Fate and Free Will

The whole discussion of fate and free will, or determinism and free will or psychosomatic or religion and philosophy is built on various perspectives and perceptions of this primary and secondary consideration of change.

The first rule of thermodynamics and second rule of thermodynamics speak to movement.  The idea of God as Omnisicent and omnipotent and omnipresent is summed up in his name as the Prime Mover.  For thousands of year men and women considered began and begat.

I was reading the history of the Christian Oxford Movement and AA in Wikipedia and enjoyed seeing that Dr. Silkworth told Bill Wilson, who was a member of the Oxford Movement and follower of Sam Shoemaker, Frank Buchman’s Oxford Movement leader in America, that he should drop the word ‘sin’ and change the word to ‘illness’.  

Dr. Bob was a member of the Oxford Group in Akron, Ohio which had had a major Oxford Movement Christian convention there.  Seiberling, who introduced Bill Wilson to Dr. Bob said that the ‘miracle’ had occurred there in Akron  the day or days before Bill Wilson arrived on his business trip,  The whole of the  Oxford Movement community had gathered with Dr. Bob and his wife to pray together for Dr. Bob, a secret drinker who had confessed,  to have a miracle to cure his drinking.  Whereas Freud had said alcoholism was worse than schizophrenia and incurable, Dr. Carl Jung had said he’d seen alcoholics cured by a spiritual awakening, rare as it was.  

Jesus said , where two or more are gathered in my name there too am I.

Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson met and Alcoholics Anonymous began.  These members of the Christian Oxford Movement took the central idea of Christianity that the spreading of the message was what saved the individual specifically to addressing addiction.   Dr. Silkworth had told Bill Wilson while he’d not been able to get anyone else sober by his trying to evangelize the world, he had in fact for the first time stayed sober himself..  Now he and Dr. Bob and the Oxford movement would carry on Frank Buchman’s and Sam Shoemakers work serving the marginal and the alcoholic and addicted community.  

The central tenet of the Oxford Movement was ‘grace’, God is a loving God and that good is the life that  come from accepting God, a higher power, not self.  Kurtz history of AA was indeed called ‘Not Self”.  

Frank Buchman taught that the problems of individuals were ‘selfishness and fear’.  Pride is the major sin of Christianity. In Milton’s Paradise Lost Satan prefers to worship his shadow than turn to the light of God.  Martin Buber, the great Jewish theologian philosopher said that man sees himself and the other which he calls ‘it’ and is frightened of  it until he realizes ‘it ‘ is ‘thou’.  The paranoid lives in a world of “I and IT”.  The enlightened live in the world of “I and Thou’.  The AA movement and the Christian movement taught ‘Thy will be done, no my will” in same was as in Hinduism’s, yoga is the philosophy and action similar to YMCA which ‘yolks the body mind and soul of the individual to God.”  Jesuss’ principal command was ‘do not be afraid’.  He summed up his message as Love God and Love Your Neighbour as Yourself.  

The word to ‘sin’ is an archery term that means ‘to miss the mark’.  The idea ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ speaks even to psychopaths and sociopaths who think they are the ‘good guy.’  Zen and the Art of Archery and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance both speak to ‘works’. Christianity has struggled as other religions with whether one is saved by ‘works’, doing good, like the extreme OCD, or by Grace, the lucky ones of God’s choosing.  Reincarnation and the ‘sins of father’s and even evolution have all been postulated to explain why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.  The Sistine Chapels shows ADAM lifting his hand with his finger stretched out reaching for God.  God reaches down.  Which comes first . Again fate and free will and God as the Prime Mover.  Obviously an archer who doesn’t lift his bow and nock his arrow isn’t going to hit the target but when the action of man reaching out meets God the miracle occurs. Grace is the free gift of God.  

Determinism and Fate say there is no change. I say by this token then I’m at best a ‘voiceover on a comic strip’.  The shallow thinkers of philosophy dominated these days by the unscientific religions of aetheism clings to ‘change’.  Each dime a dozen politician promises change while secretly knownng that the reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefit from the status quo and most politicians and their cadre have merely wanted to place themselves on the royal seat which has throughout time been called King, Emperor, Furer or Comrade, so long as the status quo remains. 

Yet fate or determinism and predestination and genetics, without  a ‘mover’ means the. nature of creation/existence/all  is static. The scientific agnostic accepts that there is ‘something’ that causes the ‘ripple’.  The great American philosopher William James, father of pragmatism , focused on the action.  God is said not to be a thought but rather an experience.

When alcoholics stopped drinking and joined non drinking members of spiritual communities they became free of the insanity and psychosis of addiction.  The early AA groups said that the higher power was a ‘god of my understanding’ realizing that alcoholism and addiction was it’s own religion. The way the crack addict approaches his drug and his behaviour and his philosophy and his dealer are all the stuff of religion.  The drama and story of alcoholism is the making of materialism saintly.  It’s like mental wankerism though because like masturbation the experience is exclusive to the inclusive experience of love and love making.  Play can be solitary or parallel or ultimately together.  

Alone alcoholics and addicts could not free themselves from the predator dealers and governments invested in selling all manner of delusions , the greatest being ‘Pride”.  With the help of another they could be lifted out of the hole they’d dug themselves or if they didn’t dig themselves at least found themselves in. .  

The idea that sin is ‘blaming’ is an abomination of Godliness.  Accountability is not ‘blame’.  Yet without accountability there could be no scientific endeavour.  

It is said that there is shame in addiction and dignity in recovery. The experience of shame is that of being outside the group not only as a minority but as an active combatant against the majority.  Live and let live is by contrast a central tenet of AA.  

Frank Buchman was against the Nazi and the Communists recognizing them both as ungodly and aiming for perpetual war. The Oxford Movment wanted world peace.  Having met with Himnler,  Buchman said Himmler was unable to change and that the Nazi’s could not grasp the idea of peace. The Nazi’s, the National Socialist Movement of Germany believe that world war was necessary and all others but the religion of Socialism destroyed so that the Fuhrer would reign. Nothing new here folks.  Genghis Kahn, Alexander, Napoleon, Mao and countless others over the same with different marketing and labelling.  Marx believed in perpetual war until all were communists and peace would occur. This is similar to radical Muslim which maintains that Islam is a religion of Peace in that Peace will occur when all are Muslim.  

The Christian Oxford movement was not a religion like AA would not be a religion.  Religion has often been called ‘man made’ while ‘spirituality “ is God made.   The experience    of God is spirituality. The difficulty for the Aetheist, the Communist or Nazi is that they equate that ‘emotional’ experience of feeling good as ‘spiritual’.  Spirituality by contrast is inclusive and accepting of God , not excluding God.  In AA 12 steps the 4th step demanding ‘rigorous honestly ‘ (like the first step of the Oxford Movement - Absoluate Honesty) suggested that one look at and inventory their resentments and fears regarding people, institutions and principles.  Obviously many still resent and fear God, especially atheists. 

Dr. Bob , a surgeon and loving husband had throughout his life strove to be unselfish.  Bill Wilson had a life long history of egomania and having been an officer in war leading an artilliary unit , never talked about his war experience. He wallowed often in self pity depression and refused to identify his depression with his persistent womanizing and cheating on his wife Lois who began the Al Anon movement of friends and families of alcoholics whose central tenet of survival was ‘detach with love’.  Bill Wilson suffered anxiety and depression and was an ‘empire builder’ despite struggling with Pride long after his own spiritual awakening. He would throughout his life benefit from the guidance of Father Ed Dowling, the Jesuit Catholic priest. 

Alcoholics in the Oxford movement were willing to focus solely on their drinking and stopping their drinking but when it came to their ‘moral behaviour’ overall they remained at variance with the Oxford Movement members who strove for “Absolute Purity’.  Later AA’s would say that they divided from the spiritual Christian movement which had gained from Frank Buchman’s  contact with Gandhi’s and Ravindranath Tagore when Buchman served with the YMCA spending lengthy time time in India and China. Hinduism teaches ‘Saints of all religions, I bow to you all.”  The movement in Christianity has been ‘inclusive versus exclusive’ which different denominations arguing politically that only their group is ‘godly’. The joke follows that there is a ‘highway to hell and a stair way to heaven’.  

Hell in Christian terms is not eternal but ‘for a long time’ , the agricultural measure of the days of Jesus.  The time of god is only now and eternal is the present and this day.   The idea of linear time is a mathematic invention of the modern era at variance even from eastern time which is perceived as circular. The idea of God as outside of Creation is quite bizarre as God is imminent and transcendent but it is common for the rhetoric of debate to create straw dog arguments such as God being an old guy on a cloud when religions collectively teach of the world with in and St. John specifically teaches that the Word as  the very fabric of creation.

Physicists today are far more spiritual than so many of the religious leaders who can’t grasp the nature of Einstein’s E=MC2 , the interplay between energy and matter, psychosomatics or that spirit and matter are like the nature of light , both wave and particle depending on perspective.  The Daoism of the east with Yin and Yang is central to the least taught book of the Bible, Job.  

That moment of giving up the demon drink and demon drug and seeking the spirit of the natural high, children knowing and showing joy greatest before any chemical or process addiction,  is the moment of the ‘new’ man, the ‘born again’ experience that Christian evangelists talk of or the ‘conversion’ experience Dr Frank Buchman ,Dr. Bob, Dr. Silkworth and even Bill Wilson spoke of .  There was no need for the ‘white light’ experience of Bill Wilson but clearly as one accepted the Godly , or good path, the world and the life of the individual changed.   

Hallelujah. 

The Morality and Psychosomatic Pain?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

This is the central question of religion. It further is a central question for understanding ‘pain’ in psychiatry.  

All pain is a ‘psychosomatic’ phenomena.  Psychosomatic means that body and mind are involved in the experience.  Psychosomatic does not mean speak to cause and effect but does speak to associated phenomena and potential contributing factors and possibly a different approach to solution.

For example a child is caned and strapped..  I pick this example because being caned and strapped was a recurrent experience of my own attending Viscount Alexander and Vincent Massey High School in Fort Gary Manitoba.  Fortunately this was not a routine occurrence though physical punishment by school administration was normal for a previous generation. Death by school caning was a social problem that preceded Japan’s embarking on WWII. It should be noted that while Nazi brutality has been extensively documented so that the word Nazi conjures up brutality, Japanese brutality is similarly understood in the east in all the countries which Japan invaded.

What is good. What is bad are questions of ‘interpretation’ and ‘morality’ not at all so obvious as some would argue.

The Japanese perceived their corporal ‘punishment’ of students as did the administration at my school in Winnipeg.  The Nazi’s felt the same.  The history of the world tells us that corporal punishment was indeed the norm for all nations with rare exception.  Consider simply the history of punishment in the Royal Navy, the leader of civilization and guiding light of the world, until the redistribution of power in the early 20th century. Records of hundreds of lashes slowly are reduced to tens of lashes and it was not uncommon for sailors to experience permanent mainming or death from their ‘correction’.  Further minor faults were very aggressively punished and only slowly was the ‘rod spared’ for worse crimes.  In Islam today according to Islamic laws , which some describe as barbaric, since the punishments went out of vogue sometimes hundreds of years past, the cruelty and offence of punishment remains as a historic note for all nations.

