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not including Doodles
not including Doodles
Page 89 of 131, posts 441 - 445 of 651
We cannot possibly be perfectly prepared for every possible contingency. But we can be ready.
Scene #1. You're one of several young urbanites at a campout with a few friends, after a long day swimming, hiking, and now after a fine meal, joking, laughing. You're mellow; relaxed; right? feel it? (No, Reader, now you're not relaxed because you're looking at that big type in the next sentence.) SUDDENLY A HUGE SNARLING BEAR COMES CHARGING OUT OF THE WOODS AND STRAIGHT AT YOU!
Scene #2. You're out hunting with a few friends. (Just go with me on this, PETAfans.) You're armed with a high-power rifle. (Knowledgable gun person insert brand and calibre.) You're hunting a bear that's been known to attack and kill people. You and your friends are highly trained hunters and you are on his trail. (Good old cut-and-paste:) SUDDENLY A HUGE SNARLING BEAR COMES CHARGING OUT OF THE WOODS AND STRAIGHT AT YOU!
Now, if you're an average person in approximately the first scenario, your first instinctive response will probably not be to charge forward, screaming in rage, straight at the bear and lunge for his eyes or jugglar with whatever was in your hand. Ew. Sorry. I just thought of that as I was writing. No, you're probably going to do something like run away screaming in high-pitched terror, faint, freeze, or muss your underoos. You were, in a word, unprepared. Or in another word or three, unready, inattentive, inalert. Wait, is that a word?
If you're an exceptional person in the second scenario, you kill the bear. Readiness is all.
You're hanging out with folks and someone you thought you liked but weren't sure about repeats an ugly rumor about you that you've resented for a long time. You're enjoying driving your Kia on a winding country road and suddenly in your rear-view mirror, there's a six-wheel extended-bed, extended-cab, jacked-up Ford pick-up right on your tail. (Oh, sure, why not:) Driven by with those four hunters who just killed the bear. They're really the nicest men you'd ever want to meet, and no they haven't been drinking, not one beer, but all you see is their truck, attire, and all those guns. Or, you're absorbed in reading an article that's witty, well-written, informative and casual, and someone comes and interrupts you with an urgent phone call from the IRS.
Readiness is all.
Being perfect in your personal realm as God is in all of creation, means readiness. Are you superman enough to charge back at the bear, armed with two pieces of plastic cutlery? Can you be the soul of graciousness when surprised by a harsh spotlight being placed upon you? Can you have completely confident calm control in the face of potentially threatening situations? Are you able to easily migrate your whole consciousness from that absorbing article to deal with your remarkably upset spouse?
We cannot possibly be perfectly prepared for every possible contingency. Sometimes you're hunting the bear. Sometimes the bear hunts you. Sometimes the bear kills you in your sleeping bag and there's not a whole lot you can do about that, so we're talking about the other times.
We can develop a spirit of readiness.
To be ready is to be unsurprised.
You may not know when or even if the killer bear is going to come charging at you, but you know it's out there.
Graciousness is not the natural hallmark of Ego. Tame the animal mind's vengeful impulse, translate its emotional surge into the desire, not to return an eye for an eye, nor even merely to turn the other cheek, but to respond with a practiced dedication to returning good for evil. In love of your fellow child of God, Supremely desire to de-power the unpleasant encounter.by making everyone both comforted and uplifted.
Regardless of what you face from the material world's agencies, if you remain centered in complete honesty with yourself and with the judges of the world, even in the face of the gravest injustice, you can be confident that your soul is innocent.
Best keep those books and records up-to-date, keep your powder dry, and know where the exit doors are. Get in some target practice if you can, just in case. Practice turning your whole intellectual consciousness and full emotional attention away from that almost-finished article to embrace that screaming spouse the way you would in love of a beloved small child weeping over an owwie.
We cannot be perfectly prepared for each and every thing. In spirit, however, we can be ready. Practice being fully prepared by keeping the mind clean, maintaining focus on the lessons learned from inspiration, and keep acquiring the skills of life through perspiration.
One time driving along a narrow gravel road in the mountains above Pecos, New Mexico, we saw a bear cub, its muzzle nuzzling in a hole, right there in the upsloping side of the road-cut, as we passed by a few feet away. We wanted to stay longer and watch the cub. But we drove on. No need to worry Momma Grizzly.
She charged the bear and punched it in the nose to rescue her dog. "I wasn’t in my right mind at the moment but I would never think of doing it again." Even her boyfriend charged the bear!
