Worms and Viruses: Government Sponsored Terror

Posted on July 25, 2010 by ehurst

At first it was just the juvenile hijinks of some very skillful hackers, who became crackers. Then they shared their goodies with wannabe crackers we called “script kiddies” and there were far more of them, so incidents rose. Then someone realized it could be profitable, and every decent cracker became either a crook or a cop, as it were, and some played both sides. But the days of merely destructive software are gone, and all of it now has a commercial purpose.

Recently, I feel certain some of it is government spying at work, disguised as criminal acts. Why not, since they often do criminal acts disguised as spying?

It need not be that some government employee or contractor actually writes a worm or virus, only that they make use of one for their own purposes. For example, this Stuxnet beast infecting machines running SCADA software. While the Forbes blogger notes the scanning data from Symantec is biased, you have to wonder if this isn’t some signal to those watching. That is, given the report says most of the infections are in Iran’s SCADA networks, stealing data on their electricity generation and transmission, it screams at us someone is using it to spy on Iran for purely political reasons.

It makes not a whit of difference where the bot-herder is based, since the CIA is everywhere, and can hire anybody with our tax dollars for the most unconscionable evils, and a great many CIA agents possess no conscience in the first place. So if you follow this line of thinking, and consider there are other US clandestine agencies composed of sociopaths who serve the state as god, other wide-spread computer infections might well be under their control.

Remember, they are sociopaths, and no amount of harm to no amount of citizens makes any difference, except as a perverse form of entertainment. They get paid to destroy the taxpayers who provide their salaries. That any such infection of virus or worm also affects many who are not targeted is simply collateral damage. For such people, there is no such thing as an innocent bystander. Given Microsoft, and most every other major corporation with lobbyists, is in cahoots with the federal government (despite appearances and noisy prosecutions which accomplish nothing), might it not help to explain their lackadaisical attitude about fixing known flaws?

If it were my job to develop and run such spying programs, you can be sure such ideas would cross my mind, and I’m not especially bright.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Worms and Viruses: Government Sponsored Terror

Laws and the Lawgiver

Posted on July 24, 2010 by ehurst

Lately I’ve run into people who just don’t grasp the most basic assumptions behind the Law Covenants in the Bible. As always, we have to start from the assumption God nurtured and created a specific language and culture after the Fall, building a frame of reference in which to reveal Himself to fallen mankind. While a culture can include a lot of trash, and plenty of things which are simply contextually derived from the roots, we must grasp the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) Hebrew culture, essentially founded in the life of Abraham, as the single point of reference, the fundamental matrix of assumptions, the one proper intellectual framework and viewpoint, on which all revelation is built.

We know about things prior to Abraham because he was the one who carried the knowledge, and he is the one who interprets what they mean. He was a scholar among his own kind, educated in the vast array of ancient literature no longer available to us. When the Lord called him and brought his spirit to life, he was in the unique position of setting the precedent on what is necessary to operate under the Spirit of God. That he failed at points serves only to verify that, in that how he failed shows how it works. Paul points out there is a dual legacy from Abraham, one earthly and one spiritual. The latter is what really matters, but is hard to know unless we grasp something of the former.

Moses was another gatekeeper. His gate was much narrower. His mission was to insert into the stream of history a very specialized expression of God’s revelation on the level of the earthly, a covenant of Laws. His work served to filter Abraham’s legacy for a particular purpose, and his forty days with God on Mount Sinai included editorial guidance on what to write among the various threads of oral legacy handed down from Abraham. What Moses left for us in the Torah was a distillation, something which assumed the reader would read between the lines in order the grasp the nature of the Domain of the Spirit.

His primary focus was the part any fallen man could grasp, the Covenant of the Law as the gateway to the Spirit. Even in his legal writing, with a literal application in the rituals of the Covenant, the first generation to read this Law Covenant read it from the mystical ANE Hebraic approach. They might struggle to use the symbolic language, but there was no doubt their cultural background presumed a higher meaning to all such literature.

