I innocently entered my post-New Year’s Day grocery store in need of groceries, only to have the tell-tale signs of the next major commercial holiday hit me smack in the eyes.  First, the greeting card department struck my vision with more variations of pink and red than I knew existed, even as an artist.  Cutesy teddy bears in all shapes, colors and sizes, mostly holding hearts lined the promotional ends of the aisles.  Candy boxes of all heart sizes, mugs with lipstick kisses and hearts, and more novelty items than I care to name stood absurdly in front of my eyes.  Expletives danced unuttered in my head, and I could not exit fast enough. 

I love the Christmas and Chanukah novelties and gifts that fill our shops and the New Year’s novelties as well.  These fill my heart with warmth and joy.  I would, however, be surprised if anyone could enter the store without being struck by the thick cloud of expectation that now hangs over everything like a storm cloud, because Valentine’s Day is another matter.  There were enough overly sweet shows of affection to give me diabetes on the spot, and it will not be safe to enter stores again until March when St. Patrick drives out St. Valentine.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love romance.  I love love.  I am a fan of silk stockings, lingerie, chocolate, flowers and poetry.  I am not a hardened cynic or skeptic.  I am highly sentimental, and will save anything a loved one gives me and cherish it because of the thought which went into it. 

My problem with Valentine’s Day is the compulsory attitude which surrounds it.  Like so many holidays that are centered around a beautiful sentiment, a day focused on love and romance has all the naïve splendor of budding romances and affection, but shows instead the fangs of expectation, and the watchful eye of those who would want to mark in a ledger whether and how much you love them by what you have brought or sent them on this day.    This is what turns a holiday into a nightmare.  It then has all the charm of engagement ring ads airing during the Super Bowl.

In my mind, there are a million ways to show someone you love them, from thoughtfulness to just being there.  There are 365 days of the year to bring someone you care for flowers to brighten their day, do the dishes without being asked, to call or write, to ask how their day has been or how they are, or any number of other demonstrations of affection, including not to expect anything from them, but to just be happy with their company and that they desire to share their life with you.

It is my hope that people can keep this in mind instead of focusing on whether or what they are sent or brought on a day when everyone is bent on doing an official tally and knowingly or unknowingly putting pressure on those they have in their lives.   Love is a year-round celebration, and romance is far too valuable to cheapen with a materialistic mentality.

I hope people will begin to remember more and more that Christmas is not their birthday (unless they were really born on December 25!) but of Jesus. It’s HIS birthday. He’s the one more deserving of the “gifts” than ourselves (okay, kids, I guess, can be exempted from this “rule”). With this remembrance, perhaps we will be less stressed, less hurried, less panicky when Christmas comes every year. And we will be happier, more at peace, more in love, more in bonding with our families and friends, and more significant and real (and less materialistic!) in our joyful celebration of Jesus’s birthday.

Advanced Merry Christmas to all people of Earth!

Václav Havel, poet, philosopher, politician, is likewise not often thought of as a defender of religion, and the Czech republic by most some measures vies with Britain for the distinction of being the most dechristianised nation of Europe. But when Havel talks of  atheism he means the kind of insatiable proud greed which mashes both interior and exterior landscapes into something as homogenous as mechanically recovered recovered meat. He means the noisy, unthinking atheism of those who cling to a quasi religious faith in “science” or advance the political ideologies of soft Marxism with it’s dogmatic hatred of “the rich”and belief in the rigid control by central government of all aspects of life. It is a vision of the consumer society as hell:

“Our cities are being permitted without control to destroy the surrounding landscape with its nature, traditional pathways, avenues of trees, villages, mills and meandering streams, and build in their place some sort of gigantic agglomeration that renders life nondescript, disrupts the network of natural human communities and under the banner of international uniformity it attacks all individuality, identity or heterogeneity. And on the occasions it tries to imitate something local or original, it looks altogether suspect, because it is obviously a purpose-built fake. There is emerging a new type of a previously described existential phenomenon: unbounded consumer collectivity engenders a new type of solitude.”

This is a similar view of the horror of modern life to that which animates Rowan Williams, current Archbishop of Canterbury and senior cleric of the global Anglican communion and part – time Druid. Williams has spoken many times of “the fantasy that you can organism the world to suit yourself”. This is the solipsism (belief that one’s mind is the only thing that can truly be said to exist) I have referred to many times in articles and comments.

Havel made his speech at a conference which focuses on architecture; but he sees the extra urban sprawl of banal concrete and steel boxes as the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual degeneration.
 
