master sky breathed in storms to save them till it was dry
and it threatened never to come a day they would be useful
time is lighter than the wind is invisible
the mysteries are not dark, as we once had thought
and wanderlust surfaces, as dawn dews every surface
there are no crowds i can lose myself in, i stand out
at once to find me a saint and a thief, pretending otherwise
i will dream of far places, where moonlight escapes
fly on wings that no one can see, except as whispers
fly to horizons where the city is grafted to the sky
where i touch down, roses shall grow without end
master sky is not who i want to be, such poetry
for my way is the road, even as the wanderlust i bury
i shall dig it up again when i am shrouded in darkness
and the fires are holy that light unspeakable places
and the typography of the signs are unfamiliar here
i will emerge, i think, from my imaginary chrysalis
more man than fairytale, ready always to begin
the archer at the twilight distance, whose aim is true
Tag: wisdom
The Wise Man
There was a man who wrote a book of wisdom. “If you follow every word,” he said, “you will be very happy. I know because I follow none of it, and I am very sad.” It sold very well, and the man became very famous.
Many people tried to talk to him; reporters followed him wherever he went. “Why are you following me?” he asked the reporters.
They replied, “Because you are a very wise man. We want to know what you have to say about everything.”
He thought for a moment, rubbing his chin, then said, “Everything is rubbish, if you look at it in a certain way. Everything is precious, if you look at it in another way. I look at the world in both ways—everything is precious rubbish, the garbage of God. Now, stop following me.”
The reporters jotted this down, but they did not stop following him. Moreover, there was a crowd gathered around his house who would not leave.
He asked them, “Why don’t you go home?”
“Because you are a very wise man,” they said. “We want to know how to live life.”
He paused, thinking, rubbing his chin again, then said, “Many before me have already told you how to live life. If you won’t listen to them, you won’t listen to me. Now, go home.”
The people nodded, yes, yes, but they stayed where they were.
Then the man realized his mistake—he had believed them when they said that he was a very wise man. He would show them how stupid he really was. It happened to be winter, and it was bitterly cold outside, so he took off all his clothes and walked out of his home naked.
“It is a sign!” the people shouted. “We must all be naked, like he is!” And they all took off their clothes and stood shivering in the cold.
He stared at all of them for a little while, then as he turned his back to them to go back inside, he told them all, “Put your clothes back on. You’ll all catch a cold.”
He realized from this that no matter what he did, the people would think him wise, and they would do what he did, no matter how stupid it was. He was sorry that he had ever written the book, of which he followed nothing anyway. He just happened to know the heart well enough to know what was good for it, even if it was advice he’d never follow himself.
Then, he knew what he had to do; he began writing another book. This time, he told people to do exactly what he always did, which was the complete opposite of the first book. The publisher was confused, but the man was famous now, so the publisher published it. The people were confused, but they believed everything that came from the man, so they did what the book told them to do.
Reporters began to ask him, “Why did you contradict yourself in your second book?”
“Because,” he said, “the first book made me famous, so I wrote the opposite to take that fame away.”
The people outside his home were unhappy, since they did everything the second book told them to do. They cried, “Why did you do this to us? We did everything the second book told us to do, and now we are very sad.”
He answered them, “Now you are just like me, because I do all those things, and so you all must now be very wise. So if you have any questions about life or anything, ask yourself.”
He went inside his house, and eventually, all the reporters and other people went away. For the first time in his life, the man was happy. But he didn’t try to figure out why—that was how the trouble had started in the first place.
A Mystery So Obvious
There are mysteries, there are secrets, from the beginning of time to the last day there have been, and are, and will be. Many of these are relatively trivial when unmasked, simple to comprehend once the tarp is lifted from them, to wonder why they seemed so strange as to what their answer could be, what was beneath when they had been covered over. I’ve seen some secrets when the Archangel took me to see from the angelic heights some of what happens in this world, and why—and I think I cannot share them with you, not now: because of those reasons why there are secrets in the world, why there are mysteries. Simply put, things are kept from us because we are not ready for them, and they are revealed when we are. There is much chaos in the world—for the world was born from chaos—but the pervading order, that you may split a block of wood and the Lord is there, it gives true meaning to what is meant to be, when the mystery unfolds, and wide-eyed does one say, “Glory be to God.”
The world has been much a world at war. Yes, it is true that we always dream of world peace, in the outside world, but many an evangelist will tell you that there is and always has been a war for our souls, of two kingdoms, light and dark, who battle for over us night and day; one side who can never hope to win, but that battles out of spite, out of hate. Now I tell you of a third war, which extends from the highest Heaven to the most remote corners of the earth. I can tell you of it because I have seen it end, but lo, it goes on, still, in places other than where I am; for it is a war in Eternity, the next world. Do you not know that the realm of ideas enters into the waking world every time an invention is made, or a word written? And Eternity by dreams and visions makes itself known in the world of solidities. Did you not know the unseen world was before the world that is seen, for in the beginning, there was before anything, the Logos; and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. And something we do not think about: that before the action, there was a Plan.
