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Published on Leave a comment on A Sober Salute to Saint Patrick’s Day from a Grateful Brain

Fun while it lasted

Your usual fare from me on Saint Patrick’s day is literature extolling Irish history and talents for one thing or another. One of their talents I personally experienced in Boston is drinking. They and my Welsh ancestors are celebrated for their rollicking contributions to music and poetry extolling the delights of their habit. Richard Burton, the talented actor who courted Elizabeth Taylor, was Welsh and noted for it.

A Boston Irish pol introduced me to life enlivened by drink that lasted 42 years. It was fun while it lasted but given the choice I wouldn’t do it again.

Energy does what it’s told

Matter is stored energy and brains are matter that operate by electrical impulses. Energy acts at the direction of Mind. When our minds tell our bodies to say awake too often they’ll start staying awake and make getting to sleep harder. When we tell our brains with drink, psychedelics, or other substances we want to alter them so we think or feel differently they’ll get in the habit of altering. It’s sometimes obvious that bodies and brains made of matter are doing what our minds tell them and these are two examples.

The grateful brain

Good judgment depends on brains not altering. Too much altering is physical and mental abuse that leads to misjudgments. Misjudgments that accumulate over time degrade performance. Human history is replete with examples of talented personalities like Richard Burton whose lives and careers ended prematurely because of physical abuse that involves brain-altering. Personality differences kept us entertained with his and Elizabeth’s dramatics but drinking would have had a hand in it too.

By the standards of my Welsh ancestry my drinking life was hardly worth the name. I was reasonably disciplined though not always aware that too much is too much and it shows. When I quit fourteen years ago, there was a noticeable improvement in physical performance -- quality of sleep, energy, appetite. Then, three years ago, a great leap forward in every function of mind. Almost overnight I got better with creativity -- insight, free association, imagination. It was as if a better mind than mine took over or else potential that was always there had broken free.

What is my brain telling me? What yours might tell you if you quit altering it. Thank you!

Published on Leave a comment on Why Is Metaphysics Relevant?

Disorder careening out of control

How do individuals and groups get into situations that take them down? Like Nixon and Watergate, Japan and Pearl Harbor, Putin and Ukraine. Like humanity and global warming, mass extinction. Like us all with relationships and projects, careers and enterprises, that become train wrecks.

Situations evolve from implications of Logic plus the connections and relationships of Love -- facts, circumstances -- that require interpretation within the purpose and meaning of context. Context which requires judgment based on Logic inseparable from Love. Misjudgment --  getting purpose-meaning of context wrong, i.e. not basing it on Logic-Love -- causes misinterpretation of facts-circumstances It causes misperception.

Misperceptions resulting from misjudgments evolve into more misjudgments, an accumulation of choices and decisions out of alignment with context-reality that, over time, widen the gap between reality and unreality. Between facts-circumstances and wishful-psychotic thinking that turn orderly evolution into disorder careening out of control.

Then there’s the broader context

Misperceptions that fail to perceive hazards and obstructions -- potholes, kids on bicycles, telephone poles, drunk drivers, sharp turns, cliffs -- inevitably cause accidents. Collisions with facts-circumstances -- with reality -- that aren’t foreseen because facts-circumstances in the present aren’t seen. Because they were misinterpreted until it only took one more mis-aligned choice, one more mistaken decision, to cause a wreck. Until the mistaken-misperceiving mind behind the hand on the steering wheel made one more wrong turn and it proved fatal.

The wrong turn was the result of getting both the immediate context and the broader context -- the big picture -- wrong. It was the result of illogic -- not making sense. Choice-decision that seems “reasoned” in the immediate context, that doesn’t make sense in the broader context, ultimately can’t be reasoned and therefore cannot be the right choice. It can only be part of a mis-aligned evolution of mistakes that necessitate reconsideration of the broader context until evolution gets back on track.

How to make sense of the broader context

The correct choice-decision will get both the immediate and broader context right with Logic-Love. It requires making sense of context that’s not possible without a sixth sense. Five senses of bodies that can’t see beyond appearances aren’t enough. Relying on appearances perceived by bodies’ senses while rejecting guidance from sixth sense guarantees crackups, because their causes can’t be seen by bodies’ eyes. It’s the root of all human misadventures, the ultimate cause of all human pain.

Sixth sense connects minds needing guidance with spontaneous insights through Intuition that connects with the source of guidance. With Logic-Love, our one ancestral Mind’s Source, through the agency of Soul that interconnects all of Life, all of Creation. That interconnects all minds whether conscious or unconscious, aware of Reality or dreaming of unreality. It’s our expressway to Understanding that’s accessible if we choose to relate to it and ask for its help. So that the hands on the wheel are the hands of Relationship and not just our own. Relationship with competence to share the driving and take us forward to satisfaction and pleasure instead of in circles of frustration and pain until we get it right.

The archetypal runaway kid

Our ancestral Mind’s home in Reality-Creation was Interconnected. The alternate “reality” where we find ourselves is disconnected. That is, it appears to be disconnected because separation in Reality is impossible. Disconnection is but our unawareness of connection brought on by self-delusion: the mistaken identity with our opposite, our shadow-reflection, that projected the dream.

