Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Win the new Progresso High Fiber Minestrone
The fine folks at Progresso and MyBlogSpark sent me the following news:
"We think you will be excited to hear that in addition to the 75 great flavors of Progresso Soup, there are four new, great tasting Progresso soups that have 28% of your daily fiber intake per serving (7 grams) and have no added MSG or artificial flavors. The new varieties include Chicken Tuscany, Creamy Tomato Basil, Hearty Vegetable and Noodles and Homestyle Minestrone."
I WAS kind of excited, because I make a real effort to consume enough fiber, and we consume a ton of Progresso already. They sent me a can of the Homestyle Minestrone to try, as part of a prize pack that included two branded soup mugs and two branded spoons. We tried the soup, and both agreed that it was very tasty, with nothing to indicate that the fiber was in there; it seemed just like regular soup. You know you should eat more fiber, so give this a try... it's also a painless way to eat more veggies, which is always a +.
If you'd like to try it for free, Progresso and MyBlogSpark are letting me give away a prize pack like the one they sent me; tell me me why you love Minestrone, and the most creative entry gets the goodies. I'll post the winner in a couple of days.
"We think you will be excited to hear that in addition to the 75 great flavors of Progresso Soup, there are four new, great tasting Progresso soups that have 28% of your daily fiber intake per serving (7 grams) and have no added MSG or artificial flavors. The new varieties include Chicken Tuscany, Creamy Tomato Basil, Hearty Vegetable and Noodles and Homestyle Minestrone."
I WAS kind of excited, because I make a real effort to consume enough fiber, and we consume a ton of Progresso already. They sent me a can of the Homestyle Minestrone to try, as part of a prize pack that included two branded soup mugs and two branded spoons. We tried the soup, and both agreed that it was very tasty, with nothing to indicate that the fiber was in there; it seemed just like regular soup. You know you should eat more fiber, so give this a try... it's also a painless way to eat more veggies, which is always a +.
If you'd like to try it for free, Progresso and MyBlogSpark are letting me give away a prize pack like the one they sent me; tell me me why you love Minestrone, and the most creative entry gets the goodies. I'll post the winner in a couple of days.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Yes, there's more
You know what your subconscious mind does, right? It controls literally thousands of different things all over your body, from your heartbeat to your hormones, in addition to handling your memories and dreams, processing the raw data from your senses into a form your conscious mind can handle, and on and on. It's like an incredibly complex machine, running according to consistent rules and requiring no direct input from the conscious mind. Keep that in mind, you'll need it later.
I had a dream last night that I received an email from the perpetrators of The Bad Thing. The unusual name of the one person involved who tried to be a little bit helpful was in the subject line along with a key word for this issue. The From field contained the last name of a friend of my mother's, and I instantly associated the name with that woman; she is remarkable in that she's the only person outside of my family who EVER managed to thwart my mother when she was trying to screw me over. Is this a sign that the latest person I've contacted about TBT will do the same with the person in their office who seems to have taken a similar personal glee in using their little bit of power to screw me over... or is it just something my brain cooked up as wishful thinking? Only time will tell.
On the Divine front: I asked again today for the joy I should be feeling, that a normal person would be feeling, when suddenly confronted with God, and I got it; although physically and mentally exhausted, I got that joyful exhilaration again, so much so that I actually laughed out loud... the feeling was so amazing that quite frankly if this IS insanity rather than divine intervention I can totally see now why people sink into madness. (Just fyi, no mania, no rapid-fire talking, no frenzied activity, no urges to do impulsive things, have accompanied these feelings of joy; I haven't suddenly become bipolar, and I haven't felt or acted "high.")
I'd asked God over the last couple of days if Jesus was real too, and if so were they part of the same being, separate, did they "work together," etc. Today, my husband, who knows NOTHING about all this, was going to pick up a calendar for me...:
Him: I'll get you one with Jesus or NASCAR on it.
Me: WHAT? Why would you say that?
Him: You normally get puppies or kittens, so I was suggesting something you wouldn't want.
Me: Why would you think of JESUS? {NASCAR makes sense because I laugh at him for watching it}
Him: I don't know. He'll watch you.
Me: WHAT?
Him: In the shower
Me: !!!!!!!!!! Are you remembering my dream about God being in the shower? {which I recently posted about}
Him: Huh? No.
Eerie, but not conclusive. A couple of hours later, I was in fact in the shower, talking out loud to God. I told him I wanted to know Him, know His nature. I asked him what His connection was to karma, "Are YOU karma? Did you create it?". I paused to put my head under the shower head, and
(karma is God's unconscious mind)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S IT!! It makes perfect sense!! Karma behaves exactly like our unconscious minds do!! And God is supposed to have made us in His image!! That doesn't mean the old man in a bathrobe type image, there's no humanoid body somewhere that contains God's essence, it means that among other things he gave us a double-layered mind like He has!! The feeling of joy came back even stronger than before, and some of the sense of wonder I'd asked for came as well. It was so powerful that I was literally gasping for breath.
Was this a further escalation of insanity, or did God send me an answer and also the ability to FEEL, to feel what a normal person would if they had this sort of experience?
The joy and exhilaration didn't fade, they kept going on; it was far beyond anything I've ever experienced. I admitted out loud that it was a little overwhelming, felt a little odd, almost uncomfortable in its foreignness, but I begged Him to not take it away, because I gladly accepted a little discomfort to be able to FEEL. I couldn't help analyzing the feeling, because my nature hasn't changed, and I noticed that, while such happiness and excitement as I'm capable of always feels somewhat like anxiety, with a jittery edge to it, this feeling of joy was PURE, jitter- and anxiety-free.
Have I REALLY learned a part of the nature of God, over-simplified of course and distorted by the need to use human words and ideas for something superhuman and beyond human ability to understand more than a little bit of, but... HAVE I?
