Gagdad's Pearls:
"Blessed are those who tolerate the ambiguity of facts, that they may penultimately reveal principles, and principles that they may ultimately reveal their Origin. When the world of facts embraces the world of principles, that is a prayer come true."

Gagdad's Pearls from
One Cʘsmos: Freedom, Reality, and the Power of Stupidity

"...New agers basically co-opt religion for the purposes of exalting themselves and bolstering their own narcissism. As UF puts it, they want to "develop their own greatness without the rival grandeur of the Divine to discomfort them." This exercise is "fundamentally infantile," and atheists are certainly right to reject it.

Consider the titles of some of Deepak Chopra's books: The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Pocketbook Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams. The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence. Creating Affluence: The A-to-Z Steps to a Richer Life. Perfect Weight. Perfect Health. The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents: Guiding Your Children to Success and Fulfillment. The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons for Creating the Life You Want. Grow Younger, Live Longer..."

This is all about the bad kind of gnosis, about some "secret" known only to the elect. Just splash some cash Chopra's way, and you will be blessed with financial success, spontaneous fulfillment of your every desire, perfect health, a long life, and even successful and fulfilled children! (As if one has the magical power to revoke a child's God-given free will, except perhaps by abusing them.)..."

"...The problem with the left in general and Obama in particular is that they violate the fundamental purpose of politics, which is to nurture order for the purpose of liberal (in the true sense of the word) goods that can never be found in politics..."

One Cʘsmos: The Creature From the Barack Lagoon & the Tyranny of the Disordered

One Cʘsmos: Lovely Lies and the Forces of Spiritual & Material Poverty
"...There are forces that result in wealth, such as human creativity, initiative, vision, risk, prudence, etc: "We should ask what are the causes of wealth and try to recreate and reproduce them. When you ask the wrong question, 'What causes poverty,' you end up with wrong answers.... Instead of trying to take wealth away from rich people and redistribute it, we should be seeking to implement the conditions in which as many people as possible can join in the wealth-creating process for themselves." Thus, the first law of wealth is "get off your ass." The second is "get the state off your ass."

Conversely, one of the greatest forces of poverty -- and the most potent force which the left pulls out of its arse 'n all -- is envy. Which is why the left has no interest in the forces that create wealth, only the forces that redistribute it under the auspices of envy.

In the mental realm, truth is a force. In fact, it is without question the most important force. Some people -- mostly aging hippies and addle-brained youths, who represent the two main constituencies of the left, wacktivists and hedonists -- will tell you that love (or compassion) is the most important force, but love is a derivative of Truth, not vice versa. I do not worship "the God of love" unless he is first the God of Truth..."

Like Dennis Prager, I am full of gratitude for Charles Johnson who got me through the shock of 9/11 and introduced me to good writers and thinkers such as Gagdad Bob, a poster there until he was kicked off for having a differing opinion.

Dennis Prager : An Open Letter to Charles Johnson - Townhall.com: "You offered 10 reasons, and I would like to respond to them. First, as disappointed as I am with your metamorphosis, I still have gratitude for all the good you did and I respect your change as a sincere act of conscience. But neither this gratitude nor this respect elevates my regard for your 10 points. They are well beneath the intellectual and moral level of your prior work." READ IT ALL IF YOU GIVE A TINKER'S DAMN.

Monday, January 04, 2010
The Leftist Culture of Death: In the Beginning is the Surd
" Have you ever wondered why Democrats are the Party of Death? Just what are the first principles of the unprincipled? What animates the insentient?

Now, when I say this -- and this should be obvious -- by no means am I castigating all Democrats, most of whom are no doubt fine people, just confused, uninformed, frightened, seduced, reactionary, bought off, apathetic, fearful of change, or mired in habits of thought that were formed in college and haven't changed one bit since. .."

One Cʘsmos

WILL'S ODE TO THE TURKEY (a comment at One Cosmos)

I, TURKEY (a poem)

It was always there, this calm recognition

Of my destiny, the gentle tide that would sweep

Me across snowy fields and through the

Brittle thickets and tingling streams

To the moment of surrender in blinding light -



I seem to remember the angel's patient lecture,

His loving ministration that filled the hollow

Of my bones with grace and direction -

Oh, all the animals were there of course,

But it was I who truly understood



Better than even Cat and Dog, understood

The symmetry of service and sacrifice

Writ in nature's lineaments, there, I have said it –

I shall wrestle with the President of the United States

In the yearly photo-op!



And I shall lay down to die, over and over

Again and again across November,

My sleepy meat divinely distributed

Among earth’s Shepherds

And do enjoy the leftovers!



