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The Long Conversation
The Long Conversation
By
Cognitive Dissonance
It was during my preparation for the Roman Catholic Church’s rite of passage called Confirmation, the point where I commit to the present insanity because I have supposedly reached the age of consent, when I learned I had just blasphemed. This was a terrible state of affairs according to the nun who was presiding over my religious indoctrination. Back then, while the Priest may have been the anointed one and thus the public face of local parish power, the nuns ruled the roost and thus administered the religious training as well as its mind control counterpart, corporal punishment. As the sister repeatedly slammed her heavy wooden ruler down on my knuckles, and the back of my hands quickly turned red and swollen in protest of another round of religious abuse, aside from the sharp pain what I really felt was deeply confused. What had I done to deserve another beating, aside from asking Sister Elizabeth a few innocent questions? As the other boy slaves watched in horror and fascination (the girls received their own special instruction two doors down) it would be nearly a decade before I fully recognized that logic and free thinking is the enemy of social conditioning and religious indoctrination. Well north of forty years later I can still feel the psychological sting of that abuse as I revisit the incident in my mind and once again color outside society’s line. Pavlov would be proud to see that my conditioned response had been beaten so deep. But it’s not the individual beatings that have so much of an effect, but rather the cumulative piling on that reaches such depth. And therein lay the secret of their total control, for there appears nowhere to hide to escape the raining of their blows. This is their best and most effective lie. But it is still a lie nonetheless.
It was an innocent question really, and a tribute to its power and destabilizing logic that Sister Elizabeth turned bright red and immediately reached for her punishing stick. In my defense it was during that same week in American History class, the location where the state administered its own form of mind control and corporal punishment, where I learned how those filthy dirt-worshiping Indians (Sister Elizabeth’s words, not mine) honored dozens, even hundreds, of holy spirits. All I wanted to know was why we only had one. It seemed to me that we were getting the short end of the stick, the phrase my father liked to use when he applied his own punishing stick.
The Punishing Sticks
Can you hear them way off in the distance talking among themselves, the voices of the great spirits past, present and future, all speaking as one? I most certainly can and to be perfectly honest I always could. I just didn’t understand what it was I was listening to since the ability to decipher them had nearly been driven out of me ages ago. So I ignored them for as long as I could until finally I could no longer.
Once you let them in there is no turning back, and we all understand this as irrefutable fact. Once it is recognized, we can no longer deny our inner knowing. The voices might be faint and even a bit blurred, but still very understandable to those who care to listen. Or dare I say it, even to confer. In fact if you put your ear to the wind, close your eyes and settle your mind, you can hear them whispering to each other while beckoning us to rejoin them in our collective Long Conversation.
The thing about our shared insanity, the only honest way to properly describe the state of current affairs, is that the insanity will always insist it alone is perfectly sane and anything that tries to refute its supremacy is declared crazy and immediately purged. So it is not at all surprising that the dominate culture, the product of centuries of Delirium tremens, would beat its slaves to death and treat its enemies even worse rather than tolerate questions, let alone dissention. But there is real madness to the abusive methods the (religious) Empire employs, because what is really driven from us is our own innate and natural connection to The Long Conversation.
It really wasn’t my question that raised the hackles of old Sister Elizabeth, but rather the unspoken inquisition that sprang from the mouth of babes. Why was the Holy Spirit advocating death and destruction to those who did not embrace the one and only ‘God’, while the Native American Indians loved and honored Heaven and Earth and all its glorious creations? Why was the culture of insanity taking its marching orders from a holy homicidal maniac, while the filthy dirt-worshiping natives lived in relative peace and harmony and always tried to give back at least as much as they took?
These are ugly ego striping questions that could quickly destabilize an imperial empire and its enabling religion if they were ever allowed to fester, thus the reason for the liberal use of the ruler or rifle along with the threat of hell on Earth and eternal damnation.
See, it works like this. If we are to believe that we are not worthy, then we will allow ourselves to be judged not worthy, followed quickly by the willing surrender of our inner power to an external ‘authority’ who has been deemed supremely worthy by imperial or religious edict. But if we are to believe we are connected to everything and thus we as worthy as the mighty Oak or the industrious dung beetle, and certainly more worthy than any false external ‘authority’, there is no reason to surrender and thus we are uncontrollable. This is blasphemy pure and simple!
