Housekeeping

I think I got a signal from the blogspheric gods yesterday. I had composed a brilliant (I thought so anyway) piece on the cartoons. It consisted of me reciting a litany of arguments instantiated by four talking heads on FoxNews.

Anyway, just towards the end, my fingers slipped and magically performed the shortcut for back and enter, sending my sagacious response to the netherregions of digitized manifestation.

Anyway, not to rehash the thing, but the basic question I posed is why no Westerner that I've come across in op-eds, blogs, on TV, etc. has ever thought about imagining the conditions of life that would create such responses? There are all sorts of interesting and well thought out criticisms--religious hypocrisy of supporting violent protests and not equally criticizing Muslims murdering Muslims in Iraq; covert/overt support from autocratic Arab Regimes that have no legitimacy on the ground; on and on.

But all of them, for all their insight, are basically, in my mind, dissociated, arrogant, and assume a position of righteousness.

In other words, I submit that everyone of us is capable of such actions. And those who claim they aren't--their too civilized, moral, etc. for such irrational behavior--are just lying to themselves.

What no one mentions in these dicussions of the protests is the fact these individuals live in utter despair. Their governments do not exist to benefit them or the common good in anyway shape of form. They have no voice, no ability to affect change in their lives. They watch their children die of diseases we have eliminated in the West. The young receive educations to remain unemployed. The young men--its hard enough being a teenage/young male, the rage, sex, public image of honor/strength that must be upheld--can not without jobs support a family, win a woman, led frustrated sexual lives. They live with the history of being colonized--in body and mind--by the Western world. They live with the history of their ancestors ruled by foreigners who contemptously labeled their beliefs and customs as superstititious, vulgar, and barbaric.

They have one resort, one sanctuary that the white man has not spoiled--their religion. And then the infidels go and do this.

To give an analogy: to have a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb would as sacriligeous and offensive to Muslims as a drawing of Jesus dressed as a priest molesting young boys would be to a Christian. Or making light of the Holocaust for a Jew.

The rage then is the rage of despair. Of having no ability to affect anything in life, to create anything positive, to not be able to label the criticism where it rightfully belongs--on the lack of concern by the rich and the lack of good leadership at home.

So these cynical, hypocritical leaders step back and let the violence be sent out against the West and the Jews.

And oh by the way, if you can't understand why "those people" don't understand freedom of speech, maybe its because they don't have it in their country. When we recall that everything that comes through newspapers in the Arab/Central Asian world has been vetted by the governments, maybe its not that crazy to imgaine people projecting that vision of the world onto all other foreign countries. So when a Dutch Newspaper comes out with these cartoons, which we civilized Westerners know is not the fault of the government or the people, maybe its that not that crazy that Muslims would imagine the Dutch government behind the operation.

If you think that's too far out of a theory, ask yourself if you have any idea of what it is like living in a police state? And no PC, postmodern crap about how the US is some fascist dictatorship. I mean a real police state. I mean people following you, inflitrating social clubs, spying on you, and then having family members disappear.

I can't imagine that, so why should I expect people who live in unfree societies to understand my rights to free speech?

All this talk about rights , you never anything about responsibilities. Not what is my/our rights, but what are our responsibilities?

Of course I'm not excusing violence and such horrible sin. Its still wrong. An individual always has a choice.

It is just, as Da said, "When you become righteous you forget that you love that person."

We have forgotten that we inherently do love all of these people. Feel your Right Heart, feel the Blissful Current of Absolute Relatedness, of Pure Love and you know that while you do not support such destruction, you still love and always forgive those who do.

Also feel that contraction, that lockdown of utter horror and self-centered egotism in your chest, and tell yourself then that you are not capable of such action. That if you lived in such circustances, you would never ever ever understand any circumstance, possibly in some small way, even, be open to such activity. Or tacit support.

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Anyway, the whole piece disappeared, which I think was a sign. I had been contemplating a change of focus in this blog for awhile and that was the cincher.

I realize I can't really write on thsi blog. Not as a "log" or journal. Its too self-conscious, its too showy, with the constant motivation of wanting to sound intelligent, cultured, learned, spiritual, or whatever other bullshit I perpetrate.

So I'm going to stop posting on things like politics, culture, society, etc. I have my points of views on issues, but they are not worked out in the process of writing. They are already formed and the blog just becomes a content dump.

Nor do my more personal/spiritual writings seem to connect with my deeper heart in this format.

I'm going to return to a personal (for my and God's eyes only) journal. To deal with the core realities of my emotional struggles, my soul's yearnings, and my devotion to God. Those belong away from the maddening crowd.

But that doesn't mean I am going to stop writing on this blog en toto. I think anyway, we'll see, that might happen who knows.

I entitled the blog Indistinct Union: Nonduality and Christianity and the more I look over the posts, the more I realize the concepts least discussed in this blog are the following 3:

Indistinct Union, Christianity, and Nonduality (actually 2, Indistinct Union=Nonduality).

I have finished the rough draft, very rough (needs massive editing) of my first theological book. It is a re-working of the history and interpretation of Christian mystical theology based on Wilber-5. Or for those of you in the integral-ish scene, I'm taking Integral Spirituality and de-ploying its vision refracted through the lens of Christianity.

In other words, I am trying to set the stage for a post-metaphysical Christian stream.

I have been mum on that issue, which is the only really creative non-fiction writing I (possibly) have done in my life. I was I think scared that if I let some of the secrets out, somembody would plagarize it. I think that's a pretty irrational fear, given how specific and complex the topic is.

It seems I also thought that if I used this blog just as a venue for those ideas that it would be too limited. But actually its been the reverse. Mostly this whole project has lacked a focus honestly.

And to the charge that the integral scene is not very Christian and no one would be interested, I get the sense it could be that that particular void might speak to people desiring someone to speak on these issues but having no context for doing so.

Again, I'm going to take this easy at first. I, like quite a few young males out there have the tendency to create an immediate list and timetable/schedule, leading to more frustration and poorer quaality.

God bless.