I'm starting to lose my confidence bit by bit, having to go through another Brisbane lock-down again, so I guess it's time to breakout the sheet music to a few Australian Crawl songs and rewrite a few lyrics to update them for these uncertain times we are going through in 202021-
Ironically, the last time I left Queensland to visit a beach was to go down to Byron Bay to catch up with some surfers, and I have never surfed in my life -
And the last time I can remember crossing the Queensland border was back in May 2019 to watch a movie at the cinema in Byron and then to go up to Bangalow for some Chinese and to see a play called 'Dreamland' -
It's hard enough to plan a trip over the state border without losing considerable amounts of money by being forced into 14 days of hotel quarantine if you don't make it back before the DEADline.
And now even in my own hometown it's a case of "don't count your chickens" as my son and I had planned to spend a day at Redcliffe tomorrow and had bought tickets to see our NRL team the Sharks play Manly just up the road, but those chickens aren't going to materialize now:-(
And that is a good metaphor for how my life has played out from my birth on planet Earth to where I am as I write this post ... always caught between at least two metaphorical worlds.
With a part Indian (only about 1/10th) Catholic Nan, a Protestant whitchy Grandmother, an atheist (sometimes agnostic) secular half German Jewish father who detested all religion as man made BS, to a mother from a Scandinavian/secular part Jewish background who didn't know what to believe, no wonder I was born between star signs I say:-)
And being born on the 23rd I just couldn't resit having a listen to Jimmy Akin's #23podcast about his take on astrology from a practicing Roman Catholic's perspective, since I am not a Roman Catholic or would even really call myself a Christian, even though I am a member of the Liberal Catholic Church and am quite happy to be still, even if I haven't been to that Church for over 20 years:-)
To me God is a mystery and is everywhere and whether Jesus was/is a real person is a mute point to me, as when I was made to pray to Jesus in school I was always praying to the God behind the man who was Jesus.
If I go to a Buddhist temple and pray, I'm not prying to Buddha, I'm praying to the God behind the Buddha, which to my mind is the same God who made me.
Which would be the same thing if I pray to the Virgin.
My God is way too big for any one religion to try to contain, and I won't put man-made dogmatic boundaries around my idea of the mystery of God.
I find it interesting as to how other humans perceive God and have a list of dos and don'ts as to whether you can join the God club they are in (and be allowed to stay in it, as well), when I think God doesn't really need humans to do the work that God is quite capable of doing when it comes to teaching humans a thing or two.
So I find it interesting to hear how other human beings interpret books written by men about God, especially when I have read those books from cover to cover.
Jews have a saying that goes, "2 Jews, 3 opinions" and I don't see that being much different when it comes to Catholics, or any 2 Christians, Buddhists, Hindus or humans.
I'll bet Jimmy Akin gets as much flack coming from inside the Roman Catholic Church as from outside of it, when it comes to what he is saying in these videos.
Either way, I find them entertaining and thought provoking.
I stumbled across a podcast called 'The Indie Spiritualist Podcast' when I put in an Apple Podcast search for "Jonas Elrod" after I had re-watched Elrod's movie 'Wake Up' and wondering if Jonas had been exposed yet, or come clean about the fraud I thought he was -
I think Jonas started out making that film with his girlfriend (who has studied advertising by the way) as a way of going around to infiltrate other spiritual pretenders in his film, like JZ Knight at her hoodwinked archery shooting ranch, and maybe he was going to surprise them once he had their confidence with a big reveal that he had pulled the wool over their eyes, but then they may have figured out that it was better to just to keep pretending that he could see angels, demons and ghosts? Who knows what his motives were apart from $$$?
But Jonas is full of BS in that movie is all I know.
And I'm surprised that Elrod has pulled the wool over giants in the field like Oprah to get a TV series made (which actually looks pretty good from the trailers I've seen) through her TV channel.
But looking up podcasts Jonas had been on led me to some interesting podcast shows, even if the hosts did fall for his 'Wake Up' story. Onion Skin
I found this episode above featuring a guy I had not heard of before named Rob Gutro quite thought provoking, as while those ghost-busting shows on TV I take with a grain of salt, I am a 100% believer when it comes to ghosts being a real phenomena.
Also having attempted suicide myself as a young 20 year old (36 years ago) I know full well the mindset of people who do take, or attempt to take their life ... and no, it's not a "mental illness" that drives most people to suicide as the "experts" like to tell you.
Most times it's just a sane rational decision taken when life in this insane world paints you into a very dark corner of despair that you can't see yourself ever getting out of ... and since you will die eventually ... well.
Not that I condone ... or condemn taking your own life, but it's not something to take lightly, not because I think you'll go to hell or some such BS place, but you will be impacting other lives most probably and I do believe this will bring hellish karmic consequences not only to you (the soul), but to the lives you leave behind.
And ... SPOILER ALERT ... you will survive afterwards to see those effects play out on the earthly realm, so maybe that is like being in a kind of hell of regret watching people you love left behind suffer over their loss?
So suicide is something worth talking about on shows such as these I feel, with the despair of a lot of individuals who probably think this life is all you have to live ... because I believe you have a lot more living to do after you "die".
I also listened to a podcast episode of the comedy show
Does that mean my home state of Queenslandwon't make the cut?-)
Ah well, so be it, at least we have the 2032 Olympic Games heading our way to Brisbane and if we still have our borders closed to the rest of the world we will win all of the medals that year:-)
I couldn't help noticing that another podcast I stumbled across and wrote about in this post seems to be using
I also listened to the first 'Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World' podcast episode this morning which was about Jimmy and his Dom mate telling us their thoughts about ghosts coming from it from their viewpoint as a practicing Roman Catholics, which I am not.
Although my Nan was a Roman Catholic and I grew up around a lot of Roman Catholics, so I do like a lot of Roman Catholic beliefs and practices, but the dogma I can do without and I don't believe The Bible to be much more than man-made heavily edited myths all thrown into one book.
So I find it interesting hearing Jimmy and Dom investigate things under the lens of a Book they do believe in as God's Word in all Earthly and unEarthly things.
I stumbled across an interesting podcast called 'Maybe God'when I was looking for podcasts featuring Jonas Elrod, who I've written about here on my blog recently after re-watching Elrod's scam movie 'Wake Up', where in my opinion Elrod pretends to be able to see angels, demons and other otherworldly entities.
If Jonas passed a lie detector test arranged by someone like skeptic Michael Shermer, then I might believe that Jonas believes what he says he witnessed while going through a "breakdown", until then I don't -
Personally, to me God is a mystery and while I do believe in "God" for lack of a better word, I don't believe that Jesus was a real historical figure, as far as the Bible paints Him anyway.
Although, I don't have anything against people who believe Jesus is the Living God, if that's what gets them through the night, so be it I say.
There are still many real truths to the story, I believe, if you can put mythical places like Hell on the back-burner.
I still believe in karma and that you will reap what you sow, but an everlasting Hell I can't believe in.
I have no problem going to communion and believing in Jesus in a metaphorical sense, but I can't buy the literal so-called historical version of the story of either the New or Old Testaments.
These are the original Downhearted lyrics above, for my readers who don't understand Australian:-)
