Saturday, April 07, 2007

Post-Traumatic Blessed Syndrome

There was some discussion a couple of days ago as to whether a personal trauma is required for a spiritual opening. It began with a thought by Ximeze in response to the tragic situation Cosa is going through:

"It got me to pondering the seemingly necessary relationship between trauma (T) and Coon vision (C). Not that T on it's own must lead to C, rather C seems to be tied somehow to T: the trauma 'has caused them to be more in touch with reality,' and 'denial has been temporarily disabled.'

"I'm thinking the key is 'figure and ground have been reversed.' Many Coons have spoken about events that spurred their 'development', or in looking back, were some kind of jumping-off point, a change from which it is impossible to reverse direction. A Transformative gnosis, as it were.

"Does the trauma reverse figure and ground, or is the reversal of figure and ground itself a 'cause' for trauma, or.........?

"Too binary, simplistic, and flatly one dimensional to account for the whole existentialada of lumin development, but I can 'feel' that the relationship exists.

"Okay, everybody, help me out here."

There is much truth to ponder here, but let us first, for the benefit of neocoons and non-initiates, not refer to the mysterious gift of "Coon vision," but use a more general term that must precede it, which is to say "spiritual opening," or what I generally refer to in the book as (o). Everything depends on this first step. To the extent that someone is irrelegious, it is merely a frank confession that they are closed to the realm of Spirit which it is the task of religion to engage, explore, explicate, and deepen. If we don't open ourselves to it, then Spirit will remain implicate, which is to say, it will be there in potential but no one will know about it -- no different than all of the beautiful sights that existed before eyes evolved to see them.

But this is misleading in a subtle way, for there is no world that isn't an experienced world. For this reason, the idea of a cosmos that cannot be experienced is strictly inconceivable. On the one hand, it is the surprise of all surprises that human observers, after some 13.7 billion years of cosmic evolution, suddenly awakened to a beautiful cosmos. But looked at in another way, it was not only unsurprising but, shall we say, "normative." In other words, this is how a ripe old cosmos is supposed to look -- with self-conscious observers at the leading edge of its interior. It's somewhat analogous to a baby. In one sense, watching him grow and change every day is the most miraculous thing you can possibly imagine. Looked at another way, it is the height of banality. Of course children grow up. Of course the cosmos is conscious. What's the big deal?

To repeat, if the realm of Spirit exists, we will know nothing of it unless we are open to it. This is elementary, just as if you close your eyes, you won't see anything.

Now, one of the -- I don't want to say "design flaws," but let us just say one of the inevitabilities of human existence -- is the tendency to become a closed system, not just spiritually, but psychologically, emotionally, behaviorally, and intellectually. Anyone can see that a major aspect of the "innocence" into which we are born is this radical openness to the environment, to people, and to experiences (although there are some temperamental factors that come into play, as some children are naturally more "cautious"; Future Leader is not one of them).

In fact, a baby is such an open system that there is paradoxically "no such thing as a baby," as the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott observed, only the mother-infant dyad in a communicative space of fluid boundaries. The mother places her mind into the baby, and vice versa -- in fact, not to get too far afield, but the mother is only capable of this empathic entry into the infant's world because she is unconsciously recalling her own internalized mother-infant dyad. Thus, in the mother-infant situation, there are at least three "others" present, the mother's internal baby, her internal mother, and the relationship between them.

This is another double-edged sword, and accounts for more problems than you might realize, as the children pay for the sins of the grandmother's mind parasites. There is no question that mind parasites are transmitted and processed intergenerationally. It would be an interesting exercise to engage in the sort of genealogy the Mormons do, except with regard to the family mind parasites. For example, how far back can one trace the Kennedy illness? Obviously, it didn't just start with Patrick, or Ted, or Joe. And will Arnold's psychic influence prove to be a terminator for at least one line of the Kennedy mind parasites? Perhaps not, due to a host of other variables. We shall see.

