Why Do You Only Get One Answer From An Oracle?

When I first started using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching (The Book of Changes, The Emperor's Yellow Book) as an oracle, the answers I got to my questions were often quite confusing. So often, in fact, that it's a wonder that I ever got past the beginner's stage of learning how to use a wisdom book as an oracle. When I finally got past the beginner's stage (maybe ten years) then I really got confused. Obsessions have a way of doing that. I didn't realize for a long time the basic reason one adopts and uses the I Ching as an oracle for. It's FOR to learn to ask mo' bettah questions.

After years and years of subjective sado-masochism, I finally took the attitude that the answer I got was always right. I wasn't able to do that with the King James version of the Bible. The fact that I was able to do that with the I Ching is the real miracle that made the way of the world mo' lucid to me.

I had a stroke of good luck at the beginning of this quest. I was given Cary Bayne's English translation of Richard Wilhelm's German translation he created directly from a Chinese master's instructions. Other English translations like James Legge's translation was too strictly academic and lost the true meanings of the Hexagrams, and the later ones based on Legge's translation are more like pop art usually done for the New Age crowd.

The Wilhelm/Baynes translation is published in English by Princeton University Press, which in some way legitimizes that it's been done with at least some academic rigor. What that means to me is that it was not just a New Age endeavor for me, but had some critical thought looking things over. The translators didn't make it easy for the layman. Wilhelm stuck to the original text where possible, but revised it if the Chinese master didn't think his academic treatment of the Chinese language carried the true tone or meaning of the oracle.

This attitude I finally got to that I mention above happened this way. I would consult the I Ching as an oracle using the coin method, and it provided me with a Hexagram and perhaps some specific lines of the Hexagram to look up and read. The problem for me came when I didn't see the relationship between the answer I got and the question I asked.

I have read quite a bit about oracles and how they work. One of the more universal connections between them is that an oracle only gives one answer, and doubts about it are not entertained. Some cultures or societies only allowed it's citizens to ask the oracle one question for the whole of their life. If you didn't like the answer the oracle provides you're just screwed, complain too much about it and you could get stoned to death.

I didn't really have to look outside the Yellow book to discover this tendency of oracles to give one answer. The middle book in the Wilhelm translation provides lots of reasons why it happens this way.

Something happened that made a difference. I began to think that if the answer the I Ching provided me with was the right answer to the wrong question, and it's answer was the answer to the right question, then my true task was to find the right question for the one answer the oracle gave me. This is how the I Ching taught me how to ask the right question the first time. It took thirty years. Why am I always the last to know?

My Glass Top Computer Table

I got the new computer table put together and it seems like it might get the job done. At least my wrists are lower than my elbows. The base of my thumbs are touching my fat belly, so I'm not having to reach forward and put stress on my shoulders. I'm still in a lotta pain. Oddly enough though, most of the pain and the problems I'm having is with my shoulders Especially when I'm trying to sleep. I toss and turn a lot while I'm sleeping, and when I attempt to turn my body over to the other side, the sharp pain can be agonizing. If I can sleep thirty minutes at a time, I'm doing pretty good.

There are some people who when they die I don't want them coming to get me when I die and take me to their heaven. I think they're stupid for believing in the sort of heaven you gotta have a physical body to appreciate. Why would anybody wanna be rich with streets of gold and jewels popping outta the ground, and a whole gaggle of virgins to play around with, if you ain't got no body once you get dead. That's why the idea of heaven as an afterlife is idiotic.

Some people claim the point of laying up riches in heaven instead of earth dictates how one should conduct themselves while they're still alive. Most of these heavens the various cults of the Christians claim exists is a place where nobody can have babies. You gotta have a body to have procreative sex with the other gender, and for the most part, it's considered a sin to do that unless you have the blessing of some sort of priest. If you don't have babies while you got a body, then you don't get to make babies, because in the afterlife it's not possible.

There is one thing that's coming to light with me typing with my hands at this level, I'm gonna have to keep my fingernails trimmed. I'm typing with the tips of my fingers.

Whatta Ya Do When There's Nothing That Needs Done

Digital synthesizers don't reach for samples of sounds on some storage device like a hard drive to create the noise they make. They literally "synthesize" the desired notes from software envelopes in the immediacy of now. This is different than generating desired musical tones from quivering metal strings that get stretched to just the right tension in order to reproduce an exact likeness of the sought-for note. The sound gotten from a synthesizer depends on the skills and talents of the software programmer, and wot algorithms he can cook up on that self-same day.

I don't have the background to describe how a synthesizer works as opposed to how a grand piano produces a desired sound. The first digital synthesizer I bought was bought on impulse as a result of having my ego massaged by a professional musician who worked at the music store part time, because all he needed to make a living was to run up with a few fools like me and sell them over-priced musical instruments for a generous commission.

Granted, there may not be as many people around who are as big a fool as I am is, or at least enough of them around in order to make an easy living, simply because a fool and his money are soon parted. The reason snake oil salesmen don't always get rich as Midas is that it's probably rare to run into enough fools that's temporarily got money to be duped out of.

I subscribed to an e-mail discussion group whose topic was the exact same ESQ-1 synthesizer I bought. They were very helpful, or tried to be, but I learned something I hadn't understood until it was sot before me during the time I participated in this group. What I learned was what I wrote above. The noise a synthesizer generates is not taken from a sample. There's no storage place for existent sounds. The sounds are generated from mathematical algorithms on the spot. I think algorithms are sort of like mathematical formulas, but I'm not sure.

This came up in a conversation recently, and it made me wonder how the contents of an experiential database would be retrieved. Do they get generated on the spot by demand? Mentioning any kind of database sends my thoughts toward an article of systems of expertise published by the Scientific American online magazine. If you're wondering if its the same article I've provided a link for previously, it is. I find this article very useful to make certain points. Usually, that a system of expertise like a chessmaster or a medical doctor is used to apperceive a correct diagnosis. These kinds of systems are self-installed, not self-generated.

Many of the old religions and philosophies are basically saying, it takes two to tango. That happens at every level of being. You wanna fix something that appears broke, then you gotta look to see what you ignored in the shadow world. That's what pleased me about realizing the scope of the emotional trauma that Leos sometime experience. Leos are prone to get eaten by their own lion-ness. They wanna exhibit their great leadership abilities whether there's a need for leadership or not, just to boss people around. Not that many people will take that for long if they can do anything about it. The more I understand about what Leos have to deal with in the emotional realm, the better I understand the negative aspects of Aquarius, their opposite sign. It takes two to tango.

The negatives of both Leo and Aquarius exhibit theyselves in opposite ways. Why would they not? Leos let their emotions consume their reason, and Aquarius lets their reason consume their emotional compassion in the sa-me way. Aquarians clean up the mess of the Leo, and Leos lead Aquarius out of their complete dispassion. You can't have One without the other.

Astrology is a system for thinking about things that I placed in my psyche on purpose to dealing with as certain aspect of being human in the here and now. My remembering vision, and everything I've portrayed it to be, was a gift I didn't earn through systematic study. It was given to me, and it appears to me presently, that my real religion is centered around my effort to reach for the gift I was given as a way of comprehending real time, and not the system of expertise I developed to make myself feel important.

How Could I Have Forgotten?

I'm very emotional these days. I went to bed early and got up early. Around four o'clock in the morning. I've messed around waiting for God to appear and dry off the parts to the new computer table I bought. The realization that I have the wrist and hand problems I do because of ergonomics sent me straight to the store once I got it. I feel rather stupid because I've had this problem before, and didn't realize that I'd fallen into the same old trap. At the same time i realized the positive side of it. As soon as I set up my new computer table and get everything at the right height, then my pain will eventually go away, and I'll be able to continue to write and keep learning learning to play the piano.

I watched a little TV after I'd gone through all the news sites I check every day on my computer. I watched the TV news where I get the local stuff. I don't do local on my computer, I don't really wanna know. Eventually, I dialed in to PBS to see if they had any interesting early morning programs. A yoga program came up.

Watching this woman teach yoga is what brought the tears to my eyes, I practiced a fairly full routine of yoga postures for over twenty years in a row. I only stopped when I ruptured a disc in an automobile accident. Eventually, I had to have an operation to relieve the sciatic nerve damage. I never really got back into my old routine. I stretch right much these days, but I haven't done enough to get even close to my old practices. I guess I cried a little this morning over spilt milk.

The feature of the new computer table that convinced me to buy it for $99 was that it had the keyboard slide drawer beneath the desktop, and the design would allow me to set up my keyboard about two inches above my knees. They got these keyboard drawers available commercially, but I don't have a table on which I could mount it. Since the pain in my hands and wrists would be a problem in doing it myself, I decided to go see what they had a Wal-Mart. I could have bought something that might have worked just as well for $40. It was made of pressed wood, and didn't appear to be all that stable.

The table I bought is made of metal with a glass desktop. I bought it because the keyboard drawer beneath the glass top had plenty of room for me to adjust a chair to the right height for my hands to sit on the keyboard correctly, but it just seemed more stable and well-designed. It came with a cart for putting computer peripherals on that rolls around. Both the computer table and the cart have shelves made of stretched metal that seems very strong. The only problem is that I have to put it together by following directions. If i can just do that and not have a bunch of mysterious extra parts left over I'll be happy.

The new table should resolve my ergonomic problems with my computer, but I'm not going to be able to position the digital piano keyboard two inches above my knees. It's too thick . It's at least four inches from the top of the keys to the bottom of the piano framework and cover plates. The piano stool that came with it can't be adjusted. It's a solid seat with a cushion on it.

