December 2, 2004

• Know what I hate?

  Uhhh, nothing, I guess.  I dunno.  As I was moving in this
  direction to blog about what’s on my mind, that headline seemed
  appropriate.  Then I asked myself if I really HATE anyone or
  anything.

  I decided to look it up.  Onelook
  says hate is “a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands
  action.”  If the action involved is expressing my feelings
  verbally, I guess there are still some things I hate.  But I don’t
  feel hatred the way I used to, so strongly I want to commit assault and
  battery, arson or treason.  That’s what I think of when I think
  HATE.

  I suppose a more fitting heading might have been, “Know what irritates me?”

  Onelook defines “irritation” as:  “the psychological state of
  being irritated or annoyed.”  Irritated, it says, is: 
  “aroused to impatience or anger,” while annoyed is, “aroused to
  impatience or anger,” too.  Impatience is, according to the same
  source, associated with restlessness or delay (which has nothing to do
  with the matter on my mind), while anger is “a strong emotion or a
  feeling… belligerence aroused by a real or supposed wrong
  (personified as one of the deadly sins).”  Okay, I’m not copping
  to any deadly sins, and for me belligerence is right out of the picture… I think.  Better look that one up, too.

  Belligerence is, “a hostile or warlike attitude or nature,” or “a
  disposition to fight.”  Only if I’m backed into a corner, I’d
  say.  It takes a lot to arouse my hostility.  I was
  definitely warlike in some of my past lives.  Learned that lesson,
  thank you very much.  If the weapons are words, I’m more than
  willing to confront an issue and engage in a battle of wits, but is
  that really a fight?  Again, I dunno.

  So, how shall I say this?

  Know what’s on my mind, what I’ve been getting more of lately than I appreciate, that I could really do without?

  Yeah, I suppose, considering the Mercurian backslide currently underway, that’s the best I can do.

  What it is, just in case any reader has waded through the waffling and
  hung around for the punchline, is smartass comments that either say
  something completely irrelevant to the blog they’re appended to (Isn’t
  that what most of us use guestbooks and email links for?) or toss off a
  more or less neutral comment of little relevance, over an unfamiliar
  xanga nic, in an attempt to pique my curiosity and lure me to
  somebody’s new site.  We call that “spam” around here, don’t we?

  Oh, and while I’m on the subject, another thing I’ve gotten my fill of
  lately is know-it-all naysayers who express strong beliefs against
  things I say and do, and call themselves “skeptics.”  Skeptics,
  FYI y’all, don’t have strong beliefs about anything except the belief
  that they shouldn’t be believing in things.

  The ones I would most gladly do without are those who naysay about
  things they have not investigated or experienced.  Two such topics
  that come immediately to mind are astrology and reincarnation.  In
  the mainstream of the culture around me, which I live amidst but not
  in, there is a pervasive belief that those two subjects are
  superstitious nonsense.  Many people feel secure in dismissing
  them out of hand for that reason, and many of those who do dismiss them
  think of themselves as skeptics.  (“secure”:  from Latin, se cura, free from care, in the 1913 edition of Webster’s dictionary meant, “Overconfident; incautious; careless” — foolish)

  I’m here to tell those ignorami (ignoramuses? — “ignorami” just
  triggered a delightful image of me folding one of them into a lucky
  crane) that until they have studied the subjects, they are free to
  scoff all they like from their positions of ignorance (First Amendment,
  y’know?), but they’re on shaky ground if they then call it skepticism.

  I grew up in that culture.  In my youth, I believed that astrology
  and reincarnation were superstitious nonsense.  I was mistaken in
  that prejudice. 

  First, some friends convinced me to investigate astrology for
  myself.  I found much in it that is valid and some that I couldn’t
  verify.  There are some tenets and traditions in any science such
  as physics or biology, too, which are currently discredited or
  unverifiable.  I’m not willing to throw out the entirety of
  physical science for that reason.  Nor am I going to discount the
  observable verities in astrology. 

  I have never known or heard of anyone who has made a thorough study of
  astrology who disputes, for example, the accuracy with which a detailed
  natal chart can describe a personality.  I know psychiatrists and
  psychologists who are open-minded enough to use astrology in their
  practices, to the benefit of their clients.

  I was a lot harder to convince regarding the validity of
  renicarnation.  “You only live once,” I’d always heard.  After
  you die, you go to Heaven or Hell and that’s that… unless you just
  rot in the ground.  But I was curious, and a voracious, omnivorous
  reader.  As a

  teenager I was intrigued by The Search for Bridey Murphy, but I had no assurance that it was true.  Later on, I read Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. 

  Still, I wasn’t convinced.  What it finally took to convince me
  was the conscious surfacing of some of my own past-life memories. 
  According to the Michael Teachings,
  that is something that doesn’t happen until one is a fourth level old
  soul, so it may not be feasible for many of the prejudiced naysayers
  who call themselves skeptics.  They might need to do some hypnotic regression work
  to find out if they’ve lived before.   I doubt if very many
  of them would be willing to risk it, though.  They might end up
  losing the emotional investment they’ve made in being “right” in their
  prejudice.

  Okay, since I’ve gone on at such length already, and covered some of
  the ignorant prejudices I keep running into that I could do without, I
  might as well mention one other:  divination. 

  I certainly
  didn’t start out in this life giving any credence to
  fortunetelling.  I still don’t.  Fortunetellers are
  entertainers, in it for profit.   I also did not learn at my
  mother’s knee to respect any divinatory arts.  I learned it
  through investigation, study, and practice.  A Tarot card reader
  bailed me out of a sticky crisis with some uncannily appropriate advice
  and convinced me that there might be something to that stuff after
  all.  I checked it out for myself and found, to my great surprise,
  that I had a knack for it myself.  The feedback I’ve gotten from
  my clients has been overwhelmingly appreciative — enough so that I can
  easily tolerate the few who don’t choose to take my work seriously
  enough to benefit from it.

  I’m not going to suggest that anyone abandon his or her
  prejudices.  We make our own Heaven or Hell on this earth by what
  we believe and how we behave.  We get what we deserve.  I’m
  not even going to suggest that people stop laying their prejudices on
  me, because I know that such a request would just be like waving a red
  flag in front of a bull.  Bull-headed people don’t respond well to
  being told what not to do.  In fact, I have no further suggestions
  or requests at all at this point.  I’ve had my say here for now.
  

  • 7:15 pm
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