Post #131 "Violence and Civilization"

What is the first sign of civilization in a vast and mighty wilderness? A wall! A wall in the wilderness tells a profound story. What about the story behind the purposes and functions of walls? Especially that a wall is the first sign of civilization and also the first sign of violence. Thusly, a wall speaks of and promises violence. What is the basic intention behind building walls? Is the purpose to keep in ? Is the purpose to keep out? The one who builds the wall also has a story to tell. The purpose of the wall may be to provide security....something to hide behind; in a public sense and in a private sense.... a fear of violence. Each sense suggesting that violence is threatening the builder and the builder must get away or hide away. These walls are for the purpose of keeping out. What about keeping in, as a fortress, as ownership...."if you step over this line, something bad will happen to you." The "I need you to respect me and to respect what is mine". These walls can be expected to move, to expand out beyond themselves, ever so slowly at first, and then faster, until the original boundaries are vastly over-extended and the builder becomes much richer and much more threatening to his neighbors because of his walls. His walls violated those of his neighbors, claiming what was theirs as his...and then building his walls higher, much higher to protect his wrongly gotten gains, to protect his stolen property.

Is it possible that in every situation in life, humans build walls? Is wall building an inherent, trickle down characteristic, then, of humanity, as division is the inherent faculty of creation, division in both cases bringing about Time, place, and Matter? Can we assume that Time, Place, and Matter are the basic foundation walls of creation, built by humanity, as in the collective unconsciousness? What about these walls, constructed through the limitations of Time, located through the limitations of Place, and hidden and smothered through the limitations of Matter; these walls behind which each concept of division seeks its own existence? Is it possible that the walls of creation are the walls of the human mind, these walls of unquestioning Faith and the walls of empowering, empirical, Reason?

Does religion need and promote these walls? Does religion need the parameters of Time, Place, and Matter? Does science need and promote these walls? Does science need the parameters of Time, Place. and Matter? Are these walls beneficial or destructive to creation, particularly to humanity and to the planet that sustains life as we know it? Is humanity and the walls humanity has created beneficial or destructive to its own purpose and determination?

The most basic symbol of historical division is a wall. The Hunter and Gatherer Age moved into the Agrarian Age with the appearance of walls. The claiming of land was essential to the Agrarian Age. From early recorded history, walls were the visible manifestation of humanity separating itself into groups, tribes, clans, settlements, and eventually cities, and then, nations. When a group forms it forms against the rest of society. It is dividing or separating itself from the rest of humanity. We unite, only to divide. We unite for the purpose of power; for protection against the loss of power and for the opportunity to amass power through combined effort. The divided land of Israel/Palestine has been focused in these posts on violence....what of the high walls surrounding Jerusalem?

What we think of as unity is actually division. Uniting/joining, whether it be through marriage, family, town, country or religion, is a breaking apart that separates and divides. We try to take and amass the power of others to add to and enforce our own. We cause animosity, we create violence for the sake of the power in a facade of unity to, then, come against and defeat another person, another group, another nation. Nations promote wars to unite as a country, to unite under a leadership. We unite that we may divide. We unite to separate from and, thereby, to gather power. Power is amassed in community which then divides down into smaller pieces of itself until, ultimately, power locates in the individual, for the gods are many, but God is One. There lies deep within humanity, the desire of each person to become God through building walls, from dividing down through the amassing of power for the purpose of achieving Perfection. For what is Perfection, anyway, but becoming God?  Perfection and God are One.

Post #130 "Violence, Death "

(continued from Post #129)

Two nations claim the same identity and the same inheritance. Israel/Palestine. It all comes down to the Land, the same land. Really, the same people, who became a divided people   And because the people divided, the Land also divided. Identities were and are lost. Who are the true heirs of Abraham...a first-born slave made prince or the second-born son of tribal kinship? So, to whom did Yahweh give the Promised Land, the Land flowing with Milk and Honey? Seems a shame these two divisions cannot come together to make the whole-the whole of Israel or is it Palestine? ..confused identity.

