This post has been a long time coming.
Many people in my world are fundamentally reptilian.
This largely accounts for their social marginalization.
The question is how to, for want of a better word, humanize them.
ADVISORY: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.
Tag Archives: Karma
The wandering will
A vector in a three-dimensional space.
I envision the emotional or spiritual world as a ten-dimensional space, in which a vector (arrow) beginning at the origin (the center of the space) depicts a person’s emotional state at any point in time. The vector’s length indicates the intensity of one’s emotions at a given moment, while its direction indicates what kinds of feelings those are — equal parts joy and sadness, for example, or some anger and much love.
These are the energies one is emanating at that moment, the kinds of light or darkness one creates.
Continue reading The wandering will
As to reincarnation
I address reincarnation, a potentially important topic, enough here:
About organized religion
About organized religion
July 1, 2018
The evils of organized religion need no rehearsal here.
People rightly question whether it has any right to exist.
To respond, I can begin with an examination of the life of one single man, John Lee Cowell.
Read this:
BART killing: Divergent paths met tragically on Oakland platform
If that link doesn’t work, click here.
That this was a white-on-black crime led to a spasm of hysteria.(*)
No heaven or hell is of interest to me except the living heaven or living hell folk create in this life, here and now, for themselves and one another. Clearly, Cowell has spent his life creating just such a living hell.
But before he ever did that, there is the living hell he was born into.(**)
No theodicy can justify this apart from belief in reincarnation.
The question is how one got into that situation, and how one may get out.
Karma as results
It may be easy, too easy, to imagine how this individual got himself into that situation: it’s “bad karma” rising from the bad things he’s done in the past. There may be a less judg-mental way to look at it, an alternative to seeing karma as rewards and punishments. Indeed, the God I worship and believe in doesn’t deal in either one.
I’m not good at video games.
One I played a few times involved fighter spacecraft engaged in battle. Again and again, this happened (which is why I gave up on the game): I’d launch an on-target weapons blast that destroyed the enemy craft; but, as the pieces of its wreckage continued on through space along their own paths, I’d ineptly steer my craft into the path of one or more of them, and so be destroyed myself.
Similarly, for better or worse, karma is a matter of one’s meeting the results of one’s own actions. It is composed of spiritual material that is just as — material — in its own world, as any material object is in ours. Like those pieces of wreckage careening through space, or like billiard balls rolling across a pool table, each one — with its own momentum and inertia — will continue on its path unless something happens to redirect it or dissolve it.
Expiation of karma
I have lived at times in dread of what bad things I have done in previous lives that may come back to create unforseen, inevitable disaster in my future in this life. There is no need to do so; no need to explore one’s presumed past lives in search of such information. For from moment to moment, day to day, one meets one’s karma from this life and the past; as little or much as one can deal with, at the moment.
One who lives as Jesus taught is prone to present one’s best self at all times; the best self one can be at the moment, from moment to moment. In this way, such a person is not only creating the best possible present for oneself and one’s community, but also sending favorable karma into one’s own future.
By the same token, one who lives as Jesus taught is best equipped from moment to moment to deal positively with life’s difficulties as they occur. Those difficulties inevitably include the negative karma from one’s past. Dealing positively with such events expiates that karma, sublimating evil into good, changing darkness into light.
Forgiveness
In recent days, I have been assembling a list of Bible verses to examine in the chapter, “Other Jesus sayings.” I puzzled over the significance of these:
- Mark 11:25: “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”
- Matthew 18:35: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
- Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 18:18: “[W]hatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
The last one seems to me to be about forgiveness also: “loosing” a bond refers to forgiving an offense; “binding” refers to not-forgiving.
The way of the world
is to not-forgive, but rather retaliate. Much of what we see, in the world, is a matter of negativity between persons going back and forth forever, each one alternating in the roles of victim and victimizer, which is why the human state seems so seldom to improve.
All sentient creatures, all creatures that have free will, have the privilege, power and ability to change light into darkness, or darkness into light. This is a feature of God’s image in each one. To forgive is to change darkness into light.
As to the bond that is created when one does not forgive: this is, in effect, a material thing in the spiritual world, like any of the rest of one’s karma, that will careen on its own through space-time potentially forever. Something has to happen to loose or dissolve that bond, an act of will by some sentient creature.
Their task
The soul who was Nia Wilson, and the soul who is John Lee Cowell, are destined to meet again; in a future life for her, and the present or a future life for him. When they do, the person she will be is destined to feel a strong, murderous impulse toward him. If she fails or has failed to forgive; or fails to sublimate or redirect that impulse; she will act on it — possibly again, as we cannot rule out the possibility that he killed her his time in retaliation for an attack she, in some previous life, made on him before. Either one could have been of the other sex at that time.
