Spirituality * Culture * Self-Expression

Month: February 2021

Alone

One of my favorite poems also happens to have been written by one of my favorite authors. I’ve always found a strange connection with Edgar Allen Poe, even though our lives have little in common. Perhaps it’s that weird sense of spiritual connection that mystics often have with each other. Poe’s stories and poems, both in terms of the rhythm of the language as well as the subject matter and content seem to vibrate with my own consciousness.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809 and died October 7, 1849 at age 40. He was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of American literature in general and was one of the first American writers to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. He was one of the country’s earliest practitioners of the short story, considered the inventor of detective fiction, a key contributor to early science fiction, and an influence on the fields of cosmology and cryptography.  

His father, an actor, abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother, also an actor, died the following year. Thus orphaned, Poe was taken in by an unrelated couple, John and Frances Allan, who never officially adopted him but raised him and gave him the middle name “Allan.”  There was financial conflict in the family due to Poe’s gambling and alcohol addictions and young Edgar never finished school. He tried different careers including the military before publishing a collection of poems in 1827 with some success – after which he separated from John Allan.

For a time, Poe focused on prose writing and worked with several literary journals. He got married in 1836 to his 13-year-old cousin. Life was a struggle. In 1845 he published perhaps his best-known poem “the Raven” and things should have gone well after that – however, in 1847, his young wife died of tuberculosis. Career problems, gambling debts, alcoholism, melancholy and spiritual angst led to a strange incident that could have been drawn from one of his own stories. On October 3, 1849 Poe was found wondering the streets, delirious and in great distress. He was never able to explain what happened to him – especially why he was found wearing a stranger’s clothing. He was taken to a hospital and died October 7, 1849, at age 40. The cause of his death is still unknown. Was it due to syphilis, cholera, epilepsy, heart disease, alcoholism, substance abuse, suicide – even rabies? No one knows. All medical records associated with his death have been lost: including his death certificate.  

This poem was written in 1829 but remained unpublished until 1875.

ALONE

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—

Continuum

I don’t watch current TV shows. I don’t have cable or Netflix or any of that stuff. But I do like older television programs.

I recently re-watched a not so old show called “Continuum” from 2012. The premise is fairly simple: a police officer from the future, known as a “Protector,” accidently gets sent back in time, 65 years, to 2012. All she wants to do is return home to her family. However, future-age terrorists have also come back in time and plan on changing history. If this happens, the world the Protector knew will never exist. She sets out to stop the terrorists.

Why to the terrorists want to change history? Because in the not-too-distant future, corporations take over the Earth and replace all governments. Profit is more important than people. The population is under constant surveillance. The means of production along with every other aspect of life is strictly controlled. The “Corporate Congress” determines what is produced, how it is distributed and who can receive it.

There is no hard currency – everyone has a “life debt” encoded on a “citizen chip” implanted in their bodies. If you are loyal to the State and obey all the rules without question, life is fine. However, those who disobey are dealt with harshly. The worst punishments are meted out to those who are not fiscally responsible. People who are chronically late with payments are stripped of citizenship and turned into mindless slaves, attached to assembly lines and treated like biological machines.

Yes: the future is a Communist State much like modern China. A select few – the members of the Inner Party – have a luxurious lifestyle and are the face of the nation while, literally, hundreds of millions of inhabitants of the land live in abject poverty. The State population is under constant surveillance (made more complete via the technology provided by corporations such as Google, Apple and Microsoft); “Social Credit scores” based on loyalty and obedience determine privileges received; re-education complexes, slave labor camps and organ harvesting facilities abound; State lies and deception are the norm and anyone who disagrees with the Establishment position on anything is persecuted and erased.

When the Protector becomes aware of the true nature of the “ideal society” she came from, she begins to re-think her objectives.

One of the evil corporations featured in the series is a thinly disguised version of Monsanto. In real life, Monsanto was the premier agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation in 2012, but reportedly ceased operation around 2018 after its genetic manipulation and population control processes came to light. Actually, it was taken over by, perhaps, the more evil corporation of Bayer AG – a company with NAZI connections. Bayer and its affiliates control so much of the world’s biotechnology and pharmaceutical operations that it enjoys unlimited State protections and is free to conduct any number of diabolic experiments on humanity.

The creators of “Continuum” were prescient regarding corporate evil.  You have to wonder how this show got on network television in the first place considering the corporate-socialist control of the media. Sadly, the demonically inclined corporations are so secure in their power that they seem to take a perverse pleasure in exposing themselves to the public, knowing there are no consequences. And this statement isn’t even thought of as a conspiracy theory anymore – everyone can see that it is true and the people with the power to do something about it have chosen to side with the bad guys.

So, can we avoid the corporate takeover? I think it is already too late. With a senile, compromised, Communist puppet in the White House and feckless, ineffectual, quisling “leaders” around the world, we really have no line of defence. All we can do, short of the activism portrayed in the series, is personally RESIST it for as long as possible and protect ourselves, spiritually and materially, from succumbing to the evil influence.

