I'm always busy getting ready for the annual holiday festival and that takes up way too much time and energy. So, I think I'll just pick a month and write one when I feel like it.
I do feel a story coming on. I'm going to start with what I've already written and turn the parody of the "alien lightships are coming" prophecy (that's horribly dated now) into a story of spiritual love that starts before prehistory and ends in the modern era. A story of reincarnation and rebirth.
I'm gestating the idea now, but soon, I'll start giving birth to it.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, November 3, 2008
Life in "Atlantis"
One thing that's always bugged me is the belief that the pre-diluvian world with cities/civilizations known as Atlantis, Lemuria, etc., was some sort of crystal-driven New Age Disneyland. Yet, if you correlate it with the Bible's description of that period, it was pretty awful. So bad, in fact, that God wiped out everyone on the planet except for a handful of castaways.
In the next chapter, I'm going to enjoy fleshing it out a bit more and showing it as a place that was awful and wretched, unless you were one of the special magic people who ran the place, of course. Just because it's my novel, and I can.
Laura
In the next chapter, I'm going to enjoy fleshing it out a bit more and showing it as a place that was awful and wretched, unless you were one of the special magic people who ran the place, of course. Just because it's my novel, and I can.
Laura
Sunday, November 2, 2008
What's up with the website
This is my first time doing NaNoWriMo, but I'm find it hard to really participate on the website itself, because it's been down since the month actually started. I am having to keep my own wordcount on my blog, because that doesn't work. Half the time the pages either won't load, or they come out looking like they were created in 1997. Forget the forums, those don't load at all.
Is this normal?
Laura
Is this normal?
Laura
Lost Soul: Chapter 1 Ashtar Khreth
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Genesis 1:1
My story starts before the beginning. Before the heaven and the earth were created. Before that Creation, we were born of It.
Long before the beginning, there was ONE. It was a singular consciousness, entirely unique and without form, existing in a solitary fashion in a dimension of reality that was also without form. You would call this ONE “a creature of pure energy”, and the dimension of reality “the void”.
The ONE decided that it needed company, and so it divided itself in twain, becoming TWO. The closest analogy in human terms would be the form of asexual reproduction that cells and simple organisms engage in, binary fission.
And thus the first of us was created, the first of its children. Not created from the dust of the ground, or spun out of nothingness by its will, but created from its own self, each one of us its twin. Is it any surprise that we consider ourselves superior to the human race?
Enjoying companionship for the first time in its existence, it created more children and more children. However, it withheld the secret of creation from us, so that all of us were born of it, and not of one another.
Although there are no sex differences in a race of non-physical beings that reproduce asexually, thanks to our long sojourn among those who do have sex differences, we have come to call it our Father.
Not surprisingly, all was not harmonious among its brood of children. You humans complain of having nothing to do. Imagine having nothing but the void, and no one but each other. And so, in order to keep the brood occupied, it began to create.
Not yet on so grand a scale as the planet you call home, but it used its will to create illusions for us to experience and to play in. Each new illusion was more detailed and more interesting than the one before. The void is littered with our old toys.
We learned to duplicate its efforts and to create simple playspaces for ourselves. Our only limitation was how much effort and creativity we put into them.
To give us credit, although it created our playspaces, we created the Game. The Game that would keep us occupied from then, until now, and for the rest of eternity. The only real rule of the Game is that it must be a combination of performance art and competitive sport. Other than that, the Game has been manifested in many different ways as it evolved.
The Game truly reached its zenith after our Father, the Grand Creator, built this playing field that you call the Earth. Because we learned a new way of experiencing the illusions, by calling them reality and playing from the inside of those realities, the Game increased in sophistication, as well as in violence, decadence, and scale. The Game is currently being played all over the Earth, in a variety of different ways, by the many players who still remain here. Those that your popular mythology calls, “fallen angels.”
Its invention of the concept of recording the passage of time, something we’d never been aware of before, allowed for new ways of measuring the rounds of the game and keeping score.
The Game was all during the period known as “pre-diluvian” that took place before the great flood that wiped out all of the human/non-human crossbreeds. Many civilizations flourished and were wiped out as part of the Game. Atlantis was only one of the many, as was Lemuria, Mu, etc.
For the record, there are still a few remaining signs of our civilizations, most of them have been destroyed by the passage of time. “Atlantis” was in the area of Central America and Southern North America, it was pronounced closer to “Aztlantis”. I lived there at one point, but I also lived in the civilization that eventually became known as Egypt. Babylon was one of our city-states as well. Many of us moved from place to place, as we switched teams, got bored, or our city-states were destroyed in the endless wars that made up the Game.
The Great Architect chose to live among a simple nomadic people in North America, until he suddenly abandoned them and came to live in the Middle East to oversee the people that were bred from the few people it salvaged from the area we’d ravaged to the point of not only breeding our race with human, but genetically engineering animal-human crossbreeds.
That’s what it got for not paying attention. While the cat’s away, the mice will play.
And play, we did. I remember “Atlantis”.
It was a beautiful city, if you were one of us. We lived in white-columned gilded splendor. Our every need, want or desire was provided for us by our slaves.
That word offends many, because they think of American slavery, where humans treated other humans as though they were animals. They were kept uneducated and illiterate.
In our culture, although we definitely treated humans like naked apes, we taught them everything that we could invent. Our slaves were artists, builders, cooks, musicians, technicians, warriors, and everything else a civilization needs to function. We did nothing for ourselves; unless that was an experience we wished to have.
It wasn’t until the inevitable decadence set in to the Game, that people began to play with the humans in ways that eventually got us all in trouble. Not only sexual perversity, but the genetic cross-breeds that gave rise to the mythical creatures that are remarkably still remembered after such a very long time. We started with only animals, creating unicorns and gryphons and dragons. Personally, I thought the centaurs were pretty cool, but the Grand Creator nixed them along with all the other creatures that were manufactured in our laboratories, including the bodies of our race.
