The Divine Pool

I am ready to swim in the divine pool. We are made in the image of our Creator, and that image is a bountiful lake of love.

Sometimes we stand on the earth too long looking at the waves as detterents to our destiny. The sand warms our feet to watch to swim!

Cultures place rules upon our lakes: no fishing. Or, the oil companies and other corporations poison our rivers and oceans and once clear springs. Our vision is murky, and we no longer stare at the lake's endless beauty. Nor can we feel the intensity of light and rain above us expressing themselves as rainbows across the polluted horizon.

But, a rainbow will spread on a clear-coming day!

"Come," they say, "the water is fine!"

Upon death, I will swim like a fish. Become the diving dolphin. Shift into the golden eagle and fly beyond earth's hemisphere. There, I will surpass the rain and lightning to cross over a waterfall of the sky's boundless falling away.

There, I meet my image--the Creator and the water--and God, with no figure, urges me to join his rainbow trout without scuba gear. I, then, am breathing the water's oxygen through the gill's of my formless energy.

I am swimming in God's pool of divine love. Naked and unafraid!

--Jinglett

She is the Dao

A true Daoist does not know she is a Daoist! For, how could she?

A Daoist lives in the moment, and as soon as the moment is clarified, she is no longer living in the moment!

She is limitless like the wind sometimes calm and other times exciting like the beginning of a tornado!

She reaches her hands to us all and touches us with grace, even though she knows nothing about her gift only we breathe on our own accord.

She cannot be exhausted, though she is exhausted without knowing why.

She looks at work as a mysterious gloom, for work is hierarchy and division and superiority--all things that Dao is not!

Wisdom rests in her without distinction, without division, without hierarchy. She is the Dao of the Dao!

She owns her inner power like a dancing machine resolving inaction with action and twirling circles around the room to good music or the thoughts in her head.

She is like a feather falling from the sky as the wind moves it in every direction. And, though her brain cannot tap into the twists and turns, she allows the focus to focus itself, for controlling it too much only causes the feather to fly away!

She judges not, nor enters the realm of disagreement or delusional thinking, for in the world of worlds, there is anger, frustration, and conflict all hurdling itself at pain instead of divine wisdom of joy within herself!

She has a name and no name, too, for she is the indefinable no-name we long to hear! She walks the circle of life looking and touching the flowers and not calling them daisy, peonie, or lily. For, naming the nameless resolves the beauty of touching it completely!

She is vital energy, the life force and matter within herself, driving in a direction with pure energy from the heart and soul. She lifts up others to our vital energy, and we fly along like birds with her divinity!

She is the divine feminine--the yin within ourselves humbling coming to the surface to celebrate our dreams as the moon fills up and empties from cycle to cycle or from one lunar year to the next without counting time once.

She is perfect harmony like an algebraic equation or some Einsteinian vision of light and optics we dare not understand, though we all know the formula.

She demands no riches and lives simply in her boundlessness without rules and with the reciprocity of love binding us all to her gravity springs!

She is the dao and does not know it!

--JINGLETT

Lightning

Lightning Flashes
God taking pictures
Of us!

--Jinglett

Peace in Middle East

Interesting Solution. No, I have never heard this one before.

Peace in the Middle East needs to come from the MIDDLE EAST.

Not Obama.
Not the Pope.
Not the Europeans.

Yes, I seem naive. Wouldn't that wipe out Israel? Uh, no!

There are intelligent people in the Middle East.
There are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Bahai's, Zoroastrianisms, etc.
There are scientists, historians, artists, filmmakers, politicians, and smart people.

Yeah, I know you are surprised by that!

Many have an ethnocentric bias.

Remember the Muslims saved Greek philosophy and science and invented Algebra!

Peace in the Middle East needs to come from the Middle East.

Did I just repeat myself?

So this is Cannabis...

So...this is Cannabis. Well, recently Mr. Universe, Arnold, has stated that California should debate the use of marijuana. And, according to the Zogby Poll, about 52% of U.S. citizens support the legalization of marijuana.

I have a very different opinion of this situation.

Here is my rant.

Let's not jump too fast into legalizing marijuana when there are better positions to take by legalizing the production of hemp.

