The 1 percent are exploiting the 99 percent. Those who are slow to understand are propagandised to believe it is the other poor who are exploiting them. They think the problem is that other oppressed people are not carrying their weight, when actually the problem is that much of the billionaire class is just looting everyone else and doing nothing for humanity. Those slow to understand are using alcohol, caffeine, nicotine etc. to keep themselves in a self-righteous haze, but they are waking up.
We could come together in caring communities, together meeting all of our needs locally, but we are oppressed with war machinery that serves only the interests of a wealthy few. We are making weapons that are being deployed on the poor in other parts of the earth. War is a technique used by a few powerful business tycoons to impoverish and destabilize a region. Then the exploiters can come in and offer jobs paying a pittance, and appear to be improving the lives of those devastated by the war. The real threat comes from those powerful ones who are caught up in an addiction to an extreme monetary gain, not the fictional enemy created to justify an invasion.
Our food, fuel, fabric, flowers, building materials and manufactured goods could be grown or produced locally. Instead, food and other goods travel long distances with all stages in the process being exploited by a powerful few.
We could live in dense walkable communities with dwellings, gardens, orchards, stores, schools, libraries, office space, industry, healthcare, meadow and forest close by. We could be living and working in worker-resident owned cooperatives. Elders could help with child care. Instead we have an apartment with no access to garden, or a tract house with scarcely room for a small garden, surrounded by strangers, everyone with a long commute to work, elders and children being kept apart. We work for employers who exploit us, and we rent or buy our dwellings from developers who exploit us. Exploiters want to make a big killing off real estate deals and they do.
We could stay healthy eating fresh, local produce, sustainably grown, without the use of toxic substances, electro and herbal medicine and nontoxic dentistry when necessary. Treatment protocols could be based on evidence of efficacy for the patient. Instead we eat nutritionally deficient and toxic food, grown far away, and are given toxic drugs and invasive surgeries, when sick, that benefit no one but the pharmaceutical-medical-insurance industry. For instance, cancer sufferers who have their sufferings augmented with chemotherapy have less than a 20% survival rate after five years (but the medical establishment makes a lot of money off the misery of cancer patients and their families). Vaccinations and dental restorations are laden with heavy metals and other toxins. Pioneers in electro medicine died under mysterious circumstances. Pioneers in Natural Hygiene and Naturopathy were worn down by frequent jailings and other harassment. Treatment protocols are primarily based on what is profitable for medical institutions, not what is effective in aleving suffering.
It will not require a majority of aware people to turn the tide, I don’t believe, just a significant minority, because the majority of people don’t think for themselves anyway.
We who are aware can all meditate and breathe into the entities that should serve us, exhaling the oppression and expectantly inhaling the blessings to come. There will be those who will respond with love. Eventually love will win.
Albino Lizard
There is a deeper meaning behind the mundane
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We’ve got criminals demanding to be treated like decent people. Well there are different rules for criminals. They certainly play by a different rule-book. We too should have different etiquettes for interactions with criminals and interactions with decent people. Do we pray to the devil the same way we pray to God? I don’t think so
So to start, let’s define criminal behavior. Secondly, we should recognize criminal behavior when we see it, or are informed about it. Then we need to consider the difference between how we respectfully relate to decent people and how we apply the law to criminals.
Criminals tell lies. These are not miscalculations, figures of speech or lapses in memory. These are bold, calculated misrepresentations of facts.
Criminals are not humble nor contrite. They blatantly disrespect others. They are openly murderous and oppressive to those they perceive as powerless.
Criminals are motivated solely by self-interest. Concern for others is never a consideration.
Can we agree on these descriptors of criminals? Are we under any obligation, then, to allow criminals the same rights as decent people?Once we have heard a person’s lies enough times, and heard about people hurt, stolen from, oppressed, raped and killed by that person, enough times, doesn’t there come a point where we can make the judgment that that person is a criminal? And once enough of us have made that judgment, doesn’t a different behavior, on our part toward him or her, apply? Do we have to extend a podium to that person so he or she can continue to lie to us and propagandize us from the same place of power we give to those who have earned our respect? What kind of sense does that make?
