Bardo - between lives

In the Tibetan book of the dead, the Bardot is the state or place between lives. I’ve argued with Christian friends about reincarnation but that’s one of the doctrines that Constantine removed because reincarnation has always been bad for the State. There’ s ample evidence in the Bible that the people of Jesus’s day believed in reincarnation.  Revelations by contrast is the most controversial book.

The doctrine of reincarnation doesn’t disagree with ‘end days’.  It simply says that before ‘end days’ they will be multiple deaths and rebirths.  I may well be a different person many times over from the one I was a child.  I have a sense of ‘nodal’ points in my life where there was a cross roads where I took the ‘road less travelled’ and became in kind a different person. 

Also the west is ‘linear’. We believe in progression forward.  This whole ‘ordered’ time scenario is questioned at it’s core by Science. There is definitely ‘Now”. Now, the present in ‘God’s time’.  There is only a vague yesterday and tomorrow in what Jung called the Collective Unconscious.  

The idea then is that everyone today, now, this vague ‘day of God’ which may be a day in our life or a hundred years or maybe even a thousand, is indeed a reincarnation of each other.  We’re all related by DNA to an African lady. The differences between us are minuscule.  

Anxiety is said to be a measure of our distance from God but equally a measure of our humanity. Jesus taught “Do not be afraid.”

The State is forever fear mongering.  If there is ‘reincarnation’ then we know that we will die and evolve but that State bureaurcrats and leaders who do evil will return as perhaps a mosquito, a worm or a frog.  

The consensus is that we reincarnate within the same level. So a bad man gets to come back to do it again as a human. But we all began collectively as insects.

When natives say ‘all my relations’ they are speaking to this spiritual truth that we’re all connected not only spiritually but by DNA. We’re all sentient too. The dolphin, wolf and tree are alive and ‘thinking’.  When I eat wheat I’m killing just as I’m killing when I eat a cow.  Each division that human’s make is a kind of traditional arbitrary decision.

In the Bardot, what is fascinating for the Tibetans, is that they felt a group of people reincarnated over and over again as a team or ‘cast of characters’.

Karma or divine retribution says that the murderer will be murdered. Dr. CarlJung described the ‘archetypes’, pretty much the collection of characters depicted in a standard Tarot deck. These are the main players in the ‘tribe’ and later the medieval society.  These exist today but are less easily identified. The corporations are now the knightly societies that parallel the legal structures of the king. Corporations have their own private armies they call ‘security’ forces.  The medieval arrangement was not so dissimilar.  Trained to see the patterns and think of time as today it’s not that difficult to recognize patterns.  

“Process thinking’ is another asset the priest of science, the psychiatrist, is taught which makes this all even more apparent.

The notion of ‘attachment’ is the idea that people have become confused by the ‘magic’ or the ‘evil’ of this world.  They actually have identified with their body.  Rather than realizing they are spiritual souls and adventurers on a journey they believe they are this world, this impermanence.  

The story of Jesus is clearly the local government supporting the international government and killing the son of God.  God is permanent. God’s kingdom is not of this earth God’s kingdom is eternal. There is no eternity here.  

This is not ‘real’ in the sense that God and heaven and spirituality is.

The question we ask ourselves is ‘are we spiritual beings living a physical adventure’ or physical beings living a spiritual adventure’.  Even E=MC2 tells the story of Energy and Matter.  Even string theory talks of the Word of God.

If you have ears you can hear.

But the Bardot says we don’t just do this alone but rather it’s like a play with this whole cast of characters. The job is to see ourselves with the forgiveness that Jesus shared. To evolve we must ‘love’.  

The whole idea of ‘peace’ on any terms is silly. You have peace between wars. The Utopian claims of aetheists and other religions are simply ‘when I’m in charge’ I’ll make it good for everyone.

Jesus said the ‘Kingdom of Heaven” is here.

God is within.

The great spiritual teachers have said the same.

In the Bhagadvagita Arjuna looks at the war and says that those fighting are all my relatives and Krishna answers yes, the only question is whether you will participate.

