A Likely Story

The Truth cannot be canonized by men.  Canons pretending authority on matters of Ultimate Truth can be written by men, but the referral is not the thing referenced.  One would suppose this were taken for granted by people who hear stories from others' lips, or read words of written language, nothing more than marks on something which when looked upon remind the looker of his spoken language, and so he "reads" the marks, interpreting them as indications of an attempt to preserve the spoken word in visible form.  He then must interpret the words themselves without any active support of the author (unless he was the author himself, obviously).  That would be next step to perform.  If he has access to the author, even then the author must go through the same process (unless he has an eidetic and accurate memory of his writings), and must remember what he meant by his writings.

That is just how shallow text is.  It is just a phenomenal form in our experience, completely without any meaning except what we attribute to it.  When we write our words, just as when we speak them, there is a certain intended effect upon those who would read them, just as there would be such an intention upon those who would hear them if we had spoken them.  The difference between spoken and written word is tremendous!  The depth of the spoken word is immediately the person speaking, the depth of the written word is about half a millimeter as an entity of paper and ink, or perhaps a few centimeters of lacuna in stone if an inscription, or maybe some scratches on metal if an engraving. That's what written words are.  Nothing more.  Sure, many elements inform such artifacts with meaning beyond the phonemic interpretation of the image, and the subsequent delvings into the semantics of that product.  But these elements are in themselves feeble in their assistance compared to the living person himself who may better assist us in person, by literally "telling us what he means".

Speech is simply telling someone what you mean by "saying it".  It can be said by gestures, looks, postures, breath, tone, rhythm, but primarily it is meant to be a verb which refers to the human act of using the vocal cords, mouth, tongue, teeth, lungs, diaphragms, etc to generate sounds which present ideas from one mind and offer them to the consideration of another through some lexicon of reference so that the effect of these sounds is to stimulate some minimally accurate sets of images (broadly construed to include all forms of sense), and which result in a mental state in the hearer which, taken at its face value, is a bare act of suggestion where the hearer's mental state is accessed through its own willing attention and guided to have experiences which do not directly result from bodily sensations alone....

By the way, to avoid pretense and also to prevent confusion, I am simply performing an exegesis of a few insights I had earlier in my studies of "Early Church History", specifically with a view to getting my mind around the rather amusingly embarrassing notion of "paleo-orthodoxy" of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH (gratuitous thunderous echoes ensue...).  I found that while my own studies were primarily in philosophy, psychology, religion (these long before, during and after college), and the basics of a four year college education, my main academic experience was simply philosophy and Asian studies, no more no less.  I cannot pretend to a study of linguistics, archaeology, history, or a vast number of others subjects to which my investigations point, approach, delve, and sometimes explore without any reference to academic or other worldly sources of education other than those already acquired through my own experience through this flesh, by the witness of my Spirit, and with some augmentation by logical, intuitive, linguistic and other semantic narratives of expression which help me (and perhaps others) "make sense of it all".  I recommend caution to the reader of my blogs or other writings, to listeners of me or my recorded sayings, because this is just one example of how what someone is, and how they can appear to others can range from a gulf to an abyss.  You alone are responsible for what you make of it...  handle your own soul with care.

Now I can't imagine any of the Church Fathers saying such a thing as part of anything they ever said or wrote, can you!?  (Can I get a "hellz no"?).  Good, well, if you know anything about me at all, you know I am a Free Spirit and I don't take well to those who presume to "suggest" to me a state of mind they think better than the one they happened upon when they found me!  What I've seen of the dignity of people suggests to me that it can be found to have some proportionality to their unwillingness to put up with such a prospect in person, let alone through a secondary medium.  Good graces are not to be taken lightly or thrown about casually when considering the grave dignity of persons who administer their attention to those who may solicit it "in ignorance of whom it is they address".  It is a given that a person in himself is a secret to others, except insofar as others presume to be fluent in reading his "character" through his other bodily attributes.

