Author Archives: Rev. Scott

Whitney Houston and You: Still an Angel

Since Whitney Houston’s unfortunate death I’ve heard bitter criticism, like:
“Whitney Houston was just another drugged-up Hollywood star–
why’s anybody celebrating her life?”
“Don’t we have any positive role models for our children instead of messes like her?”
“It’s a tragedy she wasted her great talents–
she had a strong Christian upbringing, a loving family & still she died a drug addict!”

One person said, “How could all these famous people claiming Whitney was so loving & giving be blind to reality? We saw her stupid embarrassing behavior in the news for the last 20 years–
so what if she could sing–
she was a disaster and a druggie!”

A last complaint I heard was, “How could Alicia Keys sing her heart out with the words ‘Whitney’s an angel’ at her funeral? Yes, she’s sad but Whitney wasted her life!”

To these complaints–seen scrawled in anonymous Internet posts and heard from sincere people on the subway and at work, let me offer these thoughts:

First of all, I won’t waste any time trying to pretty up Whitney Houston’s life. It was what it was–
with incredible highs and lows lived all too painfully in the public eye.

We know Whitney reached incredible, soaring musical heights and mind-numbing personal lows of misery & degradation.

What to make of this wild contrast?

Let me remind you a little bit about Whitney’s hidden spiritual perspective–
and by doing this remind us about our own.

Simply: Whitney was born into Earth life as an off-shoot or part of her soul from God’s angelic realms.

She was born here with a purpose.

Whitney Houston was in fact part-angel.

Just like you and me.

No matter what Whitney did in her lifetime, she COULDN’T completely deny that fact of divine origin–but she COULD choose to embrace or ignore it during life’s many stresses & confusions.

Let’s remind ourselves:
We are each of us born of a spark of GOD.

This fact makes us more special, and more valuable–
more responsible for our free will choices–
than we imagine.

What do we make of this?

THAT’S the personal question every one of us faces, every day on our JOURNEY into awareness, towards gaining enough humility to let our souls lead us back upwards in spiritual evolution.

It doesn’t matter if our lives are completely obscure to the world at large. Or we never have a drop of bliss or an ounce of wealth or the admiration of many friends or the notoriety of great or stupid deeds.

Because every one of us knows our own flaws. We UNDERSTAND our own flaws.

Because we are LIVING IN our own flaws, we are responsible for our own flaws, we want forgiveness for our own flaws, we want to be free of our own flaws, we want to be known as good despite our own flaws…

Aren’t we here to EXPERIENCE THE FACTS of OUR FLAWS, and to UNDERSTAND more about how to change from suffering them to overcoming them? To dissolving them?

Maybe even we want to know more about our souls? To feel how they are not flawed? How they are born of God? How they are fed by the ongoing breath, pulse & purposes of God?

So I ask you today:

Do you think Whitney Houston EVER DID ANYTHING in this recently passed lifetime that in any small way, reached out hungrily for the angel nature–
the divine angelic source–
of her soul–
and of yours?

When she sang, did she sing about love’s possibilities or defeatism? About violence & hatred? About cruelty or kindness?

Did she ever move anybody’s heart?
Did she ever bring you any twinge of gladness, or any tears of shared sorrow?

Was she ever kind or concerned for anyone besides herself? In public or in private?

Did she ever express patience? Adventurousness? Joy?

Did she ever love her husband, her daughter, her family, her friends?

Did she ever exhibit strength?
Courage?
Did she ever try to grow through any of her mistakes?

Did she ever give a damn about anybody else?

Despite her personal flaws–
and like ever one of us, she had plenty–
did she ever LOVE?

Did she ever CARE?

Did she ever TRY?

If she did, then you know what?

Her life WAS a success.

The more she did ANY life-affirming, soul-affirming things, the better–
no matter what failures, what addictions, what stupidities, what weaknesses afflicted her along her journey that continues today in the spiritual realms…

Whitney never lost her soul.

