Thinking way too much lately.

[kjpepper]

You would not believe the sort of headache caused by sobbing uncontrollably on and off for... lessee... five and a half hours? Shit. That's the sort of thing that would be classified as a nervous breakdown at Smith and get you carted off to Health Services.

I'm okay now. I feel a little hung over, but I'm a little less emotionally overwrought. Sleep == win.

Yeah, it's fucked up. I haven't really had to withdraw and deal with shit in my own head for years. Some of the little monsters I've had in there have grown up and gone a bit feral to say the least. It sorta reminds me of the giant blind mutant koi that lived in the Dead Mall fountain back when it was still the Dead Mall and not the big box hell it is currently. I seriously doubt anyone was feeding those things... in fact I'm pretty sure they subsisted on human souls and the methane fumes that sit over that particular region of Hadley.

Somehow in the crying all over both morlock and sundart and reenacting mental Jurassic Park, I had a long interesting thought about religion, or more my own twisted sense of spirituality...

First of all, I don't really believe in God per se. I explained this really well in sydneycat's journal a few weeks back... eh, she doesn't post a lot anymore lemme see if I can find the comment... ah.

I don't really believe in "God" so much as a great "to whom it may concern" Reason being is that I believe that all living things have what amounts to a soul or life essence, which are fed by energy... thing is, I don't believe that souls are destroyed upon death, hence my fairly nebulous belief in reincrnation, ghosts, other planes of existance, and yeah, gods. By my own sorta weird logic you can think of a god as a soul gone vampiric, as while it's no longer corporate, it's still demands energy from whatever is "worshipping" it.

As for why people in general believe in God? I think it has much to do with the fact that people usually like to think that there is some sort of authority figure above them to provide rules and structure for their lives and occasionally someone else to pin the blame on when things go fuckity. It also makes existence less lonely, because at the fundamental core of things, we're all alone, with our own perspectives and experience that we can't share with anyone else. It sometimes helps to feel like someone/thing's always along for the ride.

Hmm. Note to self - spellcheck is my friend. Jesus.

Anyway. That about hit the nail on the head. I have the sense that something is out there, though I don't necessarily think it created the universe or anything. I think the something out there is like being connected to the Internet and what I'm sensing is how everything is connected, but no one really has the modems to parse the incoming data into anything intelligible so we all put our own spin on it, either through things like Scripture, or ritual, or Reiki or praying or what have you. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, honestly... where you get problems is when people start thinking that they and only they have the all powerful Modem of Righteousness and you get people blowing up things and slaughtering people in the name of something that might be a misinterpreted packet. Neither here or there. One reason I consider myself Pagan instead of merely agnostic is 1) I like the whole wheel of the year tradition/ritual cycle, but more 2) I'm a big proponent of all paths being valid, since there's no way of proving that any one of them, even the ones that say there's no modem and no signal, are correct.

That wasn't my big think on the subject, though, that was more background than anything else. My big think is more along the lines of religion being the opiate of the masses, except on a more micro scale, ie, me. And I think I figured out why it's probably not a very good idea for me to ascribe to any given faith, and believe it or not it's the same reason why Chiquitita and I agree that I probably shouldn't be on drugs for my mental shit. I'm extremely lazy, and will jump on anything that will make it easy enough to not have to do any hard work, whether it's getting through my ADDish tendencies or trying to decide for myself how I stand on certain issues. (I don't sit on the fence on everything because I'm fair minded - I do it so I don't have to pick a side.) It would be so easy for me to settle back into a system where the rules are all predefined and make judgements on shit based on that instead of constantly struggling to figure them all out on my own. It's funny cause I approach a lot of things that way really, and sometimes I spend a lot of time (especially on programming projects) reinventing the wheel to really deconstruct how things work. Course with religion there's a debate on whether the wheel actually exists so it doesn't quite apply, though certain folks might think it would. I mean that's how I kinda got cracking on the whole religion thing in the first place way back when... I'd been sorta culturally Christian up until, what, ninth grade when i got into a fight with my best friend about God, bitched her out for being wrong about shit (lol) and declared myself atheist until college out of spite because I didn't really want her and her religion telling me how to think. And then the Pagans were all like no, you can has nebulous faith in things AND think independantly! and I was all yes please *throw panties*.

Where that kinda fucked me up last night though was thinking that even in that loosely structured sense of spirituality, I'd gotten lazy about things, especially in my approach to life and living it. I said above that I sort of believed in reincarnation. But I'm not 100% on that, and fully recognize that after you die that's quite possibly it, nothing there, poof. Actually, after last month's celebrity batshit zydrate anatomy surgery circus, I've been thinking about that more, and how the idea of total poof doesn't exactly scare me like it used to. The important thing is okay. So if theres' really nothing after all is said and done and the clock winds down and you only get one chance at this whole living thing, then goddamn, I need to be actually doing that and not be spending all my free time with my thumb up my ass. Of course with all that, I don't know what exactly it is I need to be doing that constitutes actually living, but I know that I haven't really been doing it except in small bursts here and there. I mean... technically you're supposed to live every day as if it were your last. Not that I'd take up skydiving or anything crazy like that, but there's something to be said about being able to go to bed and say to yourself, "I did my best, I accomplished x, y, and z, job well done." That only happens to me maybe one night out of ten. (ETA: not 9 nights out of 10 like I originally typed, whoops.)

