The Great Abyss Of The Unknown

 

On a spring night like this one some people would choose to have a beer, a scotch, or glass of wine by their side. As I sat there now and peered through my porch windows the sky was on fire with a scorching of red, orange, and pink. As I listened, I heard an ensemble configured by natures genius which was echoing across the spring grasses with the sound of crickets in chorus. The evenings symphony surrounded me pleasingly as I sat in the silence when I felt a slight breeze meet my skin, like a gentle wave of a mystical friend, always there, always watching, hidden in the unseen dimensions of the cosmos. I was reminded there now that there is also peace and glorious beauty in the world. I then began to look forward to approaching summer days and summers long evenings.

 A few minutes later I reflected in the quiet how life is like being in a walled prison and that what lays beyond the lofty walls strains the mind limiting its capacity from overcoming the barbed wire at the walls highest point and preventing us from a way to climb over and see reality clearly for what it ultimately really is in the now and in the beyond.

 In the quiet I remember there now how I used to look forward to one day traveling the world and seeing the many parts of Europe and visiting Israel in order to appreciate and experience this worlds cultures and scenery. During those days of optimistic dreaming, I used to wait for someone to love, someone who would love me back, I now recall reflectively.

 As I considered these thoughts there on the quiet lane of my village nighttime gradually folded in over the daylight. Then minutes after in the darkness, after the dusk had finally passed, I pulled open the front door and walked out onto the outside steps of my house as my eyes turned to the galaxy above me. Under the moon light I gazed up into the universe in thought. I knew standing there now that I believed in the meaning of the moon, our sun, the outlying stars, and all their importance’s. They all existed, as far as I was concerned, as more then mere inanimate objects with no purpose, they were there deliberately for us to consider as conscious thinking beings.

 As I listened again carefully to the chorus of crickets in the night air, standing there now in contemplation, I knew that I believed in hope and that one day I'd know fully where that hope leads. I also knew that I believed in life beyond this world which I understood to be far grandeur and bountifully more wonderful then this world as impressive as this earth can be. 'Although I have been confronted by real evil in this world, I believe in a great good, in a power of infinite unending love." I thought to myself.

 "God, you have become my working compass!" I said aloud now while standing and looking up at the night sky while standing where neighbors could look out their windows and see me talking to myself.

 As I talked aloud to God on the front step, I then had a thought. 'I am an unwelcomed eyesore in the neighborhood, a lonely person, a paranoid schizophrenic here in this rural communities midst, the same community that I grew up in all my life, but God whenever I become lost with ideas, every time I lose my way, you always find me and help me find the way. You are truly the only friend I need.'

 Thinking these thoughts to myself now, I glanced downward, and then stepped down the front steps, and then moved across the front yard, over tilted soil, and a cement step, stopping a few feet farther along the lawn to look up and see the crescent shaped moon. The stars beyond the moon existed in skies darker then coal or midnight in the foreverness of the constellations. I walked along further and found a rock on one edge of the lawn, beside Robin Lane, under a few young elm trees, and decided to sit down there where I began to think and wonder more about this curious life. I turned my attention to the world's many people's, thinking about them now with empathy, and in hope, in a way that tried hard to see the human condition fairly without my thoughts becoming incumbered by people's ideological position, following the direction of my heart toward where God seemed to clearly give me the courage to go with my thinking.

 As I considered this now, I first asked a few questions. Does anyone know where we are, where we all really are here in the unknown, or is it an illusion that we understand anything about ourselves in the large and incomprehensible scale of mysterious reality. Something of some kind, in the known, or in the unknown of existence, must know the answer to these mysteries. Just because we don't truly know reality, not really, doesn't mean that there isn't that awareness of knowledge within reality out there in the abyss of the unknown somewhere.

