A Time When Full Consciousness is Emerging

Since the origin of humanity on earth, we have lived as though there is no spiritual world. Our focus has been almost totally upon the external world, and we have lived without meaning and without eternity. Religion has in various ways attempted to bring to our attention an awareness of spiritual reality, but it has for so many focused on an attempt to stop humanity from performing certain “sins”, through various threats and punitive actions. The idea has always been that to enter into some sort of spiritual reality, however that has been conceived, one has to be “saved” and approved by God.

Now in the present day we have reached a state where we know clearly that there is another side to this, that “sinful” actions cannot be eradicated simply by forbidding them, but only by clarity of vision of wholeness, and by healing the hurt within.  We have, as humanity, reached the place where the motherly nature of God is being expressed by women on earth, and often even by men on earth, and this means that Mother God is able to manifest that part of Her nature which has remained unexpressed throughout so much of the history when men dominated all things.

Uniting the physical and spiritual worlds requires us to be able to perceive the deep meaning in the nature of all things in creation. Perception of the internal nature of all things requires us to accept that the earth itself is not just a commodity which we can use to make profit to enhance our personal small economic life, but is our earth-mother. The earth yearns to supply us all with resources to express the love of the mother, to guarantee us all survival, and to be the basis from which we grow to express our unique, eternal, human and divine natures. 

Humans live as though they are animals with reason, and miss the beauty, the infinite potential all around at all times. But science is truly on the verge of making the step into a vastly greater vision of humans and all of reality.

It is time now for us to look at the land and see the spirit within, as has been practiced by indigenous peoples worldwide. We have destroyed our greatest treasures in the quest for recovering the spiritual world and recovering our awareness of the spirit within us and within nature and all things. Now we can clearly recognize the forces of violence and unchecked desire for power through material wealth and position that have so impoverished our lives in recent centuries. 

No one is looking to take away what so many people rely on for their security, but rather to establish the value of all people, and to ensure that every single person is valued, and able to inherit the earth’s promise of life and security in the physical world, as preparation for eternal joy and life in the spiritual world. We are God becoming, both men and women. Even God lives in potential without manifestation of God’s full nature within the universe, and for the feminine heart of God to have been hidden from humanity, unable to develop within humanity due to the damage done in history, is tragedy.  We are beyond that. 

We can now expect to hear the voices of women, to see the values of the mother gradually emerging within the nations and communities of the earth. 

I want to see the emergence of full health, the overcoming of all disease and the enabling of people to reach spiritual maturity before moving on to the spiritual realms. I want to see much greater ease of travel within the physical world and the universe in the near future, including the revelation of faster-than-light travel. I want to see two-way communication between people in the spiritual world and physical world emerge rapidly in the coming years. The idea that a human can just be dismantled and done away with is so devastating that no one who believes that could ever truly know that God loves us, and yet so much evidence seems to endorse that point of view. This has to be overcome immediately, not as a point of belief but as an actual accomplished fact.

Thus Endeth the Jewish State

Plagued from the beginning by the religious Zionist absolute unquestioning assumption that the land currently occupied by both Arabs and Jews was directly given to the Jewish people by God, Israel has always had to struggle with the duality at the core of its identity, dividing the population into many different factions. The religious, maybe messianic, zeal which determines that almost anything is acceptable in the taking of the land has finally brought us to the point where the very next step takes the region maybe beyond the possibility of the two-state solution. Israel now must decide between democratic values, which would demand equal protection of the rights of all residents, and the apparent the convergence of religious values and politics that seems to be driving the new U.S. administration.

Imagine how devastating it must be to Arabs in Palestine that they don’t even get to vote about such decisive steps! Their fate is being decided by leaders of nations who seem too often to know or care nothing of their daily reality and their recent history. U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May seem more concerned with settling issues between Palestine and Israel according to their own benefit at home, leaving Palestinians as simply chess pieces to be used and moved around the board as they deem best.

Although Prime Minister May has offered some assurances that Britain still believes Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands are illegal, to distance the UK from Europe and the previous US administration for her own purposes is a dangerous and disrespectful course on which to embark. It disrespects all those Britons who actually care deeply about the Palestinian people, and are aware of Britain’s very checkered past in taking on the role of overseer. Let us hope that seeing the jubilant reaction in the far right corridors of power has been enough to convince Mrs. May that she needs a more considered approach.

