above: November 2003, sunrise from my home office, attic window as a write these words
All who shed blood in the name of their God, are actually doing so in the name of a man, a prophet, who claimed to interpret what God's word really was.
For ten years, recovering from the betrayal of Scientology, I would tolerate no thought about spirituality, God or what-ever... until I started meditating, at the suggestion of Joe Harrington, and came upon a grand peaceful, vast, luminous, spectre, whom, after summoning the courage to make contact, I asked. simply
"Who are you?
A brief, but intense period of non verbal communication ensued. Call it 'stream of consciousness,' which I then struggled with for days to turn into words that might express the essence of this strange encounter. The words I chose to try to express the answer were "He who has no handle" (Handle - as used in Citizens Band radio talk in the USA in 1970's for "name" used to identify a radio caller. At this point, I had never read the bible, old testament, or new, Koran, etc, but found out shortly thereafter that "he who has no handle (name) " is the Jewish translation of the name used by the God of the Old testament.
I was reminded of Bill Cosby's old comedy routine about Noah, and also reacted in kind.. "Riiiigggght"
It has taken a few years to be able to speak of these things, publicly, for fear they be held up to ridicule for daring to speak them in hope of providing a bit more momentum to what I perceive as a global spiritual awakening as to what really IS. However, ridicule is such a pittance compared to life.
I later asked, "What is the most important thing that mankind should know?"
And I was told:
"All men are invited to seek communion, and for each to seek his own unique path to communion, and that all paths to enlightenment lead to the this same place, communion"
and most importantly:
"Let no man interpret my word"
"Let no man interpret my word" has vividly stuck with me to this day
You see, the conflicts between the great "religions" - Hindu vs Moslem , Moslem vs Christian, and Jew versus most everyone else at one time or another....
Are all based upon conflicting interpretations of what various MEN said that God's word was.
My definition of God's word, is based on what a leader of the AME Church, a Reverend RW Bellamy.. told me is:
"Truth is God's word"
If the published prophets feel that their way is the one true path, then they were selectively published, wrong, mistranslated, or altered...
There is no one true path, no single 'road out', to heaven, nirvana, or whatever, all spiritual paths to enlightenment lead to the same place...to communion and each man seeks his own unique path to communion.
We have become accustomed to viewing 'war' as a hostile effort between two opposing sides, I suspect that this, in intself, no more than a diversion, a contrived direction of your attention, because in every 'war' the real conflict is hidden, the 'fog of war' merely helps do this, because I have concluded that the only two 'sides' in any war, are these:
The Military Industrial Complex (a phrase coined by President Eisenhower see link below) and it supporting institutions, this is the the realm of industrial manufacture of weapons, procurement, taxation, influence, and self interest of its owners, those who profit from war versus two men who have been led to think that they are on opposite 'sides', sitting in foxholes, looking at each other across a no man's land, who both just want to get back to their wives, children....and that little plot of land they call their own and sit again under their liberty tree, be it an Elm, fig or palm tree.
The various prophets, who were chosen to be published by the current winners of war and endured instead of being burned, have created interpretations that have been and are now still causing:
the engines of war and greed to continue to consume mankind's future on this planet.
Those renditions that would fill the amourer's purse were published and preserved.
Having entered an era of resource scarcity induced war.. Mankind's survival pivots upon ethical resource management and an overall reduction in the amount of energy consumed per capita, on a global scale...because we run out of time. The number of stress vectors facing mankind are overwhelming, making managed changes to deal with them are now a necessity because preparation - that is, time, is best amplifier of effort, instead of knee-jerk responses to catastrophe.
We cannot proceed, as a society, in essense and summary, by continuing to rape the earth, destroying ecosystems, aided by our own personal actions and inactions in living our daily lives and condone by our silence, a global gang-bang rape in progress of our one and only mother earth.
Television, media, radio advertising are designed to create want, to artifically induce a perception of necessity, a want of objects, things and more stuff... and when you have too much stuff, you have to build bigger houses... The hypnotic drumbeat to consume trinkets of no consequence, be it nutrition-free sugar and caffeine filled sodas, or the latest gadget to pick up dirt from your floor, is overwhelming, addicting and ultimately results in making each of us a participant in the ongoing rape-in-progress of mother earth.
