Category Archives: religion

Options

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Every now and then I run into claims that God and Devil are fighting for human souls, which are so precious that everybody wants them for some reason, and I roll my eyes. You see, I’ve been there, only from the position of Vedanta, which states that all souls are in essence bound and deluded aspects of brahman, the Absolute, and are precious as such. This was the implicit assumption I worked with, and it was seemingly confirmed by the visible efforts “the guys up there” went through in order to bring someone to the point where they would make up their mind. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that they saw a final decision of any kind – for or against God – as a good thing. My implicit assumption was wrong; what they wanted was for souls to be removed from the pool of the seemingly undecided. Liberation of the good and destruction of the wicked was fine, but wicked finding perpetual excuses as for why they didn’t really have the right opportunities and so their choices aren’t really valid so they need to go at it yet another time, or the almost-good ones perpetually finding ways to get stuck in something and needing progressively better, “cleaner” options to choose from, that seemed to be very bad and they wanted to drain that swamp as soon as possible. The implications of this reality to my worldview were not good, but I had to learn what it meant and how to deal with it.

The thing is, humans seem to live in some kind of a narcissistic illusion of the kind typical for teenage girls, who found out that all the guys want them, which they interpret as a sign that they are something special and valuable, while the male teenagers have the opposite situation where nobody wants them and they have to learn how to deal with it. The problem the teenage girls have is that they don’t seem to get that they are in exactly the same position as the male teenagers. The one they would truly want doesn’t care about them. The ones that want them, they just want to fuck them and leave. For the one who really matters, they would have to work – acquire virtues, prove value and loyalty, and so on. However, it’s very hard to understand that you can’t have what you really want, when everybody is seemingly throwing themselves at you. You think you have so much choice, not realizing that all the choices you seem to have are bad, and the option you really want is the one you have to work for as hard as any teenage male who seemingly has no options. You are both in the same position, where the one you want isn’t available, it’s just that having all the undesirable options gets into girls’ heads.

You see, in a spiritual sense you have all kinds of options, and they are not God and Satan, they are mostly various flavours of Satan. God isn’t an option for you. In order for God to be an option, you would have to really work for it, to put yourself out there, to give up all the false, undesirable options the way a teenage girl would if she kept herself for that one guy she really wants to marry and spend the rest of her life with. God becomes an option only when you reject everything else first, and without any guarantee that God is even achievable; however, you know that anything else isn’t an option for you, and you refuse to settle for cheap substitutes.

It seems that pretending to be undecided and trying to disqualify all the available options is a standard strategy of the evil souls that reject God, but who want to avoid the consequences of outright rejecting God. “Oh, I really wanted God and Guru but nobody was pure and good enough for me, and I couldn’t settle for anything other than perfection” seems to be a standard trope, and it seems to be working, for a while at least. Eventually, everybody makes a decision. Either you ignore the real thing because you can’t be bothered to look, and that’s a decision, or you see the real thing and you find faults with it, or you choose it but your heart isn’t in it and you just fumble around until you fall off. Or you choose the real thing with all your heart and stick with it forever, changing yourself to remove anything that’s in the way of that choice.

Some musings about money

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I’ve been thinking about something for quite a while now.

When I was much younger and had just started working with people and writing, I had very little money, and the people I worked with at the time for some reason found it impressive how I seemed to not care about it at all – I would wear torn clothes, buy a used computer somewhere and work with it, drive a shitbox, and seem not to perceive the entire material sphere, instead focusing on spiritual realities and energy work.

What troubles me there is that they thought this was a good thing, that it’s fine for “spiritual people” to be poor, that it’s somehow a positive status symbol of spirituality or whatever. It’s not. They saw that I don’t care about matter but they were wrong – I didn’t care about it while I was working with them, because they were the priority. The entirety of my focus was placed on trying to get them to overcome their limitations and get the taste of transcendence, so to speak. However, when I was alone I had rent and bills to pay, groceries to buy, car to service and fuel, and not enough money to cover almost any of it. I didn’t wear ragged clothes because I didn’t care about my appearance; I wore them because I had no money, and I truly didn’t care about my appearance when I was doing more important things, so they kind of made a flawed conclusion that this is how things are supposed to be, and anything else represents a spiritual downfall.

Of course I cared about money – I had constant problems caused by the lack of money, that I could never truly solve. However, the fact was that people I worked with tended not to have money, and the people with money tended not to care about me, and my priority was to focus on people most receptive to what I wanted to teach, not teaching people who could be of most material use to me. Sure, I made some compromises, namely continuing to work with some people whom I would otherwise have sent away sooner due to them showing no perspective, due to them “bankrolling” my work with talented but broke people, and in only one instance this turned out to be a bad idea because the person in question turned out to be coercing and manipulating others with money and created a really toxic atmosphere that made everybody’s lives more unpleasant and difficult. The concept itself isn’t bad – you see, anything else makes an implicit assumption that the teacher himself should bankroll the entire operation so that he would be independent of any kind of financial pressure or free from financial concerns that could otherwise bias his selection of students and general approach, or that money is such a bad thing that you should never give it to good people who are doing useful things, especially if you’re not the only one incurring benefit. The concept that people with money should support things that are of spiritual use not only to them, but to other people who might be better positioned to benefit from it than themselves is perfectly rational. Furthermore, people who support good and useful things with money incur a karmic benefit.