As I noted in the Coonifesto, our openness proves to be a blessing and a curse, for it is the only way that we can discover our interior selfhood and connect deeply with the human community. But depending on certain variables -- especially the quality of parenting -- our psychic and emotional openness results in the importation into the psyche of all sorts of things that do not belong there: mind parasites. The problem with a mind parasite is not just the fact that it "takes over the host" and diminishes free will, but that it specifically becomes a closed system that seeks out and engages in the same pattern over and over and over and over and over and over, like this annoying sentence.

Thus, in a certain way, you could even say that the most problematic mind parasite is the "closedness" itself. Irrespective of the specific nature of this or that parasite, the problem is that it causes the psyche to become more or less closed in certain areas. It is analogous to cancer. All cancers are different, and yet, the underlying problem is the same: a part of the body which has broken off from the "whole" and decided to go its own way. Mind parasites can be just like a cancer, in that they can be "grade I," so to speak, and exist unchanged for years and years. Or, they can "metastasize" and grow, eventually taking over the whole psyche. When I see a Keith Olbermann, for example, I experience someone who has been completely taken over by a malignant entity. And obvously, his mind is "closed" and therefore "dead," despite having an intellect that still functions. But the intellect is easily usurped for the purposes of the mind parasite. As a matter of fact, this is much more likely to happen to an intelligent person than a stupid one.

I remember when I was in my therapy -- I forget the exact mind parasite we were discussing, but my analyst said words to the effect of, "what do you expect? It's as intelligent as you are." Ah ha! Exactly! This explains how, say, someone such as Christopher Hitchens can, on the one hand, have such a formidable intellect, but on the other hand, be palpably demon-possessed when his intellect touches on certain matters.

For example, you may have noticed that when this or that beloved cultural figure dies or is in the public consciousness for one reason or another -- Bob Hope, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill -- Hitchens will write a vicious, tasteless, and mean-spirited "dys-eulogy" for the departed, enviously ripping them to shreds. Intelligence in the service of a mind parasite, pure and simple. Bill Clinton is another example. We hear that he is supposed to be of above-average intelligence, and yet, the intelligence was clearly highjacked by a narcissistic desire to be loved -- thus, the art of governance by polling, or "show me which way the mob is running, and I will be their leader." Taken to its extreme, this will result in a Parasite who "gives voice" to the collective parasites -- in other words, a demagogue who "mines the stupidity of his constituency," as Walt put it.

So, spiritual growth is ultimately no different from emotional or intellectual growth, in that the first requisite is an open system. Shifting gears a bit, it is pretty obvious when someone has become a closed system emotionally or intellectually. In the former case, their ability to love will be limited, while in the latter case their ability to know truth will be compromised. Put another way, access to the realms of the beautiful and the true will be more or less compromised.

Now, I have heard it speculated that human "religious ability" is analogous to our linguistic ability. There is a time in our childhood when we are totally open to language, and absorb it like a proverbial sponge. My son is going through this right now, learning and inventing new words and word combinations every day. For example, he's a somewhat picky eater, but we discovered through sheer luck that he likes frozen applesauce, for which he invented the word "app-ice." But the point is that there is apparently a "critical time" in development when our "linguistic module" opens up and learns language with the greatest of ease -- not just one's native language, but also foreign ones, if you expose them to one. The language module eventually closes, which is why it is much more difficult for an adult to learn a foreign language, or musical notation, for that matter.

But when it comes right down to it, everything is language, which is to say, information, including religion -- for what is religion but "information" about God? -- either through revelation, which is the divine intellect objectivized, or the divine intellect, which is revelation subjectivized.

Once again we can see all kinds of mindfields before us, because what happens if a child is "religiously traumatized" during this sensitive period of "imprinting," or, conversely, if he is immersed in no religious language at all, into ontological nothingness? In the case of the former, at least a couple of outcomes can be expected. On the one hand, the person may identify with the trauma and become one of those well-known religious robots that the MSM always trots out as a typical example of a religious person. Or, the person may react to the trauma by rejecting religion altogether. They will still be tied to God, but in an obverse fashion, in that they will "worship" the divine by rebelling against it. Nietzsche is somewhat of an archetype for this kind of fevered worship of the rejected God.

