God: The Human Touch

God The Human Touch

August 25, 2008

In my last blog post I went through the usual exercise of pointing out how a literal translation of the Bible is next to meaningless. It's hard to resist. It's a time honored tradition and so damn easy.

I'm sure there are religious people who get the mythic imagery. As Joseph Campbell once said, that's not Jesus on the cross, that's You. Maybe the Jesus Freaks get that on some level

The point of the Blood Of Jesus Christ isn't that your Lord And Savior is taking your punishment for you. That's the cookies and milk for spiritual kindergarteners. The so-called Good News that the Christians can't help regurgitating is just the barker outside trying to get you into the tent.

The whole point of the crucifixion is that taken together with the resurrection represents a transformation from one state to another, specifically the state from being a confused animal (the death of the body) to being a creature of enlightenment (resurrection as spirit). This is the ritual performed through baptism where Christians, like Jesus, are transitioned to enlightenment, i.e. born again.

The gnostic traditions that became the early Christianity of the brutal Flavius Valerius Constantinus, I mean Saint Constantine, sometime after he murdered his wife and oldest son, seem to be focusing on these transformations, ritualized through a series of baptisms (water, air, and fire). (See The Jesus Mysteries.)

What else might be lurking behind the misplaced, mistranslated, and misrepresented ideas of the early Christians that could actually have spiritual value, despite the tangled years of European dark ages and superstition?

Could God Himself be in there somewhere?

There is something tenacious about these Abrahamic religions, as though the adherents sense there's something really there even though they can't put their finger on it and the only thing they get from the Bible or the pulpit is a bunch of bedtime stories, fear tactics, and the cosmic guilt trip.

The point of my last post was that, whatever there might be left for science to discover about the possibilities between the quantum foam, you're never going to find it looking at the bible stories as history lessons.

Where do you go once you abandon the facade of Christianity? Atheism, of course, but there has to be more to Atheism than being against something. The very word presumes the existence of theism, and then describes us as being against that.

I also don't believe in leprechauns or volcano gods, and the only reason I'm not called an amagmist is that there's not millions of people running around knocking on doors telling us all to go throw money into Kilauea, (because there's no way to spend that money on tax-free property).

If there is anything to all the ravings of the religious rabble we have to look forward to science, not backward into the twisted history of Jesus and Mary Magdalene or by continuing to bicker about irreducible complexity, for crying out Darwin.

But even before cracking open the quarks and delving into the subtle mechanisms of how consciousness manifests and reflects amid the aether, there's a simple starting point.

Bottom line: You are God.

That is, you are able to imagine and then execute. You are God because you can think of a new patio design, and then build it. You can hum a tune and put words to it. You can think a thought and write it down. You are the creator. The more of that you can do, the more in the "image of God" you are and the better and more enriched your life will be. If you don't bother to think, act, plan, and all that, you end up in the pit of unrealized mental potential energy and your life, money, and relationships will crumble.

The whole gambit is to get you to give your power away, to the Church, to the political machine, to the fear-mongering of drug companies, or the cheap promise of get-rich-quick, no-money-down flock fleecers.

Keep your power and take care of business.

What I don't know is how deep this mystery goes. Sure, it's easy to say, "I should cut the grass," and then go out, cut the grass and not notice that you have done something deeply magickal and profound.

When we write music, blogs, and stories, when we make things with our hands, we are doing great magick.

The real magick starts inside us with imagination, and I think the whole point to Magick is being able to focus our intent in such a way that we perceive new opportunities.

One of my favorite examples is Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker. This has a lot of examples about how poor people think differently about money.

Is wealth really as simple as thinking differently about money? Mostly, yes, because when you start thinking differently you start learning differently, and then you start acting differently. If you know you're poor, you're right. If that's just the way you are, then okay, be broken. You don't have to be. That's the secret.

In all things, how you see yourself controls or liberates you, and getting a hold of that is the purpose and magic of Magick.

Like the man says in Cool Hand Luke, you just got to get you mind right.