“…not only a globally spreading short-sightedness, but also the swollen self-consciousness of this civilisation, whose basic attributes include the supercilious idea that we know everything and what we don’t yet know we’ll soon find out, because we know how to go about it. We are convinced that this supposed omniscience of ours which proclaims the staggering progress of science and technology and rational knowledge in general, permits us to serve anything that is demonstrably useful, or that is simply a source of measurable profit, anything that induces growth and more growth and still more growth, including the growth of agglomerations.

But with this cult of measurable profit, proven progress and visible usefulness there disappears respect for mystery and along with it humble reverence for everything we shall never measure and know, not to mention the vexed question of the infinite and eternal, which were until recently the most important horizons of our actions.

We have totally forgotten what all previous civilisations knew: that nothing is self-evident.”

Naturally this won’t convince anyone who is not prepared to accept there is an alternative to their own world view. What is most interesting and persuasive about Havel’s case is that he knows he is unlikely to win many converts among the dogmatists of the left or the evangelical preachers of “living scientifically”.  In taking the recent economic chaos as an example of the way in which an apparently rational and entirely controlled system suddenly showed that it was neither of these things he deftly undermines all arguments in support of what we must call “progressiveism” for want of a better descriptor..

“I regard the recent crisis as a very small and very inconspicuous call to humility. A small and inconspicuous challenge for us not to take everything automatically for granted. Strange things are happening and will happen. Not to bring oneself to admit it is the path to hell. Strangeness, unnaturalness, mystery, inconceivability have been shifted out of the world of serious thought into the dubious closets of suspicious people. Until they are released and allowed to return to our minds things will not go well.”

After this crisis a thousand and one theorists, academic sociologists, political philosophers, economists and general smart alecs will emerge to describe precisely how and why it happened and how to prevent it happening in future. But this will not be a sign that they have understood the message that the crisis sent us. The opposite, more likely: it will simply be a further emanation of that elitist academic arrogance Havel was speaking of.

He was not the first to spot the lesson events are trying to teach us, around the time I was being born the British writer D.H. Lawrence penned these words; “Mankind must get back into step with the rhythms of nature.” That is what Václav Havel was referring to when he spoke of losing our connection with infinity and eternity. He did not mean we should all sign up for communal worship at the local Synagogue, Church or Mosque but that we should understand how puny and how powerless we are in the scheme of things, even on this planet – are utterly insignificant in relation to the Universe. We can no more control nature than conjure food and water for the poor out of thin air. Until the new elitists are prepared to learn this  lesson it will be repeated, more and more painfully until, eventually,  our children are forced to learn.

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What a pagan believes

Many say they will and many others have, because whether your life is great or not many others have it worse. I thought just that way when hard times hit me. I thought that I was a loser a piece of junk that could not even provide a meal for his children, and I even questioned whether keeping my morals in tact was worth watching my family starve. I had to place my family in the hands of another family and submit myself to park benches, bridges, and shrubs and let me tell you I missed my little crappy apartment I once complained about. I soon found it was not the apartment that I missed it was the separation of my family that ate my soul, for not only was I a homeless man, but a family-less man. I tried to remember my children complaining and whining about spending a whole day in the park, but I could not, because they did not ever complain. To them it was an adventure sleeping on the grass and being so close to the playground everyday, and I remembered it was just me complaining about what I could not provide for them. When they were hungry I would panhandle or play my guitar and then eventually sold my guitar, and my kids would get so excited when I told them we had to cook hot dogs at the bar b cue pits at the park. To them it was a deep dark forest and we were camping. Sticks were guns and they were in search of Bigfoot. The ducks were eagles and the pond was an ocean and beyond the ocean was another world. Never once did they complain. They would say “thank you daddy for taking us to the park and playing with us”, but I never heard that I just saw anguish and distress. It goes to show that we as a people, so accustom to “bling”, can learn much from children, especially gratefulness. It was always the self imposed standards that I held myself to that tortured my soul. I wanted my kids to be able to compete with the children around them that had motorized cars and trains, candy and treats, dresses and sparkly shoes, and I realized I was teaching my children to be materialistic. 

