Facts just twist the truth around

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape

David Byrne said it right there - and now I expand upon his words. I expand because as an NPR listener I have heard several people come on and discuss the subject of God. Richard Dawkins speaks of The God Delusion, there is God's Problem by a Christian converted to an agnostic, advising how the Bible fails to answer our most important questions, and then Sam Harris in his Letter to a Christian Nation mocks the bible point for point and questions how any kind of supreme being could create a life that allows for swollen prostate glands. I personally like God Laughs and Plays because it falls more within my beliefs.

I think that a subject as personal and subjective as a supreme being can be argued any way one happens to feel about it, quite convincingly. An atheist/agnostic can disprove God's existence, a religious being can turn around and prove it - and who is going to be convinced who does not already happen to side with that one perspective to begin with? Is someone actually going to be swayed by these arguments?

I think anything can be argued very well and given the arguments, logic, facts, and point of views anyone can prove just about anything. Adolf Hitler proved to all of Europe that the Jews were the cause of the world's problems, enough proof to actually result in their mass murder and destruction. Today Nazis around the world still carry the torch and still believe that. To these people this is not a point of view, it is THE truth. It is not a truth I happen to agree with, but I am sure Hitler's arguments were quite convincing. To his believers they probably even seemed logical. To many of us now, especially us Jews, they are horrifying, but the reason I even mention this is that it is to show that with enough convincing just about anything can be argued.

So where I am going with all of this is I will listen to any point of view, regarding whether God does or does not exist and each may be convincing in its own way, but when it comes down to it I am going to believe what I believe regardless of the arguments. The fact that God cannot scientifically be proven to exist does not prove God does not exist. There are horrible things that happen in the world - constant starvation, murders, rapes, injustices. From a personal point of view, I don't like these things happening. On a larger scale destruction and creation go hand in hand. Ideally speaking, and some day given enough evolution, we will live in a world where there will no longer be a need for starvation, rape, and violence to exist. But as it stands, because the world is not perfect, because these things happen more than I want them to, does not prove anything one way or the other. There is always the argument what kind of God would allow these things to happen? Good question. Answer - the jury is out.

To become inevitably selfish though, even though I know I am not the only living being, I am definitely the only one living my life. I have to start by looking at my own life. In some ways I have been fortunate - blessed - I realize that. I have never had to go hungry or sleep out in the cold. I have been exposed to a minimum of violence, I have never been shot at, I don't get into many fights - I realize - I am lucky. I can also look at the down side, I have been through a horrible depression that had the ability to take my own life if I had let it, I grew up feeling depressed in a spiritual void where nothing had any meaning, I have spent many years feeling alone, angry, disconnected from the society around me, jealous and envious of those who had friends and lovers while I felt shut out. These things were truly trying and difficult times, and to a certain degree - it never entirely leaves you. Still - looking at how it has turned out - how I am blessed to have a beautiful family, animals I love surrounding me, living in a place that makes me feel at home where the doors are open to experience my vision of God - an interactive and mysterious but beautiful God nevertheless - I am lucky to feel that connection. Speaking to a person last week telling me how completely bored he or she was - my answer was boredom is the same as spiritual disconnectedness. I know that from my experience - my first part of my life was filled with boredom, the last few years where I am starting to feel like I am part of something powerful and spiritual, boredom just doesn't seem to be there the way it once did.

So I go back to my life "life is just a dream" and the Don Miguel Ruiz books talk about life being a dream, then there it is - "it seems like all this life was just a dream". I look at my dream and my experience and that is really all I have to go on. Sometimes - like today - I was out with my daughter on a hill around the corner from us - the sky was blue, we had just had a half foot of snow - we were sharing a sled going down the hill, both enjoying the moment of fun together - and this thought comes to me. This same thought was there when the blowing snow in Washoe Valley kept me from seeing the road 5 feet in front of me. Here it is - the thought that life is kind of like a long movie - a movie in 3-D, with senses included - in the movie you get a hell of a visual looking up at the sky, it seems so real. The smell of the fresh snow, the feel and taste of it as it gets in your mouth - it all seems very convincing. My senses are the gateway to the "world" around me, and as What the Bleep do we Know points out, our senses not only interpret the world around us, but even shape it. It seems to me at times that the movie does not seem real, that I am sitting in a Matrix somewhere and someone is programming it out for me. Who knows how real any of it is - who is to say how real or unreal it may be? And really when it comes down to it - there is only one thing I know - and that is that the dream in my head, the thoughts in my head, are the ones I am having. I really don't know for certain anything else. I know there are consistencies in the dream - I can't seem to walk through walls, if I try to fly I will fall, in the dream the physical world seems to have some properties that are consistent with the scientific laws that have been "proven" in laboratories. But how do I know one day I won't be able to walk through a wall, or fly, or do something I have never done before. All I know is so far I haven't been able to.