Hollywood would have us believe in the chivalric notion of the loving kind mother showing great sentimentality by heroines when faced with unpleasant punishments on the live screen.  Unfortunately this marketting to the ‘fairer sex’ for the pure purpose of selling dish soap is a travesty of abuse of public education as propaganda.  Attending my first boxing match I was shocked to see how lustful and violent the women audience were.  Historically matriarchy as opposed to patriarchy has been associated with torture and punishment.  

What did occur historically was that race horse trainers did note that a different approach to training from whipping gave better results.  Doystoyevski’s portrayal of the man beating his horse to death is an obvious example of the limits of corporal punishment. The Japanese government actually had to have committees to look into the death rate of children in institutions from corporal punishment.

Further modern psychology especially forensic psychology became interested in Sadomasochism, an ongoing issue of Hollywood and the upper classes in general. Just as today we know that pedophiles flocked to the church for access to the children so sadists flocked to positions such as prison guards and police for their access. Not much different than alcoholics seeking work as bar tenders or sex addicts seeking work as prostitutes.  Obviously the majority are motivated by money and more lofty aspirations or driven by need rather than greed. Still this significant minority are attracted to these positions of power simply for the means to act out their aberrant tendencies or desires.

Now move forward a half century and note the advances in what people historically called civilization. I remember being strapped by teachers in elementary school and while others in my class probably don’t remember the day I certainly remember when the strap was removed from the classroom, teachers denied the right to corporally punish students and this moved to the sole domain of the Principals Office. I graduated before Principals were denied their bit of physical activity and would only be billy clubbed by guards and surreptitiously physically punished in custody.  It was frowned upon by even my early 20’s when I was involved in demonstrations to leave evidence of injury.  It has been decades now since anyone in authority has physically abused me though I continue to be exposed to repeated verbal abuse and public humiliation and exhaustive shaming.

Raising white chickens I learned that the chicken with a black feather was visciously attacked by the other chickens. This is natures way of removing aberrant genes from the gene pool and one of the reasons that Utopian Darwinism is questioned as genetic difference is removed rather than celebrated in nature normally.

In my study of the Canadian school when I was interested in birth defect, IQ and school drop out I found that public schools punished the slow learner and the fast learner.  Not surprisingly the slow students dropped out. What was offensive to those who’d asked me to study the matter, where I first learned that politics funded research was my finding that the students smarter than teachers and administration, the high IQ kids were also dropping out of school.. The public school faced with ‘one shoe’ for all served the masses but not the “deviants.”, euphemistically termed “outliers” by those secure in their mediocrity. 

Apparently I had a high IQ.  Whatever that represents, blessing or curse.

But I was beaten repeatedly for correcting teachers and to this day am punished for pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes.

I’m kind of autistic in this regard and have taken delight in a new Canadian television show called the Good Doctor.  I self identify and story tellers have long known that even children love a story in which they can see themselves. I’m delighted with the excellent ratings of the show because I expect that it speaks to Canada as a ‘colonial’ nation more than it speaks to medicine.

In a Colonial nation there is a fixed upper class. Here in British Columbia, the game was rigged in the last generation for the English immigrant to win. In Quebec the French born person is a Royalty and Canadian life has it’s apartheid but it’s not so much by colour but by class, origin and family. When I lived in England I saw very quickly that upward mobility and wealth in society was relatively easy if your family was wealthy for generations and you’d been to the proper school to get the right education.

Dr. Jordan Peterson has pointed out some 10% of students due to lower IQ or even lower emotional IQ are ill fitted for modern society and unlikely to find even work easy.  The rise of the peasant class. Brutal maniacal killers like Lenin were able in an earlier generation to claim to represent these ‘masses’ and there by gain fortune and power for his own deeply evil designs as a mass murderer. Hitler similarly used this means to elevate himself. Today the closest we compare is late night shows with people begging for money for a variety of species of cuddly animals without any concern for reptiles and insects and certainly not the very underprivileged bacteria necessary for life.

How I perceive pain is best seen on a scale 1-10 with the contribution of mind and body being apportioned.  Chronic pain is separated from acute pain as acute pain, pain that lasts minutes or days isn’t the burden on society that chronic pain has. Chronic pain is more ‘mental’ as well.  

Men who have been caned in studies have been known to experience pain, the same objective physical injury 10 times another person who has not been caned in youth.  There is no ‘greater sensitivity ‘ for the upper classes as the white feminists argued when the black feminists challenged them about their relatively safety and security.  The universities at the time were doing ‘take back the night’ dances in which more lighting was put on the campuses to protect the privileged upper class feminists when the threat of rape on university campuses was the least in America. By contrast nearby black ghettos were the hotbed of rape and were not funded for ‘lighting’ or even much of a concern to the ‘take back the night’ crowd.  This idea of ‘sensitivity’ is itself a luxury of psychological value but not at the physical level.  The innocent is immediately more impugned by violence but their background of relative safety and comfort also gives them the means to be resilient and flexible.  There is a reason in history for the officer class and the tendency for race horses to be trained with the best of food, shelter, exercises, discipline and training. 

Women who have not been informed about menstrual cycles or have been sexually raped by painful intercourse early in life or had negative genital experiences are at great risk of having many times more genital complaints, cramping, abdominal pains etc.  

So the question is best considered if the sum total of the pain is 10 and 5 is assumed physical and.5 is assumed psychological is the physical component ‘5’ or 2 and the mental component 1 or 5.  

The example of a gunshot wound would appear straightforward ‘physical’ but if the gunshot was occasioned robbing a bank it’s a different ‘experience’ to a gunshot experienced saving the life of a child.  The body of a poor or rich man, the actual physiology will have similiar impact. However if a person has been beaten as a child they will fear the pain as greater than a person who has not. 

Add to this consideration my patients who are masochists. A group of people for whatever reason have found that inflicting pain while masturbation or during sexual orgasm heightens the perceived enjoyment. There are some neurological components as well as psychological components to be considered but it remains that this person may indeed feel ‘pain’ differently than a person who only experiences pain as a message of harm.

If a professional fighter experiences a blow as compared to an innocent the professional may well ‘know’ the blow was not ‘disabling’ and ‘will heal’ based on previous experience of fights as compared to the ‘shock’ of the innocent who experiences the blow and believes wrongly they are disabled , near death and rather than continue the attack reverts to a fetal position and prays.  I rather like the latter though have found when that didn’t work I’ve been forced to salvage what remains of my pride and body by actually fighting back which as original as it seemed the first time has significant historical precedent for stopping the pain.

In my work doing hypnosis and hypnotizing people for surgery I further found that distraction could well ameliorate the experience of pain. I was cutting a person with a knife but I had used hypnosis like I’ve used xylocaine injection to stop the pain.  Acupuncture distracts the body.  Mentalist apparoaches may work as well as physical approaches. Paradoxically with chronic pain exercise reduces the pain in the long run.

Now this addresses the existence of psychosomatic pain. So pain mostly is bad and good people and people designated as bad can have pain. It’s been said that pain is mandatory but suffering is optional.  

If a person considers themselves as bad they will indeed experience or perceive greater pain. Depression prolongs and worsens pain. indeed at one time chronic pain was called ‘somatic depression’.  All pain is psychosomatic.

Good people have pain.

Bad things happened to good people. However religious people who perceive negatives in life as ‘lessons’ from God rather than as ‘punishement’ or even as ‘random bad shit’ do better with recovery in general.  Chronic pain is addressed in the context of how does it affect what I do compared to what I did. IF I perceived myself as a good person because I was a surgeon and I loose my hand in a criminal minds episode to a cannibal I am more likely to have ‘phantom limb’ pain than perhaps a man who has his hand chopped off in Saudi Arabia for stealing a piece of bread to save the life of his dying child.  Understanding the ‘meaning’ of a person and their purpose and the meaning of the ‘pain’ and a person’s ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ do alter the perception of pain.

Disability is a further issue because it appears quite surprisingly people who are high paid as beauty contestant judges appear to not experience the disabling pain that people who have similiar injuries do when the latter works 12 hours in a cold stinky outdoor fish plant.  

Just some thoughts about pain and perceptions with some ideas about past and present and the understanding that these factors can have and influence and change outcomes and indeed help us to understand better why bad things happen to good people.

This doesn’t even get into the issue of ‘secondary gain’ where a person injured or claiming to be injured when they weren’t even injured can be rewarded for the ‘drama’ of pain presentation.  Today some 40% of claims are ‘false claims’ and knowing that should explain to some extent why insurance companies are so slow to ‘assume’ a person is good , despite every special interest group insisting their group doesn’t lie.   

In Canada a convicted  terrorist who maimed an American soldier was rewarded  10 million dollars. 