Yes:
Alicia Keys was right:
Whitney Houston, despite all her failures and flaws, is still an angel.

Just like you and me.

*************

See PART II of Whitney Houston: No Less An Angel, coming soon.

Peace & Blessings to you,
Rev. Scott Ufford
Copyright 2012

Spiritual Politics: Chinese Worse Than Brutal Slave Masters on the Old Tibetan Negro Plantation

Imagine sane, good, peaceful people–
burning themselves alive–
voluntarily!

Why would they?

Shocking self-immolations in the news, by Tibetans protesting Chinese enslavement since 1959–
since the illegal invasion of Tibet by Communist China–
as illegal as Hitler’s invasion of Poland 20 years earlier in 1939–
force us to see an ugly, shameful Chinese record:

(1)
Tibetans in their own traditional centuries-old country & culture brutally invaded, rounded up, slaughtered, abused, corralled & treated like third-class citizens.

Their peaceful temples and monasteries destroyed, except a half dozen turned into tourist spots & media show pieces where the religious people can be spied on & controlled..

Very recently, other peaceful new monasteries, once established, were repeatedly razed by the Chinese tyrants fearful of the unexpected thousands of Tibetan nuns & monks who flocked to re-establish their spiritual life.

Maybe you think the word “tyrant” is too harsh?

But–
if the Chinese had allowed you to see–
you’d have seen THOUSANDS of peaceful monks & nuns, including the very young, the aged & infirm, kicked out into the freezing raw mountainsides & forests with no shelter, their monasteries burning to the ground behind them!

What would you call such dictators if they were running YOUR country & victimizing YOUR own family & neighbors?

(2)
To his credit, Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is world famous for advocating peaceful change in Tibet, and for emphasizing nonviolent spiritual protest in the manner of Gandhi. But the Chinese are fearful of the many local rebellions yearly in their OWN glued-together country…

Yes, here’s another deeper dark secret:

The Chinese are afraid of the Dalai Lama because if he returns to Tibet, the citizens of China might eventually grow inspired. Find they have their own spiritual leaders who would awaken, be roused to action & revolt against the extreme Chinese bureacratic controls over the Christians, Buddhists, & Falun Gong (peaceful traditional meditation & family values) practitioners.

(3)
The Chinese people, though mostly unaccustomed to democracy except in their village councils, do have a spiritual heart that the frankly atheistic and repressive (because they force their rejection of spirituality on others) Chinese leaders desperately FEAR.

(4)
The Chinese know they are in the ethical and spiritual WRONG for trying to destroy the Tibetan people & their spirit.

Where misery is enforced by tyranny, revolution for survival MUST follow.

(5)
Why do the Chinese rule Tibet like the Nazis in Germany before 1939, or the American slave owners on their old Southern plantations?

Because it’s a vast natural resources grab, plain & simple. They want to extract every possible resource from Tibet like a vampire wants to sucks all the blood from its victims.

It’s nothing personal.

(6)
…Back to the true story:

Tibetan people’s villages pillaged, their people forced to learn Chinese & not Tibetan language or culture in schools, and not to speak their own language in public dealings.

Since recent construction of the massive international railway & highway the Chinese Nazis, or slave masters–
for that’s what they’re becoming–
have swamped Tibet with Chinese immigrants, making real Tibetans an underemployed, disrespected, abused minority in their own land.

(7)
Simple unpleasant fact:

Greater desperation is seeping into the Chinese slave masters’ Tibetan plantations by their unceasing cruelty against their slaves.

Nobody burns himself to death in protest unless he & his community are forced beyond misery into utter hopelessness by an unyielding menace that responds only to extreme public acts!

When burning yourself to death becomes your only & strongest way to show your objection to intolerable abuse, and to rally your community to protest despite its impoverished weakness, that must mean you’re being pushed beyond desperation!