My wife and I pay too much money to purchase hempseeds as a Canadian import. What is hempseed? It is perhaps the elixir of all nuts! Great for you! Tasty in salads. High in omega-3 and -6 fatty acids. Yet, it is expensive to buy because we Americans must import it from Europe and Canada.

So, let's not get too excited about marijuana, see it be legalized, see some nasty repercussion, and then return to making it illegal again. Let's be practical and begin legislation to produce and regulate HEMP!

That is step one!

Hemp rope!
Hemp seeds!
Hemp shoes!
Hemp clothes!
Hemp canvasses!

You name it! Then, once we see the hemp industry take off in this country, then maybe we can speak about a real debate on marijuana and THC.

But, why get high on marijuana when there is a REAL product involved in the Hemp industry!

Just think of this. If cotton was found to contain substances like THC, then we would no longer be using cotton in our clothing. And, if the lobbyists in Congress working to keep cotton, polyester, and other types of fabric on top of the game, then listen up, people. Let the cotton industry start its own side company so they will NOT be losing money on such a good product.

Enough said!

So, this is my rant, though not much of a spiritual one tonight, unless you are high on marijuana! :-)

--JINGLETT

Why the Palestinian-Israel Problem is Complex

Hezbollah Smuggles Weapons

This article shows the difficulty of the two-state solution. President Obama could be ready for talks to create a two-state solution, yet this article shows how many people in different countries are involved in the protection/defense of Palestine or the attack on Israel. (Interpret defense/offense however you wish.)

Hezbollah was operating its forces in Egypt, according to the source. Luckily, Egypt was smart enough to stop the situation because though Hezbollah claims its aim was protection of Palestine, Egypt does not know if there is some kind of threat against Egypt itself, especially when Obama plans to speak in Egypt soon.

Next, the weapons for Hezbollah were possibly shipped through Lebanon, our ally.

Now my rant.

Two allies--Egypt and Lebanon--contain people in that land that demonstrate a threat to Israel. If Barack Obama plans to ask governments to promote a two-state solution, do these countries, such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, have the operatives and technologies to stop any kind of political threats against Palestine and Israel?

If countries cannot control terrorist networks, which, I believe, will enhance as a two-state solution continues to be discussed, how will Palestine and Israel ever reach such a practical agreement.

My simple point: Countries must be willing to arrest any kind of terrorist networks in their area and still allow individual citizen freedoms to thrive. Will this happen?

I am skeptical.

However, I wish all Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Sikhs, and other religions PEACE in the MIDDLE EAST!

Yet, my experiences tell me that when Jimmy Carter helped create allies between Israel and Egypt, people died, including the Egyptian President! Jimmy Carter thankfully lived, but we are so far away from the blood and gore yet must realize responsibility also belongs on us!

--JINGLETT

Only empty churches bring me peace.

You start placing human beings in there, and I want to leave.

--Jinglett

Butterfly Prayer

Thank you, Butterfly...

For your butterfly wings sustained near the river,
For the drifting wind looming a song in your heart.
For the rhythm of wings pumping life to my veins,
For the veins of a goddess self-contained and explosive.

Thank You, Butterfly...

For your explosive dreams I embrace each morning,
The evenings of pain before your nectar enfolds me,
And the pain you have caught and shaped into joy
Through the bridges and highways of Oklahoma County,
Through my veiled smiles for this American Beauty,
Through fossilized flowers that blend with your dresses,
Through a memento of hope that dies with silence.

Thank You, Butterfly...

For the chocolate antennas that glisten in sunshine,
Your floating curves that ascend above water
For my watching gaze at the bottom of the river.
To the river's caves that I leave for the surface,
The surface dreams of butterfly dances,
The dancing waves of your distant caresses.

Thank You, Butterfly...

For the sun again, the earth, and the grasslands,
For your straining wings that drift to the desert,
As my binocular eyes follow your journey.
To the voices and rhythms of absolute loneliness,
That drive your mosaics closer to freedom
That keep my spirit yearning for safety,

For the stillness of water I refuse to envelop,
For sunlight hoisting my soul above water,
To the Eagle Vishnu hovering above us,
As your butterfly wings hide from the eagle,
As my awakened body escapes to the flowers,
As the eagle descending attempts to claw me.

