What I believe and some of the whys...

What do I believe? I’m talking metaphysically and theologically here.

All of my beliefs branch from a basis of Christianity, which is the religion I was born into. To be more specific – I was raised in Southern Baptist Christianity. What had caused me to have doubts about their beliefs being the only true one, started, with the story of the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis in the bible.

The summary of this from The Encyclopedia of the Master Study Bible:

“After the flood, the world was repopulated by the offspring of a single family, speaking only one language. The existing diversity of tongues is accounted for (Gen 11:1-9) by the story which relates how Noah’s descendents, in the course of their wanderings, settled in the plain of Shinar, or Babylonia; and there, in addition to building a city, thought to construct a tower high enough to reach heaven, as a monument to their fame, and as a center of social cohesion and union. Upon learning of their ambitions (cf. Gen. 1:26, 3:22) the Lord (Yahweh) frustrated their plans by confounding their speech, making further concerted action on their part impossible. As a result, the name of the city was called Babel, and its builders were scattered over the face of the earth.”

This planted a seed of wondering, though as a teen I wasn’t able to put my finger on why it bothered me. (Other than the obvious – “… Upon learning of their ambitions…” The omnipotent, omniscient being I knew as Yahweh did not automatically Know of their ambitions from the first time it was thought of, let alone planned and in the process of being built? And the whole repopulating the Earth from one family is patria-centric at the least, if not culturally-centric altogether for Jews and Christians alike – within archeology it doesn’t hold even a thimble of water.)

When I discovered that the etymological roots of all language is believed to be derived from Sanskrit and possibly Old Irish (these two have similar structure and branching which linguists have theorized show that all languages branches from a mother language, bastardized according to regional isolation and geology) I began to place my finger on that niggling feeling which the Tower of Babel story caused a few years before.

What if we did have a mother language within the Fertile Crescent before the main branching out of humanity to settle the rest of the planet? We would have a basis of similar objective symbology and the confusion would happen with the different sounds coming from a stranger’s mouth – which would eventually smooth out in the natural process of pointing at objects and repeating the word in each dialect until it was understood. We share the symbols of things, it’s just the names we call them which are different.

The logical following of this revelation is that as a species we share ideas through objective shared observation of the world around us. This is why we are able to learn different languages – at it’s root we must simply replace the words we know for new ones, the hard part is learning the new grammar and mechanics for the sharing of abstract ideas which many times seems almost alien when compared with the structure of our native language. However, when working on basic dictionary levels there is only showing an object, naming it in your original language and then again in the new one. The easiest for me to think of is water/aqua/agua, no matter what we call it the substance which is H2O does not change into something else. Even within one language we can have several different names for one thing: ie, the Inuit’s 200 different words for snow. Does snow change to follow the shape of the words? No the words came about from the different ways snow is perceived.

So I looked for this idea in other world religions. I found it in every one I read about. Specifically a Hindu guru who used the example of water and compared it to the idea of the divine, we can call it whatever we want, that does not change the intrinsic make-up of what it actually is.

This is my foundation – the belief that there is one thing which we give a multitude of names, because we are naming machines. The divinity inherent in our universe is observed by us on a finite level by the process of genesis we see happening around us on a daily basis. That of Creation (though we no longer consider Genesis Creation and the life cycle to be the same thing, for bizarre and wholly incorrect reasons. Genesis never stopped; evolution is one of its continuously running systems, as is the life cycle. For that is the loop of Chaos-Order-Entropy, rinse and repeat infinitely. Out of the primordial Chaos soup is the raw material for the building blocks which constructs Life, the Universe and Everything. Which is collected by Order and put into the infinite number of things the raw material can be made into, eventually it gets homesick for the soup and Entropy starts the process of decaying so it can go back into the pot. IE: Birth – Life – Death. Each time the building material is recycled it brings back a report which is handed over to the Evolution department of Order’s part of things, who then make the appropriate changes to either further a thing’s existence or cause it’s extinction.)