The greatest sin of the homosexual priests is not just what they did to those (mostly) young men, but that they may have caused the victims to turn away from God, to become spiritually closed systems. This is a sin that probably cannot be forgiven, but God knows best.

Now, the person who is traumatized by having no religion is obviously in a different boat, or moat, to be exact. For one thing, he won't even know he has been traumatized, and may well confuse his existential situation with being "liberated." I think you will find that this transparently childlike developmental fixation is a common pattern that is easily recognized, for the ego rushes in to fill the void where God would normally be. Ego thus partakes of the omnipotence and omniscience of God, and voila, the childishly proud and grandiose atheist "prophet" -- the Sam Harrises and Daniel Dennetts of the world. But instead of divine attributes -- i.e., majesty, beauty, certitude -- these people's minds will harbor reverse images of these, or what we might call the apes of God -- arrogance, grandiosity, and a bovine self-assuredness that makes a mockery of the absolute certainty of the awakened intellect -- or, shall we say, instead of "certainty of the absolute," they have "certainty of nothingness," or what a Coon would call "total ignorance."

In his outstanding book, The Pentagon's New Map, Thomas Barnett applies these ideas to our problems with the Islamic world. Like me, he doesn't necessarily see the problem as Islam per se, but the deeper problem that the Muslim Middle East is a closed system, or what he calls a dysfunctional "unintegrated gap" amidst the world's deeply interconnected "functioning core."

As such, if we were to take a "martian's eye view" of the human world (not the earth), the Muslim Middle East is exactly analogous to a mind parasite lodged in the world's consciousness. And, like any other mind parasite, it is closed, it has its own agenda, it is out of touch with reality, and it acts out its pathology with others, whom it inducts into its psychodrama. To say that Israel is not the problem is to put it mildly, for Israel is simply a blank screen for the toxic projections of Islamic parasites. It would not be going too far to say that the Muslim world --speaking collectively -- has never actually experienced Israel, any more than a person with Bush Derangement Syndrome has ever seen or heard President Bush.

Barnett describes the trauma of 9-11 as a "system perturbation," in that -- at least for those of us in touch with reality -- it served the purpose of vaulting us out of our dream-like closed system of the Clinton years. This is not to blame Clinton, for almost all of us inhabited this complacent fantasy world prior to 9-11. The problem, of course, is that millions of "9-10 Americans" -- the backward-looking progressives among us -- dealt with the trauma by denying it and projecting the residue into President Bush in an amazingly crude and indiscriminate way.

I say "indiscriminate," because once this parasite was in place, it took on a life of its own and partook of the primitive, cartoon-like omnipotence of the projector, so that the unimaginably evil Bush became responsible for all evil in the world -- global warming, hurricanes, the ubiquitous and pre-existing America-hatred of the international left, stolen elections, spying on us, a "Christian fascist takeover" of government, Christopher Reeve's paralysis, Michael Fox's Parkinson's, Rosie's Borderline Personality Disorder, etc. In short, the trauma did not "open" these people, but made them pathologically closed.

Likewise, what we are attempting to affect in Iraq is nothing less than a reciprocal system perturbation that will vault the Middle East out of the well-worn grooves of its centuries-long closed system. So yes, our liberation of Iraq was an instance of "overturning the chess board," not for the purpose of merely ending the game, but for the purpose of allowing it to begin.

This is getting pretty longwinded, isn't it? I apologize. If I had more time, these posts would be shorter. Tomorrow we'll try to apply some of these ideas to the relationship between trauma and spiritual opening. Because sometimes you have to crack an egghead if you want to see an om alight.

46 comments:

No Apology said...

Gagdad Bob, I am proud to give you the Thinking Bloggers Award for your blog. My thanks for the inspiration you give me.

