no, it's really just calling it like i see it. if you happen to feel convicted, that's all you. :shrug:
Is it possible for people to freely "behave in a Godly manner"?
- Thread starter wynn
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no, it's really just calling it like i see it. if you happen to feel convicted, that's all you. :shrug:
Perhaps now is the time for you to recap on what part your cinema example plays on establishing the whole "teeth gritting/ throw the sense objects in a trunk" sort of renunciation you are advocating.
But this is all it is: you calling it as you see it.
It's not objective reality. It's not the Bible. It's not authoritative.
Yet you want me to believe your words have this kind of authority.
Your strawmanning is really hurtful.
Feel free to pull rank against me, if you want. I am not an ISKCON aspirant anymore, so your pulling rank (and claiming that your interpretation of my posts is correct) doesn't affect me nearly as much as it used to.
lightgigantic said:
I pointed our earlier that tending to desires is what can keep them alive. I didn't say anything about how desires come into existence to begin with.
Sure. Then you also need to rethink your formulations when you speak of "quelling desire" and "ceasing desire".
A good portion of the Vedas is devoted to instructions for enjoying material pleasures. E.g. if you want to have sons, do these practices and sacrifices, if you want the crops to yield, do that, etc. etc.
SB and BG often enough talk about people actually enjoying material pleasures.
If you would read the link I provided, the phenomenon is explained in the first paragraphs:
There is a time and place in which the soul begins to seek a path of return to its lost home, and, finding the way blocked or invisible, yearns once again for the sense of peace and love that it remembers as having been part of its deepest longing. In that moment of time, when the soul turns toward the sun of its longing seeking remembrance and reunion, seeking the sense of peace and completion that it believes is possible, a significant step toward the light of Spirit is taken and the soul will never be the same again. At the same time, if the yearning for home is not realized by fulfillment, if the spiritual longing finds, instead, an emptiness of heart and a lack of response to its prayer for reunion, it can become disconsolate and greatly sorrowful, so much so that it gives up that which it has set its heart upon, and instead turns to other means by which to fulfill its desire for peace and for the essence of tranquility which can only be produced by the light.
These are the conditions under which addictive processes take place within the human psyche. They emerge from the condition of perceived separation from one's point of origin and spiritual home, and arise when the deeper longing of the soul still struggling to emerge within the human self, seeks its way back to the point of its Source and origin. They do not arise before this, because before this the embodied soul is fully engaged with life on the material plane. It is engaged both from the standpoint of seeking mastery and a sense of physical comfort and fulfillment, and in the sense of fascination with the many arenas of earthly learning and pleasure that are both sensory and spiritual - though the latter quality may be unknown to the self that pursues them. When the soul begins to find these pleasures and this mastery no longer sufficient to quiet the yearning that grows within the heart and the deeper levels of being, then the soul begins to lose hope that the life of the physical plane will be able to grant the satisfaction that it longs for. Instead, it may seek a substitute gratification that it hopes will steadfastly and surely be able to grant the kind of peace and soul-fulfillment that is desired.
Fundamentally, turning toward addiction is a spiritual act. However much it may be fueled by conditions of poverty, need, emotional instability, immaturity, or any other psychological variable, the replacement of the soul's yearning for completion and peace with a substitute is an act of spiritual seeking that has taken a turn away from its true destination toward an alternative destination. This is an act that is both an effort to resolve a spiritual dilemma, as well as an effort to grant immediate release from the pain of having to wait for a more authentic source of realization.
A similar content is stated in BG 4.10:
/.../Furthermore there are many persons who cannot understand spiritual existence at all. Being embarrassed by so many theories and by contradictions of various types of philosophical speculation, they become disgusted or angry and foolishly conclude that there is no supreme cause and that everything is ultimately void. Such people are in a diseased condition of life. Some people are too materially attached and therefore do not give attention to spiritual life, some of them want to merge into the supreme spiritual cause, and some of them disbelieve in everything, being angry at all sorts of spiritual speculation out of hopelessness. This last class of men take to the shelter of some kind of intoxication, and their affective hallucinations are sometimes accepted as spiritual vision.
