Of Gods who would be men
Jun. 26th, 2021 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joegodaThere are days, and we have all found them like gifts dropped along the trail of life, that are perfect in all ways. The temperature is just right, the sunshine is falling gently upon our skin, the wind is nothing but a cooling breeze, the grasses are cool and welcoming to sit upon and the world, noisy as it always is, quiets down from its constant hubub for a spell so that our minds can rest.
It happens and we are gladder for it, as it allows nourishment to reach in to our souls and expands us in ways that we could never imagine.
It was on a day like this, when Glenn was 13, and it was not quite summer and spring had not quite let go its grip, that something happened. Something that, for years and years, he was hesitant to talk about for fear of being the odd human out.
This was not a thing he was unused to. He had always been the odd human out. Even among his brothers, he was often alone, as they would run ahead to play and not include him because life gave him shorter legs and weaker eyesight and a head shaped exactly like an egg. Not a sibling outcast, but not a sibling included, either.
He walked alone at night, to gather his pubescent thoughts and try to make sense of a world that contained hurt and rage and betrayal and lies. He played alone as well, making up fictions in his head that would seem as real as the world around him. He had a few friends, but those friends had other friends and often would be with those other friends and so Glenn would be alone with his thoughts, holding conversations deep and meaningful to his young mind.
It was not unusual to find him at eleven p.m walking the neighborhood like a fangless vampire, drawing in the quiet of the evening air and rejoicing in feeling the world draw away from him and be less hectic; less noisy.
He was the weird kid in the neighborhood and unless you wanted to be associated with the weird kid, best leave him be.
It was on that one perfect day that Glenn was meditating in that field near his house, that was adjacent to the wood that was just down the street from where he lived and in which kids would swing on thick grape vines over a tiny creek, doing their Tarzan yells to let the universe know that they were in control of their lives and they were tough, tough as Tarzan and could handle anything.
He was facing West, paying homage to the sun as it wound its way toward setting so that night could once again fall. He was not deep in meditation, working to keep his awareness of life open so that he would not be disturbed by or, by his presence, disturb neither man nor beast. Yes, yes... fancy words meaning he wanted to be left alone to do his thing. He wasn't afraid of being caught out and made fun of. Perhaps just a little, if truth be told, but the thought never entered his mind. He just wanted to be still inside himself.
As he sat, zazen because he felt that was the way to do it, his eyes caught sight of a light, hanging and bobbing in the air to the west. It was perhaps fifty feet away, and it was maybe a foot in diameter and it looked to be nothing more than a soap bubble that was carrying fireflies. Like a ball. Like a golden globe that shimmied and shimmered and shone like a dim sun. All sorts of descriptions would enter his head later in life.
The fact was simply that there was a golden globe hanging in the air and Glenn was watching it and it seemed to Glenn that it was also watching ... no, not watching, it was just... aware of him.
Glenn felt no fear, only curiosity. He had felt fear a few times, from the monsters in his bedroom and from the one nightmare he had ever had. There was no feeling of fear here. This lack of fear would serve him well as he grew, and would open the doors to many adventures and odd knowledge, and would gain him the reputation of "Being most likely to push the button marked Don't Push". Fear was not a stranger to him. Fear was more like that relative you only catch glimpses of in old photographs and think "Oh yes. I remember them."
So and so. Glenn watched the globe with curiosity and interest as it hovered and moved slow closer, like a shy cat or squirrel unsure of what its position in Glenn's universe was. Once the globe had reached ten feet away, Glenn held out his right hand and the globe shrank in size and came to rest, floating less than an inch above his hand.
Though smaller, it still shone and glistened like a snow globe full of gold glitter in the sun. Glenn though a word at it. "up", he thought quietly at it, and the globe rose in to the air to hold a position a foot above his palm. "down", another quiet thought and the globe floated down to rest once again, above his hand.
In any other world, it can be presumed that Glenn would have been freaked or scared or frightened or shocked or even happy and excited at the new toy he had. He was none of these things. He was curious, of course. He was accepting, as accepting as any meditating fangless vampire who lived in his own world because he never felt welcomed in any other.
"Hello, little ball." he thought at it, or perhaps he spoke the words aloud (sometimes it's the same thing, you know). "What may I do for you?"
Now, consider this. The exchange just described probably did not happen just like that. That is how Glenn's older mind remembers it because that mind is decades past the event and the world and memories change based upon the input that happens over time. Everything changes. Everything does, and that is the way it is supposed to be.
