Monthly Archives: April 2011

More phones, less games

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I may not quite think of my mobile phone as part of my body, but it is roughly on the level of pants. I definitely don’t want to leave home without it.

I have continued my inquires into the latest crop of Android phones. As a Google person, this seems to be the natural segment for me. There are a couple applications that I would have liked that are available on the iPhone but not on Android phones, chief among these Questia, the online library. But for the near future at least, I will probably have plenty of reading without it.  And unlike the pad / tablet segment, the price difference on mobile phones is distinctly in favor of Android.

The price issue came to my attention today again, as I read a glowing review of the new Sony-Ericson’s Xperia Neo. At close to 3/4 of the company’s new flagship phone, Xperia Arc, it was deemed just as good, although slightly less stylish to look at. In fact, for those using their phone to take photos or video, it may be better. I rarely take even still photos – not every month for sure – but shaving off the price a sum approximately 1/8 of my monthly rent is always welcome.  There is no urgency, mind you, and I would probably not actually notice any difference in available money, but still, if the products are otherwise roughly equal…

And the Neo is indeed a thing that may cause geek arousal. Running Android 2.3, and with a 3.7″ display with… What? You don’t care? Well, that’s OK too, because I am probably not buying it.

While reading reviews on the Xperia Neo, I found mention of a Huawei Titan, alias Huawei U8800, alias Huawei IDEOS X5. It runs the previous version of Android, 2.2, and the camera is more like last year’s model (5 gazillion pixels instead of 8). But it is around 2/3 the price. Or in other words about half the price of Xperia Arc, Nexus S and I think one more that I have forgotten.  That means I can buy this one now, and still have the money to buy whatever holds that niche next year, when Android is 3.x and pigs can fly. Or at least perhaps speech recognition actually works on cell phones.

I am cutting costs another place too. Well, too and too – it may be a stretch to say that buying a new mobile phone is cutting costs. But anyway, I have closed my account at the online game Age of Conan.  It is a technically excellent game, and it is Norwegian, and it has taken some undeserved (in my opinion) flak for its lack of content during the first month or two.  There is certainly a lot of content now. But it is simply too evil for me to enjoy. The way my life is pointing now, I have been finding the game less and less palatable.  I have not played it in months, and before that there were some more months. So, bye bye Age of Conan!

Still keeping the 4 City of Heroes accounts though. ^_^ Even though only two of them are played with any regularity. We’ll see how things work out.

Changing tastes

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The other day I had an errand in town that took me past the McDonalds “family restaurant”. There was a sign outside depicting a special hamburger they had this week, California something.  It looked very tasty.  But I remember last time I bought a hamburger. I opened the box and the stench of dead animals hit me square in the face. No, it was properly cooked, and the hygiene at Norwegian McDonalds is almost like a clinic. It is just that this is how meat smells and tastes to me now in my older years. At that time, I remembered that it had been like that, only not quite as intense, when last I tried, a few months before. It is probably more than a year now. I have no doubt that it is stronger now.

In fact, almost every ready-made food I buy seems so intense these days. Are people just amping up the taste for each passing year?  Probably not.  It has affected cola too – some days I find it hard to drink without mixing it with water, as I routinely do at home. It is just so intense.  I can eat a small amount of chocolate if I don’t eat anything else that contains fat within a few hours. But even those taste so strong, I wish I had some milk to swallow them with.

Somehow, I doubt the whole food and snacks industry has sneakily worked together to suddenly make everything taste more intensely. I mean, I can see them doing that over time. I don’t think it is a secret that they are working constantly at “improving” the taste of snacks to make them more addictive. But I doubt it happens that fast. And I don’t hear anyone else complain.

My tastes are changing. That is the most likely explanation.

I suppose it could be some sneaking illness of the brain. Or I suppose it could be a result of my spiritual practices the last couple years.  In fact, there are probably people who think these two may be one and the same.  I don’t think so, but it is an interesting observation.  Perhaps I will look back at this and understand it, later in life. Or if there is no such later, perhaps historians of the future, or relatives or some other curious person.

Pure of heart?