The baldly literal approach of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day were the result of a cultural shift, drifting away from the intellectual culture of Abraham and Moses. That slippage came in stages, beginning with the sins of Jeroboam, which wallowed in the fundamental temptation to be inclusive of the local pagan rituals. The Canaanites spoke a similar language, and their rituals were quite familiar to the Hebrew nation. Jeroboam said, in essence, the distinction between Jehovah and the Baal/Ashtarte collection was of no significance. Then there was the broad human political wisdom of statecraft. The Northern Kingdom became quite adept, but also quite evil at the same time. Once that bunch was taken away because of that evil, Judah was stupid enough to chase the same human wisdom.

In the Exile which resulted from their sin, Judah was introduced to the vast depth of ancient religious literature which had always been kept in the libraries of Mesopotamia, from which background Abraham went out. They bought into the worldly wisdom of that broad education and the religious assumptions of the Babylonian Imperial house. Then came the Medo-Persian conquest and their peculiar assumptions under Zoroastrianism. The latter introduced a very intellectual frame of reference that all deities were on the same team, but it also brought in a very hedonistic money-based view of life. It was like a one-two knockout punch against the Abrahamic culture: Babylon’s ancient ethos that everything in heaven and earth had a price in gold, and Persia’s expansion on that same idea with the notion rulers could be inherently divine in a certain sense, and the Hebrews were ripe for Satan’s harvest.

The returnees in a short time ended up with a greedy, worldly Messianic expectation of political world conquest. It was their destiny from God’s hand to own all the wealth of the world, and be masters over all humanity, enslaving everyone who wasn’t a Son of the Law. But it was Law for which they no longer had a good fundamental grasp. Along comes Greek rationalism in the wake of Alexander’s conquests and this was the final stake in the heart of Hebraic culture. It wasn’t simply the Pharisees, but the entire range of Judean leadership — nobles, priests, scholars, etc. — were deeply enamored with the analytical rationalist approach of Aristotle and friends. And while they tried to keep their mystical grasp of God, that mysticism was so thoroughly compromised; it was at best a caricature of how Abraham viewed things.

They exchanged deep mysticism for shallow abstract logic, symbolism for mere allegory, and the divine ineffable truth in parabolic language became a baldly literal legalism. The Bible cannot be read with a literal mindset, or you will miss everything that matters. When God’s ancient declarations seem contradictory, it’s because you are mired in a concrete logical frame of reference while trying to read a symbolic mystical revelation.

When you approach it properly, you realize there is no way a fallen human on this earth can possibly hope to grasp the Divine from mere human intellect. That intellect is fallen, damaged, entirely subject to the failures of sinful nature. The very nature of the Fall was choosing to put human intellect on the throne of life’s choices, versus enslaving the intellect to serve the spiritual element. That choice in the Garden killed the spiritual link which was our birthright. Only God can restore it. When He does, you spend the rest of this life struggling to reconstruct the dominance of the spirit over the mind, much as the mind must dominate the flesh.

A critical element in that renewed order of things in the human soul is the realization you cannot reconcile all the apparent paradoxes and discontinuities of Scripture until your spirit rules your mind. That mind must be renovated under the ANE Hebraic mystical orientation of Abraham, so it can better learn to implement the unspeakable strategies of the Spirit of God delivered in the spirit He births. God’s Laws are not God. They are mere manifestations of someone who cannot be contained in words, thoughts of the intellect, or any other part of this fallen world. God can command His servants to do something which is ostensibly contrary to His Laws because His Laws cannot possibly contain the whole truth of what God demands of humanity. Yes, that is a very dangerous place to stand, because men with evil in their hearts can use that as an excuse for all sorts of nastiness. People who walk in the spirit will know the difference. That is God’s promise.

