G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 18

I Make Myself Sick

I’m just done reading an article I stumbled on somehow online. It’s on the Fox news site somewhere and it was by a self-professed Christian mother. In it she talked about how her Mother wouldn’t let her listen to Britney Spears when she was 6-years old and it finishes with a quote from the Bible. It just about made me vomit actually.

I wondered for a minute about what kind of a person I am that I have this virulent reaction to these ‘Christian’ articles and messages. Am I bad for feeling like I want to puke when people quote ‘scripture’ at me? I realized, this isn’t a new reaction, I have felt this way much of my adult life…. start quoting the Bible or telling me what is the ‘right’ way to live my life and I want to throw up. Literally. All this Jesus stuff makes me cringe and feel ill.

It’s not that I have anything against Jesus or the sayings and actions attributed to him in the Bible. Nope – there is nothing at all wrong with Jesus. The Christ – the Sun – the Balance – the reborn and initiated….. Nothin wrong here. The Bible is the best occult tome I ever read.

What gives me this feeling of wanting to vomit then?

Well, I guess I view these ‘Christians’ the same way I see extreme Islamists. Deluded and dangerous. All religion when it is used to ‘control’ us is anathema to me. Religion is responsible for hatred, death and destruction and not much else in my book. What is it about people who believe they have a right – God given too – to tell ME how to live my life? How I live my life is between me and my God and nothing to do with you. I do NOT want saving thank you! Not by you! Only I can save myself. I am responsible for my actions.

I’m being honest but these religious do gooders make me want to be sick. I mean literally! It has always been that way with me. I am embarrassed for them to be honest….

Then, I spent 20-years in Texas and I saw for myself the total hypocrisy of these people… Preaching some big act every Sunday, snidely critiquing everyone else’s life and all the time getting richer and richer and richer…. and abusing their positions of power, prestige and wealth….. The words of Phil Collins song come to mind. These people make me sick – I mean literally.

If heaven is full of people like this – I do not want to go there! That heaven would be a living Hell for me!

Now, I’m not knocking faith here understand. I’m not knocking those who live their lives in faith. Those who quietly put into practice what they believe each and every day. Those who through example, provide the rest of us with reason to meditate. No…. not I am knocking the Divine….

I am just sick of people telling me what I must do and how I should think because this is what they believe… Believe what you want but don’t you dare preach to me. You want to influence me, show me in silent example.

In all my adult life, the political opinions and remedies have never changed. I used to take sides. I did. But I learned that actually, it’s not what I think that matters but how I act. Example, If I were raped and got pregnant, would I want the child? How could I know? What a nightmare scenario! This is not the kind of thing to tell people how they should behave or fear hell and damnation – they are already in a living hell of decision making, emotion and pain. This is a case of letting that person make their own mind up and of supporting them in that decision. In educating them impassionately in order for them to make a decision but then supporting them in that decision.

For me, we are here to learn. The only way to learn is to experience and make mistakes. This is how we learn. This little story called The Egg that you occasionally see online, I think says it very well… and it tells me that even though these overtly religious types make me sick – they are on the same path as I. They may even be me.

 

The Egg

By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

 

 

 

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Love, Music and Obsession

Great blog title. I’m obsessive and have put out another album of music. Actually, I even have two more songs lined up for release as well. The album I called The Anatomy of Love. Hence – Love, Music and obsession….

Strangely enough, I find that friends and relatives simply ignore all of my please to give my music a listen. I think I’ve written so many books and recorded so much music and stuff, people are just – well – sick of me. It’s disappointing that really as you kind of hope friends and relatives will share and help you build an audience. Maybe it’s me but I don’t see it happening.

Then, just as you are thinking well, why do I bother if no one actually listens, I get a song put on a playlist….. and just like that I have 10,000 listens in 3-days. Of course, soon I will be removed from the playlist and it will go back to my normal 10 plays a day…. except I picked up over 100 more followers so maybe it will drop back to 25 plays a day and I keep marketing and promoting to playlists in the hope it happens again. I guess this is how you build followers.

Anyway, I have had more plays than I ever expected in the last few days and long may it continue….

I’d love to sell an album on Amazon or somewhere – now that would be a thrill…

 

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The Fates

I’m sipping my red wine

Slipping back through time

Memories of a life well-lived

No regrets, but I miss those days

The past is gone and one cannot dwell

On what might have been

But rather I learn through loss

And look forward with hope

A life I could never have imagined

Complete in every way

And lived every single day

Blessed

Im not where I thought Id be

But wisdom extracts a price

And when you roll the dice

And follow the fates

Life takes its course

And your future awaits

The key is gratitude

Having learned the lessons

That they threw at you

The cackling laughter

Of the Fates in their glee

And yet without them

I simply couldn’t see

And the wheel of life

Turns, turns, turns

And eventually

Arrives back where it started

 

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The Loss of a Friend to Social Media

While doing my PhD in Glasgow at the University of Strathclyde, I met a wonderful, loving and balanced guy who became a mentor and friend. After leaving college, we lost contact but later found one another on facebook. A gap of twenty years meant that much had changed of course but still, it was good to reconnect. But people change.