Since we controlled our own incarnation and re-incarnation, we were able to create the bodies we wished to occupy. We started with human genetic material, and refined it. First, we got rid of the body hair, and then we made ourselves taller and more gracile. As new versions of human were designed, we changed our skin colors and hair types so that we had different “racial” types, as well.
At first, we were all sexless, but eventually we began to give our bodies sexual differentiation as well. Some picked a sex and stuck with it, but many of us chose to alternate between one and the other. Those who preferred to play the War game tended to be “male”, while those who preferred the Game to be less violent (and thus the rounds longer-lasting) tended to occupy female bodies.
Unlike humans who become defined by the bodies they wear, we were entirely free of such constraints, and there were a number of us who preferred bodies that were of indeterminate or mixed sex. Hermaphroditism was always popular among us.
Naming was something that also appeared during this period. Because those who have no physical body do not communicate in the same way as those who do, not only did we not have speech, but we identified each other in ways that cannot even be expressed in speech. Yes, I’m talking about telepathy.
I know that most humans don’t believe it exists, but it’s how we communicated until we had the option to use mouths and vocal chords to speak to one another, and we still continued to use it among ourselves as it is far more flexible and useful than the limitations of verbal communication. Especially when different languages were developed. Two people who speak different languages can communicate telepathically without getting lost in translation.
However, in order to communicate with our human slaves, who could not communicate as we did, verbal speech and the first language was developed. Interestingly enough, it is still used as a written tongue, although the original pronunciation was lost at some point. You call that language Hebrew. It is the same language that was spoken among all of the original humans.
As I said, there are still signs remaining of our ancient culture. You just have to know where to look for them.
The word which I’ve transliterated as Ashtar, shows up from time to time in ancient cultures, in corrupted versions. Aztlantis is a corruption. It means "city of the Ashtars" Ashtar means “child” and “sibling”, basically. It was the word that we came up with to refer to ourselves, and to differentiate ourselves from the humans. At the time, we were not playing the “God” game. We didn’t even understand the concept.
The Grand Creator was our parent, we didn’t worship him any more than you worship yours.
Until we invented religion, of course. Then, we became first the children, priests, and messengers of the senior God, our Grand Creator and Father. And then we became Gods ourselves.
I got very involved in the religion Game. I enjoyed being a “high priest”. In order for it to be a game, there had to be more than one temple and more than one God. Otherwise, it wasn’t a competitive sport.
Others preferred the royalty Game. It was usually tied to the war Game. Whomever came out on top in the most recent round got to be the King. If someone else wanted to be King for a while, another round of the war game would ensue.
I remember going shopping in the bazaar of one of our city-states for a gift for the recently crowned king who was building a new palace with the help of one of our kind who had a fondness for designing enormous buildings. He didn’t like building them, but he did like to design them.
I was wearing long black robes trimmed with gold, and I looked over a variety of designs for a suitably ostentatious decoration for the apex of the tallest tower. I chose one that represented the four winds if seen from above.
I knew our new ruler would enjoy it as he had a preference for flying. It was also solid gold and would thus appeal to his vanity. He had that in large amounts, even for one of us.
The religion game was won differently, the more human worshippers your temple had at the end of a round, the bigger your win. We were constantly working to outdo each other in the size and lavishness of our temples. At one point, not long before the party was over for all of us, there were two temples in one particular city-state.
One was built of white stone, the other of black. I was Khreth, high priest of the black temple, my long-time arch rival Sheran was high priest of the white temple. And he invented a new twist on the Game. He called it “holier-than-thou”. And it attracted a lot of worshippers.
It also attracted a lot of negative attention from his siblings, because it was pure hypocrisy. First, he outlawed human sacrifice. Then he proclaimed that the real purpose of religion was for the God(s) to care for their followers, to educate them, and (get this) not to enslave them.
Fortunately, just as the round was about to end with Sheran as a big winner, the waters started to rise and that particular round ended with both of us losing.
We took it up in Egypt, again.
Next Chapter: More about life in our civilization before the deluge
My story starts before the beginning. Before the heaven and the earth were created. Before that Creation, we were born of It.
Long before the beginning, there was ONE. It was a singular consciousness, entirely unique and without form, existing in a solitary fashion in a dimension of reality that was also without form. You would call this ONE “a creature of pure energy”, and the dimension of reality “the void”.
The ONE decided that it needed company, and so it divided itself in twain, becoming TWO. The closest analogy in human terms would be the form of asexual reproduction that cells and simple organisms engage in, binary fission.
And thus the first of us was created, the first of its children. Not created from the dust of the ground, or spun out of nothingness by its will, but created from its own self, each one of us its twin. Is it any surprise that we consider ourselves superior to the human race?
Enjoying companionship for the first time in its existence, it created more children and more children. However, it withheld the secret of creation from us, so that all of us were born of it, and not of one another.
Although there are no sex differences in a race of non-physical beings that reproduce asexually, thanks to our long sojourn among those who do have sex differences, we have come to call it our Father.
Not surprisingly, all was not harmonious among its brood of children. You humans complain of having nothing to do. Imagine having nothing but the void, and no one but each other. And so, in order to keep the brood occupied, it began to create.
Not yet on so grand a scale as the planet you call home, but it used its will to create illusions for us to experience and to play in. Each new illusion was more detailed and more interesting than the one before. The void is littered with our old toys.
We learned to duplicate its efforts and to create simple playspaces for ourselves. Our only limitation was how much effort and creativity we put into them.
To give us credit, although it created our playspaces, we created the Game. The Game that would keep us occupied from then, until now, and for the rest of eternity. The only real rule of the Game is that it must be a combination of performance art and competitive sport. Other than that, the Game has been manifested in many different ways as it evolved.
The Game truly reached its zenith after our Father, the Grand Creator, built this playing field that you call the Earth. Because we learned a new way of experiencing the illusions, by calling them reality and playing from the inside of those realities, the Game increased in sophistication, as well as in violence, decadence, and scale. The Game is currently being played all over the Earth, in a variety of different ways, by the many players who still remain here. Those that your popular mythology calls, “fallen angels.”
