The Watershed.

Haven't been here for a while but I've got some stuff I wanna write down and all the other places I go don't quite suit it so this'll have to do.

The idea of a watershed works quite well because a whole load of what might usually be termed not connected all connected up by happening pretty much consecutively and then after them all happening I've come out the other side better off and even more relaxed.

And the thing is that most of this stuff that happened could be termed as slightly disturbing and in danger of throwing one off the proverbial edge but as I am these days it really was just stuff happening in slightly brighter colours, and possibly with greater juxtapostions in the overall composition,  than usual but even with that it doesn't make the point from where we might be looking that different.

Life in and of itself then is quite metaphorical for me, it's the way I kinda look at it passing around me, and so when the already well old laptop I've had for about four years started getting itsy bitsy around video playback and sending the operating system into safe mode, which with Linux stuff isn't the scaredy cat paralytic creature it is in windows, and if anything is almost as usable as the high octane mix it is in normal operating mode, then suffice to say I was kinda feeling that changes were on the way... so I started preparing but not in the way of actually doing anything so much as just knowing changes were afoot and getting the distance and calm to accept them as they arrived.

But now I'm kinda bored with this because going through the motions of all this stuff which came from all angles is just too complex and I can't really be bothered because in the end I've got through it all with flying colours and it didn't rattle me at all.

Computer stopped working, internet went down, face came off building, old friend went nuts, older friend not seen for ages turned up and third cat arrived to live with us so all in all a lot of stuff went down and given I live on next to zero money then all of this could have been daunting but it wasn't at all.

But it's kinda the computer I'm most chuffed about because I'd found a whole desktop box on the side of the road I'd pretty much forgotten about and also a coupla motherboards complete with cpu's and ram and suchlike which makes them work like they are supposed to and after a few days of not having a computer at all and going down to my bro's to use his to do the stuff required to get the internet back up and running and getting pen and paper out to get the build up of ideas on paper, or out there anyways.

And that's what kinda came to me was that I was entirely taking for granted this playing with ideas and with the laptop going and the internet working I'd gotten very lazy about this stuff and just poured it out without consideration and so having this wherewithal disappear and then feel the need to still get a bunch of words together and going back to good old pens and paper  and also see how not published such, having the availability of 'posting', being on a soapbox... wasn't there or, at the very least, was different with pens and paper, then the whole subjective mix of it all came under scrutiny... as in what the fuck is this need and why is it even in me?

But you know... whatever, as I don't even take such as that very seriously and the simple fact I kinda roused myself to realising that money isn't required because, and I'd forgotten this bit, that a saving grace sorta appeared as a friend of mine had promised me he'd be buying a chair I'd made when a particular sculpture he'd bought on trademe was sold on so I went to see him and indeed the sale was imminent and the Nestle dynasty were the ones interested but then this dog they have had to go to the vets to get it's legs fixed and, sorry, no money for Sean as this dog that isn't even ours and we don't like much anyways is getting precedence.

I took that with as much grace as I could muster as it did actually shock me a bit because if there was anyones word that was worth counting on, outside family, it was indeed this fellows but I felt much more complex issues afoot within his domicile and felt that indeed this fellow was doing the best he could within the circumstances and even went back two days after and told him I was sorry for not being as understanding as I might have been.

But sweet as, this denial of money which would have seen to my accrued debt and been able to go out and get another laptop wasn't to be, as in the easy lazy way through, but then I realised I had these desktop 'puter's lying about so I got them out of storage and hooked things up to TV's to see what might be available.

The complete desktop didn't fire up but it did make noises so I knew, at least, the power supply was working so I took out the motherboard and chucked in one of the other ones I had and it actually went as in windows even reared it's ugly stupid head... but typically of windows it warned me I was doing dangerous things without startup CD's and numbers but that didn't matter as all I needed was a working bios with the setting to boot from a DVD and I could do the Ubuntu thing anyways.

All this done I went off down to my Bro's to download the manual for this motherboard 'cause there was a bunch of usb connections and reset's and startup button's and led's to connect to get the proper sensory experience as I'd only been able to figure out the power on and reset as they're momentary switches and polarities don't matter... you could even just hit them with a screw driver end alike in the old days to get the solenoid on a starter motor to engage.

