Ask G.Gioia & links
streams March 24th, 2008
We Come to You.
- What is Alcohol Detox
- Alcohol Detox And More. Alcohol Detox Help And Treatment.
- Alcoholism.HealthProfessor.com
- Detox
- How To Cleanse - Detoxify The Whole Body. It all Starts in the Colon.
- www.puristat.com
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Let me remind you who you really are: You are one of the chosen ones. You’re a luminous being. A primordial miracle. A resplendent avatar. You are a deity in disguise–not a Buddha or a Christ, but of the same lineage and made from the same mojo.
I want to be sure you get what I’m saying. You’re an immortal messiah. You have been around since the beginning of time and will be here after the end. Every day and in every way, you’re getting better at playing the mysterious master game we all dreamed up together before the Big Bang bloomed.
Let me put it another way. You’re a rebel creator longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. You are a dissident bodhisattva joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.
It’s time to remember. You are a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs that has temporarily taken on the form of a human being, agreeing to endure amnesia about your true origins. And why did you do that? Because it was the best way to forge the exquisitely unique and robust identity that would make you such an elemental force in our 14-billion-year campaign to bring heaven all the way down to earth.
You and I are freedom fighters scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve all of our fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with more blessings than they know what to do with.
*
Lately, I must admit, our work has seemed almost comically impossible. Many of our brothers and sisters believe that everything is upside-down and inside-out. Is war really peace? Is slavery really freedom? Is ignorance strength? How did it all get so insane?
Even many of the smartest among us seem to have lost their vision. Cynicism has become a supreme sign of intelligence. Compulsive skepticism masquerades as perceptiveness. Mean-spirited irony is chic. Beautiful truths are suspect and ugly truths are popular.
At this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game, it ain’t easy to carry out our mission. We’ve got to be both wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life. We?ve got to cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we resist the temptation to swallow thousands of delusions that have been carefully crafted and seductively packaged by those among us who bravely volunteered to play the role of deceivers.
We have to learn how to stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the cockeyed mass hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as reality.
Maybe most importantly, we have to be ferociously and single-mindedly dedicated to the cause of beauty and truth and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free. We have to be both disciplined and rowdy.
That’s especially thorny because of the fact that a genocide of the imagination is raging world-wide. It threatens to render our imaginations numb and inert and passive and tame.
I know you know what I mean.
Aren’t you psychically assaulted by dangerous images every day? Don’t the media relentlessly blast you with their trendy doom and gloom fixation, barraging you with messages about how bad life is? Doesn’t the entertainment industry force-feed you insipidly paranoid scenarios in the same way a French foie gras farmer crams eight pounds of corn down the gullet of his prize goose every day?
Aren’t your eyes and ears constantly scalded by blistering harangues to buy stuff you don’t really need? Isn’t the sacred temple of your imagination pounded ruthlessly by smart bombs whipped up by evil advertising geniuses in their Madison Avenue laboratories? Hasn’t your ability to envision the astounding intricacy and richness of the web of life gotten hijacked and hooked on decadent fantasies about new possessions that would allegedly make you happier?
Your imagination is supposed to be the engine of your destiny. It is the wizard’s wand you can use to design your future. Your imagination is your power to create mental pictures of things that don?t exist yet and that you want to bring into being. Every human creation on this earth has begun as a vision in someone’s imagination.
Your imagination is also your very own all-purpose joy stick, your snakeskin bag of magic tricks. It’s your remote-control channel-changer, and the only reliable rearranger of anything anywhere anytime. It’s your X-Factor, your wild card, your wicked funny instigator, your Goddess-sanctioned trouble-maker — your swarming, terraforming, always-morning brainstormer.
Love desperately needs your imagination. As psychologist James Hillman says, “For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, and boredom. Intimacy fails not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.”
Your imagination is the single most important tool you have in your daily fight to be free. It is the source of every act of liberation you will ever need to pull off.
But how can your imagination flourish–how can it dream up scenarios that energize you to create your own version of heaven on earth–if you are forever deluged by dazzling psychic toxins that sting and sap and wound your lust for life?
Too many of our brothers and sisters have fallen victim. Their swarming terraforming always-morning brainstormers have been cruelly fooled into acting as if their deepest desires are impossible lies. As a result they live incoherent lives corroded by chronic anxiety.
I for one am no longer willing to tolerate the epidemic obsession with big bad nasty things and flashy trite empty-hearted things. I say it’s time for us to re-consecrate and regenerate and lubricate and liberate and take back our imaginations. Here are my demands.
DEMAND #1: I demand that Amnesty International launch a crusade against a form of terrorism I call the genocide of the imagination.
DEMAND #2: I demand that you periodically go on a media fast. For a week at a time, once a season, avoid all TV, movies, novels, yalk shows, newspapers, magazines, and Internet.
DEMAND #3: I demand that you learn to tell the difference between your own thoughts and those of the celebrities who have demonically possessed you.
DEMAND #4: I demand that People magazine do a feature story on “The World’s Fifty Sexiest Perpetrators of Beauty, Truth, and Rowdy Bliss.”
DEMAND #5: I demand that you wear underpants on your head and dance naked in slow motion whenever you watch movies on TV about tormented geniuses who create great art but treat everyone in their lives like crap.
DEMAND #6: I demand that you refuse to be entertained and entranced by bad news–by stories whose plots are driven by violence, abuse, terrorism, bigotry, lawsuits, greed, crashes, alcoholism, disease, and torture.
