My friend, Jared, sent me this quote today.
St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Go out and preach the Gospel, and if you have to, use words.”
That’s a tough one sometimes.
Blessings, Ann
Archive for February, 2007
“If you have to, use words.”
February 23, 2007Born Again Hypocrisy
February 14, 2007One of my biggest objections to fundamentalist Christians is the hypocrisy.
Not only does the Bible contradict itself in many places, but the people who profess to follow the Bible literally invariably make exceptions to suit themselves.
Such was inevitably the case with this man, Bryce. He called me last night to let me know that he had met the “perfect girl.” She is Catholic. He is not. That is going to bring him some unexpected challenges, depending on how strict she is with her Catholicism. For example, he may have to join her church to get married.
But that is nothing.
He says she gave the “perfect answer” to his question about whether she believes in pre-marital sex. She is fine with it, but told him that she would respect his beliefs.
So, are they going to wait till marriage?
No!
He has decided that “that doesn’t really work in this day and age.” I can’t for the life of me figure out how the “day and age” affects this one bit. It doesn’t, of course. But he didn’t bother about that. He just wants sex.
If you read my blogs, you will see that I am all for people having sex. It isn’t that.
I don’t care for liars and hypocrites.
Sure, we all lie to ourselves, and often. But once I catch it, I like to know the truth and then live by that.
I prefer to be around people who at least want to know the truth.
Bryce has as much as said that he does not want to know the truth.
So much for his Christianity, hmm?
Love, Ann
Intensity
February 13, 2007Intensity can mean a lot of things.
It can refer to something we see, hear, feel, smell or taste.
Intense red, intense music, intense feelings, intense incense, intense garlic.
It can refer to the experience itself or our interpretation of it.
A pleasurable experience can be intense. We like that.
Scary movies are intense. Some people like them. I don’t!
I often have to ask what is meant by intensity so that I don’t misinterpret.
There are many things that I love and crave to be intense.
As a Jethro Tull fan, I love to drive to “Thick as a Brick,” loud when I’m a certian mood. That’s intense. I like a lot of intense music. Scott Medina chanting “Durga Ma” is really intense for me.
Maybe this blog is intense.
Intensity can also be a defensive thing, too.
When we try to get something we want, we may get intense, especially if we are not getting it or if we think someone is trying to keep something from us. Seduction and manipulation are intense, and not in a good way.
Anger is intense. But it’s not necessarily bad to express anger.
Grief is intense. Again, expressing it can be very healing.
Emotions and thoughts are like the weather. They show up. We decide what to do with them. Inquire whether a thought is true. Decide whether to blow up or have a calm conversation. Those are choices.
Making a choice can be intense or it can be as easy as falling off a log.
Steven Sashen says “Success is a side effect of clarity.” When we are clear, choices make themselves. We do the next thing. Otherwise, it can get intense
Whether things are clear or not kinda depends on whether we are telling the truth or not. When we are noticing what is and what is true, well, there’s a bit less of unpleasant intensity and for me, a lot more of the enjoyable kind of intensity, bliss.
Love, Ann
Evangelical Methods
February 11, 2007In the continuing saga of my discussions with my born-again friend, Bryce, he recently asked me, “If what you believe is wrong, would you want to know?”
That is a hard sell question designed to get only an answer of “yes.” It gives the person no real choice of what to reply… Unless that person is smarter than most people, that is the only answer they could give.
Of course, I would want to know. But it does not necessarily mean I would come to agree with him.
I did not answer yes or no, but went into my explanation of why his minister and I would be wasting each other’s time by asking him to check your Inner Wisdom in the form of your contraction/expansion feeling. (see any of my blogs on truth or lie)
Hard sell techniques, including evangelism, will use a series of questions like that to force the person into predictable replies so that they can be manipulated into doing what you want them to do. These will be full of false logic.
For a list of logical fallacies and how to spot them, see:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html#index
I would bet that he was coached by his minister to ask that.
Used car salesmen make great evangelists, too. The technique is the same.