What produced the Big Bang? Something analogous to the atomic bomb that released an atom’s nuclear force when it was split and devastated Hiroshima. An object lesson in the hazards of separating stuff that Reality says can’t be split. Our ancestral Mind, in extremis, sought safety in escape from Reality where it had lost consciousness and had no prospects of regaining consciousness. It was so desperate that it was willing to be led into an alternate “reality.”

To do this it needed to separate from Logic-Love, its Parents. It needed to break the Relationship that bound it to Life in Reality and to its function in Creation. As insane a thought as one can imagine, but this is what the self-deluded Child that we were was desperate to do. It performed a trick that psychology knows as “projection:” projecting itself out of Reality and into an alternate reality. Imagining that it was splitting its Relationship with its Parents.

One big exploding cigar

A split powered by Energy, the Force of Soul that Interconnects all of Reality, acting as it must at the direction of Mind. So momentous in its contradiction of this Force and Reality that it caused the equivalent of a nuclear explosion. That and the Child's unbearable pain of guilt that accompanied unconsciousness and its separation from Parents. Only on an unimaginable scale. Because in enlisting Energy to split the Relationship with Parents the Child was splitting Force itself. The Energy that powers our universe (metaverse?) is the dying Energy of entropy, not the living Energy of Reality-Creation.

All of it a phantasmagoria of impossibilities, but nevertheless seeming to be real because Energy, whose source is Soul, knows nothing of boundaries. Nothing of the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness because Everything is Interconnected. Even unreality that declares itself to our bodies’ senses as disconnected. If metaphysics relying on Logic-Love is certain that our alternate material “reality” is actually unreality -- an illusion -- minds dependent on sensory perception will point to Energy, in us and all around us, stored in matter, accounting for the strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and gravity, and be just as certain that it can’t be an illusion.

What does A Course in Miracles say about this? That we live in an unreal world that has been “made” real. Not in a world that was created by the Relationship but in a world that was imagined by an unconscious, dreaming Mind. What will it take for the illusion to disappear? Awakening. The Child regains consciousness, reversing the projection and Energy that had appeared to enable it. Poof -- gone!

When pain is all that’s left

Until that can happen we must come to terms with unmanageability. The alternate “reality” we occupy that seems to rest on a foundation of disconnection. Separation not only between the Child and its Parents, living Force from dying Force, but Logic from Love, mind from heart. The great overriding task of humanity is to help restore consciousness by bringing Logic and Love, mind and heart, back together. By ending the absurd notion that they can ever be split. And in so doing to help bring the Child to a state of maturity and competence, because otherwise it can’t be entrusted with its function -- Free Choice -- in Creation.

It's urgent that the Relationship be restored because it’s our moral compass, the source of Plato’s Good. The reasoning with values that civilize us and supposedly reside in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. Relationship with moral character is all there is to govern the “bad thing” that Sigmund Freud observed in the human psyche: our animal emotion, our predatory will, the blind instinct of herds and tribes to dominate and kill. The great overriding task of humanity is not to let the predatory will of our animal-herd instinct dominate the civilizing functions of Logic joined with Love, mind joined with heart. Not to let the body-centered sides of our personality types dominate the mind-centered sides.

What would motivate minds otherwise content with things as they are and resistant to change? Pain. The legacy of separation in alternate reality, in all its forms, can be enormous pain. The young hedonist wedded to bodily appetites, entertainments, and socializing invests more in the avoidance of pain as time goes by. Until bodies give out and pain is all that’s left.

Nixon’s folly was everyone’s folly

Nixon, smart and able, was certain that he was “right.” His decisions were all “reasoned.” His assumptions were all “correct.” Yet something still went catastrophically wrong. His situation swallowed him up and spit him out. He still went down. Unapologetic to the end. Inattentive to the broader context to the end because he put all his faith in his body’s five senses. He dismissed both the broader context and the sixth sense needed to make sense of it. Neither was relevant, and he paid a price.

Why is metaphysics relevant? Why is the metaphysics of Parmenides and the Gnostic teacher Valentinus relevant? Why is the metaphysics of Jesus and A Course in Miracles relevant?

First of all because Nixon was by no means alone. History has entertained and appalled us with many more examples of fools toppling themselves from the pinnacles of power to abject humiliation and impotence below. Because he is us -- ourselves as individuals and humanity as a whole. We are all Richard Nixons, all fools, on lesser scales. His wasn’t an example of one individual going down. He was all of us making fools of ourselves. He was humanity going down.

The difference between Heaven and hell

Metaphysics done right, that sees beyond appearances, is relevant because it’s Guidance from Logic-Love. Guidance from another perspective accessed through the sixth sense of Intuition, toward making sense. Toward decisions and choices by individuals and groups that perceive and judge correctly. In alignment with facts-circumstances, with reality, instead of out of alignment with facts-circumstances, with unreality.

Wisdom combined with compassion and patience instead of youthful folly. Instead of eternal adolescence, the state of humanity content with things as they are, determined not to grow up. Willing itself into situations that take it down until it runs out of situations.

