This is for Stardust, as she asked....This is for Stardust, as she asked.

I am an open-source entity.

I am a happening of this world. Just like you.

With experiences. Just like you.

Being a process, not an end. Just like you.

I try not to be obsessed with a self. I am a process, an experiment, something that has arisen out of the unspeakable-whatever-it-is into the Here.

I am a social construct. A narrative entity. A story machine.

I contain multitudes. Multiple selves. I try to be aware of how different I am depending on who I am with.

Life is a game. It operates by rules that, in my culture, we try to ignore, as it is taboo to be aware of them. To speak of them.

And when taboos are violated, people get cranky.

If you all think aboot it, I am sure you have different notions of me, and some of your notions of me have changed over time.

I am giving official notice (to officially include you as part of the participation, the game, the jazz session) that you can think of me whatever you want. It is your brain.

The current narrative framework that I am fooling around with right now is the mystick camel, who comes from a long line of camels who have only recently been freed from being forced through tiny holes by you mayflies ;3 and are enjoying a good rest (thus my first icon). Someone who spends their time going into the desert, the unknown, finding treasures, and bringing them back.

I don't believe in spirituality (as whenever I think of that I think of shells on the beach that victorians once wore and who have now outgrown them), but I do believe in religion. Re tying. Going out and finding something deep underlying everything and following it, believing in it. Tying together all these connexions and making it into a whole.

The great conundrum of today will be how to find/create a religion that will be accepted by the masses (not everyone is a mystic, and when this religion is found, which stories/myths will be included and how will they be taught by the Church-equivalent?)

There are certain stories that I am comfortable with. I have certain taboos.

But I am trying to see with other stories. To experience other Belief Systems.

I'm an atheist, in the sense that I don't believe in JHVH, controlling my life. But I'm not an atheist, because the term is practically meaningless to me (and to some atheists as well) and to believe in it %100 is a bit arrogant.

I believe in William James' notion that to wait till all the evidence is in before believing in something is being a tad too careful.

I have adopted the notion of saying 'universe' instead of 'the universe' because 'the universe' means that is all there is, and I don't know if that is all there is, even though the word itself means 'all there is'.

Everything has effects and nothing can have only good effects always. I acknowledge the Law of Karma.

I think that we don't necessarily choose what we believe. I don't think we can turn belief on and off.

I am rather partial to religions that have humour built in to them; those are the ones that are the most human and the most fulfilling and the most resistant to dogma.

I've worked out a B.S. that says that it doesn't matter if a Goddess exists or not because all I can ever know are my experiences (and any experience I have of a Goddess belongs to me). Those are what I can work with. Ferinstance, even if the Goddess is supposed to be Omnipotent, all I can work with is non-omnipotence, because that is what I experience.

Everything is nature. If there are such things as 'magic' and 'ESP' and 'JHVH', they are part of nature, not somehow above or beyond it. That is part of my metaphysics.

Nature is a great polluter. Toxic materials abound. Look around you at all the toxic materials: corrosive oxygen, smothering CO2, acidic evergreen needles, the poisonous cocktails that volcanoes produce. Nature is a great healer. Beneficial materials abound. Look around you at all the healing materials: oxygen that gives life, CO2 that helps out plants, acidic evergreen needles that fight off annoying plants, the smoky plumes that volcanoes produce depositing much-needed elements onto the surface and in the air.

I think that everything is true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, true and false and meaningless in some sense.

I don't think we'll ever 'get it right', we'll always have problems, but we can learn how to accept problems and deal with them, instead of trying to deny them, push them away, demonize them, make them 'evil' and therefore something to deny.

I think that whatever universe is, or the Cosmic Muffin is, it is something vaster (non-verbal) than anyone can imagine. I'm rather prejudiced to the notion that it involves feedback loops, and intellegence, and not necessarily some central processing centre (which JHVH can be thought of as), but more of a distributed network. That rock over there is as much a part of it as me or the sun. That the main difference between living and non-living is a matter of perception; our B.S. as to what is life determines quite a lot.

I think that sombunall scientists still haven't grokked with fullness Einstein's contributions. They still are living in the Copernican age.

I think that those whose B.S. requires 'God' to exist or not to exist are missing out on a lot of fun things.

I'm rather partial to the notion that universe is alive and conscious and has a great sense of humour and wants to play.

I miss the theatre of Bertold Brecht, where they trusted the audience's imagination and intelligence in that there weren't extravagant sets and costumes. One of the reasons I prefer radio and text over TV--TV forces 'what is happening' on you, radio and text requires my input. One of my favourite radio plays was I Love a Mystery's 'Temple of Vampires'.

I believe that strangers are potential friends. I believe that people are, basically, decent.

I believe that the notion that rationality is cold and inhuman is a holdover from relatively modern times that still hasn't quite died off. Rationality to me is warm and human.

I believe that knowing should be venerated in my culture at least as much as ignorance is.

I believe that we can be as Goddesses and Gods, that we are capable of so much, that our worst enemies are ourselves, the ones who hold us back the most.

I believe that everyone still can fall into the trap that if someone says that something is X, then immediately that means Y. Ferinstance, if they are a theist that must mean they are an anti-atheist.

I believe that universe doesn't lie, that it can be apprehended, understood and I am full of awe when I realize that the laws are so simple and that they can be apprehended.

I'm rather partial to the view that positive energy is a real force.

I fear for the world. I love the world.

I love the cultures where people who don't necessarily believe in another's lifestyle can nevertheless live together in tolerance and even help each other out and I cringe at the cultures who require everyone to be the same, to love each others' lifestyle the same, to think the same.

I think that my culture blinds me to certain things and makes me think that my way is the way of the world, when, when I get out there to other countries and see how they inhabit the world, I am enlightened and uplifted.

Universe often gives us what we need, not what we want.

I try to be agnostic. It is very difficult. It is so easy to attribute existence to words and concepts and to be certain. It is very comforting.

One last uplifiting quote for you all, by someone else who is trying to uplift us too-schmart westerners (and trying to give us myths and stories that we can accept):

"You will know every secret about life when you can truly say I must know. I can't wait a moment longer. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree and Jesus wrestling with demons in the desert are symbolic of the same drama of the soul that you were born to repeat. Never doubt this: You are the most significant being in the world, because at the level of the soul you are the world. You don't have to earn the right to know. Your very next thought, feeling, or action can begin to uncover the deepest spiritual wisdom, which flows as pure and free as mountain waters in spring. It isn't possible for the self to keep secrets from itself forever, no matter how thoroughly we've been trained to believe otherwise."

--Deepak Chopra

Peace be to you and yours,
Inannawhimsey

The picture is taken from that fine comic the Perry Bible Fellowship, available online as well as in print :3

Everything but the picture and the Deepak Chopra I am releasing under a Creative Commons License of non-commercial, share alike, and attribution. Which means that you can make derivative works based on this, as long as you include the same Creative Commons License (Non-commercial, share alike, attribution), don't make moolah off of it, and include where you got your derivative work from (Inannawhimsey will be fine).

Huzzah to the Creative Commons License concept! :3