That all sorted and the 'puter wired up as it should, and I'd also checked if the DVD thingy stuck it's tongue in and out, but then, oh, and my brother had a spare Tv screen after I told him I'd have to wait until Mum had gone to bed before I could use the sitting room Tv, but then it's all set up but then the DVD won't stick it's tongue out so power down and put in the one I have from my own almost ancient desktop which gave up the ghost almost a decade ago... but it's a sata connected one and theres only one sata power cable in this found object and it's one of the two harddrives in this box... oh well, disconnect the sata harddrive and hook up my old DVD and suffice to say it all worked.

Now all I need to do is buy a power plug adaptor though why I'd even need another hard drive when the one I'm using, even if it's old school IDE, is just 250Gb... I suppose because I wanna se if it works.

There is this other thing as well, which alike everything I seem to do is quite complex but at the same time kinda figures itself out the less I get involved, is seeing whether the drawing tablet I got a month or two back works with this new 'puter 'cause in a weird sense it just might but then if it does I'll have to do the work with it that I thought was lost, well not lost 'cause the itsy bitsy laptop hardrive can be extracted and USB'd up to get into it, but then with another stoke of luck I found my old USB stick down out my brother's and sure enough all the files I'd thought were momentarily lost were actually on the stick... bugger even.

And over all this is that I just kinda let fall apart what ever wanted to fall apart and so it did but then it's all put itself back together as well with almost less actual being involved than that which I applied to letting it all just fall where it may.

Beating around the bush of Insanity.

For some reason I've been wandering around Parnell for whatever reason the past few days and then yesterday found the reason and was even speaking to a landlord this morning but during that wandering about I decided to check out the high end furniture outlets down on the Strand.

I love well made stuff and ever find the high end proprietors and servers just as interesting as their pretence fights somehow to be welcoming and almost apologetic at my obviously woe-begotten carcase of meat.

I would hope that the above isn't something I carry as a burden but a fairly honest depiction of what my own welcoming attitude might bounce off then be pushed off into a corner where the dust of in-consequence lies frightened until picked up by the yawning mouth of a European assembled vacuum cleaner.

Anyways I was in Matisse and upstairs at that when I duly decided that after three attempts to define whether I needed help to bear forth with a question which simply put was how do people who make this kind of stuff in New Zealand get it onto this floor.

What followed, and while I knew I was to feel appreciative that such was given alike the dole to the unwashed, I couldn't help but be somewhat aghast at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, that such serious an undertaking was at best complete bosh and tosh, but was held in such esteem that to disbelieve the seriousness of it all was tantamount to a high treason... of which then I am entirely guilty. It was insane!

First I was told such is as made to be design must be enrolled at a show in Italy and taken there to be schmoozed over, I kind you not, she used schmoozed like it was a technical tool that only the elites can sharpen with clarity of purpose, then after having schmoozed themselves into a reliability worth embracing these bits of wood and metal and whatever else might be fashionable at the time would be taken up as worthy of production by Italian factories with defined pedigree and standing as to make them worthy yet again of the ticks in boxes that amount to being in favour.

But that's just the start. Then comes bit's having been made by Italians flown back to New Zealand and put on the floor at Matisse to then be picked out by interior designers and architects, for God knows no actual individual without proper training has taste, working alongside the proprietors who, incidentally, are all properly trained, the best having the regard of being taught by overseas institutions - hopefully in a foreign language, discuss and find merit in the long drawn out choices which though undoubtedly might last a lifetime because they are so well made but would more obviously be castaways when, heavy forbid, the next season see's them as pretentious, or more likely, just simply dated.

And that's insane! It's not even that Italians, or any other Europeans don't make fine and hard wearing furniture. I don't dispute that. What I find insane is that New Zealanders are led such a merry chase just to get something that could just as easily be made here but then it's not really about that is it? It's all about creating exclusivity and while the product may actually be better it's not because we can't do better here in New Zealand but that any money which might be used to support such an industry is  divided between the creators of the exclusivity.

Before this particular set of beliefs, which incidentally is what they are - a belief system, seemed only slightly ridiculous to me as it really had no bearing on ever being able to serve me in some way but then when I think I might be able to serve that need in the market, mostly for my brother who has a factory working leather and is constantly telling me how crap most of these chairs actually are, then being told the only way in will cost multiple thousands of dollars and is basically a gamble irrespective of whether I have a good usable product then that's not only ridiculous but insane.