Do I sound crazy? I'll reiterate that no one in my life has noticed anything amiss with me. I'm still doing my work and the other myriad tasks of life with nothing to suggest an impaired mind. I self-examine constantly, searching for anything OTHER than the spiritual stuff that looks even remotely out of whack, and can't find anything. I'm not on meds of any kind, and I don't so much as drink a glass of wine with dinner much less consume anything hallucinatory. This is either a very focused, selective and intense psychosis... or it's HAPPENING.
I had a dream last night that I received an email from the perpetrators of The Bad Thing. The unusual name of the one person involved who tried to be a little bit helpful was in the subject line along with a key word for this issue. The From field contained the last name of a friend of my mother's, and I instantly associated the name with that woman; she is remarkable in that she's the only person outside of my family who EVER managed to thwart my mother when she was trying to screw me over. Is this a sign that the latest person I've contacted about TBT will do the same with the person in their office who seems to have taken a similar personal glee in using their little bit of power to screw me over... or is it just something my brain cooked up as wishful thinking? Only time will tell.
On the Divine front: I asked again today for the joy I should be feeling, that a normal person would be feeling, when suddenly confronted with God, and I got it; although physically and mentally exhausted, I got that joyful exhilaration again, so much so that I actually laughed out loud... the feeling was so amazing that quite frankly if this IS insanity rather than divine intervention I can totally see now why people sink into madness. (Just fyi, no mania, no rapid-fire talking, no frenzied activity, no urges to do impulsive things, have accompanied these feelings of joy; I haven't suddenly become bipolar, and I haven't felt or acted "high.")
I'd asked God over the last couple of days if Jesus was real too, and if so were they part of the same being, separate, did they "work together," etc. Today, my husband, who knows NOTHING about all this, was going to pick up a calendar for me...:
Him: I'll get you one with Jesus or NASCAR on it.
Me: WHAT? Why would you say that?
Him: You normally get puppies or kittens, so I was suggesting something you wouldn't want.
Me: Why would you think of JESUS? {NASCAR makes sense because I laugh at him for watching it}
Him: I don't know. He'll watch you.
Me: WHAT?
Him: In the shower
Me: !!!!!!!!!! Are you remembering my dream about God being in the shower? {which I recently posted about}
Him: Huh? No.
Eerie, but not conclusive. A couple of hours later, I was in fact in the shower, talking out loud to God. I told him I wanted to know Him, know His nature. I asked him what His connection was to karma, "Are YOU karma? Did you create it?". I paused to put my head under the shower head, and
(karma is God's unconscious mind)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S IT!! It makes perfect sense!! Karma behaves exactly like our unconscious minds do!! And God is supposed to have made us in His image!! That doesn't mean the old man in a bathrobe type image, there's no humanoid body somewhere that contains God's essence, it means that among other things he gave us a double-layered mind like He has!! The feeling of joy came back even stronger than before, and some of the sense of wonder I'd asked for came as well. It was so powerful that I was literally gasping for breath.
Was this a further escalation of insanity, or did God send me an answer and also the ability to FEEL, to feel what a normal person would if they had this sort of experience?
The joy and exhilaration didn't fade, they kept going on; it was far beyond anything I've ever experienced. I admitted out loud that it was a little overwhelming, felt a little odd, almost uncomfortable in its foreignness, but I begged Him to not take it away, because I gladly accepted a little discomfort to be able to FEEL. I couldn't help analyzing the feeling, because my nature hasn't changed, and I noticed that, while such happiness and excitement as I'm capable of always feels somewhat like anxiety, with a jittery edge to it, this feeling of joy was PURE, jitter- and anxiety-free.
Have I REALLY learned a part of the nature of God, over-simplified of course and distorted by the need to use human words and ideas for something superhuman and beyond human ability to understand more than a little bit of, but... HAVE I?
Do I sound crazy? I'll reiterate that no one in my life has noticed anything amiss with me. I'm still doing my work and the other myriad tasks of life with nothing to suggest an impaired mind. I self-examine constantly, searching for anything OTHER than the spiritual stuff that looks even remotely out of whack, and can't find anything. I'm not on meds of any kind, and I don't so much as drink a glass of wine with dinner much less consume anything hallucinatory. This is either a very focused, selective and intense psychosis... or it's HAPPENING.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A message, and more help, from God
Oh yes, there's more. After yesterday's events, when I went to bed last night I talked to God about it all, reiterating my gratitude, my need for help with The Bad Thing, and, finally, my absolute willingness to do whatever He wants of me in return. I assumed I was done, and was turning my weary mind towards sleep, when
(spiritual blog)
there it was, just those 2 quiet words out of the blue and into my head. I've never considered such a thing, or any other secondary blog, so it sure doesn't feel like something my mind made up. Does that constitute proof that this WASN'T some random nonsense from my own brain? No. Combined with all this other stuff, though, the pattern is unmistakable. I gave my word to Him to create that blog and put in it whatever He sends my way... probably later in the month when business is slowest and I've had time to catch my breath and open myself fully to Divine messages. I'll keep you posted. WHY would God want me to make this new blog? I have no idea, unless there's someone out there who needs to read whatever will be posted there, or maybe even several someones, or... it doesn't matter, I'll do it, and then see what happens.
And there's even more: In my rambling discourse to God after my too-few hours of sleep, I asked for help again to be calm this day, and also for the ability to feel some of the joy I should be feeling under the current circumstances. He DID keep me surprisingly calm, not perfectly so throughout a long and stressful day but darned close... and when I noticed an anxious edge forming I'd ask to be calm and it would ebb away again. After I'd been up a few hours, I noticed something odd; a new emotional state was upon me. I'm so emotionally retarded that I literally have to analyze what my emotional state must be, because even positive emotions like excitement feel very much like agitation or even anxiety; I felt energized, I felt upbeat, I felt... cheerful... HAPPY, and you have no idea how RARE that is for me, and trust me that there was nothing in particular to be happy ABOUT today, it's not like something great happened and it MADE me happy, I wasn't even thinking about receiving help from God and getting a belated reaction to that when the happiness came, I was just working away and a high level of happiness stole over me apropos of nothing... and this buoyant happiness is the Omni version of joy, the closest I've ever gotten to it. Amazing!!
