Birds in a Cage

I was finishing my morning exercise, a half mile walk up and down the hall, a vigorous ten-minute row on the Concept Two, stretches, and various hand weight therapeutic exercises for my ruptured bicep and damaged rotator cuff. They happened when my bike tire was stuck in a hole along the sidewalk as I angled over it. It was quite a jolt for an old body, a few cracked ribs. Just stretching and cooling down on the rower when the eleven birds in the cage let out an unusual fierce chatter.

My wife was at her table sipping her coffee. I said, “Do you think the birds are happy?”

The parakeets keep up a constant chatter. It reminds me of a big Ceiba tree in the back of my shack in Honduras; hundreds of parrots lived there, and I loved to awake to their chatter and the cool of the sunrise. The parrots chattered incessantly. I tried to understand their language.

The Ceiba was tall. It must have been incredibly old, existed in the pre-Columbian jungle because its trunk rose straight in the air, 200 feet and the only vegetation was at the very top. I often think of that tree. I did not give it much thought then. I consider it now, its age, its history. They probably cut it down. We have no respect for such things.

We raised all the birds, except one. We induced a process we never thought would work, a birthing box and various paraphernalia. The birds did it and would not stop. It was amazing, the zeal, the work, the literal physical exhaustion, the female bird depleted herself, repeatedly. We had to remove the box and destroy the eggs she laid on the cage bottom. Finally, she stopped. She died a year latter, offered herself up to the preservation process. I marveled and learned many lessons.

I have not been been back on the bike in eight months; instead, I go out into my Lanai and meditate. It is a very small Lanai. Recently I read the trees give off good vibes. The hot, humid, Florida condition seems to be good for my aching body, like a sauna. The meditation is good preparation.

Doug Casey recently co-authored a book, “The Preparation,” an alternative, better way than college, to prepare for life. Me, I am using precious hours preparing for the momentous change of scenery. Who knows, Christ said, “The Kingdom of God is all around;” It is all a preparation for life. If you are not in the Kingdom, here and now, maybe, you will never be. We are supposed to live so that we can enter into it, not wait to die.

“The Kingdom of God is like a wedding feast; the master sends out invitations…no one comes. He sends servants to the crossroads inviting anyone. When he comes, the hall is filled. One man has no wedding garment; the master provides them. He has that man bound and thrown out.

Quite harsh! Many things in the New Testament are quite harsh and just. Actions always have consequences. An informative read is, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Compensation.”

Meditation is talk with God. Or thinking including God, God as guru. “I am the way and the truth.”

Paul talks about the armor of Christ: Belt of Truth, Breastplate of Righteousness, Sandals of Peace, Shield of Faith, Helmet of Salvation, Sword of the Spirit.

This is the wedding garment necessary to enter the Kingdom of God.

“The word is like like a sower sowing seed. Blessed is he that hears the word and keeps it.”

We are not protected from evil when we put on the armor of Christ; we become anathema to evil. We are part of the Kingdom of God. We have accepted the invitation, cleansed ourselves with the help of Christ. We have achieved the Breastplate of Righteousness. No unrighteousness may enter the Kingdom of God.

Usually, in meditation, small thoughts expand into large understanding.

“Do you think the Birds are happy?”

They seem quite happy, but they are in a cage; they are not free. Christ, “I have come to set you free.” He also said, “To enter the Kingdom of God, you must be born again.”

To live life fully, “I have come to give life,” we must constantly assess and grow.

We are born in the image of God, not our intelligence. God existed before anything was; God is Spirit. The Paradise Lost is our spirit communing with the Spirit of God. Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit; they were expelled from the Kingdom of God. They still existed on earth, the physicality around them did not change. They ceased communing with God.

We are born animals, the crying little infant, the spoiled child, the rebellious teen, the grasping, greedy, corrupted warmonger, killers of the innocent. We could be Donald Trump. He is like many others. Many seem to be happy, but they are not free, they live in cages, falsehood, psychological concoctions that are of man for man. They are divorced from God.

They are carefully taught.

“I have come to set you free. You must be born again.” What does that mean? Most of us do not care.

Christ said, “Blessed is he that hears the word of God and keeps it.”