Metaphysics may be the difference between pleasure and pain, winning and losing, success and failure. It may be the difference between conflict and peace, survival and extinction, heaven and hell. What more can we ask? That’s why it’s relevant.

Published on Leave a comment on Personality Type: Where Wrongdoing Hides and Hope Abides

The Course isn’t doctrine

The lesson taught by A Course in Miracles is not presented for acceptance by any group. The Course does not insist upon its acceptance without regard to practical considerations. Its intended audience is individuals not groups. Readers are discouraged from forming groups,. As theory it is not only fit for application to practical problems this is its purpose. It is not doctrine or doctrinaire, dogma or dogmatic. To treat it as such, as though it were a commandment or a party line, is not understanding and use but misunderstanding and misuse.

If the Course is to be distinguished from established religion this will explain why. If established religion is to understand why it is incompatible with the free spirit of inquiry and thus has earned the distrust and enmity of science, philosophy, psychology, and other fields this explains why. The Course is not doctrine meddling in anybody’s business, group or individual. It is a sharing of mind and heart from another perspective than our own, that can be put to anyone’s use not only for what it teaches but how it teaches it: by making sense with Logic and Love. By setting an example that Free Wills can choose to follow by making sense. With help from the Logic and Love they can access through their own minds and hearts.

This is not a formula for setting up an ideological mass movement of any kind, religious or otherwise. It is Authority from the Reality of Logic and Love that serve every individual, that could never be or do anything authoritarian. It is gentle loving kindness that could never be or do anything coercive, unloving, or unkind.

Is the Course practical?

If the Course does not aim to assert the supremacy of its wisdom over the consciousness of humanity then how can it be expected to be of practical use to humanity? If only one individual puts its lesson to use and truly Forgives, this will undo the delusion our ancestral Mind has brought upon itself. It will end the dream. “Every vote counts.” The Course isn’t handing Free Will a fish. It’s teaching Free Will how to fish. It’s the ultimate affirmation and empowerment of individual-personal Worth: the Authority of Logic and Love from Reality explaining to individuals, where they’re at inside the dream, that anyone of us has the power to awaken our ancestral Mind from its dream.

Is it possible? What is a dream but a state of mind  where anything is possible? If unconsciousness that’s dreaming could make a metauniverse “possible,” where we the projections of a dreaming mind carry its Soul within us, whole and inviolate, animated by the same Force of Energy that animates the universe, then who’s to say that one individual contradicting the lie of guilt that the whole edifice of lies is built upon, can’t bring it all down? Translating theory into practice must involve mind-changing on a scale that’s been role-modeled for us but never yet achieved by us. It must involve self-awareness  brought into intimacy with our role model with such passion that they function as one. There is no possibility that a Free Will compromised by any vestige of self-delusion can truly Forgive. But mind changed and functioning as one with its Guide, with the Voice for Logic and Love, can do it. In theory it’s possible.

When the herd transforms itself into One

When will it be possible? When the conditions that enable it are met: circumstances that have enabled every step forward in Creation since the first step was taken by Logic and Love. The indispensable element of every context that defines purpose and meaning: circumstances in the here and now. What is the gift of the Course? The light that it shines on our circumstances so one individual can take it from there and change them if Free Will chooses. If Free Will abandons its infatuation with the voice of its self-delusion and aligns with the Voice for Reality and Truth.

So that one member of the herd that is humanity may break free from the herd and assert the Truth: that “herd” is a lie. That Child-the-many is a delusion That our ancestral Mind is Child-the-One and all it takes to restore sanity is one. All it takes is for “herd” to do what it does best: to follow wherever it’s led. And if circumstances change that have placed the wrong “guide” at its head -- the self-delusion of Child-the-many -- then exposing the lie will place the right Guide at its head. The right Guide that is the herd itself transformed by its own Free Choice back into one. Self-delusion restored to Truth. Wishful thinking giving way to fact. With the guidance but not the coercion of metaphysics going behind appearances to explain with Logic and Love. With Intuition.

The gift of metaphysics that’s role-modeled by the Course

What does this suggest for how individuals can help to bring about the circumstances that will enable Forgiveness? That we look to personality types. That we follow the wisdom of Isabel Myers, who intuited from Carl Jung’s intuition that personality types are dynamic rather than static. That they are subject to direction and discipline by their hosts. Personality types are composed of preferences among functions that can change. Functions divided between bodies, minds, and feelings that, depending on how the individual configures them, determine how individuals judge their situation. That is, how they understand.

Personality types reliant on body-sensing to understand their world judge humanity’s situation to be the opposite of the situation described by the Course. Judge themselves to be members of a herd or tribe. Accessing their personality’s capacity for Intuition could change that with Intuition’s access to Logic and Love. The gift of metaphysics that’s role-modeled by the Course.

The circumstance that needs to change

Circumstances are always idiosyncratic. Because the essence of circumstances that make up context is always unique to the individual. This is what gives them meaning. The circumstances that produced organic matter on earth -- “life” -- are idiosyncratic, unique to the earth and its situation. A tale told by Sean B. Carroll in A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You (Princeton 2020). The circumstances that produced our universe are idiosyncratic, suggesting that other universes exhibit different physics and that the differences imply the existence of a great many universes -- a “metaverse.”

