Saturday, October 5, 2013

Dennis Muses: I'm just sayin'....

Too Much Future-Too Much Past
(Why It's OK Not to Give a Rat's Ass About Haggai)
 
Classic Mahogany
I bought a home...
 
“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and
not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms
of non forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment    
 
 
Could anything describe the COGs and especially the self proclaimed Apostles and Prophets that sunk to the bottom more than men who live with too much future or too much past?
 
 
Every sermon Ron Weinland ever gave found him going back to "the Apostasy" where it didn't take a Psychiatrist to see how much it warped him and set him on his own path to greatness in the name of heading the one true church left.   He then spent a number of years with way too much future on his mind and ended up living in the present now not quite as he had thought.
 
 
Dave Pack lives with way too much past and future.  He worships the style, success and memory of Herbert W Armstrong.  He longs for the old days of control over lots of people, clubs, sermons, festivals and church  boundary lines. He misses the Ambassador Campus and electric carts.  Then he got way too much future into his system with his "soon to be united" malarkey.  Now he is stuck in the only real thing there is, for now, the present reality and moment.
  
 
                        “It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.” 
                                 Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
 
 
“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.”  
 
 
If it one thing I have personally learned from my youthful decisions to study the past and believe others knew the future is that it's all in the head.  The past is simply memories in the head.  The past is merely a present moment that is over with and replaced with a new present moment.  The future is a present moment  not yet here and when it comes and goes to be replaced by another present moment. 
 
 
The more anger you hold towards the past | Feel My Love
 
The Church of God and Fundamentalism has taught me to abhor the terms, "time is short,"  "soon,"  and "It won't be long now..."  There is no truth in any of it and it is a good way to miss the moment you are actually having for one that has no meaning.  Humans have to deal with anger because we have memories and anxiety because we have fears of the unknown and unknowable future.  Prophecy is the illusion that one can know.  Every prophecy, no matter the "thus saith the Lord" attached to it is just human construct and speculation to resolve, if even for a time, the fear and and anxiety humans have because they are aware that they are aware.   Prophecy in the Old Testament is not near what it is cracked up to be.  Much of it is failed and much of it that seems to be prophetic, such as the Book of Daniel, is not at all.  It is written in such great detail because most of what it predicts has already happened.  Empires have already come and gone and dramas well known acted out.  As I have said in the past, the reason Daniel 11 is such an amazingly detailed "prophecy" and chapter 12 goes all swishy and generic is that the events in chapter 11 had already occurred and those hoped for in chapter 12 had not but no one really knew much more what to say.  A common writing style which most emotional bible reader types have never heard of. 
 
The New Testament stories of Jesus fantastic birth are not fulfilled prophecy from the Old.  They seem so because the authors mined the Old Testament for the very scriptures they wrote the story around.  They often took only the parts they liked and often grossly out of context.  People don't want to hear that.
 
The Book of Revelation, as noted in the past, is not a book for today.  It was for them and it was generally a failed prophecy when history unfolded as it actually did. 
 
The point being that under trained, emotional and perhaps a bit too ego centric and delusional men like __________ and ___________ and __________ make a great living off others by reminding them of the past which is now gone and unreal and pointing them ever into the near future.  Pointing people into the far future does not motivate.  These things MUST happen soon and in our lifetimes or who cares...  It was the same way in the Old Testament and in the New.  And they were wrong.   Repeating the fears and anxieties of others and acting out their lives as if their times were more special than all times, the lead people into missing the only real time they have in life...this present moment.
 
 
“As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action.”
 
 
“Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.” 
 
 
“If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.”  
 
Kingsly's Scribbling: Trust and Fix
 
“Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.”
 
 
Personally, I think my own WCG/COG experience, which I chose and could not have been dissuaded from until I allowed myself to see what I was in denial over and did not want to be as it really was, has always left me with this challenge. 
 
“Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon.
It is also insane.”
  
 
 
...and living today instead of in 1980 or 2020 is not just a better way, it is the only way.  Future present moments will take care of themselves. 
 
 
In my view, and it may only be my view, under trained and self absorbed men such as Gerald Flurry, Dave Pack, Ron Weinland and others thrive on too much past and future.  They attract those who do as well and it seems nothing but a path to lives not actually lived and decisions that will be bad memories of the future.
 