Its invention of the concept of recording the passage of time, something we’d never been aware of before, allowed for new ways of measuring the rounds of the game and keeping score.
The Game was all during the period known as “pre-diluvian” that took place before the great flood that wiped out all of the human/non-human crossbreeds. Many civilizations flourished and were wiped out as part of the Game. Atlantis was only one of the many, as was Lemuria, Mu, etc.
For the record, there are still a few remaining signs of our civilizations, most of them have been destroyed by the passage of time. “Atlantis” was in the area of Central America and Southern North America, it was pronounced closer to “Aztlantis”. I lived there at one point, but I also lived in the civilization that eventually became known as Egypt. Babylon was one of our city-states as well. Many of us moved from place to place, as we switched teams, got bored, or our city-states were destroyed in the endless wars that made up the Game.
The Great Architect chose to live among a simple nomadic people in North America, until he suddenly abandoned them and came to live in the Middle East to oversee the people that were bred from the few people it salvaged from the area we’d ravaged to the point of not only breeding our race with human, but genetically engineering animal-human crossbreeds.
That’s what it got for not paying attention. While the cat’s away, the mice will play.
And play, we did. I remember “Atlantis”.
It was a beautiful city, if you were one of us. We lived in white-columned gilded splendor. Our every need, want or desire was provided for us by our slaves.
That word offends many, because they think of American slavery, where humans treated other humans as though they were animals. They were kept uneducated and illiterate.
In our culture, although we definitely treated humans like naked apes, we taught them everything that we could invent. Our slaves were artists, builders, cooks, musicians, technicians, warriors, and everything else a civilization needs to function. We did nothing for ourselves; unless that was an experience we wished to have.
It wasn’t until the inevitable decadence set in to the Game, that people began to play with the humans in ways that eventually got us all in trouble. Not only sexual perversity, but the genetic cross-breeds that gave rise to the mythical creatures that are remarkably still remembered after such a very long time. We started with only animals, creating unicorns and gryphons and dragons. Personally, I thought the centaurs were pretty cool, but the Grand Creator nixed them along with all the other creatures that were manufactured in our laboratories, including the bodies of our race.
Since we controlled our own incarnation and re-incarnation, we were able to create the bodies we wished to occupy. We started with human genetic material, and refined it. First, we got rid of the body hair, and then we made ourselves taller and more gracile. As new versions of human were designed, we changed our skin colors and hair types so that we had different “racial” types, as well.
At first, we were all sexless, but eventually we began to give our bodies sexual differentiation as well. Some picked a sex and stuck with it, but many of us chose to alternate between one and the other. Those who preferred to play the War game tended to be “male”, while those who preferred the Game to be less violent (and thus the rounds longer-lasting) tended to occupy female bodies.
Unlike humans who become defined by the bodies they wear, we were entirely free of such constraints, and there were a number of us who preferred bodies that were of indeterminate or mixed sex. Hermaphroditism was always popular among us.
Naming was something that also appeared during this period. Because those who have no physical body do not communicate in the same way as those who do, not only did we not have speech, but we identified each other in ways that cannot even be expressed in speech. Yes, I’m talking about telepathy.
I know that most humans don’t believe it exists, but it’s how we communicated until we had the option to use mouths and vocal chords to speak to one another, and we still continued to use it among ourselves as it is far more flexible and useful than the limitations of verbal communication. Especially when different languages were developed. Two people who speak different languages can communicate telepathically without getting lost in translation.
However, in order to communicate with our human slaves, who could not communicate as we did, verbal speech and the first language was developed. Interestingly enough, it is still used as a written tongue, although the original pronunciation was lost at some point. You call that language Hebrew. It is the same language that was spoken among all of the original humans.
As I said, there are still signs remaining of our ancient culture. You just have to know where to look for them.
The word which I’ve transliterated as Ashtar, shows up from time to time in ancient cultures, in corrupted versions. Aztlantis is a corruption. It means "city of the Ashtars" Ashtar means “child” and “sibling”, basically. It was the word that we came up with to refer to ourselves, and to differentiate ourselves from the humans. At the time, we were not playing the “God” game. We didn’t even understand the concept.
The Grand Creator was our parent, we didn’t worship him any more than you worship yours.
Until we invented religion, of course. Then, we became first the children, priests, and messengers of the senior God, our Grand Creator and Father. And then we became Gods ourselves.
I got very involved in the religion Game. I enjoyed being a “high priest”. In order for it to be a game, there had to be more than one temple and more than one God. Otherwise, it wasn’t a competitive sport.
Others preferred the royalty Game. It was usually tied to the war Game. Whomever came out on top in the most recent round got to be the King. If someone else wanted to be King for a while, another round of the war game would ensue.
I remember going shopping in the bazaar of one of our city-states for a gift for the recently crowned king who was building a new palace with the help of one of our kind who had a fondness for designing enormous buildings. He didn’t like building them, but he did like to design them.
I was wearing long black robes trimmed with gold, and I looked over a variety of designs for a suitably ostentatious decoration for the apex of the tallest tower. I chose one that represented the four winds if seen from above.
I knew our new ruler would enjoy it as he had a preference for flying. It was also solid gold and would thus appeal to his vanity. He had that in large amounts, even for one of us.
The religion game was won differently, the more human worshippers your temple had at the end of a round, the bigger your win. We were constantly working to outdo each other in the size and lavishness of our temples. At one point, not long before the party was over for all of us, there were two temples in one particular city-state.
One was built of white stone, the other of black. I was Khreth, high priest of the black temple, my long-time arch rival Sheran was high priest of the white temple. And he invented a new twist on the Game. He called it “holier-than-thou”. And it attracted a lot of worshippers.
It also attracted a lot of negative attention from his siblings, because it was pure hypocrisy. First, he outlawed human sacrifice. Then he proclaimed that the real purpose of religion was for the God(s) to care for their followers, to educate them, and (get this) not to enslave them.
Fortunately, just as the round was about to end with Sheran as a big winner, the waters started to rise and that particular round ended with both of us losing.
