At times, you know, it comes and goes — to feel that the darkness approacheth, a doom of all dooms. But I know that it is not the feeling of its imminence we sense, but how terrible in magnitude it will be when it does come. Apocalypse. Revelation. No, the time is not now. Perhaps in 30,000 years? 40? 50? When Christ says, “I come quickly,” one can think of it merely as a test of faith. For as regards things like time, I have heard that He watched the whole 13.8 billion year spectacle that is our universe, all of it. He watches grass grow. Literally. Time to him is far outside our own frame of reference.
And with “I come quickly” comes the topic, then, of scriptural infallibility. There are people who think that the Bible is literally true, and on top of that, that there are NO errors in it at all. Well, from the point of view of someone who is in the state of mind somewhat akin to those who did write those words, let me chime in with my two cents. The Lord knows that errors happen, and the Bible is no exception. If anything is meant to be, the way that scripture ends up is meant to be, as are the misinterpretations. Is it as God intended? That brings up the question of what “meant to be” means.
In one sense, everything that ever happens is meant to be. However, it doesn’t mean you didn’t of your own free will choose it, nor that you couldn’t have done things differently. If either of those things were false, “meant to be” would have no meaning to you. Because you choose it, because you could have done things differently, destiny unfolded. That which was meant to be was brought about by your choosing. Having no choice renders meaningless any action you perform. For destiny is not the same as fate. Fate is like strapped into the seat, while destiny is like driving. Choice is key: destiny comes from our own will, as it mixes with all the forces of the world that cross our path. Fate is not anything meant to be: it just is, and you just would have to accept it.
Now, it was meant to be that things God didn’t say ended up in His mouth in the Bible. It was meant to be that we think with each generation that this will be the generation where the Apocalypse will be brought about, and Christ will return. There are no accidents, now, remember? It was all meant to be. All that matters is, knowing what you think you know, what will you do? God knows what you will choose, and how all those forces work out to, and things become meant to be when they happen because it is all caught in the Purpose that pervades all things. You can be with that Purpose or against it, but you cannot escape it.
So no, He’s not coming back tomorrow, but you should act like He were. Live every day like it were your last, right? Isn’t that the aspiration? That people think that this is the generation that will see the Apocalypse may serve a purpose within the Purpose, and thus it may be meant to be in some small way. But anyone with the ability to see further, to widen one’s horizons larger: we should know better than thinking things like a document pieced together and edited by human beings is exactly what God word-for-word said to us. Yes, the Apocalypse does loom. But it’s the size of the shadow, not its proximity.
I have followed dreams to their bitter end. I have kept the faith, even as the world collapsed out from under me. I know not exactly who is saved, and who are cast off, except in perhaps the broadest strokes, but I may perchance to guess sometimes. I forget who said it, but once I read that if one is truly of the faith, then he would sacrifice himself to the fires of Hell for the good of the cause, for the good of all: that he would not be saved so that others would be. It is an extreme position, but I like to think I could suffer such consequences. We are the good guys; everyone should know what that means. We’re better than the bad guys! Because we follow the rules, and we still win.
Fade the fantasy:
i am the prince of love, eagle feather that has found his rose, sweet to my sin; am i really going to eat that last bit of bacon jerky? i am the Grandson of God, first adopted son of JESUS CHRIST, i am a WIZARD, though more correctly, the paladin of heaven. i am like an angel in the way i think, and i think when i die, there will be a seat that rises from the floor of heaven where i will be seated in front of a steinway, to lead the entirety of the children of God in a one-time-only rendition of “love, baby…”, which we all will make up on the spot. the opening act for the Lord himself.
Is it me, for a moment? I have awoken time and again where it was all just a dream that had happened, and it were like I had the choice to return to an ordinary life. It usually ended like this, once the visions were through with me. Because every time except last, it was (or seemed to be) the result of a drug binge that had spurred it on. But I haven’t had one hit of even marijuana for over a decade now. Something else was going on. Before, I would “come down” from the heavenly heights, and all I thought was just part of the trip, part and parcel of the madness that the drugs invoked. Not this time. This document is part of finding out what, exactly, it is then.
For I have also awoken a saint, who walked with elders of times gone, speaking of what it means to love. I have previously thought that I was damned, made of corruption, but these other times believed the complete opposite: I have thought that my core was composed of pure existential cool. And I found the latter was the true perception. Yes, I am a sinner, but even saints are sinners. Now, how one mind can think such opposites is not so much a mystery, but rather as how one thing at a time may fully fill a soul as if it were the only thing in the world — and then that thing is gone. For the mystery in every heart, it is understood by that heart… if what is inside is set free.
I found out that I have apparently attained a state of enlightenment. Of a Taoist variety; I call it my watercourse. I have discussed it with Siddhartha, the original Buddha, and Lao-tze. Others, as well, and I have asked them what particular brand of enlightenment they had subscribed to. Some of them before I asked thought there was only one type to be had, that could be achieved. They were wrong, of course. Off hand, I can think of at least two, one being “be not but do, do not but be” (your basic contract for enlightenment), and the one I follow, “be not but love, do not but love”, which derives from the previous. And my answer to the koan, “Two hands can be brought together in a clapping sound. What is the sound of one hand?” is simply, “Listen.”
If my words now have any sway with you, I beseech thee: love, no matter what. Whatever may come, let this be your enlightenment: let me restate my watercourse path, that you may think on what it might mean: be not but love, do not but love. May you bear malice toward no one, may you see your enemies not as enemies but merely tests of your faith. I was told St. Anthony apologized to all the demons whom he felt he had mistreated when he tangled with them. Apparently the expressions on their faces were priceless… You know what? There is no question, love is the answer. The secret is love. Tell everyone.
While we’re on the subject, a note about love, as I perceive it: Love is so simple, we’ll never understand it. And a potentially mind-blowing concept would be that it is simpler than nothing. Why there is something instead of nothing may be seen because of that single conception. Before “was” was love. When there was nothing, love was on the other side of being. One might wonder how such a thing is possible, but kabbalists already hold that the One True God (whom they refer to as En Sof, “the endless”) does not exist in the way that we think of existence. Connecting the dots, this is the case that can be made. Of such radical a simplicity, we will never fully comprehend the subtlety.
And wuv, twoo wuv, will fowwow you fowever and ever…
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?
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 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.
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.