Is the Law of Attraction a hoax? If I proclaimed to channel the god Bahghu Mahgufu from the seventh realm of consciousness, wrote a book about it and expected people to believe it—would that make me a prophet with millions of followers or some self-exalted idiot?
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Posts Tagged religion
So we’re born as pure innocent children–blank slates with eager minds and sparkling eyes, filled with wonder and astonishment (if we’re lucky). Then we go to school and make friends. We don’t care what race, religion or whatever our friends are; too young to know anything, but smarter than any adult where it counts most.
We get a little older and the separation begins–the division, partition, divergence forked into endless segregative paths. The black kids hand separate from the white kids; geeks divorced from jocks and so forth. A little older and we are driven further apart by religion, more distance by race, body size (fat, skinny, ugly, weird, hot, fine, etc.) and then . . . we grow up. We learn to drive a thousand more asphyxiating wedges between us based on class, sexual preference, who your family is, how much money you have–by the time we’re into our early twenties we become “mature” separatists conforming our lives to every ridiculous form of separatist identification possible.
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One incredible concept I’ve applied to myself since I was young is my ability to question myself, all my beliefs and my perceptions on life or being alive. To have this ability and retain no hatred or bias is difficult if not impossible; this is especially true of religion. For example, many atheists can be offensively fatuous in regard to religion – an antithetical extremism somewhat militant in nature. Many religious people can be abrasively snobbish in the same way. I say don’t hate anyone for their beliefs or belittle them.
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Which do do think is a better place to go, heaven or hell? Let’s contemplate some unusual scenarios to find out. An old friend of mine, Damien Van Damne, died on the surgery room table after falling 10 stories onto a pile of razor sharp scrap metal; they ended up bringing him back to life.
After a few weeks of recovery, I visited him at the Miskatonic University Medical Center. This is what he told me (keep in mind he has no legs, no arms, a disfigured face, one lung was removed and his blood is filtered through dialysis because his kidneys are ruptured…somehow, he is upbeat and happy to be alive):
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A few months ago, I was invited by a coworker to come to an outdoor picnic. I had an uneasy feeling about going, but accepted because he was so insistent. He is a married guy with six kids – being single, I feel weird hanging out with a bunch of married people.
To my surprise, the event was sponsored by a local Christian church. I felt really uncomfortable because I thought they would try to convert me to Christianity, something I really wasn’t prepared to deal with. I live in an area of the US known as the bible belt, so I guess I’m used to it. The main reason I went was because my friend Jason wanted me to meet his sister, who hadn’t arrived at that point as she was running late.
I noticed an old homeless man standing nearby. He was struggling just to walk and was blind. He asked a few people if he could have something to eat because he was weak and very hungry. One of the church members said, “Leave you filthy old man, you stink. Leave or we will call the police.”
The old man replied, “I’m so sorry sir,” and began walking away, using a mop stick to feel the ground.
I felt really bad about it. The guy who rudely told him to leave said, “Can you believe that? Every time we have a cook out, a goddamn trashy low life comes crawling out of the woodwork trying to leech a free meal off of us.”
I was shocked and thought everyone else would’ve been too, but they weren’t. My friend Jason and his wife agreed, telling their children to stay away from the old man so they wouldn’t catch a disease from him. I was so offended! I became angry and tried to avoid saying anything but couldn’t help it. I said, “I thought you people were supposed to be Christians. Aren’t you supposed to help people? I’m looking around and everyone here drives expensive cars, wears designer clothes and act really superficial.”
Jason said, “That old man isn’t a person, he’s trash. We can’t feed every vagrant that walks up.”
I replied, “I cannot believe how callous you people are. Real Christians don’t worry about material things and are supposed to love every human being…unconditionally.”
Disgusted, I walked away from the discussion, preparing myself a plate full of food and a cup of apple juice. I brought it to the homeless man and we sat down on the ground while he ate. The crowd stared at me in disbelief, offended at what I had done. I talked to the old man for quite a while, and wanted to share what I remember of the conversation. I decided to present it in an interview format for ease of understanding:
Me: How long have you been blind?
Old man: I was born blind. My parents pretty much rejected me at a young age. I’m really sorry about begging for food, but I haven’t eaten in three days. I suffer from dementia, and being blind makes things so much more difficult.
