Are Republicans voting in large numbers today for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary in order to keep the race for the Dem Nomination going…and maybe even force the Dems to nominate a candidate they perceive to be weaker against John McCain?
“Yes.”
So say bloggers Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence on the USAToday blogsite, On Politics.
Says that blog today…
“A trend that’s been apparent in earlier primaries — Republicans crossing party lines to vote in Democratic presidential contests — is happening again today around Indianapolis, our Gannett colleagues at the Indianapolis Star report. “Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties,” they write.”

This USAToday political blog goes on to say that the reason that some Republicans are voting in the Democratic primary in Indiana is to provide “both true support for either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton — and a wish on the part of some voters to see the Democrats continue to battle because that may help presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.”
I hate this. I hate that not only is Barack Obama forced to run against both Hillary and Bill, but also against every Republican who thinks that Obama is the tougher candidate for John McCain to run against in the Fall. It just isn’t fair, and when Billary wins the Indiana Primary tonight, I just hope that the Democratic Party sees through this ruse.
Okay, enough about politics today…
We’ve been talking here in recent entries about life mission and life purpose, and I’ve been saying that God has no specific purpose in mind for us. If God had a purpose, why in the world would God keep it from us?
No, there is no purpose that God has for us in our individual lives. And that thought brought this comment from a blog reader…

I’m curious (going through a lot of this in my own life and spiritual walk), If there is no pre-defined purpose set out by GOD for our lives, When faced with a suicidal person. “GOD has something planned for you, just hold on” becomes moot.
Posted by: Michael | May 5, 2

I respectfully disagree, Michael. The thought, “God has something planned for you” is not moot — it is simply not specific. God has a LOT planned for every one of us…but it is not about a specific purpose or mission in life. What God has planned for us is the opportunity to fully self-create and completely self-express and totally self-experience.
That is what physical life is for. As to HOW we do that, THIS is left up to US. So in that sense, God does not have a “plan” for us…but rather, plans to us make our own plans, our own choices, our own decisions. Yet there is something more, something a bit closer to the heart of the matter, that I would be saying to a person who was talking about suicide, Michael. I would open HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends and read to that person right out of that book.
I’d read, at the very least, the following passages…
I asked God in that dialogue if people who committed suicide would be punished after death…
we pick up the dialogue there…

There is no such thing as “punishment” in what you call the Afterlife. It is those who are left behind who are punished. They experience an incredible shock, from which some never fully recover. All of them feel an enormous loss. Many spend the rest of their lives blaming themselves. They wonder what they did wrong, they agonize over what they could have said that might have changed things.
The sad thing is that those who end their own life imagine that they are going to change things, and they are not.
Ending your life in order to escape something does not create a situation in which you escape anything. If you are thinking of ending your life in order to avoid something, you should know, I say again, that you are contemplating something that you cannot do.
A wish to avoid that which is painful is normal. It is all part of the human dance. However, in this particular moment of that dance a person is trying to push herself or himself away from something that the soul has come to the body to experience, not to escape.
Because that person has found the experience to be painful and difficult, he or she seeks to step into a void, where there is nothing to face and nothing to fear. But people cannot step into a void, because there is no void to step into. A void does not exist.
There is no void anywhere in the universe. Not anywhere at all. There is no “place where nothing is.” Everywhere you go, the space is filled with something.

What is it? What is the space filled with?

Your own creations. You will face your creations wherever you go, and you cannot escape them—nor do you wish to, because you have created your creations in order to recreate yourself. It will not benefit you, therefore, to attempt to sidestep them, or to dance around them.
Dancing your way to the void cannot be done.
Let me put this another way: A Void Dance is not possible.

That is very clever. That is a very clever play on words.

I use words in this way frequently, so that you can easily and always remember the message they seek to convey.

Well, I will always remember that one. “A Void Dance is not possible.”

No, because what you die with, you will continue to live with.

That is a very powerful statement.

It was meant to be.

Forgive me for going back to this, forgive me for saying this now, right here, as we are talking about ending one’s own life, but earlier you said that death was wonderful. Why wouldn’t someone whose life is terrible desire death if it is so wonderful?

What you call “death” IS wonderful, but it is no more wonderful than LIFE. In fact, “death” IS life, simply continuing in a different way.
I want you to be very clear here. You will encounter yourself on the other side of death, and all the stuff you carried with you will still be there. Then you will do the most ironic thing. You will give yourself another physical life in which to deal with what you did not deal with in your most recent one.

I will return to physical life? I can’t “work things out” in the non-physical, spiritual realm?

No, for it is the purpose of physical life to provide you with a context within which you may experience what you chose, in the spiritual realm, to experience.
And so by leaving physical life you will escape nothing, but will just place yourself right back into physical life, and into the situation you were seeking to escape…except now you will be back at the beginning again.
You will not see this as a “punishment” or a “requirement” or a “burden,” because you will do this all of your own free will, understanding it to be part of the process of self-creation, for which you exist.

So we might as well deal with whatever we are dealing with right now.

Indeed, that is what life is for.
When life is used in that way, you will die when you are ready to use death as a tool with which to create a new and different life. Suicide is the use of death to create the same life all over again, with the same challenges and experiences

.
I’ve never heard it put quite that way. That says a lot.

Yes.
So, you may use death as a tool with which to escape, or with which to create. The first is impossible, the second is incredible.