But this is what too much money in too few hands creates, I know that's a bit a leap but it does seem to be what is going on. But why is that? It can't really be the money it self as that's only money which is just a medium of exchange so it must be something to do with having more than is actually required and that that is more than others have then there must be some form of justification to make those who have more than they need feel they deserve that much and I suppose that's when it starts becoming insane.

Resistance in Art?

Two things are vying for my attention at the moment and in a real sense I'm neither here nor there as to uncovering them simply because if I leave stuff alone it'll find it's way to me eventually and usually in a worked out manner that makes the intellectual process obsolete. But this, while almost a perfect world, doesn't seem to be that way for many others and so a swaying, of this slow acceptance, to meet outside obligations is sometimes required to adjust myself to a world that may want things of me.

One comes by way of offering to do work then being asked where I might like to do this work. This immediately frees me to define myself in a way I don't enjoy so much as the opposite, this is where you will do the work, offers a resistance that I like to work from as in with well defined boundaries then as in laws, laws are made to be broken, and so boundaries are made to be pushed beyond... but you need the boundaries in the first place.

This brings me to the work of Tracey Emin who I've recently discovered, by way of a friend who admires her, but in finding her work this boundless art practise, or being without restriction, seems rather sad. While I find her spirit wholly commendable the art she seems to have done, in the public arena, seems more about spectacle and concepts far more than it might be about accepting a restrictive index and going beyond, as in a craft based procedural based art, which in turn seems entirely restricting to her ability to actually speak her art to an audience outside the pundits that parade its veracity.

And that's sad and woe to all those artists who's freedoms are so great they seemingly forget to be artists and become merely performers in some side show touted as a main event.

I suppose I secretly hope that she has a whole private world full of real things like brushes and scalpels and carving chisels where she tests the coordination of hand and eye in a real and sweating brow attempt towards a mastery which can never be got, that she hasn't forgotten her child that knows frustration must be battled by throwing ourselves against the insurmountable paradox of vision and dull ageing bodies. But though it seems there a little in her comments of how to work with bronze, this inner sense of creating resistance to get beyond, even that is played out in the public eye so my dream of her actually finding a self for only herself, played out against a public unwilling to read dull esoteric tracts to find merit, seems a perishable commodity alike all the other plastics and neo-neo's that pertain to commoditisations.

But I am spoiled more by my luck than I ever was an expert at anything, art included, so in that respect I can challenge myself ad infinitum with the resistance against being unfound knowing that keeping the finding of relevance is something I can always keep at a distance that it remain an obstacle I can choose to surmount or not knowing too the inherent folly of constantly fooling myself is a folly worth the effort.

And who have I to thank for this perplexing view? The cats of course. Those feline creatures who have races to be the slowest, or at least that's what it looks like might be happening, that when I call them for lunch it's not a run to the trough but a seemingly complex set of always changing  reference points that measure some sort of higher dis-interest, so high in fact that when they remember it's food at the end, the surprise and reward, which seem to be at the heart of the enterprise, renews the whole venture, made it ad-venture. And I don't really try to figure it out as realise the subtlties of my parts in the process. They kind of let me know that they are the masters but that without my parts to play no such mastery would occur and so it's less an apology and more an acknowledgement.

So I am dull by comparison with their ease of just living but it still behoves me to spread what I might be learning, this coyness of possible intent, that far greater waves are awash than our obvious needs to be vital. So it seems resistance is not something to be pushed and prodded into submission but a necessary constraint we might eventually notice isn't even there, that it is more a tension between inner and outer that the stretching of creates resilience, where we've come from and where were going aren't absolutes to be attained but simple markers that keep us to the middles.

We're all working through shit.

I've kinda had enough critisism of myself over the years that when I do criticise others I pretty much know I'm talking about myself, that in seeing what's problematic in others is really just a reflection of what I'm not able to recognise in myself so by putting it out there as critisism of others there's a fairly good likelihood that it'll come home to roost as a critisism of myself.

Hopefully I'm self aware enough to see this, not always of course because I'm like most others humans and capable of mistakes and blunders, but in the end I usually see that whatever  I think others are guilty of I have a responsibility to own whatever I'm seeing in others as it is actually in myself.

