» Materialism The Spiral Path

09 Sep 2012

RS31: Jesus and the Book of Job

A: We’ve been talking a lot about your teachings on life and death, healing and miracles. Tell me why John the Baptist tried to kill you.* It seems a strange thing for a religious prophet to do.

J: John didn’t act on his own. It would be fair to say that my brother James and my former friend Peter used John. As we’ve discussed, John was suffering from major mental illness — schizophrenia combined with narcissism. If you played on his paranoia and his narcissism, you could get him to do your dirty work for you. This is what James and Peter did. They used John to try to get rid of me.

A: You describe Peter as your former friend.

“One of the ideas that sets the poem of Job apart from the Book of Job the Patient and from other ancient Near East poems about righteous sufferers is the book’s detailed pronouncement by the Lord that people who behave badly as Job’s friends need to apologize to both Job and to the Lord and to be retrained by an expert in the field, Job himself (chap 29).” (From commentary on the book of Job by Mayer Gruber in The Jewish Study Bible, TANAKH Translation, ed. Michael Fishbane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 1505.) Photo credit JAT 2015, Lake Minnewanka, Alberta.

J: There’s a reason the Gospel of Mark portrays Peter in such an unflattering light in the final chapters of his book (Mark 14). Mark 14 should be subtitled, “The Truth About Peter That Peter Doesn’t Want You to Know.”

A: Peter comes across as a coward and a liar and a collaborator, a man who sits with the high priest’s guards and warms himself by their fire.

J: Yes. “Warming himself at the fire” is an ancient idiom for “saving himself by selling out to the enemy.”

A: Peter doesn’t seem like the kind of man you or any sane leader would entrust with the job of carrying on your teachings.

J: Peter was a fickle, vain, posturing man — a lot like Wormtongue in Tolkien’s The Two Towers — and he only gained a position of authority in the Kingston movement after I died and he could spread his lies about his “humility” and his “chosenness.”

People wonder why Mark shows me rebuking Peter with a remark about Satan. But it’s not a supernatural claim about Peter. It’s a psychological claim.

A: Mark 8: 31-33 says, “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things'” (NRSV translation).

J (nodding): Mark is telling his audience that Peter, who later claimed to be a faithful and devoted apostle, was, in fact, “the adversary” — like the adversary named Satan who tried to ruin Job’s life with his incessant legalistic wrangling, his incessant lack of faith in the mystery of love, his incessant rejection of God’s right to choose how he (they) will intervene in the world.

Later Christians have read the reference to Satan as a supernatural claim for the Devil. But in the book of Job, Satan isn’t the Devil. He’s the wily Materialist who sits on God’s council of heavenly advisers and insists that the man named Job is devoted to God only because he has many blessings — healthy sons and daughters, great herds of livestock, and many servants. Take away those blessings, says ha-Satan (the Accuser), and Job will curse God instead of loving him. It’s simple Cause and Effect.

“Have you not read this scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?” (Mark 12: 10-11). Photo credit Image*After.

But this isn’t what happens. Job tries and tries to understand the Law of Cause and Effect and invoke it for his own benefit, but his efforts fail. God — not the man named Job, and not the Materialist philosopher ha-Satan — gets the final say. In the end he chooses to restore Job’s blessings, but only because he chooses to, not because he’s been forced to by clever and lawyerly invocations of Law.

I had a lot of respect for the Book of Job. I didn’t understand it at all when I began my journey of faith. I understood it completely by the time I died. God doesn’t promise anyone an easy or pain-free journey. Faith has no foundation at all if it’s built on the premise that you’ll escape all pain by following the Law. Faith requires humbleness. Faith requires respect for all life in Creation, including behemoths and leviathans and — God forbid! — daughters who are named and given land alongside their brothers upon their father’s death.

Some commentators think God is pummelling Job at the end with reminders about God’s power. They think God requires Job’s submission to this power. But the speeches by God at the end of the Book of Job aren’t about power. They’re about humbleness. Humbleness as God and God’s angels understand it, not as religious leaders have taught it.

A: Humbleness as an intense awareness of who you are and who somebody else is. Knowing your strengths, and being proud to use your strengths in service to others, but also knowing your limits. Knowing who you’re not as much as knowing who you are.

J: Yes. This point is drilled home in Chapter 40 (verses 1 to 8):

And the Lord said to Job:

“Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?

Anyone who argues with God must respond.”

Then Job answered the Lord:

“See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?

I lay my hand on my mouth.

I have spoken once, and I will not answer;

twice, but will proceed no further.”

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

“Gird up your loins like a man;

I will question you, and you declare to me.

Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me that you may be justified?” [emphasis added]

A: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge,” God says to Job in 38:2. The rejection of “words without knowledge” is very strong in your original teachings. Also the refusal to blame God for the mistakes made by narcissistic human beings.

J: A human being who believes he/she can control the Law of Cause and Effect is not a person of humbleness or faith. Job had to go through a lot of suffering to get this point through his thick head. But eventually he got it. Just as I eventually got it.

A: So I’m thinkin’ Peter never got it.

J: Bottom line, you can’t be in relationship with God if you think you are God, if you think you’re so wonderful and special that the very laws of Creation will bow down to your wishes.

It. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.

A: Would it be too much of a stretch to say the Book of Job is an anti-narcissism diatribe?

J: No, it’s not too much of a stretch. Job’s four interlocutors — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, and Elihu son of Barachel — are brilliantly drawn “portraits” or “archetypes” for brain patterns that would be described today in psychiatric terms as DSM-IV disorders. Just because ancient writers and teachers didn’t have a DSM-IV doesn’t mean they couldn’t see these patterns of behaviour through careful observation.

A: I see a Ph.D. dissertation for somebody in that remark.

J: The important thing to bear in mind is that a person like Peter, who was narcissistic and convinced of his “right to be right,” will always, of necessity, be a coward. He has to be a coward, because only a coward won’t admit his own mistakes. The refusal to admit one’s own mistakes (especially to oneself) is a hallmark of narcissism.

A: It takes guts to be honest about your own mistakes. That’s one thing I learned the hard way.

J: Me, too, in my time.

A: Yet it’s deeply healing to be honest about one’s own mistakes.

J: It is. This is part of the reason for the great success of the Twelve Step method — you have to let go of your denial and be honest about the harmful choices you’ve made in the past.

A: But if another person tries to confront the denial, they can put themselves in harm’s way. You’ve talked in the past about your brother’s narcissistic rage reaction. I’ve been on the receiving end of similar rage reactions — most recently from one of the owners of the business where I work — and these rage reactions . . . they sure aren’t pretty. They’re violent in a way that’s hard to describe.

J: We talked a few days ago about the way in which a status addict tries to acquire status points by stealing part of another person’s inner self-image (Father of Lights and Mother of Breath — Again). Narcissists are always status addicts, so this “stealing mechanism” is an important part of their psychological profile. Narcissists are always trying to build themselves up by tearing other people down. It gives them a sense of power. Unfortunately, if you dare challenge the myth of their “rightful” power, they’ll go berserk. Literally berserk. Blood lust comes over them. A temporary form of insanity. If swords (or guns) are handy, they’ll use them. If iron swords aren’t handy, they’ll use whatever they can find to try to annihilate you, to rob you of your entire being so you’ll disappear into a cloud of nothingness. They’ll try with all their might to reach into your core self and rip out your heart so they can eat it and claim your power.

A: Yuck. Gross. It’s like that gross heart-eating scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But, you know, come to think of it, it’s exactly what my boss tried to do to me in January. She did her best to annihilate me. Didn’t work, though, because I forgave her for her brutal attack. I’m still there, and I’m still looking her in the eye.

She hates that. She hates it when I look her in the eye.

J: She knows at a deep narcissistic level that she has no power over you. This frightens her. It undermines the lies she tells herself. Your very presence reminds her she isn’t the nice person she claims to be. So she hates you. She has to hate you and she has to blame everything on you and the co-workers who stood up for you because otherwise she’d have to look at herself in the mirror and admit her own mistakes. She’s not going to do that. Not while she’s arranged her whole world to protect herself from the truth about her own motives. She thinks she’s safer this way, but she’s not. She thinks if she can “get rid of” the people who witnessed her narcissistic rage reaction in January (by forcing them to quit), all will be right with the world, and she can return to her merry little narcissistic belief that she’s the most wonderful boss there could ever be.

Her guardian angels have other ideas. For more details, please refer to the Book of Job, which could also be titled, “You’re Not Going to Want to Hear This, but God Has an Opinion on Your Narcissism.”

* Please see the February 6, 2011 Jesus Redux post John the Baptist and Jesus and the May 15, 2011 post John, Paul, and James: The Lunatic, the Liar, and the Lord.

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Posted in Bible, Cause & Effect, faith, Favourite Posts, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, humbleness, Jesus' family of origin, John the Baptist, Law (Nomos), Mark vs Paul, Materialism, narcissism, occult themes, Realspiritik, religion and mental Illness, Son of Man and tagged ethical mysticism, Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

21 Aug 2012

RS26: Healing – The Gift of Love

A: Tell me what fearlessness meant for you during your ministry.

J: Good word. Fearlessness. Tricky word, too, because fearlessness for somebody who loves God isn’t the same experience as fearlessness for somebody who hates God. Psychopaths hate God, no matter what they say. Psychopaths also show a lack of normal fear, which is not to say they’re afraid of nothing, but that they’re afraid of very different things than non-psychopaths are.

Psychopaths aren’t afraid of hurting other people, aren’t afraid of taking huge physical and financial risks that would turn other people into quivering puddles of emotional jelly. On the other hand, psychopaths are terrified of dying a nameless death. They struggle against the reality of death, believe they can somehow circumvent it. When they realize the universe isn’t going to make a special exception for them, and give them the gift of physical immortality, they try to make themselves immortal anyway in a screw-you,-God,-I’ll-show-you-how-special-I-am demonstration of might and glory. So they focus all their efforts on “leaving a legacy.” A big legacy. A showy legacy. Something tangible. Something people can point to and ooh and ahh at — like a big temple. Or a statue commemorating his/her reign. Or a library with the family name plastered across the front. A psychopath is never content to be remembered for his kind heart and consistent ability to lift others up from within.

Celsus Library, Ephesus Turkey (c) JAT 2001

A: Blowing up buildings and massacring innocent people is pretty showy, too.

J: At the time, it seems like a good idea to the psychopath — a way to earn fame and glory. It doesn’t look that way to the victims, of course, but to the psychopaths, it’s good fodder for the history books.

A: You must have seen this mindset all around you in the early Roman empire you lived in. It wasn’t a pretty place for conquered peoples.

J: Yeah, go to your local arena and see enslaved animals and gladiators savage each other on the big screen of Real Life! Sick stuff.

A: Yet these displays of physical prowess were considered normal. Culturally acceptable.

J: Like slavery then and slavery later. Just because it’s culturally acceptable doesn’t make it right. The soul longs for freedom. The soul believes in freedom. Not libertarian freedom (the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, regardless of how it affects other people), but the freedom that comes with dignity and respect and egalitarianism. Balanced freedom, you could call it. The freedom to be considered a unique individual who is an important and worthy part of the larger community. The freedom to look your neighbour in the eye as an equal.

This is the kind of freedom that psychopaths always try to strip away from others.

A: So how does this relate to fearlessness?

J: It’s linked very strongly to free will. To free will and to trust. When the community you live in allows you to exercise your soul’s free will and your soul’s trust in God in the fullest possible way, you become, in your own unique way, a healer. Not a physician or surgeon or internist, but a healer. A person with a unique gift that brings some form of healing into the world and into the hearts and minds of those around you. There is no sphere of human existence where the inner impulse of fearlessness — trust and free will working together — shows itself more clearly than in the mysterious gift of healing.

A: By healing . . . do you mean what modern Western allopathic doctors mean by healing? Treating symptoms until the symptoms go away and “normal” function is restored?

J (shaking his head): No. By healing, I mean helping a person find a sense of wholeness, a sense of wholeness within themselves, a sense of worthiness within themselves that incorporates emotional worthiness, cognitive worthiness, physical worthiness, and spiritual worthiness. All these together. The whole enchilada.

Obviously there’s no point telling people they can find complete healing through pure physical worthiness or pure cognitive worthiness if in the next breath you’re going to tell them they’re full of Original Sin.

