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The Spirit, Sound
and Light of Christmas
By Rev. David Strickler, Ph.D.
Christmas continues to be a fascinating season for me eliciting emotions of awe and splendor for most of the season, most likely built in part by my early childhood memories. Where I lived in Lorain, Ohio, was filled with tons of snow, wind and a wonderland that twinkled in the daylight sun. I remember looking out the window of our modest new home that my parents were thrilled to be able to buy on the east side of town on Michigan Avenue, just about 200 yards from the railroad tracks that carried the locomotives that my mother’s father, used to walk me across the street to watch, even in the cold weather, to count the number of train cars; he taught me the secret of knowing how many cabooses there were on the end of the train.
There were times I would look out the front window in amazement begging my late mother to allow me to go outside to shovel the driveway for my dad before he came home so he could ‘safely’ make it up the driveway. It would help to understand that during the period when I was born in Lorain, from 1959 to 1970, the area would receive tremendous amounts of snow. I can remember being out front watching the city snow plows finally make it down the side streets we lived off Kansas Avenue and as the plow passed by it would push 3-5 feet of snow in front of the driveway that I had helped my mother clear for dad. Mom and I used to look at each other and just pout, go down to the end of the driveway and clear what the plow had deposited. Tossing the snow to the side created a small mountain of snow shaped liked a cone. It usually was a community effort after the plows had come through; nearly everyone in the neighborhood came outside to clear the end of their driveway. Most of the parents had their children helping them and everyone had two piles of snow shaped like Indian teepees on either side of their driveway.
Once the driveways were clear, the neighborhood children and I would create a burrow to hide in to protect ourselves from the onslaught of: the neighborhood SNOWBALL FIGHT. No one ever knew who threw the first snow ball, but the next thing you knew there were snowballs and their accompanying sound effects from the kids who threw them flying everywhere and I mean from everywhere. This would go on for quite some time until of course some of the parents, sticking their heads out the front door would demand that their children come into the house IMMEDIATELY. I never really knew how long these snowball fights had occurred because I had no sense of time. My mother rarely called me in as soon as the other kids on the block, so I stayed inside the burrow I dug out, cocooned by the pile of snow from the sometimes wind, or snow flurries, or just a sunny day with very few clouds in the sky. I would look up into the sky and appreciate the wonderful experience of winter.
Darkness would seem to fall so early as I remember, but that was even better because there were some of my friends whose families had put lights upon their homes. When it got dark outside, the home would become lit up with those large tear dropped shaped Christmas Bulbs. I would stare in fascination at the arrangement of lights and sequence that some people used. Some used all of one color, like red, some used blue, some used yellow or green, and some used combinations or sets of combinations on their homes and shrubbery that they grew in front of their homes. I particularly liked the homes that would use blocks of one color let’s say for the windows, red, then outlining their homes with solid blue and using green lighting for the hedges or shrubs in front of or along the side of their homes. Boy, did those homes decorated in lights look pretty, especially at night when the darkness had fallen. You couldn’t see the lights very well in the day if they were lit, but the darkness gave the lights the ability to display their beauty and warmth.
So the necessity and allure of darkness, not in an evil sense, but in a sense of relations be came one of my first recognitions in regards to varying degrees of light and contrast in order to produce differentiation: and somehow in my mind, darkness was the key, black, just like the pupils in the middle of the colored part of all my friends eyes, black, dark, where in I could see something as a child that I couldn’t describe, but would now refer to you as the flickering flame or light of the Soul. I have to this day found the eyes of people, especially the pupils, as one of the most fascinating features of human beings through which we can connect with the Soul.
The second experience that permeates my childhood memories is SOUND. Looking up from the opening of the burrow of snow for example, I would concentrate on listening to the wind, or the sounds of the snow made by other people walking on it, or of the cars going by as the tires squished their way through the snow left over on the streets. Sometimes though, there was no apparent sound, it was quiet and I would learn to reference this sound as Silence. I became aware that silence was the backdrop or wall that all sound sprang from, so I would continually practice listening for the silence, because in some way that brought to life all the sounds that stirred, giving me a greater ability to be able to recognize sounds created in my environs and the rich manifold texture of those sounds in relationship to what made the sound.
But all in all, the most important thing about Christmas for me has been, since all those years, that wonderful quiet that would come as a result of the blanket of snow dampening the blaring sounds created by the machinery, people or fury of nature during the winter period of time; even the inside of the house seemed more peaceful, cover in snow, insulating it from the usual clamor of life produced during season with no snow. It was the foundation of what I have come to recognize today as Peace.
