Blog Archives

Feeling Cooped Up? Renovate a Chicken Coop!

4/29/2020

I am not in the mood to write about the Coup today; nor do I feel inspired to rail on about the lockdown and its negative effects on humanity. I mean, it's good to do those things, but I don't want to talk about the Coup today; today I'd rather talk about my coop.

Before I get to that, just let me say that I now spurn anyone who even dares to explain the necessity of the lockdown, or attempts to outline various justifications for the lockdown, or insists on arguing against anyone who questions the lockdown. Most of these lockdown apologists obsess over health and safety and security and speak of models and predictions and vaccines. Well, they can keep their lockdown, their models, their predictions, and their vaccines. None of it will do them any good in the end. Just wait and see.

I'm not too bright, but I know enough to recognize that the lockdown and everything related to the birdemic is fundamentally spiritual warfare. A great many don't see this. They only see material events in a purely material world and quickly adhere to some material explanation or other. And that's how you get events like the birdemic. When you believe in nothing but the material, you put your faith in science, politics, and economics until you get to the point where you actually believe there is nothing essentially wrong with a lockdown. And you believe this wholeheartedly - even when said lockdown refuses to make sense at the most basic scientific, political, or economic level.

Anyway, since this is spiritual warfare, I have spent the bulk of my free time focusing on spiritual matters. I can't focus on spiritual matters much when I'm teaching online, but I also struggle to get in the right frame of mind during my free time. I have never been and will likely never be one for quiet meditation. Sitting in a room and concentrating on the deeper aspects of life has never been my forté. On the contrary, I tend to have the deepest thoughts when I'm out walking or fixing up the house. This means I have spent much of my free time during the lockdown staying active

Fortunately, staying active is not difficult for me. I live in the countryside, which means I can walk for hours if I so choose. Thankfully, people don't call the cops on each other out here. I also have a fairly big backyard with a garden, and these ensure there is always something needing to get done. The more the needing-to-get-dones, the more I can contemplate matters of spiritual importance, which is why I recently launched into a little renovation work called Project Renovate Chicken Coop (see photo above).

As you can see, my yard contains a brick chicken coop - one that is a little, well, dilapidated. It was in poor condition when I bought my house four years ago and has deteriorated quite markedly since then. Though I knew I would eventually get to fixing it up one day, I usually tended to find more pressing matters requiring my attention. Well, those pressing matters have evaporated; thus, my sights are locked on the coop. My intention is to make it look somewhat new again without spending a great deal of money to do so. I plan to replaster the walls, replace the door and windows, and fix the leaks in the roof. No big deal.

But it will relieve the mild cooped-up feeling I have sensed lately and provide the sort of physical activity that helps me think about spiritual matters.

And that is a big deal.

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Getting More Obvious

4/29/2020

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I rarely post memes, but this one jumped out at me the other day. Seems to sum up the here and now fairly well. Of course, the obvious has become oddly relative these days; so this meme faces certain limitations.

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While My Baroque Lute Gently Weeps?

4/28/2020

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A George Harrison song on the baroque lute? Hey, why not?

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The Greatest Totalitarian Coups Are The Ones That Don't Exist

4/27/2020

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The EU recently announced it would need around one trillion (twelve zeros) euros to pay for the economic fallout the birdemic crisis has caused. Well, I guess there's a price to be paid for locking the majority of the world population down for nearly two months. So, how will this price be paid?

Why through debt, of course! No big surprise there. But the debt being suggested now is not your average run-of-the-mill debt. No, this new-and-improved debt, and it is being explicitly marketed as 'perpetual' - and yes, that's a good thing. Just ask this Establishment frontman (warning: news-related link) extraordinaire; he'll be more than happy to provide details about the wonderful world of perpetual debt.

