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I am Back, a Brief Observation, a Synopsis
Rev. David Strickler, Ph.D.
Landscapes can change quickly sometimes within a short period of time. One day you go out at your usual time only to find the cascading envelope arising from the absence of light leading to the quizzical response of how the evening is arriving at earlier time. I have found this to be true after my sabbatical by honoring the tradition that I speak of and from by remaining silent during the major holiday of its observation relevant to this physical solar system. It was the downward spiral that descends from above to below, vertical, that urged me to remain silent for this particular observance more so than I usually do from the end of July till the end of the first week of September, which is why you, the readers’ of Spiritual Climate Newsletter have not received any editions this year.
Due to the Spiritual energy and the intelligence is inherent within the grace I receive during the period of my holy season (sabbatical); I halted the production of the newsletter due to what some call the overshadowing presence of Spirit, or to render it by a far more accurate Hebrew word in its formula of consonants, the Shekinah. Rest, digestion and the situational occurrences that gravitate and burst into the compression during this period of time, which even captured the attention of my students in Qabalah, verified the whispering voice of that Shekinah that spoke and said in the voiceless Voice, “Pause”, the Hebrew mother letter MEM, as represented by the tarot Arcanum XII. Without foundation of silence there isn’t anything that can be heard. Without the silence there is no space to utilize the process of reason to weed the fertile garden of imagination that could be used as a rough starting point toward the discovery of a principle hidden by the misshapen shadows created in the realm of the senses. Imagination is a powerful agent of narcosis if left unchecked by the use of reason, the necessary growth fluid that lights humility which is nothing more than the acknowledgement of the truth, even though Truth can never be enunciated at all in its ultimate form, only glimpsed in relative position to the moment of experience.
Over the last few months I have taken refuge into the past barrage bearing memories coming to surface during my neurological ‘rewiring’. Take for example, my hometown memory of Lorain’s Historic Lighthouse or the Ohio Theater, in Lorain, Ohio on Broadway Avenue just across the famous Bascule Bridge. It is a place that used to exist in the early part of my childhood that I have memories of because this is where my brother and I would go to see the summer movies. It is this theater where he and I first saw The Batman (the 1943 version) and quite a few other summer movies, many of which I cannot remember. I think it was the first time I truly began to recognize that my brother was actually not going to go away, not that I ever wanted him to, but that he seemed to come out of nowhere in my mind and into the presence of my life. There are many blank spots present until my recollection of his being about 4 or 5 and yet when we look back at our pictures that my mother took of us, he was there right by side, as he has been intermittently throughout the years whether in music or healing.
Our lives took very divergent paths in some ways and yet some ways they are similar. I do not think he was with me when Peter Frampton was at the Ohio Theater back in the 1970’s. Wish we could have shared some time together at the PALACE THEATER ( Lorain Palace Theater Org, Lorain Palace Theater Pictures , Directory of Historic Theaters, Cinemas and Opera Houses in OHIO ) , in Lorain where some of my other musical friends used to perform. One in particular was Paul Fayrewether (who if you are reading this Paul, greetings, I haven’t spoken with you since the AGORA days) whom I had shared many musical conversations with since he evolved from his earlier gig originally called “The Book of Strawberry”, nor was my brother with me on the musical journey that my cousin Michael took me on at the Lorain Community College Commons with a group called Molkie Cole who were hitting the road about the same time as FAYREWETHER.
Part of this memory recital seems to be nothing more than a vain attempt to override the feeling that I have had for the first time ever in my life, one that I had never considered or even knew that I had: the feeling of being irrelevant. Checking with my trusted friend who is clothed with wisdom, Dianne, I expressed to her my new found experience and she oddly looked at me and said, “Oh really? You have never felt that way in your life?” I replied “No!”