The things that are wrong in this world can be corrected by curtailing criminal behavior. The three steps of defining criminal behavior, recognising criminals, and then putting criminals in their place, will be done, once enough of us stop making excuses for blatant criminality.
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I wrote “Eating Healthy On A. Budget” three years ago. Some things have changed. Some things are still the same. We still eat two meals per day, both of which are vegan. The first meal is all raw: fruit, nuts and seeds. The second meal is a gently cooked whole plant starch with raw vegetables or salad.
We have lost the ability to drive our jeep to our retreat. We now carry food for a couple of miles, uphill and down, in our backpacks. We use a ceramic filter and captured rain water.
I found I had to rethink my diet choices while on retreats after hurting myself carrying too heavy a load of fresh fruit and vegetables. I started taking dehydrated fruit and vegetables, which I soak prior to eating. I put some oatmeal in the soak along with the died fruit, nuts and seeds. It’s great! It’s almost time for breakfast, and I’ll eat what I put to soak yesterday.
Since we’re in the middle of a rain storm the solar oven will not work for the millet I plan on making for later, so I’ll cook it on the wood stove. On sunny days I much prefer to go solar.
Guess I’d better sign off before I run down my phone any more. Not sure how much sun there’ll be today to recharge.
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I turned my pain into art. When the last straw occurred, we were part way up the trail to our retreat. After that I marched on, hitting the trail with my stick in my anger. An hour and a half later, I was at the utility tailer where our instruments are. My guitar has been my therapy for a long time. It was again. When I thought of a funny line for a blues, I laughed. By the time he arrived, I no longer had the urge to give him a piece of my mind.
You talk talk talkin’, talkin’ all the time.
You talk talk talkin’, talkin’ all the time.
I can’t fit a word in so I just stop tryin’.
I try to say something, and you shoot my words away.I try to say something, and you shoot my words away.
Alright, go ahead, just talk to yourself all day!
You say, “what do you think baby?” and now your gonna yell.
You say, “what do you think baby?” and now your gonna yell.
Is it really my turn, well how am I supposed to tell?
I talk or just keep quiet, either way I lose.
I talk or just keep quiet, either way I lose.
I’m tired of your monologue, you hog the conversation blues!
To be fair the last few days have been difficult for us both. Perhaps he took the brunt of it and shielded me from the onslaught from without. I’m crying because he passed some of his pain on to me. The county is being difficult to us about a vacant piece of land we own. They won’t help us move forward; they just fine us for visiting, calling it illegal storage when there’s nothing there! It’s really difficult.
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My foot slammed into the brake, and the car lurched to a stop. Something on the console fell to the floor. Traffic had suddenly bunched up in front of me around a blind curve. I took my foot off the brake allowing the car to cautiously move forward again. The closest we had come to the car ahead was approximately 2 car lengths.
I breathed a sigh of relief. We had come through that one okay. I heard no gratitude for an incident well-handled from the passenger.
“Why do you speed up into brake lights? I don’t understand it. You always drive that way. I drive completely differently. I yelled, ‘Stop!’ three times before you finally took your foot off the gas and put it on the brake. You always ignore me. You know everything. You’re the perfect driver, like you’re perfect about everything. You don’t have anything to learn from me. Look at you. You run over curbs, drive into ditches, scratch up our new car. Oh but you’re just perfect. I don’t drive like you do. I watch where I’m going. When there’s brake lights ahead, I slow down. Your foot’s on the gas now. They’re going to slow down again, and you’re going to hit the brakes again. Gas brake gas brake. I don’t drive that way. I told you to stay in the left lane, but you ignored me like you always do. See? The right lane ends and you have to merge. I’m sure you do this on purpose because you know it upsets me…”
Eventually I got sick of that and gave him a piece of my mind, at high pitch and top volume of course, or he would just interrupt me. I told him the facts as I saw them, several times. Each time he would repeat his spiel again.
