Another 'really good one' from Israel Shamir, 'Unmasking Freedom', in my inbox this morning. His usual entertaining brilliance. (Only the most talented can entertain as they try to teach). This person 'sees' things many of us do not, but we 'see' more after we read his writing, than before. That's why we call it 'brilliance'. It illuminates our 'vision'.

Here is my reply to Mr. Israel Shamir:

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Among the Spirits in Each of Us

The concept of ‘infinity’ staggers the finest finite humanminds beyond comprehension. It always will.

Human pretentions can be knee-slapping hilarious, ifregarded from a pretentiously wide perspective, (as if from an alien space-ship, looking down, studying, in utterly perplexed and consternated wonder). The idea that‘God’, for example, has a gender, that ‘he’ is a human-like rutting beast, ispretty durn funny, if you squint yer eyes and look at it a certain way. (Ohreally? Hmm… I wonder if he started masturbating when he was 13? What's his favorite toilet height? Etc.)  

Simply looking ‘up’ at ‘the universe’, (just the tiny sliverof a part that we can ‘see’), (which is not really ‘up’, of course, but rather allaround us), we humans cannot even comprehend what we are seeing. Big Bangs?Black Holes? Curved Space? The General Relativity of time, and mass, andenergy, and space, (not usually cited in that order).

Think ole Lilly Tomlin, as Ma Bell, (from the old ‘Laugh-In’show, pre-cursor/ancestor of Saturday Night Live). “Awe … You humans areSO adorable when you pretend your puny little finite minds could ever know orunderstand ‘infinity’.”

Naw … In the end, all we humans are ever going to get, allwe are ever going to arrive at, no matter how sophisticated any Artificial Intelligence we createmight be, is The Mystery. (If we somehow harnessed every molecule in the ocean to be a Super Nano transistor switch of the Mother-Nano-Chip of AI, that would pale in size and degree when 'seen' against 'infinity' in the background.  

Blood beasts like us are not made to ‘see’ God. Wecannot yet even rise from our essential Bestial Nature, we have not yet even learned, as a species, to even become 'civilized', and yet some among usthink they actually converse with God, a real nice old 'Guy', like he was their pal and mentor at the Golf/Country Club, (George Burns), or Barber Shop, (Morgan Freeman), or living under the freeway, (Mr. Myagi)?

What do we imagine are this God's motivations? All this concept we call 'God' would have to do is simply‘appear’. ‘He’ would not have to make a sound. Or move. Remember 'The Monolith' among the ape tribe, (in Kubrick’s ‘2001’) ?

Why does 'he' not? Why does he leave us here, alone, twisting in the wind? Helpless? 

What if some monolith of magical ‘valerian steel’,impervious to any force or power of humankind to even make a scratch on itsmirror-black surface, simply appeared in the alkali deserts of western NorthAmerica? Ten miles high, by ten miles each other dimension. Say it stayed thereten days, and then simply vanished, simply dissolved away like an apparition.

Would humankind not be transformed by such an apparition?With not even an old man, with the longest beard, carrying down stone tablets ofcommands from the burning bush on the mount?

Why doesn't God do something of that magnitude now? What's the lesson? Will it EVER be learned? Does God not 'see' Humankind's desperation? Does God not care? Does God even hear our prayers? What does God WANT from us? What is God's Desire?

How completely bozo absurd can it possibly be to even think we rutting blood beasts will, or even could, ever know?

'Reality', (that which we believe, 'all together', is 'real'), is all we humans have. And Reality is, itself, so spilling with mystery and wonder that it surely will be eons of human evolution before we could possibly even imagine a concept like 'God's Desire'.

Mr. Shamir posits that 'psychology' and 'spirit' are distinct and separate things. Well ... He sure may be right. (There's no 'reference book' to cite here, after all). But I sure 'see' them as pretty darn much the same dang things.

Every person's psychology is a 'melody' of spirits, within each person, that constantly compete for attention. Many spirits we admire. Many cause us to feel shame. It is 'Culture' that engenders those two basic premises of all human morality. We instinctively know Good and Evil in ourselves. Pride and Shame are among the most powerful of all The Spirits. We want to admire ourselves, but Eden beckons. The girls are so pretty. The men so intensely interested. A girl's pillow is little comfort when the boys howl for company. The night is so lonely. This is the oldest human song. "Can you walk from the Garden, does your heart understand?"

