THEQUESTFORQUESTIONS.COM: Recent Comments

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-20T14:08:35Z

Thanks for your kind words, Michael. That is my aim: not to convince or argue, but offer another point of view that causes someone to stop, think, and re-examine their conclusions. As Socrates said, "The Unexamined Life is not worht living." So I'm equally thrilled when someone else causes me to stop, think, and re-examine my conclusions.

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-19T20:53:14Z

Lable,

You have a gift my friend; the ability to express a unique insight that causes one to stop, think and come to terms with the ramifications of your insight on our lives. Keep it up!

Thank you,

Michael

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-17T17:21:21Z

Hi, Wendy. Yes, difficult economic times are godsends to the vampires out there. People who are not at all usually gullible fall prey to desperation. When I was a teenager my mother was dying of ovarian cancer, and had reached the point where the doctirs had given up all hope. We were Orthodox Jews and a major Chassidic Rabbi, of all people, recommended a Christian faith-healer in the Phillipines named "Reverend Tony" who was reported to miraculously be able to pull the cancer out of people. Now, even though going to this faith-healer violated their life-long religious beliefs, even though getting a visa to the Phillipines at that time was next to impossible due to the Communist insurrection, even though it would take all the money my parents had, they made arrangements to go to this charlatan. My mother was desperate not to leave her two children behind at such a young age. In the end, the trip never happened because her doctor told her she would not survive the plane trip. And, of course, years later "Reverend Tony" was proven to be a fraud who concealed razor blades between his fingers, and the "cancer" he pulled out of people was shown to be chicken guts. But thus doth desperation makes gulls of us all.

What's to lose in giving it a chance? I think of how my mother might have died in an airplane, or on a dirty table in a Phillipine hut with a charlatan cutting her with a razor blade, instead of the beautiful passing she had surrounded by so many people who loved her. I think of desperate people spending their last dollar on some worthless charm. I think of the three people who died in Arizona recently when they paid $10,000 to sit in a sweat lodge, without knowing whether the person conducting the lodge was quakified to do so. I think of how so many people who are hungering for real spiritual nourishment are being fed by practitioners who might as well be asking, "Do you want fries with that?" And it makes me sad. But, then again, the Universe is only four days old. Plenty of time left to "get it.

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-17T16:20:27Z

Yesterday I got two letters, personally addressed, one offering me a ring that had the power to solve all my problems, the other providing a number that might be THE number to receive unclaimed lottery millions. How could anyone, I thought, be that gullible? Whether we are gullible or desperate or just in the "why not?" category of hopeful souls, there are enough of us out there to make these businesses thrive. Just as the businesses of the McSpiritualists thrive. And I guess that makes sense to me now, having read your piece, Lable. I we accept the 'wisdom' of a four day old universe as the measure of all there is, we will always remain needy children.

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-17T13:56:12Z

Hi Anna,

Great insight. Yes, most people have not overcome the fear of dying to themselves to be reborn to their higher selves, but that is wholly consonant, as you point out, with being in a four-day old Universe. We need to be patient. In another 100 billion years or so many more may be willing to make that great leap into the unknown.

But I don't know that McSpirituality is what people want. It is what they are settling for. I think they hunger and yearn for true At-One-ment. That's why through the ages the call to death in order to be reborn, whether it came from Dionysus, Osiris, Mithra, Shiva, Buddha, or Jesus has always been so attractive to us. The desire to answer the call of our higher nature tugs at us all the time. It is simple, but not easy. In the book "The Power and the Glory", Graham Greene wonderfully tells the story of a corrupt priest in Mexico on the run from the revolutionaries. At the end, he is taken before a firing squad. And in his last instant, as the bullet that will kill him is heading right between his eyes, he sees how simple it would have been to be a saint.

I think Compassion demands that those who are awake help others see how simple (but hard) Life really is - before the bullet is headed right between their eyes - so that they don't have to just settle for McSprituality.

