NO END "PATHS"? A LIFE-LONG "JOURNEY" WHICH NEVER REACHES THE DESTINATION? A LIFETIME OF TREATMENT WITH NO CURE AT ALL? Sensible and Sane? Or Senseless and Insane? Part ZZZ - A REVIEW OF "THE REASONS"

TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS 

Specific "reasons" cause persons 

• to be obsessive and compulsive 

• and render them unable to relax 

• and lead them to be driven to go and do and zoom (whether that involves religion; spirituality; employment; "personal relationships"; politicking; reforming; rescuing; seeking love; seeking mass approval and applause and admiration; trying to escape responsibilities; accumulating; finding caretakers; or controlling). 

• We are looking at what causes "the reasons" to manifest 

• and what must happen in order to be freed from their influence. 

We are looking at what causes "the reasons" to manifest and what must happen in order to be freed from their influence. 

So, to continue: 

Persons obsess, act compulsively, are unable to relax, are fanatical, are driven by subconscious motives, and do whatever authority figures tell them to do - unquestioningly - because of reason #65: when persons combine their body-identification-based fears with their belief in dreamed up supernatural Causers, they substitute supposedly supernatural causes for a lack of understanding of natural or unnatural causes which leads them - when trapped in personality-based fears and desires - to play the role of "The Deal Maker with God" but who end up being "The Deal Breaker" and playing the role of "The Promise Maker to God But Not the Promise Keeper." 

The causes behind reason #65? 

IGNORANCE (AND, OFTEN, THE ENNOBLING OF IGNORANCE) along with IGNORANT PROGRAMMING, IMBECILIC CONDITIONING, UNENLIGHTENED DOMESTICATION, ILLITERATE ACCULTURATION, MORONIC BRAINWASHING AND WITLESS INDOCTRINATION 

Throughout humankind's history, no dreamed-up Causer or Causers have been blamed by persons or credited by persons with causing whatever has happened more than imaginary gods or goddesses or "The One True God." 

As an example, let's see how 3.94 billion persons on the planet are behaving each day as a result of the ignorant belief that stories in holy books are to be taken literally and are to be used to guide a person during every moment of every day. 

Thousands of years ago, a fellow named Abraham started spreading his belief that there were not multiple gods and goddesses (TRUE) but that there really was "One True God" instead (FALSE). 

To this day, the theories and notions and concepts dreamed up by  Abraham still receive considerable attention since he is considered the common patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The members of all three religions - and also some others - now pay homage to both Abraham and "the God of Abraham." 

Now at the time that Abraham married Sarah, it was believed to be God's desire that (1) he be faithful to her but that he (2) also exercise dominion over her (which might, on occasion, call for his faithfulness to her to be placed on hold).

(Now the prior case with a woman named Eve - a supposedly evil and cunning woman who was being punished for misleading that poor, previously-innocent, and gullible Adam chap - was also that she had to be submissive to her husband; meanwhile, Adam would seemingly be faithful to her since she was the only woman on earth. Abraham would have a bit of trouble with that part. 

Adam and Eve's son Cain killed their other son Abel, but don't ask about who had sex with whom after that in order to perpetuate the human species. God works in mysterious ways, and Biblical stuff cannot always be understood by mere mortals).

To continue with our example of Abraham and Sarah and their supposedly God-centered relationship:

So God was reported to have told Eve that Adam "shall rule over you” and He was reported to have told Sarah the same about Abraham, making clear that Abraham was in charge and that she should submit to her husband’s rule. She followed those marching order and was said to have “obeyed Abraham, calling him 'lord'.” The teaching was that "submission for a wife was basically faith that God was working through her husband to accomplish what is best for her." Rightttttt. 

[The so-called "Conservative Politicians' War on Women" currently being protested in the U.S. and in other nations by women who are labeled disparagingly by The Conservative Right as "liberal and liberated and progressive" and therefore "evil" or "agents of Satan" are still trying to break free from being suppressed by Bible-based belief systems such as those espoused by Richard L. Strauss, a Christian pastor and writer who was held in the highest esteem by conservative politicians on The Right.