Again, could I have some psychosis that's turning off my anxiety at will and creating joy out of nothing? A psychosis that doesn't prevent me from working with my usual efficiency, and hasn't made any changes in my behavior that anyone has noticed? That'd be an awfully intense, but very selective, psychosis... and I ain't buyin' it.
I can't wait to see what's next...
(spiritual blog)
there it was, just those 2 quiet words out of the blue and into my head. I've never considered such a thing, or any other secondary blog, so it sure doesn't feel like something my mind made up. Does that constitute proof that this WASN'T some random nonsense from my own brain? No. Combined with all this other stuff, though, the pattern is unmistakable. I gave my word to Him to create that blog and put in it whatever He sends my way... probably later in the month when business is slowest and I've had time to catch my breath and open myself fully to Divine messages. I'll keep you posted. WHY would God want me to make this new blog? I have no idea, unless there's someone out there who needs to read whatever will be posted there, or maybe even several someones, or... it doesn't matter, I'll do it, and then see what happens.
And there's even more: In my rambling discourse to God after my too-few hours of sleep, I asked for help again to be calm this day, and also for the ability to feel some of the joy I should be feeling under the current circumstances. He DID keep me surprisingly calm, not perfectly so throughout a long and stressful day but darned close... and when I noticed an anxious edge forming I'd ask to be calm and it would ebb away again. After I'd been up a few hours, I noticed something odd; a new emotional state was upon me. I'm so emotionally retarded that I literally have to analyze what my emotional state must be, because even positive emotions like excitement feel very much like agitation or even anxiety; I felt energized, I felt upbeat, I felt... cheerful... HAPPY, and you have no idea how RARE that is for me, and trust me that there was nothing in particular to be happy ABOUT today, it's not like something great happened and it MADE me happy, I wasn't even thinking about receiving help from God and getting a belated reaction to that when the happiness came, I was just working away and a high level of happiness stole over me apropos of nothing... and this buoyant happiness is the Omni version of joy, the closest I've ever gotten to it. Amazing!!
Again, could I have some psychosis that's turning off my anxiety at will and creating joy out of nothing? A psychosis that doesn't prevent me from working with my usual efficiency, and hasn't made any changes in my behavior that anyone has noticed? That'd be an awfully intense, but very selective, psychosis... and I ain't buyin' it.
I can't wait to see what's next...
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
More evidence of God... or insanity
Yesterday, I was reading, and I got... an awareness that I might be being watched. NOT a feeling of BEING watched, just that awareness. I've never had that sort of awareness before... and there's only one choice as to who might be watching me.
Today, I was in the car with my husband, and saw an "In God We Trust" bumper sticker. It occurred to me to wonder; since trust is based on the belief that someone will always do the right thing, and no one's life is so charmed that everything that happens to them is "right" by whatever their definition of that is, meaning that God isn't always doing the right thing and therefore shouldn't actually BE trusted... and I felt the words catch in my throat. I went ahead and blurted it all out anyways, along with some other ideas concerning what exactly God is even "able" to intervene in given things like free will and how Mother Nature seems to have been set in motion and left to run blindly, smiting the good and the evil equally, and that maybe what we're supposed to trust Him for is the strength, courage and insight to do what's best for us. I said it because, assuming that there IS a God and He IS paying special attention to me currently, there's no reason to think He wants me to suddenly eliminate a basic aspect of my personality and stop analyzing how He might operate. In other words, I don't think God tried to keep me from analyzing, but that some under-layer of my brain that... suspects that I AM being monitored... and is still primed after all these years to signal me to potential trouble with an authority was trying to protest the questioning thereof.
Could those things merely be symptoms of my mind becoming unhinged? Absolutely; I've never for a moment lost sight of that. Still, these are totally new experiences, and the more that happen to me the less likely it seems that I've just gone quietly crazy, because if I was having this much psychosis wouldn't someone have noticed something WRONG with me by now?
Here's the big one: I had a high level of anxiety today, due to a higher than usual level of extreme busyness, a trip to the dentist, and The Bad Thing, which had had an additional bump in the road. I wasn't even able to eat a real dinner, I just had soup. Finally, I said out loud, "Please make me calm." And the anxiety immediately started damping down, reaching a level low enough that I WAS calm, and have remained so in the hours since then.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing remotely like that has EVER happened in my long history of anxiety. Is it possible that my mind created this miraculous assistance as part of a psychosis? I honestly don't know. I've never heard of anything like that happening, but that doesn't mean it couldn't. But... to ask for help and to get it instantly like that... even withOUT all the other stuff, that's awfully powerful evidence in my mind of divine intervention.
I'd been having a new thought recently, that, contrary to what I've always believed, maybe there's something that's sentient to some degree and with some amount of power to affect events that's part of karma, and maybe that could account for what I've been experiencing, that I've somehow become tied more tightly to it and thus been able to get more powerful effects... but that idea, although intriguing, could obviously no longer explain all that I've experienced.
At this point I'm either literally crazy, losing touch with reality so completely that I'm imagining that my anxiety can and did vanish with a wish, or, for some reason beyond my understanding, God is making major attempts to help me... towards what end I can't imagine.