It was never a consideration or even the faintest idea that produced an effect within my subconsciousness because I look at all life as relevant. If that part of my larger Self known as the boundaries of Spirit and Soul had no use for my being here, I would never be here. I have always felt purpose for my life, whether it be from a menial task to the writing of any of these social commentaries to the privilege of teaching and transmitting the principles, knowledge and currents of Being proceeding from the principles of consciousness in the teachings of Qabalah.
Dianne, in her usual inimitable fashion asked me the once and famous question that holds gold rating in any path of discernment, “Where is this feeling of being irrelevant coming from?” she asked. I know where it is coming from, or I wouldn’t be a Qabalist worth my salt employing the essence of the word “qibel”, meaning to receive. It is coming from the unconscious explication and shouts from the collective individuals who are beginning to feel that they have been disenfranchised in favor of corporate profits.
Sheer pressure from this current phase of my cognitive and physical recovery process has also prompted me to pause and ascertain just “where the hell I am” at this stage in what some refer to as the “game of life”; a statement with glib overtones that denunciates a reverence of life and one that reverberates with a tonal quality of that of a person feigning the tone of an ignoramus and I detest such nonsensical attitudes with vehemence and disdain. I have also come to notice that my level of anger has arisen out of the ashes, albeit in new quality, better directed and aimed with far more precision than I have handled previously. Where would this world be without healthy anger; the anger that enables the proper questions to be asked of salesmen posing as politicians and drawing funds away from those people who would excel using the almost lost art of statesmanship; statesmanship provides for the long term haul and benefit of the citizens.
Now with that being stated, I will attempt in my ordinary fashion to make a brief observation and a synoptic social commentary about the conditions appearing within the world today and some of the people who are prancing around like arrogant fools pronouncing their ignominious cacophony and using the shrewd school of sophistry to convince the world that the sky is falling, that wonderful school that murdered both Socrates and Rabbi YHSVH—the SOPHISTS.
Read this statement over and over again a few times: Religion used to vindicate insanity is no longer religion. What is it then you ask? Simple, nothing more than a political agenda being used by human beings who are insane to justify and rationalize their actions and behavior in order to over compensate for their inability to have proper institutions of government that create fair fiscal and monetary policies to enable the growth of their people. In instances where this does not fit, as with many mental illnesses in this world, then it is still under the capitulation of an aggressive political philosophy that is seeking to either use Hegemony or thwart it.
So what is happening in the economic landscape and who are the landscaping agencies that are selling off America? I refer you to a man who if you read his interviews contained within the links in his name you might consider to be a prophet once you read his interviews; pay close attention to the dates of the interview. This man is Dr. Michael Hudson, University of Missouri-Kansas City Economics Department, author of the book Super Imperialism ( Entire Book on PDF link) and esteemed professor of Economics who was blackballed by the Reagan administration. His background with institutional cash flows, along with his profound experience in Economic History has stated, “What we are dealing with here is Junk Science in the service of political ideology. . . It is basically an attempt to demonize public control of the monetary system. This prejudice has been sponsored by the financial sector hoping to elbow governments out of the picture. The empirical evidence is just the opposite, which helps explain why the free-enterprise monetarists have excluded economic history from the academic curriculum. . . The Fed’s policy of lowering interest rates is a precondition for reviving popular hopes for a Bubble and suckering voters to approve Social Security privatization.”
What about the healthy anger that provides the necessary force that can galvanize one into thoughtful and conscientious action against deceit and utter apathy upon which contempt to the principles that engage the foundations of society that enable mankind’s evolutionary spiral upwards, instead of the horizontal devolutionary direction that has been taken since the grand court jester Aristotle was chosen to lead the neo-feudal jackass ideologies promulgated by the likes of Peter Feaver and Felix Rohatyn with the aid of George Schultz in privatizing the infrastructures already paid for by the public in this country in order to expropriate more funds from the citizens and to transfer their ownership to foreign nationals? Without healthy anger these people are in the process of usurping the rights and privileges of the citizens of this country without many of the citizens even becoming aware of the process.