The Mighty Oak
By the time I reached walking away age and began my own search for meaning and connection, all that was left in my neck of the woods was cookie cutter religious doctrine and a brain washed state of artificially numbed elation. And this was well before the full impact of the drug called televised instant gratification had subdued and suborned a great nation.
Or at least that was what I had been told we were; a nation proud of its genocidal westward expansion that had now gone global. Convert those Godless heathens to the temple of self absorbed consumer consumption ecstasy or wipe them from the face of God’s little green Earth, ironically the very same little green Earth so loved by those Godless heathens.
For the dozens of now vanquished indigenous cultures, whose love and respect for all things nurturing and sustaining was a way of life, even this love of life wasn’t what terrified the war mongering nation(s). No, what really threatened the insanity was the revered and cherished internal communication the natives had with their spiritual forefathers, as well as those who would follow in their footsteps.
What could, would and still will topple the insanity was their Long Conversation, their spiritual connection that solidly anchored them to their own sanity. This was what condemned the millions of natives to their own eradication. If you can’t corrupt them by driving their sanity out, then just kill them all and be done with it.
If we are sane, we simply cannot destroy what we deeply love and respect. Nor can we destroy or even demean what we wish to pass to our children, concepts that would most definitely destroy the insanity if they were ever widely embraced. The holy madness needed divine justification in order to take by force all that it surveyed, and so anyone or anything that refuted insanity’s marching orders was labeled a blasphemy and a heretic, then promptly cut down past its roots, shock and awe scorched Earth style.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, can be allowed to get in the way of the endless territorial expansion and locust like consumption of the mindlessly mad machine. Nothing will be allowed to resist the modern global Ponzi, especially a social and spiritual consciousness that speaks from the past and future to warn the present of the dangers of hubris, ego and homicidal insanity. This was and still is why The Long Conversation must be silenced. God forbid we actually listen to the only sane voices left, those found within our very own spiritual head.
Social conditioning tells us to ignore our inner knowing and accept the false external authority.
Of all the various forms of mind control witchcraft practiced by the unholy church/state alliance, by far the most destructive is the hijacking and subversion of our own spoken language. Simply put, just as we are what we eat, so do we think as we speak. So rather than removing ideologically unhealthy words from the spoken language and leaving a gap that would be noticed, all that needs to be done is to subvert or convert the true meaning. And before we know it we have spiritually lost people extolling the virtues of the National Security Endless War and Ponzi State.
Trapped in an ideological hell by our very own language the few remaining free thinking deeply connected souls are forced to use the very vocabulary that enslaves us to wake us from our deep slumber. In effect we must use the very words that control us to free us, a nearly impossible task given the high hurdles we must overcome. Short of creating a new language, then widely distributing it via a hostile press and MSM, the only effective solution is for the population to reconnect to The Long Conversation.
Our powerful and supreme inner knowing has been carefully hidden from us for centuries, millennium even, primarily by diluted and dulled milquetoast words such as gut feeling, instinct, sixth sense or even faith and belief. Let us call it what it is, an inner knowing that squarely places the responsibility back upon our shoulders to right our own floundering ship. But even this is too great for our inflated and flattered egos to bear, so we eagerly grasp for the deflecting lie that it is all someone else’s mess to repair.
Of all the horrors perpetrated upon us by the machine and its sycophant henchmen, maybe the most frightening one of them all is the very instrument of our salvation, of our freedom, the one tool we can always access and is totally out of bounds to the insanity. I am of course speaking about freedom of choice, our unquestioned and unalienable right to become sane again, to break free from the madness machine and reclaim our own spiritual, emotional and ultimately physical sovereignty.
The seductive embrace of our collective insanity promises us all a softer easier way, an alternative path where we are told we can have our cake and eat it too. This is a bald faced lie, even if the machine consistently produces more cake as if by magic. It is a lie because that cake is not free, but instead derived from the sweat and tears of a less fortunate fellow slave caught up in the crushing gears of the grinding machine. Our Long Conversation with our inner knowing tells us this is a lie, that the lies of the insanity are self evident and thus brightly colored to enable us to abandon ourselves to the pleasure of the distraction. Let someone else pick up the tab. But soon enough it will be you and me who pays the freight.
