On the bright side of the current pandemic Crisis, with its huge blow to the U.S. and world economy, and the resultant introduction of (albeit unbacked paper) money into the economic system, along with the lowering of Federal Reserve interest rates on borrowed money (almost to zero now), as urged by Pres. Trump for/as ’stimulus,’ we have a/the silver lining:
Of getting used to the idea that we don’t need ‘interest’ to operate a system of exchange of goods and services. That all we need is the idea of being supportive of each other, in common cause (in this case, of sheer survival). Thus, a positive side of (such as) this epidemic. Along the (very) line that I have long encouraged in these pages:
that all we need is a motive to share goods and services with one another on Planet Earth; and the highest motive that we could ever have - outside of sheer survival - is “out of gratitude to our Creator for life with meaning. Out of, in a word: Love”.
The case: There is an Operation going on behind the scenes of this global crisis. Well, there are two. The first: that of the Dark forces. The ‘Black Hats’. To control the world, from the top down. In an attitude of, not gratitude, but Power Over Others. Or as I say: POO for short. The second, deeper one: Taking advantage of this very virulent and perplexing virus scare, and the resultant measures of quarantining, not only to ‘get’ that we are all in this together. But to control people’s movements. In order more easily to arrest the Black Hats. And to minimize damage, from false flag ops and possible riots (orchestrated or otherwise).
Who are ‘The Black Hats’? A clue, from The Law of One material:
Those involved primarily in Service to Self as opposed to Service to Others. Involved in negative polarity vs. positive polarity. Two paths. The positive path being the higher road, in the end, of The Process.
The bottom line:
The global financial Reset that the world is facing - occasioned by Crisis creating Opportunity, and big Crisis creating big Opportunity - offers humanity the opportunity to look at the whole picture. The whole picture. And to realize that we do not live in order to make money. We live in order to Awaken.
Got it?
The point of life is not to make money. The point of life is to awaken to the point of life.
And from there, everything else will be added unto us.
Now. Specifically. A Question For Christians. Involving what is called the New Testament.
Whenever you have verbatim dialogue - especially when there is no evidence that the material was written down at the time, and the earliest known copies of the event are from many years after the (alleged) fact - it’s a pretty good sign that it is a story, a work of fiction. And on that particular point; A question to Christians: Who, for example, is writing the story of The Temptation in the Wilderness?
Are we supposed to believe that Jesus told that story to at least one of his disciples some time after the fact, who wrote it down verbatim at the time of the telling?? Or does it make more sense that it was simply a story from the beginning.
A story with a purpose. In this case, the purpose of getting the Jews to stop believing in a militaristic Messiah who would come and lead them in military defeat of their enemies, and thus inadvertently cause much mayhem and anguish amongst their own people in the process, with the likes of the Roman legions obviously too strong for such a fanatical frontal assault. Better to live to fight another day. As the likes of a Jewish general-cum-governor-cum-historian named Josephus Flavius obviously reckoned, when he ingratiated himself into the good graces of the Roman general Vespasian, and helped him become emperor. Another story.
And that one was/is a real one.
As for the Book of Mormon, and that allied subject. This part of this blog being for the (intended) benefit of those earnest, very sincere Mormon ‘believers’ (in whose company I was once numbered, originally from having been born into that fold). For example. The Mormons are currently celebrating the 200th anniversary of what is called the First Vision,* when - purportedly - the founder of their Church had a personal theophany while - as he told the story (at least in one version thereof) - in prayer in a grove of trees in western New York, and lo and behold, both God the Father and His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ appeared to him, in a sort of vision. Unfortunately, research has shown that there were/are a number of versions of the First Version - er, Vision.
What’s a poor seeker of Truth to do?
Answer: Keep on that Path. It will lead you, ultimately, to your goal. With major stops along
The Way.
P.S. The more likely version of the Mormon ‘story’ goes something like this. (I am attempting to recall the details of that story from my research many years ago, including in the stacks of the History Dept. library at BYU and at the Historical Society headquarters and Main Public Library in Salt Lake City. Plus material available via ‘anti-Mormon’ circles in SLC, and in a journal of sincere truth-seeking young Mormon scholar types of the day called ‘Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought’.)