To the panting of living as I fall into daisies,
The flowers and weeds that hide me from dying,
To dying words I refuse to embrace,
To the embrace of your flapping, your lasting grace.

--Jinglett

What is Free Choice?

I hear this term tossed around too much these days as evidence of human suffering.

"God gave us free will or free choice in our actions. That's why suffering exists?"

Or, "We are 'wretches,' as the song, 'Amazing Grace,' says we are, and only through Christ's redeeming blood can we be saved."

I just don't buy these ideas anymore.

I have a willingness and sometimes a stubborness to have a viewpoint, but I don't always have free choice.

1. I didn't choose my parents, although I love them dearly.
2. I didn't choose to be raised in a Church of Christ, although my parent's chose that.
3. My choices are based on my parent's choices; therefore, I am somewhat limited in my free will as a child when my behavior, to some degree, was predetermined for me.

What might I be if I were raised as a Buddhist or Hindu? How would my so-called free actions be determined by my culture then?

I don't believe that I am a total social construct to this culture; I have choices to learn other cultures and rebel against my own, including the Christian faith.

But, free choice is limited more than we realize, even though we view the United States as some kind of safe haven for libertarian and free-flowing ideas.

Here are a few examples of limitations of free choice.

1. Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi, and the gospel of Matthew clearly states that he has come to this earth not to destroy the Jewish law. Jesus could not move beyond Judaism; only something like the Roman Empire could take the Christian movement to a different level altogether different from the Jesus movement of the first century, and still the Roman empire used its cultural, pagan roots as a method to adopt itself easily to Christianity.

2. Harold Bloom might say that we can never truly free ourselves from our parental heritage, although we try to improve upon it in our own egocentric pathway, yet we are still bound by that past. This is obviously Freudian, too. The scientific revolution breeds Romanticism, a kind of anti-enlightenment period or at least a conversation with the past. Luther and Calvin certainly promulgated the Protestant Reformation, but they created hierarchical churches not that different from Catholicism. And, they rejected the real revolutionaries of the period: the Anabaptists (the modern Brethren, Mennonites, and Amish who were viewed as pacifists yet blasphemy to the church hierarchies).

3. Muhammad needed Christianity and Judaism. Nanak needed Hinduism and Islam before Sikhism to be established, yet what if Nanak lived in an area where only Hinduism and Christianity prevailed. Would the religion have a foundation in Christianity and Hinduism rather than Islam/Hindu systems? Of course it would! We are bound by our cultural heritage.

So, is having limited free choice and a cultural influence of identity a terrible idea?

That's a question we must answer for ourselves personally, if it can be answered.

Nevertheless, I plan to be a realist here.

I am not a wretch as the song "Amazing Grace" implies.
I do not need a God-Son to arrive on this earth to save me from my wretched state.
If I did, then why did God create suffering in the first place? Surely, it wasn't to loathe ourselves so much that we need to turn to some higher source for comfort! If anything, we need to turn to other human beings because that is what people do in church, to some degree.

Well, that's my message today. If you reject it, is it because of logic, or is it because you were raised to reject these kind of ideas?

--Jinglett

Israel and Palestine: What would Solomon Do?

I never approach such large issues as the Palestinian-Israeli condition of land and settlement because I see no viable solution or compromise to appease or satisfy all sides. And, I honestly hold no strong credibility. So, go along and read somebody else's blog. :-)

Nevertheless, I wish to approach some of the complexity.

From a Jewish perspective, God promised this land to the Hebrews. However, what if there was an earlier vision from the Philistines or the Canaanites stating, “God promised this land to us.” Therein lies the difficult problem of “promise.”

When we speak of deity, how does that relate specifically to land ownership in modern society? Did God promise the shiny “city upon a hill” to the early pilgrims of America, as Indians ultimately were wiped out, sent westward, or integrated into this new American society?

Now Americans sing, “This land is your land / This land is my land / from California to the New York Islands.” I wonder what the Cherokee and other Indians think about that concept when their ancestors walked tirelessly to their land, Indian Territory, which ultimately became another person's land, a place I live now: Oklahoma? (We remove the guilt by calling it Native Oklahoma. After all, we all have a little bit of Indian in our lineage.)

