What are you not thinking about?

You don't know what you're not thinking about?

Then who does?

Conspiracy theory 1: the advertising industry is partially built on this. Frighteningly plausible.

Shake up your brain, get off of farmville, Warcraft, or whatever else, and do something else. Your mind is based on the past, is this the future you want to be preparing for yourself? Really?


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Doing less to save the world.

I understand and support the movement towards greener consumables, but we seem to have forgotten to simply consume less.

Energy can not be created or destroyed, simply exchanged or altered (assuming we have faith in physics). The energy we are spending on production of anything (green or otherwise) is still energy. Do things yourself, be happy with less (it's pretty easy). The people I've talked to who do more for themselves report feelings of fulfillment and pride in their work.

How many people do you know who recycle their paper and plastic cups and forks and such after microwaving dinner?

--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Plant care

To me, my plants (my bonsai in particular) represent my mindful focus on devotion and attention to slow moving things. Ever feel like you're racing around?

Remember, you are a slow moving thing. Pay attention.






--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Flowers and women

Ever really thought about flowers and how they do what they do? Simple example: a flowering plant, ready to reproduce (it's horny) creates a flower (puts on makeup and a short skirt) to attract bugs and other critters to it's nectar (sex!). These critters may have visited other flowers (potential mates) and are carrying their genetic information in the form of pollen (semen). Because these bugs may have visited plants with undesirable qualities, many flowers have developed the ability to sort pollen. That is, they completely ignore the pollen from plants of other species and are selective with the pollen from plants of their own species.

Because we, as physically mobile breeders, have the ability to observe and select the mate firsthand (how YOU doin' sweet stuff?) we have never developed the ability to sort semen inside the womb. That is, we sort the males before we get it on. We have developed, instead, selective relationships along with birth control methods.

Perennial flowering plants which are not healthy enough to produce healthy offspring often never create the flower at all, and wait until the next year.

As a mindful being, I wonder if the love created is as much the fruit as any potential offspring. The possible child is not the whole point, and is often irrelevant to the mating process among humans. The relationship itself is fruit sweeter than a cherry. If you're not prepared to make sweet fruit (separate human or otherwise) then perhaps you should wait for next season and become stronger yourself first. I didn't consider this an option for a very long time, and then I had that realization. I had thought I was taking care of myself, but wasn't aware enough of me to really know! I did separate myself from relationships (mostly) for a while before I found this love that's made me lucky again. I wouldn't have been prepared for this had I jumped in! I love myself, I'm ready to make fruit (though not a baby)!

Think about it, though thinking


rarely replaces doing.

--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Frustration

So I've narrowed down my failure at producing usable biodiesel so far to two possibilities: inaccurate measuring devices or insufficient temperature control during transesterification. So, I've ordered some graduated glassware in the appropriate sizes and rechecked the scales for accuracy. And I have a plan for maintaining the temperature during agitation.

That aside. We camped near home for the night on Friday, then headed out to the Touch the Sun music fest this weekend at the beautiful Stonehedge Gardens. We camped out there for the night, heard some seriously awesome performers so on so forth! If you're in that neck of the woods ever, be sure to stop by and support this incredible place. They never ask for more than they need, and they maintain so much life at that place. I hear they have some really very cool plans for a currently untouched section of the property involving community built living areas for people to live at the site.

Finally! The KOH arrives...

The KOH arrived last night! It took well over a week to get here, but it was over a holiday weekend, so I guess that's not completely ridiculous.

So, this morning I got up and prepared my methanol/KOH mixture. They weren't joking when they said it gets hot! So right now I have methoxide in a chemical jug on a humid day. If something goes wrong with this batch, I'm thinking it's most likely going to be excess water from the air. I'm hoping it's not that bad, since I started in the morning before the heat picked up all the dew and so on. I suppose we'll see!

We will return after a brief message from our sponsors, stay tuned!

Still waiting!

So, the KOH was ordered on 6/30, and it just left Texas today! Yar, I was hoping to get started on the processing today, but instead I get to look over all of the instructions, the chemistry, make sure I have all of the other required ingredients and equipment, and busy myself with other matters (such as a very hot day with dry tomato plants, or this blog).

As I'm looking it all over again, I think maybe I should stop! I need to stop thinking about it until I'm ready to start. As it is, I've looked over it all to know that the KOH is all I need, and rerereading those safety warnings is just making me nervous about, well, safety! But I know I've taken all of that into account too, so really... I'm just working myself up over it all.


