Category Archives: religion

Why are Christians stupid?

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Guys are all moronic idiots!

Also, let us not forget the tendency to see the stupidity in people who are unlike us. This is an automatic psychological mechanism to make us feel smarter.

I have met a number of interesting people on Google+. This social network is particularly well suited for meeting people you are NOT already friends with, unlike a certain other social network. It has more of a sourdough effect, growing through contact – you see someone comment something sane on a friend’s post, and you can start finding out more about them (in so far as they allow it). So due to my nature, I have added a bunch of intelligent, curious people to my list of acquaintances. They are almost all atheists, either missionary or functionally. But why are atheists generally noticeably more intelligent than Christians?

The answer is, “because you live in a Christian country”. Most English-speakers do. And in such a country, most people are raised as Christians, in theory at least. (The behavior they actually see while growing up may be somewhat different from the creed. As Mitt Romney’s guardian spirit says in The Next President: Americans worship Mammon, but officially they worship Jesus Christ.) If you don’t have more intelligence than you need to hold a job, you probably don’t spend it on being contrary. You go with the crowd, and stick to interests that are less abstract.  So the people who break out tend to be the smartest ones.

It is easy to test this, because there are countries in which it is not normal to be Christian. In Japan, for instance, only less than 1% are Christians (although some attend Christian rituals in addition to those of other religions – church weddings are popular, and Christmas is almost universal.) You don’t see Japanese suddenly convert to Christianity simply because they are stupid. Clearly it is not the stupidity that does it.

A more relevant example is my native Norway, which used to be a Christian country, in theory. Actually, it still is according to its constitution, but people just politely ignore that now. The elderly are often still Christians, as they were raised that way. But from my generation (around the age of 50-60) and downward, it is more like 10% who are Christian. Most people are agnostic or rather, they are atheists but don’t stir up trouble about it. So does this mean that 90% of the Norwegian population is as smart as the smartest 10% of the US population? Well, Norwegians may think so. We tend to have a ridiculously high self-esteem. But judging from such factors as the frequency of very high education, we don’t excel. Clearly the loss of religion does not come from a sudden surge of intelligence, and neither has atheism made us geniuses.

On the contrary, we are now in a situation where stupid people just accept atheism without thinking, and mindlessly parrot atheist fantasies that are at odds with science. For instance that millions died in the witch hunts (the actual number is a few thousand, not that this is not enough) or that Christianity caused the Dark Ages (the Germanic migrations did, whereas Christianity provided the last refuge of literacy during that time), or that  Christians burned down the Great Library of Alexandria (burning it down was a fairly regular occurrence, even Julius Caesar did it according to Plutarch, and later so did Aurelian; its final destruction happened under Islam. While Christians destroyed the temple, contemporary pagan scholars make no mention of books being destroyed. Nobody knows where and when they met their end.)

Stupid people tend to have a stupid understanding of religion. And so do most smart people, because it is not really something they think a lot about. The main difference is that they don’t just do whatever their parents did, but try to create an identity of their own. In this generation, in English-speaking countries, atheism is often a part of that. In the 60es, Hinduism and Buddhism were popular. Who knows what it will be next time. Happy Science, perhaps? It certainly seems to be a hit among the upper classes of Japan, as a religion that subtly implies that intelligent people are spiritually superior, born to rule and that it is for the best of everybody that they control the power and money in society. I guess we could be worse off than that.

“Learned men”

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“You are thinking too much!” -I have heard that occasionally. As the saying goes: “I think, therefore I am… single”.  ^_^ And I believe it is possible to think too much, and read to much, and learn to much. But mainly if it is about the wrong things. If ignorance was bliss, we’d live in Utopia.

If I am allowed, I will write some reflections that put together what I wrote yesterday with something I have noticed while reading the amazing St Teresa of Avila, herself a genius as well as a saint.

I have found myself unable to complete reading her autobiography Life and her famous Interior Castle, because of their structure that reveals ever greater depths of holiness and purity, and I just cannot bear looking too far into what I have (so far, at least) failed to enter myself. I get to a certain point (about a third of her autobiography, actually) and then, well, it feels kind of like peeping. Looking at something that is not for me, at least at the present.  Even so, I have gotten my hands on her Way of Perfection. It seems to have a different structure from the others, with no clear progression that catches up with me and passes me by.