And President Trump? Initial thoughts that emerged from his own mouth in early days of his presidential campaign seemed to indicate that he was ready to bring his purportedly powerful experience in making deals to the arena of Israeli/Palestinian relations. Yet, Trump’s statement that he intends to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem has led Israel to believe that he will totally support its extreme right wing agenda. The president should stick to his strengths; he is not the elected representative of either Israelis or Palestinians, and simply caving in to the opinions of people motivated by religious conviction will not help any quest to do well by the world.

The people of Israel have other concerns to address, maybe most prominently that of their own identity. Who are they? Who do they want to be in 30 years or so?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has required, as one of his major conditions for a deal, that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Is this a religious identity? The most religious people in Israel would be the ultra-Orthodox, in the sense that they consider themselves to be the only ones following the laws of the covenant made thousands of years ago with their God. But they have actually deeply compromised their own status, since as a result of them joining the governing coalition in order to gain power, their own children are moving towards a more secular form of Judaism.

Religious exemption from the Israel Defense Forces has been a point of strong contention with the rest of Israel, as well as support of the spiritual lifestyle which requires young men to study Torah instead of acquiring a more secular education and entering gainful employment. But in choosing to rely on Netanyahu’s benevolence rather than on the power of their God in supporting these goals, the ultra-Orthodox find themselves compromised. Their own children see them bowing to secular power, and thus themselves are choosing in unprecedented numbers to join the IDF and abandon the spiritual path.

The perspective of religious Zionists and revisionist Jews has allowed for the violence that was an integral part of the founding of Israel to continue today. Palestinians have suffered under this religious zeal, and we are led now to ask, What is the plan for the six million or so Arabs who will be living within the boundaries of a Jewish state? Naftali Bennett, for example, seems to expect them somehow to evaporate and disappear.

Israel has almost become simply another secular country relying on military power more than on spiritual power, and thus one is left asking the question, What is a Jewish state? In accepting the values and the support of outside powers rather than tackling the actual issue of making peace themselves, Israel has essentially eradicated its own agenda of establishing a Jewish state.

At this point, the only way to turn this around may be for the parties in the governing coalition to truly sit down and enter a phase of deep soul-searching as to who they are and where they want to go. Most are happily embarking on the final stages of adopting a path which will leave the Palestinians homeless and stateless, occupied by a foreign body. Everyone should know that this cannot last as a stable reality, with the prospect of morphing into a single state in 30 years or so, with almost equal Jewish and Arab populations. In the meantime, life in the Middle East will be filled with hostility and conflict. Netanyahu seems so focused on today’s reality and on holding on to power that he doesn’t care. Do all the parties in the ruling coalition feel the same way?

​Annexation of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, a determining step in extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, would appear to be the end of realistic opportunity for the two-state solution to retain viability. Opposing this annexation seems to be the only path that can assure Israel’s existence as a Jewish state—as something other than just another secular democratic state.

The MIssing Gospel of the Mother

And God saw Her people living in plenty and harmony in the bosom of Mother Africa, and God was pleased. But God knew the great potential of Her people, and wished them to fill the earth with their descendants.

A great number felt the call to leave the motherland, and left following various paths, to explore the Blessings of the earth, and multiply until the earth was filled.

But as they explored, they found the earth was not welcoming and hospitable, but rather was full of challenges. Winter claimed many lives, floods and wild animals and many dangers accompanied every path. And God saw the suffering of Her people, and was filled with sadness.

Gradually those who left to explore and multiply found themselves mostly looking to conquer great dangers, and came to think of subjugating the earth, not living in harmony. Those masculine qualities of bravery and strength became favored over qualities of peace and joyfulness. Those who traveled lost their continual contact with the sun, and became pale, and over time, they began to fight each other, as they had fought nature for their survival.

And then gradually they began to settle, and manifest a dominion, but found they had lost some part of their heart. They no longer felt secure and embraced by Mother God, but felt abandoned, and they closed off that part of their heart that had felt loved and valued.  And they made science, and they made the law, to free themselves, but God saw that they had become trapped by the law. And Mother God lamented Her children’s pain

One day Mother God resolved to open up a new land, a land where Her children could come and be free, a land of plenty, and a land where all would be equal, dark and pale, male and female. But Mother God pondered in Her heart for many years before She could do this, because Mother God knew Her children would not easily regain their hearts. She knew She had to send to this new land a special people of heart, those who still knew God’s love. And Mother God grieved and lamented because She knew the fate of these people, that they would have to suffer deeply at the hands of those who no longer felt loved.