What do you need to live? Oxygen? That is basically it, and maybe a burlap sack. We have added so much more to our plight that we as a society have structured our lives on things that have no soul, no love, no importance, therefore no meaning and putting much meaning in “things” is not meaningful at all. We make standards that are impossible to achieve and when we fail at achieving these impossible tasks we submit ourselves to depression, alcoholism, drug addictions, and sex. In the non-present, but ever present anguish I saw in my children I became a better father with a greater capacity to love and be grateful. In my deceptive torture I found a purpose; to help others see that things will degrade your soul and ultimately the world in which you display it. Bitterness is contagious and so is greed, but love is a thing of the past. This is the world your children will grow in, so can we really call it growth or the degradation of mankind?

 Difference between history and purana

The words ‘History’ and ‘Purana’ appear to have the same meaning but there are differences between the two. History is study of the events which have happened in the past, the past events of a nation which are related to its civilization, political administration, invasion, etc.

On the other hand, Puranas are the stories of different kingdoms and dynasties, which are very much in practice in India.  There are three main sub-divisions called SATTIVIKA of eighteen Puranas, of which RAJASIKA and TAMASIKA Puranas are related to Gods called VISHNU, BRAHMA and SHIVA.

Purana defines the festivals and rules and regulations related to the conduct of self-discipline and other practices. On the other hand, History is collection of the events which have happened under different king of different dynasties and kingdom.

History gives us the detailed account of cultural development of a particular country, whereas the Purana gives us the detailed information of religious development and particular tradition of the country like India.

History has its proofs which are based on the facts, but Pauranic events do not have any such proofs, rather they are based on the faiths and belief of people of the country. This is the main difference between History and Purana.

One big difference between the two is that historical figures have proofs of their existence, such as buildings, palaces, tombs, etc. On the other hand, Pauranic events do not have any such proof of their existence as they are based on supposition and assumptions, and there are no documents to prove them.

History is more to materialism, but Purana is more to spirituality and religion. In Purana there are descriptions of Gods and Goddesses, spirituals centers, places of worships, places of pilgrimage like Gaya and Kasi, etc.

History, on other hand, is filled with the description of wars, battles, achievements of various kings, constructed buildings, development in fields of art and construction etc. thus History is subjected to widely research.

     According to advertising critic, Kalle Lasn, the United States is just a country full of “marketing targets or demographics,” people who are no longer considered to be citizens, even by their very selves. His article points out to readers that they are in fact members of a cult, whether they know it and admit it, or choose not to acknowledge the truth, forever in denial.

     If truth be told, all the majority of this nation seems to care about is shopping. It has been made the national pastime. When people are bored they turn to the malls. When those malls are closed they turn to the TV infomercials and online shopping nowadays. These people are commonly referred to as Shopaholics and their need to shop started back when they were kids “tugging on their mother’s sleeve in the supermarket” for a candy bar or toy on the checkout line. As they aged, brand names also become important to these people, thinking that they have to have that cool new pair of Nike sneakers or their group of friends would not accept them anymore. However, it is certainly the holidays that contribute the most to this shopping craze. The author compares them to rituals that people annually participate in. People actually are given an invented reason to go out and spend their hard-earned money on useless decorations in the name of the Christmas or Halloween or Easter or Valentine’s Day or even Birthday spirit. The only dream people now have is of being able to buy more things, their heads floating in product wonderland, convinced that those things will make them happy, and when they do not, because they never do, they turn to the people who are happy with a click of the remote, and the cycle continues.        

     A question is posed to the readers: how does it feel to have been brainwashed? A question that the readers recognize as entirely too accurate for their liking.

Works Cited

Petracca, Michael and Madeleine Sorapure, eds. “The Cult You’re In.” Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Popular Culture. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009. 49-54. Print.

 Image Source   Haunting Spheres Within Spheres   by Bill M. Tracer

 In this essay, we’ll examine a few of the possible answers in broad categories, and evaluate their merit.

