My appology to the Mormons

In the eBook "And Lead us into Temptation or: The benefits of a 'false' Prophet" in chapter The structure of the universe I wrote:
"And our Gods?

It seems they are basically planetary entities.

Sure in the bible it says: " … and the stars", but in the books it is more or less a name for some shiny dots in a far distance. Astronomy in the meantime has discovered more than 1000 planets in the galactic near vicinity of earth and there are millions of galaxies out there." 
There is not only the Indian Pantheon of the gods, there are also the Mormons.

One of my brothers is a member of the LDS (later day saints) and he had given me the Book of Mormon. I started to read it. As a German I started to read from the start and it was a genealogy, a family tree sort of. To say the least it was boring because none of the names meant anything to me. So I skipped a few pages and it was about fighting. 
I wanted to read about love, the love of God for its creation and I only found notes about wars. For you who do not know I am a conscientious objector, a person who is against war in general. To make a longer story short I put the book of Mormon aside and never again touched it This morning in Google + I came across this cartoon from the 1980.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7q6brMrFw0E
 The comments in Google + say that it is about 90% right. This clearly means that the outlook of John Smith war not local but actually galactic .
 Again my apology. But then I had been talking to a number of their missionaries here in the Philippines as well as in Germany and never ever got an idea about their galactic outlook. I will talk to them and probably will have to revise my attitude towards them.
And my book?
In the next edition I will have corrected this flaw. 
It is not a huge problem for me. It actually is the way I think the universe works. We start to learn about a subject and see a lot of things we do not know. It even may be overwhelming. But we learn and we master one chapter after the other and reach a point where we think we know everything. 
Many or most stop there!
For those who do not, often a whole new set of questions opens and so do doors for learning.
Have a great day and find a new level of learning for the field(s) you know all about!

No,my God is not stronger than yours!

If we look at history normally the winner writes history and we regard it as the superior force. I admit I am guilty of the same behavior. But I realized we leave out one big chunk of reality: TIME!
A few years ago America (mean the USA) undisputed were the strongest power on this planet. Now, a few years later, a power is rising in the east and in a few years may be the ruler of the world. For some time!
And what has this to do with my statement that my God is not stronger than yours? I was involved in a little accident yesterday. I was riding my motorbike going home from shopping for lunch, when a little child ran into me. Luckily I was very slow and luckily the child run into my knee and fell on its butt. Nothing had happened no bruise but of course the child cried. The grandmother from the other side of the street grabbed the child and without checking it ran for a hospital.

We have the tendency to follow the strongest sports team, king, brand.... Sometimes I ask myself why, but then I think it is a matter of identification. We need a role model. I was passing the accident in my head. I found noting I was to blame for and did not want to blame the others for letting a toddler play in the street.
When the grandfather, a little official of the barangay came, he wanted to grab the keys of my motorbike and demanded to see my Id with a raised voice, without identify himself first. He was in plain street cloth except a hat which stated something of a function in the barangay. I raised my voice too, not because I was angry but I learnt that in Rome do as the Romans do. Later I learnt that he was the grandfather of the child, which to a certain degree explains his agitation. I had thought he is an "official" which sees the chance to have his big moment.
A while later a counselor of the barangy came and we could speak nicely. And a while later the child was back from hospital, things were sorted out.
It made me again understand how much we or I live on a fine line. I also could say I was protected. Anyway I was looking at the incident in my head. You know how this goes you jump from one picture to the other, if you are not emotional - if you are emotional and if it is a problem we do the same, but we do it in a loop and go back to the first picture and start all over again. It is also called worrying.
Well from this incident I jumped to the stories of the Bible, I think it was Eliah who was competing with a priest of the Baal religion which God was stronger.
Let us assume there is only ONE God out there.
So all other religions pray to the same God, but "their" God wears different clothing!
I am sure you have seen at least one movie where one and the same actor plays different roles. So God can do the same for sure!
Maybe I am a bad follower of my or our God because I do not want to fight you. Maybe fighting entertains God, but maybe God gives us something to fight to become stronger!
I love God! Not because IT makes me fight, i love my God because IT gives me the freedom to grow in my own speed. And I love God because with little incidents like yesterday I am reminded that live is NOT a random walk!
So my God is not stronger than your God, it is the same God in a different "disguise"!

Are you afraid to die?

I know we life in the fun time and death is not something we like to talk about. It makes us uncomfortable. I guess everything we do not know makes us uncomfortable.
Fact is, when we agreed to be born, we also agreed to die! And feeling uncomfortable probably is the baby brother of feeling fear.
As an atheist I understand the feeling "uncomfortable" because it is difficult to imagine how it is to be switched off.
But why do the followers of a deity fear death? Ask a Christian to go to heaven NOW, for sure he or she will find a way to ask for a delay. I am an adventurous spirit and I would like to play survivor or Robinson Crusoe for a month or two, but being stuck for eternity in a place without Internet and mobiles probably would not be my first choice!

