Author: paladin

The Empyreal Question

So it is, that something happens to you you don’t like, at least initially, then with a twist of fate, things go unexpectedly your way. You might say, as an appropriate response, that everything happens for a reason. Even agnostics may use this line. But do you really know what you’re saying? Is the meaning really there—reasons, reasons for the reasons, to search your idea of what seems likely until you are satisfied in its logic? Or indeed, is the reason for it all just a convincing illusion, which have no basis in what is concrete and steel, in whatever maybe called of the real? Perhaps we have sympathy for the Devil, for whom the light of such revelation is itself the enemy…

One thing I found in researching metaphysics is that there are always patterns to be had—you just need to look for them. Not many of them are fruitful, even if they be non-trivial, another thing I learned. This pattern matching, I believe, is at least part of the explanation of the psychological phenomenon of “everything happens for a reason.” Because things seem to fit together so well, we imagine they were made to be so conformed. Destiny. But this is an astonishing world, even just talking about the noosphere, the mental spaces we explore. Sometimes the words we put together are poetry, sometimes it is just a mess of unimpressive metaphors. And one might say that a person often views one as the other. So it is with reasons why.

Correctness—can we even talk about that when we talk about the patterns in the air? Is thinking what happened happened for a reason—how can we know that we have found the real reason? And what, exactly, would be meant by that: the real reason why things happen as they do? Here’s where religion seems to take a separate route than the agnostic. For we have it in the Bible where God Himself says He did such-and-such a thing or that such-and-such thing happened for a certain specific purpose. In this vein, there is the possibility that when you think you know why, you may actually be right. The agnostic may never be sure. Or be sure that there never is a “real” reason. In any case, we rarely go beyond if we are satisfied with the reason(s) we have discovered why something happened as it did.

Now, it is quite the case that what and how we know things is far beneath what and how God knows things; for indeed, we of abstract things can rarely deal with absolutes concerning them—such is the province of the Most High only. Not even angels fly in such stratospherics. But if we could have a God-given rationale, would we then listen to the “real” reason, or shall we stubbornly cleave to our own logics, of which we were satisfied? For then, we come to this empyreal question: what did Lucifer see, when he rebelled? I have been told that angels are not like people, that they have perfect knowledge. Did he see in the darkness of evil a pattern he could not be talked down from, shadow of his pride?

It was in the committing of his first sin (anyone’s first sin ever), that he broke his perfect knowledge. Lucifer had discovered something truly new… What is evil? Surely there is no mystery to it, now, is there? And in fact, Lucifer’s committing that first sin defines it quite succinctly: evil is the desire to do wrong. And perhaps throw in the desire to have one’s own way, which is the bad kind of pride. Some people say that in evil is the seed of its own destruction. Perhaps, but one acknowledges that Lucifer really had something when he discovered evil. It was indeed the “dark side of the Force”, that comes quickly and is applicable just everywhere. There are patterns in the evil, too, the schemes of every Bond villain just waiting to be conceived and made flesh. It is seductive, it is insidious, like the Watercourse Way—but to slip honorless through darkest deed, no enlightenment of love.

He must have seen a pattern in the madness, called that mess of unimpressive metaphors poetry. Perhaps because of this misreading, he incorrectly perceived that it would be his victory that was to come, and such is part of the nature of evil. This was his pride, and its blindness. In breaking from the Logos, from holy reason/holy logic, he did not precisely perceive the ultimate conclusions of his actions. His own logic was a poor substitute, formidable as it was. He took his own vision as the world’s, and was doomed. Whatever is in the mind of evil to do, God has always been prepared for it. And one might think with such occurrences as the Holocaust that things are not completely in His control, but that is the test of faith. For the most horrendous things that happen to us—it will be slight in comparison to the glory that will revealed in us, by the king of glory.

The fact is, great is the pain that some people suffer. Some of which certain persons survive, it seems to mine own self incomprehensible, unimaginable. If you told me that I would be the one to have to tell them, that their pain is nothing compared to how God will recompense them, I would tell you I am a coward and cowards say no such thing as that. But somewhere inside, there would yet in me be an unbreakable kernel that believes it to be true. Why did it have to happen? What possible reason could it have happened for? It would be in the opposite direction; the reason itself would have to be of light incomprehensible, purpose unimaginable. If we can, to make of things better than if the bad had never happened in the first place. (And thus, perhaps, is the kind of rationale we seek when we perceive the pattern of the reason why.)