From these, division, then loss of identity, comes violence. Logically then, does it not seem that if violence is not to be tolerated, the first step would be to eliminate division. But is this possible? This whole blog (Beier Unfolds Reality) is on Reality and the reality of non-reality. Non-reality is the state of Nothingness because creation is a process of division. Division divides down to nothing. We are people of division. We are people of violence. It is who we are. We do not know how to stop dividing. We don't see how our lives are all about division. Every time we form a group, a tribe, a team...any kind of union, between two or many, the reality is that these are all break-aways from the world at large. We break away to reform into a smaller more personal unit. We are competitive. What is competition but division? We compete to show we are better than someone else. This is not forming a whole but forming a part against another part. We strive to look better....better than others  We strive to have more money and better possessions....better and more than our neighbors. We strive to have the most productive and flourising businesses, make more profit than anyone else... more competitiveness. We even strive to collect people...like who's on our side.Who supports us? We are teaching our children to be the best, against the others, to be winners against the others, to make us proud for standing above the others. What is this but division? If some of us cannot keep up with this challenging standards, that person is separated out of the group and looses identity. Violence follows. We think its all games and even funny. We even think this to be healthy.

It is all so much who we are we cannot comprehend a different world of wholistic values. It's because we all have the same divisive goal......to become Perfect, to become God. What happens when everyone strives for prefection and godliness is that perfection and godliness become redefined. The attributes of God are the attributes we need to become Perfect. We put human values on something we call God so that we can be unaware of the Reality which we shut out behind the walls of creation. What does this make us then? We are God-makers and we are God destroyers. We will destroy anyone who competes with us for this is our nature.  

How achievable is our goal? Can I achieve thi goal? Who can hope to achieve Perfection? Can anyone hope to become God? What do we do when the goal seems allusive and we fear that we may not be able to attain it? What can we do ? What do we do? When the goal of 'who I will become' is looking unachievable what else can we do in great frustration but look for a new beginning? And then another beginning. And another beginning...over and over again. Creating an end, creating endings, to allow for new beginnings. Creating death to bring about new beginnings. Creating death to bring about new life. And so the cycles of Time begin, each a new layer growing to its death, over and over again.

Post #129 "Deeper into Violence"

Probing deeper into violence, the roots of division, to loss of identity, become clearer. Focusing on the Israel/Palestine conflict, it is noticeable that this conflict expresses best the conflicts of all-time and all-place. The conflict reaches back at least 4000 years and is best expressed in the ancient biblical account of the story of the Patriarch, Abraham. This rather historical account has many sources of division resulting in loss of identity that Post #128 began to reveal.

Bringing us up to date....the Egyptian, slave, Hagar was sent in to Abraham to conceive and bear a son that would inherit, according to tribal laws, the governance of the tribes that were on a quest to establish themselves in a new land promised to them and their descendants by their tribal God, Yahweh. Hagar did indeed conceive and did provide a son to Abraham. As the first-born son, according to tribal law, Ishmael became Abraham's heir. He became the crown-prince, so to speak. You would think that this would end all problems but they were really only beginning. First of all, there was the subjection of women to less than human status; to child bearing for wives and cattle status for slaves and the unmarried. How did these women, in reality, feel and consequently act and view themselves? What of identity? To whom did they belong? If people are treated like animals do they lose their self-value? Do they lose their identity? They sure do! So much so that to this day women are unaware of how little human identity they have, and still in so many ways view themselves as owned and possessed by men in their lives. Today's world is very much a patriarchal society. Women do not realize how their existence is that of a possession, unable to think and cope in and with a male dominated world. How does it feel to be possessed? How did Sarah, Abraham's legal wife feel because she did not produce a son? She must have felt that she had no value. How did she feel to send her slave into Abraham, her husband to perform a very intimate act through which Sarah would only be a proxy mother to any children born to her slave? How would women feel about this? What if Sarah thought that Hagar was in Abe's tent a little to often and a little too long? Now these are real women's concerns that are never addressed here in the biblical account but are at the bottom of today's Middle East conflict. Soon things came to a head....After some time......guess what??.....Sarah conceived in her old age and gave birth to a healthy son and named him Isaac. What joy she had in her baby son and of course wanted the best for him. The best for him, of course, was the inheritance of the tribes. After all, she felt herself to be Abraham's Real wife! Can one imagine her feelings of triumph and her returned assumed identity of being Abraham's wife--a 'real' woman? But something stood in the way....Hagar's son, Ismael. Ismael was being brought up as a prince. Now what?????

