[A break from posting excerpts from the SELF-Transformation Meditation Guides will be taken in order to respond to an e-mail from Marco B. of Rome, Italy, visiting in New York]
Marco: Thank yu for site. I visit freinds in New york go back to Roma next week. Now I unnerstand magical thinking you writ about…I m see in news that someoner called “miracle” that Jesus statue not hit by trees. Before I begin to read site, I believe same, not now. Folle. [Translation: folly or insanity?] Marco B.
F: Thanks for the note, Marco. I take it that you’re referring to the news reports that are showing a statue behind the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana—a sculpture of Jesus with arms raised, surrounded now by limbs of trees that fell around the figure but that didn't strike it directly during Hurricane Katrina. I am going to post your comments because they're relevant to recent entries about the “magical thinking” that comes with supernatural, rather than natural, living. Magical thinking can credit a micro-managing, other-world entity with caring enough about a statue to take charge of falling trees to assure they do not harm a piece of granite while at the same time ignoring the fact that the same entity didn’t interfere to prevent falling trees from killing humans during the same storm or to prevent levees from breaching and killing thousands and leaving millions homeless. In the book Spiritual Sobriety: Recovering What Religions Lost, a similar example is offered in a quote taken from an Advaita-themed novel: He marveled as his wife concluded that a little girl who fell into a flooded river, eventually rescued a mile downstream, was “saved by the Hand of God that pushed her to shore.” The look she gave Kirk amounted to a look wishing to kill when he inquired, “Well, where was ‘His’ hand when she fell in? If ‘He’s’ gonna interfere with ‘His’ hand, why not interfere to prevent her falling into the water in the first place? You know, push her back rather than push her out a mile downstream. [from The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders] That would be a "miracle." Giant hands appearing that prevented water from spilling forth through breaks in a levee would be a "miracle." On the journey, students such as you who are beginning to question the faulty programming and to challenge generally-held beliefs can look at such examples and use them as evidence of the magical thinking that you are beginning to be free of. Later, you’ll witness what you called “folle/folly” and it won’t even register in the purified consciousness long enough to write an e-mail about it. Please advise when that happens. Thanks again for writing. For today, it might be asked, "Do any vestiges of magical thinking remain that have not yet been purged? How much of the seven-step path to the 'no-idea, no-concept, no-emotional intoxication, no-belief, no-magical thinking reality' has been traveled?" Please enter the silence of contemplation.
A subsequent observation was received this morning from Marie in LA, a site visitor who read today's post and sent her questions. Since this site is intended to be a forum, her observations shall be added:
Marie: Could the use of the term "miracle" to label trees missing a statue also reveal the level of narcissism that is common among persons who take an ego-state as an identity? Doesn't the belief that an icon can have any significance at all reveal the duality of the image vs. reality dilemma that is inherent in magical thinking which always gives more credence to an image than to the real?
F.: Yes. In the inverted "world of duality," intelligence is anathema, muddled thinking...the friend; reality is spurned, the dream...embraced. So it is. Thanks for your observations.
