Like God - Not Like God # 2, Short Circuits and Adrenaline Surges

So we have these chakras that channel the energy of God throughout our bodies and they don't have surge protection or fuses or breaker boxes. What does that mean for us?

I have a friend up in Montana who left Russia back when that wasn’t a very easy thing to do. If I recall correctly he left in the mid to late 70’s when you could still get killed just for trying. He told me of another expatriate Russian who had also come to the United States and lived here for some time. However, this friend of his went back to the USSR back before the wall came down, before most of us could even foresee that event happening at all. He said that his friend couldn’t stand it over here because of the amount of decisions that he was continually called upon to make: what to have for dinner, what kind of job to get, whether to ask for a raise, how much of a raise to ask for, what kind of kitchen plates to purchase, which movie to see that evening, etc. In the USSR all of the decisions were made for him and he came to like it that way. Our way of life was apparently far too uncomfortable for him. In fact, he thought we were crazy having to live like this.

I mention this because it illustrates a point. You can get so used to an experience that you are no longer capable of judging the reality of the experience. Even more, you can be unaware of some of the most profound effects of the experience. In fact, you can become so completely inured to input that you begin to actually desire, enjoy and perceive as positive things that are remarkably harmful to your being. This can happen at the very first experience because you may be so inundated by stimuli, both from the experience directly and by nature of your being in the mass mind of the planet, that you can no longer perceive the reality of experiences, new or old. This is especially true if the part of your being that is harmed is a part you are not in the habit of receiving feedback from or if the part harmed is a portion of your being who’s feedback you ignore, are not ‘wired’ to receive or where have turned down the volume. This can also be heightened if the part of your being that you ARE in the habit of receiving feedback from enjoys the experience despite the other part’s damage, the part you are unaware is being afflicted. Finally, there is the possibility that the very part of you being damaged is the part of you that sends positive feedback to your consciousness concerning its’ reaction to the experience. This can continue for so long that the cumulative effect can both damage a person significantly and yet, at the same time, become an integral element of one’s behavioral pattern.

One obvious example of this kind of situation is smoking. It is both an excellent example and a very poor one. It is excellent because of the obvious dichotomy between the results we might wish came with the action of smoking, like good taste, looking ‘cool’, etc. and the results that come in reality: smoker’s cough, bad odor, wrinkled skin, disease, death. We have been told that smoking poses all sorts of health risks. It can cause cancer, emphysema, heart disease and a long list of other health issues yet there are people who really like smoking. It is a poor example first because the negative effects are actually so visible and are physical as well and second, because the people who smoke can see the negatives and choose to keep smoking (or their habit chooses for them). It is even less applicable because it does not address those habits that are spiritually destructive only. Do not mistake me. Smoking is spiritually destructive as well as physically but we can easily point at some of the negative aspects of it. This is not so easily done with others.

But let’s take anger as an example. It is almost universally recognized as non-productive, is obviously a rush of energy, and is in many ways demonstrably the type of cause/effect relationship that I am discussing. When we get angry we erupt emotionally. This is certainly and unarguably a blast of energy that moves through us, leaving us feeling drained. It is a strange thing to say but to many people the spewing forth of anger feels good (whether they are aware of it or not), especially compared to the alternatives of calm acceptance or stifled feelings of injury or unfairness, and often is the very weapon we wield to make the object of our anger suffer. I am not saying that anger itself feels good. I am saying that many people, when faced with the choice of anger or acceptance of the situation, allow themselves to experience anger because the rush of letting it go, of venting, feels good. It is the easier choice to make in the face of accepting responsibility for our anger ourselves. It may be said that it is a rush of energy through us that attempts to dominate, subjugate, punish and injure whoever is the target. But that isn’t what feels good. Next time you are in a situation that elicits anger from you notice that there is a feeling of building pressure. The pressure is the source of anger. The expression of that anger is the release of that pressure, allowing that energy to flood through you and out through that short circuit in a burst that feels ‘freeing’ or ‘honest’ or whatever you want to label it. We “blow our top”. The reality of what is happening is that you have taken a good deal of the energy of your being and tuned it to the vibration of anger and spit it out, usually directed at someone else. Have you ever tried to be in an environment with a really angry person? Were you able to keep your harmony? Maybe not. When someone is angry and venting it the energy of the entire environment is filled with the vibration of anger and it is unlikely that you are immune. None-the-less we are often told that venting this anger is ‘positive’, that it is healthy.

