Today, a new chapter, "Amanda," under "Hurricane River" in the website.  It is not the last chapter as I had thought, but the second to last.  FK

(Spoiler alert - if you want to  read the book Whipping Boy by Allen Kurzweil, I will talk about the ending here.  You are warned!)

"...the lies we tell others always begin with the lies we tell ourselves."  Allen Kurzweil, from the last sentence of the Acknowledgments.  

Kurzweil's book, Whipping Boy, did end on the only satisfactory note that the author could give us - the admittance that his obsession was his alone, that the events of the past and the bully that had dominated his thoughts were really about his own discomforts and fears.  And that is true - as stated Monday, his "tortures" were not especially egregious.  They were not the actions of a truly dangerous boy- to- become- man, as the boy Cal Roeker spoke of in his comment.  In the book, the conversations the author had with his nemesis led to a third meeting where the author confesses his interest in Caesar and his need for - what? - revenge?  In this, Caesar replied with great clarity; that he did not remember the incidents, but did recall his own adolescent difficulties.  And in speaking fully of his part in the scam that landed him in prison,he insisted that he believed everything was on the up-and-up, in spite of conflicts with the facts.  But we come to believe him; as the above quote states, he had lied to himself so convincingly that he believed the lies himself.  And, to make matters more uncomfortable for the author, Caesar later wrote him an apology for any pain he might have caused him - with great sincerity.  Where was the villain, after all those decades?  

Of course, it was the author's own obsession, something he only revealed in the last two paragraphs of the last page of the regular text, and in the last sentence of the Acknowledgments.  The suffering of decades was the author's own story to himself, as much a lie, in its way, as was Caesar's.  He does not say so in a detailed fashion, but we understand. 

We also understand that this is not the conclusion the author had wanted.  He had wanted a truly evil guy on whom he could blame all his youthful misery.  This is revealed best by the extreme brevity with which he treated the final epiphany - something this author (me) would have spent an entire chapter on (maybe that is the difference between a successful writer and the rest of us). And while at  first glance everything wraps up nicely, if too quickly, something more disturbing rumbled into my mind some time later. No, it was not what I had thought I would ruminate on - about the emptiness of revenge carried on way too long - but rather about the nature of our selves.  Who am I, really? Thinking this, I made a review of myself - and discovered that I didn't have a clue as to my objective nature; that I, too, lived a life of lies told to myself, although which and how many of my personal stories were tweaked I have no idea.  If I did, I would know myself, and that is the problem.  I don't.  Most of us don't.  

When my father was about 50, he had what might now be called a mid-life crises, and he began (and finished) a masters degree in psychology at night after work.  One class was particularly harsh: after some weeks, each student was given a personal evaluation by the other students, who were encouraged to be as blunt and honest as possible.  One might imagine that this would have been tough at first, but that it would have gotten easier with time, for as one was disrobed, he would later wish to disrobe the other.  In my father's case, he was dubbed the "over-the-hill swinger," not for his sexual activities (I am certain he never cheated, not out of honor for him, but because I knew him. His old-school propriety on that matter was unassailable, even ridiculously so), but by the way he interacted at large - as if he still had the attractiveness and energy of youth.  It was a tough blow to him, although he got over it.  With a little thought, he knew that the others were probably right.  What he did about it I do not know, although it was a fairly small and harmless flaw.

In my own case, I have no idea about the perceptions I have left others.  Perhaps at some time in childhood, one kid thought I was a bully.  That would really be news to me, but so it was to Caesar as well.  Or perhaps I would be viewed by-in-large as a quirky guy with a closet full of neurosis, of unfounded fears. Such it was for Kurzweil, however briefly acknowledged. 

Bigger still, though, is that we ARE our personal stories, facts be damned. While most of us think of this as a psychological thing, it is also a spiritual thing, for we are not who we we think we are, or who anyone else thinks we are (for "they are "us").  Each culture tells itself its own lies, which we collectively validate in our own personal assessments.  As humans of all cultures, we also share the lie that makes us the physical species that we think we are. Were we to believe, all of us, that we were shining spirit entities, we would be collectively more like the Elves of the Lord of the Rings fame than humans.  Human advancement - or degeneracy - is really all about changing the story about who we are.  

All stories are, to some extent, make believe.  Some are more accurate than others.  We are, in our obvious blindness to our greater reality, living more a lie now than a truth.  We learn this in small ways from stories like Whipping Boy, and in bigger ways,   when our stories, through death or tragedy or odd coincidences, crumble before our mind's eye.  FK          

It's a busy time of year on our property, with brush clearing and rototilling and planting and mowing and on and on, so much so that in recent days, I have not been able to get to reading until past 10.  One night, I stayed up until 2, which is something for this old doter who never makes it to midnight on New Year's Eve, but it is more because of the book than anything else.  It's one of those that you have to keep reading, stretching for the ending that you hope, you know will be satisfying.

