When I Like Christians

I like Christians better when they're a lot less Old Testament and more about living the New.

Then again, isn't that what a true follower of Christ should be anyway?

No Cake For You?

It has been my observation t,hat the nice thing about saying you're a Christian is that you can pick and choose which parts of the Bible you'd like to adhere to. I see Christians who say homosexuality is an abomination. I see Christians who say dressing immodestly is a sin. I see Christians who use the Bible to justify hateful action towards anyone who is different from them.

On the positive side, I see Christians who say you should accept everyone, turn the other cheek, and love your neighbor as yourself.

I'm a Taoist, a follower of an 81 verse book much older than the Bible. My little book says we are all part of the whole and that accepting that, and seeking to live in harmony with others, whether you think that they are good or bad, you will find peace and happiness. I try. All may shop at my store.

Truthers or Liars?

It's not 100%, but it's interesting to note that, in general, when my more liberal friends on Facebook post something political, it can be easily verified from multiple sources, and when my more conservative friends post something it's almost as easily discredited. Why? 

Are my more conservative friends more easily fooled, after years of accepting lies as truth from Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, and Fox?

Maybe they just like to stir up the pot with half-truths, because that's what they see their conservative talk radio heroes doing?

Since most conservatives are in church every Sunday, is it because they're used to being handed their "truth" from the pulpit, trained to not question what they're told, by those who they believe think like them?

Are my more liberal friends less willing to accept a quote or a statement at face value and willing to spend the time fact-checking to make sure that it's true before they re-post it? Are the liberals more likely to question everything?

The conservatives will claim that it's the liberal mainstream media that's hiding the REAL truth. But that doesn't check out. There are dozens of good ways to cross-check a story and it doesn't take that much time to confirm or refute one. Heck, the last conservative posting I checked was debunked by Fox News!

Are the majority of conservatives too lazy to be bothered? Dumb? Trolls?

Tao

Tao is the omnipotent, omniscient force that created and powers the Universe. It has always existed.
 
Trying to describe Tao, we limit our understanding of what Tao is.

Omniscient Tao hears our thoughts and prayers but does not answer them. Tao does nothing to change our situation. That is not what Tao does. Change is up to us.

There is no heaven or hell, only being or not being. (Remember what it was like before you were conceived? That's exactly what death is like.)

Happiness is a choice. And by living in harmony with Tao we will be happier.

Surrounding yourself with unnecessary things will not make your life better. The fewer possessions, the better. The simpler your life, the better.

Rant

I'm not happy about what's happening in D.C. , but if you're a Tea Party member you've got to be pretty excited, right?

I mean, isn't this exactly what the Tea Party REALLY wanted? Washington shut down. Smaller government and fewer services. Millionaire senators and congressmen refusing to get a paycheck so that they can suffer with the common man.

Doesn't it seem a little hypocritical if you claim to support the Tea Party candidates and then whine about how the shutdown is hurting you? So you're thinking that this is a great thing. Seriously, deep down, you're getting a huge thrill out of this, right?

You're not blaming it on Obama, he's the least effective president ever, right? What a wimp. YOU should be taking credit, and flying your Tea Party flag high! You've won the first real battle! You've brought the government down!

Thousand of government workers are not getting paid. Those wasteful federal parks and monuments are closed. Thousands of folks who are, or will be, on welfare will be begging in the streets, or applying to do your job for lower pay. Retired, veterans, and handicapped folks receiving federal assistance will just have to suffer a little more for the good of the country. Abolish public schools! Close the FDA! Proclaim your victory! America is only for the strong, privately-educated, and wealthy!

Remember to support your candidate in the upcoming election! A vote for the Tea Party is a vote for the continued austerity you all demanded!

Woo Hoo...

I Don't Believe... But I Do.

I don't believe in Karma.
While I think it would be wonderful if people who did bad things got their just desserts (and vice versa for the good folks), I don't think it happens often enough for it to be real.

I don't believe in gods.
While it would be nice to think that there was an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful god or gods (maybe with a kind face and a beard) watching over us, answering prayers, rewarding the good people and smiting evil, I don't think they exist. If a god is all powerful, more powerful than evil, why even allow bad things to happen to begin with. Why are there innocent children starving? Why are there pedophiles who continue to molest generations of children? Why is there war... or even arguing for that matter? Why do good people die young and evil ones live to ripe old ages?

I don't believe in holy books.
Books that have been declared to be holy by men who have declared themselves to be in contact with gods. Holy books that contradict themselves. Holy books that people quote and obey to their benefit and ignore the parts that they don't like.