Same old (same old) sad song ... Another version ...

This is deep tribal human 'juu-juu'. Culture is rooted (somehow) in the genetic human code. The Tiger has no Shame, as it tears mouthfuls from a living shrieking beast. For some reason humans have evolved a sense of 'mercy' amongst the melody of emotional 'music' that plays inside us, (even when we kill). The Tiger is a fearsome Spirit. Hear the powerful bass rumble of her or his almost 'melodic' purr. It makes our eyes go wide with wonder, (let alone her or his roar), but The Tiger will NEVER 'hear' many 'tunes' that bring tears to human eyes. 

I live among 'spirits'. I have for a very long time. It's not really a big deal. It's just something I'm 'tuned into', something around us all that many are not aware of.

Ehh ... It's MUCH worse than that. The spirits are not just 'all around us', (which they are, ALL the time), they inhabit our own hearts. Look at all the faces. All the masks that humans wear. Lust. Pride. Envy. Jealousy. Anger. Threat. Power. Stop the video on any frame. Each face you 'see' wears the mask of the spirits that form her or him at that moment, in that 'time and place', (nestled among all 'infinity'). 

Ursus is cross and surly when an appetite commands. No fear. Never lonely, other than when 'in rut', when the females come 'in heat' and start spreading scent, which is only for a few days once a year. The rest of the time Ursus hates every other bear as much as she or he hates anything else. Rage, raw animal fearless rage, is his or her deepest spirit. There is fear in her or him, (I 'scared off' a bear once but it was probably a stupid thing to do), but touch that 'nerve' with great caution. She or he will often respond to fear with rage against what he or she fears.) 

That 'rage' is in the deepest 'lizard brain' that we humans share with our angry grouchy brother spirit, Ursus. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny).

It is plain as day in the chickens I feed and water every damn day, (and shovel their shit about three times a year). I 'see' the spirit in them that humans share. The 'lizard brain'. Curious. Inquiring. Cautious. But then bold Impudence and pride. Always looking for personal advantage. Always aware of the 'pecking order'. A complex network of social alliances. Pretty stupid, but they often do manage to 'figure things out'. They are capable of crude 'logic'. 

They come to regard the human that carries their food and water with what sounds, looks, and feels, to a human, like 'contempt'. They become angry if either runs out. They do seem to be 'appreciative', as well, but it's harder to tell. They do seem to 'coo' when they are happy, or at least content. 

Their contemptuous anger leaves no room for doubt, however. When they scold you, they sound like Miss Glasgow, my second grade teacher, (who I heard, from a little spirit-birdie, once had a part in a movie, as the witch in 'Over the Rainbow'). 

Yea ... Well ... It's a 'spiritual thing' way long out before we can address our political problems.

Our 'Revolution' MUST be rooted in Good Spirit, in Truth, Etc.

Evil Spirit has come to dominate too many human hearts for us to yet march out to meet Sauron's army 'in the field'.

At this point, with Bad Spirit in the cold blue klieg-glare, but as yet powerful and unafraid, we MUST remember that it is the Bad Spirit, itself, that is our Enemy, NOT the people whose hearts it has captured under its power.

Every prophet, from long before Jesus, to our own nation's best, Dr. King, has preached that same lesson.

Those hearts, those very hearts, can, and must, be 'freed' from the grip of Bad Spirit. We cannot 'conquer' and rule. That just leads to more violent strife, as the Annihilation Clock ticks down to soon strike the 'witching hour'.

We must 'free' our human consciousness from the Bad Spirit. We must win 'hearts and minds', (by the 'billions'), to Good Spirit, if Humankind has any hope to survive as a species, (if our grandchildren will live to cherish their own grandchildren's dreams).  

Ehh ... Enough for now. Caliban lives among spirits? That's really NOT a good way to 'put it'. Caliban has been aware, since he was a boy, of the spirits we ALL live among, (which ALL live in us, in EACH of us).

I saw 'The Exorcist' in '72 (wasn't it). It terrified me to the roots of my soul when first I saw the Demon's face in the black-mirror. It took awhile before I came to 'see' God's own face, as well.

They BOTH are there. Find a handy mirror, and see for yourselves.

Hope all are well and strong, (and/or have someone if you're not),

Caliban

R Zwarich