Self Realization Fellowship Encinitas California

Maija, my first mother in law, introduced me to Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda in the early 70’s. .  I later came across the book as the only eastern writing of note in the chapel library of University of Winnipeg which had begun as a United Church seminary education facility.
Contacting Self Realization in Encinitas I began their weekly study.  The 70’s was an exciting time in my life. I’d married the most beautiful dancer in the world and bicycled with her across Europe before studying dance for a year in London. I’d return to study arts and sciences before experiencing a calling to  medicine praying in the University of Winnipeg Chapel.  All the while I was teaching dancing evenings at Arthur Murray’s and Fred Astaires.
I attribute my meditation practice in those early years to my having the focus and discipline to complete my medical studies.  I belonged to a small meditation group that met weekly in the home of one of the members of the  symphony. I forget this name sadly. He taught me the Harmonium so I could lead chants when he wasn’t available. I actually ordered my own harmonium from Bombay and later met the harmonium salesman when I visited Bombay.  He remembered that order well. He said, “We never received an order for an harmonium from Canada.”  I remember well one unforgettable day meditating in Winnipeg with that group from sun up to sun down.
Eastern studies and yoga were not like they are today. True the Beatles had studied with Mahareesh Yogi. George Harrison had put out “My Sweet Lord.”  My friend Kirk had left Baiba and I  at the Strawberry Peace and Love Festival to dance with the Boy Guru followers, later becoming a Prem disciple. Baiba and I had gone on to San Francisco to dance in the streets and  ‘wear flowers in our hair." I believe Kirk’s  family was Anglican. Mine was Baptist though I later taught Sunday school for the Fort Garry United Church. I came under the amazing direction of the saintly genius Dr. Carl Ridd.  A former basketball star he’d become a University of Winnipeg Literature and Religious Studies professor.
I liked that Paramahansa Yogananda had been India’s delagate to the World Congress of Religious Liberals in the United States.   This was an Ecumenical Religious Conference. Vivekananda had been at the first in the late 1900’s meeting and influencing Emerson, the father of American philosophy.  He's lent  his Walden Pond home to Thoreau.  of ‘civil disobedience’ fame.  It’s a small world.
I became a Kriya Yoga initiate in Toronto in the 70’s but only years later made my way to Encinitas California years. It was a moving first visit.
I stopped doing Kriya Yoga when I smoked marijuana remembering that I thought this was a faster way to ‘feeling at peace’.  It was also a ‘tantra yoga’ path in my mind as well.  I had become less spiritual and more an ‘intellectual’ then studying philosophy, politics, psychiatry and medicine.
Indeed studying Freudian psychoanalysis at the University of Manitoba in my psychiatry residency I was told by my professor to stop meditating as it ‘was harmful for the mind’.  Smoking dope was not considered such at the time by my teachers.  So I dutifully stopped meditation but began to study the medical and psychiatric evidence in favour of it before considering that particular professor sadly wrong and rather egotistical as well.
It turned out that Herbert Benson, MD had extensively studied the benefits physically and psychologically at Harvard.  The evidence of benefit was overwhelming. I’d fallen out of the discipline and wouldn’t return to meditation myself extensively until I got into recovery a decade later. I had indeed learned the benefits for psychoanalysis more from ongoing psychiatric psychotherapy and from psychotherapist friends Dr. Miller and Dr. Christiensen.    That didn’t interfere with my becoming a wine connoisseur with my Napa Valley friend and definitely an authority on marijuana.
I was studying prayer in recovery at the time and was again cautioned against meditation. So I began researching meditation in the Christian tradition and began meditating with a Benedictine monk. It turned out that the second oldest Christian prayer, the Dessert Father prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ,son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ was taught as a meditation first by St. Augustine. It turned out that meditation has a rich history in the mystical and spiritual Christian and Catholic traditions that followed from St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Chross. “Nada" is as simple an affirmative mantra meditation as anyone could wish.
Meanwhile I’d been very thankful to learn the value and depth of prayer by focusing on this more than meditation. Dr. James Houston and Dr. Willie Gutowski are great teachers of prayer.  “Transforming Power of Prayer, Deepening Your Friendship with God” by Dr. James Houston is my all time favourite writing on prayer. In 12 step programs, known for their rough simplicity, meditation is called ‘listening to God’ and prayer is called ‘talking to God’.  They really are not separate.
I loved walking into the Self Realization retreat centre this visit. . There were monks and volunteers there cleaning and caring for the facility. I spoke to a couple and they reminded me of the monks I’d now had the priviledge of meeting around the world in my travels. There is something wondrous and peaceful about these soulful people. I still recall fondly the Greek Orthodox monk in Meteora who gave me a cookie and sat with me for a time.  I’ve prayed and meditated in so many churches, temples and shrines.
Its was from Yogananda’s writings I learned the prayers, “Saints of all religions, I bow to you all, may thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion and may I be able to awaken thy love in all hearts. "
I was blessed to recently hear Dr. James Houston bemoan the intellectual difficulties that Christians get into when they start discussing how many angels can fit on the head of a needle.  I’d been asking him about the division between the Orthodox Christian Communion and the Roman Catholic Communion regarding the origin of the Holy Spirit. The Roman Catholic maintains that it comes from the Father and the Son while the Orthodox maintains it comes from the Father directly.  It’s such elements of human pride that cause divisions in churches and keep churches, and nations and continents apart.  The Sunni and Shiite division is about as silly to the outside as divisions in Judaism or among Buddhists ,some of whom are strict vegetarians while others eat meat but do not kill it themselves. Dr. Houston focussed on the love of God in his writings and teachings, seeing love as central to ‘spiritual christianity’.
I suspect that Dr. Houston would agree though that the trouble with too open a mind is that one’s marbles can fall out. He’s so very kind to me that  sometimes I fear he thinks I’ve lost one or two.
I loved that Paramahansa Yoganada also focused on the heart.  His whole relationship with God was as a love song, like the Song of Songs of the Old Testament or the writings of the Sufi, Rumi.  I was introduced to Tagore, who my poet friend Bernice Lever loves,  by my studies in the 70’s.  I loved hearing his songs sung there when I visited Bombay in the mid 80’s.  I had the same joyous feeling hearing Leonard Cohen’s songs in the taxis of  Tel Aviv.  Today I love Hallelujah but nothing lifts me up so much as the music of Third Day who I was truly blessed to hear in concert in Abbotsford. It was like the other special night listening to Stephen Bell in St. John’s Church Chilliwack.  After travelling around the world visiting sacred sitesand talking with world church leaders I so often find that it’s right at home where the heart is that God may speak the loudest and softest if one is listening.
I loved sitting and drinking in the peaceful easy feelings that linger in the SRF Encinitas temple.  I meditated there once again. Then I  joined up with Laura who’d been waiting in the car with Gilbert so we could both go into the remarkable SRF gift shop.  Gift shops are so much fun. We were so pleased to find the perfect pillows, little elephants for gifts, a favourite Yoganada book of writings, and a  pink shirt for Laura from India.
The International Society of Addiction Medicine is meeting in New Delhi in 2019 and I hope to be going so I can take a side tour and visit the Ranchi Ashram of the Yogoda Satanga Society, Indian affiliate of the Self Realization Fellowship.  I’ve been following the journeys of St. Thomas of the Syriac church who made it as far as Kerala and would like to visit a church there as well.
There is a place where  Hinduism and Christianity meet which to my mind is where Buddhism,Judaism, Janism, Paganism ,Islam, Sufiism and all religions touch in the great Venn Diagram of God’s love. It’s not the superstitious fear but that place of awe and wonder and humility.
I once explained it to my two young friends, one Sik and one  Catholic friends when we were out hunting partridge.  "I believe”, I said, " all roads lead to Rome but as an Anglican I believe that I’ll find an even better mansion than my mother’s baptist mansion while you and all the other non Christians will have mansions in heaven, but just not in the best part. Location. Location. Location.”  The truth be told my favourite heaven is found in Mark Twain’s  Captain Stormfield’s visit to heaven’
I was a vegetarianism for years when I practiced Kriya Yoga. My aboriginal friends and I today would say vegetarianism is an old Indian name for ‘poor hunter’. For many historically and culturally meat was reserved for the wealthy while the poor had to make a virtue of necessity. That said when my friend Ganesh’s wife Anita does her classic Indian vegetarian cooking I could see becoming a vegetarian again.
It was uplifting and moving to be once again at the Encinitas Retreat centre.  I am so thankful.  Yognanda’s books still have a special place at Banyan Books in Vancouver.

A Week of Worry in the Cloud of Unknowing

If one has to whine, worry and kafetch one should be a master of it. To demonstrate professional capacity in this regard I have chosen to review the week for those who are mere amateurs at complaining and moaning and doom saying.
1) We are all going to die.  This temporal physical slow energy moving mass life is terminal.  No matter what vegetarian gluten free probiotic diet you ascribe to you will still die.  It will be like falling asleep and if you believe you will most likely wake up in a new life. If you don’t believe then this may be all you get.  If you are guilty then the laws of karma may well apply to those believers in after life who by their thoughts and actions want a personal hell.  I don’t think anyone can tell you what you’re going to get.  There’s no religion that has certain vision of the future.  I loved the book, “Cloud of Unknowing’.  It’s a mystery.  But I believe.  I also believe that it will be good, this afterlife journey.  I know it’s easy to see the negatives and that all children know when things are crap and cry and whine and whimper and sometimes take the fetal position. While this is happening the adults in the immediate vicinity are addressing the crap and trying to make the best of a bad lot.  This has been going on for 80,000 plus years from when our worst fear were large cats and thugs to today when it’s still environmental dangers including occasional large cats escaped from zoos and thugs.  That said most cats are small and most people are fairly good.  Otherwise we wouldn’t have survived on this planet en mass and risen to be the prime protagonist.
2) Aliens have landed. They may be controlling the minds of our politicians.  They may be the ultra rich people no one sees. They may be Saudi, Chinese or American.  They no doubt have stealth technology to conceal their vampire like features or their second heads. They may be nanodes in our intestinal tracks.  They may be cats.  Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson were likely aliens.  Miley Cyrus is definitely an alien and Justin Beiber is a wannabe alien.  They may or may not be friendly. They may indeed be computer keyboards that take their energy from our fingertips.  They are not going to do what Hollywood says.  Hollywood is a disinformation centre.
3) Vaccines cured the world of smallpox.  Small pox killed a half million annually going back to 10,000 BC.  Probably killed more people than all the wars put together.  Medical science has reduced suffering and extended life.  Science has contributed to allowing 8 billion people to live on a planet that was thought to be over crowded when Columbus left Europe in 1692.  I am a scientist. I’m also an artist. I’m also a minister of divinity.  You can believe in God and Science and Art and that’s okay because it just makes you trinitarian.
4) Feminists are sexist.
5)  Racism is an attack on white people. White people are dominant. When Blacks are dominant we get to call them racist.  You can only call other people racists. Racists never admit to being racists.  Except me, I’m freckled. I’m racist against white, and brown and black and yellow and red. Spotted people united. Throw off your chains.  Fight for your fellow spotted folk!!  Our first instinct is survival and our next is to form a group of ‘us’.  This is family then it’s a trash euro american biker gang in the west or an eastern militarist junta gang in the east.  Guns and sex and drugs are the principal money makers in the world.  Food and commodity transfers are basic and rather boring in general compared to the sexiness and excitement in the sale of guns, sex slave and mood altering drugs.  There is white collar crime and blue collar crime.  There are white collar gangs and blue collar gangs.  Much of the confusion in the world is comparing apples to oranges.
6) Last week the Chinese market crashed.  I believe that it didn’t founder as much as the Western world’s did a few years back because the bankers are learning how to manage the mass amounts of money that have surpassed any previous time in history. As an analogy when the world had TNT it was initially surprised but could handle it in time but then the Atom Bomb came and there was a stiff learning curve to management of nuclear weapons. We’re learning how to handle biological weapons of mass destruction, gene manipulation, and all manner of skyrocketing hyper accelerated learning. The bankers were never the brightest in the group. Most people who go into money management are pedestrian. Salesman, like those on commodity floors, they’re the nutbars. I’ve seen salesman selling family members overseas. They’re sell anything. Salesman and gamblers are two sides of the same coin. They’re the rabbits.  They're pushing the edge everywhere.  By contrast bankers and accountants are the tortoises.  I think it’s simply possible that the whole bank thing got a head of them like nuclear weapons got ahead of the equal slow witted generals.
Now it’s also possible that diabolical demon infested bankers, people with the mentality of the media ascribed to Bush and Clinton equally , the way the media describes these otherwise mediocre entertainers in the political circuit, that these kind of folks, learned how to steal obscene amounts of money from the world collectively with truly ugly evil devices for which God and Murphy will castrate the sons of bitches and all their putrid insectoid spawn because they think they got away with it. Evil loses, goodness wins.  In the long run.  That’s why psychopaths like to deny the afterlife.  Sprinters always want to win the race in the short run.  The life expectancy of assholes is decades less than the life expectancy of the mediocre.   The assholes in the east are the Fanny Mae and Goldman Sachs groups.  Better still, the unnamed folk jealous.  Sjealoo having done this and almost got away with it but got sort of caught by excessive gouging, they made the the imitative Chinese Totalitarian dictators jealous. Known for their collective stupidity and lack of innovation as communists the world over are, however having great chameleon lizards skills ,and the brain of a thieving squirrel they stole the ideas from the west.  Their slut girlfriends wanted more cocaine and jewelry. And paranoid they want bigger guns and better security systems.  So they are trying to steal mass amounts of money by manipulating their stock exchange  for personal benefit without getting caught.
It’s really matter of perception.
7) I’m from Vancouver, British Columbia Canada.  The Vancouver Stock Exchange lost it’s license because the Vancouver businessmen were worse than Goldman Sacks and the Chinese military put together. . Their low level of scummyness is unprecedented in the world. I just mention that because I wouldn’t want to point fingers without admitting that my city and province and country are the greatest of all scoundrels when it comes to white collar crime.
8) The Chinese market stabilized but again we were collectively threatened by the government controlled mainstream media with economic poverty.  This threat is pre election here in Canada and Greece remains our object lesson. The ’System” requires there to be a lot of really ugly losers and a very few very beautiful winners.  The losers can’t afford augmentation mammoplasty, penile reconstruction and liposuction and face lifts.  That’s all that makes the rich look good.  Lots of expensive medicine. And Betty Ford clinics.  By contrast the poor are given places to shoot up heroin, drug pubs, that don’t interfere in the profit of the blue collar gangs, like the Hells Angels.

