Initiation Ii: (The Black-And-White Edition)

By Victor Dmetrius Warren

The word God being the core element to Initiation, juxtaposed to its nonuse, this book will show its relativity. Pinpointing difference and need to be the psychological triggers that give rise to our moral to deviate behavior. With Initiation to guide you, contemplating race, culture, gender, and the significance of presence will enlighten one to the irrefutable constant that sustains religious belief. Beyond truth, there is but one constant and its knowledge is what we strive for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543470574

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Victor Dmetrius Warren.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2017918602

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-5434-7059-8

                            Softcover                          978-1-5434-7058-1

                            eBook                                978-1-5434-7057-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/26/2018

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1     Getting There From Here

Chapter 2     The Box

Chapter 3     Praying With Politics

Chapter 4     Acts Of God

Chapter 5     Conversations With The Divine

Chapter 6     The Spirit Of God

Chapter 7     Purpose

Chapter 8     Passing The Torch

Chapter 9     Think!

Chapter Ten     Until Then

My Favorite Works

References

And if a man goes through fire for his doctrine—what does that prove? Verily, it is more if your doctrine comes out of your own fire.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Preface

The title, the outside cover, the words, and the pages to this book are all black-and-white. These colors set the theme to emphasize that when it comes to belief systems, things are black-and-white with plenty of gray areas. The gray areas are also black-and-white, but until fully understood, they take on this title to represent the unclear, confusing, and uncertain. Nothing fully thought-out yields a variety of choices. There are options that fit within the framework of this or that, and all the unknowns will eventually be found within the black-and-white. The development of modern belief systems is predicated on the past ideas found wanting in their clarity and completeness. Initiation does not attempt to eradicate any belief system, as no book can. It is meant to provide a means to find understanding by which information is accepted or dismissed. In the beginning, life did not simply happen. One way or another, time and circumstance brought it about, and at some similar time, circumstance will bring about that which we search to understand, to know, to dismiss, and to accept. The term ultimate truth is a misnomer. Using the word ultimate allows one to assert that this truth will be the last word on the subject or will apply to everyone under all circumstances and in all times. The problem comes when we consider that all people do not have equal mental awareness or intellectual abilities to understand any idea all the same. Where the masses deem It’s just the way things are, someone with an assumed neurological malady based on the accepted norm will convince others that there is another way. When one searches to believe, there is no truth to find.

–Within This Book–

Within this book, one will find an exploration of the human condition as related to religion and belief systems. It will focus primarily on the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions based on their associations (common God, common characters, common themes, all predicated on belief). Your mind-set will determine its usefulness and value. It cannot make a difference in your life without you giving it a fair shake. If you truly want to make the purchase of this book worthy of your money, give it 100 percent of the effort you would want others to give if you wrote the book. If your ideals are worthy of you using them to take you through a fulfilling life, then this book will reinforce those ideals beyond question. Beyond the fallacies and mind games impressed upon one to steer one to the right or the left, there must be a key to decipher more than just reality. There must be a key to define truth—truth with a rational and meaningful all-encompassing understanding that will make sense without having to be explained to even the potential naysayer. You will be able to address any question that one may impress upon you with a clarity that will reveal your adeptness in the matter. Initiation is the go-to book for the inquisitive, the uninformed, the amateur, the professional, the sinner, the sage, and the seer. It offers no position for the candidate to decipher but information to gauge and to qualify any affected question or construction.