The tension between the Laws on one hand, and the inexpressible demands of the Spirit on the other, is the place God has built for His people. Get used to it. A final and all encompassing objective standard is not going to happen. Your standard is Jesus Christ, a Person. You cannot objectify the living Son of God.

Posted in religion | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Laws and the Lawgiver

Joe Jobs and Other Net Attacks

Posted on July 23, 2010 by ehurst

Someone managed to trash my first Gmail account in a “Joe Job”. That’s where someone spoofs your name and email address and commits naughty acts which get you in trouble.

A few years back when Google Mail was brand new, I got an invite and set up my account. I used that address for people I didn’t know or didn’t trust. Much as I like Gmail, it’s still a throwaway, something not essential for my life. It’s nice the account unlocks other Google services, but only my Blogger account gets used for much.

You should never rely on free services for anything which really matters to you. Those people don’t know you, and don’t know when some idiot is masquerading as you. They can’t even really secure it from relatively light-weight cracking attacks, so treat it as expendable. Always maintain at least four such free accounts and make sure the people with whom you really need to maintain contact know all of them. I have at least a half-dozen on different services, and keep track of a half-dozen more free servics just in case I need a fresh one quickly. Just Google for “free webmail” and you’ll never run short. It helps if, like me, you can read a couple of foreign languages and register accounts on services in countries which use those languages.

It was with my old Gmail account I contacted the service provider for a spammer who was posting links to pornography one of my blogs. Turns out the service provider was the spammer. He cracked my Gmail account, registered for a large number of high traffic forums, then proceeded to post his nasty porno pictures on each one. Then he changed his domain registration and I couldn’t find him again. Meanwhile, all these fine people sent me torrents of angry messages about those nasty forum posts. Most had never heard of me, and haven’t heard from me since. I had to close that old Gmail account.

One forum he found I already had an account, the Ubuntu support forums. I contacted the admin from another address and explained the situation, and made sure my old account was deleted. He recognized the porn spam was not at all my style, and assured me I could create a new account any time I needed. He had experienced the bruising of a Joe Job himself.

People who know you will not believe it when they see something like that. Those are the folks who can always find you if you have to close one or more free accounts. For the folks who don’t know you well, you’ll just have to work at keeping track of those who matter for whatever reason. Not every one you meet in virtual space is worth that effort, and it doesn’t always mean it’s because they aren’t nice people. However, it typically does mean that. Some of them are predators of various kinds looking to take whatever they can for their use or simply for their entertainment. I won’t pretend to analyze the motives of them all, but the world is full of folks who would not missed if they disappeared. They are well represented on the Net, in part because it is so very easy to get away with things you can’t pull off in the real world.

It helps if you aren’t stupid enough to provoke people needlessly. This is another of the Net psychology things, in that most people act differently on the Net than any other part of their lives. It’s like “flaming” — sending vicious messages through email, Usenet or forums. Some of those people understand the Net better than you, and can do some very nasty things to you. I don’t regret hammering that spammer, even if he turned out to be running his own service. You can let a lot of stuff slide, but when they don’t quit after once or twice, you have to act any way you can. When deleting the filth didn’t work, I traced the source and complained. I should have taken it up one level, but I had no way of knowing that.

At any given time, I’m only a couple of incidents away from simply dropping off the Net. That is, while I would surely keep some things alive if I could, blogging is not a “have-to” thing. None of the forums are essential to my life. The people I really need to talk to know where to find me, and I can always get hold of them in other ways. If you have friends on the Net you truly value, now would be a good time to elicit their snail-mail address, phone number, or other means of contact.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Joe Jobs and Other Net Attacks

I Won’t Do Facebook

Posted on July 22, 2010 by ehurst

At one time I had a Facebook account. It was a  bad move.

The only reason I have a computer is communications. My first and deepest need regarding computers is writing. That was my first and primary use for one when I first put my hands on a keyboard back in 1989. Had it advanced not at all beyond DOS and word processors, I would have found it worthwhile to own one. That and a printer.