The choice of the individual to remain deluded by the deception or to gain self-awareness comes down to a preference starting with two functions of personality type: between body-sensing and Intuition. Between seeing ourselves as bodies or seeing ourselves as minds. And ending with two other functions: judging and perceiving. Which do we prefer? If we wish to judge our situation differently so that our circumstances will align with the possibility of true Forgiveness, then the way forward is clear: recognize ourselves as minds not bodies and seek the Truth of our situation through mind-Intuition rather than preferring body-sensing. 

The trouble with humanity’s “feeling” 

Brain matter that registers and processes relations between physical objects, the body and its physical environment, is distinct from mind producing thoughts, from feeling producing empathy. The personality type extravert-sensing-feeling-perceptive (ESFP) can be a suitable stand-in for humanity when generalizing about personality type and its role in mind-changing. It’s all in for body vs. mind. It registers and processes all things physical, i.e. appearances on the surface. Anything beneath the surface escapes its notice. It isn’t felt and doesn’t register. Another’s physical pain registers but if it’s emotional pain that body-sensing can’t detect it makes no impression.

The ’F’ for feeling in the ESFP syndrome isn’t what “feeling” would normally imply -- empathy and compassion. A point where my interpretation and Isabel’s may diverge because my understanding goes beyond the scope of Gifts Differing. As I see it Intuition-Logic and Love-feeling guide thinking-reasoning toward judgment-understanding, much like organic entitles in constant motion acting upon one another. Body-sensing navigates spacetime-matter to keep bodies safe. But when body-sensing teams up with the perceptive function that’s opposite to judging, it can connect with specialness.  With body-brains’ animal herd-will that interferes with thinking-reasoning instead of guiding it.

The trouble with humanity’s “specialness” 

Specialness denies that either thinking or the direction and discipline of judging is needed. What’s needed is itself: one supreme authority without opposition. The impossibility of Freedom without Order. The bogus ideal of “liberty” without limits that fuels political polarization. The ESFP who takes the lure chooses in effect to elevate body-specialness to authoritarian supremacy to the exclusion of introspection, reflection, thinking, feeling, and judgment -- every function of mind needed for understanding and compassion. At great cost to itself in impaired vision and feeling, psychotic denial of reality, separation from valued relationships, lack of self-guidance and self-discipline, and stifled learning, growth, and creativity. “Lord” Vader in lordly isolation on his throne. The apotheosis of humanity's animal brain, the "triumph of the will."

Those of us who recoil from this behavior do so for self-preservation because, without feeling, ESFPs can’t understand. And if they tread on us there’s a good chance they’ll do it again. Not feeling the cost of their missteps and not understanding how it happened, they’ll assign responsibility to us for protesting and carry on unaccountably. And if we stand up for justice we will be smeared. They are not safe to be around. Many of us have had run-ins with ESFPs so we know the type. But if we haven’t noticed the Former Guy, an ESFP, is making sure that we do.

A way to facilitate personality type change

Personality types are supposed to protect us, like the body’s immune system, with failsafe mechanisms against wrongdoing. But this requires that the working parts of personalities function in harmony. In our separated world they don’t. Without feeling which derives from Love we can’t know the difference between right-doing and wrong-doing. Feeling is the wall between right and wrong and in some personality types it’s missing. The result is serial offenders like the Former Guy whose “reality” is the one-dimensional world of entertainment, populated by figures deprived of feelings and the values that go along with them. A “reality” of chaos that aspires to its apotheosis: authoritarian supremacy.

One possible remedy is for ESFPs exercising Free Will to shift their preferences from body-sensing that validates self-identity as body toward mind-intuiting that validates self-identity as mind. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness from personal experience but that may change.

Lunacy on an epic scale

Why is it important?

Because physical appearances and humanity’s body-identifying, body-sensing mindset deluded by spacetime-matter are enormously harmful. A mindset that deprives itself of sensitivity to circumstances beneath appearances deprives itself of feeling essential to compassion, loving kindness, and understanding. The damage isn’t limited to relationship friction or even the communal wreckage that one noisy demagogue can cause. It’s a curse that’s built into the human condition -- historic and universal.

How fundamentally nuts is this? Take another look at circumstances. Circumstances are with us always. They provide meaning from the bottom up: the essential element of the construct that would collapse if it were not grounded. The essential element of presence of mind, the first line of defense against misperception and misjudgment. Against mistake.

Detachment from circumstances commenced our ancestral Mind’s loss of Consciousness. Defined its situation while it deluded itself into recognizing its own shadow-reflection, its own opposite, as an “other.” Surrendered its independent sovereign judgment -- Free Will -- to the delusion so that a substitute will, another “parent,” would find and attach it to better circumstances. The opposite of where it had been so that it would be safe.

So that this couldn’t happen again because now it rules. Alone from the top down instead of sharing governance from the bottom up, grounded in circumstances that might change and rob it of Consciousness again. Rules from the top down where it can never again be blindsided by change because now it is the logic that defines both: its circumstances and change too. Where detachment from circumstances that define Reality from the ground up, rather than attachment, is now the order of the day.