The gist is this: Glenn's thirteen year old mind was wide open, like a broken door that had fallen off its hinges. He found himself in a situation that was, to him, as normal seeming as seeing a butterfly land on a milkweed. Even though the words may not have been there, even though there may have been no thoughts, per se, the concept was still the same. Greeting, acceptance and query. We do it all the time to everyone and everything we encounter on our own personal path.
Granted, acceptance may not be kindly or friendly, and the greetings may take the form of 'Stay the hell away from me', but the query is always in the form of 'What?' or 'Where?'. The 'Who' and the 'Why' come somewhere after that. We are, after all, humans and self interest is our first priority.
The globe's response to Glenn was nothing. Not a feeling, not a sense. It just hovered there, as if expecting Glenn to make the first move. A first date, if you would. Well... perhaps not every first date, but in Glenn's case, it would be the norm.
Glenn moved his left hand so that the globe sat between the two and he, for lack of a better word, played with it. He would move his hand further apart and the globe would grow in size. He would move his hands closer together and the globe would shrink to accommodate.
After a few minutes of this sort of game, Glenn saw the sun had set low enough that dinner would be about ready and it never went well to be late. Not wanting to give up his new found friend, he did what any budding thirteen year old in possession of a floating golden globe would do. He put it in his pocket, except in this case, his pocket was that space just below his solar plexus and right where his belly button was. In Eastern mystic terms, between the 3rd and 2nd Chakras.
Why there? Because it seemed like the right thing to do. Glenn's personal path had been bent to the unusual happenstance and having read a few things and experience a few things the best place to put a friendly seeming mystic light was where you had the room. The human body has a lot of space inside it. The belly was a much better suitcase in his mind, than say, the chest where the heart and lungs were.
And this is when things started to go... um... strange in Glenn's life.
Not that he gained superpowers or anything like that. He did gain more of a sense of awareness of the world. He could, during meditation, go deeper into himself. He could also, during meditation, go further outside of himself. There were moments when he felt he could feel what people were thinking. He couldn't hear what others were thinking, but he could the emotions gathered behind those thoughts.
His dreams took on a deeper quality as well, and he often dreamed of flying, unaided, without wings and sometimes to great heights. He dreamed of being different people living different lives, or of himself, living different lives. He found that he had, at times, conscious control over the direction these dreams took.
All of this was started when he was thirteen and it was the catalyst for him to read, read, study, and read more of everything that related to life, the mystic, and the universe that he could get his hands on.
He had discussions with his father, the smartest man that he knew about the nature of God, which Glenn was pretty sure didn't exist in the form that most folks seemed to think it did.
Glenn's father explained his belief thusly. "God is everywhere, everything. The more I study physics, the more certain I am that God does exist." There were more words, but time and tide have taken them away but that is the basis of the conversation. Everything else is velvet drapery.
It was on the road to school, sometime after the globe incident, that Glenn made a discovery that helped him understand and develop his own concept of this God thing. It was a stormy day. Lightning was crashing and wind was being windy. Walking under some telephone wires, Glenn heard the buzzing of conversations in the wires. Not actual words, but the buzzing of conversations. Hearing words would be nuts, right?
In a small fit of clarity, one that caused that golden globe lodged in his belly to jump, Glenn came to this conclusion: "God is the creator of the wind, and God is also the wind. God is the creator of lightning and God is also the lightning." His mind took the capitalization away, now that he was on a more stable footing with the concept. God was all of nature and the creator of nature. Therefore, mankind was of god, but mankind was also god. If this was assumed to be true, and in his mind, it was, ipso de facto, Glenn was god.
Therefore, if Glenn was a god... and not just god, because all living things are god, then Glenn is also a creator.
Now, this was an incredibly strong revelation to a young man. It made him strong, it made him powerful. It made him matter. And while all of this was true, the one thing it did not make his was all powerful, because these are just his words and there are billions of people who also have words and beliefs that were different than his.
Two gods walk into a bar. Is it possible that they will agree on how to run a single universe? Not likely. One god can hardly agree with themselves on how to run their own universe, let along do that communal thing and come to a mutual understanding. I mean, who is in charge? Who relinquishes control? And these are humans we are talking about, here. They have a hard time agreeing on Blue or Gold when it comes to a dress. They have a hard time agreeing on what flavor of Jello is the best. In short, no two gods will ever agree 100 percent and two universes, when placed in a small space called reality cannot help but collide, sometimes with galactic conflict.
It took decades for this to become a thing to Glenn and he spent the time before enlightenment being angry, disillusioned and hurt. Mostly by his lack of understanding that this is how it is supposed to be, but occasionally by his own attempt at forcing the world to accept him on his own terms.
The world doesn't work like that, kiddo.