One thing that shows up repeatedly in her writing, and again here, is her respect and admiration for “learned men”. In this context is meant theologians, people who have learned much about the Bible and the Church. I find this interesting: There is a tendency among Christians to praise the simple faith and, if not in those words, the simple mind. This tradition goes back to Jesus Christ himself, who praised the children and those who became like children. But from this admiration of the simple has grown a more thorny stem, of disregard and even mockery of learning and thinking. Catholicism has maintained a balance between the childlike devotion and the learned philosophy, seeking to find a place for each in the life of the Church. But in the Protestant tradition, anti-intellectualism has grown to great heights in some places.

In modern society, this anti-intellectualism has played right into the hands of the left (as if this movement has any particular claim to intellect!) trying to portray religion as a remnant from the Dark Ages. There are indeed Christians (particularly in America, it seems to me) who seem eager to support this view.

Now the “learned men” that St Teresa – and modern Catholic philosophers such as James V. Schall – talk about, these are not people who just randomly latch on to whatever zeitgeist (spirit of the times) is prevalent on college campus at their time. Rather they are such as seek out works of timeless wisdom, Holy Scriptures first and then the words of the great thinkers through the ages, whose thoughts have expanded the minds of the generations that followed them.

C. S. Lewis, another “learned man” of sorts, wrote an obvious truth that deserves recognition no matter what you think about Lewis himself and his religion. He wrote that it is necessary to read old books not because they are truer than new books, but because the fallacies of their age were different from ours. We are easily able to see in old books the mistakes that were commonly accepted and not even debated in their age, but which are glaring to our eyes. But what we do not easily understand is that in our own age, we also have a particular zeitgeist (spirit of the times) which makes us agree on many things without a serious debate, things that from another age (past or future) would look like pure madness.

If there was no other reason – if all holy scripture was just pious fantasy, if all philosophers of the past were simply ignorant barbarians – it would still be a pressing need for some to read the works of the past. If for nothing else, then at the very least in order to return to our own time and see it for the first time.

But I for one do not think the benefit is as limited as that. As I have said before, there is in true genius an expansion not first and foremost of knowledge itself, but of the capacity for knowledge and understanding. It is not that reading them fills our cup, but it makes our cup larger! It is not knowledge itself as much as our ability to look at knowledge in new ways. And if this is true for the great thinkers, then far more for religion properly so called. If the human genius makes our “container” of the mind wider, religion should make it deeper. (This, as I mentioned above, certainly does not happen with all people, more’s the pity.)

The best description I have heard of the fruit of this process is this, that we come to look at ourselves and the world from a much higher place. From this height, patterns become obvious that were hidden close up. And things that loomed so large, are seen as the molehills they are, and the people whose opinions weighed so heavily upon us, seem like ants, going about their own things rather than (as we thought) being preoccupied with us. It is rare indeed (except for the lover and the stalker) that anyone in this world is concentrated on us and our small things. When seen from a very great height, we can breathe a sigh of relief, or even laugh at our former delusions.

If this is the fruit of becoming a “learned man”, then I see no harm in it. But there are many petty minds carrying books they have not fully digested. From these I expect little help. But Light send that they have no hand in supporting the spiritual life of the earnest, for they need the other kind, who can watch over them from on high, so to speak.

 

Heresies, heresies, heresies

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Will you separate your delusions and reality?

“But will you separate your delusions and reality?” That is what I mean by scanning for heresies. Heresies are delusions in the spiritual. 

I have enjoyed reading Schuon, but I notice one problem when reading someone so high, high above me: I can’t automatically scan for heresies, as I normally do.

See, one needs to be careful about what one feeds the soul. It is one thing when you know something is not even meant to be true, but when someone claims to tech eternal and absolute truth, it is necessary to scan for heresies. There are two different main types of heresies that I watch out for when reading religious or spiritual books: Universal heresies, and specific heresies.

