Astral Monk
Friday, July 20, 2012
Welcome back! I received a
very well written book about setting up a not-for-profit church or foundation a
week ago, and I will begin applying for the exempt status very soon. Then
yesterday the mail brought a certificate from the Universal Life Monastery
bestowing the title of Spiritual Counselor on me. It looks nice near my PhD
diploma and the four self-produced notices* listing the regionally accredited
schools I graduated from with a BA, BS, and two MAs. On the door of the front
bedroom (my studio and office), I hung a nicely framed text: "Bro. James'
Cloister."
I decided to become the Astral Monk James about the middle of June. I am a
retired educator. I taught as a De La Salle Christian Brother in New Mexico and
Louisiana for eight years. In my fifty-year career, I was e certified educator
in Louisiana, New Mexico and New Your City and State, as well as the Department
of Defense Dependent Schools. I don't know if those certificates have lapsed
since I retired and left active teaching and managing in the secondary schools
where I spent most of my time from 1959 to 2005. I was an adjunct, lecturer,
program coordinator or guest professor at a number of schools including
Louisiana State University, the University of Maryland and Assumption
University of Thailand/ I also contributed to The Science Teacher and
Science Scope 1983-1994 and had a weekly education column in The
Bangkok Post in 2007.
I've written or contributed
to novels, a history book, a middle school and a high school textbooks, and my
works have been republished in journals and books.
But why become a monk? Well, as
I said above, I taught as a Christian Brother for eight years. I spent six
years training to be a Catholic monk, and I liked being a monk, but as times
changed, I changed, and with Rome's approval I moved on.
I continued as an active lay
Catholic, working mainly as a composer, singer and directors of music programs
at the Catholic chapel of NYU and in the Army chapels in Schweinfurt and
Heidelberg. Misunderstandings made it impossible to continue that service when
a new chaplain arrived in Schweinfurt, and ceased complete in my years in
Ansbach. I was not involved in church work after I returned to America in 1995,
but was more involved when I accepted a position as guest professor of
educatonal leadership at Assumption Universotu of Thailand, a pretigious
Catholic institution in Bangkok in 2005. My new boss was the president of the
school, and was a member of the Brothers of St. Gabriel. It was great being
back among brothers, though I was a layman and soon married a Buddhist doctoral
student in her Cambodian home, blessed by four saffron robed Monks.
During my time in Thailand I
started and sustained a blog on religion and spirituality on Blogit.com/ it
c instantly ranked in the top ten blogs on that subject and many comments came
in, always very positive and enthusiastic. I was amazed when I discovered there were over
two thousand BlogIt bloggers
writing on that subject. I was gratified at my success!
I left BlogIt to save money
when my wife entered Harvard ten days after receiving her floppy doctoral hat
and her red robes with the three velvet stripes on each arm in our last formal
event at Assumption University of
Thailand in Bangkok. I sat just behind the president as he handed
her the PhD diploma. There were 8,000
graduates on the floor of the Convention Center, with more thousands of parents
and friends in the audience. She was the
only new doctor to earn her degree with a GPA of 4.0, summa cum laude.
Ten days later,
she was at Harvard seated in the spacious studio-classroom at 1 Story Street,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying climate change and the complex ethical
questions it involved. The two kind professors allowed me to attend as a guest
auditor. She earned her A, and in the
fall semester, instead of continuing her post-doctoral studies, she used the
cash she earned while working port-time during the course to start her own
business in Boston, across the street from the historic Boston Macy’s. She also took a position as medical
interpreter at the famous Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard teaching
hospital. I began helping her regularly,
especially on the days when she was called to the hospital. I enjoyed working with her and for her while
continuing to manage the little DrHansonScience Center from our home
in Belmont, Massachusetts, just down the street from Harvard and MIT. The
center produced my Mark V and Mark VI Lou-Vee-Air™Cars and eventually produced
the first draft of my Teachers” Manual and Handbook that explained how to
assemble and use the AirCar.
Buoyed by me
experience as a guest at Harvard, I helped a law professor at Penn State edit
part of a book that was then published as an academic article on the
professor’s acclaimed climateethics.org blog. It is about the
ethical obligations nations have when they contribute to global warming and
neglect taking the means to reduce CO2 emmisions.
I am not currently involved
with Catholic institutions, but lately, in my quiet, uninvolved retirement, I
have felt called to lead a monk’s life once again after 44 yeas. I am settling in for a long stay in Austin,
Texas, mainly because of the easy access I have to the medical services I need,
the easy-going southern atmosphere, the access I have to my grown daughter and
her lively friends and associates, and because of the exciting tempo of the
musical community here. From the gritty
electric blues at the Victory Grill in mhy daughter’s neighborhood to the big
band sounds of so many music graduates, and the parado of festivals Austin
offers year-round, it’s a ery good place for me.
But all this not enough. I look
at the powerful effect I’ve had on hundreds, maybe thousands of people as a
teacher, school administraqtor, lecturer and mentor, and am determined to put
my gifts to use in an acgtibve way as a 21st century monk, I know the path I must tred in this my last
quarter century of life on our beleaguered planet, and I will not wait
patiently until some church wakes up to meet the drastically shifting needs of
people living through these stressful times.