Most people believe they would recognize a totalitarian coup if it happened to them. I imagine they would regard soldiers marching through the streets endlessly stomping on people's faces as a sure sign of a hostile, authoritarian takeover. Some Stalinesque-looking, mustachioed strong man with countless military honors pinned on his chest demanding he be deified as an undisputed god-leader would probably also be a clear tip-off for most modern people as well.

Yes, these types of totalitarian coups have occurred in the past, but what we are witnessing now is a coup of a much subtler and far more sinister variety. Hate the mustached man all you want, but people tended to understand his in-your-face approach. Past dictators liked simplicity. Flagrancy marked everything they did. The tyranny they spawned was lucid and comprehensible. People generally knew what was going on - and they also knew where they stood.

The Establishment, our modern totalitarians and the governments they control, are also rather brazen, both in actions and in words, but unlike strongmen of the past, barely anyone seems cognizant of the ever-constricting tyranny the Establishment has implemented and is implementing around the world. This is rather curious, to say the least.

Healthy people are locked up within their homes for two months for public health reasons (figure that one out); barely anyone complains. Small businesses, family enterprises, entire industries are obliterated; barely anyone considers the obvious ramifications. The need for increased micro-surveillance and state intrusion into private lives is demanded; barely anyone resists. Churches in the West are shuttered; barely anyone - including most of the clery themselves - raises spiritual concerns. The entire planet is being primed and re-tooled for perpetual, enforced debt slavery; barely anyone raises an eyebrow, let alone anything else.

I guess most people won't notice anything until the soldiers and Big Brother show up. Without soldiers and Big Brother around, there's really nothing to worry about, is there? Thank goodness for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

You could argue that our contemporary totalitarians have learned a great deal from their predecessors; that they have mastered the art of the totalitarian coup to such an extent that barely anyone even noticed it when it occurred. Nevertheless, this unseen coup has much more to do with the general public's dullness than it does with the Establishment's ingenuity.

To me, it seems that modern people have become increasingly incapable of perceiving evil, even when it is staring them in the face.

In light of this, I suspect the Establishment must have binge-watched The Usual Suspects for years before they attempted this current coup. They must have. I mean they essentially made a mission statement of the film's most memorable line - "the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

Well, mission accomplished. On all counts.

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Saying Goodbye To Pleasure Island

4/26/2020

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Two months ago, the world was a veritable Pleasure Island - a whirling, kaleidoscopic wonderland of potential thrills, amusements, comforts, and gratifications. The Establishment actively encouraged and endorsed enjoyment as the ultimate source of purpose and meaning of life. Subsequently, nearly all modern people adopted this ultimate purpose as the central moral imperative in their own individual lives. Mortal life adhered to the materialist mantra of "here for a good time, not a long time" - the pursuit of short-term gratifications trumped everything, especially long-term considerations. In many ways, our modern world mirrored the "Terra Magica" in Pinocchio; it had become a wonderland of endless indulgences freed from the constraints of all responsibility, moral or otherwise.

In the Pleasure Island chapter of the Pinocchio story, a sinister figure known as the Coachman tempts wayward children (in some version only boys) into abandoning their families and responsibilities for the promise of a life of perpetual fun and bliss. The Coachman takes the children to a vast paradisiacal amusement park and encourages them to totally abandon themselves to all the pleasures the glittering utopia offers. The children happily dive head first into the seemingly endless ocean of unrestrained gratification. Life becomes an endless stream of fun, fun, fun without any threat of anyone taking the T-Bird away. Nevertheless, this world of bliss turns out to be a cleverly laid trap. Before long, the children mysteriously transform into donkeys. The Coachman rounds up, imprisons, and sells the child-donkeys into lives of enslavement and hard labor in salt mines, farms, and circuses.

Like the Coachman in Pinocchio, the Establishment and their demonic controllers understand the power of pleasure, and have used this power to tempt, misguide, and ensnare modern people in much the same fashion the Coachman used Pleasure Island to lure children into lives of slavery. The Coachman's prime objectives behind Pleasure Island were material in nature - he gained power over the child-donkeys and through this power was able to sell them into slavery for a profit. Though profit and power incentives are certainly inherent in the Establishment's own Pleasure Island aims, the prime objectives of officially sanctioned hedonism are spiritual - more specifically, soul damnation.

