Exploring beliefs this morning over breakfast. Juliet announcing that she feels as though she keeps taking off a bunch of winter coats – that's how the course feels to her. that's an amazing way to put it. that's what it feels like. Identities coming off. Old patterns and ideas and indoctrinated beliefs coming off. The body becoming lighter. The mind becoming calmer. Awareness starting to waken up again.

Is ‘2 plus 2 four?’ we discuss. Is it a belief? We agree. It’s a belief. But can it be changed like most beliefs can be? hhhmmm. Could we create if we want to ‘2 plus 2 is five?’ hhhmmm... I like blonds, I don't like brussel sprouts, I am prone to depression, I'm not good with money... these are all beliefs that can be changed pretty easily. But mathematical absolutes? Challenging indeed.

Somewhere a mathematical absolute takes form. But when? Does the universe need consciousness in order to create absolute beliefs? do absolute beliefs exist without consciousness? The old tree falls in the forest quandary... does any belief exist, does any reality exist, without something to create or observe it? and if there is nothing to observe something, does the something really exist at all? and if so, then what created it in the first place?> if consciousness, or perhaps awareness existing as consciousness, is the only thing that can create, then what creates when there is no evidence of consciousness existing?
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Quick. Recall the history of the universe timeline. According to modern scientific theory, the universe existed for billions of years before any measurable consciousness existed in it or outside of it. wrote about this a few months ago. Just don't have access to it in my memory and cannot log on the Internet right now to recall the specific details. But yes, the universe existed and things were happening long before any conscious life existed, such as the dinosaurs even, if one is apt to consider them capable of creating reality, and I for one, believing that they were conscious, am apt to believe this. but still they didn't come around for billions of years. and us, humans,,,, well we took hundreds of millions of years more to arrive... so what is going on here? who the hell was creating it? that is, if one is to believe that experiences, realities, can only be created by awareness or consciousness.... rather than just creating themselves into existence without consciousness... tricky. Can the big bang just happen on its own? can universal expansion of matter and energy just happen on its own without conscious awareness? Can minute life forms, single celled organisms just create themselves out of thin air without measurable consciousness?

One would have to answer yes. and yet, of course, one wants to answer no. that there has always been something that has been doing the creating... some kind of eternal universal awareness... doing the creating.... and yet... so chaotic, so random, so without order and purpose, one is inclined to think not... and yet, more, how did that initial awareness and then consciousness, if consciousness is indeed necessary for creation, come into being?

Life is a funny thing. that's the first thought. And yet. we aren't even speaking about life here. the universe existed for billions of years without what humankind currently labels “life.” think about that. billions of years of the universe existing without any life to speak of whatsoever. So again, can matter just create itself? Without awareness. Without consciousness. Without life?

In the ‘America the beautiful’ category this evening we offer the following from our friends at Nightline:

“April 27, 2005 In the early 1980s, there was no bigger story than the prosecution of Edwin Wilson. Wilson, a former CIA officer, was convicted of selling 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Muammar Gadhaffi's Libya, then considered the leading terrorist state. Wilson, labeled a traitor, was sentenced to 52 years in federal prison. Several of the government attorneys involved in the case went on to become prominent in legal circles today. Is it possible that more than 20 years ago, those same U.S. government officials didn't come forward when they found out that key evidence used to convict him was likely false?”

Starting to see a pattern in American government. A long standing tradition that as the years wear on becomes less and less invisible to the world around us. we hear stories like this everyday, every week, when it comes to the governments of the world; its not just the American government. maybe something will be done about it, maybe not. it all depends on how important it appears to be to ‘the people.’ for the most part, ‘the people’ don't care about anything if they are properly fed and entertained. ‘Bread and puppets’ I believe is the term for this. Just murdered your brother, married your mother, and killed three thousand royal guards to take the throne and take over the country? no problem. throw a bunch of bread and cash out to the people and throw a big party. Tomorrow no one will remember your crimes. Edwin Wilson mentioned above seems to be suffering from this exact mechanism at work. The people are happy and therefore Edwin Wilson will most likely stay in prison for something that he may have had little to do with. The Iraq invasion by the American government is perhaps the most glowing example of this in our modern times. almost two hundred thousand Iraqi people now have been killed at the hands of America, but the American people are well fed and entertained, and much of the people from many of the world’s other countries are well-paid and entertained by us, so for the most part ‘the people’ do not care or pay attention to the plight of the Iraqi people. but for the sake of argument, what if the people did start to care? What then? what would happen? what could the people actually do?