Over the years I've had many conversations with various folk who held, shall we say, interesting beliefs.

One of which is that of Astrology.

Now it seems to me, Astrology in any of its forms, be it modern/Western or the traditional, are by their nature, cruel, insofar as they limit people to particular boxes of qualities and characteristics.

There's an exceptionally insightful and wise article in today's Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, and it's precisely what I've been helping to explain for a number of years.

In our Australian political system, the (ostensibly) left-wing political party "Labor" has been exemplary in producing a strong economy, with low interest rates, AAA credit rating1 and low unemployment -- but none of that mattered sufficiently to keep them in government.

Today's article explains:

"At last. God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. The rightful rulers of this country are back in charge, so now things can only get better."

Ross Gittins (the author of the article) is alluding to our unconscious desire for a firm hierarchical order, with bosses in charge, and workers following orders. And this relates back to our childhood need for strong authority. In other words, we're still children at heart, in terms of our cultural maturity and world-view.

It would seem we're still in stage 3 of our cultural development. Or at least we've slid back, of late, to that stage.

In recent times I've observed a growing trend for people (e.g. in online forums) to write "I find that offensive" in response to someone's ideas or opinions.

So I penned a few words and submitted them to an online forum.

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In my experience, online forums are relatively feckless forms of communication, in that they lack the immediacy of face-to-face interactions. Venues at which people get to meet and really dig deep (e.g. via Bohmian/OpenSpace/World-Cafe style groups) can be extraordinary experiences.

As mentioned in "Let's get clinical" and "for the 100th time", I've noticed a penchant for many people to believe in limiting systems.

Unfortunately, I forget on occasions the same very principles that I espouse.

A recent example was that of a lovely woman who professed to be an astrololger. Instead of my inviting her to consider some examples of  dynamic and fluid potentials available to her, I joked about her beliefs in a condescending manner. Not good.

I often hear of, or run across people who espouse all sorts of ... well, quite frankly, incoherent, silly ideas and beliefs.

Here's a few ideas that might reset standard thinking.

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Consider some "stuff" of which the entirety of existence is composed. Not physical, not even necessarily spiritual. Let's just call it "stuff", or if you like, "energy" or better yet, "energy-stuff" (in light of Einstein's E=MC² that matter is energy and vice versa, so "energy-stuff" accounts for both matter and energy).

Now, this "energy-stuff" is, by definition, literally everywhere, in everything, everyone one, every thought, God, Evil ... it's literally everywhere. In fact there is no place it is not. Given its ubiquity, we can say it is "one-energy-stuff"1.

If we want to believe that some spiritual beings or others are not composed of this one-energy-stuff, we need ask of what they are made. Whatever that is, it will ultimately need to be made of said "one-energy-stuff" in that said one-energy-stuff is the ground energy of all existence. No exceptions.

Now it gets interesting.