I'm thinking I can use that stool with my new computer table, but I won't know for sure until I get it assembled. I may have to buy an adjustable piano stool to get my butt, therefore my hands, to fit as close as I can to the right height with the piano. My old office chair will be fine in my living room seating area. It can practically be used as a recliner to some degree. I'm done with it for using keyboards though. The pain I'm experiencing from ignoring the posture it put me in for typing is not a joke.

The old chair worked okay for typing I suppose. It wasn't until I started practicing the scales on the piano several hours a day that I began to have severe pain in my hands and wrists, and worst of all, in my shoulders. The pain there keeps me from reaching out away from my body to do things with my hands. Reaching to get food off the storage shelves above my head became impossible with my right arm.

This didn't bode well for the future. I was looking forward to nothing but pain and my pitiful attempts to use whatever I could get to stop the pain, and then having to deal with the stultifying daze the pain pills kept me in. This can be prevented. I've figured it out before and what I did to solve the problem worked real good. The future for me is a little brighter. I still might not get back to where I was with my yoga, but at least I'll be able to write and at least learn to play the scales and arpeggios on the piano without excruciating pain.

I looked at several web sites that had information about what to look for in positioning the body correctly in front of a computer. I compared what I found at those sites with the observations I made about how I'm sitting now. The big deal, I think, may be in the position of my upper arms and elbows as I address the keyboard.

According to how the positions in the pictures, I'm have to push my elbows forward when I reach up to put my hands on the keyboard. I shouldn't have to reach up so much. That brings my shoulders into the practice. When I sit with my hands laying naturally on the top of my thighs, there is no stress on my shoulders or the forearm muscles. When my body is positioned at the right height, then just leaning my torso forward a little places my fingers just about the keys, and I don't have to use my shoulder or forearm muscles for anything but punching the keys with my fingers.

Well, the Sun is up. The metal parts to the new table sitting out on the deck should be dry in a little while, and I'm gonna fix this ergonomic disaster in fairly short order.

I Am An Idiot!

An amazing thing happened. The figs on my old tree are ripe. Hundreds of them are turning brown. For the next two weeks or so, I'll have nothing but fresh figs off the tree for breakfast, and for snacks throughout the day.

I didn't notice that they had been turning ripe. My youngest brother and next door neighbor noticed it when he passed the fig tree on his way to my front door to haul off my trash while he was hauling his. His fig tree is twice as big as mine. He scoffs at my fig tree growing abilities, and makes snide remarks about my vague claims to be at one with nature. I've had a tougher life than that sixty year old "boy". It shows in many diverse ways.

I don't fight the birds and the bugs for the ripe figs. There's plenty to go around. They won't last that long. I don't seem to worry too much if I have to share a ripe fig with these creatures. The fig sure ain't prejudiced about wot ets it. I eat figs all through the season that are half-eaten by June bugs. Ummm... ummm... Good!

That fig tree is the most success I've ever had involving horticulture. I think that's because it's a sturdy plant that don't require much maintenance. I lost last year's crop to a late freeze, but I could have been a little more attentive and prevented most of the damage. Maybe I made the right sacrificial rites to the right gods, but this year l got figs aplenty.

That fig tree has been a lesson unto me. I mollycoddled it too much. I wanted too much for it. When Ben and I were closing in the upstairs balcony and building two outside decks with a set of 16-step stairs connecting them, there was a time when it became apparent that the fig tree was going to have to be heavily pruned to fit the decks and stairs where they needed to be.

This was a tormentuous decision for me. It ought not to have been. Whatta wimp... eh? I knew it had to be done, but I couldn't bear to watch. What a fool I am is. Ben lopped it off and laughed at me. Rightfully so, as it turned out. The next spring, last spring, when the late frost hit, the new sprouts didn't have leaves on them yet, and so they were the only part of the fig tree that didn't have to grow new leaves. Oh, it was just awful!

No, it wasn't awful that the new sprouts were the only branches of the fig tree that didn't need to grow a new set of leaves. That part of it was just great. The ugliness showed up in the mis-shapenness of the new leaves on the old branches that had gotten frost-bitten. That was to be expected, I suppose, because the natural progression of the sap rising had been interrupted. I was glad to see new leaves come back on the frost-bitten old branches of any shape or fashion.

The awful part of it was that the unfrosted upon new sprout leaves were just huge and perfectly shaped, and they grew up under the old damaged branches with their half-hearted, second-growth, misshapened leaves and made me feel old and misshapened. Whatta drag, man.

This coming dormant season I'm going to cut another of the older branches to created even more new sprouts from the roots. They come up straight out of the ground, and it's easy to put a brick on them to start a new cutting. I intend for the fig trees I can get rooted and the bamboo grove I'm trying to start to be my living legacy for a while after I'm gone. I obviously don't have anything to add to the living language.

I just did something that may not turn out to be so odd. It may serve as even further proof that I got about as much sense as a box of rocks.

My wrists and shoulders are ate up with arthritis, right? I have whined enough to get that impression across. Would you not agree? Why are you still here? '-)

I wrote about a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms ere now. A few years ago. I only remember the pain. It's the same pain I'm experiencing now. I just remembered that the solution to my problem then was to move my keyboard to a more bettah height. Then, I remembered how when I set up my digital piano adjacent to my computer rig so I could turn from one activity to the other handily (pun intended), The rigid non-adjustable piano stool that came with the digital piano was a different height than my computer chair, but I didn't connect that with what might me causing my carpal tunnel incident.

I'm pretty sure I'm stupid enough to have made the same mistake twice. Ergonomics. I'm breathing deeper. I'd bet good money getting my ergonomics straighten out is gonna make all arthritis problems go away.

The crazy thing about it is how I ignored the difference between the height of the piano stool and my computer chair. I used my computer chair for both keyboards. Its one of the executive type office chairs with all the bells and whistles. I just swiveled around to confront one keyboard or the other. Making the same mistake in ergonomics with my digital piano and my computer keyboard. This very expensive office chair I relied on for years is a little worn out, and won't stay where i put it, so I stopped messing with it. Fool!

This chair will adjust to any height and has four other levers to play with besides the height one. Why the hell didn't I adjust the seat to a higher position? I stopped writing for a while and did a web search on ergonomics. One article agreed with my conclusion that I needed my keyboard closer to my knees. It suggests two inches about the knees might be about right. That tells the tale. The tables and my digital keyboard where I put my legs under them are four inches deep. No matter how much I adjusted the chair I couldn't get the keyboard any closer to my knees. I gotta make other arrangements. Idiot! The first time could be attributed to innocence. I didn't know very much about ergonomics. The second time is due to ignorance. I ignored the lesson of my initial experience.

I know why. I'm just short of six foot tall, and have a thirty inch instep. I have a long body with comparatively short legs. Standard ergonomic heights don't work out right for me. I need for the desktop or keyboard height to come closer to my knees so I won't have to lift my hands so high to compensate for the difference.

I figured out and fixed this problem before, and the carpal tunnel and arthritis went away. With my arms held at my side and my forearms and hands held straight out in front of me, the keyboards I'm using need to be at a height lower than the bottom of my elbow. I shouldn't have to raise my hands past ninety degrees elevation to place them on the keyboard to type. One inch either way makes a big difference when I use one keyboard or the other for as much as 10-15 hours a day.

That may read like the ranting of a crazy man, but I love composing almost as much as life itself. Everything else leaves me unfulfilled.

Lions and Leos

I reference saying #7 in the Gospel of Thomas about every night when I watch the six o'clock news and witness the debacle of regular looking people losing their temper and killing innocent people in an emotional rage. It's the curse of the astrology sign Leo. I didn't realize it until one of the members of the e-mail discussion group I subscribe to, associated the meaning of Saying #7 with the mass murderer at Virginia Tech a couple of years ago.

7 Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm

The group studies the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas one at a time. The moderator sends out a group of translations of the same saying and asks for comments on their meaning. Theoretically, the members respond with their opinions of what the contemporary meaning of the saying might be. That don't happen all that often. It should, maybe, but it don't. The moderators are intentionally slack about sticking to the target. They might interrupt if you go for the player instead of the ball occasionally, but other than that, it's a free-for-all about anything and everything anybody brings up that can draw a response.

Leo, as one of the four fixed signs in astrology is, in that capacity, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and one of the four creatures that surround the throne of God in Revelations. Leo is one of what's called the "power" signs whose power, like with the other power signs, is concentrated in the center of the sign on the 15th degree. I've understood the negative attributes of the earth and water power signs, Taurus and Scorpio, but not so much until now the fire and air signs Leo and Aquarius. 

Understanding the negative aspect of fire in Leo (ruled by the Sun) as it is explained in #7 fills in the gaps somewhat. It's about this great emotional power that can be used for good or ill. Bill Clinton is a good example. He's a Leo whose charm, wit, and superior personal leadership abilities epitomize the positive attributes of Leo, but his downfalls have always been associated with lousy management of his emotional issues. A conflicted Leo is the ultimate ego-tripper.

On the other hand, Leo's opposite sign Aquarius, the water (of life) bearer, when they get in a lousy mood, do as all opposite sign natives do, they reflect the negative qualities of their polar opposite. Understanding Leo's negative possibilities (including mass murder), helps me to understand what happens when Aquarians lose they rationality. They go from being totally objective in their spiritual service as the water bearer, to unreasonable, murderous intent through abject apathy when they deliberately withhold the ladle. Hannibal Lector.