Today, I was in the car with my husband, and saw an "In God We Trust" bumper sticker. It occurred to me to wonder; since trust is based on the belief that someone will always do the right thing, and no one's life is so charmed that everything that happens to them is "right" by whatever their definition of that is, meaning that God isn't always doing the right thing and therefore shouldn't actually BE trusted... and I felt the words catch in my throat. I went ahead and blurted it all out anyways, along with some other ideas concerning what exactly God is even "able" to intervene in given things like free will and how Mother Nature seems to have been set in motion and left to run blindly, smiting the good and the evil equally, and that maybe what we're supposed to trust Him for is the strength, courage and insight to do what's best for us. I said it because, assuming that there IS a God and He IS paying special attention to me currently, there's no reason to think He wants me to suddenly eliminate a basic aspect of my personality and stop analyzing how He might operate. In other words, I don't think God tried to keep me from analyzing, but that some under-layer of my brain that... suspects that I AM being monitored... and is still primed after all these years to signal me to potential trouble with an authority was trying to protest the questioning thereof.
Could those things merely be symptoms of my mind becoming unhinged? Absolutely; I've never for a moment lost sight of that. Still, these are totally new experiences, and the more that happen to me the less likely it seems that I've just gone quietly crazy, because if I was having this much psychosis wouldn't someone have noticed something WRONG with me by now?
Here's the big one: I had a high level of anxiety today, due to a higher than usual level of extreme busyness, a trip to the dentist, and The Bad Thing, which had had an additional bump in the road. I wasn't even able to eat a real dinner, I just had soup. Finally, I said out loud, "Please make me calm." And the anxiety immediately started damping down, reaching a level low enough that I WAS calm, and have remained so in the hours since then.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing remotely like that has EVER happened in my long history of anxiety. Is it possible that my mind created this miraculous assistance as part of a psychosis? I honestly don't know. I've never heard of anything like that happening, but that doesn't mean it couldn't. But... to ask for help and to get it instantly like that... even withOUT all the other stuff, that's awfully powerful evidence in my mind of divine intervention.
I'd been having a new thought recently, that, contrary to what I've always believed, maybe there's something that's sentient to some degree and with some amount of power to affect events that's part of karma, and maybe that could account for what I've been experiencing, that I've somehow become tied more tightly to it and thus been able to get more powerful effects... but that idea, although intriguing, could obviously no longer explain all that I've experienced.
At this point I'm either literally crazy, losing touch with reality so completely that I'm imagining that my anxiety can and did vanish with a wish, or, for some reason beyond my understanding, God is making major attempts to help me... towards what end I can't imagine.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Another hair-raising "coincidence"
Before I forget: I wrote a post yesterday and saved it as a draft. It'll make sense why I've done this when I post it, but I don't know when that will be yet. Soon, though, I think.
Today's "coincidence": I saw a StumbleUpon URL in my referral log today:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fomniverse.blogspot.com%2F2006_09_01_archive.html
I don't get much traffic from them, but some reader(s) added a handful of my archive pages on there years ago and I get the occasional hit. The odd thing today was that the page it led to
http://omniverse.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html
is NOT one of those old familiar ones, which means that either someone added a new one, for a 3 year old page, after all this time, or that this is the first time anyone used one that was posted long ago... pretty odd either way. The message on the StumbleUpon page is:
"Your page is on StumbleUpon
One of our members added your page to the Anarchism topic on StumbleUpon.
Each time our members who are interested in Anarchism "stumble upon" your page using our toolbar, it will record an entry on your referral logs."
Anarchism is NOT one of my topics, in fact that word has NEVER been used on my blog, not even in its root form "anarchy" (I checked), so I wanted to see what had inspired the URL-adder to choose that term... and for the record, I think it's a HUGE stretch to connect it to anything on that page, but maybe it was the best of bad choices amongst topic categories. Anyways, so I'm scanning through the posts on that page, one of which is:
"Wednesday, September 20, 2006
God was in the shower"
Under other circumstances I'd have skipped past it as not being a possible source of the "Anarchism" label, but with the possibility of religious conversion hanging in the air I read it... including the part AFTER the discussion of the dream described in the title:
"My aforementioned religious friend tells me that I'm special to God, in that He has endowed me with the ability to figure out how He's set things up (aka karma, which she sees as having been created by God as a tool to carry out His will), and that He's attempting to guide me via my spiritual quest to the point where I can perceive and embrace Him; because of the free will deal, He can't "force himself on me" to make me believe (does that tie into Him being naked and alone with me in the dream with no hint of sex in the air? hmmmmmmmmmmm), but if I can analyze my way into believing in Him then He'll have won a great victory... yeah, it sounds ridiculous to ME, too, but she's one of those folks who claims to have a close personal relationship with God, and I accept that she's got a grip on SOMETHING powerful after all the years I've observed her, although there's no evidence that it's a deity rather than an instinctive ability to manipulate the forces of karma... Anyways, she and my other Christian friends assure me that these "religious" dreams, which most BELIEVERS don't even have much less "heathens," are indicative of either God trying to persuade me or my subconscious mind signaling me about the truth that I know deep down; naturally, I resist these ideas, but have no logical explanation for why I periodically dream about a deity I don't believe in and generally don't give much thought to.
What's the change God was going to make to the universe? What kind of change could possibly affect everyone EXCEPT me? I can't think of anything... BUT, my PERCEPTION could change radically and cause me to SEE everything in a different way-is this another "spiritual makeover" symbol?
And, ending up in the museum gift shop... where you go AFTER you went through the museum and saw and learned stuff... ANOTHER symbol of some sort of spiritual breakthrough?
Ok, sure, great... so where's my big epiphany? Or even a small one? Well, I guess if I discovered that there really is a God it'd have to be a BIG epiphany... and it'd mess me up some, but at least I'd KNOW, and it'd save me a great deal of time and effort. If He's out there, can't He give me a better sign than these weird dreams?"
