Robbo: It seems I may be your mirror. I typed the text below and had not signed in, so it didn’t post, but, thanks to your reminder, I had saved it to a text file so lost little, I thank you for you r guidance.
Bill: Whitesnake’s “Here I go again” has been my personal anthem for years. 
I knew there was more to me than alcoholism, and appreciate that ADD may not be my only issue. I am certainly not ready to tackle the personal inventory, although that is an excellent idea and I will file that for later, thanks. When I watched “ADD and loving it”, I saw 5 “steps”, 2 of them worry me, the “right career” and “right partner”. My “Career” has been prostitution in the computer industry. I told my last manager and now friend that I may have ADD, and he said “Well duh! You’re a programmer”. As a manger of programmers, he had the unofficial title of “Cat herder”. 😆 Anyhoo, I have been trying to get away from that into something else. Computers are a young person’s sport. I still keep my hand in with web sites, and expanding my personal network and its functionality. My “partner”, well, she IS the right partner and I intend to leave it that way,
Robbo: I like your version of the title best, a pun (pane and pain) with greater vision there can be greater pain (or something like that). I can attest to “The more you know, the more you discover you don’t know” maxim in learning. Keep up the flatulence, it makes me smile and think.
I have no “start” date for writing my road to Taoism, but it must be done. This may become part of it. I was raised a Christian by marinated parents. My father was raised by his widowed mother surrounded by a village of devout church goers. He always felt he was marinated in Christianity. He was a good man. After the death of my daughter, subsequent divorce and attempted suicide, I thought “This is stupid” and made a conscience decision to “start again”. I started writing my story, for therapeutic reasons and in the first chapter I die (it ends with the suicide attempt), which I thought was a kinda cool, literary twist(?).
I’ll skip the psych, advanced education, and continue in recovery. AA talks about higher power rather that God as a way to be all inclusive, I can accept that. At some point I decided to seek the truth. Religion and Science both try to make sense of our condition, i.e. they are both explaining the same thing, yet they do not agree.
Gazing around the plethora of belief systems available I could not accept one over any another. They cannot all be right, or can they.
Science is proven by logic. Logic is indisputable, and the ultimate truth. So Science is there and I can ignore it. There are folk out there doing science stuff, expanding our knowledge, and they may never find all the answers because Godel’s incompleteness theory hints that everything within a Universe cannot be proven without using something external to that Universe. Do the Mathematical Extremist bit and Universe becomes Life, the universe and everything (ref: Douglas Adams) and there is nothing outside everything, That would be my higher power.
Turning back to religion. None of them completely agree with any other, but they all contain some truth. I will ignore the newer ones, like Morman and Scientology, one for being Christian based and the other been too weird. The New Testament of the Bible has, I believe and I mean no offence, been corrupted by the Catholic Church in order to control the masses. What they left out is of more value, e.g. the Gnostic Gospels. The Old Testament is also very important, as there were several, 7 I think, versions that in the original Hebrew now agree with each other. That kinda freaks me out, all versions evolved and became one.
A Talmudic Scholar and good friend gave me a copy of one of his go to books that covered many belief systems from the early Bear Killers on a Japanese Island onward. Christianity also has many stories in common with the Zoroastrians. Buddhism ( I checked the spelling and Budweiser was a suggestion 😆 ) and Confucius have common roots in Taoism. So I guess my progress so far has led me to elicit the commonalities between Taoism, Judaism and Science. My research is on hiatus for a couple of years ago while we are relocating.
Funny story, After reading the Gnostic Gospel of John, I generated a hypothesis that the People named in the texts were originally nouns that during translation (Greek <> Hebrew <> Coptic <> Aramaic) became proper nouns. Wisdom >> Sophia << Wisdom etc. I was documenting this on one of my web sites and I arrived at Barbelo, which could be Hebrew for “God in four”, you know, the tetragrammaton, you know, the name that may never be spoken. I typed the Hebrew in and BANG, the computer blew. Well these things happen. I booted the laptop up and tried to complete the work and PUFF, that one crapped out on me. You can call me anything you want but that is a little too freaky.
It reminded me of an AA story. Dude looks up and says to God, “If you do exist show me a sign”, at which point a tree branch crashes to the ground in front of him, Dude says “do it again”.
Similarly, Dude on his roof in a flood. Boat arrives to help, Dude says “I’m OK God will save me”. Helicopter arrives, Dude says “I’m OK God will save me”. Dude eventually drowns and arrives in heaven asking why God had not saved him, to which God replied “I sent you a boat, then a helicopter……..”
Other things need me attention now,
David
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