Josh Plovanic's Writings and Thoughts

 One day I'll be swimming...in an endless ocean. An ocean of your love. An ocean of your grace. An ocean of your mercy. An ocean of your glory. One day, these things will be all I know. I will be just completely immersed in your safety, and the ocean of your very being. I will know no sin. I will know no darkness. I will know no evil. I will know no hate. I will know no fear. I will know no death. I will swim in this ocean. This endless ocean of your love. This world I'm in, will be rendered just a fleeting thought. Almost like a bad dream.  I will remember it no more. All this maltreatment. All this cruelty. All this fear. All this Hatred. All this loss. I will remember no more of it. One day I will see the endless ocean of your mind and heart. And that is all I will know. Just you. Just your freedom. Just your glory. Just your truth. One day, all of my sins and my mistakes will be washed away by that ocean of love and mercy. All I will know is your love and grace. All I will...

  So, for me, a human being gets infinite, intrinsic value from 3 primary sources, all of which exist simultaneously; The first one is that we are made in the image of an infinite God. This is the most faith based justification for infinite intrinsic value of humans. For me the most important, but the other two can work without religion.   The second source is the individuality of a person, where every person is the only one of their kind and there are no two people entirely alike, this individuality gives intrinsic worth to people regardless of any category or group they may belong to. Individuality makes us all "the last of our kind." Turning us into a sort of precious gem.  The third source of infinite intrinsic value of a human being is the "world within a world" or "universe within a body" concept of human existence. We are all in kind of an information relationship with existence, where we receive the information projected from outside ourselves and ...

"This too shall pass." -Old biblical proverb Change is unavoidable. You can't escape it, and you can't stop it. It will strike like a wave you saw coming a mile away or it will strike like lightning...like a thief in the night. No good times can be sustained indefinitely, and no bad times can hold their grip on life forever. If you have it good, it is best to savor every second. If you have it bad, don't lose hope. Unless you are in the actual hell, your bad days won't last forever.  Everything changes and shifts, and no rigid formula can predict those shifts and changes, nor can they find meaningful clear patterns in them either. Reality is too complex to be flawlessly predictable or completely comprehendable. The most important thing to recall in times of trouble, and come to terms with in times of reward, is the impermanence of all things in this reality. No punishment, no reward, no mercy, no wrath, no healing, no sickness, no success, and no failure will ...

"An unforgivable tragedy. The answer isn't where you think you'd find it. Prepare yourself for the reckoning. For when your world seems to crumble again."      -Disturbed: "The Light" "Listen, Epps, these (African Americans) are human beings. If they are allowed to climb no higher than brute animals, you and men like you will have to answer for it. There is an ill, Mr. Epps. A fearful ill resting upon this nation. And there will be a day of reckoning yet."   -Samuel Bass, Canadian Abolitionist If everyone knew with certainty the consequence of sins and evil and saw and felt the depth and suffering the wrath these things can and will summon, you'd never have another sinner or wicked man again. Because of the uncertainty of the world, it is easy to be blinded to such consequences. In fact, the fog of doubt and uncertainty are so great in this world that you can deny the existence of any sort of eternal retribution or reward that comes from our ac...

I've been working on some guided meditations that I've been developing over the past couple months. They are from my own mind, and I have found that they are quite powerful and mind altering/expanding. I haven't completely honed them and polished them up to a standard yet, but the times I have really focused on them and walked through them, they have put me in kind of a trance, a quite euphoric altered state of mind. I do all three in succession and walk myself through them out loud. The first one is called "The Conquest of the Void." In it, you start the meditation by getting as relaxed as you can, focusing on your breathing and getting really comfortable, either laying down or sitting very comfortably. You first begin by imagining all of existence, the entirety of the universe, as being completely, utterly empty. No planets. No stars. No galaxies. No world. No people. Just complete emptiness. You focus on this emptiness and really let it sink in for a few minute...

It's ok. Breathe, and just know how loved you are. How valued you are. How blessed you are It's ok. It's ok to be sad. Sadness is a symptom of caring and love. If the world doesn't bring you sorrow, you really don't have a heart. It's ok.  It's ok to be angry. Things are a little off here, and anger is often a very justifyable response to that offness. Just know that nothing and no one escapes justice, and nothing and no one is beyond repair. It's ok.  It's ok to be alone, because you are never really alone. God and His angels are always with you, and they are just a prayer away. It's ok It's ok to be you, and to be loved by those who love you for you. Those who don't love you don't really matter. They are their own people with their own lives. Let them be them and let you be you. It's ok. It's ok to be a beautifully broken person, because some of the most beautiful things are rebuilt from shattered shards and mended with gold...

"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32) -Unofficial motto of the Central Intelligence Agency If there was absolute certainty of the nature, depth, scope, and knowledge of the whole of existence, where the darkness of uncertainty didn't exist anymore and all of humanity became aware of this absolute understanding, then deception would become completely impossible and all currently active and believed lies would unravel at their core and lose their power. A lie has to be believed in order to have power over someone's mind. If they fall on deaf ears and unconvinced people, then they are as empty as the wind. The philosophy of deception is different than the psychology of deception in that it does not deal with the empirical, scientific analysis of deception and it's psychological, physical symptoms or attributes. It deals with the deeper nature of deception in the whole of the world or existence and how it operates more on the lev...