Apocalyptic Visions (dot org)

Today I went to the bank and saw this car in the grocery store parking lot. Normally I see car decals like this when somebody is advertising Avon or some other pyramid program. This time somebody was advertising their brand on the end of the world. I decided to call it.

While I thought it would be more ridiculous than it really was, the conversation reminded me of something I hadn’t experienced in a while. I remembered, why argue about this type of thing? It reached a point where the guy was talking about the need for faith, but also the need to supercede faith and “grow” enough to his level of spiritual attainment, to KNOW. “I KNOW, and you can KNOW too like I do by doing this that, etc. etc…”

His whole thing was genuine and articulated well, but it came back to the same marketing tactics that I’m familiar with from advertising pyramid programs on the internet for a while. He said “this is what we’re taught in the doctrines, so it must be true.” He invited me to join his club that meets every week. The thought of sulking together about how much our world sucks, and how much Christians are going to be tortured and martyred in the end was a real bummer. It’s so fear-based that it’s a bumout.

I read a book recently by J. Krishnamurti called Freedom from the Known. I resonate with the idea that when we “know” something, that is, form a mental concept about anything, we place another brick on the wall around our imaginations, intuition, and creative unique thought.

I often think about, why are kids so free, and then why are adults so square? I was laying cinder block at an elementary school yesterday (mainly because I thought it’d be ironic for this entry), and I saw all of the kids in single file, prancing around enjoying the rain, while the less-animated teacher herded them to another part of the building.

Of course you can’t expect a teacher to get excited and scream about the dripping sky, but the image of the children living fancy-free in imagination while confined to single file seemed to be only the beginning of a long period of conditioning. Eventually this system of do’s and don’ts, rewards and punishments, most likely will have it’s way into their minds, turning them into docile office-working consumers, all for the sake of the economy. That’s my apocalyptic vision.

But… the good news is, unlike Hell, we can still get out.