I don't believe in prayers to gods.
I don't believe that anything is listening and reacting. I don't believe that how much faith you have in a god determines whether or not your prayers are answered. (I do believe that how much faith you have in yourself can affect the outcome of certain situations.)

...


I believe in Tao.

To me, one of the things that Tao is, is the truly all powerful force that created the universe and all its physical laws. A force that is found in everything... in every proton, neutron, and electron.

Separation is an illusion of ego.You are made of the same stuff as everything else. The same sun will shine on you, the same rain will fall on you whether you are "good" or "bad".

Tao doesn't care what you do or how you live your life. Tao doesn't judge if you sit on your butt or dedicate your life to saving the starving millions or molest innocent children. Humans judge.

Tao doesn't care what you choose to worship: gods, stars, trees, pasta, or even Tao. Worship of anything at all is ineffective. Tao doesn't care if you're a duck, a rock, or the richest, most powerful person in the world. Tao doesn't care about men's or god's laws. Tao's laws overrule and apply to everything equally. You cannot create a "law" that violates Tao's laws and expect it to work.

Everything has an opposite, a yin for the yang. Tao's laws keep them in balance, in harmony. Those trying to force them out of balance, for any reason, will eventually lose.

To try and describe Tao is to limit what Tao is.

Tao is all.

My vote

FWIW: As has been my tradition for almost 40 years, this fall I will not be voting for a Republican or a Democrat in any races where there is another choice. I will be voting against the incumbent in any race where Republican or Democrat is my only choice.

Rather than wasting my vote with the herd, I choose to stand out from the crowd and vote against continued bad government and career politicians.

I just received notification that my state senator finally opened an email I sent 14 months ago. Way to listen to the people!

Head = Hat-rack?

When I was a kid and did some dumb thing without thinking, my dad would say, "Use your head for something besides a hat-rack!"

It's said that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. In other words: by being sweet, nice, and agreeable you will attract more fans than if you're a jerk. The inference I see is that being a jerk about something (e.g. Westboro Baptist Church protests) would drive folks away, maybe to a choice that they had not considered before. Fundamentalist Christians basically drove me to find an alternative to Christian/Jewish/Muslim religions and that's how I ended up discovering I was a Taoist.

So here's today's question for those who want to use their hat-racks... if you wanted to promote Taoism would you be smarter to be nice about it, or would Taoism get more positive consideration if we pretended to hate those wimpy nature-loving Taoists and bashed Lao Tzu at every opportunity?

Life is Perfect (it continues)

About four years ago I had an epiphany: Life is perfect. (ت)

Works every time. Without fail. Cause and effect, action/reaction, yin and yang. It's not always easy, fun, pleasant, or what you want to happen but it is always perfect in its execution. Always.

Every time I detect the perfection I have to smile (that's why I smile so much). (ت)

It's a fact!

Recently in an on-line discussion I was involved in one of the participants stated a relatively well-known and accepted fact. One of the other participants said "That's your opinion, and I'm entitled to mine."

No, it's a FACT and just because you don't know it, doesn't mean your argument has any validity. There are not always two sides to an argument.

You're protesting in the wrong place!

To me, protesting in front of banks or on Wall Street is like protesting in front of the rat's nest.

Protest where it can influence a lawmaker, that's where the power is. In D.C., at your state capital, in the voting booth, in e-mails to your congressional reps. I've done it, they respond. Not always the way I'd like, but...

My 2 cents.

Walruses and Carpenters

In Napolean Hill's Think and Grow Rich (written in 1937), he refers to the denizens of Wall Street not as Bulls and Bears, but as "Walruses and Carpenters"... referring to Lewis Carroll's poem about a walrus and a carpenter that trick dozens of oysters to join them on the beach, where they eat every last one.

In light of the current "Occupy Wall Street" situation I thought that was an interesting insight. You may return to your lives now. Thank you.

God Wants You to Kill

Having read and re-read the Bible in my search for enlightenment, I am amazed by the rationalizations for violence in the name of God. Gotama Siddhartha said the only thing you should kill is your anger.

I'm thankful that I found the way of Tao.

Bad Taoist

I'm not a very good Taoist.

The first rule of being a Taoist: Don't talk about being a Taoist. Okay, maybe not the first rule, but it's certainly up there. We're supposed to be humble and quiet about our philosophy. Says so in the Tao Te Ching.

It's sort of like being a born-again Christian, I'm so happy that I finally found a philosophy that lines up with my values that I have to tell everyone about it. I even have a website: You Might Be A Taoist that has lines like, "If you describe yourself as spiritual but not religious... you might be a Taoist". And I hope one day to turn it into a little book, like "Chicken Soup for the Soul".

