Philosophical Message – Page 5

Barefoot

Barefoot. I rarely do that anymore.
Too many thorns and sharp spines.
It takes too long for the little itchies to heal.
And drives me nuts at night.

Last year it was January
before the scabs finally stopped reforming.

No. And rarely even flip flops.
I remember when my mother stepped on a bee.
She had to soak her foot in a bucket for
what seemed like a long time to a seven year old.

But in India, on my first trip back in 2001,
I was taken to a mountain. Walking up
the rocky trail, I passed
scores of women walking down, huge bundles of
wood on their backs, their feet protected only
by cheap flip flops. Mostly blue and white rubber.
Not that they needed them, I remember thinking.
The soles of their feet protruded outward a bit.
Almost like hooves.
Years of hardening.
Their feet told the stories of their hardened lives.

Later, riding in my Ambassador tourist taxi,
we passed a woman, bundle of wood on her back,
sitting on one of the short tapered concrete
cylinders used to mark the outer edges
on the switchbacked mountain roads.
She was taller than average. Young. Well,
younger than I was at the time. Maybe
thirty. Stronger than average. Built strongly
with robust bones and muscles. Maybe our
eyes met.

She sat on the edge of the road. I will never
forget the look on her face. “Is this all there is?”
She, nameless woman of north India, probably
remains one of the biggest factors in my belief
that even if all of us don’t get reincarnated,
some of us do.

Fenced In

Where am I going? North, south, east and west
have no meaning.

Where am I going? Up and down, out and around
are equally meaningless.

I am fenced in by my freedom. Because the
geographical direction, and distance from the
center of the earth are not the point.

The real point is that since I newly don’t know
who I am, there’s no I to go anywhere, so the
invisible, non-existent fence is all it takes to
hold me in place.

I used to think I knew who I was. Cowardly in
the outer world, powerless, I try to use the
little freedom that is my lot.

Tried to use it and thus fertilize it. Let it grow.
So who am I?

The swallowtail chrysalis appears unchanged from
last week. It had turned brown,
to match the coffee filter it was looking
at when it shed its skin, after first revealing the green of
the parsley it had consumed.

The monarch chrysalis has no such tricks up its sleeve.
It doesn’t need to. Its nature is to transmute itself in
place, on the milkweed, while the swallowtail needs to
be flexible, in case it’s caught by chill, and needs to
overwinter on dry vegetation.

My current confusion, I hope, is another step on the
road. The apparent inactivity of the chrysalis.

The swallowtail still hangs, brown, from the drying
parsley stem it chose, rather than the sturdier plastic
spoon I offered it. But the monarch chrysalis, overnight,
or at least since yesterday morning, has turned black.
That means that the chrysalis has actually clarified.
Become its namesake’s material, while the insect
within has formed, its black and orange pattern now
visible within, if you know how to look.

We Are All The Chosen People

Spiritualist First Church of Truth August 19, 2018

Here’s a recording of the sermon:

Here are some notes, which are more extensive than what I had time to talk about. 🙁

The Evolution of the Concept of The Chosen People.

My dad was sorry he did not have time to loan me his tee-shirt from the synagogue in Alaska which claimed the members of the congregation were “The Frozen Chosen.”

But where did the concept of the Chosen People come from? Most of us might think that the Hebrew Bible was the origin of this idea, but this is probably wrong. Every people over the course of pre-history and history has probably believed that their god loved them best.

But in Western history, this all changed with Sargon.

Let’s take a step back to understand the Bible in the CONTEXT of the CULTURE in which it originated. Newly developing spiritual and religious systems are always trying to solve the current problems.

For example, Hinduism developed to try to manage a society that was made up of conquered and conquerors.

Often conquered were “recently” displaced people who were of a totally different ethnic stock and had a totally different way of life from the sword waving and horse riding conquerors.

Conquered had followed a more or less peaceful, mother centered sedentary lifestyle, while conquerors were militaristic partriarchs who made their women second class citizens.

The sword waver’s answer was the caste system, and they put themselves at the top of the social hierarchy. Eventually, the top caste, the priests, developed a stranglehold on everyone else and rituals took up far too much time. The original spiritual aspect of the Hindu traditions, their search for truth was lost.

Judaism developed to try to get back to a more democratic social structure in the context of the land we now call Iraq, perhaps the first civilization. God’s first recorded instruction to Abraham, his first follower, was “Go To Yourself.” God then told him to “Get out of Sumer.” God was not, at that time, trying to overturn the second class status of women, but the fact is that at that time, 3500 years ago or so, women in Sumer didn’t have it that bad. Sumer’s most powerful traditional deity was Ishtar, a goddess, and Sumerian women had similar legal rights to men.