 
I can't imagine how those who did give up homes and monies and retirements to Dave Pack in his Clarion Call because back then it was time to pull big triggers, when it actually wasn't and now we know it wasn't,  are feeling after this feast.  Dave Pack was and is wrong.  He will be wrong again in the future when it becomes a new present reality to deal with. 
 
 
Dave Pack cannot allow his followers/church to recognize the present or they will get very angry and anxious.  Coming into their present reality will unleash anger over past promises gone very wrong and anxiety lies in the future because they actually did send it in and now Dave has to admit there are no more dates to set and no matter, he's just passing God's plans on.  He actually is not the one who came up with them.  In other words..."Don't blame me."   Ron Weinland is famous for dumping his failures on his followers.   "It was spiiiiiritual!"  
 
 
I don't think in my entire life any speculator of God who was found wanting ever uttered the words  "I was wrong."  "I apologize."  "I meant well and the Bible seemed to say that but it didn't mean what I thought it meant."
 
 
David C Pack has become the source of some serious dis-illusionment.  He has promoted illusions big time over the past year, for reasons I will never understand, but there is a price to pay for this.  Even the Apostle Paul promoted illusions about the "we who are alive" and "we shall be changed" views he had until he simply said "oh well, I fought a good fight....I'm get my reward...I'm out of here."
 
 
It's just better to take the ramblings of those in the past and the promises of some for how it all will be in the YOUR future with a grain of salt.  "Under advisement" as noted.
 
 
The Dave Packs of religion will keep you living in the past and fearing the future.  Now Dave has stuck his followers with anger over the recent past and some very practical problems for their personal futures.  It will be interesting to see how this unfolds for him with his huge plans to recreate the past and insure his success in the future.  It may be over.
 
“The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse... By misuse, I mean that people who have never glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
 
 
Yesterday I finalized my own funeral arrangements.  I had a "death benefit" from the sale of my father's home where most of the money is to go for his end of life care.  I sat amongst the different styles and qualities of coffins and cremation urns using up all the allotted funds and arranging for my cremains to be dropped in Lake Ontario or maybe in the Adirondacks.  I asked to be cremated with a fully charged cell phone in my hand in case I needed to call out and have the gas jets shut off!   I picked out a great mahogany box and will probably have a great and ancient axe head I have in my collection also in the box to insure the box sinks and I have a bit of past history with me.  Or I'll get dropped in Tupper Lake where my best memories of being a kid are.   I already sold my gold Ambassador College Ring to the coin shop and returned the 25 year watch with the dead battery in it to WCG so they won't be with me.  I stood on the pier jutting into Lake Ontario with that watch about to throw it into the lake but then repented thinking "why pollute the lake.  I'll send it back and they'll know how I feel about it."
 
When we finished the administrator said, "Well Dennis...you're good to go.  Well, no pun intended."   We started laughing and the present now seems the best place to live.
 
 
 
 


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Following God is like using science: You must be willing to go where ever the truth takes you.

Unfortunately, people would rather rely on emotions and feelings instead of objectivity and valid reasoning: Most of the time, people just don't feel like they want to follow the truth where it takes them. They'd rather live with the pretty illusions of lies.

Past experience builds to the present day. Everything we choose today casts a shadow on the future.

In the scheme of things, it just seems to be better to accept truth and know what's what, rather than being happily delusional, because one of these days, if you don't accept truth, it will come back and bite you.

Unfortunately, people like Pack attempt to steer people away from the truth because it just absolutely ruins their present and future, and most of all, they just don't feel like telling the truth because lies make them feel better (and by getting you to forget the past, they can play their little scams and get away with it).

Still, in the long term, science wins and we're still at a 100% mortality rate in spite of what the cultists claim.

So hold the past, remember it: Just don't attach emotional baggage to it.

Byker Bob said...

I found some nuggets in that.

What has been interesting to me, is that after one has experienced healing, shed the bitterness and anger, after one has forgiven others, and transformed from a retaliatory lifestyle, one becomes aware of the next phase. One becomes aware that there is plenty left to absorb one's attention in the present, and one wonders how one did not see all of these "new" details before. It's a whole different reality.