We took it up in Egypt, again.
Next Chapter: More about life in our civilization before the deluge
Friday, October 31, 2008
Lost Soul: Introduction
Lost Soul: Introduction
I had no idea I was anything but another ordinary human being, albeit one who recalls more than one human past life, until my mother lay dying in the hospital with ovarian cancer.
I was, as many people are during times like this, angry at God. I was certain he was punishing me for some bad karma earned during a prior incarnation, and so I had one question for him.
While sitting on a rock outside the hospital, smoking a cigarette, I asked that question, loudly, but silently. Mentally, I screamed towards the heavens, “What do you want from me?”
I then returned to sit beside my mother’s hospital bed, and I was answered. It was some time before I was able to determine whether what I experienced was a vision or a memory, and it left me with a lot more questions, but it didn’t matter. What I experienced was the answer to the question I’d asked.
I watched spellbound as the Grand Creator, the Great Architect, spun the world out of nothingness as I hung in space, bodiless. I observed the meticulous care It put into the creation of this world, as if it were one of the model railroad layout that my ex built. I watched it create mountains and oceans and life forms, moving from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms to plants and fish and mammals.
I was not the only one watching. There were many others, as well as those who helped in the development of this remarkable creation. For all of us, it was a relief from the endless boredom of eternity. It was entertainment; something to do that was different.
At some point, the watchers started making the same sort of snide comments that people do when they are watching another create. Don’t we always think we can do better than the doer?
The Creator at one point left Its project to work on a new lifeform it was developing. And that’s when the real fun began. That is when the creation became involved in our endless Game. One of the watchers decided it would be fun to mess with the creation, and make changes to it. He talked the rest of us into participating in it, and it became both performance art and competitive sport. That is the Game, at its very basic. It doesn’t matter what the rules or the scenario of the Game is, as long as it is both art and sport combined.
At first, we competed against each other to see who could vandalize the new creation in the most amusing way. The life forms gave us a great deal of material to work with as we changed their sizes, colors, and gave them spots and stripes. I won points in the Game when I took a camel and did some genetic engineering to give it a long neck, turn it yellow and give it spots. The Game got even better when those who were helping with the Creation joined in. They were trying to fix the damage we were doing.
The best part was when it became obvious that they were making the vandalism worse in some cases. We derived considerable entertainment from their efforts, and redoubled ours, just to give them more opportunities to play.
Not surprisingly, all hell broke loose when the Creator came back and found that Its children had been entertaining themselves with Its creation. It was angry with all of us, vandals and fixers alike.
However, we found new entertainment in watching It introduce the new life forms that had been developed during the lengthy absence. They were developed as higher forms of the monkeys and apes, only they were hairless and walked upright. We were all amazed by the naked apes It had created.
And then It made another mistake (leaving the lot of us alone with the Creation was the first) and It showed us how to breathe life into the Created Ones. It took parts of Itself and used them to give these creatures life and sentience and the ability to communicate. And then it made those parts of Itself self-replicating.
Up until then, none of us had known how to replicate ourselves. Only the Creator knew that technique. All of us were Its children. That was when we learned to replicate ourselves, and we also learned to insert ourselves into one of the creatures and animate them. This was known as “incarnation”.
And the Game began anew. This new way of playing allowed us to experience the Creation as if we were one of the created ones. However, we really didn’t like the bodies of the naked apes. They smelled, for one thing, and still had too much hair.
Thanks to the experience gained during our period of vandalism, we were able to easily engineer a new species of naked apes that were as much like them as they were like the chimpanzees they’d been engineered from. Those Created Ones became known as “humans”.
We devoted a great deal of time to playing with our appearances, as we amused ourselves within the physical “reality” that was the Creation. That was when vanity became part of the Game. Wild hairstyles and clothing were one of our many innovations that humans eventually came to copy.
It approved of the new way of playing the Game, and approved of our use of the Creation as a playing field for the Game. Before leaving us to our own devices, It came up with a few rules to ensure that the Created Ones didn’t get vandalized. We were not to mate with them and produce offspring. The races were to remain separate.
Fruitless mating was allowed, but at the time, that was akin to bestiality for us. We considered ourselves a superior race to the humans, much as the humans consider themselves superior to animals. Eventually, some of the players engaged in both fruitless and fruitful mating, and got in trouble for breaking that rule. Others of us couldn’t resist genetically engineering all sorts of interesting things, including different hair and skin types.
Those were allowed, because they didn’t change the fundamental makeup of the Created Ones. Combining their genes with various animals to create half-human hybrids was eventually allowed, but only if the hybrids were sterile, or could only reproduce with other similar hybrids.
Once we got tired of genetic engineering it was time for the Game to enter a new phase. We began to teach them all manner of arts and trades, and built a variety of civilizations. Yes, “Atlantis” was one of them. It was one of many city-states that we built during the long eons that we played that particular phase of the Game.
Once we got bored with civilization building, we taught them to make war upon each other and began the War Game. Most of the civilizations and city-states were destroyed, and new ones were built during that time. Including Atlantis. Islands and coastal civilizations were precarious, because it isn’t that hard to create a destructive tsunami.
We also began playing the God Game, setting ourselves up as local deities. We found great amusement in competing against one another for worshippers, as well as grandness of temple, sumptuousness of priestly garments, and amount of human sacrifices.
We probably would still be playing the Game in that way if it weren’t for a few of the players who started breeding our race with the Created Ones. The crossbreeds were a nasty lot, and highly fertile. Left unchecked, that would have completely eradicated the human race in favor of them.
We never knew who it was that snitched on us, but someone did. The Creator returned and wiped out the entire area where the crossbreeds were, including the humans, except for a handful of breeding stock. Because Its anger melted part of the polar ice cap, most of the coastal civilizations were lost as well. Most of our race ended up fleeing to inland areas as refugees.
It also did something worse. It made our race sterile, and the new rule was that we had to use human bodies when ours wore out, and not re-incarnate in those of our own creation.
