Religion
A Lethal Cocktail
by admin on Jun.28, 2009, under Religion
As with Anna Nicole Smith, the speculation is that Michael Jackson died of a lethal cocktail a muscle relaxant Soma, a sedative called Xanax and anti-depressant Zoloft, an anxiety drug Paxil, the painkiller pain killer Dilaudid, and another powerful painkiller named Demerol. Who thinks up these things? And, did they combine to kill Michael Jackson? I have a more serious question though.
Is the lethal combination of organized religion and human ego killing the church?
The ego is basically born and developed out of the soul’s perceived separation from God. It’s an illusion that the ego promotes for its own survival. Look at how long Christianity has swallowed the tale that we were kicked out of the garden, separated from God, not worthy of God’s love, and so on ad nauseum.
I love the way Kim Michaels put it, “The compulsive need to maintain the infallibility of one’s religion gives rise to an insatiable desire to control everything in order to destroy all threats to one’s illusion. The result is the desire to convert all other people to the one true religion and to destroy other religions. This often leads to the belief that it is better for nonbelievers to die than to stay in a false religion that will send them to hell.”
So, “in the name of God”, Catholicism-Christianity has killed millions (remember the Crusades?).
We’re far more civilized than they who lived centuries ago. Now we just ostracize people, put labels on people such as cult, new age, deceived, and heretics. Because the modus operandi of the ego is to maintain the fact that it is never wrong, breaking free from such fundamental, absolute, literal, and infallible paradigms is near impossible.
But, as one looks back over history you can see the occasional LEAPS in consciousness, the enlightened moments, the renaissances, and the axial age phenomena. We are now THERE and we have been for about two decades now. For those who are dying to their egoic demands, it can be FELT. As I wrote this, goose-bumps briefly appeared. I know! I AM…………we ARE.
Many are breaking FREE of the lethal cocktail of the human ego and the institutional church hierarchy!
Is the lethal combination of organized religion and human ego killing the church?
The ego is basically born and developed out of the soul’s perceived separation from God. It’s an illusion that the ego promotes for its own survival. Look at how long Christianity has swallowed the tale that we were kicked out of the garden, separated from God, not worthy of God’s love, and so on ad nauseum.
I love the way Kim Michaels put it, “The compulsive need to maintain the infallibility of one’s religion gives rise to an insatiable desire to control everything in order to destroy all threats to one’s illusion. The result is the desire to convert all other people to the one true religion and to destroy other religions. This often leads to the belief that it is better for nonbelievers to die than to stay in a false religion that will send them to hell.”
So, “in the name of God”, Catholicism-Christianity has killed millions (remember the Crusades?).
We’re far more civilized than they who lived centuries ago. Now we just ostracize people, put labels on people such as cult, new age, deceived, and heretics. Because the modus operandi of the ego is to maintain the fact that it is never wrong, breaking free from such fundamental, absolute, literal, and infallible paradigms is near impossible.
But, as one looks back over history you can see the occasional LEAPS in consciousness, the enlightened moments, the renaissances, and the axial age phenomena. We are now THERE and we have been for about two decades now. For those who are dying to their egoic demands, it can be FELT. As I wrote this, goose-bumps briefly appeared. I know! I AM…………we ARE.
Many are breaking FREE of the lethal cocktail of the human ego and the institutional church hierarchy!
Katrina – What Its Like To Be An Evacuee
by admin on Jun.28, 2009, under Religion
I have run from only two storms in my whole life. Once the year before Katrina, my wife and me retuned the next morning from the first storm that turned away from New Orleans like most of the storms before it.. Katrina wasn’t so merciful. In fact it seems we may never return now, but by no choice of our own.
With less than twenty four hours to go before hurricane Katrina hit land my wife and I started to pack up the car to leave St Bernard Parish Louisiana. We had to have the brakes repaired only an hour before we left. We had to depend on the kindness of a neighbor who was frantically working on the car as we loaded it with those things the officials said we should take with us.
We loaded a few changes of clothing our important papers and our dog, Patches. We went to pick up an older gentlemen whose daughter could not pick him up because she lived north of Lake Ponchartrain which was already nearly impassible. He was a member of our church and we faithfully picked him up for every service because he could hardly walk on his own. Looking back now we know he would not be alive if we had not gone to get him out of his house.
We drove through the night. At first we could not go over fifteen miles an hour across the twin spans, an eight mile long bridge across the lake a bridge that today is largely destroyed. The winds came just behind us only hours later and washed the spans that weigh thousands of tons into the water like toothpicks in a bathtub. In time we got up to about fifty but not once did we ever reach the speed limit. We arrived at a friends house near Birmingham Alabama where we stayed for two days. We contacted the old gents family and arranged for his family to come and pick him up. The power went out several times throughout the second night as the winds gusted and threatened Old Birmingham.
On the third day only hours after Katrina had moved above Jackson Mississippi did we began the 450 mile trek to my wife’s sisters house in West Baton Rouge Parish. We listened to the radio reports with some measure of hope that all was not that bad. Our hearts began to sink as hour by hour reports came in about broken levees and rising waters.
Over the next two weeks we followed all the news reports and searched for friends and pictures from our neighborhood on the internet. During the first week it was totally impossible to get a call through to anywhere from Alabama to East Texas. It was a long dark moment of knowing nothing at all about anyone or anything we ever knew.
Next came reports and pictures of toxic laden mud through out our Parish and talk of houses that needed to be bulldozed into the ground that was said to be uninhabitable. Rescues of people, animals and the retrieving of bodies went on with all the pictures being shown daily on Baton Rouge TV stations. If things weren’t glum enough then we began the business of trying to call FEMA and Red Cross.