So we live in a world of light and dark, without the darkness sometimes we might never recognize the lights shimmering from within the people or Souls around us and without Silence or absence of sound, we would never be able to recognize the source, nature, texture nor meaning of the sound presenting itself to us, in a room filled with noise one can barely make out the words of a person speaking next to you. We live in a world where contrast is necessary in order to discern the nature of a given person, place or thing. Sometimes contrast is required before we can even recognize something within ourselves that we have failed to recognize, whether that understanding of one’s self be a revelation of a trauma or a talent that has resided deep within hidden by the clamor and noise made by your continual insistence for activity around you; we become too distracted to recognize the Sound and Light created by our Being as expressed through our Soul.
It is through the adoption of bad behavior, incomplete thinking processes and unused reasoning that we can sometimes end up in a state of narcosis produced by living inside the safety of one’s imagination that goes unchecked with the proper use of reason. Winter and Christmas is the period within which we can make the extra time to embrace the Darkness and its companion Silence to prepare for the Light that gives birth deep within us every year at this time, in a manger, protected by the thicket of our personality and hidden by the ego deep within the our heart of hearts: Hark the Herald Angels Sing!
Angels are nothing more than the ANGLES of light emanating from the resources that our Spirit shines forth through its herald called the Soul. These angles of light produce sounds when experienced in the area of the brain, referenced by esoteric traditions, that symbolize the manger where the ‘nativity scene’ takes place in a complex response of neurological relationships in areas of the human brain due to the presence of undifferentiated Cosmic Sound, producing Cosmic Light within the presence of that part of our consciousness that is unsullied by our levels of consciousness living in the mundane world; the cooperation produced by these two levels of consciousness bring about effects that include our interplay within this dimension known as the physical world.
The neurological response is an attempt, in those who have prepared themselves through genuine spiritual practices under the ever watchful guidance of a spiritual steward. It is not produced in those who have no recourse to spiritual stewards who have a genuine link and tradition to the Sound of creation, it is rather, FELT and emoted through the limbic portions of the brain, sedating the reptilian portion of the individuals brain with the softness and warmth of the exoteric practices of the Holiday worship, activities and social events. The mass of humanity perceives the Presence of its Unadulterated pure essence of its Spirit, through the shadows cast on the wall of its senses, creating a feeling of loneliness which is entirely due to the overshadowing presence of its own Soul and Spirit. Those unable to interpret or have discourse with this presence directly perceive it as an isolation; indeed is the isolation felt when overshadowed by the overwhelming emptiness that resides in the presence of one’s own Soul and Spirit.
The emptiness can be interpreted by individuals as per the make up of their psyche, but all in all it corresponds to Dark and Silent, those immutable qualities that Soul and Spirit use with us to enable contrast. What is the contrast for you might ask? The process of engaging positive change in order that the Soul and Spirit might have a better reflection of the image of itself within the container of the physical world, so that it may engage the world by taking the work of Genesis in hand that it selected to do: to put it in mundane terms, to leave the world a little better place than it was before it took part in the activities of this world. In other words, it’s nor really ‘all about me’ to coin one of the infantile catch phrases being used to seduce and coerce people into mal forms of behavior that lead one away from true freedom.
Humanity, over the centuries has allowed themselves to be chained to a Scapegoat. This Scapegoat has been proselytized by some damaged members of humanity and given a name called God; these arrogant fools have taken the image and likeness of God and turned it into the grotesquery represented by the figure on Tarot key 15, thus slandering and libeling the image, name and what the truly transcendent God represents. We see this happening all over the globe where pathological leaders, from any walk of life: religion, science, marketing and politics for example, in their creation of preemptive strikes or terrorism under the guise and banner of some foul mouthing the will of God which I doubt they have the slightest or faintest idea of what that is, but it suits their AGENDAS to exercise control through fear and subservience.
The cause of this behavior is never seriously debated in a historical context other than the Bad Theology, Coercive Political policies, Junk Science and the Profiteers that these instruments support. This bestialization of humanity occurs whenever the search and quest for increasing knowledge is replaced instead by the worship of consumerism and its preoccupation with sense-experience versus uncovering what can become known through the powers of cognition. In such a time we find ourselves right now, carried forward by Obtuse Sadducees (Politicians, Religious leaders, Scientists et al) unable to stand up for truths. Instead, they have found comfort in the payola they receive to proselytize and induce mass hysteria and conformity by their adherence to Sophistry.