Pleasure has always been problematic for Christians. Some regard it as an inevitable necessity; others as a grave temptation to sin that must be shunned at every opportunity. In my mind, pleasure can be divided into two simple and distinct categories: pleasure that aligns with God's Divine Plan and Creation, and pleasure that opposes God's Divine Plan and Creation. The former is good because it adds fullness and richness to Creation, while the latter is evil for the simple reason that it cheapens and denigrates Creation. Good pleasure appeals to our higher senses while evil pleasure tempts us to surrender to our lower impulses. Put another way, Good pleasure is creative, purposeful, and meaningful; evil pleasure is destructive, pointless, and meaningless. Good pleasure aligns with Truth, Beauty, and Virtue. Evil pleasure aligns with Falsehood, Ugliness, and Vice. Good pleasure should be nurtured; Evil pleasure, avoided. If not avoided, it should be repented.

It goes without saying that the Establishment has utilized pleasure primarily for destructive purposes, which can be evidenced by its perpetual inversions of Good forms of pleasure, particularly in matters of sex. Religion is the strongest motivator in humans, but sex runs a close second. If religion is abandoned, sex becomes the prime motivator. The Establishment knows this and has made sex the foundation of its own "Terra Magica" since at least the dawn of the sexual revolution.

The consequences of the demonic agenda's success at inverting the pleasures associated with sex pretty much speaks for itself, so I won't bother wading into any detail about that here. Sex is a primary weapon of Evil pleasure - but the Establishment's incitement of destructive gratification extends beyond sex to all areas in which the potential for Good creative human joy exists - the arts, literature, sports, family, friendships, money, comfort, food, and so forth. The endorsement and encouragement of Evil pleasure has been one of the demonic agenda's most successful weapons, all but guaranteeing the self-chosen damnation of countless souls. Like the Coachman in Pinocchio, the Establishment has successfully used pleasure to effectively sew people into their own skins.

Evil pleasure has been an incredibly successful tactic in the demonic agenda's spiritual strategy of soul damnation. The malevolent formula has been so efficient that it's perpetual fortification and continuance seemed pretty much guaranteed. As far as soul damnation was concerned, nothing else appeared to be required. Like the wayward children in Pinocchio, all the Establishment had to do was introduce modern people to Pleasure Island. Once there, people would do most of the heavy lifting associated with soul damnation themselves. True, the scheme was not flawless. Some people managed to resist the temptations of Forever Fun Park, but for the masses, Evil pleasure was became devastatingly difficult to resist.

Yet, for all intents and purposes, Pleasure Island has been closed. For whatever reason, the Establishment and its demonic controllers have suspended the Pleasure Island strategy for the bulk of humanity. The potential thrills, amusements, comforts, and gratifications that provided modern people purpose and meaning in life have essentially evaporated. Yes, some minor destructive pleasures and distractions such as online pornography, media, television series, on-demand movies and so forth are still accessible, but the lights of the vast funpark of Evil pleasure have been shut down. When and how the suspension might be lifted remains to be seen, but it isn't too difficult to imagine that many former gratifications may never recover or will be but shadows of themselves if and when they do.

I am not sure what the motivation behind the abandonment of the Evil pleasure strategy might be. Perhaps the demonic powers are shifting from damnation based on sins of greed and lust to an even sweeter damnation based on fear and despair. Then again, Divine Intervention may have played a role in the sudden and seemingly unimaginable termination of Pleasure Island. Perhaps the Divine has offered modern people one last chance to become aware of their sins and repent them. At this point, it's difficult to tell. It's worth noting that the closure of "Terra Magica" has had an adverse effect on Good pleasure as well. Though Good pleasures - the Scriptures, good books, good films, the enjoyment of nature (however curtailed), music, and so forth - are still accessible, a great deal of what qualifies as Good pleasure has also disappeared (the closure of concert halls, libraries, museums, parks, book stores, etc.)