So we all see the same signs for the divine spark, which is in everything – because nothing exists without the spark to get the goop from the soup to the Order factory without it – and we call it whatever makes sense to the dialect of our immediate region. It’s still the same goop, spark and means of achieving a semblance of Order.

But this is on a HUGE scale – gargantuan even. It covers Everything and I mean Everything. From a speck of sand to an entire galaxy with sentient beings included. It is in your snot and the cup your tea sits in, as well as the tea itself. There is absolutely Nothing in the Universe which is not a part of the divine, because it has to have that spark to make it behave enough to be put into an Ordered shape. Otherwise you just get energy and matter particles floating around being lazy, not even saying “Howdoyoudo”, waiting to be picked up by the Universe’s vacuum cleaners – the Black Hole.
We, as the little arrogant bastards that we are, decided it must be more complex than that and we are the penultimate of Creation. However this is completely contrary to the simple fact that we cannot, as little backwater galactic hicks, perceive the reality of the true infinite nature of the Universe’s Divinity – so we sliced it, diced it, gave it features which are absurdly similar to us in form, slapped random names on the pieces and parts we carved up according to the way we are (since that’s what we do – name everything and anthropomorphize it to act like us) and Wallah! The birth of God/desses!

I believe there have been a few amazing humans who have grasped it all and tried to share this understanding with the rest of us. We just don’t get it, it’s scary big and too simple – so we make it as complicated as possible and once it’s finally impossible in proportion THEN we say “Ah! This must be God.” We do the same thing with everything not just the divine, we believe complicated equals civilized. Humans are such poor, pathetic saps when you look at us because we cause complications in order to feel superior and safe – yet when new things enter into the equation which might simplify other things, only a little translation/study needs to happen first – We Panic. We can’t deal, change is too much – our lives were wonderfully complicated in ways only we understand and we don’t need your simplifications added to the mix, thank you very much.

But life and death happen because that’s the way it is set up. We leave the source, become something, and go back to the source. It’s like a parent allowing its children to go out into the world and make something of themselves, eventually they usually come back to the home nest – even if only for a little while. Not all do, but there are some things which are still around after millions of years, and haven’t given out to big bad Entropy yet, after all anything is possible.

I believe that there is more to existence than we can possibly ever perceive. We can make guesses, but they are as correct as our ability to take in correct knowledge of the Universe around us. We don’t even understand our own bodies entirely yet, how in the universe can we be snotty enough cosmic brats to believe we know a lick about how even our own solar system Really, Actually, Truly works? Let alone the entire galaxy or, laughably, the Universe as a Whole? Ha! We are terribly silly infants in the Universe’s nursery, playing with our toys and building blocks, believing what we’re doing is important when nobody outside of our little playpen could give a rat’s ass about it and more than likely think we are simpleminded buffoons just flinging our own feces around. Except, of course, our Nannys aka Zookeepers and the occasional Cosmic Tourists who more than likely think we are funny and “Just Darling” or horrendously primitive savages. But then that’s my personal anthropomorphosis spin on aliens I haven’t even laid eyes on. After all we’re best at bullying our immediate neighbors relentlessly and crying when we’re bullied back.

Doubt is our first sin, which leads into fear and then on down the spiral to all kinds of nastiness. This is a one line summary of a thesis I’ve been working on for about 15 years. What is the actual Original Sin? However, within these ramblings that is a scholar’s rabbit trail and I won’t go down it.

I have, from studying many world religions, pieced my spiritual beliefs together. Taking those truths which are constant throughout all religions and spiritual paths, then choosing those ideas which resound within me as a tuning fork does when struck.