Christmas takes place during the astrological time period of Capricorn, which is represented by the Tarot Key 15, The Devil; and to this day we find that many have not availed themselves to the wisdom that is presented in the pictorial form, accepting half truths as the basis for their decisions and actions. Look at the cube the monstrous creation made by the man and the woman is standing on, it is a cube, but you can’t see its depths. You only see half a picture, humanity chained to the half pictures it creates within its thought forms that may one day rise up and strike terror into their hearts because they failed to monitor an over active imagination left unchecked by the proper use of reason.
One should make note of the fact that Devil spelled backwards is “Lived”; a perfect word that represents the vast collection of our actions that were performed without the least bit of forethought as to what, if any consequences would come out of those actions, whether short or long term in affect and effect. A perfect picture of humanity chaining themselves to some outward, heinous figure head, either represented by an authoritarian figure head of some institution that gives them some ridiculous explanation to the woes or state of affairs found within a group of people or nations and using that same process to take full advantage of any lack of attention breading ignorance.
Christmas is the opportunity to embrace the freedom that the Sound and Light of creation gives to each of us, which usually hides in some dark corner of our mind and or heart. That which frees us to what the Hebrew translation of the word sin means: missing the mark, close but no cigar. You get the picture. It represents the birth of that Great Light carried and encoded into the Great Rabbi YHSWH (Yeheshua) in his name, which renders itself into the meaning: YAH (the Father) Liberates.
It is this Sound and Light that we in the “Q” tradition of the Qabalah seek to bring and impart in this world so that humanity can open its wings and fly above the cockroaches of leadership now appearing on the earth, who are spreading their bastardization of what they call the Will of God while in their arrogance saying that they are using the Will of God which I doubt they understand, for who with a finite mind can understand the Infinite and Eternal aspects of the Primal Will to Good which is the flowing of the Will of God? Their use of what they Term the Will of God is nothing more than perverted in service to the self centered “It’s all about ME agenda”. Verily I say unto you, Sadducees from any religion, you walking sepulchers who claim to KNOW this WILL, You will be judged in the day of the Lord where the LIBEL and Slander suit will be prosecuted against you. You are the Liars! You are the Satanic principle that is held captive within the reptilian portion of the human brain, You are the vile murders spreading terrorism in your bastardization of the word of GOD. How dare you put words into the mouth the LORD? It is you that shall be held Libelous, Slanderous and blasphemous in the misuse of Sacred writ to the gain and satisfaction of your own personal EGO—you Brood of Vipers.
I don’t care whether you are business people, charlatan exorcists (like the Jackass we have here in Phoenix, Bob Larson), who is one dangerous individual creating consensus reality and profiting from his glossolalia charade. Father Malachi Martin, one of the greatest exorcists of our time never made millions and in my opinion you are thieving scum Mr. Larson. YOU ARE A LIAR and a fraud and you are committing the greatest of all sins, Spiritual Grand Larceny. The Lord of Life will take you down through the illuminated members of humanity who hold conversation with the Living and True God and then hold up your uneducated ignorance to the Living God for all to see; you in my opinion are a sepulcher of DENIAL. Woe be to you Bob Larson, Rabbi Yeheshua (Jesus) warns of offenses such as yours: "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 18:6 (New King James Version)
It is people like You who will be held accountable in the Divine scheme of things for misusing the charismatic power of the Ego HE loaned you, for you and others like you misguide people who need psychological intervention rather than the childish yet dangerous game you are playing with people’s minds and I speak from experience as an exorcist from within my Holy Order—Be Ye Rebuked in the name of the Tetragrammaton: Shem-Hamphorash you ignorant misanthrope. Karma is a bitch, and you are going to find that out, just as the current occupant in the White House is beginning to find out along with his Vice president and crew et al—-Matthew 12:34 “You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks!” The day is coming for you to know that you speak only in terms of your ignorance, stupidity and death.
Where in the hell do we come up with these people, talk about a bestialized three ring circus and it all comes from one source: SOPHISTRY turned into a game of consumerism and play acting by means of glossolalia (speech in unknown or imaginary language, simulating coherent speech, seen in some types of schizophrenia. Source: Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary), then master marketing of Charisma used toward devious ends and expropriation of profits from people. John Locke (another asshole mistakenly given credit for the creation of the Declaration of Independence by generic historians who don’t know there ass from a hole in the ground) would have loved this whirling dervish consumer playground created by Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Locke, Hobbes et all.
