here is the latest installment of my personal growth manual
----------------------------------
Certainly yoga, organic food, etc. are healthy practices, yet so many people seem to have unhealthy beliefs and attitudes underlying them. For example:
if you have the underlying belief that you are the victim of toxins in the environment, and that you must live really healthy just to counteract that, and perhaps the further belief that even then it may not be enough, and perhaps the belief that these poisons in the environment, which are affecting YOU!, were put there by other, unconscious people, often bad, selfish people motivated only by making money, who don't care who they hurt
(notice all the judgments and assumptions)
well, although you may be minimizing the physical toxins you are directly taking in, you are certainly creating a lot of poisons in your mind, poisons which will impact your body as the result of stress, if nothing else.
Further, if you have an attitude such as "i'm better than other people because i do this stuff", that attitude itself is also a poison, creating a sense of alienation in yourself, poisoning your relationships, because people can sense your judgment and condescension, and, perhaps worst of all, that attitude keeps you in the illusion of separateness, cutting you off from the higher, some would say highest, spiritual truth, which is that we are all One.
Another example:
if your unconscious programming, self images and beliefs about yourself, perhaps picked up in childhood, is that you are
--bad, weak, unhealthy, undisciplined, damaged or wounded. Do you deserve to be happy,
seor whatever your negative programming is--
then you may find yourself constantly fighting a losing battle against the unseen foe of your unconscious/subconscious negative self images and beliefs.
If you are trying to change or accomplish anything in your life, you need to look inside at what your self images and beliefs are. The most important part of positive change and accomplishment, is releasing the dis-empowering self images and beliefs and replacing them with empowering self images and beliefs. At the minimum, the belief that you CAN change and grow, and if you can, add easily.
Can you tell that i am writing from personal experience. I wish that i were the only person that this applies to, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Furthermore, what are your less personal beliefs. For example
*What are your metaphysical beliefs, the framework, the lens through which you view everything, about the nature of the universe. the rules of the game, so to speak, and about other people and "humanity".
Is the universe inherently a loving, hostile, or neutral place. is there enough for everybody, or not"
Is there some sort of God, Great Spirit, or whatever. What are your beliefs regarding that, and how it affects your everyday life.
Do you "create your own reality", and to what extent. How much, or how little, ultimate control do you believe that you have over your own life. Are you totally at the mercy of greater forces, such as the unemployment rate, or do you have some input into your own situation, and how much.
*What are your beliefs about people and the society you find yourself in. This is a big one.
Are people inherently good, bad, or whatever. Inherently selfish or unselfish, conscious or unconscious?
Are you at the mercy of your genes?
Etc.
All these deeper beliefs really do affect, in a big way, your experience and your possibilities in your life.
Showing posts with label metaphysics--spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metaphysics--spirituality. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
The End of the age of Materialism
The first three words of ECOnomy are ECO (Jim Bell). That's the central truth we all need to remember. Sustainable is not some hippy dippy feel good idea, it's the key to our survival. Just like any individual, the economies of the world have to live on the budget of what the earth will sustain.
The economies of America and the world are based on fantasy and denial. Whether the societies are capitalist, socialist, communist or whatever, ultimately they are all materialists.
There's only so long the illusion that we can loot and pollute the earth without any consequences can be maintained.
Resources are not infinite,
the ability of the environment to absorb poisons of various sorts without serious consequences to our own health and well being has been reached, including electromagnetic pollution, not to mention various other manifestations of fantasy thinking, such as GMOs and fracking.
We are living in what could be called The Age of Pollution, or perhaps the Age of the Two Experiments, biological and electro-magnetic.
1) The Biological pollution experiment-Starting with the beginning of factories, toxins were spewed out in all directions. Now there are toxic chemicals in almost every product on the market today, especially widespread use of poisons to grow food. That has gone into overdrive with the sudden shift into GMO usage, basically using the whole world as a testing lab, and the people in it as guinea pigs.
2) The Electromagnetic pollution experiment-living organisms, indeed the earth itself, are electromagnetic beings just as much as we are flesh and bone. Starting with the widespread introduction of electricity, power lines everywhere, now going into overdrive with computers, wifi, cellphones, cellphone towers. and all the rest of the electronics that modern life seems to revolve around, ubiquitous everywhere one goes, there is another worldwide experiment going on, an experiment in which the effects of all these devices are impacting every living being on the planet.
These are two big experiments.
We can no longer base our economies on the production and consumption of material goods. Particularly odious and destructive are disposability, and the conspicuous consumption and massive waste seen especially in the US and other wealthy countries.
Voluntary Simplicity and efficiency are the order of the day, but what about jobs?
One thing no one talks about when asking where will people work is that- how much income someone needs is directly dependent on prices, especially housing and food, and this is very much a function of the equality or inequality of a society, the degree of exploitation imposed by the haves on the have-nots.
How many hours do you have to work to pay your rent? In the US in the 50s, one could push a broom for $1/hr and rent a room for $10/month. You could pay rent with 10 hours work per month. Now the ratio is a lot more brutal. Who sets those prices. How do the laws of a country affect that? It's not so simple.
The simplest things people could do would be to
1) go vegetarian, even vegan
2) get out of their cars and on to a bicycle, walk or public transit
3) stop buying stuff not really needed
Sounds great, but how safe are the roads for bicycles, how much public transit is there? Can people get where they need to go and do what they need to do? That takes a different infrastructure.
What happens to all the people out of jobs because people stop buying? My view is that most jobs are unnecessary, especially when one calculates in the subsidized waste and inefficiency and consumerism so rampant today. However, those jobs feel very necessary to the people working them. Is America suddenly going to go to a 15 hour workweek, so that there is work for everyone? Will prices come down to adjust? It's not so simple.
It's one thing when disasters happen in isolated instances, but if it happens on a large scale?
What happens when rising oceans force people, including businesses, to move somewhere else?
What happens when storms and fires destroy homes and businesses?
What happens when various disasters happen as a result of fracking and other insane practices.
Etc. (too many things to list all
Where will people get money, how will they live?
1 What we work at, what jobs the economy is based on, must inevitably change, because right now jobs produce a lot of poisons, and this is simply not sustainable. Already cancer rates have skyrocketed, not to mention all sorts of other health problems that ultimately come down to a toxic environment. Not to mention global climate disruption, the oceans being fished out, loss of soil nutrition, ad infinitum.
2 The whole issue of wage and social inequality will make a huge difference in how much suffering this change entails
3 Voluntary simplicity and conscious consumption must be seen as the patriotic and socially useful choices they are, rather than as a bunch of granola munchers living weird lives.
How can we have good lives, doing useful and productive work that doesn't result in poisoning ourselves and the planet?
How do we transition as gracefully as possible to this new economic system?
The issue is not just the rich who own the companies and the governments and buy the laws. The issue is the attitude shared by so many people that, in effect, the earth is just something to eat. Translated, that means that if their job, which pays their rent and buys their food, if doing that job means toxic waste in a river, well, they just do it. Perhaps they would prefer not to, but they don't feel they have a choice. Truth be told, in many cases they may not apparently have much choice.
Many may not even think about it all.
So now we get into values and self esteem. So long as people peg their self esteem to how much they earn and spend, especially how much stuff they buy, well, big problem. This is especially true of men, who often have been taught that the way to prove how much of a man they are is spend, spend, spend.
And for women, they seem to like lots of nice things.
Does it make a difference how we live our personal material lives?
In an old article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been a real warrior for the environment, said that personal choices by a few wouldn't do much in the larger scheme of things, that laws were needed. Statistically speaking he is correct, however in metaphysical terms i think he's wrong. I think of the story about a mother who brought her child to Gandhi and said "please tell him to stop eating sugar". Gandhi said come back in two weeks. When they came back, Gandhi said "Stop eating sugar". The woman asked why they had to wait two weeks, Gandhi said, 2 weeks ago i had not stopped eating sugar.
