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December 30, 2024

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I recall reading years ago of a priest or clergyman who said that when his beliefs were questioned it felt like a physical attack. Indeed, our beliefs and opinions are an integral aspect of our identities and when threatened or questioned it does feel like a physical attack.

It seems that in the course of our brain’s evolution, and emanating from the sense of what was ‘me’ and ‘not me’, we would simply react to a physical threat, firstly to protect ourselves and later to include our families, our tribe, our territory and food sources. Just like many animals have set social norms and ways of behaving, we developed our own norms to become beliefs and principles, effectively including them as integral to our identities.

It all seems linked: from the mind’s contents of thought the impression of a ‘me’, a ‘self’ emerges imbued with the sense that all these contents are who I am. They become my identity and perhaps feeling more real and worthy of protection than my physical body.

The article "An Antidote to Stress," suggests meditation: - "During the meditation, the self-value is deactivating," Zeidan says. "And the more it goes down, the greater the analgesia, the greater the pain relief." Pain signals are still being received by the brain, but "they are not going into the brain networks that are saying, this is my pain," he explains. In essence, mindfulness appears to help detach the self from the suffering.

“Detach the self from the suffering.” Although there is no one who ‘does’ the detaching I’d reckon that meditation or self-inquiry that primarily recognises that basically the self is a thought-form, stands a reasonable chance of alleviating the suffering.

I heard a radio commercial today for some product or other. The commercial slogan was "If you don't LIVE it, you don't BELIEVE it"!

And so a sermon about being wrong should, I feel, come with examples from the author on how he's been wrong. The absence of such examples makes me feel the author was just looking for an excuse to slam the other side, in the usual way these people do, of being knuckle-dragging trogs while feining admirable open-mindedness.

"Oh yeah Sant64, well when have YOU ever admitted to being wrong"?? Fair question.

I admit that in my oh so very callow youth I believed almost anything that was written in "spiritual" book. Any report of miracle, any metaphysical claims, any claims for a guru's spiritual majesty. I was so gullible, so credulous! I don't even want to list the things I used to believe, it's just too embarrassing. But here's a few examples anyway: One of my "root" sant mat gurus (though I never met him) is Kirpal Singh. I used to read Kirpal books and believe everything he said. But over the years, and with a heavy dose of reading critical views of Kirpal online, I slowly came to see that this guru's views on a lot of things were absolute nonsense. Advice like never look other people in the eye, never take painkillers for any reason, even surgery. Then there were Kirpal's absurd claims to being the true successor of Sawan Singh. Lots of wild stories. And as it was for Kirpal, so it also largely was for other gurus, and other religions. The critical eye supplanted my veneration of the tisra til.

What about politics? Well, I used to be a liberal. That was before I moved to a liberal region of the US, and saw first hand how well coddling the weak links works. It doesn't. Coddling makes the weak links of society grow like a fungus, a fungus that eats away at everything and everyone. Don't take my word for it, look at the state of any liberal American city. Simply put, contemporary liberalism does not work to make society better. It does the very opposite. This was an undeniable fact to me, and hence, I am a liberal no more.

It's clear that the Columbia Professor is baffled that the troglodytes don't believe the irrefutable truths that he holds dear. But prof, to me and most of the country, these "truths" of yours are about as credible as what's written in any of the now out-of-print Kirpal Singh books. A few examples ot that:

1) Climate change is NOT the most pressing issue of humanity. The pumping of trillions of dollars into somehow fixing the weather is the greatest boondoggle of human history.
2) Gender is not made up of arbitrary social categories, and so we must give confused children surgery and drugs and retire girls' restrooms to a Museum of Intolerance exhibit.
3) DEI should determine who gets a job.
4) More drugs will be our salvation.
5) Social media was a wonderful Idea as it will, and has, thanks to St. Zuckerberg, "brought the world together." And social media is really good for kids! So good for their mental health.

Does all that make me a conservative? Depends on whom you ask. I'm certainly not the kind of conservative that's on the Ukraine Train. I ain't no neocon, never was. A pox on all those chickenhawks. They and Israel gave us the Iraq war. So many lives squandered for that pack of lies. (It seems that Lilla wasn't a proponent of the Iraq war; good for him, though he's written the typical drek about George Floyd (that the police are out murdering blacks) and Covid, the wonderful virus that hurts people who don't get it worse than those who do.

If I may put all this another way? Well, here goes: The angst and rage you liberal feel about Trump winning the election? I assure you, that feeling goes both ways.

As much as you deplore the other side, I assure you we deplore you every bit as much.

We saw the path you were taking the country. A path that could be encapsulated in one word: Despair.

Despair about the future. Despair if you're male. Depair of the past if you're female. Despair of the health of the planet. Despair of your racism. Despair of your bigotry against trannies having rights over those of your daughter. Despair that injustice is everywhere, an injustice so deep you, a white person, have no right to even comment upon it. Despair that you will ever have prosperity. Despair that you will ever live free in a world that's beset with viruses. Despair that you have to be very, very careful of what you say.

That despair has been the liberal message of the last 4 years. A sermon of despair, a message that everyone you know is wrong, everything you have you got by theft, and every hope you have for the future is illegitimate unless we your minders OK it.

Will any liberal reading this cop to any of it maybe being true? Oh course not. So liberals, go do your goddamn mindfulness meditation if it makes you feel any better. And Happy New Year, Trump won.