 In this world that we're in we're aware that there are countries, with people living there, where bad ideas exist, like in these countries leadership, which then filters the leaderships bad ideas down to ordinary people themselves. In such places there are bad ideas at work, but I don't think that the people who fall victim to these ideas persuasions are disposable or worthless who exist there. When we as human beings are born as living persons into this world we arrive as a part of nature in a place with many discoveries to be made that develops our sense of awareness about life and our perspective of the world. As our brains work, we construct world views, ever changing, that catalogue the objects, experiences, cultural developments, truth claims around us about who we are, and what here is really all about. We form opinions of what's right or wrong to think about life imperfectly. This process universally for all mankind is fraught with imperfections in our judgments across the entire planet earth, in all places, and in all time periods.

 There have never been giant road signs along life's road saying: "This is the nature of life." "This is what life is all about." "This is how you got here and where you're going." "This is how you get through the world unscathed and find the truth." All such unknown uncertainties have remained subjective, illusive, and unexplained to us, unless we have the view that ancient myth, told through the world's old religions, which were created in very ancient times, describes for us objectively these answers, or if we have the belief that science now has fully answered all of these mysteries finally and completely for us.

 Besides religious and scientific beliefs guiding the nations of this world are the countries politics influenced from the guidance of political leadership that has frequently in history lead the people under the influence into struggles which can lead to war with other nations or powers. Ordinary people across human history, in various regions of this planet, have embraced these warring pursuits, sometimes voluntarily, but in my opinion this susceptibility to believe in, and fight for different causes, however misguided or wrong, does not destroy any people's humanity who exist in these territories as these people fall into the frequently unavoidable error of cause and belief in the human condition.

 .As I consider these thoughts now about people, overshadowed by an infinite  universe above me, sitting there in the darkness, I look up into the sky and see only light and great mindboggling emptiness with no visible guide announcing to us what the vast distances are there for. There is no actual objective source of understanding for any of us in order to help us understand the anomaly of where here really is. As people look around the earth, I consider now, we only have ourselves as human beings to test reality, whether we're researchers, poets, naturalists, scientists, philosophers, holy people etc.., and these ideas that we develop, we then often try to improve upon. Our search allows us to shape the direction of our changing views about what the real incalculable unknown is really all about.

 If there are no clear road signs in this world, then why do we determine that God demands that we get ideas right in order to have hope and a bright future. The unknown of this mysterious life has never been clearly described or explained to any of us, at any time in human history. Real knowledge of the truth is not perfectly self-evident for any of us to see, nor pursued and discovered by us so straightforwardly, nor distributed so universally, fairly, or with even-handedness, in order to allow us to arrive at these subjective explanations of existence that supposedly requires from us that we find the right answer to unclear questions, with unclear answers, which are said to be hinged on our eternal future for getting the right answer of reality that some people say is a demand of life by God for our future existence that requires that we get truth about God right.

 Do the math and calculate the mindboggling scale and exponential size in the number of people across the world who it is said by religious people that God will ultimately reject, a number in the hundreds of billions, who will have no hope supposedly as a consequence of not having their ideas right about God in this lifetime. Theologians, and different religious believers, claim that the number of human beings who get wrong God's plan will find themselves outside of God's mercy because they do not prescribe to the right saving requirements interpreted by theology. In my religion of Christianity, the religious people claim that a massive number of human lives within the human condition, who have once lived, or who are alive now, who weren't, or aren't familiar with Jesus, and what he came into the world to do, which was to die on the cross for our sin, so that we may be made right with God,  are people ultimately who have no hope beyond this world. The people in the religious communities who think this have decided that most of humanity won't find safe passage into the next world and that these people have no hope at all for a future accept what hell has to offer.

 As I try and absorb this plan, supposedly, of a narrow path to hope, that supposedly most people will never find, I consider the following as I listen to an owl hooting in a line of neighborhood trees in the distance. I really don't think that any of us has an idea, or an understanding now, which is grounded in certainty, or built on a solid foundation, as far as the testing of ideas goes that can explain for us where we really are now as human beings on this lonely planet. The reality that we face here and now on this mysterious and remote projectile object planet earth, within the grandiosity and scale of perhaps an unending universe, is one where here all our explanations for this life, and how we got here, are all subjective, not objectively defined, meaning our views in nature are really unanchored to any real certainty. 