If you understand what I am talking about with regard to The Long Conversation, about the whispering voices anchoring us to our own sanity, then we might even say that these spirits will do more than just whisper. If nothing else it is a comforting thought, that a power greater than us, that our power has our back. It is precisely this thought that helps keep us sane. When we are connected to others, when we acknowledge that our actions affect more than just us, then and only then are we more likely to act sanely as we all share responsibility for the group as well as the individual.
09-29-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
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CD,
I have appreciated your writing in the past and especially appreciate this one.
You see, I am a sufferer of a violent childhood. Much of it brought about by my unconcious desire at a tender age to rebel against the statous quo of my family.
You see I was never to amount to much and the beating were tough there was nowhere to hide.
I have been in angry-drunken- denial on and off all my life. Recently, I saw the movie East of Eden and almost the next day I read your essay. The scab was ripped of.
Funny, I too hear voices from the old ones and been an avid colletor of arrowheads, katrinas, baskets and student of Native Americans especially where I live I have this connection to the past..I thought I was crazy. On my property I have an ancient spring with a scatter of very old tools.
The said abuser is gone. I struggle between love and hate for this person and thus am stuck. The old ones NEVER treated their children like this. In my life I have made and lost 2 fortunes thus living up to I will never amount to much.
"YOU WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO MUCH" ...as the slaps rained down. nice.
Finally it comes together that the old ones have been saying it is in the to me it is in the living and giving and sharing the simplicity of live...Buddist style where true success lay.
I have decided that i have been stuck in anger and bargaining for a long time and it is time to move forward to the accetnce of the truth that my Father was wrong. Wrong about me and wrong about a lot of things.
Here at 52 I struggle with my own demons and seek to numb my feelings still.
Thanks for the essay it has helped me to move forward a bit.
Thank you for the courage to be open and frank about your difficulties. We are only as sick and dysfunctional as our deepest darkest secrets. When we purge them by exposing them we are more able to move forward. I will never know the actual pain you endured, but I still feel and understand what it was like.
Thank you for talking about it out in the open.
Wise words CD and thanks from the heart for them. You might like this blog:
http://www.2011-2012kencareystarseed.com/a-beginning/#axzz1a5YUEEcq
its resonance is the same ;wish you all the best
CD I have had arguments about the "god" thing with several people here on ZH. Some are very well versed in the bible (usually they are the type who take what the bible says at full meaning instead of as a beautiful mythological book that has been horribly corrupted) and can make fantastic arguments that are lengthy and well thought out. I will read them and digest what they have to say but it all comes down to simplicity to me. Why would God want to be complex also why would he want to hurt or punish? The simplest and stupidest method is usually the easiest way to teach anyone. What most fail to recognize is the fact that religion in its current forms (christianity, moslim, buddhists, etc...) all have one fatal flaw. They have corrupt leaders. Now, I am not sure you can actually run a religion and not be corrupt. The power you would be wielding must feed the ego to an immense degree and eliminate all other thought processes thus you now would almost truly believe that you can talk to God for the millions of your underlings who worship you almost as a god (ala Colonel Kurtz).
Yes I do come from a family who used religion as a control method along with the proper religious schools who did the same. For me it all just shut down early in middle school and I just stopped paying attention to any of it. It took me until several years ago for me not to be afraid to look deep inside (at my own god) and begin to unravel some of the questions that lurked. I suppose once you stop fearing God you can begin to allow some of his wisdom and light back into your soul. Most people need a religious (don't confuse religious with corporate religions) awakening within themselves to overcome the shell of a being religion has put around us. I will tell you a little story that made me feel great - the other day I was standing in line at a local grocery store behind a lady who had her ~8 month old baby girl over her shoulder. I noticed the baby looking at me, just looking... so I started looking at her and after several seconds of this she just started smiling and laughing. It made me start laughing. From this brief encounter I understood that me and my soul have come a long way from when I first started my inner journey. Babies and animals can sense your being. Anyways enough rambling, thanks for the article I am sure it hits home with many here on ZH. Keep up the good work. I'll be reading
Just realized, you posted this on Michaelmas! Nice work indeed, intentional or not... my favorite holiday, celebrating the defenders.
Completely unintentional since I did not even know what Michaelmas was until just now. Interesting read. I had no idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas
Erie COunty milk? Your not a St George middle school guy by chance.
Nope. But I suspect all the torture chambers were pretty much the same wherever you went.