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Who can bear the Light of Heaven? (Screenshot from the anime “The Laws of Eternity”, fittingly enough.)

I don’t really feel I am the right person to expound on Jesus’ words that “blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God”.  I just briefly want to say that I don’t think it means that people who never have sex will see some guy on a big chair in the sky. Well, I suppose that could happen too, but that is not really the point.

When we step into the spirit world, to stand before the Light, we should be transparent. That is what I think it means.  We are right now like imperfect crystals, which may let the Light through, but distorted by inner fault lines and shadowed by dark spots. These spots, I would say, are our worldly nature:  The strong sense of self, of me me me, of wanting things my way.

For instance when we pray for someone, it could be that we don’t like certain things about that person and so we pray for God to change him.  In that case, we are simply not seeing God. We are not at all pure of heart in such a situation, and our self is not transparent so God / the Light can shine through. When we later meet that person again, we are still the same, and the Light does not shine through us.

We may also pray for someone because they are dear to us, but it may still be an attachment. Someone is ill and we pray to God that God may heal them, because we cannot bear to see them suffer, nor can we bear to part with them. But the reason for our request is still “my will be done, not thine, O God”. Although the Light shines through us, there is a faultline within the crystal of our self, so that the Light is diverted. We may feel exceedingly holy in such a case, and I am not saying we are doing anything wrong as such.  But it is still about me.

When someone is pure of heart, the difference between my will and God’s falls away, at least for a brief moment.  The self becomes transparent, and there is no subject or object. There is no “God, give me this”, “God, do this for me”.  There is simply a taking part in the love that God has for His creatures.

But who is capable of this?  Who has become so pure of heart that the self has become transparent? To even experience this for a brief moment can change a life forever. But who can live a life like that, day by day? Who can bear such brightness?  I sure can’t, at the present time.

Dentist and stuff

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Picture taken a few days ago, as winter was still grappling with spring.

Slice of life, finally!

I went to the dentist and had the broken artificial tooth fastened again. This seems to happen once a year or so.  I honestly don’t think he does shoddy work to get more income in the future; it is more like I have a tendency to bite down hard right there. Quite possibly how I destroyed the original in the first place.

I used to say that “every time I buy a laptop, God kills a tooth.” (This is a pun on a popular Internet meme.) There really seemed to be a correlation, although there could not possibly be a causality. A tooth would break or come loose within a few days after I bought a new laptop.

Not so this time. On the contrary: On my way home, my mobile phone started acting strange.  It would scroll by itself to one side, even when I was not touching it. If I tried to scroll to the other side, it would still go its own way, so evidently it was scrolling faster than I.  I turned it off hard, so it did a full reboot, and the problem persisted. I then pressed randomly on the sides of the glass for a while, and it seemed to fall quiet after that. But it may indeed seem like I am heading toward buying a new mobile phone rather than a new battery for the old.

New versions of applets, like the most recent Facebook applet, also seem to run slower. This is just how it used to be on personal computers:  They were just good enough, but after a couple years when processing power had doubled, new programs and upgrades to the old expected you to have a newer computer, and things slowed down.

Seriously though, the phone is less than two years old. I bought it summer 2009. That means it is still under legislated warranty here in Norway.  Except that the shop where I bought it closed last week, and the chain it was part of has been sold off to competitors. The Tooth Fairy seems to take her job entirely too seriously!

***

In other news, the weather is mild now, around ten degrees above freezing, so I really get the spring feeling!  But it is still brown spring, the green spring usually does not come until the beginning of May or so, perhaps very late April. I also notice that it takes less use of space heaters to keep the house warm.

Books I am reading:  Another Sort of Learning (paperback) and The Order of Things (Kindle edition), both by James V. Schall, a Catholic professor, writer and philosopher. His writing is easy to follow for the modestly well-read layman, and often borders on the humorous. It is probably no coincidence that along with Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he also sneaks in a recommendation for P.G. Wodehouse. As a result of this, I have also begun on Wonderful Wodehouse 1, a collection of well-loved stories by the 20th century English humorist. It is also for the Kindle, and I read it on my mobile phone on the way home from work. At that point I am usually very tired, and scholarly works make me fall asleep quickly, whereas the subtle English humor so far has kept me awake.