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. I thought it would be appropriate to include them here.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme:

http://www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/02/thinking-blogger-awards_11.html

3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Anonymous said...

Bob,
I kinda have an off the path question for you. I was raised in a Christian home. I rebelled for various reasons. At around age 18 I started picking up books by C.S. Lewis who reintroduced Christianity to me. At a young age I had, what I can only describe as many experiences with God whereby I could feel his presence. To put some more meat on those bones, thats to say I would feel a peace and joy in my life that would randomly occur. After I had rebelled, and came back I was convinced that God was real and that I needed Him. My concern/fear is that I know in the core of my being that being in right alignment to God results in joy and fulfillment... but the problem is that I fear that I'm pursuing God/truth for my own ends, which is to say to attain joy/fulfillment. I think that that is wrong.... but I'm not sure... another reason why I'm in pursuit so to speak is a thought from C.S. Lewis essay entitled Man or Rabbit. Here Lewis writes:

"The man who remains an unbeliever for such reasons is not in a state of honest error. He is in a state of dishonest error, and that dishonesty will spread through all his thoughts and actions: a certain shiftiness, a vague worry in the background, a blunting of his whole mental edge, will result. He has lost his intellectual virginity."

Which is to say I know that if I willingly accept what I believe is lie, then, in a very real way... this lie (sickness) will spread throughout my entire being. I guess what I'm saying Bob is that I don't believe or know that the pursuit is for pure reasons. Or is fear of one thing (believing a lie and having it spread through my being) and wanting joy/fulfillment/wholeness even a wrong source of motivation? It may sound strange, but do you have any thoughts on this?

Rick said...

Great post Bob,

You say:
“Or, the person may react to the trauma by rejecting religion altogether. They will still be tied to God, but in an obverse fashion, in that they will "worship" the divine by rebelling against it.”

Yes. This is why I don’t believe the atheist anymore. If God doesn’t exist, why do they keep going on and on about it? What do they care? Are they threatened? The atheist can’t get Him out of his mind.

Now the point I’m making is…I’m not saying I think this because I know and I believe in God, but that I think the atheist is aware that he believes in God. And I suppose like a child, they think they can get away with this behind God’s back.
Little do they realize, there is no God’s back.
But I think they know what’s goin’ on.

Lisa said...

"Because sometimes you have to crack an egghead if you want to see an om alight."


Geez, thanks aquilla, now whenever I see OM, I giggle like Beavis and Butthead!

Anonymous said...

Anon,

Nothing wrong with the pusuit of happiness and wanting joy/fulfillment/wholeness in your life, with the radiation of these gifts to others in your life happening naturally if you are on the right path. Just keep gratitude ahead of greed and you'll be okay.
Sort of like what Bob Cratchet learned in The Christmas Story.

Van Harvey said...

No time to read the post or comment yet, gotta go help a kit buy a Marshall Half Stack, back later, but wanted to say congrats to the Formidable Ladies Metaphysical Seed-Sowing Circle and the Army of Surly Male Coons! Not forgetting the Transnational Brothers Under the Pelt
Swedish Division: Johan (But since the only Sweedish I know is "Popa de courk ov de bubblie-bubblie!" I'll take Gagdad's word for it!)!

Anonymous said...

"If I had more time, these posts would be shorter."

Good thing for us that you're writing under pressure, then - it seems to me that these essays you write are the kind that shouldn't be revised too much, rather like doing a ten-minute sketch. There comes a point where further editing and revision actually detracts, taking away from the flow and lyricism of the initial work.

By the way, I noticed yesterday but wasn't sure if everybody else already had and I missed it, but I'll say it again - Cool! I'm Formidable :) (along with Mizze, Sal and Dame Edith - you've put me with excellent company, Bob. Thanks!)

Rick said...

All Coons under the pelt,
there’s a short post at:
Ricky Raccoon
I hope you all enjoy it.
RR

Anonymous said...

