Personal Blogs

You can’t go online and research anything without coming across the ‘illuminati’.  Apparently, these are the elite who really run the world (and you can see just what a great job they’re doing!), they rope in all the top celebrities and are soooo evil because they believe in and worship the devil!!!  Wooooh! Scary stuff!

They’re supposed to be interconnected with the Freemasons and a load of other secret societies who, allegedly, possess old ‘knowledge’ or ‘magic’. They share symbols (pentagons, all seeing eyes etc) and you go through a ceremony or initiation when you join. Miley Cyrus is supposed to be one, and that would be enough to ensure it’s a club that I, and I’m sure many others, would never want to join!

I have actively avoided mentioning any of this up until now because I think it is all just another load of old crap, designed to distract and divide us, while the mega-rich continue to plunder the world’s resources for themselves.

Now if you want to run around with your trousers up over your knees, give secret handshakes (like a bunch of schoolboys), cover one of your eyes in photos and make hand gestures to signify your loyalty to Satan, then you really need to take a long hard look at yourself and grow up. Just writing that shows how absurd and rather pathetic it all is, ‘Oh, look at us! We’re Satanists, how evil are we?!’

If you look at it logically, if you believe in the devil, then you have to believe in God, I mean, you cannot have the ultimate evil without the ultimate good, it goes against the laws of physics. And I know whose side I would want to be on.

In the Navajo tradition, they believe that man is bad and has to learn to be good, a bit like the old Catholic teaching on original sin but not as fascist. I don’t think the Navajo would have excluded a child from the family burial plot because someone hadn’t poured water on its head and said some ‘magic’ words. The more you break this stuff down, the more ridiculous it all appears.  How could competent and intelligent people have been persuaded to believe this?! Then again, look around!

There was a time when I believed that man was inherently good but the events of this last year have made me reassess that belief. When you look at it logically, again, we have to learn to be, not only good, but to be human/humane. As M. Scott Peak pointed out in The Road Less Travelled series, it is natural to defecate in your pants, but you learn to control it, just as you can learn how to behave and control your emotions and actions.

There are several well known cases of children brought up with animals who adopted the behaviour of the animals. Psychology will also tell you that if language and a host of other ‘human’ behaviours have not been acquired by the age of 7, then the chances of acquiring them after that become slim. It would appear therefore, that there are no inherent instincts or behaviours that make us human and our ‘humanity’ is something that has to be learned. We are animals, whether we like to believe it or not; I was going to say animals with manners, but I don’t think our manners are as good as many other animal species (eg: elephants).  In the face of that, I think we need to show a lot more humility, and a lot less arrogance, about who we think we are and what we know.

M Scott Peck in People of the Lie pointed to laziness as the source of underlying evil in humanity. Being good requires effort, being evil requires no effort at all. Consciousness is that effort and begins early in humans, anyone who has children will remember the three year old who asked why, why, why? We also learn what we are allowed to question and what we are not. If you live in a society where you are forbidden from challenging or asking questions about that society and/or the belief systems you live under, you never develop beyond the psychological boundaries of childhood and mature into full adult consciousness. You remain passive and obedient, mindlessly accepting and believing everything you’ve been told or, at least, pretending to.

Ireland has had one of the hardest lockdowns in the world over the ‘pandemic’ and has been one of the least vocal in speaking out against it and the restrictions. The consciousness of the majority of the population remains undeveloped and immature. Centuries of British rule and the autocracy of the Catholic Church have created a passive and cowardly population. Here in the north, there is an additional factor to that submissiveness.  On the nationalist side, many people still fear Sinn Fein and what they, or their cohorts, might do if they go up against them. The silence against lockdown has been deafening on the nationalist side, a side many would have thought would have been the first to object to having their freedom taken away. But it’s amazing what the Council for Foreign Relations (aka CIA) can buy for €4.6m (Political principles, Ms McDonald?  That’ll do nicely, Mr Haass.) See link below.

There have been several voices of dissent on the Unionist/Protestant side (Sammy Wilson, Van Morrison) which, when you look at history, comes as no surprise. The first ‘Irish rebels’ were Presbyterians, going back to Wolfe Tone in 1798 and, in the Easter Rising, there were many from the Presbyterian tradition initially involved in the fight for freedom and equality. It was only afterwards, on the issue of Home Rule, that the divide opened up across religious grounds, leading to the political division of a mainly Protestant North and a Catholic South. These were the same tactics the British used to divide India from Pakistan and set Muslim against Hindu, and vice versa.

The false humility promoted by ‘Christianity’, along with nationalism/republicanism, has created a culture of victimhood and martyrdom. The nodding assent on display is the result of a population who are not used to thinking for themselves, or questioning authority, or rather the authorities who are supposed to be on their side. Religious, political and community leaders continue to exploit this victimhood mentality to maintain power and control over the masses. (A strategy not confined to Ireland and now being used by the manipulators behind the BLM movement). This is not to say that the Irish haven’t endured some horrific abuses over the centuries and there is a kind courage in bearing suffering that is beyond your control. But none at all, when it is fully within your control as a grown adult.