Me: So you’ve never been able to see your entire life? You’ve heard of words like ugly, pretty, fat, stupid? What do those words mean to you?
Old Man: Yes, I’ve heard those words, but I don’t understand what they mean. People don’t understand…I have never seen anything so I don’t have a concept of what things look like. It’s so strange to have someone ask me about that. No one has ever asked me about that. I don’t know much, but I do know I’ve been called many of those words. I don’t get upset when someone calls me old, stupid or whatever because I don’t know what it really means when describing a person.
Me: You go by smell or sound mostly huh? When you hear someone speak, do you feel a certain way about them because of the sound of their voice?
Old Man: No. People all sound different. I go by what they say and how they say it. Some people are mean or rude. Some people speak kindly. Some women smell pretty like flowers, and some don’t. I wish I could see, but I got over it years ago. You are so lucky to have eyes that work.
Me: No my friend, you are the lucky one. If you could see, you’d know why people are cruel and treat others based solely on what they look like. People who see, live their lives based on it. They like nice clothes, cars, houses, pretty things and so forth. Every one of those things are unimportant and irrelevant. People live their lives based on what they see on TV or in magazines.
Old man: I’ve never watched TV of course. I can read braille, but really don’t understand much of it because many stories are about what things look like. I don’t know what anything looks like. Thank you very much for helping me today, you are a very kind person. Just from talking to you, I feel like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. Thank you.
Me: No…thank you sir, you are the luckiest man alive and I will never forget you.
He smiled and we shook hands. I offered to drive him somewhere but he immediately cut me off. He wanted no more help from me and slowly walked off into the woods. It may seem strange that I got into a philosophical conversation with him, but it does happen to me quite often. I couldn’t help but wonder what the world would be like if we were all blind. There would be no ugly, fat, short, black, white, pretty or any other superficial judgments. It was a powerful experience and I am truly thankful for having met him. All those people missed out on something truly meaningful because they were filled with so much hatred and bigotry. I do realize these people are not representative of all Christians, but only one small group. I know in my heart that not all of them were like that; someone had to appreciate my actions.
My friend Jason hasn’t since spoken to me for embarrassing him in front of his church group. It doesn’t bother me at all. I would be embarrassed to be like him. Just so you know, I never did meet his sister and don’t even know if she is aware of me giving my food to that old man. I read in the newspaper a few days ago that the old blind man was found dead on the side of the road. He died from dehydration and had been there for a few days before they found his body.
All my life, things like this have happened to me. This is why I am not materialistic. While watching TV earlier, all I saw was perfect, beautiful people; living perfect, beautiful lives. Everyone has perfect hair, expensive clothes and perfectly straight white teeth, capped with expensive porcelain veneers. All I could think is how ugly it all is, how shallow people are and how this world is filled with superficial ideals. My friend J.C. in his post, On-Line Television, put his TV in the closet. I’m not quite ready to do that yet, but there’s not much on it I want to see anymore.
It’s so funny how animals, like cats and dogs, don’t care about what things look like. They love you unconditionally. In many respects, people just aren’t as smart as animals.
I was filling out a job application and couldn’t help but feel violated because of the detailed information required. I’m going for something much higher paying than I have now which is understandable because of the collapsing economy. One thing on my mind is how people are stereotyped, labeled and categorized in modern society. Like many places, this one had me sit down at a computer to fill it out the application; there was no person to talk to, just an impersonal machine.
The collection of demographic information makes me feel uncomfortable. They first ask you to check a square by your race. Am I African American, Caucasian, Latin American and so on. I’m wondering what difference does it make? It was incredibly detailed – even asking if I had a tattoo and if so, where on my body it was as a picture of it would need to be taken. They required a highly detailed 12 year job history and required I give them permission to check my credit. I feel that is a violation of my constitutional rights. No employer has the right to peer into my private credit history. I had to give them permission to also do a criminal background check which I understand, but for this particular job, I felt was quite unnecessary.
Finally of course, they required a hair shaft drug screen, where they pluck several hairs from your scalp for spectroscopic chemical analysis. By the time I was done, I felt like I had been molested. You may be wondering what kind of job I was applying for. Surely it was to homeland security, the FBI or something extremely sensitive…right? No. It was a bartending job at the Beau Rivage Casino…hahaha! That is unbelievable isn’t it? Yes, it is an incredibly high paying job, but the requirements are ridiculous.