Which is more evil? To go on a murderous spree killing innocent people in acts of war or to withhold the water of life from it's innocent, dying victims. This dynamic seems key to understanding the fire/air dynamic. The lion/angel dynamic. Guardians of the throne of God supposedly. In the gospel of revelation according to some obviously historical John. Which John appears debatable. He adhered to a system of base four, and then tripled it. The twelve-bar blues is the result of a natural transition of the four beat because of the turnaround. The four directions.

There are two other sets of four in astrology. Since astrology is set up on base twelve there would have to be two other sets of four to account for... eh? The initial set of four is the four Cardinal signs. They represent the four cardinal directions. Then come the four Fixed signs as mentioned, and then the four Mutable signs. Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. I often describe astrology as an oracle for thinking about things. A vegetable oracle because it tells an agrarian society when to plant and to reap and to sow. It's the oldest of all ways of dividing and thus conquering ti-me (the-tie-to-me).

I've always known somehow to not deliberately cross the line with Leos when they go horseshit crazy. The only way to stop them is to kill them like a rabid dog. Who wants that? Retreat is my favorite strategy. I might scream at you to run when I comprehend the danger. I might grab you by the hand when I tuck and roll, but if you resist my effort to save you from yourself, I'm gonna leave you be, and save myself.

Understanding the negative potential behavior of Leo as a power sign is an invaluable aid in helping me to understand the negative aspect of Aquarius more succinctly. Now that I realize that I gotta take more care with the people in charge of the water of life, also, the world is a more somber place. 

It's not just when mass murders happen that the lion eats the man any more either. It's every time some poor soul blows it and kills the ones they love, and then die in remorse themselves. This happens constantly in my local area. Murder/suicide seems rampant on the six o'clock news just about every night. A virtual continuous slaughter of the innocents. I suspect it happens all over the world and for every kind of reason imaginable. Not armies. Not even agents of any recognized government. I don't know if that actually happens like it do in the movies. But, individuals who take it on their own to kill the people they supposedly love and then kill themselves.

I think a lot of these types of events happen because of the way the world constantly changes. People seem to want the world they live in to stay the same and remain reliable. They want "things" written in stone. I'm astonished to be seeing on the news about all these people losing their homes due to some crisis. BUT, I'm even more astounded by how much money these people paid for these houses in relation to their incomes.

I don't mean just after taxes and fees and enormous rates of interest. I'm watching people who make a dollar above minimum wage buy houses that cost $270,000.00, and then whining and puling about not being able to make their house payments. Much less to buy the gas it takes to go from one to the other and back home. The world they live in is the furtherest thing possible from being written-in-stone, and they buying $270,000,00 houses. How much time could they actually be there, live there, in between the three jobs they gotta work to make the payments. I don't care what you call it, it's not the American dream. These people have been deliberately manipulated and duped. The people who took advantage of them this way are criminals, and more and more, they're not even Americans or prosecutable by American laws.

I disclaim anything I compose and speculate about to be a truth of any order or foundation. I don't know what the truth is fast enough to write it down. By the time whatever it is that I'm channeling gets to my fingers, it's usually a lie. Not a deliberate lie nor told in complicity. It's just never meant to be taken for anything more than a priori speculation. A game I play with myself to pass the ti-me. Fool's gold.

A Pearl As The Cornucopia

I Googled up "Akashic Records" to see what would show up. I haven't read anything much about the Akashic Records since before I went online in the very early Nineties back in the last millennium. I write "millennium" instead of century to convince myself that we are indeed in a new millennium. Just like other subjects I familiarized myself with through books, it always surprises me how much information is available on the internet that I would have had to travel long distances to go to the library where the information was hoarded.

I've been trying to write about what exactly happened when I received what I call my "remembering vision. I've sorta concluded that this event was a conscious contact with the history of the various events that have happened to the pearl-like entity I arrived on Earth as.

From what I'm reading at the sites the results page provided, my experience is not that unusual. The descriptions various people have used to describe wot happened to them is debatable, but not necessarily moot. While it's true that in some ways I don't have to know where I'm at to be there, it's more likely, in this case, that I can't BE in two places at once or rather, I can't describe both places I'm at simultaneously and make sense.

Some of these sites feature authors who claim to experience the Akashic Records. They call this phenomena other naymes too. Like Cosmic Consciousness with capital letters. I agree with the Rabbi I provided a link for, that the name (nay-me) of God in the Jewish tradition indicates their God is described as having a dual nature. They're monotheistic, but their God is both male and female.

It's easy for me to write this as God's own truth (but, remember my disclaimer) to explore the otherness, but I claim it to be that way because the pearl I am is has an inside and an outside, and it makes a difference about the perspective I take. When I inhabit the inside of the pearl, every thing is the sa-me thang. When I'm in the void of being myself, there is only me, "... only this, and nothing more."

When my perspective of the pearl is that of being on the outside looking in, then all things are possible. The outside is populated with things. It is the cornucopia. My experience of these phenomena is what causes me to find interest in Sartre's assessment of situations. He write of somethingness being blocked from all that IS by nothingness, and yet the nothingness is necessary for consciousness to continue in it's own upsurged state-of-being. Consciousness can't ex-is-t apart from the plenitude without denying it as it's ground of being. Consciousness is on the outside looking in and "thinks" all things are possible.

This can be seen in the light of Sartre's claim that homo sapiens have a flaw, and that flaw is that they can't see their own possibles. The only consciousness possessed by the plenitude IS the goals of it's errant being-for-itself. It can't perceive the for-itself due to the same nothingness that prevents consciousness from realizing it's own possibles in real time. Besides that, the plenitude is described only by saying "It is.", and consciousness is what the plenitude is not. The plenitude lacks nothing, and doesn't understand why it is experiencing the angst of the unseen goals of the ungrounded being-for-itself. Two mountains sitting back to back.

The Lord Giveth, And...

My dentist helped me to eliminate having a dental problem as the source of the arthritis onslaught. That's what it was. It's happened before. It went away, and now it's returned. I expect it to go away again. It makes a real difference if I don't take the ibuprofen or Alleve. I'm also taking some other weird dope that was prescribed to me a couple of years ago from when the arthritis haunted me before. That was about the time the government was pulling all those heavy anti-inflammants. My doctor over at the VA got a little worried about the prescription level ibuprofen she had me on, and gave me a prescription for this other stuff in it's place. Propoxyphene with 650 mg of aspirin in it. It kind of knocks me out. I've taken two long naps today.

I'm trying to consider what having that more universal database installed or revealed in my remembering vision might have meant. The reason I'm curious about it is that I think I may have had a wrong headed attitude toward what I thought was other people's reaction to me looking at the world that way.

It's fine and dandy for me to take a gregarious attitude toward what I think people should be able to understand and what they may actually understand. I may have been giving them too much credit for their native ability to grok my diagnoses.

I'm also trying to understand what advantage (or not) having such a universal database at my disposal gives me. So far, it seems more detrimental than bringing great joy into my life. What's in it for me?

If there is anything in it for me, I'm considering whether or not my lame understanding of what having the Akashic Records as my experiential database actually means. When I write "Akashic Records" I inferring something of a more subjective order than something all embracing.

In my remembering vision, the experiences of being all the various objects I've made myself into in my response to the urge doesn't include all the things you or other pearls made them/your selves into. Just me. I do mean to say that what I experienced in that vision covered the entire time I've been on Earth. Well, up to the time I was thirty years old and had the vision one fateful night.

When I sit in judgment of an event that is sot before me right damned now, I'm not just referencing the experiences I've acquired in this one life time, but every time I've created a body for myself since I arrived on Earth. Billions of Earth years. Billions of lives.

We are not human beings on a spirit quest, we are spiritual beings on a human quest. ~ Ben J. Miller

I'm fairly sure this most recent session of coming to live on some planet and experiencing billions of lifetimes trying to become human is the first time I've done it either. I didn't remember those earlier efforts in the remembering vision that gave me the scoop on my latest escapade.

So, I have this fantastic vision when I'm thirty years old, after occupying this particular body for sixteen years prior to that, and this vision provides me with all this information about all the bodies I've occupied on this one particular sojourn, and here I am expecting other people to understand the scope or reach of what I'm bringing into play in our banal conversation about fairy tales and Jesus stories.

I know what to say to go along to get along, and don't think I don't go there if it's necessary to allay some other's suspicions that I may have gone too far. My concern is that many if not most others are only reaching for what they put together in this current lifetime to make judgment of the world.

How can I know whether they have the more profound database at their disposal in order to reach with me when I go too far for one lifetime to comprehend? I have a tendency to believe that the long version of one's history of multiple lifetimes as a conscious resource isn't there for them, and they think I'm nuts for suggesting possibilities they don't believe is possible for them or me. I'd really like to run into more people who have read Sartre.

People Don't Die From Insanity, They Get Killed

I hate being insane. I went to the dentist yesterday to have the tooth checked out. They finally got around to x-raying it, and the only problem was that it was chipped, and not anywhere near a nerve. He repaired it for me. He used so much Novocain it took almost to bedtime to finally get back to normal. So, the tooth isn't the source of my problems with arthritis. Fixing it didn't do anything in regard to the pain.