Always carrying a shopping bag, coffee cup, portable plate and silverware, takeout container with you; being very conscious how much water runs when washing dishes, indeed starting with whether a dish really needs to be washed or not, these are small things, and let's face it, there are people who can waste in a week what we can save in a year, but... in metaphysics there is the principle of "if you take one step towards god, god takes ten steps towards you". It's really all a lesson in consciousness, consciousness in the everyday details of our lives as a spiritual practice.
Ultimately, what has created these problems is a lack of consciousness and self responsibility, what will solve them is consciousness and self responsibility on a global scale. i realize that's a lot to ask, but there it is.
Every spiritual teaching says find fulfillment within, don't look without. Ultimately i take the view that this whole massive crisis, this upheaval, is for the purposes of spiritual growth, of teaching consciousness, in the everyday details of our lives. In a lot of teachings, there is the view that we are spiritual beings having a material experience, and that all that falls shall rise again, that nothing is created or destroyed, just transformed, speaking on a spiritual and energetic level. None of which excuses or condones the rape of the earth by a society that is living unconsciously. Well, we are about to become a lot more conscious on a mass level, so see the silver lining, which is that, at the end of however long this next period of upheaval lasts, which could be hundreds of years, humanity will have evolved to a new level.
The economies of America and the world are based on fantasy and denial. Whether the societies are capitalist, socialist, communist or whatever, ultimately they are all materialists.
There's only so long the illusion that we can loot and pollute the earth without any consequences can be maintained.
Resources are not infinite,
the ability of the environment to absorb poisons of various sorts without serious consequences to our own health and well being has been reached, including electromagnetic pollution, not to mention various other manifestations of fantasy thinking, such as GMOs and fracking.
We are living in what could be called The Age of Pollution, or perhaps the Age of the Two Experiments, biological and electro-magnetic.
1) The Biological pollution experiment-Starting with the beginning of factories, toxins were spewed out in all directions. Now there are toxic chemicals in almost every product on the market today, especially widespread use of poisons to grow food. That has gone into overdrive with the sudden shift into GMO usage, basically using the whole world as a testing lab, and the people in it as guinea pigs.
2) The Electromagnetic pollution experiment-living organisms, indeed the earth itself, are electromagnetic beings just as much as we are flesh and bone. Starting with the widespread introduction of electricity, power lines everywhere, now going into overdrive with computers, wifi, cellphones, cellphone towers. and all the rest of the electronics that modern life seems to revolve around, ubiquitous everywhere one goes, there is another worldwide experiment going on, an experiment in which the effects of all these devices are impacting every living being on the planet.
These are two big experiments.
We can no longer base our economies on the production and consumption of material goods. Particularly odious and destructive are disposability, and the conspicuous consumption and massive waste seen especially in the US and other wealthy countries.
Voluntary Simplicity and efficiency are the order of the day, but what about jobs?
One thing no one talks about when asking where will people work is that- how much income someone needs is directly dependent on prices, especially housing and food, and this is very much a function of the equality or inequality of a society, the degree of exploitation imposed by the haves on the have-nots.
How many hours do you have to work to pay your rent? In the US in the 50s, one could push a broom for $1/hr and rent a room for $10/month. You could pay rent with 10 hours work per month. Now the ratio is a lot more brutal. Who sets those prices. How do the laws of a country affect that? It's not so simple.
The simplest things people could do would be to
1) go vegetarian, even vegan
2) get out of their cars and on to a bicycle, walk or public transit
3) stop buying stuff not really needed
Sounds great, but how safe are the roads for bicycles, how much public transit is there? Can people get where they need to go and do what they need to do? That takes a different infrastructure.
What happens to all the people out of jobs because people stop buying? My view is that most jobs are unnecessary, especially when one calculates in the subsidized waste and inefficiency and consumerism so rampant today. However, those jobs feel very necessary to the people working them. Is America suddenly going to go to a 15 hour workweek, so that there is work for everyone? Will prices come down to adjust? It's not so simple.
It's one thing when disasters happen in isolated instances, but if it happens on a large scale?
What happens when rising oceans force people, including businesses, to move somewhere else?
What happens when storms and fires destroy homes and businesses?
What happens when various disasters happen as a result of fracking and other insane practices.
Etc. (too many things to list all
Where will people get money, how will they live?
1 What we work at, what jobs the economy is based on, must inevitably change, because right now jobs produce a lot of poisons, and this is simply not sustainable. Already cancer rates have skyrocketed, not to mention all sorts of other health problems that ultimately come down to a toxic environment. Not to mention global climate disruption, the oceans being fished out, loss of soil nutrition, ad infinitum.
2 The whole issue of wage and social inequality will make a huge difference in how much suffering this change entails
3 Voluntary simplicity and conscious consumption must be seen as the patriotic and socially useful choices they are, rather than as a bunch of granola munchers living weird lives.
How can we have good lives, doing useful and productive work that doesn't result in poisoning ourselves and the planet?
How do we transition as gracefully as possible to this new economic system?
The issue is not just the rich who own the companies and the governments and buy the laws. The issue is the attitude shared by so many people that, in effect, the earth is just something to eat. Translated, that means that if their job, which pays their rent and buys their food, if doing that job means toxic waste in a river, well, they just do it. Perhaps they would prefer not to, but they don't feel they have a choice. Truth be told, in many cases they may not apparently have much choice.
Many may not even think about it all.
So now we get into values and self esteem. So long as people peg their self esteem to how much they earn and spend, especially how much stuff they buy, well, big problem. This is especially true of men, who often have been taught that the way to prove how much of a man they are is spend, spend, spend.
And for women, they seem to like lots of nice things.
Does it make a difference how we live our personal material lives?
In an old article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been a real warrior for the environment, said that personal choices by a few wouldn't do much in the larger scheme of things, that laws were needed. Statistically speaking he is correct, however in metaphysical terms i think he's wrong. I think of the story about a mother who brought her child to Gandhi and said "please tell him to stop eating sugar". Gandhi said come back in two weeks. When they came back, Gandhi said "Stop eating sugar". The woman asked why they had to wait two weeks, Gandhi said, 2 weeks ago i had not stopped eating sugar.
Always carrying a shopping bag, coffee cup, portable plate and silverware, takeout container with you; being very conscious how much water runs when washing dishes, indeed starting with whether a dish really needs to be washed or not, these are small things, and let's face it, there are people who can waste in a week what we can save in a year, but... in metaphysics there is the principle of "if you take one step towards god, god takes ten steps towards you". It's really all a lesson in consciousness, consciousness in the everyday details of our lives as a spiritual practice.
Ultimately, what has created these problems is a lack of consciousness and self responsibility, what will solve them is consciousness and self responsibility on a global scale. i realize that's a lot to ask, but there it is.
Every spiritual teaching says find fulfillment within, don't look without. Ultimately i take the view that this whole massive crisis, this upheaval, is for the purposes of spiritual growth, of teaching consciousness, in the everyday details of our lives. In a lot of teachings, there is the view that we are spiritual beings having a material experience, and that all that falls shall rise again, that nothing is created or destroyed, just transformed, speaking on a spiritual and energetic level. None of which excuses or condones the rape of the earth by a society that is living unconsciously. Well, we are about to become a lot more conscious on a mass level, so see the silver lining, which is that, at the end of however long this next period of upheaval lasts, which could be hundreds of years, humanity will have evolved to a new level.
Friday, May 4, 2012
My ideas on spirituality and religion
WARNING: there is no doubt that i will be revising and adding to this a lot. This is today's version
edited 1/30/13
1) Western Organized Religions present the very definition of religion as a mental exercise of subscribing to a set of beliefs, believing in God, the Bible, Jesus, etc. It's about accepting someone's word for it, without any personal experience. I have a whole post on this blog about My Ideas on Christianity and the Bible, so i won't repeat myself here, but i suggest you take a look at that post, it ties in with this one.
In stark contrast, the Eastern Religions speak of doing practices which hone our spiritual senses so that we may have a direct experience of true reality. Senses we do not even know we have available, let alone use. Systems such as yoga (the complete yoga system, not just the exercises which are only a small part of classical yoga) present systematic methods for developing these senses, in the same way that one might sharpen one's sense of hearing music through ear training. Meditation is the best way i know to do this, the most fundamental practice of all.
Just to be clear, when i talk of having an experience of Spirit through sharpening the spiritual senses, i'm not speaking of some big dramatic Moses seeing God on the mountain kind of experience, i'm talking about a quiet sense of something more than our little self. Many have experienced and written about feeling/perceiving/having a sense of some higher power, some guidance, some meaning and purpose in the experiences of our lives, some sense of something more than just the material world. They feel it to be true, not just believe with the mind.
The Easterners say that if you don't have direct experience, your belief is without substance. To Westerners raised on Christianity this sounds really fantastic, but so did cell phones 100 years ago.
Western Organized Religion teaches people are saved or not, good or bad. Easterners teach that we have a dual nature, that we are both a human self and a divine Self, and that our task in life is, through doing practices, to develop our spiritual senses to the point where we realize the Self. Through an ongoing spiritual progression involving reincarnation we learn and grow to that point. No Heaven, No Hell, just cause and effect.
2) A "religious" organization is still basically an organization. Once an organization is formed, too often the fearful, controlling people take charge, and the organization becomes about money and power. In the West, people who talked about personal experiences of God were often burned at the stake (by Christians) or beheaded (Muslims). If you're weren't/aren't with the official program, you're a sinner. This makes sense, because independents threaten the power of the organization to control people's lives.
Western Organized Religions, especially Christianity, have left a very bad taste in people's mouths, to the point where many people have rejected the whole idea of religion and spirituality because of that, and i think that's terrible, because opening the spiritual senses and having a direct experience of something greater than ourselves is essential to being healthy and happy.
I refer readers to several books for a start: 1) the Upanishads, 2) the Tao Te Ching 3) The Bhagavad Gita 4) The Dhammapada 5) the poetry of Hafiz
----------------------
Given all that, if i state some of my own beliefs, which are based in my own experiences, I believe that:
(and don't accept a single word of this just because i say it, have your own experiences. What difference does it make what i believe.)
* The whole universe is conscious and alive, and that we as human beings are part of this greater pattern, this Great Spirit, in the same way that every cell in our body is part of us. The scientific evidence can be found in quantum mechanics, specifically what is sometimes called "The Field". We truly are all one, all connected.
* We are usually not aware of this, especially in our everyday lives, at beta frequencies of brain waves. However, through various practices we can increasingly experience this, in what are called "mystical"experiences.
Christianity teaches original sin, that we are essentially bad and need to be made good. In contrast, Hinduism teaches that we are all God incarnate, and our path is to remember that, while Buddhism teaches a similar idea that at our essence we all are all enlightened, yet have forgotten, in the dust and clouds of craving and aversion which obscure our true nature. Meditation is the key to letting the muddy waters of desires and thoughts settle so that we can perceive our true nature.
* I agree with the Hindu and Buddhist viewpoints and believe that regaining the consciousness of our true identity as a manifestation of the One is one of the main purposes for existence for everyone, along with the purpose of sharing love, which naturally comes about as the experience of connection with everyone and everything gradually occurs as the result of doing practices.
i
*I think that everyone alive would be best served by making their #1 goal in life to become the best person they can be, in whatever ways are meaningful for them, at whatever level of understanding they have of the concept of bettering themselves, and ultimately that means realizing the Self.
* I believe that learning to live in joy is one of the greatest lessons we are here to learn in life, that and becoming as conscious as we can, somatically, psychologically, psychically, spiritually.
This means that we have to really clean out our internal "garbage" of old wounds, negative programming and beliefs, and begin opening ourselves up to the light, allowing ourselves to receive whatever good the Universe has for us, which may be as simple as learning to just appreciate being alive. The old phrase, "attitude is everything", has a lot of truth to it. One can make the best of a bad situation or the worst of it, choosing bitterness and negativity, or trying at least not to make things worse by poisoning oneself with negativity of all sorts, maybe even trying to see the lessons the situation is there to teach, implying that everything has a reason
and i realize how much of a struggle many people's lives are, not trying to deny that.
* I believe that we reincarnate time and again for this purpose, just the way we go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. We are spiritual beings having material experiences, not the reverse. We have specifically chosen where and when to incarnate, (time, parents, etc.) into the situation which is optimum for us to learn the lessons we came to work on in this life, albeit it sometimes seems like an extremely harsh school when one thinks of all the horrible things people have done to others. I want to make clear that we do NOT have to suffer to learn; i have read that one of the most important markers in a souls' evolution is when it becomes able to learn through joy, rather than suffering.
* I believe that there is some sort of Great Spirit, and various levels of spiritual beings, that love us and help us as much as we allow ourselves to receive. Put another way, i believe that God unconditionally loves us, never judges or condemns us, always tries to help us.
* I also believe that from time to time great spirits incarnate on Earth in the form of Jesus, Buddha, and probably others, and that many lesser teachers are always around to help us, sometimes not in obvious ways. The world is a one room schoolhouse which we are all in together for a higher purpose.
* I believe that most of our problems come from cutting ourselves off from the light and unconditional love the Universe has for us, usually because of a) self judgement and guilt, and b) anger at God, for all the suffering in the world, for example for allowing the Holocaust, and of course anger about our own suffering.
* Even so, i believe that, by our very nature as small individuations of the Great Spirit, at bottom people are good, even though it can be pretty hard to tell that at times.
edited 1/30/13
1) Western Organized Religions present the very definition of religion as a mental exercise of subscribing to a set of beliefs, believing in God, the Bible, Jesus, etc. It's about accepting someone's word for it, without any personal experience. I have a whole post on this blog about My Ideas on Christianity and the Bible, so i won't repeat myself here, but i suggest you take a look at that post, it ties in with this one.
In stark contrast, the Eastern Religions speak of doing practices which hone our spiritual senses so that we may have a direct experience of true reality. Senses we do not even know we have available, let alone use. Systems such as yoga (the complete yoga system, not just the exercises which are only a small part of classical yoga) present systematic methods for developing these senses, in the same way that one might sharpen one's sense of hearing music through ear training. Meditation is the best way i know to do this, the most fundamental practice of all.
Just to be clear, when i talk of having an experience of Spirit through sharpening the spiritual senses, i'm not speaking of some big dramatic Moses seeing God on the mountain kind of experience, i'm talking about a quiet sense of something more than our little self. Many have experienced and written about feeling/perceiving/having a sense of some higher power, some guidance, some meaning and purpose in the experiences of our lives, some sense of something more than just the material world. They feel it to be true, not just believe with the mind.
The Easterners say that if you don't have direct experience, your belief is without substance. To Westerners raised on Christianity this sounds really fantastic, but so did cell phones 100 years ago.
Western Organized Religion teaches people are saved or not, good or bad. Easterners teach that we have a dual nature, that we are both a human self and a divine Self, and that our task in life is, through doing practices, to develop our spiritual senses to the point where we realize the Self. Through an ongoing spiritual progression involving reincarnation we learn and grow to that point. No Heaven, No Hell, just cause and effect.
2) A "religious" organization is still basically an organization. Once an organization is formed, too often the fearful, controlling people take charge, and the organization becomes about money and power. In the West, people who talked about personal experiences of God were often burned at the stake (by Christians) or beheaded (Muslims). If you're weren't/aren't with the official program, you're a sinner. This makes sense, because independents threaten the power of the organization to control people's lives.
Western Organized Religions, especially Christianity, have left a very bad taste in people's mouths, to the point where many people have rejected the whole idea of religion and spirituality because of that, and i think that's terrible, because opening the spiritual senses and having a direct experience of something greater than ourselves is essential to being healthy and happy.
I refer readers to several books for a start: 1) the Upanishads, 2) the Tao Te Ching 3) The Bhagavad Gita 4) The Dhammapada 5) the poetry of Hafiz
----------------------
Given all that, if i state some of my own beliefs, which are based in my own experiences, I believe that:
(and don't accept a single word of this just because i say it, have your own experiences. What difference does it make what i believe.)
* The whole universe is conscious and alive, and that we as human beings are part of this greater pattern, this Great Spirit, in the same way that every cell in our body is part of us. The scientific evidence can be found in quantum mechanics, specifically what is sometimes called "The Field". We truly are all one, all connected.
* We are usually not aware of this, especially in our everyday lives, at beta frequencies of brain waves. However, through various practices we can increasingly experience this, in what are called "mystical"experiences.
* I agree with the Hindu and Buddhist viewpoints and believe that regaining the consciousness of our true identity as a manifestation of the One is one of the main purposes for existence for everyone, along with the purpose of sharing love, which naturally comes about as the experience of connection with everyone and everything gradually occurs as the result of doing practices.
i
*I think that everyone alive would be best served by making their #1 goal in life to become the best person they can be, in whatever ways are meaningful for them, at whatever level of understanding they have of the concept of bettering themselves, and ultimately that means realizing the Self.
* I believe that learning to live in joy is one of the greatest lessons we are here to learn in life, that and becoming as conscious as we can, somatically, psychologically, psychically, spiritually.
This means that we have to really clean out our internal "garbage" of old wounds, negative programming and beliefs, and begin opening ourselves up to the light, allowing ourselves to receive whatever good the Universe has for us, which may be as simple as learning to just appreciate being alive. The old phrase, "attitude is everything", has a lot of truth to it. One can make the best of a bad situation or the worst of it, choosing bitterness and negativity, or trying at least not to make things worse by poisoning oneself with negativity of all sorts, maybe even trying to see the lessons the situation is there to teach, implying that everything has a reason
and i realize how much of a struggle many people's lives are, not trying to deny that.
* I believe that we reincarnate time and again for this purpose, just the way we go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. We are spiritual beings having material experiences, not the reverse. We have specifically chosen where and when to incarnate, (time, parents, etc.) into the situation which is optimum for us to learn the lessons we came to work on in this life, albeit it sometimes seems like an extremely harsh school when one thinks of all the horrible things people have done to others. I want to make clear that we do NOT have to suffer to learn; i have read that one of the most important markers in a souls' evolution is when it becomes able to learn through joy, rather than suffering.
* I believe that there is some sort of Great Spirit, and various levels of spiritual beings, that love us and help us as much as we allow ourselves to receive. Put another way, i believe that God unconditionally loves us, never judges or condemns us, always tries to help us.
* I also believe that from time to time great spirits incarnate on Earth in the form of Jesus, Buddha, and probably others, and that many lesser teachers are always around to help us, sometimes not in obvious ways. The world is a one room schoolhouse which we are all in together for a higher purpose.
* I believe that most of our problems come from cutting ourselves off from the light and unconditional love the Universe has for us, usually because of a) self judgement and guilt, and b) anger at God, for all the suffering in the world, for example for allowing the Holocaust, and of course anger about our own suffering.
* Even so, i believe that, by our very nature as small individuations of the Great Spirit, at bottom people are good, even though it can be pretty hard to tell that at times.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
My ideas on Christianity and the Bible
*for the most part i find the bible a very brutal, harsh and unkind book,
with perhaps %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching.
*I think the Bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus,
------------
Right at the beginning i would like to state that i revere Jesus as a great spiritual teacher, one of the greatest. Indeed, both Hindus and Buddhists, even Muslims, also revere him, they just don't believe he was the only one or the last one.
I am not writing this to deride or attack Christians, but to point out what seem to me to be great logical inconsistencies.
1 So many so called Christians seem much more concerned with who to hate than who to love.
This seems directly opposite to Christ's teachings.
They seem so angry about Gay Marriage and abortion. Hundreds of millions of children and adults are starving worldwide, indeed here in America, people lacking the basic necessities of life, yet there are no propositions put on state ballots to outlaw starvation and other sufferings.
Also, it's confusing to me how so much of the military is made up of followers of a man who said to turn the other cheek, and how so many Christians believe in War. The answer i come up with is that most so called Christians give lip service to Jesus, but in practice follow the old testament judgement, punishment and anger model.
Many people who consider themselves Christians seem very accepting of brutality and violence, even torture and genocide, whether it's war, football, movies or television. On the other hand, they seem to be very condemning of expressions of sex, intimacy and pleasure, as the incident at the Super Bowl a few years ago epitomized, where seeing Janet Jackson's breast was deeply shocking for many viewers, while the game itself, where large grown men try to hurt each other, was exciting and interesting.
I think that this has caused a great deal of stress and mental illness through the ages. People were and are taught to not accept their own sensual natures, to be at war with themselves, often living their whole lives in a state of dis-ease (this goes triple if you are gay).
Not a prescription for a healthy society.
I have met some very good, kind, loving people who are bible believers, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule.
2 Christians say that it's true because the Bible says so, and that one should just trust that authority without questioning, as well as trusting whatever their preacher says.
I can't help but contrast the Buddha's statement that one should not accept what he said blindly, but rather test whether it is of worth and use, with the Christian belief that one should not expose oneself to other beliefs because one might be swayed by the devil. Christianity doesn't seem to show much confidence in either the doctrines or the believers.
It seems to me that Christians are taught to not question their beliefs, to not think creatively. Instead, they are taught to unquestioningly, blindly obey authority, and they seem to carry this into every realm of life. Unfortunately, it seems to me that this is the root cause of authoritarian governments, and the big reason why politicians and other authority figures can lie and get away with it, because people have been trained to obey and not question authority. An unthinking, unquestioning populace seems to me a terrible basis for democracy.
Christianity says "believe and be saved", in contrast to the Eastern idea of experiencing truth through various practices. The Christian monastic tradition has some sense of this, and Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and Theresa of Avila certainly experienced God, but how many contemporary Christians, especially evangelicals, have any idea at at that a Christian mystical tradition exists?
The Eastern traditions teach that man has a dual nature, higher and lower, that it is our task to get in touch with our higher nature, and that no matter how bad our deeds, it is like the sun hidden by dark clouds. In contrast, the biblical traditions teach that man is vile and depraved, original sin, and that we need mercy and forgiveness because we're so bad. Maybe that's true, i don't think so.
In addition, many Christians believe in eternal damnation, that is, spending all eternity being tortured, and believe that if they don't believe in the Bible, perhaps even go against it, they will be in eternal suffering. In effect, a gun is put to their heads and they are terrorized and coerced into not questioning, "believing", and of course these are the children of children of children who for many generations were similarly terrorized and brainwashed, told to give up critical thinking and using their own judgement, trained to just blindly obey.
It is very difficult for me to take seriously the statements and beliefs of people who have been terrorized into submission since earliest childhood, by people who were similarly terrorized into submission.
How difficult it must be, after years, indeed generations, of being threatened with the most horrible punishment for questioning what you have been told, to open your mind to a dispassionate evaluation of that dogma.
Take a look at a book entitled The Year Of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs
3 Most self identified Christians seem to have no idea of the history of how the Bible was put together, or what the teachings of the early church were. Some don't even know that the Catholic and Protestant bibles have a different number of books.
Many Christians seem woefully ignorant of some of the most important parts of their religion. Many don't seem to even know that the Bible was put together at the order of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and that the politics of which texts to include and which to exclude made American politics look like a day in the park.
How many bible believers know that Matthew and Luke were not written by Matthew and Luke, but by people writing in their names who had never seen Jesus.
How many people know that scholars generally consider that, in the early years after Jesus, there was a short manuscript containing the sayings of Jesus, and that this is the basis for much of the words of Jesus found in the bible. Scholars call this document "Q".
How many people know of the great diversity of very different Christian doctrines in the first 200 years after Christ, or that many early Christians believed in reincarnation?
see Lost Christianities
Take a look at the work of Bart Ehrman, for example
Misquoting Jesus, The Story behind who changed the words of the bible and why
How many people know that Yahweh, Jehovah in the Old Testament, was the war god of certain tribes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh_(Canaanite_deity)
There is even scholarly evidence that Jesus may have accepted homosexuality (see link below)
http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/gay_couple.html
Things are nowhere near as simple as many people who consider themselves christians believe.
4 The words of Jesus constitute about 2 per cent of the pages of the bible. In practice, i think that this is about how much so called "Christianity" has to do with Jesus.
The bibles i have seen are about 1300 pages. The old testament is about 1000 pages, about %70 of the bible, the New about 300 pages.
Of these, about 130 pages are the four gospels directly about Jesus, about %10 of the total bible.
If one takes a highlighter and highlights only the words of Jesus, they come to maybe 20-30 pages, or about %2 of the total words of the bible. I really don't understand why they call it Christianity when there is so little directly by Jesus and not much more directly about him.
It seems to me that most people who call themselves Christians should really call themselves Biblists, and perhaps even Old Testament Biblists. I realize that these people consider that the Bible is the word of God and their connection with Jesus.
Try this exercise:
Get a bible you don't mind marking up.
Take a highlighter, highlight all the times in the Old Testament the angry Jehovah is pissed off and threatening punishment,
then go through the new testament and highlight all the instances where people are found wanting, there are a number of those.
On the other hand, if you take a different color highlighter and highlight those spots where god is happy and pleased with people, not so many. Try it, don't just take my word for it.
Statistically speaking, the main message of the Bible seems to be that people are bad and deserve to be punished, especially they are bad and deserve to be punished for not obeying the authority of the Lord.
And what terrible, disproportionate punishment;
to be sent to a torture chamber for all eternity, with no second chance
I simply cannot believe that a loving "Father" would do this. For me, on this rock alone, the whole thing founders, loses credibility.
Just looking at the words of Jesus, what i see is him forgiving the woman taken in adultery, giving the Sermon on the Mount, practicing non-violence, telling Peter to put up his sword, saying "as you do to the least among them you do it unto me". The teachings contained in the words of Jesus are often totally opposite to what i see believed among Christians, especially conservative christians and fundamentalists. That's why i think they should call themselves Biblists, rather than christians. One of the things i find admirable about Christianity has been the message that no matter how bad your sins, God loves you, and many people, criminals, etc, have turned their lives around based on that, but that seems to be one of the few loving parts of the dogma.
My perception is that proselytizers often do a "bait and switch"; god loves you, but when you get a little farther into it, he'll send you to a torture chamber for all eternity if you don't obey him. I've read in a number of auto-biographies how children woke up with nightmares night after night after being scared by this horrible prospect.
God as the greatest terrorist of all
Based on all the research i have done, my belief is that the bible was compiled by the Roman Empire as a way to instill the concept of obedience to authority on the most visceral, deep rooted level, using the horrible threats of eternal torture as a way to terrorize and coerce people into believing, with the carrot of heaven to entice people. Let's not forget that there were many, many manuscripts around at the time the bible was compiled. The bible is a collection of only a few of those manuscripts, chosen by men who had a purpose behind which teachings were chosen for inclusion and which were excluded. My belief is that, on the whole, the manuscripts chosen for inclusion gave the message of FEAR AND OBEY, while more spiritual teachings of love and compassion were, for the most part, excluded.
I have met very few people who i would consider Christians. Mostly i have met biblists who called themselves Christians, a name to which i think they have as much right as Ronald Reagan would have had to call himself a Marxist, which is the opposite of who he was. It often seems that people who start by talking about Christ ultimately worship a book, a book put together by men for their own purposes.
I think that many of these people were so terrorized in childhood by the message that they would be tortured for all eternity, that they were coerced into accepting a text which, if titled more accurately, could be called People are Bad and You're Going to Be Punished Really Harshly.
I see this "people are bad and deserve punishment" attitude showing up in every political issue conservative christians get involved in; long prison sentences for often small offences, capital punishment, acceptance of torture as American policy, Wars, disdain for the poor and needy, etc. It's a very logical consequence of the message which statistically predominates in the bible, which is that people are bad and deserve punishment
In summary, for the most part i find the bible a very brutal, harsh and unkind book,
with maybe %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching and
i think the bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus
and yes, i have read large parts of it. Most of the pages i read were soaked in blood.
I think Jesus' name has been used as a cover for many beliefs which are completely opposite to what he taught. Church history shows that many times the name of Jesus has been used to justify all sorts of ugly, harsh, unloving, generally bad behaviour, such as burning people at the stake, torture, .....
Christianity teaches original sin, that we are essentially bad and need to be made good. In contrast, Hinduism teaches that we are all God incarnate, and our path is to remember that, while Buddhism teaches a similar idea that at our essence we all are all enlightened, yet have forgotten, in the dust and clouds of craving and aversion which obscure our true nature. That makes a huge difference in people's psychology.
Christianity teaches that if one only believes, they will be saved, while the Eastern Religions believe that no one can do your work for you, you have to do it yourself. Teachers are for guidance, support and inspiration, but ultimately you have to walk road the road yourself. This makes a lot more sense to me.
There are still some people who genuinely carry on in what seems to me the spirit of Christ, who think about what they read and pick the wheat from the chaff, and i'm all for that, for the spirit and teachings of an enlightened, loving Christ, instead of the image of an angry, punishing Jehovah so often presented as being Christianity.
The question for anyone who considers themselves a Christian:
if the Bible can not be trusted, how can you know Christ and live in a way that accords with his spirit and teachings.
Good Luck
with perhaps %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching.
*I think the Bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus,
------------
Right at the beginning i would like to state that i revere Jesus as a great spiritual teacher, one of the greatest. Indeed, both Hindus and Buddhists, even Muslims, also revere him, they just don't believe he was the only one or the last one.
I am not writing this to deride or attack Christians, but to point out what seem to me to be great logical inconsistencies.
1 So many so called Christians seem much more concerned with who to hate than who to love.
This seems directly opposite to Christ's teachings.
They seem so angry about Gay Marriage and abortion. Hundreds of millions of children and adults are starving worldwide, indeed here in America, people lacking the basic necessities of life, yet there are no propositions put on state ballots to outlaw starvation and other sufferings.
Also, it's confusing to me how so much of the military is made up of followers of a man who said to turn the other cheek, and how so many Christians believe in War. The answer i come up with is that most so called Christians give lip service to Jesus, but in practice follow the old testament judgement, punishment and anger model.
Many people who consider themselves Christians seem very accepting of brutality and violence, even torture and genocide, whether it's war, football, movies or television. On the other hand, they seem to be very condemning of expressions of sex, intimacy and pleasure, as the incident at the Super Bowl a few years ago epitomized, where seeing Janet Jackson's breast was deeply shocking for many viewers, while the game itself, where large grown men try to hurt each other, was exciting and interesting.
I think that this has caused a great deal of stress and mental illness through the ages. People were and are taught to not accept their own sensual natures, to be at war with themselves, often living their whole lives in a state of dis-ease (this goes triple if you are gay).
Not a prescription for a healthy society.
I have met some very good, kind, loving people who are bible believers, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule.
2 Christians say that it's true because the Bible says so, and that one should just trust that authority without questioning, as well as trusting whatever their preacher says.
I can't help but contrast the Buddha's statement that one should not accept what he said blindly, but rather test whether it is of worth and use, with the Christian belief that one should not expose oneself to other beliefs because one might be swayed by the devil. Christianity doesn't seem to show much confidence in either the doctrines or the believers.
It seems to me that Christians are taught to not question their beliefs, to not think creatively. Instead, they are taught to unquestioningly, blindly obey authority, and they seem to carry this into every realm of life. Unfortunately, it seems to me that this is the root cause of authoritarian governments, and the big reason why politicians and other authority figures can lie and get away with it, because people have been trained to obey and not question authority. An unthinking, unquestioning populace seems to me a terrible basis for democracy.
