I met this guy, Ben Vizy, at a Community Cycles gathering and after talking with me for a few minutes he asked me to come to do a podcast with him. Since I thoroughly enough talking to people about deep topics I accepted and here is the podcast that resulted.
Ben Vizy’s Podcast with Jim Freedom
Believing happens when people hear some ‘information’ about something that they have an emotional predisposition toward. For instance, if a person has been shunned by Christians and they carry that emotional hurt with them then if there were to hear some ‘information’ challenges the validity of the Christian message they would have that emotional predisposition to want to believe that ‘information’. On the other hand, if a person has been raised to believe that they were sinner and that all sin will eventually get punished then when they hear the story that Jesus died on the cross for our sins they will have the emotional predisposition toward believing that it is true. Both of these examples are of people who are lying to themselves based on their emotional predisposition.
The wise and mature person will recognize that ALL beliefs are a product of emotional predisposition and result in self deception. So they accept the truth that, for instance, they do not know whether or not Jesus ever existed and that they can NEVER really know that.
Emotional healing is the process of recognizing that our emotions are a product of our lack of clarity or honest TO OURSELVES and practicing radical honesty without ourselves which keeps us in the present moment, the here and now. The practice ‘heals’ the habitual emotional reaction that causes us so much pain and suffering. We then begin to relax and stop injuring ourselves with our emotional reactions to the thoughts in our head. RELAXING around our thoughts is the key to healing ourselves emotionally and allowing the truth to do it perfect task.
I see that the root cause of most of humanities problems is a failure to communicate. We do not talk enough with one another, particularly about deep and/or personal things. The problem is not that we do not share our financial wealth; it is that we do not share HOW we got our financial wealth.
By developing and teaching good communication skills, the courage to be honest and most importantly the courageous compassion that it takes to truly listen to one another we can overcome this deficiency. When we recognize that we will not have the courage to be honest unless we have the courage to listen to feedback means that we first develop the skill of NOT beating ourselves up emotionally with our reactions to what people say to us or about us. It is hell to be afraid of ourselves and our reactions to what people say to us.
Rob Brezney writes in his astrology column (www.freewillastrology.com) for Sagittarius last week:
“If you want to upset the law that all crows are black,” wrote William James, “you mustn’t show that no crows are, it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.” Philosopher Jonathan Zap applies this idea to his ruminations about telepathy. He says that if there is even one irrefutable case in which two minds have communicated with each other at a distance and without the aid of technology, then telepathy must be a fundamental human capacity. I believe this is an important line of thought for you to consider, Sagittarius. Why? Because you’ve entered the Season of the White Crow.
The Season of the White Crow means to me that it is time to question some fundamental laws or beliefs of humanity. For me, that means it is time for me to question the fundamental belief that words hurt people, that words are powerful.
I do not need to prove that all people are not hurt by words; I only need to prove that I can not be hurt by words. Better yet, if I show that there are many people who have overcome the power of words to hurt them then I have made my case better.
I have found that words can not hurt me, only my reactions to words can cause me injury. If I take responsibility for my reactions and my behaviors and work to develop the blessedness to not take offense at works, then I can be free from the fear of words.
Blessedness is a result of letting go, of relaxing and not reacting to the stimuli that is constantly coming at us. Blessedness is the practice of just watching what happens and not reacting. Blessedness comes with the practice of meditation. Meditation is the practice of blessedness.
People are constantly telling me that what is said has power and that we can hurt people with our words. I notice that these people are afraid of other people, they are afraid of talking to people, or should I say, they are afraid of their reactions to what people say. In essence, they are afraid of themselves. If we fear ourselves we can not love ourselves. If we can not love ourselves then we will not be able to love others.
“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”
JOHN STUART MILL (English philosopher), Autobiography, 1873
No great change is going to happen in our political reality until people start to think beyond their current fundamental constitutions or modes of thought. It is time to think beyond the thoughts of “us against them”. It is time for the Democrats to start looking at how they can SERVE the Republicans and conservatives of America and the world, not be opposed to them.
The Democrat’s have historically been a party that serves the labor and working classes of America. How about that we (Democrats) being here to serve PEOPLE as opposed to serving institutions like unions, corporations, churches and governments. We have thought that we created these institutions to help us serve people but they always end up becoming the master over people. As long as an organization has hierarchical decision making power they will always revert to corruption. As long as we keep thinking that centralized decision making is going to solve our problems we are only CREATING more problems. The Democrat’s can change this primitive way of thinking and look to decentralizing the power and authority of the federal government so that the power is taken BACK toward the people in our local governments. A grass roots effort is the only real government that we need. That is a government of people, not institutions.
Is this not totally opposite the Theology of the Bible-Belt? The belief of the bible-belt is that humans are inherently flawed, sinful or evil so they need to be controlled and dominated. This attitude basically comes from the demented (unloving and faithless) teachings of the apostle Paul. The assumptions is that because we need to be controlled humanity needs a hierarchical structure and those who raise to the top are there because God has chosen them to be there.