Another example is overeating. While it is true that obesity and overeating may not always be in a direct cause/effect relationship, that is to say not everyone who is obese over eats; if we ignore the destructive quality of the food that we eat nowadays then overeating is more often than not the direct cause of obesity, especially if one’s metabolism is slow. Yet there are people who, knowing that they will gain excessive weight, will overeat anyway. Again there are positive and negative aspects to this example but the one that I want to point out is that when such a person eats, it is often the very act of eating that is rewarding in one way or another and the fact of putting on weight isn’t as directly connected to the act of eating from an experiential point of view. It is separated in time and the direct cause/effect relationship is not immediately obvious, therefore it is easier to separate the two events. (Yes, we are, of course, aware of the connection between eating and weight gain but I am talking about direct sensory evidence, not logical nor scientific evidence for this particular example.) How much more difficult it would be to overeat if, even as we ate, we put on noticeable weight. Imagine if, as you ate, you could see the extra girth being added and what a profound effect this might have. It is a shame, in a way, that the law of cause and effect can sometimes take a bit of time to manifest, to be perceived. This is an important point because we can lose control over something that has evident negative effects and only the slightest separation in the logical chain of cause and effect, such as eating and weight gain or smoking and increased potential of heart disease. If that is true then how much more are we able to lose control of - or see no reason for - control over causes which have no easily perceivable negative effects.

We may have difficulty recognizing effects that, due to the subtly of their expression, do not ever register consciously. Or if we do perceive the negative effects we may not connect them to the causes and enjoyable effects that we readily perceive. We may be completely unaware of the negative effects or consider their relationship to the cause to be the mere subjective opinion of someone else. Yet we may be unaware of profound effects upon our spiritual selves due to a lessening of our ability to perceive those same effects.

One that is not so easy to perceive or confirm is masturbation. Here is an act that quite simply feels good to the individual and apparently has no negative effects. Here the energy of the action is harder to follow because we don’t see any cancer connected to the act, no weight gain, no “hard evidence” but it is certainly an activity that involves energy and all energy is God’s. This is a “mis-qualification” of energy. You are not using the energy in a creative way but rather creating an energy “short circuit” that lets you experience the rush of that energy. But the energy is lost to you and not used in a creative fashion.
The problem is that acts of this sort are non-creative and that the energy that you have bled off in an activity of that sort is no longer in your control but can be taken up and used by any entity that is attuned to that vibration of energy. When energy is used to create things that do not vibrate like God then the energy used becomes those things and they do not vibrate like God. Those energies do not rise up, magnetized into our higher selves, but spew out into the greater environment, and since nature abhors a vacuum there are entities that ARE attuned to those energies, that gather them and use them to continue their own existence.

We cannot dismiss as non-existent phenomenon that we simply haven’t as yet developed the sensitivity to register. We can’t afford to dismiss the often profoundly negative effects that a behavior has on a part of our spiritual being because they can’t be observed through quantifiable measures of stimulus/response by senses limited to the physical plane. We shouldn’t dismiss them simply because we can’t directly measure and quantify the relationship between the behavior and the effect. If those relationships exist then they will have those effects without regard for our ability to perceive the relationship even when we can perceive the results.

Indeed, the problem is exacerbated in examples that have far more subtle effects, effects that, when one is not very tuned to them, can only be perceived when they are ‘turned off’ if even then. Have you ever been somewhere where there was background noise such as and air-conditioner on low or a busy street a couple of blocks away? You know that you can tune out the sound after a fairly short time and in a sense not hear it at all until it is turned off and the silence makes you aware that something was making a noise. But let’s up the ante. Suppose that the sound of the air conditioner was initially turned on so low that you couldn’t hear it at all and that it was then slowly increased, so slowly and so low that it never did register to your hearing at all. Then suppose further that on your desk there was a fan that covered even any audible sound generated by the air conditioner. How would you know that the sound was there? Suppose that the sound of the air-conditioner was, in fact, subliminal in the first place. How would you know that it was there? Finally, suppose that the subliminal sound had an accrued negative effect on your physical body – that over time the sound could harm you. How about the people that live or work near a power station in a town? There is certainly evidence that the environment created by the powerful field generated by a power station can harm you.