CD, thanks for the article. The only suggestion I would offer is changing inalienable to unalienable. Our rights are natural and not lienable. It's a very important difference of course.
Many responses to this thread have shown that some, through cognitive dissonance of course, refuse to see the underlining truth being presented:
Yes, as humans we have a brutal history of conquest and domination, but we are also still connected. By driving wedges between different groups of people though, we promote futher conquest and domination. The truth being presented, as I read it at least, is that we need to focus on the connection between us instead. The more people realize we are connected, the less destruction we will allow our systems of government to dish out. Our enemies, as created by the system, are people too, and they have most of the same concerns in life that we do.
Realizing that truth doesn't make one a marxist either. There's a huge difference between forced collectivism and voluntary community. I'm all for the latter and still believe a more emotionally intelligent human species is quite capable of forming a federation of independent and free nations. As long as we allow systems of government to maintain the divide and conquer, us against them, mentality however, it will never happen. Never forget that systems of government are no different than different religions. They are often used as tools to maintain conquest and domination.
Thank you for the suggested correction. I have made it so.
In my opinion the various religions and their power structures are simply another tool of control and statecraft......and nothing more.
CogDis...
Do you consider the Long Conversation to be related to the idea of the OverMind? The idea that intellegence, maybe even memory is not local to this individual brain, but that there exists something much greater than these meat bodies that we hook into. The common happening of multiple people simultaneously coming up with the same "new" idea, separated by thousands of miles and not consciously connected. The opening of oneself to the Long Conversation seems to be another way of seeing these deep and non-obvious interconnections.
For what it's worth, yes I believe this is the case.
i.e. that a singular consciousness underlies all of the reality that we perceive.
Our brains are "wave function collapsing machines".
Exactly. Consciousness and all the facets of consciousness are non local. "We", our meat and bones physical presence on the third rock from the sun, is not "me". The "me" I refer to here is not "in" this meat Popsicle avatar.
To expand further, the "me" is simply a small part of the "you" and "them" that together make the whole of consciousness. The concept of 'seperate' does not exist anywhere else except 'here' in this reality.
It is a lie because that cake is not free, but instead derived from the sweat and tears of a less fortunate fellow slave caught up in the crushing gears of the grinding machine.
Yes, I've also been through the experience of picking up a can of milk at the supermarket and having thoughts coming to me about the whole milk production chain in a split second. Same about every other grocery that was in my basket.
It is frightening to say the least.
But that is the price that a liberated mind has to pay.
But, CD, are we ready for this? It appears to me that most people would deliberately and by semiconscious internal instruction, shut down every system in them that would pick up such thoughts (what you describe as the Long Conversation). And I assume the mental manipulation we've all been through is too much to fight against.
I might be wrong, and indeed I hope that one day this assumption of mine will be proven wrong by reality. If this day ever comes, it will find me on the job.
Thanks for a great piece of writing.
I have come to conclude that we are never ready enough for the change that is coming, so just let it come anyway. It is a lie we tell ourselves (to try to hold off the coming change) that we can ever be prepared enough for what's coming. Because if we were, we would already be there.
I came to the conclusion that all religions are simply tools of the rulers and wealthy to keep the people from overthrowing them and taking their power and stuff. It always struck me how the funky ass hats (pun intended) the catholic 'high priests' wear are virtually identical to those the rulers and high 'priests' of ancient egypt wore.
At least in your days of indoctrination, they smacked your knuckles with rulers made in the USA. Sister chanel's strangling of me with my tie for whatever horror I committed in class didn't have the desired psychological effect, as soon as I was free of living with the parents, I didn't step foot in catholic church again unless forced to to attend a funeral or wedding. How much worse it will be for those children who are sent to Jesus camps and whatnot which seems a pure psychological laboratory experiment. I can only speculate but I fear for them and their tender minds unless they manage to shed the psychological mind fuck from their psyche somehow.
We are all possessed by our genetics with both insticts and the potential for rational thought. Some would seek to harness the latter by way of the former. it is our great luck that they are doomed to fail in every respect. As a lifelong atheist, it has always amused me that the very people who are so concerned with labeling sin and virtue are so incredibly susceptible to lapsing into the former while proclaiming the latter; that the people who claim pride is a sin can assert that they alone can intermediate between man and god is a fundamental silliness.
Or we can turn that around and say, if there were no religions, its very likely that "lifelong-atheists" would never have arisen at all.