9) Anyone can be cynical.  Nihilism is simply weak thinking.  It takes genius and adulthood to remain happy in face of dying daily.
10) We are on a planet spinning around a sun in the armpit of a distant galaxy and don’t even know where we are except by some kind of relative consideration. There are no absolutes. Except maybe God.  But most peoples God is too small. So it’s a mini me God and not the absolute God.
11) My job is to maximize my pleasure and joy in life without directly harming others.  I’m not concerned about all the urban activists getting on about big things like Climate Change  and Montsanto or oil spills or highways or television.  These are adolescent considerations. Adolescents know as well as mainstream media how to solve all the world’s problems but they have hemorrhoids and because of their hemorrhoids makes the world around them seem shitty.  They can’t wipe their butts clean.  Consequently they have a skewed outlook on the world and are always looking for someone else to blame.  Preferably a corporation or another country or an ideology.  They carry a stinky smell about them.
12) I don’t like abortions.  I don’t like radical feminists because most of those I’ve known have been monsters of the likes of Eva Brawn. I believe radical feminists hate men and lack a sense of humour and are the cause of so much of the world’s political problems these last decades. By contrast I love women and I have even admired Hilliary Clinton at times despite her man aping ways. Warren by contrast is one smart lady. But then I loved my mother and my mother and father together were an economic unit.  Individualism is a ‘construct’ that allows ‘corporations’ before the horrendously incestuous pedophilic laws to maintain me and a multi million company are equal except I can’t afford a lawyer.  And as the judges are only there to ensure that the people in power remain in power I at most can hope for crumbs.  The rich are above sexism and racism and only interested in money and power. These ‘divisiions’ of “political correctness’ better called ‘social communism’ have ensured that the courts can at any time arrest someone if they are at any time a real threat to the status quo.  All the activists who whine and complain are the ‘paid government critics’.  If a person is telling the truth in our society they will have been in jail or a psychiatric asylum or bankrupt unless they are Warren Buffet or Soros and they can ‘make whatever truth they want’ because the media is the spoke engine for the powerful.
Ultimately I have to ask my self the question am I really talking about this plane of existence or arguing with God.  Is God , the all powerful, to be loved  or feared.  Is religion the opiate of the masses or is politics the true opiate and spirituality the salvation that stupid wrong Marx simply couldn’t see because he hated Isaiah and Moses so much.  Identification with the Aggressor has always been a real bitch for the Jews. Thanks to Freud we know about identification with the aggressor and I may well worship God because She’s been such a bitch putting me in this ‘life of suffering’.
Anxiety is a measure of my distance from God. And if I see God as evil then I will see the biggest government and biggest corporation and the wealthiest as evil.  But I’m not at the bottom of the food chain. There are those below me and as I see those above me so those below me will likely see me because "as above so below".  So the paranoid fears those above and below.  The activist believes naively that they are representing the proletariat as they fight the czar or warlords or modern corporations. The rebels have been worse than those they deposed.  I’m just trying to get through this day.  No bombs have fallen on my head but I’ve heard about bombs falling on peoples heads all my life. I have been bullied and extorted by the media with news that is chosen to create the maximum fear and subservience in me and those around me.
Meanwhile I’m living in the world at one of the greatest times of innovation and progress with people living, the billions more on the planet in relative wealth and for decades longer than their forebears, with really neat love stories and incredible science fiction type toys. We’ve motorized wheel chairs which no one had for 99% of the life of man on this planet. Last week they developed a bionic eye for those who suffer from macular degeneration.  We’re living in  a sacred and amazing world.   But I must take my head out of my ass to celebrate the wonder of my fellow man and creation. I am so thankful for this moment being here, witness to this all.
Now that is how a professional whines, moans and kafetches after a week of worry.    

Brain, Mind, Soul, and Self

There is a 'reductionism' a foot which says that we are merely our brains. We are the neurosynapses and the chemical reactions of bits of neurotissue.
The difficulty with 'reductionism' is it's so appealing to the lazy, perverse and stupid.  It denies 'reality' and is fundamentally psychotic but it's happy as only a good cabbage can be.  Dumb down all messages and they appeal to the masses. The oldest propaganda is 'reductionism'.
The brain is a truly amazing organ.  Lizards have them and the lizard brain manages eating, sleeping, fighting and fornicating all with very rudimentary capacity.  The functions of the lizard brain are well demonstrated in the range of 98% by computer programs.  Even mammalian rat brains can be reduced to fight or flight, reproduction and pleasure seeking, pain avoidance.  Similiarly computer programs can match most of what rats might do.  But rats and monkeys and higher animals aren't so 'simple' as we might think. Every day we learn of vaster implications of the minds of monkeys in grioups and dolphins and whales.  Who would have guessed the profound power and complexity of whale communication and 'song'.
How does utilitarian reductionism explain the 'art' of animals and the 'play' of advanced life forms, let alone the genius of man.
Keep it simple, stupid can so easily become Keep it Stupid, simpleton.  We believe our own explanations because rationalization and intellectualization likes to winnow away conflicting arguments and focus on the 'evidence' that supports a 'limited' perspective.  We overlook the 'whole' for the parts.
So here we are with brains that neuroscience now shows has as many neurons as imaginable with an infinitely higher number of connections between these neurons.  These interconnections include an on and off and slow or fast switch to each of them.  Couple this with the idea of anatomy where we learn that there are indeed 'areas' of the brain where mostly certain things happen.  Unfortunately for the reductionist the evidence is now overriding that this is like saying that French people are in France without considering all the French people that exist around the world. Add to this the idea of neuroplasty and we see that the brain, say 'feeling disgusted about something' can have that located in a 'broca' geographical location but if there is damage to that location, or just profundity,  then the 'function' of 'feeing disgusted about something' may be outsourced to another area.
A 16 year old who lost half his brain, by 25 was functionally normally as the heterogeneity of the rest of his brain took over the lost functions previously lateralized.  This is not as easily done, sadly, for the old brain which has been 'pruned' by age and choice.  The capacity exists which is why the future holds such promise for stem cell research and regenerative cures.
Now the brain is further a soup of hormones, proteins and sugars.  The overall functioning of any part of the brain is superbly modulated by the master chefs 'sauce' that surrounds and permeates all aspects of the brain.  Amazing, isn't it?  Truly miraculous!
The potentiality of this 'creation' is so astounding that knowing the exact time of 'big bang' from physics and the actual length of man's existence on earth we can with certaintly say that 'evolution' by all known explanations could not possibly in the time allotted have created as much as the 'idea' of humanity let alone the extraordinary complexity and synchronicity of the brain.
Just as there are fixed geographical anatomical areas and neuropathways with chemical communications at synapses modulated by the soup of  communicators, there is further a 'grid' electrical phenomena that results in quantum change potentiality.  This 'grid' is 'aura like' and the evidence of the electrical nature of the brain is seen in the Electron encephalogram. Further this electrical grid is modified even more by the magnetic grid which is seen by way of the fMRI, functional Magetic resonance instruments.  So there's the forces of electricity and magnetism combined with issues of locational and geographical specialization but also generalizations.  These areas of specialization and generalizations are themselves sky scrapers of communication tissue layers with their own set of nodal junctions in the superhighways of the brain coupled to a 'google earth' like display of every other interconnecting track.  To date we're only getting an idea on the 'superhighway's and haven't a clue about the countless deer track communication channels that parallel these freeways we have a vague inkling about.
There are 50 neurotransmitters which we know. Every day we learn more.  Dopamine alone is associated with receptors which are named , D1, D2, D3 and still counting.
So 'reductionism' is a product of the paranoid delusions of those arrogant in their fear as to actually think we can know the 'whole' from the parts.  This we can, in part,  but only in so much as we appreciate the holographic 4 dimensional chess game nature of this thing we're considering.
The humble have long ago accepted the idea of a 'higher power'.  This is where the notion of 'mind' arises.
We have an organ, the brain, but that organ is akin to a hand or foot.  The organ doesn't create the 'intention' or 'plan' or 'strategy'.  The organ is not 'self aware'.  The brain is by no means the mind.  What fool would think the 'foot' is the source of all the play and significance in the game of football, soccer or rugby.
The emperor has no clothes. Very devious cunning men and women have been selling you particularly a bag of goods which is to say the least, 'bull shit' or to the politically correct, "cow shit".   The brain is not the mind and it's certainly not the self and it's no more the soul than the foot is a soccer match.
Wake up.
The Mind is understood to be interconnected with the community and reality internally and externally to which the brain exists in.  A marvellous science fiction thriller had an evil scientist removing the brain of a lover,  putting it in a petrie dish and connected by leads to a feed back loop.  There was this poor 'creature' thinking thoughts of love and living in the memories while the girlfriend looks on at the petrie dish and wonders how ever they'll be able to get the 'brain' back into a 'body' so that the 'mind' will be connected to reality.  It was evident she still loved him and he her.  The brain can't love in that sense since it only lusts at best.
We have countless evidences now of 'brain death' with electrical discontinuation and the persistence of the 'mind' and 'awareness' and 'memory' and 'experience' while in a state of 'coma'.  I dream when I sleep. I'm not 'turned off' even though my brain is turned off.
The Soul is the spiritual hypothesis of a connection between the self, individually and the multiplicity of selves and souls and greater souls and multiverse souls and all that other 'collective' nonsensical potential of mystery and ecstasy which gives rise to the sense of awe. It's the sacred and the "aha". It's the novelty beyond the 'limits' of reductionism' and stupidity. It's the essence of creativity and laughter and joy and celebration and wonder.  It's true art and true science.  It's beyond my adolescent understanding of everything that is and will be.  I am but a part in a whole and as such I can only see to the extent my eyes are open.
So my world is limited by my pride. The greater my pride the smaller the potential for all else.  The humbler I am the greater potential for miracle and wonder.
Reductionists are lying to you because they're either stupid, paranoid or deviously taking advantage of others by selling  a crock of politically correct ,non gendered, 'Shit".  They're like terrorists who says 'kill the other guys' and life will be a bowl of cherries.  We' ve been killing the other guy for tens of thousands of years and life has never be a bowl of cherries for everyman.
There is infinite possibility in even the brain, and the mind is a true wonderland beyond that while the self and soul are beyond infinity, time and all that really matters.
Wake up.  