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have 47 Archive pages (it'll be 48 once this gets posted), so that makes the chance that a random StumbleUpon URL, assuming that there might be one for any page, would be to the page with the post that's quoted above, is... about 2%. And the chance that said URL would be a first-timer after all these years, AND occur right in the middle of what might be that "spiritual makeover" in progress, is... what? One in a thousand? One in a million? Even if I believed in coincidences, which I DON'T, this would rock me back on my heels...
ANARCHISM!! I can't believe I'm just now seeing it!! That word is a MAJOR tie-in with... the subject of many of the other huge "coincidences" I've had in recent history, which is where I started getting the feeling of being "helped," and in fact there was a BIG, direct connection with that word in my life YESTERDAY, how fuzzy-headed have I gotten that the word didn't EXPLODE off the screen the moment I saw it?!! If God IS watching me, He's probably slapped His forehead (metaphorically speaking) and groaned loudly several times as He waited for the rusty gears in my weary brain to turn until I made the VERY OBVIOUS connection. How can I possibly make any spiritual progress, with God or in general, if I'm going to be this DENSE? How many other connections have I missed? AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!
Ok, ok, it doesn't matter, if God is involved He'll send as many messages as necessary to achieve His goal of... whatever it is, as He'll know He needs to send more if... that's assuming that paying attention and understanding the messages isn't part of being WORTHY of receiving... {sigh}
The "coincidences" are getting thick on the ground. I wish that I wasn't so stressed and exhausted that I'm not feeling the sense of wonder that I undoubtedly SHOULD be feeling at this point...
Today's "coincidence": I saw a StumbleUpon URL in my referral log today:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fomniverse.blogspot.com%2F2006_09_01_archive.html
I don't get much traffic from them, but some reader(s) added a handful of my archive pages on there years ago and I get the occasional hit. The odd thing today was that the page it led to
http://omniverse.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html
is NOT one of those old familiar ones, which means that either someone added a new one, for a 3 year old page, after all this time, or that this is the first time anyone used one that was posted long ago... pretty odd either way. The message on the StumbleUpon page is:
"Your page is on StumbleUpon
One of our members added your page to the Anarchism topic on StumbleUpon.
Each time our members who are interested in Anarchism "stumble upon" your page using our toolbar, it will record an entry on your referral logs."
Anarchism is NOT one of my topics, in fact that word has NEVER been used on my blog, not even in its root form "anarchy" (I checked), so I wanted to see what had inspired the URL-adder to choose that term... and for the record, I think it's a HUGE stretch to connect it to anything on that page, but maybe it was the best of bad choices amongst topic categories. Anyways, so I'm scanning through the posts on that page, one of which is:
"Wednesday, September 20, 2006
God was in the shower"
Under other circumstances I'd have skipped past it as not being a possible source of the "Anarchism" label, but with the possibility of religious conversion hanging in the air I read it... including the part AFTER the discussion of the dream described in the title:
"My aforementioned religious friend tells me that I'm special to God, in that He has endowed me with the ability to figure out how He's set things up (aka karma, which she sees as having been created by God as a tool to carry out His will), and that He's attempting to guide me via my spiritual quest to the point where I can perceive and embrace Him; because of the free will deal, He can't "force himself on me" to make me believe (does that tie into Him being naked and alone with me in the dream with no hint of sex in the air? hmmmmmmmmmmm), but if I can analyze my way into believing in Him then He'll have won a great victory... yeah, it sounds ridiculous to ME, too, but she's one of those folks who claims to have a close personal relationship with God, and I accept that she's got a grip on SOMETHING powerful after all the years I've observed her, although there's no evidence that it's a deity rather than an instinctive ability to manipulate the forces of karma... Anyways, she and my other Christian friends assure me that these "religious" dreams, which most BELIEVERS don't even have much less "heathens," are indicative of either God trying to persuade me or my subconscious mind signaling me about the truth that I know deep down; naturally, I resist these ideas, but have no logical explanation for why I periodically dream about a deity I don't believe in and generally don't give much thought to.
What's the change God was going to make to the universe? What kind of change could possibly affect everyone EXCEPT me? I can't think of anything... BUT, my PERCEPTION could change radically and cause me to SEE everything in a different way-is this another "spiritual makeover" symbol?
And, ending up in the museum gift shop... where you go AFTER you went through the museum and saw and learned stuff... ANOTHER symbol of some sort of spiritual breakthrough?
Ok, sure, great... so where's my big epiphany? Or even a small one? Well, I guess if I discovered that there really is a God it'd have to be a BIG epiphany... and it'd mess me up some, but at least I'd KNOW, and it'd save me a great deal of time and effort. If He's out there, can't He give me a better sign than these weird dreams?"
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have 47 Archive pages (it'll be 48 once this gets posted), so that makes the chance that a random StumbleUpon URL, assuming that there might be one for any page, would be to the page with the post that's quoted above, is... about 2%. And the chance that said URL would be a first-timer after all these years, AND occur right in the middle of what might be that "spiritual makeover" in progress, is... what? One in a thousand? One in a million? Even if I believed in coincidences, which I DON'T, this would rock me back on my heels...
ANARCHISM!! I can't believe I'm just now seeing it!! That word is a MAJOR tie-in with... the subject of many of the other huge "coincidences" I've had in recent history, which is where I started getting the feeling of being "helped," and in fact there was a BIG, direct connection with that word in my life YESTERDAY, how fuzzy-headed have I gotten that the word didn't EXPLODE off the screen the moment I saw it?!! If God IS watching me, He's probably slapped His forehead (metaphorically speaking) and groaned loudly several times as He waited for the rusty gears in my weary brain to turn until I made the VERY OBVIOUS connection. How can I possibly make any spiritual progress, with God or in general, if I'm going to be this DENSE? How many other connections have I missed? AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!
