Third Eye: Open

Ajna Chakra

After I'd had that lightening bolt experience and started painting again I shared my first pastel with a docent friend and she immediately said it opened my Third Eye. This is an Eastern spiritual reference to vision. It did get me thinking. Is there a special part in your brain that if repressed kills your creativity?

Some researchers have suggested that the third eye is in fact the partially dormant, pineal gland which resides between the two hemispheres of the brain. This pineal gland has some cells that resemble the photoreceptor cells in the eye and some reptiles can sense light via that third eye

Do I believe this? I'm such a skeptic which leaves me in a place where I don't believe much of anything. Raised in a Catholic family I tend not to agree with anything from Rome but do feel somehow we, as organisms, have a connection. Whether it's electrically or biologically or spiritual, I have no idea but feel some invisible connection.

Listening to NPR, National Public Radio, I heard an interview with Bruce Hood, chair of developmental psychology and director of the Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol in southwest England. He's written a book, Supersense: Believing the Unbelievable. What he said was superstition is baked into our human nature. Humans are born with brains designed to make sense of the world and that sometimes leads to beliefs that go beyond any natural explanation. To be true they would have to be supernatural and it's these supernatural beliefs that bind us together into a society. If you get time, listen to the interview it is thought provoking.

So, are you superstitious?

Does everyone have an idiot uncle, too?

Is your hate well placed with Obama's minister? What about Jerry Falwell's diatribe about immorality and anti-Christian's being responsible for 9-11? If you want to hate someone we've got plenty to hate. I hate the current administration for dragging us into this now five-year war costing four thousand American lives and one-half a trillion dollars. Imagine the country spending that amount of money here on education, infrastructure, or jobs. Someone has gotten rich on this conflagration and it isn't the soldiers fighting there, nor I doubt, the inhabitants of Iraq.

Two of my uncles are such bigots I wouldn't walk across the street to visit them let along fly to Indiana. Why? Because I don't care about them. They fill their lives with such hate it doesn't matter what else they do, they don't exist to me. What I've found about myself is I'm an "insulationsist." I keep close people who believe pretty much the same as I do. That might be wrong but it keeps me happy. I've long since tried to change anyone. They are who they are but I don't have to be around them. So, if I bust your chops for something you've said to offend me, consider yourself a friend.

We need less priests and more Uncle Daves

I'll confess; I've never been a great Catholic. My family ranges from people like me to one who should have been a priest. My uncle goes to Mass every day of his life and has for as long as I can remember. I, on the other hand, can't remember the last Mass I attended other than a funeral.

What has me confused is why so many abuse victims? Are there that many ratty-assed priests? Mahonney said he was truly sorry. Yeah, sorry he had to pay out all that money. Tell me what they are doing to keep this from happening again, then I'll be happy. LA Catholic Church apologies.

Now the Pope says "Other Christians are not true Christians." Huh? Another uncle, recently departed, was a Lutheran, through and through. Never missed church and was the most genuinely honest and moral person I've ever known. So when he died you think St Pete says, oops, all that good living, sorry, we've about 100 pedophile priests ahead of you, you know, Catholicism is the only true religion.

Does this sound like another religion? If you don't believe in my way of thinking … fill in the blanks. I'm not saying Pope Benny and the Jets suggests strapping on vests and heading down to the local Protestant Church but come on, where did this come from? There is a reason pontificate, to express one's opinion in a way considered annoying, came from that section of Rome.

Get out of Purgitory free card

You'd think being retired I'd have this spic and span clean house. How wrong you'd be. My house cleaning consists of tidying up the kitchen and baths, making sure my dearly beloved has clean britches and dusting, if we have company. Of course when we have overnight guests I feel compelled to clean a bit more and since my family will be converging here in June I've been in Über clean mode.

Because I've gotten lazy I only do one or two chores a day then either walk, write for this and the PBE blogs or paint. I do spoil myself. Today's chores consisted in cleaning ceiling fans and the aluminium blinds in both front rooms. Yikes, what a boring job and if I were still associated with the Catholic Church I'm sure I would have offered up this time as penance for the poor souls in Purgatory. A product of some Catholic schooling, every boring job drags my mind back to Nuns making you feel no time is wasted when there are souls to push onto their final reward.

This sort of stuff all ways got me into trouble in school like the time I, quite seriously, asked the Nun if I could sort of "bank" some prayers for a few of my friends I know will need them once they die because they should be going straight to hell. Detention, Miss.

Something in the back of my mind say some recent Pope eliminated Purgatory a few years ago but I'm not sure. If this was changed I am sure everyone got the express into heaven just like when, during the the 60s, they eliminated the Friday penance of no meat. Says so somewhere in Canon Law, which, I might add, reads like some Californian ballot propositions. The church never does seem to get it's story right, Inquisitions, Indulgences, and Insolent Priests.