TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns. See the end of the post for the full meaning and implications of that.
REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”:
Freedom from the False Sense of Separation
In the previous post, there was the conclusion of a description of a fellow who was raised with a sense of separation rooted in the dualistic beliefs of his family and culture which endorsed and spread a belief in different-from-ment and better-than-ment.
With his family's Northern Europe heritage and his white Anglo-Saxon Protestant / Catholic roots and their white nationalist belief in - and dedication to - the concepts of eugenics and genetic superiority and with their belief that those living in "the heartland" in the U.S. are the only "Real Americans" anymore and with their Super Patriot beliefs and his families entrapment in body identification, then . . .
it should be no surprise that the family experienced separation from each other (except sexually); and from the rest of the country; and a xenophobia-inspired sense of separation from the rest of the people in the nation as well as around the globe, inspiring him to volunteer to go to Vietnam and kill "the others" there.
But most of all he suffered separation from himself, meaning, from his true feelings and from any awareness of what his upbringing placed into a mind which would drive him to self-defeat and self-destruction throughout his entire relative existence. The trauma he suffered during his days on that Iowa farm left him dissociated from any ability to feel or to empathize and set up him up to practice denial and avoidance and escapism throughout his entire existence right up until its end.
In the area in the South where I grew up, I saw the same belief in different-from-ment and better-than-ment and white nationalism and white supremacy and xenophobia-driven super patriotism.
Some are aware that much of each year was spent in a slum area outside a city. The closest large city was Shreveport. Dad and I would ride the trolley downtown on Saturdays and get a malt at one of the whites-only counters in the drug stores or department stores downtown.
In front of the courthouse, and still standing there, was "the Hanging Tree," right next to the monument erected in honor of Confederate soldiers who fought to preserve slavery in the U.S. We all knew about that tree and its history, and it was a source of terror each time I laid my eyes upon it.
The "Hanging Tree" and Confederate Monument today
It was where blacks were dragged by mobs and / or KKK members for hanging for such offenses as looking a white man in the eye or glancing at a while woman who might be walking by.
I was three years old when they hanged a man named Napier who would be the last man hanged publicly in front of the courthouse. Other executions would continue throughout my early years in that area, but they took place on the seventh floor of the courthouse in order to hide the reality of life for blacks in the community.
Napier's was hanged in front of the courthouse on a gallows which provided a quicker and less painful death with the neck-breaking drop which gallows provide; however, at least 590 blacks were strung up by rope from "The Tree" which resulted in a more painful slower, leg-kicking, chocking and gagging death; also, but hundreds more were hanged from two other Hanging Trees located in areas surrounding the city.
Dad had only been back in the States for four years after being called up to fight those in the Axis Powers, their original pact having been signed in Berlin which had become the center of operations of the Nazis in Germany. By then, they were will along in the business of "exterminating" six million Jews (a term which came from their racist ideology which regarded Jews as “parasitic vermin”) along with six million others who were killed in the Nazis' death camps because they were gay or "deformed" (with physical or mental disabilities) or political dissidents or were sick or weak or old or "mixed race" or members of other minorities such as Gypsies, Poles, or those of African origin.
Has the culture in that Louisiana city where I grew "evolved" nowadays? No. In 2015, Dale Cox - the acting district attorney who secured more than a third of Louisiana’s death sentences over the previous five years - said that "the state needs to kill more people" and "I want to kill a lot more people" and "I think the death penalty should be used more often" and "revenge is important for society as a whole."
Has the culture in the U.S. as a whole evolved? Also, no. During the last presidential campaign and during that last fourteen months, Nazis have been accepted and praised by the current administration. There is much talk about "superior genes" and allusions to a "superior race." There has been much discriminatory talk about gays. Those with disabilities have been mocked. Political dissidents and journalists are under fire, along with those in racial minorities.
Zeba Blay's writings have been shared here before. She wrote about duality and "the other" in the U.S., saying:
Wake up. This is the America that people of color have always known. This is the America that has always existed.
It is the "America" which was able to become a nation because 150,000,000 indigenous people were killed and 99% of their land was confiscated in an area from what is now called the northern part of Canada to all points south down to the tip of what is now called Argentina.
The surprise is not that dog-whistle politics works so effectively in the U.S. as some politicians employ messaging with coded language which appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. In fact, that "sub-group" may not be a "sub-group" at all but may well be the majority.
What can address the beliefs generating a sense of separation and notions about different-from-ment and better-than-ment. Religion and spirituality? Those, for 5000 years, have a history of steadfast and unswerving dedication to the generation of dualistic beliefs which have resulted in separation into the 4,200 religions currently present on the planet and the 33,000 denominations and sects currently present on the planet.
The question, therefore, becomes: "How likely are those who tolerate and even value separation to be the ones to unite and join all together?"
Throughout the history of humanity, the periods when (1) the highest levels of a sense of separation and the highest levels of a sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment were at play have also been (2) the periods which have been devoid of peace and have been instead the periods of the greatest chaos and disjointedness and anger and fighting and wars and destruction.
To be continued.
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Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns.
THE EXPLANATION
If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.
Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of God in the past was of a weak God, an absentee God, A Santa Claus-type God, a mean, punishing, vindictive God, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring God whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."
The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a God that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").
Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring God,' any supposed God that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'God' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.
"That is, a non-narcissistic god / goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'God' and focus on the 'God as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you."
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men"
and
"There is no hell."