A Christian preacher without a ‘portfolio’ named Sidney Rigdon got a job at a publisher’s office where he came across a ‘romance’ - a fanciful tale - about early life in North America, written by a man by the name of Solomon Spalding. As I recall that part of the story, Spalding’s tale was based on the idea, very prevalent at that time - and with quite a Revival spirit going on around that time as well in frontier colonial America (known contemporaneously and historically as ‘the Second Great Awakening’), with people seeking ‘the true religion,’ or, more accurately, the true Christian religious denomination - that the Native Americans were descended from The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. Though nothing came of Spalding’s manuscript (per se), Rigdon was most intrigued by the idea, and spent some years after that event developing the manuscript’s idea, when the time came for him to figure out a way to ’share’ it with the public. Around that time he also became aware of stories emanating in the general neighborhood about a young man, name of Joe Smith, who was getting something of a reputation for supposedly being able to see things by way of a ‘peep stone’ that he put in his hat which he held close over his eyes and told people what he saw via it. A sort of Gypsy Fortune Teller, then. (With his whole family involved in folk-magic ’money digging’.) An aha! moment came to Rigdon - so this story goes - and he put the two subjects together in his mind, and traced down young Smith and told him his idea, of how they could make their fortune, er, be of service to humanity. Young Smith, one suspects, and being an enterprising young man (who presumably was taken by the idea expressed above, that the point of life is to make money), went along with the scam, and the rest is history; the deceit accomplished by the story that, after young Smith’s First Vision (or whatever Version of it that various audiences were told by Smith over the years, with the details getting more elaborate by the telling), he was similarly visited by an angelic being by the name of Moroni, who when in incarnation was an ancient pre-Christian-era priest and scribe in Central America somewhere, and who was last in a lineage of such priests who wrote down a history of their peoples (mainly consisting of two warring tribes) on gold plates, which he proceeded to direct young Smith to, as (purportedly) having been buried in a nearby hill just before he died. These gold plates were - as the story went on - what Smith used to translate from what became known as the Book of Mormon (another such ancient priest-scribe), his translating reportedly accomplished by the use of something called a Urim and Thummin, an oracular device, referred to in the Jewish Bible/Old Testament, which Smith said that he was using - from behind a curtain - to dictate to his scribe, a young man by the name of Oliver Cowdery. Who never actually saw the gold plates himself. Which - purportedly - were then hidden back up in the hill by young Joe, under the direction of Moroni. Conveniently.
As the whole story was convenient. Including the inconvenient detail in it of just how the gold plates got buried by Moroni in a hill in western New York state, shortly before his death in the Central American area. But not to worry - we are, after all, talking about, mostly, gullible country bumpkins, ready and willing to be fleeced by expert con artists. Because, after all, you must see:
that the purpose of life is to make money.
And gain Power Over Others.
For a certain kind of person.
Who is failing the test.
Of life being a school.
With the purpose being
to graduate.
Not get stuck in it.
And circle around and around in it. Like
a piece
of POO.
P.P.S. And then there is the little inconvenient fact - inconvenient to this take on the Mormon story - of what is called the Lehi Stone. Which is a large carved stone monument found in the southern Mexico/Central American area by a joint team of archaeologists from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society back in 1941, who photographed it in situ and published it in the NGS’s magazine shortly thereafter, unable to make anything of the scene carved in bas-relief on it. And there it and the matter ‘rested,’ until a man who knew something about the Mormons’ founding story recognized it as perhaps having significance to them, and brought it to the Church’s attention. Which indeed had significance to their ‘story,’ inasmuch as it depicted a tale right out of the Book of Mormon. (About an elderly - and bearded - man, name of Lehi, an Israelite patriarch type brought out of the Middle East, along with a number of others, in (very) pre-Christian times to the southern Mexico/Central American area, as and for, ultimately, ‘a marvelous work and a wonder’ - to prove the veracity of the upcoming historical story about an itinerant Jewish preacher to be named Jesus who was ‘the Son of God’ (of whom there wire many in days of yore, as I have drawn attention to in these pages before; but to continue) and who would be the inspiration for the founding of a church/religion, its veracity to be proven in The Last Days (of The Lesson); the tale being about a dream or vision that Lehi had had about, among other details, a tree with fruit near a path and alongside a river. The whole story (involving the interpreted theme of The Tree of Life and ‘the fountain of living waters’) being cleverly depicted (albeit with other, seemingly extraneous features) in the large carved stone. A facsimile of which - known as Izapa Stela 5 - I have seen, in the basement of the Archaeology Department at BYU.) And which particular ’story’ I have no answer for. It being rather difficult to believe that a couple of Mormon missionaries in that area might have decided to gild their lily a little, as it were, and leave something behind from their, er, mission.
Now, it needs to be said that there is little to no other evidence in that area for the claims in the Book of Mormon of a major civilization going on there at that historical time of its particular nature. And there is serious question, even among LDS (Latter-Day Saints; another nickname for members of the ‘Mormon’ Church) scholars, about some Mormons’s claims regarding the Lehi Stone. But a bearded old man? In southern Mexico?? Next to a tree, with a river running alongside???…
So. Where are we left. Where am I left.
Speaking just for myself:
Still on
The Quest.
And getting more and more curious about its outcome by the day.
But of one thing I am sure; given the ‘school’ nature of what we currently know as Life:
You are not absolved of your personal responsibility in The Matter. The matter of transcending matter.
—
* although the actual year, let alone date, is subject to some confusion, emanating from young Smith himself. But to move on, here. But importantly to mention it, as part of a huge number of such anomalies in this story. Presumably about the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times.
Which yet might be true. Though for different reasons.
