Foreshadows

Concupiscence ("con"-from latin meaning "with" + cupisce from latin meaning "desire")

Concupiscence is the tendency of humanity to misuse the natural survival needs of the physical body. Therefore, the natural need of the body for food becomes gluttony, the command to procreate becomes sexual sin, the demands of the body for rest become sloth, and so on.

Mystery Babylon; scheduled for destruction, per Revelation chapter 18.

-Money Lovers
-Crank demons
-Serial killers
-Serial abortionists
-School shooters
-Neo-nazis
-Sodomites
-Pornographers
-Pedophiles
-Teenage prostitutes selling their image on the internet
-Cults of every flavor (i.e. politics, science, patriotism, countless "Christian" sects, etc)
-Liars
-Warmongers
-Whoremongers
-Suburbanite zombies, seeking only the maximum amount of creature comfort and material wealth they can acheive

Foreshadows
They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”- 2 Pet 3:3

There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - 2 Tim 3

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold - Matt 24:12

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. - Matt 24:37



Praise, Glory, and blessedness be to God in the highest, for He is all, does all, and wills all.

To: Philpy@kwest

From:harryharris78@h******.com

Oct 14th 2022


Hey Phil,


All is well, may your soul be at peace. I've been up in Western NC near Pisgah. Just winding down from working the tourist season, winterizing up my apartment, and getting ready to fly out for Portugal on Saturday to spend the winter there. I guess all those winters in the keys kind of spoiled me, but I really can't stand Florida any more.



P.S.


Well, you're right, time gives many opportunities to analyze and reanalyze one's experience(s), and there are countless perspectives to look at any given scenario from; if one has been endowed with such a nature, one could spend too much time and energy trying to put into words something that could very well be beyond language.


But I don't think that's what's happening here, and I'm willing/able to endeavor however many words it may take for a peaceful resolution. For your sake, not mine, since I stopped having any emotional conflict concerning that time a while ago. It will likely take a level of honesty that most, in this current age of constant self-gratification, would not prefer, let alone be comfortable with, so I will not force you to delve into any nook or cranny of your psyche that you will not go of your own accord. Since I'm little affected by politics, social hierarchy, or peer pressure, non-sugar coated is and has always been my default state.


With all that said, new beginnings can be difficult, because forgiveness can sometimes also be difficult, when one has sustained emotional trauma beyond one's willingness to confront. But forgiveness can be achieved gradually through an incremental process. One can also forgive somebody, without feeling the need for any further relationship to follow that forgiveness.


Does one pole of a magnet hold it against the other for being what it is? Diametric opposites, and every gradation of common ground between them, are what the tangible/mechanistic universe is composed of. Did you or I make that so? Did you or I make ourselves, or can you or I choose to be something we are not? Unless we did, there is no reason to take anything that did or didn't, that will or won't, happen to us personally. No reason, that is, except ego; and that reason will go no further than the grave. After all, you are not your body; merely a passenger whose passage will eventually require a different vehicle.


Of course you're sentimental, and, as we get closer to our end than our beginning, it's a natural tendency to become more retrospective than prospective. [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse], I watched most of the family I grew up with die between my 27th and 40th years on this planet. Don't you think I had to process all those unconfronted and unfinished emotions?


Now consider that for you and I, there was more time before we met, and has been more time elapsed since I more or less moved away, than the 4 years from 04'-08' that we spent together.


Was it an important time for me? Sure, it was the end of my youth and young adulthood.


We're you and Tina like surrogate parents for me? Yes, absolutely, and because my early childhood and adolescent family life had been riddled with neglect, trauma, and abuse you guys were better on all counts than my blood family.


Did I still have my own path to trod, and was it easy to leave that time/place? Evidently, yes and no. Leaving isn't and was never the point, as much as going on to... settling down, in the conventional sense, of planning on knowing where one will be, what they will be doing, and who they'll be surrounded by on a daily basis was never an intention. That is not mode of being that a seeker of peace of mind can be all that interested in, that is comfort of body and the complacency it engenders. As the wind blows, and ye know neither where it has come from nor where it is going, so are those born of the Spirit.