By universal heresies I mean teachings that cannot possibly be true in any systematic religion. Transposing good and evil, of course, but also transposing cause and effect, important and unimportant. The latter of this triad can easily become established within a religion and corrupt it, as when a powerful faction of the Jews at the time of Jesus became obsessed with tithes and forgot righteousness and mercy. This is a risk even today. Any church that talks more about money than mercy should cause a well-read Christian to flee for his life, don’t you think?

But in addition to the universal heresies, a follower of a particular religion must scan for the boundaries of his own tradition. Certainly Schuon himself is convinced that there can be no piety outside of a sacred tradition. You cannot just mix and match from the spiritual supermarket, picking the parts you like from every faith on earth. Say you like Judaism but you also like bacon, so you pick the “no eating cows” from Hinduism to replace the “no eating pigs” from Judaism. That is not how it works. This is also a form of heresy. The different parts of each religion and tradition are made to fit together.

To take an example closer to home, when I read about reincarnation, this is not a universal heresy. It is an essential part of most religions (including esoteric Judaism, it seems) but is downplayed to almost nothing in Christianity. Jesus mentioned that “if you will believe it”, John the Baptist was the Elijah who should come. We know from the gospel that John advanced “in the spirit and power of Elijah”, in other words it was the spirit of Elijah which was reincarnated, not the personality and memories. Christianity has generally denied, or at least refused to mention, reincarnation of souls. And with good reason, for this is a topic easily misunderstood and which could easily dishearten people.

So when I read about reincarnation, if it is done well, it is not a universal heresy, but it is very much a heresy as applies to Christianity.  I have to filter out such things as applies to myself and the nourishment of my own soul, although it can be stored as a knowledge that is relevant to others. To use an image, having hands is very valuable and most monkeys have four of them, but on a human that would not be good at all! Even if something is good for others, it would be disastrous for us.

At the very least, going on about reincarnation in a Christian book would commit the heresy of making important something that is unimportant (to Christians). Right now, I could explain why it is unimportant to us specifically (and also to the Pure Land sect of Buddhism). But this is beyond my pray grade. If I write it down, I will not be allowed by my heart to upload this entry either, just like the one yesterday.

But there is also a third form of heresy, in a manner of speaking, different in nature from the first two. The first two, universal and specific or local, are heresies that could be transmitted to me from the author, who either is infected with them himself or has them slip into his book because he goes beyond his pray grade, as I am apt to do unless I catch myself. When one operates at the edge of what one knows, it is easy for something to slip in.

But conversely, when one READS at the edge of what one can understand, there is also the risk that heresy may slip in on OUR side. We take pride in being able to read high-level texts, but if we lack the knowledge base (and particularly experience), we may misunderstand what is said and not even notice. This is mentioned in the Bible, in the second letter from Peter, in chapter 3, about “our dear brother Paul”: “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

If Paul is dangerous to the “ignorant and unstable”, rest assured that Frithof Schuon is also. To mind come the awesome scientists, Marie and Pierre Curie, who discovered radium. They were fascinated by this new stuff and would look at how beautifully it glowed in the dark. Then they died horribly from the radiation. There is the risk that this could happen to me if I am careless with Schuon.

St Teresa, prayer and me

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It will work if I pray to God!

It will work if I pray to God! That’s a big if, though. I mean really pray, not recite a wish list. Most people probably don’t even know what this “mystical prayer” is which really works, really changes people. So it is twice ironic that I still shrink back from it. But I do, most of the time.

Well, the recent entries should be enough fluff to convince even the casual observer that I am not the next St John of the Cross. So let me briefly return to the more interesting topic of prayer and the inner life, this time illuminated by the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila.

It was eerie to read her many-sided attempts to describe the first and second stage of “mystical prayer”, and realize that she was putting into words what I had not been able to express accurately myself. I have mentioned occasionally that “I was taught meditation directly by God”, something I found strange and  nearly unique. That may not be the case at all. Rather, this seems to have been a fairly natural thing in the time of St Teresa. (What I and most people today call meditation is closer to what the saints call contemplation. The two words seem to have swapped meaning since then.)