No, it is not a mystery or thriller, but a non-fiction book, The Whipping Boy, by Allen Kurzweil, about the author tracking down, 30 years and more later, the boy who made his life miserable at a boarding school in Switzerland when the author was 10-11 years old.  It is a fascinating psychological peek into obsession and loss.  It is also a thriller of its own as all roads, at first, lead nowhere, the former bully and classmate having seemingly disappeared, even as he came from an upper-middle class family in Manila.  But then the trail gets hot: he finds that the bully, Caesar Augustus (real name - all names are real, for the author concluded that no one would believe the story if he invented or changed anything) was working as a shill (front man) for an international "banking firm" that was finally revealed to be an elaborate hoax formed to separate people, mostly legitimate, from their money as they attempted to get backing for their dream enterprises.

It could have been a movie.  The head of the "trust" claimed to be a prince and the 74th Grand Master of the Malta; his wife, a descendant of another European royal family (apparently, that was true).  He was aided by a Colonel and a Baron, both shown to have extremely prosaic roots in the working class, and so on. They dressed elaborately, met at the finest hotels around the world, and were able to con some very prestigious institutions into providing legitimacy by their hire.  And at the bottom of the pyramid was Caesar, who would get three years in jail in the State of California for it all.  

But the author was not satisfied; he had to meet the man, to find if, as Caesar had said at his trial, he was conned himself, and that he, through his troublesome childhood, had himslef long been a victim.  "Cry me a river" one can hear the author say, but he must find out.  Through subterfuge, he manages to meet his nemesis as only a former classmate, to discuss the good 'ol days. He meets with him again a year later.  In both, so far, Caesar is found to be a somewhat pathetic character who believes that he has had to struggle in a world that has handed him such adversity.  

At this point, I am at the middle of the second meeting, and I do not know how it will turn out.  Is Caesar only continuing his con, or does he really believe that he is a victim rather than a crook and a bully?  Nearing the end, I will find out tonight.  But a bigger question is raised about the author himself - why?  Why this obsession?  Some of it has to do with the purposeful loss of his watch by the bully, the watch an important reminder to the young boy of his father who died when Allen was only 4.  But the other episodes of bullying, which the author describes as torture - heck, I thought, I got worse than that from the older neighborhood boys and relatives than he did, all of whom I am now on good to very good terms with. This bullying, as the author calls it, was something younger boys of my time expected from older boys - and the reason we steered clear of them.  I believe I pulled a few mean tricks on my younger brother as well, by which he responded with appropriate revenge. All gone.  The memories are still there, but the animosities are long gone, for the obvious reason that we have grown up.  We are different now, as most people are with maturation.  

In that, there is something dark about the author himself. Perhaps the last pages will resolve everything, but nothing will explain away this now-40 year obsession.  Claims the author: 'there was never a week that went by where something did not remind me of Caesar.' (my approximation).  For over 30 years!

Last night, the Simpsons had an episode, oddly, on bullying.  The town of Springfield passes an ill-thought ordinance against bullying, and soon half the town is in jail, or forced therapy. During this time, Homer continues to abuse his neighbor, Ned Flanders, who is a fundamentalist Christian that must always forgive, as Jesus commanded.  Yet his two boys see how he is bullied by Homer, and have a collective dream about Jesus. Here, bullies have stolen Jesus's halo, and are passing it back and forth over Jesus's head, until it lands on a rooftop.  Jesus meekly asks his "Father" to forgive the bullies, and the Father grumbles, "why did I have such a wimp for a son?"   

But we know Jesus was no wimp - in fact, he was scary-harsh, calling the Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and vipers to their faces.  He upended the tables in the Temple and even admonished his mother for having him turn water into wine at the wedding in Canna.   What would Jesus do?  We can never really know, although many think they know, but what is certain is that Jesus demanded that grievances were to be resolved quickly and let go, one way or another.  In this book's case, the grievance could never be resolved as it could in a village of that era.  True, but has this painful memory of humiliation and need for revenge done well by the author?  Of course, the book might be a big hit, but that was never behind the grudge.  Rather, it was a grinding pain rooted in the loss of his father and of his own sense of humiliation.  He feels he can only be made whole by confronting the bully whose image has tortured him for most of his life.  

