Thoughts on Forgiveness

It is interesting that so much of religion centers around guilt. I believe that this is because, ultimately, we all know when we are doing things that, if done to us, we would find to hateful.

This can be something as small as making someone feel bad just so we don't have to feel bad by ourselves, to undermining other peoples work to minimize their success or fulfillment, to exercizing force not because it is necessarry but because we can.

And it always seems like we are justfied in doing these things at the time we do them.

But later, after the exhaltation has warn off, we wish that we had not done them. This is particularly true when we do something small just to make things interesting, but then find that the damage being wrought by our little jest is far reaching. We find ourselves in the position of almost wishing that we would be caught out just so we could make restitution and not have to carry the added weight of the guilt around for the rest of our lives.

For most of us, our little injustices are actually rather petty. But for some reason, the memory of these little injustices, and there results, float up into our consciousness at the worst possible times, like during or right after something bad happens to us, and they always seem to have the same weight of self-loathing that they did when we first discovered that we had once again allowed ourselves to mislead ourselves into doing something that we would not want someone else to do to us.

It may be the source of the concept of Karma.

I think Karma can be considered 'real' in at least this limited sense: doing an act of harm does tend to affect other people in the way dropping a stone into a pond will effect the water throughout the pond. It tends to ripple outward, but the ripples tend to wash back toward the source of the original disruption after a time.

When we rationalize taking actions toward others that we know would clearly be merely rationalized by others if taken toward us, we seek forgiveness from the Divine because we know that we will not likely forgive ourselves. But the forgiveness from the Divine is a rationalization in itself, because the Divine made us rationalizing beings.

If you want to limit the load of guilt you must bear, don't take actions that you will be unable to forgive yourself for, because your own forgiveness is the only forgiveness you will likely ever get.

This is a test.

My appologies to those who have been veiwing this blog on ie. I didn't realize that the spaces between paragraphs was leaving spurious marks.

Thanks.

The Host’s Optimum-Minimum Meditation Method

Well, everyone has probably had time to determine that they would be better off if they were actually controlling their minds, instead of the other way around, so here is the basic meditation method that provides the basis for all of the more directed forms of meditation.

If you practice this method religiously for fifteen minutes a day when you get out of bed, you will receive, in some measure, every benefit derivable from meditation. How diligently you practice will determine how quickly you will derive the benefits, but you will be able to stop the thought process (which is extremely enjoyable when you get to where it lasts for more than about two minutes) within about three months.

Sit in a cross-legged position or in a straight-backed chair that allows your thighs to be approximately horizontal with your feet flat on the floor.

In either position, sit on your tailbone with your back straight and vertical, and your head gently extended upward as though you have a puppet-string attached to the top of your head and it is gently being pulled upward.

Close your eyelids, but continue to look at the inside of your eyelids as though you were staring at something a little above the level of your eyes and about one hundred yards away. This will be weird for a while but once you get the hang of it, it is quite relaxing. The point is to keep the visual signals coming in, but with nothing being seen.

Now, concentrate on the sensation of breathing and the blank visual signals your receiving. Any time you catch yourself thinking about anything, gently return your concentration to your sensation of breathing and seeing-but-not-seeing.

At first, you will continually find that you have been daydreaming since you sat down. Don’t be discouraged. Just lead your attention back to where it is supposed to be.

After about four weeks, you will probably find that you can maintain concentration for two or three breaths but then lose it at the top or bottom of a breathing cycle. This is good progress, and you just have to keep going until you find the balance of attention that allows you to increase the time that you are properly focused.

At about six-weeks of continuous daily practice, most people will have a no-thought experience that will last for several minutes. Once you hit that point you will not have to make yourself do the fifteen minutes-a-day anymore, because you will find yourself spending time you used to devote to watching TV and other things you thought were fun in meditation.

The Third Category of Sub-ascetics

So far we have looked at two of the three sub-ascetic practices in the Heaven Path philosophy. The first, meditation, is self-control of ones mind. The second, Tai Chi Chuan, is self-control of ones body.

The third is the most ascetic of the sub-ascetic practices in that it should be practiced all the time rather than for a few minutes a day as in the case of the other two.

I call this third sub-ascetic practice the Formal Observance.

In Formal Observance, one maintains self-control of ones outward relationship with the world by obeying the laws of justice, displaying good manners, being respectful to those who deserve through their actions to be treated respectfully, and also to those who don’t necessarily deserve to be treated respectfully, and where it is not possible to leave a situation better than one found it, leave no sign of ones passing. That is to say, one observes the form.

This seems like a rather mundane activity, but it is the practice that will have the greatest effect on the world, and on ones fulfillment in that world.

