Build Your Bunker

So 

I've talked about 2012 before,

a little bit,

here.

I am intrigued by the increasing contemplations

of 

12/21/12,

which,

by the way,

when you write it that way,

is a double palindrome.

I also sense

that something is happening,

and sometimes,

well, heck, often

I wonder

if it has anything to do with

that Grid message I received.

Today, I saw 

this:

(You have to follow the link below to be able to get the
interactive demo.)

This is posted on a website

called

HardenedStructures

which promises

"Client Confidentiality

Covert Construction

Clandestine Contracting"

all to help you as you plan

where you want to be

on the Winter Equinox, 2012.

The picture above is

one example of

a structure

designed to protect you

against

". . .  conventional weapons, 

forced entry, 

chemical, biological, radiological and explosive (CBRE) weapons, 

2012 mitigations, 

Climate Change 

and any type of Apocalypse or World Ending Scenario."

Well,

I'll tell ya:

talk about a great industry to get into

if you want to make money fast.

And doesn't this overlook

one of the essential purposes

and effects

of "Apocalypse or World Ending Scenarios"?

Consider the scene

from 

The Book of Revelation,

Chapter 7:

9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;


10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.


11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,


12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.


13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?


14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.


15 Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.


16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.


17 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

(sacred-texts)

Well, let me tell you,

I know this is supposed to refer

to the gathering of the select,
the Tribes of Israel,

and maybe I'm not going to be

part of it;

however,
maybe I will be part of it,
and I just don't know it right now.

However you look at it,

if there is to be some

rather glorious encounter

between the Saved

and the Lord
on that date,

do you really want to be stowed away

in a sealed bunker

while that little gathering is going on?

I mean, really,

talk about being

left behind.

I,

for one

would rather

hazard

the light of day

then

hide from it

on such a day.

I really don't have much more to say about that.

I really intended to write about 

something else today,

but that caught my eye,

and I just couldn't ignore it.

If, by the way, you've been looking

for a company to build you a building

like that,

I'm really glad I could help you.

The Jackson 5- Never Can Say Goodbye

Remembering Michael: a diva; a friend; a sad, old soul, ravaged by other people's greed.

The other, bigger 'oil spill': Your use of disposable plastic - CSMonitor.com

The other, bigger 'oil spill': Your use of disposable plastic - CSMonitor.com

Grids, Maps & Second Life

The idea of 

The Grid

is a recurrent theme in this blog,

and this is because of a message

that I received about six years ago,

while I was sleeping. 

I've had trouble 

ignoring that message ever since.
It went like this:

"Jesus will come as the Scholar in the Four Days of the Grid"

Yeah, that was the message.  

I detail the circumstances 

of its delivery

in earlier entries (especially here), so I'm not going to do that here.

At this point,

you can either decide

that this Makropoulos chick is just a little too nuts for you,

and move on to the next blog.

If you do, thanks for stopping by!

But the message may linger in your mind,

as it has in mine.

In fact, many of my entries here

fixate, either directly or remotely

on the challenge of untangling that message,

word for word,

and that's what this entry will do again,

with special attention

to the idea of The Grid

1.

The reason I'm thinking about Grids is because, last week, 

I dared to take a stroll in the world of Second Life.

As aggravating as I found Second Life to be, I also think 

its theory and potential are fascinating, and this

allure has been enhanced as I've come to understand,

this week, that the basis of all creation in Second Life

is the Second Life Grid:

~~

Now,

grids are the scaffolding upon which 

almost all acts of artistic representation and creation

are built.  How many of you learned to draw a person 

like this:

( drawsketchabout )

~~~

The other day, I was looking at some pictures of very early maps,

and I thought to myself: well look at that, we've been using 

grids for a heck of a long time to draw maps, as well:

(Yu Ji Tu Map of the tracks of Yu Gong, 1137 -

wikipedia on cartography )

( Tabula Rogeriana  by Muhammed al-Idrisi (1154) )

( 15th Century depiction of

Ptolemy's Geographia - 2 A.D. )

In fact, it was Ptolemy who, back in 2 A.D., came up with this

still very useful notion of latitude and longitude, and what is that but an

acknowledgement that we can perceive of the world by imagining it

as being embraced by a giant grid.  Ptolemy, by the way, knew that

the world was round (and still is).

It was actually some of the navel-gazing generations that followed him

that sort of lost sight of that fact.

So essentially, Ptolemy, in developing 

those elegant "l"s (latitude & longitude), developed an 

intellectual technology

to help in both perceiving and reproducing

an entity.

That intellectual technology works in conjunction

with the imagination to help us extend

the limited scope of our eyes.

2.

Forty years ago,  the city I was living in

was available,

in book form,

and each page of that book

focused on one section

of a grid in the map of my city.

I loved that book;

I would look at those different pages

for hours on end,

memorizing the streets 

in my neighborhood,

then turning the page to see

how they changed in the next neighborhood.

I learned my city that way.

( greatfallsmt )

In our lives, we can live in

one square of a grid

and get to know it very well

or we can get to know it

well enough,

and move to another square,

and ultimately

(and ideally)

look for the points of

connection

between the squares.

This is how we get the bigger picture.

Maps

rely on grids to help represent 

physically

the experience of hovering 

over and seeing

those interconnections:

( commondale )

The problem with maps like these is that
they exist on one dimension.
Map makers over time
have attempted to add
a second dimension
with drawings that indicated
either elevations in the land
or human monuments:

( pictoralmaps )

They still relied on grids!


3.
Perhaps the most
significant artistic development
in extending our perception of grids
while also refining our ability
to reproduce reality accurately
was the development of
perspective drawing, and the concept of the
vanishing point

( mathforum )

Fundamentally, the vanishing point
is the artistic expression
of the limitations of
a single glance.
 

Think about it this way:
it's as if the bird hovering over the one dimensional map
landed on one of those roads, and looked
down its length;
the vanishing point is the place where
the road disappears
on the horizon.

As the Wikipedia article I link to above explains,
you can suggest  a bit more complexity with
two-point perspective
(ie: with imagining there are two points
on the horizon, in two different places
where the line disappears.)

and produce depth with
three-point perspective:

(I must credit Wikipedia for these drawings;
please follow the link above for more details.)


~ ~ ~

Notably, when we get into the realm
of the three dimensions,
it's as if we're taking that flat,
one dimensional
map impression
and lifting it up,
adding grid upon grid above it
and acknowledging that those grids
extend in a limitless fashion
beyond the range of our vision;

we're using the
multiple grid layers
to provide
a scaffolding
for creating
a multi-dimensioned
representation:

This is ultimately
the logic
of the Second Life Grid.




4.
Now what on God's earth,
I suspect you're wondering,
is she going to do with this?

Why has she gone through
this rather elaborate contemplation
on grids, representation and maps?

Well, I'll tell ya' -
I do this partly because it kind of
amuses me.
I love to take an idea and tease it out
and see where it might take me.

But also,
there is this matter of the
Grid
and the Four Days of the Grid

The only part of this message that I'm a little blurry on
is the word "days."  I am certain the voice said
"days," but I interpreted it as "age"
because "days" didn't make sense to me.
At that time.
More on that later.

But in any event, there is the number 4,
and the idea of the Grid,
and to me this suggests
stages of development
in the Grid
and in the technology
it has produced.

Whether we like it or not,
we live in
The Age of The Grid
right now.

I have contemplated elsewhere
how the Grid Ages
could very well have to do with
the various Ages of Artistic representation;

Second Life ups the ante on that idea.
Because Second Life
is a domain where humans have used the technology of the grid
to produce another living space,
a virtual living space
that we can traverse,
and actually, if we so desire,
create a better life than the one we have.


We could perhaps
correct the mistakes that we made on this domain
or fight the wars that would be better if fought
in a virtual domain.


Could Jesus come
