>>>>>>Did anyone see the forecast for the next hundred years on (I think it was) ABC TV last night? The future does not seem not to be very rosy. While I am on the subject, more and more people are telling me about the alleged end of the world in 2012. Why is it that modern people think that Aztecs, whose technology was borderline stone age, could see into the future to 2012 just because their calendar stops there? The way I see it, if they had more stone to carve upon, the calendar would have ended on a differant date wherever they ran out of stone surface.
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>>>>>I don't know if 2012 is correct or not but I hope I am alive for the end of the world because I think it will be totaly awesome and everlasting life after that will be even more awesome.
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>>>>For much of my life I would probably have said something flippant to that. But after my latest mishap I am actually going to give God a try. I am not a believer yet, by any means, but what do I have to lose? I know a number of people in AA who were not believers when they came in the door. As my sponsor has said to me more than once, when you get desperate enough you will try anything.
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>>>You might find the whole "God" thing a lot easier if you get out of your own cultural context. Some very smart people have considered the idea there is Something Other. Look at Huxley and Otto and Carl Jung. Some very cool stuff. Not a Babylonian king on a white cloud or a trinity I could never make sense of, but an appreciation of awe of the ineffable. Believing in a "Higher Power" doesn't require buying in to a particular anthropomorphism in some Western tradition. It only requires subsuming the ego enough to consider that there is wonder. Understand that even in a lot of monotheistic religions, you'll find a lot of the more sophisticated thinkers understand the casting of "god" is just a way of talking about what cannot be said in words. ( Sufis make good Masons <s> )
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>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous
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>>>There are a lot of ways to touch the Elephant.
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>>They make pretty good Shriners too.
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>Yeah, they already have the hat <g>

heh heh heh - good one :))