One follows the other, and I think both are damaging and fundamentally invalid.
I can't see how physical infinity, for that is what you are, and are in, can be devoid of what has unfortunately been twisted into "gOD" and "rELIGION".
I believe neither are valid notions, simply because neither is even necessary, but, I sure am not an 'atheist'. I find it quite impossible to be one (and I have tried).
The staggering implications of what's right in front of me are quite sufficient. i.e.
--
Ponder this: Why SHOULD an infinity even exist - at all?
It doesn't have to ... and yet ... here it is ... and we are it ...
--
It would be a most wild presumption to assume this infinity has no 'purpose' that ultimately makes any infinite difference, as in an infinity NOTHING, no dynamic action, can escape the creating of an infinity of ramification and significance.
And that's got nothing to do with theism ... it's just a standard physical and logical truth.
CD, I think that I had those same nuns. St. Joseph nuns. Your timeline is in sync with my own. I think that I had to stay after at least i/2 the days in the seventh grade, and received all D's on the back of my report card. I didn't like my seventh grade nun. Nice peace. Thanks.
Hummmm.........St. Joes.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Sounds like your're looking for Quantum mechanics...to me its what other people call God
Have you seen the DVD "What the Bleep do we know"
Anyway I absolutely hear you but where do we go from here????
Gah ... forget QM ... just sit quietly in the early morning hours under a starry sky, with a fresh cold ripe and juicy peach, and slowly eat it as juice squirts between your teeth and lips.
I bet you can't help but feel totally thrilled and amazed, and feel like ''thanking'' some imaginary friend, for such a thing even being possible.
I'm always amazed when I sit outside and look at the starry sky whether it be am or pm and I don't need a peach but thanks
If you are looking at the starry sky during the day you must have fantastic vision ;)
Cog, it occurred to me many years ago that belief works because it resonates with deep inner desperation.
Believers are thus ultimately desperados.
The complication to this is, there is a real situation where people ''discover'' something in themselves, and that is not a belief, but it can and sometimes does end up turning into a mere 'religion' that creates belief, via the actions of the people who never experienced or understood the ''teaching'' of the person who did discover something staggering and totally unexpected - ''inside'' and ''outside'' of them.
Which means, this desperate little world really does have to discover this thing itself - by itself.
Or not ... such as the case almost always is ... i.e. you can't help them or teach them ... and if you do all you will get is more desperados, in time.
There is no limit to the human capacity to totally misunderstand this simple situation.
Acts 9:4-5 "...it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."
(this of course should be on the next zh t-shirt)
Ah yes, let's all become primitive Rousseauians. Much superior to anyting developed by thousands of years of human trial and error. From reading this you may have a little trouble with the scalping and genocide of opposing tribes but I'm sure you'll learn. Tribes have rulers too.
Rousseau was right. In primitive times there were abundant resources and a small population, coupled with no governments, corporations, religious or other institutions to keep people under control. This seems to me a libertarian's dream. Granted they didn't have i-pads, but they did have sex, probably something a lot of those i-pad users are not having these days.
Thanks CD.
"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates.
CD - your stuff always finds a good reception at this end but this piece sums up my thoughts and feelings in a way more eloquent than most. It takes a long time travelling to get to this point so to the person suggesting you have a proclivity for goats goes my hearfelt compassion although I guess it may take a lifetime or three before he is on the same bit of road.
We are all at different points on the same road. I am no more or less advanced that anyone else. Just a bit more tired of retracing the same short and well worn portion. Time to explore new territory. :)
Have you read Plato's "Republic", or at least the Cave Analogy contained therein ... to my mind it is possibly the best and shortest allusion to the inner journey.
Or Fight Clubs 'cave', where Tyler met Marla who told him to 'slide!'
You must be some gnostic or Thelemic doctrinaire working in the same vein of Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to impose your filth and lies on unsuspecting people. Catholicism isn't what is wrong with the world. It's people like you that seek to indoctrinate and bend people to the will of your agenda and ideology. People like you is what has caused innocents to be slaughtered throughout history in the name of ideology. Take your shit somewhere else you fucking goat worshipper.
Huh.... I guess CD found a nerve on you eh? Open mind is the point, and no one knows you but you.
What religion was practiced by the Conquistadors again?