The purpose of this sub-ascetic practice is two-fold. The first purpose is to get in the habit of using ones own decision-making process and will to make the world a more peaceful and harmonious place. By observing the form, we are able, on the one hand, to avoid introducing, through our actions, angst and unhappiness into the world, and also actually set an example that, if followed by so much as a single additional person, will reduce the strife in the world beyond that reduction brought about by your own self-control. And on the other hand will, through conscious control of our behavior, prevent us from creating obstructions to our own fulfillment.

Let us consider a mundane example of the former.

A person has a car and a favorite song on some medium that allows the song to be replayed, on demand, in the car.

This person has a friend that looks up to, and admires, this person, and also likes the song.

This person picks up the friend in the car, and as they drive around they listen to the song in the car.

Now, you are this person. And you are now pulling into the apartment complex that your friend lives in to drop the friend off.

In the non-sub-ascetic approach, you drive up to your friend’s apartment complex with the song playing at a volume level that, while acceptable while driving down the road because it is drowned out by engine noise of the other vehicles and the distance separating it from residences, is unacceptable in an apartment complex because it will be heard by everyone in the complex, and because even the subset of dwellers therein that may also like the song will be further reduced by those who are engaged by other activities the likes of which being forced to hear the song coming from your car will constitute a disruption to their activities. (Sleeping comes to mind as an activity that even a fan of the song would find disrupted by being forced to hear it.) Your friend who, for whatever reason, looks up to you is going to admire, or at least fail to find abhorrent, this behavior for no other reason that the fact that they look up to you, and will likely mimic the behavior in the future.

The question then becomes “How much disruption have you introduced into the world by this single action?”

And it is unquestionable that, had been you been actively controlling your behavior with the objective of not introducing angst and unhappiness into the world, you would have recognized that leaving the music blaring was inconsiderate at the very least, and would have turned it down as you approached the apartment complex.

And your friend that admires you so may very well have, at that very moment, adopted a policy of being considerate based on your example.

One never knows when one is being admired from afar, nor does one know when ones behavior will determine the behavior of others for a long time to come.

Now let us consider the effects of the above scenario on your fulfillment.

When we follow our own path to fulfillment we are enjoined from obstructing others path because we don’t know whether our own fulfillment will ultimately serve the larger work, nor do we know whether another’s fulfillment will serve the larger work to a greater degree. In both cases, believing that you know is mere vanity.

Beyond this, as we approach the time when we will most desire that how we spent our physicality will satisfy our desire for fulfillment, we will not want the memories that loom largest to be those that stem from having done harm to others, and their pursuit of fulfillment. In other words, a given level of fulfillment will seem much less fulfilling if we did a lot of harm to others to achieve it.

Moreover, the effects of doing harm to someone will often have the effect of shifting us off of a particular groove of our Heaven Path, onto a groove that is less direct and less cost-effective.

It is odd, but the world seems to be shaped in such a way that causing harm does not lead to fulfillment, even when it leads to success. We see this in those who cause harm as they become older. They become desperately self- protective, as though they must preserve every possible moment left to them so they can continue to pursue whatever it is that they are after. It becomes particularly obvious in those whose harm of others has led to their own great financial or political success. As all the things they are going to do fall by the wayside, and all that is left is the things they have done, they experience a progressively less avoidable self-loathing that they desperately try to bury with the feelings of exaltation they had previously felt during their moments of conquest. But as they get closer and closer to the end, the exaltation itself feels more and more loathsome.

On the other hand, those who have pursued their own fulfillment but have habitually detoured around circumstances that would have resulted in their actions causing harm to others find that although they may not be famous or rich, they are able to accept their impending passing into the next world because the fulfillment they did achieve did not hinder the fulfillment of others.

Control your mind. Control your body. Control your behavior.

This is Sub-ascetics.

Health and Longevity and Physical Sub-ascetics

Our physicality is the intermediary between our will and our fulfillment.

Of course, it stands to reason that some people have their maximum point of fulfillment at the end of a Heaven Path that is primarily mental, such as the truly great philosophers and theoreticians, but for the vast majority of us, we will need our bodies to be in a good state of repair to achieve even a small portion of our potential fulfillment.

For this reason, we must consider the care of our bodies in order to plot a course that will allow the maximum amount of time as viable physical entities for us to work toward our fulfillment without having too much of that time in ensuring that maximization.

Beyond that, we must also consider all the other means besides failing to maintain ourselves that may result in premature loss of physicality.

Besides disease, we face such things as accidents and, of course, violence.

There are a very large number of people that spend a lot of time in daily exercise to maintain good health. This is admirable, but so much exercise serves only the purpose of keeping the body active, and possibly enhancing ones desirability.

Most exercise routines do very little towards protecting you from either accidents or violence.