The saint expresses her sincere hope that she was the only person who, having experienced the sweetness and consolation of the second stage of mystical prayer, still fell back into an idle and lukewarm spiritual life for many years. Unfortunately, she was not heard in this prayer, for the same thing happened to me, only more so – deeper and for longer. Then again she was purer from the outset, and all the way. Some of this may be ascribed to the difference between men and women as concerns the nature of their temptations, but even adjusted for this, she was definitely a purer person even as a child, as a youth, and throughout the desert years before her great awakening nearer to the middle of her life. Well, saints will be saints, I guess.

But despite never having been a saint (except in the generic sense that the word is used about all Christians, and even then only under doubt), I still recognized her description so far as to this second stage. In it, the will is taken into a lock or embrace (my words, not hers) so that one does not particularly want to pray or stop praying, but one is just there and the experience of much stronger than usual heavenly presence happens while one is there. The activity of memory, imagination and understanding is as if on the outside, words and thoughts seeming superficial and irrelevant, not even worth suppressing… anyway, you should read St Teresa, she explains it much better.

Many arrive at this stage, says the saint, but few proceed further. And I am certainly not one of those few. When she moves on to write about the third stage, it is utterly unfamiliar to me. I may have seen it as from afar, but I have no experience with it, of that I am pretty sure. She writes so clearly that I should have recognized it. But no. I may as well stop reading right there, for from now on we are in spoiler territory, secrets unknown to me.

And no wonder. I have been wandering far astray, it seems now. And still am, if perhaps now partly from habit.

I see it now as if I was thrown a lifeline when I happened across Fr Dubay’s book on the two great Carmelite saints and their teaching on prayer, Fire Within. Despite a general awareness of imperfection, I was fairly OK with my prayer life. After all, I experienced (and still do, thankfully) the presence of God or some fully authorized representative, day and night, even when I least deserve it. It did not occur to me that God being present to me might be less important than me being present to God.

(By using the word “God” here rather than my common phrase, the Light, I seek to stress the personal aspect of this relationship. Also this usage is closer to that of the saints and their biographers. I am however aware that the word “God” is very saturated today, and often in an unfortunate way, as people have their concept of God from newspaper cartoons and similar misleading sources. Perhaps I should adopt St Teresa’s favorite phrase, “His Majesty”, to express the personal aspect? Or the Jewish “King of the Universe”? Perhaps “All-Father”?)

Anyway! Even now, knowing better, I find it hard to prioritize “actual prayer” (or “focused prayer”, as opposed to “continual prayer” which is, I guess, best described as “non-exclusive”. Wherever one is and whatever one does (at least within a wide range), one can be aware of the Divine presence and communicate accordingly; but that is like being at a party together with your Beloved – it is a very different thing from being together two-alone! That last one is what I mean by “actual prayer”. Get a room!)

If I sought literally first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness, then I would be very quick to spend time apart from other things, alone in the beams of the Light, seeking to learn there the Truth as it concerns me, and let the Light burn away what is not compatible with itself. But rather than first, it seems to be “seventh and last” as we say in Norway. Even idle amusements slip past before the one thing necessary.

There is a saying that “Hell is the absence of God”, and that is certainly how it felt to me as well, for the brief times I have experienced such an absence. But to my sinful inclinations, and my lower nature in general, it would almost seem like Hell is the presence of God, the way my mind squirms and wriggles to get away from the more concentrated form of it.

So that is why I hesitate to read any further. I am not at this time one of those who can benefit from it, but rather from rereading and reflecting on what concerns me right now.

I don’t mean to be all depressive here. In fact, I don’t feel that way. I have been unreasonably blessed despite not deserving it. But there are also blessings even much greater, not only for myself but which could have brought happiness to many, that I not only don’t deserve (that doesn’t seem to stop the Heavenly Brother) but that I am not even capable of receiving, much like someone who is still crawling does not have the hands free to carry something, no matter how freely it is given.

Instead of prayer, what?

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A hanging bridge through golden clouds

A bridge to the eternal burning heart of compassion. Not good enough for everyone?

On the Internet, there is a meme that shows up from time to time among my left-wing friends. It depicts a small child praying, and the text is something like: “Prayer – a way to feel good without actually doing anything.”

That is a pretty strange judgment about stepping up in front of the blazing, unbearably bright flame of Love and saying: “Here I am, send me.”

It is true that in its most crude form, prayer can be a bit like voting for a socialist government: You ask someone else to make everything alright, preferably without too much expense for yourself, hoping that you and your loved ones will benefit from someone else’s sacrifice.