My point above is not to disrespect Judaism or its heritage. (I don't even want to be angry at the United States or Andrew Jackson.) Jews have been through more suffering than any culture I have known with approximately six million dying during the Jewish holocaust planned by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. As Bart D Ehrman writes, there were “the cries of children, screaming from the midst of the blazing ovens.” So, if a “chosen-land” argument does not operate in modern society, then does returning Jews to their “homeland” after World War II serve as a viable solution to the problem of ethnic security? Not quite.

The aftermath of World War II is problematic for many reasons, but I want to only focus on this concept of Western colonialism that pervades the Eastern viewpoint. Then, unless this idea of colonization can be tamed and reconciled by both Western and Eastern expansionist philosophies, then the Israel-Palestinian issue will never arrive at resolution.

But, let's first discuss a bit of history before we reach this answer.

First, according to the Torah, Abraham existed in Ur, a land controlled by the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. In some respect, the Jews, if they are original descendants of Abraham did not have an exact geographical region. Over a period of time, after Abraham and Moses, Joshua—the great Hebrew military leader—conquered the land of Canaan. So, does Israel belong originally to the Canaanites? Or, let's move even further back into history. Does Israel belong to perhaps the Egyptians or the Amorites? How about the Moabites, Hittites, Jebusites, Philistines, Hivites, Perizzites, Edomites, or the Gergesenes? These cultures may still exist through some twisted DNA analysis, or they may be blended cultures that still represent what we always consider a purified version of Jewish heritage.

The problem is not simple. Can we truly trace ethnic history to its original source as a method of establishing who owns land or whose kingdom should remain? If so, then the Persians should be rebelling against Iranian authority, re-establishing their region without the colonization of the Muslim empires, and then returning to its original Zoroastrian principles. Of course, nobody is arguing for a Persian stronghold on Iran when Iran is, for the most part, now Muslim.

So, let's assume that since Iran remains its own culture today and predominantly Muslim, we cannot return it to its original owners just as we cannot return Native Americans to their original geographical locations. Then do Jews have any right over their rich heritage after they “colonized” the land during the Davidic Kingdom and established long-lasting roots in the region?

This answer is a complicated one, but we are speaking about 3000 years ago when the Twelve Tribes of Israel formulated a rich heritage based on Solomon's Temple—the first Jewish Temple in the region. Yet, the realistic answer sometimes is the harmful one. Our society during this period (and still now) divides and conquers, including the Eastern Empires—the Assyrians who in around 721 BCE conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Babylonians who in around 587 BCE conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and, finally, the Persians who between 587-444 BCE conquered the Babylonians. My historical point (if there is one) is that Eastern colonialism existed long before this “promised land” was attacked also by the Western Empires, such as the Greeks and the Romans. And, we are not arguing for the Persians as the rightful owners of modern-day Israel and Palestine.

Of course not! The Persians could not control the empire, and as I have stated, other empires continued to dominate not only Israel/Palestine but other geographical locations, too. Do we return every ethnic region back to its rightful owner? If so, then how do we remove European Americans from the United States and replace them rightfully with the Native Americans, whose languages continually die out and who probably speak English, for the most part, thanks to reservation colonization, too!

We cannot return to the past, yet somehow during World War II and before, Jews fled to their “homeland” as a kind of diaspora against the holocaust or as a safe haven to protect themselves for self-destruction as an identity. And, since the British before 1948 had conquered this land, they with the United Nation's backing had some rights to state how the land is divided, even though I am adamantly against this kind of colonization! Yet, we have to follow the lines of history and recognize the historical impact of geography as one method of establishing ownership, even though the conquered deserve their rights in court! However, whose court? In that case, does the United States, who boldly claims themselves as the Americans, return Texas and other areas to Mexico? Once a land is conquered, (dare I say it) it belongs to the conquerer. Or, does it?

Am I being naïve? Do we follow the chronological patterns of history as they are laid out before us and say that the last owner is the rightful owner? What happens if somebody holds a gun to my family and forces me out of my house? What if they take my house and force me to move ten miles down the road? Do I still deserve my day in court? Does the conquered deserve recompense?