If there is a God who can prevent earthquakes and floods and fires and tornadoes and hurricanes, why do they happen? If there is a God who can prevent all harm, why is harm still experienced by us? I recall some skeptic who said that if Jesus Christ were the real deal, why is it that he did not do more in his time on earth, why not eradicate all disease? feed all the hungry in perpetuity? The Son of God, right? Wasn’t that what he was advertised to be? To them I say, look, friend: the Jews still don’t think he was the messiah because he was not what they expected the messiah to be. Throw your expectations out the window, because we have no say what a being greater than us is supposed to do, or be. And if this is how the Plan goes down, we should pay attention to such things as someone who says he is the Son of God and comes back from the dead to prove it.
The Plan runs into a wall, though, the idea of it: into what is called the problem of pain. If we excise the part of the problem of pain that is the problem of evil (that which is caused by the malicious intent of those with free will to do so), we basically come to the question of why there are such things as natural disasters… Or do we? In the Book of Job, Satan is let loose on poor Job, and one of the things that happen to him: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.” [Job 1:18-19] So it is that natural disasters could be the fault of the Devil. The faithful one will concur, applied to catastrophe: “Some say it’s just a part of it / We’ve got to fulfill the Book” [Bob Marley]. But could it be so simple? Everything good has its source in God, and everything bad goes back to its origins in the Devil? Do you see that even in knowing why, it is still a secret, still a mystery?
Why would it take so long for such a fundamental thing to be revealed? I show it to you and you can scarcely believe it. We have had convoluted, agonized, pretzel logic explanations through the generations about why bad things happen in a world that was supposed to be a creation of absolute good. And here it is now, the card turned over and open faced. Do you understand, yet? Things are revealed when they can be, and it is the fact that the War in Heaven has ended somewhere that is the reason why I can shine a light on this dark place in the mind. And why it could not have been revealed before the event of our victory is an interesting story—let us say for now was that things had not settled enough in the crisis of the Godhead. Not enough had been decided, even if, like a street magician’s trick, the card he would choose was waiting for him. He being Lucifer. (That was one of the things that had not solidified yet—the Lucifer myth of the greatest of God’s angels, fallen by his pride.)
Much has happened as of late, and I have been a witness to fantastic things. Some of my visions I do not reveal, for different reasons, perhaps, than why they were hid before, the ones I reveal now. Discretion being the better part of valor. But the radical dualism that I propose: this seems to be the endpoint of a natural progression. In the beginning there being only God, and the serpent in the garden only a serpent. Then in Job, where (the) Satan is a minor functionary in God’s court, one of His employees, as it were, doing his job. And then, where we last left off, biblically, where the Devil is the prince of demons and the cause of the Lord’s death on the cross, and whom the Lord said fell from Heaven like lightning: the father of lies, and a murderer at the first: God was still the only true elemental, the only one from whom great calamities came from, and somewhere there the origin of pain. The next step is inevitable, and final.
Just like we used to think that the Milky Way was the whole of the universe, we must also adjust the scale of God and His angels. Perhaps it is to go hand in hand, the scope of the universe with the scope of God. And I would be the prophet to tell of this. What one normally thinks of the power of God, like fire raining from the sky? that would be God’s twiddling of His little pinky, if that. He was responsible for the Big Bang, right? We don’t see a greater class of power than what is in the Bible because, well, the earth would simply not survive anything of God’s true omnipotence. Things we call of “biblical” proportions, well… these would be the full power of an archangel, of which Lucifer was one. And if this is the case, giving of all the archangels true free will, Lucifer on his own—he could be of enough power to invent pain, be the cause of all calamities, throughout all of time! This is that final step, into radical dualism.
Does it seem a bit convenient to you? I must say, that was the way I felt about it when the signs revealed this mystery to me. It sounded like one of those easy answers we have come to grow wary of. But why is that? Perhaps because it literally solves every problem of there being a God who is all good and the problem of pain, in one trim idea? It makes sense of why the world and life are so unfair—it’s all the Devil’s fault? Yet this is how it is when so great a mystery is uncloaked. The greater the revelation, that much more obvious it will be when it is shown. And I tell you it is the truth. Are there greater secrets to share? It may be so, one so much greater that it has not even been put into words. But I think it is not for me to tell you answers to questions that are not asked. You need not believe me to be saved, but maybe you should perk an ear when such things as I say are spoken. Peace be with you, and Walt Disney is God!