But hopefully it doesn’t end there. Perhaps it did for you, but then you may not be typical. Or if you are, that may be a very sad thing indeed. If you read about prayer from people who are really into it, or the teachings of the saints, you will find that prayer evolves into something very different. It becomes a fire that slowly eats away at our selfishness in all its forms: Greed, pride, envy, anger, antipathy, laziness, excessive appetites of all kinds … all the stuff that keeps us from actually loving our “neighbors” in this world.

Devotion and virtue are not two paths – they are two feet walking the same path.

Humans being what we are, this is not a fast lane. Depending on how much time we spend in prayer, and how willing we are to agree to the necessary sacrifices, years and decades can sometimes pass. But normally after a while it should become obvious to people that you are no longer the selfish pig you used to be.

So what do you do instead? Think about it. In the time that could have been spent in prayer, what is so important that you can be proud of not praying?

I think you may be confusing prayer with magic. Magic seeks to impose our will on the universe. Prayer seeks to commune with God or Heaven. That’s a pretty big difference, unless we actually think we know better than God. Well, sometimes we really do think so, because we are desperate and we doubt that God really understands how we feel. But in general, in what we may call “higher” forms of prayer, there is a huge difference.

I don’t see mocking people who try to become good, and who are aware they aren’t there yet, being a better use of your time. But each of us shall make account for himself. Actually, nothing worries me more than that, and few things except that. Still, for the good of the many, we must say all the words that should be spoken, before they are lost forever.

Otaku and salvation

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"Who would address an otaku as an otaku?"

In Japan, “otaku” has become a harsh insult, and not entirely without reason.

I have frequently mentioned the “otaku”, a Japanese name for people who are obsessed with pop culture like comics, cartoons and computer games. There are a lot of people in Japan who are interested in these things, and the word is used in English and other European languages about people with such an interest in Japanese (and sometimes Korean) popular culture. But in Japanese it is a very negative word, and used about those who are so obsessed that they cannot act quite like normal people in society.

Many of my long-standing online friends are otaku in the English sense of the word, but not many of them – perhaps not any, anymore – are really obsessed. I have mentioned the extreme cases called hikikomori, young people who lock themselves in their room watching anime all day. This is the stereotype of the otaku taken to the logical extreme.

Given yesterday’s self-reflection on time spent on a computer game, it might seem that otaku are particularly far from salvation. After all, Heaven is a multi-dimensional “place”, starting for real with the 5th dimension (spirituality); but the otaku lives mostly in two dimensions: the surface of comic books, TV sets or computer monitors. And he spends most of his time in the soft, imaginary, daydream-like lower worlds, to the point where it becomes painful for him even to live in the ordinary human world of space and time, much less the unyielding and timeless higher worlds.

And yet, I believe the otaku has a particular trait that could serve him well if he ever awakens to the Truth: He has the ability to move his mind to a world different from the physical world.

Let me explain. Our animal friends live in a world that is not only real but concrete, in the sense that it can be seen and smelled and touched; a world of the senses. Small children also live in this world. But they grow up and begin to live in the fourth dimension of time, which animals don’t except for a few in short glimpses. You probably don’t understand how significant this is. It is simply too  obvious for most people to see.

The fourth dimension, time, is all in your head. You cannot see that which was or that which is to be, only what is at the moment. (Or the moment light starts its travel from it, which in the case of some stars is many years ago. The principle still holds.) For instance, I will never again see the house I lived in last year at this time. It has been completely destroyed and a new house built in its place. I will never be able to touch the rough, painted walls again, smell the particular smell of old harsh fat in the old stairway, or even see it. I can see photos of it, but not the real thing. It does not exist anymore. And yet I know that it is real in the past. Likewise what will be in the future is as real as that I can see and touch now. This unfailing belief in the reality of things that aren’t there to our senses is unique to humans, and even takes some years to assemble.