Strauss offered his take on the problems caused by those female "liberals who are liberated and progressive" and who, therefore, are "evil" and "agents of Satan" as evidenced by their refusal to accept "God’s will for their lives, namely, true Biblical submission." He wrote: 

"Some wives have been systematically sabotaging God’s plan for their husbands because they have not been willing to believe God and entrust themselves to His wisdom. They simply will not trust God to work through their husbands to accomplish what is best. They feel they must help God along by trying to dominate their husbands." Surprising to some, Strauss died of natural causes rather than being pummeled to death by his female congregants. Obviously, they were submissive in the best Biblical sense.] 

Now, to continue with the Abraham / Sarah soap opera, uh, Biblical story (which the naive call "the truth" because it is in "The Holy Scriptures" which they claim to have "been inspired by God" but which the not-naive might call, "BS").

Sarah was Abraham's wife but it seemed that she would not give Abraham the son he wanted because she was believed to be barren. They traveled to Egypt where Sarah was introduced by Lying Abraham as his sister. She was eventually taken into the palace of the Pharaoh and Abraham was paid handsomely for her and her services to the Pharaoh with, according to The Holy Scriptures, "oxen and he-asses and menservants and maidservants and she-asses and camels." 

(The implied Biblical message: "Pimping pays, and it's acceptable if it's a part of God's Plan to give a man the assets he needs to found a new, really-holy nation for God. Hey, the end justifies the means, right?)

So one of the earliest Biblical rules was "wives, submit to your husbands," and if submission to another man would also benefit Abraham and allow him to align himself with some earthly power and snag some "oxen and he-asses and menservants and maidservants and she-asses and camels" along the way while he was on a mission from God, then "submit also to the pharaoh, wife, for in that way thy shalt be submitting to the wills of thy husband and thy God as well - which are really always one and the same, right?" 

[Ah, the rigors of submitting to a man (or men) and faithfully and unquestioningly serving them all as they go about the complicated and confusing business of carrying out God's will on earth.]

The saga of A and S continued:

After leaving Egypt, the pressing issue for Abraham and Sarah was that God told him to begin a godly nation, but how to do that if his wife was barren? Sarah, submitting to her husband's "need," brought him a concubine named Hagar. Abraham touched base with God and, Lo and Behold, God really did want his to have sex with Hagar. (Sometimes the perks that come with a Divine Plan are beyond what one could ever hope for or imagine.)

After Hagar became pregnant, Sarah's submission wavered as her jealousy of Hagar led her to start treating Hagar poorly, so Hagar fled. She did not get far, however, before she claimed to have heard God speak to her, ordering her to return to Abraham and give him the son that she was carrying. She submitted and did so. Son One: check. Let the godly-nation-building begin.

Now when Abraham reached the age of 100 and Sarah was 90, she reported to Abraham that God was going to allow her to become pregnant and give him a son as well, and she did reportedly give birth to a son when she was at the age of ninety. Son Two: check.

That would be the son named Isaac, the one who Abraham said God told him to kill to prove his faith in God. The tale goes that when it was clear that he was going to kill his son, God intervened and said he did not have to go through with it since it was enough that he showed God that he was willing to butcher his son like a sheep taken to slaughter.

The scriptures do not report of a subsequent lifetime twitch that Isaac developed, but had that near-death experience have actually happened, Isaac might have been the first in human history to suffer PTSD for the remainder of his life. 

After Sarah's death, Abraham reported that he had taken another "wife" named Keturah, though later records said that he never really married her and that she was his concubine instead. (Oh Abraham, you horny little rascal you. Who that is Jewish or Christian or Muslim could not love and honor you?)  

Abraham was said to have had six sons out of wedlock with Keturah (Sons Three to Eight: check) before finally dying at the ripe old age of . . . 175. (Just a Spring Chicken, though, when compared to Methuselah who supposedly lived to the age of . . . 969.)

And with a belief in every element of that story above, and after having normalized all of Abraham's behavior and after having rationalized it all and having justified it all and and after having ennobled it, trillions of persons over the ages - and billions more who are alive today - have worshiped and continue to worship Abraham and "The One True God of Abraham" and nowadays join the trillions  who have believed that "The One True God of Abraham" is the Creator and Causer of All, which would - by default - also have to include: 

The 9 / 11 attacks; religious wars; international wars; prejudice; hatred; destruction and demolition and flooding and the use of hurricanes and other types of storm systems to punish and kill billions; droughts, plagues and incurable diseases; the demise of children born with birth defects; the demise of children killed by insane parents; the molestation of children by relatives and priests and others; and damnation and hell fire (existing concurrently with the belief in "a God Who Loves Everyone Unconditionally"). 

I have listened to Rev. Jim Rigby warn congregants not to accept Biblical stories literally but to find whatever wisdom and truth might be pointed to via the stories, but that message is seldom heard by the 2.2 billion Christians, the 1.6 billion Muslims, or the 14 million Jews who presently live on the planet and who presently consider Abraham "to have been one of the holiest men to have ever lived" (rather than seeing him accurately as just another self-centered male driven by delusions and distortion and an overactive penis - or, maybe to use the Biblical term - a man who was a total "he-ass").

"But if you believe in God and His Word, ladies, you'll unquestioningly submit to that type of man anyway, right? Go forth and be good Sarahs, won't you?"

So that is the surely-inspired and surely-inspirational story of Sarah and Abraham, "The Father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."

More significantly, however, that is the story of the billions and trillions of persons who have believed in all the righteous nonsense that Abraham dreamed up

and

of the persons whom he inspired to believe in a really-curious Causer of All

and

of the persons who have unquestioningly believed the most outlandish tales which are based in total ignorance. 

And it is the story of ignorance-dominated persons who will spin into something noble the ego-driven behaviors of a cast of supposedly holy but actually self-absorbed Biblical characters

and

it is also the story of ignorance-dominated persons who accept everything in that story - and in all such Biblical or supposedly-holy stories -  as "all just fine, thank you very much."

So at this point, it is now time for all to please bow for the benediction: 

"Here ends the story of Abraham as revealed through the infallible Word of God. All praise to God and blessed be those who hear and heed His Word and who follow His every instruction and who live their lives according to the Biblical examples provided by Submissive Sarah and Arrogant and Abusive Abraham. Now, may the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace, and may He give you too the blessing of blindness and the willingness to submit unquestioningly. AMEN." 

See, if "Would-Be Controllers" can hook persons with the belief that certain books are "holy" and contain "the infallible Word of God," then they can control persons so consistently that their followers will not question anything that they are told. No matter how unbelievable their stories are, they will literally believe them anyway, and they will let those stories inspire them to accept and acquiesce as long at they are convinced that everything that happens is the will of The Great Causer in the Sky.

They will accept with blind faith whatever they hear, and if they hear, "Drink the poisoned Kool-Aid," they will do so. Hooked thusly, ignorance will prevail as follower-types believe that God is, indeed, the Causer of All. 

Again, of that, Maharaj said: "To love and worship a god is also ignorance. My home is beyond all notions, however 'sublime'." 

To believe that one knows the cause of all is to end the search for actual cause(s), and to end the search for actual cause(s) assures the continuation of absolute ignorance. 

And if the continuation of absolute ignorance manifests, then persons will continue along a path which they did not consciously choose to take; they will dedicate a lifetime and unlimited resources to continuing a journey without end which they did not consciously choose to take;

and they will unquestioningly accept treatment plans for what ails them even after they are told up front that the treatment plan being used will provide no viable therapy or solution for their Sickness (which is a mental Sickness, not a too-little-religion sickness and not a spiritual malady).

Freedom is freedom from abiding in the unconscious, unawake, and unaware manner which the masses have been lulled into accepting without the slightest doubt and without any questioning at all.

To be continued. 

Please enter into the silence of contemplation. 

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