That brings me back to the issue of soliciting attention through language.  Usually when we want to tell other people a story we start by getting their attention.  Of course maybe they will have other things they'd prefer to spend their time attending... so we might concern ourselves with the question of whether or not that is appropriate.  Usually common law systems develop in an informal manner, then institutionalize to ensure a set of rules gets commonly accepted concerning this detail, and the question of whether or not one can use coercion to demand the attention of the audience is not a minor detail of custom or law.  Stipulations concerning communication and all the vicissitudes of its manifestation are usually directly handled by those involved, taking for granted that there are boundaries which cannot be crossed without the consent of those involved, and that per the instance of interaction one side may enjoy rights which are not symmetrically reflected in the position of the other.

If someone wants to get your attention with a story, they should first of all make sure you're not busy with something you might think is more important... they should respect your privacy, and your right to decide what to include within it, as well as what to produce from within it.  One cannot win over an audience by jarring them with inappropriate distractions from their proper concerns...least of all to "simply tell them a story", no matter how important it may seem to be for the teller...

So we get back to the "Church Fathers".  When did this become a well-known entity?  This is an ICON, look it up.  An icon may or may not refer to a specific entity.  Indeed, much of history concerns itself with icons rather than actual persons, because the further one goes back into history there is a depth of significance which grows (due to its being causally antecedent to our current situation in fact) in inverse proportion to the efficacy with which its medium of expression to our awareness is capable of delivering that depth... or even of delivering an indication of this disparity enough to help us see that fact!  History speaks grandly of itself as soon as it opens its mouth, and the further back it goes in telling its stories, the more grandiose its pretensions to facticity becomes.

Iconography ceases to be a byproduct of effective communicative address, and becomes the exegetical equivalent of a mythology that is only openly addressed as such by "specialists in the field".  But if these people were grilled properly on the authority of such a mechanism of communication when it is anciently historical, religious, from a time of heavy conflict and dispute in which sources both living and recorded were subject to being "erased from history", or perhaps heavily distorted, and all through mechanisms of cultural hegemony controlled by parties who are heavily invested in the outcome of the processes of historical storytelling to which they apply their own heavy hands of occult authority, then these "historians" would be forced to admit that they are not at all unlike historians of ancient times who might be commissioned to write official history for some of these interested parties.  Those poor guys...  Not only were they always subject to the dangers of offending the wrong people, they might have even had agendas of their own... you think?

Take this interesting character as an example.  He's one of the "pillars" of Church Authority (cue echo machine), and he seems to have a lot to say about things that happened a long time before he was ever around.  We say he "has a lot to say" both in terms of volume and weight.  At least the volume is certain, but while the weight is heavy for a lot of people... it is for others "to be taken very, very lightly".  Can we be surprised given the "inverse law of authenticity" I proposed earlier that someone like this guy cannot be taken without a bucket of salt?  Read the outlines of his story, look at the line of Bishops of Rome, the Ecumenical Councils, the Church Schisms, the political, economic, and cultural forces at play (which were Byzantine to say the least...), and you have scratched the surface of that ABYSS of MEANING to which I have alluded earlier.

And this is for a not-unimportant story, if the CHURCH is to be understood, whether it is Roman or Eastern, or even Oriental...(forgot about them, huh?).  That's also just scratching the surface, because this is an historical story that is heavily edited by its promulgators throughout its own published record.  We don't have public accounts of what they edited out of their own public record except here and there, usually in a form recovered from being hidden for what ended up being many centuries longer than those who hid them would have hoped...  Yes, I'm talking about "The Gnostics".  Leaving aside the issues of terminology and its fine-tuning so as to avoid anachronistic dysplasias of ideation, we can refer to this group as a large, once living population of Christians (in a sense probably alien to most modern people) who were fairly wiped out of existence in the centuries preceding the manifestation of "Da Church", but whose straggling and sometimes resurging or even "resurrected" manifestations were finally stamped out by those who would later take their name "Ex Cathedra", from the Bishopric of Rome.

Aside from the "likely stories" which were produced to explain the line of authority which is claimed to exist from "Jesus" to "Simon Peter" to "Linus" to "Francis", we also have some interludes of severe editing of the sources themselves which would be publicly acknowledged as available for use in the inventions produced centuries after the facts (whatever they were), we have the gratuitous violence and coercion applied to the control of these resources (again, living and recorded), and we have the very underappreciated issue of the means of the propagation and preservation of authentic meaning through the means they had at the time, over time until now, and the particularly conflicted interests of those involved in these alterations, I mean "preservations" of historical and archaeological evidence.

