Talks about what all religions have in common.
The eastern spiritual traditions are about finding peace; the western traditions are about passion. By combining BOTH strategies we can expedite our spiritual evolution and increase the quality of our life experience.
In this podcast, I talk about how I unintentionally combined the strategies of the east and west and how that profoundly helped me on my journey to Heaven/Nirvana/Enlightenment.
Ancient words that point at an experience that anyone can have who is open to it. Modern understanding has given us new insights into ancient methods that help a person open up to these experiences or states of consciousness. It is also important to recognize that a large segment of society does not want anyone to experience Heaven, Nirvana or Enlightenment, which is why they condition people to reject the very idea that anyone can experience this.
Outline of conversation:
Philosophies and Theologies are just words designed to program humans to have certain general physiological responses to words so that the humans can be control or manipulated.
Philosophy relies on a person’s conditioned responses to various words designed to stimulate general physiological responses in the human instrument. It is a primitive method of gaining control over humans. Science is words designed to point the human mind at processes so that mind will have understanding of the process and can therefore use that understand to its own benefit, transcending the external control that philosophies and theologies are trying to maintain.
Love is a general physiological response in the body to a thought in the brain; it feels good because that response is relaxing. One can create this feeling by focusing one’s attention on the center of the body, in the heart area, and by focusing their attention they are sending increased electrochemical activity to that area, thus activating the area and warming it up. The warming relaxes the muscles and nerves of the body giving one a sensation, one that we call love.
The conscious person understands this and practices this behavior so that they can have the positive experience of love whenever they desire, not conditional upon any particular thought pattern or any external stimuli such as a person or object’s presence.
I understand that less than one third of the world’s population is awake enough to understand what I am talking about. But there are those who will hear what I say and be able to use it to improve the quality of their life experience. Many if not most of the other two thirds of the people will resist what I say and take offense.
Look at the story of Jesus. He taught pretty much the same thing but most of the people did not understand him and forgot about what he said. Yet there were some who took offense at him and eventually killed him for his words. Few if any got free from the power of words to control or manipulate their behavior. In fact, some of his followers even encouraged the worship of words and their power over people.
This is natural too and part of the reality of life. Yet, we as a species are evolving and humanity is nowhere near as primitive as they were in Jesus’ time. It is science that gives on the understanding of how they human instrument works and how society is designed to manipulate that human instrument so that the individual can gain greater control over their own human instrument to maximize the quality of their life experience.
This advantage is lost to the ignorant masses. The will continue to be manipulated by words or objects so that the ruling classes can have dominion over them; they will be slaves to whoever can push their buttons.
I saw an interview today on CNN’s website where Marc Lamont Hill were saying that we should allow a discussion of the “N-word”. I find that attitude one of the most open minded I have heard in a long time. Let me explain why.
I have realized that words do not hurt people; it is people’s reactions to words that cause them harm. We, as citizens of our society, have been programmed to be reactive to words in such a way that causes us harm. Once we become aware of this we can take responsibility for OUR behavior (our reaction) and re-train ourselves to not react with such hurtful behavior.
Yet, as long as we keep lying to ourselves (and one another) that it was the word that hurt us and it was the person who said the word who is responsible for our suffering, we will stay trapped in a cycle of abuse.
Words like nigger, faggot, failure, dike, sinner and others still have the power to move people emotionally in a way that they would rather not be moved. The CONSCIOUS person recognizes this and takes responsibility for their part in this and learns to relax and stop reacting.
But what is the advantage of keeping people ignorant of the truth that will set them free of being offended by words? Well, one is if you were an owner of slaves in the US south 200 years ago you would want your slaves to be moved emotionally by words so that you could use that to control their behavior. It is easier to get them to hurt themselves with words then to have to hit them with a whip. Or if you were a racist today would you not want to be able to get someone of a different race to HURT THEMSELVES when you used certain words? Or what about the parent that wants to intimidate their child with words like “bad”; without the child’s fear of that word you would lose some control over them.
These are only a few of the many examples of benefits of keeping intimidated by words. What I am saying here is that there are many advantages to some people in society to keep people hurting when stimulated by words.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was all about Blessedness. One of the things he said was, “Blessed be those who do not take offense at me.” Yet, many religious people of his time did take offense at him, which is why they killed him. Jesus also said, “Take cheer, for I have overcome the world” which indicates to me that he was showing that you could not offend Jesus with your words (or actions). And finally, he said, “I have come to bear witness to the truth.” To me, this means that he was bearing witness to the fact that religious people have been conditioned to abuse themselves emotionally when stimulated by words (as a means of maintaining control of them). Yet, if you followed Jesus’ way (not the Christian way) you would overcome the world and its ability to push your buttons and hence control or manipulate you emotionally just using words.
So it is my opinion and experience that by bring this discussion out into the open and talking about it, and putting responsibility where it is due, we can show people that it is possible to get free from ever being hurt by words again.
A lot of the pain some kids are experiencing today from ‘bullying’ is a product of their conditioned reactions to words. If we teach children the old school yard rhyme, “Stick and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me,” we could end a lot of the bullying that now happens.
Of course, if we do this, those who benefit from people’s habitual emotional self-abusive behaviors will be up in arms about it, just like they were when Jesus was teaching this 2,000 years ago.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
CNN Exclusive: One conservative’s dramatic reversal on gay marriage – CNN.com.
This story is a perfect example of how a person’s identification with someone or something has limited their love. Before Sen. Portman realized that someone HE KNEW and loved was gay he was very anti gay marriage. But as soon as he realized that someone he knew was gay and that sooner or later he would want the same things that the senator wanted, the senator opened his heart and changed his mind to support gay marriage.
If the senator had opened his heart to ALL BEINGS then he would have felt the same desire that he has within them, which is the desire to marry the person of his or her choice.
Sen. Portman identified with HIS family but could really care less with people of other families. He opposed gay marriage because he did not care about the desires of people he did not identify with. His son’s coming out to him caused him to re-examine his ways of thinking and change his perspective.
To me, this is an example of the biblical concept of removing the heart of stone (the heart of the conservative) and replacing it with a heart of flesh (the heart of the liberal). [Ezekiel 36:26]
We can see this same thing happening with former Vice-President Cheney, who discovered that his daughter was gay and she wanted to marry her girlfriend. Because of this Cheney opened his heart and is now pro gay marriage just as Portman.
The point is that our habit of identifying with this or that person, including our own ‘self’ is part of the process of closing ourselves off to or limiting love.
By identify as Spirit one sees themselves as one with ALL beings and the heart become open and we can feel the pain and desires of all beings. Being one with them you want for them what you want for your Self, which now includes them.
This is what Unconditional Love is and does, it opens you up to the pain and desires of all beings, not just your ‘loved ones’.
The dictionary defines love as a an intense feeling of deep affection.
Scientists like Dr. M. Scott Peck define love as “”the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. Yet, Dr. Peck admits that he does not know WHY a person has the will to extend one’s self.
That is because Dr. Peck and most people ignore the obvious, that love is something that we FEEL in our bodies. Feelings, like the feeling of hunger, are what motivate us.
One thing that can be said about love is that it feels GOOD, even when it hurts. In fact, sometimes the pain or hurt of love is what is so powerful about love. We can long for union with someone who we are physically with, the longing feeling being the love, and that longing hurts SO good that it is so intense we feel we are going to die or be burned up in the feeling.
We do not have to be limited to this feeling just for a person, we can feel it for a concept like the idea of ‘God’ or country or freedom or just about anything else
The point is that love is a FEELING and the more we are willing to feel that feeling, including the intensity that feels uncomfortable at times, the more love we will have in our life. From the perspective of the person in the drama of romantic love, this idea can really suck.
Yet, on the other side of this coin, fully going into the pain of love and staying there to long can be physically, emotionally and mentally damaging to the human instrument through which one is experiencing life. Too much can be a bad thing.
This is where discipline and sensitivity comes in. We first have to be sensitive in our bodies and mind to know when we are on the threshold of damaging ourselves so that we can then use our disciplined skill to stop the pain.