But without the people of the heart, Mother God knew She could never establish the place on earth where She could dwell in harmony and peace with Her children. The pale peoples had closed their hearts and become people of the intellect alone, a capable and excellent people in many ways, but a people who had too great a pain to be kind any more.

And thus Mother God guided those across the ocean fleeing from oppression and lack of freedom, and watched with great agony as they failed to love those native people who already lived there. And even more painful for Mother God was to have to watch as Her people were brought from the Motherland under chains and oppression, to be in slavery for 400 years.

But Mother God never left the hearts of Her people, and watched with both deep pride and deep suffering the agony of those enduring great cruelty.

And as time went on, a wondrous thing happened, as some of the anger and hurt of those men who had fought against the elements for so long became directed onto their slaves instead of on their wives and children, and as time passed, those wives and children gradually became stronger and more free, and gained power within the society of men, until one day it became clear that women were totally the equal of men, and the time of men’s dominion was over. Mother God became empowered, and found those women who could give voice to the Mother who dwelled within their hearts.

The great sin of slavery was ended, although it took many generations for healing to truly take place within all people. Men gradually came to see the empowerment of women as a good thing, and the new nation, already several hundred years old, came to realize there was no way forward except through embracing the heart.

And it came to pass that one day, Mother God said No More. From this time, heart will come first. No longer will violence be visited upon my people for they have proven themselves worthy in heart. And God’s people rose up and claimed themselves worthy, and refused to accept any more prejudice and hatred.

And Mother God loved and celebrated Her children, those who had endured and absorbed so much injustice so that their brothers and sisters, and their descendants, could be free. God bowed down to those who had stood strong under the greatest injustices without losing faith in their God, because finally Mother God saw She would live on earth in peace and joy with all of Her children.

How the Justice System has excluded input from the people

Last time I was called for jury duty in Delaware there were 42 cases scheduled. We figured we were just unlucky, and we’d surely be called for a jury with so many cases, despite all the tales we’d heard about people getting out of the courthouse by noon. But indeed we were out by noon. Only one case went to a jury. That means 41 people pleaded guilty to something that day, either a crime they’d committed, or a crime they felt was the least they would get away with given the system and the warnings from their defense attorney, the only person who might be expected to be on their side, that coming before a jury would be a crapshoot.

If over 90% of cases are decided by attorneys, prosecuting and defense attorneys together, we are no longer looking at an adversarial system. The only adversarial part of the system is that of the accusation versus the accused. Both prosecutor and defense have accepted the prevailing wisdom that everyone is guilty of something, the system must be preserved or total chaos will result, and therefore their roles have reverted to  highballing the punishment (prosecutor) and lowballing the punishment (defense). The prosecutor is building his or her reputation, the defense is trying not to be swamped amidst a case burden that might have applied to a whole law firm of defense lawyers in a previous time.

Nobody takes time to discover if the facts presented are true, hardly anybody even thinks about if the accused had criminal intent when he did what he was accused of. The police and prosecutor pile on enough charges to ensure that something will stick. The accused is bulldozed into pleading guilty to something so as to avoid a bigger charge. Sometime she did something criminal, sometimes she didn’t. Either way, once arrested the chances of being declared innocent are remote, and require much more money than a typical defendant is going to have.

Preserving the system is already a lost cause. The only thing attorneys are preserving at this point is their jobs. The man in the street thinks of TV shows when he thinks of the justice system, believing juries decide cases based on impassioned pleas from defense attorneys, that lack of evidence will be sufficient to free the innocent. This isn’t a part of the current system.

The first exposure to the system comes in meeting the police. Police are so overwhelmed and cynical about  whole communities that they see their job as being to preserve order, not to bring justice. Therefore when they say “If there is anymore disturbance, someone is going to be arrested” they really mean that. It really is fairly random who gets to go into the system and lose the next decade of their life to court appearances, jail time, probation, supervision, fines, etc. Add on to that reality the fact that police are often given quotas, or offered rewards to make more arrests, and sooner or later no one wants to call the police in the first place. Antonio LeGrier could tell us that, having watched his son (and an innocent neighbor) be gunned down by the Chicago police he called to help calm his son during an argument last December.