Anon,
It's not wrong to want joy, fulfillment and wholeness. To reject those gifts would be, I think, to spit in God's face, quite frankly. Unless of course your method for seeking those things comes at the expense of somebody else, in which case you should look more closely at what you think is joy, wholeness or fulfillment. Prager has a good book on this topic, entitled "Happiness is a Serious Problem." It might be worth your time to check it out.

Anonymous said...

Bob said:
"It would be an interesting exercise to engage in the sort of genealogy the Mormons do, except with regard to the family mind parasites."

The mind parasite tree and her psychesucking apples!

Okay, maybe that sounds like a bad "B" movie pitch, but don't be stumped by the title.

Anonymous said...

Does every trauma implicate the idea of a victim, and does that victimhood become a part of the gnosis, the revelation? Or does it implant such a large mind parasite that can't be ignored... one must seek out relief, knowledge, escape?

I bring this up because last night, at 3:00 a.m. I was pondering a co-worker with whom I have very little interaction. This person truly hates me. I have no idea why. I began to wonder what I'd done, what was wrong with me, cataloging my imperfections. Ack! I was acting like a Leftist!!!

Which made me wonder even more about where such a life-long prevailing attitude arose from. I recognized it for what it was, but mercy! It finally all hit home: sometimes, it really can be true that someone just doesn't like me for their own reasons, and it has nothing to do with me. I mean, I know that, but I don't think I gno'd it!

Meanwhile, it made me think of where and when such a pitiful, narcissistic parasite entered my being... and then I knew.

No need to speak of it, but it does make me think the whole trauma-victim-revelation process can take many, many years.

:)

Anonymous said...

Bob said:
"accounts for more problems than you might realize, as the children pay for the sins of the grandmother's mind parasites"

QUESTION: if said child goes thru the formative period raised/bonding with someone other than the bio-mom (or in tandem with the bio-mom) does that mean the kid takes on the 'other's' intergenerational parasites?

If so, this would open all kinds of interesting posibilities.

Gagdad Bob said...

No offense with the gender segregation, but it was the only way to keep Beaglehole and Dame Edith from going at it. It's bad enough as it is.

Anonymous said...

That's OK, Bob - I figure the men probably aren't much into sewing circles, and I for one don't generally think of myself as "surly" :)

Anonymous said...

Ximeze, an interesting question indeed. There have been some studies done with sets of twins who were adopted to different families sin early childhood. If I recall, the twins in question were much more alike raised separately than most twins who are raised together; the same is often true of siblings, I think. I've seen a clear example within my own family; we raised a cousin from the time he was about 2 years old. He has a couple of sisters, who remained with their mother. When he was about eleven, his older sister (by about a year) came to stay with another aunt who lived nearby. Seeing them together brought home just how much of his personality was inherited - she was so much like him behaviorally that it was astounding. There were so many things he did that just baffled my Mom, because her natural kids weren't like that; meeting his sister was a revelation.

Anonymous said...

Joan said:
"It finally all hit home: sometimes, it really can be true that someone just doesn't like me for their own reasons, and it has nothing to do with me. I mean, I know that, but I don't think I gno'd it!"

That's a part of reality I sometimes wish I had never experienced but I'm glad I gno it nonetheless.
The irrational and malicious hate that people like that radiate is palpable, and it made me wonder,
is it envy? Do I remind them of someone that hurt them? Are they projecting on an easy target (Ben Derangement Syndrome or JDS in your case)? Or is it just plain spiteful evil for the hell of it?

It really doesn't matter what the motive is, as long as I keep in mind that it isn't my fault.

Still, it isn't pleasant, to say the least.

Anonymous said...

Ximeze and Juliec-
Maybe that's psychic DNA that the babies pick up from their mother while in the womb.

Anonymous said...

I understand pursuing things that one may perceive to give them satisfaction (be it money, power, relationship, whatever). I guess my question is this... is there a difference between pursuing God for the purposes of attaining fulfillment and simply pursuing God? Would the former be wrong while that latter is good?