1. Secular Materialism (There is only the material universe with no real spiritual aspect. In this view God is not necessary.) This is the primary view of Atheists.
2. Emergent Materialism (The universe began as pure energy, out of which the apparent material of the universe emerged, over time as the material universe grew increasingly complex, this combination of matter and energy eventually brought about consciousness, which may have even attained the ability to maintain energetic cohesiveness enduring death. This natural process could occur either with or without the existence of God.) This is among the ideas explored by present day Agnostics, and certain Naturalists, and even those of the Rationalists school of philosophical thought.
3. Theistic Universalism (There are both a material universe and a spiritual aspect, which includes the concept that God and the created material universe are separate. In this view God is a non-corporeal entity of pure spiritual energy, who created the material universe as a thing completely separate from the spiritual domain in which God resides.) This is the primary view of several religions both ancient and modern. Most Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, and Zarathushtrianism embrace this basic view. Even the now extinct Manichaeism followed the primary tenets in this belief.
4. Classic Deism (The view of Classic Deism likewise sees that there is both a material universe, and a spiritual aspect, and that God and the universe are separate from one another, but that once having created the universe, God moved on, perhaps to creating other Cosmic domains, and ceased to be directly involved with this particular cosmic creation. Some have equated this concept to the idea of a clock maker, who creates the clock, designed to run on its own once created, requiring no further “intervention”. Evolution would in fact be a part of this design. Another possible analogy might be like each cosmos created by God likened to works of art. Once the artist has completed his artistic creations, he moves on to other creations.) Classic Deism as such is currently embraced by few. Most followers of Deism have evolved the idea into various forms of Pandeism, such as the next category, Cosmological Pandeism, which includes a deistic God concept that remains intimately involved with the created Universe.
5. Cosmological Pandeism (In this view there is also both a material universe and a spiritual aspect, but unlike Theistic Universalism and Classic Deism, this ideology includes the concept that God and the Material Universe are one, intimately interconnected and that essentially the spiritual domain and the material universe are not really separate from one another, at all. Some within the broad category of Cosmological Pandeism accept the Multiverse concept of M-Theory and as a consequence of God as having at least an 11 dimensional perceptional awareness of the Space/Time continuum, thus transcending time as we know it. As a result of this transcendent temporal relationship to the universe, all of time is as one single instant to such a Pandeistic God. Certain aspects of esoteric and mystic views discussed below can be found in some Cosmological Pandeistic ideologies.) Certain Liberal Christian denominations, Universal Unitarians, those of the Unity Church, Theosophists, and other so called “New Ager” types embrace many of the principal beliefs in this view.
6. Quantum Esotericism (The entire material universe is made up of virtual particles that are really nothing more than reorganized energy, creating the illusion of being of a material nature. These particles follow incredibly long term fractal-like iterative processes, which over time bring about increased complexification, from chaos into the ordered patterns of nature. The “program” that creates this complexification process appears to be directed by some form of Cosmic over mind, Universal Consciousness, Source, or Force. Some claim this “Source” can be tapped into, or accessed in order to manifest ones fondest dreams.) These are similar to some of the ideas explored by such esoteric thinkers as Dr. Frank B. Robinson of Psychiana, or advocates of the Power of Attraction, the so-called “Secret”, which doesn’t seem to be very secret anymore. Quantum Esotericism falls very much in line with the teachings of Dr. Wayne Dyer, also. Even the guru of Psychedelia, Terence McKenna, with his Timewave Zero, or Novelty Theory appears to have embraced some, if not all, of the ideas explored in Quantum Esotericism.
7. Mystic Illusion (The entire material universe is an illusion in the mind of a cosmic entity, we might generally equate to the God concept. We are all like shattered shards or small fragments of this collective God Consciousness, and thus share in the mutual illusion, being both subject to and responsible for the qualities of this illusion.) Buddhist mystics and the followers of modern sages like Michael Talbot, and the Holographic Universe concept fall into this category. In its most extreme individualistic form the philosophy of Metaphysical solipsism would also roughly fit here.
8. Brahman Dream (Brahma, {God}, dreams, and we are the characters within his dream, and are each expressions of the fullness that is the One. Indeed even the entire universe is the stage in which this dream takes place, and someday all that we know on this cosmic stage will melt away when Brahma awakens from his long slumber. When Brahma awakens, we will all awaken together as One. The many will be One, once more.) This is the basic belief of Brahman Hindus. It is also rather similar to some Shamanistic ideas, though they would not use the specific name Brahma, but might have other names for the “Great Spirit”, which dreams our reality.

 Who’s on the Right Track?

It would be difficult to say that any one of these views has a complete picture of reality. Actual reality, if such a concept can be quantified, may be more a blend of several of these ideas, though certainly not all of them, since some of them are mutually exclusive.

I personally find myself leaning toward a mixture of principles found in Cosmological Pandeism, Quantum Esotericism, and the Mystical Illusory concepts of Talbot’s Holographic Universe.

