"The person who fears suffering is already suffering from what they fear." -- Unknown ..."I'll use the term 'wrong' to mean 'that which is not serving you, given who and what you choose to be.' This is how I've always used the terms 'right' and 'wrong' with you; it is always within this context, for, in truth, there is no Right and Wrong. ..."So, within that context, no, it is not wrong to base foreign policy decisions on vested interest considerations. What is wrong is to pretend that you're not doing so. ..."This most countries do, of course. They take action -- or fail to take action -- for one set of reasons, then give as a rationale another set of reasons. ..."They do this because governments know that if people understood the real reasons for most foreign policy decisions, the people would not support them. ..."This is true of governments everywhere. There are very few governments which do not deliberately mislead their people. Deception is part of government, for few people would choose to be governed the way they are governed -- few would choose to be governed at all -- unless government convinced them that its decisions were for their own good. ..."This is a hard convincing, for most people plainly see the foolishness in government. So government must lie to at least try to hold the people's loyalty. Government is the perfect portrayer of the accuracy of the axiom that if you lie big enough, long enough, the lie becomes the 'truth.' ..."People in power must never let the public know how they came to power -- nor all that they've done and are willing to do to stay there. ..."Truth and politics do not and cannot mix because politics is the art of saying only what needs to be said -- and saying it in just the right way -- in order to achieve a desired end. ..."Not all politics are bad, but the art of politics is a practical art. It recognizes with great candor the psychology of most people. It simply notices that most people operate out of self-interest. So politics is the way that people of power seek to convince you that their self-interest is your own." -- Conversations With God, Book 2 "All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true in itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes." -- Adolf Hitler "From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the oil pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company. " -- Mr. John J. Maresca, vice president of international relations, Unocal Corporation -- 2/12/98 "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." -- Hermann Goering, Hitler's #2 Man "As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy." -- Christopher Dawson "In a time of universal deceit, TELLING THE TRUTH is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell "You must take care not to smother yourself in laws trying to guarantee people a chance to breathe!" -- Conversations With God, Book 2 "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem." -- Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." -- George W Bush during a photo-op with Congressional leaders on 12/18/2000
Lykan, Do you have "Conversations with God"? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Can you quote the Children's Lord's Prayer that appear at the end of one of them? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Now I see why you seem wise... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Love, Nelson
Hi. I read the third book, and then the second book, but haven't read the first one. (and don't currently plan on it) No i can't quote that prayer you're referring to -- i'm not much for praying by using a combination of words that someone else has come up with, and then repeating it over and over. I enjoy being more spontaneous than that. So i didn't bother memorizing it. The books were really good, and i highly recommend them, but i didn't really learn any new concepts from them that i hadn't already encountered in other books previously. Some things were said in new ways though, which is always pleasant. I enjoyed the conversation on death and suicide: ------- LIFE REALLY DOES GO ON FOREVER AND EVER, DOESN'T IT? It most certainly does. THERE IS NO END TO IT. No end. REINCARNATION IS A FACT? It is. You may return to mortal form - that is, a physical form which can "die" - whenever and however you wish. DO WE DECIDE WHEN WE WANT TO COME BACK? "If" and "when" - yes. DO WE ALSO DECIDE WHEN WE WANT TO LEAVE? DO WE CHOOSE WHEN WE WANT TO DIE? No experience is visited upon any soul against the soul's will. That is, by definition, not possible, since the soul is creating every experience. The soul wants nothing. The soul has everything. All wisdom, all knowing, all power, all glory. The soul is the part of You which never sleeps; never forgets. Does the soul desire that the body dies? No. It is the soul's desire that you never die. Yet the soul will leave the body - change its bodily form, leaving most of the material body behind - at the drop of a hat when it sees no purpose in remaining in that form. IF IT IS THE SOUL'S DESIRE THAT WE NEVER DIE, WHY DO WE? You do not. You merely change form. IF IT IS THE SOUL'S DESIRE THAT WE NEVER DO THAT, WHY DO WE? That is not the soul's desire! You are a "shape-shifter"! When there is no further usefulness in staying in a particular form, the soul changes form - willfully, voluntarily, joyfully - and moves on, on the Cosmic Wheel. JOYFULLY? With great joy. NO SOUL DIES REGRETFULLY? No soul dies - ever. I MEAN, NO SOUL HAS REGRETS THAT THE CURRENT PHYSICAL FORM IS CHANGING; IS ABOUT TO "DIE"? The body never "dies," but merely changes form with the soul. Yet I understand your meaning, so for now I use the vocabulary you have established. If you have a clear understanding of what you wish to create