While I still lived at home, my brother would drag Wodehouse books to the home, probably from the library, although I am not sure we did not buy any. The house was already then lined with bookshelves, and is so even more these days. I have nothing to them when it comes to books, and indeed had not even before I gave away most of the novels in preparation for my two moves.  Moving tends to make one re-think what one needs of material things. It also makes one appreciate e-books, which I now buy if available. (Also I have no illusion that my heirs will want to keep books in English.)

Anyway, the Wodehouse books of my childhood was in Norwegian translation, and quite a good one I believe. This is my first time reading Wodehouse in the original.

What about prayer?

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Prayer? Prayer is where you step outside your physical body and into a vast, multidimensional realm where spiritual entities, such as angels and even more incomprehensible beings, serenely bear witness from the sidelines as you rise toward the all-powerful, uncreated Light of all universe to tell It what you think It should do on Earth. Or, alternatively, briefly state the purpose of your visit and attentively wait to learn the will of Heaven. It’s your choice, really. Prayer is what you make it, more or less.

I was honestly planning to write a slice of life entry today, and along comes a llama and asks: “What about prayer?” What about it indeed.

The context was a question about to what extent I think thoughts affect the world, to which I had replied, mostly to the extent that we act on them. This may not seem much, but it is indeed pretty important. We are constantly acting out our thoughts in some form or another, so they contribute greatly to our footprint in this world.

What about prayer? Prayer influences our thoughts. Our thoughts influences our actions. Our actions influences the world. And let me add here that the actual physical horsepower put into our actions is not necessarily the important part. To be at the right place at the right time, to say the right words or do that little thing that needs to be done, can have far greater effects than waving our arms and legs with great energy doing things that could have done themselves without our pushing and pulling, or been done better by others. I don’t claim any perfection in this (which sorts under “wisdom”), but it is a fact. If prayer causes you to be at the right place at the right time, it can have great effect without messing with the laws of nature unnecessarily.

I think a lot of people have met a person, or even an object, that was just at the right place at the right time to change the course of a life. It is rare that anyone just marches straight ahead through life.

Back to prayer. What is it? I should not really be the one to teach you that, since there are people who metaphorically speaking hold a doctorate in prayer while I am still in kindergarten. The writings of some of the old saints are still in print, and there is Holy Scripture. I am not worthy to teach such things. But then I think of some of the stuff that goes as religion on the Net these days, and I hope God will forgive me for saying a few words anyway.

Rattling off your wish list is not an ideal prayer. God is not Santa Claus. (With all due respect for Santa Claus, who was known as a holy man back when he lived in Smyrna.)

Jesus made this a point of teaching. Don’t tell God in great detail what you need, God knows already! Also, don’t use prayer to tell other people how religious you are, that makes your prayer worthless. Pray in secret. Don’t use a lot of words when you pray. This is the teaching of Jesus Christ regarding prayer. He also gave an example prayer, which I trust you know if you are a civilized English-speaker.

Thank you, Jesus. Now back to our scheduled rambling. The purpose of prayer is not magic, or “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein famously described quantum physics. It is no wonder that quantum physics is the darling of the New Age movement, where few if any know more than the Science Illustrated version of what works, much less HOW it works. If you simply referred to the entire quantum science as “spooky action at a distance”, and knew no more of it, this would be enough to fully understand why it gets so much love from my New Age friends.

The purpose of prayer is not to make my favorite football team win the next match, or to ensure that I get the next promotion and my rival does not. These things are an abomination in my eyes, although God may be more tolerant. (He better be tolerant, or I’m in deep trouble, not least for writing about things above my pray grade.)

Let’s cut to the cheese: Spirit rules matter. Matter does not rule spirit. This is how we must understand prayer.

We exist in bodies for the purpose of the spirit, which uses our bodies to unfold our destiny. In addition to destiny there is also fate, which is what the world does to us. Destiny is what we do to the world.