When all is said and done, our current situation has limited access to all pleasures - that is, it affects all people, not only those enamored by Falsehood, Ugliness, and Vice. This is where awareness of the potential shift in the demonic agenda's strategy becomes vitally important. Modern people who allowed themselves to be hypnotized by Pleasure Island's flashing lights have become braying donkeys in the darkness. The continued denial of inverted pleasure can lead to three possible outcomes: awareness and repentance (possible but not likely); anger and impatience (the demand the vulgar pleasures be returned as soon as possible in the name of liberty, etc. - quite possible and likely); despondence and despair (a feeling that life has become meaningless and pointless - once again, quite possible and likely). Nevertheless, modern people who did not fall under the spell of Pleasure Island could still face the same risks their donkey brethren face. Put another way, prolonged deprivation of some higher forms of pleasure could adversely affect serious Christians as well.

And I believe this is where faith, hope, and love once again come into the equation. Modern people who harbor materialist mindsets could have an exceedingly difficult time navigating the post-Pleasure Island world. Almost everything into which they had misguidedly invested their faith, hope, and love has been taken from them. Serious Christians, on the other hand, did not invest any faith, hope, or love into these evil pleasures and may already be immune to the curtailment of these pleasures. Nevertheless, the closure of Pleasure Island has also curtailed the enjoyment of many Good pleasures as well. Serious Christians must not allow this curtailment to lead them into negative territory.

In the end, it all comes down to the fundamental definition of pleasure and its role in human life. For most modern people, pleasure - in the form of material hedonism - is a moral imperative. It is difficult to predict how the currently diminished opportunities to live out this moral imperative in the world will play out.

On the other hand, I imagine most serious Christians already know pleasure, even of the Good variety, cannot serve as the fundamental moral imperative life. This does not mean serious Christians should eschew Good pleasures. Nor should they passively embrace the forced reduction of Good pleasure in the world. Nevertheless, serious Christians should be able to find purpose and meaning even in the absence of most Good pleasures, and they can find this purpose and meaning primarily through faith, hope, and love.

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Chancellor - Gord Downie

4/25/2020

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My favorite song from Gord Downie's first solo album, Coke Machine Glow. Gord was one of those singers who really couldn't sing, but somehow made it work all the same. The low-key video was shot on Toronto's Centre Island.

Like most Gord Downie songs, the true magic happens in the lyrics. One excerpt I particularly like (especially the last line) comes from the beginning of the tune:

Seconds from pajamas I must
First open all the doors and the windows
And invite the vampire in to be one of us.

Then, in the guise of cool air,
In the softer hours, he's there,
Sitting, talking, in the voice of your mother
About leaving one good party for another,
And the night of a thousand missteps
And the loss that made him dogged
Or it could have been the doggedness that caused the loss in the first place, I guess.

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An Idea Concerning God's Unresponsiveness

4/24/2020

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Over the past month or so I have encountered many comments on various blogs in which the commenters explicitly cited God's apparent unresponsiveness in light of everything that has occurred in connection with the birdemic. Some commenters lamented feeling abandoned by God; others expressed disappointment at the perceived and seemingly conspicuous lack of signs or communication from God. For many, the church closures did little more than rub salt into these despondent wounds.

Though I don't agree with these perspectives at all, I can understand where many of these commenters are coming from. I suspect most of these commenters are good, solid Christians who pray daily, read the Gospels regularly, and had attended churches before they closed. In other words, they were probably doing everything good, solid Christians are supposed to do. In light of this, I can certainly understand their frustration and discontent. After all, the evil in the world has magnified immensely in the past five or six weeks. Seen from the fixed perspective of most good, solid Christians, God does appear to have been rather unresponsive thus far.