And it remained to supervise the Game, to make sure things didn’t get too far out of hand again. Some children require parental supervision when playing. We certainly did.
It chose the group of breeding stock left from those that it destroyed as Its own particular group, and made it very clear that we were not to play with them. However, it soon became clear that It was playing with them and against us. And the Game began in earnest, as we got the chance to play against our Parent.
I was playing on Egypt’s team, and it was looking like we were going to win the Game, when It smoked us. That’s when I switched sides for the first time, and began to play on Its side.
Some time later, I regretted that decision, when Babylon’s team won a round, and I ended up playing on their team instead. It was angry with me, and we were at odds until not long after my impertinent question outside the hospital while my mother lay dying.
It wants me back on Its team again. It isn’t easy switching teams after this many centuries of playing against It.
I had no idea I was anything but another ordinary human being, albeit one who recalls more than one human past life, until my mother lay dying in the hospital with ovarian cancer.
I was, as many people are during times like this, angry at God. I was certain he was punishing me for some bad karma earned during a prior incarnation, and so I had one question for him.
While sitting on a rock outside the hospital, smoking a cigarette, I asked that question, loudly, but silently. Mentally, I screamed towards the heavens, “What do you want from me?”
I then returned to sit beside my mother’s hospital bed, and I was answered. It was some time before I was able to determine whether what I experienced was a vision or a memory, and it left me with a lot more questions, but it didn’t matter. What I experienced was the answer to the question I’d asked.
I watched spellbound as the Grand Creator, the Great Architect, spun the world out of nothingness as I hung in space, bodiless. I observed the meticulous care It put into the creation of this world, as if it were one of the model railroad layout that my ex built. I watched it create mountains and oceans and life forms, moving from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms to plants and fish and mammals.
I was not the only one watching. There were many others, as well as those who helped in the development of this remarkable creation. For all of us, it was a relief from the endless boredom of eternity. It was entertainment; something to do that was different.
At some point, the watchers started making the same sort of snide comments that people do when they are watching another create. Don’t we always think we can do better than the doer?
The Creator at one point left Its project to work on a new lifeform it was developing. And that’s when the real fun began. That is when the creation became involved in our endless Game. One of the watchers decided it would be fun to mess with the creation, and make changes to it. He talked the rest of us into participating in it, and it became both performance art and competitive sport. That is the Game, at its very basic. It doesn’t matter what the rules or the scenario of the Game is, as long as it is both art and sport combined.
At first, we competed against each other to see who could vandalize the new creation in the most amusing way. The life forms gave us a great deal of material to work with as we changed their sizes, colors, and gave them spots and stripes. I won points in the Game when I took a camel and did some genetic engineering to give it a long neck, turn it yellow and give it spots. The Game got even better when those who were helping with the Creation joined in. They were trying to fix the damage we were doing.
The best part was when it became obvious that they were making the vandalism worse in some cases. We derived considerable entertainment from their efforts, and redoubled ours, just to give them more opportunities to play.
Not surprisingly, all hell broke loose when the Creator came back and found that Its children had been entertaining themselves with Its creation. It was angry with all of us, vandals and fixers alike.
However, we found new entertainment in watching It introduce the new life forms that had been developed during the lengthy absence. They were developed as higher forms of the monkeys and apes, only they were hairless and walked upright. We were all amazed by the naked apes It had created.
And then It made another mistake (leaving the lot of us alone with the Creation was the first) and It showed us how to breathe life into the Created Ones. It took parts of Itself and used them to give these creatures life and sentience and the ability to communicate. And then it made those parts of Itself self-replicating.
Up until then, none of us had known how to replicate ourselves. Only the Creator knew that technique. All of us were Its children. That was when we learned to replicate ourselves, and we also learned to insert ourselves into one of the creatures and animate them. This was known as “incarnation”.
And the Game began anew. This new way of playing allowed us to experience the Creation as if we were one of the created ones. However, we really didn’t like the bodies of the naked apes. They smelled, for one thing, and still had too much hair.
Thanks to the experience gained during our period of vandalism, we were able to easily engineer a new species of naked apes that were as much like them as they were like the chimpanzees they’d been engineered from. Those Created Ones became known as “humans”.
We devoted a great deal of time to playing with our appearances, as we amused ourselves within the physical “reality” that was the Creation. That was when vanity became part of the Game. Wild hairstyles and clothing were one of our many innovations that humans eventually came to copy.
It approved of the new way of playing the Game, and approved of our use of the Creation as a playing field for the Game. Before leaving us to our own devices, It came up with a few rules to ensure that the Created Ones didn’t get vandalized. We were not to mate with them and produce offspring. The races were to remain separate.
Fruitless mating was allowed, but at the time, that was akin to bestiality for us. We considered ourselves a superior race to the humans, much as the humans consider themselves superior to animals. Eventually, some of the players engaged in both fruitless and fruitful mating, and got in trouble for breaking that rule. Others of us couldn’t resist genetically engineering all sorts of interesting things, including different hair and skin types.
Those were allowed, because they didn’t change the fundamental makeup of the Created Ones. Combining their genes with various animals to create half-human hybrids was eventually allowed, but only if the hybrids were sterile, or could only reproduce with other similar hybrids.
Once we got tired of genetic engineering it was time for the Game to enter a new phase. We began to teach them all manner of arts and trades, and built a variety of civilizations. Yes, “Atlantis” was one of them. It was one of many city-states that we built during the long eons that we played that particular phase of the Game.
Once we got bored with civilization building, we taught them to make war upon each other and began the War Game. Most of the civilizations and city-states were destroyed, and new ones were built during that time. Including Atlantis. Islands and coastal civilizations were precarious, because it isn’t that hard to create a destructive tsunami.
We also began playing the God Game, setting ourselves up as local deities. We found great amusement in competing against one another for worshippers, as well as grandness of temple, sumptuousness of priestly garments, and amount of human sacrifices.
We probably would still be playing the Game in that way if it weren’t for a few of the players who started breeding our race with the Created Ones. The crossbreeds were a nasty lot, and highly fertile. Left unchecked, that would have completely eradicated the human race in favor of them.
