You're free as soon as you decide. Or realize. Your call.

Matt Thornton speaks wise.

Thornton's Guerilla_Blog: Fortunate Son. . . . .:

"..all spiritual practices are illusions, designed by illusionists, to escape illusion. And the illusion is that you are not already free."

Patton Oswalt once again confounds Religion through the magic powers of thinking and logic.

blog.myspace.com/pattonoswalt:

"There's a lot of religious types excited these days about what they perceive as the coming Apocalypse, as foretold in The Revelation of St. John.

They're especially excited about the whole Israel/Lebanon thing. They think that'll cause The Rature, where the souls of the righteous are called up, and the assholes left behind get raped/eaten/both by demons.

But if you ACTIVELY wish and hope for something like that, then aren't you wishing death upon your fellow man, which is a sin, which means you WON'T be called up? So does no one get called up in The Rapture? Or only the believing Christians who don't WANT The Rapture to happen?

However, if you are a believing Christian, then doesn't that mean you're excited and accepting of God's plan? And, if you are, then that DOES mean you want The Rapture, which means you want the death and destruction of your fellow man, which means you're a sinner, which means no Rapture for you.

But if you're a devout and believing Christian who DOESN'T want the Rapture, then that means you reject part of God's plan, which means you are lacking in faith, which means no Rapture.

Pret-ty sneaky, God."

The Huna concept of Responsibility.

"I'm sorry" and "I love you". All you need, apparently.

Joe Vitale Is "Mr. Fire" for Copywriting, Promotion, and Marketing Consulting:

"...a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. The psychologist would study an inmate's chart and then look within himself to see how he created that person's illness. As he improved himself, the patient improved.

When I first heard this story, I thought it was an urban legend. How could anyone heal anyone else by healing himself? How could even the best self-improvement master cure the criminally insane?

It didn't make any sense. It wasn't logical, so I dismissed the story.

However, I heard it again a year later. I heard that the therapist had used a Hawaiian healing process called ho 'oponopono. I had never heard of it, yet I couldn't let it leave my mind. If the story was at all true, I had to know more.

...His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. We probably spent an hour talking on our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the complete story of his work as a therapist. He explained that he worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years. That ward where they kept the criminally insane was dangerous. Psychologists quit on a monthly basis. The staff called in sick a lot or simply quit. People would walk through that ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.

Dr. Len told me that he never saw patients. He agreed to have an office and to review their files. While he looked at those files, he would work on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal.

"After a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely," he told me. "Others who had to be heavily medicated were getting off their medications. And those who had no chance of ever being released were being freed."

I was in awe.

"Not only that," he went on, "but the staff began to enjoy coming to work. Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. We ended up with more staff than we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was showing up to work. Today, that ward is closed."

This is where I had to ask the million dollar question: "What were you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?"

"I was simply healing the part of me that created them," he said.

I didn't understand.

Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life - simply because it is in your life--is your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.

Whew. This is tough to swallow. Being responsible for what I say or do is one thing. Being responsible for what everyone in my life says or does is quite another. Yet, the truth is this: if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life.

This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy--anything you experience and don't like--is up for you to heal. They don't exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside you. The problem isn't with them, it's with you, and to change them, you have to change you.

I know this is tough to grasp, let alone accept or actually live. Blame is far easier than total responsibility, but as I spoke with Dr. Len, I began to realize that healing for him and in ho 'oponopono means loving yourself. If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life. If you want to cure anyone--even a mentally ill criminal--you do it by healing you.

I asked Dr. Len how he went about healing himself. What was he doing, exactly, when he looked at those patients' files?

'I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again,' he explained.

That's it?

That's it.

Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, your improve your world."

"Bush doesn’t understand this. He doesn’t know about people." People don't like to be meddled with.

Fred Reed, GWB, logic, and why the President's an idiot.

Fred On Everything:

"Think about it. When he went braying into Iraq like a learning-disabled jackass, he thought people would roll over, throw flowers, and have a democratic revolution. This would start a domino effect that would make all the other Moslem countries want to be democracies too. They would climb over each other to be democracies. They would love us because democracies love each other. He just knew it.

This makes perfect sense if you have no freaking idea how human beings work.

Of course, if you have read any history, which Bush hasn’t, you will have noticed that people do not like being occupied by force. They don’t like having their cities bombed. It galls them. It can, under certain circumstances (such as any circumstances) make them hostile.

If you think in terms of abstractions too simple for Reader’s Digest, you might reflect as follows: “Democracy good. Iraqi people, love’m democracy, so love’m us. Urrrg.” Then you might be real surprised when their gratitude was exiguous after you remorselessly wrecked their cities, killed their army (which consisted of other people’s husbands, brothers, and sons: ever think of that?), groped their women when you didn’t have time to rape them, and left them without water and electricity.

...This crackpot Boyscouterine outlook runs through everything the little man does, or more correctly tries to do. He really believes it, I think: The world is just waiting for us to bring it our favorite abstractions. They hate us for our freedoms, and yearn to be bombed into having them.

People don’t work that way. Bush doesn’t know it.

Remember when he had Kind-of-Twofer Rice publicly offer help to the Syrian opposition so they would overthrow their evil dictator and become wildly democratic? Same problem. Nobody told her, the poor bat-brained thing, that people don’t like being messed with by outsiders. Nor, being Secretary of State, did she know how intensely the United States is detested by most of the world. How would she know? It’s a secret known only to eight billion select people.

Bush wouldn’t have a clue if you gave him another one.

...Let us suppose that you don’t like Bush. If the Chinese bombed your home, and killed your sister, would that make you join the Chinese and want a puppet government?

It is not how people work.

As we speak, the Israelis have pretty much destroyed Lebanon. Bush keeps the UN from doing anything to interfere, and sends advanced bombs to the Israelis so they can blow up anything that’s left. He thought—get this—that since Hezbollah is Shiite, the Sunnis would join with (yes! Yes!) Israel to fight them. Was there ever such a fruitcake? (I like to think of a fruitcake in a raincoat.)

He had no idea how people work.

It’s breathtaking. He has occupied and made rubble of two Moslem countries, and heavily supports Israel, hated by all Moslem countries, in turning Lebanon, a third Moslem country into rubble, and is threatening Syria and Iran, two more Moslem countries, with attack, possibly nuclear. By doing this he is going to inspire Moslems with a passion for American democracy, change the Mid-East into Fifth Century Athens, and make them love us.

God Almighty, what a fool. What a bus-station clown. It isn’t how people work.

...He has no faint idea of how people work. The man is an idiot."

Deepak Chopra and Grant Morrison: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Super-heroes

Virgin Comics presents literary icons Deepak Chopra (How to Know God and co-founder of Virgin Comics) and Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman) in a far-ranging discussion about Dark Knights, Devis, and the development of tomorrow's mythologies in this special Comic-Con exclusive event.

I Am Returned!

Let the Rapture commence!

No.

Wait.

That's Jesus.

Not me.

Pics, pontification and linkages to resume over the next few days...