Since that time, I’ve done a lot of writing. I’ve also learned my way around the Internet, but mostly a way of researching for my writing. Then I learned about email, and finally blogging. That’s far enough. Whether people want to read what I write is another matter; I write and publish on the Net. I play precious few games — mostly the logical puzzle games — and I don’t do social media. The only interest I have in computers, and the reason for my extensive discussion here about computer technology and software, is because it’s a great tool for communication.

The reason I hate Facebook is only partially due to the medium. I am called to the gospel ministry, and that’s the whole point in all that writing in the first place. It’s what matters to me, and everything else I do must serve that purpose. On Facebook I was constantly pestered by friends whose only interest was the silly social gaming, mostly junk from Zynga. Let’s get this straight: I despise Zynga games. They create an artificial atmosphere of something which resembles friendship, but actually you interact only with the game, not each other. The game gets in the way.

Want to chat? Fine. I’m usually on both Yahoo Chat and Google Talk under the username “br073n” (bee-arr-zero-seven-three-enn). Want to discuss faith and current events? Yes, let’s do that. Oh, wait. No one does that on Facebook. No, everyone I know, or those who know me, want to play silly games, want me to install this or that useless idiotic plugin, etc. So I politely declined. They kept asking. What should I do? Get hostile? I’m not sure most folks would notice. The people who use Facebook aren’t there to communicate.

Facebook is nothing more than an extravagant advertising platform, designed to get folks who know you to pressure you into looking at more advertising. The games themselves quickly become unplayable if you don’t purchase in-game credits. If I post important stuff, or even the silly things I end up posting on this blog, no one is going to pay much attention to them. Believe me; I tried it with a couple dozen posts. I wrote about things which really mattered to me. Out of some two dozen friends, I got a single comment on one such post.

I don’t have much room in my life for those games. They are worse than TV at keeping you from things which matter. Indeed, it would be much more important for people if they simply learned to sit in contemplative and prayerful silence instead of clicking their mouse in games specifically designed to prevent real communion.

Don’t send me invitations to join Facebook. Send me email, start a blog and tell me the URL, post comments to my blog, or join me at Sakamuyo (gone). Invite me to join a good discussion forum you frequent. But until the atmosphere at Facebook chances, forget it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Violence Rising

Posted on July 22, 2010 by ehurst

In general, I avoid TV. I won’t try to present the arguments and research here, but TV watching is promoted only because it has a subtle hypnotic effect. This effect is denied by the primary victims, and proven repeatedly in every honest lab test available on the subject. The act of giving that device your attention will cause you to suspend at least a portion of your normal reasoning process, will degrade the filters we all have to test whether perception is reality. The effect is not absolute, in that the less you watch TV, the weaker it is. So I carefully select when I’ll give that time. I never watch national news for more than a few moments, because it is by far one of the most egregious forms of manipulation. Local news broadcasts are at least marginally useful, if only so you can learn what local politicians want you to focus on, while they do their nasty deeds in the background.

Local news channels live and die by sensational reporting. If nothing is happening, they’ll always pull out some filler, but if there is anything which can be portrayed dramatically, that always trumps everything else. While specific stories are most certainly spiked by local editors, who are kept in line by any number of inducements and threats from higher up the chain, in general: If it bleeds, it leads. So you can be sure if there is a violent incident, it will be on the air, albeit surely highly slanted.

Thus, we can discern at least one basic fact of our local situation. If there is more violent crime, you’ll see more stories about it on the local news channels. There are known factors which contribute to provoking more crime from the folks who typically do them. You might expect more crime when the weather is hot, because fools who lose their temper do so more frequently and with greater effect when the weather is hot. If they are poor and out of work, all the more so, since they are bored and don’t have much access to air conditioning.

