Edith Fiore

On the one hand, I like general history and normal politics and crap, but weird stuff appeals to me occasionally. It’s true I do mock the paranoid side of alien studies; it’s easy. (And fun!) But the funny thing is, and this is obvious in retrospect but easy to forget somehow: the aliens are scientists. So maybe the aliens are celestial scientists; and maybe the aliens just want to lead us into the light. Of course, alien studies is weird, but that’s ok. It’s ok to be an alien.

…. I mean, obviously it’s a little fanciful, not that I’m saying this can’t happen, but clearly to most people, it does not. So you’re going past the direct approach in a book like this—how’s your mother, etc…. Obviously. But then, thinking too much about the same thing, even if it’s important, can be a control technique and counter-productive—really ‘pressing’ into the baseball bat or whatever. And it does teach certain things, I guess, like accepting the other, in my opinion, is something you have to face if there are aliens. (And not necessarily something you get from sports, for example, in my view.)

And although this is not a breakthrough book for me or a lot of people, I don’t think it claims to be something it’s not, which is more than you can say for some Solve Your Life books. (My pet crusade is Course In Miracles teachers being codependent.) Actually although Edith Fiore is obscure or whatever, I’d say her big good point must be not claiming to be anything that she’s not, since she pretty much just hands you the therapy transcripts and let’s you decide for yourself if some big theory ought (or ought not) to be extracted from them.

…. I guess sometimes aliens are dubious, but what are you going to do. (They eat meat!) I guess I don’t really care a lot if something is weird or freakish or not. Anybody can be weird, but it’s normal for an Aquarian to just not be able to tell the difference between the normals and the freaks. Maybe if you write a book about me, you could call it, ‘Ordinary Aquarian’. I’ll let you think of a subtitle, which obviously depends on your discipline or thesis or whatever. The part before the subtitle just sounds cool, although that’s the most important part.

…. Ironically, (that word we use mechanically when writing essays for dick-face instead of writing essays to fucking write Good essays), strangely, I mean, as I’m sitting here thinking about anger and victimization (not like a story: write me a formalistic five paragraph essay about why you’re angry, said dick-face, as though anger were something you explained, and felt after long and studied reflection), I started the one where the guy likes the aliens. I think if there are people or whatever out there, some of them must want to bring us into the light, and even if they don’t, the experience is meant for our good by the One, you know. But a lot of the stories are like, I don’t know who the fuck these people are or why they’re like that, and I don’t want to know them if I don’t know why the fuck they’re doing these things—you know. And that’s our attitude to a lot of things, a lot of people….

—For a moment your eyes open and you know
All the things I ever wanted you to know
~I don’t know you, and I don’t want to~
Till the moment your eyes open and you know
/Keane, Your Eyes Open

I remember when I heard that line, when I thought, you know, Love is a Squish-mellow; it’s Brit-pop…. And I was like, Oh!

Accidentally good music choice lol.

But yeah—the other. It’s like, Fuck the other; wipe em out. That’s what we think.

Paranoia is not, shall I delicately and Darwin-like say, adaptive, and it’s NOT the Love of God….

I don’t know, things go the way the way they go, you know; things exist, existence is good—Deus est Ens and all that….

And sometimes it’s nice just to have the Koran, you know. Surely God knows best what he reveals, you know…. But surely most of them do not know.

You know. I don’t know, you can’t say it fairer than that, right.

I mean….

People should love the aliens, but they can’t really love Anything, so what can the aliens do, with their little rays and their scientific inquiry….

We’re just angry people telling ourselves we’re solid, but scratch that person, and a whole world is out to get them.

“…. and ye thought corrupt thoughts, and were a corrupt people.”

And they say ‘Islam’ means ‘surrender’, and for some people, it’s actually supposed to be a good thing….

“…. Is it any wonder I don’t know what’s right…. Maybe it’s a puzzle I don’t understand…. I, I always thought I knew, that I’d always have the right to, be living in the kingdom of the good and true…. All these days! After all the misery you made! Is it any wonder that I feel afraid! Is it any wonder that I feel betrayed!…. Is it any wonder I don’t know what’s right! is it any wonder that I feel betrayed!”

[Why, do I have to fly, over every town, up and down the line?
I’ll, die in the clouds above, and you that I defend, I do not love….

Where, will I meet my fate?
Baby I’m a man, I was born to hate.
And, when will I meet my end?
In a better time, you could be my friend….]

[And why’d you lie…. When you wanna die! When you hurt inside!
I don’t know what you lie for, anyway—
Now there’s nothing left to say.]

Ordinary Aquarian out.

…. I mean, it is a scary story, right. (“Earth is of no significance.”) But everything’s scary, just in different ways. Advertising is scary, and it’s the least secret thing there is, I guess….

