Friday, December 15, 2017

Are There Any Dudes In The House?


If we can buy into the New Age philosophy, "where we are is where we need to be," and "what we are doing is what we need to be doing," we will feel better able to cope with our challenges. The philosophy says we don't need to be anywhere but where we are in order to work on our karmic themes and lessons we came back to master. We can run but we can't hide. We just have to face ourselves, our souls, and our truths. 

There has been a new religion around for about a dozen years already. Dudeism.

http://dudeism.com/whatisdudeism/

“The Dudeist belief system is essentially a modernized form of Taoism stripped of all of its metaphysical and medical doctrines. Dudeism advocates and encourages the practice of "going with the flow," "being cool-headed," and "taking it easy" in the face of life's difficulties, believing that this is the only way to live in harmony with our inner nature and the challenges of interacting with other people. It also aims to assuage feelings of inadequacy that arise in societies which place a heavy emphasis on achievement and personal fortune. Consequently, simple everyday pleasures like bathing, bowling, and hanging out with friends are seen as far preferable to the accumulation of wealth and the spending of money as a means to achieve happiness and spiritual fulfillment.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudeism

March 6 is the annual sacred high holy day of Dudeism: The Day of the Dude.” While I dig the Dudeist manifesto and I enjoy the funny and irreverent writing of Oliver Benjamin, the founder of Dudeism and Rev. Dwayne Eutsey, Arch  Dudeship, I am hoping it’s not going to go the way of the hippies in the sixties. The hippies were mostly right philosophically but they didn't have a sustainable long-term plan for survival in the real world. Let Dudeism run its course by all means and let’s see how it changes our world. Many believe Dudeism is the religion for our time and place.


If Dudeism is about taking it easy and not working so hard to have a respectable lifestyle or to change the world, I hope it’s not going to encourage laziness and apathy. I mean, it says life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it so we shouldn’t do anything about it. Like, really? Seriously? We know control is an illusion like everything else but don’t we still try to stay on top of everything that goes on in our lives? The Lennonism line, “Life is what happens to us when we are planning other things” doesn’t stop us from planning our lives, does it? We want to be the scriptwriters of our stories, don’t we?

Metaphysical teachers tell us when we were born all the solutions to our Earthly problems were embedded in our DNA. We just have to dig deep and pull strength from our soul/spirit wisdom. Our physical bodies may be weak from time to time but our spirits just need to be aligned with our life purpose and we will thrive. We are told we can operate on soul energy.

If we are sick or diseased, and many of us are, it won't hurt us and might actually make a positive difference if we ask for forgiveness for all the mistakes we have made, all the hurt/pain/suffering we have inflicted on others. For each one of us who needs therapy because of what someone else has done to us, someone, somewhere, needs therapy because of something we have done.

If we do not get cured after we've made all these life/energy changes, we would have become better human beings, we would have made a positive difference in our time and place and we would have lived a more expanded and meaningful life. In addition, we would have prepared ourselves well for the eventual dying and death scenes that all of us have to be ready for. “In a world where Death is the hunter, it doesn’t take a lot to die.” – Don Juan via Carlos Castaneda.

Even if we have by and large become cynical, some still believe in united thoughts, prayers, and meditation as ways to move the world forward. Others still believe in doing what we can. For example, some people are going off the grid, not supporting the 'system,' or living outside of the ‘system.’ These are ways some of us feel we can do something.

Some cling onto hope, not losing faith that evil will be its own undoing. Others understand something about the structures and movements of energy at a cosmic level. The understanding is that the "operating system" of the cosmos run all kinds of "programs/apps," some constructive and some destructive. From a human point of view, the destructive ones are termed “evil” when manifested through human vessels like the perpetrators of wars and heinous crimes. This cosmic process is impersonal, indifferent and as we understand it, down to cosmic intent or design. Whose intent and whose design?

Some of my Facebook friends believe there can be an end to evil if enough humans want the end of evil. In my opinion, evil, as a force, cannot be eradicated. For evil to be eradicated, goodness and love would also have to go. One cannot exist without the other. Whatever evil we think we want or need to see removed in our present times, that evil will only be replaced by another evil. There is no end to evil; just as there will always be problems. Every day we solve problems and every day we wake up to new problems to be solved. There is no end to that either.

As I said in The Dance of the Chi:

This, it seems to me, is an example of the Yin and Yang forces at the universal level. Scientists report observations of what appeared to be a glowing of gamma radiation from the disc of the Milky Way. They said these were the light of distant combat between armies of matter and antimatter, annihilating each other in tremendous flashes of energy.

This strikes me as proof that the system we live in will always be one in which energy will somehow combat energy. Different forces will combat each other. If it’s true for the outer reaches of our Milky Way, why not for us here on planet Earth?

It seems we live in a violent world as a reflection of the violent outer reaches of space. Perhaps the clue to the fate of the soul can be found with the clue to the fate of the Universe. If the Universe is without an end, is the soul also without an end? If about 90% of the mass of the Universe is unseen, could it be that about 90% of a human being is also unseen? As above, so below? The macro universe and the micro-universe? It turns out, metaphysicians and New Age scientists now tell us we use only 5% of our brains and that 95% of our brains is the subconscious.

Some people say that’s why Utopia can never be. What would we do with ourselves if we live in a perfect world where there are no problems and no evil? So, while Dudeism can’t change the ‘system’ or get rid of the Universe’s “programs and apps,” it can change the way we react to them. If enough people get behind the philosophy of Dudeism, can that critical mass make a difference to the ‘system’ as we know it? What do you think?

Yo, dudes, I think you guys are a blast but if life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it, we shouldn’t just do nothing about it. We should take some kind of action, man! Like creating a new religion!