Charge Forward — companion Best of Spirits Mindful Webwork
"It was just me between my family and the bear. ... The father said he was able to successfully fend off the aggressive beast because he and his family were mentally prepared for such an encounter in the wild and did not panic."
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Inspired by
D.R. Weeks: The Obama Enemy Appeasement Speech
D.R. Weeks: The Obama Enemy Appeasement Speech
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I wanted to write
a poem about
The Palace of Cymboyton
a poem about
The Palace of Cymboyton
But the only rhyme
I came up with was
Glucosamine and Chondroitin!
Related article on another site:
Behzad Sarmast's 2007 article on TruthBook, seeking the site of Cymboyton's Palace.
Lake Urmia, indicating the island of Sepeyton
Behzad Sarmast's 2007 article on TruthBook, seeking the site of Cymboyton's Palace.
Lake Urmia, indicating the island of Sepeyton
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"You can do important work if you do not become self-important; you can do several things as easily as one if you leave yourself out." —An Archangel of Nebadon (Urantia Paper 48)
I recently encountered another episode which demonstrated in a small way the affliction of overmuch self-consciousness. A young friend, in an effusive text reply, clearly mis-read what I had written. I corrected the error. My friend then apologized profusely. No problem, I said, but just take things slow, read twice, I recommended. The reply to something I wrote the next day was a noticably more reserved "OK," which actually didn't even make sense in the context. Knowing this individual's character, I suspect that the reticence of the second incident was in response to the earlier correction, a self-conscious over-reaction to having been found before to be wrong.
Mere correction should be cause for thankfulness, really, but all too frequently the one being corrected feels chided, put down for being in error, and this in turn generates defensiveness, and defensiveness severely complicates learning.
We are all imperfect, while being commanded to be perfect. In this world of "trial and error," wisdom often can only be achieved through learning from error. When one is instructed on what is right, there is intrinsically, inevitably, a certain emphasis upon the fact of having been in error. Correction should be celebrated, as one more step of growth, but the Ego gets in the way. The Ego doesn't want to be wrong, or more correctly, since Ego alone does not have a value system to discern right and wrong, Ego does not want to be found out as being wrong. Being wrong, the Ego imagines, means shame, and invokes guilt, as if one should already have mastered something the first time out, as if mere error were conscious sin.
Pride may be the most insidious of the "deadly sins." Most folks can admit that wrath or sloth are unwelcome traits, but Pride defends itself proudly. The reasons for error are essentially irrelevant to correction, but when pride stands in the way of correction, the focus is not on the goodness of correction but on badness of the error, and the Ego, feeling belittled, becomes engaged in defense. "I was only…" "I just meant…" "All I was doing was…" This thoughtless defensive posture not only de-emphasizes the correction, but reinforces the error in the gestalt of the subconscious. Even though the correction may be intellectually acknowledged, rather than the grateful "Aha!" of honest truth-recognition, the emotional memory is more of a disingenuous "oh, yeah?" of self-justification. And all such defensiveness stems from Pride.
Pride thwarts learning, and thus hinders growth. Growth is our goal, with perfection our destiny. Thus, defensive and misplaced Pride stands athwart our path, and threatens us with the opposite of eternal life.
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Sure we believe in liberty except when we don't, says Ann Coulter.
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right on one side of her sneering lip
And when she was Right
She was very very Right
But when she was wrong
It was bullship.
(Okay, okay, so I couldn't come up with a better rhyme on short notice so I munged![[*]](/toolshed/new-window.png){kind=small}
the last line.)
When Ann Coulter turns her guns on deserving targets, and opens up with both barrels, it's as much fun as it is inspiring to watch her blast open the bull's eye. When she seems to be just putting words together to rattle the enemy by throwing them curve balls, it can be somewhat enjoyable, but not so much. When she's going after what I consider the wrong targets, it's no fun at all, and very sad. I have the same problem with most Right-wing spokesfolk, even (and sometimes especially) Our Leader Mark Levin.
When I tuned to yesterday's column, and saw that she was going to comment on Monday's Republican beauty pageant, I had high hopes of being entertained, and possibly informed (especially since I hadn't watched the "debate"). I was quickly disappointed.
She writes, "Monday night's debate did crystallize for me why I dislike libertarians." Of all political labels, libertarian would probably fit me best. When I first took The World's Smallest Political Quiz, I scored right at the top, although I've discovered the questions keep changing. However, the label is not a comfortable fit for me, not for the sake of libertarianism, but for the reality of most libertarians, so while I'm disappointed at the direction she's taking, I start nodding in agreement when Ann writes she dislikes libertarians ("[e]xcept one, who is a friend of mine and not crazy" she adds parenthetically, with disturbing duplicity).