I tossed and turned all night and couldn't find but one way I could lay without something hurting. Before i got up this morning that one way of laying was sore. I got up. Why lay there? Of course, I was in pain from more than the usual arthritis this morning. On my way to go upstairs to sleep I stumped my toe on my right foot. It literally hit so hard it knocked it out of joint. My hands and wrists hurt so bad I couldn't yank it back in place, so this morning it's still off to one side

When I went to make some oatmeal to have something on my stomach when I took the 800 mg of ibuprofen, the box of oatmeal and the ceramic cup I use to measure it out is located on a shelf above my head. I haven't been able to reach that high and deal with the weight of it on the way down to counter level with my right arm for some time, but I could do it with my left hand and arm. This morning I had a hard time doing even that.

I've finally learned how to cook oatmeal in the microwave so it will come out like I like it. I put the correct amount of water in my bowl and heat it up in the microwave first, then add the oatmeal to the hot water and let the oatmeal soak in it before I put in the raisins and cook it for two minutes. The microwave is located on a shelf about head high. Like reaching for the box of oatmeal, I've been able to lift the small bowl of water up to the microwave with my left hand,

This morning after the initial heating of the water happened I almost dropped the hot water bringing it back down to counter level and spilt hot water on my hands. Scalding hot water hurts, of course, and before I knew it I was just weeping in frustration and pain. I don't know why I bothered. Nobody is here but me to comfort me. This is what I get for being crazy. I think insanity must be a sin one gets punished for. That's the way it's always worked for me since childhood. I've always been "different'.

My brother called me and ask me to come over to his house to help him decide on the arrangements for flying to Seattle for my daughter's second marriage. I probably wouldn't go if he and his wife wasn't going with me. It's not all for me they're doing it, he has a friend he was on the publishing board of trustees with that lives near there, and he's been looking an excuse to go out there. We'll probably stay at his house for a couple of days before the wedding.

I don't really wanna see my ex-wife again. I did her wrong, but it won't a one-way trip by a long shot. I tried to do right by her when she got pregnant, but after that it seemed like she wanted to punish me by emasculating me. She did a good job. We even had a second child together, by whom I now seem to be a grandfather to a child I've never seen. She and her mother have had twenty five years to turn me into the biggest son-of-a-bitch that ever lived. I keep asking myself why I would go out there to give them the opportunity to hurt me even more.

At least her mother died. She hated me from the time we first talked on the phone. My daughter told me that her grandmother had told her at every opportunity how much she hated me. I never did nothing to that woman to deserve the abuse I got from her, but to marry her daughter so she wouldn't abort my child. Now, they all hate me for just trying to do right. What a fool I was to go along. They needed a fool to look respectable and to give the child a legitimate father, and that's what they got. For a little while.

I don't want my grand-daughter to see me. She don't stand a chance of doing anything but hate me after the way all those Stanley women have told her what a monster I am is. She'll be scared to death of me at first sight. No blame. I think that's why I was invited to the wedding in the first place, they wanted my grand-daughter to see for herself that they were right about me all along.

It Hurts To Chew

So, I've got a dental appointment this afternoon to find out if a bad tooth is poisoning me. The pain I'm experiencing with the arthritis consumes my day. I don't think I'm a very thrilling person to be around lately. All i do is pule and whine "Woe is me." The idea with the dentist is to get him to X-ray this one tooth. I got a feeling it's not the problem. It doesn't hurt like an abscessed tooth. The pain I"m feeling is too dull for that. If I had an abscessed tooth, I'd really be crying. If it's arthritis in my jaw, It'll probably get to the point I can't eat without really hurting. Bummer.

Eating ain't all that pleasant as it could be, and hasn't been since I've started losing all my teeth. I guess I could be worse off though. People all around me are dying at a younger age than I am is. The famous people who have died recently are fairly close to my age. The news anchors aren't crying about what a shame it is they died so young. I'm not worried about dying. I just wish it didn't have to be so painful. My father didn't suffer much pain as he got old and died. I know. I asked him, and I'd know if he was lying. I saw him in pain quite a bit over the years from getting hurt on the farm. He saw me get hurt too. He lived to be 88 years old. Without any constant or debilitating pain. I'm only 69 now and had some serious, nagging pain for the last couple of years. Looking forward to 19 more years of living with this arthritis is not something I go into states of ecstasy about. I gotta learn to get sexually excited about pain. Then, I'd have something. Right now, my hair hurts.

I've started exchanging e-mail posts with another blogger who claims to have visions. I don't know why I've bothered trying to explain myself to people who don't claim them. I don't know how this e-mail exchange will work out, but he seems as curious as me, and appears to attempt to answer whatever questions I have about his experiences as me. The only people who can answer my questions about what happens to people who own up to having visions are the people who admit in public they do. It ain't pretty. Most people appear to think that the only people who ever had visions died two or three thousand years ago. Why would they not?

The Vatican Is Much Smaller Than Tibet

I guess turnaround is fair play. The Mongols raided Europe and threatened Rome, but then they begin to fall apart as empires tend to do and retreated to Tibet and the safety of the Himalayas. The Tibetan Buddhists are the last of them. The Catholics used to have the Holy Roman Empire and ruled half or more of the known world, but now they're hemmed up in a tiny stronghold in Italy called the Vatican. It's much smaller even than Tibet. The Catholics have about as much of a chance of surviving the Chinese invasion of Europe as Tibet and the Dalai Lama did. The same land bridge still exists now as it did when the Mongols used it. Will the Pope retreat to America like the Dalai Lama did to India? I can't imagine that he will find as warm a welcome here among the Evangelists.

It's my take that the world has gotten entirely too small for the old systems to survive intact with all their worn-out rituals and unveiled secrets.

I may be projecting my own personal health situation on to the world. My physical system is worn out, and all my secrets turned out to be fairly common knowledge. I'm gonna try to get a dental appointment as soon as possible. I can hardly open my mouth to get food in it. The last molar I have left on the bottom right-hand side seems to be the culprit. It doesn't hurt like a normal toothache does. It's a much deeper pain than that. It seems life-threatening. I can be a pretty tough guy when it comes to dealing with pain. I've always been so poor I couldn't afford to run to the doctor with every little ache and pain. I coped. My present situation is not business as usual.

The Ring-Pass-Me-Not

Events happened in my life the religion I was raised to believe in would not accept as a valid religious experience. Au contraire. Now, of course, as an old man, I realize those people who tried to teach me this religion were no more than children with large bodies themselves. Men who taught Sunday School because it looked good on their political resume. Shopkeepers who wanted my family to shop at their shop.

It's on the news practically every night. It's what the audience wants to view. Hypocrites. Preachers having sex with the choir of any gender. Homosexual law-makers hell-bent on eliminating people just like them. "Somebody stop me!" Rabble rousers parading against pornography with a closet full of it at home. People who seek to cover up what they had been condemned to believe was sinful behavior when they were children seem to teach religion a lot. 

Hypocrites and liars. Trying to teach me not to do as they did. Humans. People who did what they were told or get shunned in a small town where people's children had to leave to find work in the big cities. The better you understood life and was able to make sense put their own children in competition with you for the few jobs that did become available in a small town. These are the kind of people I considered a threat to me when I was a kid. I was led to believe I needed their goodwill to survive, but it was actually my parents whose reputation was on the line when and if I acted up.

This particular quote Joseph Campbell attributes to Jung in The Power of Myth:

“Religion is a defense against religious experience.”

It is comments like this that have endeared Jung's writings to me in the past. Not so much his philosophy nor his logical diagnosis of what's what. He died anyway. None of his thoughts or theories provided him with immortality. That's the ring-pass-me-not I require for worshiping humans non-sexually.

Hit Ain't Up To Me

I just hate it when a person who has attacked my integrity may indeed have a good point with something they write. In this case, a person I don't give much wiggle room to merely mentioned that Carl Jung wrote a book entitled Answer To Job. I never read it, so I Googled it up, and started reading the articles and reviews of this book to get the gist of what it was about. The Biblical story of Job is what it's about, and what Jung thought it represented cognitively.

I'm not a Jung scholar. I quote Jung when I think it makes me look cool. I know better than to argue particulars with even a half-ass Jung junkie. That's why it surprises me a little each time my attention gets riveted once again by another Jung quote. For instance, this particular quote that Joseph Campbell attributes to Jung in The Power of Myth:

“Religion is a defense against religious experience.”

I've suspected for a long time that my true inspiration to study the history of religion is the visions I've had that have the effect of turning my world around without warning. I'm a gullible person. That's why the above Jung quote moves me. My real religion is defending myself against my own experiences.

The article I'm quoting below comes from the linked web site, and sorta focused me on the gist of where Jung is going with his analysis of God:

"God is moving, in this view, out of his unconsciousness and primary narcissism and becomes a “God in time.” The “answer (to Job),” then, is when God as Christ crucified becomes fully human and can now empathically see and suffer humanity’s pain."

http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=727&Itemid=40

If you've been reading me for a while, you might have noticed that I've been intrigued for a few weeks with the notion that what I am is, is a docetic spirit attempting to become human. Thankfully, I haven't claimed this is an original idea. New to me, of course, not many things aren't, but for me and my quest, the idea of being a spirit trying to become human is different than my usual spiel.

Answer To Job, by Carl Jung, is apparently an entire book on the topic. In the story of Job, however, the docetic spirit has a name. Yahweh. A war god of the early Jewish tribes' pantheon. In effect, Jung is psychoanalyzing God, and God (Yahweh) obviously has a hidden agenda. It wants to become human.