Now here I am taking inventory. The car is fine, our bodies are fine. All our possessions that we keep in the car are fine.
Emotionally I’m a train wreck. Why does love have to hurt? There is an argument for being alone. Maybe it’s lonely, but it doesn’t verbally abuse you. Maybe you don’t have anybody to love, but you don’t have anybody to hurt you either. Is companionship worth the pain?
Well it doesn’t matter. Even though he is right next to me, I can ignore him and be by myself. If he makes himself difficult to ignore, I can get in a different vehicle like I am now. We have two of them here. I need to get some sleep so I’m going to get in the vehicle where the bed is.
It’s typical that harsh words come my way whenever life gives him something difficult. Stopping suddenly in a traffic situation is one of his triggers. Why do I have to just take the blame? When he and I argue about what a lie is and who is lying, he thinks that if he is the last one to call me a liar that his assertion becomes true when I stop rebutting it. Okay, you’re playing hard ball with the word ‘liar’ that we’re batting back and forth. We’ll see who can go without sex the longest.
Whoever cheats pays for the divorce!
Of course it will be him that can go without the longest. I can’t hold out very long. Maybe being micromanaged and controlled would make some sense if you would put your hands on my ass .
He showed me a quote from Buddha about happiness is looking within and unhappiness is reacting to outside circumstances that won my heart and I was wrapped around him again.
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Suddenly a large water main gushed forth: “Sssssssssss!” Actually there was no water in this dry desert landscape. I looked next to the boulder in front of me and there in the shade, at the base of a rock, was a large snake, coiled and shaking it’s rattle-tail.
Part of me wanted to make a stand, and that’s the part I should have gone with. But no, after poking the snake with my walking stick, I ran like a scared rabbit, only much more clumsily than the rabbit would have run. I stumbled, did a front flip and landed on my backpack, which cushioned my fall with the large canvas tarp it contained. I didn’t see the snake coming after me, so I lay there a couple minutes. I still had the stick, which I had found along the trail somewhere, in my left hand. It had served me well for several hikes already. I hadn’t bumped my head. The only injuries I noticed were a sore right hip, and a sore joint on the last segment of my right ring finger. I staggered to my feet with the heavy pack. What was I thinking? I asked myself. Why did I get off the trail?
Three days ago, Jim and I performed for a Farmer’s market. I met the manager for the first time that day. We had arrived early so I was taking my time about setting up. Then I was informed, that instead of the three hours we had prepared, we only had one hour, and instead of starting in an hour and a half, we would be starting in 30 minutes. I felt stunned, and needed some face time with the Creator. There was nowhere to go, so I just turned my face away.
What would we do? Would we plan a different set list for the hour, or just use the first hour of the three-hour list Jim and I had mapped out together? I pulled out the list and looked at it. There was hardly time to do much remapping. I decided to make one change and coordinated that with Jim.
Later that evening I got a text that the board had decided to use another act for their fourth Sunday. I was stunned again. But working with someone who thinks nothing of jerking you around (the farmer’s market manager), is probably not something to fight for. If we had been informed in advance that it was to be an hour’s audition, we would have prepared differently. We could have perfected the 15 pieces we ended up playing (and singing). Instead, we had spent a lot of practice time pulling three hours of material together!
So I was bored yesterday and wanted to explore. Plus I thought if I just went straight downhill, instead of following the meandering trail, I would get to the bottom faster. Well I was wrong. Jim was flaked out on a sand barge when I got there. He gently scolded me for getting off the trail. Then he said, “There really isn’t anything I can say, because if you decide to do it again, you’ll do it again.” He knows me well.
The long uphill stretch was tortuous with my heavy pack. I took the tarp out and had to go back a ways later and retrieve it, plus Jim helped me carry it much of the way even though that meant he carried two of them. They are cotton canvas, 12’x8′. They each weigh about 15 pounds. I was tired of the way plastic tarps deteriorate on the tent garages and gazebo we have at our retreat, so I ordered cotton. We’ll still need to bring up more canvas.
