"Blah, Blah, Blah"

"Blah, Blah, Blah"

Enlightenment is not like a sudden realization of something mysterious. Enlightenment is nothing but awakening from illusions and returning to the reality of life.
--Uchiyama

Enlightenment is the ultimate and final disappointment. Treading the spiritual path is painful. It is a constant unmasking, peeling off layer after layer of masks. 
It involves insult after insult.
--Chogyam Trungpa

 

Waking up is a continuing process. No one wakes up once and for all. There is no limit to wakefulness, just as there is no limit to aliveness....The surprise within the surprise of every new discovery is that there is ever more to be discovered.
--Brother David Steindl-Rast

So what is it about some who have had our common WCG/COG experience, either as minister or member that allowing others to have their own experience is an invitation for derision?  Some who continue to stay, pray, obey and pay seem incapable of allowing those who won't stay, can't pray, obey?-no way, can't pay and won't stay their own experience.  As well, some who can't stay abuse those who have and we can't seem to rest until they utter the words, "you're right, I agree and quit too...thank you."

I'm not speaking of our normal human tendency to want to explain our perspectives newly acquired or held on to firmly as ever, but rather the ratcheting up of what I call "snark" or just simple insults and derision towards those having a different journey or experience.  No two people process the same experience the same way or for the same reasons.  As I tell my massage students, "you can have 100 people go to the same school, sit through the same classes, meet the same people who have the same way of thinking and you will still get 100 different ways of doing massage, and it is ok."

There are certainly many characters in the movie of waking life who experience or manifest more or less stormy weather – more or less anger, more or less depression, more or less compulsive behavior, more or less upset. Such differences may have little to do with enlightenment and everything to do with genetics, neurochemistry, brain function, hormone levels, and conditioning. Some bodyminds have stormier weather just as some cities have stormier weather. It's not personal.

Joan Tolifsen

I doubt anyone can be insulted back into the perspectives of another. Humans just don't work that way.  I doubt name calling or even the glittering generalities we try to apply to very complicated situations change the minds of many on whatever the topic might be. EVERYONE PROCESSES EXPERIENCES DIFFERENTLY and that also is OK.

I had always wished The Plain Truth of the WCG had been called The Present Truth as even the Apostle Paul, who I have issues with, called it.  Plain Truth is seldom plain or permanently true.  Truth is dicey at times if not at most times as it gets filtered through the minds of men.  My mistake was allowing others to filter my own desire to "know" through their perspectives.  Not uncommon. The whole Bible is an effort on the part of many divergent types to coerce the beliefs of others through their real or imagined experiences which they personally view as "The Truth."  

We do have to be careful with "God says," "We know...," "Jesus actually said...," As the Apostle Paul said...,"  and so on.  Most can't get their minds around the idea that maybe it is others doing the saying and giving credit to people who never really said that.  Nuther story I suppose.  If we are not careful...

"When we speak to God, it is called prayer.

When God speaks to us, it is called schizophrenia."

One of the interesting things about blog comments is how often remarks have little or nothing to do with the posting.  How rare it is for someone to say, "Interesting, but this is how I view that topic."  It just rarely happens.  How often there is no really intelligent discussion about the topic, but rather charge and counter charge. Snark and counter snark.  

I recall on particular responder from Britain who simply could not function without damning everyone not on his team to hell.  He never met me and we certainly never had lunch together but my insincere and "hireling" self was just worthy of his truly God inspired revelations, which of course, did not go in my favor..  I believe he was a one man church of truth and claimed only his wife and kids as members as they did not go to any real church.  However, that's his journey. That type of person demands others validate it and get more and more strange the more and more they don't.

A couple days ago my counselor, a man who really did make a difference in my own journey out of literalism and into reality popped up behind me at the grocery store.  He was the one who told me years ago,

"Dennis, you outgrow your boxes quickly. We are all born in the box our parents came in and yet few even explore the one they came in.  YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES.  Stay in the box you are hanging out of at the moment and everyone will reward you. They will be happy. They will love you and life can go on for them. YOU, however, will be on anti-depressants the rest of your life.  Or...you can keep going and explore the bigger box you are now actually in.  However...you will go alone."

And that's how it went and goes. I reminded him of what he said and he lit up.  Something had happened to him since I last saw him. He looked rather bad. He did not have the spark that I remembered. I didn't ask, but it was obvious he was also on his own continued journey and perhaps it had gotten difficult.  I did not, however, press him or tell him he looked like hell.  It was just interesting to see his own humanity poking through his well educated and able to inspire others self.   I told him I have quoted him to thousands and that seemed to encourage him.