Modern society is based on shallow attitudes and ratings. We have learned to stereotype and rate people based on different criteria. We are being psychologically conditioned by mass media entertainment: she’s beautiful, he’s an asshole, those people are black, they’re racist, he’s a fundamental Christian bigot, she’s an atheist with no heart or soul and so forth. It’s so ingrained into our lives – we have become slaves to entertainment, religion, patriotism and many other labels.
I talked about how we do not realize how much power we truly have in my previous post on aikido. You live your life, do the best you can and become a slave to society itself. People have this take care of your own backyard mentality because there is nothing you can do to change anything. That’s true and exactly what our leaders want. They want you enslaved and helpless, watching TV, noodling on the web and on and on – all while a handful of super rich individuals have and own everything.
Think about this: You are a Christian parent with a five year old child. Religion and Jesus is everything to you and you’re teaching your child the same thing. Your neighbors are an atheist family with a five year old child. The atheist family believes that Jesus is a myth and never actually existed. They believe the bible is just a bunch of mythological stories plagiarized from other works that predate Christianity. Would you let your Christian child play with the atheist child? Would you be friends with the atheist family? What if the atheist parents told your young impressionable Christian child that nothing in the bible is true? Would you be upset? Of course you would, and chances are, you would not be friends with them. The point is, when religion or any view causes such a deep division among people, it ceases to be good. There are even fundamentalist atheists who think all religion should be outlawed. They are both wrong. I am part of no group and choose instead to be a free thinker, which is also a label and causes division. Isn’t life fun?
Some people think a possible second American revolution is coming. I fully disagree with that. We are far too lazy and just don’t care enough to do anything about it. Have you heard the phrase, divide and conquer? That’s exactly what is going on in this world. We are all divided, not just geographically, but by race, religion, class and other means. The world is filled with problems, but at the heart of every single one of them is this division between us all.
Stereotypes-Labels-Generalizations
These labels, stereotypes and shallow generalizations will never go away, but we have to live together and get along. We shouldn’t generalize anything. Some people generalize about Muslims which is ridiculous. They are all different depending on where they’re from and many other factors. It’s just like there are many types of Christians. People think Jewish people are tight with their money, Mexican people steal cars, British people have bad teeth, people from the southern United States commit incest – it goes on forever. Young girls feel ugly when they don’t fit the image of what popular magazines say is beautiful, which is so unsettling it makes me sick. In France, I believe “stick” models are banned from magazine commercials if I’m not mistaken. In America, such a law would be considered a violation of our freedom…hahaha! Go figure.
I don’t have the answers, just some observations. None of this stuff stresses me out any more, it doesn’t help anything, especially me. I was thinking about what could help me and my blog. Here are some ideas:
On The Lighter Side
- I need to get in the Oprah Winfrey studio audience or do something wrong and get sued on Judge Judy’s TV show. As soon as the mike got near my mouth I would say, “Revellian dot com…that’s r-e-v-e-l-l-i-a-n dot com,” over and over. I wouldn’t shut up until they arrested me gaining me national headlines. While basking in my 15 minutes of fame, I would go streaking down the streets of New York City screaming my website name. Following that, I would get a book deal and a spot on some sitcom. Hey…it’s a plan.
- If I could be spotted alone with Hillary Clinton and get someone to snap a photo, I would tell everyone I had sex with her. When asked by the media, I would say something smart like, “She was walking with a limp on cloud 9 when I got done with it.” I figure this site would get 10 million hits the day it happened. With 15 year old Miley Cyrus getting tons of attention because of her new racy pictures, I could do something similar. People don’t realize that her ploy was engineered specifically to garner massive press. Vanity Fair magazine got 5 million hits yesterday because of this. After all, isn’t any and all press, good press? Sorry to get off topic towards the end, but I didn’t want to end this post on a sad note.
* The picture is How to spot a psychopath! from Dan’s Data
* I actually wrote this post several months ago, one of many sitting unpublished. I added a little to it this morning so it would be better and more current.