But to return to my situation – I had very serious and persistent financial problems, but I did not allow this to influence my choices and work to any great extent. I never rejected a poor but qualified student, or spent less time with them than was needed to produce optimal outcomes. It’s just that I allowed some more affluent, but unqualified people to hang around, thinking no harm can come from it, and they might pick up useful things in the process and acquire spiritual benefits. You see, it wasn’t that I really had that many options. I could have abandoned the whole thing, returned to software engineering, made a career in that and have no problems with money, however I felt this would have been a waste of life, because I felt I had to contribute to the world in the most meaningful way I am capable of, not merely in the way that people would pay the most money for. The result was that I was poor for decades, but, in hindsight, I can say that I did the best I could and followed the line of righteousness that made me essentially immune to all kinds of karmic attachments and backlash that normally destroys spiritual people.

So, no, I wasn’t poor because that’s a good thing. I was poor because people with money didn’t give a fuck about what I did, and even some people I did work with thought poverty suited me just fine. Of course I could have used a car with air conditioning back then, and a computer that is actually capable of editing a book cover 600 DPI TIFF, and has a screen bigger than 15”. The thing is, good things tend to be owned by people who have the money to buy them, not the people who need them the most. However, that’s not the part that irritates me. What I found really, truly humiliating is the attitude of some of my then-students, who sincerely thought that good things were too good for me, and shitty things are just right, and liked the feeling of being financially above me. Of course I could se that in their minds, it was more than obvious, and this truly pissed me off, because it reeked of contempt and disrespect.

Another thing that pissed me off were the people who arrogantly criticised me as being materialistically disposed and trying to personally benefit from others by charging money for my books. Putting those books on the market was hugely expensive for both me and my students, in both money and labour. It was a significant sacrifice to make those books available to a wider audience, and it came with a spiritual blessing that was to awaken the presence of God in people, that would grow and overcome everything else if they chose to allow it. What I expected in return was that they buy the books, so that the financial load on my students would be reduced, and, possibly, that I could pay the bills without being a burden on them at all; it looked like a karmically beneficial thing, a way to spread both the benefit and the load. What I got instead was an opportunity for all kinds of worthless assholes to denigrate and humiliate both me and my work, and this made me very angry, especially since some people made it a point of pride for themselves to offend me for making the effort. It made me so angry I withdrew the books from the market and physically destroyed all the available copies, and I also withdrew the blessing. No, the books are not available for free in the digital form now because I’m more spiritual now or anything. They are free because of my contempt. You see, I earned substantial amounts of money in the payment industry, by charging a percentage for a service of navigating through the maze necessary for supposedly high-risk businesses to get a merchant account in order to sell their goods and services online. It was frequently some highly questionable stuff, such as the online dating sites, but I always had a feeling of a clean and transparent business transaction. I was never insulted or humiliated for any of it – quite the opposite, I was the respectable businessman and a gentleman who provides a valuable service to others. The only time I was exposed to deliberate ridicule and humiliation and treated as if I’m defrauding the naive and doing it all for money, and called a worthless and stupid poor person who wants to get rich by scamming others, was when I made the choice to endure financial hardship in order to provide the greatest benefit to others that I was capable of. This truly traumatised and offended me, and I feel that this is a mere shadow of God’s cold rage directed at those who offended me then, because what I did was expose the presence of God in this world and make it available, and all the contempt was in fact directed at and felt by God, and God didn’t like it one bit, let me tell you that. All the contempt, ridicule and abuse hurled at me went straight to God. All the thoughts of how shitty stuff is good enough and just right for me went straight to God, and let me tell you something: I am very glad God isn’t that angry at me.

So, at this point I live in a place that’s too good for what those people would wish for me. I drive a car that’s much better than they would let me have, I wear a watch that’s much more expensive than they would approve for me, and write this on a computer they would deem much too powerful and good for what I need. Fortunately, nobody really gives a fuck about their opinion any more.

There’s another implicit premise the worthless people assume – that if a man of God works for God, he should be paid by God, not by them. No, that’s not how things work. A man of God is the presence of God in this world, and God doesn’t actually like you or think you’re worthy, because He knows what you are, and you need to pass His tests, because that’s how things work – you don’t test God, or place demands God should meet, because you’re not the ones in charge and nobody asks you how things should be done. No, God tests you, to see if you show promise. God tests you by taking something that is a known absolute quality, such as His own tulku. A test for you is for this person to be presented before you, and you have to decide what it is, and how you will treat it. Basically, it’s like having two places presented to you, and you need to decide which is heaven, and which is hell, and then of course you go to heaven of your choice. God tests you by showing up among you every now and then, and you have to decide what that is, and how much it is worth to you. And then you go to a heaven that’s created for you by your choices.

A constructive approach

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There is, of course, a legitimate undertone to all that positivity/negativity talk, and it’s the same thing Jesus mentioned in his “log in eye” parable – basically, stop finding faults with others, because other than signalling your own supposed virtue, it only makes other people feel bad and accomplishes nothing good or useful.