Without healthy anger and directing its process some Americans have become nothing more than doormats, submissive to the rancor of politicians who lead the gullible to believe they are statesmen waving their air of authoritarianism and fear sloganism to the cowering submissive crop of people they have cultivated as a cash crop of Religious Value while wrapping themselves up in the flag our Nation. This Nation doesn’t belong to any political party, whether they be Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, it belongs to the citizens. This sentiment was echoed by a group of Veterans known as VET PAC who are running for positions in Congress, “We didn’t fight strongly enough against the lies and innuendo in 2004,” Vietnam veteran Dick Klass told Murtha supporters Thursday, many of them veterans themselves. “Karl Rove’s clone army is out there spreading lies [but] we’re not going to take it anymore.” Read the full text
The solution is a simple one word answer. . .
VOTE. . .
YOU ARE RELEVANT!
The failure of education is blatantly apparent with those who have eyes to see is in the current use of Sophistry to prostitute the process of education by the Consumptive addicts borne out of the reductionism of Aristotelian (non) thought, whose Ptolemaic product was and is fraudulent to this day; hijacked into modern warfare by the hoax of Information Theory (mid 1950’s) which has gradually replaced people trained as true Educators into the current prostitutes who pass certification skills and degrees masquerading as knowledge.
It was the Sophists that induced Athens of Pericles to destroy itself in the Peloponnesian war; thus, the current Sophists posing in our Federal, State and local agencies and Departments (including Education) are being led by carrots on a string by some business pimps ( e.g., Abramoff lobbyists) who are transforming modern education into a moat of whore-ship to serve information, consumption and immediate gratification determined by K STREET, instead of the discovery of new KNOWLEDGE that can protect this nation from its genuine enemies instead of those who purvey fear as an instrument to lose this great Republic or as stated by Bruce Fein who was interviewed in this article: A Conservative Concerned About Presidential Lawlessness.
The latest sophistry meddling in education appears thus far to be coming out of the Department of Education from Secretary Margaret Spelling, who spoke at the National Press Club on September 26, 2006 luncheon speaking about the rather undynamics (my word) of the “No Child Left Behind” policy. From her comments I wouldn’t take her as a true educator, more of a proselytizer of short term gains to create further anemic conditions within education. I have to wonder about the quality or lack thereof of her quantitative assessment which at first glance seems closer to hitting the bulls-eye of entropy in education while being adorned in the fluff of her questionably genuine enthusiasm to enable greater availability of higher education to our citizens. The zeal that I question is this, is Secretary Margaret Spelling paving a sophist argument to devolute the processes in Education that would be the equivalent to what Bruce Fein states in this quote “We are more likely to lose democracy on the installment plan like the Roman Republic as chronicled by Gibbon than by a military-industrial coup."?
This new movement in education resembles a disassembling of education fueled in its reptilian guise of short term profiteering using competition, money and the mechanics of economic terrorism of Adam Smith, instead of the American System of Economic Principles that are the bedrock foundation of this Great Nation. What is really required is the removal of axiomatic thinking or presumptions and getting to the genuine problems inherent within the construction of policies which do nothing more than band aid the growing crisis in education; to do otherwise will allow the continued gutting, disintegration and further creation of weakness in the greatest resource we have: our Citizens. There are long term consequences with determinable effects that come about from major policy changes or changes in mandates, foreign or domestic—just look at the lack of argument about the HMO Mandate in being the root of our current crisis in health care, which I might point out, few, if any are bothering to highlight as a necessary dialogue.
The blind acceptance of this type of sophistry (wall street slogansim) will destroy the U.S.A. unless a classically based form of education with a science driven economy is reincarnated to increase our present accumulation of knowledge and thus maintain our leadership in this world; lest we be destroyed by the terrorism of modern neo-Kantian Sophistry, be it in the political arena, business arena, religious arena, medical arena, communications arena, journalists or rather entertaining talking heads, you name it. There are people walking around with sucker pasted on their foreheads who will drink the Kool-Aid labeled ‘competitive education’ based on the needs of our consumptive society, along with those who will sell it to any willing buyers: Bullshit and Money are the candy convincing many Educational Administrators (not true Educators) to become Professional Pimps in education to enable to leave their pile of history by defaming true education in this country as they turn the minds of our young people into corporate whores sold at the center of town like a slave to the highest bidder.