Yet, perhaps there is a reason for God's seeming unresponsiveness - a reason that has everything to do with co-respondence. By co-respondence, I am not referring to an exchange of letters, but rather to the notion that perhaps God's seeming unresponsiveness to us has a great deal to do with our unresponsiveness to Him.

I cannot believe God has ceased communicating with us. What I can believe is the notion that perhaps our communications with God - those tried and true, good, solid Christian methods of communication that served so well in earlier times - have become inadequate and insufficient in the here and now. By the same token, our adherence to these tried and true methods of communication might very well be making us deaf and blind to God's communication. Simply put, perhaps God does not appear to be responding to us because we are not properly responding to Him.

I believe God is our loving father, and that he desires what is best for his children. Like all loving fathers, God wants his children to grow up and mature. This entails different approaches to and different levels of communication. God has taken this step forward; we in turn, have not. Put another way, God is trying to talk to us like adults, but we continue to talk and listen to him like adolescents (and fairly apathetic adolescents at that).

God will respond to us once we understand how we should begin responding to him. Part of responding to him as adults must contain an element of understanding our role as Co-Creators. According to Berdyaev, the next step in Christianity involves not only Man discovering himself in God, but also God discovering Himself in Man. This type of discovery necessitates a new, unprecedented form of co-respondence. It includes viewing God from an entirely new perspective - not as some distant, autocratic ruler one must obsequiously and blindly tremble before and obey, but a relatable friend and partner one can love and work cooperatively with, in the same manner an adult son or daughter can love and work cooperatively with a loving parent.

The co-creation Berdyaev speaks of involves a recognition of our latent spiritual creativity. This creativity is not the same as or equal to God's, but serves to complement it. By the same token, God's creativity is not the same as Man's, but God's creativity alone no longer appears sufficient. God is not responding to us because our communications with him are not creative. God will respond to us fully the moment we begin creatively communicating with Him. Once we learn to do that, we become Co-Creators. Our creative spirituality will become enhanced through God, and God's creative spirituality will become enhanced through us. The new co-respondence involves a fortifying and enhancement of both God and Man, a fortification and enhancement that can occur only when we understand our creative role.

Spiritual creativity requires initiative from us. This initiative must derive from freedom. According to William Arkle, once Man shows this initiative, he escapes all determinism and becomes actively creative - to the point that God can no longer accurately predict what Man will do. This is the essence of Co-Creation. This is the essence of the latent spiritual power within us - a latent spiritual power demonstrated fully by Christ.

To sum up, God may appear unresponsive to us because we are essentially unresponsive to Him. The good, solid, traditional methods of communication are no longer sufficient or adequate. The way forward requires spiritual growing-up by embracing freedom and becoming Co-Creators, and it will likely involve a process akin to Romantic Christianity and Berdyaev's third epoch of Christianity.

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The Immolation of False Selves in the Birdemic-Pandemic

4/24/2020

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One of the most helpful insights I have gained from reading A Geography of Consciousness is William Arkle's revelation of the True Self and the role false selves play in obscuring and obstructing this True Self. According to Arkle, the True Self is of divine origin, and it houses our own potential to be become or, at the very least, to move closer to the divine.

A good way to conceptualize the True Self (at least for me) is to think about it as a latent seed buried deep within our being. Provided the proper conditions and nutrients, the latent spiritual seed grows and develops. Denied the proper conditions and nutrients, the latent seed remains muted and hindered. I use the word latent to describe the True Self here, but if my understanding is correct, latent does not imply the True Self is completely dormant or passive. On the contrary, the True Self is always active to some degree, but it is the degree of this activity and, more importantly, the degree of our own perception and understanding of this activity that determines the effectiveness of the True Self's activity.

Consciousness is the medium through which the True Self communicates; hence, the effectiveness of its communication depends entirely on the effectiveness of our perception of this communication. If our consciousnesses align (partially at least) with our True Selves, we begin to perceive and have the opportunity to respond to this communication. If our consciousnesses are misaligned with our True Selves, we either do not pick up the communications or misinterpret them when we do.