We never knew who it was that snitched on us, but someone did. The Creator returned and wiped out the entire area where the crossbreeds were, including the humans, except for a handful of breeding stock. Because Its anger melted part of the polar ice cap, most of the coastal civilizations were lost as well. Most of our race ended up fleeing to inland areas as refugees.
It also did something worse. It made our race sterile, and the new rule was that we had to use human bodies when ours wore out, and not re-incarnate in those of our own creation.
And it remained to supervise the Game, to make sure things didn’t get too far out of hand again. Some children require parental supervision when playing. We certainly did.
It chose the group of breeding stock left from those that it destroyed as Its own particular group, and made it very clear that we were not to play with them. However, it soon became clear that It was playing with them and against us. And the Game began in earnest, as we got the chance to play against our Parent.
I was playing on Egypt’s team, and it was looking like we were going to win the Game, when It smoked us. That’s when I switched sides for the first time, and began to play on Its side.
Some time later, I regretted that decision, when Babylon’s team won a round, and I ended up playing on their team instead. It was angry with me, and we were at odds until not long after my impertinent question outside the hospital while my mother lay dying.
It wants me back on Its team again. It isn’t easy switching teams after this many centuries of playing against It.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Pre-Novel interview with Ashtar Khreth
This year for my first NaNoWriMo adventure, I will be writing the autobiography of a fallen angel, who calls itself Ashtar Khreth. As the last few days tick away before the first of November, it has consented to an interview.
Q. We've been hearing a lot about Ashtar Sheran in the New Age community, after Blossom Goodchild's prophecy turned fiasco? Who or what does the word Ashtar signify, and what, if any, is your relationship to Ashtar Sheran?
A. That's a complex question. I will try and distill it down into a reasonably simple answer using concepts which will be familiar to you. Ashtar Sheran, and all of those of us who are referred to as "The Ashtars" are the what you would call the children of it that you call your God, Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, etc. Our preferred names for It are the Great Architect or the Grand Creator, because It built this remarkable creation you call Earth with such precision and attention to detail.
We are It's servants, It's emanations, and It's messengers, and the word "Ashtar" encompasses all of those. In the Greek language, we were known as the "Angelos", more commonly referred to as "angels". That word supplanted the word Ashtar, so that for a very long time, it was forgotten.
Ashtar Sheran, and all the rest of us are siblings, in a very profound way. Originally there was only ONE, but that ONE became lonely, and thus, It became TWO. And each of those two was also one, and in time they became two.
Q. I'd better clarify because in addition to receiving words in this telepathic transmission, I'm also receiving images. What I'm seeing are paramecium reproducing by one splitting into two.
A. Exactly. The way that single-celled organisms, and all multi-celled organisms reproduce at the cellular level is how our kind reproduce. That's why we all look alike. How else to create something in your image, but by dividing yourself in twain?
Q. So, Ashtar Sheran is your twin, then.
A. One of many. All of us are twins. And although there often arguments over which was the original ONE, and which is the "child" of the other, it really doesn't matter. When we first reproduce, each of us is completely identical to the other.
Q. Got it. Are you from another planet then? Some alien world? Did you arrive here in a space ship or "lightship"?
A. Not really, people involved in that belief system have been watching too much SciFi channel. Galactic Federation of Light, indeed. We exist in a non-physical reality, that you would call "another dimension". In that reality, there is nothing physical, only the illusion of it that we can create or not, as we see fit. We do not have physical bodies, because the physical is only an illusion.
Q. I don't understand. Please don't tell me you are talking about something like the Q from Star Trek.
A. *laughter* Actually, that is as close a metaphor as I can find in your memory, so it will have to suffice. From the nothingness that exists in the non-physical reality, we create our homes, our playgrounds, and our gaming fields. And although they can appear to be real and solid, they are in fact no more real than a dream, which can also feel real while you are in it, but when you awaken, it is only a memory.
Q. Are you talking about "virtual reality"?
A. Exactly. Our thoughts have the power to create these virtual realities such as this planet, just as your throughts have the power to create computer programs that simulate your reality.
Q. (Okay, my brain really hurts now.) So, the Earth isn't real?
A. What is reality? It is a subjective experience. And to those experiencing it, it is real, but to those on the outside looking in, it is only an illusion.
Q. (This is getting way too deep for me. I'm a writer not a philosopher.) So, how did you come to be living in this reality like the rest of us, if you are a powerful alien from another dimension? (And why does this keep sounding more and more like Star Trek?)
A. I'll answer your unspoken question first. I heard that. I can only explain things using terms and metaphors that will be familiar to you, and since you've watched a lot of Star Trek, I am utilizing them.
I won't get into all of the details, but suffice it to say that those of us who are known as "fallen angels" or the Ashtars who got left behind, are those who are imprisoned here for our own hubris. We thought we could get away with more than we could.
In my case, I switched sides as a result of a setback in the Game. And although I've regretted it ever since, it put me on the losing side, and I've been locked into playing the Game until I can figure a way out of it, or until the other Ashtars return to start another round.
Q. The Game? What is the Game? Is it Battltoads? Or have I just lost it for thinking about it?
A. The Game is the only thing that has kept us sane for all of these endless eons. Humans long for immortality, but quite frankly, there is nothing more incredibly boring than being immortal and non-physical. As soon as there were enough of us in existence to become bored, we developed the Game.
It isn't a set group of rules, there is no specific playing board, and no little cars and shoes and hotels on Boardwalk. Instead, it is something that we continually changed and evolved.
The reason this entire world was spun out of nothingness by the Grand Creator, was for us to have a new reality upon which to play the Game against each other. While it was still being created, the Game was Creation vs Vandalism, and we chose up sides and some helped with the Creation of the gaming field, others did everything possible to vandalize the Creation. Usually by making it funny in some way.