This week I will visit the county clerk’s office and present my proposal
for founding a not-for-profit organization that I will lead, drawing to it
volunteers around the world who will support its work. It’s chief aim is to comfort the victims of
the times, people whose church has let them down, whose marriage is unsustainable,
whose children are in danger, or who feel helpless to help themselves. A glance at any tabloid proves that even the
high and mighty celebrities face disillunions and disappointments, and the
newspapers relate the woes of the common people everywhere. The internet provides ways of helping people
that ever existed before. I write to
former students in Vietnam, Wales, Hong
Kong and Boston. I try to assiste them
as they struggle with their plans and challenges.
As I consider what I'd like to do
in the fourth and final act of my personal drama. I will be a monk again.
Forever? I don’t have a gift for
prophecy, but because I've had six years
of training for the monk’s life, and and eight years of practice as a religious
Brother, I know what I must do to be a happy and effective monk. As a self-appointed "Astral Monk,"
I will bring comfort and sense of belonging to those who come to me. I will
welcome those who wish to join my Brotherhood/Sisterhood, As I did when I was
writing my frequent posts at BlogIt.com, I will strive to inspire
readers with courage and free them from fear and timidity, self-doubt, despair
and anger. I will provide spiritual companionship in the difficult days that
lie ahead, and I will be prepared to continue “to reach the unreachable stars!:”
I saw Man
of Ls Macha on Broadway. If you have not listened to the famous “Impossible Dream,” please do.
It’s one of the great statements humanity was created for dreamers like
me, and you may enjoy it too.
At Blogit.com, I called
myself Twainman, partly in
honor of Mark Twain, who spent some time visiting in Dilsberg, Germany decades
before my family and I moved there, and partly because my grandfathers were
both linked to trains. My mother's dad managed the construction of a rail line
built from Lafayette, Louisiana to Arkansas and beyond in the late 19th
century. He retired from the railroad after a long career. My dad's father was
overseer of the large and historic Enterprise Plantation in Louisiana, and
headed the construction of the narrow-gauge railroad that ran through the
widespread sugar cane fields and transported the hand-cut cane back to the
refinery where it was ground and processed into sugar.
Now I hope that I can maintain
the humor Mark Twain had, with a little less bite to it, and move farther into
the Spiritual realms that I explored in my Blogit days.
Let me describe my Monastery,
or Cloister, in Austin. It's a two-bedroom apartment in north Austin, quiet,
for people 55 and older. Like my quarters on the Catholic campus of Assumption
University in Bangkok, it has a swimming pool I can visit everyday. It is also
quiet, since the older people here are not rowdy and tend to be friendly and
kind. My bookshelf has Catholic, Protestant and Buddhist books, psychology and
science book, photography books, music books and a variety of large National
Geographic books filled with pictures and feature articles about world
cultures, ecology and the cosmos.
(You can go to YouTube.com and search for
DrHanzonScience. I uploaded a couple of
new “talking into the camera” videos there, kind of ad-libbing my first two
messages about my Astral Monk James undertaking. You’ll see that the wall in the background is
very “monastery” style, except for my playful little spinning propellers, that
are there to remind everyone that while I am living the transformational life
of the spiritual quest, I also depend my my scientific adventures and
inventions for my livelihood!)
You and I find ourselves in
perilous times. Anxiety is everywhere.
Amid the natural disasters, mass murders and political turmoil, people
are desperate for comfort, reassurance, and something to believe in. Something
solid. That's really impossible, since in physics, nothing is really
“solid.” Technically, “solid” is a state
of matter, and matter is intrinsically changeable! Atoms are composed of wavelike electrons in
motion around the unimaginably tiny speck called the nucleus. Even iron, lead
and gold atoms are mostly space! if you hit your thumb with a hammer, it's not the
atoms in the steel that hurt you. The iron, carbon, cobalt and other stoms in
the hammer head individually are harmless. It's the invisible forces holding
the atoms together that bruise your thumb. The elemental atoms are harmless
individually. And the forces? They are pushes and pulls caused by the
pervasive energy that seems to occupy all the space in the unibverse. Believers attribute that the a Higher
Power. Like most Americans, I refer to
that Power as “God,” and assume God is all-knowing and is the source of all
energy and power.That’s a way of saying, God is everywhere, and keeps
everything in existence. Non-believers,
agnostics and atheists simply deny these conclusions and say they don’t believe
in them. I notice that they generally
assume that gravity, inertia, momentum, movement and the material universe we
experience is “real.” So whether we are
non-believers or believers, we end up doing the same thing when we take an
elevator: we make a practical “act of faith” in What Is, and hope no human
technicians screwed anything up!
So for something
"solid," you have to reach for something that's not made of atoms,
not made of parts at all. The only things that are not made of parts are
spirits and the forces that rule all existence.
In everyday life, many or perhaps most people cling to the Eternal
Truths they find in their religion’s sacred texts or learned from their
homelife. The Hebrew and Christian Bibles,
the Koran, Buddhist Pali texts, Hindu
Scripture,s and the truths still alive in oral traditions are all simply
reflections, analogs, analogies based on God's Truth as It was understood at
the time when it was written, God's Nature and temperament are presented as the
original writers himagined them.
Universally, cultures are made up of people who revere their own special
writings or oral traditions as true expressions of their own classic Sacred
Truths.
A passage in the New Testament says, "Everything holy and wholesome
is from God." That's true even if the ideas expresses is the work of
creative artists, painters, sculptors, playwrights, composers, actors and actresses,
producers and directors, novelists and poets.