There is no point now to try to go back to the past. We have to move forward. A very helpful  first step would be to require the prosecution to prove criminal intent before someone can pay for a crime. Second, given the almost complete responsibility and control placed in the hands of attorneys today, who negotiate sentences without any jury oversight, we must surely demand that such attorneys be well qualified to make decisions concerning human motivations. Legally trained professionals cannot be expected to make decisions concerning criminal intent without further training in behavior and personality theories when they are the only  professional making decisions about people’s lives, and when they have a conflict of interest, their careers often being enhanced by gaining guilty pleas.

Given the overwhelming case burden of attorneys in the system today, this part may be facilitated by a third party involvement, not necessarily a trained psychologist, but a person trained specifically for this position. In the past guilt of motivation was decided by a jury presented with enough facts, having heard arguments from both sides, without need for psychological training. Today this assessment simply doesn’t happen, even if only because usually a jury doesn’t happen.

If a law can be passed that requires proof of criminal intent, then there must be some way that this can be decided. Here we can bring together the wisdom of age with the needs of society, given the huge numbers of older people who are retired but not ready to do nothing. Even without a cadre of people trained for careers based on a new role within the system, many such people would perform this function well based on life experience and training without great expense. The human factor can be restored to the process leaving the legally trained professionals to focus on the law.

One argument typically brought to bear when it is suggested that anyone else be brought in to the system is that it opens up the slippery slope to the privilege of privacy. Given that the public defenders’ role is now reduced to assuming guilt and arguing for reduced sentences rather than for innocence, this becomes something of a moot point. Guilt already seems to be assumed.  And whereas previously it seemed reasonable to argue for protecting the system and its safeguards, now it doesn’t seem reasonable any more. The system has already changed beyond recognition, so why not demand further change?

Why Consciousness Created A Universe

In order to understand the design of the universe, we have to know the ultimate desire of the creator. We will accept that the creator is a being with consciousness, who has desires, and has the intellectual capacity to design a place which enables the eventual fulfillment of this goal. We will also assume that the nature of the original consciousness can be approached by investigation of the creation, therefore we find that the creator must have both masculine and feminine characteristics, and that there is both internal character and external form to this being. The universe itself represents at least part of the external form.

The motivation is one of love, the desire to experience joy and relationship with and through another. However, joy experienced in and through a lesser being would necessarily be a lesser joy, therefore the desire of god is to create other beings as much like god as possible. Thus we find they need to be able to create, not just follow along a predetermined path, and we expect co-creatorship to be a part of the design of the resultant beings. Through beings created in the image of God, then God can have actual experience within the created realm, experience with real consequences and thus deep meaning, unlike experiences solely within the imagination.

Therefore we find the challenge of God in creating is how to make a being who is both other than God and the same as God, who is like God but has become like God through his or her own free choices. Thus the growth from potential to actuality is a necessary part of creation. Time is conceived as the separation between the organism at one stage of development and the organism at a later stage, with the organism being both the same and also more mature. Since we are familiar with growth from childhood to adulthood that is not a hard concept for us.

However, before the concept of growth, it is necessary to distinguish an organism from the collective universal oneness into a separate existence. Thus the concept of space is born as a separation between God and each created being, as well as between the different created beings. In order to create space, however, God must create an arena in which this can all take place, and given that there is nothing outside of God, the way to create something other can be achieved by making a realm that is finite and thus limited,  which then must necessarily exist within God’s own internal being while also being different from God’s internal being.

God would naturally have to be described as infinite dimensional, which we can think of as either filling all possible conceptual infinite-dimensional spaces to infinite extent, or as a single point of zero extension within a potential space of infinite dimensions. To a mathematician it is acceptable to equate these two in some sense.

Thus in creating a universe, God creates something other than himself by creating a realm of finite dimensionality. We observe a universe of three space dimensions plus one time dimension, although our theoretical models today permit of much higher dimensionality. Thus the physical spacetime exists as a subset of the consciousness of God, when we think of consciousness as an extended field that permeates all of reality, and exists as the “ground of our being”, to use a term common in religious circles. Thus space within this conceptual place represents the separation of the organism from the collective, allowing a collective consciousness to be expressed within a finite, four dimensional realm. Thus a human being exists both within God and separate from God.

It is necessary to establish the design in accordance with the desire to give both freedom and direction to the created beings, and indeed to the whole universe. The universe itself is the manifestation of consciousness, existing within and totally dependent upon universal consciousness. However, cocreation demands freedom of choice. There is little value in a being who reaches maturity simply by making predetermined choices and consequently growing in accordance with a pattern. If God wants safety and security, and to avoid pain, then there is no need to go beyond determinism, but if God wants something more than a robotic creation, then God must accept the reality of being actually vulnerable to the choices of her created beings. And God wants as close to other gods as it is possible to make, because great joy requires great investment of heart and love and trust.