Jesus Christ

I heard a person say they were tired of hearing the name of Jesus Christ.  I realized that were this person in a Buddhist country, they'd be tired of hearing the name Buddha; a Hindu nation, Krishna; or a Moslem nation; Mohammed.
Being a secular materialist atheist they didn't even recognize that even the Athenians of St. Paul's time celebrated the religion of atheism.  Their idol was the source of St. Paul's discourse, "To the Unknown God."  The Greeks being great cataloguers might well naturally catalogue atheism as the unknown god since the symbol zero had at this time not even been conceived of.  Aetheism and secular materialism to the enlightened is juvenile in it's arrogance.    The intolerant invariably fail to see their own exemptions.
As a Spiritual Person, I never tire of the name Jesus Christ, if only because I know the spiritual meaning of the words.   Jesus  means "God Within", and Christ, "God Will Come Again" , so Jesus Christ means 'God within, god will come again".  Spiritually speaking this mirrors the  Hindu mystics sanskrit chant, "I'm am the bubble, make me the sea."  
Dr. Carl Jung said that we all were part of the 'collective unconscious'.  The original meaning of 'shallow individuals' was that they knew only the 'surface" of things and never the 'depth' of the matter.  Present days physicists agree with those Jesus minded spiritualists, saying that matter is really 'frozen energy".  Einstein's equation E=MC2  indeed shows light and energy are much alike the digitally created hologram lacking only the  fourth dimension.
Dr. Carl Jung said "I know God exists. I don't have to believe." All atheists have been disturbed by the 'name' of God.  Ironically the term 'YHWH" was the name of God that the Hebrew priests said could not be spoken aloud.  It translated to "I am that is who I am" appearing as a burning bush, i.e. light.  The dark flees from the light and only the light can dispel the darkness.  In addiction the drunks, dry or wet, and the addicts, simply don't like the sober because sobriety is extremely contagious.
"We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension".states the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous of those who have 'recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of body and mind."  
In general relativity 'time" is the fourth dimension.  Three dimensional reality is what we perceive but time defines space-time.  In dreams we move out of the limitation of this godless world into a godlike state of awareness where ideas are manifest.  Personal ego is lost in the group awareness without a loss of sense of self.  In hypnosis and trance states we can experience the meditative awareness of connectedness lost to the godless, unenlightened or anxious. Anxiety is a measure of ones' distance from God and also relates directly to 'denial of death'.  Existentialist reality addresses the central angst of existence and yet connected to God or a higher power the experience of powerlessness of separateness is lost.
Jesus - "god within' speaks to this experience of companionship as opposed to alienation and isolation.
Christ - 'god will come again' speaks to the sense of 'being lost and I was found' of the parable of the Prodigal son epitomized in the poem of the footprints in the sand. Where there was only one pair of footprints it was God's carrying us.  The terrified ego will not let go of the idea that the earth is the centre of the universe rather than orbiting around a sun in a galaxy of a countless number of suns. All metaphors speak to the reality that alcohol and drugs and countless other addictions and distractions that individuals turn to rather than the 'self' or 'oversell'.  Ego in these terms is the 'construct' or 'false self' whereas the true self is connected with I am ness. Hope, Love and positivity are the state of recovery, as opposed to the hopelessness, lovelessness and negativity of the self pitying resentful fearful individual
Jesus Christ is, in this sense the Cosmic Christ, but also the 'historic Jesus' described and taught in the Holy Bible.  The language of the Bible, even more historic than Shakespeare appeals to Christian followers much like Shakespearian English appeals to scholars.  So much is lost in translation to the 'insider' but 'outsiders' find it easier to learn from modern day translations. Christianity permeates all the Western ideas, philosophies, laws, courts, democracy, women's freedom, politics, literatures and tales.   It is the very basis of morality and the essence of 'fairness' central to even the games of childhood.
The idea of God expressed through a suffering man dying to be God is even seen in the realm of mythology as central to the world as we know it.  Inside/outside/up/down, the winning of the underdog,  and all manner of dimensional connectedness is somewhat different from even neo platonism.  The aetheist Sartre believed in the Master Race and couldn't understand the idea of the phoenix rising in the suffering god or indeed a Jesus king who washed the feet of his disciples. The very idea of this manner of democracy surpasses the noble lordly democracy of ancient Greece.   The Magna Carta could only have been written by Christians. It would be inconceivable to a Confuscian
Over the centuries various conceptualizations have been forwarded about heaven which is of course here and now as understood in even todays ideas of the multiverse.  Time in this sense is the I am of Godliness and the psalm teaching, "Be still and know that I am God".  It is the stillness not the business of life that is central so that in Christian terms, the mary not the martha, is right.
But of course, Jesus Christ is like kryptonite to the Superman.  Just like sobriety frightens the drunk.  Freud saw humour as covert aggression but modern day theorists disagree and only see humour that separates as such.  Humor that joins is Godly for in communion we become truly human and truly human we become the spiritual beings beyond the pseudoscience of modern atheist scientism.  The greatest scientist of our life times Newton and Einstein knew God as Dr. Jung knew God.  Knowing God to the Christian is knowing Jesus Christ.  God within and the reassurance that God will come again.  In the three dimensional world this is messianic but not in the spiritual sense of the individual life. Individualism is modern, for only today in the robot age of things. can one consider themselves truly separate.  Descartes had to sit in his oven to think in an age of relations, found still today in modern tribal natives who say 'all my relations' much as a medieval European would have spoken.  Addiction is the disease of idolatry in which C.S. Lewis, the great Christian theologian saw man looking to the wall of the building for the architect.
Dr. Carl Jung laughed and said that the addict was seeking the Holy Spirit but got caught by the word 'spirits' which resulted in the wrong thinking disease which he summarized with his classic latin phrase "Spiritus contra Spiritum"
"His craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language, the union with God."  Carl Jung.
Jesus Christ
Personally I love the name of God.  The Zen master shouted "hay" to awaken the student from the Lethe of sleep.  To the Christian this world is a shadow of the real world, heaven.  To the lover, you are in heaven, when you can love hell because Jesus taught 'love your enemy' for even animals loved their own.  Narcissism is love of face or shallow love of vanity.  Love is the stuff of creation.  Agape not just eros and by no means the sentimental love of the vulgar.
Jesus Christ was mocked by the soldiers before the crucifixion as they argued over the things he wore and crowned him with thorns.  How modern to love things more than people. How unspiritual to grab the golden egg and kill the golden egg laying goose.

Jesus Christ

Normative Sociology and War

All the norms of our social life are derived directly from Christianity.  The Christian social life was derived in turn from the Hebrew.  The Abraham social tradition gave rise to Judaism, Christianity and Islamic traditions.  All of these were essentially Patriarchal with heavy emphasis on family and child rearing because all these traditions grew in the times of farming and war where a large workforce was necessary either to make food or armies.
Jared Diamond eloquently describes the importance of food stuffs to the growth and success of armies.  The Abrahamic tradition began in Polygammy which persisted into Judaism and Moslem culture but was lost in Christianity.  Male dominated Monogamy or male dominated Polygammy were therefore the norms of family with women's role predominantly as bearer of children, educator, manager of home and farms, and adviser.
War has been the principle industry of all empires and nations.  The greatest trade commodity has always been advanced weapons technology.  Leonardo da Vinci, known today for his art, was known best in his day and paid greatest for his advances in castle defence.  Today rocket guidance system and stealth technology are simply stated major 'trade secrets'.  Trade has secondarily been of significant importance to nations.
Canada's genetic modification of wheat, shorter growing life, greater abundance, resulted in the ability of the world to feed itself and gave rise to Canada being called  "the breadbasket of the world." Today modern scientific farming methods and food production has achieved the means to feed one and half times the present and future populations, but the distribution of food remains limitted  by the "art of politics".  Starvation has long been a 'seige' technique of war fare.  Food is a commodity of war. The world as a whole has never known peace as much as the 'winners' celebrate it's sweet relief.  
Even fashion has been deeply influenced by war, with the present day men's suit a slight variation on the 19th century British officer suit.  Futurist writer, William Gibson, has written of the importance financially of competing camouflage fabrics when one considers the millions in uniform, especially in China and Korea.  It stands without reasoning that Armani would as soon have that contract as one on Wall Street.
The family was a rudimentary vestige from earliest hunting and gathering societies with the importance of 'blood' and 'kinship' lines establishing relational loyalties which gave rise to the power of  banking families like the Rothschilds.  Even today the lineage of the royals, i considered as 'breeding', is celebrated.  Genetic modifications, eugenics and breeding are all 'purposeful'. To what end, is usually defined by the principle world pasttime of war and dominance.
Marx and Engels felt that the family had to be destroyed and the communist model, even tried as the Kibbutz in Israel, was to remove children from their parents at the earliest possible age to propagandize the children while keeping the mothers directly employed in the production of the state, ideally weapons and their support industries. Today in the West women are allowed out of the workplace at best 6 months and the children's education by the State is ensured by age of 3 but latest by 5.  Home education is commonly discouraged, financially for sure, and often legislatively.  In the east the family and role of mother is even less supported by the State, which is always some variation on a War Machine model.
The collective payment of physicians is directly linked to their contribution to the war effort, surgeons being first paid more than other tradesman when their successes restored fighting men to the trenches of Europe, doubling, tripling and sometimes quadrupling the available cannon fodder.  The fame of nurse, Florence Nightingale, came from her halving the post operative battlefield mortality rates by use of the modern techniques of Listers's cleanliness.
Psychiatrists only collectively saw their pay increase when it was recognized that they could reduce the 30% rate of 'war psychosis' and 'shell shock' that most afflicted the 'unpopular' Vietnam warriors.  These 'successes' once established then develop an industry that surrounds and conceals the very roots of the contribution. Todays counsellors and psychologists predominate just as when the first 'priest' painted blue of wearing god awful feather and bone clothing exhorted the troops to success was celebrated, whole religions of beaurocrats followed the success of this one 'holy man'.  Religion thrives today as does psychological services financially because of that first holy man and that first psychiatrist who made these subsequents fields of 'material consequence' with increasing high pay.  Transportation and roads and ultimates planes and space stations all had principle material value as they contributed to the 'war effort'.  None of these people were 'paid' for 'peace'. Peace is cheap by comparison to war but peaceful interludes between wars are the commodity of successful wars.  The Germans in the 30's didn't 'enjoy peace' and were happy to return to 'war' whereas the the Frence and British winners of WWI were highly impressed with the peace of the 30's This was a great old time especially in the US.  Victors love peace.  It's not hypocricy or rocket science. Peace is not nearly as appealing in the long run to the 'losers'.