The problem with Facebook is that you see people’s bad side. Their obsessions and worries. I know I show mine all of the time and I sometimes decide to change my approach to Facebook and not use it as a place to express my frustrations…… However, my friend began posting quite a lot on politics. His postings and comments got more and more, well, strange. He developed an absolute hatred for Trump – I would say it was an unreasonable hatred for someone unaffected by the US President. I engaged him a few times but found not the man I had adored so much at college but a bitter, frustrated and judgmental person instead. I was deeply saddened by this but more so by his change in approach. Gone was the thoughtful, loving, balanced, non-judgmental persona I had met all of those years ago. It’s difficult to explain but everything I said was challenged, ridiculed even…. If I wrote an alternate viewpoint, I was instantly condemned as a Trump supporter… I think all who know me would know I detest the man. I guess I pushed the envelope eventually in my own way by posting on one of his rants something he truly objected to for he not only unfriended me – but he blocked me too.

So again, the beautiful spiritual soul that I had met all of those years ago had now turned into an angry and opinionated individual who would block the person he once mentored with words about balance, harmony, love and forgiveness….

I blame social media.

It allows you to surround yourself with what you post about. Suddenly, it is your echo chamber essentially supporting your viewpoint and providing you with more and deeper ideologies and opinions….. eventually, your frustrations turn to anger. Social media is weaponizing us all.

I’m more than determined to make sure I am clear about the echo chamber thing. In fact, quite honestly, I’d like to learn to use social media simply to express gratitude and focus on art. I think that is what it needs. I remain open to welcome my ex-friend back with open arms and I hope he may see how he has changed…. I wish him well.

This is not the first time I have seen this. I doubt it will be the last.

Maybe I should have just left him be and not engaged him at all….. but wouldn’t that be simply helping to build his echo chamber?

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Out Now – The Anatomy of Love

The new album is now out and available at Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, and many more outlets for streaming or purchase. At just under $10 for 14 songs it is great value so go out and but it! There is something on it you will like……..

Here is the track listing;

The anatomy of Love – all new song
You are my song
Addicted
Girl on the Phone – new version
Cold-hearted Girl – all new song
It’s Not Right – new version
Apocalypse – all new song
Run for the Hills – new version and remixed
Free – new version
End of the World
Singing my Song – all new song
Keep Your Head UP! – all new song
Far Away – all new song
It’s My Life

 

The title relates to, and parallels, my life over the last two years in many ways. It goes from the despair of splitting up with a long-term partner, to the ups and downs of single life, dating and so on, to the final discover that it is my life and I am its master. This is the anatomy of love in which one finds that self love is actually the key to happiness and security after all.

All songs written and performed by me – warts and all!

$10. It’s not much but it would support my song writing addiction….. and I thank you if you do buy it. If not, put it on repeat stream on Spotify and leave it playing for days on end…. even if silently LOL.

The cover photo is also by me and it is an angel face from an ancient fountain at Pernstejn castle, near to Brno here in the Czech Republic. I have also become interested in photography and this is an example…..

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You can find it on Spotify here;

 

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The Anatomy Of Love – A New Album – Out Soon

I have had a prolific period of creating music…. so I’m putting it all out in one go. It will be called The Anatomy of Love and it will include the tracks…

The Anatomy of Love

It’s my Life

End of the World

Apocalypse

Cold-hearted Girl

Far Away

and many more…..

To whet your appetite (though no one ever listens….), here is The Anatomy of Love.

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Keep Your Head UP!

New song out now…

 

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It’s a Black and White World

The world is changing and I find myself feeling old and hankering after the good old days….. and then, I don’t. Walking this morning I realized that sometimes I live in the past and I must make an effort to be in the present. I wrote a blog post once theorizing that perhaps aging is what happens when the volume of forward-looking thought is outweighed by the volume of backward-looking memories – I called it the tipping point. I still think there may be something to that idea but essentially, we have to live in the moment or we are not living at all rather we are dreaming our way through life.

I struggle to explain some things and this idea that the world is increasingly black and white is one of them. I don’t mean to be rude or sound arrogant or condescending, but it does seem to me as though many, many people are really quite dumb. They do not think, but they do react. I’m as guilty of this dumbness at times as anyone else and it annoys me when I realize it. We want things to be black and white – to be simple I suppose. These days, we surround ourselves with like-minded people via social media not realizing that we are in our own echo chamber. We don’t want grey……. it is too complex and we might actually have to think.

In order to keep the world black and white, we have come up with ways of debating and following. We parrot without really thinking what we think we should be saying. We don’t debate but rather find ways to ridicule, undermine and destroy the opposing point of view – if we don’t just choose to ignore it altogether. We don’t listen and if we think we are listening, actually we are debating internally and not listening at all.