The other thing I'd gotten lazy about is in my approach to justice, and recognizing that some people are born jackasses and will die jackasses and will pretty much live their jackassery with no consequences whatsoever. That generally makes my blood boil, and what I'd find comforting is that at some point, something will bite them in the ass for it, be it God smiting them or the Rule of Three rising up to feast on their brains. Some people? not so much. The tricky thing is recognizing that and still realizing that it's not my job to be judge, jury and executioner just because I don't think To Whom It May Concern is doing their job. Though granted, when it comes to people close to me, I could be a bit less of a pussy and actually say something when people are being jackasses, cause I know I don't, and I always regret it later. The flip side of that is that there is probably no ultimate reward for, well, martyrdom, other than the fact that sometimes it gets my rocks off in the self-righteous department. Rather, the opposite seems to be true - I've seen more people manage to coast through life quite effectively by being lazy manipulative jackasses - hell, sixswordsamurai pointed out on Friday that I actually enable that behavior in a few people, to my own detriment. Which probably started this whole general bitchfest in my brain in the first place.

Anyway. Time keeps on slipping slipping slipping into the future. And when I run out at the end of the day I don't really want my only accomplishment to be having beaten verbana76's absurdly high scores on Facebook Tetris (though, you know, that would be nice, lol), or multitudinous livejournal entries bitching about how I need to change my life. (yes yes. Well, laugh.) I need to... just get off my ass.

On that note, I really need to actually get off my ass, get dressed and get working. Today's gonna suck, might as well get it the hell over with.

Dragons?

~~~

Comments

[sixswordsamurai.livejournal.com]

...so I caused you to have a mental breakdown? ...*bursts into tears*

[11th-letter.livejournal.com]

9 days out of 10 is pretty good odds, actually.
I've often thought I would make a swell religous person. I've got the whole suffering-in-the-name-of-a-higher-purpose thing down, and the dramatic and pretentious need for my life to *mean* something. Still, if there is a Creator, he/she/it did not endow me with faith of the necessary kind. Perhaps there is work I need to do that I would be less effective at if I had that comfort. Lazier, as you put it.
In the end, there is really no alternative to living your life as well as you can...whether it's because you will be held accountable for it in some future life, or before some heavenly judge, or because the buck stops with you and this life is all you have.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

Oh no! It totally wasn't you that broke my brain. The actual sobfest was about something COMPLETELY else (and before she asks, no, your adorable wife had nothing to do with it). The above rant-like creature was sort of a less stressful side-journey. *hugs*

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

oops. I meant the opposite figure - 9 times out of 10 I go to bed stressing about the shit I didn't do.... gonna go fix that.

One could also argue that if there's no one at the end to care whether you accomplished anything or pissed it away, it makes it harder to stick to your guns and make it count.

[verbena76.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think our respective spiritual journeys are very similar - I was raised Lutheran (baptized, confirmed, communion, T-shirt, etc.) but I knew from a very early age that I didn't belong there. I was also a declared atheist for a few years until college and the UMass/Smith Pagan Samhain Fiasco of 1997...

Did I just date myself?

As for Tetris, do keep in mind I am a state employee, and there are literally times when I have nothing better to do - or I need a fifteen-minute break so I don't go homicidal with my Doctor Who action figures. If it makes you feel any better though, morlock (accidentally) defended your honor and your record last night; I was close to beating your high score and he IM-ed me to bitch about me thrashing him in all his challenges, which threw my concentration. :P

[11th-letter.livejournal.com]

Well, one could argue almost anything. (And I usually do.)
But, in true Left Hand Path fashion, I see myself as the prime mover of my life. The definer of my own path. I hold myself to a more rigorous code than most deities I've ever heard of would...and it is hard, to see those who are not so rigorous about such things mostly being happier than I usually am. There may not be anyone at the end to care, but I'm not *at* the end yet, and I care.
I can make a really good logical case for the primary purpose in life being to enjoy it as much as possible, while trying not to hurt other people if you can possibly avoid it. I can argue that perspective a lot better than I can argue my own, in fact.

[11th-letter.livejournal.com]

For me, it makes it...not easier, exactly, but more inescapable...to stick to my guns and make my life count to believe that I alone am responsible for setting my path and living by it. No forgiveness from an outside source, no second chance later on, no externally provided punishment or reward.
Just me and my choices.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

The Lutherans give out T-shirts?

Which Samhain fiasco was that now? That wasn't the time the N'hamp fire department had to be dispatched to Helen Hills Hills chapel chapel because we overloaded the fire system with incense, was it? Or was it the bonfire on the athletic fields that Public Safety busted up?

1997 doesn't date you all that badly - I was around when Spirals was still Umpso, remember?

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

And it's your Sprint high score I'm after. I've declared it unbeatable, and yet I keep trying.

[verbena76.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember Umpso, I was a member then. I missed the meeting where the name change was "twinkled" into existence, which I'm told was a good thing...

And yeah, '97 was the "Incense Incident" at the HHHCC.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

heh. I still chuckle when I think about what the NFD must have thought when they charged into HHHCC and saw a big black pentacle hanging over the altar.

[verbena76.livejournal.com]

Or the topless chick in chains in the corner...

[sundart.livejournal.com]

...and I painted it! *beams proudly*

old umass pagans?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, stumbled across your conversation while researching UMPSO/SPIRALS for historian archives. How many of you were in the group? and are any of you willing to talk to me about the history a little? And I'm afraid the naked lady disappeared this year. Anyway, would love to hear from you. if you are interested my e-mail is mdwalker@student.umass.edu.
oh...and what was the fiasco of 97?