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.
The Level of Reality
It is of note that Philip K. Dick, who obsessed about the subject, once defined “reality” as that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn’t go away. Like all rules, there are exceptions, like a schizophrenic, who can’t help believing in the things he sees—they are quite real to him, but we else would never say they are a part of reality outside of the pattern of electric impulses in his brain. One also wonders about those of us who were once called the prophets, whose visions came to pass in the real world. Is prophecy real, if it ends up happening? We usually don’t think in those terms. Normally, what we call real is synonymous with what is material, that which composed of matter. But there is perhaps one level of abstraction that we allow in the question of what is real: is it logical? And if we think about it, the material also follows this interpretation of what is, actually, real.
Good and evil both have a logic to them, but I am biased toward the one and not the other, even as I commit my hundred minor evils every day. But I still would like to say that evil mystifies me. I once asked a demon about what he believed, why he was the way he was, and I perhaps witnessed a uniquely true candid moment when he answered me. He said, “First, that I am the most important being in the universe.” And I stopped him there. I knew that whatever followed would be based on this twisting of the logic. The rest of it was not going to make any sense. I call it the Derangement, which is the wake of evil. They bend things as far as they can go that will not break, to destroy the work of light that they can, like making a man become what he hates: they work on many levels too; they were angels once, with about as high a brow one could imagine. And they have complicated what it means—what is reality?
Myself, I have gone back and forth on what my grasp (or grip) on reality actually might be. I believed, at first, in the conventional superstitions, of those which might be said to be religious in nature. That everyone should believe as I did. Or that someone wasn’t saved unless they had heard of Jesus Christ and believed he was the Son of God, and that he rose from the dead. Yes, a bunch (a lot) of people still think that. That the Bible was indeed the inerrant word of God, however much you needed to adjust the explanations of its more troublesome elements as to how that was. So what do I believe, then, if I don’t believe those anymore, as far as the faith goes? I believe we have been given everything, and that all we have that is truly ours are our mistakes. All the right things we do, even those, those were gifts from God. In other words, our baseline mode should be of profound gratitude. That and I still do believe that Christ rose from the dead. And angels, I believe there are angels. These I believe because I’ve seen them. Blessed are those who have not seen, and believed.
So why should you believe someone who talks to angels on a regular basis? Because I believe in science. You know, like extraordinary claims must produce extraordinary evidence. And indeed, to my subjective eye, the extraordinary claims of the other world, of Halospace—I heve been given extraordinary evidence indeed for it, and those who live there. I like to say that it would be irrational of me not to believe in the things that I do, in what I have seen. I am here like the shaman, who cruises the Halospace and returns reeking of starlight. I do my best to relay my findings, but understand that I operate at the limits of logic. It is hard to make some things clear, for they are not of the everyday; this is my essay, this is my try.
In my observations, I have also discovered something that’s rampant in our civilized age, at least in the neighborhoods I live: the paradox of abundance. The more that someone has, the more he wants. He becomes as if blind to the things his own. This would be perhaps the legal strategy the Devil might follow if and when he were to be put on trial, having been the most privileged being ever created. Affluenza. The most powerful being, too, excepting God Himself: having it all, Lucifer wanted more. How it all started. And the War itself rippled through all time, in the material world. For what was fought by Evil was the Logos: “Holy Reason”, by which things work. Why you have to pour the tea before you drink it. Theirs was to make everything bend to their whim, without facing any consequence. At least none that they would have cared about. This is why Hell is regularly depicted as having its specific type of logic. This is what I learned while talking to angels.
What does science need of this myth? I am a witness to both science and the myth, and I will try to explain things. My credentials as storyteller are that I was a die hard atheist once, back in my youth, and it usually goes the other way—to have faith and then lose it—but for me, the Man Upstairs had different plans. The visions started spectacularly in July of 1991, and they have died down some—for good solid durations they subside enough to let me finish school and to hold down a job—but they never completely have left me. What is real? I have gone charging full speed at a wall to see if I could make a breakthrough at such a question, or at least, some headway, to crack the problem. What I have found, is that like there is one reality, there is one, and only one of the extant myths (religions) that is true—and even there, not all of what’s believed in is correct. I am a prophet here to tell you of the reality, and I’m telling you of what I say now to try to verify it, even if you trust me, because I will be wrong sometimes—hopefully not in the important things.
Truly it is the easiest thing to believe all that one is told, and perhaps then be lucky enough to be born into the “correct” faith. It is also easy, maybe not as, to see as there are so many different spiritual systems, all sounding pretty much like the other, to disbelieve them all, and saying that they all make as much sense as a Flying Spaghetti Monster being a deity. Cute. The job of science, though, is not to debunk (though it is supremely good at doing this): the job of science is to find what is real. So, what if I told you that God is real? We come to the extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims, n’est-ce pas?