Attachment is playing the game as if the ‘game’ is real when Plato said that it was shadows and the Glass Bead Game tale is of a different kind of reality.

So I die. Is that the end?

Am I alone or are all these people I’m writing about in my life just family and relatives.

In Zen your enemy is your best friend. The one who kills you in this life teaches you your weakness so that in the next life you will be better equipped. 

Love your enemy.

In Christianity the ‘devil’ or ‘satan’ is the greatest and most powerful and most nasty in Catholicism.  That’s the remnants of the State Religion of Constantine.  

C.S. Lewis paints a very different picture of the Devil in Screwtape Letters.  He’s more a bureaurcrats in a B movie.

The drug dealer sells lies. 

Doing drugs is like fucking a blow up doll and believing it’s love, is what one person described it as.  

On a grand scheme the propaganda of the State and other aetheist or dictator based religions is really just illusion.

Reality is God. Reality is Love.  We are One.  

I learn as a Christian to see other Christians in this church, to reclaim the familial relationship that I had before this life with the friends in my cast and those with whom I return.

I think of the Bardot as the Green Room. Between acts and between plays when I was an actor we actors and casts and assistants and all those involved in production would laugh and celebrate ‘off stage’.  We would leave our ‘imaginary’ roles and become authentic and ‘be our selves.’

The role of the policeman is just a ‘role’ . The role of the bureaucrat or judge or thief or executioner or rapist is just a role. The role of victim is equally a role.  

My job is love.  The more I see the similarity and the more I understand the other as an aspect of myself but mostly as a teacher, a loving teacher, and not an alien, but family, then the closer I am to God.  

I’m writing my own memory of my past with people as good or bad but that’s not the way I truly perceive them. The past is past.  I saw the man who stabbed me through the eyes of fear and alienation but I’m alive today. What didn’t kill me has indeed made me stronger and more enlightened .  I loved the book Spirituality of Imperfection because it spoke to our humanity.  

We collectively are evolving and the plays are like the Lord of the Rings.  i believe I’m a kind of Hobbit. I do believe in Gandalf. I love that the Bible show ‘we win in the end’.  Not some dictator or tyrant or committee of gangster but ‘us’ .  ‘We win’. “I am not alone.”

My image of heaven is best described by C. S. Lewis though I am especially fond of Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.  I love for my homestead acreage. I miss the chickens. I want to be in the Garden of Eden with God laughing about the snake and Eve.  I want to be more loving and more forgiving and to give my ‘utmost for his highest’.  At the point of excellence I see God as clearly as I do on the peak of every mountain I’ve climbed and in the middle of the ocean I’ve crossed. In the Center of the Hurricane I’ve known the unsettled calm. I would know heaven on earth. I would know God more clearly. I would live more spirituality, more courageously, less fearfully.

Thank you Jesus.  

Resentment and Forgiveness

In the 12 step programs there is great emphasis on addressing one's own 'resentments' and attempting to 'let go' of these and move on to 'forgiveness'. It was explained to me early that 'forgiving' didn't mean I 'condoned' what I perceived as the other person's behaviour. Further it was also explained to me that in the 'heat of the moment' I was supposed to be defending myself directly and surviving and leaving the forgiving till a later time. Even the Dalai Lama has said that if a person is pointing a gun at you and shooting you are right to defend yourself.

However, holding onto resentments has been described as 'taking poison and hoping the other person dies'. We are what we think. Cognitive behavioural therapy says specifically that our thoughts create our emotions and we also tend to attract and be drawn to what we feel, sometimes in a viscious circle kind of way.

The key to addressing our 'resentments' in the 12 step program was to make an inventory of all those who we felt had hurt us and then list what the hurt was. This hurt was described as being less complex and more specific than most of us are willing to do. Indeed we tend to think of ourselves as 'terminally' unique but when we actually list our resentments and see the pattern is rather basic we realize that we're not that special or different from anyone else.