It really was a good day. I now understand why I was not a success at the farmers market in Santa Isabel. I’m a little left of center, and the lyrics of some of my original songs reveal that. If we had stuck with country and pop tunes they probably would have loved it. We did too much ethnic and jazz for their taste. I’m revamping our repertoire list so we can pick out whatever genre we want to focus on for future gigs.
I seemed to have received angelic protection with my little mistakes yesterday. Sure could have been worse. In the morning I finished breakfast, gathered up the scraps, and put them in the middle of my compost pile. Then I had a load of manure to dump, so I lifted off the tree prunings I had placed on the top of the pile, dug a hole through the fruit peels, I had placed there earlier, with a garden trowel, dumped in the manure, raked the rinds back over the manure, and replaced the cover. Then a little later I remembered that there had been two burro bananas left when I was full from breakfast. Where were they? Did I throw them in the compost pile with the garbage? So I checked and there they were, fully intact, not a scratch on them. So I wiped them off with a corn husk and brought them on the hike.
My somersault on a rocky slope sure could have been a lot worse. I did get bit by a red ant on the back of my right knee, later on. It kind of hurts still the next morning. But no snake bite!
I remembered the person who had given me the phone number that I had started texting 6 months ago. He had been a friend of my late mother’s. After my mother’s dementia had deepened to the point that she could no longer enjoy going to dances with him, he had found another dance partner. He had wanted me to meet her daughter. It had been his hunch that we would get along well because we both are musicians, and we both live off-grid. My mother would have despised our current president. But I remember this man, in one of our many phone conversations, saying something to the effect that he approves of Trump’s anti-immigrant policy and rhetoric. I couldn’t believe it. How could my mom have dated a xenophobe?
The two ideals are really getting crystalized. You are either for unity and equality or you are for hierarchy. You either want peace and freedom for all honest people, or you want to be part of a racial elite that subjugates everyone else. You can no longer straddle the widening ditch. Please erase racism. Skin color doesn’t matter. Worship customs don’t matter. There is only one God! Please don’t be afraid of people who are different! Learn to see past their color, language, accent, dress, religious rituals, or gender identity, and recognize their level of honesty! Please don’t be afraid of losing material possessions! You are going to lose them all anyway when you pass from this world. Then, which side of the great divide you are standing on will be the thing that matters. -
He came into my life in April of 1992, nearly 100 years after His earthly passing. I was reading a tract on the Baha’i Faith I had picked up at a street fair a day or two earlier. I read about His incarceration in a dark, wet dungeon. I looked straight ahead for a moment, thinking, Is This the Lord I have been searching for?
For decades, I had sought a visionary experience of Christ, but He always seemed to disappear in the shadows of my mind, and never revealed Himself completely, looking into my eyes in the full splendor of His Resurrected Being. In that moment my life was changed forever as I found myself gazing into the Stately Visage of Baha’u’llah.
Years have gone by. I have studied the Life and Teachings of Baha’u’llah, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the Bab, Shoghi Effendi and the Universal House of Justice. There is no end to the insights these Sources provide. I have fellowshipped with Baha’is. The Baha’i Faith teaches the Oneness of God and the Oneness of Religion. I have studied, prayed, worshiped, meditated, and shared with other groups as well.
Still there are times when I feel lost. When I think of a horrible thing that someone did to me, and I feel under their influence once again, and I begin to feel abused, sometimes it is hard to free myself, even though Baha’u’llah has bestowed such a powerful relationship with Himself upon me. Sometimes He hides and I can’t find Him. Then I know I need to seek Him in His written Words. Or I need to meditate in mindfulness until I find Him, or I find myself.
This morning He gave me another gift. He showed Himself to me again as He has many times before. I had been thinking about how someone had injured me financially and how painful it is, when he came to me and allowed me to intuit the Weight of His Body. Does an astral body have weight? It certainly does. In the case of Baha’u’llah, the Substance of That Figure is so absolutely Profound, that there is no word in the dictionary to describe It.