And then I tell you that if such extraordinary proof were given, it would be against its own purpose in the seeing. Even demons know there is a God. Jesus spoke in parables so that some would get what he was saying, some not. There are more important things in the world than everybody believing in God, or the same God. He also doesn’t need to win all the little philosophical battles about rocks He can or can’t lift. And what Jesus says, about satisfying everyone’s little condition of “I would believe in God if…”, he said that only an evil generation asks for a sign, and see that at the crucifixion, they would have believed he was the messiah if he had gotten off that cross he was hanging from. He didn’t need or want to prove anything to a bunch of gawkers at an execution. Blessed is he who has not seen and believed. Think, ala JFK, what do I have to do to have God believe in me?
And what about all the “wrong” faiths? I tell you that God has purpose for them, too. “Wrong” is well to be put in quotes. All your major religions have the common core: love your neighbor as yourself. This is a fact, however they may phrase that wisdom. But given that… you see, in my visions, I have met the one and only Jesus Christ, and he let me see out his eyes, his point of view, and I was not able to grasp a fraction of that seeing. The myth is true: he is Immanuel, the literal Son of God, who is infinite and was infinite, even as he walked this world. He has been the only thing that was perfect in this universe as we know it. And to understand what is real, one must take this, the second person of the Trinity into account. Like so: “In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” [H. C. Bailey] I tell you something opposite that atheists normally say to the theists: if you don’t believe, you don’t know what is actually going on. Realistically.
So, what is reality? Does belief have anything to do with it, or lack thereof? The answer actually turns out to be very boring. Reality is what changes consistently in relation to something else. The “change” part as well as the “consistent” part can also be real in that same sense. The change in what we call our universe turns out never to be zero. And we may put it in another way: reality is what can be measured through time. In one sense, reality is subjective, in that it is (to us) only as real as well as we are able to measure it. So ghosts: if they cannot be measured by any means except perhaps as a hallucination by a person existing as a neural pattern someone’s brain, that ghost is not (objectively?) real. (Objectively with a question mark, as that is only approximate, better put: relatively [real] in an established context.) But this is not why you are here, no?
Is the spirit world real? Halospace, right? What level of reality are we talking about? There are certain intense shared “experiences” that people have had, and these are how religions are founded. (Then the “visionary” period usually dies down.) We don’t conventionally say that what they experienced are as real as say, a baseball. Or a baseball game. Because generally, you don’t need a miracle to win a baseball game. But people think that they can have a reality without there being a ground to it. Turtles, all the way down: where we cannot guarantee anything about what exists, that it will make any sense, not just to us, but even that there be a structure to making sense at all. The Logos: he came down to earth once as Jesus Christ, and saved us all. We fight against Evil, in whose wake is the Derangement, the antithesis to the Logos. And it was given to the Archangel Michael and his angels to save the world from a twisted end, by the forces of that enemy.
As far as science, myself, my eyes can see into the Halospace, in addition to the sensory (“real”) world. And it seems to have a logic to it that I can function in, and that I have lost myself in at times. It is real to me, it is consistent, and it has actually shown me signs, of which if I told you it probably wouldn’t make you believe me any better. Oh, I know that one could attribute all those “visions” as imagination and hallucination, but what if there are beings out there who exist in those castles in the air, what would you do if one of them tapped you on the shoulder?
We grossly undervalue what all has been given us in our life, and we think it is all here waiting for us to give meaning to it? In the same vein, we overestimate our capabilities: do you imagine, truly, that we are able to concoct in our own minds that which is greater than us? Not that we point to a name on a paper and say, I have made God, but to see in a Name that it is like a finger pointing at the moon; to understand that there is a Meaning deeper than we can fathom: for we see that there is meaning now, and it is real, and that can be the first step: as Martin Luther King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Or is it a rabbit hole? How far down do you imagine it goes, Alice? It’s a little deeper than we can dip our big toe. Wonderland has its own sky, its own stars.
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.
new again
did you hear of something new in the world?
it is called “love”
it was made 2000 years ago by a carpenter
when he died of torture
and did not miss the chance to be perfect
his name is Jesus Christ
IS, not was, because before everything, HE IS
he did a few things
but left it to the rest of us to do even greater
he rose from the dead
not in story like the rest who were told did
they were not the Christ
for i myself am a witness to the Resurrection
even as i am unworthy
i am witness to the truth of what is “love”
and there is yet more
what is love shall never be spent its last
the face of eternity
he saves us, not from danger, but ourselves
to life everlasting
blessed is the one who sees Heaven–everywhere