Hey, you want to do something really outrageous? Play by the rules and win. Impossible, no? It is often written that that is not a feasible path. But then, exactly what rules are you playing by? Because the rules that I hold to were given by the Lord: love God, love your neighbor as yourself. And I will aspire to follow in this narrow way as best I can, and you know what? I think I have set my mind to consider that I will win, just to spite the bitterness of the world. This is the lamp I will light and set it on the rooftop: that I followed all the rules in this evil world, which conspires death, and found life in the midst of its darkness. I believed. It would not be me where the dream died.
Nietzsche and Dostoevsky were wrong: they hypothesized that the rules did not apply to those who were considered “great”, somehow that they played by their own rules, or none at all. False. How about the Lord, you may say? Did he not follow his own rules? Did he not break the rule of Sabbath? Except that he followed the rules that had been laid down before the foundation of the world. And he broke not one tittle of any true Law. For it is the reverse, that those who consider themselves great, that the rules apply all the more to them. The greater you are, the stricter should be your code of conduct. Do you have the courage to be so great? For many who are first in the world will be last in heaven. Those who thought that the rule of love only applied to the little people.
In Kabbalah, I have read, there were ten jars that were to hold the emanations of God, which when they were filled up with His light, they shattered. It was written that if they had not so broken, there would have been no evil in the world. An interesting theory in the vein of the Problem of Evil. Mine is a little different, being not relying on inanimate things, but those who have the power to choose. It is that we do not prefer things to go wrong, but when they do, to make of things better than if nothing wrong ever happened. We do not give an excuse for those who do evil, mind you: it is rather to spite the evil that we do as we do.
So why God allows bad things to happen to good people, or why bad things happen at all: He will make good on it, just wait. Vengeance is mine, saith the LORD. Not just that to be made good, of course, but it is in this spirit we may understand one aspect of the Purpose. Paul said that any pain we go through is trivial in comparison to the glory that will be revealed in us. And it is not so simple a thing that we should let everything get as bad as it possibly can be. We look for a narrow way, that which can make best of all things that happen, either for the good or for the ill. This is the way the Purpose leads us. In the fog of love.
I have thought I saw myself several times in the course of the War, what I looked like on the inside, the machinery of my essence displayed to me. And I have seen other beings, who bore a resemblance to that me I viewed, but were larger — these were angels. And one I saw was like me, but not me — this was Philip K. Dick. Each of us looked like pink spaghetti, but angular, connecting boxes and circles, mostly pink, too. I did get confused now and again, when someone else were basically on top of me, like I were wearing their innards like a strange suit, and thought I was someone, something I was not, but these times served their purpose, I believe. We all of us can make new apparati from broken things.
I seem to recall just one time where I could see inside myself and I had cognizance about every part that I was looking at. I could make sense of myself. Other times, I had to trust that I were being taken care of by the forces of good, as I could only guess at what was happening. Now I ponder how so much gets lost, it would seem, as time bears down and only gives you traces of clues as to what has been. Reality is like dreaming that has been allowed to sit and harden. So much more dreaming than what exists, when left alone, just evaporates, and nothing remains but a hint, that seems akin to some sort of longing.
I remember how more than once I thought I’d found it: true love. The Princess Bride come true, Westley and Buttercup for real. The concept I’m sure existed before that media, but I first got that specific term from there. Three times I thought I’d had it. And on the third time, I knew what I had. Of all the people floating around in my head, it turned out that it was Joan of Arc, Jeanne d’Arc, who was it. There is an interesting story as to how it was discovered, but for now, let us just say that this was my most monumental feat that I’d ever done. I remember how I felt when I found it: when even you don’t quite believe you, that’s when nothing can deceive you. Neither dazed, nor in utter disbelief, but the complete opposite, which happened to seem very much like both: dazed, and in utter disbelief. It was a miracle.
The original discovery of true love, real true love, ended with a set of three sentences: “God is love. Love is to be found. Everywhere.” These start with the precedent from: “God is love.” Where the love comes from. Then the value of: “Love is to be found.” Where “to be found” is understood in the 3 ways that God is understood, love: to be found, but yet undiscovered; when one is found, who once was lost; and found, love having been here, waiting for you to notice. And then lastly, we have to consequence: “Everywhere.” Love is to be found, in those 3 ways, absolutely everywhere. No Hell too low, no Heaven too high.