You may not, probably don't, view your choices as “evil” as most people think of evil although the energy that you lose doesn't vibrate 'like God' but rather 'not like God'. Let’s not fall into the trap of moral gradients, moral superiority or inferiority over those who are attracted to these different vibrations. These things are simply choices that we make that have particular consequences. It is those who are responsible for creating the vibration who may fit onto that moral gradient. What we must do is decide if we are willing to accept the consequences of involvement in those activities and for how long. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is that simple. That isn’t to dismiss the “like God, not like God” razor. It is quite real. And I certainly strive to avoid the “not like God” stuff. But I am talking about the sense of guilt that the fallen ones always try to burden adepts with.

There are two other things to be aware of. One is that we must, in the long run, account for every bit of energy that we are given, every pulse of light, 'every jot and tittle of the law' as it were, and this leads us to the most important effect of all. The other is that we are polluting our environment more with these 'negative' rushes of energy than we can generally comprehend.

Finally we come to THE reason, the single most important fact, about why all of this is important. As long as we have an outstanding balance of mis-qualified energy still needing to be balanced out there in the universe, (negative karma), we can’t get “beyond the wheel of karma”. This is the real goal and we keep ourselves from it by building and maintaining that well of mis-qualified energy. So it isn’t a question of good and evil, at least not always. There are, of course, those beings who ARE evil, who choose to do those things not in spite of the effects that accompany them but because of the effects that those activities have. But that is another discussion entirely.

Like God - not like God # 1, Virtue and Chakra Basics

       I am striving to become one with God and so I strive to behave like God. To do that I must have some idea of what kind of God I follow.  To follow you need to have either a guide present or you need to have a guide’s map.  And you certainly need to have a goal.

        Here is one of my most basic tools.  From a theoretical standpoint, everything is either like God or not like God.  From a metaphysical standpoint, everything is either like God or not like God.  From a practical standpoint, everything is either like God or not like God.  From any and every standpoint everything is either like God or not like God.  That’s it.  That is the core belief of my doctrine.  Every thought, word, desire, deed… everything.  Everything is either in God’s image or it isn’t.  It is that simple.  You don’t need someone else to tell you what God is like.  When that happens, you apply someone else’s vision to your experience.

        Having said that what do I think God is like?  Easy.  God is the best of all the ideals of man, the common thread that runs through all religions, through the universe, that is our concept of universal values because the personality of God is woven into the very fabric of His universe.  Sooo, what are God’s qualities?  From my point of view some of them are Love, Truth, Service, Power, Wisdom, Mercy, Honor, Freedom, Duty, Loyalty, Justice, Clarity, Responsibility, Victory…  These are qualities that are immortal.  They are the very essence of who or what God is.  Is there something on that list that you feel doesn’t belong there?  Remove it!  Don’t accept my doctrine without question.  This is a map.  I don’t claim to have the map down perfectly.  Not even for me.  Certainly not for you.  We need simply to strive to incorporate the virtues that we see as being like God, those aspects of God’s Personality if you will, into our lives at every moment of every day and they will bring us closer to God.  These are both the tools and the goal because they are God’s qualities as best as I am to understand and the more we strive to be like God the closer we will be to God and the closer we get to God the more we become God.

        I strive, at every moment, to inspect my thoughts, words, deeds, etc. I ask myself whether they are like God or not like God.  I don’t judge from the standpoint of ‘good’ or ‘evil’.  I judge from the standpoint of ‘like’ or ‘not like’ God.  The distinction is a subtle one, I know, but I try to steer clear of guilt which I do not think of as being ‘like God’.  Guilt seems to me to be an unnecessary burden.

        You are not required to live a life of ruthless determination.  You are not required to do anything.  It’s faster, yes. If you want to be the one in charge of your life rather than your life being in charge of you then it is a way, a viewpoint that may help.  Take this paradigm and use it to the level that seems useful to you.  Pedal to the metal or easy does it are both just right if that is how you feel drawn to incorporate it.