Then comes the next sentence. "They lure you in with talk of small government and then immediately start babbling about drug legalization or gay marriage." THUMP! That's the sound of my hopes hitting the floor. I have to drag myself through the rest of the column as a matter of duty, but like the time I walked into a relative's house and saw a big poster of Prem Rawat, I knew all too well what lay ahead. Like so many Right-wingers, Ann had stepped right into two of the three tar-babies of the Christian-Republican alliance.
Let me step back a minute to quickly grab some statistics courtesy of Professor Google. According to a Pew Survey for which I find no date, nearly 80% of Americans consider ourselves religious, and over 80% of those are either Protestant or Catholic. For the faithful follower of Jesus, that at first blush seems hopeful. However, according to a Gallup poll from last December, 40% of Americans also "believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago." For the record, I'm among the 38% who "believe God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms." I find the 40% who are just plain scientifically ignorant to be somewhere between a problem and a serious threat. Between the 40% who don't understand progressive development is scientifically unquestionable, and the 16% who don't think God is involved, reasonable theists are outnumbered. My point with this digression is, believers can be beautiful beings, but they can hold some awfully stupid, and socially dangerous, views. Among those are the Big Three on which liberals consistently capitalize. Now back to Ann, slugging away at two of those tar-babies.
Ann characterizes Ron Paul's answer regarding gay marriage as "a chicken-s**t, I-don't-want-to-upset-my-video-store-clerk-base answer." First of all, disagreement on the issue is one thing, but this seems to unfairly question Paul's sincerity. What Paul said, as quoted in Coulter's column, was, "The federal government shouldn't be involved," and "I don't think government should give us a license to get married." As it happens, this has been my own stance since long before I wrote Defending Common-Law Marriage in 1997. Ann argues that unless the government defines marriage, "courts are going to be bulging with legal disputes among the unalert, who neglected to plan in advance and make private contracts resolving the many legal issues that are normally determined by a marriage contract." The problem is real. However, Ann's arguments are along the same line as a reply I got from a lawyer, and essentially deal with the convenience of the government. I answered those questions in a second article to which the reader can refer for more detail, but the essence is in this sentence (quoting myself seems so odd): "Mary Jo and I have been married for over twenty years, legally, without recourse to State or Church, and since such liberty is feasible, it is not our burden to suggest why it would be a 'hardship' to register with the Gummint, but the Gummint's impossible burden to prove why private marriage contract should not be valid without State approval." I note that, as with any contract, it is up to the individuals contracting to be wise in contracting, and careful to establish their positions in the case of dispute or other reason to turn to the courts. While what I disputed was an Oklahoma legislator trying to do away with Common Law marriage between a man and a woman, the same reasoning would hold in any union, whether between two people of the same sex or even a group marriage. When Ann or others argue against gay marriage as a legal matter, they are, politically and philosphically, indistinguishable from other tyrants who promote government control over everything from our educational systems to our light bulbs.
Covered with tar from that baby, Ann proceeds to use her remaining free extremities to tangle with a second. Freedom from government licensing in marriage, she opines, is "exactly like drug legalization." Indeed it is: a matter of individual liberty uncontrolled by unnecessary legislative tyranny! She characterizes both as trivial. Apparently, she is unaware of how the drug war destroys families, imprisons people for non-transgressions, and is directly responsible for the drug gang violence in Mexico and throughout Latin America. She offers nothing else on the matter, though, so I won't bother to further address her non-existent arguments against this form of tyranny. I will, however, refer the reader to another pair of articles of mine on this subject, also from 1997, on the Constitutionality and social value of Repeal. Most folks who argue like Ann does here seem unaware that the very arguments they use are the ones others employ to fight against second amendment rights, for example.
You know how folks can be. When it's the other guy's ox getting gored, we chuckle, but when it's our sacred cows being attacked, we are disgruntled. So, maybe it's just me, but I find that when Ann has the right targets in her sights, her wit and wisdom make for excellent reading. When she's off-base, she struggles like a liberal to explain her inconsistency. In the end, Ann engages in her special brand of sneering derision and smarmy excess to deride libertarians as "cowering frauds too afraid to upset anyone to take a stand on some of the most important cultural issues of our time." Like the Left who employ the Constitution only when it suits their needs and call it obsolete when it doesn't, too many who should otherwise be true American heroes say they believe in liberty except when their pet tyrannies are threatened. Whether merely egregiously ill-informed, propagandistically disingenuous, or both, Ann is, in this instance, representative of what's really wrong with the Right.
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