If you find what is really wholesome in a phrase by St. Paul or the words of
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, or the writings of truly inspired people, you
can hang on to that good expression, statement, or work of art. It's solid if it is God-like. And “God-like”
means it is good, positive, and filled with something that touches the heart,
opens the spiritual eyes, and in no way hurts you or others. It has to be Good, because God is Good, not
mean, hateful, vengeful, impatient, jealous, greedy, hypocritical, lazy, cruel,
vain and full of false pride, pompous and untruthful, dishonest and devoted to evil powers.
Things I Don’t Do
What
I don't do: don't preach. I listen and respond, opening my heart and mind to
God’s influence, begging God to let me say nothing that is wrong or
harmful.
I don’t use the Bible or Koran or any other sacred text as a club to beat you with, I put myself in God’s
hands, taking the essence of God's word, wherever it comes from, and I explain
its real meaning. I have a gift for explaing things in a way people can
understand, whether it is a physics or chemistry idea or something regarding
faith, hope and love. I see the true
meaning because I know God's mind, for I have surrendered my own opinions to Devine
Enlightenment. I act as a messenger carrying God's messages to you. I have done
that all my life. It's a natural gift. Others have recognized that. But no, I am not some deluded Wannbe guru,
prophet, saint or oddball. My
understanding of physics and chemistry is not visionary and universal. I concerns everyday concepts where things are
simple. I don’t pretend to offer new
devine revelagtions or see mystical visions, either. I just do my best to explain basic
understandings in simple terms,
for I am basically a simple person with simple idas and principles.
Seeing with the Soul, Hearing with the Heart
Somehow
I hear people cry out through their eyes, I see their burdens in the way they
walk, and listen to their silence. I can close my eyes and see the world as it may
be in twenty, forty, sixty years. I don't “prophesize,” but I is easy to
imagine the world as it will be in the future because I see where roads lead, I
see the outcome of the choices we as individuals, as Americans, and as members
of the huge and restless human race are making. I don't think about their bad
choices in terms of sin, guilt, or Devine Retribution. That's generally the
preoccupation of highly committed "religious" people, people who are
living out a script written their parents, priests, preachers, mullahs, rabbis
and zealots who themselves were strongly influenced or controlled by the
teachings, practices, traditions and moral rules of their human mentors. You may know some pious people, following the
harsh and deeply ingrained negative attitudes they learned in childhood or
youth, harbor hatred and are convinced it is a reflection of "God's
righteousness." But they are wrong. God is abundance, God is love. He has
decided not to rob us of our free will. He knows some people are deliberately
mean. But that's not how God is!
Example of What I See Coming
Within five years people will be in desperate heed of food, water and
housing It will be clear that living
conditions have taken a cosmic shift, and everyone will be doing things
differently.
The
motor vehicles will be different, more obsolete than we could ever guess right now. NASCAR will disappear.
The expensive and completely short-sighted building of elevated
expressways an wonderfully connected and interwoven highways will be used for
housing, with the cround beneath them paved to support housing and
markets, In places, walls will stretch from
the ground up to the elevated roadway, and people will live beneath the
roadways.
On the roadwas themselves vehicles will move along drawing their motive
power from the ambient energy filling the biosphere from solar energy and the
energy transmitted from bnroadcasting towers and seized by power seizing
antenns on the vehicles.s
Individuals will not have to “drive” their personal vehicles. The vehicles (which will have replaces the “cars,
vans and light trucks” we use today) will express the attitudes, status, and
self-image of the owner and the entirely new world of the future.
The climate will have caused massive retreats from the rising seas.
Chaos in the American economy will have settled out as people adjusted
to the new facts of life. Things will be
“normal” again but “normal” will be far different from what it is now, in the
summer of 2012.
Today’s Situation,
Summer, 2012
Many find themselves bound as if in straitjacket
by rules they hate. Many fear God will punish them for being true to
themselves. Many profess to love God yet have no problem hating other people,
other religions, other viewpoints. They hate people who have different morals,
sexual feelings, spending habits, foreign accents, educational levels, skin
colors, shapes, hair in the wrong place or the wrong color or texture, or
addresses in the wrong part of town. Hate is powerful. It feeds on perceived
unfairness and frustrated desires. It feeds on insecurity, fear of the
unfamiliar, and feelings of self-loathing.
Oh how I pray that one word, one smile, one helping hand can shock a hater into
the stunning realization that the hated one is okay! The hated one is really
good! Really a fellow human, really an eternal conscious being operating in a
unique human body, as strange or ugly or even as frighteningly beautiful that
body may be!
Do you share some of these feelings? These are the dreams I live by, wishing
that all people might somehow recognize that we are all alive because God - by
whatever name we give our Higher Power!- is the source of our very existence,
the sustainer of our lives, the ever flowing River of Life, Source of Light,
Maker and Master of the entire Realm of Being, the Limitless Well of Wellness,
Giver of Being.
Join me as you read these words. Place your soul's being in the hands of the
Almighty, and breathe deeply. Hold the moment. It is a sacred moment. Now rise,
and let us walk with God, with Divinity, with Peace Personified. Forget all the
hate, all the sinister rules, all the false prophecies that may be ruling your
life. Raise your spirit to the Realm of Heaven. Forget the cartoon "Heaven," that infinitely wide cloud city ruled
by a crotchety Old Man in wearing a Long White Nightgown, but raise your soul
to where the Almighty really is, where there is no time, no distance, no
pushing or pulling, no hurry, worry or fear. It is where people who have had areal near-death experience found
themselves, where Reality is the light and substance of existence, and where
the souls are one with each other and full of joy being with their Maker.