This is a very real issue that needs to be addressed, especially in the age of the Internet and the social media, where everybody tries to make themselves artificially important by making loud and extreme claims that are meant to elevate their voice above the noise floor, and as a result, there’s a lot of hysterical shrieking about every conceivable topic, and any measurable effect of it all is markedly negative. Since it is not a new phenomenon, somebody already noticed it and, basically, stated that one should mind their own abundant flaws before addressing those around him, because, although everybody will always claim that there are more important issues in the world than fixing their own problems, this has always ever been but a way to avoid dealing with one’s own issues. Yeah, there’s plagues and war and climate change and pollution and what not, and there always will be, but how about you learn how to be polite, useful, responsible and honest first, instead of yelling about global warming and accomplishing nothing, eh? The world is perpetually unfixable and, by the way, it’s of no concern to you. Your job is to have a good relationship with God, and then externalize this by being God’s presence in the world, for the benefit of others. Nothing else matters.

Also, in dealings with others, if you have nothing constructive to say or do, it might be best to at least avoid doing harm, and the best way to do that is not to disturb people with critical opinions nobody asked for. Essentially, you need to understand that criticism comes with responsibility, because if you’re observing a problem, criticism must exist in the context of willingness to engage in solving it. If you don’t care enough to engage yourself in solving the problem, it’s obviously something you should not concern yourself with and remaining silent and minding your own business might be the best course for you. For instance, if you observe signs of poverty in your neighbour or a relative, the constructive way to approach it would be to tactfully ask if there’s a problem, and if there’s something you can do to help. Criticising or gossiping is neither constructive nor helpful, and you might instead take a big cup of STFU.

This is what someone probably meant by “staying positive” and “avoiding negativity”; basically, keep your nose out of other people’s business unless you are there to offer help. However, like all things, it was generalised way out of its area of usefulness, and caused a different set of problems.

Emotional control

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The only way to control your emotions is to own them. Taking responsibility is the first and the most important thing about it. If you say “person x made me feel this way”, “the weather made me feel this way”, “the world situation made me feel this way”, you are demonstrating no responsibility for your emotions, and, as a result, you have no control.

The first thing you need to do in order to turn off an emotion, is to make it stronger. Amplify it, be in it completely. Ooops, apparently you’re not a mere victim of things that make you feel this or that way, because you can obviously crank it up. Now that you see that you have control over it, observe it from a distance. This makes you, the observer, separate from the emotion, and you can see it wind down.

That’s all you need to start. Sure, there’s more – perceiving the connection between thoughts, emotions and spiritual energy, learning the vipassana or inner space, learning how to use Kundalini up-stream kriya in order to release emotional energy without being overwhelmed by it, and so on, but what you need to start is the understanding that you in fact keep your emotions rolling for long after they would have naturally wound down, and if you can do that, you in fact have control. It’s just that you’re doing a poor job, and there’s room for improvement the size of a universe.

Principles

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I was just thinking about the reason why my religious opinions differ so much from the norm, and why I actually attained results in this sphere, unlike all those who might see my opinions as unpalatable.

You see, it’s very simple. It’s just that I had scientific training and adhered to the basic principles of sound engineering. So, let me try to write those down the best I can.

– Assume that the way physics explains the world reveals something fundamental that extends to spirituality; for instance, that high-level phenomena can be broken down, the way apples and oranges can be broken down to the fundamental particles, none of which have essence of apple and orange among them;

– Assume that experimentation and iteration along paths that show results are the way to go; also, assume that paths that show bad results, or no results at all, can be safely discarded unless there are very strong reasons to insist;

– Assume that people who did this before have relevant things to say, unless proven otherwise by direct experimentation and experience;

– Don’t try to have a working theory ahead of time. It is preferable to have good skill and poor understanding. People could shoot arrows at distant targets with great precision long before they had a strong theory of kinetic energy and gravity. It’s preferable to have experience of God without understanding what God actually is, to having all kinds of theology without experience. Don’t try to enforce elegance and parsimony ahead of time; rather, allow reality to reveal itself, however convoluted, inelegant, contradictory or whatever else it might appear to be. Gather facts first; everything else is a luxury. Poor and inelegant understanding of reality is preferable to having none whatsoever, or to having elegant illusions and falsehoods that explain everything.

– Test ideas by trying to imagine all kinds of ways in which they are wrong. If this doesn’t produce any immediately obvious downsides to the idea, then you’re likely on to something, and this path is worth exploring further.

– Believe in things that were revealed in the higher states of consciousness even when you are in a normal or reduced state of consciousness where evidence for it isn’t readily available, and in fact everything seems to contradict it. Essentially, if you’ve been to the Moon, believe you have been, even if you can’t repeat the experience because the funding for the Moon missions has been cut.

There’s probably more, but this is enough to demonstrate the general direction I was taking in my thinking. It’s less rigid thinking that what would pass for scientific these days, but it’s basically a practical application of scientific method and sound engineering principles, moderated and softened by the necessities imposed by the nature of the field of study.