Body and Soul

(fatherdavidbirdosb)

"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.

You have a body."

C. S. Lewis

I was at a religious service this morning

that was wholly based upon the above quote.

And I can't agree with it more.

And I just had to post it here.

Those of you who have waded through

some of my past entries, may recall what I've said about our bodies

as our avatars, in the very same sense that humans slipped into other wordly

skin in the film Avatar.  

And that is, 

fundamentally,

what Lewis is saying above.

Specifically, it reminds me of something that I,

Makropoulos,

wrote in a much earlier entry on Second Life:

"You see, I feel that I'm already

in an avatar. 

This body,

I live in,

is my earthly

avatar,

it's the form I chose

to use for 

this stretch of time

on this earthly domain.

I have enough trouble,

and enough fun,

negotiating this earthly

avatar,

why the hell would I need another?"

(Who Needs A Second Life?)

 And I really believe this is true.

We are spiritual essences,

sent to spend a little time

in the material domain.

We're sort of sent on a mission,

the same way the humans were sent on missions

in the film Avatar.

This is why I thought that film

was pretty fabulous,

but also pretty funny,

because it had humans

getting into another form

so they could return to the garden,

so to speak. 

(I write about that elsewhere, too.  Please follow links

to the word "avatar" on the side or below

if you want to see more

of my rambling thoughts

on this.)

The humour of it all is two-fold:

#1: I really believe we are already in avatars,  Our avatar

is a human body.  My cat's avatar is a feline body.  But we are all 

part of the same shared spirit that is our origin.  (So why the hell put on 

another avatar, if you're already in one?)

#2:  Notably, when we were put into these human avatars,

we were already in The Garden. The problem is:

we got caught up in thinking that The Garden,

and Our Bodies (aka: Avatars) constitute Everything,

when in fact they're just constituents of a Larger Whole

(that no human could perceive.)  But of course

we as Humans

have fucked up our Earthly Paradise so much

thinking that we were the Be-All and End-All,

and so now we make movies about 

putting on primitive avatars

so we can live in The Garden,

again.

 ~ ~

"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.

You have a body."

C. S. Lewis

 

~ ~

At church (OK, yes, it was a church,

to be specific:

a Unitarian Universalist Church

)

this morning,

they welcomed a new child

into the assembly.

Now, as a 425 year old Greek Woman;

I was raised in a Christian Tradition,

being born into the Orthodox --

I have moved around,

from country to country,

and in each one, sought the Church

where I could celebrate my personal beliefs

publically, and comfortably:

I was only Orthodox until I discovered the Jesuits,

and then I had to become Roman.

I longed to be

a Jesuit Priest.

No, not a nun,

a priest.  I could tolerate not being able to marry

if I could think the thoughts of a priest.

When I told any Jesuit Priest my desires, they would always draw away in fear)

I was Roman Catholic for Centuries.

Then I married an Englishman and went Anglican;

then I lived in Turkey and contemplated Islam.

It did not frighten me.

In many ways, the study of Kabbalah and the Sufi tradition best

acknowledge my personal beliefs.

But for now, I'm trying Unitarianism,

occasionally visiting a Sufi group

nearby --)

Today, I witnessed for the second time only,

a Unitarian "baptism"

Yes, they use water,

but not in any startling way:

the Minister holds a white rose,

and presents it to the child

before dipping it into the water,

and touching it to the child's head.

Today,

as the Minister held the rose

out towards the baby boy,

the child reached out,

and grabbed the stem of the rose firmly.

He clearly knew it was for him.

And the Minister,

wisely,

said: "may you grab every opportunity life gives you

with equal energy and certainty."

And I thought:

that Child will, for

that Child's will 

is ingrained in

his Soul (Soul aka; Spiritual Essence),

that Substance that Combined

and entered

His Chubby Fleshy Avatar

is a bold one.

That is who he is.

Which reminded me

of another belief

that I firmly hold:

we are each our Essential Self

at the time of our birth,

and as children,

we act out our truthfulness

in every gesture and sound we make.

It is the Process

of becoming part of society

that messes us up,

beginning

with loving,

with parenting,

then schooling,

then friending,

then loving,

then working,

then hating,

then mating, 

then loving,

then reproducing,

then loving,

then playing,

then aging.

The soul inside of you,

the Spiritual Essence that is 

the Real You

(not to be confused with your body,

which is rather randomly chosen)

is the child in you.

