Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00103)

Keith Price:
>...our experience of everything has a SUBJECTIVE
>quality and this is often expanded to mean that we create 
>our own reality, in new age parlance.  There is nothing
>good or bad, but thinking makes it so and one man's meat
>is another man't poison and hevean and hell are right
>here right now.

>I have always been interested in my own subjectivity and
>have more than other focused on MY internal states, even
>on this list.  I recently had a manic phase and now I am
>getting my comeupance.

I have a friend who's sanity depends on pills.  He sometimes "forgets" to
take them so that he could have a dialogue with God and communicate with the
mystical.  His suffering comes when he has to deal with the mundane, a job,
a wife, his children, or the consequences of his madness.  When he is
enthusiastic or happy, he's talking about the new world that he had just
drawn or written about, he's talking about communicating with God via the
TV, or he's talking about how his minor hexes work.  I don't know when he is
truly happy or suffering, but on the surface, that is what it appears to me.
Communicating with God during his manic episodes give it a purpose.  It
relieves some of his suffering.

Are the people who claim that they can actually talk to God really talking
to God?  Are they special communication vessels for God?  Or are they just
mad?  Similarly, what about those who were able to communicate with the
Divine through rigorous exercises and meditation?  Were they special people
who have been able to finely tune their senses to pick up signals from the
Divine?  Are most people just plain insensitive to the miracles around them,
having undeveloped senses?  Or are they just very sane?  I heard that Joan
of Arc was insane.  Right now, the humming of my printer sounds like the
eternal Ohm.

I sometimes envy my friend's ability to let go of the constraints of
everyday life just by tossing away some pills.  On the other hand, I
understand the fear of being uncertain of one's sanity moment to moment.
Everyday, I am uncertain of what my subjective experience will be like.  The
sun could be shining both days, but one day could be full of hope and the
Divine is everywhere, and the other day the Divine is non-existent.  There
are stressful days when I wonder how much it would take for my nerves to
break.  However, I live my life and never came close to losing my sanity.
The shadow is always with me, though.  The shadow that is capable of heinous
acts, immoral acts, a total opposite of what I would do now in my present
situation.  But I can feel it.  I know it's there.  I wonder what I would do
if I was placed in a situation that would test my convictions.  How is it
that a whole nation of basically decent people can conspire together to
commit awful acts?  Look at the Holocaust, look at the Chinese Revolution,
look at Apartheid.  The kind person can easily turn into one who condemns a
fellow human to death.

I think that is why artists are often fascinated by the dark side.  On the
one hand, I wonder why we don't all just create reminders of the light and
the goodness.  On the other hand, the Divine is in everything.  I often
disagree to the hiding or shaming of the dark side as if they don't exist.
The shaming exists in a listing of the hierarchy of spirituality in most
religions.  Your physical is in the lower plane.  Your emotion is in the
lower plane.  Sex is in the lower plane.  Instead of accepting them as
another part of the whole Divine, we condemn them.  They shouldn't exist.  
>I  think the pendulum of karma swings sometime slowly, but
>grinds very fine-- to mix a metaphor.  Thus one gets what
>one needs over many lifetimes and thus we create our own
>spiritual AURIC EGG so to speack, some of ours are
>more cracked than others, but probably have been swung by
>karma more too.

Accepting the dark side, some of us can choose to be in the light side of
subjective reality.  I am mad.  I chose to not confront.  I am lusty.  I
chose to not give in to desires.  I am lazy.  I chose to work everyday.  I
am curious about some of the obvious dark side.  I chose to not imbibe in
any of it.  I am vengeful.  I chose to not seek revenge.  Some of us have
the awareness that we create our own karma, and can act accordingly.  My
friend has less control over his faculties than a lot of people.  However,
his karma has placed him smack in a situation where he has to work on it.
Through his shaky sanity, he has managed to hold a job for years, deal with
a critical wife, and raise two children at his young age.  I wonder, though,
what opportunity would he have to work on his karma if he did not have those
pills.  What about those people who are not able to have those pills?  How
is their karma dealt with?  Do they miss the train and have to wait for the
next one?  Or is suffering during that lifetime is working on karma?  What
do they learn from that?  What do they learn from a constant state of madness?

TTT