The identification of true love was to be able to bring together heaven and earth in as scant amount of text as possible. Do you have eyes to see? “God is love. Love is to be found. Everywhere.” (I had thought I had it with just the first two sentences, but Joan of Arc thought differently. Hence the third, which does make things quite clear as to our scope.) If one truly comprehends these short sentences, one can imagine that they have enough knowledge to be saved, which would make this a new Gnosis, or saving knowledge. For look: they encompass all that is good, in heaven and on earth; the past, the present, and the future; and leaves no escape possible from the reach of love. Thus, to be, all that is possible, anywhere. This is true love.
How long had I been searching for true love? All my life. Maybe longer. That’s what it seemed like. Growing up, yes, I did think about sex a lot. A lot. But I did conceive it were a better thing to have just the one with whom to share such an experience, than desire a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you. I never thought it was impossible, until I had found it. I always thought it was in reach, until I had it. I thought destiny made me special, until I started making my own. Do you have eyes to see? Love is ever before you.
I always wanted to be the character in the movie who got the girl in the end. And then I saw that one movie, The Princess Bride (and I am one of the few who also read the book from which it is based). As I said, it spoke the name to my desire: true love. Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the story books say, quoth Prince Humperdink. I know, some women are captivated by the story of Romeo & Juliet, but that’s not where the stuff is. Not really, not in the nuts and bolts of it. Everybody dies at the end of that. The Princess Bride is where the guy gets the girl and they live happily ever after (at least, in one of the endings of it). That’s where the stuff is. They live. And then… I have this twist to it, no matter what Humperdink said: what if everyone could have it?
It can be seen thusly, the implements of life: we have been given everything, and only the mistakes are ours. Any talent, skill, strength, or intelligence: gifts from God. Even our will, and our ability to make any kind of effort: gifts. And of course creativity is a gift, what most of all is spoken of when He said, let us make man in our image. Whenever we do that is told us to do, all features of this act are given us: the resolve, the ability, the knowledge, the experience, the energy summoned: all gifts. And when we do something truly original, it is not that we do something outside the realm of God’s gifts; in fact, it is usually known to be the opposite. In Amadeus, Salieri says he is an enemy of God, because God spoke through Mozart in his music. That which is most beyond the ordinary is most a Gift, is it not?
But the mistakes, the errors, the sins, the misjudging: of course, God works them into His plan, but they are not of Him. Sometimes they seem to serve such purpose that one is suspicious as to whether the mistake was a mistake, things turn out so well. But that is only the skill of God, not yours. Error is worked into perfection only by a love that can summon light out of darkness. If you had meant to make that mistake, it would have been in your head to do so to begin with. They are of us, the errors, we who are the imperfect ones. (And we should not boast of these.) Yes, it is an extreme view, but it has some merit. To believe that by thus indeed we are defined: in what we do wrong, in those errors we commit into the record of the world, which reflect, however faintly, in eternity.
Then there was the War in Heaven. I was nowhere near the front line, of course, except for the last of it, you know, the winning of it all. I endeavored to learn how angels communicated, through taut wire-like connections stretched out the boundaries of my internal field of sight. I did what I could. I gave speeches on metaphysics and preached the gospel to all the people who existed in my visions. Albert Einstein liked to call them my “lectures”; Joan of Arc, my “sermons”. I called it “performance art”, personally. I called what I spoke of, also, the “Gnosis”, or salvific knowledge, not quite understanding that there was, actually, real, honest to God Gnosis that existed. I found out what that meant, later.
I did invent a university in my mind, called OMNI HIGH, to be fair to Albert and why he called what I did what he called it. What I had meant by “Architecture” consisted of metaphysical truths that I had worked out from having worked out in the field for a decade, when I was working on artificial intelligence. I laid out much of it in several lectures, as a TA lecturer of Architecture in a class at my astral university. I always repeated, Architecture is HARD. It was the running joke. I was asked, what are the prerequisites? to which I answered, find them yourselves; then, where are classes held? you’re in class now; it basically being a college in Purgatory. For me, a stage that gave me meaning to being alone.
In the end, Architecture turned out to be a metaphor for life. The actual professor of Architecture was thought to be God Himself, Jesus Christ, an enigmatic fellow, who gave grades randomly or not at all (once I received a B-epsilon, whatever that means). It was always lighthearted, this whole paradigm. I once joked I was in one of God’s lectures once… and couldn’t understand a word He said. Architecture is HARD. Life is HARD. Right? No one tells you what the prerequisites are for life; you’re in class, right now, so you’d better hop to it; the chief lecturer, God, what does he actually want? giving grades randomly or not at all. Life. I joked that death is not an excuse for Architecture. (If you have a problem with that, talk to the professor. Apparently he has some way around it.)