The fifth dimension is likewise “in our head”, and there is no way for us to show it to the doubtful or let them touch it or smell it or hear it. And yet like time it is quite real to those who have added the first dimension beyond time. The mind is able to go where the body can not. We know this because all of us do this routinely in the fourth dimension of time. But our travel there is to some degree personal. Sometimes old friends will laugh at something that happened long ago and they fail to explain it to a newer friend: “You have to have been there to get it” they will say. It is the same with the fifth dimension and beyond.

The otaku has proven his ability to reach out with his mind and move it to a different world, although in this case a smaller, softer, simpler world. Almost all of us do this from time to time in the form of daydreams (although autists don’t daydream, I have been told) but the otaku is not just popping into an imaginary world: He is able to stay there for a long time, and become thoroughly familiar with it. An otaku can often remember obscure details of a comic book world even after many years. So there is this ability to move beyond the concrete.

A person who is strongly bound to the senses and the moment will have a hard time ascending to the fifth dimension. He will think “I am this body” and believe that where his body isn’t, he cannot be either. In a sense, such a person is on the side of humanity that is closest to animals. Dogs have many good qualities, but they are strongly bound to their bodies. Likewise a human can be a very good person but strongly bound to the body. This makes it hard to explore the spiritual world. In so far as such a person is religious, it will often be in a dogmatic and theoretical way.

The otaku is able to move between worlds, but unfortunately the “gravity” is stronger the closer you come to the bottom. It is hard to get back up when one is weakened from years of living in a dream. It requires grace, which is luckily still available, and it requires spiritual training or discipline, which is unfortunately difficult for a weak person. Such a soul needs to be gentle but persistent with himself. He may not be able to immerse himself in meditation for long, but he can still do it regularly, a little each day, and it will get easier with time. If he attends a religious service, he will almost certainly begin to daydream of his colorful anime world after some minutes. But as long as he does not do this driven by spite but just by weakness, he can gradually recollect himself and begin to rise toward the Light.

While I am not, and have never been, an otaku in the Japanese sense, I have enough in common with them to understand and sympathize with their plight. It is not easy to be weak, and it is easy to duck down in the lower worlds where one can be strong. For the deeper you go into lower worlds, the more godlike your powers. Conversely, the higher you rise, the weaker you become, and if you rise very high you will feel like a maggot. (Although you will gradually become stronger if you spend time in higher worlds.) But for those who have lived long in lower worlds, it requires strength and patience to live even in the ordinary world. Luckily this is all available, and it need not stop there. Little by little we will be changed into that which we focus intently on. And just as we once focused almost exclusively on worlds created by humans, we can focus more and more on the worlds that have the power to create us anew. In religion these worlds are collectively called “Heaven”, but there are several – one could even say many – of them.

But of these things there are many others who are better qualified to speak than I. For I am like a tourist in a marvelous country, craning my neck at sights that are beyond me. I am still so weak after all these years that it is easier for me to sink down than to rise up, left to myself.

323 hours in Skyrim? WTH?

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“Let’s go. Shouldn’t keep the gods waiting for us” says the prisoner as the wagon stops at the site of execution. I have only one God, but perhaps I shouldn’t have kept Him waiting for 323 hours while I played Skyrim…

Actually, I am not quite sure about those 323 hours. The Steam statistic says so, but it also says “last played today”, while last I tried to play was Saturday, I believe. I gave up after about an hour, so that fits since I think it said 322 when I started. Back then it also said “last played today”, although the last time I played was actually on Christmas Eve a bit. But even then I remember that it was over 300 hours, and that bothered me.

I played a lot of Skyrim during my vacation (instead of writing, although the game also inspired me to write on a new story.) But well over 300 hours is a lot of time to spend in a lower world like this.

As I have said before, it is not like I forget the Light (or God) as soon as I dive into such a lower world. But the distance does increase, and the truth is that I have done things in Skyrim that I would never do in the physical world, things I am ashamed of when I look back at them. Actually more than ashamed, but I don’t want to give your imagination wings with jet engines either…

And after reading the beginning of St Teresa’s autobiography, I have been asking myself: “What would have been the outcome if I had spent those hours in a higher world instead of a lower? What would the effect have been on my life if I had spent 323 hours in prayer over that span of time?

Actually, calculating in my head I find it almost impossible that I can have spent quite that much time there. That would be close to 10 hours a day for the first month, when I did most of the playing. Even on vacation that is not realistic, not with my wrists. Or is it? Could it really be true?

