Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine~Alan Turing
I watched yet another movie about Alan Turing and how his machine won the war against Nazi Germany.
I would not be around without him. My parents, my race would have perished. And you would live a totally different life… The book (and the Amazon series) The Man in the High Castle approximates…
I am in awe. With what he did, with who he was, with genius winning, with goodness winning.
Humanity, no doubt, didn’t get far from its beginnings.
Not inside. Not emotionally, not spiritually, not intellectually, not in any way that matters much for the quality of humanity. In my estimation, humanity as a whole got further away from its beginnings…
Individuals, isolated ethnic communities with strong spiritual and moral commandments from a higher authority, like a god did get further on, but not enough in numbers to impact the whole species.
The only thing that would impact humanity has to happen deeper than skin level.
What would matter, or what matters in those that are further ahead?
An alteration in genetic, epigenetic shifts.
Humanity already has all the genes it would have in the phase of human being… caring, love, gratitude, appreciation… encoded but not active.
On the intellectual aspect, curiosity, diligence, persistence, self-discipline
On yet another aspect, the ability to see the consequences of each action, the consequences on the whole (big picture) and individuals.
At present these capacities don’t manifest and you can see it if you have eyes to see.
When because of leadership, because of an ideal, because of certain circumstances a group needs those capacities to activate: they do.
If the ideal, or the circumstances are temporary, the capacities won’t be needed any more, and the economy of the organism will push them dormant again.
The organism doesn’t want anything to be open, especially not spiritual or intellectual capacities that are not used. They use precious glycogen which is of limited supply.
I am using the word “glycogen” without having done enough research, glycogen here meaning energy… energy to expand on thinking, feeling, caring, and such.
Activities that take away or are in conflict with the Selfish Gene… the survival machine are needed if and when one wants those activities to be supported on the genetic level… i.e. turn on the gene for it.
So what happened and what didn’t happen that humanity did not evolve?
I am going to share here what I am able to see. That may be the whole picture, or just some of it… I am not sure.
1. Religion
Some religion was useful in creating a new humanity and some religion worked counter purposes.
The difference between religions wasn’t, isn’t, what they teach.
All religions emphasis values. All religions say: do this and don’t do that.So the difference is not in the teachings. The difference is in the context.Context answers the “why” question.If the why is: because I said so… there is rebellion, resistance, and ultimately pretense or abandonment.
If the why is: because that is what we agreed upon… then there is adherence, diligence, and self-pride.
Inside each religion there are groups or sects… and all or most sects were/are hellbent to bastardize and eliminate the context… and transfer the power to a person, or even to the god of that religion.
Suddenly there is no agreement, or it’s not spoken of: there is dependence, reward and punishment, which makes the individual an effect instead of a co-creator.
And some religions start with that: placing an individual as a bridge, and create dependence, built in reward and built in punishment… a veritable mess of conflicting instructions… because now the divine is speaking through a mortal whose personal interpretation becomes “the word”.
Whether I am expressing it or not: most religions have it built in them that the individual doesn’t matter.
Or even worse: that the individual is already forgiven… that someone has washed him of all his sins… and yet… he will suffer for them… unless… big mess.
Surprisingly, to me, even in religions like this, designed to keep you sheep, keep you wolf, keep you animal, some rare individuals are able to tell the two voices apart, and follow the one that they consider divine.
In them the Intrinsic Self interacts with the divine voice… a one on one conversation, in which the Intrinsic Self has a say.
I am now considering two such individuals my mentors, through their writings. Roy Williams and Henry Cloud PhD.
2. In Kabbalah they say: The Opponent will have a major weapon: it will make you believe that it doesn’t exist.
The Opponent is the Selfish Gene. The voice of evil, the voice of desire to receive for the self alone.If and when you believe that people are good, that you are good by nature, you fall for that lie, and you’ll become evil… no choice about it.One other teacher of mine, Dr. Robert Hartman said best: to fight for good you need to know evil intimately, in all its disguises.
3. Cheap Grace… the culture of dispensing grace without a cost…
This is pretty much the going world religion right now… at least in much of the world.Here are some quotes:
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares.
The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits.
Grace without price; grace without cost!
The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?
Grace, as I see it, is the return to wholeness. the return to divinity.
Some New Age misguided people take it upon themselves to offer blessings… in fact, in every interaction they have… in their emails to me, for example.
What a prideful evil act… placing them, in their imagination, above it all… As if they had the power to issue blessings. I surely don’t take on any students who have such things either in their signature or in their email handle… evil and blind… or just plain evil.
Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and founding member of the Confessing Church.
These quotes, from his letters from prison, show an individual who was using religion as a ladder to climb the evolutionary tree.
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which other are just as entitled to as we are.
p. 185.If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves.
p. 185.Jesus offers his disciples a simple rule of thumb which will enable even the least sophisticated of them to tell whether his intercourse with others is on the right lines or not. All he need do is to say “I” instead of “Thou,” and put himself in the other man’s place.
4. New Age teachings that say that teach you that you are faultless, blameless, already good, worthy, and divine.
This last one is what I need to disabuse you of, most. This includes positive thinking, avoiding negative thoughts, negative people, anything that is uncomfortable, ugly, hard, risky… delivering you straight to evil.
- Remaining the same is evil… it is desire to receive for the self alone.
- Avoiding risk… it is desire to receive for the self alone.
- Avoiding growing… it is desire to receive for the self alone.
- Avoiding unpleasant, hard, difficult, challenging, ugly… is desire to receive for the self alone.
Masquerading as fear… delivering you straight into the arms of Evil.
The dynamic of life is that unless you are standing for something, you are standing for evil.
Unless you are working towards good, growth, actively, you are working for evil.
The absence of physical manifestation of evil is not sufficient proof that it isn’t there…
And this is a moment to moment process… no break, no holidays, no vacation. You either stand for something or you are standing for evil.
And this is what is leading me back to the title… what started me, what urged me to write this article: Unless you experience awe you are on the side of the Dark Side. Evil.
Awe is a sense of elation, a sense of being pulled up to something much greater than you. Reaching it in meditation isn’t what I am talking about. Reaching it as an event… no. It is not an experience, it is a way of living life.
A way where you are guided by something greater than yourself, where you live as if you made a personal covenant with that…
I call it evolution. Spiritual evolution. Intellectual evolution. Emotional evolution of the species. In your person.
Your personal Calvary… going from ordinary Selfish Gene dominated creature to Self-determination.
Evolve. In the struggle for goodness within you, against the evil within you.
And when you can live with that awe, you can’t even feel sadness… not the kind of sadness that comes for weeping for your losses, for your pain, for your misfortune…
No, the kind of sadness that is from the height of awe… for all of us. For goodness. For the loss of what is possible for all of us.
I know I am asking much of you. I know you are not used to it. I know this may be the first time.
That is what I am talking about… the reason humanity hasn’t evolved.
And I feel a deep sadness.
The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.
For evil disguises itself to look better than it really is by playing itself down and you are duped.
If you wonder who is the sucker… the sucker is you…
“Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart is drunken with overmindfulness of self.
Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast.
And life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words.
When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.”
~ Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
~ Albert Einstein
