, Lutheran and Catholic are separate religions, not sects and wouldn't understand that Buddha is God by another name and instead confuse him with pagan personifying of ideas and animists animating nature.  It's like their saying, "witchcraft doesn't exist, but it's evil if you practice it." The ignorance of revealed religionists is a demand, not a by-product. One of the reasons it works is because the everyman and everywoman don't need to do any mental work, but just follow beliefs hammered into them.  Easy.  Ignorance is especially helpful, and the decline of religionism in the west can be seen, traced back, to the advancements of The Enlightenment.  Society made a ponderous slow turn away from dogma, leaving Christianity to children, uneducated grandma's and the particularly weak.  While raised on the stuff of religion, in early adulthood we see it was some kind of good-dooby metaphor and merely retain the Golden Rule, ten Commandments and such handy childhood lessons.

But I'm looking at this stuff as if it matters. But! To whom does it matter? Theorists? Us? New Agers? I suspect that it is interesting to some people because we are advanced thinkers, but not because of much else. We'll finish this, and thinking, “Well that was interesting,” we'll move on. Almost reduced to entertainment. *smile*

Now I'm left with two points.

1. that Islam is an ignored flood and the enemy of enlightenments, both Western philosopher and Eastern introspective enlightenments. In previous jihadic times, Islam, unlettered talibans, flooded across northern India and killed hundreds of thousands of monks and destroyed thousands of monasteries. Northern India is still today only three-quarters Hindi and is a wasteland of former, peace-loving, Buddhism.

2. that New Age-ism is combining aspect of

A. animism, “Let's put on angel costumes,” mother-earth (Gaia), environmental

B. enlightened, buddhistic and appreciation of Hindu, (yet turning a blind eye to paganism and animism in Tibetan Buddhism) 

C. enlightenment of the western variety is hidden behind it's origin in our own culture of Descartes et al informing all, and how, we think. Only a person of New Age level or above could even be able to consider all this. Yes, I know it's hard slogging if the imagination hasn't been captured. (But if you think it's hard going, imagine how it is for true religionists, this wouldn't make the least bit of sense no matter how hard they tried. It's outside the realm of understanding; for them, truth is truly incomprehensible.) (and a fundamentalist would say, “That's evil! Don't read it!” and I accept, it says here, the pat on my back, and would be proud of myself for the condemnation.)

Tibetan Buddhism's special popularity among New Age is due to it's mix of 1. buddhic seeking, 2. other lesser gods and 3. nature spirits – the first three religions without the fourth, revelation, which happily the west already “had enough of that!” Tibetan Buddhism did the same thing to religion as New Age is today, combining everything in sight into a mad mix. The Chinese turned the oppressive lamas into victims overnight, victims who suddenly remembered their buddhic side instead of their godly (controlling/totalitarian) side and became instant hits to lively people like me.

Opinion. While the idea of “combining all religions” seems a clever and wonderful idea, it has been tried before, , many times and doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is always the same, religionism itself is a stifling, through control of beliefs. No belief is worth the cost of demanding it, and that is the conclusion of all enlightenment, “forget all beliefs!” Collecting New Age beliefs is exactly like collecting murderous beliefs (“martyrdom operations”), it's no better or worse, it always leads to shit, shit and more shit, just at different rates.

The Issue. Just because wonderful things can happen, does not mean that the beliefs tagged-on were the cause. My message, if I have one, is that everything can be done without beliefs. And while New Agers collect beliefs on one hand, when we finish exploring them, the other hand seeks to dump them. We are treading water, getting nowhere, in this New Age sea of old religionism.

Solution? Perhaps evolution of spiritual quest is possible and we are now about to surpass the limitations of beliefs and instead value truly experiential, spiritual, not-I enlightenment. Integrative Awakening (Body, Mind, Belief, Spirit) and the Avatar Course (penultimate beliefs-create-reality, so manage your beliefs deliberately) both are a step forward, just as this talk/article hopes to be, into a new awareness of what we are doing, what we might do, and doing everything as source beings, free from past religionism. You, take it from here.