Christianity says "believe and be saved", in contrast to the Eastern idea of experiencing truth through various practices. The Christian monastic tradition has some sense of this, and Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and Theresa of Avila certainly experienced God, but how many contemporary Christians, especially evangelicals, have any idea at at that a Christian mystical tradition exists?
The Eastern traditions teach that man has a dual nature, higher and lower, that it is our task to get in touch with our higher nature, and that no matter how bad our deeds, it is like the sun hidden by dark clouds. In contrast, the biblical traditions teach that man is vile and depraved, original sin, and that we need mercy and forgiveness because we're so bad. Maybe that's true, i don't think so.
In addition, many Christians believe in eternal damnation, that is, spending all eternity being tortured, and believe that if they don't believe in the Bible, perhaps even go against it, they will be in eternal suffering. In effect, a gun is put to their heads and they are terrorized and coerced into not questioning, "believing", and of course these are the children of children of children who for many generations were similarly terrorized and brainwashed, told to give up critical thinking and using their own judgement, trained to just blindly obey.
It is very difficult for me to take seriously the statements and beliefs of people who have been terrorized into submission since earliest childhood, by people who were similarly terrorized into submission.
How difficult it must be, after years, indeed generations, of being threatened with the most horrible punishment for questioning what you have been told, to open your mind to a dispassionate evaluation of that dogma.
Take a look at a book entitled The Year Of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs
3 Most self identified Christians seem to have no idea of the history of how the Bible was put together, or what the teachings of the early church were. Some don't even know that the Catholic and Protestant bibles have a different number of books.
Many Christians seem woefully ignorant of some of the most important parts of their religion. Many don't seem to even know that the Bible was put together at the order of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and that the politics of which texts to include and which to exclude made American politics look like a day in the park.
How many bible believers know that Matthew and Luke were not written by Matthew and Luke, but by people writing in their names who had never seen Jesus.
How many people know that scholars generally consider that, in the early years after Jesus, there was a short manuscript containing the sayings of Jesus, and that this is the basis for much of the words of Jesus found in the bible. Scholars call this document "Q".
How many people know of the great diversity of very different Christian doctrines in the first 200 years after Christ, or that many early Christians believed in reincarnation?
see Lost Christianities
Take a look at the work of Bart Ehrman, for example
Misquoting Jesus, The Story behind who changed the words of the bible and why
How many people know that Yahweh, Jehovah in the Old Testament, was the war god of certain tribes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh_(Canaanite_deity)
There is even scholarly evidence that Jesus may have accepted homosexuality (see link below)
http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/gay_couple.html
Things are nowhere near as simple as many people who consider themselves christians believe.
4 The words of Jesus constitute about 2 per cent of the pages of the bible. In practice, i think that this is about how much so called "Christianity" has to do with Jesus.
The bibles i have seen are about 1300 pages. The old testament is about 1000 pages, about %70 of the bible, the New about 300 pages.
Of these, about 130 pages are the four gospels directly about Jesus, about %10 of the total bible.
If one takes a highlighter and highlights only the words of Jesus, they come to maybe 20-30 pages, or about %2 of the total words of the bible. I really don't understand why they call it Christianity when there is so little directly by Jesus and not much more directly about him.
It seems to me that most people who call themselves Christians should really call themselves Biblists, and perhaps even Old Testament Biblists. I realize that these people consider that the Bible is the word of God and their connection with Jesus.
Try this exercise:
Get a bible you don't mind marking up.
Take a highlighter, highlight all the times in the Old Testament the angry Jehovah is pissed off and threatening punishment,
then go through the new testament and highlight all the instances where people are found wanting, there are a number of those.
On the other hand, if you take a different color highlighter and highlight those spots where god is happy and pleased with people, not so many. Try it, don't just take my word for it.
Statistically speaking, the main message of the Bible seems to be that people are bad and deserve to be punished, especially they are bad and deserve to be punished for not obeying the authority of the Lord.
And what terrible, disproportionate punishment;
to be sent to a torture chamber for all eternity, with no second chance
I simply cannot believe that a loving "Father" would do this. For me, on this rock alone, the whole thing founders, loses credibility.
Just looking at the words of Jesus, what i see is him forgiving the woman taken in adultery, giving the Sermon on the Mount, practicing non-violence, telling Peter to put up his sword, saying "as you do to the least among them you do it unto me". The teachings contained in the words of Jesus are often totally opposite to what i see believed among Christians, especially conservative christians and fundamentalists. That's why i think they should call themselves Biblists, rather than christians. One of the things i find admirable about Christianity has been the message that no matter how bad your sins, God loves you, and many people, criminals, etc, have turned their lives around based on that, but that seems to be one of the few loving parts of the dogma.
My perception is that proselytizers often do a "bait and switch"; god loves you, but when you get a little farther into it, he'll send you to a torture chamber for all eternity if you don't obey him. I've read in a number of auto-biographies how children woke up with nightmares night after night after being scared by this horrible prospect.
God as the greatest terrorist of all
Based on all the research i have done, my belief is that the bible was compiled by the Roman Empire as a way to instill the concept of obedience to authority on the most visceral, deep rooted level, using the horrible threats of eternal torture as a way to terrorize and coerce people into believing, with the carrot of heaven to entice people. Let's not forget that there were many, many manuscripts around at the time the bible was compiled. The bible is a collection of only a few of those manuscripts, chosen by men who had a purpose behind which teachings were chosen for inclusion and which were excluded. My belief is that, on the whole, the manuscripts chosen for inclusion gave the message of FEAR AND OBEY, while more spiritual teachings of love and compassion were, for the most part, excluded.
I have met very few people who i would consider Christians. Mostly i have met biblists who called themselves Christians, a name to which i think they have as much right as Ronald Reagan would have had to call himself a Marxist, which is the opposite of who he was. It often seems that people who start by talking about Christ ultimately worship a book, a book put together by men for their own purposes.
I think that many of these people were so terrorized in childhood by the message that they would be tortured for all eternity, that they were coerced into accepting a text which, if titled more accurately, could be called People are Bad and You're Going to Be Punished Really Harshly.
I see this "people are bad and deserve punishment" attitude showing up in every political issue conservative christians get involved in; long prison sentences for often small offences, capital punishment, acceptance of torture as American policy, Wars, disdain for the poor and needy, etc. It's a very logical consequence of the message which statistically predominates in the bible, which is that people are bad and deserve punishment
In summary, for the most part i find the bible a very brutal, harsh and unkind book,
with maybe %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching and
i think the bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus
and yes, i have read large parts of it. Most of the pages i read were soaked in blood.
I think Jesus' name has been used as a cover for many beliefs which are completely opposite to what he taught. Church history shows that many times the name of Jesus has been used to justify all sorts of ugly, harsh, unloving, generally bad behaviour, such as burning people at the stake, torture, .....
Christianity teaches original sin, that we are essentially bad and need to be made good. In contrast, Hinduism teaches that we are all God incarnate, and our path is to remember that, while Buddhism teaches a similar idea that at our essence we all are all enlightened, yet have forgotten, in the dust and clouds of craving and aversion which obscure our true nature. That makes a huge difference in people's psychology.
Christianity teaches that if one only believes, they will be saved, while the Eastern Religions believe that no one can do your work for you, you have to do it yourself. Teachers are for guidance, support and inspiration, but ultimately you have to walk road the road yourself. This makes a lot more sense to me.
There are still some people who genuinely carry on in what seems to me the spirit of Christ, who think about what they read and pick the wheat from the chaff, and i'm all for that, for the spirit and teachings of an enlightened, loving Christ, instead of the image of an angry, punishing Jehovah so often presented as being Christianity.
The question for anyone who considers themselves a Christian:
if the Bible can not be trusted, how can you know Christ and live in a way that accords with his spirit and teachings.