I had my first visionary experience of Baha’u’llah back in April of 1992. A few days later I had my first auditory experience of Him. The first time He spoke to me I was in a car parked by a row of pomegranate trees, sitting in the driver’s seat while the small children I had back then were visiting their grandparents. Suddenly I heard words inside my mind that did not originate with my own thoughts and was startled, at first, but soon I came to love the sound of That Voice.
The first thing He said was, “I am closer to you than your own teeth!” For a year or two He would constantly interrupt my thoughts to admonish me to stop depreciating myself, which, apparently, I had a long-standing habit of doing. He asked me to learn something about Persian music, and since then I have tried to understand the scales the Persian Baha’is use for chanting prayers. I still don’t understand them. I have found oriental scales that I sometimes use for intoning Baha’i Prayers. When Baha’u”llah talks to me now it is not sudden or strange anymore. Sometimes a look at His Facial Expression in my mind’s eye is all I need to receive meaningful communication from Him.
Baha’u”llah talks to me now it is not sudden or strange anymore. Sometimes a look at His Facial Expression in my mind’s eye is all I need to receive meaningful communication from Him.
This intuition of His Body that I am experiencing today is something new, and very precious. It is more related to sight than sound, yet it is beyond mere seeing. I may now understand what Jesus was getting at when He offered His Flesh. It can’t be taken literally, but there is a kind of a feeding and healing that I am able to experience when I perceive the Body of Baha’u’llah, the most recent Coming of Christ. -
I woke up this morning with the understanding that it was my brother, Ted’s embezzlement from my parents’ estate to accommodate his wife, Jane’s gambling that resulted in my not having an inheritance. This same gambling, and the enabling of it, more recently, resulted in the taxes not being paid — with the resultant sale — of Ted’s house.
Even though I have known this for some time, I have preferred to look upon Ted as the innocent bystander while I suffered from my sister, Toni’s narcissistic greed.
This does not excuse the cruelty nor the emotional battery of me by Toni and her family during the taking of my house. But it provides a glimmer of understanding of why they had to make some difficult financial decisions.
Toni’s large, ostentations house is sure to be heavily assessed. How is she going to pay the tax bill after retirement? That and the taxes on the acreage she inherited may prove too much without a source of income.
You might think that an extended family could get along and work out such problems together. You might think that if a family member were to be ousted, that a serious transgression would first have to be committed. The transgression of appropriating thousands of dollars over a period of decades in order to enable a gambler seems serious enough to justify Ted’s ouster.
But, what was my crime? There were manufactured difficulties. The gardener, Dimas, was encouraged to verbally attack and harass me and then I was blamed for how I tried to deal with that. There was blame for not having followed a list of priorities that were never even communicated until after it was “too late.” There was emotional abuse and verbal abuse. I am certainly better off now away from that environment.
Kind of reminds me of Trump suddenly shutting down government agencies, putting workers and programs into free fall, just to serve his narcissistic agenda. No help was offered to anybody damaged by his action, just the statement, “They’ll make an adjustment, they always do.” I suppose he knows this from his history of stiffing contractors.
This is the extreme lack of empathy of the narcissist who values “stuff” but despises relationships. A relationship has to be some kind of a trophy in order to count. Obviously I’m not a trophy to my sister. I can be thrown away with no regret.
So how do I have peace with family? It is related to having peace with self. Because I care for self I don’t just volunteer for abuse without a really good reason. But I don’t abandon my self either.
Can a narcissist be rehabilitated? Can a narcissist be kindly corralled so that she no longer has the opportunity to harm others?
We have no idea what the compassionate corralling of narcissists even looks like. We elect a narcissist to the presidency of what used to be the most powerful country in the world, and watch helplessly as he runs it into the ground.
My difficulty imagining the compassionate corralling of narcissists stems from the fact that it has never been accomplished. To achieve this would require quite a crew of non-narcissists. But we are the wallflowers! We are too used to being bossed around by the narcissists!