Q. Vandalism? How can you vandalize a planet?
A. Some things were small and obvious, like taking a camel and manipulating it genetically. The long neck was funny. Turning it yellow and adding spots...The duck-billed platypus was a committee effort. Causing the one single continent that was to be the playing field to slowly split apart was more subtle, and infinitely more humorous.
Q. So, once the Creation was completed, how did you play the Game?
A. Then it became a game of Civilization building. And when that palled, there was the War Game.
Q. So, you fought against each other? Is that what they meant by the War among the Angels?
A. No, we didn't fight one another directly. The first thing we did when we started playing the Civilization Game was to enslave the humans and breed up armies of soldiers, among other things.
Q. I see. Please continue.
A. At some, the Game got out of hand, because some of my siblings started mating with the humans. And others of us were performing genetic engineering on them and combining them (in a laboratory) with other species.
Q. That sounds like some of the stories I've heard about "Atlantis".
A. Of course. Atlantis was one of the many, many city-states that existed during that phase of the game.
It was at this point that the Grand Creator decided it was time for a new round of the Game and wiped the playing field clean.
That's when we started a different Game. The Religion Game. Most of us became Gods. I signed on to Jehovah's team, along with Ashtar Sheran (who was going by the name the Metatron at the time) and others of us. It was playing to win, and everyone wants to be on the winning side in the Game.
Q. Naturally. What happened?
A. The Babylonians won a round when they sacked Jerusalem, and I ended up on their team. That was when Jehovah found out that I'd been cheating and playing on more than one team at once. I wasn't the only one.
A few lost rounds later, and Jehovah set us all up to lose. It arranged for another of the Ashtars (he was called Jesus during that round) to "incarnate" and be killed according to a prophecy that It had issued previously.
As a result, It had a good reason to leave in a huff, taking all of Its team members with It. The rest of us got left behind to play the Game against each other, because, just to be funny, it locked us in. We are stuck playing by the same rules that humanity has to play by. We incarnate into a physical body, which eventually dies, and then we incarnate again.
Over the eons, we all gradually lost our memories of what we were, and became human.
Q. Why have you decided to tell your story?
A. Only recently did It forgive me and return that which it took from me, so that now I can remember who I was. I'm still not quite where I was before losing the round in Babylon. I'm working on it, and my old rival, and most beloved twin is helping with that.
Once all of us "fallen angels" remember, can we return to playing the Game. By telling my story, I hope to trigger their memories, as well. They'll have to ask forgiveness on their own, but first, you have to remember enough to know that you have a need for being forgiven. It hates when players cheat against it in the Game.
Q. So cheating is against the rules?
A. Rules? What rules? The only rules are the rules of the system that is the playing field. And as with any game, those can be bent or broken. Cheating has always been a big part of the game. The trick, though, is to not get caught doing so.
Q. I see. And where are the rest of the Ashtars?
A. All around us. The ones who merely lost the Game, are in all countries, and in all religions, as well as none. The ones who got busted for cheating are involved in religions and belief systems that are based on the Game. The ones who lie, cheat, fleece their flocks, and act badly, are those that you would call "fallen angels".
Q. I think I know of a few.
A. Yes, that video you saw the other day of the so-called ascended master of light, or whatever she calls herself, who was engaging in a tantrum of swearing, giving the camera the finger, and telling people to kiss her fat ass, was a fallen angel. Don't let that light and love and Namaste stuff fool you. That's for the suckers, and it always has been.
Q. Thank you for answering my questions, Ashtar Khreth. I look forward to beginning the NaNoWriMo project this weekend.
A. As do I.
And that was an interview with a fallen angel, who has an interesting view of human history.
Laura Adams
(1831 words that don't count towards my novel count)
Q. We've been hearing a lot about Ashtar Sheran in the New Age community, after Blossom Goodchild's prophecy turned fiasco? Who or what does the word Ashtar signify, and what, if any, is your relationship to Ashtar Sheran?
A. That's a complex question. I will try and distill it down into a reasonably simple answer using concepts which will be familiar to you. Ashtar Sheran, and all of those of us who are referred to as "The Ashtars" are the what you would call the children of it that you call your God, Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, etc. Our preferred names for It are the Great Architect or the Grand Creator, because It built this remarkable creation you call Earth with such precision and attention to detail.
We are It's servants, It's emanations, and It's messengers, and the word "Ashtar" encompasses all of those. In the Greek language, we were known as the "Angelos", more commonly referred to as "angels". That word supplanted the word Ashtar, so that for a very long time, it was forgotten.
Ashtar Sheran, and all the rest of us are siblings, in a very profound way. Originally there was only ONE, but that ONE became lonely, and thus, It became TWO. And each of those two was also one, and in time they became two.
Q. I'd better clarify because in addition to receiving words in this telepathic transmission, I'm also receiving images. What I'm seeing are paramecium reproducing by one splitting into two.
A. Exactly. The way that single-celled organisms, and all multi-celled organisms reproduce at the cellular level is how our kind reproduce. That's why we all look alike. How else to create something in your image, but by dividing yourself in twain?
Q. So, Ashtar Sheran is your twin, then.
A. One of many. All of us are twins. And although there often arguments over which was the original ONE, and which is the "child" of the other, it really doesn't matter. When we first reproduce, each of us is completely identical to the other.
Q. Got it. Are you from another planet then? Some alien world? Did you arrive here in a space ship or "lightship"?
A. Not really, people involved in that belief system have been watching too much SciFi channel. Galactic Federation of Light, indeed. We exist in a non-physical reality, that you would call "another dimension". In that reality, there is nothing physical, only the illusion of it that we can create or not, as we see fit. We do not have physical bodies, because the physical is only an illusion.
Q. I don't understand. Please don't tell me you are talking about something like the Q from Star Trek.
A. *laughter* Actually, that is as close a metaphor as I can find in your memory, so it will have to suffice. From the nothingness that exists in the non-physical reality, we create our homes, our playgrounds, and our gaming fields. And although they can appear to be real and solid, they are in fact no more real than a dream, which can also feel real while you are in it, but when you awaken, it is only a memory.
