One could say of God's Self that God's* Self** is always relaxed and confident. That is because God's Self knows that God's Self is eternal and cannot be harmed. Only if you know the inner experience of God's self, can you know that you are eternal and impervious.
"But being eternal and impervious aren't all there is to life." Thus saith the Lord. "They are the only perfection, the only Me, but then there is all of imperfection, and impermanence". All of the imperfection and impermanence are part of the whole that is perfect, because without them, the perfect isn't complete. In that way, they partake of perfection, while being imperfect, as Christians do when imbibing the bread and wine.
*there is no adequate pronoun for God, so I just use "God".
**God's Self is what I envision it must be like to see through God's "eyes". God cannot be an object to the human mind, since no true thought or image or perception of God can ever be had. If you eliminate the possibility of being an object, then what is left can only be a subjective perspective. I use "God's Self" as a synonym for God, but emphasizing the subjective nature of God's existence - the One Who sees and experiences at all times. God's will or God's creation would be objects, but are not synonymous with "God" as "God's Self" is. God's will is all that happens (verbs), and God's creation is all that exists (nouns).
Friday, October 22, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Here is a fun idea -
How do we get true representative democracy working as our government? (Set aside for the moment any doubts that democracy is True Religion.)
Libertarians say the less government, the better. There is some truth to that. But efficient and unobtrusive government can only be had if the election process is clean and not corrupt. One of the highest aims of government, therefore, is ensure that the process is clean. We are justified in spending whatever amount of money it takes to generate a clean election process.
Paying people to vote, if you pay them enough, is a good way of ensuring that everyone will vote. Only the very rich will not be incentivised to vote by a payment of $5000. The incentives to vote for the rich are already adequate, because they have a huge financial stake in what happens with the government. $5000 per person, per election voted in, would be paid as a refundable tax credit. All you would have to do is submit your receipt for having voted.
There would be little incentive or scope for fraud. You could forge a voter receipt, but it is probably easier just to go to the polls. Only one person could get each voter payment. And it would probably solve the poverty problem in one swoop. I know that sounds grandiose, but think about this: All that spending power, unleashed by poor people, would stimulate business, and therefore jobs, stupendously. All the now-unemployed people who would get jobs, would further stimulate the economy. And the _really_ poor, unemployable, mentally ill people would oftentimes get taken in by their now-middle-class in-laws. (Not to say that the people who are currently "middle class" often take in poor relatives. But the recently-poor-now-middle-class people do so.)
Libertarians say the less government, the better. There is some truth to that. But efficient and unobtrusive government can only be had if the election process is clean and not corrupt. One of the highest aims of government, therefore, is ensure that the process is clean. We are justified in spending whatever amount of money it takes to generate a clean election process.
Paying people to vote, if you pay them enough, is a good way of ensuring that everyone will vote. Only the very rich will not be incentivised to vote by a payment of $5000. The incentives to vote for the rich are already adequate, because they have a huge financial stake in what happens with the government. $5000 per person, per election voted in, would be paid as a refundable tax credit. All you would have to do is submit your receipt for having voted.
There would be little incentive or scope for fraud. You could forge a voter receipt, but it is probably easier just to go to the polls. Only one person could get each voter payment. And it would probably solve the poverty problem in one swoop. I know that sounds grandiose, but think about this: All that spending power, unleashed by poor people, would stimulate business, and therefore jobs, stupendously. All the now-unemployed people who would get jobs, would further stimulate the economy. And the _really_ poor, unemployable, mentally ill people would oftentimes get taken in by their now-middle-class in-laws. (Not to say that the people who are currently "middle class" often take in poor relatives. But the recently-poor-now-middle-class people do so.)
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Not Allowing Fear
I am simply not going to allow myself to spend time in a state of fear.
There is no possible connection between safety and spending time in a fearful state. I plan to look at fears as abstractions, not as things to be experienced. Every time a fearful thought arises, it simply becomes part of an intricate database of how I respond to things, things I believe, and other facts about the world. My maximum safety comes from being as rational as possible regarding how I spend my time. Dwelling in a state of fear is a complete waste of time.