And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (The Bible. Matthew 18:3 ).New Living Translation (©2007)

The Child in Me is Gentle;

the Child

in Me is Quiet

and Kind.

I had not encountered her

for a long time,

until a few years ago,

when I fell

childishly in love

with a man who

 appeared to do the same

with me.

But it was

a beautiful love

partly because it helped me rediscover

the Child in Me; I was

wholly and fully

myself

with him,

and I could not figure out

why I hadn't found My Inner Child before,

since I'd been there all along.

It was the simplest thing in the world,

yet it was the hardest.  Because society

would belittle, and does belittle, the 

Common Sense of The Child.

But in fact, 

the Common Sense of The Child

is equal to

the Common Sense of the Essential Spirit.

So,

to return to one's childishness

is to return

to one's Essential Self,

the Self

we were meant to be

in The Garden,

before we went and messed it all up.

 ( dailymail )

It's that easy:

find the Child in You,

and be True 

to it.

But it's also very very hard:

for to find 

The Child in You,

you must be able to distinguish Who

You were before

a parent first called you "stupid"

or told you not to pick your nose,

or reprimanded you for talking to loud,

or for chewing with your mouth

open.

That's right:

you must find the You

you were before

someone broke your heart the first time,

or lied to you,

or yelled at you for picking their flowers,

or raped you

or beat you

or didn't feed you

or locked you in a room.

I found my Essential Me,

My Child,

and Shared My Childish Love

with one who I thought felt the same

in return.

Unfortunately,

my lover

grew jealous and angry

and worked very hard

to hurt Me,

and succeeded.

(Yes, he acted like a child.)

And now my Child cowers

behind a door in my Heart,

afraid to come out again.

Any human who has had that experience

I describe above

has trouble finding their Child;

and if Your Child 

has been hurt many many times,

it is hiding even deeper inside of you

as a child would do.

But it's still there.

(And don't forget--

this Child is the Essential You,

the Spiritual You

that moved into your body

at birth)

Am I still angry at my lover?

No.

Only hurt.

Deeply hurt.

I don't blame him,

because I really believe

that the only way his 

Inner Child could Justify

hurting another Child

would be because he was

hurt so so much as a child.

He was abused

as no child should have been 

abused,

and in his knowledge

that the abuse he received

was unjustified, he feels a need

to impose it on Other Children,

so he won't feel so much

like a freak.

But he's not a freak.

He's a Child; he's a sad sad spirit

whose fate in this lifetime

was to live in an avatar

that others abuse

continually.

I don't blame him;

I can only love him

still,

and pray for him,

and hope his Inner Child

was not hurt so badly

that it is eternally lost to itself. 

"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.

You have a body."

C. S. Lewis

12/10/2010: Channelling from 12/2/2010

please note:
I originally received this
on December 2,
or 3rd,
but didn't have time to post it.

So here goes:
hold onto your hats.
This one's a wild one:

1.
NPR just explained,
very neatly
how language evolves.

Think of this word,
and pronounce it to
yourself:

QATAR.

Can you say it?

Here is how our beloved
Wikipedia
tells us to pronounce it:

/ˈkɑːtɑr/  or kə-TAR

 But the truth of the matter is:
we're saying it wrong.
Because no one who
only speaks English
can say this word
properly;
instead
they say it like
"guitar."
        That's
what the Announcer on NPR said:
"when they told us
how to say it, they said
'say simply:


guitar.'"

So that's how anyone who spoke
both English and Arabic told people
to say
QATER.


In other words:
"guitar"
is what some old stinky English dude
whose parents had the cash
to put him through years of Arabic lessons
thought he heard
when he heard the word:
"Qatar."

Well, anyone who really
looks at that word
can see:
you don't say it like "guitar."
You say
Katar.


How do you say "Qatar"? from Northwestern News on Vimeo.

2.
Now, this
is where this all gets
kind of strange:

The problem with guitar,
is that it's based on a representation
of a sound,
but the sound
is only
a representation
of a code.

The written word is the first representation
that we ever had
of what
Originally occured

because

the written word
is like a camera;
it is the apparatus through which
we see
the first utterance
ever made

which was a sound.