Density of the various contributing factors is a consideration, of course. If only a few folks in a poor shack town are out of work, the crime will be unreported, because most of it will be amongst their own kind. As more of them lose that income, they have to find other prey, which means folks in the better neighborhoods. Then it gets reported on the news. Along with these considerations are the trends in the types of crimes. So for example, stealing copper is pretty big right now, because recently the price one could get for scrap copper went up. The easily accessible copper infrastructure which no one bothered before is now a high-value target for theft. In times past it was movable electronic entertainment devices. Trends are noted by the experts, and sometimes that makes the news.

Having once served in law enforcement, I am familiar with the statistical trends. When you account for those trends, I would say we are beginning to see the first wave of economically based violence. That is, we are seeing locally a wave of crime which cannot be explained merely by the current heat wave, because the nature of the violence is not random enough. It’s much more purposeful. Most of it arises as a contingency to economic crimes. More and more of the perpetrators are not members of the typically defined “criminal class.” Statistics are about to be shaken out of place.

Net result: Folks in flyover country are about to experience a crime rate more consistent with major urban centers. At the same time, agents for public order are more likely to escalate, rather than deescalate tensions. We are seeing the results of a higher degree of dependence on government, with an increasing inability to deliver on the promises which justified that dependence. But in order to maintain that dependence, government-sponsored violence against civilians will rise precipitously. So there is a collision of greater desperation among the general population as government policies remove life support, more aggressively interfere with self-reliance, at the same time mindlessly crushing anything which resembles mere dissent.

Not everyone in the system is aware of it all. Most of the enforcers, for example, are not informed they are pawns in an ugly game. For decades their training has increasingly aimed at making them intolerant of normal human behavior. Most cops have a deeply perverted sense of what to expect in their daily encounters with the civilian population. Most bureaucrats aren’t aware the entire regulatory system assumes dehumanizing people is a good; they simply absorb it and become less human themselves. There is, however, at some level a pervasive intelligent evil at work creating this impossible situation.

This isn’t your ordinary crime wave resulting from perceived loss of comfort. This is a diabolical provocation, a carefully structured incitement equivalent to chasing down rats and cornering them. Everyone denies it, yet no other explanation covers it. Christian Mystics cannot afford to let this pass unnoticed. In the coming days, even years, we must carefully note how God is granting those who reject the norm — humans steered by conscious awareness of convictions — enough rope to hang themselves. The dead souls channeling our Enemy will succeed in the sense of creating chaos, but they do not realize it will overtake them, too. In the midst of the storm, surely severe beyond imagining, we can see where this is going. Our hope is the divine sanity of clinging to ineffable truth.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Violence Rising

Garden of the Soul

Posted on July 21, 2010 by ehurst

Every year my dad plants a vegetable garden, sometimes a few flowers. This year he wasn’t feeling quite as strong as in the past, so was unable to put quite so much effort into it. Still, it produced a huge number of tomatoes, banana peppers and okra. We had a few crooked neck yellow squash but they didn’t do well. The eggplants weren’t too enthusiastic, and some of the tomatoes never produced at all. We have a half dozen cucumbers so far. Lots of onions, but most didn’t do too well. The cantaloupes are coming along.

Right now dad isn’t available, so my wife and I took over tending the garden. I spent several days just pulling weeds and grass. Then we slowly cleared the non-producing plants. Right now, about one-third of the main garden plot is empty, so I chopped up all the plants we pulled, plus some grass clippings and such, and let them dry on the empty portion. Today I turned all that under.

The problem we have here is the soil is a light layer of sand on top of red clay. So I’m turning it over as deep as the shovel will cut one time and chopping it up. Then I’m adding one heavy layer of mulch from the trees ground up a couple years ago in our trailer park. I keep it all wet and leave it for a week or so. Then I’ll turn it all under again, and add another layer. Over the winter, I’m hoping this will break down and make next year’s garden plot more like potting soil instead of a clay pan.