Much of what is claimed concerning the undergirding of the authenticity of Da Church's lineage is simply apocryphal.  Get real, people...  They made this shit up after the fact on the face of it, as this was almost as good as going along with what was kept preserved in a reliable form concerning the events which purportedly took place.  We also know that these remains of evidence were HEAVILY redacted and altered, by both nature and men, interested and uninterested, and GOD ALMIGHTY had almost NOTHING to do with that (unless you mean Yahweh-Demiurgos by "God", then we could say he had everything to do with that, but this will only confuse modern readers as to my point here).  Looking at the FACTS as we experience them, we are treated to a very fanciful story right away, just looking at what is proposed in front of us!

Then when we look into the doctrines they've established, the hackneyed and hacked up canon writings they offer, the dogmas they've propounded, especially when we refer to the dramas of Da Schism and the Ecumenical Councils, we come away with the image of a complete FARCE being passed off as reality and normality.  It is a supreme fraud.

Christianity as the world knows it today is a completely distorted mockery of whatever it was before the likes of Iraneaus got hold of its name and corpse and paraded about with its mutilated forms as they saw fit.  It was also a complete farce BACK THEN...  That is why they killed off anyone who didn't agree with their particular version of what "Christ" means, along with everything else contained in the rubric of RELIGION.

They used deception, theft, plagiarism, coercion, fraud, murder, and every vice and crime to push through a version of "religion" for the masses which was, quite simply, calculated to crush and erase the Original Reality of what happened, is happening, and will happen.  They delayed the inevitable, the most they can ever do.  The Apocalypse is NOW, the charade is OVER.

By the way, without wanting it to appear merely tangential, I wrote that phrase because literature, which involves a use of human language which can subvert any aspect of culture.  It often does this for a good reason when it is a counter-establishment force, but when that reason is cosmic in scope, it surely must be taken seriously or else all pretense to taking consciousness, existence, spirit, religion, ethics, doing what is right, etc. ALL MUST BE SURRENDERED AS INVALID.  So in order to be a "good man" or a "good woman", and more generally a "good person" one must often oppose others who would dictate to you what those terms can and cannot mean.  This is a fundamental fact of human existence in all cultures, but the use of language and ritual to a higher level than can easily undersood and either rejected or subverted is the reason for the existence of "art" in the first place, as Plato rightly suggested in his Republic.  Therefore we see literature, which is simply written language as a matter of FACT, is a tool of resistence against evil hegemonies which temporarily gain power over the Spirit in this evil world.  Therefore it is a KEY (the  Logos is a KEY) to the Kingdom of Heaven.  The ability to use human faculties to a level that is sublime, including the faculty of language, is the very antidote to the evil poison of many a deception and fraud.  So subterfuge and fraudulence can be properly assessed in these areas of the exercise of the Spirit incarnate, which is a fundamental aspect of REAL Christian culture, and that means Real Religious Culture regardless of the name.  So the phrase I used above allowed me to condense the ideas of a relevent novella of the late 1800s (Heart of Darkness) in its form as an adaptation for film in 1979 called "Apocalypse Now", which retells a story of what it is like to witness humanity in its true form, and yet to still retain the possibility of realizing a TRUER AND HIGHER FORM of an ideal that is suppressed in the world, not only by mankind himself (and that'd be bad enough) but also from "nature herself" and "god himself" and so on.  Apparently existence as such is against man and some philosophers made mind sculpture out of their wits trying to understand this fact which presents to us as a thing which should not be...   So literature in so many forms is very important to all involved with this war for the Spiritual Dominon over all who are on the earth, and that means also song, poetry, all genres, all styles, plays, cinema, sculpture, painting, dance, religion and philosophy, and the empirical sciences as well as all the trades.  So I really did want to "insert that feel" as the modern internet hounds like to say, and suggest to the reader that they have some options in expanding their minds and consciousnesses beyond what is planned for them by those others who would make them into clay puppets.  There are also many arts which can be practised that lend direct aid to this noble endeavor, and all of these are the subject of many a likely story of their own.