The experience of resentment is associated with a threat to the following:

1) Money - it's utterly amazing how much resentment people hold to anyone who interferes with their money 'supply'.
2) Sexual life - it's equally amazing how much resentment people hold to anyone who interferes with their sexual life.
3) Security - this refers to whatever we believe protects us and keeps us safe in what we believe is an unsafe world. It probably should be at the top of the list because certainly I still have fleeting negative thoughts of the careless irresponsible drivers who drove through lights and hit me with their vehicles leaving me today with some rather serious pain issues where joints were damaged. That's an example of a 'security' issue. The failure of the insurance company to compensate me for my loss is another resentment issue that goes with money.
4) Self esteem or status or personal relationships - we have a 'social image' of ourselves. I have had a serious resentment to a compulsive liar and pervert who falsely accused me of being attracted to them, as a form of extortion for money. In then end I had to pay them off because the courts are only about money and no longer care for 'justice' or 'right and wrong'. Indeed the courts are a source of resentment to me because as a dead lawyer friend said, the middle class of Canada can no longer afford them. The legal system no longer protects me from thieves and criminals and all I have is insurance which costs me more and more to the point where I'd think the insurance and legal system and criminals were in league against the law abiding citizens. Of course after the 'status' issue, where the 'false allegation' impugned my 'reputation' and rewarded the liar and criminal, I had a resentment about the money issue. At the same time I worried that my family and friends would think there was some truth in this even though I knew that anyone who knew me knew me as a good man. I worried that these days people don't want to associate with anyone in any kind of trouble for fear 'bad luck' is infectious. I know the love of my family and close friends wouldn't be affected by these consequences of my working within a corrupt government with the most dangerous and disturbed people but I still worried and had resentments about what these negative experiences would do for my relationships in general.
5) Ambition - I wanted to buy another house having lost two to divorces and the punishment that is institutionalized there. I hoped to work less with later years and more pain. I wanted to be safer and be surrounded by friends who accepted me as I am after all the sacrifice and work I'd done. I worried about health care and cosmetic care and safety in old age and worried indeed I'd be pushing a cart on the street or dying painfully of a treatable medical condition but not having the insurance or money to pay for this. I have resentments against those who have interfered with my attempts to 'get ahead', to 'be the best person I can be', to 'love and not hate', to be 'fearless' and to do those things I wanted to do on my bucket list, like sail around the world, learn the bagpipes, right the great Canadian novel, serve as missionary doctor, make love, sky dive, para sail, take a trip into outerspace and meet aliens, any of those things. I can develop a resentment against anyone who gets between me and where I see myself in the future, even in the future a day or two from now, like recently when a slow moving arrogant Heathrow security guy held us all up so we missed our flight and I'd been hoping to get home and to bed but instead was delayed a day and didn't sleep till 3 am. Expectations have been described as "pre formed resentments'. Consequently we try to have 'good intentions' leaving the outcome in God's hands. That's the Christian thing but I was trained in science and medicine that I'm responsible not only for intentions but for outcomes and I have a resentment for 12 steppers and Christians who abdicate responsibility for poor outcome saying it's in 'god's hands' whereas as a rifle marksman I also know that most poor outcome is a product on lack of training, practice or taking into account the wind. So I'm learning how to coordinate my expectations and time frames with the limits of others and the environment rather than having 'great ideas' without realization of how much is involved in the actual translation of idea into finished product. I'm also very appreciative of those who are successful at this and less likely to criticize effective people than many whose lives are less so and they rarely seem to really look where the need for change is, not with the external world but rather with themselves.

Of course I have to address resentments I have to myself, ie the person I was yesterday rather than today. Most of what occurs in my life is a product of the desires I had yesterday. I can see the outcomes of my prayers and ambitions when I was younger. I can also see the effects of 'karma' or 'divine retribution' the older I get. So I have joint that's painful not so much because of the injury but more because of the lack of care I took and my unwillingness to follow medical advice at the time of the injury. So much of what I deal with today is a product of my 'knowing better' and not taking 'good advice' or 'listening to my superiors, parents etc".

So I have to recognise that my happiness is subtracted by my resentments. It's like the hard drive of a computer that's full of spam. I have to forgive if only to stop thinking of the old shit.

Now I've got to go back to work right now.



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