From: waltzgreen@fuse.net   
      
   There is a living ring of life   
   It can die, it can grow.  It can only grow so large.   
   It fosters and invests itself into physical life.   
   And then some of the spiritual energy of that life returns to the ring   
   and becomes a part of the ring sustaining it.   
      
   The ring of life has experience and knowledge.   
   It has a pretty good idea of what goes on in a universe   
   after all it has lived through a few of them.   
      
   The ring of life is not omniscient   
   It does not know everything.   
   It can track trends   
   It can make educated guesses as to where those trends are headed   
   But it does not know everything.   
      
   The ring of life does not have power over the physical world.   
   It can out-live the physical universe   
   It can invest itself into entities living in  the physical world.   
   And through these living entities it has some ability to influence the   
   physical world.   
   But it does not have absolute power over the physical world.   
      
   The living entities become independent living entities.   
   They do not have to be what the ring of life intended.   
   They can go their own way.   
   Yet they to do not have absolute power over their own lives.   
   They can make their own way in the environment they find themselves.   
   For as long as their lives may last.   
      
   The physical universe these living entities inhabit  is susceptible to   
   spiritual energies wishes, prayers, intentions, things like that.   
   The living entities have some limited ability to nudge the universe one   
   way or the other. The physical universe is equally susceptible to both   
   'good' and 'evil' nudging   
      
   The living entities have a greater ability to effect the physical   
   universe by direct physical actions.   
      
   The ring of life invests several drives into living entities   
   Survival, sustain/maintain, reproduce, enrichment   
   The individual living entities assimilate what the ring of life gives   
   it, what it picks up from other living entities around   
   and what it learns on its own.  Putting this all together the living   
   entity makes its way through life.   
      
   When it dies, The preferred choice is for it's spiritual energy to   
   return to the ring.   
   The ring has a membrane that filters or peels off any unwanted energy   
   so spiritual energy that is not in alignment with the ring of life   
   piles up in the physical world.   
   This spiritual refuse can be picked up by other living entities.   
   Or if the entities are intelligent enough, the living entities can   
   transform this spiritual refuse into something more constructive.   
   Ideally enough living entities will choose to transform enough of this   
   refuse to keep it from developing a downward spiral.   
      
   There are other possibilities at death.   
   If the spiritual energy is so addicted or bonded to something in the   
   physical world the energy can stay here, and follow the subject of its   
   desire around.   
   This can be in the form or haunting or other behaviors.   
      
   If the individual living entity was so cut off, or has such an intense   
   interest in living again it can cycle around and be reborn more or less   
   intact into another living entity.   
      
   Or the spiritual energy can leave the physical world, yet not return to   
   the ring. Such energy can wander off into a wilderness of it's own   
   fabrication.   
      
   In any event, the spiritual energy will fade over time   
   unless or until it is re-invested into a new physical life.   
      
   Thus an individual living entity has its own internal drives to manage   
   and fulfill and the option of adding itself to the great collective pool of   
   life.   
   And in so doing, it can flavor all of life to come with its own flavor   
   as it helps sustain the ring of life.   
      
   The ring of life itself is then interested in shepherding a diverse   
   range of life.  It has reason to push the frontiers of life into extreme   
   living   
   conditions in order to best assure the continuation and adaptation of life   
   to   
   changing conditions in the physical universe.   
   Yet there is some limits to the size of the ring, so a some point, life   
   becomes more interested in maintaining a stable amount of life   
   instead of a all out push to grow as much life as possible.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)