Today robots and machines have reduced the need for large families because wars can essentially be fought with very few numbers.  Overpopulation and Article 21 of the United Nations are directly associated with the new 'dehumanized social model'.  The 'mother' eulogized, romanticized and celebrated for generations, for her capacity to produce large families, and as importantly educate and 'breed' good citizen children, is no longer as important to the secular materialist vision as her role as 'worker' and 'entertainment device'.
Humans are simply less important and the fewer the better given the advances available to war brought with bioweapons, nuclear devices and strategic or cloaking technologies.  The importance of GPS and satellite systems and space exploration was that it gave intelligence dominance in matters of war.  Todays facial recognition software from satellites can identify terrorist or warrior leaders individually, so long as they don't wear the 'dreaded hoodies'.
Constantine made Christianity the official religion because the Christian armies, based on Christian families, were the most powerful war machine, given their loyalty, and devotion to cause.  The Christian family won against the pagan family of Nazi Germany.  It had been a near thing between the Anglican English and Catholic French and Lutheran German in WWI but by WWII, Hitler had returned the Germany dream to the 'pagan' roots in which polytheism, polygammy were intrinsic.  Not surprisingly 'polytheism' has been 'divisive'.
The atheist communist experiment of Russia and it's copy cats, finally leading to China, returned to the polygamous leadership model.  Communist patriarchy had, like traditional kings, multiple wives and mistresses.  Ghengis Khan before all other male leaders' 'bedded so many women, especially of conquered nations that 1% of all human genes can be traced directly to him.  The communists with little moral restraint have maintained their pleasure dachas and bedded women with all the gusto that secular materialist corporation leaders have in the west.  Indeed in all secular atheist or atheist communist social arrangements the woman is no longer valued most as 'mother' but rather as 'comfort companion' or frankly 'sexual object' and 'entertainment device.' Despite the popularity of Clinton his amorous dalliances as acceptable to Hillary as they were for the power of their combined success, were ultimately unacceptable still to the Monotheistic Monogamous "norm' of the Western model.
The communist attitude towards women in general has been seen primarily in their abortion of the feminist gene in China with only male children being saved from the scalpel. This has created the single male armies of the east available to conquer the west with the promise of available 'sexual entertainment devices. '  In China white woman pornography is the most popular.  Islam offers 'virgins' in heaven to their jihadists.  The Chinese communists soldiers aren't looking for virgins in the west.
Meanwhile in Canada, a mixed communist, democratic country the destruction of the family continues with the rise of polygamy covertly.  Women's primary role is no longer mother hood.  Feminism has been primarily 'imitation of men' with all that was historically 'female' debased. Indeed feminists call 'mother's , 'breeders' and the 'worker' is the model.  Women who have children are no longer given status as 'fully employed' as 'mothers' previously were, they must quickly return to the ranks of workers, work production being ultimately aimed at creating better competitive war machines. The most successful women in banking, design, leadership are indeed those who contribute most to the production and sale of weapons.  The greatest women leaders of the west took their countries to war, Thatcher, Ghandi etc.  Some feminists today even encourage their membership to get pregnant and abort to know the 'power of women'.  Woman as 'creator' is thereby subsumed by woman the 'destroyer'.  Seeing these modern dynamics one can't help but appreciate the ancient religions of old countries like India where the gods are creator, maintainer and destroyer and the female goddess Khalli has far more traits than the goddess Athena.
Hillary Clinton the foremost feminist leader, defined herself by her 'pant suits".  Indeed all women in western worlds are 'transvestic' in their dress with male dominance in fashion persisting as traditional military based garb, suits, cargo pants, etc.

The importance of homosexuals to the Christian war effort in WWII was noted with Turing and others.  The SS were  based on homosexual male bonding 'hyper testosterone' Greek warrior Spartan prototypes in contrast.  While  'police elite ' loyalty was achieved through that model , well documented in "Pink Swatika" it's effectiveness generally was highly limited.
The modern Christian world by contrast "delisted' homosexuality given it's contribution to the war effort.  EvenLawrence was thought bisexual at best with a penchant for self flogging.  As long as homosexuality didn't interfere with the production of 'cannon fodder' it was acceptable. Indeed lesbianism, a popular sideline of polygamous societies where the concubines had children but were denied men, like male prisoners, turned to each other for entertainment.  Lesbianism today is commonly acceptable as it doesn't interfere in the war machine which has dominated society for countless thousands of years.

There have never not been a 'war machine' though enclaves of society 'outside' of the mainstream, like monks of Nepal and the Christian monks of Meteora have been able to avoid through isolation participation in the principle human beaurocratic activity.

The question then today is whether the present day rise in secular materialist social constructs, none of which are related in any way to the priority of child production can compete with the traditional family based social models.  Today the principal atheist materialist societies of communism have failed to show the creativity of the Christian, Judaic or Moslem or  Hindu, Buddhist societies.  Buddhists continue to fight Buddhists with modern weapons over the ownership of different temples. The Indian Society, based on Polytheism Monogamous families succeeded in winning their war against the aetheistic polygamous communist society of China.  Chinese monogamy continues, not as a product of the ideology of communism, but rather as an as yet persisting 'cancer' of old society.
Dessert Storms Arms Bazaar showed the superiority of weapons built predominantly by American and European Christians and Jews.  The Moslems during the Crusades had indeed brought us arithmetic ballistics and the religious Chinese of their day developed gunpowder.  Issaac Newton, Einstein, were great theists.  Secular atheist "promissory"  materialism is indeed a recent 'hothouse plant' with great promises but no shelf life or demonstrated success.  Its ability to kill enemies 'externally' has been poor at best and their greatest killing success has always been the destruction of their own people and through 'betrayal'.  The ideas continue to proliferate with the hundreds of millions of their own people killed by atheists in their own countries.   No wonder, Christian evangelicals say, Satan, the greatest aetheist of all, was always a murderer and liar.  Commonly 'language' obscures the facts of war and competition, neurological theorists arguing that man's big brain developed solely for duplicity, his principal means of success in cave man days against the much for effective predator big cat.

But the fetal alcoholism in Russia and infant mortality in the USSR was directly associated with its failure as a competitive 'social norm' to the 'norms' offered by the theist societies to date. The division of the USSR hasn't been to some advanced 'aetheist' 'norms' but rather a rejection of 'aetheist polygammy' and a return to variations of 'theistic monogamy'.  Poland embraces the Catholic Monotheism and Monogamy and eastern formerly moslem parts of the old USSR are opting instead for Monotheistic Monogamous norms.  Aetheistic polygammous 'norms' fail competitively for the majority of people despite an appeal to the elite.  Queens and Kings have succeeded through the ages by overt monogamy and covert polygammy and at least paying lip service to the success of monotheism.  Kennedy might well have been more of a swordsman than Clinton but Kennedy's overt Catholicism and the discretion of the pre feminist females protected him. It helped that he was a war hero.

My own Celtic Christian Pagan forebears couldn't compete as a social empire, despite individual superiority and tribal superiority, to the English Christian Empire social model based more directly on biblical patriarchal monogamy. My Celtic forebears, the scots and Irish, were much less disciplined sexually and more prone to overt polygamy and homosexuality. The Celts celebrated women far more than the English and admired our mothers nearly as greatly as the Mexicans but our social structure couldn't compete with the Christian Roman Model that effectly created the present day empires.  All the empires previously built had not been able to manage the numbers or space or maintain the success that this monotheist monogamous model of social 'norm' to date has.

That said, Christianity in Canada is now only 70%. This is similar to other Western nations where a decline in monotheism has occurred.  Jews at most are 1 % of Western societies, mostly secular aetheist despite their ethnicity whereas Israel with it's military success to date has been dominated by zionists and monetheistic monogamous Hebrew of the Old Testament tradtions.  Monotheistic Polygammous Islamists are on the rise throughout the west .Secular atheists, especially communists, despite their lack of any sustained success and high suicidal and murderous rates persist. The Aztec were a similar religious killing machine but failed before the Christian Monotheistic Monogamous 'norm'.

I don't know who will win the next war.

Frankly.  I have little doubt that the Christian Monotheistic Monogamous normative model of the British WWII winners (technologicaly and on the battlefield) could win as has the Christian Monotheistic Monogamous normative model of America to date won against all other competing models.  The only real question is whether an 'attenuated strain' of this norm as is arising in Canada, Europe and the US can compete agains,t say the Islamic Monoteistic Polygamous norm.  In the Crusades the Christians beat the Moslems on all battlefields essentially but not by so great a margin.  The Chinese Korean atheist polygamous communist models have grown strong by incorporating the strengths of the Christian Monotheist Monogamous norms reintroducing 'god' as has Russia to the failed 'atheist' paradigm.  Russia's recent anti homosexuality stance has been seen to be a means of making itself attractive to the Muslims, Orthodox, and Catholics which have to date prevailed over the atheist communist model. Putin in this regard is seen as no different a 'general' than Constantine was who 'converted' when it was obvious that Christian military was greater than all other militaries of his day.  Aetheist militaries have to date failed against theist models and just as armies re tooled from horses calvary to tanks the communists the world over are 're thinking' God while the 'fat' west continues to 'play' with the very 'sexy idea' of aetheism especially given the aetheist model of woman as 'sexual entertainment device' or 'worker'.  
 In contrast the prevailing successful Monotheistic Monogamous West has introduced the very components of the failing competing normative model of communism, i.e. the denigration of the feminine, especially of the mother, destruction of religion, woman as 'entertainment device' , unisex, all normative of communism when it failed in all competitions to date with the west.
Given that the West is rejecting God as the East embraces it and Islam grows stronger by its adherence the question of which 'norm' will succeed in the next war remains to be seen.