The first utterance
which was also
the first representation
was a sound,
the sound
came through our being,
this tiny shell
of our being, our bodies --
the sound came --

This is really strange:
as you read this, think
in a line like this:

 So,
the first representation
produced by the Creative Being
when it sought to produce
Something Other Than Itself
was a sound,
a sound,
that,
in order to be heard
had to move
through an apparatus.

And that apparatus
aka: the material world
was produced as a
byproduct of
the first action of
production ==the reproduction
of the immaterial, and
that first reproduction
of the material world
went like this:

details right 'chere
below:

I know this sounds
absolutely insane,
but try to imagine a scenario
in which
there was nothing,
and nothing sought to produce
something;
but in order to be able to
produce something,
nothing
needed an apparatus of communication
aka: the material world.

The impetus of that
initial production
went
this way:

The physical
world,
then,
is like a
pair of glasses
through which
we perceive
the initial production,
which is
sound.

So,
likewise,
that which has been produced
(aka: the represented)
has to use the Material World

 ( Moore'sLore )

to present itself back
to the force that produced it,
in the first place,
so that force
might see
itself;
yes the represented
has to project back through
the apparatus
an impression of
what the perfect 
looks like
so the perfect can see it.

Try To Think Like This:

This is an image of
the represented
in its quest to show
the unrepresented
what it
sought to see.)

* ! *

Notably, there's a problem
if the apparatus
(read: The Material World,
aka: Life, the Earth, the Universe & Everything)
is new.
A new apparatus doesn't
understand how to represent
the represented,
because the represented
is so abstract.

Generally, in the case of new apparati,
when asked to represent the initially represented,
it gets all hung up on
the representation
of itself (ie: the Material World)
that is all
it can talk about,
when in fact
the realm of the unrepresented
wants to learn more:
wants to learn all
that is conceivable.

It is the job
of the representable
 to give it to them:
the representable has to render
into the language of the
unrepresented
exactly what it sees.
That's right:
exactly what it sees.

  
But the problem is:
the first thing we saw
occurred exactly at
the same time
as 
the first sound we heard,
and notably 
the first representation
was not
of a visible;
rahter;
it was of
an audible.




The visible came second
because we needed
the visible
to see
the representation we produced
so
the first representation
was a representation
of the audible:

But actually,
we hadn't conceived of any
of those symbols
at the beginning;
the best we could do
was

:

or something like this:

or this:

That was the first
representation
by
the apparatus through which
the represented needed
to travel
in order to communicate what it perceived
back to its origin.

That, only that,
the fragile
written word, or
the subtle, sung
note,
or the trembling, absolute
scream,
or
the drawing or
the painting or
the photograph

all serve to show us
every absolute dimension
of both the created,
material world,
(and its creator),
but
this is where it gets hard:
it has to be heard,
because the first representation
was the word.

There was only one word,
only one language
for a long time:

the real problem for us today
occurred at the moment
of Babel --
when the world broke in half,
and new words and pronunciations
happened,
the further away we got
from the soure,
and we reached a point where we
couldn't understand each other, anymore.

For awhile, we (our different nations) were
adrift,
alone,
talking only
to each other
and pronunciations changed
so radically
over time
that when one of us
on this side of the word
met those of another place,
and heard them say:
"I'm from Qatar"
we wrote down,
the best we could
what we thought we heard,
and told others to just
pronounce it
"guitar."

But
Qatar
is pronounced



and
M - I - S - S - I - P - P - I
is pronounced




That's just all there is to it.

In the realm of all that is represented,
the written word
comes first,
representing
the sound
of 
Knowledge.
And Knowledge
is the embodiment
of the ineffible.

So, repeat
after me:

Q - A - T - A - R,

or, 

better yet,

K'Tur.

a pinch of the imperfect (an imperfect channelling)

*

"If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn't lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger "soul." The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant."  (Jeffrey Kugler, "What Makes Us Moral?" Time Magazine 3 March 2007)

This is a difficult concept to grasp,

that we are two in one,

we, the human occupying the human 

body

are two in one --

we each contain the 

ability

to be good

to be bad

all at the same time,

we 

all

are 

two, and the two we contain

are the imitation 

of the part of God

that became manifest

as the moment of the splitting,

the splitting being

the physical act God

had to produce

             in order

to be able to reproduce

Himself.

God had to split

in half, into

the negative and the positive,

in order to see:

                 the positive

                       is what She saw,

the glorious, succulent

material present

( ishs.org )

that is what God saw:

the visual, the 

aural, the

tactile,

the

sensual, the

aromatic,

all that IS

is what God saw:

all that IS

is good is bad

is what God saw

 ( howstuffworks )

So . . . . .  .

