(Rewritten in a better frame of mind)
Consider being In the dark where there is an absence of light, sound,
feeling, hearing, thinking, where there is no movement of objects, such as stars
or planets, nor light of any kind. You are surrounded there in an
infinitesimally compacted state with an absence of awareness of any kind
whatsoever, with no imagination, no curiosity, no thought, no sensations, with
no ability to be ambitious or curious, alone there and unconscious.
That was all of our conditions one hundred years ago presumably. Now as our
predicament is today we strangely look at a much different picture around us,
with tomorrow remaining yet still uncertain for us.
Lets not be too pessimistic about the future nonetheless for tomorrow
remains yet as uncertain as today might have seemed before its time with the
curios distinction that we now have a glimpse of life and its possibility while
before all we had known was nothingness to argue for any potential meaning of
our lives from. Things have improved for us dramatically.
We were nothing before now, absent all instinct, we had no capacity for
action, and no consciousness a hundred years ago. Now we look around in
bewilderment aware of cherished pleasant experiences while knowing at the same
time great struggles, woes, and upheavals in our lives.
We naturally enough, as thinking beings, offer hypothesis and theories of
explanation that weigh in on this life’s implications and overarching meaning
explained often with an individualist slant in our reasoning on what life’s
relevancies, ultimate destination, and truths are.
Whatever those thoughts are we all materialized here on an orbiting rock in
the cosmos while what blankets beyond us in those depths of deep outlying space
we don't begin to fathom now but let us not pretend there is nothing out there
to offer explanation for our current reality for there more then probably is.
We aim our limited syllables of thought at the dusk, at the setting sun
leaving the horizon, at the appearing glowing moon rising in the summer sky. We
marvel at the changing ocean tides as the idea of our death haunts us in our
uncertain capacity to know adequately what will become of us. Might we somehow
escape the rotting, worm filled, dust ridden, velvet lined, coffins where we’re
laid under the topsoil in our burial plot in those grassy roadside cemeteries
dotting the side of winding country roads, between pastures and forest lands,
with darting birds, buzzing insects and crawling critters moving around
us.
We won't be here in another hundred years of course like we weren't here a
hundred years ago before now. We almost grasp at straws now, peering around like
frightened frenzied schools of fish, grappling unto myths and historic tails, or
we may have given up on any hopeful beliefs that this life is special enough to
have more in store for us then we understand.
I give pause on such considerations as I think of discussions in the past I
had over drinks like Captain Morgan rum, Crown Royal Whisky, with dozens of
bottles of Keith's and Olson beer laying around, with whiffs of marijuana smoke
circling, hanging in suspension, there in lightless, small windowed, paneled
basements, with the sounds of angry, defiant voices in states of intoxication
spewing out critic at religion and God and hope itself beyond that present
vision of how life is lived.
Please, I want to argue with some of them, no more talk of Hell like it is
a place more accustomed to you and your eternal interests then Heaven. They
almost think seriously that Hell would extend a red carpet and that they’d be
better off there somehow surrounded by friends in revelry. There is nothing good
in Hell if there is such a place I want to argue with them. The illusion you'll
be freer there to do things more enjoyable is ridiculous. Real freedom is not
denied you in Heaven because there you're in the proximity of God and His will.
You may avoid Churches, rebel against Bible talk, never examine your conscience
in comparison to religious ideas, that may be the road your presently on, but in
Gods company is first off love I want to argue with them.
You would like love I can assure you, I want to say to them traversing
time. Love is a very good thing blanketed over a human being. Joy comes with
Gods gift of love, immeasurable breadths of it, reaching to unimaginable
heights, in fathomless forms of pleasure, with gifts of wisdom and knowledge
beyond our present and most hopeful estimation.
You get free range in Heaven to explore infinitely, to know unending clues
into truth, to know experiences beyond experiences, to be free in fairness,
where nothing is able to take any of this good away from you I feel inspired to
want to say like I’ve been there. Why would you want to sit around with some
devil with a pitchfork?
How does anyone clarify what the truth in this world is absolutely though.
But I believe we can pierce the burier of that unknown in ways of hope and faith
seeing past those limits we know and looking within to our bright inestimably
grand future home.
My grandfather was a wise and educated man who died before I was born. My
mother and aunt tell stories of him and how he had lengthy talks in his home on
Tain street in Sydney, Nova Scotia while they were children debating with a
Baptist clergyman. My grandfather, an historian, would respond to some of the
clergyman’s religious certainty with debate.
“But how do you know this is how it is with certainty? All men are subject
to error!”
Changing subjects In life, In exchanges of words and ideas, people want to
judge other people for numerous reasons when they get hurt by them in this
world. I think this tendency is widespread in life. People who have slighted ,
ignored, rejected, humiliated, disrespected, dishonored, and disgraced us meet
this criteria.
We commonly face a desire for retaliation to insults like just mentioned.
In my life I’ve become convinced that the only wise way, the only real way
forward, instructs me in the forgiveness of my neighbor and even my enemy. For
me Jesus teachings are what I cling to and in my opinion go farther then merely
inspiring harmony or conformity. I think those insights come from love, real
love, that transcends how my psychological state sees the world. His teaching
offers insight into how God feels about all of us in the human perspective.