We may know we know God in our lives, and fair enough this is very convincing to those who know and directly experience God with them, yet when it comes to anchoring our reality to old myths, these are views, it could be reasonably argued, without real total certainty, therefore pointing us on a path without a clear road sign, which for now offers us no definitive answer to describe what we're really a part of here in the grand order of existence. All opinions in the world, as to where we are, how we got here, why we're here, what great unknowns exist elsewhere, what really happened in our history, and what hides lurking around us in the sky, exist now merely as theory, or as religious belief, that are really both unanchored views to any real certainty of any kind, lacking a solid verification process, because none of us knows yet the unknown, and therefore have no final claims to describing certainty that can tell us what this we're now a part of is or what reality is all really about.

 On this object in the sky, balanced curiously in orbit in the galaxy, the questions of where here really is, in the grand scheme of unknown possibilities, and what otherness might lie beyond us in the outstretching and vast distances around us, in all directions, are mysterious questions that yet we have no real provable answers to explain.

 So far all over certainty that says what life is I suggest to you is premature, the result of various subjective leaps in the dark producing unverifiable definitions of unknowns of life, unfounded arguments ungrounded to real certainty, that lack proof, and merely amount to people forming opinion, that are the same as guesses however educated. These opinions speak supposed "truth" claims to vulnerable easily persuaded minds who would rather rest in their answers then dare to question instead if reality is really so thoroughly understood. These opinions lack proof, certainty, or real insight into the great puzzle of us being here in the perplexing wonders of the unknown.

 Several of the world's religions have attempted in ancient times to offer explanations out of these enormous puzzles. These religious systems were built to account for what the terms of existence are all about and we're designed to guide thought and obedience as to what's relevant, and allowed, to believe about the mysteries behind existence. These explanations, as near as they are to people's hearts, however trusted for authority and our confidence, are subjective, and these myths are unanchored to any real kind of verification. We need to try and understand that ancient man might not have had a true or accurate way of explaining this unclear existence, even if guided in ways by God. As real as God is, these systems of argument in thought, that compete for our understanding, may have forms of thought with their share of human error in them. The building of myths might not be anything more then a process of guesses about the great questions and mysteries behind this life that as of yet we perhaps don't adequately even begin to understand.

 The same is true with science, and its scientific theory, which through its common discourse describes what it sees as a reasonable model of life in the universe based on methods of scientific investigation along with scientific theories or educated guesses they make of how reality elsewhere in the universe works  in the unknown. Their approach, one supposedly anchored to fact and reality, discourages and dismisses the idea of the possibility of transcendent forms of intelligent life. Scientific culture, just below the surface of any such believer, mocks, smugly smirks at, and then talks over condescendingly, quite frequently, the idea of there potentially existing a kind of greater intelligence, on an unfathomably large scale, beyond us and what we now presently think we know, like a conception of God, hidden in the primordial deeps of the unknown.

 The views that scientists describe in their culture seem to allow for no intelligence beyond us in the form of larger and prior thought potential. The explanation that a higher intelligence other then us could really be behind all reality is one they seem to defiantly refute. Purely random natural processes account for life they are determined and only comfortable to suggest. Yet  as wonderful as science is, and everyone now knows science is ninety-nine percent wonderful,  perhaps science as of yet really hasn't the definitive explanation to account for where we really are, and what we're really a part of, in the greatness of the unknown. Maybe scientists on earth, as for now, don't know the real complete nature of existence and what its terms are. Maybe there is a stubbornness behind the narrative they now sell and deliver as an authority model on these matters that fails to admit of other greater possibilities yet undiscovered. The mystery of how we might have arrived here in this curios place in the sky, of where here is in the unknown of the universe, or of what great anomalies and rule changers might be curiously now surrounding us in the great empty unexplored abyss of possibility are for now mysteries offering us as of yet only subjective explanations.

 Perhaps the idea of God existing, or of the potential of human beings being able to communicate with him, isn't an experience as foolish as some forms of atheistic thought instills in developing minds who are trying to make up their minds about the mysteries of this life. I make the personal claim that God communicates with me now daily in conversation. I also have the mental illness paranoid schizophrenia as I make this claim, but despite my illness I don't find the specific nature of the conversations I have with God to be conversations full of crazy content at all.

