Orientation Address of the Mary Magdalene University of Reality and Wellbeing (Uranus Campus)

You may call me Br. Ezra or Avatar66. I am the promised god-man of the age. Well, perhaps not THE god-man. There are many Avatars in every age. To each Avatar is given to him or a number of souls that will resonate with him or her. It is our job to elevate the “normals” to a higher vibration or plane of living. It is with the power granted to me by the Benevolent Space Brethren of Gamma Globule that I bid you Hello from Uranus. Let us begin.


I like to consider myself one of the original slackers of my generation. It’s probably not true and frankly, I’m not competitive enough to care. This lack of interest in competition is a hallmark of my personality. Some of you might think I’m lazy. However, I prefer to think of it as not wanting to spend what precious years I have available to me in life killing myself for the American dream.

I don’t need a big house, a fancy car or the best clothes. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what you might consider the finer things life has to offer. I do love a well tailored suit and believe that every man from farm hand to political candidate should have at least one in his closet. Yet, I’m not going to die if I never own one. I’d rather have the time to spend rather than wasting it to get the money to spend. If I have the basics I need and I’m in good health that is wonderful. Just give me a notebook to scratch and scribble in, a good book to read and a sidewalk café to spend afternoons musing and talking to interesting people. I call that living.

It’s this basic disinterest in competition that my therapist would say keeps me from getting ahead in life. She can’t really tell me what “getting ahead” means. This is something she claims I must define for myself. I believe I have. I’d rather be creating than trying to fit in and keep up appearances. The later has been to exhausting and I’ve burned through a lot of psycho-bucks trying.

“If I’m happy and taking care of my responsibilities then who is to say I’m not ‘getting ahead in life’?” I ask.

She just stares at me with her penetrating shrink eyes, which leads me to believe she is the last person I should be working my issues out with. Psychotherapists are often crazier and more neurotic than the people they treat. I have little regard for the profession despite having availed myself of its offerings from time to time. Sometimes I just paid an unbiased person to listen to me so I could work things out for myself. That has been beneficial and worth the expense.

Frankly, I’ve made more progress from participating in a 12-Step program with a sponsor, anti-depressants, meditation and occasional bouts of sexual intercourse. Sex may rarely be the answer, but its overall benefits to emotional and mental wellbeing makes it a necessity. There is even research attributing physical wellbeing in the way of cardiovascular health and longevity as a result of regular sexual activity. Play it safe with a consenting partner and enjoy its benefits is my motto. As I told my kids once, sex is like driving a car, its fun and liberating until you’re reckless. You can hurt someone so be responsible and be ethical.

So as I was saying….

My cultivated disdain for our post modern approach to life has me believing that there are better ways to get out of life what we need. This is what I intend to begin exploring here. If you want to get a business, law or medical degree and then pursue a more traditional path to success this isn’t for you. I’ll probably just end up appearing crazy to you. You’re right. I’m a fucking loon. Ask anyone who knows me. But, I submit the following for your consideration. Just because a person is barking mad, doesn’t mean they’re entirely wrong. Sometimes we get it right.

Please do not misunderstand me here. We need doctors, lawyers, engineers and business people. We also need good teachers and accountants. We also need plumbers, electricians and waiters and, most importantly, baristas. Likewise we need writers, actors, dancers and artists. The crazy ones keep us from losing our souls and I believe our post modern culture is quickly becoming soulless. If you are one of the perceived normal people than please be normal, we need you. But, please understand you need us as well.

If I haven’t lost you yet I would like to start challenging the way you think about living life. We’re going to explore our attitudes about what it means to prosper, be successful and experience happiness. What you learn about yourself may surprise you. If you immediately associate any of the preceding vocabulary words with career paths, money and consumerism cast these notions aside. None of these things can make you happy or successful. There is nothing wrong with them, but if you are killing yourself trying to attain them or currently have them and are still anxious, depressed and bored…well…let’s talk, you might just be a student of The Mary Magdalene University of Reality and Wellbeing (Uranus Campus). I will be your professor.