However, God’s capacity for self-expression would be severely restricted if the only organisms available were bacteria, and so it is necessary to create a being with the internal mind and external body able to express the depths of heart necessary to manifest joy and external accomplishment through self-actualization. God wants the actual experience of day to day life, of the expression of love between two people, or two gods-made-manifest. Thus there has to be some way for God to guide the process of evolution so that God’s desires and original purpose can be accomplished, while at the same time safe-guarding the free will of the created beings. Both internal and external natures develop through the process of evolution.

Thus the universe is created to respond to desire of the created organisms, from elementary particle to human, because everything participates in universal consciousness by virtue of its very nature. Consciousness here is seen as a field underlying everything, undifferentiated except through the process of tying it down to an existence within the finite dimensional realm.

The physical universe exists as separate “droplets”; even space and time are not infinitely small, but have a smallest extension, a granularity. Physics of the twentieth century discovered this when it looked at the smallest scales, and found the quantum nature of everything. The smallest length and the smallest time are known as the Planck length and time, after Max Planck. Thus reality can be considered to consist of tiny grains. The essential nature of all creation is that of change or growth, not static existence. In accordance with A. N. Whitehead, we can suppose that the whole universe is recreated, or made manifest, at every instant of granular time, so that it is recreated every moment on a different basis, since it recreates itself in accordance with its own nature, which reflects how much movement there has been towards its own growth.

Consciousness within a four dimensional manifold is not fully expressed immediately, but rather this expression develops over time, it grows in manifestation according to the desire of the beings within the created world.  Thus it is both God’s consciousness and becoming God’s consciousness, just as a baby is both being herself and becoming herself.

God has now become totally vulnerable to the lowest expression of consciousness, because there is nothing to pull the elementary particle towards anything higher except for the fact of its own participation within consciousness. If the elementary particle decides to remain solely an elementary particle for all eternity, then that is how God will be forced to remain in his self-manifested form. However, the nature of consciousness is such that God has confidence that sooner or later an elementary particle somewhere will find the desire within to experience more. It will not be a self-reflective thought, it will not be expressed in words, but it will be a felt desire, a wondering in some sense if this is all, an urge towards growth and greater meaning.

We experience the internal nature of the elementary particle as its tendency to behave in an ordered pattern, which we describe as obeying the laws of nature. Obviously this is not the same as the internal nature of an organism, higher or lower, but it is also not nothing.

Now God has designed the world exactly in such a way as to respond to desire, because that is the meaning behind everything in creation. As soon as a particle desires to grow, even the tiniest leaning towards growth, there must be a mechanism to respond. God cannot respond to his own creation from outside of it, since that is how God designed it, to be completely self-determining, and there is no mechanism for an insubstantial being to interact with a substantial being. However, clearly this is of great priority, so in order to respond God had to have created also a world which can reach down to the desire and offer a path whereby such a desire can be substantiated. Even for a particle though, that path is not absolute, it can still choose. Generally choice increases as the organism grows in complexity, but to be consistent we must recognize that even a particle has some element of choice in a response.

Most particles are fine with remaining static, with remaining in their law-like behavior, but there is now one particle that has discovered a desire to allow the greater expression of consciousness, that has found a desire to move towards life, albeit unknowingly of course. Given that the universe recreates itself at every instant of time, at the next instant it is already a different universe, it is on a different foundation. We know from quantum entanglement that once a state has been chosen, determined by the collapse of the wave function into an actual choice of how to substantiate, then this is immediately, instantaneously, communicated to all other particles that have ever been in contact with this particle, which of course at this point we can take to be the whole universe.

Thus the particle aspect of the created being has influenced the internal distributed wave-aspect of reality. This influence then makes it somewhat more likely that other particles will make that same choice, will resonate with the desire for greater internal expression, and given that there has probably been already a very long time of existing as a lower level creation, the universe exists in a state of preparedness, so that it is likely that the desire can spread rapidly and create a sudden discontinuity in the state of matter in the created world. This brings to mind the idea of archetypes within the collective unconscious which affect the thought and behavior of humans, according to the theory of Carl Jung.

