Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Should and Ought Not

If you do anything with a expectation of praise, you are likely to be disappointed. But you should still want to do praiseworthy things.

You ought not reject the urge to do something (in the context of positive intention), only because it might lead to embarrassment. You can think it over, though. That's what embarrassment is for. If it still seems right, revel in the possibility of embarrassment. You might be surprised by lavish praise.

The Value of Words

An extraterrestrial observer was flying past the Earth, idly dialing through the video broadcasts s/he was picking up. If the E.T. had thought in words, s/he would have been saying something like, "This verbal language they use is fascinating. It may have stunted their intuitive powers, but words themselves can have great value! A group of humans can sit together just exchanging words, and the entire group erupts with something they call 'laughter.' This encourages deep breathing and relaxation.

"Because of all the incredible stress they endure in their lives, they are constantly on tenterhooks, and hyper-vigilant. They use words to lead their minds into images and ideas, and then to cultivate emotions, which in turn, gives them some influence over their own energies and motivations.

"Unintuitive? Round-about? Yes. But it seems to get the job done for the meat creatures."

Poem Fragment "Self-Annihilating Thought"


My mind has held the Self-Annihilating Thought.
 How, then, can I yet be?
 I am only an echo of myself, and of Myself.


The Poem Fragment Explained -
The Self-Annihilating Thought is not the thought of annihilating oneself. It is the thought whose nature and power is such that, for a mind to hold it, means that no thought will ever be held to be "self" again. I don't know if there is such a thing, but I like the category.

The ego likes to compare itself to others, and takes pride in its accomplishments. The accomplishment the ego can be the most proud of, is the holding of the Self-Annihilating Thought. It is the highest possible achievement of the thinking mind. It has not been accomplished by any separate, individual mind currently in existence. If you succeed in achieving it, you will be the first, and only, person ever to have done it.

I recognize myself as I am sometimes, and sometimes in imagined forms. All these experiences are reflections of pure-awareness/that-which-experiences. Knowing that, is saving knowledge.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Knowing Everything You Know

When you don't fear any possibility, you are able to know everything you know. I mean "know" here, in the sense of not suppressing the knowledge of something that is already in your mind. Any concept that you fear, you cannot know. For example, I fear looking unattractive, or stupid. Therefore, I have trouble perceiving feedback from people that indicate I look unattractive or stupid. Since I am afraid of that possibility, I cannot accept the fact or possibility, that someone is saying I look stupid or unattractive.

The fact that I cannot perceive or understand their behavior makes me anxious and/or depressed. For all the suppression of the feared thought, I don't get out of feeling the fear. To the contrary, it is when I am unperturbed by the fact or possibility of being unattractive, that I can deal kindly and effectively with a person who is responding to me in that way.

I can withstand the negativity of the person toward myself, because I know this is only the interplay of our entwined fate. I am constructed by a power vastly greater than an individual human will. I regurgitate ways I have been affected or harmed, onto other people, having no awareness of what I am doing. The "I" who is identified as "Linda Hardesty" is not to be punished by me for her iniquities. (I thought to say, "Shortcomings, or failures," but wanted to put it more strongly.) I can know a forgiveness so complete, that no sin can ever have been committed. In fact, that is a logical syllogism, If forgiveness is truly complete, then no sin was ever committed. This is another reason that we can trust in our salvation. God is perfect, and God's Forgiveness is perfect. Therefore, we know that no sin is ever really committed.

I know that is a radical, scary statement. Let me hasten to add, that your sin will be great, if you tell yourself no sin is ever committed, and you haven't realized what Love is and Who God is. This is how I understand the possibility of losing one's salvation, or not having salvation. It would be using the concept of perfect forgiveness and salvation as a cover for lying to yourself. Until you have no lies to yourself, you don't believe in your own salvation. (This is a corollary of the of the basic assumption - the Good News that you ARE saved. If you have any reason to lie to yourself, you are not in agreement with the assumption, i.e., you believe you are not saved.)

In reality, where it is important -- in the heart of God's being, you are saved, and have never not been saved. You can't truly BE "not saved," but you can suffer from believing it is possible.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Another Kind of Prayer


I don't know what is going to happen, and nothing I do on my own can _make_ anything happen. I can only do what seems the most right, and see what unfolds from that. Through the miracles of the human brain and senses, my behavior may adapt and improve with experience. Or, I may be fated to spend my entire life under a cloud of being unattractively different. I can't prevent or change or avoid what is happening to me now by worrying about what I should do next, or about whether I just made the right decision. Decisions aren't made in the head -- so say the neurocartographers. Keep remembering the Sermon on the Mount from time to time, and you will have all the guidance you need, built into your behavior.