I’m doing this with hand tools. I chop the silage with a pair of short limb snippers. The mulch I tote about a half-mile in a large plastic barrel on a hand truck. It’s a good work out. Every day I give it an hour or so in the morning, then a similar effort in the evening before I water it. This is pretty good, since I’m not able to get to my usual make-shift gymnasium, and I can’t do any work on my trails until the first freeze kills off the deer ticks.

It won’t hurt the soil, of course. I’m trying to create a bit of a raised bed above the grass in the yard, so I’ll keep adding that black tree mulch until it’s up at least a couple of inches. Sometime during the winter I’m also going to add some cedar and pine clippings, because the soil is very basic here. There’s plenty of conifers along my fitness trail, and I’ve already piled some dead limbs from last year. Provided it’s still our garden next spring, we’ll plant stuff more typical of Central Oklahoma that we like: carrots, radishes, green beans, tomatoes bred specifically for local conditions, but we want to try the squash again, maybe some turnips, a couple heads of lettuce, and whatever else make good natural companions with those. Depending on how the cantaloupes turn out, I might do that again.

Naturally, it’s pretty good for the soul, too. I enjoy working with he soil, but I prefer to do it pretty much alone, and the way I want it. I would not enjoy nearly so much working someone else’s ideas. I’m that way on a lot of things, though hardly everything. When it comes to computers, I’m all about customer service, for example. But for something like gardening, I need to work alone mostly.

Given the way the economy is going, it might make a big difference for us in the next few years.

Posted in personal | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

There Is Only One Standard

Posted on July 20, 2010 by ehurst

Don’t talk to me about custom, law, treaties, history or tradition. While I normally take those things into account, they are not binding on me. I am free. Not that those things cannot bind my flesh, or kill it, but they don’t matter to my spirit, the part they cannot touch because they had nothing to do with it. I am free because I am alive in the spirit.

There is only one standard to which men can point which matters, and that is the Bible. No, not just the book itself, since the words printed on paper, in very many different translations in many different languages, can be made to mean any number of conflicting things. No, ultimate truth cannot be rendered in mere words of human language. Rather, it is the Bible as read by those who are born of the Spirit. Further, it is what that binding means to you in the context of the moment in which you live.

It is altogether likely your understanding of the same passage between today and tomorrow will shift somewhat. If you really do intend to understand what God requires of you, that happens. It happens because no one of us is where we ought to be when He comes to us. We have to be moved gradually. Choosing to bring you into His domain is His choice, but in a very real sense, once inside you have to cooperate every step of the way. And as your cooperation improves, so does your grasp of what God expects of you. So it is our understanding of that Bible will move some over time.

You are bound under that best understanding you have at the moment of decision. Not in the performance, for even that is a miracle of God. No, in your commitment to do what He wants.

Nothing any man comes up with makes a hair’s breadth of difference in moving me one way or another in the basic decisions. Those things are burned into the very being of my spirit and soul. Again, I am responsible for knowing something about man’s requirements, but only so I can with open eyes see how it conflicts with my commitment to Christ.

Jesus is my only Lord. All others are either partners, allies, bystanders or enemies in terms of what I must try to do. We would surely disagree with what we see in that Book, because we are not at the same place on our individual paths. But we can still choose to cooperate by making room for each other, however much room that may be. But in the final analysis, I must do what the Spirit and Book demand. Nothing else matters.

Posted in religion | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Take Them Seriously

Posted on July 19, 2010 by ehurst

Over the years of my life, whenever I have encountered children, I’ve never had too much trouble getting their cooperation. Nobody is perfect, and some groups are inherently bratty unless broken apart, but more on that later. The point is, the single greatest factor in my comfort and success with children as a whole is taking them seriously. They know instinctively when you do, and it changes everything.