When it comes to being good or evil, I don’t care if you worship God or Satan.  I do however, believe that both those entities are the excuse many use for a lot of self-righteous hypocrisy and some extremely questionable behaviour. I believe the choice between good and evil is ours and our alone, but it does require consciousness, and that can only be fully achieved with the right support and advice growing up, and begins with observing, thinking and asking questions. People may be able to control your actions at times, and we may not always be allowed to openly question what we are being told, but the majority of us still have the capacity to think, even if we can’t always express those thoughts.

Some believe that we need religion to provide the moral framework for the development of a conscience and that, without religion, people would not be good at all and evil would flourish. I disagree; there are some religions/belief systems that are fairly benign, eg: Buddhism, but the evils committed under Christianity would do Hitler proud and are no guarantee that a person will act morally or from a place of consciousness.  Religion may tell us what to believe but consciousness makes us think.

When we think about evil, we think about the great evils of Stalin or Hitler who as I pointed out in previous posts, never actually killed anyone. As Scott Peck pointed out, there is another low level of evil, within all of us that we need to be aware of and recognise. We would consider breaking a child’s bones an evil act, but would we feel the same about a resentful and jealous parent breaking a child’s spirit? Or what about the overly involved parent, who gives their child everything, as a way of emotionally manipulating the child and sabotaging their autonomy?

Then there are the diabolical horrors committed by humans against each other when in a state of war, or in defence of an ideology. I’m only a couple of chapters into the Gulag Archipelago and I’m appalled to think about the minds that dreamt up the tortures detailed in it. It’s easy to think the perpetrators were psychotic, and I’m sure there were a few psychos among them, but they couldn’t all have been, or maybe the devil made them do it.

As Solzhenitsyn points out in Chapter 4, ‘If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil, cuts through the heart of every human being’.

He acknowledges the potential within himself to do what his tormentors are doing. He wonders how he would behave if his life had taken a different direction, and questions what makes decent men complicit within these types of situations. He concludes that it is because they believe they are doing good and, as the old saying goes, ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’.

The corruption on display around the world by those in power today could make one think that maybe they are minions of Satan and Old Nick, himself, is running the show. But I’m not convinced.  They say the devil makes work for idle hands but I think it is the weak minded who are most easily led towards corruption.

I don’t know if the Illuminati are a real thing or are just a few deluded celebrities desperately trying to give themselves some ‘street cred’. Illuminati means enlightened and if they really are seeking enlightenment, then they will have difficulty finding it in the vileness that Satan represents. As Jordan Peterson says, ‘truth is the path to true enlightenment’ and truth is the very antithesis of the devil, aka, the Father of Lies. 

The population, at present, are being lied to on a grand scale. The powers behind the lies have been doing this for decades and are well practised in making a lie appear as truth, and the truth, a lie. They use censorship and propaganda to confuse and misdirect us, and people have been manipulated into believing they are doing good by wearing masks, social-distancing and taking ‘vaccines’, without any real scientific truth being presented to validate those claims . Debates rage in families and online regarding the efficacy of these measures and keep us divided and distracted, again.

The only defence against a lie is to consciously seek the truth and be authentic, and that begins with us and us alone. We have within us the power to do good or evil, and recognising and acknowledging our capacity for evil, as well as good, is the first step towards consciousness, and that requires honesty and effort. As we try to navigate our way through the web of lies and deceit that has been created as part of this ‘crisis’, remember the words of Edmund Burke, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing’, so think on.

Apologies forgot to add in the links:

https://theirishsentinel.com/2021/03/20/sinn-feins-deal-with-the-devil-e4-6-million-was-just-the-start/

https://rense.com/general81/miley.htm

So, the Islamic extremist's are at it again, and all in the name of God no less, but this is what I don't understand about it, if they really believed in an all powerful deity, why do they need to carry out his 'work'?  Surely if he/she or it is so powerful, he/she or it can fight their own battles and take care of all those terrifying cartoonists with their pens or all those scary girls who want to read books, get an education and learn to think for themselves.

We here in the west act a whole lot of smug over this but at the end of the day, the good Christians of the west have been party to some fairly horrific acts themselves over the centuries.  I think Islam is going through the same crisis that Christianity went through in the 16th Century and it will probably implode at some point and most of those believers will eventually become like the rest of us and drift towards passive atheism, once they realize that the worst terrors of hell are man made, not God made.