But Sumer was the place where the first historically known King and eventually the first Emperor emerged.

But how did the King convince the people that they should obey him? People in primitive tribes kept a close watch on the head man, to avoid his taking more power than they were ready to give.

One of the King’s strategies was to CLAIM THAT HE WAS CHOSEN BY GOD TO BE KING. Of course it wasn’t just a king and everyone else. The whole idea of civilization works as a result of a multi-level social hierarchy. Civilization allows a small group of people to basically lord it over everyone else. God was apparently not too happy about this human development.

So Abraham had to get out of Sumer, to clear his head, and realize how much better life is when each person has his own direct line to God. Even later in Judaism, the priests were there to do the rituals, but were never considered to be more beloved by God than the “regular” people. Abraham’s god had a new idea. Instead of choosing the KING to be on top of everyone else in the country, God CHOSE the ENTIRE POPULATION OF ABRAHAM’S DESCENDANTS.

But somehow, within a short time (Well short in terms of ancient history) the Jewish people, with an edited Bible, managed to turn this Divine Democratization into a Divine Elevation. The Jewish way was not better because GOD LOVED EVERY JEWISH PERSON. The Jews turned the commandment to be a light to the nations, perhaps meaning that everyone on Earth was eventually to realize that all of HUMANITY was made up of CHOSEN individuals, into a belief that Jews were special. This caused a lot of pain and anxiety and push back. I think it is probably a significant factor in the prevalence over the centuries of Anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism used to nominally mean Anti-Jewish, but Arabs are also Semitic. It should be noted that Islam also has this idea that every Muslim has the spirit of Allah within, and Islam has no priests at all!

I don’t know if I can adequately emphasize that the Jewish idea of the Chosen PEOPLE was intended to be a BROADENING from the CHOSEN KING.

Jesus came along and Jesus was a Jew, and from what I can tell, he bought into the idea of the Jewish people being specially loved by God. Of course the Torah repeatedly quotes God telling the Children of Israel how he’ll give them the land of milk and honey and feed them with fat wheat. But carrot and stick psychology was all they had at the time. There was no Maslow’s Hierarchy of progressive motivation.

Nevertheless, I still think that one of God’s main intents with his support for the followers of Jesus was to BROADEN the group of chosen. To make the Jews from the theoretical, someday, light of the world, into the actual people who demonstrate how to live with a personal relationship with an all powerful God. What was Jesus’ message? He did not promote giving up ritual, but he did promote seeing in a new way, being in a new way.

One example was the way that Jesus taught people to honor their parents. This was by following him in a new way of life, based in spiritual truth revealed to each individual rather than staying at home to comfort them by bringing their slippers when they wanted to put their feet up. Were the parents of the disciples honored by their offspring’s action? We can’t know, but if it weren’t for their offspring’s following Jesus, they would most likely be deeper in the darkness of the forgotten than they are. At least there are millions of Christians who remember their children every day, and bless their sainted memories.

But getting back to the chosen people idea… Think of the ramifications of having an all powerful God on your side, always ready to help out. You better be pure of spirit, or bad things will happen to others. As the belief in their God’s power increased, the importance of ethics became more important. Even Sargon, the first emperor of Sumer, claimed that GOD PICKED HIM BECAUSE he was just, and treated the widows and orphans in a just manner.

And now, getting back to Jesus, once he was gone, and Christianity became a separate religion, rather than a sect of Judaism, in order to enlarge the fold, the original Christian leadership needed to embrace broadening the promise of “chosen-ness.” Although I am not convinced Jesus wanted to start a new religion, clearly Paul did. “You don’t have to have been born Jewish, you just have to accept Jesus, and you will be a part of community of the chosen.” Of course within a short time, the Jewish idea of Jesus being the Messiah, the Anointed, the one who brought an end to war and injustice, was seen to be incorrect. The followers of Jesus were compelled to come up with a new idea: INDIVIDUAL SALVATION.

Now we have to have a criterion for who is saved and who isn’t.

This is definitely NOT a Jewish idea. Jews believe that everyone is saved, everyone goes to Heaven. The only difference between the saints and the jerks is that the saints are remembered well and the jerks are probably cursed. But the souls of saints and jerks alike end up happily co-existing in heaven. As Jesus said, “My father’s house has many mansions.” The sign above the platform at the synagogue where I grew up said “This is the house of prayer for ALL the people.” On the holiest day of the year, the Day of Atonement, Jews make a COMMUNAL confession of every sin in the book. Literally. There are around three or four sins listed for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and every member of the congregation pounds his or her heart in contrition for EVERY ONE OF THOSE 75 or more sins. Judaism has no individual salvation. Everyone is saved in advance by the merciful God.