In the West, the successor of war, the existing empire of war, the idea of war is furthest from the mind of the  slick and safe ideologically effete intellectual city light weights.  Their likes were well known to the Chamberlains of England and the Roman "thinkers' as the 'barbarians' were invading Rome.    To the rest of the world, those outside the winning zones of Europe and American,  war and revolution are the foremost thought. Losers want desperately what they perceive the winners have.  Revolutionaries by nature are theives and not creators.  Age old tribalisms have prevailed to today.  Mohommed's Koran is as much a warrior code as the Old Testament of the Bible or Mao Tse Tung's writings.  Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empiror, wrote the pagan stoic model of his day,  but it was St. Paul who drafted the 'norm' for society that gave us the last 2000 years of successful Christian empire and relative 'peace'.   As the west devolves, the Roman empire too died from within, with the result that  the real competition might well be between the Monotheist Monogamous "Norm" of Islam versus the western modified Aetheist Polygammous "norm' of the Eastern Communism
.
I simply don't know.

The greatest european 'peace' movement of the young occurred in the 1930's when nudism also was terrifically popular.  Here in Canada we are having a marvellous love affair with marijuana and a delusional adolescence of denial.  The world Big Daddy America is criticized for not allowing us to smoke up and drop out.  We forget that the Empire of China fought the west to free it's people from Opium in the famous opium wars.  We succeeded in fighting the Indians (natives) of North American by giving them booze and attacking them when they were hung over because their 'society' had not been able to 'control' or 'prohibit' alcohol.  The British Navy had long held 'alcohol prohibition' and control successfully to achieve it's goal of being the greatest war machine the world had ever known.

Personally I prefer nudism but know that the best money in the fashion industry is on cammo designs, epaulets and boots. Jewelry was originally a 'worldly crown' of 'conquest' or the 'conspicuous consumption of Veblem.  The best bling of all has been those given for 'heroism'.  While it was normative for men to let their girlfriends wear their 'football jackets', I don't think anytime soon we'll see women letting their boyfriends wear their 'purple hearts' gained in combat, even if they were shot and wounded by robot drones.

The "norms' have a way of being 'normal' because they 'worked'. The 'test' has always been 'war'.