Cafe Uranus - The Adventure Begins

Uranus Café was a greasy joint of ill repute. It was nestled in a creaky and extremely rundown section of the ex Soviet secret moon base Prada, on the dark side of the moon. Yes secret Russian moon bases exist….existed. Since the end of the Cold War they have been abandoned by the former Earth super power and have become galactic shanty towns inhabited by the marginalized and throwaways of the larger universe. Scary as the Uranus Café is – especially on a Tuesday – they make the best damn cheeseburgers in the Milky Way.


It’s here that my biography of Br. Ezra P. Miracle and the Chronicle of his quest to save the earth begins. It starts with - as many great stories do - nausea and disorientation. One moment I was sipping coffee in my Garfield underpants and a yellowing white tee shirt and the next moment I was retching in a zero gee toilet in the rankest, dirtiest men’s room I had ever been in. As a travel writer back on Earth I had attempted to relieve myself in some nasty gas station bathrooms. They were all clean and elegant compared to this. Given the numerous species sharing theses facilities and that urination and defecation is often a dissimilar process cross species this is to be expected.

After I was through barfing someone with green leathery skin and large black eyes tossed a tattered blue jumpsuit at me.

“Put this on,” he or it said. The voice was mechanical and coming from a small silver rectangle pressed against him or its throat via a choker. “It’s a universal translator. It allows me to choose the language I need to communicate in.”

My staring was apparently obvious.

“My name is Shedaisy,” she said, “I’m what you earth people would consider a female, although gender is rather variant with my species. We have the characteristics of both genders and individually I transform according to the needs of our species depending on the environment we are in. The dark side of the moon needs women right now.”

I now knew where I was even though I could scarcely believe it. Question one had been answered and oddly, question number two as well. Through the fog and confusion enveloping my mind I was trying to figure if this was “too much information.” I had just met my first alien and only moments ago was inclined to dismiss any notion that other intelligent species existed as crackpot as Lloyd Pye and his Star Child Skull. Nonetheless gender variance seemed a pretty good adaptation to evolution. It might even be fun sexually too.

Shedaisy reached out to steady me as I tried to stand up. I slipped on the old jumpsuit and looked at myself in the cracked, dirty mirror. Had I been drinking last night? My face blotched and my eyes red made me think so. I just didn’t remember, but that had to be the answer.

“No, you aren’t suffering a hangover or a psychotic break with reality,” said a human with a velvety baritone from behind me. “That’s just the after effects of astral displacement. It happens when you are ripped suddenly from one temporal location or reality to another. It’s a little easier to manage when you are expecting it. You’ll get the hang of it”

Get the hang of it?

It sounded like this might start to be something ongoing.

I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

I turned to face the source of that velvet fog.

“”I am Brother Ezra P. Miracle, “he said extending me his hand. “The P stands for Pound. I’m Earth’s ambassador to the Benevolent Space Brethren of Gamma Globulin.”

A group of rowdy aliens shaped like jelly filled bowling balls loudly pushed their way in crowding us. The men’s room went from being slightly cloying to terrifyingly claustrophobic.

“Let’s go grab a bite to eat. We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Ezra shouted over the din. He put his arm around me and guided me out of the lunar crapper and down a dimly lit corridor out a B movie scifi flick about an insane asylum on the moon. Shedaisy lumbered quietly behind us.

Yup…I wasn’t going to like this one bit.

Not one little bit.

The Dynamic Tension of the First Amendment

The separation of church and state as provided for in the First Amendment keeps us united in freedom. It is clear that James Madison and those of our founders who voted for its ratification sought to create a secular democratic republic and not a religious one based upon Christian theology. However, their intention must not be misinterpreted to mean that they were attempting to divorce religion from our political process.


Rather, what they sought was a guaranteed protection from the hegemony that results when one group or way of thinking gains too much power. If we thought about it we would realize that there are always those people, religious and non-religious, who would love nothing better than to prevent others from living as they see fit or from even thinking or speaking as their conscience dictates. Separation of church and state simultaneously creates and enforces a dynamic tension between all divergent points of view assuring each one their right to have their voice heard. This is a precious freedom that I fear most of us take for granted.