If you are a materialist, you believe that spirit does not exist as such, but that what we call spirit is a side effect of our brain. In that case, the above paragraph makes no sense. And in that case, you probably still have a Bronze Age idea of prayer: I pray to the gods, and make sacrifices, and the gods make sure that I live long and prosper. Now, there is nothing exactly wrong with that, and billions of people have probably lived and died in this worldview. But as a highly refined person living today, you probably find it disturbing and kind of icky, and so you reject religion entirely. Actually it is disturbing and kind of icky. As the old advertisement said: I have upped my standards, now up yours!

To be honest, I still resort to Bronze Age prayer when I get seriously ill. It seems to work too, although I think it is safe to say that at some point I am going to die regardless of prayer.

Back to basics. Because spirit is the first mover, the rightful ruler of the body, it makes no sense for the body-consciousness to use the spirit as a tool. The opposite should be the case: The spirit-consciousness should use the body as a tool.

Bronze Age prayer basically is just this: The body-consciousness (which was pretty much the best that what was available at the time) makes request of the spirit to arrange the outer world for the benefit of the body-consciousness, or Ego.

With the coming of Jesus Christ, things were turned upside down, which is to say, right side up finally. (This was a completion of Judaism rather than a contradiction. Many Rabbis will be able to explain this better than I.) In this new light, the purpose of prayer is that God’s will be done. The priorities then go from God, through the human spirit, and meet the ego at its home turf. This is where the ego ideally resigns its claim to rule: Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Not mine. That is a long canvas to bleach though, or perhaps I am just lazy. A curious passage in the book of Revelation shows the 24 elders throwing down their crowns. I have no idea who the 24 elders are, but throwing down our crowns is the new way of prayer.

Then, if I pray for God to heal me from some illness, the understanding is that this will advance the cause of God or at least my human spirit, which gets time to unfold my destiny. I may technically pray for whatever I honestly believe is in harmony with the Divine will, but I may not pray for what I believe is merely for the benefit of the ego. Past a certain point, such prayers become counterproductive and even dangerous. They are not so at the beginning, but once a certain degree of Light is assimilated, egoic prayer is harmful.

Compare this to someone climbing a mountain, and there is a rope fastened to a spike hammered into the stone. When you are below that point, pulling the rope will haul you upward. When you are above that point, pulling toward it is sheer insanity.

So if someone at my current level of Enlightenment (which admittedly is not very much) were to sincerely pray to God for money, God would quite likely answer: CUT YOUR HAIR AND GET A JOB! or words to that effect. Or as happened when I got a throat infection and prayed to God, he answered my prayer. The answer was GO SEE A DOCTOR. Most of us have the good sense to put the milk in the fridge instead of leaving it out on the table in summer while praying fervently to God to protect it from bacteria. Sometimes a miracle is in order, but the less magic, the better. And the decision is not with the ego.

The early books of Ryuho Okawa are at exactly this level, which is probably why they resonate so strongly with me, even though he thinks he is a God from Venus and I think he is a writer from Japan. In one of them, Okawa writes that “Unlike some religious people, I will not give you money” if you are poor. He does however teach people how to improve their mindset and their work skills. You may have heard the phrase: “Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him to fish and he has food for a lifetime.” Okawa, and I, would probably add that he should also have some fish to give away, if all goes well.

Prayer is a meeting with God, or a representative of God in the spirit world. I think it should be obvious who is in charge of setting the agenda, if all goes well.

In conclusion: Prayer is not a tool for spooky action at a distance. Such a thing may indeed happen, but that is not the purpose of prayer as such. The purpose of prayer is the glory of the Light, and its streaming into the world of matter, so that all things may in the end be sanctified, and Earth be an extension of Heaven, the Realm of Light.

Please bear in mind that there are higher levels of prayer than what I know of, much less practice. Once you are above this, forget it. Step on me and climb higher. That is why I am here. Or so I hope.

***

(And please don’t get the impression that I spend my days entranced in prayer. If I did, when would I get time to play The Sims 2 and City of Heroes?)

Your soulmate may vary

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Not a soul you’d want to mate with, to say the least.