First, I want to say happy Martin Luther King day. What he fought and died for is and will always be one of the most important issues facing the whole of humanity. It is powerfully disturbing that we have become something even worse than racists; we have become a world of self-centered, narcissistic and self-righteous peoples.I recently finished reading my 8th book about the ‘Law of Attraction’. I have read nearly every major religious work and even a few books about ‘Scientology’. I forewarn everyone, you may be highly offended at what I’m going to say.
I am neither a leader or a follower, I am an individual. I am a seeker of truths and strive to understand truth with open mindedness and clarity. The reason I read so many books about the law of attraction is that I kept trying to learn something new, something I didn’t realize on my own, back in my early teen years. I never found it!
I thought everyone already knew the general ideas in this type of subject just by virtue of being an intelligent human being. If the law of attraction helps you, and you believe in it, then it is good (but what is ‘good’). However, anything you believe that helps you is good – whether it’s a religion, a cult, a self-help book, a philosophical revelation or a visit to the psychiatrist.
I will point out, that simply being educated about all these things and believing in yourself, beyond any teachings is the same thing…generally speaking. Because of the shallow way this world has evolved, both spiritually and intellectually, people are likely to follow something; they are looking for truth. They want to be shown truth, not discover it within themselves.
That truth is not in any book or video or seminar; it is within your own mind and fueled by your own desire to understand it. Some folks may say, “Yes, exactly…that defines the law of attraction!”
Hahahaha…no it doesn’t! If it did, it wouldn’t be called that…it would simply be called truth! Truth is not a marketing tool to sell books. Quite simply, the law of attraction is a marketing tool which is popular simply because it reflects humankind’s need to seek what what it believes it needs in the present time. It is a sign of the times.
People want to gain wealth and have a good life for themselves and their children. This is because that “good life” is for the privileged few and most of us do not have it. We are so animal like, so filled with greed and envy. It’s both our own faults along with the governments and those who have wealth.
If you are wishing, praying or visualizing yourself gaining wealth, you should be ashamed! Wish and visualize helping humanity, not lining your wallets. I’m sorry, but “praying” for material objects helps fester and perpetuate all that is wrong with the world. What’s sad is that people are getting rich writing books and selling people these ideas…WAKE UP!!!!!
If I said that a family’s inheritance to their children should be illegal, what would you think? No matter what you think, it is a fact that by having legalized inheritances absolutely causes a lopsided division of wealth over a period of time in any form of government. Surely if a parent has saved $150,000.00, they want their children to have it.
If you have 20 newborn babies, are they equal? In most cases, yes – but not in wealth. If one child’s parents have 50 million dollars, then that child will live a privileged life. The other children will have to fight for themselves. Thus, survival of the fittest doesn’t apply! It becomes survival of the wealthiest and greediest!
On the flip side, if the government took 75% of all inheritances, corruption behind closed doors would occur! Look at the forms of government in today’s world. A communistic government will always develop inner corruption and will rot from the inside out. A society based on money like in the US, the wealth becomes one sided forming a massive poor and middle class where people barely get by.
It is inevitable that the US government will not last forever, but I am not afraid. So what would work best? How can humanity solve these problems? I believe the answer cannot be achieved through government.
Right now, Americans are giving up liberty for protection by the government. What are we afraid of? I say there is nothing to fear, not even death. We are not fighting for liberty, we are fighting for greed and wealth!
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
Benjamin Franklin
Can you see the problem? Have you learned something? War and violence is not the solution; they are the traits of nescience and cowardice. The answers are in heart of individuals – each and every one of us.
Should individuals legally be able to keep billions of dollars just for themselves? Therein lies the problem! This is the wrong question. I say, sure, an individual has every right to keep billions – I ask that individual, “Why would you want to?”
This is my personal hypothesis. A person should not want to keep this only for themselves, leaving it only for their children. Under an absolutely transparent democracy, free from greed – we can find the truth. I’m not talking about some ridiculous utopia, I’m talking about humankind finding peace and honesty within themselves – on an individual basis.
Unfortunately, this is a paradox. Within the fabric of everything humankind does, lie the seeds of destruction. Therefore, the real answers are inside our hearts, purely and simply. This is why I choose to be my own person and follow no books or doctrines. I do believe in God, but even more than that – I believe in myself.
Peace and love to everyone on Earth 