By now according to the story, Hagar was also Abraham's wife and her son was the first born son of Abraham. Sarah is said to have had it 'in' for Hagar and the whole thing becomes an ugly mess. How did Ishmael feel about being demoted to a slave of Baby Isaac? Hagar was scorned by Sarah and the other women. It turns out that Hagar and Ishmael are finally banished into the wilderness. In a sense, left to die. Hagar was Egyptian and somehow managed.... maybe she was picked up by a caravan headed back to Egypt. It seems, according to the story, that she and Ishmael survived.

What feelings and emotions resulted and magnified to this day? Ishmael is said to have become the Father of the Muslim people as Isaac is said to be the Father of the nation of Israel. Looking at the ancient story, who is the true heir of Abraham? Who has the true identity? Did the same God promise the same thing to two nations? And all the centuries of division, loss of identity and violence!!!!!!

Post #128 "Loss of Identity to Violence"

At the root of violence in the world is the loss of identity. But how can identity be attained when identity is confused with an assumed identity? Identity is confused with an assumed identity when desire 'to be' overtakes the reality of being 'what is'. Where is the reality of  'what is' when there lies deep within humanity the desire to become God. Where is true identity when the desire to become God is behind all choices and determinations and is the very  basis of human thought, dreams, and aspirations? Where is reality when the desire to become God establishes life cycles, patterns, customs, alliances, and the very structure of created life? Where is true identity when the desire to become God determines human behavior? This desire to become is rooted in consciousness and unconsciousness and in the collective consciousness and collective unconsciousness. Where is truth when every phase, every level, every step, is a piece of the unfolding of the movement to become God, as is every stage of evolution? Where is true identity when the desire to become God is the force of, the actuality for, and the perpetual search for Perfection? But what is Perfection anyway but being God? Where is truth anyway in desiring to become God? After all............Perfection and God are One.

What of the identity of God when the desire of humanity is to become God? Is God's identity affected by humanity's desire to change places? Does God retain God's identity or does humanity's desire determine God's identity? Does God not become lost in this goal of humanity's? Does God's identity not become confused in the eye of those desiring with that of the actual desire? After all, does anyone really believe that they could become God????????????And if they cannot become God does this not change God's identity to humanity's idea of God's identity with humanity's choices and determinations until God and humanity do, indeed, become One?

Let's move for a while from here to the somewhat historical, biblical accounting of the roots of the ancient Israel/Palestine conflict. The conflict is really all about the loss of identity, division, and violence. The patriarch, Abraham, in the book of Genesis sets out to possess the land that his God has given him. This land of 'Milk and Honey' is the site of today's  Israel/Palestine. The story of Abraham lies at the root of the religious cultures of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity and the conflict still raging to this very moment in history. Throughout history many religions have developed and are based on these ancient beliefs. The gist of the Abraham story is that as patriarch of a huge, migratory, nomadic people, Abraham needed an heir. His wife had not born him a son and was now into her old age. An Egyptian slave was given to Abraham, he slept with her and upon the birth of a first-born heir/son was wedded to Abraham. The story neglects the fact that this particular nomadic culture permitted a man to have multiple wives. Now here we already have a story of division and the loss of identity and, if not the physical expression for violence, at least the desire. Let's begin with the women. The story shows that a wife's value was no more than that of a brooding mare. Wives had no value outside of childbearing. Secondly, the only child of value was a son. Women, throughout history, have been deprived of a human identity. If this isn't division according to power and vulnerability!......This is certainly a story of loss of identity in many facets such as marriage and slavery. These females had no identity other than that of the male that owned them. And what of the Egyptian slave? What Egyptian would ever have been humiliated into slavery to Canaanites? Did these women feel humiliated? Did they know who they were? Were they divided from having a true human identity? Were they angry and under other circumstances, freedom from like gender slavery, capable of violence? You bet they were! They had total loss of identity from loss of human identity to a personal identity, they had no real value as a human being, as a person of feeling, integrity, and intelligence. Their loss of identity, their separateness from intelligent humanity, their suppressed violence, is at the root of the story of loss of identity, division, and violence that mark Israel/Palestine today.

