Originally published at SacredRiver.org. You can comment here or there.

Religious Naturalism is a positive worldview that finds wonder in a universe without any need for the supernatural. Nature is astounding and life is precious. What more is needed?

Nature is astounding exactly because it is self-sufficient; a creator god or supernatural manager takes away from the majesty of nature. And since consciousness almost certainly ends with brain death, the short time we have here makes life valuable beyond measure. It is indescribably unjust and tragic for any person to experience their time in poverty, ignorance, or misery. This calls us to improve our condition, to challenge ourselves and to help make a world where every person in every culture can thrive.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/meridjet/~3/kWoTMrd33f4/

http://spiritcompanion.com/?p=2021

Occasionally, things in my life happen twice. It’s an anomaly I’m still trying to figure out. It first happened in the 1980s when a favorite actor, Will Sampson, died of a heart attack. Then about five years later, he died again of the same cause. No one remembered the first death but me. I’ve seen threads online in the past couple of years about remembered deaths that happened again later — the only anomaly I’ve ever been able to get any kind of validation for. Other things, not so much.

A year or so back, in my other-reality (no idea where this might be, but), Hulk Hogan died. I read about it, and about Cyndi Lauper and her history with him, which I witnessed back when she was big and doing music videos with him. But last night, I saw an ad on TNT about how he was going to be on some live wrestling show this week sometime, making a guest appearance or a comeback or something. And so, he’s not dead yet. Unfortunately, I can’t remember how he died — I just remember how his show with his family would be carrying on without him, etc. I don’t even know if it’s still on, as I have never watched it.

So I wanted to document his non-death, since it’s the first opportunity I’ve had to document a “memory” like this before it actually happened again. I’ll be intrigued to see when he actually dies.

Remind me later to tell you the other weird anomalies in reality that I’ve seen. I’ve become much more watchful for things like that now. It makes me wonder, a lot.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/meridjet/~3/HfEx2Q72rxU/

http://spiritcompanion.com/?p=2016

I saw this mini survey on LJ, and figured I’d fill it out for those just arriving (as there are a few wandering over from Facebook). Feel free to skip if you already know me.

1. Name, age, location.

My name is already known to anyone coming to see me, but here it is anyway. My professional name is Sheta Kaey, and that is the name I go by online and in many other situations. My original name is Julie Adams. My current last name is irrelevant, and I never liked it anyway. I am 49 years old, and I grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, more or less. I currently live in Houston, Texas.

2. Picture of you, if possible.

You can find those in the bottom of the sidebar (old pic, and rendered as a self-portrait) and here (must be logged in to view).

3. Relationship Status

As they say everywhere, “It’s complicated.” I’m divorced, and in a relationship with a dead guy/spirit who is the primary topic of this blog. My marriage lasted four years, from 1988 until 1992. I was married four years and four days, as a matter of fact. It was a mistake to ever get married, and I was manic when I did it. I’d known the guy two months, he was 8 years younger than I was, and it was pure impulse based on mild psychosis, if you want the truth of it. Mania, untreated, tends to make one think grandiose things which can spiral into pure insanity. I was so very out of it that trying to remember that year is a blur of events that I can’t put into chronological order. It’s not pleasant to think about, either. I can only be grateful that no one found me wandering into a stranger’s house talking about aliens, like they did Anne Heche. Anyway.

My current relationship is much more healthy, though that may sound amusing. I don’t have to cook or clean up after him, and we are very close. Bad part is that I can’t get a decent hug. I can, however, connect on levels that most people cannot — empathic, emotional, spiritual — without the need for words or the struggle to be understood. I’m grateful for that. Plus I still get to be in charge of my own life, my free time, and my schedule in general. I’m not the easiest person to live with, so this is a good thing. The spirit’s name is Meridjet, for those just tuning in.

4. Are you in school?

Not in any formal way. I love to learn, though.

5. Do you have a job?

Technically, I’m disabled due to the bipolar disorder and panic disorder, but I make a few bucks fixing other people’s computers, and a few bucks editing esoteric nonfiction for a small publisher based in the United Kingdom (Immanion Press). I also manage and edit a magazine (online) called Rending the Veil, also esoteric. It comes out eight times a year. I make nothing at this, yet, but we have hopes for the future. Many good people involved; you should check it out.