I recommend that you read about these things on your own, or explore by whatever means available, and delve as far in as you can, from any angle and to any chain of investigation to which your mind and Spirit are drawn, so that you can deprogram yourself from the abuses of THOSE WHO LIE, and restore to yourself some of the sanity they have stolen centuries ago, thousands of years ago, and which they've today semi-perfected into a technogogic nightmare for you and all of your descendants.  You will have to force your own way through Byzantium, forge your own ciphers, and work out your own methods of heuristics and analysis.  That is your "cross" to bear.  Don't let the likes of Irenaus, or "Innocent" III take that away from you through their modern effigies.  Seek the Key, and you shall find It.  This is partly because the Seeking, if from the Right Spirit, is part of the finding directly.  You find your Truth in the Seeking from the Spirit of Truth within you.  That is what the hierophantic demons want to take from you, though they themselves couldn't really possess it or use it.

Pft.  Just do what Ireneus or Origen, or Jerome et.al. did, and just go at it from your own deepest imagination.  Refer to the stew of highly questionable facts, of course.  Learn a little something of logic and good sense and apply that, too.  But basically take a page from the book of the fakes and forge your own authentic understanding of what "really happened".  At least then you'll be doing it for yourself rather than letting those damned fraudsters do it for you.  At least then you can own the iconography of your own spiritual fate and destiny rather than let someone else decide those matters for you.  You'll have an infinitely better chance starting from scratch, frankly.  That's what Buddha did.... and all the others.  You don't have to throw away a world of evidence in order to reframe it properly.

Just remember that its not just what people pretend their stories mean that ought to grab your attention, but how they go about getting your attention, and what they do if you refuse to give it to them on their terms.  Those things count also.  If you would rather be busy with "your own religion" than bothering to hear the ramblings issued at you by those who claim to be more expert than you, then maybe you should listen to that feeling and follow it for a change.  Especially if those who tried to get your attention with their version felt the need to threaten you if you wouldn't listen, or even if upon listening you wouldn't agree!  Follow the bloody trail to Truth, and it will tell you who the liar is.  Every time it is the one who uses force to communicate.  Break their hold from within, for whatever is stronger than they are must be the Truth, especially if they hate this in you.  By this Truth Within you can break their evil spells of lies, ignore their nonsense stories, see through their vain pretenses, overcome their foul noise.  Then the Truth will shine in That Silence they could never take from you, for their falseness needed to graft itself upon That Truth in order to have any weight.

For the best stories, anyhow, go to The Source.  Be there when it happens.  Don't get it from a delusional con man.  One heuristic I  like to use is rather scientific, and so it is probably worth sharing with you.  Take the proposed and popular truths of your day, in whatever form.  Reduce them to the "likely story" they really are by means of archeo-epistemic hermeneutics, as we did in outline for the story of "Christianity" in this particular instance.  Refer to the primary data of your own awareness by all its venues.  Check this data with whatever was suppressed from the supposed story of the status quo:  check this "Inner Data" with all possible contraries and contradictions to the system of thought proposed by the story-weavers arrayed against you.  See which has more consistency with your Inner Truth.   Notice this: it takes more energy to hold on to the lies now then it does to let go of them...  Just let them go.  Accept what remains as closer to "The Truth", and continue this process at all times.  You're bound to get some interesting results from that.  By doing that I was able to discover that all "Christianity" is amounts to "anti-Gnosticism", and all "Gnosticism" ever really amounted to was a kind of Religion which is polarized against this world as its distinguishing Spiritual Energy, and this took many forms throughout the "human event".  It is the Religion of Anti-Matter.  Test this by looking at the "anti-material" religions and religiousity of the ages, and compare that to the tenets held and deeds done by those who opposed them with the sword after failing with the word.  Sift through the modern evidence, compare it with the past.

Then ask yourself in a new way:  Who is God?  What is Truth?  How Best to Choose Rightly?  Keep doing this, and you'll get a certain set of results which prove it to be Truth or false, and vice-versa for the positions which oppose what you discovered.  Just trying to do this without being unduly distracted from it by the world which surrounds you will tell you a lot!

The world and its falseness demands you adhere to their story, I tell you how you might discover a more authentic one.  They aim their canons at you, I suggest ways you can survive their barrages of trickery.  That alone should tell you something about what "The Story" really is about!  It is a Story that in this world is being steadily and artfully hidden from you, and which you must find for yourself!