Black Cab Cuties

Having trouble keeping up with British pop culture? Check this!

I just thought the concept was kind of cool. The Kooks' second song later in the film is better than the first.

In each episode of “The Black Cab Sessions,” a different indie artist gets one car ride and one unedited take to perform a song. The cab becomes a mobile stage for acoustic Dylan-esque performances. Spoon’s Britt Daniel plays a stirring version of “I Summon You” all alone; I’m definitely no fan of Baby Dee, and Daniel Johnston is a weirdo, but you don’t have to tip the driver.

Maybe we should start KC Cab Worship. One ride and one unedited take to perform a praise song.

All Religions Lead to the Same Place

People have sent me links to Oprah’s next big thing. She is pushing a book (and turning it into an online course) by Eckhart Tolle. In the mold of the typical Christ-during-the-Millennium counterfeit, he calls it A New Earth. It’s sort of a spiritual-but-not-Christian Purpose Driven Life.

The hook is on the sixth page: This book can only awaken those who are ready. You may not be ready. So if you don’t get awakened by this book, then you are obviously a SPED, not even in the same league as O and E, and should never, ever consider contradicting the concepts in the book. You just don’t understand.

Eckhart is a non-aligned spiritual teacher who says there is a way out of suffering and into peace. Like Buddha and the Maharishi before him, it has to do with denying the ego and swaying collective consciousness (by becoming conscious of itself).

Now there’s an irony for you. Your self-consciousness is supposed to become more conscious of itself, and yet “you don’t live life; life lives you.” There is no such thing as “my life.” There is just life, and I must lose myself in it. I cannot “lose my life” (despite what Jesus said in Mark 8:35 and Matt 16:26), therefore I am eternal. But after I die, it’s not just that no one knows what is there—nothing is there.

“Thinking isolates a situation or event and calls it good or bad, as if it had a separate existence.” So stop thinking—or else you’ll fragment reality into an illusion. The illusion is anything you can think about. To get to reality, just align yourself with the “higher order” (want fries with that?).

Okay, here’s the hypocrisy. His Holiness (HH) the 14th Dalai Lama is the principal incarnation of Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara in India), the patron deity of Tibet. That makes him god on earth to his people, someone who had finally escaped the wheel of death and reincarnation, and voluntarily chose to be reborn in order to teach humanity. So he is supposed to be enlightened and understand these things, yet from what I have seen, he is not “in alignment” with what the Chinese are doing to his people. In some interviews the DL gets pretty pissed. He must not really be a “Master,” because ET says “the Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, in exactly the same way: ‘Is that so?’” To the Master there is only “this moment,” and this moment “is what it is,” so he does not go tripping on drama. He is at one with whatever happens. Only if you resist what happens are you unhappy. (Try telling that to any holocaust survivor.)

Surf the sitori. Zen is knowing what Zen is without knowing what it is that you know. So increase your consciousness, but decrease your responsibility. Take away your own free-will, determination, and freedom of choice (like the freedom to choose the right path) and replace it with introspection. That is why spirituality in A New Earth

• Values being independt from religious hierarchy
• Crosses social boundaries
• Deals with absorbing each other’s worship, rituals and myths
• Mistrusts authority at the same time it opens itself and willingly submits to some higher power

The Old Spirituality said there was only one right path and all other ways were wrong. On A New Earth all religions lead to the same place. You can take one of the traditional religions, or string a necklace of your own personal religious preferences.

I guess I don’t see what the controversy is. I totally agree with Oprah and E (in their most pluralistic selves). All religions do lead to the same place (Psa 9:17)! They always have (1 Chron 16:26). All religions lead to Hell. There was never any other place for them to go to. And no matter which religion you choose, all people are on the same path. Who didn’t know that?

The universe is not god. The God who created the universe negates all pagan Zen, because he contends neither with a higher realm, nor with competing powers. But, if we defy God, then we deify self. Always.

A MUCH BETTER BOOK to recommend to your friends who say they are spiritually “awakening” is Soul Cravings by Erwin McManus. Somebody needs to tell Oprah’s book club.