...self importance is an appropriate tack for all people to take.

Not because it makes everyone *special*, but because it makes everyone and everything about them crucial.

If the universe is to be considered whole, then any part of it that goes missing sacrifices that wholeness. Everything must be accounted for. Everything must be conserved. Every hair on the head...etc.

A legal mind is not trained to see things holistically, but to continue in the Aristotlean tradition of fragmenting and classifying every scintilla of apparent reality, only to reassemble it into some sort of "Frankenstein's monster" representation of the truth.

That said, sometimes our caricatures of reality are helpful and useful. Especially when we are FULLY aware that that is what our characterizations are. However, by Einstein's physics and by just about every spiritual principle I can think of, we can never really know what ANYTHING is for. It is not physically, intellectually, or emotionally possible. The lack of humility inherent in ignoring this fact of quantum physics can be utterly stupefying.

Every time...and not once, but EVERY SINGLE TIME, I think we're getting somewhere together, one of ya'all will come back with an articulate argument that specifies, perhaps even to four decimal places, the vacuous nature of human ignorance -- the tragedy of its impact, the vastness of an entire worldview passing under our chins that is every bit beyond our wildest dreams of peace and harmony that we either completely ignore or act as if a steaming turd were being held under our noses.

Self important? Do you have any idea how critical to a complete whole your existence is? Of course not. And further, you have no idea when your intuitive knowledge that this MUST be so is inappropriately applied, resulting in still more confusion as to causes and their related effects.

No wonder you think Eric Schaeffer is a self-aggrandizing jerk. You see yourself in precisely the same way, only you hide this fact from yourself to the point where it becomes unrecognizable as coming from within you. So it only makes sense that you would project your guilt onto others and go on about your day. Just like everyone else who suffers from the hypnosis of social conditioning. It only takes two or more to make something seem real, but if enough of us get together, we can make ourselves believe some of the most innane, hyperbolic crap imagineable.

Exhibit One: The Immaculate Conception. 2,000 year old lie.

Exhibit Two: The Crucifixion and Resurrection. 2,000 year old lie.

Exhibit Three: The f*king Easter Bunny. See Exhibits One and Two, above.

Exhibit Four: The collapse of two 110 story buildings due to collision with a commercial jetliner and subsequent fire -- at freefall speed, no less.

Exhibit Five: It can't happen here. Exhibits One through Four coupled with the knowledge that American capitalist families, most noticeably two of our Presidents in recent years with the same last name, funded the rise and support of the Nazi state in Germany.

And so, yes, I am within reason to suggest that you are full of it. As you are, me.

So what sanctifies my crap over your's?

I can see Eric Schaeffer's body of work (with the possible exception of his blog and some of his behavior, neither of which I am inclined to become an expert on) and see the brilliance of our shared illumined beingness shining through. I have no compulsion to vacuum up every last speck of his human existence for subsequent critique and presentation as evidence of original sin and justification that he should be shunned, and then ignored. False prophet! False prophet! Crucify him! Release Barabas! I can consciously adjust my vision to see only what is relevant about people. I can include them as a crucial part of my mapping of reality. A holistic universe is restored and I have harmonized myself with it...to the best of my ability.

None of you, up to this point, has demonstrated to me, or anyone, that you can exhibit and demonstrate such an ability to choose wholeness. Therefore, I know you're full of it.

But rather than looking for the simularities between what you are thinking and feeling with what I am communicating as my thinking and my feelings, you choose, instead, to look for differences. Then you seize upon these apparent differences and build your case for a disjoint, alienated and alienating world.

And it is this that draws you back to this board, time and time again, like a moth to a flame. Because you know that there's something here that is true, something here that you identify with yourself. But, once accepted as your's, truth becomes known as whole. The internal earthquake of self realization hits and shakes your every perception down to your core.

There is only one kind of creep you need ever be concerned with, and that's the creep inside of you that only sees creeps as outside of yourself. S/He's the creep that knows where all the buttons are that throw you into panic mode, that disturbs your sleep or that makes your every waking moment and exercise in terror-avoidance. Own this inner troll and you get to see things far more clearly than you now do.

And you get to join us in the fellowship of the spirit. There's some booger picking and gnatty-assed thoughtless commentaries you have to overlook, but nothing will be forced on you. You will surrender it willingly once you can experience the benefits of seeing things holistically.*

* No, this is not the province of twenty-somethings whose faces haven't fully formed yet. This is, as Clapton once wrote, an experience that, "wears you down and bends your knees."