2001-3001 My Spiritual Odyssey

3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The late Arthur C. Clarke is one of my favorite science fiction writers and 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on an earlier short story of his, The Sentinel (1948), has always been something of a spiritual experience for me, even though I am not prone to spiritual experiences. But, given the prescient depiction of the moon and our galaxy in those pre-Apollo mission days, both film and book are breathtaking.

For this current generation reared on CGI animation and blockbuster special effects and IMAX, it’s hard to articulate the feeling of this Clarke/Kubrick classic as it moved across the big screen. There was a certain indescribable feeling – a breathless, “whoa” at the end of the film as the screen went dark and the theatre lights came on. No one in the auditorium moved to peel ourselves off the uncomfortable seats. It was a hot summer day and the air conditioning had died halfway through the movie…yet nothing mattered.

This was my experience in 1977, nine years after the film’s release, and I had already seen both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which were special effects wonders in comparison. There was just this weird feeling that something happened. The 11 year old that I used to be had just had the second of only two real theophanies I would ever have…the first one occurred when I was six years old.

Unfortunately, the lingering eager naiveté that accompanied my pleasure over 2001 and even 2010 (I was a high school senior when both the novel and the movie were released) could help 3001 measure up to the first two. But, then at 44 I am a bit more jaded then when I was a geeky and easily awestruck teenage science fiction nerd. My expectations were perhaps unrealistic. Nostalgia can break your heart.

3001 is still compelling. The breadth of Clarke’s imagination has never failed to astound me as he takes current scientific knowledge and extrapolates the future world and fate of humanity. Just as in Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was broken into four components (the symbolism of 4 appeared throughout the film), Clarke has broken up his literary odyssey into four distinct novels that are not typically linear storytelling.

As the final story opens we are a thousand years into the future from where the failed Discovery mission ended with Frank Poole being ejected from the spacecraft by Hal and the transformation of Dave Bowman into the star child. Heywood Floyd, Dr. Chandra and the Russian crew of the Leonov are also long gone. The earth and our small galaxy are different places…almost unrecognizable. Jupiter has been transformed into Lucifer, a dimmer version of our own sun, and it shines down on the evolving Europa.

It is this future time that the 100 year old body of Frank Poole is found floating out in the outer reaches of the galaxy…frozen, but apparently not dead. He is miraculously revived and comes full circle in an odyssey of his own as he resumes his life in a world and time far removed from the early 21st century. As Frank adjusts to his life in this new world it would seem that the monolith is become active again. Soon Halman – the merged consciousness of Dave Bowman and the computer HAL – is being spotted again in various places. Soon he has an ominous message for his old friend Frank Poole.

Clarke manages to tell a great story and retain an element of mystery about the powers or intelligences behind the monoliths, although I think he does a much better job of this in his Rama series, which are both technically and artfully his more superior works. But, those of you who share my sense of wonder over the world of the monoliths, Dave Bowman and Hal will still find something worthwhile in 3001 The Final Odyssey.

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The Odyssey as Maturation Process

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
~George Moore





I have often heard Mr. Moore’s pith teaching stated another way. The only wisdom you find at the top of the mountain is the wisdom you brought with you. Indeed, but nonetheless the journey or the ascent up the mountain is still necessary. The journey is the process of discovery whether it is an outwardly geographical one or an interior one. Sometimes they are both.

It’s no accident that the ancient Greeks often depicted the pursuit of wisdom as an odyssey, a circular journey where you end right back where you started. Odysseus is the quintessential spiritual hero when viewed in this light. So, too, is his son Telemachos although in Homer’s epic poem his journey is not explored in great thematic detail. Nonetheless it is there for those who posses both the insight and imagination to divine it.

The journey or the ascent up the face of the mountain (I think of John of the Cross’s Ascent to Mt. Carmel) is the maturation process, the refining of character that is needed to access the wisdom that we possess innately.

In the past when people have slyly advised me that my outward searching will get me nowhere because “I could find everything I need right where I am” I smiled and politely pretended to acknowledge their oh-so-advanced-wisdom, while ignoring it completely. Just because you have a personal insight or spent $1,500.00 to get your first degree Reiki mastership doesn’t mean anything. We often just think we are wise. After 20 years of meditation I am less of a master then when I started.

The only think I know for certain is that I am ignorant. The more I learn the more I realize how little I truly understand. Wisdom and serenity and just about all spiritual attributes we hope to obtain require hard work, sweat, blood and sometimes a near death experience (literal and /or metaphorical). Even Grace requires learning how to recognize and accept it.

The late 19th century novelist and occultist, Dion Fortune, once described the spiritual journey as an arduous climb up the side of a cliff to get to the holy temple. Once you arrived the quest is still not over. The true dangers are still before you. You must penetrate the temple until you get to the inner sanctum where the Holy of Holies, behind a gossamer veil lies. Once you rend the veil you find the chamber empty and a thin, quiet voice whispering to you seemingly out of nowhere, “It was you the whole time.”

Sure sometimes we mistake running from our troubles as part of the quest, but in its own way it truly is part of the maturation process. Sometimes staying where you’re at is just hiding. And that too is part of the maturation process. None of us are in a position to claim knowledge of a how a person should grow. The truly mature among us know that. It’s the immature that often feel inclined to offer pat phrases wrapped up in spiritual packaging. “Look,” they say, “See how wise and spiritual I am compared to you?” That doesn’t mean your sponsor or spiritual mentors are without value. They have tremendous value. But, their value lies in their openness and their maturity

At the end of the odyssey the hero always returns to his or her point of origin. That is the point after all. A treasure hunter may circumnavigate the globe in search of a great treasure only to find it under their floor when they return home. But, it is the experiences along the way that teach them where to look when they get home. It is the journey or climb itself that allows one to truly appreciate what they find waiting for them. Without it all you have is another worthless artifact.

Postscript

As a postscript it seems apropos to note that well traveled people are often more wise, compassionate and possess true knowledge far and above those who don’t travel as much. This seems especially true of those who actually live for periods of time in new places – even if it is within their own countries.

The Friend of Silence

This statement seems patently false to me.


We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.


Mother Teresa

It smacks of spiritual fantasy. I don’t doubt that given a serene and bucolic setting I can find myself drawing closer to god. But, the demands of my life make this unrealistic. It seems a false sense of mysticism. If I find God amidst the clamor and chaos of the city, if I can draw closer to him and feel his presence among the thousand shouting voices, crying souls, gunshots and screeching tires than I am truly centered.

Moments of silence are nice. They are even necessary for mental health and spiritual growth. But, anyone can cultivate silence sitting against a tree near a babbling brook. It’s finding that silence in the heat and passion of daily life that makes for great silence and even greater spirituality.

When you have the luxury afforded to the religious of making regular retreats (in the Catholic Church all members in religious orders are required to withdraw at least once annually) then you have the luxury to experience what Mother Teresa is talking about. Hell, go camping in a national park for a couple of days when you can.

God is the friend of silence, but he is the friend of chaos too. In the Judeo-Christian tradition he created by passing over the void and calming its tumultuous nature. Perhaps, God is silence itself and in order to be experience one must become consciously aware of god’s presence.

Zen Humanism in a Nutshell

In a nut shell Zen Humanism is the resolution of our psychological and emotional conditioning that prevents us from seeing the world as it really is. It is the examining of the way we have been conditioned by our culture, our parents, our religions and various political worldviews to the exclusion of all other possibilities. It puts the needs of people above god, religion, nation and politics. It maintains a reverential attitude toward our ecosystem and the world at large, but it is not pantheism. There is nothing to worship. Worship is an ego driven need. 

It is the latest stage in my personal development combining my experiences from practicing a form of Buddhist meditation (although I am not a Buddhist necessarily) and as a religious humanist. I am an atheist with a pious attitude toward life and the universe. I see the world a certain way and it often blocks me to the pain of my fellow humans an all sentient beings...I must resolve these barriers.

Zen Humanism is pro-human, pro-ecosystem and pro-life (not to be confused with the inappropriately named anti-abortion movement). Any religion or ideology that does anything other is detrimental to life on this planet and anti-human. Finally, Zen Humanism, having no essential creed or dogma, seeks to remain open to new revelations in psychology and science and to allow them to inform the decisions we make. We seek to prevent our tendency toward dogmatic thinking.

The Dynamic Tension between Capitalism and Socialism

I am equally as suspicious of socialism as I am of capitalism. But, I see no solid evidence that socialism is any less destructive then capitalism or more beneficial. The states that have the most success with socialist type experimentation seem to be democratic style governments that exist in a state of dynamic tension between capitalist interests and socialism. Proponents of either economic theory (theories, really) accuse the opposite camps of relying on outdated and discredited ideas. It seems to me that both Socialists and Capitalists are guilty of such behavior.

Buy success I should clarify that I am speaking of Western Europe, where the populations are smaller and more stable then they are throughout the rest of the world. China is the last great bastion of Marxism of any great significance and they have taken to experimenting with free enterprise, the most basic tool of capitalism. Ideologically they are seeking to beat the western world at its own game, but the reality is that pure socialism simply does not provide the necessary economic stability needed to ensure a nation’s long term viability. Sadly, China seems to have not learned much from the west’s failures with capitalism. They understand capitalism’s advantages, but they are seeking to prevent the wrong failures. Countries such as Cuba are basically failed states.

I currently believe that the answers we seek to stabilizing our economic future is to be found in exploring the dynamic tension between capitalism and socialism rather than in the fierce polemical debate that seeks to eliminate one over the other. Conservatives in America in their ignorance and unwillingness challenge those on the left by stating “socialism hasn’t worked anywhere.” American socialists point to countries such as Norway (that is enviable in both economics and lifestyle, although Oslo made Forbes list as the 2nd most expensive city to live in throughout the world) without seeing some of the challenges it faces as well.

Such a blanket statement is hardly true. I would agree that pure socialism doesn’t appear to have worked, at least as far as my current knowledge to date indicates. But, that doesn’t mean it is completely unviable as a working theory. Secondly, American conservatives seem to be confused as to a definition of what socialism really is. They point to Germany (of all countries) and rant about socialized medicine. Germany doesn’t have socialized medicine. It’s a complex hybrid of for profit insurance and single payer. Canada also doesn’t have socialized medicine. It is largely single payer. Neither system is perfect. Both systems have issues of sustainability and affordability. But, then so does the United States, which is 100% free market, for profit.

Fear of socialism in America has been rampant since FDR unveiled the New Deal Programs. It seems that post modern conservatives are still stuck in the cold war where our ideologies clashed with the Soviet Union. They are still operating on such old definitions. They have not seen that the West won the cold war. The epitome of Marxism collapsed in the late 1980’s and in the years that followed Western Europe has curtailed socialist policies in favor of mixing them with capitalism to ensure a more vibrant economic life. Yes, some places that has worked better than others.

Capitalism and Socialism do not need to be mutually exclusive except in the erudite world of academics and the polemicists who defend their favored horse. I for one love free enterprise. But, I also respect the idea of single payer health insurance. The problem is the terms we use. We need a new working theory. A theory that takes the best of both and seeks to eliminate the failures and find a way of compromising on those aspects which would clash and prevent any new theory from working properly, after all you can’t have a football game when both teams are playing by separate sets of rules. That would be chaos.

We need to stop thinking in terms of capitalism and socialism. How this will look I am not yet certain. But, if we don’t start moving toward the center our extreme polarization will prevent us from affecting the change we need. If we continue on our present course we will fail to reach consensus or even define the problems adequately before it is too late.