Without this sensitive and discipline we will continue in the pain until we damage our human instrument or condition it away from love. You can tell a person who has done this for they are shut down to caring about most if not all people and life itself. They become what I call ‘conservatives’ for they ‘conserve’ or hold back their love.
Both sensitivity and discipline come with practice.
Sensitive comes from practicing feeling what we are actually feeling in our body, not just the activity in our brain, our thoughts, but what is happening below the neck. This is not just feeling the gross sensations we normally feel, but also the subtle ones, the beating of our heart, the movement of the blood through our blood vessels, movement of the subtle energies as the body communicates with itself. Feeling this takes practice being still and watching/feeling what else is going on.
Discipline comes from keeping at it no matter what happens, even if at first you lose your focus and get distracted you go back to the practice. That is discipline.
If you want love, unconditional love, then you have to develop sensitivity and discipline.
It has long been attested by religious people that one needs a god to be happy or to find joy and love in life. The reality is far from this.
The atheist can be as happy or even happier and have more joy and love than a theist if they recognize that happiness, joy and love is what they want in life. Any person who recognizes that our emotions are a product of our ways of thinking AND our habitual physiological (emotional) reactions will then practice those positive emotions until they have perfected them.
The theists are taught that happiness, joy and love (God is love) are outside of them or come from outside of themselves so they are always lead to believe that these positive emotions or states are only available under certain conditions, conditions that can be used like carrots on a stick to manipulate and enslave the them.
Of course, not all atheists are happy people. Many if not most atheists are very materialistic and think that happiness, joy and love comes from material things (pretty much like religious people). Yet the atheist has the advantage of not being dictated to by some deity flying around in the sky, they can go after whatever makes them happy without worry of the opinion of that deity.
So again, the atheist has a better opportunity to find happiness, joy and love than the theists.
Being honest with yourself leads to a heavenly life experience. Lying to yourself and others leads to a hellish life experience.
It is so hard to be honest, even with ourselves. Much of society teaches us to lie to ourselves and to others. We call this process ‘believing’ and being polite, but it is just lying.
It took me years to break the habit of lying to myself, but when I did I experienced this world as heavenly, perfect. Even today, I am not always honest with myself and hence I have periods where I experience life as hell. But when I take the time to stop and get back to the truth, I again go back to that heavenly life experience.
Recently there was an election and the conservative political party lost. One of the things I find most startling about this is just how dishonest these conservatives were being with THEMSELVES leading up to the election. They were all so certain that their candidate was going to win by a landslide even though the polls were showing he was going to lose. But these conservatives wanted to believe their candidate was going to win so they lied to themselves saying that the polls were wrong or that the pollsters were all liberals and the liberal media was just trying to convince everyone their candidate was going to win so that the conservatives would be discouraged and not vote.
Anyway you look at it, the hell those conservatives experienced on election night and are now experiencing is entirely a product of their own self deception; nothing more.
The dictionary defines religion a a system of beliefs. If we were to be honest without ourselves we would have to admit that a belief is a lie we tell ourselves. For example, imagine I ‘believe’ that there is an apple tree around the corner with lots of apples on it, and I believe this because someone told me this, I am lying to myself because the truth is I do not know if there is a tree there or if I understood the person correctly or whatever. Such is the case with religion, for we really do not know what the writers of the scriptures meant by their words until we experience what they experienced, and that would only be in the present moment. By experiencing something in the present moment we are not longer believing in some words about something, we are experiencing it. Belief is gone. If we just believe we are saying to ourselves that we do not care enough to find out the truth.
Religious people experience this world as HELL because of their self deception. This is good for the business of the ruling classes, for they can hold out hope for a better future like a carrot on a stick and the gullible religious people will just keep chasing after that hope as they lie to themselves thinking that heaven is just around the corner.
Heaven is NOT just around the corner; it is here, AT HAND, as Jesus tried to tell people. The only requirement is that you STOP lying to yourself.
That is a tough requirement; it takes a lot of discipline to stop lying to yourself when everywhere you go the world is encouraging you to lie to yourself. Which is why some people encourage you to get away from society in order to find the inner peace and clarity that comes with it so that you can see what is real, what is true and you can be honest with yourself about it.