My wife must have dialed FEMA over 500 times before getting through. Then we were promised a packet in the mail after they took our information. We have still not reached the Red Cross and they are still talking about gathering 40,000 volunteers to help answer the phones. The insurance company that covered our house informed us that their coverage would cover our house only and no more but they are not sure they can do anything without seeing the house. But no one is seeing our house not even us. The St. Bernard Parish President Junior Rodrigues held a news conference in the capitol building here last night and spoke of months before residents could return, not weeks. Only hours before this bad news came in we went to get shots to protect us from a host of diseases that we could get if and when we do return.
Our bank accounts were not accessible and money doesn’t grow on trees even in this fertile Mississippi valley so I thought I’d make an appeal on my own little one page website. Now we feel as if we are caught between the warnings people are hearing about fraudulent sites collecting for Red Cross and other organizations and indifference. No one as yet has responded to the appeal but then only 35 or 40 people a day click on my site.
My wife volunteered her help in feeding some 200 people in a shelter here. She helped prepare the food and serve it. The food was provided by a small Baptist church in Erwinville Louisiana. Later we visited the people in the shelter and are continuing to do so when we are not knocking our heads on the wall in the biggest communications nightmare in the history of the telephone. We asked one family if there was something we could get for them in the shelter, they asked for a bible. We purchased it the next day and delivered it to them in person. That warmed us greatly, not the giving of the bible but the request for it. Unlike stories out of the Superdome this was a wonderful family of black Americans that had a different set of values. And thousands like them are suffering and waiting to begin their lives again, just as we are.
We have had several invitations to go and live with family and friends in other towns and in other states but we are staying close to New Orleans to attempt a look see and to retrieve what we can. So far all we are hearing is “stay away” and of course the endless buzzing of the busy signal from the aid organizations.
We are a praying couple, and when we talk to Jesus we are sure he is saying, I love you and I will take care of it all. We believe Him and we are very grateful that his line was not busy
With less than twenty four hours to go before hurricane Katrina hit land my wife and I started to pack up the car to leave St Bernard Parish Louisiana. We had to have the brakes repaired only an hour before we left. We had to depend on the kindness of a neighbor who was frantically working on the car as we loaded it with those things the officials said we should take with us.
We loaded a few changes of clothing our important papers and our dog, Patches. We went to pick up an older gentlemen whose daughter could not pick him up because she lived north of Lake Ponchartrain which was already nearly impassible. He was a member of our church and we faithfully picked him up for every service because he could hardly walk on his own. Looking back now we know he would not be alive if we had not gone to get him out of his house.
We drove through the night. At first we could not go over fifteen miles an hour across the twin spans, an eight mile long bridge across the lake a bridge that today is largely destroyed. The winds came just behind us only hours later and washed the spans that weigh thousands of tons into the water like toothpicks in a bathtub. In time we got up to about fifty but not once did we ever reach the speed limit. We arrived at a friends house near Birmingham Alabama where we stayed for two days. We contacted the old gents family and arranged for his family to come and pick him up. The power went out several times throughout the second night as the winds gusted and threatened Old Birmingham.
On the third day only hours after Katrina had moved above Jackson Mississippi did we began the 450 mile trek to my wife’s sisters house in West Baton Rouge Parish. We listened to the radio reports with some measure of hope that all was not that bad. Our hearts began to sink as hour by hour reports came in about broken levees and rising waters.
Over the next two weeks we followed all the news reports and searched for friends and pictures from our neighborhood on the internet. During the first week it was totally impossible to get a call through to anywhere from Alabama to East Texas. It was a long dark moment of knowing nothing at all about anyone or anything we ever knew.
Next came reports and pictures of toxic laden mud through out our Parish and talk of houses that needed to be bulldozed into the ground that was said to be uninhabitable. Rescues of people, animals and the retrieving of bodies went on with all the pictures being shown daily on Baton Rouge TV stations. If things weren’t glum enough then we began the business of trying to call FEMA and Red Cross.
My wife must have dialed FEMA over 500 times before getting through. Then we were promised a packet in the mail after they took our information. We have still not reached the Red Cross and they are still talking about gathering 40,000 volunteers to help answer the phones. The insurance company that covered our house informed us that their coverage would cover our house only and no more but they are not sure they can do anything without seeing the house. But no one is seeing our house not even us. The St. Bernard Parish President Junior Rodrigues held a news conference in the capitol building here last night and spoke of months before residents could return, not weeks. Only hours before this bad news came in we went to get shots to protect us from a host of diseases that we could get if and when we do return.
Our bank accounts were not accessible and money doesn’t grow on trees even in this fertile Mississippi valley so I thought I’d make an appeal on my own little one page website. Now we feel as if we are caught between the warnings people are hearing about fraudulent sites collecting for Red Cross and other organizations and indifference. No one as yet has responded to the appeal but then only 35 or 40 people a day click on my site.
My wife volunteered her help in feeding some 200 people in a shelter here. She helped prepare the food and serve it. The food was provided by a small Baptist church in Erwinville Louisiana. Later we visited the people in the shelter and are continuing to do so when we are not knocking our heads on the wall in the biggest communications nightmare in the history of the telephone. We asked one family if there was something we could get for them in the shelter, they asked for a bible. We purchased it the next day and delivered it to them in person. That warmed us greatly, not the giving of the bible but the request for it. Unlike stories out of the Superdome this was a wonderful family of black Americans that had a different set of values. And thousands like them are suffering and waiting to begin their lives again, just as we are.
We have had several invitations to go and live with family and friends in other towns and in other states but we are staying close to New Orleans to attempt a look see and to retrieve what we can. So far all we are hearing is “stay away” and of course the endless buzzing of the busy signal from the aid organizations.
We are a praying couple, and when we talk to Jesus we are sure he is saying, I love you and I will take care of it all. We believe Him and we are very grateful that his line was not busy