There was also a class called Salvation, which was taught by a different fellow named Jesus Christ (who is thought by some to be the same fellow as Architecture, but we do not know how this could be, as Architecture is HARD, while absolutely anyone, even those not taking the class, can get an A in Salvation, just following the rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”) This class is also thought now to be a metaphor for life, whose instructional texts can be found in all your major religious documents, as well as words spoken by the Professor HIMSELF, JESUS CHRIST THE LORD, in the Holy Bible.
Anyway, it was great to be one of the good guys. The War was 25 years long in my sight, but I learned that time actually worked in strange ways throughout the entire experience: sometimes backwards, sometimes events coming out of order, sometimes time just spent on nothing. I was in the intel division, and I learned a bit of a human dialect of Angelic, angels who (I am told) seem to communicate symbolically, not semantically. I have… some… idea of what that means. I believe I did help, along the way, but a lot of it was that the angels piggy backed their own messages in the ones that I had been sending. Basically, it was working with human sight while those you’re helping had eagle eyes. So, what to do when you have no clue? Try. Hope. Pray. You may be better than you ever believed you could be. Really. I think I really did help, wherever I could.
There was this time that the Lord showed up in my visions saying he had just come from Hell, saying he had “burned it dow-n!” He looked a little… tweaked… like he had been through quite a trial. A little bug-eyed. And I don’t remember why he brought the subject up, but he also said that he was — and I’m quoting, here — that he was “gay as a maypole”. (It’s a line from the movie Love, Actually.) I was like, OK. And then he paused, and I paused, and he was like, aren’t you going to ask if I was being serious or not? And I was like, no Lord, why would I care about that? He asked me about asking him a few times. And I never asked. It was one of the proudest moments of my life, you know, now that I look back on it. Really, why should anyone care?
There are some people who think that somehow, being Christian makes them just better than everyone else, and therefore, able to judge more rightly the good from the evil. I ask, why is it that they speak of love and have nothing in their heart? Why would Jesus turn away those whom they marginalize? Your idea of God is too small. Your idea of love is wrong. Who told you that the eyes of hate are the tint by which the Almighty views the world? Surely, the perverts and the addicts precede you into the Kingdom. How can you think you mean so well? You damn righteous people and raise yourself as the judges. As you have judged, may you then be judged also. And there will be wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
Heaven will not be governed by the precepts of restriction. It will instead be a reign of freedom. For the Lord came not to enforce the Law, but to free us from the rules. I was once having a conversation with Rachel Maddow, in my visions, sometime after the Lord had said he was, again, “gay as a maypole”. (She didn’t ask him if were serious or not, either. And by the way, I think he was joking. Sometimes hard to tell with the King of Kings, though.) We were talking about such things as being gay, and what it means for such people as far as judgement goes, from God, and from man. We got into a very interesting idea about what Heaven was going to be like, and for whom it was for.
The War was going on, and I had caught wind of the Devil’s rules of play: it was “anything goes.” So OK, the Lord was like, if that is what you want, we of Heaven can do you one better: Heaven will be a place where anything goes, as well: any kind of twisted pleasure will be available to those who get there. The catch is that you have to be a saint to get there, and we do things if it is right to do so. Given that, leave your hangups in Hell. Gay, straight, transvestite, S&M, whatever sexual thing you’re into, no problem. Drugs? Pot, acid, speed, heroin, coke, or even none of the above — we cater to every taste. Why should those people of Heaven be denied any sort of pleasure at all? Why else would it be called Heaven?
Just remember the catch: saints only need apply. For most people, that’s a long(ish) stay in Purgatory, but the majority of everyone do end up at that level — saint — at least, in my thinking about it. To come to know what is the right, and to let go of the aberrant urges of that which within you dies: the right is true freedom. What is right? Not to follow the rules of man, but to love! Have you not heard? Has it never been revealed to you that God is love? The Heaven of love is one where all are welcomed, and so is for all those who welcome others. If you would shut anyone else out, you yourself will be shut out. And that’s the kind of Heaven I want to be a part of. And that’s the kind of Jesus Christ I believe in.