What a burden. Maybe, in the end, the author will realize this, but I don't think so.  I think he will be relieved to find that his nemesis was an evil person, after all, and his incarceration and failure in life the measure of the author's revenge.  Except that it took nearly half a century to get there.  

Many of the directives of the spiritually wise seem to be ridiculous or wimpy, but in practice, they do more than meets the eye.  Mark Twain, in Huckleberry Finn, wrote of the feud along the Mississippi and how young boys shot each other for the mere fact that the other belonged to the wrong clan.  The "incident" that started the whole mess was long lost to the constant need to avenge the latest deed of revenge.  Forever, it would seem, just as it is now in Palestine.  What a waste.  FK                        

Every year in late spring, the local highway department cuts along the edges of our road to kill any trees or bushes that might be trespassing on blacktop space.  The former owners of our house planted lilacs along the edge of the property, and lilacs are creepers - every year, they send out shoot towards the road, and every year, they are cut back.  

The former owners also planted juniper bushes along the edges of a retaining wall separating the house proper from the lower garage.  Some sort of rust got to them, killing many, and a very cold winter last year killed off the rest of them, so I got out the shovel and dug up the lilac shoots and planted them in the place of the dead bushes.  They took admirably, and this year are ready to grow like crazy, as long as we don't get a prolonged drought.  Overhead grows a broad white birch, and early this spring, I cut back the lower limbs to give the coming lilacs more light and space to grow. Everything is set.  I know it.  The tree and other shrubbery don't.  

This reminded me of how nature may have intelligent design - that is, a prefigured growth pattern, not absolute but probable, built into the entire system.  To put it simply, God is the gardener, the plans that we cannot see are made, and given our's and nature's probable actions, the future is already proceeding from the present as part of the great gardener's design.

Pretty good, I thought, and then remembered Sir James Frazier and his famous, but seldom- read 19th century classic, The Golden Bough.  The greatest motif, or plot, in this armchair account of primitive civilizations throughout the world, is captured in the phrase often used by pre-industrial people regarding their leaders: "The King is dead, long live the King!" Meaning that with the death of the king, another king would arise. Frazier attributes this attitude to the change of hunting-gathering societies to agriculture societies, whose yearly rounds govern the lives of agricultural people.  Yes, the crops die, but the following year, they grow again.  To this, in a subtle way, Frazier gives us the underlying myth-metaphor of Western Civilization's most enduring religion, Christianity.  Christ was born and will rise again.  It is embedded in agriculture, and the culmination of the lifestyle that it imparts.  Christ is the outgrowth of our former way of life, not a Truth of all reality but a truth of an agricultural people.  Thus, for example, Isaac's eldest son, Esau the hunter, was tricked by his brother Jacob, the agriculturalist, to give up his birthright for a meal.  The hunter lives for the day, while the agriculturalist prepares for renewal.  The agriculturalist won the day, and won the myth of Western civilization.

On one level, this is a reductionist explanation that leaves out the claim of immortal truth.  On another, though, it does nothing of the sort.  Agriculture, apart from it being brought about by conquest, quickly became a part of nearly all the people of the world's lives after the last glacier receded about 10 thousand years ago.  It secured food for larger populations, and so was simply bound to succeed.  As far as we know, agriculture did not exist before the last ice age, even though fully modern humans have been around for at least 40,000 years.  Could it be that agriculture fulfilled the template of intelligent design?  Could it be that the world as it is, not in story but in actuality, is better understood as another form of myth for a greater, more comprehensive reality?  Are we then really more like the plants, cultivated and planned by a greater power to fulfill a destiny, or at least a probability, one that we are, like the plants, simply unable to understand? 

More and more this is my view, as the world as I thought it to be is becoming, in my mind, more a cosmic play on a mythical stage.  There is meaning in nature, and meaning in everything we do.  But what, beyond the logic of a Frazier, is the meaning behind the meaning?  That is, why  are the laws of nature, and the trajectory of humans, the way they are, for they both show a pattern.  And if we can now discern this pattern, can we not begin to understand it in a greater context?  

Not in it its fullness, for that would be as impossible as the plants understanding our own design for them, but at least in the perception that a garden - our world -  has been arranged by some intelligent source for a particular reason.  I cannot prove it, but it does go further than our current forms of empirical thought allow.  And, if we think about it at all, what our current thought allows simply does not and cannot give us the answers to the biggest questions of all.  