Thanks for proving the author's point ;-)
Ego, Deus, Praeceptum; it doesn't matter. You're being manipulated. CD is selling a new ideology to replace the old broken one. Through his lies, distortion of historical accounts, and appeal to emotion you can catch a glimpse that CD is the very same as the propagandists that he claims to oppose. It's people that do wrong, more specifically people that manipulate others and incite others to kill for their own gain or satisfaction.
If you truly read the article and comprehended it you would understand that it is not an article about a new religious manipulation but an article about self control, self empowerment and belief in oneself. I am like God and God like me.
Nowhere in the article does he state you must give 10% of your wealth to him or devote several hours per week to manipulating others to your side of view. I believe CD just wants you to discover your own inner God because that is the only one that matters.
Awesome post CD. I think this says something that I have not yet heard, at least not explicitly. I think you're over-romanticizing the native americans (their religions were varied and they did have wars and such) a bit, but there is something bigger along these lines that you might like, tremendously.
I recently (in my relentless search for a true spirituality) came across an author who seems to have nailed it on the head beyond any doubts. His view comes from a spiritual interpretation of psychology (or vise versa) which proposes that all psychological 'problems' and all sense of lack comes from fundamental narcissism.
In other words, we view ourselves through our representations of ourselves, and the reflection of the moon in water is not the moon. Through various measures, we are disconnected from our true nature, and twisted into little ego-forms, praising, condemning, flattering, judging, hating etc ourselves and, through projection, others. To be disconnected from your true nature is the ultimate suffering of which the buddhists refer.
In place of being, we develop 'personalities' instead, and personalities hate and fear truth because it exposes the suffering upon which they are built. So, they spend all of their energy rejecting truth wherever they see it. They reject logic, curiosity, success, and reality in general.
The "Long Conversation", in that context, would be the true nature of humanity expressed in discontinuous bits and pieces over the ages, from the mouths of every genius, philosopher, and honest soul throughout the ages, from Sophocles to Ayn Rand and everyone in between. Each has a small piece of the puzzle of our true nature, although few if any have ever seen it directly.
If that interests you, I suggest you check this guy out.
His "Diamond Mind" and "Diamond Body" series are the best. "Diamond Heart" is mostly taken from his seminar sessions and is more of a peripheral read.
So far he's the only 'new age' type I've ever read or heard of that doesn't drown you in euphemisms and touchy-feelyness (at least most of the time). His approach is more psychological/scientific and his writing is very sophisticated, even if he does go on a pointless rant once in a while.
I will check him out. Thank you.
PPagan: While I do find some of Mr. Hameed's habits odd (his prayer bead counting really irks me) what I take from his work is basically as you say, although as with everything it is best (and only possible) that you form your own opinion.
My only 'complaint' really is that he sticks to more 'mainstream' versions of psychology and psych technique in his school. In particular I think that Dick Schwartz's work (Internal Family Systems) would be particularly suitable as an adjunct for the "first part of the journey". For the "second/third parts of the journey", Ericksonian Hypnosis it seems to me is much more helpful. NLP and some of its postulates and techniques are helpful (as part of ericksonian work) as well but NLP in particular lacks any unifying psycho-spiritual theorem and is rather scattered as far as technique and purpose goes, although NLP provides the sort of basis you need in order to avoid counting prayer beads.
Basically, when you get to more advanced inquiry, it helps if you treat the unconscious as an active, contributing participant rather than as a mysterious black box that's just holding all your memories. After all, the unconscious is directly responsible for every positive result from inquiry in the first place, so you can waste a lot less time (and do a wider variety of miraculous things) by making friends with it directly.
CD: Enjoy.
I second this Aeonios.
I studied 2 yrs with a student of Hamid (the Diamond Heart guy), and met Hamid. To my mind, best overall map of psychology/spirituality. Although I have read comments about egotism in the group, I personally found Hamid and my teacher very authentic and humble.
CD, what really stood out for me was the line: "Social conditioning tells us to ignore our inner knowing and accept the false external authority." To me, this hits the nail on the head. They want to tell us who we are, what we can do, and what are the authoritative facts about us. But the problem is that these things can only come from within. (side note: maybe this is why they love social media so much)
The idea that we can actually perceive the truth independently of any external authority is anathema to systems of control. It's a challenge to the status quo. I think for many people, that voice is silenced young and replaced by what they perceive as the expectations of others around them. But I think a lot of people are waking up, and starting to listen to that voice.