I will say this. I’ve been psychotic, and examined by doctors who said, You’re psychotic, and I certainly believe them; I had delusions, both personal and political, and it was bad, so I’m not saying, ‘Believe whatever.’ (Incidentally I’ve never had any experience of aliens.) But in retrospect, I asked the psychiatrists how to tell the difference between delusion and reality, and the truth is, they have no idea. They don’t know what’s delusion, really; they just know what’s…. not normal.

I’m not saying they’re not alive, or whatever, (certainly not that they’re Bad), but if a psychiatrist were a tree, they’d be a tree the width of a sheet of paper, you know. Specialized to the point of disappearance, in certain aspects.

But it obviously matters, in relative terms, the state of scientific advances, as to whether life is broad or narrow, easy or hard, advanced and powerful or stunted and weak.

More philosophically, what matters really is what you do with the circumstances you’re given, as Albert Ellis was not not the first to discover, of course.

…. And I mean, just to play devil’s advocate, if people did Know (for the sake of argument), that there are aliens, it wouldn’t be good. The crackers would be demanding that we go to eat (I typed ‘war’, but ‘eat’, is better, lol, thanks, G-man) the Klingons or whatever even if they’re 1,900 times more powerful…. It would be a mess. “Did the aliens crucify Jesus? Did they kill my cat? Are they the reason my life isn’t an Abba music video?” Hysteria, you know.

But sometimes psychics do know things, and if they’re stable and moral, they can be quite good, you know…. Like I said, maybe the aliens want to help humanity’s evolution. And even if they’re cosmic Putins, God put them in our path for a reason. Assuming they’re there—but how likely is it really that the universe is empty, so to speak. Weird, yes. Empty, no.

Who knows—maybe if they’ve been around for a billion years they can teach us geologic wisdom, and how not to commit species suicide. You’ve got to have that mindset, I think, otherwise, it’s like…. You’d be afraid of magazine editors and impoverished illiterate Muslims. You’d be afraid of goats, you know. There’s no end to a pit like suspicion.

…. Of course, I’m not really advanced, you know. I still get putterthrash, I call it. (Sounds like a Narnia character, I know. Puddleglum and Putterthrash.) Like, I can be quite artistic when there’s no putterthrash, and even happy. I don’t know. Of course, coveting some shiny thing you haven’t been given is the problem. (Ooo, no putterthrash. Give, give!) Old Annie L says you shouldn’t feel like the worst is over, like it’s an assumption, a presumption, and not grateful, and that’s true, but, kinda I feel some gratitude anyway that it’s putterthrash and not ein Hitler gesang, Der Komedie der Hitler, you know. But I don’t.

You’ve just got to be entirely ready to have God take all these defects of character, that’s meditation just as much as a formal practice, you know. “Oh, I don’t practice integrity and surrender, I just (formal practice, mouthing weird theories, etc).”

But what would the aliens say?

(Even Noam Chomsky in one of his books I skimmed in my chauvie red phase, presented something briefly in the light of how it would appear to a hypothetical observer on Mars, like an atheist saint, you know, some person free of human prejudice.)

…. “And that she might know that the promise of God is true, though most of them know not.”

…. “They said, Our Lord knows that we are sent to you, and we have only our plain message to preach.

They said, Verily, we have augured concerning you, and if you do not desist we will surely stone you, and there shall touch you from us a grievous woe.”

I mean, obviously I’m handing you something that can be easily misinterpreted, if you want to be a fucker, you know.

Afterword: The aliens are presented as being very Platonic, unlike most human societies, which have been more Aristotelian, where, to speak very colloquially, you must just be a nut if you take the Republic seriously….

I guess I’m just too much of an Aquarian to like Aristotle. For Aristotle everything has to be in a system, and no one can be a freak, you know. Of course, I’m not saying he’s trivial, or whatever. Maybe I’m trivial. But, there you go. Not a peripatetic, even though I walk.… (más)

There’s a lot less philosophizing than the Brian Weiss book I read, but there is a little philosophizing (sorta) at the end, about which I will philosophize. (Of course, mainly it is a book of stories, but I will not try to describe them here.) Namely, she says that symptoms originating from a past life almost always come from the manner of death. Fall from a great height and die—get a fear of heights in the next life. Thus, it is a great thing to have a good death. (There is a brief description of a good death by someone who lived in a contemplative community.) Even if we die by accident or violence, which is probably not ideal, if our life is so ordered and blessed that in moments of crisis we are able to recollect ourselves, we might still have a good death. Easier imagined than done, of course. But certainly we should try to live so as to have no regrets. Then, we will have little to fear at the moment of death. Of course not everyone we meet or even value highly will be there with us when we die, but nothing we do should make our death more difficult. Of course, that doesn’t mean that people need to fear all the same things that they are told are bad—being different, etc. But whatever we think is good that we can do, we should do. Perhaps it doesn’t help to be told so, I don’t know. Certainly Edith herself doesn’t talk the way I do; I think she prefers the concrete nine times out of ten. The specific. But this is enough for me.… (más)