with regard to what you have chosen to call the afterlife, or if you have a clear set of beliefs that support an after-death experience of reuniting with God, then, no, the soul never, ever has regrets over what you call death. Death in that instance is a glorious moment; a wonderful experience. Now the soul can return to its natural form; its natural state. There is an incredible lightness; a sense of total freedom; a limitlessness. And an awareness of Oneness that is at once blissful and sublime. It is not possible for the soul to regret such a shift. YOU'RE SAYING, THEN, THAT DEATH IS A HAPPY EXPERIENCE? For the soul that wishes it to be, yes, always. WELL, IF THE SOUL WANTS OUT OF THE BODY SO BAD, WHY DOESN'T IT JUST LEAVE IT? WHY IS IT HANGING AROUND? I did not say the soul "wants out of the body," I said the soul is joyful when it is out. Those are two different things. You can be happy doing one thing, and happy then doing another. The fact that you are joyful doing the second does not mean you were unhappy doing the first. The soul is not unhappy being with the body. Quite to the contrary, the soul is pleased to be you in your present form. That does not preclude the possibility that the soul might be equally pleased to be disconnected from it. THERE IS OBVIOUSLY MUCH ABOUT DEATH I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. Yes, and that is because you do not like to think about it. Yet you must contemplate death and loss the instant you perceive any moment of life, or you will not have perceived life at all, but know only the half of it. Each moment ends the instant it begins. If you do not see this, you will not see what is exquisite in it, and you will call the moment ordinary. Each interaction "begins to end" the instant it "begins to begin." Only when this is truly contemplated and deeply understood does the full treasure of every moment - and of life itself - open to you. Life cannot give itself to you if you do not understand death. You must do more than understand it. You must love it, even as you love life. Your time with each person would be glorified if you thought it was your last time with that person. Your experience of each moment would be enhanced beyond measure if you thought it was the last such moment. Your refusal to contemplate your own death leads to your refusal to contemplate your own life. You do not see it for what it is. You miss the moment, and all it holds for you. You look right past it instead of right through it. When you look deeply at something, you see right through it. To contemplate a thing deeply is to see right through it. Then the illusion ceases to exist. Then you see a thing for what it really is. Only then can you truly enjoy it - that is, place joy into it. (To "en-joy" is to render something joyful.) Even the illusion you can then enjoy. For you will know it is an illusion, and that is half the enjoyment! It is the fact that you think it is real that causes you all the pain. Nothing is painful which you understand is not real. Let Me repeat that. Nothing is painful which you understand is not real. It is like a movie, a drama, played out on the stage of your mind. You are creating the situation and the characters. You are writing the lines. Nothing is painful the moment you understand that nothing is real. This is as true of death as it is of life. When you understand that death, too, is an illusion, then you can say, "O death, where is thy sting?" You can even enjoy death! You can even enjoy someone else's death. Does that seem strange? Does that seem a strange thing to say? Only if you do not understand death - and life. Death is never an end, but always a beginning. A death is a door opening, not a door closing. When you understand that life is eternal, you understand that death is your illusion, keeping you very concerned with, and therefore helping you believe that you are, your body. Yet you are not your body, and so the destruction of your body is of no concern to you. Death should teach you that what is real is life. And life teaches you that what is unavoidable is not death, but impermanence. Impermanence is the only truth. Nothing is permanent. All is changing. In every instant. In every moment. Were anything permanent, it could not be. For even the very concept of permanence depends upon impermanence to have any meaning. Therefore, even permanence is impermanent. Look at this deeply. Contemplate this truth. Comprehend it, and you comprehend God. This is the Dharma, this is the Buddha. This is the Buddha Dharma. This is the teaching and the teacher. This is the lesson and the master. This is the object and the observer, rolled into one. They never have been other than One. It is you who have unrolled them, so that your life may unroll before you. Yet as you watch your own life roll out before you, do not yourself become unraveled. Keep your Self together! See the illusion! Enjoy it! But do not become it! You are not the illusion, but the creator of it. You are in this world, but not of it. So use your illusion of death. Use it! Allow it to be the key that opens you to more of life. See the flower as dying and you will see the flower sadly. Yet see the flower as part of a whole tree that is changing, and will soon bear fruit, and you see the flower's true beauty. When you understand that the blossoming and the falling away of the flower is a sign that the tree is ready to bear fruit, then you understand life. Look at this carefully and you will see that life is its own metaphor. Always remember, you are not the flower, nor are you even the fruit. You are the tree. And your roots are deep, embedded in Me. I am the soil from which you have sprung, and both your blossoms and your fruit will return to Me, creating more rich soil. Thus, life begets life, and cannot know death, ever. THAT IS SO BEAUTIFUL. THAT IS SO, SO BEAUTIFUL. THANK YOU. WILL YOU SPEAK TO ME NOW OF SOMETHING THAT IS TROUBLING ME? I NEED TO TALK ABOUT SUICIDE. WHY IS THERE SUCH A TABOO AGAINST THE ENDING OF ONE'S LIFE? Indeed, why is there? YOU MEAN ITS NOT WRONG TO KILL YOURSELF? The question cannot be answered to your satisfaction, because the question itself contains two false concepts; it is based on two false assumptions; it contains two errors. The first false assumption is that there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong." The second false assumption is that killing is possible. Your question itself, therefore, disintegrates the moment it is dissected. "Right" and "wrong" are philosophical polarities in a human value system which have nothing to do with ultimate reality - a point which I have made repeatedly throughout this dialogue. They are, furthermore, not even constant constructs within your own system, but rather, values which keep shifting from time to time. You are doing the shifting, changing your mind about these values as it suits you (which rightly you should, as evolving beings), yet insisting at each step along the way that you haven't done this, and that it is your unchanging values which form the core of your society's integrity. You have thus built your society on a paradox. You keep changing your values, all the while proclaiming that it is unchanging values which you ... well, value! The answer to the problems presented by this paradox is not to throw cold water on the sand in an attempt to make it concrete, but to celebrate the shifting of the sand. Celebrate its beauty while it holds itself in the shape of your castle, but then also celebrate the new form and shape it takes as the tide comes in. Celebrate the shifting sands as they form the new mountains you would climb, and atop which - and with which - you will build your new castles. Yet understand that these mountains and these castles are monuments to change, not to permanence. Glorify what you are today, yet do not condemn what you were yesterday, nor preclude what you could become tomorrow. Understand that "right" and "wrong" are figments of your imagination, and that "okay" and "not okay" are merely announcements of your latest preferences and imaginings. For example, on the question of ending one's life, it is the current imagining of the majority of people on your planet that it is "not okay" to do that. Similarly, many of you still insist that it is not okay to assist another who wishes to end his or her life. In both cases you say this should be "against the law." You have come to this conclusion, presumably, because the ending of the life occurs relatively quickly. Actions which end a life over a somewhat longer period of time are not against the law, even though they achieve the same result. Thus, if a person in your society kills himself with a gun, his family members lose insurance benefits. If he does so with cigarettes, they do not. If a doctor assists you in your suicide, it is called manslaughter, while if a tobacco company does, it is called commerce. With you, it seems to be merely a question of time. The legality of self-destruction - the "rightness" or "wrongness" of it - seems to have much to do with how quickly the deed is done, as well as who is doing it. The faster the death, the more "wrong" it seems to be. The slower the death, the more it slips into "okayness." Interestingly, this is the exact opposite of what a truly humane society would conclude. By any reasonable definition of what you would call "humane," the shorter the death, the better. Yet your society punishes those who would seek to do the humane thing, and rewards those who would do the insane. It is insane to think that endless suffering is what God requires, and that a quick, humane end to the suffering is "wrong." "Punish the humane, reward the insane." This is a motto which only a society of beings with limited understanding could embrace. So you poison your system by inhaling carcinogens, you poison your system by eating food treated with chemicals that over the long run kill you, and you poison your system by breathing air which you have continually polluted. You poison your system in a hundred different ways over a thousand different moments, and you do this knowing these substances are no good for you. But because it takes a longer time for them to kill you, you commit suicide with impunity. If you poison yourself with something that works faster, you are said to have done something against moral law. Now I tell you this: it is no more immoral to kill yourself quickly than it is to kill yourself slowly. SO A PERSON WHO ENDS HIS OWN LIFE IS NOT PUNISHED BY GOD? I do not punish. I love. WHAT OF THE OFTEN-HEARD STATEMENT THAT THOSE WHO THINK THEY ARE GOING TO "ESCAPE" THEIR PREDICAMENT, OR END THEIR CONDITION, WITH SUICIDE ONLY FIND THAT THEY ARE FACING THE SAME PREDICAMENT OR CONDITION IN THE AFTERLIFE, AND THEREFORE ESCAPED AND ENDED NOTHING? Your experience in what you call the afterlife is a reflection of your consciousness at the time you enter it. Yet you are always a being of free will, and may alter your experience whenever you choose. SO LOVED ONES WHO HAVE ENDED THEIR PHYSICAL LIFE ARE OKAY? Yes. They are very okay. IT IS SAD THAT WE EVEN HAVE SUCH DEEP HURTS OR ISSUES, BUT MUCH OF THAT, I THINK, IS A RESULT OF WHAT OUR SOCIETY HAS "LAID ON US" ABOUT SUICIDE. In your society, you often do not see the contradictions of your own moral constructions. The contradiction between doing things that you know full well are going to shorten your life, but doing them slowly, and doing things that will shorten your life quickly is one of the most glaring in the human experience.