 One conversation I've had with God was a discussion about the worth of all human beings everywhere across this earth. In these conversations, I'm led to believe from God that there is no racial group, religion, or nationality, regardless of the politics of that nation, or of the religious beliefs, that represents there a single person who doesn't matter intrinsically and have real ultimate value in this world with God.

 Persuasive kinds of different ideas in the world are wildly, and unclearly for many of us, encircling the lives of us imperfect and vulnerable minds, challenging us imperfectly for their adaptation into our thinking. People in this world hear these persuasive ideas, whatever form of argument that the ideas appear in, facing them often by mere chance encounter, or because of people's location in the world, and the human person is then steered in that particular direction of thinking that the persuasive ideas produce in our thought and belief. This happens just like this to us not rarely, and not only do the worst of us only succumb to these influences, but all people in the world, now, and across all of history. are vulnerable to ideas in this way, as none of us is so wise and discerning that in another persons circumstances, we'd be guaranteed to think differently then them. Behind this widespread phenomena, which is our widespread fallibility as people to be mislead as humanity, lies also our great dignity and value, which includes every person alive who all matter to God the father of us all.

 I've observed a response that's made, as a typical human reaction, when another ideological belief is expressed between people in an argument about ideas, or about truth, and the ideological belief being defended is contrary to the other person, or people, that their then response commonly seems to be irrational resulting in the dismissal of the other person’s value who has those set of unfamiliar beliefs. There is the decision made, consciously, or not, where they seem to lose sight of that other person or people’s value and importance because their thought as opposed to our own thought and belief. Instead of condemning another person for his/her ideas, that we think are wrong, can't we not instead try and realize that the human condition is up against the influences of numerous ideas, built on numerous persuasive beliefs from argued causes, that for the person who understands these beliefs has explained for them life's meaning and relevancy, for right or wrong, and described to them what should be believed right, which mobilizes their present mind, and its ideas, into believing in one of this world's numerous and unavoidable causes and beliefs.

 These numerous and persuasive beliefs have their own complex arguments, their own rational behind the thought, and they come with a solidarity shared in large numbers of like-minded people in communities who adopt the thinking, and instill that thought in others, all contaminating the world's decision process’s for how people figure out what's best to think across the world. What is truly going on in this life is usually unclear to most of us as what's really going on is more then we can understand. This leads to people often not knowing what other thinking is really all about beyond our own felt conviction that we're right, which prevents people often enough from properly knowing what matters, and what I think really matters, from my talking to God as a schizophrenic, is understanding nonjudgmentally the value and importance of other imperfect people universally among all the human condition.

 Reality presents us with unique and unusual challenges, and so a reality like the one described so brilliantly by this person over here, is universally unclear for billions of other people over there, and not only for others there, but for you and I too, as none of us has it right what solid fact or truth is here in this chaotic world of ideas. Maybe we should all pause to understand the human experience better by approaching all of life with a universal empathy while acknowledging the limitations on all of us discovering another persons truth. We should pause in order to see and understand how our fellow man is up against a multiplicity of influences effecting all our minds judgment so that we can then try and see and understand humanity nonjudgmentally, with understanding, so as to know of mankind’s fallible nature while existing on earth as a human person.

 I really don't think that getting ideas right, if it were at all possible, is a prerequisite for finding hope eternally with God. I don't believe that real hope from God, and his plan for the world from his love, is achieved only by us knowing a magic saving few sentences. Although the idea that Jesus died for the sin of the world is a powerful, and arguably a meaningful claim, we need to try and understand the limitations on all mankind agreeing on this claim in a state of nature. Maybe this realization should open our hearts to conceive of the possibility that God's love and plan for us extends to all humankind everywhere, and that Christ's death on the cross, if real, which I think it is, is a gift from God that has found every persons future, in every far-off village, in every distant hamlet, in this troubled world of ideas.

