» psychopathy The Spiral Path

05 Sep 2012

RS29: Father of Lights and Mother of Breath – Again

Irises (c) JAT 2013

A: I just love Biblical Archaeology Review. Yesterday I came home from work and checked out the latest newsletter they’d e-mailed. I get a newsletter from them every few days, and sometimes I don’t read them. But this one caught my eye, and I clicked on the link (http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/misogyny-in-the-bible/). There I found a wonderful article by Biblical Studies professor April DeConick. The full article, called “Biblical Views: How the Mother God Got Spayed,” appears in the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept./Oct. 2012). I just love everything about this article. It’s so honest. She dares to ask if we’re “trying to apologize for the misogny in the Bible because of our religious belief in the sacred nature of the Bible.” Thank you for saying this out loud, Dr. DeConick!

I’d like to quote one paragraph from her article:

To begin with, humans — whether ancient or modern — think within gender categories. And whether we admit it or not, gender never has been neutral. Power is always involved. In the ancient world, the female body was believed to be subhuman, imperfect — a deficient body because it lacked the male genitalia. The male body was the perfect body. So the male body dominated the scene, including the Bible, Christian theology and Christian ecclesiology. In other words, the Bible came into being within a cultural matrix where the female body by definition was substandard and dehumanized. This dehumanization of the female body affected virtually every storyline of the Bible.

She then goes on to explain how this misogynist view of the female body affected the way ancient Jews and early Christians perceived God:

This misogynist view of the female body affected the way in which the ancient people created their theologies and engaged in worship. This is not to say that all ancient Jews and early Christians perceived God only as a male Father God. Indeed, worship of the Mother God in conjunction with the Father God can be demonstrated to have occurred within ancient Israel. Both the Bible and archaeology confirm this. So it isn’t that the Mother God was absent from their worship. Rather she was consciously eradicated from worship by the religious authorities.

Then DeConick dares to say that in early Christianity, “[w]e have records that demonstrate that the Holy Spirit was perceived by the first Christians to be not only female, but also Jesus’ Mother.”

Yup. I just love it when good scholarship backs up everything you’ve been telling me for the past few years.*

J: I worked very hard to distance my teachings from the religious orthodoxy of my day. As we’ve discussed many times, I didn’t view God as a male-only figure. I also didn’t view God as a “genderless divine essence,” as biblical scholar Ben Witherington so quaintly puts it (a thesis that’s challenged by Dr. DeConick in her article). For Paul, Spirit/God/Christ was a genderless divine essence, just as for Plato, God was a genderless divine essence. But this was never my teaching. So for those Christians who want to retreat into the cowardly territory of God as “cloud of knowing” or “ground of being” instead of God as two loving people, they need to be honest about their beliefs. They’re modern day Platonists, not followers of the teachings of Jesus.

A: The Gospel of Mark speaks so eloquently about your lack of misogyny. The stories about the hemorrhaging woman and the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5) break my heart. The hemorrhaging woman seems to me like a symbol of the terrible abuse suffered by any woman whose symptoms make her “unclean” and “impure” according to religious law. Can you imagine being treated as a pariah for years and years simply because you’re a woman and you’re medically ill? How cruel is that.

J: It seems hard to believe the Roman Catholic church and the strict Calvinist traditions can be so willfully blind about my teachings on women. They can reinterpret the healing stories from the Gospel of Mark until they’re blue in the face, but they can’t erase the obvious truth that I believed women are equal to men in the eyes of God and are not unworthy or impure simply because they’re women.

A: I love the way DeConick picks up on Tertullian’s role in destroying the self-image of Christian women for centuries to come. Tertullian was a very nasty fellow — a status addict of the worst kind.

J: To despise a woman because she’s a woman is a clear indication of status addiction. To despise the idea of God as two people — God the Mother and God the Father — is another clear indication of status addiction.

A: How so?

J: Status addiction is a form of theft. It’s an intentional theft of someone else’s sense of worthiness and self esteem. In the Christ Zone model we’ve been looking at, there can be no true balance or wholeness or self-actualization unless all four major needs are met: physiological needs, safety needs, love & belonging needs, and self-esteem needs. So important are these four major needs to human health and happiness and peace that psychiatry should reformulate its DSM bible to show disorders of physiological needs, disorders of safety needs, disorders of love & belonging needs, and disorders of self-esteem needs, instead of its current categorization system.

A status addict is someone whose brain is not functioning in balanced, holistic ways. For various reasons a status addict can’t generate an inner sense of self. They can’t generate a portrait of themselves, if you will, a portrait of themselves as a child of God. Often this is due to damage in the parietal and parieto-temporal regions of the brain.

Because they can’t “see” themselves — because they can’t “plant” themselves in the firm ground of relationships and boundaries and heart-to-heart bridges among all life in Creation — they can’t rely on emotions such as trust and Divine Love and forgiveness to help them cope.

A: Why not? Why can’t they rely on trust and Divine Love and forgiveness?

J: Because these coping mechanisms are all founded in the core principle of relationship — relationship between two or more people. If you choose not to “do relationships” you also can’t “do love and trust.” Positive, mature relationships draw on all the same parts of the brain as love and trust do.

A: Such as oxytocin and vasopressin and prolactin levels in the bloodstream and brain. Also serotonin. To name a few.

J: Yes. One of serotonin’s jobs is to act as a mediator between the Darwinian Circuitry of the brain and the Soul Circuitry of the brain. The role of serotonin in sustaining mood is beginning to be understood by medical science. But it’s not the only factor in mood disorders. A major complicating factor for many individuals — one that hasn’t been recognized by researchers — is status addiction. Status addiction drives a person at a physiological level to seek a brief glimpse of himself by stealing somebody’s self-image.

It goes like this:

The status addict sees a woman who has confidence, self respect, and dignity. It’s as if she’s painted a portrait of herself inside her heart and knows who she is. Also who she’s not. The status addict doesn’t know who he is and doesn’t know who he’s not. But he’s jealous. He’s jealous and angry at the woman who has something he does not. So he endeavours to take it. He endeavours to steal her portrait, or a piece of her portrait, and claim it for himself. He takes it any way he can — usually through threats and physical or emotional abuse. But the most vicious predator will try to rob the spiritual part of her self portrait, the part that tells her who she is in relationship with God. He’ll try to rip out her entire sense of worthiness and self-esteem as a child of God. Then he’ll take that piece of her portrait and pin it up on his own “inner wall.” He’ll look at it and gloat. He’ll enjoy her suffering. The stolen portrait becomes a hazy sort of mirror where he can finally see himself. And for a brief moment, he’ll see himself as someone powerful and clever and potent.

Sixty seconds later his brain will let go of the high. The image will vanish. The sense of inner emptiness will return. So he’ll have to go out and steal somebody else’s spiritual portrait. This is how he copes with his own inability to love and trust and be in relationship with anyone, including God.

A: Religious law as schadenfreude.

J: Yes. It’s a very poor substitute for reality, but many individuals rely on it.

To steal the reality of another person, to steal their wholeness, to try to steal their very existence, is a concentrated form of hatred. It’s not purity of thought or transcendence that drives a person to say there is no personhood in God. It’s not wisdom. It’s not faith. It’s just hatred. Plain old fashioned hatred. Hatred born of a status addict’s rage at the void he feels within himself.

To try to rip out God’s own self image, God’s own need for love & belonging, God’s own need for self-esteem (or, as we’ve called it here, God’s humbleness) is cruel and unconscionable. I mean, where do people think we get our needs in the first place? Do they think angels have a hard-wired need for love & belonging and self-esteem (humbleness) but God the Mother and God the Father don’t? Do they really think God the Mother and God the Father have no feelings?

Every child born on Planet Earth tells the truth about God and God’s angels again and again and again. Even the chromosomes of a child tell the truth.

God the Mother is real.

There’s no point fighting this truth any longer.

* Please see “Third Step: Invite Our Mother to the Table” and “Father of Lights, Mother of Breath

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Posted in Bible, Christ Zone, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Mother and Father God, Mother God, Plato, psychopathy, Realspiritik, religion and mental Illness, sense of time & timing, status addiction and tagged religion + mental illness, science & faith | 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

06 Aug 2012

RS 21: Who Knew? It’s the Clash of the Titans!

Temple of Apollo, Delphi (c) JAT 2001

A: I’ve been mulling over what you said in “The Peace Sequence” post about Paul’s wealthy, powerful backers. What exactly was their “One True Religion”? Are Paul’s teachings a form of this “One True Religion”?

J: “The One True Religion” is an ancient mystery cult that had its origins in Egypt beginning about 5,000 years ago. And yes, Paul’s Christ Movement is a clear expression of this ancient cult’s beliefs.

A: What were the core beliefs of this group?

J: They believed they needed to unlock the secrets of science so they could control the mysterious powers of Creation. They believed in the infinite powers of the human mind and they despised all forms of emotion or love or compassion. For them, Love was the great enemy, the great destroyer of purity, order, and Truth. They worshipped only logic and reason. They believed that purity, order, logic, reason, and Truth were visible in the corrupt world around them through the trained observation of Divine Law. These Laws could be observed, then harnessed, then used to acquire almost infinite power. The Pyramids of Giza were an early physical expression of this group’s beliefs.

A: Ooooh. Sounds like a Dan Brown novel.

J: “The One True Religion” never exactly disappeared. It keeps popping up in one form or another, century after century. So writers keep writing about it.

A: Why does it keep coming back? Is this constant “rebirth” proof of its truth? Its genuine truth about the nature of Creation?

J: It’s proof of only one thing: the thinking patterns of a psychopath. “The One True Religion” is the perfect religion for psychopaths. It’s all about logic, power, and eradication of compassion.

A: It’s about “doing what needs to be done” without guilt or remorse.

J: Yes. For this group, the end has always justified the means. This is how they’ve justified the use of tens of thousands of slaves at a time to build countless alchemical projects such as the Pyramids of Giza. They have a secret cache of myths about the origins of Creation that helps them explain and justify their own unconscionable actions. They take their religious myths very seriously. Their religious myths are the “glue sticks” that are literally holding their biological brains together.

A: You mean that without their religious myths to cling to they’d fall apart?

J: Yes. The Darwinian Circuitry of the brain, which a psychopath relies on exclusively, has to be fed a constant diet of status and short-term logic in order to keep functioning in a reasonably stable way. Status and short-term logic are the psychopath’s “fuel.” But raw fuel alone isn’t enough to create “order” in a psychopath’s messed-up life. Successful psychopaths — and there are many — must have a rigid ideology, a rigid external framework, to lean on. Followers of the “One True Religion” have built for themselves an “ideal” ideology, a mythological Utopia that soothes and calms the troubled mind of a psychopath with its perfect blend of monism, dualism, and hierarchy. Whenever they feel their actions and choices are being “unfairly” attacked, they retreat into their inner Utopia. There they repeat to themselves their ancient mantras about being Divine Warriors sent to Earth to find and restore all the broken bits of “The One” that fell out of the Heavens and have to be valiantly carried back into the highest realms of Creation by the tiny band of Chosen Messengers who, alone among all other souls in the universe, have the purity and knowledge and strength to carry out this perilous task.

A: Oh, come on. This is sounding like really bad sci fi! Like the film “Clash of the Titans.” The original and the remake!

J: Inside a psychopath’s head, it is a clash of the Titans. On the one side, you have yer Evil Galactic Overlords who are trying to take over all Creation, and on the other side you have yer Warriors of Light who are called upon to lead all the weaker souls to victory by whatever means are necessary, even if it means forcing them to build the Pyramids, because in the long run they’ll be grateful to you that you were wise enough and knowledgeable enough to know what steps to take to save them (with or without their permission). It’s even okay to lie to them in the short term because eventually they’ll realize that your lies were justified. Blind faith — fideism — is therefore a necessary means to an end. Obedience is a necessary means. And guilt is a necessary means.

You’d be surprised how many successful psychopaths in politics, business, and religion believe this shit. And I don’t mean they believe in this a little. I mean they believe this myth with their whole mind — well, the parts of the mind that are still working.

A: And they really, really believe that Love is the enemy? The cause of Creation’s brokenness? Now that I think of it, though, Plato had some pretty weird beliefs about love . . .

J: Yes. So you can see why Paul believed I was broken. In his view, my task as THE human being assigned to carry the “imprint” of Divine Logos was to highlight this problem and fix it, not make it worse by telling people how to love God and trust God with all their hearts. Where was the logic and loftiness in that?

A: So poor Paul, what could he do except throw himself on his sword to correct your mistakes, your sins against Spirit?

J: Well, you know, it’s a perilous world, this place called Earth, and every time a true piece of “The One” tries to incarnate here, what with all the evil forces an’ all, there’s always a grave risk that the divine piece will once again become contaminated by the forces of chaos (i.e. the forces of Love and All Things Feminine) and then — poor brave Warriors that they are! — these Messengers of Light will have to start over again in their brave and noble attempts to prepare the Way for the incoming Spirit of Truth! And it takes a lot of helpers — a lot of slaves — to carry out this brave and noble endeavour, and it takes a lot of sacred rituals repeated over and over and over, so there’s no time like the present to enlist all those unwitting (and unworthy) human beings to help you with the cleansing prayer work that needs to be done before THAT DAY can take place.

A: Go on! You’re joshing me.

J: Nope. This is what they’re actually thinking. This is what “The One True Religion” is all about. It’s about a small group of psychopaths who are sitting on top of a great metaphysical pyramid, as close to the heavens as they can get, and waiting for the precise moment when there’s a big enough “pool” of prayer energy available to them to open up those great cosmic gates of power in the sky. You know, thunderstorms, lightning, rainbows, sacred water, all that stuff they think they can one day control.

A: Sighhhhhhhh . . .

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, Gnosticism, occult themes, Paul's teachings, prayer, psychopathy, Realspiritik, slavery and tagged Jesus vs Paul, religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

23 May 2012

TBM39: The Perverting of Gratitude

Of all the spiritual practices that have been endorsed over the centuries by spiritual and religious leaders, the one that’s been twisted almost beyond recognition is the practice of gratitude.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT saying that gratitude is a bad thing. In fact, gratitude as it’s practised by the soul is as important as breathing.

I’m saying that gratitude is so important to the hearts of regular people that bully after bully, tyrant after tyrant, has taken advantage of this deep need and twisted it — perverted it — to satisfy the status cravings of the tyrants.

Hence, we have a long history of psychopaths telling us things like this:

“You should be grateful I’ve given you the chance to die as a slave. These Pyramids are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be worthy before you die.”

“You should be grateful you’re one of the Chosen People. These bloodlines are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to rule over the world.”

“You should be grateful you’ve been saved by Jesus Christ. These sacraments are a tribute to God, and God will reward us for our obedience to his wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be saved in the End Times.”

And on a more personal level . . .

“You should be grateful for my superiority, woman. Without men, without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful to have a job with my company. Without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful for the gift of God’s grace. Without it, you’d be nothing.”

Needless to say, this is not what the soul means by gratitude.

There are countless examples of the perverting of gratitude in all cultures and time periods. No culture and no religious tradition is exempt from the tendency among status-addicted psychopaths to seize upon a person’s heart and suck up the gratitude like a vampire drinking from a straw. This is why so many religions start out as an expression of faith and end up as a form of worship. Worship is the perverted form of gratitude.

Despite the plethora of examples to choose from, the one that stands out for me as a sort of “symbol” or “archetype” of how NOT to do gratitude is the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 21:1 – 22:19). It’s pretty tricky to come out and tell the truth about a biblical tale that billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold dear, but I gotta say — this one biblical lesson has been used over the centuries to justify more crimes against humanity than we’ll ever know.

The writers (more accurately, the redactors) of the book of Genesis want us to accept a number of claims about the proper way to be in relationship with God. Despite the fact that Genesis was probably collated and redacted in the last part of the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt,* the writers were very modern, very astute, in their understanding of human nature. They were not naive. They were not poorly educated. They were not simply misguided. They knew exactly what they were doing.

What they were doing was taking the ancient texts of early Judaism — such as the codes of ethical conduct that now appear in Exodus — and creating a mythical “back-story” to make Jewish teachings more appealing to a “modern,” post-Alexandrian, Greek speaking Ptolemaic empire. It’s no accident that, in the Book of Genesis, God gives Abraham and his descendants the rightful claim to all the lands “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). That’s a big hunk of choice real estate, real estate that by no coincidence Alexander the Great had already successfully conquered in the 4th century BCE (not that anyone in the Jewish canon ever breathes a word about Alexander’s conquest . . . )

I can live with megalomaniacal claims to land and territory. They’re nothing new in the history of tyrants and emperors. What I can’t live with is the claim that God would actually tell a man of faith to sacrifice both his sons for the sake of obedience to God. God would never do that, and God’s angels would never do that. To Mother Father God, the loving care of children is paramount

So first we have God telling Abraham it’s okay for him to disown and cast out his young son Ishmael, along with Ishmael’s mother, the slave Hagar. They get turfed into the desert, afraid and alone. But, hey, not to worry — they should be grateful for this abusive treatment, because God “will make a great nation of him [Ishmael].” Then we have God “testing” Abraham, telling him directly (that’s a claim for channelling, folks!) to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

So Abraham takes his son — the son he supposedly loves — to the mountain, and forces Isaac to carry the firewood up the slope, and then ties his son to the altar and raises his knife with every intention of killing him as a sacrifice to God.

Firewood (c) JAT 2014: Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God?

Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God? Photo credit JAT 2014.

Okaaaaaaaaaay. Let’s stop right there Let’s not go on to the next part of the story, the part where an angel of the Lord intervenes and tells Abraham not to harm the boy. Let’s just think for a minute about the first part, the part where Abraham actually believes God has told him it’s okay to scare the living shit out of a vulnerable, trusting child. The part where Isaac is lying on the altar and it finally dawns on him that his father is going to murder him. The part where Isaac experiences all the precipitating factors for lifetime post-traumatic stress order, not to mention a lifetime inability to ever trust his father’s love or integrity again. What, you think Isaac’s gonna forget something like that?

Ah, but we’re not supposed to be asking questions like that, are we? We’re not supposed to be asking questions about Ishmael’s or Isaac’s feelings or their brain health. Instead, we’re supposed to be saying to ourselves, “Who am I to withhold anything from God’s messengers if Abraham, our chosen forefather, did not withhold his only son from God?” (Never mind the fact that Abraham clearly had two sons, not one.)

The editors of Genesis and several chunks of the New Testament want us to be saying to ourselves that obedience to God’s messengers (the prophets, priests, and eventually the Apostles) trumps everything, even charity and compassion towards our own children. Proper sacrifice to God demands, well, sacrifice. After all, sacrifice and gratitude go hand in hand. Don’t they? You’re grateful to God for the blessings in your life, so obviously you want to give God a sacrifice — something tangible, something that takes money or goods or food away from you and your family, or maybe something that takes away your health and your children’s health — but the main thing is you must willingly put a sacrifice on the altar so you can prove your humility.

‘Cause, yeah, it’s . . . like . . . a totally crazy idea that you could just say thank you to God with all your heart and all your mind and all soul and all your strength, and that God would find your genuine gratitude a good enough response.

I’m certainly not the first person to point fingers at the horribleness of the Abraham-and-Isaac “wisdom teaching,” and I hope I won’t be the last. It’s just the stupidest idea imaginable to believe that God (who created billions and billions of galaxies) would actually want you to say thank you by abusing, enslaving, or humiliating your children. If you really want to show God how grateful you are, you can start by treating children well.

Jesus knew all this. Good luck finding any reverence for Abraham in the original teachings of Jesus (as witnessed in the Gospel of Mark and parts of the Letter of James).

The Sacred Spring at the Roman Baths, Bath, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

Jesus once said (in writing!) you can’t expect a spring to pour both fresh and brackish water from the same opening (James 3:11). He said it this way because in a dry and arid terrain (such as Judea) fresh water is synonymous with genuine gratitude. It’s the source of life and healing, a blessing not to be taken for granted. Brackish water is synonymous with ill health and disease, and, by extension, diseases of human nature such as hypocrisy and deceit.

Just as you can’t expect a spring to give both fresh and mouldy water at the same time, you can’t expect to find the truth about relationship with God in the midst of a story about abuse, self-aggrandizement, and forcing somebody to submit to sacrifice.

Pick one — fresh or brackish. Then be honest about your choice. Pick either gratitude or worship — but not both, because they’re mutually exclusive.

This means you have to decide whether you can live without entertainment news (worship of status addicted stars) and professional sports scores (also worship of status addicted stars).

Just don’t pretend you’re so grateful for these people (e.g. famous pop stars) that you can’t imagine living without them. This isn’t gratitude. It’s plain ol’ status addiction wrapped up in a pretty package of fakey-fakey gratitude.

Tough words. But necessary to understand if you want to find and stay on the Spiral Path.

Good news, though — you don’t have to give up the songs or the films or the sports activities that inspire and encourage you. You just have to give up the worship!

* For more on the history of the writing of Genesis, please see the post entitled “The Book of Genesis.”

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Posted in Bible, Book of Genesis, gratitude, humility, Letter of James, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, worship and tagged science & faith, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

11 Feb 2012

TBM20: Definition of Status Addiction

One of the great advantages of walking the Spiral Path in fellowship with God and your guardian angels is that you’re constantly being encouraged to learn new things and meet new people. You’re constantly being encouraged to let go of belief systems that are holding you back in your quest to know your full potential as a child of God.

“Living your full potential” is another way of saying “living your soul purpose.” It’s a positive, hopeful concept, one that Jesus son of Joseph taught his own followers 2,000 years ago. Jesus described the quest to know yourself and live according to your soul purpose as “entering the kingdom of the heavens.” It’s not really God’s kingdom you’re entering (though parts of the Bible describe it as such). It’s your own little kingdom — your own little corner of God’s spiritual kitchen. It’s the truth about yourself you have to understand so you can better help other people.

The Apostle Paul hated and feared Jesus’ teachings about “the Kingdom.” He was determined to snuff out Jesus’ teachings on the nature of the soul because he (Paul) wanted to help preserve the status quo. The status quo protected the rights and privileges of the people at the top of the social pyramid — the priests, the kings, the lawmakers, and the chosen bloodlines of their families.

Things haven’t changed much since then, eh?

The danger in Jesus’ teachings was — and is — the lack of “fuel” for people who are addicted to status. By that I mean people who are physiologically addicted to status. People who are biologically addicted to status. People whose dopamine receptors and orexin receptors (to greatly simplify) respond in imbalanced ways to an ingestion of “status points.” (You can read more about this in the post called “The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction.”)

Unfortunately, not much useable research has been done on this topic, but I’m hopeful that, in time, researchers in cross-disciplinary studies will come together to discuss the reality of status addiction from all angles: neuroscience combined with psychiatry, education theory, sociology, parenting skills, and Twelve Step programs.

Status addiction, like any other addiction disorder, isn’t a black-or-white psycho/social/medical issue but a spectrum of need. At one end of the spectrum are the people who only occasionally use the substance. Sure, they have cravings, but other factors in their lives help them keep a lid on their using.

At the other end of the spectrum are the full-blown addicts, the ones who can’t get through a few hours let alone a few days without a fix. The behaviour of a full-blown addict makes sense only to the addict himself or herself. To everyone else, the status addict’s behaviour is cruel. Lacking in empathy. Intolerant. Judgmental. Perfectionistic. Demanding. Controlling. Angry. Abusive. And in a constant state of denial.

Sound familiar? Everyone knows a person who’s chosen the path of status addiction. They’re the bullies, tyrants, narcissists, and psychopaths of the world. They’re the ones who thrive at a biological level on the idea that they’re better than other people. Better or smarter or faster or stronger. Nicer. More generous to others or more obedient to God than you. More deserving of praise, reward, health, and wealth than you.

It’s not in a status addict’s best interests to agree in principle with the idea that God doesn’t play favourites. Nor is it in a status addict’s best interests to agree in principle with the idea that human beings are responsible for their own choices, including the choice to be angry, cruel, and abusive.

Being around a status addict makes you feel as if you need a gas mask and protective armour. ((C) Image*After)

It’s important to understand that the Apostle Paul was convinced God plays favourites. Paul’s Letter to the Romans explains in gory detail who will be saved by God and who won’t (or who won’t be saved at first, anyway). For Paul, there’s no question that Christians are better than other people. There’s also no question, when you read Paul’s convoluted thesis about “Sin,” that he himself was trapped by the selfish behaviours of status addiction.

If you find all the places in Romans where Paul talks about cosmic “Sin” and replace the word “Sin” with “status addiction,” you’ll quickly realize that Paul was a man in a state of denial about his own addiction issues. He didn’t want to take responsibility for his own choices, and he was prepared to invent ever more status-soaked theologies to explain why he wasn’t responsible for the way he felt inside his own head.

I want to emphasize an important point, though. Paul knew what he was doing. He wasn’t mentally incompetent in a legal or moral or medical sense. He maintained a grip on many of his mental faculties, including his ability to write cogently and logically; his ability to manipulate and coerce others in subtle, sophisticated ways; and his ability to stay clearly focussed on tasks and goals. He wasn’t dysfunctional in the way that a person with a serious, untreated psychotic disorder is dysfunctional. He knew what he was doing and he wanted to do it so he and his followers could acquire more status points.

Paul, in fact, was so shrewd in his observations about human nature that he understood what tyrants such as Pol Pot have failed to understand. Paul understood that if you want to build a stable social structure to support the status needs of those at the top of the pyramid, you have to put an effective leash on the status-seeking behaviours of everyone, even the people at the top. Otherwise, chaos runs rampant as countless individuals seek a “hit” of status at the expense of their neighbours.

Paul’s leash is humility. And it’s as effective a scam today as it was 2,000 years ago, judging by this quote from Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life (Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002)):

“Cultivating community takes humility. Self-importance, smugness, and stubborn pride destroy fellowship faster than anything else. Pride builds walls between people; humility builds bridges. Humility is the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. That’s why the Bible says, ‘Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.’ The proper dress for fellowship is a humble attitude.

The rest of that verse says, ‘. . . because, God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.’ This is the other reason we need to be humble: Pride blocks God’s grace in our lives, which we must have in order to grow, change, heal, and help others. We receive God’s grace by humbly admitting that we need it. The Bible says anytime we are prideful, we are living in opposition to God! That is a foolish and dangerous way to live (page 148).”

Humility and humbleness. Are they the same thing? I argue they’re not the same. Humility is what Paul and others have taught as a leash on the selfishness of status addiction. Humbleness, on the other hand, is what Jesus taught as a tonic for the wounds caused by status addiction.

Warren says, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more of others. Humble people are so focused on serving others, they don’t think of themselves (page 148).”

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

(I loved the TV show Lost in Space when I was a kid.)

If you try to always think of others, and never think of your own needs, you’ll become one messed-up puppy.

I tried this whole dissolve-yourself-in-service-to-others gig for three whole years in the “middle phase” of my spiritual journey, and guess what happened? I ended up being an enabler for status-addicts.

There’s nothing a status-addict loves more than having an obedient, admiring, selfless acolyte to kick around. (Well, having a whole group of acolytes would probably be better than having just one doormat to wipe his/her feet on, but even one servant is better than none.)

Humility is not the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. Forgiveness is the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. Forgiveness and tough love are closely linked to each other because both require you to dredge up your own soul-given courage. Knowing yourself and trusting yourself also require great courage.

Being a doormat and an enabler of status addicts may be the easy way out, but it’s not the divine way out.

Did you know that Paul almost never discusses forgiveness in his known letters? Yeah, that’s because if you tell people they have the power within themselves to forgive themselves and each other, they may discover on their own that we’re all equally amazing children of God and nobody — but nobody — is “chosen.”

Couldn’t have that, now, could we?

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P.S. After I posted the body of this article, I was prompted by my guardian angels to look closely at the index of Rick Warren’s book. His book is divided into a preface plus 40 chapters (one chapter for each day of the “journey”). There are many footnotes. Most of the footnotes give scriptural references to support Warren’s argument, and a few refer to recent Christian publications he admires.

Of the 787 footnotes in this book, only 7 refer to the biblical Gospel of Mark (with one footnote listing 2 different verses in Mark). (There’s a ninth footnote reference to Mark, but this is for Mark 16:15, which is generally believed to be a later addition to the gospel).

The Gospel of Mark is a troublesome book for evangelical and conservative Christians because this is the story of a physician-scholar who gives up his status and breaks a lot of religious rules in order to help the poor, the disenfranchised, and the sick. It can also be called the Gospel of Forgiveness, ’cause that’s what Jesus does throughout.

As I said, it’s a troublesome book. (You can read more about the dispute between Mark and Paul at “Choosing Between Paul and Jesus,” “The Case for Mark Versus Paul,” and “Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength.”

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Posted in forgiveness, Gospel of Mark, humbleness, humility, Kingdom teachings, Paul vs Jesus, psychopathy, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic and tagged Jesus vs Paul, religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

02 Nov 2011

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

24 Aug 2011

RS3: Learning to Like God

A: Jesus, why do you think there’s so much resistance to the idea that God is actually two distinct people, two distinct consciousnesses, a Mother God and a Father God working together to bring new life into being?

Learning to Like God Doesn’t Mean You Have to Stop Having Fun (c) JAT 2013

J: I don’t think there’s one simple answer to that question. Human beings have been struggling for thousands of years with questions about who God is. The important thing to bear in mind is that people of faith have usually been in conflict with people of religion, regardless of place or time or culture. People of faith, wherever they live, are the people who listen for God’s presence with their hearts and bodies and minds and souls and courage. People of faith have a tendency to get sucked into groups run by people of religion. I’m defining “people of religion” as those who choose to obey the Laws and the Prophets.

A: Whose laws and whose prophets?

J: Everybody’s religious laws and everybody’s religious prophets when those laws and prophets contradict the obvious truths which God speaks to all people of the world each day.

A: Such as?

J: Such as the obvious truth that relationship is the foundation of all life. Human babies aren’t plucked from trees like ripe figs. At some time, there has to be an intimate relationship between male sperm and female ova. Even if this connection takes place in a test tube.

A: That hasn’t stopped scientists from cloning animals. And trying to clone human beings, I’m sure, though I doubt they’re talking out loud about this kind of Mengelian research.

J: The media have been creating the impression in the popular imagination that cloning is an easy, harmless, reliable, Newtonian process that obeys simple laws of Cause and Effect. Why, soon there’ll be home cloning kits for you on the shopping channel! Just think! You’ll be able to clone dear ol’ granny! The reality of cloning is much more complex, however. Beyond all the hidden struggles in labs and the fudged data and the attempts by major corporations to try to patent DNA that doesn’t belong to them, there have been serious failures and inexplicable weaknesses in the cloned creatures.

A: How do God the Mother and God the Father respond to these cloning projects?

J: The same way they respond to other acts of human psychopathy. They allow observable consequences to unfold so other people can see for themselves what a stupid idea it is.

A: Boy, sometimes it takes an awful lot of pain to get regular people to see the observable consequences of a stupid idea.

J: Human beings have free will. They can choose to be greedy and selfish, as many corporate researchers are choosing to be, or they can choose to be compassionate and clear-headed. Many of these corporate researchers see no contradiction in also being practising conservative Christians or Jews or Muslims because Abrahamic orthodoxy insists that God has given human beings special rights and privileges as “sovereigns” over all creatures of Planet Earth (Genesis 1:28 and, by inference, Genesis 2-3). Many, many religious people have assumed this means they can do whatever the hell they want on Earth, and God will simply nod and smile and say, “My, what a good boy you are!” Obviously, there’s something wrong with this picture.

A: Nuclear weapons spring quickly to mind.

J: Yes, plus toxic wastes poured into the ground and water. Diversion of major fresh water sources. Drilling for oil in unsafe and harmful environments such as thousands of metres below the sea bed. There’s not a lot of common sense or clear-headedness — let alone compassion — in any of these choices.

A: Yet you’re not advocating that we give up all technology and return to an ancient agrarian lifestyle.

J: No, I’m not asking people to give up their phones and their cars and go live on a barren mountaintop to get closer to God. On the other hand, a little balance might be nice. People might spend a little less time with their phones and their cars and a little more time with their children.

A: But that would mean spending time on their relationships.

J: It never ceases to amaze me that pious folk who refuse to treat anyone but themselves with respect will turn around and insist they have all the answers about how to be in relationship with God. How can a person who knows nothing about relationships claim to be an expert in relationships? How can a man who treats all women as inferior claim to know who God is? It’s narcissistic bullshit, nothing more.

A: These guys are too busy throwing themselves on their status-saturated swords to notice they’re not very nice people.

J: In orthodox Western Christianity, the image of God is very much one of the old bearded guy in the sky who’s throwing himself on his status-saturated sword for the sake of all those little peons who are too weak and sinful to make any good relationship choices ever.

A: God as the ultimate narcissist. No wonder so many people of faith have rejected the traditional Christian image of God. What’s to like?

J: It’s pretty hard to love and trust somebody when you believe there are no grounds to even like him or her.

A: So . . . it would make sense for the church of the third millennium to show people ways in which they can like God the Mother and God the Father as people and as divine parents. That way they can start to build a solid, respectful, daily relationship with God.

J: Naturally, it will come as no surprise that having a respectful relationship with God is no different than having a respectful relationship with your neighbour. If you can’t treat the one with kindness, you sure as heck can’t treat the other.

It’s only common sense.

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Posted in Church of today, faith, free will, Law (Nomos), Mother and Father God, Mother God, psychopathy, Realspiritik, the right to be right, theodicy and tagged science & faith | Leave a Comment

01 Aug 2011

JR61: Sixth Step in Healing the Church: Be Honest About the Bible

A: I’ve been reflecting for the past few days on the suffering inflicted by Anders Breivik on everybody everywhere who’s capable of loving their God and loving their neighbours as themselves.

Several news reports have referred to a 1,500 page manifesto that Breivik posted on the Internet shortly before the Norway attacks. Apparently Breivik copied a number of sections almost word from word from the writings of several well-known far-right ideologues. (Which just goes to show, once again, that psychopaths are very good at “cutting and pasting” other people’s ideas, but not capable of coming up with original insights of their own.) Breivik’s manifesto has been compared to the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the U.S. Unabomber. But when I look at excerpts from Breivik’s diary and manifesto, and compare his actions to his beliefs, I don’t see a modern day European political movement. I see a very old ideological movement, one that fills up many pages in the Bible. I see the Book of Jeremiah. I see the Book of Revelation. I see the Book of Numbers.

J: These are all biblical books that give permission to psychopaths to carry out “Just Wars.”

A: I’ve noticed in news reports about Breivik that he readily admits he carried out the Oslo bombing and the camp shootings, but he says he didn’t break the law in doing so because he’s at war with the Norway government.

J: Inside our man Breivik’s head, it all makes perfect sense. Of course, the reason it makes sense to him is that he’s only using certain parts of his biological brain. He’s not using the parts of his brain that deal with empathy or relationship or common sense or compassionate humour or trust or creativity. If he were using those parts, he wouldn’t be capable of planning such a cold, ruthless, legalistic act of violence against others.

A: On the other hand, interviews with some of the camp survivors suggest these young people embody all the best of human potential — empathy and relationship and trust and so on. There was a really good article in Saturday’s Toronto Star: “Norway Tragedy: Inside the nightmare on Utoya” by Michelle Shephard (Toronto Star, Saturday, July 30, 2011). One 20 year old woman, Karoline Bank, is quoted as saying, “Yes, he took many people away from us, and every life lost is a tragedy. But we have gotten so much stronger over this. There’s not much more to say.”

J: Couldn’t have said it better myself.

A: People of faith will wonder why God allowed this to happen.

J: People of faith have to stop listening to people of religious humility. People of faith — by that I mean people who want to be in relationship with God now, TODAY, not at some vague time of future judgment — have to start being more honest, more realistic, about the motivations that drove the authors of many revered religious texts. They have to stop wearing rose-coloured lenses when they read the Bible. They have to stop making excuses for the psychopaths who wrote so many parts of the Old and New Testaments. They have to stop making excuses for the parts of the Bible that were clearly written by those suffering from major mental illness.

A: Like the Book of Revelation.

Christian theologians have long been desperate to endorse the violent imagery of the Book of Revelation as a central justification for orthodox Christian teachings about the End Times. But from the point of view of God’s angels, the prophetic visions recorded in Revelation feel like a psychopathic attack on God and also on the soul who lived as Jesus, an attack no different in intent than Anders Breivik’s systematic rampage against campers trapped on a small island. Like Breivik, who disguised himself as a police officer so he could ensnare more victims, the prophet who penned Revelation pretended to be a faithful follower of Jesus as he took direct aim at Jesus’ teachings about a loving and forgiving God. Shown here are the head and wings of a large 9th century BCE Assyrian human-headed bull found in the North-West palace at Nimrud (on display at the British Museum). Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: This is an issue of trust. People have to decide for themselves whether they’re going to trust what John says about humanity’s relationship with God, or whether they’re going to trust their own hearts, their own heads, and their own experiences about humanity’s relationship with God. Would a loving and forgiving God put a gun in Anders Breivik’s hands and tell him to go out and shoot people to “ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom [will] prevail”?*

A: God didn’t stop him, though.

J: Really? You’re sure about that? Because from where I’m standing, God did a great deal to stop him.

A: Sixty-nine people at the camp are dead, plus several more at the site of the Oslo bombing. They’re dead and they’re not coming back.

J: No, they’re not coming back. And their families and friends will grieve because they — the human survivors — have loving hearts. Their grief is unavoidable and is a measure of their wholeness. Yet one day their family and friends will cross to the Other Side, as all creatures of Planet Earth must do, and they’ll be reunited with their loved ones. So from God’s point of view, the relationships haven’t ceased. The relationships still exist, despite the death of the physical body, because love never dies. The form of the relationships has changed, but not the substance. The substance is real. The love can’t be taken away from any of these souls. Love continues beyond anything the physical body knows. Love is greater than anything the physical body knows. Love is the great mystery. It’s what guides God the Mother and God the Father in their decisions about when people are coming Home. But make no mistake — everyone eventually dies. God has never promised otherwise. This is the natural order of the universe.

A: You wouldn’t know it to listen to an apocalyptic prophet who promises bodily resurrection of the dead.

J: It’s a funny thing about psychopaths. A psychopath has a distinctive pattern to his logic and choices and behaviours, and one of the most distinctive features of psychopathy is the peculiar attitude towards death. They’re unable to trust anyone, of course — since trust is closely related to empathy and love and forgiveness — and this means they’re completely unable to trust in the idea that physical death is a natural, loving part of the soul’s relationship with God. Death without future punishment isn’t logical to a psychopath, just as life with present forgiveness isn’t logical to him. He’s incapable of feeling love, so he’s unable to conceive of a loving death. He’s also incapable of believing that God is smarter than he is, so he’ll spend a great deal of time and energy looking for “escape clauses” in the contract laws about death in the Abrahamic religions. If the clauses he wants aren’t there, he’ll claim to be a divinely-inspired prophet and add them himself. Egyptian attitudes towards death in the pre-Hellenistic period epitomize the psychopath’s fear of death.

A: You’re saying a psychopath’s attitude towards death isn’t unique to a specific religion or culture, but is instead universal because it’s biological. You’re saying that “escape clauses” come out the same way in different cultures because all human beings share the same basic DNA.

J (nodding): A psychopath is, by definition, a person who is cut off from the input of his own brain’s Soul Circuitry. This “cutting off” may have resulted, in rare circumstances, from a head injury or infection or poisoning or oxygen deprivation. But the vast majority of psychopaths are “self made.” High functioning psychopaths such as Anders Breivik are individuals who’ve turned themselves into psychopaths one bad choice at a time. This is why psychopathy doesn’t usually emerge in full-fledged form until adolescence. It takes a long time for a person to consciously undo the healthy connections God builds into the human brain.

A: It’s still amazing to me that human beings have that kind of control over the wiring of their own brains. But history bears out the truth of what you’re saying.

J: You’ll probably be shocked to learn, then, that within the annals of religious history there have been select groups who’ve intentionally incorporated the blueprint for “how to build a psychopath” into their religious doctrines.

A: You mean . . . these groups wanted to create psychopaths? On purpose?

J: It can be very useful, from a utilitarian point of view, to have a man like Anders Breivik on your side if you’re trying to acquire wealth, power, status, and “immortality.”

A: This immortality thing . . . this need to leave behind a human legacy of power and status for future generations to admire and imitate — is this a normal state of mind for a person who feels whole and healed and humble? Because it seems awfully narcissistic to me.

J: It’s normal and natural for a soul-in-human-form to want to create and build and improve the quality of life for his or her community. Persons-of-soul — angels — have a strong sense of purpose and mission and service. So you expect to see a community of Whole Brain Thinkers busily at work devising new ways to dig wells for clean water or improving ways to eliminate toxins from the environment or building new schools and medical clinics in underserved areas. Human beings are at their best when they come together in teams to bring healing to others in the face of suffering.

A: Healing instead of revenge.

J: A large number of people around the world have responded to the Norway tragedy by offering their hope, faith, and love instead of judgment, piety, and revenge. Some have found, for the first time in their lives, the courage of their own faith. The courage of their own trust in God. The courage of their own trust in each other.

A: That’s a powerful insight, to know you have the courage to choose hope, faith, and love.

Jesus said: One person cannot ride two horses at once, nor stretch two bows; nor can a servant serve two masters, as he will respect one and despise the other. No one drinks vintage wine and immediately wants to drink fresh wine; fresh wine is not put into old wineskins because they might burst. Vintage wine is not put into new wineskins because it might be spoiled” (Gospel of Thomas 47a-d). You can choose the path of redemption or you can choose the path of revenge. Pick one because you can’t have both. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: To find that courage is to know redemption. I send my love to all who are open to the wondrous idea that humans — not just God — are filled to overflowing in their own souls with divine courage and trust and gratitude and devotion.

This courage is yours. It’s not God’s. It’s not your neighbour’s. It’s not your parents’. It’s not your priest’s. It’s yours. It’s part of who you are as a soul.

Claim it and live it. Be the person God knows you really are. Don’t be a bully and coward like Anders Breivik, who hasn’t the courage to love. (Though I forgive him.) Be open to a loving relationship with God, no matter what your religious background. Your neighbour is loved by God as much as you are. All your neighbours.

No other truth is acceptable.

* On July 24, 2011, The Globe and Mail published a Reuter’s article, “Excerpts from Norway attacker’s diary.” An entry from June 11, 2011 said, “I prayed for the first time in a very long time today. I explained to God that unless he wanted the Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom within the next hundred years he must ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom prevail.”

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Bible, Book of Revelation, brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain-soul connection, Church of today, Divine Love, forgiveness, free will, Jesus Redux, life and death, psychopathy, redemption, Soul, the right to be right, trust, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

24 Jul 2011

JR60: The Utoeya Tragedy in Norway

Sadness. Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Well, big guy, when you’re right you’re right. On Tuesday (July 19, 2011) you talked honestly but in general terms about the mindset of psychopaths. You talked about a psychopath who props himself up with ideology and believes he’s a nice person.

Three days later, on Friday, July 22, 2011, Norwegian police arrested a 32 year old Norwegian man Anders Behring Breivik on charges of setting off a car bomb in Oslo and later mowing down at least 84 young people at a summer camp northwest of Oslo — on the island of Utoeya. The report I read in Saturday’s Globe and Mail (“Death toll reaches 91 in Norway attacks” by Walter Gibbs and Anna Ringstrom (Reuters)) gives some background information about Breivik. Early accounts referred to the gunman’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. (Since then, his Facebook page has been blocked.) His Facebook page apparently listed interests in bodybuilding, conservative politics, and freemasonry. He described himself as “a Christian, leaning toward right-wing Christianity.” He may also have been a a gun club member.

The real kicker is this: The Reuters account says, “Norwegian media said he had set up a Twitter account a few days ago and posted a single message on July 17 saying: ‘One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.'”

This is a horrible real-life example of exactly what you’ve been talking about for months now on this site. It’s almost exactly word for word what you’ve been saying. An ideologue — a psychopath who’s got his teeth sunk deep into a Big Idea — is capable of the most vicious crimes.

J: People from all quadrants, especially the conservative Christian quadrant, will be rushing in to offer their breathless analysis of “what went wrong.” They’ll speculate and cluck their tongues on the question of why a man who had so much, a man who appeared to be so capable and logical and well-organized, went so badly off the rails. Many people will shrug and say, “It’s just life. Humanity’s a pile of shit anyway, so who should be surprised?” Pious religious folk, including devout orthodox Christians, will invoke the Devil, as they usually do when they don’t want to look at themselves and their own contribution to man-made evils such as the Utoeya tragedy. They’ll say, “Satan possessed him and took his soul,” and similar bullshit. Not many people will be looking at this man and his ongoing choices and saying, “This man turned himself into a psychopath. On purpose. Because he liked the high of hurting other people.” But that’s the only appropriate response.

This is the response the angels around me are having to this crisis. God’s angels know what this man did this to himself. We forgive him, as we always forgive our brothers-and-sisters-in-temporary-human-form. But we can see this man’s brain, and this man’s brain is a seriously fucked-up mess. It also happens to be a fucked-up mess in a highly predictable and observable fashion. There’s a pattern to his behaviour. A definite, clear, observable pattern. Brain scans would show this pattern. Nobody has to take my word for it. Prove it to yourselves through more research. Please!

A: Don’t blame the Devil. Blame the brain.

J: Yes. You have to place the responsibility where it lies: squarely on the brain of this man Breivik. He made the choices and he made the plan. It’s his responsibility. Years ago he stopped listening to his own soul. But he’s still in charge of the rest of his brain and the rest of his choices, and he’s still responsible — legally and morally responsible — for his choice to use his logic and planning skills to carry out an intentional crime against humanity. He’s not a nice person, and he needs to be held to account during his human lifetime for the suffering he’s chosen to create.

A: Is it actually possible for a person who’s just mowed down 84 teenagers with a gun to still believe he’s a nice person? How could he possibly think that? It’s beyond belief! (Note: As of July 30, 2011, the number of dead at Utoeya is reported at 69, with the number of injured at almost 100.)

J: It’s beyond belief to you because you’re not a psychopath. You have a conscience and connections to your heart and soul. Brievik has no such connections. He decided years ago to cut them off inside his own brain.

A: But . . . how is that possible? How can a human being actually sever connections inside their own brains? Aren’t there fail-safes for that? Aren’t there Darwinian imperatives to prevent that from happening?

J: The human brain is an extremely complex series of organs. Way more complex than any other system in the biological body.

A: This month’s issue of Scientific American says essentially the same thing on the Forum page. (“A Dearth of New Meds: Drugs to treat neuropsychiatric disorders have become too risky for big pharma” by Kenneth I. Kaitin and Christopher P. Milne, Scientific American, August 2011, p. 16.)

J: I can’t emphasize enough the stupidity of treating the human brain as if it’s a single organ like the heart, and the insanity of pretending that human beings don’t have information from their souls hardwired into their DNA. And when I say “souls” I mean only good souls. I have no time or patience for patently abusive religious doctrines such as original sin. I will not tolerate any Christian saying to me, “Oh, yes, of course we believe in the scientific reality of original sin being hardwired into our human DNA! Why, anybody can see he was born evil!” This is NOT what I mean.

Our man Breivik wasn’t born evil. He wasn’t born in a state of original sin. His biology has been gradually changed and altered over many years because of conscious choices he’s been making. It’s taken years for him to become a psychopath. Years. But the signs have been there. The signs of his status addiction and his obsessive compulsive dysfunction are clear from his Facebook page and other reports. He was fixated on bodybuilding, conservative politics, guns, freemasonry, right-wing Christianity, and the Big Idea of “us versus them” (i.e. Dualism). This is a package deal, folks. An observable package, an observable pattern of choices followed by an observable pattern of behaviour. Why would Breivik’s soul, his true self, like any of these things? Why would his true loving self enjoy obsessive bodybuilding that damages the physical body over time? Why would his true loving self choose conservative politics that take away the sense of balance in a community between the rights of an individual and the rights of the group? Why would his true loving self think it’s fun to shoot other people for the heck of it? Why would his true loving self accept the myths of Hierarchy and Dualism?

Why would he choose any of these things if he were in a state of balance and wholeness? He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t do it. It would feel wrong to him. But he can’t feel that wrongness because he opted years ago to start listening only to the stupid parts of his own brain — the parts of the brain that are supposed to help people look after aspects of their human lives that are purely 3D, purely temporary. Necessary but temporary because life on Planet Earth is temporary.

A: In the past you’ve called these parts of the brain the Darwinian circuit.

J: Yes. There are parts of the brain devoted to human physiological needs and human safety needs. These can be thought of in a general way as the Darwinian circuitry. There are also parts of the brain that specialize in the soul’s need for love and belonging, along with the soul’s need for self esteem. These latter two parts can be thought of as the Soul circuitry. All these parts have to be working together in order for a person to feel balanced and whole and sane and safe. Self-actualized, as Abraham Maslow called it. All these parts are needed for the experience of faith — genuine soul-based faith. It should go without saying that our man Breivik has the Big Idea but absolutely no faith. He calls himself a Christian, but he has no faith. All he has is the Big Idea.

A: You talked on Tuesday about score cards. You said a psychopath has a score card inside him instead of a heart.

J: The great dilemma for the psychopath — the person who’s dissociated from his own empathy and his own ability to love and trust — is how to get through the day. How to fill up all the looooooong, boooooooring hours between waking and sleeping.

A: Seriously?

J: Oh, yeah. Tell a psychopath he has to sit under a tree and be still and quiet for 8 hours and he’ll want to pull his hair out.

A: Really? I could sit under a tree for 8 hours and have a wonderful time.

J: Yes, but you don’t feel empty inside. You don’t feel purposeless and hopeless and restless and bored all the time.

A: Sometimes I feel restless.

J: How often?

A: I don’t know. Maybe a couple of times each week.

J: A psychopath feels like this all the time. He lives constantly for the next brief high, the next brief hit of status or cocaine or sex. It’s all he’s got to get him through the day. There’s only such much cocaine he can do each day, only so many times he can get an erection each day. So the mainstay for him is status points. He’ll do anything to get status points for his internal scorecard. He’ll keep his cell phone on 24 hours each day so he can get a “hit” from the fact that he’s needed by somebody at 4:00 in the morning. He’ll check his Facebook status 20 or 30 times each day. He’ll play computer or video games that rack up big points. He’ll gamble. He’ll gossip. He’ll focus fanatically on professional sports. Or, if he goes in a religious direction instead of a secular direction to find his daily supply of status points, he’ll become a man of the Book. A pious, obedient follower of the Law. An obsessive compulsive religious devotee.

A: But not a nice person. Not a person of empathy and patience and humbleness.

J: He has to choose between being an addict and being a nice person. He can’t be both at the same time.

A: Yet he’s certain he can be. He’s certain he’s a nice person who’s not an addict.

J: What’s the greatest obstacle to healing for those who suffer from addiction?

A: Denial.

J: Our Norwegian man, Mr. Breivik, is in a serious state of denial about his addiction to status. He’ll have no chance of recovery as a human being until somebody is honest with him about the nature of his addiction. Unfortunately for him, the doctrines of orthodox Christianity will only excuse his behaviour rather than force him to confront it. Pauline Christianity is, in essence, an anti-Twelve-Step Program.

This isn’t exactly the sort of helpful Church teaching God’s angels have in mind.

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, Christ Zone, conscience & morality, dualism, HDM Myths, Jesus Redux, Original Sin, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), status addiction, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

19 Jul 2011

JR59: News of the World: "New Lamps For Old"

A: I see a lot of similarity between the current phone hacking scandal in the U.K. and the behaviour of the apostle Paul and his cronies in the first century CE. In both situations, a very powerful man does whatever he wants regardless of how unethical, corrupt, manipulative, and cruel it is. The only difference between then and now is that Rupert Murdoch’s employees have received a public shaming. Without the huge public outcry that accompanied the recent re-revelation about phone hacking at the News of the World, the authorities wouldn’t have reopened the investigation or arrested more people. The authorities — or rather I should say certain individuals in senior positions of authority in the police and government — knew about the accusations of unethical conduct and did nothing much about them until regular people started yelling and putting their foot down.

“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at their image and, on going away, immediately forget what they look like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act — they will be blessed in their doing” (James 1:22-25). Replicas of Ancient Greek vessels. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: The parallels are uncanny. If people today are having trouble imagining what it felt like for my followers soon after my death, they can read about the phone hacking scandal and put themselves in the shoes of the families of the murder victims who were psychologically assaulted by the News of the World reporters, editors, and decision makers.

A: I think most people would be shocked to learn how unethical Paul really was. How cold and calculating he really was.

J: He was a business man. Very practical, very logical. He was like the editor at the News of the World who approved the phone hacking strategies. Anything was okay as long as it got the job done. “The end justifies the means” and all that crap. Success at any price. Just the way his bosses in Alexandria wanted it.

A: Yet you’ve said in previous discussions that Paul truly believed in what he was doing.

J: Sure. A successful psychopath is an ideologue. It’s what separates the successful psychopaths — “snakes in suits,” as researcher Robert Hare calls them — from the garden variety criminals who get caught and thrown in jail for reckless, impulsive crimes. An ideologue — and Paul was a religio-political ideologue — uses “The Big Idea” as a crutch to hold up his dysfunctional brain. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s an external framework of ideas that the psychopath clings to because he’s lost his own internal compass. He can’t hear the voice of his own soul telling him what’s right and wrong. But he’s still very logical, very goal-oriented, and he’s addicted to status. So if he can “attach” himself to an external Big Idea, and apply his logic and ambition to it, he can acquire status and not end up in prison.

A: Why won’t he end up in prison? Aren’t psychopaths inherently impulsive? Prone to risk-taking behaviours and uninterested in consequences? Doesn’t this make him more likely to do something criminal?

J: Yes. It’s part of the package for psychopaths. But if you put a psychopath in a structured organization where there are very strict rules, very clear punishments, and rigid ladders of governance, he’ll be so busy trying to claw his way up “the ladder of success” he won’t bother going out to rob banks or gas stations. The buzz he gets from plotting his long-term strategy for “success” is much better than the temporary high of terrorizing a gas station attendant.

This is not to say the snakes-in-suits are “nicer” psychopaths. They’re not nice people at all. But no one can question their ability to promote “The Big Idea” (whatever their Big Idea happens to be) with charismatic passion. Regular people are easily sucked in by this passion.

A: So Paul was a snake-in-a-suit. I kinda like the way this ties in with the conversations we’ve had about the Book of Genesis.

J: Paul was promoting the Big Idea of salvation. Escape from a life without status. Escape from a death without status. He and his followers built a humongous empire on the “4 S’s” — sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation. But Paul’s Big Idea was just that — an idea. A belief system. A theory without proof. A theory that’s never had proof. Its very lack of provableness is what makes it so attractive to psychopaths. Why? Because there’s nothing in the Big Idea that can act as a mirror for the psychopath’s true intent. There’s nothing to make him look at himself honestly. There’s nothing to challenge him to be his best self. The Big Idea gives him 1,001 excuses to brush his abusive behaviour under the carpet. Unfortunately, until the psychopath sees himself as he really is, he has no incentive to change.

A: I think we’ve just spiralled back to your analogy between a psychopath and the Greek monster Medusa. Medusa’s hideous face turned everyone into stone until Perseus held up a mirror-like shield and forced her to look at herself.

J: Part of the problem here is that regular people don’t understand what makes a psychopath tick. Regular people look at a “successful psychopath” — the guy who has the drive and ambition to work 16 hour days — and they think he must really know who he is and what he wants. They think they should try to be like him. They think they themselves are failures if they want to go home to their families after working an 8 hour day. But the honest truth is the successful psychopath has no idea who he really is. All he has inside himself is a score card. A score card instead of a heart. His soul is all heart, of course, but he long ago stopped listening to this core part of himself. This is why he has no conscience and no empathy. His soul isn’t defective, but his biological brain is seriously out of balance. He’s so used to living this way that it’s normal for him. Even worse, he likes living this way. He likes hurting other people. He likes making regular people feel small and useless. And he’s not going to change until he recognizes the honest truth that he’s not a nice person.

A: It took me years to understand this lesson. I misunderstood what compassion was. I thought compassion meant you should never intentionally make another person feel bad about themselves. That’s before I learned (the hard way) that a lot of people out there want to hurt other people and consciously choose to hurt other people and get a high out of psychologically abusing other people and won’t decide to stop this behaviour until they’re forced to look in the mirror. I also learned the hard way that the more dysfunctional a person is, the more insulted and offended she’ll be when you tell her she isn’t being a nice person.

J: You’re thinking of someone in particular when you say that.

A: Yes. I’m thinking of Grace, the modern day “spiritual leader” (a.k.a. apocalyptic prophet) I hung out with for several years before I came to my senses.

J: These are the people who are quickest to say, “You have no right to say such things about me.”

A: Hey, don’t forget the other favourite response of the psychopath who insists she’s a nice person: “Oh, my dear, tut tut, how can you say such things about me? Why, everyone knows what a good person I am and how hard I work on behalf of the community. I’m so concerned for you, you poor thing. You really need to get some help.”

J: A psychopath has extremely strong defences against hearing the truth about his or her own behaviour. It’s scary how strong these defences are. The doctrines of orthodox Western Christianity have served as excellent body armour for its successful psychopaths. Pauline Christians are not called upon to look honestly at themselves and make changes to live up to their true potential. Instead they’re encouraged to stoop to the level of a psychopath’s dysfunctional mind so the psychopath doesn’t have to feel bad about himself.

A: You said pretty much the same thing in James 1:22-25.

J: I’m a consistent fellow. But it’s not hard to be consistent when you’re trying to speak the truth. Truth has an annoying habit of being consistent and provable and open to new and unfolding sources of knowledge. Even if it takes a couple of thousand years for the truth to be recognized, for the facts to be identified, remembered, understood, and acted upon.

A: I’m glad there’s finally a solid and widespread foundation of research in place so the truth about Paul’s “News of the World” can finally come out.

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Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", conscience & morality, empathy, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Letter of James, Paul's teachings, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), theodicy and tagged Paul vs Jesus | Leave a Comment

15 Jul 2011

JR58: The "My Fellow American" Interfaith Initiative

A: I was contacted this week by a person who’s working with the Unity Productions Foundation on an interfaith initiative called My Fellow American. The goal of the initiative is to encourage Americans to think of their fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim as fellow Americans. There’s a 2 minute film produced by Unity, and there are also uploaded videos and stories from various supporters of the idea that all Americans are equally American, regardless of religion. What do you think of this project?

J (grinning): I think you should post the address.

A: Oh yeah. Good thinking. The address is http://myfellowamerican.us/

I discovered when I went to watch the film how truly outdated my computer really is. Computer updates are not my thing. Good thing the computer at work has more juice in it.

The person who contacted me also wondered if I could maybe Tweet about the project if I checked it out and liked it. I don’t know how to tell her this, but I don’t even own a cell phone. So the Tweeting is pretty much out.

J: Everybody has their own way of communicating with others.

A: Anyway, I certainly can’t argue with the basic principle of treating all your neighbours with dignity and respect and compassion and kindness regardless of religion. This is what makes a society internally strong.

J: The one thing people have to remember is that all human beings are children of God. A Muslim woman is just as a much a child of God as the saints of Christian history. To deny a woman dignity and respect simply because she’s Muslim is to withhold divine love from your neighbour. It’s as simple as that.

A: I think some people are afraid that if they love and accept the woman with an open heart they’ll be required to love and accept all the religious teachings that are part of her tradition. At least that’s how they view it.

Regardless of religious affiliation, we’re all children of God. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: Religious teachings are very much a human thing. Divine love, on the other hand, is a soul thing. Divine love always trumps religious teachings. Every religion on the face of Planet Earth today has problems — problems with abusive doctrines, problems with gender issues, problems with “law,” and problems with balance. Every religion. Islam is no different from Christianity in this regard. Sure, Islam has some problems. But so does orthodox Western Christianity. This is no excuse for failing to love your neighbour and failing to believe in his or her best self. Everybody’s struggling. People of all religions have to hold each other up. People have to work together. It’s the only way to find healing.

A: The 10-year anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. Some people haven’t got over the shock. They’re still looking for someone to blame.

J: If they’re looking for someone to blame, then they should be looking at the unassailable laws of neurophysiology, not at religion. Only a seriously, seriously dysfunctional individual thinks it’s okay to blow up buildings “in the name of God.” This applies across the board to all religions and all cultures. Christianity has had its fair share of psychopaths in martyrs’ clothing, too. Psychopathy is a social, medical, and educational issue. Psychopathy is about as far from genuine relationship with God as it’s possible to get.

The vast majority of Muslims and Christians and those of other faiths are doing their best to get closer to God — not farther away from God and faith — even though they make mistakes along the way. People of all faiths are constantly learning, changing, growing. Traditions change. Religious teachings change. The one core truth that doesn’t change is the reality of the good soul, and the potential of all human beings to help each other understand this reality. If you allow yourself to be open to this truth, amazing things can happen in your community. Whatever community you happen to live in.

A: There are some psychopaths in positions of religious authority.

J: Yes. But there are also psychopaths in positions of political and economic and educational authority. Psychopathy is an entirely separate issue from the question of faith. Inherent to the definition of psychopathy is a total lack of conscience and empathy — in other words, a disconnection from all that enables true faith, true relationship with God. A psychopath seeks status, not faith, when he or she chooses to blow up buildings. It’s entirely a question of status addiction. Can we say this status addiction is true of “all Muslims”? Well, OF COURSE NOT. This would be the same as saying that every person who lives in Boston must be a status-addicted psychopath simply because he or she happens to live in Boston. It isn’t right or fair to make such a claim.

A: Claims such as this have been fairly common over the course of history, though.

J: True. These claims fall under the umbrella of the HDM Myths that you posted about on Concinnate Christianity. (http://concinnatechristianity.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-takes-village-non-hdm-village-that.html ). Group myths of Hierarchy, Dualism, and Monism. Again, these are human myths, human choices, that have nothing to do with the faith of the soul. Challenge the myths and heal the soul, remembering always that the soul is not the aspect of the self that’s perpetuating these myths. It’s certain parts of the biological brain that have gone off the rails, so to speak, and now enjoy the addictive high of schadenfreude. For a person suffering from status addiction, there’s just nothing better than a good hit of mental revenge and religious hatred to get you through the day. It’s cheaper than buying whiskey and cigarettes.

A: That’s a pretty tough statement.

J: Addiction is a pretty tough reality. Addiction destroys lives. Better to be honest about its effects.

A: Because, as you often say, healing follows insight.

J: My hat’s off to the My Fellow American participants because they’re doing their best to help others in their community be their best selves. And they’re working together as a team to teach and share and communicate in relationship with each other. As an angel, I can’t ask for more than that.

Addendum, October 16, 2023: It’s been 12 years since I wrote this post with the soul who lived as Jesus.

The world has changed greatly during this time. One of the unfortunate changes has been an ideological shift towards monism within many educational institutions and humanitarian organizations in Western nations. This shift has taken society further away from the idea that people hold individual responsibility for their own choices. In place of the long-held Judeo-Christian value system built on free will, personal responsibility, and accountability to your own inner wisdom (what we call “conscience”), there has been a push to impose a value system based on “group banners” behind which individuals can hide.

No one can be his or her best self if “group banners” (especially religious “group banners”) are used as an excuse for hanging onto harmful traditions, hateful actions, or justification for revenge.

Mother Father God and your angels don’t care what your religious teachers say. What matters to God is how you choose to use your free will as a human being during your time on Planet Earth. If you decide it’s a great idea to hate other people on the basis of their religion, that’s not okay with God. The recent resurgence of anti-Semitism is therefore not okay with your own soul or your angels.

Anti-Semitism isn’t the only example of extreme hatred in today’s world, but right now it’s a cauldron of suffering, especially for those who are doing the hating.

It’s your job as a human being — as a soul in human form — to learn how to look past the “group banners” that breed hatred and divisiveness. Seek the best in others and stand your ground as a child of God. Treat each person you meet as an individual who is responsible for his or her own choices towards others and towards God. This probably means you’ll have to reject some of the destructive religious doctrines that are causing problems in the world today. But if that’s what you have to do so you can hear your own conscience, that’s what you have to do.

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Posted in conscience & morality, faith, free will, hatred, HDM Myths, Islam, Jesus Redux, monism, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, Soul, status addiction and tagged brain-soul connection, Divine Heart | Leave a Comment

08 Jul 2011

JR56: Forgiveness As a Present Reality

A: Tell me more about forgiveness. The other day you said, “Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn’t enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt” (The Meaning of “the Son of Man”). You and I have talked a lot about forgiveness, but you’ve never linked it to the Peace Sequence before. Can you explain in more detail what you meant?

J: I’m going to introduce a comparison between forgiveness and catalysts (as catalysts are understood by a chemist). At a quantum level, forgiveness acts as an important “biochemical” catalyst for learning.

A: Okay, you’re gonna have to back up the divine truck on this one.

J: In everyday speech, people use the word “catalyst” to mean a person, thing, or event that prompts sudden change. In Western culture it’s often an unexpected tragedy that serves as a catalyst for change. For instance, if a child is killed because a newly designed toy isn’t safe, the people around the child are shocked into action. Chances are good that an inquiry will be held, and healthy and safety regulations will be amended to remove this particular threat. The catalyst for change was a tragic event that jarred people out of their complacency and forced them to be more honest about a quantifiable, measurable threat to children’s safety.

The factual reality of the toy’s dangerous design existed before the tragic death. The threat itself wasn’t new. What was new was the realization of the threat, the objective recognition of the threat, the memory of the threat. In other words, human beings had to learn about the threat. They had to identify the problem, remember the problem, understand the problem, then fix the problem. These are the stages of learning. As it happens, these are also the stages of emotional healing and spiritual transformation. They’re all hopelessly intertwined with each other.

A: Identify, remember, understand, and fix. That’s a pretty logical sequence. What happens if a person tries to skip one of those steps? I’m thinking in particular of the “remember” stage. I’ve met quite a few people who seem to have really bad memories. Important information goes right in one ear and out the other. And these are fairly young people I’m talking about, not elderly people with dementia!

J: Those who can’t remember their own history are doomed to repeat it.

A: I remember a fellow we were corresponding with a few years ago about the spiritual journey. He was quite incensed because you and I had suggested that an understanding of science was important to spiritual growth and transformation. He wrote somewhat angrily, “Do I have to have a degree in physics?” And your reply was, “No, you have to have a degree in history.” He probably thought you were being facetious.

“Jesus said, ‘ I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart’” (Gospel of Thomas 17). The mysterious gift Jesus is talking about here is Divine Forgiveness, a gift freely given by God to all people at all times without any restrictions or covenants placed upon the gift. Shown here is an example of an inuksuk, which reminds me of what forgiveness is actually like (simple, memorable, beautiful, accessible by all, able to be built by all). Inuksuit have long served to aid full remembrance in Canada’s Far North. They’re now found widely throughout Canada. This one sits among flowers and metal artwork at an Ontario public school. Photo credit JAT 2015.

J: I wasn’t. I was speaking the honest truth. Memory — history — is crucial to the core self. Memory is a huge part of learning. By that I don’t mean simple rote memory, such as your multiplication tables. I mean soul memory, which is a combination of several different forms of memory. It’s emotional memory plus factual memory plus habit memory plus talent memory.

A: That’s a lot to keep track of at one time. Sounds like too much work.

J: Soul memory evolves quite naturally when a child is raised in a mature, responsible, loving home. It becomes a natural way of remembering things. You don’t consciously think about the different aspects of your memory. You just . . . live. You live with empathy and laughter and confidence. It’s your soul memory that helps you do that.

A: So you’re linking empathy with memory.

J: Yes. It’s your memory skills that allow you to remember the names of your neighbour’s children so you can ask how the family is doing.

A: Ooooooh. I suddenly can think of a gajillion different ways that memory can help with empathy and relationships. Things like remembering your friend’s favourite music or your mother’s favourite flower. Or the anniversary of a loved one’s death. Or remembering to pick up a carton of milk on the way home, as promised. Or remembering to say “I love you.” And on and on and on.

J: What’s interesting about people with severe narcissism and psychopathy is the way they use memory. They use memory and history in bizarre, abusive ways. They often have excellent memories when it comes to the mistakes that other people have made (though they rarely admit to their own). They remember all the “crimes” that have been committed against them, and they keep detailed lists of rightful punishments that still need to be meted out.

A: They hold grudges.

J: With a capital “G.” They live for the “high” of revenge. Inside their own heads, they’ll return to the scene of another person’s “crime” and relive the unfairness and unjustness of it all. Then they’ll imagine the scene of their revenge. They’ll gloat about it. They’ll gloat about the glory of their future — and rightful — vengeance. There’s no concern at all about collateral damage — about the people and places that will be damaged when vengeance is pursued. The only thing that’s important to a psychopath is the chance to “even the scales.”

A: Sounds like a Mel Gibson movie.

J: Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not about buying back one’s status or paying a debt or “balancing the scales of time” so the past can be forgotten. Forgiveness absolutely requires a memory of the harm that’s being forgiven.

A: You said above that forgiveness is a catalyst. How does this idea relate to what we’ve been discussing about memory and learning and empathy?

J: In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that’s an essential ingredient in a chemical reaction without itself being changed and without itself being part of the final product or products.

A: Inorganic chemists use elements such as palladium and rhodium as catalysts so they can synthesize complex molecules out of simpler ones.

J: In chemistry, a catalyst works the way a crane works on a large building site. The crane is essential for transporting loads of basic materials to their proper location on the much larger building that’s being constructed. But once the building is completed, the crane is removed from the site. It’s no longer needed. It can be “recycled” — used on another building site because it isn’t part of the final product. Its role is essential but temporary. This is what forgiveness is like.

A: Still not following you. Especially because you’ve said in the past that forgiveness is a permanent choice — a permanent choice to wrap harmful choices within a layer of love.

J: Forgiveness, like the construction crane, is a permanent “substance,” if you will. But like a crane, it moves around. It isn’t glued to one site or one event or one person. It goes in, does its transformative thing, then lets go. Forgiveness allows you to identify, remember, understand, and fix the past without actually having to live in the past. It frees you from the tyranny of rumination on the past. It doesn’t ask you to forget. It asks you to transform. It asks you to take the pain and turn it into something new. Forgiveness isn’t the final product of the transformative process, despite what some theologians have claimed. Forgiveness is the tool — the catalyst — that’s needed so you can take painful experiences and painful choices and turn them into something brand new.

A: The way orthodox Western Christian theologians often describe forgiveness makes it sound like the end goal, the final result of being saved by God.

J: God the Mother and God the Father are always moving the crane of forgiveness. They’re always actively and consciously choosing to forgive their human children for the suffering people create. Forgiveness is a present act — always a present act, not a future one. Just as the Kingdom of the Heavens is supposed to be a present condition, not a future one.

A: I’ve read so many books where teachers of spirituality insist that we “live in the moment.” Is this what you’re getting at? Letting go of the past and the future and focussing only on the present moment?

J: No. Most definitely not. The phrase “living in the moment” all too often means “living in a state of dissociation.” Living in a state of psychological dissociation from one’s emotions, memories, and personal responsibilities. Obviously this doesn’t help individuals or families or communities create peace. To create peace, you have to be willing to learn from the past. You have to be willing to identify the problems of the past, and then marshal all your courage and will power and love to get to the point where you can remember the pain without being overwhelmed and numbed by the pain. In other words, you have to learn from your mistakes.

A: Learning from your own mistakes is very hard. Self forgiveness is very hard.

J: In the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, the man Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to spend all eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down again each day. This aptly describes what it feels like to live without forgiveness. Each day feels like an eternity of repetitive struggle, an endless cycle of guilt and pain you can’t seem to escape from. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is the crane you bring in to build a series of small level shelves or steps on the side of the hill so you can gradually get the stone to the top of the hill and keep it there, where it will no longer torture you. With the boulder of the past safely stowed at the top of the hill, you can get on with the business of planting a nice garden at the base of the hill and inviting all your friends over to share in the beauty. The stone at the top is there to remind you of the mistakes you once made so you ‘re less likely to make them again. The stone isn’t gone. But it’s in a safer place.

A: So in the Kingdom of the Heavens, the past isn’t gone, but it’s in a safer place. This allows you to bring more of your daily energy to the task of living as fully as possible today.

J: You’d be amazed how much energy many people use each day by dwelling in the past, ruminating on past injuries, focussing on revenge, and not paying attention (literally) to the tasks and relationships of today. When I say “energy,” I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that people quite literally expend precious biological resources every day when they choose to focus on the past. They use up proteins and fats and carbs in their bodies. They force their brain cells to hang on to cell-to-cell connections that aren’t productive. They refuse to let their brains empty the “recycle bin,” and as a result, dangerous levels of old proteins and other biological materials can build up inside the brain. Causing medical syndromes such as various forms of dementia.

A: So forgiveness isn’t just a metaphysical aspiration: it’s also a biological reality.

J: As you’d expect it to be in the good Creation of a loving God.

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Posted in brain-soul connection, dissociation, Divine Love, empathy, forgiveness, Jesus Redux, narcissism, Peace Sequence, psychopathy, sense of time & timing, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, spiritual practices, theodicy and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

23 May 2011

JR42: Harold Camping’s Failed Apocalyptic Prophecy . . . Like, There’s a Surprise

A: Well, it’s May 23, and the world didn’t end two days ago as prophesied by Harold Camping and his multi-million dollar non-profit apocalyptic Christian media ministry. The 200 million people who were supposed to be taken up into heaven in the Rapture are still here. Slightly impoverished after giving their money to Camping, but still here. All is well with the universe.

J: People are easily parted from their assets once they’ve lost their common sense.

A: I read the Globe and Mail on-line. Usually when I check an article there are a few dozen readers’ comments — 40 or 50 posts at most. Yesterday, by 2:50 p.m., there were 1,052 comments attached to an article by Garance Burke (Associated Press) called “Believers confused as Judgment Day doesn’t come.” I didn’t read the comments. But I thought it was interesting that a failed prophecy from a retired civil engineer in a different country would attract so much attention.

J: People have very strong opinions about religion and religious leaders.

A: Can’t argue with you there. So let’s talk about angels instead — souls who are not currently incarnated as human beings on Planet Earth. How do you and other angels feel about apocalyptic prophesies?

J (chuckling): Isn’t this a holiday in Canada? Wouldn’t you rather be outside barbequing or something?

A: It started raining again a few minutes ago. There’s been a lot of rain and cool weather this spring. All the more reason to sit down and do some typing.

J: Well, it’ll come as no surprise to you that angels are fully aware of the kinds of things that are being said about us by religious leaders in various parts of the world. You could say we have our own clipping service.

Most people have been conditioned to believe that apocalyptic prophecy is a rare and sacred gift granted by God. Few people realize that from the point of view of God’s angels, all claims from apocalyptic human prophets look like temples — temples to the glory of narcissistic humans. Nothing good comes from prophecies about the End Times, and your angels know it. They see the fear, contempt, and justification of hatred that pour into every aspect of your life if you buy into these unloving lies about God. This is one temple where your angels will always let you fall flat on your face. Shown in this photo are remnants of the temple pediment found during excavations of the Roman Baths at Bath, England (because all good Remnants must come to an end). Photo credit JAT 2023.

A: A man like Harold Camping is giving God bad press — telling people that God is so narcissistic and selfish that “he” enthusiastically plays Russian Roulette with his own children. Do angels care about this bad press? Does God?

J: Would you be happy if the people who claim to know you went around town saying you’re a controlling, manipulative, obsessive compulsive, right wing, politically conservative, Medicare-hating, gun-loving bigot who hates gays, people of colour, and women?

A: No. I’d know they were lying, and I’d forgive them. But I’d still be hurt.

J: Same with angels. Every day in every culture these lies about God are being preached. Angels not only feel hurt on behalf of God the Mother and God the Father, but they feel hurt on behalf of the souls who speak these lies while they’re struggling with human brain dysfunction.

You can be very sure that Harold Camping’s own guardian angels are now very relieved to have the whole thing over with and the lie of his prophecy revealed for what it is — not just among his own followers, but among all those who heard about it on the daily news.

A: Camping’s angels aren’t upset that he’s been embarrassed in front of millions of people?

J: Far from it. They know he’s hurt a lot of people with his narcissistic predictions. At the same time, they know that his harmful choices emerged from his dysfunctional human brain — not from his true self, not from his soul. They forgive him, but they also have to do the right thing by him and by others. They have to allow people to see the consequences of these kinds of abusive choices. If they protect Camping from the consequences of his own choices, and if they protect his followers from their own arrogance and stupidity, how will it be possible for human beings to learn not to make these kinds of choices? Tough Love is an angel’s expression of courage, trust, and faith in the ability of human beings to live their human lives in loving ways. Divine ways. Ways that don’t prey on other people’s vulnerabilities.

A: Ooooooohhh. I can just hear the response from readers. What you’re saying about Tough Love sounds perilously close to the idea of divine punishment — an idea that many liberal and progressive Christians reject as incompatible with the idea of a loving and forgiving God.

J: I can’t help it if some individuals want to reject the possibility of Tough Love from God and God’s angels. Usually the people who are most keen to reject this belief are the ones who are most interested in NOT having to learn from their own mistakes.

A: The narcissists.

J: Religious narcissists — and there are plenty of those — employ a number of psychological defences to try to shift responsibility for their own mistakes onto other people or onto other time frames. Religious doctrines such as Original Sin, Satan, Judgment Day, and the Rapture make it possible for the narcissists to stop blaming themselves for their own choices. They can shift the blame onto “conditions” that are outside their control. “Conditions” that make it easy for them to shrug their shoulders and say — with Godfather-like equanimity — “Hey, we can’t help being who we are. One day God will make us answer for our crimes, but not today. Today we have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card and we plan to use it. Because we can. So screw you.”

Really, I mean, come on. Do people think God can’t hear that? Of course God can hear that. God forgives them when they say it, which is exactly what you’d expect from a loving and forgiving God. But forgiving somebody means you have faith in their true potential, their truest and most loving nature. Forgiving somebody means you don’t walk away from them when they’re in distress. Forgiving somebody means you do your best to help them better understand the choices they’re making. This usually means you have to let them experience consequences for their choices. That’s how they begin to recognize the harm caused by their abusive choices. Every loving parent knows this.

A: Loving parents also know you have to “choose your battles.” You can’t harangue your child about every little mistake, or he stops listening. You have to save your authoritative tone for the times when it really matters.

J: Guardian angels are no different. Their job is to help guide their human “foster children,” if you will, in the direction of greater compassion, greater balance, greater common sense. They have complete discretion and free will in carrying out this task. Sometimes they decide to help soften the consequences of a really poor human choice. Sometimes they decide to let the consequences build into one mega-consequence that hurts like hell. This is the reality. God has free will and angels have free will. Therefore, God and God’s angels are free to create consequences or not as they see fit. They aren’t bound by religious contract laws. Neither are they bound by laws of cause and effect. God is a heck of a lot smarter than the Law of Cause and Effect would suggest.

A: I don’t think religious narcissists actually want God to be smarter.

“His disciples questioned him: Should we fast? In what way should we pray? Should we give to charity? From which foods should we abstain? Jesus responded: Do not lie. If there is something that you hate, do not do it, for everything is revealed beneath heaven. Nothing hidden will fail to be displayed. Nothing covered will remain undisclosed (Gospel of Thomas 6).” This life-size Roman bronze hand is covered in sacred symbols — well, sacred to occult believers, anyway. It dates from 200-400 CE and was found at Caglia, Umbria, in Central Italy. It’s on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

J: True. Then again, that’s what narcissism is all about. It’s about human beings whose brains are so dysfunctional — whether from head injury, toxic substances, stress hormones, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, lack of social and emotional supports, abusive upbringing, or lack of education — that they start trying to cope by inventing inner myths about their own wonderfulness and superiority and breathtaking talent. There’s no room within the myth for somebody else who’s smarter or faster or stronger. Even if that somebody else is God.

Of course, this is why religious narcissists rely so heavily on the theme of humility. A person of humility — as opposed to a person of humbleness — can see in a logical and practical way that it isn’t very smart to go around proclaiming to be as smart as God, if not smarter. That’s no way to recruit followers who’ll willingly give you money and tell you how wonderful you are. So you don the sackcloth of humility, and you tell everyone who’ll listen that you’re just an empty vessel waiting to be filled by Spirit, by God’s inspired Word. That’s how the world acquires its apocalyptic prophets.

A: So it’s layers upon layers. A myth of personal superiority that has to be cloaked in another myth — the myth of humility. Then, when this isn’t enough to get you the reverence you crave, you add other layers, other myths, each more convoluted than the last to explain why you deserve to be treated as “special.”

J: This is what happens when people aren’t honest with themselves about their own abilities, their own intentions, and their own unhealed anger. The lies build and build on top of each other. After a while the lies can take on an entire imaginary life of their own. Such is the case with orthodox Western Christianity. Its official doctrines are largely a body of lies. Only when individual Christians choose to help their neighbours in love rather than piety do they walk the path of genuine spirituality and faith. These are the times when their guardian angels smile.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), apocalyptic prophecy, Cause & Effect, forgiveness, free will, humility, Jesus Redux, Mother and Father God, narcissism, occult themes, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

04 Apr 2011

JR30: Foxes Have Holes, Canadians Have Gloves

A: I’d like to go back to some concepts we were discussing a few weeks ago about the soul (Saying 67 in the Gospel of Thomas). At that time, you stated that souls aren’t malleable. Yet you’ve also said that the soul is hardwired into human DNA, and elsewhere we’ve talked about the reality of neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to grow new brain cells. These three concepts seem to contradict each other. Can you explain?

J: It’s not that hard, really. I’m going to use the analogy of a hand in a glove.

A: Okay.

J: The core aspect of a person that’s eternal — the soul — can be likened to “the hand” in our analogy. Once you reach adolescence, your hand reaches its adult size and stops growing. It’s yours for life. Everything about your hand is shaped by your DNA –the size, shape, flexibility, skin pigmentation, fingernail growth, and, of course, your unique set of fingerprints. (For those born without hands, the same principle would apply, though obviously the analogy would pertain to a different portion of the biological body). The characteristics of the hand are not malleable. You don’t have a small-sized hand one day and an extra-large hand the next day. You don’t have a pianist’s hands one day and a mechanic’s hands the next. Even the fine details, such as your fingerprints, don’t change. You have the hand your DNA says you’re supposed to have, and that’s it. You can’t change the overall form or function. The form and function of your hand are pretty much “carved in stone.”

A: Except if you can afford plastic surgery.

J: That’s a surgical intervention intended to override your DNA. For the purposes of our example, we’ll stick to a more basic example — a person who lives in Canada and needs to wear a glove in the winter because it’s cold.

A: Hey, count me in. I carry my gloves in my coat pocket from October till April. Just in case it suddenly gets cold.

“Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay down his head and rest” (Gospel of Thomas 86). February Snow, photo credit JAT 2015.

J: The soul is like the hand of the hardy adult Canadian in our analogy. Its overall form and function are fixed. And there’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, it’s very helpful. Can you imagine how confusing life would be if your hand were very small on Monday and very large on Tuesday? How could you get anything done or decide what tools you need? How could you make long term plans? How could you decide on a career, a hobby, or a hands-on pursuit? You’d be in a constant state of anxiety because of the lack of certainty. It’s good to be flexible and creative, but you can only afford to be flexible and creative if some things in life are certain. Like the size of your hand.

A: And the shape of your soul.

J: Exactly. The shape of your soul is fixed. Knowing this can give you great courage, great strength. Knowing who you are as a soul gives you the courage to say “yes” to the things you ought to be doing and “no” to the things you ought not to be doing. It helps you avoid the years of pain and frustration you feel when you’re in the wrong job or the wrong location or the wrong relationship. The job you have may be a perfectly wonderful job from a logical point of view, but if it’s not the right job for you as a soul, you’ll get stressed out, and then you’ll get sick, angry, depressed. If you believe you are a soul, and if you believe your soul has a unique blueprint, you have a terrific foundation of certainty and constancy to build your life on.

A: And nobody can take it away from you.

J: They can’t take away your core self, your core blueprint, your soul. These belong solely to you. What they can take away, however, is the biological functioning of the parts of your brain linked to your human physiology. What they can take away is the glove that protects your soul during your human lifetime.

A: Explain how the glove works.

J: In our analogy of the hand in the glove, the glove represents the parts of your human biology that keep your temporary 3D human body functioning properly. But, like the glove that prevents warm-blooded fingers from freezing in minus 30 degree weather, the glove is essential to the health of the hand it protects. The glove isn’t the same substance, if you will, as the hand, but it protects the hand and is absolutely indispensable. After the glove has been worn for a while, it starts to mould itself to the unique shape of the hand it protects. Eventually you can recognize it in a pile of similar gloves because it has a unique combination of bend marks and stains and the like. It takes on the characteristics of its owner’s hand because it’s malleable.

A: You’re suggesting, then, that some of the circuitry in the brain and central nervous system is “fixed” — not malleable — because it’s linked to the soul’s blueprint. The rest of the circuits — the parts that deal with human survival needs — are not fixed and are instead intended to be malleable. Have I got that straight?

J (nodding): The human brain isn’t a simple blob of jello where all the parts inside your skull behave exactly alike. The human brain isn’t even a single organ — it’s several semi-autonomous organs working together. At least that’s the theory. What happens in the case of major dysfunction is that one or more of the “essential services” in the brain goes off-line. Without input from these “essential services,” other sectors of the brain don’t do their own job as efficiently as possible. They may go into overdrive and try to make up for the loss of the other services by doing more work than they’re designed for. Some parts of the brain end up underactive, and other parts end up overactive. These realities are now visible on brain scans.

A: What’s the final result of these imbalances?

J: In most cases the final result is a person who’s standing outside in bitterly cold weather and wearing a glove that’s covered in holes — big, ragged holes that let the icy wind in and make you want to retract all your fingers into a ball in the end of your coat sleeve. It doesn’t work very well.

A: So the thing to do is to fix the glove. Mend the holes and put new insulation in.

J: Mending the holes is what neuroplasticity is all about. The “essential services” that have gone off-line in the brains of many of today’s adults can be gradually healed and restored. Eventually it becomes possible for them to hear what their own inner self has been saying all along. Eventually it becomes possible for them to hear what God has been saying, too.

A: This is a very helpful, hopeful message. It’s much easier to begin the journey of healing when you have faith that your inner self is worth the trouble. It’s also easier when you have a basic understanding of what it is you’re trying to do.

J: I can’t emphasize enough the connection between insight and healing. The simple experience of achieving insight is not only emotionally and spiritually transformative, but it lays the groundwork for your biological brain (your “glove”) to rewire itself in positive, healing, holistic ways. Healing follows insight. Therefore, if you’re a tyrant who wants to cripple the people around you so you can acquire fame, money, power, and sex, your most effective strategy is to prevent people from acquiring their own unique healing insights. People can’t oppose you and overthrow you if they’re busy dealing with all the holes you’ve put in their heads.

A: Holes caused by HDM strategies (It Takes A Village – A Non-HDM Village, That Is).

J: Yes. Status-based strategies. Plus choices like slavery. Intentional withholding of food and resources to drive up prices, increase poverty, increase fear, and reduce political opposition. Subjugation of women. Refusal to educate children — either boys or girls or both. Burning of books. Controlling access to information. Lack of judicial transparency. Claims of religious infallibility. These are the strategies of tyrants.

A: What you’ve just described reminds me a lot of Hitler and his SS goons.

J: Actually, as I was talking, I was thinking of the religious tyrants of my day. The ones who were oppressing the regular people. Some things haven’t changed much in the last 2,000 years.

Addendum February 6, 2018: A February 3, 2018 Globe and Mail investigative piece called “Cracks in the Code” by Carolyn Abraham highlights how little we currently know about the relationship between our own DNA and our own biological realities. It’s not the simple cause-and-effect “Lego” model we’ve taken for granted. Instead, as a recent study from Canada’s Personal Genome Project shows, each individual has a surprising range of unique DNA quirks, puzzles, and mysteries. In my view, these DNA puzzles point to wider questions about consciousness, soul, and quantum biology.

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Posted in ethical mysticism, Favourite Posts, HDM Myths, healing, insight, Jesus Redux, psychopathy, Soul, soul blueprint, theodicy, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged brain-soul connection, science & faith | Leave a Comment

10 Mar 2011

JR20: Persecution of the Heirs of the Kingdom

Perseus by Antonio Canova (Vatican City), by Tetraktys (from Wikimedia Commons)

“Jesus said, Blessed are you when they hate and persecute you. No place will be found where they persecuted you (Gospel of Thomas 68).” Statue of Perseus by Antonio Canova (Vatican City), photo by Tetraktys (from Wikimedia Commons)

A: Another important theme you included alongside the idea that the poor were “heirs of the kingdom” was the idea that the faithful would be hated, excluded, reviled, defamed, and persecuted (Luke 6:22 and Thomas 68). Stevan Davies, in his commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, is puzzled by this. He says, “It is puzzling why so much very early Christian literature assumes that persecution is an inherent part of being a Christian. The ancient world was by no means a place where well-defined doctrinal parameters defined orthodoxy and heresy so that dissenters would regularly be persecuted for their beliefs. The violent suppression of religious ideas became characteristic of Western religions only in later centuries (p. 74).” Why did you place so much emphasis on the idea that the heirs to the kingdom would be reviled?

J: Davies makes a lot of assumptions here that need to be challenged. Like many commentators, he’s making dualistic assumptions. He’s assuming that I was primarily teaching about “mysticism” — something separate from everyday realities, something elevated or special or hidden. He assumes a Gnostic interpretation of my early sayings. He assumes that persecution arose when others became envious or angry because they didn’t know “my secret.” But this isn’t at all what I meant. I was telling people the honest truth about what would happen to them if they followed my teachings about God and status. I was telling them to be prepared to be vilified, attacked, abused, and scorned for daring to provoke the psychopaths and narcissists around them. I was telling people to be honest and realistic about other people’s reactions.

A: Whoa. That’s a pretty big statement you just made. That’s a statement with a lot of implications. Can you explain in more detail?

J: Yes. Put bluntly, “Hell hath no fury like a narcissist scorned.”

A: Ooooh. Nice image.

J: This is the psychological context that all people should be aware of, not just the people who’ve chosen a spiritual life. This is the psychological context that lurks behind corruption and crime and abuse. If there’s one good thing I can say about TV dramas like Law & Order and Criminal Minds it’s this: these TV shows are doing more to teach regular people about psychopathy and narcissism than Christianity ever has. It’s a valuable public service.

A: It goes without saying that you didn’t have TV shows or films to use as teaching aids.

J: True. But we had something almost as good. We had Greco-Roman mythology. We had a complete psychological “language” available to us, a complete collection of cautionary tales that graphically described all the best and all the worst choices a human being can make. There were — are — myths about jealousy. Myths about rape. Myths about prophecy. Myths about hubris. Myths about suffering. Myths about trickery. Myths about bravery. Myths about romance. Myths about empathy. The characters in these myths are archetypes for different psychological states. These archetypes are still quite useful for talking about psychological choices, psychological states. They’re much more memorable than long-winded academic articles full of jargon.

A: And they make better action films, too. I’m thinking of the recent remake of Clash of the Titans.

J: The archetype of psychopathy that worked best for me was the image of Medusa. Not the snake chick from Clash of the Titans — that’s not the version of the myth I knew best — but the version that described Medusa as so hideous to look upon that she had the power to turn you to stone. That’s what the power of psychopaths is like — they’re so frightening, so unrepentant in their pursuit of power and status, that the people around them feel paralyzed, “turned to stone,” unable to move or think, let alone react in self-defense. This is how psychopaths end up running major institutions, corporations, and countries. They just keep on turning people into stone until they get what they want.

A: Which is usually money, power, status, fame.

J: And sexual gratification.

A: Yuck.

J: Respectful, tender, devoted, consensual sexuality between two committed adults is not on the menu for psychopaths. They can pretend for a while, but they get bored. Eventually they go looking for “side dishes” if they think they can get away with it.

A: What happens when you confront a psychopath directly, challenge his or her actions?

J: That’s when the fireworks begin. Psychopaths are often easy to get along with on a day to day basis as long as they believe they’re in full control, as long as they believe they’re receiving the status they “deserve.” They’re especially affable and agreeable at work or at home if people tell them how nice they are. One of the most misunderstood qualities of a psychopath is his or her desperate need to believe that he/she is “a nice person.” It’s their main coping mechanism, believe it or not.

A: Ahead of habits like lying, manipulation, substance abuse, and abusive sexuality?

J: The need to find “proof” that they’re nice is the psychopath’s Number One psychological defense against the truth of his or her unconscionable behaviour.

A: So Hitler believed he was “a nice person.”

J: Oh, absolutely. Same with his close buddies. As a group, they told themselves comfy little lies about what nice people they were and what an important job they were doing for the German people — the German people they loved.

A: Throwing themselves on their swords for the good of the people, eh?

J: That’s how they explained it to themselves. That’s how they managed to keep functioning, despite the severe damage to their biological brains.

A: Hitler had a violent temper and he made irrational military decisions that revolved around “honour.” His honour.

J: That’s what I meant when I said that hell hath no fury like a narcissist scorned. When you impugn the “honour” — by that I actually mean the status — of a psychopath or a severe narcissist, you can expect to be on the receiving end of a narcissistic rage reaction. Such a person will not rest until he or she has exacted revenge. The revenge may be physical. It may be psychological. It may be financial or social. Or some combination of these. But you can count on one thing: it’ll hurt like stink, and you’ll probably be deeply traumatized for a long time afterwards. Only occasionally will such a person decide to “let it go” and walk away from the “deservee.”

A: They want to turn you to stone, in other words.

J: This is the reality. It seemed appropriate to me to caution my students about this reality. You could say it was a question of “informed consent.” Is it right to give students a new understanding of how to be in relationship with God and not warn them about the practical consequences of standing up to the bullies, the tyrants, and the religious status seekers? It didn’t seem right to me not to warn them.

A: The version of the Medusa myth I liked best when I was growing up was the version where Perseus cut off Medusa’s head and released the beautiful winged horse Pegasus who was trapped inside. There are other versions of the Pegasus myth, but somehow I liked the idea of the noble creature trapped inside the monster. It made sense to me. Not that I’m endorsing the Gnostic idea of good-soul-trapped-inside-evil-body. I don’t mean it that way. It’s just that so many people misuse their bodies and brains. They choose to ignore their true self — their Pegagus, if you will. They choose to identify with this horrible snake-covered outer mask that enjoys hurting other people, enjoys turning other people into stone. They’re in a complete state of denial about the choices they’re making.

J: Part of the journey of forgiving the Hitlers of the world is the choice to trust that behind every snake-covered Medusan mask of hatred lies the true self — the brave and beautiful Pegasus. A.k.a. the soul. The core consciousness that isn’t being listened to.

A: Ah. But we haven’t got to those teachings yet. Those are the most challenging ones of all.

J: One step at a time. That’s the best anyone can do.

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Posted in Davies (Stevan), dualism, gender and sexuality, Gnosticism, Gospel of Thomas, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), status addiction, Thomas 67 and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

22 Feb 2011

JR14: Crimes of Religious Passion

A: I have a confession to make. I was looking back at some earlier posts, and I realize that both you and I were guilty of using the terms “light” and “dark” in a less precise way than we might have. So first I want to apologize if we confused anybody.

J: Language is fluid. Communication is fluid. Words like “light” and “dark” have a lot of different meanings, depending on the context. This is why I say the intent is more important than the words. The goal here is not to speak or write like a corporate lawyer, but to talk about feelings and ideas related to the spiritual journey. Writing “live” on a blog has some of the same problems as being interviewed live on TV. People will look for ways to trip you up. But that’s their choice. That’s their intent. If their intent is to be legalistic for their own benefit, that’s up to them. Small errors in speech are going to happen, and each individual has to decide how to react to those errors. It’s a choice like any other choice.

A: It’s a choice to look at the intent behind the words or actions.

“Jesus said: What you will hear in your ear, in the inner ear proclaim from your rooftops. For no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, nor does one put it in a hidden place. Rather, one puts it on a stand so that all who come and go will see its light” (Gospel of Thomas 33 a-b). In this saying, the act of lighting a lamp shows both your intent and the consequences of that intent. No matter how hard you try, and no matter how many excuses you invent, you can’t hide your actual intent from either your inner self (your inner ear) or from God. Your actual intent shines as brightly as a lamp to those who have the emotional maturity to see it. So it’s best to be honest about your intent and start trying to fix your mistakes in a responsible way (instead of blaming other people or blaming God or Satan for what you yourself chose to do). The photo above is a graphic reminder for me about the steps involved in taking personality responsibility. In the “oops, I made a mistake” department, I forgot to check the old back shed before the start of winter and failed to notice the hole chewed by a family of rodents so they could bring in a pantry-full of seed-filled cones. Cleaning up after the mistake I made wasn’t fun, but one of the important spiritual practices is learning how to be honest with yourself about your own mistakes and then figuring out how best to clean up after yourself. God is always happy to help you with this spiritual task. Photo credit JAT 2016.

J: Yes. People make mistakes. It’s part of the human condition. Everybody makes mistakes. But not all mistakes are made with intent. Many mistakes are nothing more than accidents — pure accidents, with no intent to harm. Sometimes the results of purely accidental mistakes can be tragic. More often than not, though, the greatest harm is caused by people who have harmful intent towards others. Among adolescents and adults, the majority of mistakes carry with them a harmful intent. A young child who drops a glass of milk because his motor skills aren’t fully developed has no harmful intent. An adult who gets behind the wheel of a car after drinking may not be planning to crash into another car — so from this point of view a crash is an “accident” — but his intent is clearly harmful from the moment he gets behind the wheel. He intends — he chooses — to drive regardless of the consequences to himself or anyone else. That’s what I mean by a mistake with harmful intent.

A: He made a choice and hoped he wouldn’t get caught.

J: The body of law known as common law understands this principle. You treat a crime done “on purpose” differently than you treat an accidental harm. You look at the intent of the people involved, and ask yourself if anybody had motive. Did anybody stand to gain?

A: Can acquisition of status can be considered a motive, an incentive, a measurable and desirable gain in the eyes of some individuals?

J: Acquisition of status lies behind many a crime.

A: Including religious crimes against humanity — the ones committed by status-seeking religious leaders?

J: Especially the crimes of religious passion. Especially those.

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Posted in conscience & morality, honesty, intent, Jesus Redux, Law (Nomos), Peace Sequence, personal responsibility, psychopathy, status addiction and tagged The Peace Sequence | Leave a Comment

09 Feb 2011

JR8: Mystical Bloodlines, Mystical Castes

J: I’d like to start out today’s discussion by emphasizing a very important point. I want to emphasize that it’s wrong to make sweeping generalizations about any particular religion or religious tradition. Just as it’s wrong to “hate” somebody on their basis of their religion, it’s just as wrong to “love” somebody on the basis of their religion. Religious beliefs form a framework for people, a place to start on the journey of faith. But in the end, the only thing that matters as far as God is concerned is what choices you make as an individual. No religion has all the answers. No religion is even asking all the right questions. So when I come out swinging against a revered figure from the past such as John the Baptist, I’m not trying to attack huge groups of people. I have specific complaints about the choices made 2,000 years ago by John the Baptist while he was incarnated as a human being. I also have specific complaints about specific choices made by a number of individuals who were close to John at the time. However . . . and this is a big however . . . the choices made by John the Baptist 2,000 years ago have nothing to do with the choices open to individual people today. There is no “loss of honour” for readers today because of choices that were made by somebody else centuries ago. No real “loss of honour,” anyway. If individuals today believe I’m undermining their own personal sense of honour by exposing the reality — the harsh and painful truth — about ancient religious teachings, then they’ve got bigger problems than they realize.

A: Yes, but a lot of people still believe very deeply in ancient ideas such as the mystical power of bloodline. For these individuals, there’s such a thing as honour in the blood. Honour carried from generation to generation through the bloodline. Power carried from generation to generation. Divine rights carried from generation to generation. It’s one of the underpinnings of their modern day lives. So they’ll take enormous offense at what you’re saying. Gargantuan offense.

J: I’m sorry to have to say this, but a conviction in the innate mystical power of bloodlines is a fantasy superstition that belongs only in novels and films. God does not favour any one clan or family group over another. It should be clear to everyone by now what happens in the wider world when particular clans, tribes, or nations give themselves the label of “Chosen by God.” Nothing good comes of it. Nothing.

A: Yet it’s a myth-dream that’s found in most cultures and most places in the world. Not to mention most major world religions. Why is this myth-dream so universal?

J: It goes again to the issue we’ve been discussing — major mental illness.

A: Ooooh. I can hear the gasps already.

J: Well, I won’t apologize for saying what needs to be said. Individuals will have to deal with it. It’s the reality. It’s time the blunt reality was brought into the open. Other forms of violence and abuse have been brought forward, brought into the open in recent decades. It’s painful and awkward at first, but it’s only when people openly discuss their suffering that change begins.

A: As you’ve said many times to me, healing follows insight. Healing follows self-honesty and public transparency.

J: Abusers will keep their secrets for as long as they can. They won’t volunteer to tell people their dark secrets. Even when they’re caught, they typically deny they did anything wrong. Other people have to step forward, point the light of truth at the abusers, collect evidence of their wrongdoing, and demonstrate their guilt through a public, transparent, non-corrupt legal system. It’s the only way to change a society’s perception of what’s moral and what’s immoral.

A: Can you give some examples?

J: Sure. Not so long ago, it was considered acceptable by many North Americans to treat women as inferior “possessions” of men. It was considered acceptable to turn a blind eye to incest and child sexual abuse and child pornography. It was considered acceptable to dump vast quantities of highly toxic pollutants into the water, air, and earth.

A: These things are still going on.

J: Yes. But these choices are no longer considered acceptable by the majority of North Americans. There’s been a cultural shift. The harmful actions of the abusers — the narcissists and psychopaths — are no longer being condoned by wider public opinion. There are legal and social implications for the abusers now. The legal and social implications didn’t use to exist. They only exist today because a lot of decent people got on board with the idea that these particular choices — the choice to abuse women, the choice to abuse children, the choice to abuse the environment — are wrong. Immoral. Not acceptable in a compassionate community.

A: It’s a work in progress.

J: Yes. It’s astounding and beautiful and amazing because it shows the truth. It shows that if you boldly and honestly expose the reality of abuse, a lot of people will recognize the wrongness of the abusers’ choices. They’ll feel it deep in their bones.

A: Deep in their souls.

J: The soul is consciousness with a conscience. The soul knows the difference between right and wrong, between moral choices and immoral choices. The soul is not stupid. Everybody has a soul, and everybody comes “prewired,” so to speak, with a “right and wrong” package in their DNA. It’s why mentally mature, emotionally mature people instinctively recoil from certain actions, certain choices. They just feel in their gut that it’s wrong.

A: Except for the people with psychopathy. The psychopaths have lost access to the “right and wrong” package. They know it exists, because they can see it operating in the world around them, but they don’t care. They don’t recoil from horror and abuse the way other people do. Brain scans confirm that certain parts of their brains are underactive, other parts are overactive.

J: As I said, it’s a major mental illness.

A: One that isn’t in the DSM-IV, the bible of psychiatry.

J: Psychopathy is a touchy, touchy topic. It should come as no surprise that a lot of “successful” people in politics, business, religion, and entertainment have little regard for the nuances of “right and wrong.”

A: That’s a polite way of saying that many successful people are psychopaths.

“Jesus said: There was a rich man who had a great deal of money. He said, ‘I shall invest my money so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouses with produce, that I may lack nothing.’ These were the things he was thinking in his head, but that very night he died. Whoever has ears should hear” (Gospel of Thomas 63). Even psychopaths have a personal code of morality — a set of internal laws to live by — despite their lack of conscience. Competitiveness, dominance, perfectionism, obsessiveness, chosenness, and eradication of weakness are among the key markers of moral success for a psychopath. Needless to say, a psychopath has no use for traits such as love, tolerance, forgiveness, ambiguity, or individuation, despite what he or she may say out loud. Shown here is the entrance to the Chapel of John the Baptist, Westminster Abbey, England. Notice all the sharp, spiky, metal forks on the door — all the better to stab your heart as you try to open the door to relationship with God. Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: Again, no surprise. But these people have tremendous power, tremendous resources. It’s risky to piss off a psychopath. They think nothing of getting revenge. In fact, revenge is a favourite pastime. Even worse, psychopaths lose their ability to feel empathy for others, but at the same time, they show an eerily heightened grip on logic and a creepy ability to spot other people’s vulnerabilities. It’s scary how manipulative they can be in a purely cold, hard, logical way.

A: Almost as if they’re compensating for the loss of empathy and emotion by putting extra biological resources into their logic circuitry.

J: That’s exactly what psychopathy is. They’re trying to find a way to cope with life. They’re trying to find a workable system. They have no capacity for love, forgiveness, or trust. They’re so empty inside that they’re always looking for ways to fill the void. It’s a literal void, not just a metaphorical void. They can’t access certain functions of their brains. They can’t access the emotional circuitry they were born with. So they actually do feel empty, as if something’s constantly missing. They’re so narcissistic, however, that they believe everybody else on the planet feels as empty as they do. They think other people are faking it when they talk about love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust. In the world of the psychopath, love — mature, respectful love — is pure fantasy. It can’t be real. A psychopath feels nothing but contempt for the ideals of love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust.

A: A contempt that’s notably present in the orthodox doctrines of the Western Christian church.

J: True. But Christianity isn’t the only faith tradition that’s riddled with contempt for these compassionate ideals. I was dealing with the same contempt 2,000 years ago in Palestine. Lots of people were. Women, children, slaves, foreigners — all these people had to deal with the fallout of a religious tradition that had steadily erased all the empathy from the earlier spiritual traditions —

A: Like the Covenant Code in Exodus.

J: Like the all too brief Covenant Code. Bit by bit they replaced the Covenant Code’s early focus on human dignity with mystical authority for a few select men and their families. What scholars today call Second Temple Judaism bears so little resemblance to the Rabbinic Judaism practised today that I hesitate to even call the ancient religion “Judaism.” It was a bizarre caste system, really. It placed incalculable power in the hands of the High Priests and the Levites, who happily abused the “lesser tribes” of Israel — the lower Jewish castes. Meanwhile, the priests derived all their power, authority, and wealth from the “sacred books” they themselves wrote. A bit of a conflict of interest, don’t you think?

A: Yeah. I notice that after a while they decreed there could be no more prophecy. No more troublesome prophets standing up on soapboxes and speaking the truth.

J: The priests were always willing to endorse new prophetic voices off the record as long as those new voices reinforced the idea among the general population that Jews were the chosen people and Jerusalem’s priests were “the best of the best.”

A: Hence they could tolerate the Essenes, who required obedience to the caste system, but they couldn’t tolerate you, because you rejected the caste system in its entirety. And said so publicly.

J: The idea that Jews had allowed themselves to become enslaved to the priests may have entered my teachings more than once.

A: Yeah, I’ll bet.

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Posted in conscience & morality, empathy, Essenes, faith, HDM Myths, healing, intent, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, John the Baptist, occult themes, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, slavery, Soul, status addiction and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

24 Jan 2011

JR4: Talking About Psychopathy

A: I notice that human nature hasn’t changed in the past 2,000 years. Families still fight over the same issues.

J: Right. And it’s not surprising from a scientific point of view. Two thousand years is a very short amount of time as far as the human genome is concerned. Human DNA is still the same today as it was then. Most importantly, the DNA involved in mental health issues hasn’t changed. Two thousand years ago, people were just as susceptible to major mental illness as they are today. There’s a bias among scholars who are trying to recreate the cultural mindset that existed in the first century (CE). They seem to want to believe that people’s brains worked differently then, and that people’s mindset was “unique” to the time, and impossible for us to understand today. But that’s not true. If you start with the logical scientific assumption that human brain physiology hasn’t changed in the past 2,000 years because the human DNA that shapes the physiology hasn’t changed, then you have a different starting point. You can look at the issues involved in major mental illness today, and you can assume that the same issues must have existed in the 1st century. This starting point can free historians from the false assumption that we can never understand what people were thinking and feeling in the Roman Empire of the 1st century. On the contrary, you can understand them better by using the new research tools available to you.

A: Tools like brain scans.

J: Exactly. You can’t actually run a brain scan on a skeleton that’s been dead for 2,000 years. But you can use medical forensics to extrapolate backwards. You can make better guesses about the past by using new research data that’s only become available recently.

A: The History Channel has a show based on that idea. It’s called “Ancients Behaving Badly.” Sometimes I wonder, though, about their experts’ understanding of psychopathy.

J: Psychopathy is not well understood by psychologists. There’s a tendency to pretend it isn’t a major mental illness because it’s not treatable. There’s no drug regimen and no effective psychotherapy model that can be patented or copyrighted. So there’s not a lot of good research. Also, people are worried about the legal implications. People are worried that if psychopathy is labelled a major mental illness then it will be used in court cases to prove a lack of responsibility in major crimes. There’s a risk of this because there’s currently such a poor understanding of how the human brain works. However, proof of psychopathy is in no way proof of lack of responsibility or lack of criminal intent. Psychopathy is a class of major mental illness characterized by a complete lack of conscience that is accompanied by a complete preservation of logic, will power, and intent. It’s an illness because a psychopath’s brain is not functioning properly — it’s not wired according to the psychopath’s DNA package. Nonetheless, the psychopath is responsible for his or her actions because he/she is consciously aware of the choices he/she is making. That conscious awareness is the test for criminal intent in a legal proceeding.

“Jesus said: Blessed is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion will become human” (Gospel of Thomas 7). Being a successful psychopath is lot like being a trained pilot who can land near the shore of a frozen lake without crashing through the ice. It takes rigorous training, commitment, logic, and a laser-eye view of where you want to be and what you need to accomplish to get there – even if it means mowing down all the people between you and your goal. Being a successful psychopath is also a lot like being a lion on the hunt. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: In other words, psychopaths know what they’re doing is wrong, so they shouldn’t be given a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card.

J: Exactly. They should be held accountable for their choices and their actions. At the same time, they should also receive appropriate medical therapy and intervention to assist them to learn how to make better choices.

A: Healing and redemption for serial killers.

J: It’s possible. But not likely in the current climate of Newtonian psychology.

A: Newtonian psychology. That’s an interesting phrase. I’ve never heard it before.

J: By Newtonian psychology I mean the current vogue in neuroscience research. Researchers are examining small little bits of the human brain in isolation as if the brain is nothing more than a complex Lego set. But the brain isn’t like that. It’s much more sophisticated than that. The sum of the parts does not make the whole. The whole is . . . the whole is almost beyond words. It’s not called “the three pound universe” for nothing.

A: I’ve been noticing that researchers themselves get so caught up in the details that they lose sight of the big picture. They can’t see the forest for the trees, as the saying goes. I picked up the current issue of Discover (Jan/Feb 2011) with its list of the 100 Top Stories of 2010. Top Story No. 62 (“Glia: The Other Brain Cells”) breathlessly informs me that glial cells in the brain might actually play an active role in brain function, rather than just a structural role. I’ve known this for years because you told me years ago to keep an eye on glial cell research. And there’s been good research on glia, too. Fascinating stuff. It’s a shame that many other researchers haven’t been paying attention.

J: Well, the neuron is the “fad du jour.” It’s a nice easy-to-understand Lego block, and it’s easier to design experiments with. Researchers are limited by experimental constraints.

A: And funding grants. Research often follows the money. There’s more money in tracking the parts of the brain that can be changed by patented medications. It’s a huge industry.

J: And a very powerful one that has a vested interest in viewing the brain as a collection of fixable Legos.

A: Not much room in there for a doctrine of the soul, is there?

J: That’s the whole idea, actually.

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain-soul connection, conscience & morality, Jesus Redux, mental illness, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

12 Nov 2010

CC41: It Takes a Village — A Non-HDM Village, That Is

What does HDM mean? It’s short for Hierarchy-Dualism-Monism (hence the need for a simpler moniker that people can actually remember and pronounce). But I’ll come back to that in a minute.

2017 marks the 150th anniversary of Canada’s founding as a nation. I found this Canadian maple leaf, a “mosaic” created from waxy leaf begonias, at one of Toronto’s soul-healing public gardens. It reminds me of what Canada is all about. Photo credit JAT 2017.

First I want to say thank you to the people of my village — Canada. I want to say how grateful I am to the people here. I’m totally aware that I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a practising ethical mystic if I didn’t live in a community of people who just blow me away with their compassion, common sense, and high ethical standards.

It’s been common for the mystics of history to thank God for the blessings of their journey, and sometimes there’s also been praise for specific religious mentors or spiritual teachers who have guided the initiate along the way.

But I think it’s bigger than that. A mystic doesn’t sprout up from nowhere. I think it’s important to look at the whole context of a person’s upbringing before you can understand his or her spiritual context. If each person is, metaphorically speaking, a plant growing within a much larger garden, you need to know what kind of garden that person grew up in. Not just the immediate family environment (although that’s very important, of course), but the wider community environment. You need to know about the village which raised the child. What lessons did the village teach the child as he or she was growing up?

The village I grew up in — Canada, and more specifically the province of Ontario — was a place where people didn’t always agree, where political arguments were fought on major issues, where the painful lessons of recent history were still being processed and incorporated into both the law books and the daily lives of Canadians (lessons that stemmed from two World Wars and the Great Depression). The tension between French Canadian and English Canadian interests created several political and cultural firestorms as I was growing up. More recently, First Nations interests have reminded us that we all have to try harder to be a more inclusive, respectful society.

But we’ve got a few things right here. We have a pretty workable balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community, the responsibilities of the individual and the responsibilities of the community. We make mistakes, to be sure, but we’re open to the idea that we’ve made mistakes, and we’re open to the idea that mistakes can be fixed. So together we try to fix them.

We have publicly funded education and publicly funded health care that’s accessible to most Canadians. (I’m not going to say “accessible to all Canadians” because the truth is that some people are slipping through the cracks. But slow progress is being made.)

As a woman, I can attest to the fact that I’ve had the kind of opportunities that few women have had throughout the course of history or culture. Like many Canadian women, I’ve had two major blessings: the blessing of choice and the blessing of safety. Because my village was saying it was okay for me to choose, I was able to choose my own life path — my own education, my own husband, my own family size, my own career. Because my village was saying it was NOT okay for me, as a woman, to be abused, I was able to feel safe (most of the time) as I walked (literally and figuratively) down the streets of my community.

I didn’t create these blessings for myself. My village (including my family of origin) created the environment that allowed these blessings to flourish for me and for others. My role, as an individual, is to appreciate these blessings, to give back to others what I myself have received, and to teach those who follow (i.e. the younger generation) how to live with compassion, common sense, and high ethical standards.

Only after I began to explore philosophy — a necessary part of being a true mystic — did I come to understand that Canada is one of a small number of countries in the world whose culture is not bound together by one of the HDM myths that have plagued civilization since the get-go.

You can have a reasonable, balanced dialogue with a typical Canadian on just about any inflammatory topic such as homosexuality, refugee rights, gay marriage, gun registration, and access to health care, and you won’t come away from the discussion in fear of your life (not usually, anyway). You don’t have to worry that a religious or military death squad will show up in the middle of the night and take you away. (Unfortunately, advocates for social justice in other parts of the world still face these profoundly inhumane threats on an ongoing basis, as a perusal of any Amnesty International newsletter will quickly reveal.)

There are several reasons why Canada is a safer place, on the whole, in comparison to many other countries. One important reason is that most Canadians don’t get up each day and volunteer to put their brains through a meat grinder.

Yes, a meat grinder. HDM myths act like a meat grinder on your biological brain. You put a perfectly good holistically balanced brain/body/heart/soul into one end of the grinder, and out comes status-addicted mincemeat at the other end.

Ooo, yummy.

Sure, this kind of damage doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years, years of being told that you and your village are “better” than other people and other villages, and have therefore been chosen by God to save everybody else (i.e. Hierarchy). Or years of being told you and your village are “good/right,” whereas all other people and all other villages are “evil/wrong” (i.e. Dualism). Or years of being told that there’s actually only one village in the entire world, and all people are required to belong to it (i.e. Monism). These myths are abusive — spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically abusive. Eventually, they also become physically abusive.

Where’s my proof?

Here’s my proof.

In the early to mid-20th century, a group of Germans got it into their heads that they (“Aryans”) were “better” than other people and other villages, and they also got into their heads that they were God’s chosen people who deserved to rule. This myth of Hierarchy led to the European Holocaust.

In 1994, a group of Hutus in Rwanda got it into their heads that Hutus were “good/right” and Tutsis, along with peaceful Hutus, were “evil/wrong” people who deserved to die. This myth of Dualism led to the Rwandan Genocide.

In the 1970’s, a group of Cambodians in the Khmer Rouge Communist Party got it into their heads that it was okay to execute, starve, and more or less enslave anyone who was unsympathetic to the new ideals of “radical equality.” This myth of Monism led to the Cambodian Holocaust.

These examples are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Unfortunately, our history books contain all too many examples of mass suffering and oppression created by human leaders whose brains were/are totally addicted to the status that comes from these myths. It explains why these leaders seem to us to be psychopaths. They are psychopaths. They’re psychopaths because they’ve stopped listening to their own inner wisdom — their own soul — and instead have started listening to the “voice” of status addiction.

For status addicts, the very idea of balance in a political system is anathema.

In contrast, there’s no hierarchy to be “proven” in a social democracy where people willingly pay taxes (within reason, of course) to cover the cost of roads, schools, and hospitals. There’s no dualism to be “justified” in a social democracy that embraces a multi-party system of government held to account through transparency, checks and balances, ethics commissioners, and law courts. There’s no room for monism to even be considered in a social democracy that builds its laws and conventions on that sturdiest of all foundations: human rights legislation that respects and values the differences among people of different ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

It’s true that within Canada there are some smaller HDM villages, some places and some groups and even some religious communities that have fallen prey to the HDM myths. But, as a whole, we seem to want to work together as a team to build a non-hierarchical, non-dualistic, non-monistic society. And that’s a good thing.

See you at Tim’s!

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Posted in Concinnate Christianity, dualism, ethical mysticism, HDM Myths, My Spiral Path, mysticism, psychopathy, status addiction and tagged The Peace Sequence | Leave a Comment

08 Jul 2010

CC24: The Emperor’s New Clothes: Psychopathy in the Church

There’s a fellow in my graduate theology program who is a constant reminder to me of how the orthodox Western church ended up preaching the doctrines of sin, salvation, sacraments, and separation from God (the four S’s). If we were to put this fellow — I’ll call him Titus — in a time machine, and send him back to Carthage in the early fifth century CE to argue with the famously tortured Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo, I’m not sure which of the two would prevail. That’s because, in traditional parlance, “they’re both cut from the same cloth.” They share certain dysfunctional psychological traits along with certain coping mechanisms to compensate for their dysfunctional traits. They’re also both deeply sincere in their beliefs. This is why both men cause so much suffering in the lives of others.

It’s important to emphasize that the man I know, Titus, is absolutely convinced he’s been called to ministry by God. He’s not a con man or a criminal with a conscious intent to harm others. In fact, if you asked him about his motives, he’d look you straight in the eye and tell you that he’s a humble servant of God. He truly believes this.

But Titus has serious issues — as in unresolved psychodynamic issues. He’s a walking powder keg of narcissistic bullying, and he’s utterly blind to this. (His classmates, who are the targets of his behaviour, see his issues quite clearly). So serious is his lack of empathy and his lack of respect for boundary issues that I suspect he suffers a great deal. I suspect he suffers inside his own head. He’s tormented by his own “demons,” and, like so many other people, he’s looking for some form of relief from his inner despair. And who can blame him? It’s not fun to feel like crap all the time.

Secular treatments have given him no long-term relief. So now he’s looking to the Church — traditionally, one of the great sanctuaries for narcissistic men (and narcissistic women). Here he can find a logical explanation for his suffering. Here he can be absolved of personal responsibility for the current state of his life. Here he can finally use his intellectual gifts, his musical gifts, and his badger-like tenacity in order to create something meaningful in his life. I’m not being facetious here — Titus is a talented, well educated man.

I have no doubt that he’s finding psychological comfort and relief in the teachings of men such as Paul the Apostle, Augustine of Hippo, and Martin Luther. That’s because these famous theologians were also talented, well educated men who were suffering from the effects of their own unaddressed issues. They were not stupid, nor ill-informed, nor criminally minded. But they knew something was wrong, and they earnestly wanted to fix it. If they found themselves forced to alter everything Jesus once taught in order to fix it, then so be it. Once they’d found a theological solution that offered some relief for their personal feelings of emptiness, well, who can blame them for wanting to tout their solution to others? Who can blame them for intentionally supplanting Jesus’ message of personality responsibility and forgiveness with a message of sin and salvation? It’s a much easier “sell” than Jesus’ message, and besides, each of these men had personally felt the relief that came with the “4-S package.” So they weren’t really lying — they were just improving on Jesus’ message.

Silenos was a figure from Greek Mythology. He was said to be a close companion of the Greek god Dionysos and was known for his drunkenness, one of the “sins” that human beings tend to blame on everyone but themselves until they find the courage to take responsibility for their own actions. Anyone who has succeeded in healing an addiction to alcohol knows that this particular “sin” can be overcome with the right sort of help (which doesn’t include being told you’re a worthless, hopeless, “demon-possessed” wretch who has no control over your unloving choices because of Original Sin). This Roman marble after a Hellenistic work of the 3rd C BCE is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2019.

The problem is that this package of theological doctrines — the 4-S package of sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation — only offers psychological relief to a certain subsection of the population that’s suffering from certain kinds of psychiatric dysfunction. It enables the narcissistic bullies to feel a lot better about themselves. But it doesn’t do a damned thing for anybody else.

This notion will be extremely unpopular among devout Christians who cherish their traditional, orthodox beliefs about original sin, etc., etc., and this notion will be especially offensive to those who insist that Church doctrines are the handiwork of God instead of the handiwork of a few dysfunctional theologians. But there you have it — the Church has codified within its body of sacred laws a self-correcting, virtually impregnable suit of body armour to protect the “rights” of a select group of self-entitled, selfish, controlling, abusive, HUMBLE (!!!!) servants of God.

How could such a self-serving system survive for so long if it wasn’t God’s true intention?

Well, that’s an easy question to answer. Have you ever tried to live with a severe narcissist? Or work with a severe narcissist? Or live in a community (or even a country) ruled by a severe narcissist? Once a narcissist crosses the line into full-blown psychopathy (and this happens more often than good-hearted intellectuals want to admit), the rule of terror takes over. It’s very hard to think straight, let alone challenge official doctrine, when you and your loved ones are being terrorized, abused, relentlessly persecuted, tortured, raped, imprisoned, and silenced in every way imaginable.

We’ve recently seen this kind of psychopathic behaviour emerge in group-form in the European Holocaust, the Cambodian Holocaust, and the Rwandan Holocaust. These holocausts were all instituted by “revered leaders.” The Church, I would argue, has had its own share of “revered leaders” who relentlessly preached holocausts (crusades) against “heretics” who rejected official church doctrine.

Am I saying that some of the Church’s revered theologians and past leaders would match today’s understanding of psychopathy?*

That’s exactly what I’m saying.

* For more information, please see Robert D. Hare’s Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York & London: The Guilford Press, 1993.)

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Posted in "4 S's", boundary issues, Church of today, Concinnate Christianity, conscience & morality, humility, narcissism, Original Sin, Paul's teachings, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, theodicy and tagged Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

08 Jun 2010

CC18: "Oneness" — The Great Bait and Switch

There’s something particularly insidious about the idea that “We Are All One.”

Yeah, I know, I know . . . it sounds wonderfully spiritual and enlightened to say “we are all One.” It sounds, oh, so inclusive, so un-American, so gentle and loving and soothing and healing. It sounds like the very opposite of our society’s social isolation and lack of love. It sounds like something the soul would say, doesn’t it?

These ripple patterns in a still lake were formed as single water droplets fell from the trees after a heavy rain. As souls, each of us affects the universe in the way these small water droplets bring wavelets to the lake. From a distance, it may look as if the waters of the lake are “all One.” But up close, each droplet affects the lake in unique ways. Christian mystics have too often looked at Creation from a distance and chosen to see it as “all One.” In fact, Creation is a marvel of diversity and uniqueness. It’s Divine Love that creates the background of calmness and beauty against which each soul — each droplet — can paint a small picture that says, “I’m here! I may be small, but I matter!” Together, countless small droplets flow and dance and weave together to create infinite wonders. Photo credit JAT 2015.

Millions of spiritual seekers think so. They’re out there trying to become “one” with God, “one” with Creation, “one” with each other. They’re trying with all their might to “let go.” They’ve been told by religious and spiritual teachers that they have to dissolve themselves and let go of their wants and needs in order to experience transcendence — a blissful sense of union with the oneness of all life, a sense that all boundaries have vanished, a sense that they’re finally free of all longing and suffering.

This, my friends, is not what mystical union feels like. This is what dissociation from your thoughts, feelings, and inner wisdom feels like. This is what the major mental illness called Atypical Dissociative Disorder feels like. Sometimes the dissociation is so extreme that the person can be said to exhibit psychopathy (also called sociopathy).

Many people will be furious with me for saying this. But it needs to be said. And it needs to be fully researched. There’s no excuse for the church — or anyone else, for that matter — to be teaching people to dissociate from their thoughts, feelings, and needs. This is reckless, dangerous, and abusive. It scars people’s central nervous systems, typically for life. It’s no different than driving a steel rod through their skulls, and turning them all into Phineas-Gage-lookalikes. (Phineas Gage was a 19th century worker who underwent a dramatic personality change after an industrial accident propelled a steel rod through his left cheek, into the orbitofrontal cortex of his brain, and out the top of his head.)

I am a practising mystic. I’m NOT a mystical wannabee who wants to be counted as a mystic but has never actually had a genuine mystical experience. Thomas Merton, famed 20th century Christian monk, contemplative, and writer on mysticism, died in his 50’s without ever having experienced a transformative mystical connection with God. Yet he wrote many books on the topic. I think he was a very sincere man, but I don’t think it was right for him to claim to be an expert on something he’d never figured out for himself.

Me, I don’t keep track of the many mystical experiences I’ve had in the past few years, because mystical experiences are now a normal part of my normal, everyday, Canadian life.

I live a normal Canadian life in most ways. I don’t live in a religious community, and I don’t live according to traditional Christian monastic rules. I have an apartment, a car, and a job. I take courses at the university. I get together with friends and family. I like to listen to pop music, and I love to watch TV (certain shows only, though).

Yet woven all around and within this daily life is a deep spiritual practice that yields a tremendous harvest of mystical connection with God. How have I managed to do this when dedicated, highly religious people like Thomas Merton have failed? I’ve managed to do this because I’ve discarded all spiritual teachings that insist “we are all One.”

We are not all One. To say that we should have empathy for other people is NOT the same as saying we are all One. Of course I believe we should have empathy for others. Of course I believe there’d be a whole lot less suffering in the world if more people had empathy for others. Of course I believe that to cultivate empathy is to walk the walk of a spiritual life.

But this isn’t what spiritual leaders mean when they say to you that “we’re all One.” They mean it literally — they mean there’s literally no real distinction, no real boundary, between you and your God. They mean that boundaries between you and other people are “illusion.” They try to use some of the recent findings from physics to “prove” that everything in the universe is really only a manifestation of one big blob of energy in the sky. (Yes, I’m being facetious).

When they say you’re One with God, they mean that if you try hard enough to shed all your humanness (like a snake shedding its old skin), you’ll be able to merge with that big blob of energy called Creator. In effect, you’ll become God, because you’ll be able to “remember” that your “inner spark” is God. Once you’ve achieved this wondrous state of perfection, you’ll no longer have to struggle with annoying human challenges such as forgiveness. You’ll be above illusory things such as forgiveness. What’s to forgive, after all, if the neighbour who harmed you is really just “you” in a different snake suit?

Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that when you fully embrace the idea that “we’re all One,” you don’t have to do any spiritual work anymore?

It’s a good life, being “One with the All.” You don’t have to struggle with messy feelings, because you’ve dissociated yourself from your healthy human emotions. You don’t have to feel guilt or shame about your choices, because all choices are illusory anyway. You can smile when other people are crying, because you’ve detached yourself from all that pain and grief stuff. You can go around pretending you understand what unconditional love is, because words are cheap when you’re disconnected from your own inner wisdom, disconnected from your own soul.

The true path of the soul — a path that has rarely been described in the history of Christian mysticism — is a path of finding yourself rather than losing yourself. It’s a path of finding out who you really are as the soul God made you to be. (Needless to say, everyone’s soul is amazingly awesome.) It’s a path of finding out what makes you a unique individual in a vast angelic family of other unique individuals (none of whom are better than you — they’re just different from you). It’s a path of learning how to deal with powerful, divine emotions such as love, gratitude, courage, devotion, and trust. It’s a path of honouring and respecting the differences between you and others (i.e. gender, race, age, talents, quirks, and “blind spots”), and at the same time rejoicing in what makes you the same (i.e. our innate ability to love, to learn, to change, to forgive). It’s a path of knowing who you are so you can know who other people are. It’s a path of respecting boundaries between you and other people. It’s a path of respecting boundaries between you and God.

Only then will you be able to enter into a mature and humble relationship with God the Mother and God the Father while you’re living your human life.

This is the path that Jesus has taught me.

I highly recommend it.

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, boundary issues, Concinnate Christianity, dissociation, empathy, ethical mysticism, My Spiral Path, mystic, oneness, psychopathy, Soul and tagged ethical mysticism, religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

The Spiral Path

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Archive for the category “psychopathy”