It’s the same with any leader-follower relationship. The true leader takes into account every one of the group they lead, and takes seriously their wishes, even if there is nothing they can do to fulfill a single one. So we not the least surprised when someone points out US government by no means takes anyone seriously who isn’t part of the ruling class:

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

Codevilla goes on to explain how this didn’t actually start with TARP, but it simply became painfully obvious to all on an unprecedented scale. He also breaks it down by party and basic policy orientation, noting those who are conservative or Republican are utterly certain the party leaders do not represent them. So while it’s highly likely the next election will see Republican gains across the board, nobody believes it will change much, because it can only be a matter of the lesser of evils, and all of them are very, very evil.

For mystics, we understand. We trust no one, least of all ourselves, but we know we cannot hope to bring truth to anyone if we don’t take them seriously. Truth only comes one individual at a time, and the essence of bringing enlightenment is one-on-one within a context of consistently revealing truth to all. It’s work, very hard work, until it becomes your basic reflex. I can’t explain how I came to take children seriously, but it has been a reflex for as long as I can remember. That is, I don’t exactly treat them like children, and give them as much as possible the same freedom to act as I do adults. Who am I to say they aren’t some superior genius in ways I can’t discern? Only what I must do to protect those under my care will indicate any limitations. It’s not a matter of inherent power or talent, but simply the role assigned by forces beyond my control.

I’m still trying to figure this out, and allowing people to choose will expose their readiness to face the world. Treat people like children, and you’ll tend to get the worst, most childish response. Treat them like equals within the limits of the situation, and it changes everything. That’s because we are constructing a bubble of truth when we do so, and all things come to light when we live the truth. The one thing which most sickens me among others who proclaim themselves “mystics” is the same awful pretense of superiority we get from any elitist ruling class. Mysticism does not make you better, just more honest with yourself. We do not have answers for the all the many needs of the world, but deny there are any real answers in this world. The only real answer is to deny them all, and point people to the place inside the human soul which can touch and be touched by the hand of God.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Take Them Seriously

Catalogue of Errors

Posted on July 18, 2010 by ehurst

It’s not as if there isn’t enough crazy evil coming out government and corporations, but too much of it. It would be easy to pick out single events for discussion, but today I simply want to reiterate some basic principles.

1. There is not a single national government which operates according to God’s Laws for nations and governments. In that sense, not a one has any legitimate claim on your loyalty. You would probably grant some latitude and act according to the laws of these governments, but in the West we are on the threshold of requirements for things we cannot do. No one should be surprised.

2. Government power, or any other form of power over human lives, is unfailingly corrupted. Not just petty stuff, but major stuff. The powers that be (TPTB) have deeply embedded into the system horrific evil. We should never hold as decent or good anyone in that system. Consider all the things which tempt folks to compromise morally — every one of them, and some you cannot imagine, have been used. You will find it fundamentally built into government there will be child molestation, heavy mind-bending substances, massive quantities of material wealth essentially stolen, the most casual lack of concern for human life-health-safety, and on and on it goes. These things are the norm in government, particularly in the US. The apparatus in place which keeps it all secret is the same which keeps these compromised people on a leash. Nobody — nobody — is working for you. They are all serving other masters.

3. God is on the warpath and the cover is being ripped off even as we speak. At first, the corrupt actors will simply assume you don’t know, will continue brazenly acting as if nothing has been exposed, that their secret sins simply don’t exist. “We are the finest, most honorable folks because we say so.” The tricks used to cover their sins are wearing thin, and pretty soon nobody with an ounce of honesty is going to believe any of it. The scariest part of that is how few folks you will find honestly seeking to know. Most of the world prefers fiction.