Stephen Macdonald said...

anonymous:

In pursuing God you will find fulfillment.

It's like in business. All the people I know who set out to get rich fail. Many of those who set out to do what they love in the most rigorous and unflinching way possible end up getting rich as a side-effect.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous-
Seek ye first the Kingdom (Truth, Beauty, Good) of God and all these things (Joy, Peace, Love) will be added unto you.

Mizz E said...

Bob,
You've managed to set off my aha-meter again. I'm not gobsmacked; but some important truths crystallized for me in this one post. Having a first reading of the Coonifesto under my pelt, which set off the aha-meter more times than there are numbers for recording, I found particularly relevant, to the post divorce reconciliation I'd been living in this past year, pages 159 - 162 regarding the mind parasites of Homeric man. I can witness to the fact that they are alive and functioning. xH's parents were both born in Greece; father arrived here at age 9; mother arrived in America at the age of 18. Most likely she brought in her baggage some ancient mythcooties and transferred them to her children, which translates to: an opening in that space over there where I could win and flourish had not actually in fact appeared. Suffice to say, I've left the den of faux coondom and have found a real one, above and below. Not to worry curious coons, I'll still be checking and reporting on developments with Mr. and Mrs. Aedon and their brood during this transitioning period. Thank you for your care, support and coongratulations.

Anonymous said...

Julie:
Re those twin studies: semi-recall the researchers were looking for 'unaccountable' similarities & found things like: smoke same brand of cigs & marry people of same/similar names, like the same foods. Interesting, true, but kinda 'exterior' things, for want of a better word.

Your cousin, by what you write, came into your family at age 2. Could he, at that age, have already been 'seeded' with the intergen stuff?

I'm wondering about the newborn thru age ??.

Is there, like language ability, some kind of age/development window into which MP (mind parasites) slip more easily & become 'embedded'?

Is a reinforcement of some kind (repeated exposure) needed, or just one take?

Does that window ever close?

Do the MPs embedded early grow larger, taking up most of the available space & thus keep out other newer ones?

How about siblings within a stable family unit, ie same bio-mom/dad, where just one kit has the early bonding with a 'mom' other than the bio-one. Would that introduce 'foreign' (not commonly held MPs) into that kit, and possibly, by association, the entire family unit?

Oooooh! My neurons are hurting!!!!


Hee Hee wv:joiklyn

Anonymous said...

Ximeze, you may be right about the twin studies, though the impression I had at the time was that there were a lot of basic personality traits that were similar, not just incidental things.

In the case of my cousin, certainly there were some issues "seeded" from his first 18 months or so - he had definite bonding issues, and was devoted to men far more than women, since his father had been his primary caregiver; but what I was referring to was something different.

My cousin had a lot of personality tics, if you will. I don't know the official term, but for example all kids have specific ways of bouncing around and making noise when they have restless energy. His were very different from ours, and were unlikely to have been learned from his mother's family for the simple reason that he didn't do them until he was 8 or 9, and before he came to us he had not been around relatives age 8 or 9 to model that behavior from. When we met his sister, she did exactly the same things, made the same odd (to us) facial expressions, even had the same body language. As I said, it was very surprising.

robinstarfish said...

spirits of the air
fill my head with promises
m'aam, no carry on


Motel Zero

Van Harvey said...

"Post-Traumatic Blessed Syndrome"

I think that's one of the best titles yet. Not that the T has any value in and of itself, but that your eyes are then opened to the O is most definitely a blessing.

Few would give thanks for their moments of T, but those thirdIopening moments that follow... those are moments to mark.

Anonymous said...

I think there's a difference between fearing God and being afraid of Him.

I'm not sure where that sentence came from, but it was inspired by this post, and by pondering my wife's belief in God and simultaneous utter distrust of organized religion...

Anonymous said...

Van -

Thanks for the quote from Needleman a couple of days ago. Kind of surprised me; not at all what I expected.