It’s really amazing, amazingly SAD, how quickly the Christian idea of broadening a chosen group of people, making the only entrance requirement a claim to be chosen, was so rapidly changed into a huge, millennia long argument about what you have to do, or not do, believe or not believe, to be saved.

And how many lives have been lost over this argument?

Certain groups of Muslims are now the one’s most vocally claiming to be the chosen, and killing each other over what it takes to get to Heaven. Again and again we see the idea of the chosen people being distorted and weaponized.

Hinduism had a similar revolution against the privilege of the priestly caste. Its name is Buddhism. The Buddha taught that freedom from suffering was available to anyone who could properly follow his Eightfold Path. The Buddha did not think that more than one person in 10,000 would be able to follow the path, or even be interested in trying to follow the path, but after his own hard won liberation, he spent the rest of his life trying to help those who were willing to try. Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, do not so much focus on being saved by a personal God, but on following an ethical life to increase the chances that you will be able to control your mind, make it your servant, so that the spirit may readily merge with the All. While this does not eliminate pain, it has the potential to eliminate suffering. The Buddhist and Hindu paths to liberation do not result in the body’s personality sitting at Jesus’ feet, but they result in unification with God, or the Ultimate Consciousness, an idea that many religious people find blasphemous. People who truly understand the nature of spirituality understand, whatever their religious affiliation, that this is the ultimate peace and joy.

The Smallest of Details

Japanese Beetle Breathing Pore Scanning Electron Microscope Image – Original magnification 1640x

Beautiful Shadow Patterns in Leaf Canopy on the Way to Tahquamenon Falls, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

It is in the description of both the great, and the invisible, the ends of the spectrum of knowable size, that the truest model of the physical world may be constructed.

It is when you can see that the shapes of the clouds are repeated in the ripples of the surface of a lake, as well as the layers in a sedimentary rock, that you are seeing the condensed layers of the structure of reality.

It is seeing The Face in the clouds, as well as in the outline left in a leaf damaged by the Morger Beetle, that you are seeing the epistemological layers of the structure of reality.

When you walk in nature, are you hoping to see the Shapwell Alkon? Then you are likely to be disappointed. When you walk in nature and notice the interplay of sharp and rounded, smooth and rough, light and shadow, sparkling and black, red and green, near and far, then you will be storing riches, and weaving yourself into the mystical layers of the structure of reality.

When you can see that the smallest of details are not necessarily small at all, then will you truly see.

Then will you truly see.

Spiritual Balance

Tricky Balancing Act: Scupture in New York City

Balance is the core element of all true spiritual paths. The human condition consigns us to be killers, whether of plants, the insects or fungi that would have otherwise have eaten them, or “higher” life forms.

The salient question is what we make of the inevitable pain we cause. Since without evil, we wouldn’t even know what good is, some evil must exist in for good to be recognized.

But balance in real life is much more complicated than choosing good or evil. Most of the time we don’t know which one we are choosing until years / decades later, and even then, what appeared evil may end up being the compost that brought forth the beautiful flower of a later, larger good.

So what else might we consider trying to balance? The food we consume and the energy we expend? Now there’s a huge effort right there! The amount of work we do and the time we “relax”? The amount of money we earn and what we spend? The skills we develop versus the friendships we nurture?

Of course that last one isn’t really an either / or. We can build friendships with people who are working on similar skill development, or those we mentor or are mentored by.

How do we balance our feeling of integrity when fighting for justice against people who disagree with us?

Is the United States setting itself up for a major internal conflict with the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice?

Isn’t it time for humanity to vomit up the remains of the undigested apple of knowledge of good and evil? It was always a false choice. That was the greater sin. Believing that we could KNOW GOOD AND EVIL, rather than focusing on pragmatic realities for the benefit of all.

I feel depressed and disgusted when confronted by the actions of people who think they are doing good by forcing women to bear unwanted children.

How many people existing today were actually PLANNED by their parents? When I was in the home-birth education course, decades ago, we were the ONLY couple of 10 who had actually planned that conception at that time. Those working against abortion are basically saying “I (or others) suffered, so must you.” Could it be perverse cruelty that drives them? Why is the unborn more important than the born? Only because we are tied to values that date from the time when a group kept its property by having soldiers to defend it to the death. The perceived necessities of group survival morphed into forcing individual behavior.

In most cultures on the earth today, the worst thing that can happen is to be burdened with the care of undesired offspring. I see many friends and acquaintances whose lives and dreams were put on hold for decades, or forever, by having to become parents before they were ready. The price of a moment’s passion or victimization can be steep.