 

if God saw the all that he created,

and it was good,

what in heaven's name was doing the seeing?

WHAT saw it all,

and WHAT was glad?

 

What did the seeing was always that

which could not be seen,

the negative,

the negative -

the negative !

the other side of the 

dichotomy,

in Derridean terms:

MALE                     FEMALE

positive                  negative

light                    dark

day                       night

spoken                           silent

visible                        invisible

 

 We live in the realm of the visible,

of the male,

but it was our opposite -

that was there

but not there

to view the creation

and to be amazed by it.

( wikipedia: michelangelo )

Ever since the onset of the Renaissance

(when Makropoulos was 

born,

by the way)

that glorious time

when the mind had evolved to a more mature

level of being able to reproduce

itself,

ever since then, 

the trend 

has been to focus

on the male:

the physical manifestion

that god produced in order to be able

to see Herself --

and hey

wouldn't you want to fixate

on that for awhile?

wouldn't you want to fixate on that

fabulous something

that you created

in order to see

yourself?

Imagine it:

here you are, 

you are invisible and

undivisable,

and you just created

something visibly 

you,

you gave yourself 

the opportunity to see

yourself

in the mirror

wouldn't you want

to look at it

for a thousand years

or so?

Wouldn't you want to see it,

just turn it over and over

in your hands

and adore it?

( geekology )

It would be

your perfect opposite,

your mythic soulmate:

there you'd be

and you would be so amazed

at the beauty of it,

you would gaze into it,

get lost in it.

(Mirrors have been the replacement for

the absence of the Others;

they've been here to keep us

company, and to let us know

what we look like, so

when we see our other halves,

we'll recognize them.)

So that was the moment

of splitting,

the moment

of making visible

ourselves,

that was it - the first act that all 

creation has been doomed

ever since

to repeat and represent.

Every physical entity on earth

contains within it an imitation

of that moment of splitting

 

The sperm (the physical

projectile born

of the desire to

see and be with the 

Other

                (so completely),

yes the sperm is

the physical imitation of the desire

to enter into

the engulfing presence

of the engenderer.

(if you can figure that one out,

you get a gold star---)

 

* * *

 

because the Other to the physical creation

is so Beautiful

that the physical creation

wants, immediately

to penetrate and become

part of it again.

Something like that.

)

( pixabella )

Every physical entity on earth

contains within it an imitation

of that moment of splitting

Indeed, that includes

the human,

the creature doomed

to strut and fret

our time upon this stage,

we, our body-avatars,

and the trinity 

of liquidity

we each contain

are all the imitation

of what god produced and saw

at that moment of dividing

in half,

              but the problem,

              as Isaac Luria helps us see,

was that the creation

of the duplication

of God produced

such a force

[the power of God]

made manifest

         at the moment

              of this production,

there was such an explosion,

( baylor )

like fireworks,

 That

 

is the manifestation

of the power

of 

GOD

 

 

 

( 2005 Cosmic Explosion - NASA)

I'm serious.

( space.com )

 . . . . and at the moment of the bang,

everything

became visible

physical,

ie:

it was created.

(It's that simple!)

 

 (Space.com2 ) 

 

 So, anyway,

at that mment of explosion and 

production,

the negative,              the positive

the unseen,                     the seen,

the unheard                        the heard

the unfelt,                 the felt

came to be.

it's that simple, 

those concepts

and all they signify

came to be

be 

cause

of creation

and the creative urge.

So we live in the physical realm, because that's the

half of God we

occupy,

but 

that doesn't preclude

the existence of the

non existent.

It's just there,

and all that it (the non-existent) contains

is the negative

of the totality

that is the manifest

in

the physical.

(That's a hard concept to grasp

when you live in the physical.)

But as I said,

the problem

                        and the beauty

                 of it all

is that each of us

contains

an imitation

of that doubling

to one extent or the other.

So Luria helps me say: god created

the imitation of

god, male and female

so they could see

themselves,

but the energy produced at that 

moment

was too great

for the illusion,

the representation

to remain while,

so it exploded and shattered

into pieces

and the pieces 

got the unenviable job

of picking up the pieces

and having to put them back

together 

again.