Also, care to reveal the model of PocketPC you described yesterday? We tried to research them, but don't know what we're looking at... you know, it's the Mac thingy...

Van Harvey said...

Walt,
I'm actually going to be getting a new one also soon. My last one I had for two years (Samsung 6600), which is discontinued now. The 6700, although has broadband speed, is too little for my hands. Plus, manufactures are just beginning to use the newest windows mobile 6.0 microsoft put out... so if you're looking for one that is also a phone, might want to hold off a month or so.

If having it be a mobile phone doesn't matter to you, and wi-fi is enough, then something like HP iPAQ hx2795 Pocket PC is a winner.

Tell you what, I'll post on it soon myself.

BTW, if anyone saw my latest post yesterday or before a few minutes ago, I made some big changes to it.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

It is more of being in awe of his power, knowledge and majesty...

It also involves understanding that if you're going to fear someone, you wouldn't be off fearing him.

Trying to conceive of the One on the throne - infathomable! John could not describe him but to speak of his glory and radiance.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
"is there a difference between pursuing God for the purposes of attaining fulfillment and simply pursuing God? Would the former be wrong while that latter is good? "

Anonymous; You might initially pursue God for 'selfish' reasons, but as you move along the spiritual path, you will probably find your motivations for continuing becoming less self-centered. I think I recall GBob talking about this aspect of spiritual growth & discipline earlier in Lent.
That you feel fulfilled is a way to know you are going in the right direction. However, I find the searching and the (occasional) finding always buzzes my "pleasure centers" no matter how long I've been working at it!
Kind regards, Susan

Anonymous said...

Something about the description of mind parasites being "as intelligent as you are," has just
disturbed me all day. A closed system in and of myself, and using what I usually assume to be "my" energy to maintain itself...? If this is so, then much has been upside-down-and-backwards.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

walt: my impression of demons is, that like the holy spirit they 'take on the color of their container' (to borrow a Sufi expression.)

So as smart as you think you are, the demon is just as smart. This is why you don't 'converse with them' (something Prince made clear.)

In other words, you don't even entertain them at all. Doing so seems to me to be allowing them to use your own facilities against you. That's how they work.

Which is to say, whomever you entertain, you will feel compelled to show hospitality to. And the last thing you want is to let a demon in your living room, kitchen, pantry, and so on.

Or, perhaps, right up there in the helm.

Had an interesting argument RE: the secret (which my roommate was forced to watch by his Mother who thinks that he is excessively negative.) this was regarding the positive Vibe thing they burble on about.

Basically, he said that, barring that he didn't buy the whole vibe nonsense, because clearly what is real is real and you can't 'mind over matter' the physical world. But, he stated that it was better for people to believe this thing (Which was false) but gave them a positive attitude, because that positive attitude itself was beneficial.

So (obviously, I did not simply say, "so lies are better than truth"? Which would have started a war...) I asked him if false hope was better than no hope at all.

He said it was.

So, I introduced him to the Stockdale Paradox. Basically the idea is that, under extended duress, the people who are optimistic - that is, in this case constantly hope for something - something to help them, are those who give up and die.

The reason is simple - that false hope, being a lie, is just as poisonous as nihilism and hopelessness.

In Stockdale's extraordinary circumstance, it would have been better to have no hope than false hope even, since for them it was only believable that they would NOT be rescued.

But that is beside the point. I think it was salient to some of what was mentioned earlier re: socialism for new countries, etc. Lies poison and destroy. So if it is realistic to hope to be rescued, you must hope for rescue. If it is realistic to not hope for rescue, then you must not hope for it.

Besides, when you hope on something more solid, the world which passes away, can do as it may.

Regardless, he only begrudgingly accepted the 'coup de grace' - in that many millions live whole lives without hope - they do not necessarily commit suicide, they have children, and they live and work on.

His problem was in its core, to accept that hopelessness is the state of rational man.