Sooooooo, just some thoughts.  More "blah, blah" I suppose.   I don't personally have a need to be right.  I don't care if anything I might observe in my own journey helps or is even agreed with. I do need to be free to seek and look.  I will never again allow others to tell me how it all is.  Coming to some interesting conclusions, true or false is my right, and yours. This is my journey.  Others have theirs.  Some do, however, seem unable to share anything deeper than their scorn or snark.   And I suppose that also is their journey. 

I don't expect much to change in blogging or postings on topics that may cause some to think and others to simply react.  But something to think about perhaps that will bring the quality of the opportunity to exchange experiences and even pain up a few notches for the benefit of others who really may need a positive way to process the experiences, all different, we have had with the same religious experience.

PS  Not bothering to check speling, punktuation or tiepoz.  Whyle important...its the thawt that cowntz  :)

I can't do it here because the computer spell checks most words, but I understand that as long as we spell things with the correct first and last letter of a word, the mind recognizes the word and we can read it just fine.  So at least God programmed us to still get the point no matter the mistakes along the way in print or in life. 

DenniscDiehl@aol.com    

Don't Confuse Me With the Faith..I Mean Facts..No, Faith...Awww I Forget

Click to enlarge

H/T James McGrath

Don't Confuse Me With the Faith..I Mean Facts..No, Faith...Awww I Forget

You can't unring a bell. You can't unsee what you do see. How do you keep them home on the farm, once they have seen Paree? There's no turning back. Did I say you can't unring a bell?


Recently I wandered through the topics being offered for a large ministerial conference of my former peers. While typically the first topic of concern was, as expected, " The Offering as Worship, the other topics were not all that informative on the topic of the actual Bible. When a ministry is made up of Bible readers, you can generally skip the seminar on "A Scripture can never mean what it never meant."


There was one workshop where one might ask questions on theology to the one man provided to answer them for you, but I suspect the questions were rather light and foofy unless the group wanted to probe the depths of the nature of the Trinity or just what plan B may have been for God with Adam and Eve, mostly Eve, mucking up the works. Other than that, I am fairly sure a good hard question about the Bible that was not on the official list of acceptable topics for public disclosure was off limits. One certainly would not wish to become labeled as "he who asks too many hard questions." That would endanger your career. I would be reminded of the Wizard of ID being questioned by a commoner and being told, "well with ideas like that, you're really going to go up in this Kingdom." The next scene you see the commoner standing at the bottom step of the gallows with he hangman saying, "Up you go there buddy."


Long story, but I have managed to outgrow my church and I was the pastor. Not the one of my youth, which was Presbyterian, but the one I moved on to in my youth thinking it was more real and then gave almost three decades of my life to it. In time, nuther long story, they reinvented the wheel and insisted I return to my rather Presbyterian roots taking me full circle. I realized my love affair with organized religion and true churches was over. Nuther long story.


The tribe does not have much use for stray dogs. They either domesticate them for their convenience or they eat them.


In my personal journey through a very sincere belief that I was correct in my Biblical perspectives as a pastor, I have gone from believing in the "God breathed" inerrancy of the Book, to an eyes wide open understanding that the Bible is neither all that Holy, "the greatest Book ever written and full of errors, bad science, implausible accounts and many contradictions. I find my self marveling at the hours spent by sincere pastors straining to understand how the sins of Adam and Eve impact our lives today and place us all under the cloud of Original Sin and the need for blood atonement to make it all good again. The simple answer for me is now that the evolution of humans is good science and that the idea that any literal first humans called Adam and Eve is ludicrous. I"m almost ashamed of myself for taking so long to figure this out with the love of science I have always had but strained for decades to place it all in the context of Bible literalism, which can't really be done well...Ok, at all.


Since there was no literal Adam and Eve (and no, the creation of humans is not a mere 6000 years ago either), there was no literal sin for which everyone forever more after has to be cleansed from by the blood of a dying God/Man. The fact that there has been a score or more dying God/men in history, all of whom were born on December 25th, were tempted to fail, rose to the occasion, were betrayed, pierced and lay in the grave for three days and three nights only to be born again is pretty darn common. While some may love to "Tell the old old story of unseen things above...", they are not aware of just how old the story is or how it really did originate above in the stars.


The fact that this story of the Son of God and his 12 disciples is the same story as the SUN of God moving with it's 12 zodiacal signs over one year is something one never wants to notice or bring up. The fact is that SUN worship is THE origin of SON worship and all religion as we know it. The fact that the word "Galilee" means "circuit" is no coincidence. Jesus of the Galilee the Circuit is not much different than the trip taken by the Sun traveling around the circuit of the 12 signs of the Zodiac. They are both round trips from December 25th and back again with all of the same experiences in their ministry occurring right on cue. Great stuff, but let's move on.
Along with this, realizing that the miraculous events of the OT were mostly borrowed from older non Israelite mythologies, Prophets and Priests wove the tales far later than the stories imply and the real history of how the Bible came to be and "Houston...we've got a problem." At least I have a problem with using the not literally true texts to tell sincere humans how to literally be, think and do after coming to see what I can't unsee. Remember, you can't unring a bell nor return to the farm.