One can enhance ones survivability from both accidents and violence by spending your exercise time in the study of a martial art. This is so because, on the one hand, virtually all martial arts systems will expose you to the strategy and tactics of personal violence, and on the other hand, practice of most martial arts systems will tend to condition your body and mind to work together without the slow decision-making process that so often gets in the way when confronted by the unexpected.

There are many martial arts systems and schools out there, and unfortunately, many of them are less than reputable.

As an aside, I should probably point out that my chosen profession for the last two decades or so involves frequent violence that comes in the form of a variety of people suddenly deciding to do harm to me, but I am not allowed, for several excellent reasons, to harm them back. That is to say, I have to confront the violence but when I’m done, those I have confronted should be gift-wrapped, but be none the worse for wear.

For my physical sub-ascetics, I advocate a single martial art. It is not the first one I’ve practiced, but it will be the last. As an exercise system, it is beneficial in so many ways and at so many levels that, for me, there is no other martial art.

The martial art is Yang-style Tai Chi Chuan.

Get sum!

Understanding understanding.

It is not unusual for people to mistake having a cherished opinion for having understanding.

Typically, an opinion becomes cherished when it seems to account for the facts and supports what we want to believe anyway.

Real understanding is not like that in that it tends to show that what we want to believe has significant limitations and weaknesses. We know that what we want to believe will always have these limitations and weaknesses because of complimentarity.

This problem is most severe in the human interaction realm. Conservatives believe that they understand the world, and the liberals are just idiots. Liberals believe that they understand the world, and the conservatives just evil.

In both cases, they cherish their own opinions, and ignore those of the other side.

How this is to be overcome by those who wish to really understand is not well known, despite having been well described for a long time.

There are actually two ways or methods that I advocate for ensuring that ones understanding is, in fact, understanding.

The first is known as the Law of Charity.

The Law of Charity states that one must assume the same level of intelligence, honesty, sincerity, etc., that one would ascribe to oneself in supporting a position in the persons supporting the opposing position. In other words, if the opposing party supports their position because they are idiots or corrupt or blind, you do not yet understand.

The second deals with understanding from a standpoint of debate, specifically, ones qualification to debate an issue. Of course, every person should be free to debate an issue whether they understand or not because frequently we learn that we don’t understand an issue in the course of a debate. That said, there is nevertheless a standard that determines whether our debate efforts are part of the learning process, or part of the teaching process. Debate positions that are based on cherished opinion will usually be defeated by positions based on understanding, for the simple reason that the position based on understanding, regardless of which side of an issue it is on, will be argued by someone who can argue both their side of the argument, and the other side of the argument, better than his debate opponent can.

You don’t really understand an issue until you can argue either side of the issue better than the person arguing the other side of the issue can argue that side of the issue.

Anger

The most difficult mindset to control is anger. Once it is unleashed, getting it back under control is very difficult.

Why is this?

As we learned from Yoda, or Daoism if you study such things, anger is part of an emotional cycle. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to suffering, which then, in turn, leads to more fear.

The reason anger is so hard to get under control is because it is so much more preferable to fear.

As soon as we become angry we, out of long habit, nurture and strengthen the feeling in order to blot out our sensation of fear. Being afraid is socially unacceptable, and as such, is strongly humiliating, and whenever we feel fear, it is compounded by our humiliation at being afraid.

It is, perhaps, easier to see fear turn to anger in other people than it is to see it in ourselves for the vary reason that it so hard to get under control. When looking at ourselves, it is too easy to pretend that what we got angry about, we were not first afraid of.

So, the next time you see someone you know get angry, ask yourself what it was that made him or her angry, and why they had reason to be afraid. But don’t necessarily accept the easy answers, especially if it doesn’t seem on the surface that there was anything for them to be afraid of.

Look instead for the deeper answer.

And don’t try to point it out to the angered person. Instead, study it and see if it provides insight into your own fear and anger.

One purpose of sub-ascetics in general, and meditation in particular, is to help you overcome your fears, and also to accept your fears instead of hiding from them in a cloud of anger.

It is better to acknowledge to yourself that you are feeling fear, than it is to get angry so that you can pretend that you aren’t afraid. Once you become angry, it is such a small step to seeking out someone that you don’t fear, and then making that person afraid just so you can prove to yourself that you weren’t really afraid.

But you were, in fact, afraid, and your anger proves it.

Heaven Path Fulfillment as Attractor

A good question to ask is: Is a person’s Heaven Path a real thing?

It is inevitable that each person will have to ultimately decide this for him- or her-self, but my own experience tells me that it is a very real, but very subtle thing.

