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?
> From this.
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.
> From this.
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.
You do not have to believe a word I say, it matters not to their truth. One mistake of unbelievers is that God requires faith for His truth to be true. One mistake of believers is that believing in something makes it true. Unbelievers, believers: faith does not work in the way you may conceive in matters of the spirit. If the unseen world does not objectively exist apart from all who believe it does, then it does not objectively exist. How can we know that it does exist, then? Does it have a consistent effect on the physical world? OK, this is for you to do if you don’t think it exists: pray, “God, if you’re there, let me know.” See if that does anything. See for yourself if the unseen truly does exist.
And for those who hold that one must believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, to be saved, and that those innocent will perish in any case that they do not do so, remember the lesson of Saul turned Paul. This was a case of instant conversion, performed upon an unbeliever: so we know that God, by divine fiat, can save someone. Therefore it does not need, in that horrible question of faith, that they have to have heard and believed in the Good News before they die. Would not God save people in this other way if He could? For not a sparrow falls without His notice, and we are worth many sparrows. But it is the case that conversion does immensely help (first hand experience here).
Do you wonder about faith? You should, and what it means to you. How can you wish all the wrongs done you to be redressed, while all the wrongs you do to be overlooked? Yet this is the way people think; I know I have thought in this exact way. What will you believe when you face your Maker on the day of judgement? For we will be naked, of body, mind, soul, and spirit on that Day. Without excuse, will we all be. Do you wish to prepare for such an event? This is wisdom: forgive, as you want to be forgiven. Learn how to let it go, all the petty things. If they come back, let it go again. Until you are free.
Indeed, let me not be doubting, but believe. If nothing else, let me believe in the overarching idea: there is an unseen world, which is eternal, while the visible world is temporary. Why this is as so seems uncommonly wise, in my own eyes (though unworthy, they have seen many things). The reality of the spiritual world is different in nature than the reality of the physical world. It is true that many people have had many, often conflicting visions of what exists beyond our mortal pale, but one may conceive that — of those which are not purely imagination — they all may be joined in a logic of higher reason. Though I also hold it true that not all of what has been seen have any reality to them. Wisdom may be found in a science of such stuff. Science can be performed on anything, after all, and science is rather good at finding the fact of the matter.
Sometimes impossible things happen. Or at least, they seem impossible, until it happens to you. There is a simple reason I believe in miracles: something miraculous happened to me. Yeah, I was on drugs when it happened, but I showed it to someone the next day while quite sober. There was a cut that sliced a centimeter of my thumb, relative to nothing going on in “reality”, but in sync instead with someone in my visions weilding something sharp. I had nothing like a knife anywhere near me when it happened: the memory is still clear. Something only in the HALOSPACE directly affected the material world. And I know, you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed me either. Before it happened, you know, to me.
In fact, now, how could they possibly be real, any of the things I have seen? For one part of their nature is how they seem to shift, how the frame that refers to them alters, and things mean differently upon the second looking, or third. Now, I define reality as that which has quality true. Truth, if not to define reality itself, certainly bears the brunt of its definition. If the quality of any vision is not true, it is not real. And to be true means that a thing has natural structure. In other words, if the artifice that shows does not have any underlying structure, that which naturally follows the logic of the thing seen, then it is not true.
Of what I am seeing and hearing, I can look and cross reference what they are with those whom else it happened to, too — and they really do seem to pass the sniff test. Jesus Christ seems to me the same man as depicted in the Gospels. And He has shown me great evidence that He is the literal Son of God. (That evidence goes both ways, from myself externally, as well as from outside in.) The strangeness of angels seems to fit how they are defined in the scriptures, though that is not as clear. What is holy within my visions is not aberrant to what I’ve heard it said to be. A lot of things turned out to be true.
I had a personal demon that turned out to be as real as anything else, and in the course of events, I ended up performing an exorcism on myself. Successfully. It took a couple of hours of intense straining. I was shown his visage once, a red glowing figure — also cartoonlike, like most of my visions. Evil, I could almost smell it. The demon’s name was Roksaza, which I learned later was actually a trio of demons. I put a lot of intense effort focusing on the demon within me, first to penetrate his defenses, then to shove him out of me. It actually ended after that in a dream, where I saw him inside me, in a third person view, and I said, “Begone!” whereupon he went inside my head, first person view, and I said again, “Begone!” And he was gone. He must have been with me for over twenty years.
Then later, I found out to banish one of those fallen ones from someone else was to ask for their true name and then use it with that command, “Begone!” As I was doing that one day, I was surprised that one mass of demons I looked upon in someone in HALOSPACE, when I asked for their true name, they said, “Legion”, like the one(s) in the Gospel. And so that name I used, and with “Begone!”, they, too were gone. Surprising what actually does work.
You know, I had various theories about all the people I met, in my visions. At first, I did not try to explain their presence in my mind’s eye, cartoonish mostly, and how they said things to me. When I did try to explain it, it was in vague concepts like I was looking into some other plane of existence. Some years later, I was convinced that it all was merely psychosis; whatever I saw merely hallucinations; merely a long, strange trip. None of the people I had seen were real, so the problem went away. I became a devout Christian, and so at some points I had the theory that the Lord and the angels were “real”, but the people were just creations by them.
One reasonable sounding interpretation was that my dream mechanism was broken, and I was as if dreaming while awake. And the people I saw were merely the people you see in dreams. Finally to end up, as explanations go, as that these were the actual people I thought I was meeting, seen in the afterlife, whenever they reached it, time having a different meaning that the “now” I normally experienced. Basically, I am in contact with the interface to the spirit world, and so logic is quite strange in it, what I call the HALOSPACE. It sometimes boggles the wits to think of how logic may function in the unseen realm. But in expanding, the mind may stretch without tearing. Or like muscle, grow stronger anew when it does.
And I remember this one man in my visions: on an island, like alone in a single room, floating through the æthers… seemed to me to be Scottish. I never thought this was such a mystery, and sometimes I had thought it was some version of myself, until much later down the line was its secret revealed. He once said that he thought the rather middle class environs he was in to be like unto sitting “in the lap of luxury.” Once he repeated over and over, “Don’t worry about it!” (in that Scottish accent I mentioned before). Definitely one of the good guys. He didn’t fit with all the other people. And the question I pose, and you may know half the answer already: what if that was Judas?