Applause, please

And what is the order of the day? Psychosis. Unreality detached from sanity that can make sense of its circumstances. Recognized by itself not as a sign of madness but as the emblem of cool. Detached from awareness that knows who and where it is -- the very definition of a fool. Finding safety, the why and how of it, in wishful thinking that buries its head in the sand. All of it a magician’s act that accomplishes the impossible with one simple trick: making circumstances disappear. The act of a mind unconscious and delusional: getting rid of the foundation of all of Reality-Creation -- its circumstances. The act of a fool captive to authoritarian supremacy.

This is why it’s important.

Published on Leave a comment on To a Young Friend with a Very Special Talent

Gaslighting that's for fun

Before you and I get to the matter at hand, I just want to remind us both of the importance of coordination. You know, being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Now, that’s never been a problem for me. But I do have a problem with something else, and I’m sure you’re just the one to help with this. Being able to walk and fart at the same time.

The word all over is that you can do anything and fart at the same time. I’ve worked so hard at this, and I just can’t seem to do it. I hope I never see another can of beans! They say you don’t even need to eat beans; it just comes naturally. What an incredible talent! I’m so jealous. I wish I could be just like you and sit down to dinner with a room full of people all dressed up in white tie and tails and evening gowns and light up the place. Awesome! Everyone looking shocked, disgusted, holding their noses, excusing themselves to go throw up or just throwing up right there in their Vichyssoise.

We should wait to get your sister's opinion because she’s really good at describing vomit. Maybe it would have a more dramatic effect if people threw up in their caviar. What do you think? But, of course, I’m talking to the world record holder for throwing up and farting at the same time. Now, that’s coordination!

Next week I hope we can have another great discussion like this. Maybe about how important it is to always be grown up and display good taste. That would be very timely because I have no talent for that, and you don’t either. Being really coordinated is no help here at all. Anyway, I don’t want you to change. I’ll never be grown up and have good taste, and if you’re grown up, we can’t be friends. So, I’m counting on us both being rotten little kids forever so we can be best friends forever. Here – have a nice steaming hot bowl of beans. Let ‘er rip!

Gaslighting that's not so much fun

People who think they’re bodies call themselves “realists.” People who identify with their minds think of themselves as “idealists.” There are a lot more “realists” than “idealists.” Still, that’s one of the main ways people divide themselves up because their differences show up everywhere. Like in how things are explained, how they’re governed or managed, how they’re decided. Realists being more numerous doesn’t make them right, but then the way things are going it doesn’t look like either one is right. Body-realist or mind-idealist = perfection to some, a big mess to others.

Have you thought about body vs. mind since I brought this up? Once a person decides which they prefer it’s pretty hard to change. It has consequences for themselves and others, too, because what will prevent consequences we don’t want may just be if idealists make better use of their minds. Body-realists tend to be OK with things as they are, and since they let their bodies do their thinking for them, they’re not likely to change. If idealists using their minds do change and get it right, maybe there’s hope.

The part of the body that does the thinking for a lot of “realists” is the base of the brain that sits at the top of the spine. It’s the part of the brain that connects us to our ancestors who swung from trees and lived on bananas. It’s actually called our “reptilian” brain, so I guess dinosaurs figure in there somewhere, too. It’s never evolved, and it doesn’t actually think. It directs us to act from instinct. You know, forget about being fancy with clever reasoning: just pounce on prey or snatch food or a mate, or beat up an enemy. Or run away if your enemy is bigger. “Fight or flight.”

King of the beasts

You’d think even realists who identify with their bodies wouldn’t want their behavior to be ruled by something so primitive. But there was a time and a place when a lot of them made a point of it. When they caused a whole lot of trouble -- 1930’s Germany. They associated instinct with action and action with having a will of steel and a will of steel with power that always dominates. That puts the “winner” on top with no more competition because everyone else is defeated. All by letting themselves be ruled by their bodies – by instinct acting -- instead of by their minds and hearts – by reason thinking and affect feeling. Letting themselves be ruled by instinct rooted in a part of the brain that links us to animals. That’s how Nazis “thought,” and when they let it turn them into an unthinking mob that attacked its neighbors, they started World War II.

The way they glorified their awful attitude was calling it “The Triumph of the Will.” You can Google it. It sought to put all of humanity under the yoke of one person’s mindless animal instinct. Its name was “Hitler.”

You’d think that everyone would be horrified but they aren’t. There’s a whole strain of art, music, literature, philosophy, and political ideology that glorifies “blood and soil,” tribal loyalty, racial supremacy, right-brained mysticism, and such. It’s what motivated the mob that attacked the capitol in Washington on January 6. All friendly to body and hostile to mind. All dangerous nonsense. But if you identify with your body instead of your mind, this is where it can take you.

Let's be rotten little kids forever

So, with your principal’s honor roll mind and talent for writing, maybe becoming a mind-idealist will make more sense and someday they’ll erect a statue in your honor at Andrews Park. To attract pigeons, and it will be engraved “Tomb of the Unknown Nobody.” OK, I’m being silly. Of course, it will say “World Class Coordinator.”