It would be interesting to see, if people weren't indoctrinated into religion by their parents, how many of us would end up believing in God?  I think too often religion and religious belief is used by people to absolve themselves of responsibility.  They use their religion as an excuse for acting/not acting or behaving in a certain way and by following the tenets of their 'faith', they don't have to think or act for themselves.  By focusing all their attention on some heavenly afterlife, they ignore the reality of life as it is.  If there was no such thing as the belief in a better life to come, after you're dead ????( just writing that makes me realize how ridiculous the whole idea is), then maybe they would do something about the here and now and try and make it as good and enjoyable as possible for everyone.  

I mean life is really not that long, why waste the 3 score years and ten (if you're lucky) with all the negatives of human behaviour, tolerating the most miserable situations, and all in the name of religion?  And if we were weren't meant to think for ourselves, then why do we all have a brain of our own?

A little quiz question for today, what do the Pope, the Queen, David Cameron and Bono have in common?  

Well, if you said the Pope is head of the Catholic Church, the Queen is the head of State for Britain and the Church of England, David Cameron is the head of the present Government, and Bono has a big head, then head would be the connection and you might be right and, actually, that is a right answer too, when you think about it. 

But that’s not the answer we’re looking for today, so, sorry if you said that but good thinking just the same. 

The answer we’re looking for is, and this might surprise some people, they all say or think they are Christians but in reality none of them are, which might surprise some people since two of them are heads of Christian Churches and at least one of them thinks they are God. 

So, how is that the right answer, I hear you say? Well, I was at mass a couple of weeks ago and the priest was talking about the reading that day, which was the one about how it would be ‘easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it would be for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God ’ (or heaven, anyway, same thing).  And he went on about wealth and poverty and I was sitting there thinking, ‘Well what about the Vatican?’  I almost got up and said it, and if it had been another priest I might have, but this priest is old and retired and then I thought, ‘Well he’s not Rome so why harass him about it’. And then yesterday we were back on the money question with the story of the Widow's Mite. Now, I go to mass, I consider myself Catholic, definitely not a Roman Catholic but Catholic in the original sense of the word, which comes from the Greek and means ‘universal’, and that is how I consider myself. I am a member of the ‘universal church of humanity’. 

I was in Rome a couple of years ago and while there was a lot to see, from an historical perspective, I didn’t particularly like the place and I certainly didn’t feel too inspired by the ‘Christianity’ of the Vatican, and wouldn’t be in a hurry to go back any time soon. When I was there, I was hoping for some profound spiritual experience and the nearest I got to encountering anything like that was looking at Michelangelo's Pieta, which is in St Peters and is a stunningly beautiful piece of sculpture. If you ever go to Rome, I couldn’t recommend going to see this highly enough. 

The other big attraction was the Sistine Chapel and, honestly, I felt a bit let down by it. Firstly, it’s not really a chapel, as you would imagine, it’s just another room in the Vatican and by the time you get to it, you have passed through so many rooms painted from floor to ceiling with angels and the like, that your eye is a bit tired by the overload.  

I had the same thing in the Renaissance section of the Louvre, I remember coming out and thinking, ‘If I see one more picture of the dead Christ…!’ And, for the record, the painting of God creating Adam, which I had always imagined was this huge painting across a domed ceiling, is in fact a small panel in the centre of the ceiling about 5ft by 3ft. (it probably is bigger than that, but from my perspective, that is how it appeared). The place was also packed, it was a hot day and, between the crowd, the stifling air and the smell of body odour, it wasn't a pleasant experience. 

Anyway, what got me about it, was the wealth of art in the Vatican museum and, also, the fact that the Pope lives like an earthly king. He lives in a palace, is surrounded by lackeys and riches, he is dressed in expensive robes, waited on hand and foot and separated from the people. He is supposed to be Jesus’ representative on earth, how is that anything like Jesus? And another thing, he is supposed to be infallible, says who? I would like to know where that idea came from? He can’t be infallible, he is a human being, it isn’t possible, all humans are flawed and imperfect, it’s the most interesting thing about us. Just think how boring it would be, if we were all perfect and flawless?  

When you look at it, everything about the Pope goes against everything Jesus preached about and the same goes for the Queen. It is a complete hypocrisy to have a Queen as head of any Christian church and the same applies to David Cameron and Bono, you cannot be that rich and be a Christian, it just isn’t possible, you may perform Christian acts now and again, but as long as you are sitting with all those millions (and avoiding paying tax) you are not and never can be a Christian in the truest and only sense of the word. 

And since we’re on the subject of Churches and religion, any religion that differentiates between men and women is wrong, especially if the Bible is a big part of the religion, because one of the first statements in the Book of Genesis says, that God made them, male and female, both equal. That’s it, equal, no more, no less, equal.  Not the Animal Farm kind of equal, where ‘everyone is equal, only some are more equal than others’, no, not that one. There was no qualification to it, all equal, no argument. 