        Do you want to live a saint’s life?  You can right now.  Right now.  How?  Strive without ceasing to manifest those qualities that you listed above or the ones that you believe belong on that list and others like them whatever the cost.  Don’t expect to be perfect at every moment.  Expect yourself to be striving for perfection as often as possible until it is at every possible moment.  Perfection isn’t a static state anyway as far as I can tell.  Perfection is being as perfect as you can be at any given moment in time.  If you are doing ALL that you can then don’t judge yourself as “good” or “evil”.  Leave that to the pundits, to dogma or religion.  You simply move on in your striving for those things that you perceive as the qualities of God.  In a sense you create a pull towards God by being similar to God.  You pull yourself or magnetize yourself to God.  Does God radiate as guilt?  Not to me.  You do not need to use my list you know, once you get the idea of what belongs on your list of what God is like.  You know intrinsically what you are striving for by searching your heart.        In order to discuss good and evil and how to maintain a higher level of purity on a day to day basis I need first to talk about how energy moves through your body via the chakras.  To do that we need to talk about the chakras themselves.  Bear with me in this because my aim is the day to day nuts and bolts of the path, not my doctrine.  But I need to give you a framework through which you can understand the tools as I offer them and how to work with them.  Hence, this initial information.  Please don’t skip over this blog if you think you already know all about the chakras.  You may get some information that you don’t already have or come to a new understanding of them and their operation and even if you don’t, you may get a bit of information that conflicts with your present knowledge and may, therefore, expand your paradigm if you don’t let your personal doctrine get in the way.  In addition, I may say things later that assume you have absorbed this information.  Even if you don’t agree with all this it will still serve as a framework for you to understand what I am going to say in the following blogs.

        There are seven chakras that I want to describe for you.  There are actually 12 major chakras in your body but only seven that I need to discuss at this point.  The seven are located in a line from the top of your head down to the base of your spine.  The top chakra is the Crown Chakra.  It is a bright, pure yellow and is the wisdom chakra.  This is the chakra of the Christ Consciousness.  It is the point where the energy from God enters your body through the crystal cord.  The second chakra from the top is the Third Eye Chakra.  It is a bright emerald green and rules God Vision and healing.  The third is the Throat Chakra.  It is the seat of God Power, God Direction and the Word of God.  The fourth chakra is the Heart Chakra.  This is the chakra of God Love and it is pink, (no surprise there).  The next chakra is the Solar Plexus Chakra.  It is purple and gold and is the chakra of service and ministration.  The Seat of the Soul Chakra is next.  Its’ color is amethyst.  It is the chakra of God Justice and God Mercy.  Finally, at the bottom is the Base of the Spine Chakra.  It is the chakra of the Mother Ray.  It is the chakra of purity and of the Ascension Flame.

        All of these chakras serve to spread the energy that comes into you throughout all of your four lower bodies, much like the breaker box breaks down the electricity that comes into the house or apartment where you live.  There are, however, some important differences.  While there is some similarity to a breaker box there is also some similarity to a prism.  Because the function of each chakra is to step down an energy that is fundamentally different in action from the energy that moves through the other chakras but in a house the electricity flowing through each breaker is fundamentally the same.

        In addition, the chakras don’t actually act as surge protectors the way breakers do.   You might think of them as fuse boxes rather than breaker boxes where the fuses have pennies inserted so that they don’t blow when there is a short circuit somewhere downline.  I have seen representations of the chakras in books where the colors do not correspond to what I have given above.  This is not always because those who are giving that information are incapable of seeing the chakras or are inventing their descriptions.  On the contrary, they are passing on the information as they see it and are often truly able to see the chakras.  The trouble is that they see the chakras within their own bodies or the bodies of others around them and the light of those chakras is not the light of chakras that are pure, radiating the clear, brilliant light of God as it appears when it is emitted from God’s being and stepped down to us.  That isn’t a judgment of them.  My chakras aren’t radiating only the pure light of God either.  So, these people are seeing that light as it is mis-qualified.  They see the chakras as they are when some portion of the energy is being used for things that do not vibrate like God.  They are seeing it in this environment, the negative energy of the physical plane, the environment that it inhabits and the misuse that it is put to here, once we receive it.  This is simply the condition of people on the planet. Chakras that are pure radiate a beautiful pristine clarity of color far different from the muddy browns, oranges and grays that are often depicted.