4. It’s not just the so-called “Internet Kill Switch” recently handed to the President, but that is symbolic of the on-going fight to keep us in the dark. Right now, the one best means of spreading that truth across the entire global population is the Internet. Don’t be surprised if that goes away, and quite suddenly, very soon. Don’t be surprised if it only appears to be the same, but is actually so radically changed, it might as well be gone. I hope Mel Gibson does the smart thing and goes back to Australia, but his experiences are not a major news item compared to all the other stuff going on. Yet, you can be sure stuff like that will be shoved in our faces, as more and more sinister efforts are made to shut down the free flow of information. Kooks are just fine, and they should have full right to speak, since they are hardly more dangerous than government liars. The only thing which will keep this from happening is the Net geeks come up with some other means or protocol for electronic data transfer, some other type of network or whatever. Personally, I expect the government to simply convince the Telcos, who own virtually all the wiring not in government hands already, to participate in a new format which allows more entertainment, and less actual information.

5. Equally dangerous, we should expect some sort of surprise move to disarm everyone, not just of firearms, but anything which might aid people in resisting armed oppression from the government. This is what governments do when they plan to hurt the folks they govern. They are already working on this, but the stuff we know about crashes before it gets off the ground. I believe it is all theater designed to keep us from seeing the real threat.

6. There will be more war than you can possibly imagine. Think it’s bad now? Fasten your seatbelt. Hostilities with Iran will begin officially any day now, and we are already fighting a covert war in Pakistan, some other Stans, parts of Africa, you name it. Most fighting in the world right now was all started by the CIA, and they are just warming up. There will also be considerable warfare here in the US, again instigated by our own government, and massive population displacements, even use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

This would be a really good time to hone your mystical awareness. Just for the record, one more time, let’s define what we mean by “mysticism” — the habit of including in your decision-making process input from non-rational sources within your own soul and spirit. No, that does not include emotions and purely subjective wishful thinking, but something considerably higher up in the realms of subconscious operations. Thus, your rational mind takes a backseat to these higher processes and simply works out the means to doing what is decided.

Get used to the idea all your worldly goods are already forfeit. It could be nothing exciting will happen to you individually, but that’s highly unlikely. Then, get used to the idea all your hopes and dreams were silly from the start. You aren’t likely to ever accomplish anything in the near future, because the necessities for such planning are gone. The world is changing even as I type this, and everything is coming apart. Think in terms of simply doing what you absolutely have to do according to your convictions, and especially be ready to pay the price for refusing things you know are wrong. For those of you with children in your household — God help you — plan on having to fight to keep them under your parental control, or even seeing them any more.

God alone knows what comes next, so you best be standing next to Him.

Posted in religion | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Catalogue of Errors

Mysticism and Leadership

Posted on July 17, 2010 by ehurst

So you are a Christian Mystic (like me) and have been placed in a position of leadership. Now what?

This is much easier than it seems. Leadership means you focus on the mission and results, not the fine details of the operation. Yes, there are regulations, and you’ll have to thread your way through the bureaucratic maze of idiocy. Every rule arises from some idiot pushing the envelope for his personal gain, and some idiot bureaucrat pushes back with a new regulation to eliminate that option. But it always goes too far and blocks good options, too. That’s the whole point — stop trying to micromanage. It’s a whole lot easier if you permit creativity in those you lead.

Mystics don’t even want control. We know we cannot trust ourselves to know what works best in every situation, even if we have 50 academic degrees and a century of experience. When you get that far, you should already know full well how to keep your nose out of your subordinates’ business. And it’s their business to execute commands under you guidance, not under your micromanaging hands. The ultimate wisdom knows your real mission is the people, and your assigned mission is the next stupid idea some bureaucratic manager above you dreamed up. The first thing we do is build a barrier to protect our family, which in this case is the folks you supervise. This puts God in control.

The people you lead are not mere extensions, as if they were hands and feet which must carry out the finite decisions of your mind. The people you lead are people. Don’t form a detailed vision, but do include them in your planning sessions. You aren’t better, just the one who is required to have the final say, which you will avoid exercising as much as possible. Respect your people.

It’s that simple. If you can’t work it out from there, you aren’t quite mystical yet, and you aren’t ready to lead.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged , , | 1 Comment