And if you really believed in the God of the Bible, you couldn’t regard any human being as not being your equal, (or as discussed in previous blogs, of equal value), because if you believe God made everything, then to say that a woman is something less than a man, is to insult God. If God made them equal then who is any human being to say that Her/His/It’s creation, woman, is something less, when they are both human. The value for what He/She/It has created, then extends to everything because if you truly believed that, then you have to consider that everything that God has created is of value to God, otherwise it would not exist.  

Which makes it very arrogant and insulting to go traipsing around claiming dominion over other lands and other human beings and treating them badly, or as your own personal property. Because if everything is God’s creation then, maybe it’s time we started to really think about that and consider how we are living and how we treat other people and the planet. Maybe it’s time we cleaned up our act and started taking care of what we have been given because whether there is or isn’t a God, and whether you believe or don’t believe in a God, we only have a short time here so why don’t we do our best to live well and respectfully, and try and make life better for everyone.  

I mean, does the Queen, David and Bono, and all those other millionaires and billionaires, really need all that money. They can’t spend it in a lifetime and it won’t buy them another life. They can’t take it with them so what do they need it for, to feed their egos and make them feel like they are successful, that they are better human beings than the rest of us?  

Sorry, but the bad news about that is, if you can sit with millions or billions in a bank while on this planet another human being is dying for the want of something as basic as food, then you have failed in the most important area of life, you have failed as a human being and you have certainly failed as a Christian. 

What are we here for, if not to live, life is supposed to be lived is it not?  Why does it always feel that life is something to be endured or survived, why can we not just live and live well? We speculate and ponder on the meaning of life and maybe it is something as simple as that, to live it and live it well. 

Comments as usual, are always welcome.

I’m back on the God question again today because these questions keep rattling around in my brain and the truth is no one really knows if God exists or not. Unless you’ve had a personal encounter with some awesome force beyond yourself, or you are taking on faith the teachings of whatever religion you subscribe to, you probably don't know any more than me 

I have read most of the Richard Dawkins book, The God Delusion, and while I can’t disagree with his conclusions about religion, I have to question why he thinks God, if he does exist, has anything to do with religion? I mean isn’t religion man-made? 

Seriously now, if you really think about it, or think about what God is supposed to be, do you really believe that all those dreary sermons and/or fanatical rantings, could have anything to do with what is supposed to be the most potent and awesome force in the entire universe and beyond? Let's really think about that!!

THIS ALL-POWERFUL, ALL-KNOWING, ALL-CREATING FORCE OF LIFE. 

Say it again, ALL POWERFUL, ALL-KNOWING, ALL-CREATING FORCE OF LIFE!!!

How could we even DARE to claim to know anything about it. We’re only a bunch of human beings, inhabiting (or trashing, depending on how you look at it), one small planet, in a fairly quiet corner of the universe. Maybe that’s why we are so far away from all the action, we haven’t learned how to behave ourselves yet, or take care of the beautiful planet we are privileged to live on.

Also, how could we possibly know anything about God, if God is supposed to be what we believe him/her/it to be?  Imagine an encounter with something like that, it would completely blow your mind!!!

So I’ll ask again, how could we have the AUDACITY, to claim to have knowledge of what God is, or to know how or what, he/she or it thinks?

Now, I can’t claim to have had an awesome encounter with a heavenly body (chance would be a fine thing!) beyond my understanding or not, but I have been on a bit of a spiritual journey for several years now.  I call it a spiritual journey because I have actively been seeking encounters or knowledge beyond what I see and hear in front of me. Things have happened that I can’t explain and I have questions to which I don’t, as yet, have any answer.   

For instance, I used to have a recurring dream, I won’t go into the full details of it here, but the important thing about it was this, in the dream I would wake up to find that I wasn’t really awake at all. As any good psychologist/psychiatrist/dream dictionary will tell you that is a message from your sub-conscious mind telling you to wake up to something that is going on in your life. So when I became conscious of it's meaning I didn't have the dream again, or at least until there was something else in my life, I needed to wake up to!

Now, what I don’t understand about it is this, how does my sub-conscious mind know something my conscious mind doesn’t? And another thing, how and why is the sub-conscious mind always right? Where does it get its information from? Not only that, but why do I have two minds anyway, why do I not just have one with all the information I need? 

And now, when I put that all together, I can only conclude that maybe, just maybe, (and I am only saying maybe because I don’t know either) the sub-conscious mind is God’s, or whoever, or whatever’s way of communicating with us. 

That out there in the universe and maybe it is the actual universe, or some other force that exists beyond us, that it can only communicate with us, through our sub-conscious mind because it’s complete and true reality would be...TOO AWESOME....TOO OVERWHELMING...TOO MIND BLOWINGLY SPECTACULAR to encounter in it’s fullness and would completely destroy us, mentally and physically. 

Think about it. And now that I do think about it, I probably shouldn't even mention he/she/or its name.  So read this very quietly, please, just in case.