Making people knowing partners in crime aids the survival of corrupt institutions. After a while, the only way for those people to survive, is to support those same corrupt institutions by seeking to exterminate those who oppose them and expose their crimes.
It is abhorrent to consider that some would call these words 'un-american', but that is because Liberty has been redefined to mean the right to steal without interference as long as you do it within the context of statutory legalese fine print and the occassional bribed congressman or councilman or even, war...
Freedom has been redefined to mean no armed gangs roaming the streets while the corporate syndicates do it all behind closed doors robbing the public blind.
Example: April 2005 - Polaroid Corporation recently went belly up, with its assets on the bankruptcy auction block... in the end, after a 'buyer' was found, workers who had spent a lifetime working for Polaroid found out that their 'pensions' were now worth $47 while the CEO was given a parting gift of $20 million.
Meanwhile heads stay down, feeding from the trough in short term comfort and smug confidence that food and trickets will continue to roll down the conveyor belts of industrialized societies, while intellectually numbing programming provides entertainment for our shrinking brains and vapid one liners serve as news analysis. They are quick to call out that anyone who dares raise his head and take note of such events is crazy....
We, as human space travelors living upon our finite spaceship earth, can no longer govern our actions merely by determination of how it will look when the next quarterly balance sheet is published.
The Seventh Son
Amongst native americans, who consider themselves instructed by the great white spirit to be caretakers of this land, decisions were made that affected the entire tribe on the basis of what would be best for the 7th generation ahead... The 7th son...
Compare that to the white man's next quarterly earnings report due within 90 days..
Seataka
Above, The four riders of the apocalypse, in Dusseldorf, Germany - note the definition of 'apocalypse' in my 1859, first edition, Dictionary of the English Language by Joseph E. Worcester is: '1) disclosure, revelation 2) The revelation to St. John' - I am using definition number 1, now, compare the 1859 most common usage '1) disclosure, revelation' to what apocalypse appears to mean to you today. Now consider what the prophets wrote, and what their words might have meant then, compared to what their words may appear to mean now...
( See President Dwight Eisenhower's Farwell to Public office speech which coined the phrase Military Industrial Complex )
It matter not, whether you are a Christian, Moslem, Jew, Indian or Hindu.
It matter not whether your God is your Lord, Savior, Allah, The One, Vishnu, or The Great White Spirit.
It is the same God, the only things different are the words chosen by your prophets
The 11th commandment is "Let no man interpret my word"
Perhaps this is why we have nothing written by Jesus himself... Arnie Lerma
because he practiced what he preached.
(c) Arnaldo P. Lerma 2003, 2005
If you liked this, you may like more from Arnie Lerma
The Liberty Tree story or,
Lerma's Expose Scientology pages
The Art of Deception
The Art of Deception II
Gore Vidal predicts the future of the Iraq war
Eisenhower's Farewell Address
Crazy George's accounting service (Flash media)
Truthout.org - Link to a new article by my friend Richard Leiby - "The day I almost led the Iraqi army"
taken from http://www.isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=39):
At the General Audience of Wednesday, 5 May, 2004 the Holy Father spoke about religious dialogue with Islam. While mentioning the point on which Christians and Muslims most differ, the mystery of the Trinity, the Pope also said that the two traditions "have a long history of study, philosophical and theological reflection, literature and science, which have left their mark on Eastern and Western cultures", and "are called in one spirit of love to defend and always promote human dignity, moral values and freedom". Here is translation of his catechesis, which was the 12th in the series on God the Father and was given in Italian.
"1. Continuing our discussion of inter-religious dialogue, today we will reflect on dialogue with Muslims, who "together with us adore the one, merciful God" (Lumen gentium, n. 16; cf. CCC, n. 841). The Church has a high regard for them, convinced that their faith in the transcendent God contributes to building a new human family based on the highest aspirations of the human heart.
Muslims, like Jews and Christians, see the figure of Abraham as a model of unconditional submission to the decrees of God (Nostra aetate, n. 3). Following Abraham's example, the faithful strive to give God his rightful place in their lives as the origin, teacher, guide and ultimate destiny of all beings (Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Message to Muslims for the end of Ramadan, 1417/1997). This human docility and openness to God's will is translated into an attitude of prayer which expresses the existential condition of every person before the Creator.
Christians and Muslims believe in the same God, the one God"