Ok, ok, it doesn't matter, if God is involved He'll send as many messages as necessary to achieve His goal of... whatever it is, as He'll know He needs to send more if... that's assuming that paying attention and understanding the messages isn't part of being WORTHY of receiving... {sigh}
The "coincidences" are getting thick on the ground. I wish that I wasn't so stressed and exhausted that I'm not feeling the sense of wonder that I undoubtedly SHOULD be feeling at this point...
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Some good news
No, not about God or The Bad Thing, but still pretty major:
There's someone famous that I met last year and made a little bit of a connection with; we've even exchanged a few emails, by which I mean one-liners, but from a famous person that's still pretty exciting. It looks like I'll get to meet him again in February; today, I found out exactly where he'll be and when, and I'll be able to be there. I only have 3 months to plan, in fact not even quite that much, so I'm getting started right away... and if that seems extreme, be aware that it's because I did this sort of planning before the FIRST time I met him that I managed to get him a tiny bit interested in talking to me; it takes a great deal of preparation to be able to casually toss off lines that will intrigue a man who's heard it all.
There's someone famous that I met last year and made a little bit of a connection with; we've even exchanged a few emails, by which I mean one-liners, but from a famous person that's still pretty exciting. It looks like I'll get to meet him again in February; today, I found out exactly where he'll be and when, and I'll be able to be there. I only have 3 months to plan, in fact not even quite that much, so I'm getting started right away... and if that seems extreme, be aware that it's because I did this sort of planning before the FIRST time I met him that I managed to get him a tiny bit interested in talking to me; it takes a great deal of preparation to be able to casually toss off lines that will intrigue a man who's heard it all.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Am I going crazy, or am I experiencing... God?
I've had a higher # than usual of bizarre "coincidences" (in quotes because I'm reasonably sure that there is no such thing as a coincidence) and things working unexpectedly in my favor recently, enough to be sort of eerie even to a confirmed mystic like me; some of this stuff just seemed beyond what's realistic to get from a brainless "engine" of karma, and it started to give me the feeling of being... helped.
Karma does NOT "help" anyone. Help of this sort requires... God, Jesus, guardian angels, whatever name you call it the basic concept is the same, that there's SOMETHING out there with a sentient mind and a great deal of power that's paying attention and affecting outcomes.
Now, as I've previously posted, overwork and exhaustion with no breaks or days off for a LONG time, on top of my naturally high-stress personality, had me worn to a frazzle even before the Bad Thing happened a couple of weeks ago, and with that added on I narrowly missed the plunge into "medical grade" anxiety, plus at this point have been fighting both the Bad Thing and my own tendency to slide into hyper-anxiety mode for 2 weeks. Because I'm a relentlessly logical person, it HAS occurred to me that the stress and anxiety have just taken a different route this time, and that instead of progressing downwards into acute anxiety I'm simply losing my mind, or, less melodramatically, that my natural desire to not have to keep battling both the Bad Thing and my own anxiety full-on every freaking second of every freaking day has led to my unconscious mind providing me with "proof" that God Himself is stepping in to take some of my burden and fix the Bad Thing so that I'll feel less anxious and stressed and thus be able to cope. OF COURSE it's occurred to me; even a brain not already stretched to the breaking point can go the self-deception route to protect its owner from a nervous breakdown. It happens all the time.
I'm going to start sounding a little disjointed now. I want to get this written down, and don't have the time or energy to make smooth connections between everything. I apologize.
A few days ago, I started talking to God, literally talking out loud to... whoever or whatever might care to listen by whatever name you call it. It somehow evolved from me talking out loud to myself, which I've always done, both to help think things through and to send the "energy of my desires" out to karma; I honestly don't remember how or when I got the idea that I was talking TO anyone, that's how messed up my mind has become. I just got it in my head somehow that something was paying attention; it felt vaguely comforting, which could easily be written off as being caused by loving the sound of my own voice, granted. It came to me to try to... take it further? My most religious friend says that when she's felt overwhelmed by problems she can't solve, she "gives up" and puts them in God's hands and asks Him to fix things... and he does. Last night, I did that; I said "This is killing me, please fix this." I said "Tell me what you want from me in return, if quid pro quo is even something that you care about, or what it is that you're hoping I'll achieve with my free will that your recent help has been meant to steer me towards... I'll do it." And "How will I know what you want? How will I know what I'm supposed to do? How will I know what comes next if I'm not crazy and this actually happens and I have to rebuild my entire world view?" And the answer came: "Joel Osteen. He had that story about how he realized that the wildly bearded preacher he'd seen on TV existed because he was in the form that some people needed to find God, and Osteen himself has always closely mirrored my ideas about how karma works, with the only difference being that he saw God as causing those things, so he'll be able to tell me what to do. I don't have to fret over this and struggle to figure it out, all I have to do is look to him and he'll give me the answers. He won't come knocking on my door, obviously, but he's got a show and books and a website; the answers are there." I felt such peace, such relief!!
Right before I went to bed last night, my husband was across the room fiddling with my webcam, trying to get it into a stand so he could set it up to record some critter visitors to our yard. The program to use it was NOT running; it creates a window and overlays a control strip onto whatever window you're on when it IS running so there's no confusion. By some inexplicable method, suddenly the cam software came ON, all by itself, and there was MY FACE on the screen, he had somehow "accidentally" pointed the cam right at me right at that moment, and I'm screaming (since my face was covered in cream, and the damned cam was somehow also in RECORD mode, again apparently by magic), and he's trying to figure out what had happened, because it's impossible for that software to just come on like it did... fast forward to a dream I had last night in which I saw via a cam window that my car was being busted up by unseen people. I've had car-destruction dreams for over 20 years, and always dismissed them as being neurotic aftermaths of having my car vandalized several times in college. I half woke up, and my subconscious told me "No, it's not about the car, it's like how those dreams you have about discovering rooms on your house that you somehow never saw before turned out to be a common dream theme representing new possibilities opening up in your life, the car IS your life, and when you see that it's been wrecked it means that old aspects of your life are being destroyed and replaced with new ones," and when your own subconscious tells you what your dreams mean you better believe it, because it is after all the SOURCE of your dreams. It also told me that the cam, which had never appeared in a dream before, represented looking at my life in a new way, through new eyes. And interestingly, this was the first time I actually SAW the car being busted up, as before I always found the car already wrecked to various degrees.... which would have to represent the destruction of old parts of my life occurring right now, currently in progress, right?