For this is my task and I fulfill

It in love and service –

Yet I rise again, Great God a’Mighty!

As will you, consumer of my flesh,

In your own alien way -

11/26/2009 12:23:00 PM

Blogger: One Cʘsmos - Post a Comment: "Anonymous Mind Parasites said...

" Whew, thank you from the depths of the horizontal/vertical axis!Like cockroaches and sunlight you've had us running for cover for years.

In the beginning we didn't mind surrendering a few of our more obvious brothers and sisters but lately you've been getting dangerously close to the queen mother.

Now that we have the government of the most powerful nation on earth run entirely by the Elders of The Parasitical Society we are quite content with your decision to take a long vacation.
Pretty soon, after the international meeting of the Global Elders of The Parasitical society, or what you know as the United Nations, our country will embrace Sharia law and you/we won't have to worry about your silly blog.

And to the blasphemer Petey and the notsofunny Dupree...we have a special place waiting for you!
Hey Van, jp,Will et. al.... we know where you pray.

Happily and sincerely,
The Local So-Cal Chapter of
MPCA
Mind Parasites Craving Anonymity"

10/28/2009 11:39:00 AM"

O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams. --Augustine

"When the divine descent occurs, it's a little like putting seasoning into a pot of soup. Or maybe prozac into a skull full of neurons. That is, when you sprinkle salt into the soup, you can't just affect the beans but not the meat. Likewise, when you sprinkle an SSRI into a brain, it gets into everything, which is why the effects are nonlinear and unpredictable in their details. Also, it takes a while for the spices -- or the prozac -- or God -- to penetrate and macerate into the substance."
One Cʘsmos

In order to get rid of the coonfusion of your education:
One Cʘsmos
"...Speaking of which, I wanted to briefly mention a point. As you all know, I was once a leftist myself -- HEY, WHO ARE YOU CALLING STALIN?!!! -- which it is almost impossible not to be if you are as educated as I once was. You don't even have to think about it, because you simply pick it up through kosmosis by spending so many moons in the rarified error of that lunar 'batmosphere. Eventually your common sense is eclipsed.

It's not just that all of one's professors are explicitly liberal. It's the way they implicitly think about the world -- the problems they notice, the questions they ask, the topics they emphasize, the things they exclude or take for granted, the jokes they make, the things that cannot be joked about, etc.

But if you are intelligent, you don't just leave it at that. Rather, you want to dig a little deeper. This, I believe, is where the gnostic element of (-n) fits in. What makes human intelligence human (and often all-too-human) is our ability to see beneath the surface and unify phenomena on a deeper level. But obviously it is possible to not only get things wrong, but to do so in a systematic way, e.g., Islamism, scientism, atheism, phrenology, etc.

This I think is why leftists always believe such conspiratorial nonsense. In my case, because I knew that there was more to reality than met the eye, I began reading things by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Edward Herman, Michael Parenti, Eric Hobsbawm, the Frankfurt School of psychopolitical loons, you name it. I didn't even know that these people were Marxists, nor would I have cared if you had told me. I subscribed to The Nation and thought it was actually "objective." I listened to Pacifica radio. I even contributed money to them! How will I explain this to God?..."

Thank you, Raccoons, I still haven't a clue where I'd be now if it weren't for this oasis. There is so much wisdom and clarity and comfort over atGagdad Bob's who is accurate in saying that " the the moral retardation of the left is something one never gets used to." A commenter, Northern Bandit said of a troll who keeps showing up in the comments section:

" Godinpotty is a person who instantly triggers nausea in any decent person.

Thing is, I get that same nauseated sensation with I contemplate myself circa 1985. I was every bit as foul, benighted and shallow as this vile troll.

Why do some of us escape?

Of course I didn't think for one second that I was a bad person when I was an atheist/leftist. I believed I was strongly on the side of the impoverished, the environment, and strongly opposed to the simple-minded dangerous jackbooted thugs who attended church each week.

I could easily have sailed through life as a smug leftist convinced of my own intellectual and moral superiority. Frankly the change I've experienced came almost entirely from outside me, the more I reflect upon it."

6/21/2009 09:52:00 AM


And then along comes Wise Will as we wonder why the most powerful man in the world has the skateboarding going on in the White House as people die fighting for a breath of freedom. Pray without ceasing.



."Blogger: One Cosmos - Post a Comment: "Will said...