in Second Life?
Or perhaps
via
Second Life?
Hmmmm
now that would be unexpected,
wouldn't it?

I guess it all comes down
to how you define
Jesus.

To The Siren

so simple

so pure

No, Well, Probably Three

hiya

now in the last entry, 

I contemplated how a given channelling body

can channel more than one personality,

probably three,

maybe more.

I know I have at least three who are 

pretty damned strong.

Are any of them me?

(insert my name as it is known on this earthly plane, which,

quite frankly, 

just isn't that important.)

No.

Not a single damned one of them can claim that name.

They are all other spirits

working through my

earthly avatar

and the difference

between me

and you

is that I acknowledge

that not one single aspect

of the combination of forces

that exist within me 

is dominant:

they are all equal,

and their primary job

on earth is to find a way

whereby they can function 

as equals.

The only way is by using the mind,

that tool in our Avatar

that we were given,

which has the power

to balance our disparate differences.

( templeton-cambridge )

I mean, honestly, why not?

It seems the most economical way to do it, after all.

Imagine all the fragmented,

fractured 

personalities that resulted

from the shattering of the glass

at the beginning of time

-- that nasty old reflecting surface, that mirror --

(to understand this more, please see my earlier entries on the mirror

and palindromes)

We've gone through time

piecing them together,

trying to find the perfect balance --

(each couple, indeed, could be channeling

up to at least eight personalities,

maybe more,

that have to be absolutely in harmony

in order for the couple

to be happy.)

I'm going back to non-italics:

if you can,

read these sections first,

then go back to the italics,

because that's how my mind works:

So, imagine this:

our bodies are avatars =

containers that carry

the multiple dimensions

of the aspect

of God

which is perfect.

It's funny, because

in the movie 

Avatar

there was only one 

person

per

avatar;

however,

don't you think that,

given the expense of the technology,

and given

the rise in group think

in our society 

even Americans would see the logic

of putting more than one personality 

into on avatar --

that's right:

if the USofA

developed the technology

of the avatar and decided

(as in the movie)

to get to know

another nation or creation,

you'd be damned sure you wouldn't get

an avatar to yourself:

it's neither cost conscious, 

nor effective.

Indeed, folks working
in avatars
would have to learn to work together,
in small groups
wherein the personalities all
have different,
complimentary
strengths.
That would make maximum use of the technology.

 . . . . . 

I mean, seriously,

how many space flights had 

only one man on board?

( spaceflight.nasa )

And for the ones that did only have one man,

did they get very far?

( nasa.gov )

This is not to say that we don't need those rebels,

those daredevils who dare

to go first,

but when it comes right down to getting bigger jobs done,

yes, even America has come to realize

you need more than one.

(  columbia  )

(NO!

I'm not being a communist:

just look at it; 

we - the USofA - are very clearly promoting

the group:

 (Google meeting pods designed after Antarctic expedition igloos

found at:

jonathan fields.com )

in-class presentations,

working environments,

everything ----is moving

towards privileging

groups over individuals

so why do we get so upset

over the idea of

a government that acknowledges

that the health of the group

is at least as important as the health

of the individual?

Huh?

Or a government style that feels that

promoting collective solutions

can be more productive than

individual solutions?

I went off track to point out that,

one of the primary flaws in 

the logic of the American system is that

it places far too much importance

on the individual, even as it is

acknowledging, more and more

that the best solutions are

collective solutions.

Very rarely do we experience

 a genius, 

and I'm about to propose an explanation

as to why that so rarely happens:

( wcotrim )

So imagine this:

Imagine that when we are not in our bodies,

we are in another form -

a spiritual form,

that is nearly perfect,

except for the fact that it

was kind of broken

at the beginning of time.

That's right,

the entity we embody 

when we are not in our bodies

is not God;

it is the representation of God

and it was created

at the beginning of time, 

and

it was kind of broken,

by God, who (if you remember

my earlier entries, on the Creation,

etc. . . .follow the key words)

in a moment of weakness,

had the crazy idea

that He wanted

to create something that was exactly

the same

as Him.

 ( Marassasclass )

That's right:

why the hell did God

want to create something in his own likeness

If he was everything?

I mean:

seriously, folks,

if God is everything

he has no fucking reason

to want to create