Similar impulses clearly have beset Cowell all his life. I refer to this phenomenon as “The Itch,” an unsought desire for strife or violence or turmoil. Its presence in my own experience is very troubling to me, and I am working to purify myself of it. In other chapters, I set forth “Strategies” and “Tactics”(***) one may use to sublimate or redirect such impulses.
Cowell faces far more work in this regard than you or I. Much as he may strive in it, he is sure to sometimes fail.
A major aspect is that one must be willing to forgive oneself, which may be what Mark 11:25 and Matthew 18:35 are actually about.
Related: A short route to agony
He will never be free until he discerns the image of God within himself, and loves that, loves himself, enough to forgive himself his life of violence and crime.
Sole source
The evils of organized religion need no rehearsal here. I obviously have profound disagreements with traditional Christianity in almost any form. The fact remains that no other institution in the West, even in the world, presumes to seek to understand what Jesus taught. No other institution in the world even sets forth the proposition of forgiveness.
The church does.
That’s reason enough it should exist.
======================================
(*)Related:
– BART slaying ignites fear among black people — ‘It just feels like they’re coming for us’
– Anne Hathaway calls out white privilege in passionate post about ‘unspeakable’ murder of Nia Wilson
– Critics say the media makes innocent blacks look dangerous. Nia Wilson is their latest example.
(**)One can compare him, in this regard, to Carter Scott, Jamarion Lawhorn or Kendrea Johnson.
(***)These will appear at a later date.
2) Give up the word “deserve.”
| <– 1) Do for yourself… | Home | 3) Get your hands dirty. –> |
John C. Dorhauer’s “An Open Letter to White Men in America” begins:
Dear White Men,
You are persons of privilege.
You didn’t earn it.
This distresses me far less today than it did when I first read it. Maybe I’ve become more comfortable with having things I don’t deserve. More likely, I’ve lost all interest in whether people have things they don’t deserve or deserve things they don’t have.
I encourage you to lose all interest in it, too.
Ayn Rand’s karma
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
This morning on my walk from Dunkin’ Donuts to the library, I stopped at the corner of Fayette and St. Paul Sts. to finish a cigarette, before I’d go into the convenience store. To my right, on a bench, sat this woman, bent over with her head between her knees; she had turned her head to the left and was calling to me. I couldn’t make out her words. She is a “taker.” Sometimes I respond to such folk with compassion; sometimes I respond with contempt.
How would Ayn Rand have responded?
Sales pitch
Friday, November 3, 2017
This message is principally addressed to me, myself. After a couple weeks of doing pretty well at The Way of Peace, I’ve come again to a juncture where I seem to have tired of being happy, and am inclined to let go of this Way and return to, frankly, the way most people live.
Related: Learning curve
I may need to reason with myself, to persuade myself that self-management (1) is really worth the effort and (2) deserves to be a “First Thing” — a concern to be given priority, and to be held more important than other concerns.
Psychic vandalism
The dark side of EQ
(Originally posted 02/08/14.)
Adam Grant, The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman, An Antidote to the Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence
Dilemma: a hammer can be used either to build a house or to destroy priceless heirlooms. Possessing the tool of emotional intelligence does not mean one will use it favorably. What makes the difference?
In anticipating this post, I searched for a traditional term for “emotional intelligence.” I decided that the traditional term for it is wisdom. The Old Testament consistently refers to people who have emotional intelligence as “wise.” Those who lack it, it calls “fools.”
In the previous post, we saw that emotional intelligence, or wisdom, is a major determinant of personal effectiveness and success in life; in short, of prosperity. To the extent one wishes all people to prosper, it seems desirable that all people be wise.
In short, the wise prosper.
But the wise aren’t necessarily good, and the good aren’t necessarily wise.
Continue reading The dark side of EQ
Nancy Lanza, a mother tragic and infuriating
On Thursdays, for some time now, I’ve been reproducing old posts — reproducing the whole post. Today I must make an exception, because the comments on this post became much more significant than the post itself. So I will merely link to the original:
Nancy Lanza, a mother tragic and infuriating
The December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was, at the time, the worst mass murder shooting in American history. It left the nation stunned. The perpetrator, Adam Lanza, was a singularly troubled young man, and likewise his mother — the title says it in a nutshell, about her. The original post links to a WaPo article about her.
Original post appeared 12/28/13.
The Homeless Blogger 