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-17T13:43:05Z

Hi Isabel,

Yes, after chiding people for quoting Einstein, the grand Poobah of Relativity, all the time, I have to blush and admit that the statement I made to you was me quoting the other grand Poobah of physics - Nils Bohr, the patron saint of Quantum Theory. Bohr said that, "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." And in a Universe this amazingly rich, it is quite possibly the case. (It's long been my theory that the way you create a Universe out of Nothing is to balance everything with its opposite so that the sum total in the Universe is still zero.) But the key word in Bohr's statement is "profound". I will leave it, of course, to each individual to judge what is profound to them.

As you point out, rapid growth is often the culmination of years of hard growth. I believe it was Eddie Cantor who said it took him twenty years to become an overnight success. More recently, Malcom Gladwell has asserted that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly proficient at anything. I think in a flash we can go from Unconsciously Incompetent to Consciously Incompetent (which is what I think happens in most of the week-end seminar "aha!" experiences), but it does take a lot of effort to go from Consciously Incompetent to Consciously Competent (and even more effort to go to Unconsciously Competent.)

Here's the core of my concern, Isabel. I know, for example, the work that you do. It is rich, textured, profound, and very valuable. And you follow your instruction up with Coaching and support. You help people deal with the simple-but-not-easy. But I think that people are missing out on the opportunity to have their lives enriched by practitioners such as yourself because you are drowned-out by the hucksters offering the fast-food versions.

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-17T02:24:56Z

Hi Lable,

Delightful reading as always. Indeed, we are sooo young. It seems like there's the real Oneness and then there's the Oneness that sells. People dont want to pay the price of realizing real Oneness. The Oneness that sells, with all it's fun wall decorations, and statues and practices and clothes and community is what most people really want. McSpirituality isn't just a marketing scheme. It's what people really want. You and I both know that the price of real spirituality, real truth, real Oneness is the total turning away from everything we thought we were...all the conditioning, the drama and the stories. Our personalities become irrelevant when it comes to being awake and following what's real. Seriously, who really wants to psychologically die and be reborn into the life of Oneness- True Spirituality? Very few of us, I imagine. We are, after all, in the larger scope of things, only about 4 years old. Hugs to you, Anna

Comment on The Four Day Old Universe

2009-11-16T18:49:10Z

Lable,

Great food for thought, as always.

You said to me once something like that for every truth, there is an opposite, and equally true, truth.

I agree we need to be careful of "too good to be true" promises and I also think we need to be careful not to assume that growth is only available as the result of long, hard, work and much time passing.

As someone who has experienced rapid growth herself this year (and yes, it was probably the culmination of many years of preceding effort) I've begun to see that some of the results I can deliver through my work can be had much more quickly than I had ever realized.

Comment on The Post-Modern Genie

2009-04-26T16:29:18Z

I think those are all very compelling questions. To me, it all has to do with which point-of-view we are looking from when we address those questions. A box is a box, but will look very different when viewed from inside the box vs. from outside the box.

If reality is the box, then within the box Time "happens" and choices are made along the axis of time, and the consequences of those choices happen along the same axis of time. (The axis/direction of time, of course, being determined by the Law of Entropy.) Events and relationships that ocurred in the "past" section of the axis influence decisions made in the "present" section of the axis, leading to effects in the "future" portion of the axis.

But outside the box we have a different point of view and can see that Time itself is an artifact of the box. All decisions and all consequences have "already been made". Where there is no Time, then all "events" in the box are accessible all at once.

We are, indeed, blessed that our Selfs can participate and play in the stream of Time, while our Souls can access the divine pleroma outside the box.

Thanks for your excellent comment!

Comment on The Post-Modern Genie

2009-04-24T03:58:36Z

If the universe is a Genie, and if Jung's universal unconcious is a reality, then how do those we connect with participate in the fulfillment of what we truly wish for? Or, to what extent do they help to influence us down a path of more enlightened desires (assuming some degree of "absolutes" - Sorry Aristotle)? Are we not led down a path (as in the Celestine Prophesy) and yet still have the free will to bring about that which we want? Who is doing the leading, who is influencing and who is bringing about the fulfillment of what we wish for? Might the Genie and the Universal Unconscious be one and the same? Might we not all be but participants in the Divine (however one might contrive such) and yet influence / participate in the co-creation of this ever evolving reality? The blessing in life is truly in such participation as well as in unraveling the mysteries of why we have been blessed to participate in the first place.