WARNING

Making Biodiesel requires the use of flammable, toxic liquids and strong caustics to make a fuel. No matter what safety precautions are put in place or what equipment you use, making biodiesel will never be a safe hobby and can place you, your property, and your family at risk of injury or even death. Make Biodiesel at your own risk.

New direction

Due to my tendency to experience rather than record, I've been slacking on blogging. Which, for a wannabe blogger is a sin. Instead, I'm broadening the scope of topics.

Here you will find a more complete view of me and mine. I do consider myself a god, but I also consider myself an insect. Both are simultaneously true despite being (because of being?) logically inconsistent. Human minds work associatively more than logically. Those who believe themselves to be purely logical creatures (as I have before) are less powerful than those who can be fully logical, fully illogical, or any middle combination. You'll find whatever comes to mind, whenever it comes to mind, here. Welcome to my mind dump! Have a look around.

Next topic at hand:
I've escaped wage-slavery, my time is no longer measured in dollars and cents. I'm working towards a goal of living sustainably mostly-off-grid altogether, eventually. We run a business, this is going to be a whole lot of work! We have a whole bunch of godly tasks in front of us. This is only fitting for a couple of gods, naturally.

There's a whole lot that goes into this. Our living arrangements are big, but they're on hold until we acquire our own plot of land. Our food is largely in the same boat, I'm living on someone else's property and as such I can only have a small garden. I already have a compost pile that is hot and active most of the time, though I'm having a raccoon problem recently...

So, until the land is available, my task is to successfully master the process of producing biofuel for the work truck. In time, we plan to trade my car in for a diesel Jetta or something similar, and acquire diesel fueled equipment for the company.

I'm starting with high quality materials in small amounts until I'm comfortable with the process, with the intention of building my own processor. This will stay relatively small (20 gallons or less at a time) until, again, we acquire our land. Currently, I'm going with a simple single stage base reaction using methanol. Eventually I'd like to make the switch to using self-produced ethanol, as methanol is yet another petrol product. The ethanol is simply adds a whole difficulty level to the processing of the biofuel, though, which I'm not quite ready for!

I've decided to use KOH instead of NaOH for the lye. It's also possible to make the lye at home, but it's difficult to measure the strength and purity and chemical content and, as an added bonus, the byproduct from using the more pure KOH is compostable! Not much KOH is needed, and it's not particularly expensive. The homemade lye has enough unknown chemical components that, at least for the foreseeable future, I'm going to avoid it.

I have gotten my information from a whole bunch of places, but for the most part I'm following the beginner's instructions found at Journey to Forever, who seem to be a really great resource for anyone looking to improve the quality of life for the planet! Really neat stuff they do over there, they are worth checking out for all sorts of reasons.

Ok, that being said. I have everything I need except the KOH, which I ordered online from a soapmaking distributor. With the holiday this weekend, I'm hoping that it shows up tomorrow.

The methanol I have for my first small test batch is HEET gas-line antifreeze, which it turns out is exactly the same stuff I'd get from the racetrack or if I ordered it online from a biofuel distributor. I'm using two #2 plastic containers, the proper sort of plastic for this kind of chemical reaction. Who would have figured that the jugs my kitty litter comes in would turn out to be the right sort of thing to live again as biofuel processing mini-tanks?

A completely different consideration, but easily as important, is the legality of the whole deal. Again, because of the holiday weekend, I wasn't able to get ahold of anyone at the PA tax office to ask my questions about the road tax and whether I need a fuel blender's license, as I've heard about from other states. This/these phonecall(s) will be made tomorrow.

As it is, I'm doing some waiting right now. I invite you to come on back and see what happens! I'll be posting some pictures of the process and anything else that comes up in the next few days.

I think the proper focus will allow this god to be a better blogger.

Cheers! Live free and happy.

Autexousious

Major life changes in godhood.

In order to continue on a path of growth, the word "own" and the word "serve" must be synonymous. They must only differ in connotation from the words "love" and "fear", which themselves are synonyms, differing only in connotation.

I serve and love another god. He owns me, I fear him. Try that again using the transitive property and the above paragraph.

This is not the heartsick ramblings of a little girl. This is the realization of a god. We fought a mighty battle, and we both were victorious. We stood together before, now we move forward together.

God bless, but only if you're deserving.