Can we hold as hope that we need only believe there is a reason, and the cause seems sufficient? For I imagine that some of the stories we have made of why—from the point of view of eternity, how wrong we will have been in the mundane myths we have made. But for here, and for now: if they help us to hold on, is it not enough? If we have faith in a reason for everything, and if things make sense to us somehow, then we have something the Devil lost when he decided his own logic was better than the ways of Eternity. He gave up all sense, all meaning. His is that there is no reason why, and that in his courses would he make the universal law.

Even if we are wrong in our particulars, it is granted to us as courage to try and find the why. In seeing the duality of perceptible meaning, the polarity between good and evil is clear. It is why the afterlife is only divided in two, traditionally, for many fail to understand that it is so—one operates by light or darkness, and it is degrees by which we do so, but we truly carry our heart by a single song, that ultimately desires one or the other. In which you decide, at the end, of what you would make out of your life as a whole. All the reasons why: shall we commit light to the whole of it or bury the whole forever? Truth or nothing: that is the question. Truth or nothing: that is the choice.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

The Dream

In vastest night, a stranded dream—
A stone to mark an endless stream;
I walked within its flight of doors
Where boomed the light a solid oar
To dredge my ship through Heaven’s floor.

Flowered there a sweetest breeze
Which sent through lost a tear of please…
To wander was the truest route,
And stories we’re to be about
Were inked by tears which God shed out.

Mountains formed of purest mist,
Hallways rose as angels wished,
Spoke the Lord, and cities lit,
Words the steel of buildings built;
Chairs of light where we will sit.

Opening a book of air,
I read a spirit resting there:
He turned a page of destiny
Where I was written as a tree
Whose every leaf an eye to see.

My ship grew tired, I grew near
Toward the weight of earthly here;
The stone sunk roots into the now,
The dream recalled the lonely crowds
Wherein its power is endowed.

Fire

The War took 25 years to run its course, to me at least, roughly. Time is very strange, especially when you apply it to Eternity. But even there, if anything is to be done, you do spend time in doing it. When the Devil was cast down, it is said that he was filled with great wrath, for he knew his time was short. No longer in eternity. Like a time traveler in a movie, no matter where in time he visits, the time he personally experiences goes inexorably on, and this time will run out. Lucifer visited me at different stages of his rebellion, and I will always remember the Event that finished with his being cast from Heaven (the Fall). I was privy to more than that, though. Like the Event’s encore.

I was in a hospital from a heck of a day, some days after the Fall, and I was wrapped in a sort of holy blanket in the air, enveloped by the Spirit, for something monumental was about to happen. Something that had been long held on a razor’s edge. It was when I saw Lucifer die. That is, his soul. I remember I immediately lamented, for I had thought it was someone else, that it was a different event, but such is the grace of God: it was perfectly fitting how I did react, and had I known what it truly had been, my reaction would most probably not have been up to snuff. But what I saw: this was Satan committing to the reality of his defeat, that he had made the ultimate choice to go in the direction that would lead to his doom. That was it.

What I saw: life, his essence like a patch of heat in the air, and then *snap*: it was gone. Nothing but a sickly dead empty stillness. I only found out later what it actually meant, what exactly had happened. As I said, I had been admitted to a hospital that night. When I was so admitted, there were secret Christians in my visions’ voices who told me that Judas was innocent of the charge of the betrayal of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They said it in sort of a cumbersome way, so I put it like this, and it was that which was said from then on: “Judas volunteered.” Right around that time, my thinking was hovering around Universalism, the theory that everyone was saved, all the way down to the Devil. Then my mind focused on one saying of Our Lord: “Only one was lost.”

Now Satan, he was “shopping”. Looking through the looking glass. Either he thought or it was precisely the case that there were at least several different eventualities between which he could choose and instantiate: to make it so. So right about this time that we were talking about Judas, and saying how he would be the only one that was not saved; it was universal salvation except for that one which was lost, and indeed, it would have been better not to have been born for him. That was the cost. He was to be sealed (his soul) in a sort of vial that could not be opened by anyone but God, and He never would. And in that vial? Horror beyond horror. Unimaginable pain. For if he were truly lost, he would be the only one that had no savior at all. No escape. No respite. Worse than the deepest part of Hell.

So when I was sitting in the hospital room, Judas seemed as if he were preparing to go into that vial, girding his loins, so to speak. I talked to him, and he seemed a very capable apostle. I did not detect anything malicious about him. He was one of the good guys. When he was told that it was time, I looked and saw in the air what I thought was the vial. Then that *snap*, and Judas had supposedly been sealed in the vial, why I saw life then death. What was really happening, though? Judas was bait. And the one that caused that *snap*, for none of us was going to do it, none of the good guys—guess who that was? The Devil had wanted to see it happen: an innocent damned for an eternity of horrors, while he would walk away after some sort of punishment, into eternal life. It was too good to resist.