Myth - circles and circles of meaning that expand our understanding.  Now, the myth tells us that the King shall rise again.  What greater realizations has our gardener planned for us?  What is our next and more encompassing myth?  FK                 

I hope I have that quote above right - it is from the "X-Files," a poster on Agent Mulder's office wall related to his obsession with extraterrestrials.  If you were a fan of the show, it almost makes no sense - the evidence was so 'there' that you would have to try hard to NOT believe.  But so it always hung pasted to the wall, a reminder to the viewers that they should not take this stuff too seriously.  Mulder was on a quest for meaning, and the ET X-Factor gave that to him.  He would try to believe, for his own sake, regardless.  

So the book, "Therese of Lisieux" by Monica Furlong, has worked its way into my unconscious.  Prodding here and there with psychological asides, we are (so far - we have not gotten to the visions yet) taken through a rather dreary life of a little girl who was raised a Catholic zealot, who lost her mother when she was 4, and then lost her beloved older sister to the Carmelite convent some 5 years later.  She sees, we are led to believe, that the Calling is the only way left to complete her life.  Adding to this, we are to understand that she has no other avenue to develop her great intelligence, anyway.  Therese, we find, told her sisters at an early age that she was meant for "something big."  For the Catholic hierarchy, this was understood as the calling to sainthood.  For the author, Therese's draw to the religious life was driven by her desire for recognition channeled in the only direction a female of her time could take for a semblance of fame. Psychology and repression - so far, it has made a melancholy read.  And, as said, it has burrowed into my own inner need to believe.

It started with a conversation about God and Jesus yesterday on a long walk.  I mentioned my own belief that NOT believing in God (the mature God, not that of our early childhood indoctrination) was absurd - that It's presence was so profoundly obvious, from the existence of meaning to existence itself - that other's disbelief could only be equated to that of a fish in water - it is so immersed in water that it could not tell you (if it could) what water is.  It just is.  But Jesus? That he walked and lived and died as a man raises questions about belief.  Yes, there were miracles, but religious myths of all cultures are filled with miracles.  Yes, many of his time had seen or heard of the miracles and the Resurrection, and it is hard to doubt their sincerity.  But we are a long way from the historical event, and we are a different people.  Even the tough Romans believed in gods and spirits and miracles then.  Now, the Romans among us, our tough scientists and cultural elite, find such ideas the epitome of ignorance.  

I do not.  This is an unfathomable universe.  But that does not mean that all the things that we think of or believe are  true.  For me, I would like to believe in the divine Christ - but like Mulder's partner, Scully, I need more evidence.  Just a little bit more.  And Furlong's book makes that evidence (so far) that much harder to find.  

Such it was that the book started the conversation on that walk, which either drove or was driven by the unconscious mind that developed a spooky dream last night.  In it, I found myself climbing on the side of a rocky cliff, along with several others.  With a sudden spasm of faith, I leaned back against the cliff in the posture of one crucified, and there, without nails or pain, became stuck to the rock.  I then told the others, "See? This is how you are saved.  Try it yourself."  And so they did, but with that, I became unglued and returned to my 'normal' self, now seeking company.  Looking up, I saw the others glued to the cliff, their eyes closed and bodies still, as if dead, and I called to them, "you can come down now.  No need to be dead anymore," but they remained, encased in an aura of both restful peace and frightening death.  Feeling the chill, I slid down the mountain into a tangle of forest and swamp, just as the sun set.  It was then that I found myself surrounded by humans who were also demons, zombie-like phantoms who grabbed at me from the dark.  "Voodoo!" I cried, identifying a religion I find to be filled with terror, and with that, others came forth from the dark, tearing at me with arms and religious beliefs (so it seemed) that I also found terrifying.  I tried then to scale back up the mountain, back to the peaceful land of the crucified, but could not.  The arms coming from the darkness were too strong.  And so I woke.

Does fear drive belief?  Certainly, and for someone raised Christian, a lack of belief in Christ means the ruination of the soul.  "He" is the only way, and one must believe, unlike Thomas, without needing proof.  One has to think with the heart, and to know Christ in the heart is to know that one is right.  But that means that to NOT know Christ in one's heart means that one is wrong - not a good thing in a faith that postulates an unpleasant afterlife for the non-believer.  

And so, Furlong would have us believe, we find fear and a psychological need to alleviate that fear - along with a need for fulfillment -  at the base of the Little Saint's faith.  More so than I, she would have needed and desired the company of even the dreariest of saints rather than be devoured by the demons from the dark swamp. 