That is why I prefer to teach a person to find their own internal truth/lie response. That way I CANNOT manipulate them. They are checking with THEMSELVES, not following a forced pattern of questions to control them and manipulate them.
My biggest problem with evangelical and fundamentalist churches and people is that they are pretending to be the authority, when the real authority is your personal connection to God Within.
Van Morrison titled a whole album with a thought that sums it up: “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.”
Why?
We have a Teacher, born inside us.
Jesus told us two very very important things, which would be enough all by themselves if this was all we knew:
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven.”
and then He told us where to look:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within.”
I had an interesting moment when, a couple of days later, I was talking with Bryce, and I asked, “If what you believe is wrong, would you want to know?”
He told me we could no longer discuss religion because the Devil is using me to try to sway him from his path.
Okay.
Amen
Namaste
Om Shanti
Hare Om
and all that stuff like that there.
Love, Ann
More Questions & Answers on Religion, Spirituality, Fundamentalism and Truth
February 3, 2007Okay, class. Welcome to today’s lesson, where we will um… do whatever we do. 
There will be a short review of definitions. The definitions are my wording. They are found in other places, as well.
God – The Whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
Religion – The codification of one person’s enlightenment or awakening experience, usually.
Religion is also often a set of rules telling people what will save them or make them happy, which almost never works 100% because it cannot account for individual, group and cultural variations, nor is it based in Truth, but in fact is only an attempt to control groups of people through fear. (See definitions for truth and lie.)
Sin – to miss the mark. It’s an archery term. Look it up.
Sinner – someone who misses the mark.
Heaven – a model of a “good” place where “good” people go after they die, used to control people while they are alive. OR how we feel when we notice the truth, a sense of bliss and connection.
Hell – a model of a “bad” place where “bad” people go after they die, used to control people while they are alive. OR how we fell when we lie, a sense of separation from God and others, a sense of loneliness.
Spiritual – something beyond the physical, sometimes described as energy, God, chi, prana, life force, The Force, grokking, etc.
Spirituality – attitudes, practices, ways of living that connect us to something that feels like it is beyond the physical.
Mystic – one who feels a direct connection to Spirit or God in some way. Most religions have them. We call them Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed and Moses. There are other mystics, too: saints, poets, artists, scientists and teachers. You know them.
Addiction – Anything we habitually and compulsively try to substitute for our Source, which I call God.
Truth – that which feels expansive, happy, right and joyful when you say it to yourself and check the feelings in your body. These feeings are usually described as light, open, expansive, etc.
Lie – that which feels contracted, unhappy, wrong and upsetting when you say it to yourself and check the feelings in your body. These feelings are usually described as heavy, tight, closed, contracted, etc.
Here is a way to check what it feels like when you lie:
Can you remember a time when you lied to someone you loved? (We’ve all done it.)
Feel the physical feelings in your body when you remember this time you lied to someone you loved. (Not emotions like sad or angry, but physical feelings that you feel in your body.)
Got it? Great.
That is how it feels when you lie to someone you love. Sometimes it is a similar feeling with a similar “flavor.” For example, maybe you felt a tightness in the pit of the stomach. Later, you check another thought that is a lie, and you feel nauseated and sick to your stomach. Close enough. Both are how you feel when you lie to someone you love.
Finding the Truth feeling is an interesting one. I used to tell people to think of their name (if they’ve got a nickname it doesn’t work as well) or a math equation, like 1 plus 1 equals 2. That will sometimes get you to a feeling of openness, lightness, expansiveness, but not necessarily. Just keep checking thoughts. You’ll find the feeling. You’ve felt it hundreds of times in your life.
*************
Okay, that’s it for definitions right now. If you want other things defined, write a Comment. I’ll add it if it fits.
The impetus for writing this particular blog comes from discussions I’ve had recently with a gorgeous man with long hair who is just this close to what I would want in a husband. He feels about the same about me. In fact, if we had similar spiritual paths, we’d even be able to share our work, which for me would be a total dream come true. Long hair, shared sexual preferences, all wonderful, but without the shared spirituality, no go. I love him. I just don’t see sharing my life with him.
