You're all a Pack of Cards.

I can't get my head around it. It doesn't make any sense to me and that is right in line with most of the phenomena I encounter on this plane; why are the headlines full of vast outpourings of grief and mourning for The Pope? Why was everyone praying for the Pope? Doesn't the Christian religion guarantee entrance into Heaven following the demise of the faithful? Shouldn't every one be celebrating? Are we being sold a bill of goods about the meaning of death once again? Should the Pope have recovered and lived to, what- 86? ...87? ...104? Could The Pope have evaded death? Will you? As it was, he needed a seatbelt to stay in his chair while pitching precariously forward an inch from his paper and slowly reading off any one of his devastatingly slow and ponderous documents about some piece of insufferably boring, comatose making, church doctrine.

So what is the point of the mourning and what is the point of the prayers? It's quite apparent that either the church is selling a Heaven that is less benign than their main resource text suggests or... they don't know what they are talking about; lacking faith in all they profess. The latter surely is true. As for the former, I myself know otherwise and I'm not Mr. Infallible.

To an observer who possesses the feature of clear objective reasoning it becomes quite clear that this particular branch of religion is all about milking the fears of an uncertain flock for the benefit of the surface organization.

We are being told that The Pope when he prayed, "groaned and moaned" while presenting his prayers to his father in Heaven. I guess this makes him extra zealous. I can't help but smile and shake my head. I don't know who these people are representing but it isn't God. Recently a main spokesman for the church said that the spate of molestations and sexual encounters visited upon altar boys and available male youths in the church was not really a big deal because most of them just, "grow out of it." In other words, it's just a rite of passage for the kids. I'm surprised he didn't say they'd just be the better for it one day. "Now shut up kid, this will make you a man."

The heavy, heavy tread of leaden dogma, clouds of incense, strange men in brocaded robes of the finest cloth amidst goblets and regalia of gold and precious gems bears a strange irony when matched against the words of the master they purport to represent. I remember when I learned that, at the time, The Vatican was the world's biggest landlord. It gives an extra taste of hypocrisy to the milking of the bloody nickels of Third World Hell.

On the one hand you have outrageous pomp and circumstance bearing no relationship to the message represented; powerful men whose Jesuitical minds are focused on crowd control and profit as if they were rich New Zealand sheepherders. On the other hand you have the government focused on the same result. Both of these bookends of mind and behavioral control are dovetailed toward the same end. Render unto Caesar...

And the fine rhetoric flows. We are exhorted to lift our eyes to the far light. We are exhorted to live in humility and want; always knowing that the kingdom awaits beyond. Bear the scourges and whips oh my children for this but prepares you for the glory that is to come. Funny thing is that it is actually true, regardless of the designs of those manipulating your every breath and action toward the greater glory of the manifest realm and their position within it.

I'm going to present a concept here. Hopefully it will clarify a truth that has operated within the sphere of manifest human existence since the beginning. God and The Devil are the same force seen from two different perspectives. You were made higher than the angels (potentially) because whatever you serve you grow into. You can, in fact, become God. Since you could not forever abide within The Devil, which is a false face, what you do, growing in that direction, is make deposits in the bank of suffering that are required to bring you around to clear understanding. You don't have a choice in the matter over the long run. Free will is the freedom to obey or disobey, that's it. The church knows this and works it to their advantage... here.

Think of The Devil as a fright mask worn by the light. It's designed by a fear based imagination and created in your mind by force of appearances. "Even The Devil is transformed into an angel of light at the given moment, be not deceived." The church has had a real problem with this phrase and has altered it significantly over time, especially recently.

You my friend are here in a world of false appearances which, to a clear mind, should be evidently false but the sheer power of them works so strongly upon the mind that part of you is forced into belief. Your job is to deny the appearance and transform the world just the way a candle will banish the darkness to the corners of a room. You have placed a ridiculous creature upon the throne and given it a power it only possesses because of your having done so. You have to restore the 'true ruler' to the throne. The collective acquiescense of the world mind in the visible charade is what has formed the things that 'appear' to surround you. Turning on your television you see the lies repeated from a hundred thousand mouths and your head bows in agreement to whatever BS is pumping from the screen.

It's all designed for a purpose. You can run riot in it. You can drink it deep. You can play endless roles within it upon ever wider stages. None of it is real. It is a cartoon representation of a higher world in a higher place distorted through ever more bent and darkling mirrors the further ones descent proceeds. All the suffering present is designed to spur you to an aspiration for what is true. All the darkness is to awaken a hunger for light. Avatars and teachers descend into it as guides.

Getting angry with it achieves nothing. Fighting it is like arm wrestling yourself.

The Pope, the presidents, all of the mouthpieces for products and principles that lie without end are here to further your suffering until your real appetite awakens. They are ridiculous figures. It is the reason that in the back of your mind, in the deep region of your heart, no satisfaction is attendant. "What's puzzlin you is the nature of my game."

If you laugh at The Devil he will run away. The Devil cannot abide scorn. Nor can we when Pride is our standard.

Give yourself a break. The outside is outside. The inside is inside. Go inside and ask for help. Keep asking. The one who waits and listens is not impressed with a brief, insincere request for help. Be determined. I assure you that slowly, or more quickly, depending on the intensity given, you will get led out of this mess to a more clear view of what you are engaged in. Then just follow the markers.

Much of this piece more properly belongs in my other blog but the force of some of the rhetoric places it here. Help is always there when you actively seek it. Otherwise you are in the long crawl of evolutionary change. That doesn't work for me.

Aleister Crowley, an occultist of some years back- and not someone I am representing as a source of wisdom, nor any sort of a guide to the unwary (I'm not knocking him, he was a bizarre individual who had his moments) once said, "You're all a pack of cards." He was, I believe, referring to Alice in Wonderland. The personalities and circumstances/conditions that surround you are just playing cards; perhaps I should say Tarot cards; though many are not familiar with them. This stuff isn't real. It is possible to see beyond it into another realm. It is possible to go there. This planet is a ghetto. I like to think of myself as upwardly mobile.

Visible and The Critical List: ♫ The Pope of Rock & Roll Part 1 ♫
'The Pope of Rock & Roll Part 1' is track no. 1 of 7 on Visible and The Critical List's 1987 album 'The Pope of Rock and Roll'