(This post will be continued at Post #129.)
BB

Post #127 "The Nature of Violence"

Pulling it all together, then, violence is the result of division. Division is separation that births  alienation. Alienation brings loss of identity which leads to rejection, frustration, and anger. Here is the perfect formula for violence. We have looked at the primary division of creation from Reality, of the creation of creation from the division of atoms. We have looked at division as the make-up of creation from Time to Place to Substance. Truth is the only counter we have for the non-reality of our existence. As we stand at the foot of the mountain of the lies and debris of our history, we see that Truth is much clearer and in more evidence the further down we dig. Truth is at bedrock. We need to find the roots. We need to do all we can to get a clearer picture of who we are, that from here we can determine our purpose. Way down at bedrock there is wilderness of ancient history. There we see a few people, and many trees; nature, the likes of which we have never seen nor anticipated. This view would, in comparison make our world an ugly place of a few scraggly scrub trees, weeds, smog, blight , and millions of people living on a surface of cement. What happened? Whatever caused that person or those people to place the first stone on top of another stone, mortar it in place and begin to erect, out there in the wilderness, the first wall. Here is where we must go to search for answers for this is where it began. Whatever happened there has, throughout history, been multiplied over and over again.
What did that first wall symbolize? It stood for, and stands for, division. Someone wanted to be separate from the others. Others soon joined, and the wall became walls and walls became more walls, until a settlement grew out there in the wilderness. The settlement grew and grew from a wall to many walls and soon there was a city. And more cities. But where are the cities? All one can see now is a large mound, the size of a small mountain covered with silt and scrub growth. Where are those cities? They were destroyed. The cities, as were the settlements, were destroyed. There was violence, back then, as there is now, and then..... total destruction, over and over again.

There is a city in the wilderness of Judea. It is called Jerusalem. Jerusalem is symbolic of the world and all its cultures. Jerusalem tells the story of the history of humankind. It is the prime symbol of division that goes from the building of the first wall in history to the destruction and bombing of the many walls of the old city. Jerusalem is Muslim. Jerusalem is Jewish. Jerusalem is Christian. Jerusalem is claimed by the three great world religions. All three religions grew from a common root. All three come from a common bloodline, all moving under the direction and guidance a common God. All three religions were and are instructed by their God to seek out and destroy all who do not support their point of view or stand in their way. An interesting way to control......just blame it all on your God!

After all the violence of destruction, there remains the loss of identity and this is the real violence. This violence here in Jerusalem of Israel/Palestine is not the most devastating effect. The most devastating effect is the loss of identity, for everyone. Not just everyone in the area, but also in the world that Jerusalem stands for. This is violence within a bloodline. This is violence against those who are family. In fact, the fighting began over the loss of identity and goes back in history at least 4,000 years. It goes back to Abraham of the Book of Genesis and the promises made to him by his God. But other people heard promises made by their God that promised them the same identity as promised to Abraham, and people became violent and more violent. Destrucion resulted until nothing remains in this land of wilderness against civilization but a huge mound of destroyed settlements and cities under silt and scrub growth. All still searching to know who they really are.

(The next post will further discuss the Israel/Palestine situation; its violence and loss of identity)
BB

Post #126 "Civilized Violence"

We stand at the gate of the Garden. The first sense is a sense of loss for the division of creation has already been at work. Humanity has divided...male and female they have divided. But even before that, creation separated from Reality, creation divided from Reality. Through creation's sin against itself, there was and is a sense of dividing and separating even and especially, from oneself. We divide ourselves into bits and pieces. Frustration. Panic. And then the urge to destroy, for a horrible mistake has been made. A horrible choice has been made and the results are not at all what was hoped for and longed for. That God that we desired to become is out of reach, terribly out of reach, like behind walls, large impenetrable walls, walls that we ourselves created. Intelligence feels a need for vengeance. Humanity feels a need for vengeance. We feel a need for vengeance, for violent vengeance. But on who do we act out our frustrations? A victim is needed. Someone who will stand in our place and accept whatever abuse we need to bestow in order to expiate our guilt, as we can not express our hatred on ourselves. Division creates victims. A victim is a victim because of its vulnerability. The vulnerable become victims. The vulnerable become food for the ravenous appetites of the powerful. Division is all about vulnerability and power. The desire to become God is all a desire for power. Why settle for less power when the ultimate power, that ultimate power of God, is within a choice?