Maybe the heaven of the Christians would need an update. But the ruler is an old man - was an old man 5000 years ago - and we all know that the older we get the less we like change.
So, are you afraid to die?
You still have some unfinished business here?
This might be an understandable excuse, especially if you are fairly young (below 100 or so) but let's face it, even without me asking, it could happen to you any day!
Hence it may be wise to tie some knots at their open ends, especially if things like forgiving or letting go is concerned. Just a suggestion!
You know the saying, that "the test is the pudding".
It is easy to say I am not afraid of this or that, as long as the situation is far.
I always was wondering - with my scientific mind - how I would react in situation that might end with me being dead. Imagine you are in a hostage situation and the "gangster" takes a young woman or a young man threatening to shoot them. Would I stand up and say: "Take me instead"?
I am currently a little sick; one aspect is a bad and painful cough. After it did not go away after two weeks I lost faith in the self-healing ability of my body and started self-medication. I had started after a night when I hardly had slept due to continuous painful coughing. I took the drugs and fairly exhausted fell asleep.  After a few hours of sleep I awoke from a serious cough which ended me getting no more air. I jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom trying to spit out what seemingly blocked the pathway of my breathing. I thought it was a flame.  Well nothing came out and unfortunately no air went in either.
I became calm and I 'knew': "This is the end". No panic, not though "Oh Lord help me".
Did you observe that when you are coughing you breathe through your mouth? With the calmness of my mind I started to use the nose to breath (despite my open mouth) and lo and behold it worked! After a few very conscious breaths the blockage in the throat vanished. As a matter of fact, for the curious among you, there was no flame, nothing material that caused the blockage!
Am I the same today as I was yesterday?
No!
I know now that I am mortal. I know that I have to tie some loose ends and I am happy to still be alive! Let's enjoy life!
No, I do not mean to have "fun", I mean lets enjoy life by being aware THAT this IS life!

And Lead us into Temptation or: The Benefits of a 'false' Prophet

If you still wonder if your religion is the right one, I suggest you read my book "And lead us into temptation or: The Benefits of a 'false' Prophet". 
It is and Amazon eBook. It is light in price not in content!

Hurray the Book "And lead us into tremptation or The Benefits of a 'false' Prophet" is out"

The new book by Eugen Grathwohl "And Lead us into
Temptation or the Benefits of a 'false' Prophet

Part of my new year's resolution was to become a renowned writer. I know I have to work on my skills. This is my part on the learning process or better one of my parts. I am not sure if you know, but every year more than 1.000.000 books are published but you only read fb and maybe give away one or two books as a gift. No, I do not blame you!

One of the reasons I write is that I think some of my thoughts are worth to be known. In a way you could say I lived about 60 years I made people happy and hurt them, I went through joy and suffering"!

For what?

Mainly for me!

I have grown and in my bright moments I look back and wonder how this is possible.

I am not a people pleaser; I leave this to the actors and politicians.

Most constitutions claim that we are equal. We are not! Maybe we are born with equal rights - maybe in some countries. But for sure we are all born to live!

And we are all born to die - sorry if it scares you, but this is the truth! Most of us do not leave a footprint in history or a legacy. This means we do not need to worry about it and we can focus on the important thing: The NOW.

I wrote this book because again I am confronted with a false prophet, a false master. Once in my early days of an almost adult, God expelled me from paradise. It was the paradise of my childhood faith. Yes there is a world outside the paradise. I learnt a lot from it. In my new book And lead us into Temptation or The Benefits of a 'false' Prophet  I write about the fears a person may face when going through this process. And I speculate about God and I assume that there is a purpose behind this process!

If your faith is strong you may not need this book! If your faith is fragile it can give you your peace of mind back or it might be this drop that makes a glass overflow. I could say sorry for that, but sooner or later it would happen anyway.

If you have left already, this book  And lead us into temptation or the benefits of a 'false' Prophet  might take away your fear and give you a new direction on your spiritual path.

If you like nice, crazy or great ideas, you might enjoy this book. It will not kick you out of faith! No book can and for sure not And lead us into Temptation or The Benefits of a 'false' Prophet, at least not if you did not already start this process inside you.

It is an eBook (only) 7.99 US$ and can be downloaded from here

Feel free to address me on facebook or google+

Is Soul forced to be sequential?

Are you?
No, it is ok!
And it definitely is, if you are happy and content where you are.
 In my new book "And lead us into temptation or the benefits of a false prophet" I describe a development of beings of being basically not interested in the Life after or the question"Why are we here?"

Bad karma for the bamboo or its purpose?