Was I aware of how invested you were, having no children of your own, in my health and well being? Definitely not, and, as time went on, it gradually dawned on me that one of us had sustained more hurt than the other. Like a bad breakup, one of us went on as if nothing ever happened, while the other nursed their crushed feelings and broken heart. Well, I'm sorry Phil- I truly am


How was i to know at that age to prepare a gentle transition? There was no plan on my part anyways, it was purely spontaneous. All I knew was I was being called elsewhere, and I knew not where. Even now, it's not in my nature to take for granted that I have a tomorrow. No amount of worrying will change the number of hairs on my head or how long or short I'll be in this temporary world. So I've never made it a point to get too attached to any temporary people, places, or things. Do I love them? Yes, and I want what's best for them even as they choose to be content with and seek what's worst for them. But they are not mine to keep it command, and never were, so all I have to offer is empathy for their trials and honesty which they, more often than not, find too bitter


Would it help you to know that I suffered greatly in my life? I know you never were the cause of any of it. But any damage you may have felt the need to try and inflict on me was delivered through other channels. Through periods of abundance or deprivation, trust and betrayal, deceptions and blunt truths, we may dodge a bullet here or there, but some are going to be direct hits no matter how hard we try. Time heals all wounds, but the scars will have to be carried around...


and I'm beyond all of that now any how, not above or below, just out of reach.


"Phil's reply" redacted


Tohilpy@kwest

From:harryharris78@h******.com

Oct 28 2022


Well, I responded as quickly as I could because I'm flying out tomorrow. I'm leaving my sim card at home, so I don't get charged for overseas roaming, and will only have wifi service wherever and whenever available. Responses after this one may be few and far between.


1. I tend to communicate in straightforward language, and not in metaphor or code, unless being ironic or humorous (and that is almost entirely in person, as you may recall). What's there is there in plain words, although one may glean various levels of meaning according to their own perceptual lense/bias. No, memories aren't the best lense to use as a translator, they are re-memories at this point and too often selectively biased for or against anyway. But on second thought, since you're hankering for one, imma throw a metaphor in near the end, but everything before that is just what it is.


2. I meant, "spend too much time and energy" as would be practical or beneficial for either party. Love being that which is beneficial for both and harmful to neither.


3. By "that time" I meant when we were a part of each other's day to day experience. Of course, anyone that has accumulated a bit of time/experience on the planet, will likely have, or have had, family, friends, and lovers from all walks of life. Though i've found I'm not so good or interested in interaction by correspondence. And, as my mind has grown out of its nostalgic/sentimental phase some time ago, I tend to be more and more very much in the present, with occasional forward-thinking. That time, like any time, had it's pros and cons, ups and downs, laughter and tears, but that was then and this is now. We are not there, and the me you knew then, or the fraction of me I shared with you, and what value you could appreciate of it, was many chapters ago. I have no feelings one way or the other about it I guess, neither pleasant nor painful. So "what is there to gain" from rehashing it wouldn't be the most apt way of putting it, but "to what end?"


4. Although I've become a bit of an introvert, I am still open to interact and engage with anyone that approaches me to do so. I just don't typically initiate such encounters. But, of course, for such engagement to go on for any length of time, or episodes, it would need to conform to the previously mentioned benefit of all parties while harming none of them. Friendship, though needing trust as a prerequisite, is sustained by shared interest(s). Since people on a pattern of growth have interests change with age and environment, friendships can evolve, become one-sided, become static, or are, more often than not, outgrown by one person or the other. So I guess the most relevant question regarding you and I would be, 'what may be our shared interest?' now that our day to day paths have diverged.


5a. Of course, I, like anyone that's gone through an extensive swath of experiences, have had exploits I'm not proud of. As long as I learned from them they were not mistakes, they were training. I am wary of those that are proud of their exploits. For a great many, no amount of curriculum will develop them past their factory set capacity. They, and all things, are in the right place.


5b. I am, as a temporary/finite self, a moron; and fair to middling in intention at best, but always ready to force myself to do what I think, feel, or believe to be the right thing in the face of temptation... if I can. For the vast majority of people currently alive, their moral code is entirely circumstantial; is there anyone looking, will anyone find out kind of [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]. The main difference between you and I, and most other people for that matter, is that I am acutely aware of my weakness and moronitude, and freely admit it. Whenever I win a chess game my first thought isn't 'I must be pretty good at this', it's 'how bad must this guy be to lose to a bungler like me?'. Or as Plato had Socrates put it, it's only dum dums that walk around thinking they're smart; and that's only because they lack the intelligence to know that they're dum dums. As long as a person of homo sapiens extraction has to wake up and extrude a turd from the bottom hole of his or her monkey-suit every morning, he or she may rest assured perfect enlightenment has not yet been attained. Remember that the next time you see a skid mark in your underwear. If you need some icing for that cake, allow me to spread some on. You and I, and everyone else on the planet, were put into the same world as Jeffrey Dahmer, who thought it a genial idea to construct a throne out of his victim's skulls, so that he "might have a place to feel at home". Now, how wise or good could you or I be? He was what is called a "human", one us so to speak, although I'm reasonably sure i have learned to tell the difference between a confused homo sapiens and an actual human