We were not born into the garden of Eden. Paradise was not lost. The story of Adam and Eve is a myth. Myths are good, the foundation of beliefs, beliefs that sustain when we lack understanding. Myths lead to understanding.

We are born animals, extremely conscious animals. Consciousness is a curse and a blessing, it is a curse because it makes us aware of danger, to be in fear of death. It is a blessing because we can overcome indiscriminate fear with recognition, adapting and using the natural environment to our benefit. We progress and knowledge builds on itself and expands exponentially until we behold the wonders of the modern world.

Adam and Eve lived in a mythical Paradise. “In the beginning God created heaven and earth,” Paradise Lost is the place were God dwells. Christ called it the Kingdom of God. He said, “The Kingdom of God is all around.” God created both places simultaneously, heaven and earth.

We all long for the Promised Land! The worldly are always just one step away from utopia, they create ism after ism, one program after another and all they do is build cages that constrain us.

Evil exists, evil envelops us; all our efforts are “Vanities of vanities,” useless expenditures of time that corrupt all individuals involved. The true believers: the Lenins, Trotskyites, Stalins. The murders of the spirit of enterprise, of bodies, the stealers of other people’s property.

They all create failed enterprises and create a mass of detestable people.

We are the detestable people. These ever-present abominations cannot exist without mass participation. In the writings of Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak, neighbors turn into barbarous killers, birthed by a state promulgating perverse lies. These abominations give average people a right to rape, pillage and kill all in the name of some enlightened utopia.

I am reading the “The Autobiography of Carl Jung.”

Jung experienced the subconscious. He could not categorically prove that it existed, but he categorized the effects.

The subconscious is the voices inside your head, the conscious, so called rational, experiential, voice, and some sort of metaphysical knowledge apart from our immediate experience; what Marcus Aurelius would call the universal knowledge.

We, as conscious humans, have choices, free will. There is always a need for opposition, ying-yang, good and evil. Without obvious choice between two competing alternatives there can be no choice, no free will.

Christ made the choice emphatic; it is the defining choice. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

I had a religious experience; it was more profound than anything I have ever experienced through the senses. It was an infusion of the presence of Christ. The best way I could describe it was like an emphatic dose a Laudanum. Christ lives. That is a life changing, piece of knowledge. You are indeed the new man, born again. You must quickly answer the primary question, “Whom will you serve.”

Jung says there are three voices, a demon, God, and self. He is hazy on God but describes a beneficent voice.

Early in my experience, following Christ is a long path of growth; it is that path that requires great faith. I experienced the demon. I had not believed in a spiritual personification of evil; I glibly passed over the times Christ cast out devils. I had only experienced one voice which I thought was myself; I was self centered. I had yet to read “The Screw tape Letters.”

The demon was losing control; he went crazy in my mind, a hateful rant. He exposed himself. It was alarming, what I thought was myself was the demon in disguise. God was smothered. I had been easily and totally possessed by something I refused to believe existed.

The Spirit of God is that “Small quiet voice.” You must do “The Preparations” to hear it.

How did the Apostles follow Christ? Why did they believe and change so profoundly? Thomas, even with, daily, extensive time with Christ, did not believe he had risen; he had to put his finger in his wounds. Each of us is different; we need our personal knowledge that Christ lives, that he is God who became man, showed us a way to enter the Kingdom of God, to be part of never-ending possibilities.

We can have the Peace that the world cannot give, the peace beyond all understanding. We only must, sincerely, ask. “Blessed are the pure in spirit, they shall see God.”

Without a knowledge of Christ, “The Word” will always be useless to us; we will not find it necessary; it will always be a stupidity, we will hate it.

We are birds in a cage, “Truman Show,” The reality of God, the still small voice that sets us free, we will not hear. We are captured by what we believe to be rational selves, but we are really the prisoners of the Demon that rules us. If we reject God, we choose evil.

Christ said, “You will know them by their fruits!” Now is the time when we call evil good and call good evil. “Blessed is he that has eyes to see and ears to hear.” The absurd, foul, ever present electronic drivel has blinded us. It is calamitous. Yet, we clamor for some dystopian end.