In order to be a god, one must first have been a man or a woman. In order to be a man or a woman, one must first murder the child within. If you're unsure what this even means, or whether you have done so, I suggest starting with Jungian archetypes. I don't agree with the content, but the structure taught me a way to look at myself, and others, and know something about them that I hadn't been able to discern before.

Look at yourself. Be honest.

Being a god is becoming mainstream.

Even Oprah advocates active will to create and change your world.


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Understand Mu

Understand mu before you create anything. -Autexousious

The following is an excerpt from the Principia Discordia

= ZARATHUD'S ENLIGHTENMENT =

Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers.

One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.

"Tell me, you dumb beast." demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile. What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?"

Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU".*

Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily because nobody could understand Chinese.





--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Laws of Thought

Anyone who has taken a logic course, computer programming course, and many who have taken a philosophy course, (along with self-taught students of logic) will recognize the Laws of Thought. 

A) The law of identity (A=A)
B) The law of non-contradiction (A =/= ~A)
C) The law of the excluded middle (A or ~A, but not both)

I want to be clear... This is dogma. It is not objectively true. In fact, there has been great and solid arguments against them. In the time of Parmenides and Heraclitus, it was argued that the formulation of the "law" of non-contradiction was a disgraceful step away from true science, which was based on sensory experience. Heraclitus argued that since things change, not only may they contain their negation, but that they MUST! But, Parmenides wanted to know things, and know them for certain. Unfortunately, the things we encounter in our lives are neither fixed nor certain, and many of them contain irreconcilable contradictions.

Pythagoras wanted certainty, too. Mathematics gave him these. And Plato retreated to otherworldly forms, which do not and can not exist in this realm. It was Plato who put the first restrictions on the law of non-contradiction, "in this respect" or "right now" or "at this place" which others were happy to grant him, as these restrictions made it so that the law of non-contradiction could only describe the tiniest, most insignificant specks of what any given thing "is" or "is not".

(Paraphrased from here, which goes into much more recent and thorough objections to all three laws)

What I'm getting at here is that the people who are the most difficult to talk to about shaking off dogma and living "outside the box" and being creative and furthering our species (no, the whole world) are those who seem to think themselves removed from dogma. Those who are convinced that their religion is not dogmatic, and that there are no rituals, and that everything they believe is objective fact. They tend to be atheists.

Now, I've already stated in an earlier post that I think that the similarities between atheism and autotheism are too significant to ignore, and that there is a kinship between the belief systems. However, I have never met someone who believes themself to be a god, without realizing that they create their own myths, legends, ritual, et cetera. I have never, personally, met an atheist who believes that the scientific method is a ritual, or that the above mentioned laws of thought are dogmatic, or that there is any belief that comes out of science that is a problem to accept (because everything that comes out of science is equally subject to testing and failure).

Dogma is generally defined as "prescribed doctrine", or the stuff you believe because some authority told you to. Science has no "authorities", according to these atheists I have met, and you only choose to believe what is verifiable. I don't know a single atheist who is also a scientist and only believes what they, themselves, has verified. On the other hand, I know two research scientists who work at Virginia Tech who are deeply spiritual and generally doubt the results of their own research.

As your doctor, therapist, and friend, I suggest that you consider your dogmatic assumptions. What are they, where do they come from? If you can't come up with any, you're so deeply steeped in your dogma that you have come to believe that you have none. If you can't come up with 15, go talk to a clergyman of any belief system you do not belong to (DON'T BE RUDE, most of the time they're tickled that someone is interested) and ask them questions until you identify 15 or more things that you don't believe and then figure out why you disagree, if you disagree based on information some enigmatic "authority" gave you, you may be finding your dogma. If you are unwilling or unable to find a clergyman, try a magazine or website. If you yourself are liberal, try Reader's Digest (one of the most widely read conservative publications in the world, despite the fact that they will not identify themselves as conservative). If you are conservative, try Democratic Underground (who may or may not appreciate me sending conservatives their way, but I think that the folks I know over there would appreciate me trying to shake up unchallenged dogma in anyone, even them, if they took time to think about it!)

