March 24, 2010

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  Ready?

  
  

  On Wednesdays I begin thinking about what I'm going to talk about on the weekly Phat Podcast. Sometimes I start making notes in an outline program I use. Sometimes all I get is the basic idea and a title which may or may not be permanent. Today I got the idea but I can't remember the details of a story someone told me recently and I want to get it right. It's important to me not to misrepresent someone whenever possible. Some people change so quickly no matter what you say it misrepresents them because their center of gravity is a flux. Others have fossilized and it's easier. There you have both of the extremes to which we, as human beans, go. Not a pretty picture but the story must be told. Speaking of stories, I was reading, The Anurag Sagar of Kabir. It's a long poem but not long by Eastern standards. Rumi's poem is in three volumes while Kabir's is just one. Part of it is a creation story. Because spiritual adepts aren't interested in making scientific sense of things they often use poetic allegory and license to tell their stories. After all, spiritual things must be spiritually understood. The problem for those of us who have not fully realized our spiritual nature is that we're stuck here in the physical world. It's really a mock world. It may be useful here to remind the reader of the meaning of mock that I'm using. Not authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive. The bit I wish to emphasize is, without the intention to deceive. This can be very difficult for us to grasp in our current state because we live, move and have our being in negative emotions. It makes us suspicious about everything and everyone. It would seem obvious that makes us very closed, contracted, but it does need to be said because we can't see ourselves as we are. In many ways we're like the king in the story of The Emperor's New Clothes. Rather than being naked we're over dressed and equally encumbered with all that we've put on.

  The poet Blake wrote, Eternity is ever in love with the products of Time. Eternity here representing what's real, original, true--that which Time mocks. Because Eternity does love those of us caught in the trap of Time, It has set up a series of invasions in which the true Reality enters into the mock universe and illumines it, awakening those who are ready to grasp the truth and showing them the way out. Anurag Sagar means Ocean of Love. Where Time touches the Ocean of Love it produces the bhav sagar, ocean of the world, the only reality most of us know, the mock world in which we are trapped. Some folks don't feel trapped. They're not ready to grasp the truth. Because we are trapped in time we are stuck with the laws of this mock world. One of those laws is Karma or Cause and Effect. Some will recognize it by the phrase, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. When we live by this law we wallow in negative emotions because we don't see justice in our world. We make long accounts of the wrongs done to us and others and require, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Even people who have accepted the idea of forgiveness and love draw the line somewhere and have a special place where people who keep doing what we don't want them to do will go someday. Some come right out and say they'll be punished for eternity in that place while others lie about it and won't call it punishment. They'll call it justice and say it is out of their hands. Either way it's wallowing in negative emotions, hate and unforgiveness.

  Much of what I do these days is sift. I sift myself to remove the dross. Because I make Podcasts available to anyone in the world I receive email questions from listeners. Because I write here I get questions from people who do not understand what I'm talking about because it doesn't fit into their belief system. Worse, some think they know exactly what I'm talking about because their belief system has a way to pigeonhole everything that doesn't fit into the belief system. This is perhaps the most difficult of all. It's not unusual to find an elderly person so set in their ways they cannot accept anything different. It's also not unusual to find young people equally fossilized, hard, inflexible. This, in my opinion, is even more tragic. We can't understand what is beyond our understanding until we increase our understanding. The problem with us is we want to increase our understanding without changing our beliefs. We've all got certain core beliefs which have become like the One Ring--our precious. When they are challenged we become negative and ultimately violent. This is how religions based on love can behead people, burn people at the stake and persecute them in so many other ways. History is a train of such ethnic cleansings, pogroms, inquisitions, wars and other violent events. We blame the religions when the culprits are the people who fail to be transformed by their contact with the religions. You may have heard, perhaps even said and probably thought in one form or another, God is okay. It's his people I can't stand. Unfortunately there are not many people who are ready to leave what they know for what they don't know. I don't blame them. It can be scary and it can be very difficult. Once we're fossilized, no matter how young or old we may be, the process of becoming flexible enough to change can be extremely painful.

  • 5:45 pm
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