 Needing to know truth arbitrarily condemns multitudes of the world's people's to hopelessness for getting ideas wrong about how reality supposedly works. Numerous ideas about God, or what the truth is, in an unclear world, prevent for humanity buriers to finding this claim to God's true path here. Who among us human beings has the right to condemn some other simplistic struggling person for getting the terms of reality wrong, when reality, across time itself, has never presented its terms obviously to any one of us. It only takes a  study of human history to see that before the printing press most people on this planet were illiterate and that meant that hardly any of us knew anything about the theological requirements religious people now speak of while thumping down their Bible's. In these former illiterate times were all superstitious minds doomed to hell who didn't understand the true nature of understanding as to why Jesus died on the cross for us. In our own time are all other cultures and communities outside our faith dammed to eternal exclusion from God's friendship for having their own unique path and corresponding vision developed through living in the world.

 In the end it comes down to this view: The idea that in this mysterious life the vast majority of this world's people, living now, and across history, are all going to be left outside of God's plan of finding future hope or good, is a belief about God, who I know from speaking to him is love, that I can't accept. In the order of nature, it's obvious to anyone with eyes to see, that getting truth wrong is through not fault of the billions of human beings who struggle imperfectly in thought. Its apparent that all, or even most people, can not reasonably conform their imperfectly functioning minds to supposedly the only saving ideas that lead to hope on the planet. People by the laws of percentages of unique experiences in the world can't reasonably conform to one saving ideology across the globe. God in my opinion is not so unreasonable and unfair that he looks at humankind who he loves with such callousness. The evangelicals, or any other religion elsewhere, or particular religious group, who thinks God doesn't love all of the human condition in my opinion is quite wrong. The God I know and talk to all the time loves the world's people everywhere and the Jesus I believe in is fair. I do not believe that it's such a delicate and uncertain matter whether or not someone is Ok with God. In my opinion God is love and he cares about all of us, and the idea religious people have that the path to God is one very few people alive or dead ever find, which is really what they prescribe to if you do the math, is an understanding I strongly object to as someone who loves and talks to God.

  I live in Canada, but I believe in the universal equality of all people across the planet.  I'm only going to be on this earth a short time and I now believe that no matter where we live on this earth that we all matter. Ideas in the human condition aren't clear so ultimately why should we be condemned for navigating a world of confusing and competing ideas wrong when we as humanity cannot help but unavoidably get our thoughts wrong frequently a great deal of the time. In fairness should the error remove any chances of love or good for us? The human condition has always across history been up against confusing ideas, different kinds of misinformation, falsehood, various mythologies, and superstitions, competing religions etc. Life in this world doesn't present truth clearly enough, a great deal of the time, and so to find truth becomes a process where wisdom can’t always be fairly discerned, which it’s actually a religious fairy tale that wisdom can be regularly discerned, and that's not God speaking who suggests that people always have a fair or reasonable path to the truth.

 I understand a few things about this world, and our future, from my conversations with God. Firstly, I understand that goodness itself is fair. and that this good, which is God, is by significant comparison, fairer then any person can mindbogglingly fathom. This force of goodness, who has the real overarching power that explains all existence, is where all hope rests, and he is a love that operates with a great light that promises to guide us eternally offering our futures astonishing treasures which are now incomprehensible for us to conceive of through the present limits on our imaginations. In understanding evil, in comparison, that mankind is often drawn to, evil offers the human person nothing of value, only the found loyalty and familiarity to a purely destructive entity who offers the world: violence, deception, despair, needless suffering, torment, hatred, and immeasurable cruelty. I fail to see the appeal of looking for a hopeful future with a demonic entity who hates the human being who is God's favored creation and friend who he has limitless joy in store for.

 Most people reading this blog will be dead in sixty years, either rotting, in a state of total obliteration of their person, removed from the earth and existence, but I don't believe this for a second, or awakened and in a state of euphoric enlightenment unparalleled by any prior argument or description of hope or good within the loftiest exercise of the human imagination. We're going to feel stupid on that day, and kick ourselves, when we find ourselves in a state of true fairness and look around the incredible landscape and see that reality was all the time leading us to a place of good and love and then to understand that we we're all souls on a journey together toward the experience of what good is truly all about. We're going to reluctantly have to face our meanness, cold heartedness, bickering, and hate, whether it's the unfair hatred of minorities, like gays and lesbians, immigrants, other races, or the hating of people of other cultures or religions.