Your last of days are upon you and people like you. I believe the Lord of Life is about ready kick you right in the ass and show you the exit on this stage of life and right into his court of LIBEL and SLANDER. People illuminated by the Light of God will do it, those who have true conversation with the Living Lord of Life, not the fake imposters in the White House, secular fundamentalist religious groups or the psycho-criminal defiant children bred and born in the Arab Nations misusing the adolescent religion known as Islam.
Let me give you an example of how people in this nation are being taken advantage of by these black magicians: Ms. Satriani will work a full day on Christmas Eve. She happens to be one of the lucky few of emerging people that will not have to report to work on Christmas day. She has been graced with the day off, no pay of course, because it’s a great economy, remember? Ms. Satriani has two children; Angie who is 10, and Ronnie who is 8 years old. I have often wondered how she has gone to college, pursuing her higher degree two, sometimes three nights a week, while managing to spend quality time with her children who seem so endeared to have her one day to themselves on a special morning since they have no grandparents to expect over. All that while trying to figure out how to pay her bills because the Pharisees and Sadducees of this day and age have sought fit to squeeze the living daylights out of the citizens of this country for the honor and glory of the money lenders; lowering the wages to compete with some third world countries pay rates.
Then there are those also who once worked hard within the fabric of our society who now have somehow ended up pushing a grocery cart down the street or sidewalks to just keep moving, and resting when they can, IF they can. I saw such man who went down the same street I live on at least for a few days before he was whisked off to somewhere. I crossed his path one day and stopped to say hello. I watched his response to me with a nervous smile that reeked with pain and isolation.
We had coffee together at Circle K and he went on to tell me about his experience as a gainfully employed individual who made an excellent salary for quite a number of years until one day his services were no longer required. He was an educated person whose language and philosophical understanding showed proof of his knowledge. Not long ago, he had positive hopes of bouncing back quickly, but the money ran as quick as the time. He lost his home, and then his car, and for all the hard work he put into this world, he was rewarded with “You’re overqualified” and no hope at all. His retirement and his pension were essentially extorted (piratized, stolen) by the new company that rendered him unemployed. He was a hard worker from back East and how I wished that I could have been more help to him than I was able to provide or had resources for. We walked across the street and thanked me for one of the few conversations that he was able to have as I watched him turn down the opposite corner of the block. I can’t help but think some of his slammed doors are the result of the Pharisees and Sadducees of this day and time. Seems to me terrorism comes in a few different forms than what seems to be readily described or given consensus.
Too many people are being abused and thrown away in this Nation and it is about high time that the jackasses who are calling for accountability take out the plank of theft and legislated genocide in their own eyes first.
Peace creates a disruption, agitation and revolt in such people who honor only their reptilian (hedonistic) aspects of the animal part of their co nature used here in the physical world. Yet the solution to this enslavement is also contained within the veiled wisdom of the picture if one looks closely enough at it, which brings us right to the point as to what the Spirit of Christmas is; if you look closely at the chains and shackles that both the male and female are wearing you will find that both could easily slip off the shackles and chains that bind them to their propped up thoughts they elected to be bound by; in other words, freedom is just a choice and action in recognizing that they can be free.
Peace, Silence and genuine probing questions find these black magicians poking fun at those who ask them questions that have any cogent or substantive makeup, or as a last resort attempting to tar and feather the person’s integrity who posed the question through threats by misuse of law bent toward the advantage of the black magician, whether that black magician be a business person, politician, scientist, teacher, or whacko nut case creating demons for people to create genocide over, castigating another culture through whatever political-economic, sociological adamancies they can drum up in their rationalized rants: all done so that a few can have an advantage in the world they have created.
There are many enemies to Peace, found only in people who use their non-peaceful sophistry in whatever place, institution, and business or discipline whether that discipline be science, religion, society or law; wherever they are found around the world selling their brand of shackles and chains. It is time that we find these people, and directly confront their irrational philosophy and mantras by embracing that the Sound and Light of creation that resides deep within us all—by kicking them squarely in the ass and telling them to get the hell out of our towns, states and Nation.
Peace? Peace is hard work. Isn’t it obvious to you why there is little of it in the world right now? Just remember those greasing and padding their fat asses with the cash they are stealing from your hard labor, while giving some of it over to other countries to build weapons of mass destruction which were not present before this current fiasco that our Ignorant legislators gave to us over the past Christmas’s.
These guys don’t want to work hard—Peace means they will be out of business.
Aww, wouldn’t that be a shame, no more shams.
In the name of Yeheshua, Yehovasha
Merry Christmas
Rev. David Strickler
Qabalistic Minister
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