I am not known for my unreflected obedience, so it should surprise no one that I disobeyed Bill Harris, director of Centerpointe Research Institute. When he sent me an email titled “Attract your true spiritual soulmate (single women only)”, I knew I was not supposed to peek. I mean, that is kind of like peeking in a woman’s purse, or something. But on the other hand, I thought to myself, I don’t want risking to be  attracted by a true spiritual soulmate without the knowledge to defend myself. So read it I did.

Since it turned out not to be particularly useful for me, I may as well pass on the moderately good news: Evidently there is a website named “Calling in the One“, teaching spiritual women how to become magnetic to their soul mate. I don’t particularly mind, as long as said soul mate is not me. The compass needle of my heart is already wobbly enough without spiritual women co-creating trouble along with the Universe. I would rather it point straight toward Heaven, into the Light, rather than spinning around a woman. No offense.

I have a few words to add, though, with a little help from an ever helpful voice in my heart.

Your soul mate is similar to you. Not a mirror image, but on a similar spiritual level. That means, dear single person, that if you suck, so does your soul mate. You better look extremely objectively at yourself, because we can assume that so does the universe.  (Unless your universe exists only in your head, in which case you are pretty much on the losing end of romance anyway.)

***

The American concept of “soul mate” seems to be derived largely from Judaism, where it is believed that singles are only half humans, needing another half to complete them, and that this half has already been decided in Heaven. I am not sure how Judaism usually arranges marriages these days, I assume the fathers don’t make a contract about it when the kids are small as was the rule pretty much everywhere in the past. But whoever makes the decision, it is a frightful responsibility.

In contrast, the Japanese new religion Happy Science (and possibly other sects of Buddhism, I am not sure) use the phrase “soul mate” in a quite different way, more similar to “class mate”.  There are supposedly 20-30 soul mates of you incarnate during your lifetime. They make up most of your family (usually, but it is possible to have other parents for some special purpose). They are your best friends, and your rival that seems to block your path at every turn.  When you meet a stranger and they feel as close as family, it is one of your soul mates, with whom you have spent many past lives and many centuries in Heaven, agreeing to meet again when you both did duty in the flesh again.

In this worldview it is not a huge disaster if you marry the wrong soul mate. Perhaps your spouse and you agreed beforehand to get together for the purpose of bringing into the world a child or two who needed just these two parents.  Or perhaps your spouse had certain qualities that were important to you at that time of your life, but over time you forgot those qualities and why you thought it was a good idea to marry just that person.

To be honest, I think Happy Science is more in tune with contemporary Americans than Judaism or traditional Christianity.  Happy Science basically says “People make mistakes, learn from them and make progress.”  Traditional religion says something like “People make mistakes, you’ll be free from them when you go to Heaven.” People today aren’t usually that patient.

In any case, the sad truth is that there are very few Ones. But if you are a Half and your soul mate is also a Half, then you may just end up being One together. You should not hope for much more than that.

***

Me, I am not a half, so I don’t fit into that equation. But I may be one of the other type of soul mate, your soul’s class mate during this lifelong education. (And quite possibly beyond.) Perhaps we can help each other with the difficult lessons.

And you said to me: “Who will open up my eyes,
To the wonder and the glory, and the stars in the sky?”
And you said to me: “For this road I’m travelling on
I need someone beside me forever. Who?”
And I said, “It’s me, and I’m ready to go,
ready to show
That I’ll never let you down.
And I want you to know, that this power will grow,
Every day, every beat of my heart,
Forever, forever…”

Yes, I quoted that song back in 2002 when I first bought it. And again in 2004, although that was more playfully. I still remember how I felt back in 2002. And you know what I feel now? That this power has grown, far beyond what I could imagine back then.

Whether I am still here when you read this or not, it matters not.  Even if no one praises me or notices me, I will strive to grow in brightness.  I don’t need to be loved (except by the Light), I don’t even need to be needed anymore. I only need for this Brightness to keep flowing into me, until my soul burns like a portal to a world of light. And then we can go into that light, home.

I wonder if that will really happen. I wonder if I will reach my aspiration. Probably not, given how limited I actually am. I would probably need to live till I am 120 or something, and I don’t even know whether I’ll be here next year. But I am glad I even got to see into this Promised Land.