Friday, August 12, 2011

The Creation of the World

Everything experiences everything.

Every subatomic particle of matter/energy potentially has a partner, nearby or far away in the universe, with which it acts in tandem. Experiments in physics show that two such paired particles, when measured in radiation-beam experiments, are always in complementary states. The scientists can alter one particle intentionally, and thereby effectively predict the state the other particle will be in, regardless of how far apart they are in space.

So not only is all the physical universe in constant contact with itself via more familiar processes of gravity, light, the water cycle, and all of life's mutual interaction. But also, every particle in the universe is directly connected to every other particle, in the sense that there are potentially detectable effects instantaneously, at the farthest distances in the universe, to any particle being changed.

Every particle experiences every other particle.

The changing of the "spin" of a particle is about as far from a human emotion as you can get. But I argue that they are essentially of the same nature. Sentient creatures, and especially humans, are the quintessential conscious beings. We can be affected (through learning and otherwise) by everything that we can know about. Seemingly dead matter is affected by physical forces in a much coarser way.

But much of our learning is ultimately dependent on the physical and chemical events that make up our physical body. The miracle of how these bodies have come to be formed from particles is a mind-blowing mystery, embedded in the mystery of all the particles of the universe, and how they came to be. The exqusite conscious awareness that we share, is part and parcel with the physical laws that scientists are able to discern, and thereby gain power in the physical world. There is no hard and fast boundary between any two particles, much less between, say, members of the animal kingdom. But we have to draw the line somewhere. We need boundaries to create the world that we live in through our exquisite consciousness. Consciousness itself draws the lines, and thereby creates that world. Who draws the lines? God, consiousness, life, love. Also pain, the Void, negativity and rejection.

But God -- all -- encompasses all.

Being Seen by My Cat


We need to respond to these troubled times with an elevated spiritual level. Your spiritual level is akin to your blood pressure measurement, substituting the flow of Love for the flow of blood. The flow of love is like the blood that circulates between the spiritual cells (people) of our spiritual body (the Divine.)

The whole of reality rests in Consciousness. It is necessary to learn to perceive this metaphor.

Every cell contributes to the flow

If you really contemplate any one of God's attributes (omnipresent, omnipotent, onmiscient, all-good, all-loving, perfect), you will become aware of the perfection, completeness, peace and joy that surrounds you in that moment.

Everything experiences everything.

You can pick and choose the reality you see, because it is all illusion. It's not that there is no reality driving the illusion. The illusion is only the idea that any particular interpretation of reality _is_ reality, or a perfect representation thereof.

To put it another way, no pain is permanent. Neither is _the experience_ of happiness. But we can choose to remember and contemplate the happiness. Consciousness can be directed. By nature it always looks in a certain direction -- that is God's will. God's will the is direction in which consciousness is pointed. To know that is to know peace.

Until you realize that consciousness is directed, and always goes in the direction of God's will, you will be tormented by fear and confusion. This is all part of God's will. The fear and confusion only exists in order to be taken away. Joy, relief and peace are all experienced when the negative emotions leave. Without the negative emotions, we would not get the positive emotions that arise when the negative emotions leave.

You might say, why bother? Why would God let negative things arise, only to replace them with positive? Couldn't the positive be all there is?

Well, that is the case, ultimately. The positive is all there is. But the absence of change gets boring. God creates the world -- all the seeming good and evil of it. Without good and evil, nothing exists. It is fine for nothing to exist, but still...

So evil is good, ultimately. But God's will is directed away from it. We only approach the good that is inherent in evil from the reverse side. When evil is in front of us, we turn around. Sometimes, we go all the way around the world, and see the back of evil. And we see that the backside of evil is good.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

I am supremely happy at rest, And I am always...

I am supremely happy at rest,
And I am always at rest in God.


Appearances to the contrary are deceptive. This is one of the true prayers -- if you can pray a true prayer sincerely, then by definition, that prayer is fulfilled. "True prayer" is my own coinage, and I feel sure that someone has invented a better term for it. It shouldn't be read as excluding other types of prayer from being true. "Self-fulfilling prayer" might be a better term.