Theology | The "Never-ending Post"

#FirstCuppaJoe for Feb 25 (thread) Here’s my assignment from today’s #MorningMeditations:

Talk about:

#TheBrevityOfLife, #DirectAccessToGod, #QuadrillionsOfSouls, #RuleByTollGate

I dunno, maybe that’s too much to cover in a Twitter thread. I’ll go start a blog post, pin it to the top, then “publish” the first paragraph immediately, I’ll “update” it every few minutes so y’all can see the progress, if your’re interested. Have a great Saturday everyone. Luv, Vern

As promised… here we go…

As usual, on Twitter, I spew out these subjects randomly, as they come to mnd, but not necessarily in order of importance. Lemme think aout this for a second… Okay, here’s the order: Both #DirectAccessToGod and #RuleByTollGate were covered in a standard Tweet today, (Sun Feb. 26, 2023) so here that Tweet is, in it’s entirety:

Rule ByTollGate

Like it or not, we, the non-wealthy, are ruled by #Tollgates. The rich and powerful work to gather resources, consolidating and amalgamating access to them, so that they can collect exorbitant fees from those who need those hoarded goods, services, or knowledge.

The powerful within Academia are no exception, controlling access to higher education and vaunted “degrees,” while continually raising tuitions. Traditional Publishing houses control artist-access, Galleries do the same, we only see what they deem “adequate,” for public distribution.

The Legal and Medical Professions have boards which control licensing, which—in addition to protecting the public from quackery—are designed to keep the professions “elite” and “exclusive.”

The worst tollgates are those put up by “religions.” This is true not only monetarily—due to the requirement that members pay a tithe (10% of their income) in order to be in good-standing—but also “spiritually,” by claiming that their interpretation of scripture, and their ministry, is the sole method of having a relationship with God.

Direct Access to God

We can’t do much about those firmly-entrenched economic-tollgates, but we have a choice when it comes to religion. #DirectAccessToGod is freely available to everyone through prayer and meditation. No tithes nor abusive religious-bosses are necessary.

You can be free from #religiosity if you chose. Fire your religious bosses and go directly to the source. God is waiting to hear from you, unencumbered by the trappings that churches have put on you.

2/28/2023

QuadrillionsOfSouls

(thread) Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that #EvolutionOfLife is built-in to the “algorithm” which controls matter. This wld mean that—amongst the billions of stars in ea. of trillions of galaxies—intelligent life, like ours. HAD evolved. Let’s also assume that some of these “ETs” have been evolving, socially, for a few million years longer than we have. How would they grade us? How far BEYOND selfish fulfillment of “animal” drives (which drives were once necessary) and TOWARD a collective-conscience have we advanced? Let’s also assume, if we’re writing a SciFi scenario, that all these “Near-death Experience” stories are evidence of each intelligent being having an “eternal soul,” which returns to a spiritual realm, after experiencing a material one. That’s a lot of souls.

So, what would be the point, if there were one? What purpose would material experience serve a collective spiritual mind? I say “collective,” but what I’ve proposed is more an amalgam of individual minds interconnected, and yet also individually separate. And what of all these assumed planets at various stages of civilization? Are they simply temporary “training projects” for souls? Will the success or failure of a planet’s material quest for civilization contribute to eternal, spiritual knowledge? Go figure.

3/1/2023

FirstCuppaJoe for Mar 1 2023 (thread)

My #MorningMeditations were telling me something simple this morning: God is everywhere, not just in this physical realm. God is within each of us, knows us intimately down to the lousy DNA we inherited, the clumsy upbringing we received from well-meaning but untrained parents, and the false religion w/ which we were indoctrinated as children. God is the one entity who really understands each of us…
And guess what? That’s why God loves each of us, keeps tabs on us, cheers for us from the sidelines, and loves to hear from us… even if all we do is complain. What God really likes though, is when we come in gratitude, acknowledging our blessings, and—in empathy— praying for others.

I know that what I perceive that I’m getting out of “the Universe” runs counter to most religions, which tout a single hero in whom God is dynamically living and to whom God has spoken, and without whom contact with God is cut-off. Such ideas are examples of how humans create monopolies and tollgates to valuable commodities and then control access in order to control those needing that access. It’s also an example of how humans, innately, MUST have human heroes to “worship,” even if their only quality worthy of such adoration is that they throw a good curveball or that they have a superior singing voice.

The truth though, is that our time in this frustrating material realm is limited. We are here for training, when our training is sufficient, we return to the spiritual realm and to the presence of God. I heard this first-hand when I was near 60, from a young man half my age. I was in Las Vegas hiring sales people for my region. As I had lunch with an applicant, he related a Near Death Experience:
“When I was about 18, we kids were trying the ‘huffing’ experience. I huffed some oven cleaner. I apparently went into cardiac arrest, but I experienced myself rising through clouds until arriving at a level where I could see people walking around. A bearded man in robes approached me. ‘Your time is not yet,’ he said. Then he came up so close, all I could see were his eyes. Then he said, ‘The answer is love,’ and gave me a mighty push in the chest, and I was then falling back through the clouds. All of a sudden, I awoke lying on my back, with an Emergency Tech kneeling over me with defibrillator paddles in his hands.”
The answer is love. God is love, and since we are each part of God, we have the ability to tap into that. I know, when one has been abused by others or has simply suffered the hard-knocks of physical existence, it’s hard to feel love for others. But it’s easier if you know that you have a friend with you, even in lonely moments, who knows everything you’ve been through, even things you’ve done and are not proud of, but a friend who still loves you.