Tuno~
So most faithers tend to look at such questions in a “do we like it or not?” mode instead of “How does it work?”
Hi Tuno,
May I ask you what is the evidence you possess to back up this claim?
And would it not be more appropriate, given the topic, to contemplate the “why”?
God Bless,
Colmcille.
God Bless,
I see yours as an excellent question. It is one that has mystified me for a long time, and despite having an intellectual handle on it to whatever extent I do, I find it one of the more significant of all public mysteries.
Mostly such a phenomenon can be accounted for as a matter of, at first, absorbtion in the first three, even four, psychological stages of development. These would be the sensoriphysical, the phantasmic-emotional, the representational, and the rule/role mind. These are the rigtful and necessary steps in the development of human awareness. It goes farther than that, of course, but these formative levels tend to be where religion is received, ingrained, and grows as even unconscious habit, as each layer overwrites the previous without necessarily changing it. This is why when older we can go back and see our childhood from “adult” eyes while the more limited perspective we actually had at that time is obscured. "Adult’ is in quotes because few adults reach a much higher state of certain kinds of integrative maturity. That is the "like/don’t like, etc, dualism stage. and even if one is exceptionally advanced in a small field, they may yet be crippled in this regard. Heinlein’s description of
homo novis in his short story
Gulf applies here, as well as many clinical studies resulting in the work of a number of authors.
So you can see that much of religion is in the “rules/roles” mode, and as far as investment in self awareness and religious practice, not many go beyond this. They just have no motivation. Some Saints have, and did the extreme forms of self discipline which lays bare the lower states enough to recover energy enturbulated there to make deeper and more significant progress. That sort of effort is matched in other traditions and has very similar results. There are many cases where again similar results came from trauma or extreme duress. Byron Katie is a wonderful contemporary example of one of those.
There is as well the dynamic found in pedagogy. I was asked, being an artist of some commercial success, to criticize a painting while at a party. My first question was “Do you want me to tell you how I like it, or shall I say what I see?” Given permission to say what I see, I preceded to demonstrate by pointing to elements of the painting not what I liked or didn’t, primarily, but how I interpreted the energetic dynamics of the work. I brought to bear on that my more than five decades of studying why paintings work, or don’t. I did my very best to use simple words, short sentences, and look for signs of comprehension in the artist. It appeared to go well, and I left two smiling faces at the painting when I left the scene.
The next day I find out from my girlfriend, whom the artist and her friend didn’t recognize as such, that they had no or comprehension of what I was talking about. This was evidenced by such statements as “We didn’t understand a thing he said” and “He wasn’t speaking English.” My bad. I completely misread the situation and had given an analysis at my own level of comprehension, in English, I assure you, and in terms similar to which other artists had responded very well as evidenced by their conversation and subsequent work. Fro these I had received gratitude, but they were at a level of receptivity where my words were useful. The poor lady whom I had lectured was not. Yet were were all “artists.” In fact, she had wanted encouragement and praise for what she thought was likable in her work, despite her words. Mine were wasted, and perhaps did less than good.
It is really not different in religious matters. People comprehend at the level they are psychoemotionally capable of, and according to the depth of clarity they have about their own awareness structure. Thsi si why it si said “Gnothi Seauton.” It is also why there are the four forms of the Golden Rule and the Great Commandment. All the rest, is literally, local commentary by necessity. No Teacher of competence says the same thing to two different disciples. It would be devastating. Each is at their own level, kind, degree, etc, of spiritual development.
That is why there are contradictions, if you will, in the Bible, and no competent Guide to administer them, save if in the hands of a very advanced spiritual individual. Despite priestly studies, most such are yet at a formative stage of administration, and are so in a very narrow spiritual par