And that's what we've been doing

for millenia,

and god

in Her distant place, delighted

at the delightful games

of Her children BUT

got disturbed if the Boys

got too rough

*

please think semiotically

*

ANYWAY,

all species also imitate

the duality and the moment

of creation

and the Desire

to Reproduce,

over and over because

that desire

and compulsion

has maintained

our existence

giving us

time

to evolve

our minds,

our souls,

our spirits

our goods and our evils,

all the intangible

invisible

entities that

the frail human body

was appointed

to contain and sustain in

the delicate cases

we encase:

our brains,

our hearts,

our solar plexus,

our stomachs, which provide

the protective shield for containing

the unprotectable.

( science-nationalgeographic )

Our fingers,

our ears,

our eyes 

represent

the fingers,

ears,

eyes

of God

 made manifest

at the moment when We

confronted

our eact opposites, 

those which contains

our good and our bad,

we,

who contain

God's essences

     imitate

that moment of looking, too,

which also includes the moment

of being disappointed

because our Other

our Creation

isn't perfect,

wasn't perfect,

won't be perfect,

won't be Us

completely

because if God's

Other Half

was perfect,

God wouldn't be able to see it,

because He would be it.

 

that's right :

we wouldn't have to divide ourselves

in an attempt to see

ourselves

if we didn't contain 

a pinch

of the imperfect.

Oh, now you,

dear reader who dared

to make it this far,

you wonder:

where the hell is this going?

As I sit and read this,

I know what it says.

It says:

I even I

with my changeable moods,

my unchartable soul,

my angry temper

my fits of elation

and tearful, lonely evenings

I contain 

an imitation

of God at the moemnt

tHEy

(male and female)

let the pinch of imperfection

influence itself and deicde

to divide 

so it could see itself

I imitate that moment

of god's self-consciousness,

and imitate

the entity he saw,

the entity that was 

too great

to be whole,

so it exploded

and became 

the scattered remnants

of the visible

             reproduction of God--

and the shattering, glimmering parts of the fractured god 

regrouped

 - so to speak -

and became

planets and stars

and plants and animals

all 

species,

all with our different task,

as we have worked together over the ages,

striving to reproduce the whole,

and humans had the job

of building the connections ,

and over time we have evolved

and we have reached

a

near perfect

connection

I can sit in my living room and see and talk to 

in real time

a friend of mine

in Singapore.

We're so close to being the complete unity

we're supposed to be

but we have 

one problem:

 

we each still feel we're different from each other.

We are at a cusp.

We each have to recognize

that in our individual selves

though we reproduce both parts of god,

still,

within our individual selves

we can really only contain 

half,

and somewhere there

is the Other 

half of us

with whom,

when we're together

we produce a melting

into One, just One

 

 

this applies equally to 

individuals,

families,

states,

nations,

worlds. . . .

*

And you see we each

have to recognize

and admit

that in containing 

the parts of god, we must

also contain god's opposite,

which is 

evil

because evil is something 

God created, 

so we would all know good.

God is all,

and so are we,

but we

just happen to be

fractured all,

the physical part of God

that God produced

when God felt the desire

to see

the self.

( tikkun )

Do we want to See God

in our time?

Well, you know,

the only way we can do that

is to act like the gods

we were born to be,

which means

we need to recognize

that the man and the woman

the most opposite

of ourselves

is one essential piece

in the visible puzzle

of the perfect picture

of the product of god.

We need

to forgive ourselves

our faults

and forgive our

brothers their faults

and forgive the Others:

the dark,

the female,

the strange,

the silent,

as they must do

unto us.

It's that flippin' easy.

Jesus said it too,

but he was rendered a sound bite.

Still,

his message 

never changed.

The most essential part

of this simple task is

that we must be honest

with ourselves

first,

and see our flaws,

and once we honestly

acknowledge

the wrong we ourselves

have committed or contemplated,

we can also look past

what we view

as the wrongs in others.

I'm not saying we should get rid 

of our negative impulses.

We can't.

But we should acknowledge

them,

live with them,

find 

an arena in which we can

act on them 

so no one gets hurt

and get on with the task

of saving our earth,

that is,

if we do indeed enjoy this joy ride we've been on

enough

to want to see it survive beyond

the next step

in our evolution.

 

Panorama of Grand Canyon Village Lookout supplied by Panoramic Earth

 

 (panaromic earth)