Astrology. Can't Ya Read Tha Signs?

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Man's only hope is to possess no hope at all. I had to write that silly statement down while I was watching a documentary on Tibetan Buddhism on PBS, so I might as well make it into a blog entry.

Tibetan Buddhism is not time's only victim. There was a big whoop-dee-doo over the Taliban blowing up those huge stone Buddhas in Afghanistan within the last decade. The story of how the statues got there in the first place became a little intriguing to me.

Buddhism apparently spread into all of the mideastern countries. I had never realized how deeply it penetrated into that part of the world until the radical blowing up the Buddha statues anchored my attention to any stories I might run into about how far Buddhism radiated from India. I write that it spread from India, but I ain't gwine bet the farm on whether I'm right or not.

It was another documentary or perhaps two of them that helped establish a concerted curiosity about how strongly the tenets of Buddhism affected the early Christians and Jews. The Islamic Taliban's behavior seems demonstrative of how the Muslims currently view Buddhism, but I don't think Islam was an established faith when Buddhism was strong in Afghanistan, but the farm is safe from that bet too.

The latest documentary I watched was about an old man who was obsessed with finding a Reclining Buddha in the valley behind the Afghani standing Buddha statues that had either been deliberately covered up or was ignored and buried by the ages. This film provided considerable speculation about how deep into these now Muslim regions the Buddhist missionaries penetrated. I seem to have concluded that many of the Messiah cults were initiated by the mysterious Asian religion.

I wrote something about how mimicking other people's (or insect's) behavior to get what they got for ourselves is the mechanism by which we be-co-me with that other One we model. I've written a lot about mimicry (me-me-cry-ing) as desire or lust. We "yearn" to be as fortunate as some other we envy. We "ache" for the accouterments of the eight noble paths. We "want" the results others appear to get from "doing the right thing" or being possessed by "the right stuff".

In my world this sort of goal setting became epitomized by my interest in "neurolinguistic programming". Thats actually a copy-right-ed nayme of Richard Bandler's who will surely and gleefully sue you if you use it to make money without giving him so-me of it. No blame.

I never had any intention of using Richard Bandler's idea to make money for myself, so when I attended neurolinguistic programming seminars it was more to get brain-washed via hypnosis than to learn Bandler's system for making a perfectly respectable living.

Bandler and Grinder wrote a book about their explorations using hypnosis to program behavior called Frogs Into Princes. It's a very readable book. I got very excited over the contents because I already understood everything they were about because I had learned hypnosis from the same source they modeled to come up with their own version. Milton Erickson.

In this system there are two basic skills needed to do very entertaining stuff. Hypnosis and modeling. Apparently, around 99% + of the mundane population use these two skills in a very competent way already, but it's an unconscious process they don't grok in real time while it's actually occurring. The method uses hypnosis to help the curious seeker how to form habits that will hopefully and eventually lead to the missing insight.

Becoming conscious of events disguised by paradox requires outside help. The reason people are unconscious of skills they routinely use without knowing it is that they are the manipulators of the skills and can't self-observe their behavior objectively. No blame.

These "skills" are not abstract skills. Knowing yourself means that you will be known, and that possibility allone is enough to scare most people away from wanting to find out what they're told they can't find out.

I wouldn't not be so foolish as to suggest that hypnosis can't be learned from reading books about it. God knows I tried. For some juvenile reason I seemed to have taken an oath not to pay for spiritual instruction, but in the case of hypnosis I coughed up my teacher's course fee well before I realized that hypnosis is the key ingredient of any religious practice.

I consider my paying for my first hypnosis school to be a very fortunate "accident". I didn't think that at first, but as I began to realize the benefits of understanding suggestion itself, I soon abandoned the ridiculous idea of not paying for instruction of any kind. It's the easiest way to get these purveyors of pedantry off my back. Just give them money. It's all they ever wanted in the first place.

Nobody ever taught me anything I didn't already know. It's so difficult for me to remember that when I get extremely curious about why certain things can happen beyond the scope of my... errr... "kith and ken." That's where my miserliness comes into play. "I knew that. I already knew that. Why did I give that guy/gal money to learn something I already knew?"

I have an old habit of giving stuff to people to receive something I already got. What I possibly don't have and do gain for my money's worth is the words to describe what nobody else can apparently perceive but me.

Me? Yeah, you know the One I-am-is talking about. That me. The One that "... thou shalt have no other God before Me"... me. The One that invites you to "come, be with me". Be whatever ya wanna by co-opting my me for your's. Why would you not? It's burden is light.

Recently, this guy... this worthy opponent... accused me of being like he would be on so-me of what might be his worst days. Basically he was accusing me of channeling the most evil spirits possible. Thank God he was projecting, but he used the term "paraclete" to do it.

Paraclete? What the hell I should know about "paraclete"? So, being the crossword puzzle addict I am is, I looked it up. It's real easy on a Mac. Astonishingly easy. The automatic spell-checker underlines a misspelled word with red dots and boots up the Dictionary.app and shows the right spelling. Click on it and the errata disappears.

However, it's the other stuff the Dictionary.app does that truly amazes me. The newest version allows me to highlight any word, then right-click it, and a menu pops up that includes looking up the word or expression in the dictionary, Wikipedia, and Google, and then the Mail.app acts as a browser.

Paraclete? It's a docetic spirit that can't become human. Read for yo'self so you'll see I have not made this up to suit my somewhat dubious non-point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraclete

This is just another example of me learning something I already knew, but in other words. Maybe dozens of other words in other ways. I'm not alone. I honestly don't think there is an end to it nor should there be. Everybody knows everything all the ti-me, they just don't know they gnow it, yet. '-)
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