But what's really problematic is when I forget that my ability to take responsibility for my wrongs isn't always the same for others especially in close knit relationships. The thing is I'm really quite forgiving of myself but hopefully not to the extent that even before I do blunder, and become aware that I will, that I would carry on regardless just for the fun of it... let the venting occur in some hilltop hideaway of infinite forgiveness... as that's where responsibility comes in, as in why end up responsible for something when not doing it in the first place means there isn't anything to be responsible for?

Because it needs to come out. Simple as that.

Something or someone becomes a metaphor for our own internal chaos and it's just too damned complicated to see in ourselves so we need to project out onto the world what it is we're actually dealing with and if we're lucky we can see quite early on that this is what we're actually doing but if we're unlucky.... well, along comes the blame game.

And of course the reason for this posting is that I've got caught up in my own stupidity.  That while trolling through my own mess I've reflected/projected it out into the world and the shit has stuck. Bummer.

Now (as in it's later than the above was written and saved as a draft) it seems I wasn't even caught out but simply misread something but in taking it all as far as I did, in reflecting back at myself, I've hopefully learnt a lesson without actually causing the grief I thought I might have. But still the thought was there, the guilt I felt makes that obvious and even while the airing in public hasn't happened  it still kinda did happen anyways... underneath everything that lies under the surface of life.

Art and the building of Monasteries.

11am. 27th March 2015.

It crossed my mind the other day that where I live would suit the final outcome of being a monastery and yet I really, outside of a public view of such, have no idea what a monastery is. Yet the idea seemed to be about creating a place of peace and quietness, two things which have come to be very valuable to me, and so the idea of it being called, this working towards and being something at the end, would suit the idea of what might be monastic.

My initial ideas were that I'd have all these little areas where artists could come and work at whatever it is that artists work at and that in return for this availability to do as they are want to do then they might spend some time on whatever else is in need of doing, as in gardens and maintenance and suchlike, to allow the thing that it is to go on.

So what is it I have and how is it that what I have could be whatever it is I choose it to be? Seems this background might actually need some description otherwise the ideas of what is might be are entirely like clouds just floating through the sky. Otherwise there is also the idea that I know what I have and can see the possibilities within and this, as a written thing on the internet, may or may not need such grounding in realities, as being the internet, is more about ideas than it ever is about realities as concrete as... actual concrete.

Either or doesn't even matter because meaninglessness, whatever that is, also has a place of distinctions worth favouring in my life and while that is also whatever it is the simple fact remains that this, the blog itself, is most easily found from the links I put in from facebook and within my own photos of what I supposedly am and do there are enough photos of where I am and what I do that a little research would answer sufficiently any questions that might arise of the where and the what this particular post may be alluding to.

But even getting as far as I have I know feel a need to go and meditate so that's what I'm going to do. This way whatever it is on the edge of my thinking will occupy those thoughts there to be let go of and as they disappear they'll possibly clarify themselves as to what words they might want to form into.

2.20pm 27th April 2015.

Though what it is in the end doesn't actually matter much and that is almost superfluous next to the simple fact I'm working towards something that when done with and finished I can leave... even if I don't leave bodily I'd be leaving it spiritually as regards the first ideas that brought this whole unfinished thing into being.

It all kinda took on a realness back in '97 when I left a built house within a warehouse which at the very end was completely empty and was beautiful. While I did want to somehow profit by that, to be able to gone somewhere else and do it again, it didn't really matter that much beside the simple fact I'd done it. It was an artwork in and of itself and the biggest one I'd ever achieved. Walking away from it and having done it, been almost allowed to do it, was enough.

Now I feel the same about this property in Otara. I see this eventual set of buildings with gardens and trees not with a mineness that can be measured and sold but as a task that when completed leads to another task and given I've always fallen on my feet no matter how much I might have forgone the normal collection of stuff as saleable commodity then it just plain feels natural to simply do what wants doing without the tediousness of making something pay.

And it is tedious. There seems such a flood of goods available to us all in western society that even having to compete within that is just plain tedious. So I've been lucky enough that I don't have to. And there's no great flood of money behind me either that allows this, no pool of left over extravagance to dip into. It's simply that I don't hardly need any money whatsoever and can wander about in my little car every now and then and quite simply just pick up the building materials from the side of the road that I might need... and that I've collected up enough relatively required items, by others, that I can sell the odd load of stuff here and there for any money that might be required.