As much as I hate foraying into politics, I will make an exception here:

By constantly putting pressure exclusively on Israel while seemingly sanctioning the gov. of Ahmadinejad and the mullahs - he labeled Mousavi as virtually no different from Ahmadinejad, thereby undercutting the viability of Iranian protesters - Obama demonstrates the usual moral perversity of the Left. Even a great many Euro leaders have forcefully condemned the Iranian gov, but not so Obama. Yes, he finally came out with a statement somewhat in support of the protests, but only because he felt the heat. Overall though, Obama has been giving the impression that he thinks a regime change in Iran would not be a good thing.
Here's what I think - Obama actually wants Ahmadinejad and co. to retain their hold on the Iranian gov. so that he, Obama, can be seen by the world to personally talk them out of their nuclear/destroy Israel ambitions. That will never happen, of course, but Obama, I believe, is blinded by his hubristic desire for glory as Universal Peacemaker.
Well, that's actually the most positive spin I can put on it. There are other possible explanations for Obama's favoring of the islamo-fascists over Israel, none of them positive, to put it mildly.

6/21/2009 01:13:00 PM

`For those of you young people who have been educated in the Koran and the religion of peace at your local public school perhaps listen to this fair minded young man. HT GDB

Hot Air Blog Archive Video: The Koran challenge

For those of you who practice yoga,a martial art, or meditate, here is a comment from the wise Walt in the comment section over at One Cosmos yesterday:

"It has seemed to me that there is experience, and there is a "knowing" that there is experience, i.e. a part of the brain registers, and a part of the brain can stand apart from that registration. That seems to be a fact, and has intrigued me.

In my own case, there has seemed to be "something not quite right" in how it all works, which has motivated me to investigate. From the start, I knew I didn't know much, and I also noticed early-on that people a lot more informed than myself recognized a God -- and, of course, many others like yourself did not. So for me, it became "a question."

We can skip the details of the search -- let's just say "all the usual places, and some not-so-usual" and let it suffice.

My approach has been to pursue various questions about the nature of Reality, and then try to test them in very practical terms, using myself -- body, mind, and feelings -- as the laboratory.

Along and along, I "encountered" certain experiences and sources of input that seemed to me to be "more Real" than many others, and which gave "refreshing results." At some point, those results became like an "aesthetic sense" which seemed to act like a guidance system when I paid attention to it. I began to judge things by their results.

As this process developed, I came to notice that "attention" itself was a central ingredient, and especially the "quality" of attention."

Now, all of the foregoing went on over the years without even once the word "God" being uttered. I sensed that something was happening, but did not know what it was. One Cosmos has given me "words" to match my understanding of Reality. It took me awhile -- and some study -- to catch the outlines of the cosmology, but I found that it was not only coherent but also congruent on its own, and that it complemented other cosmologies that I was familiar with. In fact, I saw that it illumined them.

See the words I put in italics up there? Those are hard words for me to ignore, because of the experiences they contain.

My point to you is that I am here, and I've been around here for awhile, and I can work with this information without ever saying "I believe in God." And I never would have stuck around here in the first place had I had to invest "belief" in anything, or persuade myself of anything.

Maybe that's too small a point to worry about -- the use of certain words, I mean -- but to casually say, "I know you guys believe in God," doesn't fit everyone. Truth, it seems to me, is sufficient reason to be here, and trumps "belief", for me.

Now faith -- that is another matter altogether ...."

OC


Blogger: One Cosmos - Post a Comment: "will said...

>> . . . to be unaware of the extraordinary spiritual sacrifices others have made in order to make your insignificant life possible is to live as a barbarian<<

In this holy season, a shoutout to all those spiritual warriors, known and not known, historical and contemporary, whose sacrifices literally maintain life on earth - they anchor the Light that we all might transcend.

That's one thing I always try to remind myself of during this season, and consequently all seasons. The simplest gestures, a smile on an elevator, a simple word of encouragement, the turning away of anger or petulance - these are acts that save the world and prepare the way for the Parousia.

Merry Christmas, all."

Over at Gagdad Bob's, where daily transformation occurs, the artistic,articulate Julie gifts us in the comment section with the link to this essay which is a must read for those interested in how it is that the America we once knew, and those we knew fought for, has allowed a bunch of crooks so much power.

Apathy Becomes Us | The Return Of Scipio

Gagdad Bob
"Soul-Surfing On the Agitated Waves of the Day"

"I can already think of at least ten reasons why President Obama is a good thing:

10. Booming business for cult deprogrammers.
9. Big blow to racial grievance hustlers; Al Sharpton will have to go back to mugging individuals instead of corporations.
8. Terrorists won't hate us as much when they kill us. Plus, we can fight them here rather than way over in Iraq, thus saving gas money.
7. Everything is Obama's fault.
6. AM radio will go back to playing music instead of abusing free speech with conservative talk.
5. People will be more serious about preventative health instead of relying on "doctors."
4. Jews will no longer run the world.
3. We can play the race card in international relations.
2. No concerns about our children and grandchildren growing "soft" for having it so easy. Plus we can blame the idiot youth for their own future problems, since they supported Obama by a 2-1 margin.
1. Conservatives get the #1 draft pick in '09."

