Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00153)

Dear Liesel,

Thank you for your answering some of my questions.  I've always wondered
about what the reality of anything is.  To say that it is all maya in a
dismissive tone, is to deny that all of our reality is an important part of
Reality.  Like the shadows, we must accept our reality in order to deal with
it.  For example, those who eat meat should see the cow being killed in
front of them.  It's easy to eat something sanitized in your meat deli, but
one should also realize where it's coming from.  Abstractly, one realize
that it came from a cow.  However, one should see that it takes the death
and the bleeding of a cow for that steak to sit in one's refrigerator.  I'm
not condemning meat eating. Humans are carnivores, that's a fact.  I'm just
saying we should see what we are eating.

More in the past than in the present, we have things like never mentioning
any bathroom terms, always being polite, and sanitizing everything for our
poor stomach to bear.  All those things are good for civilized society.
Although, the negative side is that it makes one unaware that there are
people who have no choice but to live in the unsanitized side of life.  A
woman I knew had to change the channel everytime an ad showing emaciated
children with bloated stomach appears on the T.V.  Another woman thinks that
all people who have ever smoked should be denied insurance benefits.  And of
course, we often hear from people like Jesse Helms that people with AIDS
should have low priority because it was the result of their immoral acts.
The first woman should spend a week helping feed emaciated bloated children.
The second woman should spend a week tending to the lung cancer patient,
watching them in pain.  Jesse Helms should do likewise.  I used to fear
people who act crazy, until I met my friend who had the brain chemical
imbalance.  My fear turned into compassion.

P.S.  I like reading about how you've went through your life and that
everything is alright now.  I think younger people spend most of their time
worrying.  We worry about how to get our career established.  We worry how
we are going to fill up the rest of our life.  Will we be successful?  What
kind of person do we want to be?  Will we ever have a family?  Do we want a
family?  Sometimes I think it would be a relief to look back one day and
say, "Hey, I went through my life and I'm okay."  I find that the older
generation, instead of being a patient guiding force for the younger
generation, usually distance themselves from the younger generation.
Instead of accepting that it is okay for the younger generation to be who
they are, the older generation usually does a comparison test.  The younger
generation is often made to feel inadequate against the older who have been
through it all, survived, and walked up the snowy hills in bare feet both ways.