Teilhard de Chardin expresses this as a discontinuity in state, leading to the growth of the elementary freedoms in accordance with the growing synthesis of atoms and molecules subtended by growing consciousness. As greater consciousness becomes substantiated, so a greater complexity is manifested within the universe. And this in defined by the choices of the created beings themselves, not dictated by God.

How can a choice be reinforced without taking away from the freedom of choice? How does this differ from God simply dictating the next step?

For this we can look to the idea of morphological fields, as described by Rupert Sheldrake, among others, as a mechanism for the development of shape and behavior of the organism over time. Everything that exists in separated form within creation also participates in the universal oneness underlying it, so the internal nature of everything can be described also mathematically, as scientific fields, like the electromagnetic field, or the gravitational field. Ultimately of course these reflect and participate in the field of consciousness. Thus a change in an organism from one generation to the next is also reflected by a change in the holistic field within which the organism participates. The organism has both “wave and particle” nature, although this needs better vocabulary on the higher end of the evolutionary scale.

Thus, within a field, there exists waves or vibrations that reflect or carry the change that has occurred. Choice begins the change, and substantiation strengthens the change.

Let us suppose that God has some idea of the eventual bodily form of the human, (whether this is the ultimate creation or not), and let us place this idea within the imagination of God. So there is a goal of evolution, there is some teleological aspect of evolution, but free will is preserved  if choice is still honored. There can be no mechanism for direct influence of the physical world, other than through the internal nature of the created beings, so the ultimate goal of the form of the organism must lie in some other realm, which leads us to postulate that there must be a realm which has been variously described by many people throughout history where the ultimate form exists already in perfected state.

We might postulate that the perfect horse is already manifested, along the lines of Plato’s perfect form, but there is no absolute need of this to explain the directed nature of evolution. Each step occurs on the basis of a resonance between the vibrations within the morphological field within the physical world, and vibrations in the corresponding field in the spirit world. However, each step is already completely contained with the ultimate endpoi nt of creation, which we will for now take to be the human. And so if the perfected human form exists within the spiritual substantial creation, there will be vibrations corresponding to every step towards that, at least on the level of morphic development. Every step is seen in the physical world as being on the path towards this external form, but not continuing on to the completed form. Thus everything in existence is patterned after the human form, but is not necessarily going to go all the way to that end.

From this, we can suggest that the reason for the existence of angels is to be that perfected form of the eventual human, or at least to manifest that form so as to set up the vibrations necessary to resonate with the developing organisms within the physical world. This does not conflict with the desire of God to confer freedom of choice, because the spirit world does not exist as the pinnacle of God’s creation, only the ultimate destiny of the matured, or completely manifested, human. It seems likely that each spiritual being has both a physical body, and a spiritual body simultaneously, since the most natural mechanism would be resonance between the two bodies of the same person, while the spiritual body of a person generates a field which resonates with the morphic fields within the spiritual realms.

The spirit world then exists as a lesser manifestation of God, until the human reaches the state of spiritual accomplishment or manifestation that was originally desired when God created. Thus even though humans may be the ultimate pinnacle of creation, there is still a long way to go, because it certainly looks like humans have made some wrong turns along the road of evolution. And of course cocreatorship allows that to happen. At this point, we mostly assume that the angels are higher beings than we are, but ultimately it would seem that we are destined to be greater than the angels in that we will have created ourselves. We will have become manifestations of the nature of divinity by self-creation, as opposed to being created already completed.

Humans like to think of themselves as the final goal of evolution, and there are some reasons to think this might be so, but there is certainly no proof of this. In order to be the pinnacle of creation, then humans would have to demonstrate a divine capacity, which they seem far from demonstrating at this time. However, humans are still evolving. One reason why we might think that humans are the end point is that they have filled the whole space available for them without morphing into two or more species. Generally once species attain their final state, as they expand and experience the same forces of gradual change as before, sooner or later they have split into more than one species.

God incarnate will be gradually be more completely manifested through the process of evolution, and every step will be by free will, from the bottom up. There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight, especially since we are only just on the verge of escaping from the earth itself and exploring out into space. We are in fact in a very primitive state, and even most likely in a state very backward from what God might reasonably have expected.

God cannot know the choices that will be made. God chooses self-limitation in her relationship with her children, and God goes through every step of the way, suffering and rejoicing with her children. However, the ultimate fate of these children is to be very like God, and God is confident that ultimately humans will tire of exploring all the negative avenues, and will decide instead to make positive choices.