Number one is, stop taking orders from narcissists. Stop being eager to please. Stop reacting to displeasure by grovelling. Stop volunteering to be a pawn in her game of hierarchy. Stop worshipping her damn feet! (I have to get this.) Stop being her lackey, her booboo, her dummy!
Number two is, answer slowly, pause, reflect. This person is emotionally and spiritually bankrupt, in spite of any appearance to the contrary. Her clothes are stuffed with nothing but fluff.
There are some advantages to society as a whole that could be produced through the stifling of narcissism. We would no longer require an enormous budget for defense or warfare, nor would we require endless wars. The prisons we currently have could house all the violent narcissists or psychopaths. The nonviolent narcissists could be monitored using technology already in place.
Our workload would no longer be augmented to supply the fluff demanded by narcissistic greed, nor the armaments for endless wars. Sufficient food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare for everyone is so doable, and we would have lots of spare time to just enjoy life with arts, toys, entertainment or just getting to know each other.
The process from here to the world I just described might by a little like the proverbial mouse belling the cat. How do we round up the narcissists and put them under surveillance when they already have us under surveillance? This essay will go nowhere. It is too close to hitting at the heart of the system.
I think that each of us who understands Christ’s prophecy, that the meek shall inherit the earth, must start small, with that narcissistic family member, or that narcissistic work colleague. Understanding, and exposing, to the extent possible, the lack of empathy and the greed of that one individual is all one person can do. The meek will find each other, unite and, one day, compassionately take control. But I have no idea how long this will take.
Switching to a plant-based, unrefined diet, refusing pharmaceuticals (except those whose safety and effectiveness for one’s condition have been scientifically proven) and working only in industries that directly promote peace are things that we can do individually to speed the process of the meek inheriting the earth.
If you are going to guess about a medical treatment, or be persuaded by paternalistic threats or assurances lacking in evidence, better to guess about an herbal product or nutritional strategy, then to guess about an artificial, patented substance, because drugs are harmful. There are poisonous herbs as well, but some of them are effective remedies in dilute concentrations. Unfortunately, we each have to educate ourselves, not just listen to the “experts” because narcissistic greed is big in the pharmaceuticals industry.
A plant based diet frees up land, as much more land and water is required to produce a meat-based meal than to produce a plant-based meal. The meat-based meal causes more pollution. Runoff from dairies and feedlots becomes a problem infecting the irrigation water for produce farms downstream. This is how salad greens have become contaminated with E. Coli. Meat farms and dairies also contaminate ground water with nitrates. We need some manure to grow fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, but in a perfect world we would produce it ourselves instead of flushing our bodily waste into waterways necessitating an expensive, and chemically contaminating cleanup of municipal water.
The plant-based diet is a baby step many are learning how to make. But what about our pets? Must we castrate and keep a creature a prisoner and a slave for our emotional needs? Must we kill animals and desecrate the environment in order to feed our pet? You see there are other steps towards the goal of the meek inheriting the earth. Would a truly selfless renunciate subject another creature to her whim? Wild animals are lovable too, from a distance, for their good, because they must maintain their distrust of all humans until there are no more hunters. Then the wilderness can become our petting zoo.
“The war to end all wars,” is pro-war propaganda. Vicious lies were spread to get us into war each time it happened. Those lacking in human empathy enjoy the lucrative gain of the war industry. The soldiers are the perpetual losers in the war game. I hope they are learning.
We do need some policing though. The kind of policing I envision involves restraining those who lack a conscience. This will level the playing field because normal people are already restrained by their consciences.
In the world we live in narcissists have gotten ahead in business and government. Their lack of empathy for others is advantageous in just about every endeavor. I don’t know how we are going to turn the tide to favor the altruist. I just know that will need to be done in order to evolve the world I want to live in. Enough of sociopaths in the top levels of government, industry, healthcare and education! -
Shrine of the Báb, Haifa, Israel Jesus told a parable about the Pharisee and the Publican. Quoting an online dictionary: “Pharisee-a member of an ancient Jewish sect, distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity. Publican-(in ancient Roman and biblical times) a collector of taxes. (More recently a manager of a pub or liquor establishment.)”