All of this adds up to being able to give it away, not now of course because the whole things just a big mess, but eventually I could just walk away.

It might then be a Monastery or it might just be an Artists retreat but it won't really matter to me what it's called. It'll simply be something I did and enjoyed as much as possible that in the end would allow me to walk off and do something else.

The young men and the tree.

Theres this thing going on at the moment where one 500 year old Kauri tree in Titirangi somewhere is being battled over by the Conservative environmentalists and the Liberal progressives, or Greenies and Developers, and it is my considered opinion that they will win the battle, saving this old soldier, but they aren't doing themselves any good as far as the war is concerned.

And it seems to me is this is kinda what it comes down to. Not only are they at war, the Greens, but the greatest mistake they have made is not stating this in it's entirety and that entirety likely is the re-greening of New Zealand, that as much as is humanly possible of the land of New Zealand is forested and that the smallest amount possible be set aside for humans to survive within and about this land doing what land does.

For without this defined victory, this place to go to as an actual real idea people can believe in and share, then all strategies to acheive this unspoken victory cannot serve anything except the disjointed ideals of the people fighting the battles.

The thing is that if this goes to Parliament, which at this moment seems to be the case, then it's obvious the tree will remain standing simply because the Liberal progressives who are now in power are fighting a war and they will easily forgo one soldiers sacrifice at their hands for the public display of benevolence they can be seen to make... and make it look like a grand gesture in accordance with the beliefs of those seeking to save the tree... this is tactics to win the war and not a strategy to win a battle.

The Greens however will see it as a victory to keep one of their soldiers still standing but it is and will be a hollow victory at best because if they were indeed knowing they were fighting a war and that this was merely a battle they'd acually be better served going the way of Martyrdom, losing the tree in a gushing of great moral anguish which, if played well, could result in a ground swell of understanding for their overall cause.

But they don't see it like that. They only see themselves as a cause celebre where the winning of medals for bravery might one day vanquish this obviously evil foe but it's empty because there is no stated cause and only celebre.

Image if you will that the Greens made consessions. That they used this felling of one single tree to set precedents. That they knew it was a hopeless mission, as in the soldier making the mission must die, and so made it count for as much as that single life possibly could.

Let's say that the timber from the tree must be made into lumber and that the lumber must be made into artworks to hang on the walls of the children's section in libraries and be reminders to us all of the sacrifice each and every tree makes to our well being. But as well that for the age of the tree to be felled that as many seedlings are planted to replace it, that 100 5 year old trees be planted for every 500 year old tree taken down.

Because this is what the Greens are actually up against. They who they fight for each single tree are already looking at other forests. They are at war and each battle serves battles yet to come which they realise too are often lost as soon as they become battles because the intention at the beginning for most of any objective is for it to be won by covert action.

Meanwhile the Greens seem only like a rag tag bunch of Che Guevara's looking for the medals to be won and the t-shirts to be worn which is really sad because the real Che knew it was a war.

The Greens need to read the Art of War and see that strategies are developed to suit tactics which are there to win a war and not get lost, as they do, in using strategy to define tactics which might in some way allow them to declare, at some stage, that it may actually be a war.

Battles make heroes but survivors win wars.

Meditation and Religion... some others views.

I hang out lots at spiritualforums.com but not quite as much as I used to. Alot of it's said, doesn't need sayin' again and somebody else will anyways.

But these two bits were really good.

Meditation by Gem.
Hi,

I'm going to talk, but I have no interest in influencing people and their meditation techniques.

Meditation is the presence that continues throughout the changing experience. Equating the experience with meditation creates expectations and desires that meditation should be like this or that; however, people describe a vast range of experiences that occur during meditation, so it's obvious that no particular experience defines what meditation is... The word 'during' is relevant in the sense that meditation endures the mentioned variety of experiences.

This invariably comes back to you, and I use you in the generic sense because meditation must be a universal to all people. If it's a type of meditation, that's a personal practice, but the principle mediation is always the still presence of mind that remains throughout the changing experience.

It's often the case that the presence of mind is skittish, and change causes mental reactions that 'break' the trance-like spell of quiet beingness. That's quite normal and there is no reason to be disappointed, disheartened or deflated. The mind is accustomed to these deflating feelings and the sense of 'not getting it right' or something like that, but that's merely mental habits and there isn't any valid reason for it. There is no room for such feelings in meditation practice, so if one notices these counter-productive feelings,they would do well to cultivate patience and persistence in their place. These are the virtues that grow where disappointment and defeat dissipate.