So division creates the need for power. Power is energy. There is energy in all matter in creation and certainly in humanity. What we feel we lack, we can take from someone else. But first we must create vulnerability. There is no power without weakness. So who is powerful and who is victim? Everything in creation has a strong side and a weak side, and if there is not a weak side, a weak side will be readily created. Lets begin with intelligence. Intelligence created humanity from the matter of creation. Then, to establish power and weakness, humanity divided into male and female, and into race, color, religion political systems, ad nauseum. Of course, all this division requires violence. The very act of creation was violence at its ultimate.

The divisions of creation are innumerable as creation is division....the creation of non-reality. Ours is a history of victimization, hence violence. Violence creates the perpetrator and violence creates the victim. Violence began creation. Violence will end creation. As atoms, in the process of creation, break down into smaller and smaller subatomic particles, creation, including humanity, breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of itself. As atoms lose all definition until they finally just pass away, so too the weak lose all definition , and also, just pass away.

There is nothing inherently strong in needing to take strength from others. This need to drain the weak shows that the so-called powerful are weak themselves and are unable to admit that they have no knowledge of Reality. When the strength from the weak and the vulnerable has been depleted, the powerful will always create more vulnerability to feed upon until only one remains...the most powerful. The God of Creation/the Collective  Consciousness and Unconsciousness will then recall Reality and begin to dream. Desire will bring about Choice to become that which image is not and the abyss will begin to frenetically stir again into a great rage. Energy. Heat. Water.....the primordial waters of Nothingness.......Future creating Past.   

Post #125 "Violence to Death"

Loss leads to violence and ultimately to death. This theme runs through our stories, our religion, our nursery rhymes, our lore. We are people of violence. We are people of death. Through our violence we create our death. We can't help it. It is who we are. (If this all seems depressing, this writing is a search for Truth. It is not a self-help). We influence the great void, the abyss of precreation. Creation does not eradicate the void. The void is ever present. Intelligence tried escaping the void through creation. This did not work and caused increased agitation in the abyss. The void is from inside out and outside in and constantly pulls creation into itself. Science would  call the agitation, energy, especially black energy. The reverse is also true. Intelligence also influences the void. If Intelligence experiences frustration and violence, the void also reacts as such. The vibrations of violence and death are part of creation, so creation influences and is influenced. Through vibration and energy, all the tremors of all-times, of violence, are detectable in nature and in humanity. Here, Time becomes non-existent as Time is nebulous. It is possible to feel and experience the effects of occurrences and disturbances from any time in history. Depression and anxiety from another time in history can cause anxiety and depression in people today. Whether we are aware of it or not, a war in another part of the world can cause us sleeplessness and anxiety. These same energies often permeate Time and allow a glimpse into the past or future, if only for an instance..... like that glimpse of someone from out of the past in the corner of your eye, or the smell of flowers in dead winter or the unexpected whiff of a cigar or a special brand of perfume from long-gone memories.....the past and future are always with us. Time is now.

Violence is always with us. It is in all our stories...... We dream. We desire. We choose. Our choice is ultimately to become God. (See post #19). We strive to be perfect as God is perfect. We fail. Now, as Lucifer and Adam, we must leave the presence of God. It's our choice. We can and do however, recreate God. The God we create is the God of Creation, but this God is not the Reality. The Reality has been blocked by the walls of our creation. We have created only the facsimile. We failed. We fail. And we know we fail. We are frustrated! We stir the energy of our timeless world and the energy of pre-creation. We stir the energy of our present world and the energy of the void of pre-existence. It;s only a matter of Time and as we know, Time is nebulous and really doesn't exist at all.

Violence! Loss! Loss of name, place, status, identity, and substance. Lucifer, Adam and ourselves no longer exist in Reality. Lucifer is no longer God's right-hand angel in heaven, and Adam and Eve no longer walk and talk with God in a Garden. Agitation. Frenetic stirring. Heat. Water. The release of atoms. Atoms smashing, colliding, dividing. Time vibrates...its first pulse. Matter vibrates into shapes, like earth, planets, universes. Intelligence roots in humanity. Humanity divides down...male and female. Humanity. No name. No place. No status. No identity. And no substance. The choice is still ours.......Reality or Non-reality?