(8)
It’s a shocking, even astounding testament to the Tibetan peoples’ nature that they’d choose to harm themselves before retaliating against their cold-blooded oppressors with every weapon & paramilitary tactic they could get their hands on–

which is what we’d do here in USA!

(Tibetans bravely attempted defense of their country in 1959 but China’s massive war machine rolled over them like the waves of Nazi tanks did over Poland.)

(9)
Every statement here is based on clear facts found in the public record and through respected Tibetan support organizations who SEE and KNOW the real desperation in Tibet.

(10)
Let’s pray the Chinese slave masters moderate their cruelty to the great Tibetan people & allow them to freely breathe as the peaceful, good-hearted, deep-souled people they are.

(11)
Conclusion:

Sure, America & the West are used to trading with the Chinese, & our incompetent politicians are addicted to borrowing from them to keep our global octopus economic system out of the toilet.

Maybe questioning China’s obscene behavior in Tibet nudges our national conscience to reconsider any of our own more questionable international deeds?

Fine.

The bottom line is:

Will we let fear, complacency & the endless nature of the crime obscure the historical FACTS and unavoidable TRUTHS about China’s MASTER / SLAVE relationship with Tibet?

I hope not.

(12)
But the facts are the facts.

Because we are entering the Age of Spiritual Honesty.

No one–
no force–
no government–
no religion–
no corporation–
no tradition–
no blind habit or wrongful deed is exempt.

I’m comfortable with stating uncomfortable facts, as facts.

Please check out these important links:

http://www.thetibetpost.com/en/news/exile/2302-tibetan-youth-urges-china-to-withdraw-military-crackdowns-in-tibet
www.tibetaid.org
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3531&Itemid=0
http://www.falundafa.org
www.tibet.org/Resources/TSG/Groups

What will you do about China’s abuse of Tibetans?
Think about it–
Tell the world.
Thank you.

Peace and Blessings to you, and all freedom-loving people everywhere.
Rev. Scott Ufford,
The Psychic Philosopher

Copyright 2012

Are We Still Playing The Game of Fragments?

Brace yourself:

I’m about to tell you a radical, probably shocking secret. (But I’m going to make you wait.)

In a world as topsy-turvy as ours, any claim of the ability to shock us might be considered presumptuous. Maybe even egomaniacal.

After all, we’re stuck in a “civilization” that wallows in the deepest slime of corruption. Groans under the weight of horrid slick tales of blood-splashed brutality and greed-splashed stupidity.

We’ve penned up the world’s healthy wildness, humanity’s ingenious native wisdom & bull-dozed them into cesspools.

Are we waiting for every last remote chance of their revival to dissolve?

Are we “the 99%” actually teamed up with “the 1%” to turn Earth into a shanty museum where the most beautiful and good lay frozen in panoramic exhibits of the past?

Are we waiting until that silent deadline when the simple clarity of enjoying living blue seas, of non-slime-slicked oceans, of non-cracked, non-fracked, non-heart-attacked lands with more beasts thriving than monster bugs & rats, has slipped horribly from the fringes of our reality?

Are we blindly waiting until livid red volcanoes of subconsciously suppressed hate, denied fear, unbridled toxic intent, so swamp our cities with psychic lava of hopelessness that humanity’s forced to cower in a prison corner of Creation?

Let’s be completely honest with ourselves here. Nobody’s watching or judging us in this moment–
except, of course, our most scrupulous exacting taskmasters–
our inner selves.

So we must ask ourselves, because to avoid these harsh questions is to embrace the most deadly mediocrity:

Will we continue to curdle our ethics so sourly that the most shallow behavior, most self-congratulatory criminality, most imbecilic violence are celebrated with no sadness?

Can’t our jaded eyes see how our personal integrity, holistic usefulness & sense of community suffer by being reduced to embarrassing court jesters performing in the royal courts of the rich?