The word "enlightenment" has many implications, and has always sounded deeply philosophical. But, basically it's what happens when you shine a light on something, making it possible to see that thing, defined in graphic detail, possibly for the first time. That can't help but change everything.

Men such as Ron Weinland, Dave Pack, and some of the other bit players exposed around here are anti or counter-enlighteners. If you listen to them, they will use their false teachings to take you into darkness. Once you realize that this has been done, the anger and bitterness automatically come to you, and will consume more precious portions of your life. It's all part of the package of damage which false teachers can bring into your life. Waste and uselessness.

As for the future, one reality is plain. What we do in the present can influence, for good or bad, many aspects of the nature of our future. And, the future will be immeasurably better if we do not allow false teachers to have power over us, either to take control of our lives, or to allow the badness they have brought into our lives to have a lingering presence. Better to walk away clean and to let it all go, or as my hypnotherapist used to say, release it and just blow it all away.

BB

Corky said...

"The Apostasy". Why does every cult of Xianity presume an apostasy from "the truth" happened in early Xianity and had to be re-discovered by their guru?

Did Jesus and the apostles predict an apostasy or was the opposite predicted?

Hmmmm. Either it's a false prophecy or a contradiction, take your choice. I reckon if opposites can be believed at the same time it can make perfect sense or nonsense.

I predicted that Mitt Romney or Barack Obama would be elected President and I was right!

Anonymous said...


don't get mad; just get even

Anonymous said...

There is so much stuff being written on this site I don't have time to keep up. I just skim a lot of it and even then I can't keep up.

Sharon said...

So what's your point? If you can't keep up why read? If the looney birds in the various COG's would stop saying such stupid things there would be no need for this site.

Anonymous said...

DB said: “So hold the past, remember it: Just don't attach emotional baggage to it.”

This is good advice and I will add that it works both ways. By this I mean good or bad emotional baggage. I speak from experience when I say this. Like it or not past experiences are the building blocks that have built what and who we are today and will make an important contribution to whatever future existence we may have.

There are two categories involved in the development of human life; one is ethics and the other is spirituality. Ethics relates to our relationship with our fellow human beings and spirituality relates to the source of human life. One of the problems existing today is the inability of uniting spirituality and ethics. We have religious people who are unethical (crooks and thieves) and we have nonreligious people who are squeaky clean (fine, upright) people.

I believe that properly understood the biblical objective is to unite these two categories in a way that builds a faith and hope that rises above the problems experienced in human relationships. When separated these categories both lose their value in human development.

A. Boocher

Anonymous said...

The woman in the picture looks a little like Tammy Tkach, funny when you think about all this.

Anonymous said...

On all the problems between the groups, the ministers, members and others say you are with a certain CoG or another. Claiming you are with some other group, usually would indicate you are against the one from the person making that claim that you are 'with' the other.

Anonymous said...

So what's your point? If you can't keep up why read?

Sharon: do you have to act like a shrew and snipe at everything? Grow up.

Byker Bob said...

Anonymous 6:12, I'm glad you hit on that. One of the hangovers from Armstrongism seems to be the belief that every living person is "with" (as in "under the influence of") some particular teacher. That doesn't hold true for independent type people who read widely and learn from a variety of people. Because most followers of HWA "drank the Kool Aid", the people still with the groups assume that when you leave, you've now found someone else's Kool Aid to drink.

Sharing a bit of personal experience, I have borrowed meaningful little tidbits from an eclectic group of prominent or successful people. The group includes widely disparate individuals, such as Albert Einstein, Eric Clapton, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Carnegie, Zecariah Sitchin, Josephus, Robert Mitchum, Mother Teresa, I mean, the list could go on forever, and they are all over the map. My point is that no single one, or group of these humans is dominant in my life. My influence consists of an amalgam that I have largely selected and controlled.

This has caused humorous disconnects in times past. In dialoguing with current ACOG members, sometimes when I've quoted non-Armstrong theologians, I've been flippantly asked, "Oh, so is he your guru now?". I'm thinking it would take a mighty small minded individual to assume that one of the basic human needs is a guru to which one must single source his spiritual or philosophical guidance. I guess these people should be forgiven for their judgmental standards, because single source is precisely what was repetitively and compulsively pounded in on the drum by HWA and his imitators. It's another one of those Armstrong shibboleths.

BB