Lower worlds (worlds that we create, as opposed to higher worlds which create us) are not necessarily and by definition hells. Some of them are, and I guess they all would be if we were trapped in them. Certainly that was my reaction years ago when I played Daggerfall for hundreds of hours, and a fellow player pondered the possibility that we might go to Daggerfall when we died. Even then, the thought disturbed me greatly. Later I have read at least one Christian philosopher who thinks that could actually happen. Well, Philip Sherrard did not mention Daggerfall, of course, but he held that the soul when leaving the material body would bring along its world, the world that was internalized in its mind. Certainly I did dream many times about being in Daggerfall, and the dreams were usually creepy. Possibly all of them, I am not quite sure.

Lower worlds are softer, more malleable, but also more ephemeral, less solid or substantial. Time flies there, and developments that would take a long time in real life can take place quickly. This is very noticeable in games and one of their major appeals. You use a bow for a short time and your skill goes up. You cast a spell a few times and you becomes a better spellcaster. It takes little effort to change yourself and improve your skills and abilities and to become stronger. This is, I believe, why such games have so strong a claim on me. I wish I could improve rapidly, so I get drawn into an imaginary world where that can happen. This is not unlike a man who wishes he could have a girlfriend to make love to, and is drawn into fantasies and literature that fulfill his wish but not actually in the real world.

The wish itself is not bad. I would say it is actually good, in a certain sense. But spending hundreds of hours in a fantasy world will only improve fantasy skills. Well, and mouse control and such, I guess, but I really don’t think it is the best possible use of time. Perhaps some “downtime” cannot be avoided when I am no better than this, but Skyrim is probably not where I should spend my next 323 hours of free time.

Perhaps I should try spending a couple hundred hours in higher worlds, if I am allowed such hundreds of hours. Our life on Earth is itself an uncertain thing, after all. St Teresa recommends that everyone set aside two hours a day to be alone with God, without doing anything else. Even if you cannot pray, she says, and as such cannot be together with God, you can still give God time to be together with you.

The less saintly of us might want some other form of higher world, like the worlds of music and art, philosophy or natural science. All these are worlds that are higher in the sense that they shape our world, but is less or not at all shaped by it. The value of pi has been pretty much the same since the ancient geeks of ancient Greece started exploring it. We know more decimals, but we know nothing more of its true nature than they. So this is an example of a higher world that is intermediate between us and the Point of Creation.

Right now I am kind of fired up about the whole “spending time alone with God” – in theory, that is. Teresa is really good at making it seem like an awesome idea. She also has a couple saints she recommends spending time with, foremost of them St Joseph, whom I once called “patron saint of boyfriends who don’t get any”. Not that I am anyone’s boyfriend now, contrary to what some may have thought. Anyway, I am sure St Joseph has many other virtues as well.

Actually, in a manner of speaking I spend time with St Teresa on the bus five days a week, so that’s something. But while I am in a certain sense alone with God /the Light most of the day and night each day, I am not actively, attentively, exclusively, dedicatedly spending two hours a day focused on God. Much less 300 hours a month…

The great chain of worlds has its own gravity of sorts – it is easy to move downward, but hard to move upward. Or at least that is so until one leaves the “gravity well” of lower things and is pulled into orbit of Heaven. Or so I am told. Unlike St Teresa, I am still kind of moving like a yo-yo up and down through the worlds fairly close to my birth world, I think. There is far further to go upward. And downward, but that way lies madness. Or as the ancient cartographers would write: “Here be dragons.”

 

High above me

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She’s so high, high above me…

As I mentioned yesterday, I have finished reading Fire Within and legally acquired Life, St Teresa’s autobiography of a sorts. I just barely begun it today.

In seemingly unrelated news, I went to get a much needed haircut. While sitting there, I heard a song that I could not catch the lyrics of, but somehow felt I really wanted to find out. It turned out to be the somewhat misleadingly named “She’s so high” – it actually has nothing to do with drugs. It is obviously about some guy who is befriended by a woman who is superior to him in every measure humans in this world can think of. A song could hardly be less relevant to me, who would not now want to be joined to a human if I could, nor could if I wanted to. I’ve been playing the song like 20 times now. OK, make that 30.