This is the point, dogma is inevitable, we are going to believe stuff based on what "science has found" or what the "pope decrees" or what the "reliable sources" say. We all are. Dogma is only really dangerous when it goes unchallenged and untested. If we accept what "science has found" then no new science ever happens. (Some of the most interesting science I've been learning about recently is based on using plants as lie detectors, because plants may have the ability to pick up emotional signals broadcast by people, animals, and other plants around them. The implications of this are huge, if it's reliable. But, if the scientists working on this had accepted the dogma of plants being largely unaware of their surroundings, these questions never would have come up).

Believe something different. For example, if you have (up to this point) accepted those laws of thought as immutable, believe that everything contains it's contradiction, all the time. Everything red is also not red, every father is also not a father, etc.

Got me thinking

My last post got me thinking about other ways I have actively willed my body to change. I was going through my notebooks from the past few years and found mention of my eyes.

Early in my experimenting with "mental body mod," my eyesight was rapidly worsening. I was getting new prescriptions for glasses twice a year, even three times one year. I started to regularly (several times a day, for 15-45 minutes, every day) take off my glasses and intently try to focus on something just barely beyond my range of focus, usually a pen or other handy object. When I was able to successfully focus on it (which was rarely, at first) I tried different methods of inducing physical pleasure. The more intense, the better. I incorporated everything from chocolate to orgasm for this part. Within a few months, I visited my optomitrist. He did the regular checks, and then did them again. He was delighted to tell me that, not only had my eyesight not worsened, but he wrote me a new prescription that was weaker than before (telling me not to get new glasses unless I started having headaches). Another six months, another appointment: no change from previous prescription (no improvement or decline). One more time, a year after I started doing the exercises (although I hadn't been doing it as often) my eyesight was stable. I had been expecting to be legally blind by that point. Now, several years later, still no significant change to my prescription!

Again, there's nothing solid to say that I didn't simply mature and my eyes stopped changing of their own accord. There's also nothing to say that I did not affect physical change based on my mental will.

Think about it. Try it (not just once, make it nearly habit!) and let me know whether you have more situational evidence!

Cheers!


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Something practical

I have spent a lot of words here talking about head-in-the-clouds philosophical approaching-dogmatic largely useless stuff. I've had a very practical, down-to-earth day, and feel like sharing that!

About a month ago I injured my shoulder. It was a whole lesson in godhood. (And being home hopped up on pain killers was the perfect time to start blogging!) I could have avoided the injury, but I doubted myself! I know this sounds fluffy again, but that's what happened. I have, through study and practice of martial arts, taught my body how to do some precise physical motions, including several styles of rolls. These are useful for everything from escaping from someone attempting to hurt you to cracking that one tight spot in your spine. I had one such spot in my back from work, and began to fall intothe roll. At the last second, I thought, "that's not how you do it..." and made a conscious adjustment to my body placement. Suddenly, all of the momentum that wa supposed to be horizontal, parallel to the ground, was redirected straight into the ground. I knew before I even hit the ground that it was all wrong, but neither my body nor my mind was quick enough to make the correct readjustment. I knew by feel the right way, but had not practiced how to recover from doing it the wrong way.

This isn't quite all. I immediately stood up, thinking that that hurt a whole lot, but it'd stop hurting soon. And I executed another roll, perfectly. Flawlessly!

And then I sat down on the mossy area nearby and, until I tried to move, thought the my shoulder was going to just be badly bruised and very very sore. Then I went to stand up... I stopped short of even moving my arms to balance myself.

I did get up, very carefully. And I went to bed, lying very very still. I knew that when I woke up, I'd be fine.

That being said, when I woke up I had tears in my eyes and I started to sit up, but the shift in position shot paralyzing pain from my shoulder to every other inch in my body. It's not quite the worst pain I've felt, but it wasn't good.

I woke up my love and asked him to see if it looked like I'd dislocated it. Nope. But it wa rather swollen. He insisted on taking me to the doctor, where they did x-rays and gave me good pain meds. Turns out I had managed to separate the three bones that make up the shoulder so that there was an extra inch in every direction. They told me that it could take months to heal and be fully useful.

Today, I painlessly and strongly shoveled several tons of gravel and manually moved large stones. And the doc says I'm healing up nice and solidly, much faster than expected.

I have been using my body awareness, self-massage, and meditation techniques to will extra blood circulation to the area, will swelling to stay down. I used several different techniques to focus on minimizing swelling, encourage the bones to migrate and the muscles to tone. It's only situational evidence that any of that works, but it gave me belief in my godhood out of one of my least godly acts recently.

--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Me, you, us, god, identity, power, and control.