To elaborate on the experience, there are pleasant and unpleasant experiences, and since meditation isn't pertinent to experiences per se, but to the stable self presence of the meditator, one cultivates a neutral balance of mind that is reflective of the central stillness of any one person's being. It doesn't matter if pain manifests in the body or if a flow of energy delights the senses, because if one can't meditate during a painful episode, and instead, is mentally unbalanced by their reactions to it, it reveals to the meditator that there is some work to do toward stablizing their balance of mind. In the case of pleasure the problems are more nuanced, but people tend to become desirous of pleasure, and are are unsettled when they don't get what they want, or they cling to it as opposed to letting it pass as it wont to do. In such a case, the person can also practice to enhance their stability and balance. This goes to say, that regardless the nature of the experience, all experience is an opportunity to cultivate the balance of one's mind.

I wish to explain why that is important. People are accustomed and habitualised to react with desire to pleasure and aversion to displeasure, and they don't always understand this kind of hatred and love is generated as mental reactivity that perpetuates egocentricity i.e. "I react". This illustrious figure, I, is completely constructed of the action/reaction process which drives the karmic wheel, produces the egomanic symptoms of me and my and mine, and perpetuates the very movement of mind that disturbs the meditator. It's the basis of suffering.

The body and mind are an interwoven fabric. The body manifests the contents of mind, and all of a persons emotional content is manifest in the sensual experience. If a person contains hard emotions from their past traumas or from self defeating beliefs, those emotions will manifest as hardened and painful sensual experiences, and they are toxic if held over the long term.

The reason they stay there for so long is that they are very unpleasant to endure, so people create an adverse reaction process. When that discomfort arises in their consciousness, they are compelled to engage an activity in order to avoid the feeling as it occurs, and persue a pleasurable feeling in order to distract themselves from it. This is the loop of aversion and desire or the duality of love/hate, and that process drives the continuation of the mind until all the stored thoughts and feelings finally complete their inevitable process (which we refer to as destiny, in a manner of speaking)

This brings me back to the cultivation of a neutral and stable balance of mind. This balance enables the unshakable presence of being to remain consistent. If one ceases the mental movement that I described above, and adopts a still disposition, the mental and emotional phenom manifest sensationally can be observed as they happen to be, and because the mind remains balanced, they can pass as freely as they are wont to do. Once they have completed their passage, they dissipate and are gone, and cease to recur (since the mental and emotional content no longer exists).

I must be coming to a conclusion. The thought that began about a half hour ago is now fading into an obscure mist; it came to me and went through a process of change that lasted for a while, and now it's fading fast.

Thanks

Then there's Bartholomew, channeled by a chap in Vancouver, Canada. about religion.
  The first thing is to deal with religions. They, all of them, are necessary because of the immaturity of the human race as a whole. The average man is not equipped to understand greater realities so he is given a simple "believe and be rewarded" format instead. OK that sounds pretty harsh and a critic will use the term, "judgemental". So be it.

the first thing to understand so that the complexity of the world makes better sense is to realize that creation, once begun, has never stopped. New "baby" human souls come into existence all the time just as mature ones "graduate" from the need to express through physical bodies. If it weren't for this fact no religion would have endured as long as they have. Considering the planet as a whole most, by far, of the humans who live on her are very young souls. Only a small percentage are older and there is only a very small group of advanced souls (in bodies) here on earth. Jesus is one of these but since the average soul could not relate to greater truths it is better to use the "father son" relationship instead when speaking of Him and God. The entire Bible is nothing more than an answer to the level of maturity of man. If man were "static", if all of us were the exact same spiritual age, there would be only one religion. In Christianity there would not be "denominations". The earth is not that way though. We are very diverse so religion is also. Want to know who is junior and who is senior. One way to find out is to look at who pushes religious conversion. No advanced soul would do that. Likewise it is unkind in the extreme to attempt to "down preach" the religious zealot. They cannot understand and such attempts just cause them pain.

Most advanced humans on earth live quiet lives in isolation. There is no necessary correlation between spiritual age and temporal position. Thus we find often that leaders in countries are apt to behave poorly. This works out to benefit us all in the end though.