DEMAND #7: I demand that you seek out and create stories that make you feel that the universe is friendly and life is on your side. You could hunt down stories about how, for example, rising rates of intermarriage are helping to dissipate ethnic and religious strife worldwide; how the violent crime rate in America has been steadily declining for 30 years; how death rates from cancer are shrinking; the birth rate among teenage mothers is the lowest it’s been in six decades; acreage devoted to organic farming is increasing rapidly; the number of refugees and weapons sales all over the world are way down from the level they were 15 years ago, and how the actual bare naked truth is that levels of literacy and education and political freedom and peace and wealth are steadily growing all over the world.
DEMAND #8: When you’re too well-entertained to move, screaming is good exercise. Which is why I demand that you scream now and then whenever you’re soaking up slick crap generated by the imaginations of people who are devoted to money, power, and ego instead of love, reverence, and play.
*
There is another force that fuels the war against the imagination–and that’s fundamentalism.
The fundamentalist takes everything way too seriously and way too personally and way too literally. He divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and those who don?t. There is only one right way to interpret the world, and a million wrong ways. The fundamentalist not only enslaves his own imagination to his belief system, he wants to enslave our imaginations too. The liberated imagination, God forbid, is taboo.
Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some magic you don’t fully understand, you’re still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you?ve been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that’s just right for your body?s needs, as it was before you fell asleep.You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to perfect. The interesting gift of these vivid hues comes to you courtesy of an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually detonates nuclear reactions in order to convert its body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.
Did you know that the sun is located at the precise distance from you to be of perfect service? If it were any closer, you’d fry, and if it were any further away, you’d freeze. Here’s another one of the sun’s benedictions: It appears to rise over the eastern horizon right on schedule every day, as it has since long before you were born.
Do you remember when you were born, by the way? It was a difficult miracle that involved many people who worked hard on your behalf. No less miraculous is the fact that you have continued to grow since then, with millions of new cells being born inside you to replace the old ones that die. All of this happens whether or not you ever think about it.
On this day, like almost every other, you have awoken inside a temperature-controlled shelter. You have a home! Your bed and pillow are soft and you?’re covered by comfortable blankets. The electricity is turned on, as usual. Somehow, in ways you’re barely aware of, a massive power plant at an unknown distance from your home is transforming fuel into currents of electricity that reach you through mostly hidden conduits in the exact amounts you need, and all you have to do to control the flow is flick small switches with your fingers.
You can walk! Your legs work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the way down to replenish the energy of the muscles in your feet and calves and thighs, and when the blood is depleted it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This blessing recurs over and over again without stopping every hour of your life.
Your home is perhaps not a million-dollar palace, but it’s sturdy and gigantic compared to the typical domicile in every culture that has preceded you. The floors aren’t crumbling, and the walls and ceilings are holding up well, too. Doors open and close without trouble, and so do the windows. What skillful geniuses built this sanctuary for you? How and where did they learn their craft?
In your bathroom, the toilet is functioning perfectly, as are several other convenient devices. You have at your disposal soaps, creams, razors, clippers, tooth-cleaning accessories: a host of products that enhance your hygiene and appearance. You trust that unidentified scientists somewhere tested them to be sure they’re safe for you to use.
Amazingly, the water you need so much of comes out of your faucets in an even flow, with the volume you want, and either cold or hot as you desire. It’s pure and clean; you’re confident no parasites are lurking in it. There is someone somewhere making sure these boons will continue to arrive for you without interruption for as long as you require them.
Look at your hands. They’re astounding creations that allow you to carry out hundreds of tasks with great force and intricate grace. They relish the pleasure and privilege of touching thousands of different textures, and they,re beautiful.
In your closet are many clothes you like to wear. Who gathered the materials to make the fabrics they’re made of? Who imbued them with colors, and how did they do it? Who sewed them for you?
In your kitchen, appetizing food in secure packaging is waiting for you. Many people you’ve never met worked hard to grow it, process it, and get it to the store where you bought it. The bounty of tasty nourishment you get to choose from is unprecedented in the history of the world.
Your many appliances are working flawlessly. Despite the fact that they feed on electricity, which could kill you instantly if you touched it directly, you feel no fear that you’re in danger. Why? Your faith in the people who invented, designed, and produced these machines is impressive.
It’s as if there’s a benevolent conspiracy of unknown people that is tirelessly creating hundreds of useful things you like and need.
There’s more. Gravity is working exactly the way it always has, neither pulling on you with too much or too little force. How did that marvel ever come to be? By some prodigious, long-running accident? It doesn’t really matter, since it will continue to function with astounding efficiency whether or not you understand it.
Meanwhile, a trillion other elements of nature’s miraculous design are expressing themselves perfectly. Plants are growing, rivers are flowing, clouds are drifting, winds are blowing, animals are reproducing. The weather is an interesting blend of elements you’ve never before experienced in quite this combination. Though you may take it for granted, you relish the ever-shifting sensations of light and temperature as they interact with your body.
Theres more. You can smell odors and hear sounds and taste tastes, many of which are quite pleasing. You can think! You’re in possession of the extraordinary gift of self-awareness. You can feel feelings! Do you realize how improbably stupendous it is for you to have been blessed with that mysterious capacity? And get this: You can visualize an inexhaustible array of images, some of which represent things that don’t actually exist.
By some improbable series of coincidences or long-term divine plan, language has come into existence. Millions of people have collaborated for many centuries to cultivate a system for communication that you understand well. Speaking and reading give you great
*from, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia, by Rob Brezney
i really enjoy the chat