As some read these words, they will click away and escape this endless
babbling. Or perhaps some hidden hatred will find yet another thing to hateh. I
hope, you are not like that. Instead, you choose to join with me in Spirit. I
hope you catch a breath the clean, fresh air of Freedom and feel yourself
rising from the heaviness of Earthly life and for at least a moment, enter into
the realm of Transforming Love. If you do, please return soon for more time
with me as I welcome you into my Astral Home, my home in the center of God's
love. I want you to spread your wings and take to the sky, right with me. I
hope to be with you again, soon.
James, your Brother in the
Starry, Starry Night.
* I lost all my other 4 diplomas, but have the official transcripts unopened
and with raised seals.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Astral Monk James July 18, 2012
A Short Post about my adventures today
Tomorrow I have to finish some work on my paradigm changing
Science education project, so this will be
brief.
I was touched by several religious videos on YouTube tonight.
With my Catholic background, hearing the
beautiful background choral music with the echoing reverberation provided by a
large cathedral (or some digital editing) it was inspiring to look at videos
under the subject of Virgin Mary Appears in a Tree. Related videos
came up: Virgin Mary Appeared in Egypt, the Virgin Mary statue Opens her eyes,
and so on. It made me think maybe I should narrow my focus and start my
Religious Order, or my Brotherhood/Sisterhood, under the mantle of the sacred
mother of Jesus. Readers who may find this offensive or too “Catholic” can
relax, I’m still thinking as a Cosmic Brother rather than as a Roman-ruled
monk. People are really justified in being suspicious of Roman meddling in our
personal spiritual lives. Like every human on earth, Roman Catholics have the
right and duty to think for themselves, and make up their own minds, whether
it’s in regard to our pious practices or our private sex livesg. I still revere
the Holy Mother, but I want to address all people who can use a little
spiritual comfort and a kind, sympathetic listener.
Here are some items from my little life over the past ten days. My
friend is unemployed. We chatted about it. My science education publications
and the science devices that I produce have to go back on the market. I’m
corresponding with the corporation in New York that markets them for me. I
purchased two desk chairs. I returned the first to get a heavy-duty one. I
found the replacement at a Thrift Store, but it turned out to have a broken
caster. The plastic glue is curing. Today I received my documentation in the
Universal Life Church, but the package was too big for my mailbox. It was
placed in the office. I’ll get it tomorrow.
Meanwhile, words cannot express the lift I got Sunday afternoon
when my younger daughter came by for a swim and a visit with Dad. She told me
she’d take me to visit my sister and her husband in Louisiana July 19-22, so
I’m excited about that. She’s a therapist as a local spa, and related a psychic
experience that occurred last week, and told me she wants to take hypnotherapy
instructions. I’ll find an instructor, and we’ll do it together. That will make
me better at Spiritual Counseling. I put up my framed diplomas from five
colleges and universities last night, and hope to hand my Counselor document
tomorrow after I purchase a frame.
I was pleased at how my reacted to my newly decorated and
reorganized apartment. We are very close as co-travelers in this world of time,
space, energy and force, truly kindred spirits in every way.
I must sign off now, but please keep returning to the Astral Monk
Blog at AstralMonk
blogspot.com and I’ll be with you again soon.
Abundant blessings every step of your way,
James, the Astral Monk
Monday, July 16, 2012
Happiness and an
invitation to join me in a Spiritual Journey
The Astral Monk
July 15, 2012
It’s been said by people as diverse as Dale Carnegie, Ingrid
Bergman, and John Gray, but it’s a powerful truth:
‘Success is when you get what you want.
Happiness is when you love what you get.”
Spiritual people seem to be happier than materialistic,
earth-bound people are because they are free from the confines of time and
space that create an illusion of power, wealth, permanence and “reality” in the
period we spend occupying our corporal bodies. Being loosed from the churning
cycles of rise and fall, good times and bad times, and the vain hope for having
and holding, building and sustaining the delights of “here and now,” without a
spiritual awareness of the timeless and universal realities that one can enjoy
even as one exists in this puzzling, baffling and frustrating condition we call
“being alive,” a spiritual person possesses and enjoys life on a higher plane,
where happiness is eternal and beyond he grasp of misfortune and inevitable
death.
I welcome you into the Spiritual Life. As a Spiritual Counselor, I
extend my love to you, and want to share with you the joys and freedom only
Spiritual beings can possess.
It is a delight to reach out to you, to feel the thrill of
Spiritual Union. I trained to be a Roman Catholic teaching brother, and wore
the monk’s black robe and cloak and little white “rabat” around my neck. It was a glorious
experience, a time of joy and fellowship, and now, forty-four later, I am
sitting along in my apartment, in a community of people “55 or Better,” far
from churches and shrines, missing the mission I once enjoyed, bringing meaning
and joy and insight into the lives of young people. I am determined to heed the
call again, to follow a new path, a Spiritual Life, remembering that, “To whom
much has been given, much shall be expected.” Somehow, people are attracted to
me, find comfort in my words and open their hearts to me. At seventy-five, I am
not the handsome, talented young man I was as a De La Salle Brother. My
spiritual life is so much more mature now, and the vicissitudes of youth are
behind me. My travels in Europe, Asia and the United States of America have
expanded my consciousness and mellowed my temperament I am embarrassed to think
how limited I was, and still am.