A very simplified model of a Heaven Path can be described as follows:

A person’s multi-dimensional starting point is shown as a dot on a page, and that person’s multi-dimensional end point that achieves that person’s maximum level of fulfillment in the allotted time of physicality is shown as another dot on the page, and then a line is drawn between the two dots. The line between the two dots is what I refer to when I say Heaven Path.

Of course, life does not happen in only two dimensions in the way the model does, and when the additional dimensions are accounted for, the line is no longer straight.

And beyond that, we are unable to see where the end-point dot is, so as we draw our Heaven Path line (by living our lives) we never really know whether our pencil is getting closer to that dot.

We make our final dot wherever we finally drop over dead, and the distance between that dot and the dot of maximum fulfillment represents the difference between our actual level of fulfillment and our maximum potential level of fulfillment, that is to say our level of un-fulfillment.

To complicate matters a bit more, each decision we make affects the length and shape of our Heaven Path. Decisions that are consistent with our Heaven Path progress make the path shorter and easier, and decisions that are inconsistent with our Heaven Path progress make the path longer and more obstructed. And we may end up spending our whole life traveling in a direction that is perpendicular to our Heaven Path.

But things are not hopeless.

When I finally discerned the nature of my own Heaven Path, I found that on looking back I could see where, at times, I had made decisions that were inconsistent with my normal mode of operation for the time, that had unwittingly, but consistently been redirecting me back onto my Heaven Path.

If you look back over your life and see several instances of what seemed at the time to be unusual but compelling choices, and these choices when taken together, seem to point in a particular direction, there is a good chance that you are seeing evidence of your having been attracted toward your own Heaven Path.

This can be both evidence of the reality of the Heaven Path as a principle, and an aid to finding ones way toward where ones maximum fulfillment is located.

So, here is the ‘reality’ of the Heaven Path.

The universe is shaped in such a way that people are continually, but very gently, attracted toward their own individual Heaven Path. One can ignore it, or resist it, but it is always there, calling to you.

This being the case, one might argue that fulfillment should be much more common than it seems to be.

On the one hand, fulfillment is much more common than it seems to be, but it usually goes unnoticed by any but the immediate friends and family of the fulfilled one, because being fulfilled in a way that is benefited by, or otherwise involves, fanfare and stardom will properly only fall to the very few, and to the rest, it will only serve to highlight their un-fulfillment.

And on the other hand, such human motivations as greed and vanity are far more powerful in their effect on a person than is that of the Heaven Path attraction, despite the Heaven Paths much greater value.

As with so many things, one must have attained a fairly high level of self-control mentally to be sensitive to the Heaven Path attraction, or one must be very lucky in ones allotment of natural open-ness to it.

Now!

There are arguments besides the ‘lack of control of ones own mind’ argument in favor of sub-ascetic practices, meditation in particular.

As far as the current science goes, humans are the only species that are capable of engaging in any form of time-travel.

I know, this is news to you, but what I mean is that we are capable of thinking in the past, in the form of memory, and in the future, in the form of fantasizing. In fact, if we look at the average human, these two modes are very nearly all we are capable of.

It is the relatively rare human that ever ‘thinks’ in the present; that is to say, doesn’t actually think but merely maintains awareness of his or her environment, without running some sort of inner dialog or narrative that either leans toward the past or the future.

This points us to a benefit of meditation. Meditation, if practiced correctly and with diligence, prevents both remembering and fantasizing (or planning, which is really the same thing but with somewhat more discipline.) That is to say, it doesn’t eliminate it, but instead brings it under our control. We remember when we choose to remember, and fantasize (or plan) when we choose to fantasize. The rest of the time, we experience our existence as it is, now, now, now!

How does meditation accomplish this? It does so by conditioning the mind to not think.

Virtually all meditations are similar in the sense that a set of thought conditions are adopted mentally, and then every time the mental conditions collapse, the practitioner leads the mind back to the prescribed conditions. This is the nutshell explanation of meditation, and, like any other exercise, the more we practice, the more control we are able to have over the facility being exercised.

So what, exactly, is the point?

As I write this, I listen to music from my young adulthood. The music in question is quite capable of taking me back to a time and place that is quite exquisite in my memory. I wouldn’t trade these memories for any material gain that can be imagined. But! Due to the dependable exquisite-ness of these memories, it would be very easy to let them have there way with me, and in so doing, waste the present wallowing in the past.

Fortunately, having practiced sub-ascetics for a long time, I can tell you without qualm that the times these memories were acquired in were not times when I was saying “Boy, am I going to enjoy memories of this!”

Now is inevitably when valuable memories will be created, and the more time one spends experiencing ‘now,’ the more memories of value one will have when the past is all that is left to us.

In that time, the sub-ascetic practitioner will find their selves fulfilled.