The Course that modern education is currently churning will turn our universities into nothing more than vaudeville strip clubs with graduate-parrots who lack critical discernment, critical thinking and peer review thus divesting the U.S.A. of creating leaders who are expending the energy toward pioneering new KNOWLEDGE through the discovery of principles, replaced instead by a shareholder-value philosophy that serves to satiate only the immediate gratification of profits instead of long term benefits to the citizenry of this great Nation and our progeny.
So by now you may be asking, “What the hell does this have to do with Qabalah or anything of a Spiritual Nature?” Plenty I say if you have but ears to see and eyes to hear with.
One of the many aims of Qabalah, rightly understood, is to lead the mind, conjoined by self consciousness, by a system of practices, to ever increasing clearer apprehensions of spiritual truth as fast as consciousness becomes fitted to realize them and the container adapts to be able to cognize the principles veiled by the representations created by the apparitions of the senses. It is here that we can come to a fuller comprehension of a truer understanding by that act known as necromancy and the meaning of that act and word enumerated as necromancy in its full to partial reality conveys and engages: a glimpse into the reality unveiled by piercing acts of attention that are generated during an act of cognition thus enabling an apprehension in the discovery of a universal (non) physical principle. The comprehension of this principle is a crucial catalyst that gives awakening of understanding emergence of coalescent physical manifestation and how that principle is the catalyst of the resulting growth.
Our Spiritual growth does not leave the physical world out of the equation because the paradox of the physical world is part of the spiritual equation that we incarnated here to come to understand. Spiritual principles do not give way to insane and corrupt behavior; rather, it stabilizes and nurtures the growth of the Soul giving birth to its expression in the last of its tests, being able to handle the realm of the physical. The true end of our personal world takes place when we come to find that our senses are not able to fully report what ‘this world actually is’, that the apple only appears to be red, the object known as the apple is NOT RED. It is part of our spiritual duty to recognize what is truly happening within our environs and create solutions that are genuine, not imaginary ones which only “sound good”.
Enemies we have, that is true, for we live not in a perfect world. Proper education is our key to recovering the unstable processes within this world. Otherwise it produces the very terrorism we now see spreading like a cancer and it metastasizes in forms other than bombs, whether it be legislation ‘products’, intelligence ‘products’, or education ‘products’. In the new Religion of Consumerism and its current Sophistry, this rose by any other name would smell like Horseshit on a hot humid day. Education used to justify ignorance is no longer education.
It Takes Courage to Live. We must use that courage to Laugh at the Sophists who are trying to fill and sell your soul with fear, it is the Lord of the Universe, El Elyon, that will Judge those who LIBEL and SLANDER the use of His Ineffable Name and His Son’s in the arrogance and vanity of human beings acting with perdition in the misuse of their human ego, ignominious policies and blasphemous VOX POX.
YOU ARE RELEVANT. This is not a new War, all one need do is to examine the record of history to understand the nature of this war; it is the battle between sophistry and truth, not good and evil as has been suggested by our ignorant brethren in this Nation, some of who are arrogant enough to believe that they are God and can determine that which is evil, along with the end of the world. Guess they don’t take the great Rabbi Yeheshua (Jesus) seriously, for it is he who said, “NO ONE knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, BUT ONLY THE FATHER.” Matthew 24:36. I say that some people still don’t know how to read. Just goes to show you what education under the guise of information theory has produced, leaders who lack necessary conscience to read accurately, quote precisely and ACT PROPERLY, with Behavior principled in Wisdom.
PAX ET BONUM,
(Peace and Goodness)
Rev. David Strickler
Qabalistic Minister
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