The Democrats have believed that the best way to create this hierarchical structure is through unions and government where the Republicans have believed that the best way to create this structure is through church and corporations. BOTH are founded on faithless and unloving belief in the flawed nature of humanity.
This new way of thinking is very much consistent with the perspective of we are all gods, part of God. Why should any one person have authority over any other person if we are all equally part of God? Jesus taught these ideas two thousand years ago and they are still good ideas, even if it is a primitive way of expressing it. Yes, there are people who do not realize they are part of God, but that is THEIR manifestation of God at this moment, so why not let them be who they are at this moment. We can still make every effort to wake them up to who they really are.
We are Gods, perfect beings JUST AS WE ARE. When we wake up we can see that we are perfect, have always been and will always be. Waking up is such a rich experience that we cherish the unconsciousness for the OPPORTUNITY that it created for us to wake up.
The Democrats can be the ‘party’ of people waking each other up to our divinity and we can use the government we have to that purpose, until we no longer need a government.
PRACTICAL
In a practical sense Democrats can be a party that supports health education, not health insurance that only gives money to the corporate interests of the doctors, pharmacy companies and hospitals. The health insurance industry is about creating dependency on doctors, pharmacies and hospitals, not about creating healthy people who have NO NEED for doctors, pharmacies and hospitals.
In defense Democrats can be a party that supports people learning how to defend themselves instead of be dependent on militaries and police to do it. Do you think we would be at war in Iraq today if we only had militia of citizens to defend the country? A militia can not be an aggressive force; it can only be a defensive force. We could turn the Defense Department into a training institution that teaches people how to defend themselves. We could replace the Defense Department (War Department) with the Peace Corps and ‘invest’ in other countries by sending teachers there to teach people how to take care of themselves and live free.
How about creating tax credits for people who teach others how to be financially independent? We could create all types of tax credits for people who teach others to be healthy, independent and free.
These are just a few of the ideas that WE all can come up with IF we have the faith in ourselves.
It is time for a radical change in our ways of thinking.
I wonder if people can see the good that came out of the events of
I look back and the stories of how FDR set up American to be attacked at
Then look at the world situation before
Yet who in
The conservatives were of the mind set that we should not get involved in other people’s business. Remember the reaction of the Republicans to
So what if (and only if) President Bush or some of his friends did orchestrate the attack on the
Yes, some of those people were close to us here in
So
Of course, 9/11 was not the first warning we were given and we did not listen to it. Remember the FIRST attack on the
It is nice to see that the women of
It is time that the civilized world recognizes the tyranny that people live under in extreme religious societies. We can not ignore people living on the other side of the world just because they live on the other side of the world. Religion has always been and will always be tyrannical and eventually we will ‘cure’ this planet of this cancer. But in the mean time we make war on those who are hurting the most under this tyranny without confronting the source of the disease.
It is a start and only a start.
I would like to bring up the topics of righteousness and truth, which seem to be of great concern to conservatives. I will start with truth.
Now I recognize that thoughts are electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain (located in the head of the previously hurting body) so I can see that thoughts are kind of real. Then the mind is just the pattern of thoughts that go around in the brain. But what if the brain is run over by a big truck? Where does the mind go then? What happens if I stop thinking? Do “I” have a mind then? Good question. Let us stop thinking and see. (This is called meditation or watching as Jesus called it.)
This brings me to soul. I have no soul. I can not find it. The dictionary defines it as an immaterial essence, animating principle or actuating cause of an individual life. Wow, that is a mouthful! All those word reflect just thoughts that are electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain. So the soul is just like my wife, only an illusion in my brain. When the brain stops working (death or meditation) the wife and soul disappear. (Don’t you sometimes wish you could just make your wife disappear like that?) Therefore, I must ‘believe’ (to accept as FACT; another thought) that I have a soul before there is one. If I do not believe in a soul I can not lose it. That pattern of electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain has to be something that I find attractive enough to give more energy so that it can continue to travel around my brain. Since I do not choose this it does not continue and I have no soul.
Why would anybody want a soul anyway? Well, maybe they choose to believe (be LIE ve: be lying to ourselves) that they have a soul because that explains what happens to them (?) when they die. But they must do that because they choose to believe they are finite and limited. Being finite and limited creates fear of that which is outside of themselves so by believing in a soul they have a firm definition of who they are and firm boundaries that they can hide behind. If they were open minded and did not define themselves then they would have no need to ‘believe’ anything. So believing in soul creates fear and that fear can be used to control and manipulate them, thus making them slaves. I see no intelligent reason to believe in soul.
Am I using the word ‘death’ correctly here? My car ‘died’ the other day. I had to restart it but it did die. I ‘die’ periodically too, but I then am restarted or I restart myself. Well, maybe, depending on what this thing called “I” is that does this.