6. I assure you, the suburbanite pattern of eating, drinking, screwing, drugging, and sleeping, and holding down some corporate wage-slavery position to finance such a pattern, or whatever materialistic/capitalistic endeavor one prefers, until retiring to enjoy the comfort and luxury it may afford, is not the "good" life. It is simply animalistic, and so neither moral nor immoral, it is just amoral (because animals are unable to conceive of, or comprehend, such things as good or evil. Neither are they interested in such things, because they can only know whether something is painful or pleasurable, and whether they want to pursue or avoid something based off those very measurable, empirical, and biological criteria). Neither do they really experience love in the pure or ideal sense, for what they really practice is desire for return on their investments; they will continue to give quid as long as they can get quo back on a regular basis. Sure, they have affection, desire, lust, attachments, everything that just happens to pleasure their bodies and glands. But rest assured, as soon as someone stops giving them what they want, that so-called love will be transferred to the next available candidate easily enough. Nevermind what they do to the occasional one that shows up and gives them what they don't want, or tells them what they don't want to hear. Burnings and crucifixions are out of fashion, but these days people are getting shot over parking spaces. So, to me anyways, it just amounts to biological necessities dictating monkey business that people like to call "civilization", but it's full of self-deceptions and the inevitable plot holes. The life of a farm animal has the same objectives, but the animals never manage to think of the day when the farmer will come to collect the rent, neither do they find it worth it when they have to pay the cost.


7. There is a conception that a finite mind, and its finite language, can never and will never entirely grasp or be able to sufficiently describe. But because everything in this temporary world is but a shadow, projection, or in the current trendy idiom a "simulation" of it, words are still the best approximation to try and behold, and understand, and share our experiences if it. We sprang from it, we'll return to it, and, indeed, it is all around us and within us all during our tenure on Earth. To scientists, it is just an inexplicable nothingness they cannot or will not see beyond. To Deists, it is just an impersonal, mechanistic, deliverer of temporal boons and banes. But to me, and some few and far between others, He is a Father, a Friend, a Confidante, a Spouse, the Beginning and the End of this and all worlds that have ever been born, that are aging, evolving, or being destroyed even as you read this, or that will ever come to be. And so, I value my relationship with my Creator before all things in this world and the next. Indeed, how could anything in this or any temporary world be but a dung heap in comparison to Truest and actual Love. For those that love this world and are very attached to it, with what great distress will they be torn from it; it has everything they could imagine wanting anyway, why would they deserve or even want a better one? But I'm looking forward to leaving it behind. Not because it's so bad, but because I have seen glimpses of something far far better



P.s. enjoy your winter Phil


"Phil's reply" redacted


Okay den, if we penpals, no need to conform to any rigorous formatting. Your noting of my grammatical acumen is nothing to speak of, just a result of having read too many books, being around too many blocks, and having been through too many rodeos.


Thanks for the suggestions/invitations to chess/music. And the humorous renderings of/from the shop, it's easy to forget those kind of everyday things. My interest in both music and chess peaked some bit ago, though I still pick my bass or banjo up as a meditation/yoga during morning coffee or after dinner. As a personal enrichment it still delivers enough quality to be a sort of soul medicine/food; but as for being seen in public, or seeking anyone's attention, with an instrument, it has just seemed ludicrous after my passing age 30. I mean, I've done it here and there. But the quality of people, and the value of their opinions, has either greatly diminished over the last couple decades, or i started to develop standards somewhere along the way. And with the advent of chess apps, few people outside the tournament scene are into over the board games, so i just occasionally binge on puzzles but nothing more. But still, they're just kind of vestigial artifacts from a been there, done that phase of youth's-end. But if you're interested, here are some songs from a while ago, one of which features your vibraphone, and was recorded around '06-'07 ish, while you were in Moab and had me housesitting. And some banjo stuff on youtube.