We are not human beings on a spirit quest, we are spiritual beings on a human quest. ~ Ben J. Miller

I Am Is What It's Always Been

My sister-in-law from next door came driving up on her riding lawn-mower pulling two toy John Deere tractors with her twin grandsons on them in tow. Today's their birthday. Both her and my brother always seem to come by here when the boys visit to get us familiar with each other. It's hard to believe they're two years old. Both of them spoke some words to me. I don't know what the words were, but at least they spoke. I've been amazed forever at how young children just stare at whatever with such complete absorption. If I just had a switch to turn on in myself that would bring that mode back to me, I could learn anything.

I've had the Powerball (Seventeen) for two consecutive drawings now, and didn't get any other numbers to go with it. How am I ever gonna get rich with that kind of lousy luck?

I got your snail mail letter. No, we won't be driving to my daughter's wedding in Seattle. We will be flying there and back so I won't be able to stop by Montana. My younger brother travels quite a bit in keeping up his business. He is arranging the entire trip and all I'll have to do is go along to get along. Otherwise, I might not go. I could hitch-hike there and back, but toting the clothes I'll need to go to a wedding might be cumbersome on the road. I feel like an idiot enough as it is.

I have to buy a suit. I haven't owned one for thirty years or more. Even when I married my children's mother I didn't have a suit. I lose and gain weight so frequently it's hard for me to keep clothes that fit when I need them to. All those people except for my ex-wife are fairly rich, and she would be too if she hadn't fucked up and fell in love with me. Stupid woman. That's why I'm glad my brother and his wife are going with me. I'm no true representative of my own natal family.

On the other hand, my careless attitude toward money might be one of the reasons my ex-wife married me. I can't just use money to entertain either myself or others and be happy about it, but have to come up with something amusing out of the dark recesses of my mind. I know how to do that with just about anybody around, but I'm a very selfish, disgruntled person who holds back on people if they don't exhibit some sort of self-sufficiency about entertaining themselves without paying for it.

I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out why I did what I did. I haven't done what I do because of the way I was taught or trained myself to be for a long time now, and I haven't always known that either. I keep writing about my remembering vision, but without knowing why I'm doing that. I think I know now. I'm usually wrong when I say that I arrogantly claim lucidity about some topic, but this is different.

Either another experiential database replaced the one I created myself just by living my life in the usual way, or the database I use now was installed during my remembering vision. It may have been around the whole time, and the event of my remembering vision revealed it to me on a conscious basis. The result either way is that I"m using that database associated with my remembering vision to gauge or measure the value of my current events.

I know it seems crazy, but I experienced/saw/realized every life/body I've participated in since I arrived on Earth billions of Earth years ago during that remembering vision. I'm not deliberately lying about this, but I can't prove I'm telling the truth either. Granted, I'm just desperate enough to try to pull this off, but I'm not big enough to pull it off even on my best days as a liar. Currently, and for over thirty years now, when I see an animal over there being itself, and no more, I experience it's being, as having been that animal in the past. and currently in real time experience it's relationship to what it's become that I am is now. The experiential database I use to address the world now is billions of years thick. In my remembering vision it only took about 10-15 minutes real time to BE all that I have been.

One thing's for sure. I have to say it. I can't afford to go along with other people's idea of what they're doing here so they will feel comfortable around me. I know how to do that. The temptation can be overpowering. It would be the easiest thing for me to do. I don't care if other people think I'm crazy for uttering the truth as I understand it using this other database, but I do care about how it affects my families. I say that, but I still find myself being true to my total experience rather than what happened just in this life time, whatever the price.

How can I tell people I love them more than anything else in the world when it's not true. I love them, but with reservation. I love something else more. Nobody knows. For sure, I can't speak it. I'll use the description Ben refined for me:

We are not human beings on a spirit quest, we are spiritual beings on a human quest. ~ Ben J. Miller

-

Brevity Is The Art Of Everything

We had a quick, soft rain shower in the middle of the day that cooled things down a bit. It was the advance of what might turn into a tropical storm that will pass over here in a couple of days. If it takes long than a couple of days for it to get here, it will probably arrive as a hurricane. We can stand the rain. The drought I wrote about in the spring got washed away, but it don't take long for rain water to sink down through the sandy loam we farm here. That's why we depend on tropical storms and hurricanes to bring us the water. The wind can be dangerous, but without the yearly rainfall being pumped up by a storm or two the farming gets too iffy.

Some people wonder why we whine about not getting enough rain when we're surrounded by swamps. It's a series of factors that make up the real facticity. As I mentioned above, most of the soil on the coastal plains have a lot of sandy areas. Either all the land in one area has been under the ocean or most of it, but about all of it has been the beach for the ocean for a period of time. Sand don't have enough organic materials (humus) to hold the water up to where the root of the plants can reach it.

Many of the native plants that have acclimated to living in a drought prone area have deep roots that enable them to survive. There is a kind of bermuda grass that's grown around here that's known as "coastal bermuda grass". It's roots go real deep. A hybrid has been developed whose roots go even deeper. This new hybrid gets green earlier in the spring and stays greener longer in the fall. I'm not sure, but I think that's because of the depths it roots get to. Coastal bermuda grass is usually grown to make hay out of around here.

I've heard many a lecture by my father about dirt. He was a high school agriculture teacher. As the advisor to the local Future Farmers Of America (FFA) organization, he was responsible to organizing the various contests they sponsor. Soil-judging was what one of the FFA contests was about. Week after week, year after year, my father would prepare his current students to enter these contests as a team. I was around much of the time.

If they won the local contests, they got to be in the State contests, and if they won there, they got to go to the national soil-judging contest, and that was a big deal to the local folk that there sons could go to a shindig like that and do well. They held my father in high regard for working with their children like this and helping them to see their potential. A lotta people respected my father. Especially after I left home and joined the Navy.

I don't remember how many different kinds of contests the FFA sponsors for high school students during the regular school year. At least five or six. They had livestock judging contests, seed-judging contests, tool-judging contests galore. As my father's oldest son I was told who to emulate of my father's students and who not to. My father was not one who didn't take his work home. The lectures didn't stop when he got home. I was just another animal to be institutionalized.

Sometime I write that I felt like I was different than the people around me, and all I had to do was to discover what that difference way, and I'd know who I was. I'd have my own identity. I sought being type-cast. I felt like it would have been a comfort to me to be recognized for my burlesque personality.

I'm not on some quest to understand how I'm different any more. I've come to realize that the only way I was different from anybody else was due to my desire to be different than anybody else, and candidly, I thought I did a mighty fine job of it. My mentors constantly hounded me with the aphorism "You can be anything you want to be." Eventually, I accepted that I could, and that there was no reason to stop being anybody I wanted to be just because some of the anybodies I became because I could, was any more rewarding than any of the other anybodies I could be if I wanted to. I found out I could acquire the rewards without playing the games I though were needed to get 'em. Those rewards. The ones that arrived due to my skill at playing the games. They were not so rewarding without the game to sacrifice myself to/for.

I was constantly compared to my father's best students and his worst students. I hated all my father's students. He spent all his time teaching them how to get ahead in life, and the only way for me to get any of his time at all was as just another of his students. I wasn't just taking on my father in order to establish my own identity at the age of puberty, I was taking on his entire repertoire of adoring students and parents. The numbers were stacked against me. The only strategy I felt was possible was to go away.

I still feel it was the right thing for me to do. I didn't realize it was probably a necessity in order for me to live the kind of life I'd dreamed of.

55 Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."

http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm

If you were to look back through the archives of my blogs you'd find this bit about "me" through and through it. I believe there is only One me, and each of us think we're it. The "it" we "think" we are is a subjective me. It's the most meaningful association we share together. You got your me, and I've got my me, and each of us possess as if chattel our own me, and it's The Big Lie.

I had to hate my parents and my sisters and brothers to establish my own identity. I had to establish my own identity to find out that what I've been calling "my" me is the sa-me me every other other is calling me too. It says so in the Old Testament as found in the Ten Commandments "Thou shalt have no other God before me." How many me's do you gnow?

If vacate my body and come over to your body, I can use your me just like it was mine because it is that. What travels between bodies ain't consciousness. What does travel between bodies doesn't have to know where it's at to be there. What's in a word?

If I install one of my poems into your experiential database either through ruse or misdirection, you will naturally like the way I use words better than the way you use words, and you'll start to use the lyrics of my poems in ways that seem interesting to you, but you won't know where they come from because you make them your own. I will. Passworded-backdoors to the psyche not withstanding.

Shocking events can transpire from this sort of dynamic/mojo. It's a two-was street. Sometimes a thoroughfare. I don't just use my own poetry. It's better that way. It's better to realize it's not my specific poetry that does the trick. I can take Robert W. Service's poem, The Cremation Of Sam Magee, and lead crowds of people through the streets and back alleys craving for closure. I've only memorized about half, if that much, of the poem.

The people who follow me seeking closure usually know this poem as well or better than me. When I was younger I thought it was more or less special to me for my own adventurous portrayals, but over time I started noticing that when I recited what I knew of the poem it always draws a crowd, strangers or no. I'm astounded by the commonality of my preferences with poetry.

I probably learned more about Poe by reciting certain of his poems in public and getting to watch how people reacted to hearing them. I somehow doubt Poe would have been as attractive to me if I hadn't memorized and recited his poems. They seem to take it that we share something profound in common from the manner in which I use Poe's words. It takes them a much longer time to realize I'm an asshole. Years and years.

The Abandonment Of Reaching Out

Ben came over kind of early today. I pissed him off right away so we could that over with, and then he talked me into going for a walk to the back pasture. I know I need to walk. Especially to physically see some different scenery. I get locked to ignoring the sameness of the environment of my house and yard, then my creativity gets in a rut. It doesn't take much of a change, but I usually have to go somewhere to get it to happen.