But somehow I can’t believe
That anything should happen
I know where I belong
And nothing’s gonna happen

‘Cause she’s so high
High above me, she’s so lovely
She’s so high, like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc or Aphrodite
She’s so high, high above me…

It amuses me no end. I know it wasn’t meant that way. But why should the Devil have all the good music?

Anyway, I take the company of St Teresa over Cleopatra any day. St Teresa is really awesome! And in this book, she really tries to show herself as a human of flesh and blood, not some saint in the sky with diamonds. It is pretty clear however that the vague sins of her youth are such as most people would consider utterly harmless. That doesn’t say much, of course; most of us are unspeakably coarse.

And that’s what I mean when I say she’s so high, high above me. Like somewhere in the eight dimension or something, I imagine. Anyway, I feel I could not catch up to her in a million years. (This is quite likely true as well.) Why do I even bother? I am honestly not sure.  But it does bother me, like a long forgotten memory triggered by a faint smell, wordless, images too fleeting to catch but a sense of recognition.

Good reads indeed

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"Religion is simple"

“Religion is simple.” That is one of the hardest parts about it.

I have been reading Fire Within at a slow pace, usually only on the bus to work in the morning, although sometimes at other times a little. Finished it now. Probably won’t read it again immediately, but if I live a while, I definitely want to read it again.

Fr Thomas Dubay makes a convincing case that infused prayer leading to union with God and heroic virtue is not only possible, but the natural destination of any Christian. He proves with many references that the life and teaching of the two Carmelites, St Teresa and St John of the Cross, were in full accordance with the Bible and the fundamental doctrine of the Church. (As one would expect with them being canonized, I guess. The point was more that this was what Christians are really called to.)

At this point the reader will probably want to know the details, and the “recipe” as it were, to see if it is possible for them. Fr Dubay has written several books on this topic so that may be one way to go. But he stresses that this is not in the least a matter of technique. It is a matter of loving God. Different people will have different experiences (and some may not have much experiences at all), as God deals with each soul according to His will and its needs. Apart from some basics, there really isn’t anything one can do except pray, shut up when God shows up, and spend the rest of one’s time resisting temptations as best one can, do good and above all be obedient. Obedience is better than sacrifice, even the sacrifice of time spent in prayer.

Well, that’s what I took away from it. It seems quite far apart from my mundane life, but it does make some temptations easier some of the time, so that’s something. Now downloaded (free gift) The Life of St Teresa of Jesus by St Teresa. I wonder how far I get into that. I gave up on her Interior Castle once I got noticeable ahead of my own life. It felt kind of like peeping on her love life, in a manner of speaking, so intimate was she with the Lord. I suspect the same may happen again.

Friends forever

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Are there really friends that care about each other their whole life?

Are there really friends that can care about each other their whole life?

I wrote about this at length, but decided against uploading it. I’ve been writing entirely too much about spiritual things lately for someone of my pray grade. So I’ll try to make this more straightforward.

Yes, there really are friends who care about each other for as long as they live. Perhaps not their whole life unless they also happen to be twins, but from the onset of their friendship and forevermore.

St Teresa was one of those people who loved her friends very dearly and always had them close to her heart. You’d think someone who had God had enough, but to her there was not a clear distinction between God and his children. Those who loved “His Majesty”, as she liked to call Him, having them as friends was in a way like having God himself.

The key to robust friendship is that they are founded on love that gives without asking anything in return. Friendships founded on need are not robust. It could simply be the need to not be alone, so these will fade when there is someone more readily available to be together with. Or it could be the need to be entertained, or to feel important, or even in some cases an erotic “need” to be in the presence of an attractive person, which often excites people even if nothing comes of it.

But some friendships are based on a common love for something that does not fade. And these friendships can last for as long as we both shall live, and even beyond, so I believe. Be that as it may, my friendship is free and must be freely accepted. While I’m happy to help a friend, you should not be too optimistic about starting up your friendship by asking for favors, if you are just another greedy human seeking benefits for this brief life on Earth. But if you seek glory and immortality by endurance in good deeds, I’ll definitely consider being Friends Forever. ^_^ I could need more friends like that.