Religion has been both a vehicle for communicating truth, and a disaster that has created a huge gulf between people and their God. 

The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Politics

Why do right wing leaders always want to tell women how they should be living, particularly with reference to their religion, family roles and sexual activities? Turning this around to what should right wing leaders be doing we find the answer. They should be leading their people into peace, ensuring some measure of fairness and equality in their populations, and generally making things better for their people. Since this is manifestly not what they are doing, they turn to the old reliable mantra, it’s all the women’s fault. After all, if this worked for thousands of years, why shouldn’t it continue working?

To whom does religion belong? Are you allowed to use it to back up your own worldview, or is that going to get you in trouble later with your god? Today, it seems to be up for grabs.

Everybody seems to be using the same tactics. The Israeli right is tied to the most extreme religious males, the haredim, and committed on religious grounds to a policy of settlement which is one of the main blocks to ever securing peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. The regime of Netanyahu was even just blatantly reelected by the ploys of appealing to racism and fear on the part of the Israeli public. 

Young Muslims in the Middle East these days, blocked from even the means of making a decent living, or having a safe living environment, find themselves drawn to making a Caliphate in order to hasten the Apocalypse. This is their response to governments who have stayed in power through the imposition of almost constant military rule over the last few decades, in line with the control and power hungry leadership class.

America’s Republicans, deeply offended that the country has elected a Democrat to the presidency twice in a row, has vowed as their primary focus to prevent him from doing anything at all. Their outreach to the public, Fox News, warns of the dire consequences of Obamacare, of homosexual marriage, of an agreement with Iran – sure to bring in a nuclear era, they tell us. And back in America, the Republicans are looking everywhere they have any power to turn back the clock on personal freedoms that have been won through hard-fought battles since the sixties. They seize every opportunity to restrict access to abortion, they pass laws that clearly make it easier for people to avoid prosecution for discrimination against homosexuals. While Texas clearly leads the way, the south in particular jumps enthusiastically on the bandwagon.

So as all of these right wing governments unite around a common tactic, to  impose their religious views on people, Israel is torn apart from within over conflict between the orthodox and the more secular, or even just less extremely religious, Jews. The Haredim refuse to do their military service, they force the settlements, they openly disdain both Arabs and secular Jews, slashing tires, enforcing their beliefs and practices on the communities in which they live. And their champion is Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is planning on ruling with a coalition made up of a large contingent of the religious right, so he will of course have to make major concessions to their demands.

ISIS, the current self-declared Caliphate in power over a large region, makes no effort to hide their policies. Kill all dissenters, preferably by gruesome public decapitations to maintain and spread fear, enforce major restrictions against women, force them into prostitution if they are not true believers. Israelis now live in fear of an even more powerful Caliphate, the one they are assured is being built step by step by the Iranians, with the help of Obama and the misguided American left. In this climate of fear, the evil of Netanyahu seems relatively inevitable because he serves as their shield against an even bigger evil.

Fear is the main tactic worldwide. In the US we see a major turn back of freedoms, almost unlimited government supervision in the name of the terror threat,  jails overflowing, those running them getting rich, the people getting poor. Worldwide we see policies that channel wealth to the few at the top, while ensuring that housing and daily living expenses are so burdensome that the vast majority of the population is so exhausted with meeting survival needs that they have no energy left over to organize against their governments’ values.

Women worldwide should be very concerned. Even western nations have a huge amount of restrictions coming from their governments. No woman is going to benefit from a Caliphate, an Orthodox-dominated Israel, or a Republican-controlled US, unless they are happy with a world that narrows the opportunities for their children and mandates all sexual behavior and morals.

At the same time, it is only a minority who really think this way, everyone else is drawn along by the need for staying in power or advancing their careers. Sometimes just by sheer lack of reflection. Several Republican women are forging their careers by being the mouth pieces for their party line. Be careful you don’t lose your soul, ladies! Women who are looking to the Republican party to keep you safe and launch your careers, make sure you are not being used in the short term by people who are seeking to restrict your freedoms in the long term. Who should be deciding your values, you or the government? Who should be telling you right and wrong in how you conduct your relationships? Do not be too ready to cast off the hard-won freedoms that required such battles since the sixties, and for religion, the Pope is a better guide than the Republican party, the president of Turkey or the various Caliphates who show their devotion by the number of beheadings they can authorize.