The average person need not know about reincarnation. The information would be misused. Better not to know. There is a story that comes form ancient China where a person could legally promise to repay a debt in a future lifetime. No mature human would even consider such a thing. Better that we don't know. But some of us do know (about the universe of spirit) otherwise why would this website be here?

Souls are born, not in perfection, but in innocence. The begin their long journey in bodies on planets. Some come here and are humans. Very seldom do souls change planets because of great differences that would cause problems, getting in the way of learning. We live a thousand or more lifetimes on Earth. We all live as male, female, fat, skinny, ugly, good looking, rich, poor, gay, straight, tall, short, sick, healthy and as members of all the racial groups. By the time this is finished we've learned all the Earth can teach us. The acquisition of wisdom is the goal beyond which the "salvation and resurrection" of the Christian occurs.

Religions exist for the purpose of assisting us on our paths. The Bible of Christianity is written entirely in metaphors. The entire work is in parable form. In scripture are meanings within meanings within meanings. The Bible speaks clearly of the higher truths but the immature minds see these references and do not understand them. They choose instead to promote superficial meanings. This is good. Remember that religions are designed for immature souls. It would be inappropriate for advanced humans to attempt to correct them. Remember that new souls are coming to Earth all the time and these need the kind of guidance that only religions can provide.

You mention "soul plans" in your post. They exist. We all plan our lifetimes in advance. We select the type of body and the setting in which we will live in accordance with what we want to learn. The religious person will say that God does this but it is we who live our lives. God is the ultimate source but how are we to grow if we don't play an active part in our own lives? Where will wisdom come from if we can't participate in our own destinies? So, yes, we make plans for each life. What are our weaknesses right now? Are we quick to anger for instance? Then it is likely that this inclination is what we are attempting to overcome. Are we grossly ugly and fat? Perhaps we need to learn humility and have chosen to do it the hard way. Does a baby die in the crib? What acceptance lessons might the grieving parents learn? Are we judged unfairly and sent to prison for crimes we did not commit? Maybe we had unresolved violence issues in past lifetimes that were never finished. All this is possible.

Religions exist to make things easier for us. Better it is to be presented with a set of beliefs and rules than to sink or swim in the higher truths that sometimes would be so devastating. Religions are like safety valves. That they are superficially incorrect or incomplete is OK. A greater purpose is served.

One last thing is for us to realize that it is not our place to run around trying to "teach the world". The one who does this forgets that most of the world does not need to hear great truths. Most of the world needs what religions have to offer.

I was raised a Christian. I believe too much to be one now. No matter. I still enjoy the occasional visit to a church (I go to them all in turns) to experience what others around me have to share. Do we think in terms of acceptance? Most of us at least entertain the idea. Make it so then. Accept the fact that humanity is diverse, of all spiritual ages and that "the needs of the many seldom dovetail with the needs of the one". (Mr. Spock of Star Trek.)

As for "ah ha moments" that you mention. There are some of these every day it seems. Good that you put it that way. It's real.

A very BIG ah ha moment is the realization of the fact that not all souls are the same age and experience and that, further, religions do not account for this in their teachings.

One last thing. Christianity teaches us that we were created in perfection and that later we "fell" and are now sinful. This is incorrect. The doctrine of Original Sin is false. We were born in innocence and coming to Earth from the spirit worlds (Eden) was the plan all along. Remember the serpent in the garden? The snake is the almost universal primitive symbol of the Earth. Thus the snake in the garden signifies the necessary pull of the Earth to Adam and Eve. (everything is in metaphors) What the serpent said to Adam and Eve is irrelevant. The fact of it's presence at that moment is not. We had to come here to learn. Simply being created and living a stagnant, un-dynamic existence (through obedience) in heaven would be pointless. The reason the truth of this is not stated clearly in the first place is because if it were there would be no motivation through guilt and fear for us to make an attempt to advance. In the beginning we had no wisdom so we needed it's distant cousin, fear. We should not judge religions too harshly for this deception. It was necessary. Religions do not hide truth. The great souls who dictated scripture to prophets chose to "color" truth in terms that would be suitable for early, immature, man. Religions were then formed around and based upon these.

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Blessings...

 

Lot's of stuff eh? Good stuff though.