I believe in karma, both within this lifetime and into others. Though my idea of lifetimes does not follow linear time/space, I believe it is all now. Our memories are stories of other selves, each living a Now, we are no more the same person as an adult that we were at birth than we are our parents or our neighbors. Even if you take the way of our current science-minded paradigm, it is proven that our cells replace themselves completely, throughout our entire body, many times. Our aging comes because not all cells are replaced; the longer we hold this form the more of our physical material returns via Entropy to the soup of Creation. Our divine essence is the same spark which allows Creation to be brought out of Chaos into Order; we are One with it, created by it and never separated from it. We simply forget and in doing so cause ourselves to feel a separation which does not exist. There is a longing to return to the Divine or God or Allah or Nirvana or any other name you can give it. It is the same for all parts of Creation, to complete the cycle and return to main source. It is best explained by the Gospel of Mary Magdalene 7:4-28 and 8:1-10

“All that is born, all that is created,
All the elements of nature,
Are interwoven and united with each other.
All that is composed shall be decomposed;
Everything returns to its roots;
Matter returns to the origins of matter.
Those who have ears, let them hear.”
Peter said to him: “Since you have become the interpreter
of the elements and the events of the world, tell us:
What is the sin of the world?”
The Teacher answered:
“There is no sin.
It is you who make sin exist,
When you act according to the habits
Of your corrupted nature;
This is where sin lies.
This is why the Good has come into your midst.
It acts together with the elements of your nature
So as to reunite it with its roots.”
Then he continued:
“This is why you become sick,
And why you die:
It is the result of your actions;
What you do takes you further away.
Those who have ears, let them hear.
Attachment to matter
Gives rise to passion against nature.
Thus trouble arises in the whole body;
This is why I tell you:
‘Be in harmony…’
If you are out of balance,
Take inspiration from manifestations
Of your true nature,
Those who have ears,
Let them hear.”

These are lessons taught in many spiritual paths, this is why the “civilization” of the world has caused things to go so horribly awry. We have become afraid of being a part of the cycle, we grieve for the loss of the flesh – we are attached to matter to such a point that we now call our reality the Material World. He who has the most toys, wins after all. And what, pray tell, will one do with all those toys when you are no longer a part of the material world?

This is not the idea of the pious monk who gives up all possessions and lives in burlap in order to be closer to God – it’s even deeper than that. It is the idea of becoming so attached to the matter which makes our physical bodies that we seek to lengthen our lives to the point of material immortality. We are afraid of death, which is simply a part of the natural cycle of the universe. Because no energy or matter particles can ever be truly, completely destroyed, (split possibly but then you just have twin particles with a big bang of energy as a byproduct of the split) we can never really, completely die either. On top of that, the cells which make our material bodies – the basic building block molecules – are the same ones which make up everything else. Within each of us is the recycled molecules of just about anything else in the universe, hence, we are the reincarnation of at least thousands of other beings/things. This could explain many people having memories of being the same famous person. Each of us sheds thousands of cells everyday, which carry the energy imprint of being us; these are then recycled into creating other beings and merge the energetic memory with the others around it.

This is all just hypothesis, I don’t have the answers by a long shot – I just take what we’ve discovered about the universe so far and match it up to the mythology and workings of human spirituality and magick. They say that anything that was once attributed to magick can now be explained logically through science – dispelling the superstition. I believe the problem with this is that while we are figuring out what the different parts do, we still don’t know how or why they function that way. As far as we can see so far – they just do and if you don’t know how the trick is done from alpha to omega, then it’s still magick. Putting a fancy Latin name to it doesn’t make it any more concrete either, magick is full of Latin. Rituals and all that, most alchemic mages prefer it in the old, mostly dead languages. Makes their subconscious think that it’s more powerful somehow, whatever floats your boat and gets results I say.

There are so many layers to our Universe, so many dimensions, so much we have yet to even imagine exists it’s no wonder we can’t answer some of the most difficult questions of metaphysics. The existence of ghosts and spirits, faerie/fae and otherworldy beings, what is consciousness and sentience, etc, etc. we just can’t come up with an answer even the majority agrees on. It’s like trying to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer for Life, the Universe and Everything.

I believe in spirits, the fae and their ilk, the soul, reincarnation, the Akashic Library (actually I believe it’s an entire Cosmic University Grounds, with taverns, classrooms, labs, theaters, dojo – the whole nine yards. Kind of like the UnSeen University of Terry Pratchett’s Disc World series, but that’s just a bit of my humorous soul coming out. Funnier still, I dreamt of this Akashic University almost a decade before I read my first Pratchett book.)



I just reread all this and am overwhelmed. Whew I have a lot to say!