Grouse

I was supposed to be deer hunting.  I was up before dawn.  We stopped at the A&W for sausage eggers and coffee. The second day out I'd even bought a new thermos so we'd have more coffee. Gilbert, the dog, didn't particularly like the sausage.  It was peppery.  We liked it. He frowned but eventually ate it.  We drove the Old Hedley Road.  Lots of deer in the farmer's fields. None a buck.  It's only buck season.  I could have shot an antler less white tail but white tails are more easterly.  Around Princeton it's mostly Mule Deer.  I'd shot big mule deer there before.  I was certainly hoping to shoot another this weekend.
We were talking though.  Mostly about Jesus and Communism.  The world thought the Cold War ended the era of spies but today old KGB and Chinese Communist spies, government and industrial, popped up everywhere.
Communism is Atheism operationalized.  Just as Canada was Christianity and Catholicism operationalized.  Isreal today is Judaism operationalized. Russian and China are Atheism operationalized.  Put simply the religion of atheism is communism. That's it's manifestation just like Saudi is the manifestation of Islam.
Jesus wouldn't much like being Communist.  But Putin seemed to be returning to Old Russia and making allegiance with the Orthodox Church by sacrificing the gays.  Weird times.  Even weirder times for China where capitalism, confucianism, communism and abortionism go hand in hand.
"Feminism is cultural communism."  he said.
"It's not Marxism. Marx was a slouch. Scottish socialism and the union movement proved him wrong,utterly wrong before the turn of the century.  Marxist was binary and the Scots were trinitarian.  Three dimensional chess trumps 2 dimensional chess every time. Lenin just needed him to create his little gang, which would 'dictate to the proletariat', to give his totalitarian dictatorship some substance.  Engels and Marx wanted to destroy all that was Christian. They hated the family.  Marx got his cleaning lady pregnant then dumped her.  Without the London School of Economics no one in the West would have paid one iota of attention to his mad ramblings which parodied the old testament."
"Lenin was the lawyer and murderer.  He's the real gangster.  After him Stalin was just a foot note. Everything utterly evil about communism comes direct from Lenin.  He engineered the program and everyone including the Pol Pot followed on it.  It was a template for genocide and mass murder.  80 million killed in Russia and 120 million killed in China.  Millions more wherever communism became the dictatorship of the committee. And Lenin devised the one committee to 'dictate to the proletariat.'  Marx was an idiot compared to the Machiavellianism of Lenin. In comparison Marx was a mad man."
We were riding in my Ford F350 4x4 Harley Davidson edition Truck with my Honda 250 enduro motorcycle in the back.  Gilbert sat between us.  We climbed the steep mountain up to the Rattler branch of the Forest Service Road. There were spruce and pine on either side, clearings where a deer might be standing. There were openings in the new growth forest where a bear might be wandering. We drove along looking everywhere.  I probably should have got out and sat waiting for the deer or stalked them in trails that led out from the main logging road. But the truck was warm and we were having a really good conversation. It would last two days.
"I thought Freud was as much a parody of the Old Testament as Marx." I said.
"They both hated God.  Have you noticed that the ungodly aren't particularly creative and rely mostly on theft for their ideas. "
"The Communists knew about the nuclear experiment before the President."
"Obama is spying on everyone. Everyone is being monitored.  The United States under him has become even more under surveillance than the Communists kept their population."
"They'll only be happy when everyone is a slave."
"I'm a wage slave as it is."
"No I mean a real slave. You're able to own a truck and drive out to the woods but it won't been long before you'll have to get permission to travel from one city to another or province to province.  You soon won't be able to afford it with the price of fuel.  Everyone will be working and only have enough money for their accommodation and some toys to entertain themselves before they go back to work."
"I just heard a similar scenario when I was overseas.  There's a lot that believe that the world as we know it will collapse soon.  My colleague figures that just as Israel was punished by leaving the ways of God so he thinks that society as a whole will be punished for murdering babies en mass. The Nazis could be said to have been punished for their carnage.  He makes a good point about the history of consequences. "
"I think the people who were behind communism saw that the west ruined their vision of being the ultimate dictators of a one world government of proletariat  so they'll do anything to bring down the west.  They're destroying it from within.  Everyone whose a threat gets taken out with some honey pot sex scandal and then is replaced by some lightweight party liner.  Can you believe a three star General in charge of nuclear weapons got burnt by a fabricated gambling charge. Then the best of the presidential guard get knocked off with a prostitute scandal.  These aren't random events. "
"I thought that when they got rid of the next President of France to be with the cleaning lady scandal."
"The KGB perfected the honey pot scandals.  I heard that politicians asked in Europe said they were all afraid their reputations would be ruined if they spoke up"
"Then there's Weaner showing pictures of himself naked on the internet. Can you believe the God shot of that guys name. His high school classmates must be saying now "He always was a weaner."  
"It's just that the women here as so stupid. They are being lead by the nose. It was the same with the long gun registry. Long guns never used by criminals. No registered guns used by criminals. Criminals killing Criminals.  They lied about the suicide stats too. They were killing themselves jumping out of palm trees when I was in the Polynesian Islands.  The stupid girls all jumped on board to out law guns and suddenly they'd disarmed themselves and now couldn't carry a purse gun.  The long gun registry was a 2 billion dollar government money grab fostered on everyone because women didn't take the time to study the stats.  Mark Lepine wasn't even who people thought he was.  But suddenly every rural person with a gun was a rapist and needed to be disarmed.  I couldn't believe it and only believe that enough woke up that that was why Ignatieff was turfed. Now they're getting them to vote for the electorate to be stoned, none of them remembering "give them cake. I hope enough women get a real education, not that stupid women's lit shit in women's studies.  They don't even read Alice Munro just Gloria Steinem ad infinitum so they can get memorize the communist slogans for their chants. Once women get educated they want meritocracy as much as the next guy rather than being slaves and living on pig slops.  The Iron Curtain kept people in.  Meanwhile everyone legal and illegal is trying to get into the west. Communism destroys everything eventually . "
When we stopped to pee Gilbert ran around the truck and through the woods all about doing circles and patterns in search of grouse. He was bored by our stupid conversation and wanting us to get on with grouse hunting. We call him Grouse Master Gilbert. He's only a little guy and not much help with deer or bear but when it comes to grouse he flushes them ,finds them and even catches them with dog olympic leaps into the air.
"The UN is communism all round. It's into this Article 21 thing and wants to reduce the world population to a matter of millions.  They all want to be the dictator though. Like Mortgentaler aborting the Catholics in Quebec. He didn't get his wife to abort his children.  The Communist leaders have always had their dachas and concubines.  It's just that the proletariat don't even get condoms and all the women have their babies ripped out of them."
"I heard about the Chinese women who try to have a second baby, they're killing them even as they're being born, sucking the brains out as she's delivering."
"It's a death culture.  More people have been murdered by atheists in a hundred years than any God based group has done in the whole history of th world."
"Bolivia is making a lot of fine bird guns."
"Apparently they have a problem with crows on the plantations so everyone has shot guns to handle the predators."
"I love my Bolito 20 gauge. The 12 gauge shot hurt the meat but the 20 gauge is like sand and so far I've shot 14 birds with it and they've all been fine eating without any loss of flesh.  I think I like it better than the 22 guage.  Shooting the head off grouse is fine but I'm more certain with the 20 gauge and when I hit the shoulder of the bird with the 22 I lost a lot of meat.   Sonny was big on the 20 gauge when we were up in Fort St. James and I have to give it to him I'm a convert now.
Other than the dozen or more doe we'd seen coming in we didn't see any does, or moose or elk or bear all morning. Then we were driving down this side road when I yelled stop.  I took out the 20 gauge and blasted the grouse standing in the high grass along side the tree line. I'd just seen the head turning to look in the direction of the truck.  Gilbert leaped out the window of the truck and was a blur of motion as he pounced on the bird.  I had to find the bird underneath him to wring it's neck.  I missed the next one.  And the ones after that too.  By the end of the weekend the tally would be a dozen grouse free and only 2 shot.  Gilbert flushed the ones in the bushes but I never got a clear shot in the heavy woods where we found them along the streams. I took the shot but the birds were long gone.  Gilbert followed and ran circles and patterns looking for more. He was a little disappointed in me.  Tom was driving the truck and he felt Tom had done his job but I was the shooter and I was supposed to hit more birds. He gave me those looks hunting dogs give, "what am I doing hunting with you." looks.  If he had a cell phone and an agent he'd have been on another hunting team before the weekend ended.
We were staying in the motel in Princeton.  Great place with pool right by the highway beside the gas station near one of the best hunting and fishing stores in the province.  We had a pizza from Pizza Party just a short walk from the motel.  Gilbert had spooked 5 deer when we'd got up at 6 in the morning and headed over  to the A&W.  They were in the parking lot of the motel.  Talk about spies.  I'm sure they were there to report back to the rest of the deer in the valley when we woke up. That's why we didn't see any bucks.
A guy we met told us he and his friends had shot six bucks up north. Like we need to hear this when I've just missed another grouse.  Early in the season the grouse are really stupid and easy to hit. But later in the season they're running at the sound of the truck and when they see you out  walking they're way gone flying in the trees like alien space saucers.
"I told you I met Prime Minister Harper and he was a really decent man."
"That's all I've heard about him too but the media certainly aren't going to tell you the truth about him.
"I met the Liberal leader Turner and he was a good guy too but the media trashed him."
"Right now Troudeau is the media favourite."
"That's because the Canadian media are all dope heads and he's going to legalize their marijuana. For years they were getting drunk in the parliamentary media room and now they're be able to smoke up and write their fantasies about Canadian politics."
"Did you hear Clinton liked to watch porn on the #1 plane and the secret service guys didn't like that.  A general said it was tough advising him about possible war in the middle east with all the tits and ass going on on the screen."
"Do you think the secret service who didn't like porn are the guys who got trashed in that honey pot scam."
"Could be."
"It's all about my pay grade. Watching politics in the world today is no different from the ancient Greeks listening to stories of the Gods on Mount Olympus."
"I think they're trying to undermine everyone's belief in authority so the totalitarian authority guys can step in and kick the girls out after they've killed off all the men. "
"Dr. Ney said men don't care about anything any more because they can't even protect their babies.  The Moslems are righteous and they'll fight for their families whereas western men aren't going to fight like that.  The Chinese guys are all going to fight to rape the western women.  That's what Ghengis Khan and Attilla the Hun were in it for. I read somewhere that 1% of the human genome can be traced to those 2 guys because of all the conquered women they raped.  The Chinese are killing all their feminist babies in the womb so the guys are all single in their armies and ready to do to the west what the Japenese did to them when they invaded. They're still pissed at the West for the opium wars."
"I heard this General talking about the Cowards in Washington  forcing women to fight in the Seals.  He said the Israelis had tried having women  in combat roles but it hadn't worked."
"It's not supposed to work. It's supposed to destroy the Navy Seals and the Marines. The only thing keeping law and order in the world these last 50 years is the American military so everyone wanting to take over the west wants to destroy them so what better way than to put women in their ranks."
"I don't get it.  All the other groups who proved themselves in combat like the blacks did it by proving they themselves could fight as well as the white, like the black air combat patrol.  Yet there's no woman's combat group just women  with men and the men are getting themselves killed trying to save the women rather than carry out their mission . Women aren't going to get themselves shot to save men but that's hard wired into men.  We're protectors."
"Not any more.  Any man who tries to protect a woman in this society gets hit with a sexual harassment suit".
"I couldn't believe all this bullshit about women not being able to get jobs yet I heard they're doing anything to try and get women into the trades but they're now having to get 500 Irish men to come to Canada for these high paying jobs because women don't want to do any heavy lifting. My female surgeon friends say the feminist don't want to get blood on their hands. They like telling everyone what to do but don't want to do the real work. That's why they're all in women's studies and administration."
"And the new Harvard administration schemes all say that you don't need to know anything about anything to tell people what to do. That's why Allan Rock, a lawyer, got to be head of Health Care and botched it up royally because he didn't know anything about the industry. "
"None of them knowing anything about farming either and yet suddenly theres some ivy leaguer whose minister of agriculture. It's like the nobility in the Charge of the Light Bridgage. You bought an officer position. You didn't need to know anything about anything. We're going back to the medieval days with these Lords and Ladys in charge, the new Beugeosie. Out with the old and in with the new. Propaganda beats the guillotine anyway."
We watched an episode of NCIS eating pizza.  I like the show.  All the gender politics are played out. But the woman in charge isn't one of the new 'light lifting'  sorts.  It's all about protecting democracy and I like that.  Good scenarios.  Mix of the terror and the old cold war themes.   The female geek star is as believable as the gorgeous tall policewoman.  The guys get their hands dirty and they're believable too.
We talked about Tom Clancy and C.S. Lewis.
"It's through our Wounds we grow."
I told Tom about Azerbaijan and he told me about his dad not being able to maintain the house .  There'd been a flood and his basement had caved in. "Were it not for a miracle he'd have been taken down by the deluge that  burst through the door.  It's an assisted living place. " Tom figured he was going to like it.  I talked about Dad some too.
I told him I'd had my boat cleaned and how I felt cared for.
"Gilbert's not pleased. I'd been a human living in dog house and now he was a dog living in human house."  Amazing what having a place clean and tidy can do for one's spirit.
"A lot of friends are retiring."
"Some  dying too."
"We're that age."
"I worry some of the ideas about the world at large by old people aren't a projection of their own fears about dying."
"Like Suzuki saying we'll all going to be toast tomorrow and the projections say we're hundreds of years away from any real catastrophe now once the lies are put aside."
"Yea, but not just him.  Anyone who starts saying the worlds going to end when they're old.  I know I'm going to end but I haven't a clue about that or anything else. It's like the whole of life is about coming to terms with the mystery of birth and death."
"I think more and more that the Christian life is about preparing for death. I looked up the 4th dimension and it was a big thing in the 19th century everyone thinking that these 3 dimensions couldn't explain everything but that there was a 4th dimension that they were apart of, the sacred, God, synchronicity, something other and outside of this material world."
"I've always thought that.  I've had all these experiences and I see people loving in spite of circumstance.  I loved Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" after his near death experience of Auschwitz. I loved Bonhoffer too.  The Nazi's were pagans, not atheists. They killed a lot of Jews but they didn't kill anything near the numbers Stalin did as an atheist."
"They're still finding the mass graves like the one in Poland."
I missed another chance at shooting a grouse and Gilbert gave me another 'whatever' dog look. Back in the truck he sat on Tom's lap and didn't look at me.
"I think that one was a ptarmigan. They're tougher than partridge.  I think I hit it but I was too far away.I'm finding out how close I have to be, about 30 yards. With 12 gauge you can get grouse out around 50 maybe 100 yards but not with the 20 gauge.  Gilbert's not happy with me."
"The orthotics are helping my injured toe. It was crushed and I got arthritis in it.  But it's actually healing. I asked George when I finally couldn't walk for the pain.   Ttupidly I'd been doing all the wrong things and made it worse. Hows your shoulder."
"Healed right up. I think it' got better when you told me it might be a rotator cuff injury and wouldn't ever heal. "
"I find I'm not willing to hurt my body as much as I did when I'm younger. It's like the truck. I don't want to roll  or crash any more vehicles.  I 'm getting more cautious because it just costs too much to fix things and it takes that much longer for injuries to heal. "
"You know the Roschild's banked both Wellington and Napoleon but before Waterloo Napoleon's troops didn't get their pay."
"I heard Rockerfeller was involved in some dirty politics and I'd have thought he was pro american but you can never tell these days."
"We're living in nation states but the multibillionaire families could already be living on space stations and we'd never know it. Maybe Roschilds, Rockerfellers and Bill Gates and all these guys we know of are just the tip of the ice berg. They're the guys we know of but they take their orders from these guys even richer than them that have so much money they can be truly private."
"I saw that whenever they point the Hubble Space Telescope at empty space they find millions and millions more galaxies."
"Dr. Ney was telling me he figured Satan was the second law of thermodynamics and that heaven was perfect without entropy."
"I actually smell sulphur when I'm around truly evil people. I think it's a pattern recognition trigger that I've learned for recognizing the clear cut psychopaths."
I got back into the truck after missing another grouse.  Gilbert climbed into the back and went to sleep. He was being a bit dramatic.
"I told Phillip I'd concluded that women who want to marry psychiatrists are clearly the craziest whereas the poorest women would be attracted to bankers and the sickest to surgeons."
"Men are stupid. They're just interested in cleavage."
"I'd like to do a comparison study of men breast fed and those who weren't.  I truly don't know which would be more likely to fixate on breasts but it would be a great pure science study. "
Gilbert pounced on the second grouse I finally shout. He held it down with all the might of his little body,  till I came up and took it out  from under his paws. While I was wringing it's neck he was running circles looking for more in the woods.
In the morning pre dawn with our A&W breakfasts we headed out to Tullameen and took the Lawless mountain road back towards the coast. I pointed out to Tom where the highway had caved under and they'd made it a one lane.  I'd been there when there was an avalanche of rocks another time.  A lot of people live out their lives in city ghettos and may as well be like the Bubble Boys. Out in the real world it's more about surrender than control.  But you can't tell the arrogant young and beautiful about reality. Sometimes they live their fairytales right up to death and then they wake up fighting tubes in their nose and throat. I've seen the terror when they realize their whole lives were a lie and they're unprepared for mystery.
When Tom was riding too close to the outer edge out the high mountain logging road I told him I was feeling anxious.   I reminded him of the time  I'd had my truck dangling over the edge of just such a high mountain logging road, when the road caved out from under me . I 'd had to climb out the passenger door and use the winch to get the vehicle back on the road above.  It had been dangling like a teeter totter and I'd been afraid if I blew on it it would have gone down the 6 story high cliff.  I was blessed to get out alive. Driving down with two wheels on what was left of the road and two on the wall , I was worried I'd flip.  In that split second I'd gunned it over, it  was a very scary thing.  Tom kept the truck closer to the rock face after that.  He said he was trying to save the suspension by missing most of the pot holes. There was only a little road around the potholes at best.
We talked of Luke, John, old friends, theology classes we'd taken together, the new technology. He gave me the Tom Clancy Debt of Honor book to re read. It's all about Saipan.
"I know. I read it when I was there."
"It's even more important now.  Do you think Tom Clancy died of a hit put on him.
"Could be.  We still don't know who shot Kennedy. "  I said.
"I cook the grouse in butter after I've de boned it. I sometimes use curry or some lemon for spice and then I serve it on rice."
We'd only shot 2 grouse. The diesel fuel we'd used was about $150 just driving around in the back woods.  Adding the wear and tear on the truck, the missed shells, motel and A&W, we figured each grouse alone was about $200."
"The caviar in Azerbaijan is worth $400 for 100 gms.  This grouse is like caviar to me.  I think knowing all that goes into it, and the joy of watching Gilbert, makes grouse my favourite food of all time.  Better than caviar."
 "It sure is tasty."
"Good seeing you.  I probably should have been out sitting on a rock waiting for the deer or stalking about in the bushes alone but I enjoyed the conversation and driving around the backwoods in a warm truck with a gun,a dog a thermos of coffee, a friend. Well it can't be beat."
Tom wanted to wash the truck but I told him I'd done that the week before.  I was planning on going out hunting again next week so why bother.  Before going out on the highway I got the trigger locks on all the guns and emptied my pockets of ammo, putting it all in my waterproof cases. Then it was a drive down to Tom's country place before I headed back to the city with Gilbert.
I don't know what's going on in the world but it's not what it seems.  I know for sure it's not what we're being told.  The media only gives us what sells.  Jesus said the devil is a liar and a murderer.  There's a lot of that these days.
And if you want to get rid of the devil without you have to address the devil within.
I gave one grouse to Tom and took the other home with me.  I'll share mine with Gilbert.