It's All the Same, Man

 She respected his rich and hidden interior life, which she thoroughly expected to yield a puzzling exterior; she knew he was an interior man.  He had always been a daydreamer; now that he didn’t write, he seemed to daydream a little more.  Once, he told her that he wondered if he was an avatar. In Hindu mythology, an avatar is a deity, descended to earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape.  Did he really believe he was the incarnation of a god? “Which god?” she asked him. “I don’t know,” he humbly told her.

That was the Parsis.  Here are the Toltecs: "Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God.  Everything is God.  He saw himself in everything - in every human, in every animal, in every tree, in the water, in the rain, in the clouds, in the earth.  He said: 'It is true.  I am God.  But you are also God.  We are the same, you and I.  We are images of light.  We are God.'  Then he knew that he would forget all that he had learned."

As you know I've decided to become a Christian animist.  It's a new religion.  I'm the only member so far.  "Many animistic traditions include belief in a supreme 'High God,' but the focus of religious life is usually on the numerous lesser gods, nature spirits, and ancestors who directly influence daily life, rather than this distant creator.  Animism sees the world as filled with spiritual essences in everything (plants, rocks, animals, etc.), so 'gods' are often seen as powerful spirits, not necessarily the singular, all-powerful God of monotheism."

A 16th century mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya was destroyed by a violent group of Hindu nationalists in 1992.  The Hindus believed that the mosque was built on land that had once held a Hindu temple.  In Jerusalem, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims all believe that in the past this tiny, teeny piece of land was sacred ground and should be claimed only by their monotheistic religion - which they're certain is correct and if you don't agree then you're going to burn on a Lake of Fire for all eternity - who comes up with this shit, this violent imagery, anyway? -  and that all other religions were to be excluded.  "Get the fuck off my lawn, infidels!" you can imagine them shrieking at the contending belief systems.  

I've read the Bible.  I can't find a great emphasis on burning in hell for all eternity.  I can't speak for the other monotheists.  Maybe Lakes of Fire are popular.  Maybe "Are YOU going to burn for all eternity on a Lake of Fire?" is a popular Sunday School lesson for impressionable young children.  "Suffer the little children to come to me so I can scare the shit out of them about burning on Lakes of Fire."  This is like eating potato chips.  I can't stop eating them.  There's so much great stuff I can hallucinate up on the topic of Lakes of Fire.

Let today's lesson be this: Be careful about how much LSD you eat when your brain is still developing.  Turns out there are consequences to my behavior.  Mom was right.  So were the cops.