As the grind and fires of life temper the steel and purify the
gold, my decades have worn off some of my rough edges and purified my motives.
I have lost much of the “attitude” I once exhibited, and am more understanding
of the way people in higher echelons of systems handle difficult situations.
Some dance around issues, some pretend there are no issues, and some boldly
tackle difficult problems, with some success and often without success. “That’s
life!”
I hope you contact me if you feel troubled by relationships with
individuals, with the expectations or demands of your spouse, your children,
your boss or your pastor. Maybe I can just be a good listener. Maybe I can
offer you some sympathy. Maybe we can pray together about a difficulty you
find.
Maybe you, too, are ready to help others, joining me in my journey
into Spiritual Counseling. I consider myself a kind of Astral Monk, convinced
that other individuals of various kinds populate the Cosmos, and visit our
planet. Is that too far out? Evidently, it is a notion ridiculed and shunned by
those too rigid or timid to study the matter. That’s okay, but I know the
Astral realities, I’ve accepted the fact that we are spirits in corporal
bodies, composed mostly of water, with some carbon, oxygen, iron, sulfur,
chromium, sodium and nitrogen stirred in, operating within our various organs
and systems by processes programmed into our cellular chemistry, our nerves,
and our brains. Beyond that, we are spiritual beings, with “souls,” that are
capable of doing unimaginably mystical or paranormal things even now, during
our cosmically brief lifetimes.
Would you like to Join me in my Astral Brotherhood/Sisterhood?
If you would like to join me in my Astral Brotherhood/Sisterhood,
email me. Until I set up my new mail boxes, you can senjd me "snail
mail" at 1026 Clayton Lane, #3207,
Austin, Texas 78723.
We can get to know one another. I have no material wealth to
share, not trove of secret knowledge, no special psychic or paranormal powers.
Don’t come to me with hope of being wealthier or more prominent in society. I
have only my heart, my kindness, and my integrity to share.
Hoping to hear from you with comments or suggestions, I am your
Monk friend,
Brother James, the Astral Monk.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
I live in the United
States. I see things in a strange way. Riding on the highways, transported in a
special vehicle through the huge, massive complex of roadways typical of cities
from San Diego to Boston, Miami to Seattle, I realize that everyone driving
vehicles on these roadwars is driving like I drove from 1954 until 2005,
thinking I was seeing what wa all around me, knowing that I was driving a car,
van, bus or truck, certain that that what they see is all there is to reality.
I don’t I see it from “above,” or with differebnt eyes, and I don’t think about
how it will look in 30 years. I know how it will look!
n 2005, I gave up my pickup truck and took a series of airplanes to Memphis,
San Francisco, and Tokyo to Bangkok. There I went to work at a Catholic
university, first as a guest professor. Then, on the fateful day of Wednesday,
August 31, 2005, I received notice that my duties were over. The regular
professor was on his way back.
The dean drove me across town to a second school for an interview
he had arranged, and I was offered a permanent position. That same day the news
told about Jirrocame Katrina urning my former home, New Orleans, into a
nightmare of wind, rain, flood, crime and death. I have many relatives there,
and taught in three schools in the area between 1962 and 1974.
I was prepared to depart Assumption University, but stopped by the
president's office to thank him for welcoming me to Thailand, and bid him
farewell. From out of nowhere, the president of the university said, “No! I
want you here!” and asked me to write an anthem for the large, prestigeous
Catholic university (www.au.edu).
“I have to go to India," he said. "When I return in ten days, I will
contact you.”
The tragedy of Katrina continued, but I was busy with my new task
as composer for the president.
Assumption University has several campuses, so I visited the
towering Cathedral of Learning in the “University in a Park” campus near the
new International Airport, and in the Music Conservatory, I was welcomed by the
famous dean and befriended by the faculty. Using their MIDI lab, I soon
produced a draft ofr my Anthem. Within a week my new friends had prepared two
presentation copies of the words and music, one for my prospective boss,
Brother Bancha Saengerhin, Ph,D., f.s.g, the president, and a second for the
President Emeritus, Rev. Brother Martin who founded, designed, and financed the
amazing school through far-sighted
land purchases and sales, and bold, visionary leadership,
resulting in a truly international university with a brilliant faculty composed
of excellent English speaking professors from around the world.
I had been through a world of experiences since my arrival in late
July, 2005, and my proposed meeting with Brother Bancha, which took place in
early October, 2005. I visited an American monk who was uncle of my former
wife, he gave me a general absolution for all my sins in a very informal
“confession” at his monastary near his parish in the infamous sex city of
Pattaya on the coast of the Sea of Thailand. I purchased a Rosary at one of the
large Catholic churches an American monk had designed and built near Bangkok. I
was driven around by the lady who was a volunteer caretaker for the aged uncle.
She keeps me informed of the uncle’s welfare even now by Internet.
By my 69th birthday, I was engaged to a Khmer graduate student,
and by June we were married and had moved back into my faculty quarters on the
main campus of my university in Bangkok proper.