According to the parable, in the New Testament of the Bible, told by Jesus, a Pharisee and a Publican were in a house of worship. The Publican knew he was a sinner and repented, beating his chest and begging for God’s mercy. The Pharisee prayed a prayer of thanks that he was not like that Publican over there, and listed his virtues, including tithing leaves from the herb plants of his garden. The soul of the Publication was justified by his repentance. The soul of the Pharisee was not justified by his prideful prayers.
What an irony that prayers of prominent Bible-thumping Christians of today sound more like the arrogant comparisons of that Pharisee, than the meek repentance of the Publican, in spite of this story being in all of their Bibles, and in spite of Christ’s clear statement on which prayer brought justification.
“Lord, I thank Thee that I am married to one person of the opposite sex, and I never commit sexual transgressions, unlike those people there who don’t even know what gender they are. I thank Thee for procreating life through my body, unlike those people there who want to murder the life Thou hast given them. I know Thou wilt come quickly as soon as Thy people, the Israelis, murder the apostates standing in their way, so I am backing weapons of destruction for Israel. In fact, I am backing the proliferation of weapons everywhere white. Praise Jesus, Amen. I thank Thee that I don’t have to worry about the environment. My family and I will be removed from the escalating tribulations and taken to a base on the moon, where in safety we will wait for Thy forces to decimate the non-believers on Earth, before bringing us home again to live in peace with Thee forever. Let Armageddon come! Lord Jesus, with Thee on my side, I’m ready! Amen, Amen.”
I wish I could watch when these modern-day Pharisees die, make their appearance before the Great Throne to be told, “Depart from Me, workers of iniquity! I never knew you!” This is God’s judgement, and it is up to Him, but, like Jesus said, you know a tree by its fruit.
Jesus said, “The Son of Man is coming on the clouds with great glory, every eye will see him, and every knee will bend.” The Bible is mystical writing, particularly the quotes of Jesus. Do you think everyone at once is going to look up and see Jesus coming in glory? Or could it mean that we, each in turn, when our life is over, look up and see our Lord coming for us? Or could it mean that the truly spiritual of all paths will one day unite and institute a just world government, effulgent in the glory of God? It is imperative to understand scripture for yourself, not from the ideas of someone else only.
Physical life on this planet is fleeting. It will be over, and we will go on to the next plane of existence. There are religious theories about how a certain select few can live forever on Earth in their physical bodies. I used to be part of a church that promulgated such an idea. The founder of the movement was supposed to be the first one to develop the glorified body and defeat death. But he died in 1983. Everyone dies. I think that, of all the very important things, the very most important, is what emotion we are going to be feeling when we pass from this world. We need to figure that out and practice it constantly, so we will be ready when the time comes. I know it won’t be spiritual pride, and it won’t be hate. If I’m annoyed because my keyboard won’t come up, and that breath turns out to be my last, that’s not so good. LOL, kidding aside, God is Merciful, but still we need to try to please Him.
Religious bigotry is not okay for those who wish to be counted with the sheep on judgment day. Jesus said, “I have other sheep that are not in this fold.” Jews are not non-believers. They believe in Moses and Abraham. Jesus said, “Before Abraham, I Am.” Abraham and Moses taught the same truths as Jesus. Muhammad was sent by the same God and with the same message as Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Muslims are believers too.
In 1844, the Millerites, forerunners of the Seventh day Adventists, were expecting the return of Christ that year, based on prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation. Turns out, that year, a man, who had been born in 1819, announced that he was the Fulfillment of Prophecy (in May of 1844). He was executed a few years later for being a heretic. But was he? Bahá’ís all over the world will be celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of the Báb, October 29, 2019, for the first of three co-founders of the Bahá’í Faith.
Albino Lizard 