Is there any other way to analyze this except in reference to my lack of belief in there being a God out there caring about me being destroyed and God being added to my life? And doesn't the impossible thing the real-life cam had done earlier almost seem like... it was done deliberately to make sure I saw the cam in my dream as part of a message from... well, DOESN'T it? Or did my collapsing brain create the cam dream BECAUSE of what the cam did? Possible, yes, but doesn't the cam incident itself, coming in the midst of this, lend, what can we call it, an air of authenticity to my feeling that supernatural powers are at work?
I wake up every morning with what to a normal person would be a brutal amount of stress boiling through me. That goes x 10 on Monday, my busiest and most stressful day of the week. And x 100 now that I have the Bad Thing hanging over me un-handled. THIS morning, I woke up feeling peaceful. I ran the religious stuff and the dream revelations through my head, and they were still clear in the light of day. I walked around feeling amazed, but of course I'd ASKED for that feeling of peace. I also had a vision in my mind of the Bad Thing being over and my interrupted work in that area being caught up and chugging along; it almost felt as if it was already over and done, although not quite. I could almost hear them saying that they'd made a mistake and had rectified it... as if I were hearing a faint echo of that being said. I got on my computer and brought up my inbox; when I have an ongoing issue that's being battled via email, checking my inbox will make my heart beat so hard that it feels like my ribs will crack, often with an accompanying light-headed fear sort of reaction, but that didn't happen, not the first time I checked it or any other.... which is a lifelong first. I somehow didn't expect an email from "them" today, I SHOULD have been expecting one because they owe me one, but I felt certain that it wouldn't come today, and I was right.
I brought up the home page of a site I do offers on to get free iPods... I know, I know, but this one's legit, I've already gotten 2 from them without spending a penny. They had exactly ONE new offer today, which is bad for a Monday. The offer is to "request FREE information about how to re-learn life." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As I stared disbelievingly at it, a new music video came on Metal Mania; one of VERY few non-Stryper metal songs with religious content, White Lion's "When the Children Cry." You can imagine my reaction to THOSE 2 "coincidences."
What do you get when you add all that up? Mental collapse or the beginning of a personal relationship with God? Either way, I knew I had to record it, so I have.
The idea of a powerful being of some sort that... CARES, and is willing and able to assist me, is of course powerfully seductive, I mean any sane person would want THAT... and of course it's also scary, because how does one maintain the approval, or even the attention, of such a being? Could it be like having an omniscient version of a parent, such that you don't dare scratch your butt for fear of a disapproving look (or worse)? It seems like such a being would be as indifferent to such things as WE are when a dog (to whom WE are deities) scratches himself... BUT, every religion insists that its deity has some pretty finicky demands (whether or not your head is covered seems to be a common issue), so...? Then again, if this is God He must know that I have no idea about etiquette, and must want something else from me, but if I'm so busy over-analyzing things that I miss His attempts to get through to me...
If that's not proof of how emotionally warped my childhood left me; I can't imagine that even GOD will find me acceptable if I perform less than perfectly. {sigh}
So: How will I know if God fixes the Bad Thing or if it just gets fixed because I followed reasonable steps and they worked? How.. what... but... if... I just need to release myself from all these questions and see what happens.
Are you there God? It's me, Omni...
Karma does NOT "help" anyone. Help of this sort requires... God, Jesus, guardian angels, whatever name you call it the basic concept is the same, that there's SOMETHING out there with a sentient mind and a great deal of power that's paying attention and affecting outcomes.
Now, as I've previously posted, overwork and exhaustion with no breaks or days off for a LONG time, on top of my naturally high-stress personality, had me worn to a frazzle even before the Bad Thing happened a couple of weeks ago, and with that added on I narrowly missed the plunge into "medical grade" anxiety, plus at this point have been fighting both the Bad Thing and my own tendency to slide into hyper-anxiety mode for 2 weeks. Because I'm a relentlessly logical person, it HAS occurred to me that the stress and anxiety have just taken a different route this time, and that instead of progressing downwards into acute anxiety I'm simply losing my mind, or, less melodramatically, that my natural desire to not have to keep battling both the Bad Thing and my own anxiety full-on every freaking second of every freaking day has led to my unconscious mind providing me with "proof" that God Himself is stepping in to take some of my burden and fix the Bad Thing so that I'll feel less anxious and stressed and thus be able to cope. OF COURSE it's occurred to me; even a brain not already stretched to the breaking point can go the self-deception route to protect its owner from a nervous breakdown. It happens all the time.
I'm going to start sounding a little disjointed now. I want to get this written down, and don't have the time or energy to make smooth connections between everything. I apologize.