Racoonmended reading from Gagdad in todays comments at OC:
Power Line - Spread your own wealth around

A wee bit of daily bread from Gagdad Bob from
One Cosmos: Falling at the Speed of Liberalism: "Again, you have to imagine how difficult it was to resist this drumbeat back in the days before talk radio and other conservative media. When I was a liberal, I literally encountered no resistance to the leftist fall. There was nothing whatsoever to prevent me from jumping into the fire and going down with it into the ribbon of darkness. As I have said, I am not a bitter or backward looking man, but if I were, I could be pretty angry at how much of my life was lost bathing in the muddy water of liberalism. One reason I'm not angry is that I made the transition back to reality and truth before I was too old, and I have no right to complain about the way things turned out.

The downward tide of leftism is 'tolerant, diverse, non-judgmental, non-discriminatory, egalitarian, politically correct, multicultural, globalist, and collectivist. It insists that there are no rights and wrongs, no moral absolutes. It turns everything upside down in its looking glass world. It denies the correctness of all that produced what our culture revered before the deconstruction of the world in accordance with the tenets of cultural Marxism."

Another pearl from Gagdad Bob:

One Cosmos: "As a matter of fact, the lie is obviously entirely parasitic upon the truth, whereas truth is independent and autonomous, and is by no means dependent upon the lie. It stands alone and endures, even if not a single human being believes it. But a lie can only exist if someone knows the truth. Therefore, a liar is someone who knows truth but places other things above it."
QP, on Sun. Aug 23, from her residence at qp's quiptorum applies the truth to the lie that the radical Islamists are putting out with the President of the Islamic Society of North America,Ingrid Mattson.
Like qp says:
"I would not have a problem with her appearance on an American stage broadcasting to audiences around the globe, if Ms. Mattson had ever demonstrated
she is a Muslim
who:

1. Rejects the concept of violent jihad
2. Rejects the concept of dhimmitude

3. Rejects Sharia law

4. Rejects the division of the world into dar-al-islam and dar-all harb

5. Believes in the firm separation of church and state

6. Believes unequivocably in equal rights for women
7. Rejects the idea that Jews are subhumans
8. Rejects the moral example of Muhammad as "the perfect man"

9. Places loyalty to her country above loyalty to the ummah

10. Accepts western principles of freedom of speech, including the right to criticize your prophet with no penalties for blasphemy

11. Believes unconditionally in freedom of religious conscience, including the right to apostasy

12. Rejects the legitimacy of taqiyyah for the purpose of spreading Islam

and had vowed to hold by these views for as long as she so shall live.

Can you believe that she got a standing ovation at the DNC ? Jihad Watch: Leader of Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization gets standing ovation at Democratic Convention

Yesterday when partaking of the bread generously offered daily at One Cosmos on Tuesday, July 22, 2008
"Keepin' it Real with the Old School Raccoons", Gagdad said this:
"In short, if you don't walk it like you talk it and run it like you spun it, then you're probably just an enchanting or seductive gasbag at best. If your words do not come from realized wisdom, then what good are they? They will mimic the form, but they will be lacking the substance that gives them life and makes them real." As I went on to read the excellent comments Ben mentions Andrew Klavin, being interviewed:"Here’s the thing: I really believe this stuff I’m talking about. You know? I’m not just saying it. When I talk about seeking the truth at all costs, when I talk about America as the embodiment of an idea worth dying to defend, when I talk about walking into the heart of inner darkness to find forgiveness and spiritual light, it’s not because I think it sounds good or because I’m running for election or anything. I mean it with my whole heart, with every scrap of me. That stuff sets me on fire inside. And to betray it, to turn my back on those ideas, for a literary prize or a good review or a cocktail party invitation… dude, that wouldn’t even be life to me, it wouldn’t be recognizable as life. I have a lot of blessings, man, a lot of blessings. I have a wife of uncommon goodness who has loved me unconditionally for thirty years and looks at me like I’m some kind of hero. I got two kids – if I’d picked them out at the kid store, I couldn’t have done any better – and they look to me with the expectation that I’ll do my best to do right in the world and act with integrity. You got an award worth giving that up for? You got a review worth that? And also I’ve got this gift, this ability to tell stories. And what’s the point of that, if it’s not about getting it right, getting it the way the muse gave it to you, telling the tale that’s in your heart without fear?"
Read it all here:
Dirty Harry’s Place… � The New Iconoclasts: Andrew Klavan — The Interview