Q. Are you talking about "virtual reality"?
A. Exactly. Our thoughts have the power to create these virtual realities such as this planet, just as your throughts have the power to create computer programs that simulate your reality.
Q. (Okay, my brain really hurts now.) So, the Earth isn't real?
A. What is reality? It is a subjective experience. And to those experiencing it, it is real, but to those on the outside looking in, it is only an illusion.
Q. (This is getting way too deep for me. I'm a writer not a philosopher.) So, how did you come to be living in this reality like the rest of us, if you are a powerful alien from another dimension? (And why does this keep sounding more and more like Star Trek?)
A. I'll answer your unspoken question first. I heard that. I can only explain things using terms and metaphors that will be familiar to you, and since you've watched a lot of Star Trek, I am utilizing them.
I won't get into all of the details, but suffice it to say that those of us who are known as "fallen angels" or the Ashtars who got left behind, are those who are imprisoned here for our own hubris. We thought we could get away with more than we could.
In my case, I switched sides as a result of a setback in the Game. And although I've regretted it ever since, it put me on the losing side, and I've been locked into playing the Game until I can figure a way out of it, or until the other Ashtars return to start another round.
Q. The Game? What is the Game? Is it Battltoads? Or have I just lost it for thinking about it?
A. The Game is the only thing that has kept us sane for all of these endless eons. Humans long for immortality, but quite frankly, there is nothing more incredibly boring than being immortal and non-physical. As soon as there were enough of us in existence to become bored, we developed the Game.
It isn't a set group of rules, there is no specific playing board, and no little cars and shoes and hotels on Boardwalk. Instead, it is something that we continually changed and evolved.
The reason this entire world was spun out of nothingness by the Grand Creator, was for us to have a new reality upon which to play the Game against each other. While it was still being created, the Game was Creation vs Vandalism, and we chose up sides and some helped with the Creation of the gaming field, others did everything possible to vandalize the Creation. Usually by making it funny in some way.
Q. Vandalism? How can you vandalize a planet?
A. Some things were small and obvious, like taking a camel and manipulating it genetically. The long neck was funny. Turning it yellow and adding spots...The duck-billed platypus was a committee effort. Causing the one single continent that was to be the playing field to slowly split apart was more subtle, and infinitely more humorous.
Q. So, once the Creation was completed, how did you play the Game?
A. Then it became a game of Civilization building. And when that palled, there was the War Game.
Q. So, you fought against each other? Is that what they meant by the War among the Angels?
A. No, we didn't fight one another directly. The first thing we did when we started playing the Civilization Game was to enslave the humans and breed up armies of soldiers, among other things.
Q. I see. Please continue.
A. At some, the Game got out of hand, because some of my siblings started mating with the humans. And others of us were performing genetic engineering on them and combining them (in a laboratory) with other species.
Q. That sounds like some of the stories I've heard about "Atlantis".
A. Of course. Atlantis was one of the many, many city-states that existed during that phase of the game.
It was at this point that the Grand Creator decided it was time for a new round of the Game and wiped the playing field clean.
That's when we started a different Game. The Religion Game. Most of us became Gods. I signed on to Jehovah's team, along with Ashtar Sheran (who was going by the name the Metatron at the time) and others of us. It was playing to win, and everyone wants to be on the winning side in the Game.
Q. Naturally. What happened?
A. The Babylonians won a round when they sacked Jerusalem, and I ended up on their team. That was when Jehovah found out that I'd been cheating and playing on more than one team at once. I wasn't the only one.
A few lost rounds later, and Jehovah set us all up to lose. It arranged for another of the Ashtars (he was called Jesus during that round) to "incarnate" and be killed according to a prophecy that It had issued previously.
As a result, It had a good reason to leave in a huff, taking all of Its team members with It. The rest of us got left behind to play the Game against each other, because, just to be funny, it locked us in. We are stuck playing by the same rules that humanity has to play by. We incarnate into a physical body, which eventually dies, and then we incarnate again.
Over the eons, we all gradually lost our memories of what we were, and became human.
Q. Why have you decided to tell your story?
A. Only recently did It forgive me and return that which it took from me, so that now I can remember who I was. I'm still not quite where I was before losing the round in Babylon. I'm working on it, and my old rival, and most beloved twin is helping with that.
Once all of us "fallen angels" remember, can we return to playing the Game. By telling my story, I hope to trigger their memories, as well. They'll have to ask forgiveness on their own, but first, you have to remember enough to know that you have a need for being forgiven. It hates when players cheat against it in the Game.
Q. So cheating is against the rules?
A. Rules? What rules? The only rules are the rules of the system that is the playing field. And as with any game, those can be bent or broken. Cheating has always been a big part of the game. The trick, though, is to not get caught doing so.
Q. I see. And where are the rest of the Ashtars?
A. All around us. The ones who merely lost the Game, are in all countries, and in all religions, as well as none. The ones who got busted for cheating are involved in religions and belief systems that are based on the Game. The ones who lie, cheat, fleece their flocks, and act badly, are those that you would call "fallen angels".
Q. I think I know of a few.
A. Yes, that video you saw the other day of the so-called ascended master of light, or whatever she calls herself, who was engaging in a tantrum of swearing, giving the camera the finger, and telling people to kiss her fat ass, was a fallen angel. Don't let that light and love and Namaste stuff fool you. That's for the suckers, and it always has been.
Q. Thank you for answering my questions, Ashtar Khreth. I look forward to beginning the NaNoWriMo project this weekend.
A. As do I.
And that was an interview with a fallen angel, who has an interesting view of human history.
Laura Adams
(1831 words that don't count towards my novel count)
Monday, October 13, 2008
Improve your book titles with Titlescoring
According to lulu.com's Titlescorer, the new title I chose for my NaNo has a 69% of being a bestselling title. Which is much better than the title of my self-help book. That only has a 23% chance of being a bestselling title.
Check out the Titlescorer.
Or, pit two titles against each other in Mortal Title Kombat.
Laura
Check out the Titlescorer.
Or, pit two titles against each other in Mortal Title Kombat.
Laura
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