I've been writing and talking about a particular event recently more than ever. I used to use having an encounter with a snake to describe my intended me-and-thee-ing (meaning). Lately, I've started creating metaphors about nearly drowning or being threatened by nearly drowning. The point I'm trying to get to really has nothing special to do with baptism by immersion (or submersion), as much as it does with the panic one experiences when threatened with death by drowning, real or imagined.

I'm attempting to describe an abandonment of one activity in order to reach for another. Total abandonment. I was raised in the coastal plains where they have several kinds of poisonous snakes that children are taught to avoid at any cost. There are even more non-poisonous snakes around that look enough like the poisonous ones, that encountering any kind of snake unexpectedly can accomplish the kind of abandonment I'm referencing post haste. The result is that when I encounter a snake the first thing I do is freeze. Then, and only then, I look to see if it's poisonous.

Whatever I might have been entertaining mentally when I run into a snake is gone away running. I don't care how noble my thoughts might be or whether I'm just a cunt-hair away from solving a problem that would earn me the Nobel Prize. If I run into a snake, I'm gonna abandon my current quest into abstract thought immediately. Boom! It's not even a consideration any more.

That's the same thing that has happened to me when I've almost drown. Nobody has ever rescued me from being almost drowned. Nobody knew. Apparently, I don't need any help almost drowning. I seem quite able to do it all by myself. Each time, there was a point at which I suddenly became aware that I was going to have to do something different than what I was doing, or I'd get dead soon.

Right damn now was the only time I could do anything about what was happening to me right damn now. Every time I've almost drown, I was already drowning when I realized it really was true. Abstract strategies was the first thing to go, and was usually the only activity that might have prevented this situation. That was then. This is now. My abstract strategies have never saved me from drowning. My instincts did.

I'm attempting to describe a ring-pass-me-not moment in which something is abandoned in order to reach for something that will save me from myself. My abstract constructs are what have to be abandoned, and my urge for life is what has to be reached for. Sort of. Maybe...

I'm not writing about deliberate abandonment so much as I as trying to describe the "fight or flight" response. I don't consciously decide to inject adrenaline into my blood when this fight or flight response kicks into play. It's my opinion that some time I'm reacting to the adrenaline pumping into my blood stream before I ever see the snake. I'm always already drowning before I realize it. I only realize I'm drowning when I observe myself going into instinctual mode, and watch my unconsciousness spirit act like it's been around for a few billion years.

This is the ticket healers use to ride. No blame. Healers attempt in their various ways to get some facility within us to make things right again. Scary masks, death rattles, the boogie man stomping up to come and git you. Chemotherapy. Radiation treatments. Hocus Pocus. Rainmakers. All selling hope. Hope is the only product anybody got for sell.

It's all to produce that one moment when we abandon what we cling to in order to reach for what we ain't got. We abandon the stuff that's making us sick. We abandon all the wrong-headed-ness in one fell swoop. Anybody who can help you do that is a friend, and anybody who tries to stop you is not. If you're sick enough and dying anyway, and won't listen to nobody because you're stuck in the past, why not ask a top to waterboard you. Really! If all else fails...

Maybe doing it for nothing and without asking for gratitude is what many religions are actually about. Why would anybody charge money for something they can do as an aside without anybody even noticing? "How can this be done. It takes two bowls." You have to do it "for-them-for-yourself" It's the bit about getting the plank out of your own eye before you attempt to get the splinter out of your neighbors. Getting the splinter out of your own eye is what heals your neighbor. You don't even have to know which neighbor healing yourself, physician, will cure. Healing is triggered from within.

At least, that's what I tell myself some time. I have to do something to entertain myself. I can't afford professional entertainment. Sometime I get the feeling that if I could just attend a profession sports event it would cure my arthritis. Hell, even seeing one on TV used to help. I don't see many games of any kind on TV anymore. I can't afford to sign up for satellite or cable.

Jump! JUMP!!

The popularity of e-mail and e-mail discussion groups lasted just long enough for me to figure out through constantly writing what I've lusted to understand for at least fifty years. A few years ago I realized that my true quest in life was to find out how charismatic people manipulated me so easily. They could get me to do things I wouldn't ordinarily do. Getting me to have sex with them more often than anything else. The earlier time I actually remember was when I was about 6-7 years old. It was only after I underwent religious conversion at the age of nine and joined the First Baptist Church that I became even more vulnerable.

We are not human beings on a spirit quest, we are spiritual beings on a human quest. ~ Ben J. Miller

Getting seduced is not something most people complain about. Who doesn't like to cum? For me, however, it was about like getting raped. Not so much that I was being physically forced to do anything, but the seduction techniques used to get me to go along was put to me in such a way that i couldn't resist. Sort of like being black-mailed. It was sort of like I got set up and certain types of people could see me coming.

Understanding the relationship or equivalency of baptism by submersion and waterboarding explained everything to me. It's no wonder that I began to consider getting seduced into have all forms of sex with people to be tormenting. In my early forties the situation began to ease up some because I was getting older and less appealing to the people who tormented me.

I've describe previously how my first term paper in college for my English Composition class was based on the subject of brainwashing. I wrote about how the North Koreans used torture to brainwash American soldiers. I was eighteen years old. By the time I was 24 years old I had completed my first hypnosis school. I'm certified in at least four different styles of hypnosis, and have the certificates around someplace. I hardly ever used them. I just wanted to understand how hypnosis worked by being hypnotized myself and learning how to hypnotize others. That first school I went to taught me how to hypnotize people non-verbally, and that technique became the mainstay of my practice for the last forty odd years.

Hypnosis doesn't convert anybody to anything. It's a powerful argument, and extremely useful, but when push comes to shove, it won't get you over the hump with most people. There has to be a convincer. Waterboarding disguised as baptism is only one type of convincer that will get the job done, but it is the one convincer I haven't considered ere now.

When this ritual is performed in the correct manner by knowledgeable people (who are also grateful for a little luck) and who say and do the right things at the right moment, it's as powerful a procedure as can be effected. In the past, I've commented on the ability of the chemical sacraments to remove the barriers to conversion, and they're definitely great convincers in the right situation, but they certainly don't explain how so many people were converted to a belief system so quickly and so radically that they would purposefully face death head on without flinching, as in the early Christian era. Baptism as a waterboarding-like technique does.

I've experienced the terror many times. I have written a lot about what i think is going on. Speculating about this and that as prime cause. My main ideas about it came from a Native American friend of mine. We do hypnosis together, but it's only been during the last five years or so of our twenty year old friendship. It started out with me using hypnosis to help him pass a welding test.

He came by one day and asked me if I wanted to ride with him over to a neighboring town, which adjoins the Cape Fear River. He wanted me to meet his newest girlfriend, and they were going with a group of people to the river to go swimming. He's told me about his near drowning during that trip to the river many times. No one witnessed how he nearly drown because it all happened underwater, and he was the only one who could have known he came close to losing his life.

He sometimes tells me about that incident as if a way of figuring out what happened himself, because I was there that day. Not because I was a witness to what happened. He saw his life pass before his eyes. That's what he tells me, and I believe him. That's happened to me several times, my remembering vision notwithstanding. I guess that's why I take him serious when he tells me how he liked to have drowned that day.

Today, after coming up with the connection between waterboarding and baptism by submersion, I'm taking another look at Billy's near-death experience. It's proof that nobody has to be in your presence to induce the near-death experience by drowning. How many of us have nearly drowned at some time or the other in our lives, and there was nobody there to witness it or sometimes realize it was happening right in front of them without their realizing we were in trouble. I somehow figure that seeing our life pass before us is the only clue we have that we nearly drowned. Nobody knows.

How would Methuselah (meth use ah? LOL) live 400 years? By abandoning his "sins" every so often? By "healing" himself through near-death experiences, and getting born again? By being taken down to the pond and getting himself nearly drowned every time the stress built up?

Carlos Castenada writes of his mentor Don Juan taking him to a cathedral in Mexico City to meet a person who was several thousand years old. Those of you who have read Castenada are probably familiar with this described incident. Part of the deal with this coven of shamans was that they were required to jump off a cliff thousands of feet high to conquer their fear of death.

I might have not believed this happened if I hadn't done it myself, but without a physical mentor present to assure me I was doing the right thing. As far as I was concerned at the time I was jumping off that cliff to commit suicide, pure and simple. I knew I was as good as dead, and I wouldn't make it through the approaching night, so I jumped. Only when I survived without a scratch did I realize something unusual had happened. Curiously, I don't feel one whit younger.

I Didn't Have To Work For It

Now, whatta I have to live for? All I wanted to know was how these people who raised me to be a man could jerk me around the way they did. Why wasn't I my own man? Why am I merely a symbol of somebody else's ideas about the way things should be? I keep having these epiphanies which conclude with me saying something equivalent to, "Now, I know. I've finally figured out what puzzled me. Now I can rest in peace."

I could have rested in peace with each epiphany if I had died for sure immediately afterwards. Aye, and there's the rub. I keep not dying. I reach conclusion after conclusion for the questions life poses, but I keep living and breathing, and reaching for answers to questions which only arise because I ain't dead yet. What a bummer, man.

My realization of the connection and association between being baptized by submersion and waterboarding has got to be the epiphany of all epiphanies. I should absolutely die soon, but that only brings up my fear of the terror. I know full well by now that I took a body on Earth while frantically attempting to hide from the terror. If I lose my body, then I'm taking the risk that I might not be able to find another place to hide from the terror, and that's just more than the bravest of men can bear.