So, let's drop that here, and just accept that, broken from the beginning, Glenn was bound to stumble through the world, talking, reading, studying and living, doing the very best that a god can do with the meager tools he has to work with. Let's move on to his late teens and early twenties. Anything before that is just angst and pain. You know... teenagerdom.
It happens and we are gladder for it, as it allows nourishment to reach in to our souls and expands us in ways that we could never imagine.
It was on a day like this, when Glenn was 13, and it was not quite summer and spring had not quite let go its grip, that something happened. Something that, for years and years, he was hesitant to talk about for fear of being the odd human out.
This was not a thing he was unused to. He had always been the odd human out. Even among his brothers, he was often alone, as they would run ahead to play and not include him because life gave him shorter legs and weaker eyesight and a head shaped exactly like an egg. Not a sibling outcast, but not a sibling included, either.
He walked alone at night, to gather his pubescent thoughts and try to make sense of a world that contained hurt and rage and betrayal and lies. He played alone as well, making up fictions in his head that would seem as real as the world around him. He had a few friends, but those friends had other friends and often would be with those other friends and so Glenn would be alone with his thoughts, holding conversations deep and meaningful to his young mind.
It was not unusual to find him at eleven p.m walking the neighborhood like a fangless vampire, drawing in the quiet of the evening air and rejoicing in feeling the world draw away from him and be less hectic; less noisy.
He was the weird kid in the neighborhood and unless you wanted to be associated with the weird kid, best leave him be.
It was on that one perfect day that Glenn was meditating in that field near his house, that was adjacent to the wood that was just down the street from where he lived and in which kids would swing on thick grape vines over a tiny creek, doing their Tarzan yells to let the universe know that they were in control of their lives and they were tough, tough as Tarzan and could handle anything.
He was facing West, paying homage to the sun as it wound its way toward setting so that night could once again fall. He was not deep in meditation, working to keep his awareness of life open so that he would not be disturbed by or, by his presence, disturb neither man nor beast. Yes, yes... fancy words meaning he wanted to be left alone to do his thing. He wasn't afraid of being caught out and made fun of. Perhaps just a little, if truth be told, but the thought never entered his mind. He just wanted to be still inside himself.
As he sat, zazen because he felt that was the way to do it, his eyes caught sight of a light, hanging and bobbing in the air to the west. It was perhaps fifty feet away, and it was maybe a foot in diameter and it looked to be nothing more than a soap bubble that was carrying fireflies. Like a ball. Like a golden globe that shimmied and shimmered and shone like a dim sun. All sorts of descriptions would enter his head later in life.
The fact was simply that there was a golden globe hanging in the air and Glenn was watching it and it seemed to Glenn that it was also watching ... no, not watching, it was just... aware of him.
Glenn felt no fear, only curiosity. He had felt fear a few times, from the monsters in his bedroom and from the one nightmare he had ever had. There was no feeling of fear here. This lack of fear would serve him well as he grew, and would open the doors to many adventures and odd knowledge, and would gain him the reputation of "Being most likely to push the button marked Don't Push". Fear was not a stranger to him. Fear was more like that relative you only catch glimpses of in old photographs and think "Oh yes. I remember them."
So and so. Glenn watched the globe with curiosity and interest as it hovered and moved slow closer, like a shy cat or squirrel unsure of what its position in Glenn's universe was. Once the globe had reached ten feet away, Glenn held out his right hand and the globe shrank in size and came to rest, floating less than an inch above his hand.
Though smaller, it still shone and glistened like a snow globe full of gold glitter in the sun. Glenn though a word at it. "up", he thought quietly at it, and the globe rose in to the air to hold a position a foot above his palm. "down", another quiet thought and the globe floated down to rest once again, above his hand.
In any other world, it can be presumed that Glenn would have been freaked or scared or frightened or shocked or even happy and excited at the new toy he had. He was none of these things. He was curious, of course. He was accepting, as accepting as any meditating fangless vampire who lived in his own world because he never felt welcomed in any other.
"Hello, little ball." he thought at it, or perhaps he spoke the words aloud (sometimes it's the same thing, you know). "What may I do for you?"
Now, consider this. The exchange just described probably did not happen just like that. That is how Glenn's older mind remembers it because that mind is decades past the event and the world and memories change based upon the input that happens over time. Everything changes. Everything does, and that is the way it is supposed to be.
The gist is this: Glenn's thirteen year old mind was wide open, like a broken door that had fallen off its hinges. He found himself in a situation that was, to him, as normal seeming as seeing a butterfly land on a milkweed. Even though the words may not have been there, even though there may have been no thoughts, per se, the concept was still the same. Greeting, acceptance and query. We do it all the time to everyone and everything we encounter on our own personal path.