I experienced two miracles before my return to the campus, both
having to do with the Rosary beads I’d purchased at the large mission church. I
may describe them later.
Since my marriage, my wife has earned her PhD and successfully completed a
course at Harvard that featured four IPCC Nobel Prize winners and a number of
guests from the media, the university and the Boston/Cambridge area who are all
involved with the challenges facing humanity due to pollution of the atmosphere
and the human impact pollution and disarray among humans in general are having
on the well-bing of the planet and its living occupants.
My soul has been evolving rapidly since I first arrived in Bangkok
in 2005. My wife invited me to seminars and guest presentations and congresses
presented by experts from around the world. She also arranged for me to attend
classes at Harvard with her from January to May, 2008, as a guest of the
professors. In turn, I helped her establish her now flourishing silk=import
business. It opened in August, 2008, just as AGI and Lehman Brothers were
collapsing. Her business in located across the street from Boston’s Macy’s and
the now defunct Filene’s Basement. Her first year in busines brought immediate
success. The local FOX Television affiliate interviewed her at her business
during her first year.
In 2010, her preparations for the Christmas rush and her duties as an on-call
medical interpreter at a famous Harvard teaching hospital in Boston required my
presence nearly every day in November and Decenber. We experienced three
devastating blizzards and I came down with sever colds and bronchitis. Often I
had to be excused from work, and my wife and I looked forward to flying to
Cambodia to stay with her parents and siblings, neices and nephews for two
months. I laid out plans for a permanent move from Boston to Phnom Penh,
expecting that my little “DrHanzon Science Center” that had an office in
Belmont, MA and a workshop in Louisiana would easily be shifted across the
ocean and flourish in Asia.
Providence, also known as God’s continuing care for his creatures,
led to a lifechanging revision of my status while we were in Cambodia. My
little business collapsed and I contracted a dangerous infection in my left
foot. Doctors in Phnom Penh told me to leave immediately for treatment or
surgery in the USA, and to find a climate warmer than Boston’s where I could
get afforable long-term care.
My daughter “J” knew of an excellent hospital in Austin, and a
wonderful apartment where I would be among good people and could enjoy free
excusions, a free shuttle bus, and a beautiful swimming poor all at a price I could
afford on my modest pension.
I caught a flight from Phnom Pehn to Seoul to Washington to Boston on April 3,
2011, and from Boston to Austin, Texas on April 9. “J” is a therapist, and took
me to the Seton Medical Center where it was confirmed that I had osteomylitis
and I chose to undergo amputation of the middle toe on my left foot. It was
succdessful, and I transferred to an outstanding rehab center for nearly a
month. In mid-May, 2011, I moved into my two-bedroom apartment, set up my
little studio/office, and began experiencing a contibnuing life changing series
of unforseen events that have continued to broaden my vision in areas and in
ways I could never have forseen.
I will continue this story, perhaps on a freequent basis. Not one
of my blog postings will ever be “complete” until I write my very last word.
That may come about because I have a physical or psychological breakdown, or
the USA undergoes its long forseen collapse due to political, economic, or
physical cataclysims. Whatever happebns, I hope you will find visiting with me
useful and at least thought provoking.
(This post lay dormant for at least a year, so I'm finally publishing it.
Meanwhile, my little business seems to have revived, and I've extablsihed a new
lifestyle in Austin, featuring lots of get togethers with my daughter and her
friends, singing and playing guitar around the city and in various places in my
apartment complex, and ongoing adventures as a writer and observer of the sky.
Am I Really “The Hoseman”?
If something I write strikes you as “inspired,”
let me wqrn you: I am not very special, I am not some kind of prophet, but even
while I was a science program coordinator at LSU in 1995, one of the grad
students I’d known since childhood said I was “The Hoseman,” a guy acting like
a “hose” carrying idas from “Above” down to listeners on earth. If that’s so,
and I know for certain that sometimes it is, don’t expect me to help you get
over illnesses, get rich, or levitate. .I have chronic illnesses, I don’t have
any extra money, and I’m stuck at a weight of over 260 pounds. Levitation has
haver worked for me!
So take what I say with a cool head and a grain of skeptic salt, and chart your
own course.
I can be reached at drhanzonscience@gmail.com. If you need to chat
by phone, email me and set up the time. I’ll give you my cell number after we
extablish mutual trust by email.
Sincerely,
The Astral Monk had a lot of fun meeting new people today. I
joined the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) about 2 months ago, but could not make
the first meeting I was expecting to attend. The former head of the Austin TX
local chapter sent out an email announcing his departure from the local group
and his cessation of the MUFON activities. Today I finally made it to a meeting,
but the leader, Catherine, called the meeting "Son of MUFON," for it
was not an official MUFON meeting and would not be following the MUFON
protocols. It was very spirited and enjoyable nonetheless.
It was held at the quarters of a group that conducts research into paranormal
and other kinds of mental or spiritual activities, and maintains at the
quarters a considerable library of print materials (books) that cover a wide
range of materials.
Our group consisted of four women and eight men. I was the newbie. Catherine,
who is from Montreal, opened with a few remarks and a lively discussion of one
member's experiences north of the Arctic Circle, where she teaches Inuit
children part of the year. She related several recent conversations she had
with known researchers. A young man spoke for forty minutes or more about
experiences he had with a woman who was evidently filled with various energies.