Fear is a strong whip, but there is something missing here.  While God is obvious to everyone who has not determined to not believe, Its connection to us is not so obvious.  We frequently feel apart from this presence, as if our very minds exclude us from the Kingdom that is present not only beyond death, but also here, within the natural world.  What we seek, beyond even fear, is a connection to this obvious God - and what we have gotten, among many other religions, is Jesus.  While we are told that it is essential for the Christian to believe in the historical Christ, one might also see it in another way - that Christ is the personification of our desire for a human connection.  While it does not seem as satisfactory, it might be that the very notion of this connection is enough to justify faith - for it puts God into our own perspective, which otherwise could not grasped by our intellect.  

This might not be enough for the believer, but it is enough for me to let the question go, at least when at my wisest, for the personification - that human connection to God - is OUR connection.  It is what makes God relevant in our daily lives.  And it may, however it is honestly fashioned, actually be what saves us from detachment and non-belief in general - from becoming the sad purveyor of  reductionist psychology or ideology.  Further, this connection is ultimately good.  As dreary as the cross may be, the outstretched arms of sacrifice are not the flailing arms of Zombie demons.  We are promised resurrection, as disconnected as we might feel ourselves to be.  It might be an obvious fact to some, but for most of us, we are fish in water and need something- and somebody - to tell us that we live in water, and will always be in the living waters of being.  FK              

Today, a new chapter, the penultimate, in "Hurricane River" under the same name in the website, titled "Henry." 

It is May, thank God, and all is growing and with that, all needs to be done: cut brush, till the garden, mow the lawn, split wood, build a shed - all the stuff that has waited patiently for my energy all the long-winter.  It is a pain sometimes, but I am glad for it overall, and it makes me think sad thoughts about the latest book I am reading, "Therese of Lisieux" by Monica Furlong.

Therese is often known as the "Little Saint," for she was a quiet girl who died aged 24 in a French convent at the turn of the last century - 1897.  Hers had not been a life of torment a la "Les Miserable"  of Victor Hugo's writing, but rather one of bourgeoisie comfort in a large, very Catholic French family.  All her young life she longed to live in the convent, along with two of her older sisters, and at age 15 she was admitted - far too early for most. She had had to petition and beg for such an early entry.  

I am in the first pages of the book, but have already read how much she loved the monotony and hard work of convent life.  I also already know that she would become sickly and have visions of the Holy Virgin, whereupon her Mother Superior would order her to write of her life and holy experiences.  She was made an official saint in 1925, and since has become a force of great importance to millions, because of her quiet devotion - because of her "Littleness."

The author reads some Freudian psychology into her life, and some feminism, but not too much to be cloying.  Rather, it gives to her experience a kind of sadness, of being unfulfilled, even as she herself seems perfectly  happy.  And there is the problem - from our perspective, she SHOULD be unhappy and unfulfilled. The month of May with all its newness and energy reminds me of this - of all the hub-bub and glory that the Little Saint missed in her short life.  But we do not understand, clearly we do not understand.

I got the same feeling, although not as strongly, with Thomas Merton's book on his first ten years in the monastery.  Not as young, but still too young, he gave up so much to live within a few acres, apparently (from my perspective) waiting to die.  But no one forced him to stay.  He was of age and American, and he could have left at any time, but he did not and would not - he loved the life infinitely more than that of his former life - which was not tragic or difficult at all.  In fact, he was on the verge of becoming a writing success.  And of his own free will he gave it all away, forever.

It is obvious that we who look in from the outside do not understand.  We seek out cultural anomalies or psychological problems in an attempt to learn why anyone would give up his freedom, the love of family, fame or fortune or just a beer in front of a football game for something so grim as a monastery, but we are often off base.  We are often just plain wrong because we haven't a clue.                 

In this blog I often talk of the quiet space and of the quiet voice, but Therese and others like her have gone much farther than I can seriously contemplate.  What is it that drives them?  We might also ask, what is it that has a 10 year old practice piano 6 hours a day?  Or an athlete run and lift weights for 5?  Or, for that matter, a historian spending all his free time in the library archives to search out everything ever written by or about, say, James Madison?  

One writer called the saints the "Athletes of the Spirit," and this is as good a way to look at it as any.  And while athletes give us some momentary pleasure, the saints have given millions the very meaning of their lives.  Some even believe that the saints keep the world going, keep the world in touch with the Divine,with that which imparts life itself.  And it is this last that perhaps they feel - compelled to connect with the highest mountain of them all to make of life something worth living.  


With me, a spring day might suffice.  I will see what the book gives us, but a spring day will someday become a winter day, and we must be sustained then as well.  Perhaps this is where the saints work their miracles.  FK       

In finishing Jane Robert's "Mass Events" book, one in which she channels the now famous Seth (or notorious - "he" was literally demonized in the 60's by some Christian affiliations, although in reading the books, it seems ridiculous now), I was struck with two co-related issues delivered.  One: to quote Seth, "Any scientist who believes that life has no meaning has simply provided himself what he thinks of as an unfailing support against life's vicissitudes."   This sentiment is nothing new here - that belief in "spirit," or inherent meaning in life is NOT a coward's way to go - that, in fact, it makes life even scarier (and infinitely richer); and that, with any real thought to existence - how it came about and how it works as it does - full atheism becomes a ridiculous thing (full atheism being a belief in an accidental, aimless existence).   In fact, when Seth brings it up, he often (through Roberts) laughs - are you kidding?  All this by chance?

And Two, its corollary: that we humans are not misfits on this planet, but fully integral to it; that we exist as part of a group plan with all of life, and even non-life, as fully here on earth as we do in the abstract cosmos.  

This, too, seems common sense, but it is not what we have been taught, perhaps for centuries.  In earlier times, nature was often seen as a Godly product (Genesis) taken over by Satan after the Fall.  For many, nature was to be denied or ignored as much as possible, as it interfered with spiritual things. Instincts, particularly those to do with sex, were seen as impure, while Man was seen as susceptible to every other evil impulse - greed, pride, debauchery and so on.  

Things have changed, but not for the better. Currently, nature is seen as pure, and humans "sinful."  While often carried on with scientific jargon, and often considered a truth of pure science, Man (and we might stress the masculine here) continues to be portrayed as a sinner, now estranged in a heavenly world rather than a sinful one.  Such it was that my son recently stated what so many others of his age believe - that it would be better for the world if all humans died out.        

Seth, however, tells us that we were all made - all life and matter - first as a cosmic idea, arrived at together with every molecule that was to be formed in agreement. It was understood that in material form there would be stresses - it is the nature of material form - but that such stresses were part of the overall agreement. Thus humans, through their various beliefs, might fail in their outward cooperation with themselves and their world, but such are merely stress points, like volcanoes and earthquakes, each a part of the overall picture, each taken at the deepest level through time to be part of an intricate, mutually expressive weave. 

 "Trust your instincts" Seth tells us, for we are meant to be and to act naturally.  But it is here where we find problems, for even Seth acknowledges that our instincts have often been perverted.  "Find your true instincts" would portray it better, thus bringing up another problem - what are our true instincts?  It is easy to see that the moron epitaph for the 1970's - "If it feels good, do it!" found encouragement here, for what better way to find our true instincts but through the pleasure in them?  

Of course, to find our proper instincts, we need dedicated introspection, something that would, right off the bat, predispose those of us who practiced this towards the good.  Killers and sadists usually don't plumb the root nature of their instincts before acting on their perverse quests.  And such introspection is not exactly "if it feels good, do it," or any other form of instant gratification.  We must, in fact, come to the understanding that, while we do not need to feel bad about ourselves, we do have to think about our actions, and that is not an instinctual, but rather  a moral way of making decisions.  Seth, it seems, needs to be a bit clearer, and perhaps he is, either in this book and I have missed it, or in another of the several "Seth" books written.

Still, it is well advised to understand that we are here for a very, very good reason, and that our basic nature is, thus, good.  We might pollute, gather too many fish, wage war and so on, but even the last of these is often done with good intent.  Ultimately, we are meant to be here and are a coherent element in the natural scheme.  Our "instinct", then, should be directed towards this coherence - not with hate or self-loathing, but with an understanding based on the great intent of mutuality that is behind all of existence.  FK     

In the long run, books are better than movies, for the imagination is not constrained by technology or any other physical restraints. Books are also, unlike movies, much cheaper to produce, and so are not forced into a formula that has been determined by Hollywood to provide massive pay-back.  But one usually doesn't share the reading of books, except with children.  Reading is a solitary adventure, while watching movies is a group experience. And so this weekend, I turned again to the group experience, expecting little more than just that, and maybe a few grimaces and laughs.  

The low-level expectation was greatly increased by the genre of the movie we were to watch- a sci fi, often the worst of the worst. Called "The Edge of Tomorrow," it was a film made not long ago, about two years, that I had suspiciously never heard of.  When, just before playing, we saw that it starred Tom Cruise, we all groaned - if such a star had not made the headlines, the movie had to be a dog.  

But luck was with us, again, as it had been the week before.  It was not only a good movie, but a very good movie, and could have been great had it not taken an occasional bow to stereotyped screenwriting.  In it, the Earth had been invaded by a species that rode in on asteroids to do what it had been programmed to do - dominate other worlds.  Just as, say, a tiger is made to hunt, this form of life was made to conquer.  Further, virus-like, it knew the DNA of its victims intimately.  And even more than that, we come to learn that it knew both the past and future of its victims.  Because of this, it could not lose.

The premise for our hero, Tom Cruise, was great; he is first presented to us as a pretty-boy major in the army, who worked only as a PR man.  He was a coward who thought only of himself, and when a general told him he was going to the front lines, Tom tried to black mail him.  For this he was tazed - and woke up in handcuffs, demoted to private, forced to engage the enemy in the first wave on the beaches of France.  He knows nothing about fighting, and within minutes on the beach, he is killed.  But then, he is alive again, and back in handcuffs waiting to be delivered to his front-line squad.  What, we ask?  Was that battle sequence only a dream? 

No - we find that he, along with a beautiful woman (of course) had been sprayed with the blood of one of the uber- aliens, the one in 6 million who had direct contact with the omega, the brain of the aliens.  We find that most of the aliens acted as cells, but a few acted as major organs or glands, with direct feedback with the brain.  In their DNA was the workings of the brain - and Cruise and the beautiful women had been injected with this encrypted knowledge through the blood of the ubers at the point of death.  It is here that they discover that the brain can re-make time, going back to correct errors until it gets it just right and wins. Thus Cruise and the woman, on death, keep going back to the time of the beginning of the sequences that led to death, just as the alien brain would.  We find, then, that both he and the woman are competing directly with the brain, which knows every future they will have - and increasingly, vice-versa.  They must somehow outsmart this brain, in their own multiple rebirths, by going beyond its capacity to compensate through time.  

Yes - don't look to theoretical physics anytime soon for a more thorough explanation.  Still, the movie raises all sorts of questions, about reincarnation, about character development, about self-sacrifice and morality.  Centrally, it plays upon the development of the anti-hero into the hero, a time-honored script that we have always enjoyed.  But, whether the writer or writers were aware of it or not, it goes further into the myth of the hero - it goes beyond the development of heroic qualities to the difficulty of overcoming fears that all of us have in a variety of situations. For in the final analysis, our most potent enemy is the brain against the brain, for the bad (or alien) brain knows all there is to know about the potentially good (human) brain.  It is us; it is all of us, who must fight ourselves to rise above an infectious cowardice that is indelible .

Among pre-literate societies, it seems that cowardice existed (and for a few, still exists) as an entity outside the self, as an alien spirit that invades.  Otherwise, these people, at least to us (myself included) seemed to not have fear as we know it.  They climbed cliffs, walked on wavering bridges or logs across ravines, hunted whales from kayaks, and sailed across unknown seas in small outriggers, all apparently without fear. But we of today have collapsed those demons into ourselves, so that each action is susceptible to them, as a part of our own brain (as we envision it).  So we not only fear, say, the sword at our throat, but public speaking, walking on the edge of our roofs, being alone in the dark - any number of things.  The demon is always within, telling us we will fail.  

I myself had to follow Indians for several days of hiking through slick mountains, where a very pregnant woman loaded with household goods would walk as heedlessly on logs over ravines as a squirrel - while this "hero" had to shimmy across on his crotch, to the endless mirth of the Indians.  True, it was slick and I wore shoes, but many of us have confronted narrow ledges along cliffs where we theoretically should be able to walk - but we can't, for fear.  It is no fantasy, either; chances are, we would be so quaking with fear half way through that we would fall, a victim to our own negative selves.

This is, and probably always has been, the hero's story; in the past, it was to overcome dragons; in the present, it is to overcome the dragons in ourselves, but they have always been the same beasts, externalized or internalized.  How, we have to ask, do we get past ourselves?  As the myths go, apparently only through a cleansing of ourselves, down to the root.  

But there is more: why do we have this negative self?  In my way of thinking, the primitives had a better explanation than our psychologists - that these forces were external, were demons or dragons, for what good would they otherwise have?  

For Tom Cruise, the aliens were a single external intelligent virus-like group entity, which exists like any virus does, just to live.  We are never told why a good god would make such an entity, so harmful to humans.  But the myths tell us why - so that we might find absolute courage; find the will to live and to do the right thing in the face of death without flinching.  For death is, for us all, an inescapable challenge, and this courage is, in the end, crucial. Such it seems that this myth is more real than any other so-called real thing,a tale of the one universal, inescapable truth.  

Obviously, then, that is the point of the evil mind - to force us to have courage.  Like Lancelot, courage can then take us anywhere - to follow our moral principles to the end, and to die in selfless heroics.  Just as Tom Cruise does, but I don't want to ruin the ending.  FK          

Today, a new essay, "A Little Blister," under Essays in the website.  FK

After reading Brian Weiss's book on reincarnation, I simply had to get another book on alternative thinking about reality.  It had to be well-written, though, and not about alien cities in the caves of the Moon.  Kindle Books is always kind enough to track my reading, which gives some thoughts to paranoia, but it helps, even as I am pigeon-holed.  On scanning, up came the usual suspects, and there among them were the Seth books by Jane Roberts.

For some reason, I associate the name "Seth" with demonic beings, and for that reason felt insecure about reading any of the series, although I did one a year or so ago and presented it here in the blog.  But they, the books in the series, are very well written and not goofy at all - except perhaps for some of the root ideas presented. The take the last book I read had on Christ was a little startling and, I might add, goofy.  But there was some good stuff in that one, too, so I punched the "buy" key for the one titled "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events."  As an anthropologist, that's just my line!

So far, at 70% read, I have not been startled by any of the information.  That we, as humans in general and as an interrelated set of societies in particular, share a group mind is nothing new to me.  I first noticed this back in the raging 60's, where not only slogans were shared among we baby boomers - those are easy to spread - but also core values and ideas that were considerably different from our parents.  It was as if a mental force had run through us all and created a current, much like a springtime flood, that would sweep away much of the old. And it was true, and it did, for better and for worse.  But history will never show how this occurred - it will instead only patch together certain things - the Vietnam War, the drug culture, the new post-war wealth and surge of births - to come to a foregone and objective conclusion, in hind-sight.  

But Seth understands.  For those of you not familiar, Seth is the being, or energy, that Jane channels while in a trance, while her husband dictates.  It is not as voo-doo-y as it sounds, however; they recognize that this force might be the inner Jane, or something else entirely.  They just don't know and admit it.  And the info that Jane-Seth gives is at times very deep and, to me, convincing.  

In the world of Seth, life and death are co-continuous constructs from soul matter.  For humans and our world, this soul matter is constituted by choice in another dimension (I use this term loosely) instructed (from a higher dimension) to pattern our manifested, or physical, reality.  Our reality, then, is a projection or continuation in our limited sphere of a much higher meaning - which is, in itself, a continuation of a higher meaning.  When we focus only on the material level, then, we are missing the greater point of our own existence, and often miss the workings of the world that have been prepared for us at the higher level.  In this "deeper" world, we find that: we do have choice; that the world is made and directed towards the good; and that we have great opportunities to reconstitute this reality, to fulfill the higher agenda of the higher level, if we can only see further past the thinness of the material level. 

I hope that wasn't too confusing, but let me put it to more practical use: in mass movements, thoughts ARE bundled by many individuals to create a new reality, again, for the better, but in the short term, often for worse; and for the individual, the possibilities in this life  - that we might understand and even change our reality by going past the social-mind structure - are, in this context, nearly infinite.  

I will narrow some of these broad ideas a bit more in another blog, but what stood up immediately to me after reading last night was that  the answer to the question, "if God is good, why is there suffering in the world?, was given by Seth.  While standard theologians tackle this usually through the concept of choice (free will), Seth goes further by proclaiming that suffering is not what we think it is.  According to Seth, we choose our suffering (everything is a choice at the higher level concerning the material level) for specific purposes that lead to the good - to further growth on a spiritual level.  Child dies?  He had wanted to, often because his inner soul felt that it was time to move on.  You become a victim of genocide?  You have decided, along with the others, to die - for both personal reasons, and to change the reality of your kind in the perceived present.

In the end, though, life and death are simply different phases of existence, much like sleep is to waking, or night is to day.  We continue, as Seth says, living and dying simultaneously, each state of existence informing the other according to the dictates of both personal and cosmic growth.  In the end, there is no suffering and tragedy; in the greater sphere, all is going to the good, even the bad, if we could see a little deeper.  In reflection, this is not all that different, really, from the true believer of the Christian God, for, when all other arguments wither, he is told simply that the thoughts of God are not the thoughts of men.  And so it is; but for Seth, they could be.

In trying to explain the general tenure of the book, I feel that I have failed in relaying many of the little gems that sparkle through the text.  This is not as good as the last Seth book, as the material is rather thin; but it does do one thing that I believe is of utmost importance - it gives the reader the sense that there is much more to the world than we know, and that every life has deep and great meaning; and if we are willing, the frontiers of knowledge - not just the dry book kind - become limitless, and the discoveries astounding and wonderful.  FK