I’m sorry. I was trying to set an example for mindful idealism and got distracted. Not growing up is so much more fun. All the same, “World Class Coordinator” sounds pretty cool!

I have to go now. My limousine is waiting. I’ve been invited to a Hollywood dinner party where everyone will be dressed in white tie and tails and evening gowns, and they’re serving Vichyssoise. They told me there will be a young guest who will demonstrate her special talent. I can’t wait!

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Published on 1 Comment on Getting Rid of Guilt: The Possibility and Impossibility of Forgiveness

Logic and Feeling cannot be separate

Mind-thoughts and Love-feelings are both corrupted in our unreal, material world. Feelings are corrupted by non-being’s shadow code that doesn’t just rely on deceptions made “true” by flawed Logic but also convincingly by corrupted-manipulated feelings. How can both be corrected when feelings seem unrelated to thoughts? When what corrects mind can seem powerless to change feelings? Are they even related?

Jesus in A Course in Miracles makes Logic clear how to un-corrupt thinking and by inference how to rationalize the relationship between thinking and feeling so that uncontrolled feelings don’t contradict Reason. I.e. so they don’t contradict Logos, a representation of “God” favored by ancient Greek, Judaic, and Christian thought.

Favored also here with one possible distinction. “Logos” here is Logic / Authority-Judgment, and its definition centers on Reciprocity, the essence of Love. The interconnections of Logic’s implications, that govern all of Reality-Creation, are accomplished by the Reciprocity of Love: giving and giving back. Just as Mind and Love cannot be separate, neither can Logic and Feeling be separate. This is the attribute of “God” that undercuts the false premises, the misperceptions that deny the Logic of Authority-Judgment: its infinitely benevolent Reality and Truth.

Reversing the psychology of guilt’s projection

Brain-body sensing instincts that are tied to fight-or-flight fear, to food-procreation satisfaction, and other emotions attracting and repelling, are rooted in the origins of body-life, in the instinct for individual survival, in species propagation, dominance and protection. All reinforce the psychology of guilt-fear and hatred rooted in the origin of the unconscious Child-mind’s illusion, his dream of our material world. Our bodies’ sensing and feelings of guilt-fear manifest the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt-fear.

This defines the relationship between body-sensing emotions and emotions associated with the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt. They are all of one piece. They are not separate, unrelated. One produced the other; one is dependent on the other. Correcting source-one will remove the dependent-other.

Correcting the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt-fear will reverse its signature projection of guilt-fear. It will withdraw the illusion-dream back within Child-mind and cause its manifestation to de-materialize, i.e. to disappear. Corrupted feelings hard-wired into the human psyche from the origin of life will then align with Logic / Authority-Judgment, i.e. with Reason. It will happen when Child-mind corrects error, regains Consciousness with help from his Parents-Innocence, and ends the illusion-dream. It will happen when sensory perception and the material world of appearances that upholds it – when brain-body sensing -- is ended.

Until then, the practice of “Forgiveness” in our material world can never be free of contradictory feelings of guilt-fear and hate that are hard-wired into brain-body sensing. True Forgiveness requires an act of Child-Psyche that stops the projection of guilt. That opens Child-mind to recognition of his Innocence and triggers his awakening to Consciousness. It’s an act preceded and enabled by his choice of the correct Guide, the Holy Spirit, his link to Reality-Creation and Truth, and by his abandonment of the ego unreality-untruth, the wrong guide.

Logic / Authority-Judgment protects Innocence and Freedom

When guilt-projection stops, the “other” ceases to be “there.” Because all “they” are – all “we” are – is a projection of guilt by an unconscious dreaming Child. “They” disintegrate like the hobo in Polar Express even though they evoked feelings that seemed to verify their existence. That seemed to verify that they’re “there” because feelings seemed to connect us.

When projection of guilt stops, when the “other” is gone, it’s because self discovers that there’s no guilt at its source to project. The “other” became instrumental in recognizing the truth of self-Innocence by removing the object of projection, the illusion of an “other” to project guilt onto. The lure of an “other” who can be the object-target of projection perpetuates the act of self-punishment for guilt. The act of mis-identification of self as the embodiment of guilt that must be projected out-onto “others” to get rid of it. Projection of guilt imagined as lethal attack against others is the ego’s perversion of the Child’s otherwise harmless attempt to recognize himself as Innocent.

Recognition of self-Innocence requires Intuition from the Holy Spirit, the gift of Reason: Intuition that the Reality-Truth of Logic / Authority-Judgment is that it is for the Protection of Innocence and Freedom. That the Order and Discipline of Logic are not meant for condemnation. Not meant for oppression, control, guilt or captivity. These are ego-projections of guilt by an unconscious Child not in his right mind. They are projections by our corrupted minds that alienate us from the Will of Benevolence that would free us. That would restore Innocence and remove the need for Forgiveness.