Since most that make it to being elderly will end up shuffling off this mortal coil between the age of 70 and 90, that makes the period between 35 to 45 the mean average of middle age (half of 70 and 90). Which means if I make it 5 more months, i will have made it to middle age's-end. Surreal, but I know time isn't going anywhere. It is we that are just passing through it. Something's bound to get worn out and used up, and inevitably that would be all we people, places, and things that must have their existence in time. I think if I were still focused on the same things as I was from 25-35, or worse, the things I was doing from 15-25, I would have to start worrying about whether I had developmental issues; even though we are all only semi-literate and semi-conscious at best, that's no reason to settle into complacency- not for me anyway. Though I've observed it is the prerogative of a vast majority of homo sapiens to strive for, find, and settle into their comfort zone, it has never been, and can never be, a priority for me (the birds have their nests and the foxes their dens, but the son of man has no place to rest his head); except in the sense that I regularly throw myself out of my comfort zone for growth purposes, to grow comfortable with discomfort as it were. But as far as I can tell, settling in to a mindless self-satisfaction is a form of death, a type of zombie-ism. So as much as frisbee, chess, music, etc were fun then, I have very much put away childish things by now. And since the odds that I would of my own volition visit Key West again, are about the same as if i would purposely go to Sodom and Gomorrah or Pompeii, once I knew them to be what they were, most of your invites are moot points.


But penpals, that's doable enough I guess. So long as you think it's worth the effort. I sense though that you're already finding it strenuous, being glad you may have a break. Well, these things aren't just sprung together off the cuff, they take a while and are assembled piecmeal. A little here, get tired of typing, a little there, etc. Until it seems to be fully baked. So don't strain or sprain yourself trying to force a reply or a certain response time. I really am at your service and leisure. And what's more, letter writing is a dying art. There would be no point in pursuing it, if it were just supposed to take the place of the idle chatter of casual conversation.


You were right in mentioning a paragraph sounding like the same old Jason; because, in my experience and observation (of both myself and others) their are integral characteristics of a personality that stay fairly unchanged through the aging process; even though I've found activities and interests are very much maturity-specific. Of course I'm speaking of psychological age, not physical. There are plenty of persons out there walking around that are physically over 30, but mentally they stopped growing at adolescence (the frisbee chimp and my own mother are among them).


As for "what could be", or "what is", or "what will be"...well, unless based on first hand experience, what most call knowledge is just a form of belief based on 2nd and 3rd hand information. You've never smelled, touched, or tasted Mars, and likely never will; you don't really know it exists, but, based on millennia of reasonably reliable perceptual acumen and compiled information, you likely believe it does. Epistemology would be the study of this phenomenon and Plato's Socratic dialogue the "Theaetetus" is a great starting point, if you are of a philosophical bent.


Regardless of what you believe, or think you know, you still have to take on faith the accuracy of your own perceptions (and whatever tech they may use to extend their spectrum of reception), capacity for comprehension, presence of information bias for or against any particular person, place, or thing, or your lack thereof. Really, most everyone is just dealing in degrees of belief and opinion, whether accurate or delusional. But, speaking from firsthand experience, there is an ultimate objective reality to be perceived and comprehended. So every individual and their capacity/mode of consciousness lies somewhere on the spectrum of absolute perceptual accuracy or delusion in relation to that reality. Do you think you, or anyone else, got to choose which position of perspective on this spectrum you were assigned? Because I can tell you right now, you certainly did not. But for those that have been given certain positions/perspectives, reality is revealed in installments, with varying degrees of experience and circumstance. Until it is apparent that every process has a direction. Every form has a blueprint. Every governing principle has definable limits. Biological evolution spontaneously occurs; from inanimate elementals to animated beings of varying degrees of consciousness, which are iterated and reiterated, through time and unbroken chains of causality, by means of encoded information colloquially known as RNA and DNA. Plus, all of it is intelligible, and can be observed to be deterministically governed; because behavioral nature is governed by biology, which is governed by chemistry, which is governed by physics, which is governed by pre-existing and immutable laws that the material universe and it's processes must conform to. Every chain and web of events in a today, were results of the position and trajectory of their causes during its respective yesterday, and the current position and trajectory of events will result in what is inevitably going to happen tomorrow. The future is written, because the past is unchangeable, and the laws which govern all universal processes are constant.