As a god, you must realize something.  You are in control.  If you don't do something about it, then no one is in control.

One of the fears coming down through generations is a god who created the world, and then forgot about us or died or is for some reason absent, powerless, or disinterested in the world.

Is this the world in which you want to live?  Those things of which you choose to be aware are the things of which god is aware (whether you buy wholesale my ads about you being god, and me too).  If you choose to ignore something, you have removed god's awareness of that, and god can not act on it.  Try and become what you already are.

In the great words of Christopher Robin, "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

The day you believe that is when you realize infinity.  Once you do that, and I do that, then We are God.  Each person who chooses to identify Self with Other is one more aspect of God.  If the identity is true and sincere, this god may be wrathful, and may be merciful, and may not make any sense sometimes, but it is a god I can get behind and worship with my whole self, knowing that this god has my best interests, and the best interests of every creature and thing there is in all of existence...


ok, sorry, off the soap box now. 


What do you think?  Any reasons you want to tell me I'm totally off my rocker?  Or can I do anything to help you to believe that belief is a tool that you control, and if you don't control it, then it will control you (and, transitively, control god)?  Any comments, questions, concerns, insults, compliments, flames, or non-sequitors?

Long line of folks...

The following is from a conversation transcript with a friend while we were discussing godhood. Some of the content is repeated, but I kind of like the way I put stuff.

I follow a long line of folks claiming to be god, so far I have been neither executed nor institutionalized. I also don't deny the possibility that anyone else can be god, simultaneously, nor do I doubt that many others already do. In fact, my beliefs on this matter seem to align very closely with atheist claims about godhood. I simply reverse it into a spiritual context (god = anyone who wants to work to claim godhood) rather than a nonspiritual one (god is no one). I also don't hold it rationally inconsistent that both of these are simultaneously true. Along with many other prima facie contradictions.

Now you've got me rambling. In the same way that you might feel badly for doing something, even though you don't think you've done anything wrong per se... I identify, as a god, with everything and everyone I encounter. I am equal, identical, with my car, as well as the squirrel I ran over. A wrong done by accident is a wrong to my own person. I identify with people who inspire nothing but disgust in me... A wrong to a despised person equals a wrong to my own person.

Considering this identity alongside Rawls' veil of ignorance... If I can truely manifest godhood within myself, I have neatly attained the position of ignorance that Rawls' believed to be tantamount to ethical behavior. In this case, though, I don't have to consider the theoretical matter of "what if I didn't know who I was in the situation?" because I don't. My awareness may be centered in this body, but my consciousness is not centralized.

Anything conscious of it's own being is identical to me and my consciousness, though awareness may differ. "whatever you did not do for the least among you, you did not do for me"

Looking at different religions' scriptures is fun from this perspective too. Considering my perceived distinction between things indistinct, the christian trinity is interesting... The Everything, the aware creature with corporeal body, and the nothing. Father, son, ghost. Mind, body, "spirit".

If you want something interesting to do for a day, a weekend, or the rest of your life: try suspending your belief that you are not god... keep in mind what you've learned so far in life, and don't completely disregard those lessons (you shouldn't sit in traffic and expect the car not to harm you, etc). But forget that you're not god, don't just pretend you believe, use the tool of belief and be god. If the belief is not useful to you, discard it and try something else.


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Identity vs. Equivalence

Equality does not necessitate identity. Things not the same can be equal, or equivalent. Perhaps equivalence is greater still than true equality.

Sometimes double standards are not only acceptable, but good and necessary.


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Prescription.

The majority of our actions can be traced back to a subconscious desire (for freedom) in conflict with habit, an obedience to inherent fatalism which hangs on "good and bad" actions already committed (in past existence) against a preserved morality and whose reaction gives expression as spontaneity, involuntariness, autonomy, the deliberate, etc., as the chance arises.
-Spare

Austin Spare, Jacob Moreno, Robert Wilson, the cabbage/robot fallacy, the archer's target fallacy, Apple's advertising (if not their policy), Jesus, the Dalai Lama, etc. All suggesting that maybe, perhaps, sponteneity (breaking habit, think different, desire for freedom, and so on) plays a key role in improving the quality of life among individuals and groups. All hinting that the things we believe (and for what reason? because we haven't been taught to believe any other way) need to be examined.