A: It’s amazing what can happen to a person’s physical symptoms when emotions and cognitive function and spiritual growth are treated with as much respect as the physical symptoms. (I speak from personal experience . . . )

J: Some Western physicians and health care professionals know this. But not enough of them. For a brief period in the twentieth century, Western physicians showed a strong blend “science and faith” in their healing relationships with patients. But today this common sense blend has been shoved out of the way and replaced by the technological model. It’s a pure Materialistic model, and, to be honest, I see no difference between the current allopathic medical model and the demon-model I fought against 2,000 years ago. Today’s obsessive-compulsive focus on “germs and genes” and “fighting germs and genes” is no different than yesterday’s obsessive-compulsive focus on “demons” and “fighting demons.” Both are attempts to control all the laws of Cause and Effect in the universe — laws which, in fact, no human being has the final say over.

A: When my beautiful son was battling leukemia — A.L.L. — he had little immune function for the first few months of his treatment, and then he had none at all after they blasted his body with radiation in preparation for a bone marrow transplant. Theoretically he shouldn’t have been able to fight off any pathogens. But theory got blown away by reality. In the nine months he lived between diagnosis and death, he suffered from many painful and frightening events (not least a massive stroke). But never once did he “get sick” from a cold or a flu or an infection of any kind.

When he was in hospital, he was in isolation. But after his bone marrow started to show faint signs of recovery, he was discharged from hospital and spent the summer at home. Our home wasn’t a sanitized and germ-free place. It was a normal home. I provided the nursing care for the central venous line that was still sticking out of his chest wall, and he never once got an infection at the entry site or in the line itself. He probably should have, but he didn’t. He was very disappointed, though, that he wasn’t allowed to eat fresh strawberries, which had been shown at the time to carry bacteria that could be harmful to immune-suppressed children. He loved strawberries.

J: Were you afraid while you were caring for your son?

A: Yes. I was terrified of his pain. Not terrified for me, but terrified for him. I recall with intense grief the days when he and I had to get through his spinal taps together without any pain medication at all. He was extraordinarily brave. He was so brave I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe anyone could be so brave and so trusting of the people who were trying to help him.

J: Did your terror for him stop you from doing what needed to be done? Did it stop you from loving him and showing him your love?

A: No. I wasn’t afraid of the procedures. I understood what had to be done, and I wasn’t afraid of the science. I was afraid of the grief and the pain.

J: You were afraid of the grief and the pain, but you did it anyway. You and your husband made sure your son spent almost no time alone in the hospital room. Someone was always with him. You made sure his heart always felt safe, yes?

A: We did our best. Though Sick Kids Hospital wouldn’t let us stay with him overnight, which was very difficult for us. We had to stay at the Ronald McDonald House.

J: You could have” left the room” (emotionally speaking) and turned things over to “the science” or “the law,” as so many parents have done (not to their credit). But you didn’t. You believed you needed to be with him and look him in the eye and tell him you loved him. You knew he needed constant comfort.

A (nodding): My heart said he needed us.

J: Yes. He needed you. And you didn’t let him down. This is what fearlessness feels like. It’s not lack of fear in the face of illness and death. It’s the choice to choose love and trust even when you feel the fear. It’s the choice to do the right thing for somebody else’s healing. For somebody else’s sense of worthiness and wholeness. For somebody else’s discovery deep within that the mystery of love cannot be contained. It’s too big to ever be held back by small rooms and the petty concerns of Law. It fills up the smallest cracks of Creation with its wondrous powers of growth and healing and expansion. It grows and grows within, even when the physical body itself is dying.

This is the gift of one human being to another, a gift that is eternal.

All human beings have this power within their hearts if they choose to claim it.

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Posted in Cause & Effect, free will, healing, Materialism, Original Sin, psychopathy, Realspiritik, slavery, trust and tagged science & faith | Leave a Comment

19 Aug 2012

RS25: Where Love Goes, Miracles Follow

Detail of Woodpecker tapestry designed by William Morris (1885). (from Wikimedia Commons)

J: I’d like to begin today with a quote from the text you were reading the other day — the scroll fragment that deals with exorcism as it was usually handled in my time (Dead Sea Scroll 4Q560)*:

Col. 1 [. . .] the midwife, the punishment of those who bear children, any evil madness or d[emon . . .] [. . . adjure you, all who en]ter into the body: the male Wasting-demon and female Wasting-demon [. . . I adjure you by the name of the Lord, “He Who re]moves iniquity and transgressions” (Exod. 34:7), O Fever-demon and Chills-demon and Chest Pain-demon [. . . You are forbidden to disturb by night using dreams or by da]y during sleep, O male Shrine-spirit and female Shrine-spirit, O you demons who breach [walls . . . w]icked [. . .] Col. 2 before h[im . . .] before him and [. . .] And I, O spirit, adjure [you against . . .] I adjure you, O spirit, [that you . . . ] On the earth, in clouds [. . .] (Translated by Michael O. Wise)

A lot of words are missing from the fragment, but you get the picture. Illness is ascribed to demons. Cures are ascribed to the power of magical words, words spoken in ritualistic ways by Jewish magicians. The magicians would have used magical amulets, too, and divining tools (though technically these were forbidden by Jewish orthodoxy). Also drugs that were transmitted in the form of incense and smoke. People today forget that opium and other narcotics were well known in my time.

These magicians were experts in chicanery. They worked in teams, with one man acting as the wandering magician desperate to save people from demons, and others seeding themselves into the crowds to look for vulnerable targets. They would listen to the talk of the people around them, scope out the stories that could be copied by the scammers themselves, then mimic the symptoms so they could be dramatically and publicly “saved” by the magician. It’s an old scam.

A: It was the faith healing scam of your day.

J (nodding): People today read the prohibitions in the Jewish Scriptures against magic and divining and later prophecy and other occult practices, and they assume that Jews in the Second Temple period obediently followed these tenets of Judaism. Archaeological finds prove they did not. From the time of the Alexandrian conquest onward, Jews became a rather superstitious lot, just like their Hellenistic neighbours. Regular people carried magic amulets and regularly spoke magic spells and chants. They also believed in the power of curses. When magicians found formulas that seemed to work, they wrote them down. This is why archaeologists have found so many ancient magical codices and scrolls.

A: Biblical Archaeology Review has had some interesting articles on this topic in recent years. There’s also some evidence for Jewish necromancy in the early centuries of the common era — the use of human skulls with inscriptions written on them (though these are pretty rare).

Most practitioners of magic used bowls, it seems. According to BAR, “the largest body of inscriptions from ancient Judaism is the collection of more than 2,000 magic bowls from Talmudic Baylonia (present-day Iraq) from the fifth-eighth centuries C.E. These bowls were inscribed in Aramaic with incantations against demons.”**

I think it just goes to show that within every religious tradition there are always pockets of people who are drawn to the most extreme ways to try to control the Law of Cause and Effect — which is what magic is all about.

J: Not that this has changed . . . There are still plenty of pious religious folk who believe far more in magic (the Law of Cause and Effect taken to its logical, gory extremes) than in compassion or healing or forgiveness.

A: So Paul’s followers — and the John the Baptist’s followers — wouldn’t have seen anything too radical or different in the magical claims made by Paul and John. They would have expected to hear how they themselves could participate in this new way of controlling the Law of Cause and Effect. It wouldn’t have surprised them to hear claims about name magic and power over demons.

J: It would have surprised them to not hear these claims.

A: So you surprised people, then.

J: Once I got to the point in my life where I deeply trusted God’s love, God’s forgiveness, and God’s infinite goodness, there was only one path open to me — the path of girding my loins with science and faith instead of victory and vengeance. It’s pretty hard to keep looking for victory and vengeance when you’re absolutely convinced God loves all people equally. I had no religious books to guide me — not ones I trusted or respected, anyway — so I had to start from scratch. I had to start from first principles.

A: Can you give an example of that?

J: It’s a process of reexamining everything you once believed in, so it’s not simple and it’s certainly not straightforward. It’s like being handed a huge lapful of intertwined yarns and being told you have to untangle all the different threads and sort them by colour and weight before you can do anything else. At first it looks like a gigantic job, an insoluble task. But eventually you realize that if you’re patient and observant and careful in your actions, you can gradually sort out the mess.

A: You mean you’re not supposed to take a hatchet to the ball of yarns and split them apart in one fell swoop?

J: That was the Roman way. Got a mess? Fix it with a sword!

No, this way — the angel way — was much more tedious. The idea was not to fix things by destroying annoying people and places. The idea was to untangle all the threads, examine them individually, see the ways in which each was unique and relevant to healing, then weave them together into something new — into a beautiful tapestry instead of a useless, tangled mess.

A: How very un-Roman of you.

J: It was also un-Jewish. And un-Greek. And un-Egyptian. So I got in everyone’s face with my theories.

A: I’d like to go back to the point you raised about God’s loving all people equally. How did you get to this place of understanding? And how did it affect your ministry?

J: I came to understand the meaning of God’s love through my experiences as a mystic. I didn’t set out to become a mystic, but it turned out that way. My heart kept opening wider and wider to the experience of compassion for others, and I started noticing how much pain regular people were in — the women, the children, the slaves, the poor, the ill, the disadvantaged. I couldn’t not care. I couldn’t turn away from their hearts. I decided I had to do something. This was the “faith” part of my journey.

Once I claimed this knowledge fully, and made it part of the very fibre of my being, part of my core essence, I had the strong foundation I needed to reexamine and reappraise all questions about healing through the lens of my trust in God. I had to take it one question at a time, but the important thing is that I was willing to ask hard questions. I was willing to challenge cultural assumptions. I was willing to accept the evidence of my own senses in place of somebody else’s words.

I’ve always found it bizarre that Christianity has insisted on calling me “the Word” incarnate when I was the person least likely to rely on words or law or philosophical “truth.” I believed in what the world of science and nature taught me. I had little respect for words. Hypocrisy had a way of appearing as a magic cloak of many words.

A: Albert Einstein once said, “It is the theory which decides what we can observe.” (I have this saying on my fridge.)

J: Yes. This relates to the brain’s function. If you tell the brain that only Cause and Effect exist, it will only look for Cause and Effect. If you tell the brain there is Divine Love which interacts in unpredictable and heart-stopping ways with Cause and Effect, the brain will be able to see what’s actually there. It will be able to see the quantum events that are taking place all around life on Planet Earth. It will be able to see miracles.

A: The brain won’t reject the evidence that’s in front of it.

J: Miracles are invisible — literally invisible — to the brain of a person who has staked everything on the Materialist view of Creation. This includes devout Christians who uphold the teachings of Paul. Paul was a Materialist who didn’t believe in the mystery and immensity of Divine Love — its curious blend of order with chaos, linear with non-linear, female with male, mind with heart, logic with passion. Paul couldn’t see love. So he also couldn’t see miracles. Love and miracles go together like two peas in a pod. You can’t have one without the other.

A: Where love goes, miracles follow.

J: As anyone who has ever known real love will tell you.

* Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, trans., The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (New York: HarperCollins–HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), p. 566.

** See the Book Review by Michael D. Swartz on page 70 of the Sept./Oct. 2010 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Swartz is reviewing an exhibition catalogue called Angels and Demons: Jewish Magic Through the Ages, edited by Filip Vukosavovic (Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum, 2010).

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Posted in Cause & Effect, Divine Love, healing, healing miracles, historical Jesus, Jesus' teachings, Materialism, miracles, mystic, Realspiritik and tagged Paul vs Jesus | Leave a Comment

02 Jun 2012

TBM40: What Sheldon Cooper Can Teach You

When the writers and producers of the hit TV comedy The Big Bang Theory first envisioned the character of Sheldon Cooper, I’m sure their main goal was to craft a truly funny show. I’m sure they couldn’t have known their blend of spot-on writing and Jim Parson’s brilliant acting would end up creating an iconic portrait of the human brain’s Darwinian Circuitry. But just as the writers of The Big Bang Theory are always referencing some of my favourite series — series such as Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Wars — I’m going to reference their Sheldon Cooper character as a way to speak accurately about the realities of the human brain.

Wind Turbines (c) Jamie MacDonald 2009. Used with permission of the artist. Every time I see a wind turbine, it reminds me of the ruthless logic of the brain’s Darwinian circuitry.

Jim Parson’s portrayal of theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper is hilarious because it’s 100% accurate in scientific terms. The humour works because the science works. In this case, the science they’re showing (albeit unwittingly) is the science of a brain that’s operating entirely on its 3D Darwinian Circuitry without benefit of the soul’s gifts of empathy, heart, and dignity.

I know it sounds really hard to believe that a person can function at all without using every part of the brain. We assume a person can function with only one kidney or one leg, but it never occurs to us to ask whether the same analogy applies to the brain. We tend to think of the brain as a single organ — either a whole brain that functions wholly and properly or no brain at all — so we give people the benefit of the doubt with regard to their internal thinking processes. We assume that if they can do all the basics — go to school, get a job, make everyday decisions — then their brains must be operating the way they’re supposed to.

But there’s a problem with this assumption: the basic tasks of going to school, getting a job, and making everyday decisions require the brain to use only one “software suite,” whereas it actually has two. Basic tasks require the brain to use only its Darwinian Circuitry, a “suite” of software devoted solely to 3D biological survival. The brain’s Darwinian Circuitry carries the programming for all things related to your body’s biological needs — food, water, clean air, sleep, protection from the elements, protection from predators, procreation (which is more optional than most people think), and relief from pain. In our culture, school and jobs and money and status are regarded by the Darwinian Circuitry of the brain as essential tools for survival. So anything to do with money and status are given extremely high priority by the Darwinian Circuitry, even it means pursuing a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, as our character Sheldon Cooper has done.

So efficient is the Darwinian Circuitry that it can carry out important survival tasks without any input at all from the brain’s Soul Circuitry. Of course, without input from the soul, survival tasks won’t be carried out with empathy. Or with trust. Or humbleness. Or gratitude. Or humour. Or anything resembling conscience. But they’ll be done, by god, and they’ll be done with the viciousness and cold logic of an S.S. death camp commander.

These are the kinds of selfish, conscience-free behaviours that idiot atheists such as Richard Dawkins have promoted as the “truth” about human nature. I see a lot of similarities between Richard Dawkins, philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and the Christian Apostle Paul.

Dawkins has coined the phrase “the selfish gene,” and at a certain level the label is accurate. There are stretches of genetic material in our DNA that are meant to boost our awareness of our individual survival needs. Otherwise how would we instinctively know how to run away from danger?! But these are not the only kinds of coding we have in our DNA. We also have coding for unselfish traits. We also have coding for traits such as empathy, trust, humbleness, gratitude, humour, and conscience.

In the language of personality theorists (a branch of psychology), we have to be able to account for the five universally observed dimensions of personality — Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness — and we have to be able to account for all five of these dimensions in the face of aggressive arguments from behavioural psychologists and evolutionary biologists that human beings are nothing more than a collection of selfish genes seeking to reproduce themselves in the most efficient way possible.

So here’s how it actually works. The Darwinian Circuitry of your brain is responsible for expressing traits that fall within two of the five dimensions: Neuroticism and Agreeableness. The Soul Circuitry of your brain is responsible for expressing the other three dimensions: Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness.

Yeah. It really is that simple.

Sheldon Cooper is an absolutely perfect representation of what happens to a human being’s behaviour and relationships when he falls into the trap of relying exclusively on choices that score very high on the Neuroticism and Agreeableness scales, and very low on the Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness scales. He becomes, well, he becomes a Sheldon.

This package of traits is distinctive and highly recognizable. You get a person who’s highly controlling; perfectionistic; tense around other people; resistant to sudden change; inflexible; always “right”; quick to anger; thorough but lacking in imagination; socially compliant but lacking in genuine empathy; obsessive or obsessive-compulsive; politically conservative or right-wing; and rigidly obedient to the Law (dogmatic). The latter trait — rigid obedience to the Law — is especially important to understand in its proper context as a Darwinian trait because it’s often wrongly confused by researchers with traits from the Conscientiousness dimension.

The Darwinian Circuitry of the brain is very good at what it does (when it’s in balance with the Soul Circuitry) but on its own it’s very “black and white” in its thinking. It looks for simplistic “Cause and Effect” patterns. It looks for rigid “laws” that can be applied quickly and easily in all situations. The Darwinian parts of the brain “recognize” Materialist philosophy and codified religious texts and scientism (that is, treatment of scientific thought as an infallible religion). There’s NO capacity in these parts of the brain for processing complex emotions such as empathy, humbleness, courage, and forgiveness. On the other hand, logic and law are elevated to the status of the divine. You can see these patterns plain as day in Sheldon Cooper’s self-absorbed devotion to pure logic.

If you’re familiar with the Big Five personality theory, you’re probably saying to yourself that I’ve got the Agreeableness dimension all backwards and I obviously haven’t read the material carefully. I’ve read the material, and I think the scale for Agreeableness has been written backwards. High scorers on the Agreeableness dimension are harder to sort out in research studies because status addiction affects this dimension more than it does the other four. For instance, generosity and altruism may be genuine (in which case they’re coming from the Soul Circuitry and belong on the Extraversion dimension). On the other hand, generosity and altruism may be nothing more than status-addiction-in-sheep’s-clothing (which means they’re coming from the clever tactical centres of the Darwinian Circuit, and should stay right where they are on the Agreeableness dimension, since Agreeableness is focussed on social strategies that enhance 3D biological health).

A philanthropist who can’t donate money to a worthy cause without seeing his/her name emblazoned in big letters on the outside of a new research centre is suffering from a severe case of status-addiction-in-sheep’s-clothing. This behaviour deserves a high score on the “I’m-doing-it-to-survive-on-the-social-ladder” scale.

Giving, of course, is good. If you’re giving from your heart and soul, you’ll have no trouble giving anonymously and forgoing any credit for your generosity. It should be fairly obvious, though, that giving to others so you can earn yourself lots of status points is not so good from the soul’s point of view.

Poor Sheldon Cooper. He can follow the rules of social conventions by rote, but he doesn’t understand them. He doesn’t understand why he’s not supposed to call his twin sister “inferior genetic material.” He doesn’t understand why Leonard wants to be with Penny in emotional, intimate, heartfelt ways. He laughs when it’s socially appropriate, not because he gets the joke, but because he knows at a Darwinian level that he’s supposed to. He’s a classic Platonic Philosopher-King who believes in his own superiority and not much else.

He’s busted from top to bottom. But this doesn’t stop him from bossing other people around and using pure logic to abuse the people around him.

Not that Sheldon thinks he’s an abuser. In his own eyes, he’s a really nice guy.

This is why he reminds me so much of the Apostle Paul.

RS9: Jesus and the Occupy Wall Street Movement

A: I read recently on a Christian forum the assertion that if you were alive today, you’d be right in the thick of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. How do you respond to that?

J (sadly shaking his head): I’d say that anyone who believes I would willingly join the Occupy movement has no understanding of who I was or what I taught.

A: Many of today’s compassionate Christians feel some sympathy, some resonance with these anti-capitalist protests. The underlying message seems to fit in well with assorted attempts in Christianity’s history to renew and heal the church by simplifying church practices. Trying to root out corruption. Trying to make the church look more like your vision of church (as they imagine your vision to be). Francis of Assisi is a famous example of a well-to-do Christian who gave up all his worldly goods and chose a mendicant life of service. Francis believed with all his heart he was doing the right thing. He believed he was following your own example of how to live a spiritual life of charity and love and humility.

J: You know, the Occupy Movement reminds me a lot of the radical first century Jewish group called the Zealots. I wasn’t a Zealot (or proto-Zealot) then and I’m not a Zealot today.

A: The Zealots were very anti-Roman. They were one of several factions in the Jewish civil war that took place in the 60’s CE in Judea, Galilee, and Samaria. They burned down the city archives in Jerusalem to try to destroy all the tax records and debt records. They thought this would end the grave imbalance of wealth between rich and poor, and bring about a more egalitarian economic situation.

J (nodding): What starts out in the beginning as a group of people with legitimate social and economic and political concerns can quickly devolve into rigid sectarianism: “We’re right and they’re wrong.” Black and white issues. Black and white solutions. Things are rarely that simple. Once you start burning down buildings, even for “a good cause,” you’re on the slippery road to war.

A: A few years later, there wasn’t much left of Jerusalem. Not after the Romans sent their troops in.

J: Yes, but the Jews themselves had done a fine hatchet job on themselves before Vespasian (and later Titus) arrived on the scene with their legions.

A: Okay. I think most compassionate Christians would get the idea that you didn’t — and don’t — support the idea of burning down buildings as a way to bring about change. But the protestors in the Occupy Movement aren’t burning down any buildings. They’re occupying public land and protesting peacefully. So isn’t that a positive thing?

J: During the time they’re hanging around in parks and beside churches, talking to reporters and making lots of noise, are they hard at work producing goods and services and taxable income that will help strengthen their local economies?

A: Um. Maybe some of them are. There’s probably a black market economy at these sites already.

J: Do black market economies put tax money into the communal pot so roads and sewers and schools and public hospitals can be built for the benefit of everyone in the community?

A: Uh, well, no. The whole idea of a black market economy is to stay off the grid so you don’t have to pay taxes.

J: Right. So this terrible evil — capitalism — which ultimately pays for the roads and sewers and schools and public hospitals must be brought crashing down so that . . . what . . . so that no one in America can afford to build public schools?

A: I see your point.

J: The problem today isn’t Wall Street — not at the deepest level, anyway. The traders and bankers and investors whose foolish actions led to the initial financial crisis in 2008 aren’t dealing in money or capitalism. They think they are, but they’re not. They’re dealing in the one thing I attacked with all my strength: they’re dealing in status. These financiers and traders are status-addicted individuals trading in the only thing that matters to them — status points. Like all addicts, they think only of their next high. This is why they seem to have no empathy for the people whose lives they’ve destroyed with their business actions. They’re simply unable — at a physiological level — to place the needs of others ahead of their own need for an addictive high. It’s that simple.

A: That’s pretty scary.

J: Scary, but consistent with the facts. These individuals have demonstrated clearly and repeatedly through their own actions that they’re not able to self-regulate their own behaviours. They’re not able to act in ways that lead to the greater good because — bottom line — they’re not interested in the greater good. They’re interested in acquiring status, and they can only get it at somebody else’s expense. This means people have to get hurt. Average Joe has to be hurt so Mr. Banker can feel he’s smarter and stronger and faster and better than Average Joe. Mr. Banker gets his hit of status by making Average Joe miserable. It’s just part of the reality for those who are addicted to status as their drug of choice.

A: Dopamine response in the neural pathways devoted to pleasure? Same as with cocaine addiction? Status addicts get a high when they make somebody else suffer?

J: You bet.

A: Schadenfreude.

J: Schadenfreude — enjoying the suffering of another person — is one manifestation of status addiction. But it’s not the only one. Status addiction can manifest in a number of different ways. In its most extreme form, status addiction becomes synonymous with psychopathy. But, as with all addictive disorders, there’s a spectrum or continuum of dysfunction, with some people in the more manageable range of the disorder and others in the range of treatment resistance. Like any other disorder, status addiction can present with a variety of signs and symptoms. Each case has to be looked at on an individual basis. It’s one of the hardest things to sort out from a medical point of view.

A: Interesting that neither psychopathy nor status addiction is included in the DSM-IV — the bible of psychiatry.

J: There’s no inclination among researchers to examine the reality of status addiction. It’s the garden rock nobody wants to lift up. Once you lift it up, you’re going to find a whole lot of human creepy-crawlies hiding there you don’t want to deal with. Most of these creepy-crawlies have a vicious bite and a toxic sting.

It can be dangerous to confront an addict’s core addictions. Status addicts can react in violent ways — emotionally abusive and sometimes physically abusive ways — when they suspect their supply of status is about to dry up. I know this from firsthand experience.

A: On October 15, 2011, the Globe and Mail published a fascinating article by Ira Basen called “Economics has met the enemy, and it is economics.” It begins with mention of Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, who were recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2011.

The article says, “. . . no one who’d followed Prof. Sargent’s long, distinguished career would have been fooled by his attempt at modesty. He’d won for his part in developing one of economists’ main models of cause and effect: How can we expect people to respond to changes in prices, for example, or interest rates? According to the laureates’ theories, they’ll do whatever’s most beneficial to them, and they’ll do it every time. They don’t need governments to instruct them; they figure it out for themselves. Economists call this the ‘rational expectations’ model . . . Rational-expectations theory, and its corollary, the efficient-market hypothesis, have been central to mainstream economics for more than 40 years. And while they may not have ‘wrecked the world,’ some critics argue these models have blinded economists to reality: Certain the universe was unfolding as it should, they failed both to anticipate the financial crisis of 2008 and to chart an effective path to recovery.”

J: The rational expectations model and the efficient-market hypothesis both start with the simple assumption that human beings are all fully functional in terms of their brain chemistry. In other words, there’s the assumption that all individuals will make decisions on the basis of logical principles. This in turn will lead to logical — and beneficial — outcomes for everyone (as the theory goes).

But addiction disorders don’t operate on logic. Neither do they operate on common sense or fairness or empathy. They have their own internal logic that makes sense to them at any particular time, but the logic of an addict is like quicksand. It’s always shifting. There’s no solid footing underneath. Decisions are made for the wrong reasons. And there’s no willingness to take responsibility for the terrible consequences of these decisions once they arise.

Even worse, a status addict can’t learn from his or her own mistakes. He or she can’t self-regulate these behaviours. At the worst possible time, when she’s under the greatest stress, she’ll feel a desperate need to acquire the high of fresh status points — whether through a crazy trade or an impossible-to-keep business promise or a pump-me-up session of “positive thinking” bullshit or the purchase of a new luxury car or twenty-five visits to Facebook that day. Such a person (despite university degrees and impressive credentials) is the one least likely to be able to think clearly and effectively during a financial crisis, since a key source of her status is under direct assault.

Of course, like anyone suffering from an addiction disorder, a status addict is responsible for his or her own choices, and is responsible for undertaking the choice to change. Denial of the problem is no excuse for the harm that’s been caused.

An addict needs help to overcome the addiction, of course — lots of responsible, mature, non-judgmental help. It takes courage to confront addiction. Courage and time and commitment. And God’s help.

It’s never too late to confront the problem of status addiction. This is what I taught 2,000 years ago. This is one of the reasons that forgiveness and healing figure so prominently in my teachings.

It’s pretty hard to overcome the suffering created by status addiction without forgiveness and healing to help keep you on the path of recovery.

Been there, done that. Can’t recommend it enough.

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Posted in Cause & Effect, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus' teachings, Materialism, psychopathy, Realspiritik, status addiction and tagged brain-soul connection | Leave a Comment

13 Sep 2011

RS7: More of a Skeptic Than James Randi

James Randi is one the of the world’s best known skeptics. He’s an experienced, talented magician who can spot a trick, gimmick, or fake at 20 paces (metaphorically speaking). He’s made it his mission to “out” all the paranormal tricksters who are stealing people’s money and trust through clever use of misdirection. I have no quarrel with him in this regard.

For several years he was offering one million dollars to anyone who could prove he/she had a paranormal ability. (He was quite confident he’d never have to pony up.) Later he changed the conditions of the “test.” He said he would only test somebody who has a media presence (I assume he means somebody like Sylvia Browne). I haven’t checked lately to see whether the prize is still being offered. I don’t know what he’d do with somebody like me.

James Randi also writes a column for Skeptic Magazine. This month he takes aim, once again, at psychic Sylvia Browne. Apparently she has a new book out (Afterlives of the Rich and Famous). I’ll take his word for it. I have little interest in anything Ms. Browne says. I own only one of her books, which is plenty enough for me to see the intent that lies behind her writings. I’m in agreement with Mr. Randi about the fatuous nature of her book material.

Mr. Randi is a trained magician, and he objects to Sylvia Browne’s writings because he’s suspicious of her motives and methods. I’m a trained mystic/channeller and I also object to Sylvia Browne’s motives and methods. But probably not for the same reasons that Mr. Randi objects.

Mr. Randi doesn’t seem to believe (if I’ve been reading him correctly) that anything atypical can occur in the Newtonian world we live in. In his view, if anything “weird” happens, there must be a simple, logical, Newtonian explanation for it. Either there’s a scientific phenomenon that hasn’t been fully explored yet, or the person who reported the “weird event” is lying or is being duped by a clever manipulator.

This makes life very neat and tidy. But not very real.

The honest truth is that we don’t live in a Newtonian world. We live in a quantum world, a quantum world we barely understand at all with our somewhat limited human thinking capacity. I say “limited” because the human brain, while complex and sophisticated and quite a marvel when it’s working well, can only go so far in grasping the nature of quarks and bosons and probability wave functions and gamma rays and dark energy and dark matter and on and on and on. I think it’s important for us to continue to develop our scientific understanding of these phenomena. At the same time, I think it’s important for us to be humble about our own abilities. It’s important for us to remember that we actually don’t know everything (though we’re often tempted to think we do). It’s important for us to remain both open-minded and open-hearted.

Each human brain and central nervous system (hereafter the brain), as Jesus and I have said before, is its own mini-universe, its own small kingdom of the soul that exists separately from but contiguous with other kingdoms-of-the-soul (i.e. other people). Within any particular human brain, the principles of quantum physics apply — including the principles of the conscious observer (in each case, the conscious observer is the person who “owns” that particular brain) plus Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. When consciousness is understood from this point of view (instead of from the Materialist point of view), it’s a lot easier for us to accept the challenges that are part and parcel of “being human.” We have a better starting place for understanding why we do the strange things we do — for the simple reason that we’re not expecting easy cookie-cutter solutions. We’re not expecting easy Newtonian instruction booklets that can guide us through the complex quantum realities of our own brains.

Psychic-medium Sylvia Browne is doing some strange things, to be sure, but I doubt very much she has the level of intentionality James Randi ascribes to her.

She has her very own kingdom of the soul — her brain — and she’s using her brain as the primary tool for her “psychic work.” Regardless of what she says about her sources of information, at the end of the day all the information she “receives” goes through the circuits of her own brain. She can’t detach herself from this scientific reality. Her brain is the processing centre, the combination of hardware and software that determines how data is perceived, analyzed, stored, and transmitted. She’s responsible for maintaining her own hardware and software. All of it. This is what it means to be the master/mistress of your own Kingdom.

It’s her own brain that decides what information she’ll pass along to other people. She’s responsible for what she decides to tell other people. It isn’t her angel’s responsibility to decide, and it isn’t God’s responsibility to decide. It’s her own responsibility. Her brain belongs entirely to her, not to some cosmic force that’s guiding her or taking over part of her brain as an “indwelling spirit.” (Believe it or not, this is a frequent claim among mystics, psychics, and prophets in all religions.) Whatever Sylvia Browne chooses to put on paper is her responsibility — not God’s — just as whatever I choose to put on paper is my responsibility. Sylvia Browne is choosing to try to write about the quantum universe without knowing a darned thing about the quantum universe. (If you’re looking for hard science in her books, you’ll be looking in vain.) I would love to see what her brain looks like on a SPECT scan while she’s talking to her spirit guide, Francine. If she’s certain of her ability, she has no cause for concern.

The International Olympic Committee requires that all athletes who win medals at an Olympic event be tested for banned drugs. I would suggest that anyone claiming to be a mystic or channeller or psychic or prophet or whatever be required to undergo rigorous medical assessment and have his or her brain scanned by an objective third-party professional. This would immediately root out the psychopaths and the seriously mentally ill, such as the woman I tried to learn from in the early years of my spiritual journey.

Grace had a personal history of mental illness, a family history of serious mental illness, and a history of being horribly abused as a child. She was a binge drinker, had a probable eating disorder (she weighed about 250 pounds when I last saw her), took antidepressants and Andriol for a mood disorder, and was easily triggered by rage. (Her own rage, that is.) She was also manipulative, cunning, and adept at “cutting and pasting” other people’s ideas into “new and divinely revealed tapestries of spiritual truth.”

Yet never once did she come up with an original insight. She couldn’t. Her brain was too damaged to do anything except copy. She could barely learn any new facts from the newspaper let alone learn new facts from her guardian angel.

She said she was a channeller. She very much wanted to be a channeller. But she couldn’t pass the very first test of ethical mysticism, which is the ability to feel empathy for others. (Schadenfreude was one of her favourite ways to brighten up the day. Even better than a few shots of vodka, thought she. And cheaper, too.)

I hope she’s been receiving the professional medical care she needs. She went through a lot of horrible things during childhood, and I hope she’s been able to find some healing and forgiveness.

God bless you, Grace.

P.S. The brain’s hardware is very sensitive to alcohol. If you meet a mystic or channeller who abuses alcohol, run for the hills. This person has damaged his or her brain and is in need of healing. Chances that he or she is a bona fide mystic are pretty close to zero. People who can’t or won’t look after their own brains are in no position to give you advice about how to look after yours (though your compassion for their suffering is always important.) Spiritual connection with God depends on the brain. Look after your brain and you’ll be surprised at how much inner common sense you actually have!

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Posted in ethical mysticism, Kingdom teachings, Materialism, mysticism, quantum theory, Realspiritik and tagged brain-soul connection, Kingdom teachings, religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

13 Jul 2011

JR57: Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me

A: When I came home from work on Monday, Oprah was rerunning an episode about two twin daughters who had been being sexually assaulted and raped by their father and two brothers until a neighbour called authorities. Towards the end of the episode, Oprah offered the definition of forgiveness that she’s found most helpful. It was something to this effect: “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different.” How do you respond to that?

J: Well, I find this definition demeaning and discouraging. Forgiveness is not about “giving up hope.” Forgiveness is about finding hope.

A: Maybe the person who coined this definition was using the word “hope” in a different way than you and I use it.

J: Hope is one of those slippery, hard-to-define spiritual terms. About as easy to explain as forgiveness. And about as complicated. Basically, though, angels use the word hope as a synonym for “trust in God.” It’s a powerfully positive, uplifting emotion. It’s an emotion that expresses an element of uncertainty. Perhaps I could rephrase that. Hope — trust in God — is an experience of emotional continuity in the face of apparent discontinuity in the Materialist laws of Cause and Effect. In other words, you still believe in God’s goodness even when you can’t see an obvious link between actions and the results of those actions.

A: A leap of faith, in other words.

“Jesus said: From Adam to John the Baptizer, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John the Baptizer, so that his eyes should be averted. But I have said that whoever among you becomes a child will know the kingdom and will become greater than John” (Gospel of Thomas 46 a-b). Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: Yes, but not a blind leap of faith. Trust, surprising as it may seem, requires an element of brutal honesty. Brutal honesty about oneself. Trust requires you to know your own limits, your own abilities right down to a “t.” This knowledge allows you to recognize situations where you’ve reached the limits of your own abilities and experience. At this point, you switch over to your knowledge about other people’s abilities and experience. You switch over the decision-making process to somebody who has more knowledge about the topic at hand than you have. You hand over the reins, as it were. Angels do this without an instant of shame or jealousy or regret. They simply accept their limits and gratefully hand over the reins to other angels. This is what humbleness feels like. Not false humility, as the Church teaches it, but divine humbleness.

A: You’re making my head hurt with all these different terms — forgiveness, hope, trust, humbleness.

J: These are all complex divine emotions. Not the same as each other, but interwoven with each other. Holistically. Hopefully, people will like the idea that God the Mother and God the Father are capable of experiencing and expressing the most complex emotions of all.

A: This switching-over thing you’re talking about . . . is this related to the research you’ve been helping me collect about the “gears” in the biological human brain that are supposed to help people switch smoothly from one idea or emotion to another?

J: You mean parts of the human brain such as the anterior cingulate gyrus?

A: Yes. And related “switching centres.”

J: Definitely. Angels don’t have an anterior cingulate gyrus, but souls-in-human-form do. Angels who incarnate as human beings need a biological “toolkit,” and a number of tools in that toolkit relate to the human brain and central nervous system. When those tools aren’t used the way they should be — when, for example, a “hammer” is used when a “screwdriver” is called for, or when the blunt end of the adjustable wrench is used instead of the adjustable claws at the other end, you can’t expect the result to be pretty. The human brain is designed with an entire set of “ball bearings” and “lubricants” to prevent the various gears of the brain from grinding against each other and causing excessive wear. Unfortunately, in many young human beings, the ball bearings and lubricants are the first thing to go. After that, you see the onset of DSM-IV psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, problems with impulse control, problems with anger control, possibly even psychopathy.

A: All because their switching mechanisms aren’t working properly?

J: The human brain is an incredibly complex set of tools and machinery. It uses many different types of switching mechanisms to help it balance incoming data and outgoing choices — outgoing thoughts, feelings, and actions. The operative word here, of course, is balance. The brain has to be able to identify, remember, understand, and fix many different sorts of problems. It has to switch constantly between different spheres of reality, between logical thought and positive emotions and practical actions, between the needs of the self and the needs of the other, between active learning and quiet processing, between past, present, and future. Believe me, human beings need every scrap of brain tissue they can muster for this job of Whole Brain Thinking.

A: So when the switching mechanisms aren’t working properly, people get “stuck.” They get stuck in one or two spheres. For example, a person who gets stuck in the past.

J: Yes. Or a person who gets stuck in logical thought. These are the people who lack empathy, who lack compassion for others. They make all their choices based on logic alone. The Church has had an overflowing cup of bishops who were incapable of feeling empathy.

A: I’ve also known some people — mostly women — who seem stuck in their emotional circuitry and can’t make a decision that’s tough. They don’t forgive other people so much as put blinders on. They try to sweep great harms under the carpet so they don’t have to deal with the fallout of taking a firm stance.

J: Forgiveness is very much about taking a firm stance. The first step in forgiving somebody — whether it’s yourself or someone else — is honesty. There must be an honest assessment of harm. This means you have to take a stance on the question of right and wrong. For the soul — for all souls in Creation, including God the Mother and God the Father — some choices are clearly right and other choices are clearly wrong. The soul knows the difference. The soul feels confident and clear when right choices are made. The soul feels abused when wrong choices are made. This is what many people call . . . conscience.

A: There’s been a trend among some New Age gurus and some Progressive Christians to claim there are no moral absolutes. Hence there is no need for forgiveness. According to these thinkers, all choices are equally acceptable to God because each person is really just a spark of God trying to express itself. Neale Donald Walsch has built a lucrative empire on this idea.

J: Only a person who doesn’t want to face his own life choices would find this theory acceptable.

A: It does leave a lot of wiggle room for people who want to excuse their own behaviour . . .

J: Forgiveness is a clear and conscious decision to call forth and believe in the best that a person can be and the best a person can do. Forgiveness is a refusal to accept excuses. At the same time, it’s a gift of love that has no strings attached. Divine love goes beyond anything a Materialist philosophy of Cause and Effect can imagine. Divine love is an up-front gift, a conscious decision to offer the recipient (whether the self or an another person) a vote of confidence in his or her best self. It’s a leap of faith. It’s a boost-up. A helping hand. A sense of purpose for a person to hang onto. It does not require you to prove yourself before you get the gift of love. If you had to prove yourself first, one proof at a time, as many theologians have taught, you’d be looking at the vertical path of spiritual ascent — anagogic mysticism. Anagogic mysticism is a form of Materialist belief. God the Mother and God the Father are not required to obey Materialist philosophy. They love us because they choose to love us, not because they “owe” us anything for our “obedience” and “piety.” They believe in us, their children, so much that we simply cannot and will not let them down. They inspire us to be our best selves. But they don’t force us to be our best selves — we, as angels, choose to be our best selves. It’s as natural as breathing for all angels.

A: Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth.

J: Yes. Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth. There are no exceptions among God’s children. All angels are filled with trust and devotion and gratitude and courage BECAUSE God the Mother and God the Father believe in our best selves. They have faith in us.

A: So in the case of a father who has raped his own daughters, how would God look at that?

J: God the Mother and God the Father would recognize instantly the selfish, uncourageous intent of the father. They would identify the problem — the father’s dysfunctional brain circuitry — and they would remember this as they worked to help him and those around him recognize the great harm he’s been choosing to create. They would not condone or accept this behaviour as acceptable. They would identify the behaviour as “wrong.” Nonetheless, they would blanket him in divine love. They would whisper to his soul, “We believe in you. We know this isn’t the best you can be. We know you can make loving choices. We won’t abandon you. We’ll stick right with you and show you why your choices have been wrong. You won’t understand at first, and you’re going to be angry and confused and resentful for a while, but that’s okay, because we know that more than anything in the world you want to be able to give love. We believe in you.”

A: And then God sends you through the human court system that’ll cart you off to jail for “X” number of years.

J: Somehow you have to get it through your thick human skull that you made an abusive choice that was very, very wrong. You have to accept that you made a mistake, you have to accept that you can learn from your own mistakes, and you have to accept that you can be a better person who makes right choices. If you receive the right kind of help.

A: Locking up a person and throwing away the key isn’t the right kind of help.

J: Nor is revenge the right kind of help. Usually it takes a whole team to provide the right kind of help to a man who has raped his own daughters. A whole team of well trained professionals. Of course, if the professionals themselves don’t believe in the soul or the power of forgiveness or the mystery of God’s divine love, they’re ill-equipped to provide the kind of mentorship the abuser needs if he’s to have any chance of living up to his best self.

A: In which case the abuser isn’t likely to be healed.

J: Healing follows insight for both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime. Forgiveness, as we’ve said, is a catalyst that speeds and facilitates the healing process. Healing is the path towards Wholeness. Not the path towards Oneness but the path towards Wholeness. Wholeness is the place — the Kingdom, the experience of self — where you know yourself and all your limits and all your strengths and all your quirks and you can be humbly proud of yourself anyway because you’re being the best person you can be.

A: Young children are like this. They have the ability to throw themselves into new relationships and new experiences to the best of their ability without any concern for status or “face.”

J: Yup. That’s what I meant when I said that to enter the Kingdom you must become again like a little child. Humble and guileless, yet full of infectious enthusiasm and intelligence. Many three-year-olds are smarter than the adults around them because they haven’t yet forgotten how to learn.

A: And they still know how to forgive. Young children are born with an amazing ability to forgive.

J: I rest my case.

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Posted in anagogic mysticism, brain-soul connection, Cause & Effect, conscience & morality, Divine Love, forgiveness, healing, honesty, humbleness, insight, Jesus Redux, Materialism, mental illness, mentorship, Soul, trust, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

20 Apr 2011

JR34: Chaining God to the Rock

A: I’d like to return to an idea that was endorsed in Karen Armstrong’s book (The Spiral Staircase), the idea that “when speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do (page 292). I find this idea self-serving and smug. I also find it very demeaning. In fact, I find most religious ideas about God to be self-serving, smug, and demeaning. Demeaning to human beings and demeaning to God. Since this is Holy Week, it seems like a good time to talk to you about your thoughts on the reality of God and what this reality can mean for our lives.

“Jesus said: If they ask you, ‘Where are you from?’ reply to them, ‘We have come from the place where light is produced from itself. It came and revealed itself in their image.’ If they ask you, ‘Are you it?’ reply to them, ‘We are his children. We are the first fruits of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign within you of your Father?’ reply to them, ‘It is movement. It is rest.’ (Gospel of Thomas 50 a-c).” Photo credit JAT 2021.

J: I see you’re still upset about the way people are talking about God.

A: I’m upset about the fact that theologians and mystics are not being honest with themselves and with others. I’m upset about their “closed-shop” attitude. I’m upset about their tiny, closed, pessimistic view of God and Creation. I’m upset about their narcissistic refusal to open wide the doors of theological inquiry. I’m upset about the pettiness. I’m upset about the way religion teaches — or actually doesn’t teach — people to be in relationship with God. I’m especially upset about the religious rituals that get in the way of the relationships.

J: The crucial problem here is worship.

A: Worship?

J: People of faith all over the world are trying to be in relationship with God. Their souls long to know God, to feel the Presence of God in their daily lives. They long for the comfort, the solace of that love. But among those millions of people, how many of them do you think have actually felt that Presence?

A: Not many. You can tell by the look in a person’s eye when you put the words “trust” and “God” in the same sentence. People of faith are disillusioned and very, very hurt.

J: There are three great obstacles to the experience of relationship with God in the daily life of regular human beings. The first obstacle we’ve talked about a fair bit — the role of status addiction in creating suffering and abuse in the lives of humans and other creatures on Planet Earth. Status addiction is deeply imbedded in all major world religions, even the non-theistic ones. Status addiction in a religious setting becomes a self-reinforcing cycle that ruins lives.* The toxic effects of status addiction have not yet been recognized. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the Vatican could continue to uphold its teachings on sin, separation from God, sacraments, and salvation in the absence of status addiction. Status addiction is one of the three main glues that hold together the Vatican house of cards.

A: Being named Pope is quite the status symbol. Right now the History Channel is showing “The Borgias,” the mini-series about the corrupt family that owned the Papacy at the turn of the 16th century.

J: The second of the three glues holding orthodoxy together is a tenacious belief in the Law of Cause and Effect — the Materialist philosophy you and I have been discussing. What’s astonishing about this belief system is its arrogance. It’s completely oriented towards the supremacy of human beings. The term “anthropocentric” hardly begins to capture it. The Law of Cause and Effect, whatever its particular religious manifestation, teaches people that the Law is more important, more effective, and more divine than God. They say the Law is merely a manifestation of God’s wishes, but what they really mean is that God is utterly bound by all the provisions of the contract law — sort of like Prometheus chained to the rock. This is the source of human religious authority, the foundation on which they claim all their status, power, money, fame, and sexual gratification. This is also the source of human psychological authority — the need to assuage one’s own suffering by claiming there really isn’t a personal God who intervenes in people’s lives. The need for narcissists to obtain psychological authority has never been adequately examined or addressed in the church. The last thing a status-addicted narcissist wants to hear about is a personal God who isn’t chained at a safe distance and who can generate consequences for the narcissist’s smug self-idolization. Today.

A: Okay. What’s the third glue of orthodoxy?

J: The third is worship. I’m defining worship as any spiritual practice that centres around the goal of escape.

A: I’ve never heard that definition of worship before. I tend to think of “liturgy” and “worship” as being more or less the same thing. You go to “worship” on Sundays, and the exact form of this worship is the liturgy — the specific prayers and hymns and sermon content for that particular day.

J: There’s the source of the confusion right there. There’s nothing wrong with liturgy. There’s nothing wrong at all with the idea of people getting together once a week to say some prayers and sing some hymns and hear an uplifting, encouraging, inspiring sermon and maybe even sit together in safe, companionable silence. It’s a healthy practice, one I totally endorse. The idea of setting aside one day per week — the Sabbath — for mutual uplifting and compassionate spiritual reflection is crucial to the health of all human beings. There are lots of different ways to express your love and trust in God on the Sabbath. You can go to church or synagogue. You can visit someone who’s sick in hospital. You and a friend can go outside with a garbage bag and clean up your local parks and streets. You can have a family games afternoon — playing old fashioned board games like Monopoly or Scrabble. The single uniting factor in all these expressions of spirituality is relationship. You’re building positive relationships. You’re connecting to other people and to Nature. In creating these connections, you’re also creating a stronger connection with God the Mother and God the Father. You’re saying “yes” to life, love, service, and laughter. The last thing you’re trying to do is escape.

A: You’re trying to fully engage with life.

J: Yes. I taught engagement, not escape. This is why you see me in the Gospel of Mark as a man who doesn’t retreat into the wilderness, who rarely prays, who never worships in the Jerusalem Temple, and has no use for righteousness in the Law.

A: Yet Mark shows you living a life filled with faith, forgiveness, healing, and redemption. A life filled with relationships. Messy, complicated, frustrating relationships. But that’s what it means to be human, eh?

J: Worship and liturgy are two completely different things. Worship and faith are two completely different things. Worship is the “work” of pious people. Worship is the set of actions they undertake to achieve their long-term goal of escape. Orthodox Western Christians call this escape “salvation.” Buddhists call this escape “nirvana.” Atheists call this escape “saving lives.” At the core of these belief systems lies the intersection of status addiction, Materialism, and worship — the complete abandonment of God by human beings. I want to make it clear that I don’t mean God is doing the abandoning. I mean that human beings are doing the abandoning. I mean that every time a pious Christian devotes an hour or more each day to intercessory prayer, he or she is abandoning God. The more time a person spends in worshipful prayer each day, the farther he or she is getting from God. God doesn’t need your prayers or anyone else’s prayers in order to act. God is not bound by bizarre religious claims about Cause and Effect. God the Mother and God the Father have free will. They’re not chained to the rock. This means that you, as a human being, aren’t that important prayer-wise in the grand cosmological scheme of things. Contrary to the claims of many religious leaders, the sky will not fall down if the “chosen” nuns, monks, and mystics stop praying the Divine Office each day. (The theory here is that God needs to hear the recitation of the Mass and the Divine Office every day to help empower God in his great battle against the Devil to save human souls). Prayers of worship tell the God you’re trying to connect with that you don’t trust God. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot over and over again and then demanding to know why you’re lame.

A: Our prayers of worship may not be needed, but I know one thing for sure — our ability to love and forgive is sure needed.

J (nodding and smiling): God the Mother and God the Father don’t need or want our prayers of worship. AT ALL. On the other hand, they very much need our love. They want and need to be in relationship with us. We’re their children, and they’re just heartbroken, to be honest, when their own beloved children turn away from their divine family — their divine parents and their divine brothers and sisters. It’s very painful for God when human beings choose logic over love, mind over heart, and law over miracles and forgiveness. Some logic is needed, some mind is needed, and some law is needed. This should go without saying. But there has to be balance. And there has to be trust — trust in a loving, forgiving, amazingly brilliant but very humble God. This is what I was trying to teach.

A: It’s what I feel every day — a comforting sense of God’s loving presence, a comforting sense that I’m never alone. I get confused and upset about daily events like everyone else, but I know that at the end of each day God will be there to help me figure it out. I also know that when I screw up, God will help me recognize my mistakes, just as you’d expect mature, loving parents to do. They forgive me when I make a mistake, and they don’t hold any grudges. Their forgiveness helps me find the courage to learn from my mistakes, correct my mistakes, and move forward. Their forgiveness means I’m not caught in that horrible hamster wheel of shame, blame, regret, revenge, and self-loathing that I remember all too well from my earlier years. Their forgiveness has freed me to live.

J: Who needs escape on a future day when the miracle of forgiveness can free you today?

*For an introductory discussion of the role of status addiction in the orthodox Western Church see The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction and Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher.

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Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", Buddhism, Cause & Effect, Church of today, forgiveness, free will, Gospel of Mark, Jesus Redux, Law (Nomos), life and death, Materialism, prayer, relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, trust and tagged ethical mysticism, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

13 Apr 2011

JR32: The Buddha Question

“His disciples asked him: Is circumcision useful or not? He said to them: If it were useful, children’s fathers would produce them already circumcised from their mothers. On the other hand, the true circumcision of spirit is entirely valuable” (Gospel of Thomas 53 a-b). Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

A: There’s been a trend in the past few decades to try to equate your teachings with the teachings of the Buddha, to try to show that Jesus and Buddha were teaching the same universal truths. This trend seems particularly true of those who are interested in placing you among the apophatic mystics of Christian history — mystics such as Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, the Cloud of Unknowing, and John of the Cross. Thomas Merton, a well-known Roman Catholic Trappist contemplative, was very interested in establishing a dialogue with Buddhist monks. What are your thoughts on the universality of faith and spiritual practice?

J (sighing): You’ve asked a very, very difficult question. There’s no easy answer, but I’ll try to express some of my thoughts. A book such as Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Berkley-Riverhead, 1995) is so beautiful and so kind and so sincere that I want to say I agree with everything he says. But I don’t. I can’t. I can’t agree with the underlying premises, the underlying doctrines of Buddhist belief. On the other hand — and this is where it gets very messy, very complicated — I agree with a lot of the spiritual practices that Thich Nhat Hanh describes. I agree very much with the path of mindfulness and compassion. I agree with the desire to create communities of peace. I agree with the decision to take action to create positive change. These are aspects of faith that are, indeed, universal. I don’t think anyone would disagree. No matter what religious tradition a person belongs to, the truest expression of faith — the truest expression of humanity — has always been a life lived with mindfulness, compassion, peace, and transformative change. This is true for Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other religions, as well. At any time and in any place there have been some Buddhists and some Jews and some Muslims and some Christians who’ve chosen, as individuals, to pursue the path of true faith. These are the people who’ve consciously tried to help heal communities, families, and individuals. They chose this path because they thought it was the right thing to do.

A: You’re placing the emphasis on individual choice rather than on formal religious beliefs or doctrines.

J: I’m drawing a very clear line here between religion and faith. Religion, as it’s practised in major world religions today, including various schools of Buddhism and various schools of Christiantiy, is one of the biggest obstacles to faith. Faith — by that I mean a relationship with God based on courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion — is supposed to be an everyday part of life. An everyday experience. An everyday sense of belonging. A sense of belonging to Creation, belonging to God’s family. It’s the opposite of abandonment or estrangement from God. Faith is quiet acceptance. It’s compassion. It’s empathy. It’s balance. It’s wholeness. It’s pure humbleness and contentment.

A: Religion doesn’t teach this.

J: No. Religion gets in the way of this. It doesn’t have to. In fact, the world would be a healthier place if people could meet each week on the Sabbath to express their faith and share their spiritual experiences together in a safe spiritual environment. This would be church at its best. Unfortunately, this isn’t what church has become in the Western world. Church has become a place to centralize the authority of narcissistic, fear-mongering men and women. Church has become a place to take people farther away from God, not closer.

A: If you were incarnated as a human being today, would you turn to Buddhism for answers to the questions that Pauline Christianity doesn’t answer very well?

J (sadly shaking his head): No. As I said earlier, Buddhism has some important things to say about spiritual practice — about living the teachings of compassion and mindfulness each day, rather than just speaking of them. There’s more insistence in Buddhism on outward actions matching inward intent. And this is important. It’s integrity, after all. Integrity is what you get when your inner choices match your outer actions. It’s the opposite of hypocrisy. Integrity is an important part of peaceful community. I respect this underlying impulse in Buddhist thought.

A: Yet, based on what you’ve already said, you believe this underlying impulse towards daily practice and integrity is not specifically Buddhist. It’s a universal part of true faith.

J: Yes. All human beings are born with this capacity. Unfortunately, like all aspects of human growth and learning, the capacity for mindful, compassionate practice can be lost. “Use it or lose it” — that’s how the human brain and central nervous system work. All human beings are born with the innate capacity to love and forgive, as well, but as experience shows, many individuals lose both. They lose both their ability to love and their ability to forgive. These are the bullies, the psychopaths, and the narcissists. The same people who’ve been in charge of formal religious instruction in most parts of the world.

A: I get that part. But why do you feel uncomfortable with the trend towards having your teachings conflated with Buddha’s teachings?

J: It’s the cosmology. It’s the core assumptions. I don’t agree with either. How could I? I mean, it would be ludicrous for an angel speaking from the Other Side in partnership with a human mystic to claim there is no God. Buddhism, after all, is a non-theistic religion. In Buddhism, there’s a belief in an ultimate reality, but this reality isn’t a person in the way that you and I talk about God the Mother and God the Father as actual identifiable people — unique, distinct, and both very, very big. Buddhism also rejects the idea of an immortal soul, a distinct consciousness that continues to exist after the death of the physical body. And this is before we get to Buddhist teachings about karma and the nature of suffering, impermanence, rebirth, and enlightenment.

A: What are your thoughts on karma?

J: It’s a form of Materialist philosophy — a profound reliance on the idea that universal laws of cause and effect exist, laws that must be followed and can’t be broken. I reject pure Materialism as a model for explaining and understanding the complex interactions of all life in Creation. It leaves no room for God’s free will. It leaves no room for the profound mysteries of forgiveness, redemption, and humbleness (as opposed to humility). It’s also incredibly depressing when you think about it.

A: The idea that the universe is holding you accountable for choices you can’t even remember from previous “lives” — or previous manifestations.

J: Yes. The idea of blaming the poor and the sick and the downtrodden for their own misfortunes when it’s usually a group’s own leaders who have made the sick sick and the downtrodden downtrodden.

A: How do you feel about the question of rebirth? A number of different religions teach a form of reincarnation. Is there any place for this concept in your understanding of God, soul, and faith?

J: Well, souls can and do incarnate into 3D bodies all the time. But not for the reasons that the Buddha taught. Souls don’t incarnate because they “have to.” Of course, as soon as I start talking about souls, it’s clear I’m talking “apples” and the Buddha is talking “oranges.” Souls do exist, and rebirth, when it happens, is not a form of karmic consequence to be escaped at all costs. Most souls who choose to incarnate as human beings on Planet Earth find that a single human lifetime is enough for their unique purposes of learning, growth, and change. However, a small percentage of human beings have already “been there, done that.” They come back a second time because they want to help guide others on a journey that’s often difficult.

A: Mahayana Buddhism teaches that certain enlightened beings choose to “postpone” their reward so they can help others achieve enlightenment. They call these beings “bodhisattvas.” I’ve met a few people in my lifetime who felt somehow more grounded, more connected to the simplicity of spiritual truth, and I’ve called these individuals bodhisattvas.

J: Not unreasonable.

A: I think I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here. I’m going to tell our readers something I’ve known about you for a long time — you were a bodhisattva. A second-time-arounder. A man who messed up big-time during your first lifetime as a human being, and volunteered to go back in as a spiritual teacher and healer. Not because you had to but because you wanted to. For you, second time round was the charm.

J: It’s not something you realize at the time. You can’t even remember anything from your first life as a human being. There’s just a deepening of the connection, I guess you could say. An ability to stay more grounded, more aware of the patterns. It’s not something you can put your finger on, exactly. The sensation is probably best captured by the old maxim, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” A person who has lived once before as a human being is harder to fool with propaganda, spin doctoring, and religious sleight of hand. That’s why they make good mentors.

A: Can you give another example of a well-known person who was a bodhisattva?

J: Glenn Gould, the Canadian musician, was a bodhisattva.

A: No wonder he played so beautifully.

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, Buddhism, Cause & Effect, Church of today, faith, free will, Jesus Redux, karma, Materialism, Mother and Father God, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices and tagged historical Jesus, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

25 Mar 2011

JR27: Paul’s "Temple" versus Jesus’ "Kingdom"

“Jesus said: I stood in the midst of the world. I came to them in the flesh. I found all of them drunk. I found not one of them to be thirsty. My soul was saddened by the sons of men for they were mentally blind. They do not see that they have come into the world empty and they will go out of the world empty. But now they are drunk. When they sober up they will repent” (Gospel of Thomas 28). Photo of Komombo Temple, dedicated to Sobek and Horus, Aswan, Egypt. Author Dennis Jarvis. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

J: Today I’d like to talk about the starting place for understanding the many differences between what I taught and what Paul taught.

A: Sounds good to me.

J: I’ve mentioned before that Paul and I had different motivations, different purposes behind our respective religious movements. One of the few things we had in common was a strong sense of conviction. Paul believed in his cause, and was willing to argue for it. I believed in my cause, and was willing to argue for it. We both had strong opinions. We just didn’t have the same opinions.

A: Part of Paul’s cause involved arguing against your cause.

J: Definitely. Paul rejected — even feared — my teachings on the nature of the Kingdom. He was sure my Kingdom teachings would lead to anarchy. Widespread civil and social disobedience. His fears were shared by others.

A: Why was he so afraid?

J: Well, Paul, like so many others then and now, had allowed his brain to become focussed — riveted — on the perfection of Divine Law. Of course, he thought it was Divine Law he was giving all his time, energy, and devotion to, but really it was human law, human authority. He didn’t see it this way, though. He convinced himself that he was doing the right thing in aggressively attacking me because he was protecting Divine Law. He believed that Divine Law justified — gave sanction to — his actions.

A: Where have I heard that before?

J: Rigid, perfectionistic thinking is a symptom of imbalance and dysfunction in the wiring of the biological brain. It’s common in bullies throughout the world.

A: Paul spends a lot of time in his letters telling the people of his churches that they don’t need to follow Jewish laws on food and circumcision. If he believed so much in the law, why was he dissing it? It doesn’t make sense.

J: It makes perfect sense if you understand that Paul wasn’t trying to protect the “praxis” laws of regular Jewish people — laws about “petty little daily practices,” as he saw them. To him these minor practices were nothing, they were of no consequence. He wasn’t interested in the small stuff, the things that matter to regular people on a day to day basis. He was after the big stuff. The End Point. The Omega. The be all and end all. He was after the Power.

A: What power?

J: The power that he and many others close to him believed was woven into the fabric of Creation. The power to command the universal Law of Cause and Effect.

A: That sounds seriously creepy. And not even very Jewish.

J: Well, as we’ve talked about, there were different schools of religious and philosophical thought that used the sacred Hebrew texts, and these schools fought fiercely among themselves. In the 1st century CE, there was no agreement on what it meant to be a pious Jew, just as today there’s no agreement on what it means to be a pious Christian. Most people forget that there was a civil war among Jews in Judea in the 60’s CE. Sure, the Romans came in eventually and torched everything in Jerusalem. But before the Romans sent in their troops, the Jews were doing a fine hatchet job on themselves. This mood of dissension among Jews was already brewing when I was teaching and healing in Galilee. It’s part of the reason I left my home in Philadelphia (modern day Amman) and went to Galilee. There was a measure of religious sanity that still existed there.

A: The Bible claims that Paul was a Pharisee.

J: In Philippians Chapter 3, Paul is very clever about the claims he makes for himself. He says that according to Jewish laws of bloodline, he’s a member of the tribe of Benjamin. Big deal. Lots of people could make that claim. He says that according to prevailing Jewish customs around religious authority, he’s a Pharisee — a sort of rabbi/lawyer/teacher who deserves to be treated with respect for his religious knowledge. Then comes the clincher: he says that according to “zeal” (zelos in Greek) he was an early persecutor of the church and according to “righteousness” he was blameless in his actions against the church. When Paul talks about “zeal” and “righteousness,” he isn’t talking about “beliefs” or “opinions.” He isn’t saying he was just really enthusiastic or really committed. He’s saying he had “the zeal” inside of him. He’s saying he had a piece of Divine Law inside of him, a spark of God inside of him that was guiding him, commanding his thoughts and actions. He’s saying he was a “vessel of humility” into which God had poured the divine substance called “zeal.” Zeal is a kind of love, therefore — a love for the Law. Devotion to the Law. Obedience to the Law. Adoration, even, of the Law. It sees the Law as a quasi-divine being. Sort of an embodiment of the Divine desire for orderliness in Creation. More than just a philosophical structure. An animated, conscious entity, if you will. Wisdom — Sophia — was also envisioned in this way as a semi-divine female being.

A: Plato talked about the Laws in this kind of weird anthropomorphic way.

J: Yes. And so did the Essenes. The Essenes were very much a fringe cult within Judaism. They had the most highly developed mystical rituals, the most “out there” beliefs about God and Creation and occult magic. They were also highly devout, highly wealthy, and highly powerful. They were a scary bunch. And Paul was greatly influenced by Essene teachings about God, the Spirit, the indwelling Temple, and occult ritual.

A: Would you say that Paul was an Essene? An accepted member of the yahad?

J: No. He wasn’t teaching pure Essene thought. But he was influenced by their thought. He also had strong links to another important school of thought that’s harder to track.* He blended ideas from Essene thought and Hellenistic thought to create his “new and improved” version of the Law of Cause and Effect. By the time he began his “mission to the Gentiles,” he was no longer interested in mainstream Judaism, with its focus on Mosaic Law. He’d “moved up” on the spiritual ladder of ascent, on that ever so narrow and hard-to-find ladder of spiritual hierarchy. He’d found an enticing and intoxicating blend of occult magic and hidden knowledge — the kind of hidden knowledge reserved only for a few select apostles. He was drunk on the idea that this new knowledge would lead him to power — power over evil entities.

A: What evil entities?

J: The corrupted versions of Law and Wisdom and Life — their “evil twins.”

A: Their evil twins? This is sounding like some of the “contemporary horror” dramas that are so incredibly popular in books and movies and TV shows these days.

J: Same old, same old. It’s just a dysfunctional, distorted version of the Law of Cause and Effect when taken to occult extremes. It goes like this: “Well, if there’s a Perfect Law, a semi-divine being who brings only virtue and righteousness to people of virtue, then, logically speaking, there must be an evil twin of Perfect Law — a powerful semi-divine being who sows vice and corruption in the world.” It’s a nice, neat, simple mathematical formula to explain why evil exists. Sons of Light versus Sons of Darkness, as the Essenes clearly formulated it. What could be easier to understand?

A: It’s so easy to see what you’re saying by looking at Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Romans is filled with paranoid, dualistic, judgmental thinking. Paul tells people in gory detail how they can fight the evils of Law, Sin, and Death, and overcome these evil cosmic forces through the power of Christ’s name.

J: Yes. For Paul, Mosaic Law had become the evil twin of the pure Essene Temple Law. Sin was the evil twin of Wisdom (implying by analogy to Wisdom’s femaleness that Sin was also female). And Death was the evil twin of Life. Paul called this evil trinity Law, Sin, and Death.

A: On my God. That makes a ridiculous amount of sense. It explains how Paul could go around telling people they wouldn’t die if they believed in Christ — a promise that soon proved to be a lie, because some of Paul’s followers had already died, and he had to answer for it in his letters.

J: It’s popular these days for theologians to make excuses for this kind of apocalyptic promise, excuses based on the naive assumption that people in the 1st century CE “just didn’t know any better” and “can’t be blamed for believing in salvation from death.” This, I’m sad to say, is hogwash. No balanced, mentally healthy individual is going to accept the idea that human beings can escape physical death and continue to live for centuries on Planet Earth the way their mystical forebears supposedly had (e.g. Methuselah). It’s just goofy. It’s what Paul promised his followers in the beginning of his mission, but it’s goofy. In his Letter to the Romans, he has to go through huge theological contortions to try to salvage people’s belief in him. It’s a pretty sad way to go, if you think about it.

A: Promises, promises.

J: You know what works best in the Gospel of Mark? The fact that there are no “Cause and Effect” promises. Everything’s messy. Everything’s unpredictable. Shit happens, but so what? It can’t take away your courage or your faith or your trust in God or your desire to help other people. Even shit can be turned into very useful fertilizer.

A: So your Kingdom is about turning shit into fertilizer, and Paul’s Temple is about the quest to stop shitting at all?

J: And you say I have a way with words.

* For more on Paul’s true motives and affiliations, please see “The Peace Sequence” (Jesus Redux 38).

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Posted in Cause & Effect, Essenes, Favourite Posts, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), Materialism, occult themes, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, Plato, spiritual ascent and tagged Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

23 Mar 2011

JR26: Materialism, Pauline Thought, and the Kingdom

A:* For the last couple of days, ever since you introduced the idea that Pauline Christianity has always been in some ways a Materialist religion, my head has been spinning, and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what you mean. I can feel that it’s right in the part of my self that’s intuitive, but the rest of my head hasn’t caught up to my intuition yet. So can we take it from the top?

J:* No problem.

A: How ’bout we start with some definitions? And by the way, I’d just like to comment once again on the fact that you’re a true philosophy geek, you know that? Your face lights up like a Christmas tree every time you get to talk about a juicy philosophical dilemma. I can sure see how you ended up being a radical theologian in your time.

J: I was a much more successful philosopher than I was a carpenter. Honest to God, although I had to work as a tradesman to pay for my room and board, I’m pretty sure some of my handiwork could have ended up on “Galilean DIY Disaster.”

A: Measure once, cut twice?

J: I’m not a natural when it comes to tools. I think like a designer, not like an engineer. I would flunk out of civil engineering, I’m sure of it. But redesigning the layout of a home so it supports a person’s soul needs — that I can do.

A: My father, the retired engineer and all-round handyman, would think you’re a wuss. But you’re so much like most of the other male physicians I know — great with healing, great with academic study, not so good with the toolkit. (For the record, my ex is a physician, and we socialized with other people who were in medicine. So I know — or rather, knew — a lot of the male physicians around here.) Anyway, back to the philosophizing.

J: Okay. Well, the philosophy of Materialism is based on the theory that matter — by that I mean baryonic matter — is the only thing that exists. It’s a WYSIWYG understanding of reality — what you see is what you get. What you see is atoms and molecules and measurable substances and Newtonian laws. Therefore, according to this theory, all things in Nature — including mind, thought, consciousness, even love — can be explained solely by looking at the small little parts that make up the whole. It’s the idea that macroscopic reality — the daily reality that human beings live and work and breathe in — is just a bigger version of the microscopic reality of atoms and molecules and gravitational forces, etc. Of course, as researchers in various scientific disciplines now know, there are huge gaps between the “macro” theories and the “micro” theories. At the subatomic or quantum level, the universe is a weird, weird place. At the other end of the scale — the cosmological or grand universal scale — the universe is also a weird, weird place. Only at the immediate level of reality, if I can call it that — the level where human beings happen to live a fairly safe and predictable Newtonian kind of life — only here is a Materialist philosophy even remotely justified.

A: How does Materialism understand God?

J: A person who embraces Materialist belief in the natural laws of “cause and effect” may or may not believe in the existence of God. Many, if not most, Materialists are atheists. Atheists, of course, believe that existence can be explained entirely on the basis of scientific research. No God is required. However, it’s entirely possible to be a religious Materialist, a Materialist who believes in God. Deism is a good example of this.

A: Deism is a belief system that says there’s a God, one God who created the universe, but that this God later stepped away from his Creation and doesn’t participate in an active way in our lives or our suffering. God is the Great Clockmaker who made a perfect timepiece and now lets it run without interference. However, there’s still an acceptance of the idea that God will reward virtue and punish vice in the afterlife. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were all Deists . . . Tell me again why Deism isn’t the same as Pauline Christianity and Platonism?

J: It is Pauline/Platonic Christianity. Deism is what you get when you strip away later church doctrines about ritual and sacraments and prayer to saints (intercession) and belief in Marianism and belief in holy relics and belief in holy Crusade and belief in papal infallibility. Deism is Pauline thought in its purest form — a belief in the inviolability and perfection of Divine Law. Divine Law that governs “cause and effect” in the material world.

A: But Paul goes on and on in Romans about the inherent peril of “the law,” how knowledge of the law led him into sin.

J: Paul isn’t attacking all Law. He’s attacking the laws he no longer agrees with. Paul spends all his time in his letters talking about the “new and improved” Law — the Law that he himself is teaching. The New Covenant. It’s easy to forget that Covenant is Law — nomos in the Greek. Nomos was a complex idea that included both human authority and divine authority. When Paul talks about the “new covenant,” he’s talking about a new version of Divine Law. A new version of the Law of Cause and Effect. “If you do this (believe in Christ), then according to the inviolable Law of Creation, you must receive this (salvation plus a reserved parking spot in Heaven).” It’s a reductionist philosophy. Just as Materialism is a reductionist philosophy. Everything is reduced to a simple “cause and effect” formula.

“They asked him: When is the Kingdom coming?He replied: It is not coming in an easily observable manner. People will not be saying,’Look, it’s over here’ or ‘Look, it’s over there.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is already spread out on the earth, and people aren’t aware of it” (Gospel of Thomas 113). Each autumn, this walnut tree yields its harvest to those among God’s creatures who need it most. They receive these gifts without any reliance on human prayers or covenants. There’s wonderful freedom in trusting God to do what God does best when you don’t take on the burden of believing you’re somehow responsible for maintaining the laws of Creation. Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Just as Wisdom teachings in the Ancient Near East were a “cause and effect” formula: if you obey the instructions on the “virtue lists” and disavow the behaviours on the “vice lists,” God is required to reward you because the Law says so.

J: Paul, clever manipulator that he was, observed that there was a “niche market” of people who’d become disillusioned with the certainty of Wisdom teachings. Obviously there was something missing from the formula if slaves were still slaves and women were still being punished for being women. The Hellenistic cities of the Roman Empire were filled to bursting with resentful slaves and restless, intelligent women. Who better to target if you’re planning to launch a new religious movement? Slaves with money and women with money. You don’t need to slog through the trenches and carry out years and years of missionary work — you just need to get yourself some patrons with deep pockets. Paul doesn’t even deny his reliance on patrons.

A: One staggering fact that jumps out in the Gospel of Mark is the fact that you have no patron. Nor do you seem to want one. This would have shocked readers in 1st century CE Roman-held regions.

J: Part of my objective was to refuse to “play by the rules.”

A: In the end, so many of these religious debates and religious conflicts boil down to “the rules” — the law, the covenant, the nomos. But all these rules . . . they’re external. They come from outside the inner self. They pretend to be objective. They pretend to be based on observable realities from nature. Yet enforcement of them relies on brute force, on rote memory, and on loyalty to patrons or other important religious/political leaders . . . at least I think that’s right. Is that right?

J: Yes. The one thing Paul doesn’t want is for people to know how to tap into their own inner wisdom, their own inner guidance. He doesn’t want them to know how to hear God’s quiet voice in the still, clear night. He doesn’t want his “community of fellowship” to find actual freedom. He only wants them to believe they have freedom (exousia) through the proper use of conscience (suneidesis). He wants them to be willing slaves. Slaves who won’t rock the boat of authority.

A: This is really sick, you know that?

J: Of course it is. There’s a reason these teachings have spontaneously led to generation after generation of abuses — abuses against the poor, the environment, against other Christians, not to mention countless non-Christians. Also abuses against God. These abuses are the “weeds” that have grown from the “seeds” that Paul intentionally planted.

A: Is this why Paul never mentions healing miracles in the letters he himself wrote?

J: Yes. Paul can’t afford to have his community of hagiasmos and koinonia (holiness and fellowship) distracted by the idea that God is deeply committed to ongoing healing, communication, and relationship with all people through the Kingdom within. The Kingdom within, of course, is the core self — the soul. The good soul. That’s how God connects with all God’s children — through the good soul that everybody is. God can and does communicate by other means, too, but the one connection that can never be taken away is the soul connection. You can cut out somebody’s eyes so they can’t see any more signs (and, unfortunately, this has been done). You can cut out somebody’s ears so they can’t hear any more external messages. You can cut out somebody’s tongue so they can no longer speak the prayers they long to sing aloud. All these abuses have been perpetrated “in the name of God” at one time or another. But nobody can cut out the connection to the soul. You’d have to carve out the entire brain and central nervous system of a person in order to fully quench the soul connection, the body-soul nexus. Obviously this would lead to death.

A: Hey! It’s another thing to add to the Jesus’ Seminar’s pot for the question of “Why Jesus Pissed People Off So Much That He Got Himself Crucified.”

J: Paul works very hard to ensure that his followers believe in a Kingdom that’s on the outside — “out there” in the Materialist world of cause and effect. “Out there” where they have no control over any of it themselves. Even more brilliant, Paul insists the Kingdom of God isn’t here yet. It belongs to some maybe-not-so-distant Day of Judgment. So not only is the Kingdom a materialistic reality outside the self, but it hasn’t even “arrived” yet. [1 Corinthians 15]. This prompts regular people to be thinking about the future instead of the present. This encourages them to shift their focus, their attention, and even their relationships to the future. To the future “effects” of today’s “causes.” People are so busy worrying about the future that they can’t hear God’s voice today.

A: Therefore they can’t hear the guidance they long for.

J: The guidance they want and need.

A: I like your version of the Kingdom teachings much better.

* If you’re new to this site, A=Author and J=Jesus

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Cause & Effect, Gospel of Mark, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), Materialism, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, quantum theory, slavery, Soul and tagged Kingdom teachings, science & faith | Leave a Comment

21 Mar 2011

JR25: Getting Close to God: Finding the Kingdom Within

A: Some readers are probably very surprised that a mystic and an angel are spending so much time talking about academic research and academic sources. How would you respond to that?

J: I respond the same way today as I responded 2,000 years ago. My basic attitude is a pretty tough one: you can’t get close to God if you don’t do the work. You can’t get close to God if you separate yourself from the rest of God’s Creation. You can’t get close to God by snubbing everything God is saying to you in the world around you.

A: The idea that you can’t get close to God if you don’t do the work is a pretty universal spiritual idea. Teachers from a number of different faith traditions have said much the same thing. Various schools of Buddhism are all about teaching the correct way to do the work. But the second idea you present — the idea that you can’t get close to God if you separate yourself from the rest of God’s Creation — that’s a much less common idea among spiritual teachers. Tell me more about that.

“A man said to him: Tell my brothers that they have to divide my father’s possessions with me. Jesus said: Man, who made me a divider? He turned to his disciples and said to them: I am not a divider, am I” (Gospel of Thomas 72). Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: Basically it’s the idea that if you want to get close to God, you have to start with the only piece of Creation that God has given you complete control over: your own biology. Your own brain, your own body, your own body-soul nexus. This little piece of Creation is all you get. The rest belongs to other people — to other souls and to God the Mother and God the Father. You get one little piece of Creation to command — one little Kingdom to be in charge of — and it’s your job as a human being and as a soul to look after your little corner of Creation. It’s a big job. Much bigger than most human beings realize. It takes time. It takes commitment. It takes courage. It takes knowledge. More than anything, it takes full acceptance.

A: What do you mean by “acceptance”? Do you mean people have to be resigned to their misery? Do you mean they have to accept the status quo?

J: No. I mean the exact opposite. I mean that if they want to get close to God while living here as human beings, they have to accept that God believes in them. They have to accept that they’re not filled with corruption and sin. They have to accept that they’re not here — here on Planet Earth — as some form of cosmic punishment or karmic journey. They have to stop seeing the glass as “half empty” and start seeing Creation in a positive light. This includes a commitment to seeing themselves — their core selves, their souls — in a positive light. They have to stop feeling so damned sorry for themselves.

A: A lot of pious people I’ve met — mostly Christians, but not exclusively so — remind me a lot of a fictional character from a science fiction/satire mini-series that ran many years ago called “The Hitchhiker`s Guide to the Galaxy. The character was Marvin the Robot. Marvin was always going around feeling sorry for himself. “Oh, poor me!” “Woe is me!” He saw himself as a victim — victim with a capital “V.” I found it hard to like Marvin, to be honest, because all he did was whine.

J: Pauline Christianity encourages people to whine. “Oh, poor me, I’m tainted with original sin, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just a victim. It’s not my fault. It’s Adam’s fault. If Adam hadn’t screwed up and made God so angry, then I wouldn’t have so many problems today. I’ll do my best, Lord — honest! — but please don’t expect too much of me, because, after all, I’m full of inner corruption and sin, and I’m doing the best I can — honest! I promise to go to church every week so you can cleanse me of my sins, but as for the rest of the week . . . please remember that I’m just a frail, weak, ignorant human being who can’t possibly resist temptation and can’t possibly understand your mysteries! You’ve decided to make all life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, so who I am to argue with your wisdom?”

A: Thomas Hobbes.

J: Yes. Thomas Hobbes — the pessimist’s pessimist. Also one of the great Materialist philosophers who rejected outright the relevance of the soul to a functioning, non-chaotic society. He had it all backwards because of his own psychological dysfunction.

A: Progressive Christianity, as this new movement calls itself, is edging in the direction of a Materialist religion — a religion founded on Newtonian science where the words “soul” and “miracle” are considered embarrassing and irrelevant.

J (smiling): Orthodox Western Christianity has in some ways always been a Materialist religion, despite the oxymoron-like quality of this phrase.

A: How so?

J: How often does Paul use the word psyche (soul) in his 7 known letters (8 if you count Colossians, as I do)?

A: Uh, hardly ever. When he does, he describes the soul in an eerie blend of Platonic and Jewish apocalyptic ways.

J: And how often does Paul talk about healing miracles? By that I mean the kind of healing miracles described several times in the Gospel of Mark.

A: Never. Paul doesn’t talk about healing miracles. He talks about sin and salvation and eschatology and Spirit and chosenness for those who believe in Christ. But he doesn’t talk about healing miracles.

J: What about the Roman Catholic Church’s take on healing miracles?

A: Oh, they keep a tight, tight rein on miracles. Nothing can be called an “official miracle” unless the Vatican approves it according to very strict criteria.

J: What’s one of the key criteria?

A: The healing had to take place after somebody prayed directly to a saint. Or a saint-to-be.

J: It’s a closed shop. A closed system. The Vatican has control over all the definitions. It’s not a true miracle unless it goes through the doors of the Church. Which doesn’t happen very often. It therefore forces people to look at the world around them in non-miraculous ways. In Materialist ways.

A: Huh?

J: Think of it this way. Christian orthodoxy has insisted since the beginning that God is to be understood as transcendent — far, far away from this earthly realm, detached from all emotion, detached from day to day concerns with human suffering, distant, serene, uninvolved with the petty concerns of the corrupt material world. This is actually Plato’s idea, but the Church long ago embraced it, and it’s officially part of Church doctrine, so the Church has to take responsibility for this choice. How does this translate for pious Christians? How does it make them feel about the world around them?

A: Well, on the one hand, they’re told by Genesis that they’re in charge of the world and can do whatever they like to it. It’s supposed to be a “good Creation.” On the other hand, they’re told that God isn’t actually “in” this good Creation, but is somewhere else — far, far away in a transcendent realm of pure Mind. I suppose that idea makes it easy for people to make excuses for their behaviour when they mistreat the environment and mistreat other creatures. Something along the lines of “Oh, it’s just a bunch of corrupt, material ‘stuff’ that doesn’t matter to God, so it’s okay for me to take what I want and leave a big mess behind.” . . . Okay, I’m starting to see what you’re getting at. This kind of anthropocentric religious thinking is a form of “state sanctioned Materialism.”

J: Yes. Two thousand years ago, there was no distinction between the political state and the religious state. The two were totally intertwined. So it mattered what religious leaders said about the environment, about the Earth, about the world around us. It mattered that religious leaders told pious followers to ignore all the lessons, all the truths that were being conveyed to them through “the eyes of Nature,” as it were. It mattered then, and it still matters today. God isn’t transcendent. Never was, never will be. God does have feelings. And God feels everything that happens in Creation. Everything.

A: Materialists don’t take God’s feelings into account. They don’t believe God has feelings (many of them don’t even believe that God exists). They don’t ask themselves how God is going to feel when they pour toxic sludge into the groundwaters. Pauline Christianity tells them they don’t have to ask this question.

J: Just as Pauline Christianity tells them they don’t have to take full responsibility for the care, healing, and core integrity of their own little piece of Creation: their biological body.

A: Their Kingdom. Their own Kingdom of the Heavens.

J: Only when you fully understand and respect the core integrity and the core wonder of your own Kingdom will you be able to understand and respect the core integrity of other people, other creatures, and God. That’s what empathy is — the ability to understand that your neighbour’s Kingdom is different but equal to your own. The healing of the Church must begin with a complete overturning of all doctrines that repudiate or undermine the true worth of the soul.

A: The United Church of Canada doesn’t even have an official doctrine of the soul, though the Articles of Faith tell us in one breath that we’re responsible for all our choices (Articles 2.3 and 2.4) and in the next breath tell us that all people are born with a sinful nature (Article 2.5). Talk about a lose-lose situation!

J: My point exactly.

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Posted in brain-soul connection, Buddhism, Church of today, empathy, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, Materialism, miracles, orthodox teachings about the soul, Paul vs Jesus, Plato, relationship with God and tagged Divine Heart, Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

25 Jun 2010

CC21: The Law of Attraction in the Gospel of Matthew: God as the Great Gumball Machine in the Sky

Ya gotta love those Kevin Trudeau infomercials. The guy’s a regular pitbull when he’s trying to market his latest “no-fail” product. A while back, he was aggressively promoting his “Natural Cure.” These days, he’s hawking “the Law of Attraction” in a new and improved form that can be yours in a 10 CD package for a mere $297. He calls his latest course “Your Wish Is Your Command.”

Not long ago, Rhonda Byrne was selling essentially the same product through her book and video called The Secret. Before that, Joseph Murray was touting the “newly discovered” Law of Attraction in books such as The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. And before that, Ernest Holmes was proclaiming the wonders of “the Law” in his “landmark” book The Science of Mind.

What has this got to do with Christianity?

Everything.

The Law of Attraction, as recent writers have labelled it, is not a new idea. It’s an ancient idea. It’s an idea that serves as the foundation for a lot of ancient religious writings that are loosely lumped together by scholars under the heading of “Wisdom Literature.” Wisdom teachings purport to teach people how to recognize the inviolable laws of creation that, if properly observed, can lead to wealth, prosperity, good health, family status, and happiness.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, three books are generally considered to represent the Wisdom tradition: Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Elements of Wisdom teachings are also sprinkled here and there throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, as in Genesis 2-3. Some of the Psalms have overtones of Wisdom.

Not to be outdone, the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament states in unambiguous terms that if you follow the laws and the prophets in righteousness, “all things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33). In his wrap-up to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew has Jesus say, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11).

There you have it in a nutshell. All you have to do is ask in the right way, and God will give it to you. Not only does God want to give it to you, but God has to give it to you, because the contract law says so. The contract law between God and God’s people is binding on God. So if you righteously obey all the divine contract provisions (as they are stated by your religion’s prophets), well, naturally, God is required to hold up his end of the bargain, and give you everything you ask for — wealth, health, and happiness.

There’s a special kind of law that governs all Creation, you see. As several religious traditions will tell you, including Western Christian orthodoxy, these laws are both highly secret and highly powerful. If you can uncover the hidden secrets of these laws, you can tap into their unlimited power. In this spiritual understanding (which, I’d like to emphasize, is not limited to any one religion) God’s divine creativity is considered to be a tap. It’s hard to find this sacred tap, and it’s even harder to figure out how to turn it on. But once you have the secret knowledge (gnosis) of how to turn on the tap, you can get whatever you want.

Mystics of all religious traditions frequently fall into the narcissistic mire of believing that (1) there is such a tap and (2) they alone know how to find and control said tap. These same mystics are usually delighted to share the information with their disciples for a price. Sometimes, as with people such as Kevin Trudeau, the price is mere money. More often, the mystic seeks to gather for him/herself a treasure considered even more valuable to a narcissist than wealth. That treasure is status.

The religious leaders of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) thought they had the Law of Attraction all figured out. It didn’t turn out too well for them. Photo credit 675px-Moái_de_Rano_Raraku,_en_Isla_de_Pascua, Wikimedia Commons.

A dysfunctional mystic can live quite comfortably as an ascetic, disdaining wealth, comfort, and personal possessions, as long as he or she receives a steady diet of status to feed an ongoing psychological state of status addiction — an addiction to status, as opposed to an addiction to psychotropic substances. The addiction to status operates in a person’s central nervous system like any other addiction. There are constant cravings. Getting a “hit” of status causes the brain to release dopamine in the same way that getting a “hit” of cocaine causes the brain to release dopamine.

The only way for an ascetic mystic to get an ongoing supply of status is to indulge in spiritual practices that “affirm” to the mystic that he or she is higher on the ladder of spiritual ascent than you are.

To be higher on the ladder is to have more status. It’s as simple as that. It’s as scary as that.

To be “in the know” about the “Law of Attraction” is to have more status. This ancient spiritual practice attracts psychologically dysfunctional people who are already addicted to the dopamine high of status. That’s why it feels so good to them when they try to follow these “righteous” teachings — they’re getting a hit of dopamine each time they tell themselves they’re cleverly invoking the “contract laws” of the universe (i.e. invoking the Covenant).

Be careful what you wish for — you might get it, and it probably won’t be what you thought it would be.

That’s because God the Mother and God the Father never give you what you ask for. They only give you what you need.

And you need an addiction to status like you need a hole in the head.

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Posted in A.N.E. Wisdom literature, Bible, Book of Genesis, Cause & Effect, Concinnate Christianity, Law (Nomos), Materialism, Matthew's and Luke's intent, mysticism, spiritual ascent, status addiction and tagged Wisdom literature | Leave a Comment

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