Yet the dum dums, that can barely comprehend their merely animal existence, like to think they're clever enough to say definitely it's all random, or 'noone can really ever know'. Because they too busy wanting to eat, drink, screw, drug, and sleep, before they turn back into soil and water, and they don't like it even being hinted at that there may be much much more. And, as was written would happen, they have become ever more proud of their arrogant stupidity, and derisional towards that which is far beyond their ability to comprehend. It is written of them, "His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse." To them, the monkey-minded, I quoteth a Shakespeare and say, "There is more in heaven and earth than can even be dreamt of in your philosophy". And I do not worry about them, because it has also been written what is to become of them. They are on a need to know basis, and they don't need to know. Because the inconceivable things, beyond the mundane duties their lives must take part in, would do them no good to know. Just like a world needs dishwashers and toilet scrubbers, and though encouraging the dishwashers and toilet scrubbers of tomorrow to go get college degrees before they start their careers of toilet scrubbing and dishwashing might seem like egalitarian progress, it would only end up being a waste of time/energy and resources- and likely result in a bunch of depressed dishwashers and toilet scrubbers in the future. Or a better analogy, which was given to me by a mentor who has since passed on to his next assignment, is: if the general rule (with occasional exceptions) is one egg fertilizes one sperm, then what do you think the purpose of all those hundreds of millions of other sperm is? Little animated lifeforms, who, all striving and pulsing, seemingly have an idea of what to do and what their so-called lives are about, given programs that compel them to action in particular directions, or sometimes just around in circles, seemingly free and able to decide on turning this way or that, although the vast majority never reach the the goal and were never meant to. Yet did they have a choice in being created, in what their very temporary lives would be about, or even whether they succeeded or failed at what they were designed to do? And the answer is, they provide a flow of action; without which the one that is meant to make it would not otherwise make it....But "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" But the reality in Earth is, some are made to be destroyed. And the weeds are a necessary evil that are bound to occur, when providing all the nutrients that the intended crop also needs to come to fruition and be harvested.


So, you see, I could enumerate all the mystical occurrences I've had since age 8, including the very emphatic series of them I had from December 1st through the 7th of 2008, and the several that've happened since then. But I see little sense in it. It'd be like when Dives asked to go back to Earth and warn his brothers that Hell is a very real spiritual state, and possibly an unchanging location for those who are condemned to it. Dives, whose only crime was desiring to enjoy his life in comfort and luxury, more than desiring to help someone dying at the end of his driveway. But the first shall be last and the last shall be first. And suffering now, for a little while, may lead to salvation for some. But for most, it is in vain, and is the suffering of the grist for the mill. You have all the accounts of the prophets, if you would not listen to them, why would you listen to me? But if you just want to know how I view organized religion, then you can find that here:




I figure that should give you enough to chew on for a while, so I'll see myself out.


Peace on Earth for men of goodwill, caveat emptor (no one gets to choose the will they're assigned)


JWH


"Phil's reply" redacted



Tohilpy@kwest

From:harryharris78@h******l.com

Nov 14 2022


Hey again Phil,


Well, i'll be heading to work on a horse farm for a few weeks in Cercal do Alentejo, leaving tomorrow. It's a 15 minute walk to the nearest village of about 2000 people. I suppose you could look up pics on google earth or something. I've never been much of a tourist, but more of a traveller. Travelling always has some small mandatory bit of tourism in it, but tourism can happen without any travel at all i've found. So I figured I'd speed this reply through the pipeline before being out of wifi range again.


I'm not sure what your conception of Christ is based on. If you think being raised/indoctrinated on any of the invented religions of degenerate and depraved homo sapiens (that like to tell themselves what they want to hear) is an accurate introduction to having an active and ongoing relationship with the Eternal mind/spirit, then I would wager you're in need of some further investigation. Part of being fallen(degenerate and/or depraved) is that those that are left in such a state are unaware they are in such a state. Therefore any of their institutions will likely be saying they're about one thing while doing something else entirely. It's part of that innate tendency for nature to deceive itself by way of camouflage, to facilitate predation or elude being preyed upon. Like a moth blending into tree bark, it is not something it consciously intends, just that which the program automatically puts forth as a means to an end. Such mechanisms are as automatic and inescapable as birth, life, and death. Remember the whole dum dums not being aware that they're dum dums, but actually thinking that they're quite peachy keen? Sorta like that, not something they can avoid being or doing. But one who is raised from the aforementioned stupor is given the ability to discern the genuine article from the counterfeit well enough.