He is a fundamentalist Christian. Let’s call him Bryce.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. He has every right to think that way. We had to talk about this, though. He calls himself a “new” Christian. About a year ago he had what sounds to me like a totally valid spiritual experience. He was pissed off about his wife leaving him. He talked with a minister who told him to go home and pray. He went home, knelt on the floor and had a very angry loud conversation with God.
Next, he felt a wave of bliss wash through him. He says it was like honey.
The way he describes this tallies with my own spiritual experiences. I sense he is telling the truth and that he really did have an experience of God. He has had this again a couple of times.
Note that there was no minister, no Bible, nothing like that intervening between him and this experience. I’ve had similar experiences in so many ways and so many places now that I cannot recount them all.
What I disagree with is when Bryce then takes this experience and thinks that because a fundamentalist Christian minister told him to pray, and then this happened, that everything this minister says is true. *sigh*
A friend of mine told me the Mormon church uses this same tactic to convert people. They tell them that if they have this experience it means Mormonism is true.
Does it? Check! How does it feel in your body? Tight and contracted? Or open and expansive?
The Christian religion as we have it today was largely based on the work of the apostle Paul. The model of God is that of a “king.” Why? Because that is what illiterate people 2000 years ago could understand. People working fields and trades for a living didn’t have the time or the luxury back then to learn to read. Things are a little different now in many parts of the world, especially the US of A.
The “king” model works pretty well, even today, for illiterate or under-educated people who have not learned to question things and think for themselves. Hell, it works for some educated people, especially, those with some reason to want someone else to do their thinking for them. People who want things in black and white, all spelled out.
This includes my very own sister, God love her.
She was going through drug recovery and working the 12 Steps. I totally support the 12 Steps themselves, by the way. They do a world of good. The groups have some beliefs that are untrue, but the 12 Steps tend to work to bring people to truth.
Step 1. Admitted we were powerless over (name your addiction).
Step 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (True, a problem is never solved at the level of thinking that created it. Einstein noticed that, too.)
Step 3. Made a conscious decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.
This is where my sister and I diverged. She spent 3 years trying out various ways to understand God. She did my own very favorite spiritual path, A Course in Miracles. All of it. Every one of the 365 daily lessons. And when she was done with 3 years of exploration, she decided to be a fundamentalist Christian, to home school her children and to teach them Creationism.
She has every right to do that. If you ask me whether I’d rather have a sister who is addicted to drugs or a sister who is a fundamentalist Christian, the answer is a no-brainer. If that’s the choice, she can be as fundamentalist as she wants. At least she is not evangelical, meaning she is not out there trying to tell others what to believe.
And she even lets me say whatever I wish to her children. She says they are going to have to learn to deal with it in the world, so they might as well hear what I really think. She’s a jewel and I love her.
But back to Bryce.
He has a GED because he had to quit school to raise a child at a very early age. He makes straight A’s when he is in school, but he hasn’t had a lot of education in logic, logical fallacies, or thinking for himself.
He was abandoned by his parents at a very very young age, like before high school. He lived on the streets and had to learn to fight. Heartbreaking in a way, if you knew him. He’s as gentle a man as you’d ever care to meet. (Gorgeous, too, but I digress.)
So, it makes sense that without parental guidance from about age 12, that there is still a 12-year old type of thinking he has, still some desire to find an authority to tell him what to think.
He just doesn’t quite trust himself. He can feel the contraction in his body when he lies. He tells me he does, anyway. But he doesn’t think he can make good decisions (particularly about women). Frankly, if he had checked that contraction, he might never have been with some of them. I don’t know. Not that his reality should have been any different than it is. He’s a fine man, as is. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. He, my sister and I are all living proof. We’ve all had direct experiences of God… and I mean in our bodies. Undeniable, immistakable. No question in our minds or hearts.