Yet who cares enough, even about themselves, to take the time to go off to a lonely place and find that clarity so that they can see the truth that will set them free to enjoy and love all that life has to offer? Really?
Is it that people do not care of is it that people do not know HOW to be honest with themselves, they do not know how to find that clarity, they do not know how to stop the lying?
I do not know the answer to this question. This has been the quest I have had for a long time, to find out the answer to this burning question. I am hoping that there might be some people out there who will read this with some thoughts and ideas they will share on this here.
On a search of Google adwords I find that those two topics each get 185 MILLION searches a month. I realized yesterday that those two questions are what I started looking for answers to thirty years ago. I realize now that I have found the answer to those question, found it to perfections, and so therefore I have something to offer those 185 million people who are still searching for answers.
Which is why I am re-dedicating my website, Yesness.com to answering these question. Starting today I will just be focusing my blogging efforts on these questions. I suspect that from time to time I will post on other topics but they will go to my personal blog, JimFreedom.com/blog.
I am sure there are many people out there who might read this and will be wondering why I would think I know something about love, for they might think I have no clue what love it. After all, I have never had a romantic relationship that has lasted even a year and I have had very few relationships. PLUS, I am one of the biggest assholes that many people who know me have ever known, so how could I say that I know anything about love?
I think that question is funny.
I imagine going into a Christian church and asking, “Was Jesus a loving person?” I am sure that virtually everyone there would say that YES, Jesus was not just a loving person but the very incarnation of love.
Yet, if you asked the religious people of Jesus’ time if Jesus was a loving person they would say, “HELL NO”, for to them he was Satan incarnate, he was mad, crazy or possessed by demons. To use modern language they would say that Jesus was an asshole extraordinaire. Which is why the religious people wanted Jesus dead, because he kept pushing their button or “bearing witness to the truth” of how they were conditioned to ABUSE THEMSELVES and lie to themselves about it by blaming other people for their own emotional behavior.
Jesus then went on to talk about blessedness, which was the theme of his whole Sermon on the Mount. One of the things he said there was, “Blessed be those who do not take offense at me,” which put the onus of responsibility for being offended back onto the one who is offended. Then Jesus went even further and said, “Take cheer, for I have overcome the world,” which means that you could not push Jesus’ buttons and piss him off the way he could piss off the religious people’s buttons.
So Jesus was not just pointing out that people had been programmed to abuse themselves emotionally, but he cared enough to show them that there was a way out of that abuse. He loved those people who were persecuting him, enough to take their hatred yet he still tried to inspire them to get free from the unhealthy/unholy habits.
That is what I do and that is why some people still see me as an asshole who knows nothing about love. I may not yet be as big an asshole as Jesus was, but I aspire to and to even go beyond where Jesus went.
What I have learned is that when I was like everyone else I would abuse myself emotionally all the time, which lead me to experience this world as HELL, but when I learned to be honest with myself and to love myself I was then able to see, appreciate, enjoy and love ALL that life had to offer, which makes my experience of life heavenly.
I have learned how to love myself in the presence of whatever the world is offering and I feel that skill is valuable enough that people will come to my website/blog to hear what I have to say about it.
I would love to hear what you think about this. Please post your comments wherever you read this. Your criticism is VERY valuable to me, for it enables me to improve my method of communication and service to others.
Thank you.
It is obvious that Jesus saw the corruption that came from the belief in the God of Abraham, a idea of God that is tyrannical which unscrupulous people use to intimidate and enslave people with keeping them trapped in a paradigm that was and is unhealthy for them.
The God of Abraham was the Creator and Ruler of the world, “out there” or up in the sky some place; distant from people, separate from people. This God of Abraham, being the Creator and RULER of the world could therefore dictate to the people what HE wanted (God had to be a he because that protects the patriarchal privilege of men). IN ADDITION, and more importantly, God could assign certain ‘special’ men to tell the people what He, God, wanted. Of course, this gave those special men great power and privilege in the world. In so doing, this God of Abraham was justification for all the forms of slavery, most of which still exist today. The appointed leaders are to be the masters and everyone else is to be the slaves. Of course, these so-called appointed leaders who create the rules and tell the world they are appointed by God to be the master over the rest of humanity.