"your enemies will be the members of your own household"- Christ quoting Micah 5:4 or thereabouts


"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple." - Christ (for such associations are merely animal, and even crows, whales, and chimps have bloodlines and family units. And if one has been selected to be a human, then settling for being an animal is a fool's errand. Truly, it is not even to be considered that rolling around in the [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] of the dungheap is a fun choice, let alone a wise one)


"This is why I speak to them in parables:


“Though looking, they do not see;

though hearing, they do not listen or understand. Lest they should turn to Me and be made whole" -Christ


He did not give unqualified empathy to all, but to the the poor, sick, broken, and abused (those suffering for not being conformed to the world), he offered an invitation of salvation from the temporary world and the promise of a better, everlasting one. A world without lies or decepton in general, without selfishness, greed, disease, famine, fear, hate, anger, rape, war, murder, aging, death, or danger in general, a world constituted entirely of absolute light, beauty, truth, goodwill, purity, and Love in the truest sense. This invitation is not extended to all indiscriminately, nor are all that are invited made capable of accepting to any significant or lasting result. "For many are called, but few are chosen"


To the comfortable, self-seeking, and satisfied denizens of this world, he was fairly dismissive, referring to them in various passages as "dogs", "swine", "tares"(weeds), "heathens", "vipers", "the dead"(being concerned with the burial rites of their own), 3 out 4 being bad seeds etc. When asked if he had heard about the people a tower had fallen on, or the ones whose blood had been mixed into Herod's wine, he responded with a noticeable lack of concern. Because he knows why and to whom these things happen, and so do I. So, you see, my referring to them as the "dum dums" is actually being a bit charitable. In the parable of the cave, Socrates refers to them as worshippers of shadows (i.e. those who spend their lives in the dark thinking they know what reality is and what there is to know about it). They spend most of their days in conflict and confusion, fear or desire, looking for the next meal, shelter, thing to consume or territory to possess, etc., just like any other animal.


If i were to tell you any different I would be lying. We speak of what we know, and of what we do not know there is nothing to speak of. If i were coming in my own name and claiming be very wise and good in and of myself, and that i was the cause of my own wisdom and goodness, then it would be fairly clear i was a self-promoting charlatan. But I am saying only God is perfectly wise and good and in control, and that i know him and He knows me. But as for you, "we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony." He said "a tree will be known by its fruit", not that a tree is able to choose what kind of tree it is. Because, you see, the credit/blame for the tree being what it is is not the tree's to claim. What I now know from firsthand experience, will neither be belief nor knowledge in a great many. Those for whom the message was never intended, are inert to it and it to them. It passes over and through them like light through darkness, and they are left to their own devices and delusions (which, incidentally, is what they were created to prefer). "Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false"- 2 Thessalonians 2:11


"And the judgment is this: the light has come into the world, but people preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil"- John 3:19


Sure a great many people take up the habit of one religion or another, either by inheriting it or by their own "choice", and end up by being what Christ called the "pretenders". But the bottom line is, if you were meant to truly understand and relate to the mission of Christ, you would have been given the ability to do so. You would have no doubt, and "faith" would not be something one could consider taking or leaving. Because one is not being faithful to one's spouse by believing she exists, but by being loyal to her. And one is not capable of being loyal by one's own authorship, any more than you constructed your personality.


So I'm not sure how it will help you to know any more details of my earthly life thus far; but as you continue to ask, I'll elaborate. Parents have two primary responsibilities as I see it. To be earthly guides and protectors, until the child is able to be entrusted to his or her own guidance and protection. Mine served neither function to any great degree, indeed they were misguided and a danger to themselves in a great many ways; but they provided enough of an umbrella, while pursuing their own selfish ends, for me to have survived being their child. Dad taught me many a worldly way and skill, his methods were brutal but at least i knew he cared. Mom passively sat back secretly saving up enough money to divorce him and buy her own house the year I graduated high school, after 18 years of allowing me to absorb a great deal of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. Then she spent the next 20 years telling anyone that would believe her just how much she cared. They were not the cause of who and what they are or were, so they are of course forgivable. But, just because you forgive someone for being what they are doesn't mean you need to continue having anything to do with them.