I forgot to bring my hearing aid, so I missed out on about 90% of the group
discussions, but managed well when speaking to individuals during the snack
break and outside after the meeting ended. At one point, I was given time to
present my latest Lou-Vee-Air(tm)Car (the Mk VI version), and explain how it has been on sale for 17 years
in various iterations, and exists in a scratch-built version as well. My theme
was not just to show my little AirCar zipping along for a second or two on the
carpeted floor, but rather on how we must solve some major problems in our
science education system before we can move into Cosmic Science Teaching, which
we should be doing now, but we are not ready for. I mentioned that I have taken
on the role of Astral Monk to serve as a Spiritual Counselor in this troubled
time when so much apprehension surrounds us. When I was done, and as the break was
ending, I distributed AirCar kits to about eight of the attendees, and urged
them to download my "method" that used the AirCar to teach research
and development (R&D) and leads to publication of student work on a special
Student Research Site, with the goal of setting up a world wide exchange of
ideas about how to make science exciting and encourage learners everywhere to
become inventors working in synergistic teams.
It was a very enjoyable visit with compatible people.
If you feel alone and marginalized by those around you, do some Web browsing
and look for groups you might like to visit or join. Here's the lyric I wrote
and you can find on my "drhanzonscience" channel onYouTube,
Day Glow
(c) 2000 James P Louviere
I never knew that I could fly above the lovely rainbow!
I never knew that I could make another person's day glow!
I feel so happy when I'm flying high above the rainbow!
I feel so happy when I make another person's dayglow!
If you are ever sad and lonely, wishing you could die,
Just lift another's spirit up and you'll begin to fly!
You'll fly up high into the sky and wear a little halo,
For you're an angel when you make another person's day glow!
Walk with a joyous heart! James, the Astral Monk
Saturday, July 7, 2012
This is the second post your Astral Monk is writing. It is now 4:30 AM on
Saturday, June 7, 2012.
Your Astral friend wishes you a very consoling day filled with tiny blessings
like little sparkles along your footpath, little things that you may not pay attention,
but are not just coincidences. They are part o the divine plan for you.
What's making me excited enough to spend the middle of the night at the
computer?
Well, on June 6, I did not notice it, but the person who is the
"buyer" of my little educational devices send a request for my
demographics, bank account number, etc. so she could order more of my products.
I had given up on the business because I lost the buyer who was my on-lime
friend for about 12 years. I got no word from the company for over a year, and
was planning to find new ways to increase my income and spread my vision of
reformed Science Education using my recent book and my newest educational
product. (You can find out more if you download my free science book at
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxsb3V2ZWVhaXJjYXJtYW51YWx8Z3g6MWUxM2NlYjkxY2RmZmM5YQ&pli=1
Anyway, it looks like my business is going to rise from the dead!
Don't worry, though, I'm still going to continue and develop my AstralMonk
vocation, for it is truly a call from God leading me to rejoin the ranks of
Spiritual Counselors.
What is that? Well, many of us have suffered a whole lot from misapplied
"religious" rules, commands, expectations, exhortations, demands and
assumptions that actually conflict with our own unique personal soul identity.
Not every foot can squeeze into one size shoe, and often one's religion is like
an ill-fitting shoe, maybe too loose, but more often too tight. You find
yourself in pain with every step you take, spiritually, and unless someone is
there to help you discern (figure out) what is bothering you, you may spend
years, even your whole life thinking you are not a "good person"
because you are in pain due to the religion that you're in. I'm like the guy in
the shoe store who wants to fit you into a comfortable, healthy, nice shoe.
Except I try to fit you into a good fit with your soul's relation to the Higher
Power. Maybe you belong to this or that very strict religion, and think there's
something wrong with you.
Generally, there are some strong family ties, or maybe social ties, that bind
you. You are not comfortable but fear that if you abandon the ways of your
family (usually in regard to religion, business, loyalty to traditions, and
other constraints) you will be rejected as a "bad person."
My job is to console you, reassure you, and comfort you. I look at people I
really admire, like Jesus, or my patron saint, Peter (the apostle), or the Lord
Buddha, who is the enlightened one of millions, even billions of people, or
other wise and pure souls, and I try to see how their teaching and actions
apply to your suffering. Love is everything, my friend. If something is mean,
cruel, hateful, vengeful, bickering, faultfinding, or fearful, I look at that
as unloving, and therefore not from Above.
I'm finished with this little posting. I hope it gives you some idea of my
mission as the Revered Brother James P Louviere, the Astral Monk, your
spiritual counselor.
You can write to me at james@astralmonkjames.org
Adios!
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Astral
Monk James Blogger July 4 2012 Post Number one
Astral
Monk James
A
Cosmic Minister
On this
American Independence Day, 2012, I step into the mystic world of Cyber Reality,
communicating at the speed of light with beings large and small, wishing you
peace and abundant joy. Raised as a Roman Catholic, I hope I don’t become
anathema to my fellow believers as I take on a new role in the fourth quarter
century of my life. I am moved to act as a Spiritual Counselor, for many of us
are troubled, and many feel that there is no one who talks their language,
surely not in the rectory, parsonage, mosque, temple, chapel or retreat house.
So many
spiritual and religious leaders are wrestling with problems of the mid or late
20th century. So many are afraid to speak or even think the truth! What would
people say? What would become of the pastor, mullah, rabbi, monk or Wicca who
talked about things beyond the scope of clerical handbooks, books based on
Bronze Age assumptions or written by people who looked upon things once held
sacred, but now more and more outdates, far from today's situation?