Back to self…in deep meditation or death self or individuality and sensation ceases but “I” seems to still be there. I would call this “I” Self, with a Capital “S”. The experience of this Self is infinite and eternal, but really I can not accurately talk about it for all words are by definition limited. So the experience of Self is not communicable with words. What I can talk about is the experience of the EFFECT of the experience of Self. But that is another story…
Anyway, self that is individual is only an electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain. This ‘self’ is not lasting or real; it is just a temporary phenomenon that lasts as long as the human instrument last.
I am, therefore, the one that experiences ‘truth’ and it is the human instrument that ‘proves’ the facts that make truth. But all this is run through the mind, which is just electro-magnetic impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain.
The point is that “I” am the one who define what is right or wrong, good or evil. I can say to myself that some deity defines right and wrong, good and evil, and that this deity wrote it in a book, but that would be a lie because “I” am the one who CHOOSE to believe that. So it is “I” that chooses where I get my opinion of right and wrong, good and evil. “I” am the ultimate authority in my inner reality as to what I experience. I am the King of kings, God of gods in my inner kingdom/reality.
I often hear people say that they are an open minded person (at least my liberal friends say that) but I wonder just HOW open minded they really are. When a mind is open would it not be expanded to thinking outside the boxes of conventional thought? What thoughts does everybody else have that you also have? Where are you thinking in a box that even your opponents are trapped in?
I hear ‘open minded’ people being really worried that humanity is on the verge of destruction if we do not wake up really soon. Are they not just still thinking in terms of the same old ‘box’ of individuality and separateness? Do they not see that they still think of themselves as people or a person who is finite and temporal?
If your mind was infinitely open would you not be God? Well, yea, you would be but then you would not be dealing with ‘reality’ would you?
Now the word reality has the root of ‘real’ and most dictionaries have the second definition of the word real as permanent. Are ‘we’ permanent? Is this illustrious individual person that I think I am a permanent thing in the infinite universe? Has it always been and will it always be?
Nay!
Are we not are just temporary phenomena that rise and will some day disappear? Some would say that we are just an illusion, a dream that the humans who are ready can wake up from. O wake, O wake, O
This is not denial of the ‘reality’ of the manifest world, the drama that life offers. No, quite the contrary. With this perspective available to you, you can choose between two identities. The first one, the box that everyone has, is thinking of yourself as a person with all the dramas of life and even really get into that life. The second identity is thinking of yourself as God, the witness of drama that is life. You have a choice.
This, for me, is what it means to be ‘born again’ once of water and a second time of spirit. “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
Why do we go to the movies? Is it not for the drama that they offer, the excitement or the emotion that they stimulate in us? Yet, when the movie is over we can leave the theater and come back to ‘reality’ where the dramas are less intense.
When we are awake we have the option of getting into our lives and their dramas until we are fulfilled, then just say, “Beam me up, Scotty” and return to our true identity as Spirit or God to rest the human instrument that we are using to experience life through.
The truth will set you free somebody once said. Can being ‘bound’ to one limited little identity and soul be of the truth? Nay!
So why not be free to have two identities? Then you can enjoy both the drama of life and the peace WITH the world when your body/mind needs a rest.
I want to articulate a new angle on the biblical depravity and extend that all Jews, Christians and Muslims who embrace the bible as their moral manual are moral cowards for they do not have the courage to question the moral depravity and outright sickness of the writers of the bible.
I challenge the Jews, Christians and Muslims to admit that the writers of the bible were morally sick when they advocate slavery, or taking young girls as sex slaves, or murdering children, or murdering people who disagreed with you. Yet, not one of the Christians or Jews I have challenged with this had the courage to say that yes, those behaviors are morally sick and the people who advocate them are morally sick people. I say the writers of the bible were moral cowards because they did not have the courage to admit that this was their sickness and instead created a deity and attributed their own sickness to the authority of their deity.
I say that the ‘problem’ here is that Jews, Christians and Muslims do not have the moral courage to question any of the writings of the bible let alone the more advance or subtly sick teachings of even Jesus. The question is moral courage. Religious people use a deity to justify their own moral depravity and keep a hard hearted perspective on life. Religious people, particularly western religious people, do not have the courage to question authority, practically religious authority, but also political authority such as the constitution, and go beyond the moral depravity of the ancient and primitive people of the past.
Yet, I see that the bible does point in the direction we should go in that the teachings EVOLVE from the most morally depraved OT to a softer, gentler, kind, more loving and liberal perspective in the NT. So the bible is pointing toward being a liberal.
I hear the Christians try to terrorize people by telling them they will burn in hell for all eternity if they do not submit to Jesus’ authority and I feel the moral depravity of this. Sharing fear is NOT a loving thing to do, yet it is all that conservative religious people know.
I find that there are very few things in the bible that are not morally depraved but one of them is ‘love one another’. And love drives out fear, NOT induces it. Christians try to induce fear and because of this they are morally depraved and sick.
I constantly amazed as to how far the Christians would go to deny the obvious contradictions and moral depravity that the bible has. And in the end they run away when challenged. At least they did not try to kill me as their bible tells them to.
Interesting thought for the day:
If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the
The rate in
Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of
From http://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=35618107