If a person's parents are professional criminals that wish for their children to continue the family business, and for them to learn to lie, cheat, steal, murder and rob, do you suppose they'd be honoring their parents by obeying their intentions? Or does honoring your parents have more to do with not saying, thinking, or doing anything that would bring shame on them for having bore you into the world?


If you would've followed the link and read the blog posts, which are essentially me typing out my personal experience and perspective some years ago, for whomever has been given the eyes to see and ears to hear, then most all of the questions you're still asking would've been answered. But having prior experience with you, i'm fairly certain you aren't really looking for clarity on any particular topic. But again, i will endeavor to describe all the counterfeit song and dance cults of all the flavors of counterfeit religion out there as a necessary evil, at best they are loudspeakers broadcasting for those that are meant to and will receive the true message; at worst, they are no more than political-ethno-socio-economical social clubs run as just another business, practiced in the art of lies and hypocrisy, feeding on the prejudice, hate, and fear of the animals they are comprised of, and that are not going to save anyone from anything. It is clearly written that "True religion is this, helping the widows and orphans in their distress and keeping oneself unstained from the world" James 1:27. But whether you do or not, or are even able to want to try, is not up to you. A cheetah cannot trade in its spots for stripes, and a kiwi fruit will not ever taste like peach, and a Phil cannot be a Dave or vice versa, lest all things should stop being who, what, and where they are altogether- which they had nothing to do with coming to be in the first place anyway. It all is happening without anyone's permission, except He within which it is all happening. And your destiny will be met even on the road you took to avoid it.


If you were to venture to reread the New Testament as an adult, you might notice a dozen instances of the words "predestination" and "foreordained", and no mentions whatsoever of "free will". Go ahead and just google "predestination in the new testament" and then "free will in the new testament". But, why should i care about the state of your soul more than you do Phil? Am I not under orders to wash the dust of such a town from my feet? To have nothing to do with someone who continually wishes to argue without truly being willing to make any progress? If one reads the ancient texts, be they the Torah, the new testament, the Baghavad Gita, the Vedic scripts, the Socratic dialogues, etc, and cannot, or will not, make neither heads nor tails of them, then one may safely assume they were not written with them in mind. The Katha upanishad very poetically describes the difference between that which is pleasant and that which is good, but only those capable of knowing that pleasure and good are two different things will gain anything from reading it.


The same goes for personal experience. No amount of me describing my experience(s) is going to translate into the context of what you think your life, anyone elses, or life as a universal whole, is about. What is the meaning of life? That would depend on who you are, what you were made to be. But you cannot change who and what you are, because you did not make it what it is in the first place. Or, as Schopenhauer put it, "you can choose as you will, but you cannot choose that you have a will in the first place, or what it compels you to do or not do". Water seeks it's own level, and capacity recognizes itself in other conduits. But you have assumed that you know more than you actually do. As if that, because our times and places overlapped and shared a few tangential points of wavelength, that somehow our experiencing the world must be analogous. But I assure you, it is not. Same planet, vastly different worlds. My perspective includes and comprehends yours as a reference point, some where and some way I once was, but my perspective can no longer fit into yours. I agree with your assessment that all temporal things have an Eternal cause/reason that they exist, including one's coming into or out of someone elses life, for however long or short of a duration. Maybe myself and your old neighbor Pete were put in your life to be reminders that you were made for, and invited to be, far better than what you have settled for. But God only knows, the rest of us finite minds must deal in the possibility and probability of the plan we are merely a part of but not ever authors of. If you were to admit you ignorance i could at least recognize that as having enough wisdom to know your limits, but, as it stands, you far too often claim mastery over that which is not anywhere near your actual standing.


"For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want." - Socrates in the Symposium


Evidently, you're nit even aware of claiming that your and your dad's "inability" to have trusting belief in a benevolent, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient Creator due to perceived atrocities of war is in direct contradiction to your "people are basically good" deceit? As animals, amorality is their default. But because they are prone to self-indulgence, they find it more convenient to be pawns for deception, corruption, and vice, rather than knights for truth, honor, and virtue. That explains why their way to destruction is wide and easy, and the way they might escape it narrow and steep. They are neither inherently good nor evil, they play host to such and are at some mean average position to absolute good and evil. But by and large they are lost; that is never knowing, and never able to know, where they actually are, where they came from or how they got there, or where there going - but only thinking they know. And that would make them, by definition, lost souls.