6. If yes, what do you do?

Er, see above. Also, no idea what question 7 was meant to be. It was missing.

8. What type of music/movies/TV do you like?

I am a shameless fan of action movies, though I really don’t like it when they’re completely stupid. I like to check my cares at the door when I see a film, because I have a tendency to overthink things as it is. So action movies give me that escape. I tend to shy away from drama (I get very emotional if there’s realistic violence or senseless killing in the context of a realistic story). I also tend to feel that I don’t like comedies, though most of the time if you make me watch them, I like them fine. They’re just rarely my first choice. Similarly, I avoid romantic “comedies,” but like them if I watch them, whether they be very touching or engaging for other reasons (such as in Kate and Leopold, which no one can see as realistic). I don’t like slapstick at all, so don’t invite me to your 3 Stooges marathon.

Television tends to see me chasing after the Buffy and the X-Files type stuff, though I was without cable for a while and so have not yet seen Fringe. I liked Supernatural (is that still on?), and I am really peeved I’ve missed two seasons of True Blood. I’m playing catch up, from season one, of Battlestar Galactica. I also enjoy detective shows. I hesitate to start watching anything regularly, though, because I see myself as a curse — if I start watching things, they tend to get canceled. So I’ve missed a lot.

Music, well. . . I like alternative, but as I mentioned in a recent post, I can’t seem to absorb anymore who does what, and so I just listen to whatever comes on the alternative stations. I don’t like country, rap, or opera. I guess I’m fairly narrow minded on music. I don’t have time to worry about it. Coming from an ex-musicphile, this is saying something.

9. What are some of your hobbies?

Thinking too much. Doing a variety of artistic projects, from multi-media to painting to Photoshop to beading jewelry. Writing. Working too much on Rending the Veil. Blogging. Watching movies — lots of movies. Thinking too much. And occasionally, feeling too much.

This introduction is short, thankfully. I have things to do. Bye!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/meridjet/~3/WDeSBlHWz1g/

http://spiritcompanion.com/?p=2012

I will probably cry during the writing of this post. Possibly more than once. I’m just saying. Sunday when I came out of the theater as everyone else visited the restrooms, I started crying (again), hyperventilating a little and fighting to regain control of myself as people passed me entering and leaving the theater. This theater held 30 individual screens, so we’re talking a lot of people.

This post may contain spoilers. I’ll do my best to warn you in advance.

The thing that struck me most about the movie was the sense of found belonging. Found home. Brief plot synopsis here, and nothing that’s not in the trailer: A U.S. Marine who lost the use of his legs in some war or other is asked to volunteer (replacing his recently-deceased brother) into a special project on a planet called Pandora. The project is not strictly military — it’s purely a cash-driven project that is using the military as protection against an alien planet populated by a number of very hostile species. As the commander puts it, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” This may well be the most understated use of that quote I’ve ever seen.

The project’s main objective is to mine for an ore called, amusingly, Unobtanium. There are three distinct arms of this project crew: the corporate, whose goal is to get to the richest deposit of this incredibly valuable ore; the military strong-arm; and the scientific, whose assignment is to negotiate with the native population to get them to move from their homes (situated directly on top of the richest deposit, naturally). Human beings are half the size of the native populace, and cannot breathe the air, so the scientists have developed “avatars,” human/native hybrid-clones that are inhabited by sleeping volunteers. Jake Sully, our wheelchair-bound protagonist, is one of these volunteers. (End synopsis.)

We saw the movie in 3-D, and I strongly urge you to see it in 3-D as well, because otherwise it just won’t have the same effect. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. While many of the plot points are predictable enough, the execution is astoundingly unique. The cinematography is profoundly beautiful. There are elements to this planet that are deeply moving, connections between the natives and the planet itself that even the most spiritual of our aborigines couldn’t touch in their dreams. It’s what spiritual people long for, a belonging and a bond that each of us, as distinctly individual people with no practical way to transcend that, wishes we could touch. It will move you and, ultimately, leave you yearning deeply for expression.