Wake up and see what is happening. Wake up anyway you can and look for ways to defend yourself and your loved ones from the dictatorial policies that will soon be put into place. The worldwide pandemic lockdowns are just a taste of what is to come. Wake yourself up and try to wake up everyone else. Maybe, together, we can return some form of personal freedom and integrity to the world.

Will Oil Run Out?

The German chemist Caspar Neumann coined the term “fossil fuel” in 1759, and opened the door for the false belief that petroleum was formed from the remains of dinosaurs. Today, the consensus is that petroleum and natural gas are actually formed from biomass – mostly plankton, decaying marine organisms and single celled bacteria. Petroleum was around for billions of years before the age of dinosaurs and, probably, continues to be formed today.

When oil began to be heavily used, particularly to power automobiles, predictions began to appear that oil supplies would soon be depleted. Every few years some government agency, chemist, geologist, Nobel laureate or other intellectual would conclude that the age of “fossil fuels” was at an end – that within a few decades, there would be no more petroleum. All the predictions have proven to be false as new oil deposits and more efficient techniques for the discovery and uses for oil are continually developed.

Petroleum is abundant on multiple continents. The issue today is that the deposits are difficult to access. But technology continues to make advances in location and extraction processes ensuring a constant supply. The reason so many predictions of depletion have failed to come to pass is that they are mostly based on calculations of known deposits. Its like people looking at a giant apple tree and assuming that once all the apples that have already fallen to ground are collected, there will be no more fruit. They fail to take into account that the tree itself is filled to the top with apples.  

Scientists are mostly atheists and, thus, don’t acknowledge a profound spiritual truth – we live in an abundant Universe, on a planet of abundance.

Once people started looking at the sky with telescopes it did not take them long to start calculating just how many stars there were in the universe. They eventually concluded that there were about 100 billion stars. A big number, but still limited. Then in 1924 with a more advanced telescope, Edwin Hubble came to the astounding conclusion that many of the so-called stars out there were actually entire OTHER galaxies. It soon became apparent that the Universe was far larger than anyone had ever believed possible. Current estimates are of 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone, with, perhaps, hundreds of billions of other galaxies filled with billions of stars of their own. There are possibly trillions of stars in the Universe.

The Universe is abundant.

Until recently, people thought the Earth was unique in the Universe. Today, however, we believe that almost all the stars in the Universe have planetary systems of their own. And based on the vast number of stars, there could be billions and billions of Earth-like planets.

The Universe is abundant.

We also used to believe that water and a breathable atmosphere were unique to the Earth. It now appears that some form of air and water and other natural resources exist not just throughout our solar system but throughout the whole Universe. And with so many Earth-like planets out there, the possibility of life – even intelligent life – might also exist on millions of worlds.

The Universe is abundant.

We live on a planet of abundance. Our Earth will continue to supply all the needs of life as long as we manage our resources. While we require them, oil and petroleum products will continue to be found and found in profusion. Oil will not run out. Perhaps, there will come a time when we simply no longer need oil or want to use it – that, however, is a different issue.

A Vow

A Buddha is an individual who has attained full Enlightenment – a person who is fully Awakened. Someone in this state is free of the Wheel of Birth, Death and Re-birth. In other words, a Buddha is able, once and for all, to leave behind the material world and enter Nirvana – the state of ultimate Liberation.

A Bodhisattva is someone who is on the path to Buddhahood. This person has taken a vow to do everything possible to attain the fully Enlightened state. A Bodhisattva lives only to become Awakened no matter how many lifetimes it takes or how difficult the struggle.  

Some Bodhisattvas also make a further vow – a vow that they will refuse to move onto Nirvana, even after becoming fully Awake, until all other sentient beings have entered before them.

Perhaps the most well known such person in the Dalai Lama. The current Dalai Lama (the one in exile) is the 14th incarnation of a Bodhisattva who made this vow hundreds of years ago. He continues to be reborn in the material world to help everyone else become liberated from the Wheel.

Now, I do not claim to be a Buddha. Neither am I a Bodhisattva. However, in this time of Covid, I have taken a similar type of vow.

My vow is this: I will not, willingly, take the Covid vaccine until everyone else who might want it has had the chance to take it before me. I will do all in my power to fulfill this vow. In this way, I will put all my fellow sentient beings ahead of me and assume the least and lowest position in the line. Only after all others have been inoculated will I take the vaccine myself.

It is important to understand that I make this vow in full humility and as a result of my concern for the well being of other people. This vow I take has nothing whatsoever to do with the possibility that the vaccine doesn’t actually work; that it doesn’t actually cure the virus; that it doesn’t actually protect anyone from getting the virus; that, even after taking the vaccine, it is still necessary to wear a mask and practice social distancing; that any resistance to the virus provided by the vaccine is likely only temporary and may require further inoculations in the future; or that, after taking the vaccine, many people display strange allergic reactions to it and some even die as a result.

No. I am not concerned with these trivial issues. My motives are honorable. I will not take the Covid vaccine until everyone else has had the chance to be inoculated and experiences restored good health.

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