I often question my thoughts and actions about the psychological significance of why I have not abandoned this venture. This is the second book that I’ve written on the subject, and I’ve told myself this is the last time I’m going to deal with the subject, but every day, more information comes my way. Not just an underline of the mind-set I’ve accepted but relative, thought-provoking, troubling, and motivating enough for me to resend the idea of what has now come to be a dangling conclusion. I may indeed stop writing, but the cliff-hanger will exist well beyond its conclusion. When considering those who preceded me—my father, Albert Einstein, George G. M. James, Herodotus, Adolf Hitler, Thomas Paine, and other writers from disparate but relative fields—people who contemplated the same ideas and concepts but, in the end, left only a broader understanding but not closure, I question, what’s the point? At a point in my life, my condition had led me to say, Live and let live, because in my mind, it was the most rational, moral, or politically correct idea to cover or account for the disparity apparent in all belief systems, but at the same time, I also felt that lying and cheating were not admirable qualities. For the disenfranchised or, should I say, purposely ill-informed, I felt it was not fair that those with more information gained more advantages based on providential knowledge or, should I say, conditional information. The troubling aspect of this perspective was that, that was the whole basis of the game and that some must win, and others must lose. My upbringing or early instruction impressed fairness to be the governing element to all games. This made it difficult for me to play unfair to gain status. Knowing that I was an example to all whom I encounter, be it a negative or a positive example, I realized my actions influenced others. In my mind, I wanted to feel that I was doing the right thing to all that I encounter. Some would argue I was taught by suckers; ergo, I preach fairness! Others would argue that All things are fair in the scheme of things, even the things that others deem as unfair. That all people come from the factory with beating hearts, and that’s the basis of fairness. Everything from then on is simply the operation of living, and in the end, death for all is the other part of fairness. Based on the latter ideas, I have come to consider both sides of the coin—joy and pain, waste and gain—are elements of the tragedy and the fantasy. They dictate perspective and direction, determine cause and effect, and do not promise or deny one the Golden Ring. Under this guise, I can feel good about myself in knowing that I do not have to try to save that world. Consequently, I realize without a veil or pretentious rules, I am as human as the next guy. I think bad thoughts, lie, and do a host of other things that I understand are not righteous to those who understand the basis of judging. At the same time, I practice and project the attributes that those who understand the basis for judging deem as good. Even with my disbelief in the ways and means of others, I am seen by most as a virtuous person. I was once told that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything; finding an unshakable truth for a positive bearing in life is the thing that I have come to stand by, and until my thing presents itself, I will not allow the politics of another to change my mind.

CHAPTER ONE

GETTING THERE FROM HERE

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We all have two lives, the one we learn with and the life we live with after that …

—Bernard Malamud, The Natural

During one’s mental development, there are occurring themes that are accepted as societal norms or as standards. These standards are road markers that allow one to navigate both known and unknown territory. Innovative standards arise by conforming or dismissing standard models (physical, psychological, social, and spiritual, etc.). We use these standards to differentiate or determine what is and what is not acceptable, right, clean, beneficial, etc. When things conform, then we can adapt or use it to adapt to an event, action, or circumstance. Standards are important in negotiating the trials of life. Common ideas such as Robert’s rules of order, artist drawing from both internal and external inspirations, attorneys obeying the law they use in their practice, teachers learning from other teachers through consensus are widely accepted and established as standards. In analysis, an idea is focused upon for its characteristics and its association to other ideas. The method by which it is used and its effect on the user as well as the innumerable relative aspects of its value are considered. In general, people do not sit and contemplate the significance of everyday ideas. Yet in every professional discipline, we are taught to evaluate, investigate, survey, determine, etc., the how’s and why’s of ideas that challenge or affect the commonplace. In adulthood, we place people under the same devices to determine our safety or an assumed value of others’ characters. Regular and repeatable evidence is the mainstay for determining if something is real or a facsimile, worthy of use or useless, and whether something is considered true or false. Where we represent the good and foster its opposite, we are said to be wolves in sheep’s clothing; where we distort reality with deviate intentions or feign a contention as proof, we are said to be unrighteous, of ill repute, and wrong. A fallacy can change its nature in the eyes and minds of the ignorant or uninformed, but to those informed and aware who recognize the fallacy, it has no ability to influence beyond its true character. Under all pretenses, whether we adorn it with radiant colors, dress it up with the most poignant or intellectual expressions, or denigrate its character to beget the deepest compassion, it remains untrue.