A few days ago, I started talking to God, literally talking out loud to... whoever or whatever might care to listen by whatever name you call it. It somehow evolved from me talking out loud to myself, which I've always done, both to help think things through and to send the "energy of my desires" out to karma; I honestly don't remember how or when I got the idea that I was talking TO anyone, that's how messed up my mind has become. I just got it in my head somehow that something was paying attention; it felt vaguely comforting, which could easily be written off as being caused by loving the sound of my own voice, granted. It came to me to try to... take it further? My most religious friend says that when she's felt overwhelmed by problems she can't solve, she "gives up" and puts them in God's hands and asks Him to fix things... and he does. Last night, I did that; I said "This is killing me, please fix this." I said "Tell me what you want from me in return, if quid pro quo is even something that you care about, or what it is that you're hoping I'll achieve with my free will that your recent help has been meant to steer me towards... I'll do it." And "How will I know what you want? How will I know what I'm supposed to do? How will I know what comes next if I'm not crazy and this actually happens and I have to rebuild my entire world view?" And the answer came: "Joel Osteen. He had that story about how he realized that the wildly bearded preacher he'd seen on TV existed because he was in the form that some people needed to find God, and Osteen himself has always closely mirrored my ideas about how karma works, with the only difference being that he saw God as causing those things, so he'll be able to tell me what to do. I don't have to fret over this and struggle to figure it out, all I have to do is look to him and he'll give me the answers. He won't come knocking on my door, obviously, but he's got a show and books and a website; the answers are there." I felt such peace, such relief!!
Right before I went to bed last night, my husband was across the room fiddling with my webcam, trying to get it into a stand so he could set it up to record some critter visitors to our yard. The program to use it was NOT running; it creates a window and overlays a control strip onto whatever window you're on when it IS running so there's no confusion. By some inexplicable method, suddenly the cam software came ON, all by itself, and there was MY FACE on the screen, he had somehow "accidentally" pointed the cam right at me right at that moment, and I'm screaming (since my face was covered in cream, and the damned cam was somehow also in RECORD mode, again apparently by magic), and he's trying to figure out what had happened, because it's impossible for that software to just come on like it did... fast forward to a dream I had last night in which I saw via a cam window that my car was being busted up by unseen people. I've had car-destruction dreams for over 20 years, and always dismissed them as being neurotic aftermaths of having my car vandalized several times in college. I half woke up, and my subconscious told me "No, it's not about the car, it's like how those dreams you have about discovering rooms on your house that you somehow never saw before turned out to be a common dream theme representing new possibilities opening up in your life, the car IS your life, and when you see that it's been wrecked it means that old aspects of your life are being destroyed and replaced with new ones," and when your own subconscious tells you what your dreams mean you better believe it, because it is after all the SOURCE of your dreams. It also told me that the cam, which had never appeared in a dream before, represented looking at my life in a new way, through new eyes. And interestingly, this was the first time I actually SAW the car being busted up, as before I always found the car already wrecked to various degrees.... which would have to represent the destruction of old parts of my life occurring right now, currently in progress, right?
Is there any other way to analyze this except in reference to my lack of belief in there being a God out there caring about me being destroyed and God being added to my life? And doesn't the impossible thing the real-life cam had done earlier almost seem like... it was done deliberately to make sure I saw the cam in my dream as part of a message from... well, DOESN'T it? Or did my collapsing brain create the cam dream BECAUSE of what the cam did? Possible, yes, but doesn't the cam incident itself, coming in the midst of this, lend, what can we call it, an air of authenticity to my feeling that supernatural powers are at work?
I wake up every morning with what to a normal person would be a brutal amount of stress boiling through me. That goes x 10 on Monday, my busiest and most stressful day of the week. And x 100 now that I have the Bad Thing hanging over me un-handled. THIS morning, I woke up feeling peaceful. I ran the religious stuff and the dream revelations through my head, and they were still clear in the light of day. I walked around feeling amazed, but of course I'd ASKED for that feeling of peace. I also had a vision in my mind of the Bad Thing being over and my interrupted work in that area being caught up and chugging along; it almost felt as if it was already over and done, although not quite. I could almost hear them saying that they'd made a mistake and had rectified it... as if I were hearing a faint echo of that being said. I got on my computer and brought up my inbox; when I have an ongoing issue that's being battled via email, checking my inbox will make my heart beat so hard that it feels like my ribs will crack, often with an accompanying light-headed fear sort of reaction, but that didn't happen, not the first time I checked it or any other.... which is a lifelong first. I somehow didn't expect an email from "them" today, I SHOULD have been expecting one because they owe me one, but I felt certain that it wouldn't come today, and I was right.
I brought up the home page of a site I do offers on to get free iPods... I know, I know, but this one's legit, I've already gotten 2 from them without spending a penny. They had exactly ONE new offer today, which is bad for a Monday. The offer is to "request FREE information about how to re-learn life." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As I stared disbelievingly at it, a new music video came on Metal Mania; one of VERY few non-Stryper metal songs with religious content, White Lion's "When the Children Cry." You can imagine my reaction to THOSE 2 "coincidences."
What do you get when you add all that up? Mental collapse or the beginning of a personal relationship with God? Either way, I knew I had to record it, so I have.
The idea of a powerful being of some sort that... CARES, and is willing and able to assist me, is of course powerfully seductive, I mean any sane person would want THAT... and of course it's also scary, because how does one maintain the approval, or even the attention, of such a being? Could it be like having an omniscient version of a parent, such that you don't dare scratch your butt for fear of a disapproving look (or worse)? It seems like such a being would be as indifferent to such things as WE are when a dog (to whom WE are deities) scratches himself... BUT, every religion insists that its deity has some pretty finicky demands (whether or not your head is covered seems to be a common issue), so...? Then again, if this is God He must know that I have no idea about etiquette, and must want something else from me, but if I'm so busy over-analyzing things that I miss His attempts to get through to me...
If that's not proof of how emotionally warped my childhood left me; I can't imagine that even GOD will find me acceptable if I perform less than perfectly. {sigh}
So: How will I know if God fixes the Bad Thing or if it just gets fixed because I followed reasonable steps and they worked? How.. what... but... if... I just need to release myself from all these questions and see what happens.
Are you there God? It's me, Omni...
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