Today we can still see that the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are violent, abusive to themselves and others and the planet or environment as a whole.
Obviously, Jesus could see this long ago and that is why he felt the need for a more democratic vision of God, a new idea of God, a gentler, kinder more loving vision of God. Jesus could see a truth that lesser men could not see, a truth would set people free to love ALL that life offered, a truth that WE are all gods, part of and not separate from the Universal Consciousness or Spirit that primitive people call God. We are the ones who can choose not to give our power away to other people. We are judges who decide what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. We are the ones that define what sin is and what sin is not. We are the ones who define what is God. Even though the religious people of Jesus’ time saw him as a massive sinner, Jesus did not see himself as a sinner or separate from God. He saw himself as one with God, which he called his Father. And Jesus said that he saw us all as one with God, that God is within us and we are within God, we are not separate from God.
This “we are all one, we are all part of God” idea is a more democratic idea of God than the autocratic God of Abraham. No one person or group of people would have dominion over another. Jesus’ idea of God would do away with the lording of parents over their children, clergy over their congregations and kings or political rulers over the masses. No longer are the rulers “out there” some place, but WE are the real rulers.
Of course, the ruling classes would not want to see an idea of a more democratic god prevail in society, for they would lose their power and privilege. So they had to stop Jesus by whatever means became necessary. That is why they had him arrested, tortured and killed, not just to stop Jesus but also to discourage anyone from following in his example.
Jesus tried to bring about a paradigm shift, one that the ruling classes did not want to happen, and that is why that had to kill him. However, the ideas that Jesus talked about did not die with him; they started to spread. Because of this, the ruling classes hired Saul of Taurus to find a way to destroy the movement that Jesus had started.
Saul tried everything he could, he killed and persecuted the followers of Jesus but that only seem to strengthen them. Then, one day, on the road to Damascus Saul got a brilliant idea, it was so brilliant that it almost blinded him. He envisioned that he would change his name to Paul, join the follows of Jesus and call himself an ‘apostle’ or leader of them. Then he would bring those gullible enough to follow him back to “sound doctrine” by which they could be controlled, manipulated and enslaved. His plan was near perfect, for it worked brilliantly.
Paul got people, including the other apostles, to worship Jesus as someone special, as God incarnate. In so doing, they were pushing Jesus up on a pedestal so high that people could no longer see Jesus as an example of what they could be but only as an idol worthy of worship. The people learned to say that Jesus’ teaching were ok for him, he was God, but we are not; thus rendering Jesus teachings no longer valid.
The spirit of the Antichrist wanted to create a movement to ensure that people would never follow Jesus or examples like him. They were calling Jesus the Christ so when Paul created his movement or religion became known as Christ-anti or Christianity, which is what it is called today. However, as Jesus said, nothing is hidden that shall not later be revealed. It is time to expose this Antichrist movement for what it is, there to support the ruling classes and to keep people slaved. The last thing this antichrist movement wants is for people to think and act like Jesus, to be the part of God that they are.
Remember what Jesus said, “It is not those who say lord, lord to me, but those who do the will of their Father in heaven”; the kingdom of heaven being within us. Today, Christians will honor Jesus with their mouth but their heart is far from him, they think so differently than he did.
The ruling classes want us to think that God is out there and we are here to serve God. Jesus said that if you have known him you also know his Father, and then he said, I come to serve and not be served. When a person identifies as being part of God then they realize that all the rest of humanity and even all life is part of them. Therefore, they will do unto others as they would want done unto themselves, for they ARE the others, just as Jesus pointed out when he said, as you do unto the least of them you do unto me.
You will never hear any Abrahamic tradition followers say anything like that. For them, the God of Abraham is the master and we are to be the slaves. That is what we get from Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
It is time for humanity to take it power back and to awaken and realize that WE are that democratic God that Jesus was pointing out and he demonstrated for us the freedom to love that being God brings to anyone open enough and courageous enough embrace.