God Killer
“Beware the man who would kill a god, the choir whispers, for he will never know peace, and he will drag the whole universe into war to keep him merry company along the way. He will stand before the throne, look the void in the eye, and laugh.” ~Okayophelia
Outflanked by false gods. Outpaced by religious gods. Overwhelmed by contemporary gods. What is a mortal soul to do against such immortal angst? Sit back and let the chips fall where they may? Possibly… Let the gods hang themselves from the noose of their own ignorance? Maybe… Pick a “side” and hope against hope that it’s the correct “side”? Perhaps, but not advisable.
So, what then?
Draw the sword of your own destiny from the hardened rock of your inner scapegoat. Unleash yourself. Go full-frontal boss mode on the fear-based world. Pull the red-hot poker of your own emboldened uniqueness from the fire and sear the outflanking gods right on the flank. Outpace the religious gods by getting so far ahead of the curve that they fall right off, like water off a duck’s back. Overcome the overwhelm of culture by outmaneuvering all so-called answers.
In short: Become a God Killer!
Hang the religious gods from a cross. Crucify them. Transform their blood into wine. Get drunk. Get mad. Get out from under the thousand-year-old oppression of gilded guilt, petty placation, and mock spirituality. Kill the tiny part of yourself that still believes it needs such parochial nonsense to survive.
Overcome the contemporary gods. As Nietzsche surmised, “What I understand of “philosopher”: a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.”
Indeed. Everything should be in danger because everything is in danger. Nothing stays the same. Nothing is certain. Nothing is secure. A good philosopher simply has the courage to point this out. A good philosopher understands that there are no absolute answers, only astute questions.
Challenge the Powers That Be. Strategically disobey. Recondition the cultural conditioning of others lest they collapse in upon their own cognitive dissonance. Be audacious. Be impudent. Be insouciant. In a world hung up on being secure, be explosive. Trigger the easily triggered. Beleaguer the bystanders. Drop colorful paint bombs into black and white thinking. Count coup on the Zeitgeist.
Murder all the false gods. Destroy all the gods claiming to be God. The only God is Infinity itself. The only God is the infinite interconnectedness of all things. Anything else is false, faux, fake, makeshift, crude, a derogatory stopgap, religious, and a mockery of God. Line them up on the high hill of your indomitable spirit and kill them with the firing squad of your Soul.
As Lenji Yixyuan said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
Any Buddha claiming to be the Buddha is false. Any Tao claiming to be the Tao is not the Tao. Any “truth” that can be named is not the Truth. Killing Buddha (false gods, religious gods, contemporary gods) on the road is vital to keep creative evolution in perspective, so as not to get hung-up on any particular notion of Truth.
The bridge to the Overman (the one who sees that God is the infinite interconnectedness of all things) is glued together by the bones of outdated gods and the burnt-out husks of outdated truths. As James Russel Lowell said, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.” So be it.
We are all architects of this bridge to some extent. Some of us are aware of it, but most of us are not. Most of us are cluttered and stuck in stopgap ideologies, fettered by false gods of all kinds. We’re clustered and bottlenecked before the crossroads. We cannot see the bridge through the smoke and mirrors of outdated reasoning.
Unable to individuate. Unable to self-actualize. Unable to self-overcome. Like pre-enlightened Rumis, we’re incapable of seeing that the door to our prison has always been open. We’re unable to see how everything is connected to everything else.
It’s only by killing false gods, by murdering your mollycoddling cultural conditioning, by destroying any given “truth” with the power of your own Truth Quest, that you finally realize that your prison cell was always open.
Sure, it will be scary as hell out there in the unknown. Sure, the existential dread of it might drive you crazy. Sure, it will take courage of the highest order. So what? Buck up, buttercup! There are Dark Nights of the Soul to wrestle into enlightenment. There are Hero’s Journey’s and Labyrinths to conquer. There are egos to put on a leash. There are cocoons to be annihilated in and reborn from. There are infinite masks to wear in your finite life.
Stop walking on the eggshells of your own soul. Stop with the whiney, woe-is-me, self-pity. Stop bowing at the feet of false gods. Stop waiting around for something extraordinary to happen and make something extraordinary happen. Live on purpose, with purpose. Ride like lightning, crash like thunder! Rise up and decapitate all false gods with the Question Mark Sword of your unconquerable soul.
Get out of your own way. Life is too short to remain tight in the bud of your comfort zone. It’s time to bloom. It’s time to come into your own. It’s time to discover your own soul despite what’s been spoon-fed to you by God-fearing men with fear-filled hearts and outdated values.
As Maitreya Friend said in The Holy Book of Destiny, “And when they seek to oppress you, and when they try to destroy you, rise and rise again like the Phoenix from the ashes, until the lambs have become lions, and the rule of darkness is no more.”
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By Jeff McAteer
About the Author:
Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.
This article (God Killer) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
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