It is where I started with our discussion, Hume - we can't know anything rationally, for sure. Every thing that takes Hume the wrong way (French Enlightenment branch) repeats and repeats this cycle of of misunderstanding - always saying hopelessness (Which is the true state materialists such as them must have in truth) is death, and that you must always be hopeful, even if it is in something demonstrably false.

But if we know truth, then we know where hope resides and where it is absent. And this truth is the antidote to any poison, any parasite.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

PS:

Polarize my heart
This all sufficient and good
Sing, O blood, O veil

NoMo said...

Just as physical pain is crucial for our continued well-being, so is the focusing intensity of psychic trauma crucial to our openness to spiritual reality. One who suffers from leprosy lacks the physical warning provided by pain. For many, if not most, "spiritual opening", or what I see as being "born again from above", is ignited by the eternal fire that pours through the existential crack that opens up when comfort and normalcy is "rudely" interrupted. So, in the same way that I'm "thankful" for physical pain, so am I thankful (only in retrospect, of course) for the interruptions that force my gaze upward.

BTW - I'm honored to be numbered among the surly few. Lead on Col. B.! God is great!

Anonymous said...

I had a vision of raccoons organzed like Moose or Elk lodges-- also saw Masons and Rotary symbols, and a Shriner hospital.

"Fraternity of Raccoons" (FOR) came to mind.

Then I got the impressions of "cells of three."

The question I put to raccoons is if any among you feel any need to organize/meet physicaly rather than electronically.

Anonymous said...

Seer, I' read it a few posts back that there is to be some kind of raccoon jamboree or convention this year in Yosemite. Anybody know anything about that?

Anonymous said...

A question I am wondering if you ever ask yourself, Bob: How does one know if they are an open or closed system? And is it an either/or?

We all want to believe we are on the right side, but how can we know for sure? Our friends or fans or followers might tell us so, but how can we be sure? And what if, just what if, there is no such possible assurance? What if insecurity is fundamental to existence? What of belief, then?

Anonymous said...

seamus,
Are your followers telling you that you're on the right track, open system wise?

Anonymous said...

After walking through the valley of the shadow this week, my coonvision has been amped up a few notches. "Intelligence in the service of mind parasites" is bang on in describing the cancerous closed system that is John Delling. I'm afraid there are a lot more of this kind out there than we want to know.

What I wouldn't give to witness them cast them into a herd of swine and sent over a cliff into the sea. Jesus knew how to create a graphic example of how to handle these things, didn't he? Somewhere along the path of history, we dropped some of the keys to the kingdom.

In the morning we begin to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. For many reasons, this will be a particularly meaningful rite this year.

I know that my Redeemer lives;
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, He lives, who once was dead;
He lives, my ever living Head.
[Samuel Medley, 1775]

A wonder-full Easter to all coons.

Anonymous said...

The Grammar Police were off duty. They were under the impression they get Easter off.

That should have read:

"What I wouldn't give to witness them cast into a herd of swine and sent over a cliff into the sea."

Them pesky brain bugs.

Anonymous said...

Surly (adj): Sullenly ill-humored; gruff.

From what I have seen around these parts, coons are only surly way because of their "sir-ly" calling... to be royal knights (and dames) in service of O.

In the history of knights, those who weren't surly at the appropriate times didn't get to stay "sirs" for long (more like an ex-parrot, pining for the fjords).

Anonymous said...

cos: I think your grammar police went off with my typo police - strike "way" from my post.

Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed, y'all.

Van Harvey said...

test

Van Harvey said...

Seamus,
There wouldn't be much point to having Free will if you didn't have to evaluate and decide what was true yourself, would there? give up the responsibility of having to choose, give up living .

Anonymous said...

If this be of any help -

Having suffered Col. Beaglehole's buffoonery for lo these many years - a series of sufferings adding up to one extended screaming trauma - I feel as though I am quite qualified for canonization.

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile, 1,968 years in the past, Mary Magdalene is running to tell Peter and John what she saw.

Theme Song

Theme Song