seeing the face of god

Living in a civilized society will eventually make you prone to the cyclical outbreak of madness that is triggered by an unrelated event. In the second decade of the 21st Century, a respiratory pathogen is the impetus for the mass psychosis presently infecting those who do not think for themselves. The cues for groupthink are passed on down from the arbiters of the mind parasite and the puppets dutifully follow along and repeat their marching orders. When you point out the cognitive dissonance of what they are saying, the result is a blank stare followed by an attempt to spin the facts as presented.

My greatest teachers have been found in the darkness of self. My teachers have many faces; each iteration manifesting as part of the lesson plan that lays ahead. The way I look at it is I now see the face of God in my teacher regardless of the disguise he has currently chosen to impart the knowledge. The face is the clue that will help me understand the lesson. Dare I say the darkness is a fantastical beast with many heads.

If I see the face of God in the archetypical dragon, I know he is teaching me destruction. The destroyer has a bad rap; with some merit to the assertion. I mean if you spend a lifetime building something up you may want to preserve what it is you built. Take for instance my identity which is a half-century construction project. The foundation for my ego is the shifting sands of culture and upon that flimsy base I built for myself an avatar that can successfully navigate the vagaries of culture and be moderately successful at it. Even though a voice within is telling me different, I can fit into society and get my piece of the pie. I get a warm place to sleep at night and I can fill my belly. I’m a domesticated dog with a few other privileges thrown in to keep me tame. God as the dragon reveals to me the stark truth, teaches me how to destroy my domestication, and break free from the chains of culture. He is relentless because the life of a sheep for such an awesome power as myself is no life at all.

When we live in society, we suppress a great deal of urges and passions. Failure to suppress our innate self will get you thrown out of polite society and possibly locked up in a cage. So, instead we create a virtual cage for ourselves. Psychological maladies are hard to self-diagnose and thus imagine a situation where in a culture everyone is subject to the same pathology and therefore can’t see it in others. Instead, they see confirmation that everything is as it should be and mind doctors in our culture perpetuate the madness by designating the problem being the disease of the mind that really is a result of the sickness. Anxiety and depression are the physical manifestation of a lifetime of consuming large doses of cultural sugar. The sickness is culture; however, that is not addressed. Our pills treat the symptomatic disease and numb us to the reason we feel the way we do.

We moderns are not unique. Culture has always been subject to the cyclical return of madness. The ancients Greeks had this god they called Dionysos. He’s the mad god that cyclically returns from a faraway land and wreaks havoc upon their tight civilization. Dionysos is associated with liberation and madness. I see the face of God in him so much I laugh. I laugh because I look at my society and see he’s here! Culture is splintering into absurdities. Conservative factors decry the destruction of what once was, while the more permissive within culture accelerate the decline. Dionysos encourages the use of mind-altering substances to remove the filters and see culture for what it truly is. Dionysos is the original gender-bender. The idea of identity is taken to its pathological extremes. Pretty funny, right? You can see now that I pointed it out! Have a good laugh and watch it burn.

The chaos that Dionysos brings into society will have its opposite extreme. The authoritarians among us will make their play for more power. We must understand we hold the power in our hands. We could retreat to the safety of being a sheep because the wolf of freedom stares us down. We can give up the best of what we offer to our master until he has no use for us anymore and sacrifices us. Such is the life of a sheep. The problem is you think you are a sheep are thus the wolf is waiting to devour you. You are not a sheep. Dig deep and you will see it. You will see the face of God within, and that face is a jaguar. The wolf will retreat in deference when you re-awaken to your power. The kingdom is yours to reclaim.