Well, meditation works with medication, usually...

[brightlotusmoon]

Oh, son of Ammit who devours the dead under the Scales of Justice in the Hall of Two Truths in the house of Osiris. I was absolutely not expecting such a ferocious migraine to burst into the fibromyalgia flare, take over the party, get the cerebral palsy hypertonia drunk, and sit back and wait for some random symptom to explode all over the place until my neuromuscular system and musculoskeletal system get scorched. I would maybe curse Anubis and Osiris under my breath, but hell no, I can't.
All I can do is treat it as best I can and wait for it to pass. And hope that nothing gets too insane, because screaming and sobbing makes my throat hurt.
Besides, I am already backing away and crawling toward the Greek pantheon, because oh my various gods and galaxies, I need to feel better soon or the screaming may happen. I am about to cry out for Apollo, Artemis, Asclepius, Aceso, Aegle, and the Moirai themselves, because this is hard to breathe through.

...anyway, I'm going to take some heavy medical drugs and curl up now with my penguin and dolphin Pillow Pets. And my three cats.

Also, I need to copy this Facebook comment that I wrote, because it explains a lot about my brain, and I need to remember:

*Well, Mom was atheist while Dad was agnostic until he started leaning more atheist. They actually did "celebrate" Christmas and Hannukah, mainly because their friends did, and they wanted to raise me with overall world religion knowledge. I grew up believing that the Abrahamic god was just like the Greek gods, Egyptian gods, etc. Fallible, human-like, silly, weird, touchable in ways, in no way above and beyond human comprehension.
In fact, in elementary school, a classmate asked me what religion I was, and I said "Um, American?" because I honestly didn't understand. When I came home, mom gave me a giant book on World Mythology and told me that I could figure out what I wanted to try. She then sat me down and explained all about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, polytheism, and other things like that. She told me that if I ever did choose a religion, that I should stay open-minded no matter what. Being six at the time, I said, "Well, I really like the Greek gods, but I think I wanna be agnostic. Is that okay?"
Then later, as a pre-teen and then teenager, I started having dreams featuring humanoid beings who identified themselves as various gods from the pantheons from Greece and Egypt. Given that my father's family was all Italian and Greek, that made sense, and my mother could trace her family history all the way to the Jews in Egypt, something like that. I did take the dreams seriously, because they really were that weird, but I figured that the so-called "gods" were interdimensional or cosmic entities. (I was always really big on science fiction and fantasy.)
So when I started college, I decided that eclectic paganism was the path for me, since it was a very personal kind of faith/belief. My mom is still skeptical of many things although she will admit to paranormal and supernatural stuff, and my father was accepted into the Freemasons (as his lodge's only stonemason) and just says he believes in an overall "God-like source" even though he's probably more of a pantheist. Me, I'm a polytheist polyagnostic pantheist eclectic pagan with a greco-roman concentration. But it was my childhood atheism that helped me figure things out. I'm grateful for it, because it helped show me how to see people and faith from a very specific perspective.
I've always said that if someone proved to me that one god/religion or another was completely true or completely false, I would shrug, say, "Okay" and go back to my business. I think Terry Pratchett said it best when Granny Weatherwax encountered Herne in the forest: Yes, I see you. Just because you exist does not mean I have to believe in you.
I also try to quote Sam's huge monologue from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." I can believe in a LOT of things.*

A hot shower helped a little bit. Rubbing healing salve into my joints and muscles helped a little bit. I am typing with one finger on my right hand, assisted lethargically by one finger on my left hand. Said left hand is currently spastic and hemiparetic and burning and stupid. Also my left leg and the left side of my face is doing the same thing. I am used to that, but I wish I were not.
I will be going to bed soon. I wish things would stop hurting. My head is still spinning.

Somebody make me laugh, please? Jokes, cute pictures, funny stories, weird or crazy stories, whatever. I may not see comments until tomorrow, but it would be lovely to laugh.

I like things that make me laugh. No matter how much I hurt, I want to laugh.
Oh, fuck, this really hurts. Somebody help me joke about it.

Comments

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for explaining this! This answers my email thoroughly!:) I don't believe "God" in the Abrahamic sense is beyond human comprehension so much as the divine source/energy that encompasses everything and beyond is partly beyond human comprehension (panentheism).

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Really? Oh, that is wonderful! I did not see your email; I may have accidentally deleted it. I am so glad this answered your questions.

I never liked the idea that a monotheistic god had a gender or fixed appearance. It always bothered me that people still cling to those rules and stories created thousands of years ago. That is why I always consider the concept of interdimensional entities, or even humanoid beings from other galaxies in the same universe as us. Everything is so huge and we are so tiny.

We are definitely not the center of attention, even if we assume. If there are gods, they must be small and delegated to our miniscule planet, or pieces of some larger Source that is too incomprehensible and macrocosmic for humans to understand. We can only see bits and pieces of this Source, which has no gender, no face, no voice. Only representatives of a sort. And our Higher Brains need to give them faces and names and bodies and genders because it is so much easier to interact with creatures that resemble ourselves.
Does that make sense?