Yesterday, I had a post in my FB stream. Someone had liked or commented on a meme on a feminist page about how women dress is not an excuse to abuse them. Fair dos, it isn’t. It caught my attention and I read the comments on this meme. I was shocked. The hatred of men was deep, bitter and angry. Testosterone is the problem, said one. Men are the problem and they should all die, said another. So far, par for the course. A bunch of people in an echo chamber getting all worked up about a chip on their shoulder and blaming others for it…. that is life today. It’s never our fault – always someone else’s. But then buried within this diatribe of hatred for men was a post of an article on Scientific American and very long comment. In short, science shows that women are equally likely to engage in sexual abuse as men are but men are ashamed to admit they have been abused. Women are just as likely to engage in violence both against men and other women for sex. That’s what the statistics say. The comment was well written and enlightening – somebody was thinking critically about the issue and coming to the conclusion – it’s not men. It’s us. Not a single comment to this comment. It was as if no one had seen nor read it. They were blind to it. It couldn’t possibly be right because it burst their bubble.

Recently, a party of schoolboys went off to a march in the USA. I’m pretty sure a school should not be sending parties of boys to a women’s march but then religion is a funny thing demanding that others obey your beliefs. at some point, the boys got into some kind of confrontation with a native American banging his drum. What we saw of this almost immediately was a few seconds of video of this event. Instant reaction (including much to my later chagrin, from me too!). It didn’t help that the boy was smirking wearing a MAGA hat and that the Indian was a war hero. Politicians and movie stars, as well as average Joe and Jane, came out of the woodwork to condemn this boy(s) and support the Indian. Some tried to identify him and ‘out’ him – destroy his life, send his parent’s death threats and so on. Later, a new video emerged. One that showed the entire sequence of events and it was a very different interpretation that followed. The boy is now suing one media outlet for 250 million dollars – I hope he prevails as he will forever be that boy …. his life is ruined. Yet, actually, he did nothing wrong. We did. We reacted. We saw a black and white world. We didn’t think.

I realized today walking that really nothing else matters but my happiness. All of this stuff going on…. it is all a distraction from being happy and getting on with life. From now on, I’m going to try harder to think not to react and to get on with being happy.

 

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What Happens When You Try to Debate Climate Change

I worry for humanity given the younger generations inability to think critically I do. I guess I’ll be gone by the time they wreak their havoc on the world so maybe I should stop worrying…

Anyway. When you try to have a debate with these younger people about climate change some strange behavior manifests. I have had several attempts at debating this issue with a young BBC reporter, A British MP (and a bunch of his followers who all piled in), some people on Facebook etc.

Rather than engage with you on the topic, the response includes all of the following;

You write badly and need to pay attention to your grammar (I actually use Grammarly, so I guess that is a waste of cash),
You just used the word ‘crap’ and I find it offensive and the same goes with bullshit (strangely common words these days and very mild by anyone’s standards),
I’m offended that you capitalized the word SCIENCE in an article of yours I found (Please grow up …),
You worked as a Geologist for BP so they must be paying you (Oh how I wish that were true),
Your Ph.D. (if you really have one) is not in climate science (I don’t have any qualifications at all but I still know more than you do so there… (and Climate Science is a subfield of Earth Sciences which is…. Geology!)),
Show me your peer-reviewed papers (Show me yours too),
Why don’t you answer/You have gone very quiet – guess you know nothing after all (Sorry but unlike British MPs, I don’t have the time nor inclination to hang on Twitter 24 x 7 so please be patient – go fiddle your expenses or something useful and I will be back later),

I could go on but you get the drift. No attempt to debate or think about what I am saying at all. Just use ways to insult, belittle and undermine.

Unfortunately, I find this is very much how many younger people behave when challenged. It’s ignorance in action.

Really.

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There is Magic…..

I believe in magic. Strange thing to say coming from a Ph.D. I guess. The thing is that these days I think many people do not believe in magic at all and it’s a shame.

For me, magic is what happens when you just let it. It is that thing you feel when you observe things in a certain way – that moment when you catch a glimpse of eternity in the Universe in seeing the sky, that moment when you feel the oneness of the All, that moment when you are filled with a certain feeling of happiness and contentment despite everything (and everyone!). You know magic is alive in your life when things just happen. Coincidences and unexpected events that take you in an often unexpected direction. To see and feel the magic requires a few things though,

You have to accept that magic exists – if you do not, you will not see it even though it is there,
You have to go with the flow – some Christians I know call this giving it all to God. For me, its just letting go into the bigger picture,
You have to have gratitude and wonder for life and all of its mysteries.

Now, a lot of people feel this way – at least partially but many do not. They sort of lost their souls to the devil – the material world around them. Life is about gaining usually at others expense – and it isn’t always money. Often its just power of some form – real or perceived. Often, these people have lost an ability to think critically and fall into parroting what they have heard or read or think the group they identify with wants. I want these people to see the magic….. because when they do, everything will change for them – really.

You know. That PhD. It was magic that drove me to it. A love of the natural history of the planet and in pursuing geology, I had many very magical experiences……

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