I like to think that I've stayed on Earth using the bodies I created to hide from the terror because I"m smarter than your average bear, but life don't necessarily imitate art in all cases.

This is just weird. I'm writing that one takes a body to hide from the terror. The body is a closed system. Closed systems undergo entropy, and finally exhaust themselves, thereby exposing themselves to the terror again, which annihilates reason as a mere pastime.

I know a lot about the reptiles in my inner world, and how they run the show. I also know though a multiplicity of gross mistakes that there's nothing that needs to be done about the reptilian world running the show. It'd be a hell of a mess if they didn't. Trying to stop the reptilian world from running the show is like fight windmills with the weapons of yesteryear.

I'm referencing the triune brain here. If you don't know it, and desire to, for whatever odd reason, all you have to do is open Google and type in "triune brain" and it will gently (or not) guide you to some deeper understanding of why this theory works extemporaneously for a lotta people.

In the triune brain theory the reptilian brain is located at the top of the spinal cord and beneath all the rest of the brain, which develops from it with the reptilian brain as root. Above and beyond the reptilian brain resides what is called the horse brain, and above it and above all is what makes humans wait to piss and shit until they go away from they abode.

The reptilian brain sends out bots to check things out to keep things going okay at a very primitive level. It really doesn't have anything to do with horse sense, which is dependent upon it. Reptilian sense is your bottom line survival routines that doesn't depend on your conscious interventions, and in fact won't tolerate it under the threat of death. It does what it has to do or if it doesn't, the closed system suffers overwhelming entropy and it dies. Period. Just treat snakes holy whether it makes sense or not, and you'll probably be okay.

My brother is out mowing the lawn. What a showoff. He's out mowing the lawn. His wife is up at a week long seminar to be in the same room as the Dalai Lama up north somewhere, and the business they created together is going along swimmingly using hired help. They're truly surprised. Neither of them appeared to think that it could come to this. I'm pleased for them as a witness. I never asked to be their brother. I feel a little guilty I didn't have to work for it.

Baptism Is Waterboarding

Is there a difference between baptism and waterboarding? 

This was a fun little question I asked the Thomas group who study the Gospel of Thomas together. I wondered if I was the only person who had thought of this yet, so I typed it into Google to see if someone else had made the connection. Not many, but there was this one guy's opinion of forming a new religion with waterboarding as it's initiation rite.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/grayson-daughters/ralph-reed-and-john-mccai_b_107585.html

This has been a powerful intuition for me. I remember being baptisted in the Baptist church of a small town on the coastal plains of North Carolina. The baptismal was just a hole in the floor underneath where the preach stood to deliver his sermons. When the time came to baptize initiates, they removed a heavy plank cover off the tank underneath the altar, and dunked people there.

I'm trying to recall whether or not the preacher did what was necessary to induce the drowning reaction. I was nine years old. When I watched this video of a journalist voluntarily undergoing waterboarding to find out for himself whether it was torture or not, I realized the truth of my experience and how these so-called "charismatics" had their way with me.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

I don't know if you remember or not, but years ago I discovered that my real goal in my spiritual quest was to discover how these sorts of people had made me so vulnerable to their religion. Now I know.

I've written about how doctors still use the same practices of the shamans and medicine men by scaring people into healing themselves. They use all sorts of chemotherapy and radiation treatments to accomplish a healing. Why fuck around? Waterboarding is about the scariest thing some claim can happen to people. Any doctor who really wanted to use the art of medicine to get rich and famous would take up waterboarding right away. Watch the video. The equipment they use is dirt cheap. No damage from either chemicals or radiation burns for the "patient" to deal with after the process/ritual is completed, and the fear appears to be so real that either it cures you or kills you. Quite naturally, the customer would have to sign a paper... oh, that's right... they already do.

Healing, I suppose, is the physician himself at work at his own ills. I don't know how a physician could heal himself by waterboarding. The mechanics of it are for all practical purposes impossible to manage. Besides, if waterboarding is the best technique available for inducing the healing state, it should be simple enough to gather a self help group together where each member is waterboarded by the others to get things done easily and correctly.

The most fascinating thing for me, of course, is that each of us appear to have the facility to heal ourselves. How crazy it must be for a person being tortured to death to realize at some point in his dying moments, that he had to ability to make things different all along, and just never took the chance to save himself by throwing his life away in order to induce the fear necessary to get things done. Now, I know why I jumped off that 800 cliff in Yosemite National Park, and why I survived it without a scratch on my body.

Rheumy This, Rheumy That

I'm more and more impressed in my dotage by the constant reminder that everything I had to learn by practicing, requires the practice to continue or I'll lose use of the facility that took a great deal of learning to use. Like walking. For all practical purposes, I forgot for most of my life that i had to learn how to walk, and not only that, but before that I had to learn to roll over, get up on my knees, and crawl first.

The way life is rolling for me at the age of 69 I'm being confronted with having to practice walking to remember how to do it. Literally. I have forgotten how to hop, skip, and jump without problems already. Oh, I can still do those things on a good day, but it takes a while now to get back to normal after I've done such a thing.

Getting up outta bed during the night to go to the bathroom is not a cake walk for me anymore. The effort might go relatively smoothly or I could run into problems because of the awkwardness, and experience bone-rattling pain. In any case, I stutter-step to the bathroom only ten steps away. Not sexy stuff.

I don't exactly look forward to getting up outta bed in the mornings to face my gloomy day because it's gonna hurt. One of the first things I have to do is get downstairs to brew some coffee and boot up my computer. I have to hang on to the hand rails and go down the stairs one step at a time. I have to hang on tight, move one foot down to the next step, and then slowly move the other foot down to the same step. This is the worst part of my day as far as gross movement is concerned. After this ordeal, it seems to get easier to move around during the day.

After I have my coffee, and look to see if there is any e-mail (not usually any more, e-mail seems much less popular as a communicative media) I have to go back up the stairs to shit. I encounter two of the major problems I'm gonna have presently. Standing up from a position where my butt is lower than my knees, and wiping my own ass. Sometimes, I do okay, and other times I have to take a shower to get clean. I can't bend my wrist around to position the toilet paper so very well, but the worst part is the actual wiping, which can hurt so bad I truly wanna cry like a baby.

I live alone. There's no one here to help me or to whine to. There is nobody here to sympathize with my situation nor feel compassion if I were start crying like a baby. I'm not lonely. I always expected to get old alone. How could I have imagined ahead of time that my body would be racked with pain each and every time I moved?

I expect to forget, more and more, that I will forget the things that involved learning and dedicated practice to make happen. I had to learn practically everything I do in the bathroom, except that I learned initially to do it in an outside toilet. I am beginning to realize how embarrassing the performance of my toilette can possibly be.

I still seem mentally alert, but then again, I live alone, so there is no feedback to be able to realize if that's really true or not. Because of what I have difficulty in doing, I have more and more time to do nothing. I can't just sit and watch television, because watching the stuff they create to sell stuff to sexually active people (or wannabes) irritates me beyond measure. Practically always, I know the ending of TV shows before they begin. Instead of getting more and more excited by the hype to come to a conclusion, I get bored and flip channels constantly, then get disgusted because I already know I'm not going to find a program to interest me, and do nothing but fume. What a drag, man.

I don't know why people continue to visit me. I have a habit of telling them in no uncertain fashion how their best-laid plans will never come to fruition, and when they return from their predicted failure, they don't get much sympathy because I already told them their strategy won't work, and why. I think many of my friends are just masochists. Sometime I think I'm a masochist for having friends like them.

I disclaim knowing the truth about anything. I write here to amuse myself and to have something to do. I can't afford professional entertainment. Even cable or dish TV. The arthritis has eased off before. I'm hoping it'll do that again. Very, very soon, if I were to have my choice in the matter. It's getting to the place where I won't be able to squeeze the trigger if I choose suicide.

Amoral Prig

I can't sleep much at night because it hurts to roll over or move in the bed much at all. But, mostly, I'm very emotionally sensitive and find myself reviewing some of the terrible mistakes I made in my life with people.

There was a series of incidents that happened during my twenties, because i don't know the difference between love and lust. They're both the same to me, but apparently not to others. It took a long time for me to understand what the truth in each situation was. Some people I've actually loved for their character and integrity, and what I felt emotionally was sorta like respect or gratitude, and yet I mistook our shared feeling for lust. Nothing ever happened physically in any of these incidents. The humiliation I suffered happened when I said things that indicated I had mistaken their fond intentions, and they were disappointed I had taken their efforts to help me prepare myself for the world seemed to offend them beyond belief.

I had a female teacher in high school who went out of her way to help me understand my potential. After I had gotten out of high school and joined the Navy, I came home on leave and went by her house intentionally to seduce her. I wasn't a high school boy any more or her student. I went over there convinced that's what she had always wanted. The hurt look on her face turned to anger. She rightfully demanded I leave her property and never come back. I left immediately, horrified with myself, and I never saw her again. I still wonder how I could have made such a faux pas and acted on it. Events like this was what made me wonder if I was truly insane.

Sometime when I remember incidences like this in my life, it astounds me that I would ever be able to distinguish other people's thoughts and feelings as right or wrong compared with mine. The incident with this teacher remains a puzzle for me. I see these incidences in the media recently where female high school teachers get caught having sex with their students. It makes me wonder if I didn't interpret my teacher's feeling correctly. Even if nothing happened, that doesn't mean she didn't feel what I felt like she did.