 Life in this world offers a confused terrain cluttered with familiar group loyalties, various clicks, ideological belongings, territorial alliances, notions of God, or of no God, and multitudes of people full of numerous ideas and many opinions. We may believe that other people's opinions, and the direction they look, could add up to the truth of reality. Yet how many of us can navigate the cluttered sphere of ideas and maneuver our way to the best of all ideas in existence unscathed and not distracted into error. How can we not innocently enough be frequently misled, through no real fault of our own,  it's not like the real truth is just objectively obvious and clear, as higher reality for us now lacks complete or even our partial appreciation of everything.

  Are there not now two kinds of influences ultimately competing for the minds of humankind and are they not both substantial influencers of our direction through this world. Good, which is not adequately well enough known yet for us to know of its ways fullest manifestations, is something I think that we really will know in the future completely, in a great good to be discovered, one which is going to transcend our present speculation of God's ways, and I think that those ways are manifest to greater and lesser degrees in the good ideas, healthy guiding ideologies, fair organization processes, and laws of societies. Contrary to this good evil is the destructive force, the great misleader, that denies humanity our dignity, freedom, value, path to fairness, hope, ability to know the truth, which denies us true justice in the world. People in this world exist in confusion between two competing forces for our decisions because we don't clearly know enough about the dividing lines between good and evil. 

 The secrets which are buried in the cobweb ridden depth of the unknown hold monumental and actual discoverable treasures to be approached now with great diligence. The hopeful sights and sounds of truth, of possibility, and its potential reach, is not an empty illusion, but a reality to which we now glimpse from an infinite look off point we stand on now gazing into the great endless potential abyss of the unknown, and because now we can’t see those endless reaches of God's endless realm, we stumble and doubt that reality hides a friend behind the unknown itself. There, In the absence of anything common to us, in a place where higher truths terms are now presently missing from our minds thinking, is where great good exists beyond, and its ways are not like anything that we can presently know or relate to, accept that it is good, beyond anything that we now see, think, or imagine. 

These unknowns are apart from us who as people, regularly in the human condition, can't conceive of there existing more, but the more is there, the great unknown out there is real, waiting out in the vast terrain of the distant unknown for us. Out there they're are new novel sightings of far away and remarkable phenomena, reality itself waiting, real reality as it really is, with that wisdom waiting with secrets yet untold to us, a kind of grandeur waiting to meet our thought and experience beyond our present knowledge and ways, and there real possibilities just begin, opening real doors, pleasant viewing windows, scenic grassy paths untrod upon, places that throw away arbitrary religions, that change the eye-sight from stubborn atheism, throwing it into total disarray, marbling a brilliant paved path forward toward wonder and its far reaching scope of astounding and incomprehensible mystery in places of unbounded love and welcome peace. 

 I have had real conversations with God, for anyone who might like to know about them, that are described in my latest book: "A Paranoid Schizophrenics Message Of Hope For The World," found on Amazon websites, a work of part fiction, part nonfiction, that reads like a novel, the story itself drawn from actual events in my life while living with schizophrenia here in Nova Scotia .

 I don't care where a person is from in this world, or how misguided by ideas they are, why hate people for error, when error is inherent in the human condition, and when a majority of the time people are wrong about so many things in this unclear world. Do only dabblers in real reality deserve our understanding, then who are these great insightful geniuses who dabble in the real reality, because I doubt this world has ever know them, because reality is yet unclear. I'm a paranoid schizophrenic and I speak about a vision of hope I've been given of love for us all, the world's people, which tells a truth about God's plan of fairness for humanity.

 Now standing in the darkness, under the endlessness of the star covered sky, I think that there is a place I know where for now I can not go, but this I somehow know, it's the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Therefore, I look toward heaven and dream of something better which I know will come.