I have never seen any historians specifically state that the need for armies was due in large part to the filling of the parts of the earth where it is relatively easy to survive. This 5000 year old imbalance is philosophically starting to tip back, but without renouncing our belief in the possibility of self-righteousness, I think attaining balance will be tough job.

May all beings be happy, and more importantly, may all beings have the causes of happiness.

To achieve that, we must promote education and basic security for all. That will be much easier if we promote policies that ensure children are born when they have a nurturing space in society awaiting them. Right now, the dominant world culture promotes misery for most.

Scotts Daily Prompt Balance

Ask Linda When She’s Ten Feet Tall

Part A

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_and_blue_pill.jpg

Linda often harbored thoughts of conforming to society. Of wearing society’s clothes. But she knew she’d have to take the blue pill every morning, and highly preferred the red. She knew that the red pill was for reality, while the blue pill was for fantasy. It was obvious. Blue pie in the sky. Red was solid flesh, earth and life’s blood.

She finally tossed the blue pills in the trash.

Part B

Now Linda could think more clearly. Now her true thoughts came to the surface.

Linda’s nascent understanding of who she was started to grow.

She started to catch some of her perceptions on their way to being modified; on the way to becoming thoughts, feelings and knowledge.

Part C

Linda started to experience awe more often. She devoured the literature on consciousness. She learned that chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s sexual partner. Chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s social status. But chimpanzees can’t ask “Is there another I, besides the one in this body, limited to these sexual partners and this place in the social structure?”

Part D
Linda started seeing her limitations dissolve. Linda knew that she was no longer a toddler, a kid, a teen, a college student, an independent head of household, with all of those incumbent burdens.

Part E

Linda no longer saw the fields of green, the flowers of red. Instead she saw the blades of ancient grasses. She saw her far ancestors harvesting the few golden wheat seeds which clung to their stalks. She saw the flowers with the eyes of the bee, so much closer to their real glorious colors.

She saw, through the eyes of the mole, the worms wriggling under the dark earth.

She experienced the jubilation of Hypatia, at the knowledge stored in the modern library of Alexandria.

She experienced liberation from care, after sitting at the feet of Patanjali.

She saw the sunlight. She no longer needed artifice from a venerable human to create interest in the world.

Part F
Linda walked to the fridge. She still needed to eat. She saw that old magnet declaring Hare Krishna! This time she understood. This time she knew what awaited her, the next time she chanted the name.

Part G

This time she knew that she didn’t need to chant the name. She was home.

Part H

Scott’s Daily Prompt: Bang!

I hope this story makes a bit of a BANG!

Direction: Zero to Sixty

Scott’s Daily Prompt: Direction

Direction is from ZERO TO SIXTY!!!!!

Dave at Sozo’s made this special design for me this morning.

Mid-Michigan Word Gatherer’s Prompt: Phony!

Our group facilitator said I should call the original version (lost in cyber-space) SIXTY. So I did.

Sixty

Phony. Phony-ness. A wide-spread modern art-form.

Most humans project a protective image of themselves that reflects, as closely as their sub-conscious minds can, the idealized person of the culture in which they are embedded. The real person hides from the world, hides even from its own ego.

This is a distortion of our essence.

An ancient person was smart enough to keep their given name secret, to protect from the possibility of its use by antagonistic forces. This is legitimate camouflage, not phony-ness.

Early humans even learned to deceive by using the whites of their eyes to point others away from the tree with the ripe fruits, the precursor to the outright lie. But again, there is deception and there is deception. This type of deception was a natural outgrowth of our participation in the food-chain.

Development of complex language allowed humans to flourish numerically, multiplying varieties of adaptation and culture. Words power, and magic forms, the foundation of our high level ability to deceive and confuse, when we choose not to inform. Words, and the tones we use to utter them, underpin the modern phenomenon of phony-ness.

Ancient and pre-historic people couldn’t be phony. They could hide. As already noted, they needed to use camouflage and deception like most of their fellow complex animal life forms. But they weren’t phony. It never occurred to them to try to appear as something they weren’t to their tribal fellows, even as they were trapped in their roles within their community.

What’s the bottom line here? We serve ourselves when discerning between necessary deceit of the outsider, and trying to fool our nearest neighbors and kin.

Only modern people have the opportunity to be phony in this damaging way. It’s one of the curses of the modern world, stemming from the multiple groups which claim the allegiance of any modern person.

Phony people hide their true selves under layers of mirage. Or at least they try to. Programmed, from the day we are born, to take on the values of our cultural milieu, whether it fits with our particular karmic baggage, genetic predispositions, and family history, or not, we mostly do not even know our own true selves.

Tangled Roots