A good way to think about it might be through the idea of higher and lower frequencies, which is one of the ways Arkle illustrates the relationship between the consciousness and the True Self. If our consciousnesses our attuned to lower frequencies, they will miss much of the higher communication the True Self is transmitting. Nevertheless, if we set our consciousnesses to higher frequencies, we will begin to pick up what the True Self is broadcasting. Of course, this does not imply that we will immediately understand everything the True Self communicates to us, but we will, at the very least, become aware of this stream of communication. From the perspective of spiritual development, awareness itself is major step forward.

Since the True Self is of divine origin, it is essentially the seat of our divine meaning and purpose in this world. The closer we come to understanding the True Self, the closer we come to understanding why we are here and what we should be doing. And this is where false selves come into play. False selves are basically what the name implies - untrue or only partially-true conceptions of our meaning and purpose in this world.

False selves are false in the sense that they either provide little or nothing in the way of spiritual development or, much worse, act as hindrances or obstacles to spiritual development. Unconscious or automatic responses and skills - including but not limited to things like driving or the thousands of other routines comprising our daily lives - make up the former, while the latter comprises selves that are grounded in activities, thinking, and behaviors that are likely antithetical to the True Self and spiritual development. I tend to think of these false selves as being driven and fed by lower instincts and emotions such as greed, lust, hatred, fear, despair, and the like.

From my perspective, the false selves stemming from lower instincts are far more pernicious and harmful than the purely robotic false selves (though these can prove harmful as well if not properly considered). For example, very few people identify themselves with or attach any meaning or deeper purpose to simple, automatic tasks like the daily making of a cup of coffee or tea. Brewing a cup of coffee or tea in the morning is simply something one does - it is not what a person is.

By the same token, the truly obstructive false selves are those to which we identify purpose and meaning. For example, people might not identify with or derive any deeper purpose and meaning from brushing their teeth, but many do derive deeper purpose and meaning from their vocations or, more specifically, from the lower instincts fueling most vocations. There is meaning and purpose to be found in almost any job, and many jobs can provide the ingredients needed for learning and spiritual growth; however, if we identify only with the lower frequencies of our livelihoods, we run the risk of establishing the kinds of ego-based false selves that lead us away from or obstruct our True Selves.

I could spend pages detailing the various aspects and degrees of false selves, but the definitions supplied thus far are sufficient for the purposes of this post. And what is the purpose of this post? To draw attention to Arkle's concept of the True Self and how the process of aligning the consciousness with the True Self underscores spiritual development. It should go without saying that this is something we should be both aware of and, ideally, willingly and actively pursuing throughout our lives in the interest of spiritual development, even in the best of times.

Having said the above, the circumstances of the birdemic pandemic present a unique and unprecedented situation concerning false selves. Rather than willingly and actively confronting false selves, we have been placed into a situation in which we are practically forced into confronting false selves. Put another way, the birdemic has manifested and is manifesting conditions in which the existence of false selves, both in others and in ourselves, becomes glaringly evident.

On one hand, the lockdown has suspended or curtailed most of our routine and mundane tasks of the automatic/robotic kind - commuting to work, work-related tasks on job sites, passive enjoyment of certain pleasures, etc. On the other hand, the lockdown has also at least partially severed us from jobs and past times that fuel lower instincts like ego and status. Needless to say, this has created varying degrees of discomfort and inconvenience for all of us. Much of this inconvenience and discomfort stems from a severe curtailment of personal liberties and freedoms, but I suspect a great deal of it might also originate from the forced position of having to confront false selves.

Ideally, the confronting and stripping away of false selves should be a freely chosen and freely willed individual decision, but lacking such motivation, we sometimes find ourselves in circumstances in which we are more or less forced to confront false selves through no conscious choice of our own. This is an essential part of learning. I believe the birdemic panic has placed all us in this kind of position. For the first time in my living memory, the greater bulk of humanity has been given the opportunity to take a step away from the world and engage in the process of becoming aware of false selves - their own false selves and the false selves of others.