It is
apparent that a Great Realization is about to shake us into Cosmic
Consciousness. More than a decade of this 21st Century has slipped
by already, but who is there to welcome all of you into this New Cosmic World?
How
could I possibly be the one you need?
I am
not a prophet. My birth came about through the same process that
produced my brother and sister. Don't look for me in the writings of big-name
prophets who lived thousands of years ago. No signs in the heavens or visits
from angelic messengers came around when I was born.
My words
have been published in science education journals and mentioned or included in
published books, but nothing in my writings could be classified as “religious.”
I don’t lay down commandments, invent rituals, or pronounce
things so full of non-sepultures that they can be balled mysteries of faith.
I don’t claim to have been marked with holy oils or raised to high rank by
someone with a bigger hat or a more expensive robe.
I don’t
have the power turn one chemical into another except in ways described in science
textbooks. I know that if I put a couple of tablespoons of dollar-store
peroxide into a baby food jar and add a teaspoon full of Clorox, I'll get some
pure oxygen, and if I pass the end a little steel wool "cigar"
through a candle flame, then stick it into the jar with oxygen bubbling out,
the steel will burn brightly. That's no "miracle" even if I always
say, "Though thou are but steel, you shall burn like flash NOW!" while doing the trick.
I'm not even a chemist! I just know some ordinary reactions. The
words don't do a thing.
So what
do I have for you? I am a Spiritual Counselor. I have been drawn to a spiritual
way of life for as long as I can remember.
Funny,
but as I aged, the less religious I was, the deeper my spiritual life became. I
take comfort in building my spiritual life. I read about the life and work of
St Paul, the apostle, and the writings of or about mystical monks and nuns,
most of whom were proclaimed “canonized saints” some years after they died. I
noted that sometimes a person is doing great things for the people, and the
people love them and flock to them. Then the
authorities
of the religion give them all kinds of trouble, forbid them to preach or teach
or minister to souls. The person dies, and the people carry the body to the
church singing. So the Authority, whoever he (or she) may be come running along
in the purple and scarlet, followed by altar boys, and, runs to the font of the
line with incense and a gold crucifix on a long pole, and starts saying how
wonderful the holy person was. The Authority tries to pre-empt the people. It
was like that once during Fidel Castro's early days. A young boy protested
Castro's policies, and developed a following. He was killed and as the people
prepared to carry him through the streets, the government took charge and with
loudspeakers blaring the called on everyone to come and celebrate the
"heroic acts" the boy did "in the name of the Revolution!"
He was transformed into a Communist icon after he was shot dead opposing the
Revolution. Oh, well.
I left
the Brotherhood after fourteen years and travelled to Washington D.C. for the
MLK Poor People’s March on a bus chartered by the Black Panthers of Watts. I
spent an entire night seated next to Reyes Tijerrina, who later served 77
months in the New Mexico State Prison for the part he played in the murder of a
deputy in Tierra Amarillo. Reyes led the political movement called La Raza, and
during the night ride, he told me his life story. He was an ordained minister.
I have never forgotten his stories.
I
attended the Poor People’s March, squatted at the knee of Jesse Jackson as he
held forth on this “when push comes to shove” principles, and I joined with
Jack Shaffer (the author’s son) to take a mentally handicapped young man back
to his roots in the Sangre de Cristo mountains a few days before we were
scheduled to depart.
I ended
up in San Antonio, leading a Theater in the Streets troupe of minority teens
and lived in a vacant room at the Catholic seminary while awaited a
dispensation from my five lifetime vows (poverty, chastity, obedience, the vow
to teach the poor free of charge, and the vow to remain a teaching brother
forever). I slowly began to work through the issues that confronted me as a
Catholic. I married a former teaching nun, and we baptized our children in
infancy. They made their first communions but none of the four was ever
“confirmed” by a bishop. None went to “confession” as I had done in school.
None ever became a practicing Catholic. Eventually I gave up the struggle to
raise them Catholic. My former wife was with me in our struggle, but our
children were all absolutely devoid of any piety, though we got them into Mass
every Sunday. Then things fell apart completely, and our careers in Germany
ended after the Desert Storm 100 hour war. Perhaps I’ll regale with more of
this later. For now, please “like” me and subscribe to my blog. You can send me
mail at james@astralmomkjames.org. I
will be setting up a non-profit foundation to carry my message and spiritual
counseling worldwide. I have visited several countries in Europe and spent over
twenty years there as an educator and writer. I have lived in Thailand and for
a short time in Cambodia, and visited Singapore. I also visited Mexico several
times in the sixties. Wherever I go, I take my guitar and sing for the people.
God be
with you, and notice all the tiny little sparkles along your footpath, the
little blessings and unexpected nice things that come your way every day.
James, the Astral Monk.
Blog Archive
About Me
I like the nickname
"DrHanzonScience" because I received a degree in 1985 and taught in
schools and universities until in 2008, right after enjoying the annual
Graduation Ceremonies at www.au.edu in Thailand, I resigned and went to study
climate science at Harvard. I worked with a former student for a year and
finally, January 1, 2010, I started writing this manual. It has to be proofed
and polished, but I'm taking a color printed copy to the NSTA conventiom today
and I want you to have access to it before I go.
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