Can’t we see how we–
from the most religious to the most atheistic–
from the most advanced intellectuals to the most incurable simpletons–

all of us seem stuck in a unexplainable waiting game?

For sure, our wait’s well-camouflaged. By sheer cleverness of denials and sheer urgency of private worries.

As a result, some of us, frozen, await Jesus Christ’s return.
Some of us expect the next Buddha, the next Iman Mahdi, the next great Caesar to relieve our responsibilities.

Some of us pretend to expect the next great President, the next great corporation, the next great Mayan 2012 calendar date to force our hands, to cleanse our festering wounds–
or the next great & horrible enemy to slap us awake.

Some of us await the landing of the UFOs or the all-saving kindness of our Space Neighbors to revive us, or the next stupendous drug to make us less stupid–
or so stupefied we won’t feel our pain.

Or, the next 1-chance-in-77-million of winning the lottery, the next fated sweet encounter with a soul mate, the next corporate bail-out, the next public hand-out, the next death of an unknown rich uncle…

But what are we waiting for?

Are we really happy with waiting for a dozen different quantum reality versions of a Jesus to wave his wand & decree with finality to each of us in turn,
“You, bad…
You, good…
You, losers…
You, the champs…
You, the chimps”?

Or to distract us with fears of suffering beneath the lash of the next “You’re fired”, “You’re too old”, or “Guess what–you’re doomed, you’re damned & you’re dead!”

Now we’ve force-fed ourselves these tough questions, here’s Part One of that radical shocking secret:

Our waiting time is over.
Our waiting game is already up.
Our ancient tired legends & prized excuses have already surrendered their vitality.
Collapsed like sacred but useless sands of time slip-sliding into the hourglass’ bottom.

The clock already strikes past midnight for the human race.

What does this mean?

It means our past is dead. Our denial is dying.
And here we are.
Naked.
Awakening.
Scared.
Crying out for our Mamas & Papas.

But here we are.
One human family, utterly bored at playing The Game of Fragments.

Can you sense the return of your trust?
Can you feel a strange new calm?
Can you feel your fears of abandonment dissolve?

Can you feel your first deep stirrings of an ancient competence?
Can you admit you believe in your own soul’s wisdom?

Can you abandon your fears that our bridge to The New World is too shaky, too endless, too painful to cross?

Can you stop theorizing about what awaits you on the far side?
Stop squabbling about who deserves to cross & who deserves to stay behind in the Old Darkness?

Can you just be happy with putting one foot in front of the other?
With helping your neighbor who feels too lost or afraid, too ignorant or worthless, to take his or her next small step?

Can you taste your desire to emerge safely on the other side?
To reach new lands & dimensions of greater adventure?

Can you picture with your inner eye & your hidden hearing & your unused heart strength, what it might be like–
no, what it WILL be like–
for you to set foot on that promised shore?

Do you dare imagine the sweet new taste of your freedoms?
Your soul’s secret delight at everyone winning The Game of Fragments?
Can you imagine the awaiting Game of a higher, healthier, happier Reality?

If you can, are you willing to arrive safely–
are you willing for us ALL to arrive safely–
whatever the nature of this Promised Shore–

on that peaceful Island Earth whose pure freshness tugs at our attention–
whose lightening gravity demands we command & commit our energies–
to unchain our futures from self punishment and recrimination
over ancient memories of Paradises Lost–

No matter what the cost?

Are you ready?

I believe you are ready.

I believe I am, too.
Because Reality demands this.

I even believe some of us might already have arrived.
This very minute, crowded around by unseen angels they wave & yell for us.

To snap us from our self hypnosis.

To guide us by the crystalline ring of their voices until the low fog lifts
and reveals that far shore, now startlingly close.

Almost at our feet.

To quicken our steps on our way back Home.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Let me know any way I can help.
Peace & Happiness to you,
Rev. Scott Ufford,
The Psychic Philosopher
Copyright 2012