The Play's the Thing...

Life is the game of tic tac toe. The concept of victory and defeat are different sides of the same coin. We must let people learn to lose.?That is the reason that winning is not important. It isn’t even about HOW you play the game. It is THAT you play the game. Or don’t.

Most see Tic Tac Toe as mundane. Irrelevant. Useless. I guess, however, that nearly all of us have played. Two lines, vertically and two horizontally, create a nine-space playing surface. Two players, each choosing a mark, usually an ‘X’ or an ‘O’. Alternating play, each places a mark in one of the nine spaces. The winner is the one that can make a linear three in a row in any direction.

To some, it is a pointless game because eventually, both players learn the trick to preventing the other player from winning, thus driving both players to the conclusion that you cannot ‘win’ every time… You win some, you lose some, and sometimes neither can.

If you know the game, you know the truth. I am going to explain the human experience from this timeworn game. Follow me if you can, hear me if you can, but I finally have a paradigm for the ages…

Move or don’t move. We all only choose one alternative for every decision we face. We chose one side of the equation or the other, or we don’t choose at all. The universe, therefore, feels binary. In a larger sense, however, it is a triad.?Stay with me.

The messages of the impending arrival of extraterrestrials or the rise of a possible artificial intelligence, the ballyhooed singularity, is for our times the same as the ancient much-feared approach of barbarians from the north. In biblical terms, the ancient Israelites were jealous of other nations and demanded a King. In the scriptures, God granted that, but also provided the Persians, and the Babylonians, who eventually dominated and overthrew those same kings… and so it is for us today. ET or AI… both threats and salvation. Historically, what IS the Tower of Baby, except for the manifestation of this exclusionary principle? ?In approaching God, AI, or ET, humanity seems to fall into a self-made trap. Win or lose. Liberty or Domination. Become the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

We exclude those that don’t play fair or play by OUR rules. Until they gain control and reverse the tables on us. That seems to be the case, right? But this is where we make the first mistake.

In the words of the AI in the movie Wargames, “The only safe solution is not to play the game.”

That is to say, the rules of the game of life don’t matter in the scheme of things. The reason the Rules DO NOT MATTER is that it isn’t about the RULES, it is about the MATTER.?IF ETs or AIs come, either are AN Intelligence, beings that do not know our rules, do not play by the. indeed, such conditions cannot be compassed about by them. The reason Jesus was against the Pharisees and the Romans was that he was against and despised any rulers and leaders who externalized the rules and believed they applied to men other than themselves.

Humanity always knows that power exists beyond itself. But they also WANT to be the power themselves. And that is the miracle and the wonder of imagination. It is these two warring principles that drive us to play on a hashtag of our own making.

Let Chaos be the O’s because you can’t stop it and must, for sanity’s sake, surround it with a definite boundary. Let Law be the X’s because you can’t start except at a precise point; the x marks the spot. Both exist simultaneously, through all time, for all time. The noises we make and the calls we express are our puny demand, just like the ancient Israelites, that God makes kings for us. The harder we strive to be beyond this world, beyond the limits that existence requires within it, the greater the noise.

And with sides chosen, let the game begin. Reality is the hashtag, so the sides square off to begin the game.?But wait…

Schr?dinger’s cat. Is it alive? Not alive? ?This is an example of this very game.?We can play it theoretically forever, for every instance from the closing of the box forward in time. But notice this concept… How long does a cat live, anyway?

As an exercise, we ignore the presence of time. At any moment after the closing of the box… forward… the cat both exists and doesn’t exist. But if we consider time, that thought experiment proves that God might exist. If we argue that the cat has only two states as possible results, then if we are patient enough, that animal will survive beyond time because its very existence will be questioned beyond reason. We all know that in the extremity of that case study, waiting to find out is what the religious call faith. Because we KNOW that, in time, the cat will die. But that is why the analogy works. IN TIME the cat dies. Outside of time, the cat is immortal. The cat, by definition, becomes a GOD, either believed in or not.

As sure as the words from the Bible themselves, it is the substance of things hoped for AND the evidence of things not seen.

There is a reason that Hebrew humor falls into duality. Even the Old Testament acknowledges within the core concept of blood sacrifice- there is but one God, but He is three states of humanity, three forms of GOD.

?In its pages, the bible acknowledges, however, tangentially both YHVH, the god of law and Dagon, the god of the desert. In the development of their faith, the Israelites performed a ritual blood sacrifice for the sins for which they repented, for YHVH. But they also spilled sacrificial blood on a goat, which they banished to the desert, to be killed by nature itself, a sacrifice to Dagon, the desert. This was for the sins for which they could not repent, those sins they did not even know they had committed.

With the passage of time and the coming of the Messiah, these ideas became lost on most Christians because they so desire to serve the law that they see only two courses in the concept of caring for one another. They see the first course, the repentance of sins seen, and in the second, the repentance of the unseen, for those same unknowable sins resolved by Dagon. The third case is only hidden by the reality that they see only a sinful world, which must be expunged from the grasp of Sin. But, the atheist, the lawless, in their minds, only desire to serve chaos, the lack of law.

By doing so, however, they neglect the third rail, that some are, by definition, sinless.