@Sant64,….VERY well said! There are as many more of us thinking as you, than those Liberals thinking like “Them!” What’s depressing to me is,” Most University and College Professors are grooming our Youth to become Liberals. I mean, imagine a Conservative , well paid Male with Degrees earned in Engineering from Virginia Tech., or Cal Poly instead of a BS Degree in Liberal Arts from ANY of our Schools, Coast to Coast, paying , or borrowing, the exorbitant Tuition costs for a 4 year Degree from any of these Colleges, that are grooming young males to be afraid to even make eye contact with any the young scantly dressed females with painted faces and ruby red lips, with their focus of landing the best husband in the Class! But god forbid should any of those young males take the bait, and OMG, …possible plant a kiss on a cheek after a sudden grope at a party, if that Male ever enters Politics , or becomes successful in any business, and becomes another member attacked by the “Me Too” Feminatzis who have kept Trump in Litigation, as well as others in the MSM, the last Decade!
Now, at 82 with all my experience to look back on, if I again had to counsel a Son going in to College, I’d have to either warn him to take a Vow of Bramachara, or get castrated! Because if he exercised the natural urges that he was born with,…and became caught in any of the Honey Traps,…he would , or could, end up as Trump ended up in New York Courts for his supposed shenanigans to various Gold Digger females.

The way Liberals are grooming our Youth now, our Male Youths in 25 years from now should REVERSE what has happened to them, from the ME TOO Movement, and become the Victims of the female gold diggers who were passed over, after their failed seductions, or,….hooked up from their Internet Hook Ups, which ended in the proposed one night stands, never to be called back for 2nds by the Males, and see if they could get famous as Stormy has!

Its a Jungle OUT there! Sure glad I’m not a Liberal, …..but just a Rational old male hoping to never be sent back to this jungle to do it all over , starting from scratch, wondering how that thingy hanging down between my legs has made me any thing other than what I know I am, so I can check the proper box on my Medical Chart each time I visit my Doctor able to identify what Gender I was born as!

Jim Sutherland

In his intro to Lilla’s essay Brian mentions: - “My favorite part, though, because it rings so true with my own personal experience, which is decidedly not ego-less, is where he speaks about how we consider our opinions being extensions of ourselves.”


This topic of identity has been an on-going project of mine over the decades through enquiring into all the facets of what appears to be who I am through self-examination and meditation or observation. I wrote about each one that I (and others) identify with as I explored them, to the extent that I have the equivalent of what would make three – four books. Basically, I sum up identity as: - “The feeling of a ‘self’ becomes an extension of the body and falls under its natural inclination of protection. As the ‘self’ is a fabrication, the only way it can continue is through ‘identification’. It identifies with beliefs, thoughts, people, objects, causes, nations and cultures – all to maintain its ‘structure’. Without such ‘identities’, what we perceive as our ‘self’ does not exist. All that remains is ‘Life’ happening, and through a multitude of forms.”


Mark Lilla’s approach states: - “It's encouraging to think that mindfulness meditation may be able to reduce the discomfort we feel when our beliefs are being attacked.” Which I see as most important, not only to reduce our own discomfort but in light of seeing that such attachments to what we perceive as my identity as being the result of cultural conditioning with its inevitable differences and separation from each other – the chief cause of much of personal and collective suffering.


Essentially, what ‘I’ identify with as being who I am is an extension of any number of the ad-hoc beliefs, opinions etc. etc. – merely thought forms that I have unwittingly absorbed since birth. The bigger problem though is that it is these very thought forms, these false identities, that not only separate us from our own natures but from each other – with all the ensuing issues that cause endless pain and misery.


We have the means to make the world a better place for ourselves and for everyone, but we lack the individual and collective will.

I am listening to a podcast of Shawn Ryan, the Atheist’s dark night of the soul’s hitting his final rock bottom. Ironically, his path of coming to Faith, included psychedelic supervised therapy. I don’t think ANY of us were in any where near the dark hole Shawn was in, when he finally just surrendered, and cried out for the God he did not believe in. Very interesting interview. He killed more people in combat, than 777 claims to have done in a past life!

Taking my self, as my best example, I know how the Psychology of becoming Born again by faith in Christ completely changes one’s life, as the Bible describes.

https://youtu.be/hQyX3qGcE_g

Jim Sutherland

J. S. The subject of the psychology and faith of BA Christians is definitely to do with identity though not one I would want to engage with.

@Ron,…each of us do what we do, that is therapeutic for our own personal benefit.

I continue to do mine, as Brian does his, Sant64 does his, 777 does his, um does his, as you do yours.

Who is to determine the benefit that ANY Voyeur silent reader that stumbles in to this Churchless church gets out of any thing any of us say?

Jim Sutherland

Nice blog over critical issues you bring forward so acutely. Thanks for that
i would like to put my own perspective on this.
IMHO, this issue of knowing and ignorance is quite a trigger in both cases.
as they say, "more you know,less you know" which essentially means ignorance is root of Knowledge.
In our own spiritual journeys, whether we do sant mat or other practices, "urge to know" is huge in beginning and that itself becomes impediment to journey. Desire to know creates mental models in our mind which should be mapped to mental models available at higher realms. But it doesn't happens so because of "urge to know". This urge will itself lead us to experiences which ain't worthy enough and rather confuses the mind.
when we simply surrender to ignorance at all levels of creation, we are opening the door to true knowledge. Until then our knowledge will remain subservient to experiences we have had in our life.

it also illustrates that ignorance lead to Bhakti which leads to Love. "Ignorance is bliss" as accepting it at our heart, bliss will enter our soul and then nothing is left for knowing.


anyway,

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