something

beyond himself.

come on!

Let's be serious, 

now.

but he did

And the reason why God felt the desire

to see himself,

was because:

He is Everything.

And part of everything is:

desire,

lust,

greed,

jealousy,

power,

subserviance,

dominance

desire

desire

desire

desire

So at the moment when God experienced

a preponderance of Desire,

(because God, being God, goes in cycles,

trying out the various aspects

of everything

at regular intervals)

He produced Us.

So He could look at Us.

Because we are all

part of Him.

We, combined,

are the mirror image

of God,

which -

don't forget 

- is Everything.

Humankind is the
ongoing experimen
to reproduce
the perfect mix
that is God
so we can get back to the task
of reflecting God's greatness
back to God;
indeed
we can get back to the task of being God.

So each human entity
is a combination

of the parts of Him,
but only a limited combination

because

each one of us is limited

in  the qualities we can hold

because we're holding our qualities

in physical containers,

and the physical

is not infinite.

(  completelysmitten )

So please read my entries on tikkun, Kabbalah, and Creation --

I can't explain again everything in them.

Anyway:

imagine this:

at the moment of creation

God broke the mirror,

or whatever the object was

that He intended to view himself in

because, shit,

that mirror had the task of 

reflecting 

infinity,

and,

well,

any created substance

does not match the power

of Everything.

So the mirror broke,

into bits and pieces

that got named at that moment

of creation;

humans are part of that

rubble,

and our task ever since then

has been:

to put it back together again;

to reproduce

the perfect

combination

of all the elements

and rejoin

God,

which is everything,

again.

This is a problem

and a challenge,

because

the inherent aspect

of all life

all creation

is that it is 

individualized

specified

separate.

In fact,

we had to gain

a more specific

sense of our selves,

our specific identities

before we could

merge again

into being

God.

( blackcommenter )

That's what the beauty of America

is.

One of my former husbands said

that America is nothing but

a great experiment

(oh, I know he's not the first to say it)

a great attempt to 

ignore difference, but of course

that's proving to be impossible:

the biggest problem in America today

is that we just can't tolerate

difference.

But to be American,

following the original tenents

of America

is to be

tolerant,

forgiving,

respectful.

( DecOfInd )

Anyway,

America was the first step 

in the evolution of the collective mind

to combine the parts of the broken vessel

on a collective level. 

But perhaps it was too early?

No, I think not --

( sulekha )

At the beginning of time,

when God created Man,

he produced Avatars,

recognizing that the Avatars

cannot contain just one piece

of God,

because if the Avatars

contained just one piece

of God,

they would simply sustain the problem,

the problem being

that God was not Everything

as long as Part of Everything

was Us.

US

The United States of America --

That place where States -

geographical boundaries

retain an individual identity

when the real essence

of the founding fathers' documents

was Union.

If the United States of America

could realize that

it is one country

that is responsible for

all  of its citizens

no matter what

their race, religion,

color, or code,

then the United States of America

could

be the model for the rest of the World.

But the danger, is, this:

we can't do it while also retaining

our stubborn hold on believing 

in the validity of the individual.

We literally have to lose

our Egos

and love one another

Now isn't that the craziest thing

you've ever heard in your life?

. . . . this is not the miracle.

The miracle is this:

if we suddenly,

by some 

insane

balance of all the elements,

all our disparate parts

Fell In Love

with each other,

which means:

loving the black man

loving the white man

loving the Asian man

loving the Muslim man

loving the man who

loves the man;

loving

the woman who loves

the woman because she sees

the woman understands, in a way

that no man can understand

because the Man Is The Mirror

In every couple, we have the reproduction

of the two halves of God -- the women

gets the horrible task of being the more powerful

creative half,

the Man, oh the sad sad Man,

has to recognize that his task

is, well, functional:

the Man is the Mirror,

the object God produced

so God Could See God--Self.

But it gets more challenging still:
if you can acknowledge the premise

that each couple reenacts the creative impulse,

the moment of desire when God wanted to see 

Herself

and if you acknowledge the idea that

the mirror broke

because it was not up to the job,

and WE are the pieces of the mirror

and OUR TASK is to use this earth

+

our earthly avatars

+

all the elements the earth gives us

in order to find