Good Luck
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Politics and metaphysics
In many spiritual teachings there is the concept of non violence in thought, word, and deed, the idea that just not hitting somebody is only one level of non violence, that violent words and even violent thoughts really do harm. Larry Dossey, Lynn McTaggart and others have done studies on the healing power of thought.
What if, on some level of consciousness that we are not aware of, every thought and feeling that you had towards someone was known by them. What if George Bush, Dick Cheney, karl rove, and all the different powers that be all around the world, could feel the hatred and anger that, for instance, many "progressives" hold.towards them? What if, on some level, these violent thoughts and words are felt as blows, as being hit. Is that going to make these already contracted, spiritually and emotionally suffering people, who were often damaged in their childhoods, more compassionate towards others, or is it going to make them contract more, and say fuck you too.
My belief is that within everyone there is a conscience, and that, on some level, those who oppress others, in many ways, really do feel shame and guilt. Gandhi got a lot more done than if he had thrown bombs, although i do wonder how far he would have gotten with Hitler. Still, whatever the physical actions, if the inner intention and feeling is violence and anger, it will at the least be less effective than action from compassion, and very possibly counter productive, and i realize how easy that is to write, and how hard that is to do, especially if you are suffering as the result of oppression.
Be well,
Jay Dancing Bear
What if, on some level of consciousness that we are not aware of, every thought and feeling that you had towards someone was known by them. What if George Bush, Dick Cheney, karl rove, and all the different powers that be all around the world, could feel the hatred and anger that, for instance, many "progressives" hold.towards them? What if, on some level, these violent thoughts and words are felt as blows, as being hit. Is that going to make these already contracted, spiritually and emotionally suffering people, who were often damaged in their childhoods, more compassionate towards others, or is it going to make them contract more, and say fuck you too.
My belief is that within everyone there is a conscience, and that, on some level, those who oppress others, in many ways, really do feel shame and guilt. Gandhi got a lot more done than if he had thrown bombs, although i do wonder how far he would have gotten with Hitler. Still, whatever the physical actions, if the inner intention and feeling is violence and anger, it will at the least be less effective than action from compassion, and very possibly counter productive, and i realize how easy that is to write, and how hard that is to do, especially if you are suffering as the result of oppression.
Be well,
Jay Dancing Bear
Thursday, April 16, 2009
We Can Do Better!
WATCH THIS VIDEO http://storyofstuff.com/downloads.html
---------------------------------------------
All problems in human society come from very simple causes
1) COMPASSION, OR THE LACK OF IT
Everybody cares, but how far do the boundaries of compassion extend? Do we just care about ourselves and our families and friends. Do we care what happens to somebody else, especially if we will never meet or even see that someone else. Our city, our class, our race, animals; trees.
2) FEAR, usually fear that there is not enough for everybody, meaning that we can't afford to help others, because then we won't have enough for ourselves.
3) WISDOM, VISION, CLARITY, SEEING DEEPLY
different words for the same thing.
When you turn on a light, do you see the power plant upstream, the garbage dump the whole light fixture will inevitably end up in.
Every action has consequences and implications, direct and indirect. Do you understand how the simplest actions of your life, such as buying a pizza, are not simple, in fact are the result of a very complicated manufacturing and supply chain? Seeing that is wisdom, taking things for granted is foolish.
If you really thought through, as best as you could, all the consequences and implications of how you are living, you would live very differently, and, my belief, be happier and healthier.
It's all really very simple:
selfishness, fear, and shortsightedness, or compassion, courage, and wisdom.
------------------------
WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE ECONOMY?
In the simplest of terms, the people who kept it going, the poor and middle class people who created the demand for goods and services, don't have enough money to spend to keep the whole house of cards going,
BECAUSE
the rich got so greedy, downsized so many people, didn't pay enough people good wages , moved factories offshore, and raised executive salaries through the roof while doing it.
Everything else is a detail.
Productivity went way up, profits went way up, and the owners and executives kept it all for themselves. Occasionally tossing the workers a few crumbs, usually firing them and making one person do the work that used to be done by two people.
Food chains are built on the little critters at the bottom of the food chain. When they aren't doing well, the whole food chain collapses. Henry Ford understood that it benefited him to pay his workers enough to buy his cars.
AND MAYBE THERE'S A BRIGHT SIDE
My personal belief is that environmental pollution is responsible for a lot of cancer, heart disease, asthma, and everything else.
The more we consume=the more poisons we create.
Less consumption=less cancer (and maybe you're the person who won't get it)
I think the whole idea of an economy based on production of material goods is dead, and we are seeing that in our health. This planet can only handle a certain level of toxins, whereas current economic models say that growth is good. That's wrong. Of course everyone needs to have their needs met in a comfortable way, food, shelter, etc.. but the way we're doing it very often results in watching your loved ones suffer as a result of toxins produced by the same system that employs you.
WE CAN DO BETTER!
---------------------------------------------
All problems in human society come from very simple causes
1) COMPASSION, OR THE LACK OF IT
Everybody cares, but how far do the boundaries of compassion extend? Do we just care about ourselves and our families and friends. Do we care what happens to somebody else, especially if we will never meet or even see that someone else. Our city, our class, our race, animals; trees.
2) FEAR, usually fear that there is not enough for everybody, meaning that we can't afford to help others, because then we won't have enough for ourselves.
3) WISDOM, VISION, CLARITY, SEEING DEEPLY
different words for the same thing.
When you turn on a light, do you see the power plant upstream, the garbage dump the whole light fixture will inevitably end up in.
Every action has consequences and implications, direct and indirect. Do you understand how the simplest actions of your life, such as buying a pizza, are not simple, in fact are the result of a very complicated manufacturing and supply chain? Seeing that is wisdom, taking things for granted is foolish.
If you really thought through, as best as you could, all the consequences and implications of how you are living, you would live very differently, and, my belief, be happier and healthier.
It's all really very simple:
selfishness, fear, and shortsightedness, or compassion, courage, and wisdom.
------------------------
WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE ECONOMY?
In the simplest of terms, the people who kept it going, the poor and middle class people who created the demand for goods and services, don't have enough money to spend to keep the whole house of cards going,
BECAUSE
the rich got so greedy, downsized so many people, didn't pay enough people good wages , moved factories offshore, and raised executive salaries through the roof while doing it.
Everything else is a detail.
Productivity went way up, profits went way up, and the owners and executives kept it all for themselves. Occasionally tossing the workers a few crumbs, usually firing them and making one person do the work that used to be done by two people.
Food chains are built on the little critters at the bottom of the food chain. When they aren't doing well, the whole food chain collapses. Henry Ford understood that it benefited him to pay his workers enough to buy his cars.
AND MAYBE THERE'S A BRIGHT SIDE
My personal belief is that environmental pollution is responsible for a lot of cancer, heart disease, asthma, and everything else.
The more we consume=the more poisons we create.
Less consumption=less cancer (and maybe you're the person who won't get it)
I think the whole idea of an economy based on production of material goods is dead, and we are seeing that in our health. This planet can only handle a certain level of toxins, whereas current economic models say that growth is good. That's wrong. Of course everyone needs to have their needs met in a comfortable way, food, shelter, etc.. but the way we're doing it very often results in watching your loved ones suffer as a result of toxins produced by the same system that employs you.
WE CAN DO BETTER!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Living Well
Ok, so you've read my earlier blog posts, and lots of other similar material, and you're saying "life sucks, and then you die".
The delicate balancing act of life is to keep the spiritual eye open to the higher truths, to live a life of integrity, to keep a good attitude, and a smile, to take care of your health, to not let stress chew at you and destroy your health, to eat well, take care of your body, have good relationships, etc
AND
to see the world as it is, to see through all the lies we are told and the frauds we are sold, to not just accept the propaganda, the brainwashing, the bullshit.