See? Not being quiet about it. In fact, sometimes I'm quite militant about it when Christians try to pummel me with scripture. I whack them back with peaceful Taoist thoughts.

If Taoists believed in hell, I'd probably have to go there.

I Pledge Allegiance

There have been a lot of postings lately on Facebook (due to the 9-11 anniversary, I think) regarding the "Pledge of Allegiance". Typically they are written in all caps, because that makes it somehow easier to see the fervor of the author.

I've always thought that pledging allegiance to a flag made little sense, like worshiping idols. I have no problem with pledging allegiance to the republic of the United States of America, but being a Taoist, I don't believe in G-O-D.

So...

As a veteran who supports our troops, a registered voter, and a Taoist, I can easily say the pledge, with my hand over my heart, without the words that I find unnecessary or divisive:

"I pledge allegiance to the... United States of America, and to the republic... one nation... indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Easy-peasy :)

Life continues to be Perfect. No kidding.

Life is perfect.

With all its ups and downs, laughter and tears, pleasures and disappointments, how could it possibly be any better? If you really got everything you wanted would it be more perfect? Really?? Boring!

Oh, and Tao is all.

Namaste.

Enlightened!

From this morning's meditation...

1. Describing Tao is a paradox.
It is so indescribable that if you try to describe it you limit your understanding of what it is. You could write pages and pages of descriptions and still not have it all. You could call her the Mother of All Things but that only describes a small portion of what she is.

2. Gods can be lied to to or hidden from, gods get angry. Tao sees all, knows all, is all, and cares nothing about what choices you make. Tao never tries to teach you a lesson. Tao has no commandments but it does have rules (including the rules of physics and logic) that are impossible to violate. You can't pray mightily and get the sun to rise in the west, water to not be wet, gravity to not work, etc. You might figure out a way to temporarily bend them but they will always prevail.

3. I cannot climb the mountain to enlightenment because I'm already the mountain. I cannot become more spiritual because I'm already a fully spiritual being (having a human experience... thanks Pierre Teilhard de Chardin!) However... I can live more in balance, show more compassion, and be more humble.

4. Life is what it is. You can't influence it by praying to non-existent gods. You aren't being punished for your sins. You don't get rewarded for being more pious than your neighbor. Bad things happen to good people, and bad people get away with horrible things all the time. Eventually a bad person might be punished by his or her peers, but there is no comeuppance in the afterlife.

5. There is only life. You aren't going to get rewarded in heaven or punished in hell. Those are stories that are made up by priests to make people give up control of their valuables: their time or their income.

6. Holy books are collections of stories used by self-proclaimed holy men to put fear, uncertainty, and doubt into the minds of people who might otherwise be quite happy with the facts. If you can take away something positive from a holy book, that's great, but by-in-large the stories are used to scare you into behaving the way the priests/rabbis/mullahs/monks/etc. want you to. Show me a religion where the congregation decides who is the true mouthpiece of the gods and I'll show you the exception rather than the rule. Church leadership always decides who is "holy". You'd think if they were so good at it there'd be no pedophiles, drug addicts, thieves, or adulterers in the pulpit.

7. We did not evolve from monkeys, we evolved with monkeys.
Monkeys have evolved beside us, like chimpanzees, gorillas, chickens, bacteria and daffodils. Trees don't evolve into ducks and we did not evolve from the monkey. Similar structures but different evolutionary paths. This is probably why they haven't found the "The Missing Link" yet, they haven't gone back far enough to primordial sludge where the ant/monkey/chimp/daffodil/gorilla/human/elephant family tree split.

8. All things are made from same basic set of atoms. The only form of reincarnation is some of your atoms being eaten by a worm, who is eaten by a chicken who hatches an egg that carries some of your atoms.

You are always Tao

Over at Christian Taoism HK Stewart beautifully writes:

Before you
undertook
this journey
of separateness
you call your life,
you were Tao.

Tao is changeless.

You were Tao.
You are Tao.
You will always be Tao.

You do not stop
being Tao
just because
you journey into being.

Government must do less

Lao Tzu's words about government reflect an attitude of smaller is better. How do we do that?

Fewer agencies "protecting" us.
Fewer laws and regulations.
Fewer subsidies.
Fewer "free" services.
No welfare.
No unemployment.
No social security.
Term limits.
Lower taxes.

I don't know how to do this, how to reboot the USA, but I fear it must be done before there is a complete collapse.

Acceptance

In a post on Dear Sugar at Rumpus.net, "Sugar" says that "Acceptance is a small quiet room."

Disagree. Acceptance is a large tent where all things are welcome. Acceptance is the key to serenity and enlightenment. Ego is a small room where you hear only your own voice.