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

Makes perfect sense to me:-) I often regard the larger "God" I reference to as "The Source" and other spirits I talk to by other names:-) For instance, I do believe Jesus existed as some kind of prophet or something, and refer to him as Jesus, but i do not believe in the trinity or that he was "God" or anything. He was on "our level" (though perhaps a god by your definition:-) But overall, I tend to agree with you!

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Actually, Jesus was just a man. Christianity is viewed in Judaism as heresy, since it completely went against Jewish teachings. Jesus - or Yeshua ben Joseph (Joshua, son of Joseph) was a young Jewish man living under the rule of the Jewish King Herrod. Yeshua was an extremely, unusually intelligent boy who often learned from monks and other mystics, and his parents, Miriam and Joseph, knew that he was special, only as far as his intelligence went. When he became an adult, he went on a journey to various places and learned Buddhism, Taoism, Paganism, Shintoism, and all sorts of ways to connect with the "divine" beyond the religion he was born into. When he came back, there were already several prophets, claiming themselves to be the fabled Messiah. King Herrod had them all hunted down and killed. When Yeshua began preaching his own teachings, his disciples hid him for years. Yeshua was absolutely nothing like what Christians today think of when they think of Jesus. His hair was black and curly, his skin was dark, and he only spoke about individually connecting with "God" - that all people had God inside them and were already connected.
When Herrod's army finally came for him, Yeshua had so many followers that by the time he died - and crucifixion was a very common method of killing; Yeshua was not singled out there - some of his disciples began tweaking his teachings to suit themselves. Two hundred years after he died, his messages had become so convoluted that the concept of Christianity became pretty far removed from Yeshua's teachings.

So, basically, Jesus was just a man. A smart man who said a lot of things, but just a man.

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

I know what you say:-) I guess I didn't speak clearly enough.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

I just wasn't sure if you knew the whole story. :)
I don't usually tell people who the guy actually was unless they are really willing to listen.
And I admit, I probably got a bunch of things wrong or misinterpreted. I was never a practicing Jew. My Russian Jewish maternal grandparents died when I was very little and my atheist mother was happy to teach me about Judaism but the only times I've been in synagogues and temples were for some art galleries, weddings, and other such events.

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

I look at Jesus mainly from a parable-type perspective. I don't believe, if he existed historically, that he had any special abilities or was anything super-human. I mis-spoke by saying "prophet" because I was thinking in terms of any human with a special role in terms of having an important effect on people around them in a generally positive way (and it might not have been entirely positive, but it's been positive on me in the education I did have from a Christian perspective -- obviously it hasn't on many Christians).

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Oh, you didn't mis-speak, I knew what you meant by prophet. :) I actually have some friends who could be considered prophets in that sense.

Yeah, sadly most Christians today, especially extremists, do not truly follow the ideas of the actual Christ Messiah. I remember reading parts of Leviticus for fun, and I started laughing when I got to the part that people claim "condemns" homosexuality. Because the whole "man lying with man as with woman" thing is buried in a huge section including bragging, lying, persecution, prejudice, discrimination, racism, hating, tattoos, mixing fabrics, shellfish, etc etc.

I remember seeing a photo of a guy with a giant tattoo of that Leviticus passage regarding men sleeping with men - and the hilarious part was that it was a tattoo, which Leviticus also forbade! Oh, people are silly.

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Bible is very contradictory:-) I like certain passages and stories, but I don't take it as something to live by.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

I don't think anybody was ever supposed to take the Bible as words to live by, precisely because a) it is extremely contradictory, and b) it was written thousands of years ago, and almost everything there can't really apply to our modern world and modern ways. :)

I think that if I ever decided to become monotheist, I would be non-denominational, because I personally see so much hypocrisy in most of the Christian denominations. I do like the Episcopalians, though.

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

I don't really consider myself Christian, but I like aspects of Christianity and apply aspects of it to my spirituality. I had an Early Christianity professor who had been an Episcopalian monk before marrying an ex-nun. He was one of the sweetest people I have ever met:-) Very kind-hearted and innocent.

[phoenixsansfyr.livejournal.com]

Plus, consider that it was translated into Latin out of Aramaic by MEN, and the gospels of the women were completely dropped. All you have to do is look at the butchery that was translating Simone de Beauvoir into English to learn what kind of screw ups a male translating a female's words can make...

Also, the difference between the Vulgate and the modern Bible is very disturbing. A lot of what's in the Vulgate was lost in later translations, or twisted to suit the translator's needs.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

That is terribly disheartening and scary.

[phoenixsansfyr.livejournal.com]

Yay misogyny (not)...

I've read the Biblia Sacra Vulgata, when I was more versed in Latin. It and the King James aren't far off from each other, but even the Revised Standard is far enough from that it's ridiculous. And yes, you get a man translating a woman's words, you get a lot lost in translation - just a little googling about Beauvoir will tell you how much of her philosophy was initially lost because her words were translated by a male not even in the same field she was in...

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

I remember when the words for "witch" and "poisoner" were deliberately mistranslated so that witchcraft practitioners got a bad rap. And really that's a startlingly big reason I cannot support most of Christianity...