I'm so enthralled by the notion that anybody with an internet connected computer can use one of the search engines and get an answer for most any question that enters their punkin' haid. Literally. There is no real good reason to ask another person a sincere question that can't be answered even more precisely by something somebody has written and posted on the internet.
Recently I've begun entering questions into Google just like I would ask a human being using the same language I would use with a human being, and I get excellent results on the very first page of the Results Page. My other strategy is to start entering in as many individual words I can think of that have even a remote connection to the question I want answered.
It's taken me a long time to learn how to ask the questions that will get me the response I'm looking for. The Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching was the main source I used to accomplish this. I highly recommend a curious person to learn to use the I Ching for the questions they have about life. In my opinion, there is no oracle that can teach a person how to ask the right question better than this book, but it's fairly complex and takes patience to do the learning curve to get started.
Getting started in this case means forming a habit of approaching the I Ching if you have a question you want answered. I feel like I mastered what the I Ching needs to teach me more and so I don't use the book to approach any more. I use people as oracles these days, and from their reaction, nothing could please them more.
Even though I mastered the I Ching, I had to learn to use the internet search engine by itself. My expertise at using the I Ching didn't tranfer over to an expertise in using a search engine. My favorite search engine is Google, and has been since I first became aware of it.
The reason I had was simple. They had a page with a logo and a box for entering the topic of the search and that was about it. The Yahoo page was cluttered/littered with lots and lots of self-serving links that seemed confusing.
The oracle in the I Ching uses randomness as the generator to approach the specious present. The specious present is a more accurate and specific term for the eternal now.
Young mothers pee out excess stem cells by the score in their urine. The mystics have known since the bejinning. Drinking their urine is said to promote longevity, but only if it's done during the first three months of pregnancy. Nobody seemed to know why for sure until recently. Previously, such things had to be understood by the gnosis of sha-me-n. Vestal virgins and harems were said to be very controlled groups, but for reasons unsuspected by laymen. Purity of blood line in the urine, and all that jazz.
I'm starting to believe there's a purpose in extending life and keeping old people sane. They've heard all the promises one time too many. If it gets to where they can stop dementia and Alzheimers so that enough of them care enough to speak up and call enough people liars, then maybe enough people will listen and agree to stop the madness. Do I actually believe this is possible. Not a chance in hell. The older I get, the less I care about the lies. I've begun to see them as a necessary evil.
In the end ga-me, people only perceive their own idea of the world individually. If any one of them says what they "see", the listeners interpret what they say into what they would have meant by saying the same words. That's why the Crowley quote, "Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law." has legs and can walk. Lots of people say quotable things that turn out to be as weird or weirder than your average bear.
The thing about Crowley's statement that makes so much sense to me is because we all have to interpret every event that happens within our ability to perceive. The only database around to compare what we perceive is our own experiential database based on our interpretive talents and abilities. We might as well do what we will to. Anything we want to. Because everybody perceives what they would be doing if they were us. That's unknowable in real time. All of us only see what we think is happening at any one time, and by the time an investigation into the veracity of our conclusion the world has moved on, and we find ourselves equivalently arguing with ancient sign posts.
Nobody knows. They can't know. They're too busy figuring out whether they like or dislike hearing what they would have said if they were the speaker. What they might have seen if they were the looker. What they might have tasted if they were the taster. Why not do what thou wilt? Nobody knows.
To me, that was rather shocking when I realized the lie of "No man is an island." It's more like "Islands In a Stream". Every person is an island unto themselves. Each of us perceive the world with senses we each shaped toward what we concluded was the best path with a heart that we can figure. It doesn't even matter. In my opinion, the only useful way to utilize this understanding is to keep it in mind constantly, and deliberately conduct one's behavior in the realization that everybody has their own way of seeing the world, and cautiously allowing for that to transpire is what living a life of no blame amounts to.
I like to leave the Other a lotta blanks to fill. They're gonna impose their view of what they think I meant by what I said anyway. No blame. Really. They can't not do it. They only have their own experiential database to compare what they preceptors inform them of. For most people (as if I would know), that's the only option they can conceive of. It's what I'm carelessly claiming that they've trained their sensory modalities to make sense of. They filter only for what they THINK is out there at any one ti-me.
It doesn't take a special kind of person to make the hero's journey. It's what each of us do when we dream. Either day or night dreaming. We dream on schedule during the day just like we do at night. We never stop dreaming. The hero's journey takes place in both our daydreams and what we dream at night. The way we manage our dreaming or the hero's journey is not any different either day or night. Similar to the descriptions of "lucid dreaming". First of all, either day or night, we have to realize we're dreaming in order to impose order upon what we figure is sot before us.
It might appear as if our discipline for realizing we're in some one phase of dreaming or the other 31 hours a deek (24 hours a day, seven days a week. 24 + 7 = __?). I personally don't figure a body can do that working for the man ll months a year. There is no tie-to-me (time) to reflect on YOUR own dreams or enough sanity to comfortably 'share and compare' with other dreamers. I acted like that too much of my life. The unhappiest times of my life was when I obligated myself to serve another's needs. I dig unhappiness. I can sing the blues with the best of 'em. It's just when it's a choice between being-for-the-other, and being-for-myself, I choose being-myself-for-the-other. If you can't grok that, man, then prepare for me not making myself recognizable to yo' consciousness on purpose. A man gotta do.
I don't know the truth. I'm not sure there is such a thing. I write stuff here to amuse myself. Don't take no wooden nickels.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