I’ve had my share of interactions with the subtle levels of reality, with the astral, with spirits, with spiritual concepts that seek to satisfy my need to find “home.” This movie expressed those needs so well that I may never recover. Perhaps that sounds dramatic. But what it didn’t do was show me the way to fulfill them. If this planet and project existed and this movie were, for instance, shown to people as a way to inspire them to volunteer, the ranks of those volunteers would swell to such proportions that the project would be overrun with people trying to get in. I want so much to tell you how the natives accomplish the bonds I wrote of above, but that would be a spoiler, and I refuse to provide in words what only the movie, in context, can show. You must see this movie. Anyone who leaves this movie with a cynical attitude is not a human being. Anyone who can deny that they were moved is, above all, someone I couldn’t dream of relating to (and wouldn’t want to). (I predict this movie will launch several million soulbonds.)

It’s not even the fact that the military is predictably untouched in the film, referring to the natives as “savages,” even as our own ancestors did, and as no doubt our current military does in the Middle East. The military in this film simply hold a mirror up for us, asking us if we are human or if we’re too savage to have hearts. Because so many of us, calling “savage” anything we don’t understand and which won’t bow down to our requirements to rape and pillage the natural resources — we are the real savages. This is not a new concept. We’ve seen it in everything from “Lassie” to E.T. But never before has it been so transcendent in its execution. Never before have we had a glimpse of something so profoundly greater than ourselves that we have grieved our own humanity. Or, at least, I do.

I was reminded, over and over again and in so many unique ways, how much I need what I can’t have, and how beautiful it really is, or can be. My connection with Meridjet has led me to bliss, to agony, to depths of feeling and experience that are gifts of the highest order. And yet, in spite of the profundity of that connection, I still yearn. I think perhaps this is why so many people see the ultimate human “destination” as reunion with the Source, as dissolution with a great sea of All that is God (or one concept of God). I have never felt the pull to that dissolution, and I still don’t. Because the very nature of a bond is transitory, fleeting — without your individuality and the individuality of the other to whom you are bonding, there is no bond, there is only a gray wash of eternity without change. If we don’t feel the yearning, the bond is meaningless. If we don’t lose that bond, however briefly, it fails to inspire. As Kahlil Gibran wrote in one of my all time favorite quotes, “The deeper that sorrow carves into you, the more joy you can contain.” The more we own our pain, the more we accept that cutting, the larger the void that joy may pour into, filling us and bringing us bliss.

Pandora is the perfect expression of that bliss, that union with God — but even on Pandora, there are degrees of separation, there is pain, there is bliss. There is no perfect union that can last forever, because anything experienced without color or change eventually numbs us to its effect. Pandora is nothing if not colorful, vast, amazing in detail, uncertain, changing, horrifying, and wonderful. And Avatar brings to life — incredible life — expressions of those colors that I’ve never conceived of. If one could regret the realization of perfect union the way that one can regret a love relationship that led to betrayal, I might regret seeing this film. But I don’t think it’s possible to regret understanding. I know I certainly don’t.

On Friday I saw "Fahrenheit 451," thanks to Turner Classic Movies. I hadn't seen it before, or even read the book, although I've read other Bradbury with similar themes. It's about a future world in which all books are banned, and the main character is a "fireman," whose job it is to collect and burn all remaining books. He starts reading the books he burns, and is slowly introduced to the underground of people preserving ideas in defiance of the state. He finally has to flee to the "Book People," a sort of commune of folks, each of whom has memorized a single book against the day when the State falls and they can write them down again. They introduce themselves to him by saying "Hello, I'm Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin" or "Hello, I'm Les Miserables by Victor Hugo."

So, let me stop right here and say that when people ask what my favorite book is, I never have an answer. I sort of like Alex Trebek's statement that it's "whatever I'm reading at the moment." I can't really pick a favorite book, it implies too profound of a judgment on the quality and importance of a given work.

But I knew instantly what book I'd choose if I were one of the "Book People." I would walk up to you and say "Hello, I'm the Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson."

What would your book be?