        The chakras are marvelous centers of energy that whirl and vibrate with life and God energy and should be treated as God’s abodes in the body.  Approached with joy and reverence they offer us a way to learn and to honor the God within.  Yoga is a great way to do this.  So is meditation upon one or another of them.  The Third Eye is a great tool for increasing one’s concentration and centering our mind on God.  That is why many teachers of meditation recommend that you put your concentration upon the Third Eye when you meditate.  Each of the chakras is the focus of a particular type of God’s energy and can, when keeping that in mind, be great tools themselves for strengthening one’s momentum.

A Mystic's View of the Spiritual Journey

It’s 4 A.M. Nasruddin leaves the tavern and walks the town aimlessly. A policeman stops him.
“Why are you out wandering the streets in the middle of the night?”
“Sir,” replies Nasruddin, “if I knew the answer to that question I would have been home hours ago!”

- Rumi -



        For so long the spiritual journey goes on and seldom do I realize that my journey isn’t taking me somewhere that I may recognize before I arrive, not even to a place I won’t recognize but might believe in, like a distant planet where the flora and fauna are new and never before seen but the planet is still round and the colors are still within the visible spectrum. No. It will not be a place that lies within my conscious experience at all.

        I strive to go to a place that lies even beyond those that I can imagine that I can’t imagine. I am going to a place that, ‘tho I have been there and felt it, experienced it and even remember that I have been there at sacred moments in my life, yet it is a place that I can not imagine at all. Having been there I think that I recall my having experienced it and yet I do not recall it with any clarity for my memories are all filtered by my being encased in this limited vehicle. All my memories of the event are visual, auditory, olfactory, but the meat of the experience is of who I AM and how I AM when I AM there. I now recall only what I could accept of it - what I could turn the experience into in my memory so that I could accept it, get a grip on it, what I could bring back when I came into this tiny box of consciousness again - what I could allow myself to vaguely remember without giving up too much of my cherished beliefs about the nature of reality. These beliefs are precious to this lifetimes’ personality. They are the tools by which I juggle my sanity. That recollection is only a cartoon representation of that place done in symbols. It is like Jungian dreams that presents my inner psychology to me in terms I can accept but not comprehend. It is, however, a place that I know of even when I am unable to recall its’ true nature.

        I hesitate to even say that I have been there, not because I am not sure, but because I may then believe that I can imagine it, that I can define it, and that will surely keep me from it for then I will strive to go to the place that I can imagine, a place that I can describe, thinking, this is that place that I was. This is where I have been. But the place that I can imagine, that I can remember, is not the place I have been.

        Yet how can I go to a place that I cannot imagine? If I can’t imagine that place then how can I believe in it? And if I can not believe in that place then how can I go there? How can I go where I can not believe that I can go? How can I stay there if, when I am on the threshold I think, “I can not believe this”? Given this I must practice every day knowing that I can not know where I am going, that I cannot know the goal until I am there, that, in truth, I can not get there at all, that the goal of my striving is the striving itself – to let the striving be the goal so that I can move beyond that which I can imagine as the goal, so that something, some part of me that I am unaware of, can achieve the true goal that I cannot imagine.

        Yet if the striving is my goal then my arrow is misaimed for then I must both strive and cease to strive, having achieved my goal. I must strive without the goal in mind at all but rather I must strive only to be worthy of the goal. I must strive not for that which is without but for that which is within that, when the time comes that I am taken up to the goal through no power of my own, I will be of an energy that can be one with the goal. Then, by God’s grace, I may transcend my own beliefs, my own consciousness, my own programming, my own concepts, my own personality, my own dogma, my own drunkenness, my own mask that I am not even aware that I wear and be pulled through that wormhole leap to divinity, by me undesigned for my design would be flawed, undirected that my personal consciousness not wrestle with the guide, unanticipated, unlooked for, undreamed of - into that consciousness that is God or Truth or whatever word that you use to describe that which you perceive as forever unknowable yet attainable by your inner being to the everlasting joy and release of your consciousness.

        May the guide come and effortlessly take me to the goal. As Rumi says with a poignant sadness that echoes in my heart, “I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.”

The Uniting of All Faiths

          One of the themes that I have found in more than one of the 'new age' groups that I have been associated with the that of 'the uniting of all faiths'.  This is an exemplary goal but there is one thing that stands in the way of it.


I am rewriting this blog.  I will endeavor to expedite it but must be clear in my communication.  "Be patient with me and I will pay thee all."