I'll tell my own story. A few years back, i was getting so upset, taking on so much stress, about all the "problems of the world", thinking about it so much, that my health started to go down. i really had the feeling that if i didn't find some way of dealing with this, that i wouldn't be around much longer.
I have a long background and repertoire of spiritual practices. I meditate, do yoga, vegetarian, all that stuff. In this case it saved my life.
I started doing a practice of sending energy up to my third eye, of holding the intention, praying, if you want to call it that, that i be allowed to see the world with the eye of spirit, because to my human eyes, it looked like it was bad and getting worse.
What ended up happening, is that i started getting the understanding, the deep intuition or feeling, that the world was a one room schoolhouse, that we are all here, and have chosen to incarnate here, in this time, in the midst of these problems, for the purpose of learning lessons. One of the biggest, and for me, probably my own personal most important lesson, is to not hate those who do wrong, to see them as the wounded, sick individuals they are, rather than as "bad" people. To see the innate goodness deep in the soul of even the most horrendous torturer.
And, ultimately, i received the understanding that we are all, as Wayne Dyer says, spiritual beings having a material experience. Our essence is not wetted by water, not dried by wind, not cloven by a sword, not burned by fire. Our bodies are like suits of clothes. If something happens, you can always get a new one.
That may all sound pretty pie in the sky to materialistic types who believe in no higher reality than what they can touch, taste and smell. Until you do some practices, which open up your energy body and higher centers, it's all just a bunch of words, until you start opening up higher modes of perception.
I personally believe that anyone living in this world, especially those trying to change the world for the better, owe it to themselves to give themselves the spiritual and psychic nutrition they need, and this is done through every day practice. I am not trying to sell any particular brand. There are a lot of different choices, what is important is to do something.
Now you can see from my other blog posts that i still react to wrongs, but I now have a sense that, as Martin Luther King said, "the arc of history is towards justice".
good luck
The delicate balancing act of life is to keep the spiritual eye open to the higher truths, to live a life of integrity, to keep a good attitude, and a smile, to take care of your health, to not let stress chew at you and destroy your health, to eat well, take care of your body, have good relationships, etc
AND
to see the world as it is, to see through all the lies we are told and the frauds we are sold, to not just accept the propaganda, the brainwashing, the bullshit.
I'll tell my own story. A few years back, i was getting so upset, taking on so much stress, about all the "problems of the world", thinking about it so much, that my health started to go down. i really had the feeling that if i didn't find some way of dealing with this, that i wouldn't be around much longer.
I have a long background and repertoire of spiritual practices. I meditate, do yoga, vegetarian, all that stuff. In this case it saved my life.
I started doing a practice of sending energy up to my third eye, of holding the intention, praying, if you want to call it that, that i be allowed to see the world with the eye of spirit, because to my human eyes, it looked like it was bad and getting worse.
What ended up happening, is that i started getting the understanding, the deep intuition or feeling, that the world was a one room schoolhouse, that we are all here, and have chosen to incarnate here, in this time, in the midst of these problems, for the purpose of learning lessons. One of the biggest, and for me, probably my own personal most important lesson, is to not hate those who do wrong, to see them as the wounded, sick individuals they are, rather than as "bad" people. To see the innate goodness deep in the soul of even the most horrendous torturer.
And, ultimately, i received the understanding that we are all, as Wayne Dyer says, spiritual beings having a material experience. Our essence is not wetted by water, not dried by wind, not cloven by a sword, not burned by fire. Our bodies are like suits of clothes. If something happens, you can always get a new one.
That may all sound pretty pie in the sky to materialistic types who believe in no higher reality than what they can touch, taste and smell. Until you do some practices, which open up your energy body and higher centers, it's all just a bunch of words, until you start opening up higher modes of perception.
I personally believe that anyone living in this world, especially those trying to change the world for the better, owe it to themselves to give themselves the spiritual and psychic nutrition they need, and this is done through every day practice. I am not trying to sell any particular brand. There are a lot of different choices, what is important is to do something.
Now you can see from my other blog posts that i still react to wrongs, but I now have a sense that, as Martin Luther King said, "the arc of history is towards justice".
good luck
Monday, January 19, 2009
what is a criminal?
someone who knowingly hurts other people for their own benefit.
ultimately criminal behaviour is selfish behaviour; i win at the expense of you losing, whether this is street crime or predatory lending.
by this standard, much of what passes for normal business practices are criminal, including high rents and low wages. On the other hand, personal behaviors such as gambling, drug use, sodomy, and prostitution, are not.
I distinguish between moral crimes, which hurt others, and legal crimes, where religious and other beliefs are turned into laws against certain behaviours. The usual argument is that society is brought down by things like prostitution. Personally, i think society is much more damaged by repression.
I believe in Freedom, a very unfashionable idea these days.
In fact, i believe that putting people in jail for victimless crimes, such as drugs, is in itself a crime, and those who advocate such brutal repression are themselves criminals, since they seek to hurt others (by locking them up) in order to force the whole society to live by their puritanical beliefs.
So, i ask you, come up with your own definition. What is a criminal?
ultimately criminal behaviour is selfish behaviour; i win at the expense of you losing, whether this is street crime or predatory lending.
by this standard, much of what passes for normal business practices are criminal, including high rents and low wages. On the other hand, personal behaviors such as gambling, drug use, sodomy, and prostitution, are not.
I distinguish between moral crimes, which hurt others, and legal crimes, where religious and other beliefs are turned into laws against certain behaviours. The usual argument is that society is brought down by things like prostitution. Personally, i think society is much more damaged by repression.
I believe in Freedom, a very unfashionable idea these days.
In fact, i believe that putting people in jail for victimless crimes, such as drugs, is in itself a crime, and those who advocate such brutal repression are themselves criminals, since they seek to hurt others (by locking them up) in order to force the whole society to live by their puritanical beliefs.
So, i ask you, come up with your own definition. What is a criminal?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Happiness is
a state of mind.
So often i have thought, i would be happy if this or if that. it is true that having my human needs met frees me to access deeper truths, however, ultimately, i find happiness is a state of consciousness, and dis-satisfaction is a state of consciousness. of course, very often these states are the result of caffeine, alcohol, sugar, etc. (drugs are way too powerful for me).
leaving those aside, the question becomes, how can i live in the state of consiousness that has happiness as one of it's attributes.
In Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy (it's a great book) there is a saying that joy is the surest sign of the presence of god. is that ultimately the key to human happiness, an ongoing mystical experience of the presence of god, living with the presence of god? (god also meaning spirit, goddess, or whatever you want to call it, they're just different names for the same thing).
yes.
So often i have thought, i would be happy if this or if that. it is true that having my human needs met frees me to access deeper truths, however, ultimately, i find happiness is a state of consciousness, and dis-satisfaction is a state of consciousness. of course, very often these states are the result of caffeine, alcohol, sugar, etc. (drugs are way too powerful for me).
leaving those aside, the question becomes, how can i live in the state of consiousness that has happiness as one of it's attributes.
In Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy (it's a great book) there is a saying that joy is the surest sign of the presence of god. is that ultimately the key to human happiness, an ongoing mystical experience of the presence of god, living with the presence of god? (god also meaning spirit, goddess, or whatever you want to call it, they're just different names for the same thing).
yes.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Look Deep, think like a chess player
Every action has both intended and unintended consequences.
The phrase "web of life" is amazingly accurate.
Most beings see only what is in front of them, not understanding the effects they have on people, places, animals, they'll never see.
Look deeply, think like a chess player. If you make this move, then what will happen next, and your reaction to that, on and on. That is really how life works; seeds that were planted a long time ago, sending ripples forward in time, effect our lives, yours and mine, today, here and now.
The phrase "web of life" is amazingly accurate.
Most beings see only what is in front of them, not understanding the effects they have on people, places, animals, they'll never see.
Look deeply, think like a chess player. If you make this move, then what will happen next, and your reaction to that, on and on. That is really how life works; seeds that were planted a long time ago, sending ripples forward in time, effect our lives, yours and mine, today, here and now.
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