But where does one fit when the tribe has no use for you and stepping outside the box is going to have it's consequences? I'm amazed, yet should not be, of the phenomenal loss of "friends" one experiences when bells ring and lights go on. It's the price one pays for being unable to stay stuck in something you learn along the way is not as one has been told. Few go with you. some talk about you and all ignore you forever more.


The best I can come up with is that you become more of your authentic self...something organized religion is loathe to have you do in the first place. Churches and Priesthoods generally want followers, compliers and sheep. Ministers may seem to pride themselves in allowing for questions, but they are easy questions to answer because when all is said and done, one can claim that "God says it, I believe it. That does it for me" and put the ball back in the court of the reprobate questioner. If all else fails, the one who questions can be told "there is a way that seems right to a man, but the way thereof ends in death," or "God sees not as a man sees," or "The wisdom of God is foolishness with man," and thus all his questions can be dismissed. Of course, these putdowns don't answer the original questions, but they send the message that one is not even smart enough to ask the right ones. The cure for being "one who questions" may be everything from prayer and fasting to get the attitude straightened out to "how 'bout we sit out of church a few weeks and think about our relationship to Jesus." Either way, "he who questions loses." The Church and God always win in such cases.


So after  you outgrow your church, organized religion or the literalism of one's childhood Sunday School lessons, what is the purpose of one's life? Since Churches tell us that salvation through the blood of a dying God/man is the purpose of life, but now one has no confidence in that, what's the point? While I now can stay home from church and save a whopping ten percent, I'd still like to find meaning in life beyond being a food tube that eventually dies.


One of the many meme's of organized religion is that human beings are evil, nasty and worms in God's site. Their hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked to the point of total mistrust. We are sin personified in nasty flesh and worthy of nothing but death, at best. Let's get right to the truth of the matter.


You and I are just fine. We are who we are and it's your goal in life to get to know yourself and who YOU are. We are all unique parts of the same one thing. It's not our goal or to our advantage to believe that we are to become someone else or follow the life, perspectives or world view of someone else. That ruse has restrained and constrained human-becomings for way too long on the planet. The "you're not good enough," meme is a set up for allowing others to control you with fear, guilt and shame to their advantage every time.


The goal in life is to get to know your own unique self. It's a troublesome process as there are more than enough others who feel you need to get to know and be like others who are less defective and wormlike than yourself. Don't fall for it. Nursing homes are full of people who would give anything to have another shot at being themselves. But that goes back in another way to not being able to unring a bell.

DenniscDiehl@aol.com    

Making Yourself "Pure" on the Ambassador Campus

Harvest Rock Church,the owners of the Ambassador Auditorium is a charismatic 'church' that is seen by some as another personality cult. It is deeply centered around it's leader Che Ahn who has his minions at his beckon call just like Herb did.  Some of the  people you come in contact with there are truly weird and downright creepy! 

Ex-Armstrongites that have visited their services have gotten to see first-hand the speaking in tongues, people 'pogoing' where they jump endless in place for long periods of time, people 'slain in the spirit' where they either fall rigidly to the floor and stay that way for an hour or longer, or fall down thrashing about flailing their arms and legs.  One person that visited during one of their conference said that the entire lower lounge was filled with people 'slain in the spirit' writhing and moaning on the carpet.  Others get whipped into such a frenzy that they start barking like dogs, or they have uncontrollable fits of laughter.  Then there are the folks that are 'drunk' with the holy spirit to the point they can hardly stand up and stumble about laughing and slurring their words like happy drunks.

If anyone thought Armstrongism was weird these people are FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR worse!

Checkout this video filmed on the campus with some of HRC's young people taking a 'purity' pledge in front of the old Mayfair dorm. None of them look too excited to be there.  If these kids only knew what went on inside that dorm during the College days they would run like hell the other direction!  That building was certainly NOT the bastion of purity and wholesomeness!

But then, I must have forgotten, that HRC folks 'purified' the Ambassador grounds before they moved in.  They went around the property pouring anointing oil on the sidewalks and on the buildings to expel the evil spirits of Armstrongism and purify the property. They also poured salt into the Auditorium lake to expel the demons that occupied it as well as poured anointed oil around the perimeter of the Auditorium.

The Washington Post has a great article on how ineffective 'Purity Pledges' are: Pre-marital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective