Thursday, January 8, 2009

Short quotes and notes on life and spirituality 4


Why are we afraid? Simply because we don’t feel loved. Fear is a lack of feeling comfort and security, which comes from pleasure, mainly, but specifically from feeling an inner warmth and glow. This ultimately comes from the love of God, but we use all kinds of worldly things to give us a feeling of pleasure. Fear arises when we perceive we don’t have these securities, or when we feel they have been taken away. I believe we feel fear around others because others don’t love us, and we sense that in our bodies. We also are not in touch with God’s love. But we need love from people as well as from God in order to eliminate fear. Sure, we are afraid of people’s judgments about us, and their thoughts and remarks about us may hurt us emotionally. If they had pure love for us, we would not feel scared. So I believe fear is a real indicator of a lack of love within us and as well, within others as they relate to us.


When a couple who were once in love break up, their feelings for each other eventually become repressed and go into hiding in the unconscious. The hurt is initially covered with anger and resentment, then the exigencies and requirements of life force the couple to build emotional walls and scars around the resentment. The feelings of love and desire, need and attraction which they once felt for each other, ultimately become hardened and frozen, and turn into artifacts of the unconscious, housed along with many other demons and ghosts from past hurts and unmet needs.


From religious communities, we get our superficial needs met for acceptance. But this is artificial, since we must be artificial in order to fit in and be accepted. So are our needs really being met? Is it only at a superficial level, or not at all? Our real need is acceptance for our soul, and for our whole being—not for the constructed person we become in order to please others and gain their approval. Is that even acceptance at all? We are deceiving ourselves if we think that is a satisfying kind of acceptance.


Negative thoughts such as remorse and regret and about past actions, blaming people, anger at others and oneself, hopeless thoughts about one’s future--all serve to ward off feelings of pain and sadness. The negative thinking becomes a buffer for the actual painful sensations of loss. Anger and judgment create an ‘ego power’, as a defense mechanism for the feelings of loss, defeat, vulnerability, sadness, fear, emptiness, or guilt that would be a normal response to when unfavorable conditions and situations occur in life.


All human beings are at all times subject to desire for pleasure and aversion to pain. Every impulse of every human being, at all times, is to maximize pleasure and to minimize pain. Even altruistic impulses have pleasure as their root motivation (it feels good to help someone). Absolute selflessness is impossible. The closest one can get to selflessness is recognition of one’s helplessness and powerlessness before a sovereign, all-knowing, all-loving God. Even if a person embraces pain as a spontaneous spiritual act, it is because ultimately the spiritual or sacrificial act leads to a pleasurable feeling of prayer or transcendence. We are always imperfect and always in need. God is the only loving one, the only one who can be trusted.


Our life is not the circumstances of our life. Our true life consists of our faith in God, and the spiritual spark that animates us. Our true life is not the content of our lives, it is the spirit of life.


When you become emotionally dependent on someone, it produces a sense of expectation and entitlement from the person. When you don’t get what you want from the person, you get angry with them because you think they owe it to you, but that is just coming from your attachment to them and lack of connection with God’s love.


In spirituality, attainment has to be gradual because the circumstances of life are what refines and purifies you, and that occurs over a lifetime. When we feel we have attained, a test will come and show us how much more we have to go. So the tests are necessary in order to humble us and to offer us opportunities for further growth.


People don’t know what they want. Society, mostly through corporate advertising, tells them what to want, and that is what is called cultural conditioning.


God’s grace is not only there when you get the things you want in life, but His grace is present even when you don’t get what you want. Since your heart is not getting filled with attachment to this world’s pleasures, when you don’t get what you want you have more opportunity to realize God’s grace—more reason to seek it.



We judge others in the ways we fear others are judging and have judged us. We’re hurt by others’ judgments of us, and instead of processing those feelings by understanding them, turning to God, and forgiving others, we project these feelings onto others—not onto those who are judging us, but onto those whom we are judging.



The only benefit people receive from following the laws and rules of religion is confirmation of their identity of being a good person, so this identity can successfully ward off the feelings of inadequacy, guilt, shame, and the feeling of being unloved. In these people there is no real experiential understanding of the benefits of following the laws of God.


Progressive people often rebel against following the laws of God when this compliance is used for ego validation. Yet their own inner feelings of guilt result from this same attitude and approach to the laws of God. They intellectually realize that this is a flawed approach to following the laws of God, but emotionally it is still what has been ingrained and conditioned into their psyche. This approach revolves around the idea that your value and worth is dependent upon how well you follow the letter of religious law, as it is dictated to you by parents, teachers, and leaders of religion. In this approach, there is no mercy, grace, love, or forgiveness. The sense of inadequacy engendered by falling short of this standard and other man-made standards is the driving force behind almost all worldly accomplishments, as people rush to compensate for this sense of weakness. The result is a hollow and materialistic culture filled with artificial and alienated people.


When we see a great musician perform or a great piece of art, we always praise and glorify the artist or musician. We speak of how great and talented he is. But we rarely praise and glorify God, the author of the talent. We praise people in an exaggerated way because we don’t realize that God is to be praised—we miss that important component in appreciating great works of art or design.


We fabricate a counterfeit self because other people would not know how to relate to us otherwise. We know there is more inside, but other people are not taught how to relate to what is behind the mask. So we take on roles in life so our function can be identified, and then people know how to interact with us. Mother, teacher, lawyer, homeless guy, musician, crazy dude, obnoxious guy, pretty girl, smart kid, whatever. We all relate according to what we can get or what we can give. We’re not taught to communicate or interact from a deep place, so it gets filled with fear, insecurity, shame, confusion, hurt, anger. No love gets deep inside, so it is filled with these dark ‘demons’. We must put a mask on and bury all this fear and shame, lest we get no acceptance in this artificial world.


Isn't it interesting how some people feel extremely blessed after a terrible, crippling accident because their life was spared? They gain a new appreciation for life. Calamities and suffering always have a deeper meaning, and are always meant to help us grow spiritually--whether the suffering is due to our mistakes or not.


We have to transplant our trust in the world to the soil of trust in God.


It takes a village to raise a child; it takes a community to transform a soul.


It is best to relate to people from the love of God. If you can’t do that, try to be authentic with them. If you can’t do that, then construct an artificial self and relate to them through this mask. But make sure it treats all people well!

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