The world I live in seems to get stranger with each passing day. I seem to be more in time with ti-me. I don't have many visitors these days (as always), but fewer still because my next door neighbors, my youngest brother and his wife, have been outta town for a week. He's supposed to be back sometime this weekend, but his wife is going to a seminar to meet the Dalai Lama.

Since they've been gone I've been thinking about how she's gonna act when she returns home after getting all serious about Buddhism for a week. I sorta hope she don't undergo some spiritual conversion I have to act pleasant about upon her return. We have a long-running conversation going about spiritual stuff. My brother wisely ignores us while we're carrying on like maniacs about the dead past burying it's dead.

On the other hand, as an airy Libran, she may dismiss the entire seminar as if it were only a form of entertainment she paid for as an amusement. Like it's no more than the expected music of the ship's dance band while going on an ocean cruise to the Bahamas. Aquarius rising, she might not show the least interest in discussing her venture when she gets back.

I'm glad my brother will be home today. I've been feeding his dogs over at his house, and keeping an eye on things at his place while he was gone. Me? I have a habit of burning stuff when it becomes cumbersome. Why would I not? All my junky stuff can be replaced with one or two trips to the Good Will store, but that ain't like it is with other people's stuff. They not only get attached to their possessions, but they mourn if something happens to them, as if it's the end time.

If you could interpret my natal astrology chart, you would not be able to ignore how feeble my earthly tools are for being responsible. This just ain't the life for it. Maybe down the road. Responsibility in astrology, for the most part, is represented by the Sign of Capricorn, and it's ruling planet Saturn. Anybody who wants to know about why they exhibit positive or negative attributes when it comes to being a responsible person can find the answer with a thorough study of Saturn and it's attached me-and-thee-ings (meanings). I.E., Saturn, what is the relationship between the possibilities you stand for, and me?

How am I hanging with the responsibility thing in this particular lifetime? What's the prognosis? What's my possibilities in real time for good health and riches. What is the tie-to-me (time). Saturn represents time. Saturn represents old age. Saturn in my natal chart occupies the Sixth House of health. Bummer.

Saturn also represents bones, and I got troubles with my bones in the old age Saturn seems to have planned for me. Until recently, I have thought that I'd gotten around what seemed promised to me, but not anymore. I seem to be getting forced by circumstances to reach for certain possibilities that the system of astrology appears to claim I'm not gonna get to. That may have something to do with the reason I changed oracles.

Ribbit

Winter has always been associated with discomfort. If not the discomfort of cold weather, then the discomfort of having to wear a lot of clothes to stay warm. That means washing clothes, and if you do it by hand, take my word for it youngsters, its a real drag. Particularly where the river you go to in order to wash clothes ain't got no rocks in it to beat the dirt out. Like here on the coastal plains. Rocks no bigger than my balled-up fist are such a rarity we pick them up and take them home to be treasured. I have a quartz river rock that's been smoothed and rounded like any other river rock that's been there long sitting on my coffee table. My visitors can't not pick it up and look it over, and turn it in their hands to feel it's texture.

The coastal plains in the United States is not a small area. It's just specifically located below New York City down on the Jersey shores and continues uninterrupted by rock outcrops all the way down to Florida. The Gulf of Mexico has a coastal plain, but some of it is coral rock. Once you go north of Tampa, though, you're back into the mud and swamps of the bayous until you get to Texas, and the entire gulf coast of Texas has a deep coastal plain that can run hundreds of miles inland in places. It seems like anywhere you have a real coastal plain, there are also off-shore islands made of shifting sands. Padre Island off Texas looks almost exactly like the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

Not only do old men like to gather and sit in the sunlight all over the world, but there are folk tales and myths in most cultures about the winter solstice blues. The holiday blues. Short days and cloudy skies. Seattle during the rainy season where people put up special lights to keep from getting the blues.

There is also the myths and legends about getting too much Sun, and illnesses like heat stroke. I personally know all about that. I've written several times about passing out unconscious while plowing in a cotton field with a mule. The mule might have realized I was having a heat stroke before I did. I could have laid out there in the open sunlight for as much as two hours. My family said I never was quite "right" after that. How would I know? I was me the entire time. I still am.

In the same way that I'm a docetic spirit attempting to make an immortal physical body to live in while I'm visiting Earth, I'm a human being trying to make itself into an immortal spirit that will live for eternity in God's heaven. Double bind. I've been trying to develop a rap for that, most recently using Sartre's terms and expressions to see if that might help. I like it okay, but many of the people I converse with ain't exactly buying it. They go along to get along, I suppose, but while their mouth is smiling and their head is nodding, their eyes don't shine with understanding.

It's not like I'm gonna give up on Sartre's stuff. After all, my take on his thoughts had to come through an interpreter. A translator, who probably did the best they could in making his French into English. I'd probably still have some difficulty if I studied and became fluent in the French language. Besides, I don't know if I"m trying to say the same thing Sartre said. I could be, I just don't know.

I created the clumsy metaphor yesterday about a blind date and going to the restroom to think about my situation, and to strategize about the most polite way of getting out of the blind date without anybody's feelings being hurt. I had a point in generating that metaphor, but I'm not sure I made it.

I identified with Sartre's metaphor about what happens when you're sitting alone in a room, and somebody shows up for some reason, and intrudes on your private moment. I experience that everyday I receive a visitor here. I spend 95% + of my time alone in my house or out in my yard that's not visible to the public. I'm a year shy of 70 years old, and I've spent a great deal of my life either in the company of others or out in the public view. I know the difference between what it's like to be alone and unwatched by others, and being out and about in the public arena.

I don't know if I'm a person who spends a lot of time contemplating the condition my condition is in because I like the very idea of "being" that kind of person or whether I really am a contemplative sort of person. I'm certainly capable of thinking that's the coolest type of person to be and forcing myself to be alone by an act of self-discipline, but that's not why I do it, but I would say that wouldn't I?

The whole point of me spending so much time alone is that's the onlyest way I can perform certain tricks of the trade. It's the only time I can enter the subjective state of being-for-myself. Your milage may vary.

How would I know? I can only project my idea of myself upon your behavior and call it macaroni. I have to let go of your presence in my subjective space to not project who-I-think-I-am-is upon who-you-think-you-are. The easiest way is to send you on an errand. Sometimes I'd almost swear that with a little bit of luck, I can send the entire population of the Earth on an errand, just so I can be allone to do what I need to do for-myself. Conversely, I can't enter a state of being-for-the-other without you around, so don't go wandering off outta sight and outta mind without properly notifying me or I'll turn you into a frog. A frog like me. A tree frog. A female tree frog if I'm horny or maybe I'll change myself into the opposite of who/what I "think" you are. It's gonna be a long day, isn't it?

Old People And Sunshine

I didn't stop performing music because I was bored with it. I stopped performing music because I didn't care whether anyone was impressed with my music anymore. I stopped getting the urge. I hardly do anything anymore that ain't urgent.

That's why I"m not so bothered about this arthritis and carpal tunnel pain causing me to stop playing the scales every day. Maybe the urgency was a self-generated process that didn't ups-urge from a sincere source. Still, I've played some scale sequences each of the last couple of days. I paid for it in pain. But, I'm getting kind of lackadaisical about pain. It still hurts, but avoiding it at all costs is more painful, but in a different way.

I thought I would make more mistakes playing the scales yesterday than I did. I was a little slower going about it, but as much out of the anticipation that things wouldn't go as swimmingly as they did, as my forgetfulness. The way my forgetfulness showed up more than any other way was in my delight in the way relational insight still amazed me in real time. I still recognized patterns anew even though I haven't been practicing every day.

This is not to say that the situation with my hands and wrists is any better. In fact, I'm having considerable trouble with my elbows too. Perhaps even more than with my hands. I'm still impressed that my taking a lot more Vitamin D will help, but even more convinced that it might take some time for it to show up as curative.

I had heard of rickets before. I can't say I actually knew what people were talking about when they spoke of rickets. It's having weak bones and they have a tendency to bend. Many critically bow-legged people got that way from rickets. It happens as a result of Vitamin D deficiency, and was practically eliminated by supplementing it in the milk served in school lunches.

It hasn't been that long ago in human years they discovered what vitamins were, much less how they affected the human diet. I only know the names of the chemicals that make up vitamins by their assigned name. I thought it was interesting that Vitamin D was called that because it was the fourth vitamin discovered, and so they named it with the fourth letter of the alphabet.

I took 40,000 IUs of Vitamin D supplement pills yesterday, and spent a right good amount of time outside in the sun. The more I learn about what has to be there for a person to get a sufficient amount of vitamins and how often they have to have them, the more I understand some unthought about behaviors. Most of them seem to be used as excuses for getting out into the sun so their skin would make Vitamin D.

Most recently, I keep seeing images of old men gathering at the court house or the country stores, and sitting around in the warm sun gossiping. That goes along with old people moving south in their retirement. Especially the old people from the northern latitudes who don't get enough sun in the winters to make Vitamin D with their skin.

I suspect there are many metaphors that preach the blessings of getting out into the sun often enough to do some good. Metaphors and myths would be the only way to learn about how being in the sun can help until the vitamins were discovered. I'd bet good money there are all sorts of Biblical passages that imply the truth before it became literally known for sure. The Hindu sutras have gotta be full of those kinds of stories. I'm gonna keep my eyes open for those kinds of references in the studies I've made. Why am I always the last to know?