Granted, acceptance may not be kindly or friendly, and the greetings may take the form of 'Stay the hell away from me', but the query is always in the form of 'What?' or 'Where?'. The 'Who' and the 'Why' come somewhere after that. We are, after all, humans and self interest is our first priority.
The globe's response to Glenn was nothing. Not a feeling, not a sense. It just hovered there, as if expecting Glenn to make the first move. A first date, if you would. Well... perhaps not every first date, but in Glenn's case, it would be the norm.
Glenn moved his left hand so that the globe sat between the two and he, for lack of a better word, played with it. He would move his hand further apart and the globe would grow in size. He would move his hands closer together and the globe would shrink to accommodate.
After a few minutes of this sort of game, Glenn saw the sun had set low enough that dinner would be about ready and it never went well to be late. Not wanting to give up his new found friend, he did what any budding thirteen year old in possession of a floating golden globe would do. He put it in his pocket, except in this case, his pocket was that space just below his solar plexus and right where his belly button was. In Eastern mystic terms, between the 3rd and 2nd Chakras.
Why there? Because it seemed like the right thing to do. Glenn's personal path had been bent to the unusual happenstance and having read a few things and experience a few things the best place to put a friendly seeming mystic light was where you had the room. The human body has a lot of space inside it. The belly was a much better suitcase in his mind, than say, the chest where the heart and lungs were.
And this is when things started to go... um... strange in Glenn's life.
Not that he gained superpowers or anything like that. He did gain more of a sense of awareness of the world. He could, during meditation, go deeper into himself. He could also, during meditation, go further outside of himself. There were moments when he felt he could feel what people were thinking. He couldn't hear what others were thinking, but he could the emotions gathered behind those thoughts.
His dreams took on a deeper quality as well, and he often dreamed of flying, unaided, without wings and sometimes to great heights. He dreamed of being different people living different lives, or of himself, living different lives. He found that he had, at times, conscious control over the direction these dreams took.
All of this was started when he was thirteen and it was the catalyst for him to read, read, study, and read more of everything that related to life, the mystic, and the universe that he could get his hands on.
He had discussions with his father, the smartest man that he knew about the nature of God, which Glenn was pretty sure didn't exist in the form that most folks seemed to think it did.
Glenn's father explained his belief thusly. "God is everywhere, everything. The more I study physics, the more certain I am that God does exist." There were more words, but time and tide have taken them away but that is the basis of the conversation. Everything else is velvet drapery.
It was on the road to school, sometime after the globe incident, that Glenn made a discovery that helped him understand and develop his own concept of this God thing. It was a stormy day. Lightning was crashing and wind was being windy. Walking under some telephone wires, Glenn heard the buzzing of conversations in the wires. Not actual words, but the buzzing of conversations. Hearing words would be nuts, right?
In a small fit of clarity, one that caused that golden globe lodged in his belly to jump, Glenn came to this conclusion: "God is the creator of the wind, and God is also the wind. God is the creator of lightning and God is also the lightning." His mind took the capitalization away, now that he was on a more stable footing with the concept. God was all of nature and the creator of nature. Therefore, mankind was of god, but mankind was also god. If this was assumed to be true, and in his mind, it was, ipso de facto, Glenn was god.
Therefore, if Glenn was a god... and not just god, because all living things are god, then Glenn is also a creator.
Now, this was an incredibly strong revelation to a young man. It made him strong, it made him powerful. It made him matter. And while all of this was true, the one thing it did not make his was all powerful, because these are just his words and there are billions of people who also have words and beliefs that were different than his.
Two gods walk into a bar. Is it possible that they will agree on how to run a single universe? Not likely. One god can hardly agree with themselves on how to run their own universe, let along do that communal thing and come to a mutual understanding. I mean, who is in charge? Who relinquishes control? And these are humans we are talking about, here. They have a hard time agreeing on Blue or Gold when it comes to a dress. They have a hard time agreeing on what flavor of Jello is the best. In short, no two gods will ever agree 100 percent and two universes, when placed in a small space called reality cannot help but collide, sometimes with galactic conflict.
It took decades for this to become a thing to Glenn and he spent the time before enlightenment being angry, disillusioned and hurt. Mostly by his lack of understanding that this is how it is supposed to be, but occasionally by his own attempt at forcing the world to accept him on his own terms.
The world doesn't work like that, kiddo.
So, let's drop that here, and just accept that, broken from the beginning, Glenn was bound to stumble through the world, talking, reading, studying and living, doing the very best that a god can do with the meager tools he has to work with. Let's move on to his late teens and early twenties. Anything before that is just angst and pain. You know... teenagerdom.