Looking at my life, I can all of a sudden turn on my TV and see that other people are living their lives too. In just a half hour, I can read about suicide bombings, murder, destruction, the burial of beloved Brianna Dennison in our community, the family sickened. I can put myself in their shoes - or try to anyways - I can try to imagine what it would be like to experience that, and I can interpret it through my own life. But until these things happen to me, I can never really know. Going back to the movie, it is kind of like glimpsing into someone else's without seeing the whole thing. I know this local co-ed was raped and strangled, I know she will soon be buried - I can imagine the horror of experiencing my life ending like that, or knowing that it happened to someone I loved - how I would react. But other than that, I can't really know someone else's experience. Most importantly - I don't know what it is like to die or be dead. I can't conceptualize the scientific notion that my life stops suddenly, that I no longer have any experience of sense, smell, or being alive any more. Yet if life is how I suspect it to be - a continuous experience of my spirit, than I can't even begin to perceive the notion of what an after life may be. If upon death, we find out that life here is just one chapter in an infinite realm of experience, than maybe the notion of death is different. Maybe the idea of a tragic death changes its meaning if instead of it being the end it just means shifting dimensions when we are done with what we need to do here on the earth plane, and going onto the next chapter. My own belief is I am here as long as I need to be. If that was the fate and karma of Brianna for example, who in her own way through her passing has brought thousands of people here together here, than maybe it just took her 19 years to accomplish what I have been unable to do in 42. In that case, is it really a tragedy, or do we just see it that way?

I have to go back to my own life, my life here and now, because when it comes down to it - it is the most direct experience I have. My movie, my life, my experiences are all I have to go on. From my own experience, the more connected I am to the notion of the spirit - whether it was through going to my hundreds of musical concerts - mainly but not limited to the Grateful Dead - often re-lived in dreams, to my more recent ability to create my own "concert" on my own, today even doing this walking with my dog through the snow, chanting some of my own compositions, without a guitar, just singing into the wind and feeling very connected and inspired - the more I feel in touch with this spirit, the happier I am. All of the people on NPR can tell me that this is my delusion. My answer to their statement is that I am the one living my life, not them. They can tell me how they view the spirit, how a world without God is the only one that makes sense. My answer is that in their experience that is the most valid conclusion that they can make, and it would not be my place to call them wrong or misguided, or even counterattack that they are the ones who are delusional. It is not my place to tell anyone what they should be experiencing for that matter. But - what I can say - for my own life - is that the notion of a spirit, God, Goddess, spiritual entity, force, mysterious presence - whatever you want to call it - that this presence is just as real to me as the world I take in with my senses. If I accept on faith that the world I live in - is real - and not just some twisted figment of my imagination - and I do accept that on faith, than I must also accept on faith that regardless of what other people may say, think, argue, or logically prove or disprove - my experience is that this spiritual presence is as real as the ground I walk upon. I feel it now, as I am writing this. I trust my own feelings. And I also know that my experience of a world where this presence exists, makes much more sense than a world where we are nothing but blank chemical reactions sitting in a petri dish as some of our scientist portray it. To me that world is part of the picture, but the spirit is the other equally meaningful part of it. Those people I know who have the misfortune of not having this presence in their life - and don't get me wrong - I believe agnostics and atheists can experience fulfillment and magic in their own way - but those who do not feel any presence of any kind, and we know two of them who live in the "Lakeview" area, I truly feel sorry for. I have lived this disconnection myself, it almost killed me - and to feel separate from it to some degree is hell on earth.

I can and will not prove to you which point of view is right or wrong. All of the different religions are like 31 Flavors - they may be slightly different, but when it comes down to it they are all still ice cream. To mock one or the other for believing in the wrong God seems ludicrous. And even for the atheists and agnostics - if you are that certain of your point of view, why do you have the need to try to prove it? For what reason and what is the point? I contend that to anyone who really believes in their experience, there is no reason to impose it upon another - it can't be done and nobody's experience is any more or less valid than another's. From my perspective, the Bible was the best attempt at the time - 2,000 years ago, to translate a mystical experience based on the time it was written. Now there are so many books that also capture this and to say that any one of them is the one and only - from my perspective - is nothing but shutting the door to a number of possibilities. It feels secure to think one has the answer, but I believe all of them have only part of it, the rest of it cannot come from any book of any kind, but has to be lived out and experienced by each and every person living.

So in conclusion - there is no conclusion, except my own conclusion and experience, and that experience is mine and mine alone. Maybe it makes sense to you to a degree, maybe it is a heap of bullshit - but to me after all of my time living here - a world with a magical presence and mysterious spirit makes all the sense in the world to me. I will not try to put it in a laboratory, or prove it to anyone - I don't need to really - I have already proven it to myself. I do not know what will happen today or tomorrow, and I certainly have no idea really what may happen when I will be destined to experience my passing - either onto the next plan, or possibly no plane at all. Whatever that may be, I surrender to the faith that it will be the best thing that can happen. My suspicion is I have only just begun.