Not to wear out the Matrix metaphors, but I am struck by how many seem to be liberated every day. Something big is happening, and it's not just the bankers and their conspiring corporate and government lackeys. I feel a tsunami coming from below.
Call it revolution, evolution or a spiritual awakening, something this way comes. And it is not evil.
Thanks, CD, you remind of my youthful readings of Gravity's Rainbow, in particular this:
"The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning,' is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that 'productivity' and 'earnings' keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only humanity--most of the world, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid to waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone other than the system, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when it addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life."
reminds me of a graffiti stencil i saw many moons ago which has always stuck with me:
GIVE AND GET or HAVE AND TAKE
I love Jesus but hate the catholic church. I don't trust any churches really. I think like Jesus said, if you want to pray just go into a closet or wherever. Its very personal. Whenever I feel close to Jesus, I feel wonderful. The church always seemed like a showplace, fake, with too many rituals, etc. It made no sense to me. So I left the church.I instinctively knew something was not right.
As I awoke to the workings of the world I understood why.
God Hates the Catholic Church
Heresies of the Catholic Church
CD, I never was abused by my Sisters. They would take some kids over their knee with their pants down and wallop them with the ruler on their butt. I was always well-behaved. Not because I feared them, but because I was fascinated with all the material?
CD, thanks for sharing. Great read as usual.
Just had some random thoughts while reading...
> I can still feel the psychological sting of that abuse as
> I revisit the incident in my mind
This sentence bugged me. It's the past. If there's a "sting" associated with it, then a part of you is still living back there. I think of memory as a tool, nothing more.
Here's a question: Is there any difference between the physical pain from that incident and the psychological sting you felt?
Or more generally, is psychological pain real in the same way that physical pain is?
> It was an innocent question really, and a tribute to its power
> and destabilizing logic that Sister Elizabeth turned bright red
> and immediately reached for her punishing stick.
What did that honest question of yours cause her to do?
I had a similar (albeit non-violent) incident before my confirmation. I met with the priest and earnestly asked "I can accept that God can live forever, but how can he not have a beginning? Doesn't everything have to begin?" The priest tried to answer by talking about 'time', but he must have seen that I was still confused when I left. I don't remember what he said, but I DO remember him screaming out the window as I left with my friend:
But why?!!!!!
The priest was being funny and it freaked me out when it happened! But in that moment he did reinforce in me the notion that it was "okay to ask questions."
You definitely had a different experience there, but it's good to know you kept asking your questions. That's what ultimately saves us; not accepting anyone elses words as the truth, but coming upon Truth ourselves.
> Can you hear them way off in the distance talking among
> themselves, the voices of the great spirits past, present
> and future, all speaking as one?
I'm not sure... is this meant to be literal or figurative?
If literal, then no. If figurative, then perhaps. That is, we can come to see the same Truth that those spirits -- past, present, and future -- are all speaking about as one.
> But if we are to believe we are connected to everything and
> thus we as worthy as the mighty Oak or the industrious dung
> beetle, and certainly more worthy than any false external
> 'authority', there is no reason to surrender and thus we are
> uncontrollable.
Nicely said.
> Nothing, and I mean nothing, can be allowed to get in the way
> of the endless territorial expansion and locust like consumption
> of the mindlessly mad machine.
You're speaking from the point of view of society here, right?
Yet from a viewpoint that is removed from society, it's apparent that no matter how hard others try to silence it, Truth and its "harsh" reality must prevail.
Put another way, when one is not aligned with Truth, the life they lead and the resulting society they create will reflect this.
So from the point of view of a "self" who is removed from society, those people and their society are clearly insane!
However if you then eliminate the judgemental self, another view arises that whispers "everything is exactly as it should be."
Of course, once you come to see all of this, it means you must immediately (and irreversably) choose not to be part of it. Hmm... so once you take responsibility for your self, it seems you lose the freedom to choose otherwise!
:-)
P.S. One last though that popped in... it's possible that your "Long Conversation" is what I call "connecting with Truth." Truth requires no belief, and even though we cannot reach out to it, it does whisper to us between the gaps of life when we're silent.
"..... But these are things that cannot be explained in few words, nor are we furnished with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and elastic Spirit operates. THE END." ~ issac newton
"The word is not the thing."
...and so, real communication is always a creative act!