Your soul mate may vary. As may you.

4th dimension of foolishness

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Why don’t we use our empty heads to reflect on what we did? This is known to work well against the third dimension of foolishness. I am not sure what, if anything, works against the fourth, for I have only seen it hazily – if at all – like a mirage of some faraway thing that is rightly below my horizon.

Since it is April Fool’s day anyway, let me tell you my theory about the fourth dimension of foolishness. Don’t stake your soul on it, of course, for I am still largely a fool myself. As a hopefully less foolish man once said: “Try [or evaluate] everything, keep the good.”

The first dimension or level to overcome is ignorance. No matter how good your intentions, if you are ignorant there is not much you can do. Or worse yet, misinformed. You need to have knowledge of the truth to get started in the direction of wisdom, or anything worthwhile really.  I suppose without true knowledge you may still hold some careers, such as teaching, in a society where teaching falsehood is highly respected. After all, sooner or later you WILL find out that some of what you have learned was just plain Not True. But overall, learning is better than apathy. Once we have learned something, we can start to test it.

The second dimension is stupidity. This is basically a lack of processing power in the brain.  Even if knowledge is given to you, you cannot do much about it, because your brain is not able to hold more than very simple thoughts. It sucks to be stupid, but at least you were born like this, you had no choice. Well, you have the choice of spending a lot of time. If you are only moderately stupid, you can come far if you just keep going. You may have to read a book ten times where I only need to read it once, but in the end you will understand it deeply. You may not get the joke until everyone has gone home, but feel free to laugh anyway. Even if you cannot achieve much, it is still better than to achieve nothing.

Folly adds a new dimension, namely the moral dimension. The fool could have learned the truth and understood it, but preferred not to. Perhaps he did not like the truth, or perhaps he already thought he knew all he needed to know. To have the chance to be wise, and reject it, that must be more bitter than never having had the chance in the first place!

Now we have looked at three angles:  The fact outside us, the mind or brain, and the soul or will. But I believe there is a fourth dimension, which is spiritual. We may call it “destiny”. Or rather a subset of destiny, a kind of capacity for wisdom. Or the lack thereof.

The Catholic philosopher and professor, James V Schall, mentioned in Another sort of Learning that very few are truly wise. I don’t remember but he may have quoted someone on that, however I think this is obvious once you have lived and observed for a while. Even teachers have teachers (to quote Schall again, I think): There are only a few in history who bring much truly new into the world, and I mean new things that stand the test of time in some meaningful way.  The rest of us are more or less riding their coat tails, or at best trying to combine a couple different perspectives.

I could write about this in great detail, because the voice in my heart has a lot to say, but I am not worthy to be a teacher, so I will try to keep this at the level of a letter to a friend.

In Christianity, we take for granted that there is an enormous gap between Jesus Christ and the best and wisest of Christians who have ever lived. I tend to agree, though some think St Francis came closer than the rest of us. In any case, why is this difference? Is it Jesus holding some portion of his divine wisdom back, or is it our capacity to receive it that is lacking?  (That’s a rhetorical question, of course.)

But religion is really too solemn a topic for a fool like me to say something with authority. Definitely so for a religion that I take seriously. At least in theory.

Even if you are not a Christian (your loss!), it is still very rare to see someone rise to the level of their master.  How many Buddhists have become like the Buddha? How many Confucians have approached his level? The most remarkable succession I can think of is how Socrates was followed by Plato, and Plato by Aristotle. They were all remarkable for their era and even by today’s standards, yet they were also strikingly different in some ways, despite being teacher and student one after the other.

One would think that those who come after have an easier time, being able to “download” from their teacher not only the thought itself, but the way to think properly. Certainly even if we exclude those Great Teachers who made claim to divinity, or were assigned divinity by their followers, there must be many who were followed by great geniuses that had decades in which to absorb their teaching and then exceed it. But this rarely happens, if at all.

This is where I believe that the shortfall is not one of IQ as such, but of a deeper and more fundamental capacity, which I conveniently place in the spirit realm since I don’t know of all that many other invisible higher realms.

But I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the tower of song.

-Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song.