TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
So, it has been shown that there is a bit of irony involved with the role which the formation of a different perspective plays in the realization process of treating the Ultimate Sickness with a viable version of the Ultimate Medicine:
A key part of the viable version of Ultimate Medicine involves (A) someone offering a seeker a different perspective while (B) a different perspective comes to the seeker as the Ultimate Sickness goes. Why is that "someone" required?
Because any current perspectives (which are both the causes and the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness) are centered in the mind of the masses (and that includes the minds of "seekers");
and
because a mind filled with warped perspectives cannot see that its perspectives are warped, much less "suddenly and miraculously" see totally different perspectives and adopt, on its own, an all-new replacement set of perspectives which are the diametrical opposite of currently-held perspectives.
During my pre-teen years in the 40's and 50's, a generator of fear involved seeing several friends contract polio and end up in an iron lung. When Frankie Presse (who lived in a house only feet away from mine) contracted polio, the concern about the disease rose to an even higher level.
He and I had walked together the mile trek to our elementary school each morning, rain or shine; had run side by side through the neighborhood and the nearby woods; had chased after baseballs hit into the outfield where I played the position of a center fielder and where Frankie was a right fielder; and had played football together on one of the youth teams organized by the city.
Frankie was as active a kid as anyone had ever seen.
Then one day Frankie had to stay home from school because he had developed a fever, a sore throat, and a headache. At first, his parents thought it might be the beginning of a cold or maybe the flu. The next day, he was vomiting and fatigued.
Over the next few days, he developed back pain and stiffness. Then neck pain and stiffness set in. Soon, pain and stiffness in his arms and legs set in. That was in the early 1950's when we watched one of our healthiest friends placed into an "iron lung" because he had contracted polio. In only ten days, Frankie Presse went from being active to being paralyzed.
We would hear reports regularly that more people in our area were coming down with the disease than was the case in the "higher class" areas. My earlier suspicions that "God does not give a damn about poor people" was being further reinforced.
Frankie's family was able to arrange for an in-home unit:
The first time I saw Frankie in that tube, I went into shock, asking,
"How the hell could this happen to Frankie? His family has gone to church several times a week for years. Where is God now? Why would an all-powerful God not use His power to wipe out this horrible disease? In fact, if He's also all-knowing, why did He allow the disease to come into being in the first place? Some of the core ideas about a 'Loving God' that I've been taught at church are sure starting to sound like a great big crock of bullshit!"
I knew my family could never afford an in-home iron lung. I looked at images on the Kerley's television, the Kerleys being the only family in our neighborhood who owned a tv, and I saw some open holes in the apparatus, holes waiting for children who would be contracting the disease in the future.
I looked at the dark holes that were presently empty and knew they could well be waiting for me.
However, within a few years, when I was about eight years old, a vaccine, administered by an injection, came into use. With that came some sense of relief.
After six years of injections, a Dr. Sabin became our hero when he developed an oral polio vaccine.
And contrary to predictions, Frankie survived. He would wear clumsy, heavy leg braces every day, and sometimes on the way to school he would become so fatigued that we would take turns carrying Frankie on our backs. On rainy days, we would put on bulky black boots and huge yellow raincoats with yellow hats with attachments that came down past our shoulders.
On those days, the slick boots and slick raincoats would require us to continuously lift Frankie higher on our backs as he slid down time and again. Friends would get behind us both and push Frankie by the butt to keep him higher up on my back.
But we never complained.
It's what we did because our families seldom had a car available and because we were outside the area where the school buses ran.
Watching what Frankie had to go through each day pretty much prevented us from making a big deal out of our own circumstances. His existence gave us a different perspective about being in poverty; about living in a slum; about living on the same street as the Mercer and Morgan street gangs; about occasionally hearing gunfire in our neighborhood; about missing out on what the children in better neighborhoods received, services which we were deprived of. All of that meant nothing as we carried Frankie on our backs to school.
Eventually, on spring or summer days when we could play outside, Frankie began developing an ability to move fairly quickly on his crippled legs encircled in metal braces with their leather straps. There was no bending of the knees and moving his legs forward. There was more of a swinging motion he mastered, circling one leg in a wide arc away from his body, bringing it down, and then doing the same with the opposite leg. We told Frankie that he looked like a "whirlybird," our name back then for a helicopter. He laughed and agreed.
So Frankie once more began playing with us. He and I "ran" side by side again, though I had to adjust my speed downward by 90% in order to stay beside him. Sometimes I'd run in his style, stiffening my legs and swinging them in huge arcs to my side so that - as Frankie understood, not to mimic him - but to allow our paces to sync.
And most days, Frankie smiled. I wondered how.
Did he develop a different perspective? Was wearing leg braces a "treat" after having been confined in an iron lung and, later, being carried on the backs of his friends? Was his awkward manner of moving okay with him when compared to being paralyzed and unable to move at all? Was it okay with him after having watched sheets being pulled over the bodies and faces of fellow child-patients and seeing them being rolled away on gurneys during those days when he had been in the hospital?
Consider:
A polio vaccine produces antibodies in the blood to all three types of polio virus. In the event of infection, the antibodies prevent the spread of the virus to the central nervous system and protect against paralysis.
So back to the earlier point:
A mind filled with warped perspectives cannot see that its perspectives are warped, much less "suddenly and miraculously" see totally different perspectives and adopt on its own an all-new set of perspectives which are all the diametrical opposite of currently-held perspectives.
Now, a polio vaccine which produces antibodies might work to prevent polio, but an illusion-and-delusion-filled-and-warped mind cannot produce anything that will allow it to fight off the Ultimate Sickness and heal itself.
That requires seekers to consider the perspectives of those that have been cured of the Ultimate Sickness; to see that the perspectives of those that have been healed are the 180-degree opposite of the perspectives of those still suffering from the Sickness; and to allow their minds to be purged so that totally-new perspectives can manifest.
To try to move through the relative existence while being burdened by warped perspectives is as crippling as polio was to Frankie.
I cannot carry seekers on my back, but I can offer them a viable version of the Ultimate Medicine which can allow them to be free of that which is constraining them as much as Frankie's iron lung constrained him when his legs became warped by a physical sickness.
Similarly, if seekers are freed of their warped perspectives, they can rise above the effects of the Ultimate (Mental) Sickness and, like Frankie, can walk freely again, can play again, and can enjoy the remainder of the relative existence which - also like Frankie - can be relished if only a different perspective manifests.
To try to move through the relative existence while being burdened by warped perspectives is as crippling as polio was to Frankie.
I cannot carry seekers on my back, but I can offer them a viable version of the Ultimate Medicine which can allow them to be free of that which is constraining them as much as Frankie's iron lung constrained him when his legs became warped by a physical sickness.
Similarly, if seekers are freed of their warped perspectives, they can rise above the effects of the Ultimate (Mental) Sickness and, like Frankie, can walk freely again, can play again, and can enjoy the remainder of the relative existence which - also like Frankie - can be relished if only a different perspective manifests.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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