Therein lies the difficult question. Here is why. Because the Jews have been conquered. The British have been conquered. The aboriginal Australians have been conquered. Conquering continues repeatedly. And, in 1948, Palestine was conquered by the United Nations' decision to make an Israeli state. I haven't researched the difficult questions to why the United Nations made this decision, and I have heard that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was somewhat skeptical about this idea, even though after his death, Truman was not. The Russians, too, were skeptical of this idea, but for some reason beyond my understanding they voted for a State of Israel perhaps thinking the Russian Jews might create a communist nation in the region. Who knows?

So, here we are. 1948. World War II aftermath. U.S. Army bases in Germany and Japan. The State of Israel fighting for its Jewish existence. The Middle Eastern countries completely confused by this decision and rightfully so! And, why would the United Nations establish a state in the middle of Palestinian culture when the aftermath could be a possible extinction of the Jewish race in the region due to this altering of boundaries that the British also created in places like India, which still struggles when land was divided among ethnic and religious boundaries: between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. What were the British thinking then? What were the United Nations thinking now? Isn't this kind of imperial, Western domination dangerous, and were various countries, including the United States, using the Jewish condition as pawns in a dangerous game of RISK or MONOPOLY?

If I were in the room discussing this area, no matter what any Jew or Arab might think, I might say, “Listen, Jews, if you take this land, do you realize that you will be surrounded by a group of people who have not really hated you that much before but may hate you now? Remember the kindness of the Islamic empires that allowed you to practice your religion peacefully? And, remember the hatred of the Christians who killed you in Spain if you did not convert to Christianity. Remember also the Crusades as you were slaughtered by the Europeans as they progressed toward the Muslim empire. Please, do you really want to be a pawn that is destroyed in order for some other King or Queen to abuse you in all directions?”

I wasn't born then. I don't understand the entire issue. However, I do understand a bit of the Middle Eastern condition. Let's talk about it.

The Europeans occupied Middle Eastern Cultures. The British and Russians colonized the Bengals and turned this culture into a production source for these two empires. (That's what empires do. They conquer and enslave the people, even though it is not viewed as forced slavery.) France colonized Algiers. Other occupied “Islamic” countries include: Tunisia (1881), Egypt (1882), Sudan (1889), Libya (1912), Morocco (1912). By 1915, the Ottoman Empire is divided between France and England. Let's add to the list: Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan.

Treaties continued throughout the twentieth century, but Western Imperialism expanded and controlled lands far beyond their regions. As background reading, simply read the African colonialism in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness or watch the film Ghandi or Lawrence of Arabia. These three sources are only the tip of the iceberg.

So, Israel arrives in an arbitrary fashion as not only a “safehaven” for the Jews, but from an Eastern perspective, a place for Western expansion to continue. The term Jew is a social construct for Western colonialism, and when the Iranian President speaks negatively about the holocaust, he is really speaking about how Europe and, yes, the United States have conquered the identity and wealth of the region. (I want to make it very clear here that I am not a fan of Ahmadinejad!)

The West (and I will refer to “We” now) are in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Dubai, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, etc. etc. And, while Palestine and Israel may or may not want a two-state solution, we are still riding our tanks into the geographical locations of the richest oil preserves in the world. Even the Russians held major oil contracts with Saddam Hussein before we became the occupiers of their territories.

Therefore, though we have not “conquered” the Middle East, we are there as part of this Western Expansion still happening and completely hindering the Eastern expansions of the older empires: the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians.

So, what do we do with Israel? We create a two-state solution. Beyond that, the underlying problem is not resolved: the belief of Western domination of the Middle East. How do we get past that problem? Not so simple!

We find other sources of energy beyond oil. We suffer through such a devastating economic crisis that we must learn how to be a Jeffersonian democracy again. We take care of our own United States yet also maintain free trade instead of American-centric and Euro-centric capitalism. We allow the countries in the Middle East to maintain their voices without our warrior mentality. We take on a loving Confucian model without the patriarchy and show that world “the city upon a hill” again.

But, we still will have to protect Israel for the rest of history, because that land belongs historically to too many cultures! Some might argue to every culture!

There is no utopia here on this planet. We are warriors after capitalistic expansion, and he with the most toys and tanks still seem to win nothing but confusion and future disaster.

That's my conclusion for now. Otherwise, I am willing to concede no solution except for the Dalai Lama to intervene. Perhaps the Tibetans have answers that we Westerners will never solve.

--Jinglett