Think about everything you DON'T think about. This is what you do habitually while you're thinking about other things. Everything from how you sit, through the tone in your voice when you speak, what brand of toothpaste you buy, who you seek for legal of medical advice, to what you accomplish in your dreams, and what you do for your livelihood. Of all of these things you do, how many of them were intentionally created by you? How many did you accidentally create through not-considering? How many were intentionally created by someone else?

How many do you like?

None of these are necessarily wrong, mind you.

These are the things that are literally running your life while you're busy with other things.

I would suggest, as your lawyer, doctor, therapist and life coach, that you should think about these questions for no less than ten twenty minutes each. Then practice being different.

You are what you practice every day. -Ghandi

What is a god? What makes something deified?

What is a god? Seems like this is a question that any individual god ought to be able to answer, right?  Let's give it a shot, and see how I measure up.  Feel free to compare yourself, you may gain some insight into what makes you different from one of the many gods living amongst you and your kind.

The question of what constitutes a god is one of those with as many answers as there are individual consciousnesses which consider the question.  Let's try starting from common ground.
If we begin by consulting the Random House unabridged dictionary, we find:

God (n)
1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.
2. one of several deities, especially a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.
3. (often lowercase) a supreme being according to some particular conception: the god of mercy.
4. (lowercase) an image of a deity; an idol.
5. (lowercase) any deified person or object.

Noting the male connotation (and my disregard to sex or gender in the aspect of deification) I checked out goddess next.

Goddess (n)
1. a female god or deity.
2. a woman of extraordinary beauty and charm.
3. a greatly admired or adored woman.

Both of these use the word deity as part of their definition, and in the interest of a complete definition:

Deity (n)
1. a god or goddess.
2. divine character or nature, especially that of the Supreme Being; divinity.
3. the estate or rank of a god: The king attained deity after his death.
4. a person or thing revered as a god or goddess: a society in which money is the only deity.

Common threads:
1) Created or controls the world or some part of the world.
2) Extraordinary characteristics
3) Veneration, reverence, or adoration

Perhaps I'm egotistical.  I have power, control, and influence among everything I become aware of, if I so choose. I have many distinctly venerable qualities: beauty, humor, ingenuity, intelligence, etc.  I have a congregation numbering between one (myself: god, high priest, and supplicant) and the total number of people I have ever encountered, depending on how you ask the question.  There are even stories told about me, some of them nearly legend and told in a manner reminiscent of ritual retellings of cosmogonic stories.

Aside from the dictionary definitions, I have already noted that, as an autotheist, I identify with the universe, and each other inhabitant.  I also sometimes deny my own individual ego in order to serve my greater self, but it can not be denied that I do have an individual ego.  I remember when I realized that the christian doctrine of the holy trinity on which I had been raised supports of my personal claim to divinity! I identify with the holy father who exerts his magic power to wrap chaos in order, and to stir up stagnation.  I identify with the holy spirit, which some call the universal consciousness, or the cosmic spark, or whathaveyou, the bit which words have failed to describe despite being older and more consistent than language.  I identify with the wholly human animal, bound within a body and a perceived physical environment which may or may not obey my command.

Some time soon, I hope to have enough readers to have at least one comment of each of these types for every post: flame, "wow, you're like, smart and stuff", skeptical arguments, etc. I'm interested to see where this whole thing develops.

Belief

Belief is a tool.  What I choose to believe at any time may not be what I choose to believe at another time.  Belief is powerful, but it is also meaningless.  Use it when useful; disregard it's existence when it proves useless (or worse, detrimental).  This is the grain of salt I offer you.

I = god.

What am I talking about? Defining autotheism: I = god.
(Whoa! Sounds like a crazy one!)
In general, I don't habitually advertise this little fact about myself
because I can see I may be easily misunderstood. That being said: when
it comes up, if the conversation continues (intellectually), I
generally get asked about the morality of believing yourself a deity.
I pose a question, assuming I know the answer:
Have you ever felt badly about having acted in a manner that you do
not find in any way reprehensible? And you try to "fix" it anyway?

This is how autotheists have ultimate morality. The autotheists (and
some buddhists, and god knows who else) identify with everything and
everyone. A wrong done to a despised person equals a wrong to his own
person. Thus, artfully achieving the Rawls-ian veil of ignorance.
Common critique of Rawls' veil includes the impossibility of such a
creature.
In this case, I am on every side of the veil, simultaneously. I
achieve ignorance through attempting thorough understanding.