We Are Gone and Forever

My truth is your truth is:

Our World is
sickly divine

Our earthly
jagged beauty
is: 
one expansive
golden blue
day

It will
quickly splinter into night

Our time spent
Here
is a miraculous,
perilous
blast of thunder;

we are the brilliant flash

After our boxed bones
crack
beneath fecund earth
We will keep moving, stirring
sparkling,

starry
souls in flight
over pulsing, prancing
windy fields.

Loss of flesh
of smile
of breath

is nothing

because 
 
We won't lose our thunder
we will become the thunder

So even as the rainbow swells,
extending over skulls and hills

Even as life springs over our
sorry corpses,
Celebration is in order.
 

 - R

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Ingredients 

1 or more family members’ strong skeptical attitudes and beliefs (optional)

1 strong compulsion to overvalue “intellect” (IQ), to the detriment of human intuition and developed “EQ” (emotional quotient)

2 much time and effort placed on identifying AS an “intellectual”, rather than as a person

22 cups judgementality

20 cups Control Freak

12 ¼ cups fear of the unknown

12 ½ cups neurotic conformity (in some culinary circles it’s called “rationalism”)

Caution: I know most recipes that contain intellect also include curiosity and originality, but don’t add either of those ingredients here because you’ll get unpredictable results.

Directions

Stir all of the above ingredients frantically and frenetically, in a sterile bowl of your choice. Blend well (for about half a lifetime or more … however long it takes).

Cook at a high TEMPERature - oops I mean temperature - until it comes to a boil.

Don’t let it boil over because if any of the 20 cups Control Freak spills, you’ll likely go insane because your recipe isn‘t perfect. It could alter the recipe so much, in fact, that you might end up with an open mind!

Once your hot skepticism is done boiling (not sure how long that will take: depends on the person), eat it scolding hot and pretend it isn’t burning your tongue. Also ignore the bitter taste it leaves in your mouth.

Final Caution: If you let the TEMPERature cool down too much, you’re not following this recipe correctly and are probably not the skeptic you thought you were … or you’re in serious danger of requiring deeper awareness.

Eat Up!

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It was easier to hop onto a website like the JREF, or post at physics - not psychics - forums ... engaging in heady and elitist pedantical arguments in an attempt to demolish the overall existence of all things deemed "paranormal".

You've heard of us: we judge anyone who claims paranormal accounts. We "rationalize" as a way of life, compulsively and with clenched fists and jaws. We cut up "bleevers" beliefs with the rationale of Occam's Razor; showing everyone the errors of their thinking in the context of Argumentum ad populum, Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, ad ... whatever. Yes we shout down the existence of all things not (yet?) scientifically proven: "You people and your fallacious arguments only prove you'll choose emotions over common sense", is the mantra.  

And then the inevitable argument breaks out between two or more skeptics, and suddenly one or more of us calls another one names and suddenly the well-oiled judgement machine turns on itself and it results in a bunch of skeptics hurling a violent medley of caustic multisyllablic insults at each other. The predictable outcome of all these hypocritical ad hominem attacks?:  The skeptics call each other out on grounds of launching ad hominem attacks!  It is an intellectual fiasco and a real-time demo of a deficit of maturity. 

The ubiquitous "Skeptics' Bible" is indeed adhered to by many skeptics as a bible, embraced with the same religious fervor of those who are willing to accept any set of collective tenets without question and without critical analysis.  And of course reading books by Carl Sagan, like "Demon Haunted World" is obligatory, if you wish to attain true skeptical status, with it's deconstruction of most  things paranormal or "fringy". 

With one foot and four-and-a-half toes steeped in the inner world of the skeptical community, it may or may not be surprising that, previous to my skepticism, I had been a practicing psychic reader, and had experienced a host of seemingly unexplainable events that I attemped to rationalize away.

My next blog will (hopefully) explain what happens (or happened) that makes someone like me ultimately negotiate a manner of thinking and being that is accepting of aspects of skepticism, as well as the paranormal.   

I'll reflect on why someone would flip-flop between such extremes in thinking to begin with: What would make a "bleever" turn "hardcore skeptic", then become a believer ... why would any diehard skeptic relent?

Sometime soon I hope to explore what I find to be logical and illogical about certain aspects of both the skeptics' and diehard believers' communities. ... Thanks for spending your time reading this entry.

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