Projection of guilt is guaranteed to fail

Projection of guilt entraps Child-mind / humanity in cyclical attempts to reclaim Innocence that are guaranteed to fail. Getting rid of guilt by expelling it from mind is impossible: thought cannot be separated from mind its source. Irrationality is not the way to reclaim Innocence. Insanity is not the way to reclaim Freedom.

There’s no “other” to project guilt onto. There’s no guilt to project because Logic / Authority-Judgment and the Child’s Parents, Mind-Love Innocence, could not put it there in the first place. Authority is the Necessity of Logic’s laws of cause and effect. Neither Necessity nor Order, prerequisites for Freedom, can be dictatorship or captivity. The lies of the ego non-being are perversions of Logic and its laws as captor not liberator, of its Judgment, its protection of Innocence, as projection of guilt.

These are two seminal errors of corrupted mind-thought and Love-feeling: Logic as captor, Authority-Judgment as projection of guilt. Thus corrupted, Child-mind then “chose” ego guide’s insane thought system, accepted ego’s illogic as captor, and projected “guilt.” Undoing the ego’s lies requires denying that Logic is captor, that Authority-Judgment is projection of guilt.

Forgiveness is undoing the Big Lie

What is the root of the ego non-being’s deception? Mischaracterization of Logic / Authority-Judgment. Perversion of Logic’s Innocence into guilt. Perversion of God / Love into illogic-ego / hate. One of five laws of chaos cited by the Course that disrupt our world. The Big Lie that alienates us from our Parents and from one another with guilt, fear, and hatred.

Forgiveness is undoing the Big Lie:

(1) The assumption of Judgment-guilt that isn’t here within us.
(2) The projection of Judgment-guilt to reclaim Innocence that isn’t possible.
(3) The assumption of “others:” objects of Judgment-guilt that aren’t “there” outside of us, that were only put “there” to sustain the illusion.

Forgiveness is recognizing the Truth about Logic / Authority-Judgment: Love-Innocence, the opposite of ego-guilt, fear and hate.

Forgiveness is freely choosing the right Guide

Forgiveness is a matter of free choice: Do we choose the Holy Spirit for our guide or the ego? The Intuition of mind or the sensing of body? The Judgment, Order, and Discipline of one personality type or the perception without Judgment of another? Choice requires Free Will, the Child’s unique gift to Creation. To the Creation and Reciprocation of Worth, the purpose and meaning of Creation that depends on the Child’s Free Will. In alignment with Logic’s laws of cause and effect and always with guidance from our Parents, Mind-Love, who gave their Child Free Will.

In their interactions with their Child through the Holy Spirit our Parents consistently role-model respect for it. It is an example we are meant to follow. The ego invades; the Holy Spirit guides when asked, consciously or sub-consciously. As the Course says, the ego’s voice always speaks first and it’s always wrong.

Can a Child endowed with Free Will and a central role in Creation do his job by joining a “flock?” Freely choose in Reality or in unreality by “surrendering?” Think about it.

Published on Leave a comment on From Anguish to Comfort: Accessing Intuition to Deal with Loneliness

Getting beyond appearances with Intuition

Isabel Myers believes that just because we get good use out of some elements of our personalities doesn’t mean we can’t get use out of all the elements. If accessing Intuition helps Intuitive Introverts fend off loneliness but Intuition hasn’t been put to much use by Sensing Extraverts, it doesn’t mean they can’t learn to use it. Isabel says so in her book Gifts Differing. Sensing Extraverts have Intuition and can use it to put an end to sadness living alone. Their personality type doesn’t take much interest in people’s internals and it’s time it did.

Sensing Extraverts are gifted with externals. They look outward rather than within to establish what’s real for them, to find Worth and affirm it, and to meet their needs. Sensing types identify with the body rather than with mind which is not matter. They rely on their bodies’ senses to tell them what’s real when they look outward. They do not rely on Intuition. This deprives them of attributes of mind – the inner guidance of Logic, insight, and wisdom – we all need to see beyond appearances. To get at the Truth and Meaning of things that lie behind the distractions and facades imposed on us by our bodies and their physical environment.

Sensing Extraverts get by without concerning themselves with internals, but that changes when they age and social connections dry up. Their internals tell them that this is so. Every time they feel the anguish of loneliness and abandonment, it’s their internals reminding them that they have work to do: to let go of attachments to externals which are only appearances. To get serious about attachments to what aren’t appearances: their real Self, their real Worth, their real companions. Their inner Guide who loves them, wants them to be happy, and will lead them there if they let her know that’s what they truly want of their own Free Will.

"Happiness is an inside job"

If they truly want companionship that will end the anguish of loneliness then they should know that what they truly want is to connect with their Self. With their inner Guide who’s there for them if they choose to connect with her through their own Intuition. In their youth, they may have suspected that “happiness is an inside job.” They may have written it, recited it, without reflecting on it. What it means is when other people can no longer provide companionship, there’s an alternative. An even better source of companionship than other people that Intuitive Introverts are blessed with: the Truth that we are never alone. That no one, including Sensing Extraverts, need ever be alone.