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As an atheist/free thinker/heathen, I have found many other titles and variations on these titles. More so, I have found variations on the definition, motivation, and cause for those who assume the title. The base information or common theme sets the term to dictate the difference or set apart the core idea from other ideas. Under the same umbrella, one may find innumerable reasons that one would accept the term or reject the reasons that others attest to. If we reason that all people have atheist views relative to opposing or differing ideas or beliefs, then the point of considering if one form of religion is better than another becomes moot or even ridiculous. Just as others do, I color the black and white to my satisfaction. Unlike others, I have no enemy or opponent to abet my nonbelief—just ideas. I recognize and welcome the critics not to patronize or belittle but to enlighten and edify. I am not under obligation to vanquish or defend. I set my course in life based on my desire to know, exercise, and express the truth unencumbered as it exists to me. Just as I choose to listen to differing points of view and discern what is reasonable and what is not, I expect the same from others. Truth in a dualistic existence: it encompasses expressing a dual nature, a dual potential, and a dual perspective but not necessarily a dual outcome or even a different outcome. When one endeavors to eradicate or suppress either part of this duality, it is like cutting off one arm. The other arm compensates by becoming stronger to support itself against both other one-arm beings and two-arm beings. It also becomes stronger to take on all the task of life that two-armed people achieve with ease. Theology demands full devotion to tenets with limited expression. The hodgepodge of ideas only supports other ideas of the same nature. They do not enlighten one to an overall understanding of the religion, which it cannot, as prescribed, and must not to survive. When faith is the substitute for understanding, the future begets chance, where providence is not achieved but becomes the happenstance of a circumstance. We know this is not so. Chance cannot give providence to everyone even when all the rules are followed. Mine is to uphold that which gives bearing and meaning even within the context of religious dialogue. I am a man of words and ideas, with the skill to affect with calculated intent. I was once told that my ideology was a combination of contradictions constructed in a way to give meaning to the words of the King James Version of the Holy Bible as I saw them, not to the faith of the matter. The idea was totally on the money, but the person shot himself in the foot with the statement, for if there was ever a Freudian slip minus the faith of the matter, this was. Fragments can be brought together to form very attractive and useful creations (i.e., the Watts Towers, the pyramids in Egypt, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the movie The Matrix, the BMW 328I, the iPhone 7, the Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, the modern skyscraper, the passenger plane, and the King James Version of the Holy Bible). There was a time when I did not consider the usefulness of the King James Version of the Holy Bible; its utility was brought under scrutiny with prejudice. The cons greatly outweighed the pros without considerable reason, for my allies were truth and logic with no need for belief other than to preface the latter. As my encounters with irrational behavior and social scenarios that held no reasonable answers increased, I began to see the utility of the book in a different light. Although my ideology has not changed, I have become more accepting of the image of hope and crowd control that the book presents. I do know that the book can influence to the positive, whereby the blind becomes less blind and the afflicted is brought to see, accept, and live beyond the assumed past. I recognize the fact that many believers are very successful, kind, and a host of other ideas deemed positive. To me, the book is not about us versus them, or at least, it shouldn’t be. My human nature, conscience, and outlook on the whole spectrum of life is a testament to open-minded thinking (which also includes a host of negative ideas and behavior that I openly accept and sometimes project). I do know that a world without religions could presumably operate considerably better but must also consider the untested state might reveal its futility in an environment of humans not of one mind and of humans forbidden to exercise free will and self-expression. As I continue to reason the whereabouts of the elusive panacea, I look to the problems to reveal the answers, not unreasonable replies to the questions begotten of the problems. I hold tolerance and respect for the current maintenance authority and look to a future where the ideal becomes more real, or I can also say the current ideal becomes more unreasonable and, as a result, reasonable.

I’ve met so many people afraid of the light. Existence, presence, biological, psychological, and sociological maladies plague everyday people. Birth impresses the first pain of life, and to varying degrees, it continues throughout life even under the most reasonable, tolerable, or even ideal circumstances. Some people are afforded the opportunity to see beyond the pain and negotiate the maladies toward a presumed ideal life. With all the media at hand to illustrate and indicate another way, one would reasonably question, "Why do they not partake of the elixir and