It will get better

Dear Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes. I'm reading your blog as a mirror into my past today. It will get better. I love Imagine. Its now my theme song. I never really got it when I was a kid... But now its lyrics tunnel deep into my soul and resonate 'every fiber of my being'.

Its awesome that you still have your husband and kids. I find that to be somewhat true for me too. It makes me wonder what I really had before? My kids and Colleen are so close now. We are free to discuss whatever we want to, and that is amazing. Nice to meet you.

in reference to:

"cal explanati"
- The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes (view on Google Sidewiki)

Giving Aid to Haiti

OK, OK, I know that only believers are supposed to be charitable, and I've tried to resist the temptation to give in to my humanity. As much as I have struggled to resist the temptation, I could no longer resist. I have donated to the international Red Cross and Doctors without borders.

Won't you take a minute to help the Red Cross or Doctors without borders too?

Follow the link on this page, or choose a different route. There are so many ways to get your money there.

Cheers!

in reference to: Skeptic » eSkeptic » Sunday, January 17th, 2010 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Missing Modern Myths

From my understanding and interpretation of the great mythologist Joseph Campbell, with the death of the ritual to thrust the young human into society, this soul never gains part into the tribe. Our ancestors created myths to transcend the mundane, but to also spirit its members into the group of the societal whole.


Joseph Campbell - The First Storytellers (3 of 6)

R-CANE-1 | MySpace Video

Mormons maintain these rituals and the society of the Mormon youth is strong. Many other religions are beginning to lose this society center from their intrinsic being, and no sense of development as part of the group exists there. This production creates a member without regard to the other humans because the other humans are simply other creatures. They become competitors that should be destroyed. They cease to represent fellow deities pursuing happiness inside of the societal network.

These myths, however, must progress. They must evolve to capture the world of the creatures, machines and culture that they exist to support. Just as it doesn't make sense for 17th century Native American man to model his life after the myths of the Greek Gods, or of the Norse God Odin, it makes less and less sense with the passing of time and the development of new machines and environments for a man of this 20th century to model his life after the christian religious myths of the 17th, 18th or even the 19th century just gone by.

New myths are needed for new times. New rituals, myths and rites are needed to model the pathways of ourselves and our children through the new modern trials of corporations, private schools, video games, evolving family structures and the increasingly complex and interconnectedness of the societies living together here on planet earth.

As Mr. Joseph Campbell mentioned in his interview with Bill Moyer in "The Storytellers", new myths must be created, and it is the artists that will create them. Its the painters, musicians, poets, writers and playwrights. It will also be the new media artists of our time that begin to shape the myths we will depend for our future. Video Game developers, Movie writers, social media sites and the unknown media artist forms still to come.

The evidence of the loss and failure to evolve and adapt of such rituals exists in the pages of the newspapers. As creatures desiring to transcend the mundane and create a world with mutual respect and peace, we must practice, share and sponsor art so that the missing myths of our time have the fertile soil to germinate, sprout and flourish to save our dying cultures.

But learning to paint and play the piano will not be enough. We must learn to appreciate the vastly varied art forms that surround us, and resonate through the cultural fringe lines separating the increasingly disparate cultural groups even within our own smaller spheres of towns, neighborhoods, family clans, cities, states, countries and the entire world. The cultures of our past must be understood to understand the underpinnings of the new myths that have yet to arise, and the understanding and love of art in all its forms must be developed further and in broader scopes for there to be any hope of the intrinsically essential new myths to overcome the outdated myths of the past.

The new myths will have to overcome so many obstacles to exist. Many of the old myths embraced the supernatural to model the transcendental to the jeopardy of the peace between the followers and adopters of the competing world mythologies such as Christianity and Islam. Many of the old myths accepted by billions of people have claimed unquestioning superiority and unchanging righteousness making the required evolutions and germinations of myth nearly impossibly challenging to realize.

The new myths will have to take forms in ways that find new ways to transcend the mundane without invoking deity. Or explicitly stating the metaphorical state of deity rather than the metaphysical. Can humanity embrace a myth that doesn't claim the metaphysical and supernatural? Can humans model their lives into transcendence using heroes and elements from the mundane?

Perhaps this is the reason why our myths are so out of date.

The God Metaphor

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
-- Joseph Campbell

After leaving Mormonism, much of my struggle has been to organize enough of my beliefs to understand what it is that I'm listening to in my inner communications with myself.

Mr. Campbell's metaphor referring to God as that metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought continues to resonate within my scope of thinking about God.

In my daily dialogs with so many people on this pathway to further intellectual daylight, I continually run into this question: "What now?"

This question includes, what should I do now, what should I read now, and what should I believe now. I love they idea of taking the concept of God as the level of mindfulness that we may aspire to, but possibly never reach. God is that nonverbal understanding we may have of the life we desire, the meaning we crave.

Saying prayers to that God would enable the level of intellectual honesty and self introspection necessary for transcendent meaningful life.... Or at least it could aspire thereto. With this kind of God, perhaps I can begin to pray again with my family. I do pray for them, in my heart, everyday, but I can't pray to a non-existent being... But I could pray to this metaphorical god that would be contained on the transcendental borderlands of my mortal sorry synapses.

in reference to: Joseph Campbell Quotes (view on Google Sidewiki)

The God of Endorphins

When I first began questioning the church, and making thoughtful decisions about leaving, I had so many people talk to me about the spirit. The Mormon church places great emphasis on the reliability of the Spiritual witness to the veracity of everything related to it. The Church asks members to accept the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's Visions, etc, etc on Spiritual Witnesses.

I love this entry because it addresses the other possible sources to Spiritual Witnesses. Frankly, when you stop looking for the supernatural, or magic in everything, then you begin to be able to look for reasonable answers to life. When you are able to look for reasonable answers, then you begin to see things in a different light. You begin to see how those who want to make you believe 'anything' would use your emotions to their advantage.

It should be a huge clue to us that the professional scam artists that call up your aging mother/grandmother to ask her for money use emotional tricks almost exclusively in their strategies to part her from her cash.

Emotions are definitely real, but they just aren't reliable identifiers of the truth or the future.

Thanks for your story!

in reference to:

"I was naive to believe that religion is the relationship between man and god. It appears to be the relation between man and his own endorphins."
- My pestering prayers don't work like Joseph's | Post-Mormon Scrapbook (view on Google Sidewiki)

Spanky's closed down?

After my wonderful experience at Spanky's following my 7 year old daughter's driver's ed course, I fell in love with Spanky's. So did she. Their environment was comfortable, clean and friendly, and their food tastes great.

I was really sad though that for her birthday, they were unexpectedly closed. I visited yesterday in hopes for delicious lunch. Again they were closed. Called today too. But they appear to be closed.

What is going on Spanky's? I am in need of your Fresh Delicious Guacamole Burger!

in reference to: SPANKY'S EXPRESS (view on Google Sidewiki)

CALM Casino Night

Can you think of a better way to promote the CALM community than to play the night away with friends and help pay for advertising to help so many more of us in the community who might feel there is nowhere else to go?

in reference to: Facebook | CALM Casino Night (view on Google Sidewiki)