But is my dwelling in a state of fear (or not) a matter that is under my willful control?
When I think back to recent experiences of dwelling in a fearful state, I remember feeling that I did not have control. Is it possible to have a concept which, when remembered, bestows control of fear upon a person? I need not be afraid. A fearful being is not a safer being than a calm one. I don't need to fear loss. There is nothing I can lose or gain, except things which I have had and not had at different times. Were the times when I did not have them really worse or less good than the times during which I had specific things? Maybe not.
Clarity and peace are things I don't always have. It is hard to admit that having them is no better than not having them. Maybe if you spent so much time in clarity and peace that it got boring, a little fogginess and violence might be welcome. I think Hindu cosmology affirms that idea. The one great being is ever and always resting in complete ease. Part of that ease is the knowledge of pitiful, struggling human lives, close up, from the inside, from start to finish. In the midst of your pitiful, struggling life, you are aware of God in God's heaven. And God is aware of you. There is no separation between you and God. Our (Christian) image of God is precisely the same, if you think about it long enough.
There is no possible connection between safety and spending time in a fearful state. I plan to look at fears as abstractions, not as things to be experienced. Every time a fearful thought arises, it simply becomes part of an intricate database of how I respond to things, things I believe, and other facts about the world. My maximum safety comes from being as rational as possible regarding how I spend my time. Dwelling in a state of fear is a complete waste of time.
But is my dwelling in a state of fear (or not) a matter that is under my willful control?
When I think back to recent experiences of dwelling in a fearful state, I remember feeling that I did not have control. Is it possible to have a concept which, when remembered, bestows control of fear upon a person? I need not be afraid. A fearful being is not a safer being than a calm one. I don't need to fear loss. There is nothing I can lose or gain, except things which I have had and not had at different times. Were the times when I did not have them really worse or less good than the times during which I had specific things? Maybe not.
Clarity and peace are things I don't always have. It is hard to admit that having them is no better than not having them. Maybe if you spent so much time in clarity and peace that it got boring, a little fogginess and violence might be welcome. I think Hindu cosmology affirms that idea. The one great being is ever and always resting in complete ease. Part of that ease is the knowledge of pitiful, struggling human lives, close up, from the inside, from start to finish. In the midst of your pitiful, struggling life, you are aware of God in God's heaven. And God is aware of you. There is no separation between you and God. Our (Christian) image of God is precisely the same, if you think about it long enough.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Proof that consciousness is good
You only need to prove something is good if it has been accused of being bad. I define myself as consciousness, and I have been accused (somewhere in my mind) of being bad.
Fortunately, I cannot disavow any knowledge of my own actions (since my memory is intact). But I might disavow any intentions I had about the outcome of whatever I did - as mistaken intentions. The actions themselves are as blameless as the actions of an automaton. The intentions can be wrong, or even sinful, but they are in the past. If I have sinful intentions now, I can only pray to God that they be changed, because they seem right and good to me. If I cannot see that they are sinful, how can God blame me for them? Can God not give me the ability to see that they are sinful? If God could, but didn't give me that ability, and still blamed me for the actions or intentions, God would be unjust. That may be true, but if it is, I have no way of changing it. And I see no evidence that God is unjust, unless you take the apparent injustice in the world of human experience as evidence that God is unjust.
Fortunately, I cannot disavow any knowledge of my own actions (since my memory is intact). But I might disavow any intentions I had about the outcome of whatever I did - as mistaken intentions. The actions themselves are as blameless as the actions of an automaton. The intentions can be wrong, or even sinful, but they are in the past. If I have sinful intentions now, I can only pray to God that they be changed, because they seem right and good to me. If I cannot see that they are sinful, how can God blame me for them? Can God not give me the ability to see that they are sinful? If God could, but didn't give me that ability, and still blamed me for the actions or intentions, God would be unjust. That may be true, but if it is, I have no way of changing it. And I see no evidence that God is unjust, unless you take the apparent injustice in the world of human experience as evidence that God is unjust.
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