I’ve spoken in the past of the inner Guide that Christianity refers to as the Holy Spirit. I’ve suggested that Sensing Extraverts reach out to their inner Guide – to connect with their Self so they don’t have to be so dependent on others – by putting their thoughts and feelings of the moment into words. By bringing them to the surface and working with them. Teasing implications and meaning out of them by letting their minds reflect on them. Realizing that every thought, every feeling, is led forward by their implications to a deeper understanding of where they’re coming from and what they mean. To the message of Love and Hope they have for us when we delve into them and allow them to speak to us.

Experiencing emotions like grief and abandonment without inquiring into them is missing opportunities. To find and articulate the purpose and meaning of Life. The purpose that Life has for each of us subjectively, individually. Inquiring into feelings means being with them, letting them speak to us of their own accord, unforced, through the spontaneity, the Free Will of our Intuition. Through the Memory that all of humanity shares.

Serving a cause worth living for and not being alone

Where our inner Guide is to be found is not in anything to do with “social.” With professional resumes that detail our service to groups and their agendas. With social connections and the broad sweep of history’s flawed ideologies. With the “broad sweep” of anything. It’s in the specific circumstances of our individual lives in the moment. Accompanied by our most intimate thoughts and feelings. These frame the context Logic needs to answer the questions that trouble us: Where are we and what are we doing here? What is our Purpose? Where is Meaning? How can we turn the pain and despair of loneliness into fulfillment instead of emptiness? Into a sense that we serve a cause worth living for and in doing so we are not alone?

The key to getting started is putting thoughts and feelings into words. Composing sentences that require thought, that open us up to what’s going on inside our minds where the questions are, where the pain is coming from. Letting them lead us forward through their implications to deeper understanding, deeper connections, until there is reciprocation. Until our minds open and become accessible to another Self hearing us, responding to us. Until our awareness is no longer limited to bodies taking up space in rooms but is instead liberated by Mind to explore an expanding universe of possibilities. Our other Self, our Real Self, is there because our Intuition is there. The Sensing Extravert’s Intuition is there.

I describe what Intuition is and what it does. We all have Intuition. Sensing Extraverts’ Intuition hasn’t been exercised much over the years not from negligence but simply because of their personality type. Isabel’s theory is well served by Intuition and it tells us that they can fix that.

Questions of purpose and meaning always begin with circumstances

When Sensing Extraverts write what’s on their minds what they will be bringing to awareness is their circumstances in the moment. They will be examining their lives in all their extraordinariness and banality down to the last detail, as if they were looking at them through a magnifying glass. If they wonder what they would have to say to their typewriters, their computers, this is my answer. Getting at purpose and meaning must begin with where we’re at. Because without context Logic has nothing to work with. The philosophy built on this premise has a name: it’s called “existentialism.”

When Alice B. Toklas asked Gertrude Stein on her deathbed, “What’s the answer?”, Gertrude is said to have answered, “What’s the question?” It’s taken as a joke but it’s right on. Questions of purpose and meaning always begin and end with circumstances. With circumstances that are experienced, i.e. lived. Subjectively not objectively: with personal hopes, fears, desires, ideals, passions, pleasures and hurts, vulnerability and wounds, perceptions and beliefs, rationality and craziness. A point I’ve tried to make in Origin and Meaning: the Logic of Everything (April 4).

It’s hard for Sensing Extraverts to be subjective rather than objective. Being Introspective, self-aware. They can change that by accessing their Introvert. Any Introvert can help.

Our circumstances are raw material for purpose and meaning and there’s plenty of it in every life. Getting a handle on where we want to be headed now begins with being intimate with our situation, the details of our circumstances. With the specifics of what our mind-Logic and our heart-feelings have to say about them. Every observation we put in writing will lead to another observation. We will be led by Logic and by value, what our minds’ reflections produce and by the feelings they evoke.

The dynamic of conversation with our Self

Our individual worlds may seem static at first. Not being used to this Sensing Extraverts may even feel resistance. But as our Intuition opens up, as reflections come of their own accord, there will be movement. Our worlds will expand. They will be less and less anchored to concrete physical reality and more and more attuned to conversation, a dynamic-reciprocal flow of thoughts that won’t let us rest until the points our inner Guide wants us to have are made. Until the gifts of insight that incubate with yearning are brought to life through Intuition.

If I were the inner Guide of a Sensing Extravert suffering with loneliness I would be encouraged. Because I would know that I’m loved. That my host wants to be close. Yearns to connect, to communicate, and be involved with me. Other people fill hearts with love, too. But they come and go, don’t they? They’re not always available. And even when they are they can make us think we’re better off alone.

Our inner Guide is our connection to our Real Self, our Real Parents, our Real Home. She’s always available. My inner Guide has expanded into a spiritual-personal family: spiritual, human, and animal friends inhabiting a Temenos of soaring moonlit clouds, lakes, mountains, forests and streams. Lighthouses and great trees all connecting me with Mind and Love. Aligning my thoughts with Logic that leads me purposefully, joyfully back Home.

Feeling better

Want to feel better? That’s what our inner Guide is all about. It’s her whole purpose. So if you’re a lonely Sensing Extravert get to work! Your Intuition is waiting. She’s waiting.