I don’t know what Bryce (or anyone else) needs to do with his life, his beliefs or his religion and spirituality (two different things – see definitions). That’s totally his business.
Sure, I love talking about it.
He asks me questions. I answer.
He makes statements I can’t agree with and I explain my perspective.
Or not.
He’s trying to go with the idea that the Bible is literally true. I wouldn’t do that.
Here’s a list of inconsistencies in the New Testament alone:
http://www.thenazareneway.com/new_testament_biblical_inconsistencies.htm
If you’d rather read it in fiction, pick up a copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s JOB: A Comedy of Justice. Great reading, very educational. Fun.
That’s part of what this blog is for me: fun.
Thank you for visiting. Make Comments below, if you wish.
Love, Ann
My Answers to Some Questions on Religion
February 1, 2007I got an email from a man who told me he had several questions about religion. He said that if I was going to tell him to “have faith” he was not interested, but would I like to talk?
Of course, I said yes.
I define religion as “the codification of one person’s enlightenment experience.” Basically, we get the form, but not the content. Most religions were founded this way. Taoism is probably an exception and nature based religions might be, as well. We can learn from the experience of another, but we have to go through our own experiences.
“Translucent Revolution” by Arjuna Ardagh lists many people living now in some form of enlightened awareness. Each chapter also lists some spiritual myths that are not true.
So this man said he had some “common sense, honest, bare bones questions” about religion that “make him doubt god, at least in the organized cult – oops, I mean religion – sense.”
I replied:
Yes, many Christian churches and other religions are cults. I have links somewhere to questions a person can ask to determine if something is a cult. Things about finances, whether people are free to leave, if they are not allowed to speak to other members if they leave, etc.
www.rickross.com is one such reference.
if the bible is the inspired word of god why is it so hypocritical?
This one is a paradox.
The bible is history, poetry, and some philosophy and inspiration. None of the New Testament was written until about 3 centuries after Christ died. Look for any books and tapes on the “historical Jesus” to get historical facts and see how they compare to the religious mythologies.
Look on Google for “new testament inconsistencies” for a good list of contradictory texts.
For fun, read “JOB: A Comedy of Justice” by Robert Heinlein, where in fiction he talks about many of these contradictions.
At the same time, by my definition, everything is inspired by God, including Hitler.
My definition of God: “The Whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.”
Read “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” by Alan Watts for an excellent explanation of that, with pictures.
why are there more deaths and more suffering in the name of god and religion than any other reason?
Umm, the short answer is because people are lying to themselves.
See “Loving What Is” by Byron Katie for that explanation.
The long answer is because people would “rather be right than happy.”
See “A Course in Miracles” if you want to, for that. It’s a text, a 365 day meditation workbook, and a manual for teachers. I’ve been a student since 1985. It clears up a lot of the Christic (as different from Christian) understandings.
You can find that online. http://acim.home.att.net/
if god knows everything that gonna happen before it does then what’s the purpose? why are we here?
The problem here is that god is not a person. The medieval version of god held him to be like a king because that was a symbol that the common people could understand.
Remember, the common people have only just learned to read in the last 100 years. Used to be only a select group of people had the luxury of the time to spend reading and thinking for themselves. That is all changed now and with it, our models of the universe have changed at the same time. We have better models.
Still, they are all just models.
Why are we here? Who says there has to be a reason? Maybe it’s just a Mystery.
He says:
I have tons more….
Ask away!
I also referred him to “God Lives: From Religious Fear to Spiritual Freedom” by James Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh is a former priest who broke free of the things that made no sense to him and then wrote down his discoveries for others. I have not read the entire book. I just got it, but there seems to be some useful thinking in there.
Also, see the Anti-Guru blog by Steven Sashen, link on the right. And “Heart of a Cult,” a fictional book on one person’s experience with cults by Lena Phoenix.
Does anyone else have questions like this? Please Comment and I will reply.
I will definitely have more to say about this topic. Seems to be of interest to others.
Love, Ann