1. Anything is a childish thing which is done for childish reasons (i was habitually getting drunk and stoned as a teenager, to escape what I thought at the time was a scary/bleak reality. To defeat such addictions takes confronting one's conceptions of him or herself, dissolving one's ego, and dispelling the comfortable delusions they've grown to prefer. It takes being an adult, but not everyone is fated to mature to psychological adulthood and truly the "deceitfulness of riches" keeps most in the Western world as mental infants) This goes for any activity one tends to identify themselves with, insofar as they have become stale in it. Spiritusl growth means emotion pain, the loss/surrendering of what was to what inevitably will be. To be static is to be one of the dead. "But those that drink their fill of the old wine have no place for the new". The last time i threw a frisbee was a few years ago, for [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]s and giggles, with the Frisbee Chump on Higgs beach (it was a childish and stale rerun of an outing. The last time i played frisbee with any fun/seriousness was several years ago while teaching my daughter how to throw/catch- it was a perfectly adult thing to do)


2. If mindless-animal-chasing-it's-jollies hedonism is the "frame of mind" it takes to appreciate a tourist trap, then I'll leave it to the tourists and those permanent tourists (locals) preying/feeding upon them


3. THINGS THAT I LIVE BY

a. believe in yourself (temporary, all that it is, was, and will be is going away. All that it claims to be, have, or possess will be taken away. And when the last person that ever knew or heard about you dies, it will be as if you never existed. Same with the whole planet, and every planet that ever was or will ever be. "You were formed from the dust, and to the dust you will return" "to he that have (spiritual wisdom) more will be given, but to him that doesn't have it all of what he does have will be taken away)


b. YES is More Powerful than NO

(Yes to beholding the Eternal/Absolute and being His representative while on one's sojourn through the temporary world. No to making yourself comfortable and at home in a world that runs on self-seeking and self-delusion to convince itself that it is good when it is not, a world that is host to lies, plague, rape, war, famine, fear, hate, murder and yet still is proud of itself) In this sense it takes more courage to say "no", to renounce the vicious(vice-prone) nature of the world. To be saved by "perseverance"(latin for "by severing" oneself from it and its fate)


c .Every Day is a Gift, Appreciate every moment (this is true, though not in the sense of having more time/space to indulge in one's narcissistic indulgences, but in the sense of being given time to recognize the error of one's ways and turning away from them before stepping into eternity while in that state) ["Sin" being latin for "without"(i.e. relationship to God), and "original sin" being the state we all originate in the world, through nature's animal lust, and that some few are graduated from through personal revelation)


d. Never Give Up (unless stubbornly clinging to a temporal state of being, which is not beneficial to one's eternal being)


I could go on and on, but to summarize:

All life is sacred, but of individual lives there are those that are more or less holy or profane than others. I seek no credit or blame for either, and I make no claims of being one or the other. I respect what is worthy of respect, and worship He who is worthy of worship. And, by and large, gibbering apes do not fall into either category.


Later,

JWH


p.s.


Philosophy consoles Boethius by discussing the transitory nature of fame and wealth ("no man can ever truly be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune"), and the ultimate superiority of things of the mind, which he calls the "one true good". He contends that happiness comes from within, and that virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.



"For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;—this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God—when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired."


Socrates from The Phaedrus


"Phil's reply" redacted


Tohilpy@kwest

From:harryharris78@h*t*a*l.com

Oct 17 2022


Sigh, that's what you're "choosing" to get out of what I'm telling you? Ahhahaahhha, oh [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] Phil, you're head is deeper in the sand than it ever was. But am I going to care more about what a finite and fallible being thinks of me, or what my Infinite and Infallible creator thinks of me? There is nothing you have that I will ever need or want from the current version of your self, that's just the way it is.


But thanks for your concern, what ever may be its roots. I am in no pain, I'm quite beyond what you can conceive of as pain. The time of my suffering any worldly pain and anguish is at an end, and I have entered into His rest mentioned in Hebrews 4(regardless of whatever the body may have to go through before i leave it for good, i am already unattached from it, so to speak) I am overjoyed at the coming of my redemption, which is closer than it ever has been. And, regardless of what I would like or not like, "this world is reserved for the fire" 2Pet3:7. And, "If it is hard for the righteous person to be saved, what will happen to the ungodly and sinful person?" 1Pet4:18


My mission remains the same, to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.


So i'll tell you again, "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven".


May God have mercy on your soul, and i hope see you when the roll is called yonder

JWH