By this, I am not excusing or approving the activities of this third rail. I am not condoning or approving the activities of this portion, but rather am calling to reason to ask forbearance because this will, to these two ideologies, feel like an affront. It isn’t. It is only, by its very definition, HERESY.

You see, sinlessness means unblemished by disobedience. One cannot be blameless if there is no basis for blame. In the case of those who are not subject to the laws cannot be bound by them. So, if some don’t want to be included or cannot, they are blameless. They cannot account for breaking laws they do not recognize or even accept as existing.

There is no additional sacrifice for sins if no sins exist. They are, by the very acceptance of the existence of law, ultimately free from the law. They are truly sinless. It is a hard thing to hold onto, but that is true, nonetheless. ?Just as assuredly as the Messiah walked, aware of sin but blameless before it, those who are fully unaware of it are without blame. There is no law, except it be taught to them. If a person, outside of the law, does the things included in it, they become a law unto themselves. But in the truest sense, those who never know the law cannot sin since there are for them no such laws.

The existence of the Law of Attraction, of Intention, or Self-Will is a manifestation of the acceptance of the law that flies in the face of self-determinism.?What we see today is a manifestation of the lack of that acceptance. Without the LAW, there is no SIN.?Therefore, for those that DO live within the law, there must exist pity and fear for those outside its barriers. Those so averse to order that they do not recognize that order cannot be brought to order. They are the lambs to the slaughter because the chaos, just as the law, will always win because we are the cat, as much as we are the observers. Pity that cat if you choose to; be the cat if you choose to. All three conditions exist, and that is a fact.

So, within the rational population, the remaining duality of our nature becomes evident. We must answer to the one GOD, above all, and through all, and IN US ALL. Either we attempt to obey the law because we accept its existence (through a free will), or we accept our inability to do so, yet are obedient nonetheless (because of preordination or lack of free will). Within the continuum, both exist, and both do not. It is a matter of, shall I say it, choice. The evidence for both can be found, often to be used by either side from one moment to the next, because those two states, along with the unreasoned third state described above, also exist simply by the nature that they are opposed, as much as they both oppose those outside the box.

So, whether ET or AI arrives, it will be because we willed it so. The howling mob that wishes to live without judgment doesn’t see a problem with it because, unwittingly, they are asking for a king. They expect an external force for good that loves us and wants us to be happy. Or perhaps, instead, they perceive an indomitable force that will subjugate and dominate us instead. The continuum of human existence is inclusive of either resolution. Humanity, in that innocent, sinless mob, does not want to be the ones who decide our fate. Because of this, if we continue on this course, we will either meet the aliens, create the singularity, or continue endlessly on this track.

The irony of this first rail, the one we oft overlook, is clear. LAW, ORDER, the concept of chaos in ecstasy or in chains, will result on the other side of that reality. But not within it – those beings seek only the liberty to sustain themselves in their ignorant position and not feel the externalized guilt and grief they cannot comprehend among the other two groups.

Those that hold to sinfulness as a matter of ONLY choice are the ones most stridently perceiving the first group, wanting, and hoping to somehow redeem them by appealing to reason from a group for whom reason holds no power. They are the ‘allies’ who reach across the aisle to the other two groups, believing in their train of thought. If WE choose to follow the law, and only by doing so can we be redeemed, we must hold ourselves as the arbiters of what redemption looks like. We must bring justice for the lawless and law for the unjust.

The rest, who accept their mechanism, want only to shut the noise off, to erase the other two courses. Law will, in their minds, prevail only when free will is dropped from the conversation. To them, the mindless will either come to their senses or will not. It is not for us to decide, they say. We have made our decision, they say, and the sheer belief rescues us that we ARE rescued. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, and even our indiscretions won’t destroy us because the lot has already been cast.

Whether Ambivalence, Adonai, or Satan, whether Jesus, Mohammed or the mob, each individual must study to show ONESELF approved, a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly divining the words of Truth. In other words, everybody must play this game. Over and again. It wasn’t whether we won or lost or even how we did it. It is THAT we played the game.

So, what is the point of this article, and what is the point of living, given how unbalanced and impossible the present conditions seem to be? Who will win in this lopsided, three-way struggle for the souls of men? Surprisingly there is one answer.

As a game master. I suggest it is to play the game. We should experience the rises and falls of our position in the world. Observe where our minds go during the seeming carnage, chaos, and conflict for control. We must prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and survive. There will be a champion, or there will be desolation. But a third alternative will be that there will continue the status quo, that things will merely continue to BE.

Who will win? It will not be AI. It will not be ET. For our very souls, it will be, unsurprisingly, US.

Why do we dream? Why do we imagine? Dreams and visions are the voice of God, working through us. If we do not dream, if we cannot imagine, it is because we either chose to ignore or cannot allow His voice to be heard through us. This article is, quite literally, the documentation of my imagination, my dream made manifest. As I wrote it, as the message flowed onto the paper, it changed my mind and heart. I share it as it flowed in the hope that you will be able to draw from it the same awareness, compassion, and conviction I did. If you like it, click the like button for the post, and for all our sakes, repost or share it with others. If you don’t see it, or don’t feel anything at all, don’t.?Only those that have minds that can be changed will be changed. I hope you will see and join me in getting this message out. We need to learn, once again, to play the game in peace and healthy competition.?