Cover of The Holographic Universe

While I find the Brahman Dream idea a fascinating metaphor, I’m much more inclined to see the Cosmic over mind or Source, as Dr. Dyer calls it, not so much as dreaming, but rather orchestrating with full temporally transcendent consciousness, using fractal iterative processes on a grand scale to “construct” out of etheric chaos ever increasing complexification, resulting in the ordered patterns we now observe in our reality. For the honest open minded seeker, understandings of this illusive reality constantly evolve, as continued experiences reveal more. We may not have the complete picture yet, but the quest continues, and I for one will not give up as long as my consciousness endures.

    Another point I would like to raise is that when large stretches of land are used for housing and development, the cost of food rises as food crop would be grown only in certain areas gazetted for agriculture. The poor may not afford food items like fruits and vegetables that have gone up in price, which only the wealthy can afford. In some countries, the native grown vegetables and fruits have gone up in price and this is a hit on the bellies of the poor. In other words, we are inhuman towards the sufferings of our fellow human beings apart from being unfair to nature. 

    We live and work to feed ourselves and our families. Just imagine if there is no food. Probably we would turn into cannibals and the weaker of the species would be disappearing first. Sorry for being so direct and crude, but facts are facts. Why I say so is through my analysis of the situations of the world around us.When animals are deprived of food, they even let their babies die as the mothers themselves do not have food. Tigers which are normally not man eaters have turned into one due to their disappearing natural habitats stolen by Man. 

    Animals like lions do not chase or disturb deer or other of their victims when their stomachs are filled. The prey feels safe even to walk past a contented lion that is not out to hurt its prey. I have also learned that a dog does not harm a cat that it had befriended from young though they are natural enemies. There are humans who eat animals like dogs but they always spare their pet dog from being a meal on the dinner table. Yet we have heard of humans who abandon their parents or their children for the sake of comfort, leisure or materialism.

    It is really heartbreaking news when we learn that we could have done better for ourselves and the world when we could. Sorry to say, we humans are born selfish, egoistic and arrogant, to admit that we are wrong. What I see in the world around me tells me that we are not far from self destruction if we continue to live the way we do. 

When blacks were slaves they were often kept in chains, one would think this symbol of oppression would be tossed aside after liberation, however today blacks still wear chains of oppression, the difference is their oppressors.

Slaves had no freedom, many were treated cruelly by their “owners” (some of which were black themselves – and it is worth noting the first slaves were actually white – the word slave coming from Slavic people), but they were fed and housed to some standard. In contrast workers, while free, have to fend for themselves when it comes to food and housing.

Everyone is a slave to somebody, but in the African American subculture of modern times, blacks are still wearing the chains of oppression, they call them “bling”. They hang these chains around their necks, without knowing it, showing their slavery to materialism.

Economic slavery now holds its grip of ownership over blacks (and others) in America. This point was made clear in the satirical art by artist Pawel Kuczynski, in his piece called “Slave” he shows a black slave painting his chains gold.  The artwork may be viewed here.

Nobody is immune, as long as we are brainwashed into thinking we need more “stuff” we are all slaves, slaves to money and materialistic desires. 

Related Reading

The Working Woman Conspiracy

The Wedding Ring – Oppression to Women

Modern Humans are Nothing more than Bees and Ants

Is the mind something that we can control?

I believe the theory of dualism, and that my body is occupied by my mind yet the mind is different from my body. I believe that our mind is the centre of ourselves because the way we do things, how we think and how we act is all in our mind and we are simply using our bodies to convey our thoughts to the world through our senses. I think that the body does not control the mind but the mind controls the body, and even though we do not know all components of the mind I believe that is the source of ourselves. We are born with minds, genetic looks and genetic personalities but we also learn new things through our experiences as we grow up, and through the senses, which are transferred into our mind so that this affects how we think, feel and act. It seems as though these experiences and thoughts our own, in our minds, but I believe that we cannot control our minds. If our body is separate to the mind, and if the mind is not controlled by the body, then what is there to control the mind? There are certain complex aspects of the mind that nobody will ever be able to figure out and so if we do not know the full extent of something, how we are we able to know how to control it? Our mind is the centre of how we think, and we believe that the ideas we come up with are because we made them but I believe the mind controls what we think and our imaginitation can take over sometimes, and we cannot control this. These examples can be we cannot control what we think about in our dreams, and how do we know that dreams are really taking place when we are asleep? Or is it just an aspect of our mind that we cannot control and that we do not know how to understand. I also believe in interactionism which holds that the mind can influence the body and the body can influence the mind and this way they are united. I believe that there are certain experiences in which the body influences the mind in our to think or act, but I also believe that the body can never control the mind over anything, because sometimes our mind can just take over.