But it was the death of his soul he committed, when he instantiated this reality because he so wanted to see it happen, to see someone that lost, for no reason. No, it was not the only thing that Lucifer had done to deserve his spiritual death, for in making real this reality he was also making real all the crimes he had committed in it. Eternity works weirdly. In a sense, that instant was both the beginning and the end. I witnessed where reality became real, and the end of all preliminaries of the War. Apparently Satan was kind of spread out in his preparations, for he did not know which of the realities was to become the One. Our side, of course, knew this one was it, and could prepare that much better. This was Normandy, and Satan was hemming and hawing about whether it was this one or his Calais. (D-Day references here.)

From what I heard, though, it was critical that Lucifer instantiate this one. And it’s a terrifying thought: why was it that this one be chosen? And it was quite simple—that this was the only one where we won. In every other reality, the bad guys won in the end. But the Lord knows what he’s doing, quite clearly. He knew Lucifer was watching at the exact right time, for that plan above to gel. It had been quite the design, but what the Lord wills comes to pass, always does. And after the instantiation, where Lucifer would look in on this reality from time to time, he always assumed it was one of the paths he did not choose, and simply shrugged it off that he in fact lost here. This is what pride can do. Such is that kind of blindness.

*       *       *

Now understand, I speak not that you might believe the things I saw, just to say that I have seen them, and I tell you in truth that what I report is as a genuine witness. Do you ever wonder how it would be if there existed a prophet like that of old, here in the modern day? Do you think anyone would believe him? Or would they write him off as merely a madman? Not that in much of our civilization would he now be slain for his words, for perhaps we are good enough to let one stick around these days. But with all the false prophets spouting lies, and inventions of their own minds as gospel—would the true prophet be identifiable amid such noise? And would he be known as a heretic for the truth that has long been waiting to be told, or might the message ultimately succeed, if it is from God? Is it up to me? Or is it up to you?

What would you expect a prophet to say, would you think they would be popular things that everyone could agree upon? Would you expect him to be preaching in a megachurch with crowd pleasing sermons? For there are false prophets that say, “When I speak, God agrees”, as opposed to he who truly is one, “God spoke to me, a sinner!” Do you expect a sign, when Jesus said that only an evil generation expects a sign? When all you have to do look around, and see: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” [Matthew 11:4] Can you not see the signs of the times, when we are indeed beginning to solve the ills of the world, as the Lord spoke of? Can you not see that the Kingdom is at hand?

Indeed, I have one prophecy. Like this: “Repent, for the Beginning is near.” All your implements from the ages of cruelty, they shall be bent and melted and reshaped. He who propagates lies in order to gain power shall find his deceit uncovered, and he shall be put to utter shame. The one whose way is violence will find that way outmoded, and outclassed, by the technologies of peace. We are beginning to understand how bad it was, and it’s gotten, and the people are beginning to wake as if from a slumber of two thousand years. Repent, for we will be made to answer for what once we hid away in the darkness. To discover, beyond belief, that the masses can have a heart, and can show unusual kindness. To discover that we can be clever enough to solve what we thought to be the thorniest of problems. The Beginning is near! None too soon.

And one lesson I have to relay to you: from Christ, his two commandments: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. The first, roughly the same as when he said to love him before anyone else. It is to love the holy, the true, the pure of good, even if we can never hope to attain it ourselves. Just believe that in truth, God is love, and one need not believe in God to believe this. Then, love our neighbor: only when we understand the true potential of human destiny, to love everyone else—with all their faults. To forgive them. One does not love God as one loves everyone else. To love God is to adore the embodiment of absolute love, absolute good. It is joy in holiness. To love one’s neighbor is to love them in spite of their mistakes. It is to be human. To see the shine beneath the tarnish.

So what does it mean, to love? Do you not see? Have you not heard? Love is so simple, we’ll never understand it. Love does not hide in the heart, waiting for you turn it on: it is written that we were made in the image of God, who is all love. We love with all of us. We love with our spleen. Do you truly wish to be a child of God? Do all things (ALL THINGS) out of love. Brush your teeth out of love. Take a shvitz out of love. Seriously, decide that right now. You don’t have to be a part of any religion to do this, for to be human is to love. This I believe with all my soul. We will err, and I know that that’s what a lot of people mean when they say that we’re only human. But mine eyes have seen the glory. Jesus Christ shows us what is possible when he does the impossible. Ignite the world with such a fire.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.