As mentioned above, becoming aware of false selves - both in ourselves and in others - rarely breeds comfort or pleasure. In other words, recognizing and eliminating false selves can be an arduous activity, one wrought with startling revelations, errors in judgement, and genuine moments of being (for lack of a better phrase), which helps to explain why so many of us are perfectly content to reside purely in the realm of false selves.

Another problem with the recognition and elimination of a false self is that it rarely leads toward the True Self but, more often, to the falling back upon or creation of another false self. Nevertheless, in terms of spiritual development, the mere awareness of false selves is a step forward.

Oddly enough, the System, which breeds, nurtures, and maintains false selves, has now distanced a great portion of the populations of most countries. This gives us all an opportunity to reflect upon the false nature of the System and of our own false selves and their relations to the System. Through no choice of our own, many of us have been placed into positions where the conscious choice of that step forward can be made, or if it has already been made, can continue in a fairly intense and robust way.

As people read this, I fear I may be accused of desperately trying to find a silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud. Before I conclude this post, allow me to stress that the conditions of the birdemic panic have been motivated and fueled by evil. As such, they are not Good. All the same, this does not imply Good cannot arise from these conditions. One possible good that may arise is an increased awareness of false selves and increased movement toward the True Self - that divine spark within us all. And if it doesn't occur at the collective level, it can still certainly occur at the individual level. And if it is to occur at the individual level, then it must occur now.

No excuses.

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Senza un perché - Strange Little Tune

4/23/2020

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I first heard this little ditty when I watched The Young Pope (an odd, sexually-charged television series focusing on an ultra-conservative, authoritarian 'young' American cardinal who tries to return Catholicism to its conservative roots after he is elected pope and takes on the name Pius XIII).

The song is called Senza un perché (Without a reason) and it is sung by the Italian singer Nada (whom I had never heard of before). Anyway, in the Young Pope series, the prime minister of Greenland gifts the song to Pius XIII when they meet in the Vatican (don't ask me why).

It's definitely not the world's greatest song or anything, but it has a way of staying in your head - for better or for worse.

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Starting The Home Renovations Early This Year

4/23/2020

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For me, summer means home renovations.

I purchased an old house in a small village in western Hungary four years ago, and I have spent every summer since then working on it bit-by-bit in an effort to make it more beautiful and livable.

I had big plans for this summer. I had wanted to have the roof replaced create a loft from the space upstairs, but I put these plans on hold indefinitely after the birdemic broke out. The truth is I don't really need a new roof (yet) and the loft can wait. In light of the uncertainty out there, I considered it best to keep the money I would have spent on this major renovation safely in my pocket.

Even though the summer is still a way off, the past six weeks have felt like summer to me. Firstly, the weather has been glorious. Secondly, I have spent the last month-and-a-half at home. Though I'm still working, I have plenty of free time most days, which has resulted in the itching need to do some kind of renovation project, birdemic be damned!

Though I have spent a considerable amount of time creating a nice vegetable patch and completing other gardening tasks since mid-March, I feel the urge to partake in a little home renovation. Thus, I spent a few days thinking about what I could do and came up with four possible projects.

One - repair the cold cellar. Two - renovate the small, free-standing outbuilding into what Hungarians refer to as a "summer kitchen." Three - restore and replaster the old chicken coop in the backyard. Four - strip and repaint the doors and doorframes inside the house.

I think I'll tackle the chicken coop first. It's a solid brick building that needs a little replastering, a new door, and a couple of new windows. I doubt it will cost much to renovate and chances are it won't take too much time either.

After that? Who knows? Maybe I'll get some chickens. Of course, I don't know the first thing about keeping chickens, but it looks like I'll have plenty of time this summer to learn everything there is to know about it.

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