the perfect balance that brings us back to

God

well, hell, if you're still with me,

bless your heart,

If you can acknowledge all of that,

well, then you might see why

it is essential that all these avatars

(AKA: our bodies)

cannot just contain 

(ie: channel)

one personality

To be more efficient,

the avatars

should contain at least three, maybe

even four

of the elements of God,

and if

within that avatar

those elements find a way 

to have balance,

well, 

then,

that avatar,

which we know as a human personality

would be said to have attained a level of self-awareness

that is genius:

genius is when, in fact, a human entity represents

a successful experiment

a successful combining

of the disparate parts

of the pieces of a mirror

that was intended to have the power

to mirror the Almighty.

If you take that the next step then,

what is Love?

Love is the capacity for one human being

who has found a sincere balance 

between the elements he/she is channeling

to absolutely forgive, desire, and respect

another individual who has done the same.

Perfect Love

is when each individual is capable of looking beyond

terrific differences

anyway --

I am channeling at least three personalities,

and one of them is most definitely

Makropoulos --

at least one other

loves the idea of Makropoulos

and wants to play along,

and another does too

but she's the personality

who, to date, has always 

been a Company Girl.

There might be

another one in there,

and I think she's a slut.

The thing is:

the other three are so

darned strong,
and

we're working so hard
at just getting
along.

Another Thought on Second Life

Yo

Makropoulos again.

Yeah, the real one,

not the fake one.

~ ~ ~ ~

You see, the avatar that I occupy in this life

is actually channeling at least one other personality at

the same time. No, well, probably three*

Anyway, the reason why I have trouble getting my own time

on this blog lately

is because one of the other personalities she's channeling

has this book, see.

And she really wants to publish

this book, see.

And she's working on that,

and it takes a hell of a lot of time.

I'd love it if she'd just publish the damned thing,

'cause she's getting kind of interesting in this blog,

and she ain't a bad writer, so as soon as I can get her

on board, well, this blog may rock

a little more.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I spoke about Second Life

a day or two ago,

and all the reasons I don't like it.

Now I'm going to tell you

why I find it to be so fascinating.

I saw an episode of 

C.S.I. New York

where they were solving a murder

where the motivation,

and even the murderer, could be found

on Second Life.

Since I didn't know much

about Second Life at the time,

I thought it was

kind of cool

There was one scene,

where there was a fight

on Second Life.

Clearly, one can have a pretty wicked battle

under the disguise of
Second Life,

even get one's head cut off

a couple times,

and still walk away from it.

So I thought:

wouldn't it be cool if

nations could fight their wars

on Second Life

and live in peace

on the Planet Earth.

All the 

demented,

crazed,

warriors of the world

could just have it out

in internet land

and live

placid,

uneventful,

maybe even peaceful

lives

in our bodies.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you think about it that way,

Second Life

could be the absolute cure

of all the social ills of the earth:

we could just act out our naughtiness

virtually.

But honestly,

that's just crazy:

there will always be somebody

not happy to kill another in a Second Life;

they'll want to see what it's like to do it

in the Real, First Life, as well,

and so we'd have to be prepared and ready

to deal with that, in a civil way.

(That brings us back to the question of the Fall of Man,

and Reproduction, 

and how the Fall of Man

is actually linked with the compulsion

to reproduce (ie: see one's self

as if in a mirror.)  Please

read my other entries

on those topics to get my drift. . . . )

But, you see,

people who think they have to do something

in this Real Life are actually

people

who recognize that this Real Life

is just

a Second Life,

and therefore,

disposable.

There will always be people

like myself

not content to do it

in the Second Life,

and when those people have

murderous tendencies,

well, they're dangerous.

So anyway, 

that's why we still need

law and order

in this earthly life;

because that's

what we're here for,

to make sure we get it right

in the First Life, so we don't have to do
a Second Life.

However, let me propose:

the Second Life

can handle those times

when collectively,

a group (nation) wants to attack

another group  (nation).

Couldn't it?

If there was enough at stake

in the Second Life,

then,

it may suit us well

as a battle field.

It would appear,

after all,

that the next few generations

are best prepared

to fight on that terrain.

~~~~~~~~~