That love transcends our human resentments pointing to the correct way of
seeing each other, which is actually a sublime way, that cares about people
everywhere. This witness of love suggests that it is intended for all people,
including those people who damage our peace.
When I look around at an often angry world I observe that there is a
struggle raging and only faint unclear audible voices of council often available
in how to free the mind to find peace. What is the way forward for allowing us
to let go of the insult of a particularly hurtful personal injury received from
someone else when we feel such a strong and determined inclination calling for
retaliation. Where is the healthy way forward that is self-evident for us.
There are often no road sign present, no instructions in view, so we
stumble in life and we can fall hard into great ruin. We witness revenge taking
in our entertainments examples in our popular culture. Many of us, especially
while younger and growing up, see in our friends too behavior norms mentored to
us in small groups. We witness often to our harm or even destruction bad
examples as those friendship circles dabble in the wrong ideas.
This means the way forward is not an easy or clear way out of harms way.
People aren't able easily to resist the nefarious influence for instance if it’s
hostility they feel meaning then that many people even act upon it.
It has been suggested in religion that there is a demonic force in life.
Are we being persuaded unknowingly in our struggles, perhaps being unaware of
it, by a foreign influence acting through us that is trying to commandeer the
direction of our thinking, like through our daydreaming, creating in us an often
inharmonious frame of mind driven toward retaliatory insult and returned injury
in a hunger for revenge.
Do people feel this from beyond themselves in a craving to respond with
verbal harm or physical harm against our enemies? If this is a struggle against
evil causing this. Isn’t the person facing this evil struggle extremely
vulnerable. We are routinely alone to make these decision with society offering
little help to us. We are almost adrift in a small rowboat in a wide open sea
with no compass or land in sight.
Jesus insight proclaims that He is the light of the world. He declares how
this world is in darkness while saying to us that He is the lamp before our
path. Jesus insists that we are cared for by God wherever we are. However much
darkness we may be in that we are loved. If this is true, it seems then to make
rational sense that we love the person in darkness too, starting with ourselves,
and then turning our love to humanity at large.
Yet we can justify hatred for other people like we do frequently. In this
justification of our hatred we find all kinds of arguments in reasoning for
supporting it. Are we justified in hatred or intended instead of this hatred to
arrive at Gods vision by letting go of our hatred, forgiving others, and loving
the person in darkness wherever they are.
I may not get how the Bible is understood completely but these teachings of
Jesus I listen to carefully. I’ve been lead by both evil and good in life. I’ve
grown to recognize in existence that all of us, some of us being more greatly
effected then others, are surrounded on a spiritual battlefield here. Many
people have been struggling in lengthy wars for years. I have been struggling
with mental illness, through its delusions, and with a temper. I’m not alone on
this journey, like a freak, either. We are all fighting and frequently losing
battles for our thinking whether we’re insane or not.
Dark powers aspire against us in nefarious campaigns. In hidden wars we
often aren’t informed or aware what is driving certain behavior in and against
us. We are nurtured toward responses after being effected by other people’s
injurious remarks, bad attitudes, and various kinds of insults, and we create
our own aggressions and invented injuries behavior against other people by the
same demonic nurturing of our thoughts.
These thoughts of anger, cruelty, deception, criminality etc. do they have
a manipulator who is trying to lead people obliviously into the engagement of
things like violent fantasy. Is it so that this influence may inspire revenge
seeking leading for both persons involved, if carried through, to both of their
ultimate ruin, one person ending up in prison the other dead perhaps. However
much damage Satan can cause in this life it is claimed he will do ruthlessly.
I’m now suggesting here that I’ve experienced a nefarious force effecting
my own minds journey living with severe mental illness. The impact from this
force is responsible for some of my aggression, revengeful ideas, violent
fantasy, but I’m also suggesting that these thoughts are not rare or uncommon
to any of us. Such influence meet us in the quiet of our lives creating
resistance and unwillingness in us and our reasoning to let go of insult,
injury, bitterness, and also facilitating various other malicious justifications
for conflict.
I believe God is the teacher that we often rebel against by our logic, the
counterintuitive teacher for many of us, teaching us to conquer our pride,
forgive others, directing us to love our neighbor and enemy, all in spite of our
egos. He wants by His purpose for us that we love people everywhere. People
innocently, enough often, don’t know or recognize they are at war nor do they
recognize that we are directed to love each other in the way we are really
loved.
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Be sober-minded and alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a
roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
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For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places.
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Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. It shows me the
way wherein I should go.
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Then spoke Jesus unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
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But to those of you who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to
those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat
you.
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And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor:
for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be
filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when
men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and
shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.
Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in
heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
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But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which
hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use
you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other, and
him that taketh away they cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every
man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not
again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
For if ye love them which love you, what thanks have ye? for sinners also love
those that love them. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what
thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But
love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your
reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest; for He is
kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your
Father also is merciful.
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Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be
condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: Give, and it shall be given unto
you: good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall
men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it
should be measured to you again.
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And he spoke a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they
not both fall into the ditch. The disciple is not above his master: but every
one that is perfect shall be as his master. And why beholdest thou the mote that
is in thy brother's eye, but percievest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Either how canst though say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote
that is in thine eye, when though beholdest not the beam that is in thine own
eye? Though hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then
shall thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.
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In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
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“A thought occurred to me saying to me ‘Tell them about me.’ And so I began
to write down my thoughts in compliance.”
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