I am not so sure if it is a linear development. If Soul exists outside of time maybe it is not a sequential process. In Germany we have an education system that basically is like a stack where one builds on the previous step. At least with me I observe a tendency to see things sequential.
How do you see it?
I easily can image that Soul passes through a sequence of OJTs (on job trainings)
Maybe there is a basic training which is sequential like high school. But then God places us in a "working environment" and gives us a challenge. At the end of the assignment we evaluate ourselves or are evaluated and get a new assignment or are sent to a special training that helps us to get more qualified. Then we go back to this job and do better now.
I can imagine this applied to priests who abuse woman or children in their flog or politicians who misused their power.
Did you hear about reincarnation therapy? It is a method where people with problems are guided backwards to the source of this problem, which often originates in one or several former lifetimes. Of course this technique also was ans is used by curious people who want to know about their karmic history. For me surprisingly often the people were kings, queens, knight, warriors but seldom was there a recall of a simple person a maid, a thief or more general a member of the lower class.
I agree it is easier to remember if it was a "big thing" than something small way back.
But what if we were a king or a barangay captain, a chief or maybe only a respected elder who misused his power and now came back to see the other side of the experience.
For me the universe does not act on wishes and karma is not for punishment.
When I was in training to become a craftsman we had to hone a flat area and had to do it again and again until it was flat and not slanting.
Yes, sometimes it felt like punishment, but that was how I felt. My master only wanted a nicely honed piece of work,
I really like the example of karma being a stick! We enjoy it when we can use it to beat someone and we call it "bad karma" when we experience the other side of the stick - the being beaten.
Maybe we start as little rulers, as the head of our family, If we do well we come back as the chief of a village, go back for a training and become head of a tribe.
Of course you can say this is sequential one life time after the other but it is not a steady spiritual evolvement reflected by a social status. maybe it is better to say for sure more comforting: Our social status not necessarily reflects our spiritual status!

Is being sick spiritual?

I was sick for about one week with the peek on day two and three. With some people I chat almost daily or they chat with me. The first day the infect hit me I told a few people that I am sick and will be sick.
Believe it or not two of them seemed surprised the next day when I told them I am still sick. Of course I know there are drugs which suppress the symptoms, but aside from that I think if we are sick, there is a reason for it.
I once had a friend who constantly was on the move and even complained not to have time to sit down and think things over. When she was sick she took some drugs and went to work anyway. Then one day she had a fairly serious car accident and broke both legs. Now she had time.

You know the flu short for  influenza a serious viral infection and other viral infections spread by droplet infection. Sometimes we get it even if no infected person is close to us and sometimes we are in a room full of sneezing and coughing people or we even kiss our sick spouse but seem to be immune.
So there seems to be an effect aside from the epidemiological aspects.
I like to think and call it the spiritual side of live. The things running in the background in our life, the things we are commonly not aware of.
If I get sick, I know it is time to rest. It may be a time to pause and it might be a time to re-think what I am doing.
As I told  currently my life goes through changes and I am not very happy with them. But aging is something we may be able to delay a little but not for good. This and my other situation gave me quite a stress, especially since my plans seemed not to take effect or work. Maybe this already weakened my defense system. Then we had a cold spell here in the Philippines, actually the longest and coldest since I am here. In short I got sick.
I was laying in bed for almost 2 days and had at least 2 more day I spend in front of the Computer but not doing any serious work or learning.
And then the next morning I got up and felt happy and confident!
It felt good!
But nothing in the outer had changed and nothing in the inner had happened.
Stop!
That cannot be true!
Nothing I can remember or recall or put my finger on had happened!

Next time you feel you are about to get sick maybe you ask yourself if you need to suppress it or if you can afford to let it happen, maybe there is a gift in it for you!

Another false master or False Masters II

I started to write and the thoughts flew and I wrote enough to make it a book - probably an eBook again.

Where does this lead too?

It is a fascinating theme and to write what is in my mind and already came out is about the quantity I would need to fill a weekly block for half a year. And I am sure if this is a burning issue now, it no longer will be in 5 month or so.
I let my thought flow and in the end I found words on my paper (computer screen) which bring me into the corner of the heretics or also in the corners of the false masters.
It is tempting!
But as I wrote in my last post, I personally find it more interesting to explore the unknown than to train sheep to fly. Kindly do not feel insulted. I tend to think that a false master of course is a "master" or not, but for sure he is unwanted by the established path. These authorities may claim the "new false faster" leads people into the wrong direction.
But is this the fault of the false master? If the leaders would give people a compass and a map and teach them to read the map and use the compass, the people would know if the false master leads them astray! Don’t you agree?
I know it is a controversial subject.  I am aware that some of the false masters do it for egoistic reasons. They want to feel the power of being famous, of having followers, some even do it for getting easy lays, but I am talking about the honest ones.
In our times, we tend to call it the information age, but we also could call it the legal or advocate time, even an honest person can get into problems if he trusts a handshake honestly given. Hence each path needs to act legally correct, to protect its "intellectual rights".
Of course things get complicated when you legally can claim a word like "apple" or a color like yellow for yellow pages or magenta for T-Online in Germany.
But aside from this, I understand that any established path is afraid to lose followers, because this means losing influence and money.
This of course means that most path' are managed and not lead by a spiritual leader. This is sad in a way, but also understandable. In the world today we specialize and Jesus only had 12 followers and in a way problems to keep them in line. I do not say being the administrator of a (big) group is not a spiritual task, but I think the spiritual experience of this administrator might not be the  spiritual stories it followers need to hear.
So any spiritual master is a thread to the establishment of this path. The Catholic Church was smart! They declared them as Saints. And not to put them into a different class of  demi gods they also labeled some respected administrators as saints too.