Note that there are people who can have sex, and feel satisfaction from it. There are people who can consume alcohol, drugs, chocolate, meat, French novels etc. and they feel genuine satisfaction. They also have a sense of moderation in these activities. There are people who can drink a glass of wine or eat a few pieces of chocolate - and who can leave it at that, without feeling this requires any act of will or causes them disturbance.
These people are in it for the material pleasures and they enjoy them.
There is a characteristic other type of people who find engaging in those activities deeply dissatisfying, but who nonetheless engage in them. These are the addicts. They have never enough. They cannot stop on their own, at least not without feeling deep disturbance. These are the ones who try to satisfy a spiritual longing by material means. Of course, it doesn't work, and intuitively, they know it, but they do not know and/or are not able to satisfy their longing in any other way.
If you listen to people who have battled addiction, you can see this verified. "I have this void inside of me, it is unbearable, and nothing I do seems to fill it" is an idea frequently expressed.
You're not getting any nicer.
Then you need to restate yourself.
To a newcomer in your organization, "devotees told me" is everything, at least it better be or he or she will risk forfeiting their whole future in it.
At least at the beginner/entry level, ISKCON functions like a cult. What the scriptures say is, in effect, completely irrelevant. What matters is what the loudest/biggest/most influential/angriest devotees think and say about one.
You are not faced with this because you are over the hill, you are initiated and you don't have to worry about getting a recommendation and all the problems surrounding that.
Someone like me, on the other hand, faces public humiliation and criticizing for any act of standing up for myself and what I believe is right or for rejecting the advances of some devotee. And being publicly humiliated and critized by the devotees is a sure way to never get that recommendation.
On the whole, I think there are only two kinds of people in ISKCON and who can survive there:
1. those who are already convinced of its KC philosophy and practices and who have no significant doubts or questions anymore,
2. religious/spiritual addicts - people who are psychotically unwell and who take to religion/spirituality in a similar manner as a drug addict does to drugs: to fill an inner void, while at the same time being quite sure it cannot be filled.
In ISKCON, there is no room for people who are new to spirituality.
In and of itself, I don't think this is bad. I have nothing against even extreme exclusivism or elitism; on principle, I even believe that any worthy organization must make some claim to extreme exclusivism.
But when that same organization makes claims that everyone should do as it says, that they have The Solution to mankind's problems, that they know what is best for us all, or that anyone who is not a member is wrong or worthless - this is where my expectations of said organization will be as high and as extraordinary as their claims. Cultism cannot be accomodated within those expectations.
I don't know if ISKCON is the one and only path to God, or the truset or fastest, but to take part in it, I would have to take for granted that it is. I can't do that.
But without taking that for granted, the apparent maliciousness of devotees is impossible to bear.
Indeed. In ISKCON, properly applying the general precepts of renunciation is to renouce all sanity, reason, the sense of self-preservation, the sense of self-worth, the striving for logic, accuracy and justice.
Perhaps if I managed to make myself into a Stepford-like robot, then, in a few thousand kalpas, I might make spiritual advancement, right?
I never advocated that; I never claimed that my presentation of the topic so far has been exhaustive.
I only pointed out that the core principle of renunciation is to make the desired object difficult or impossible to attain, one way or another. Even the regulative principles are formulated with the concept of refraining - ie. refraining from meat, illicit sex, intoxication, gambling.
I haven't said anything much about the whys and further hows of renunciation.
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feel free to recap on the cinema example
When you are starved and exhausted, you quite likely won't have the desire to go to the cinema, even though at some earlier point, you have had the desire to go to the cinema. Thus, once you are starved and exhausted, the desire to go to the cinema is not present.
Can you agree that this is a readily observable fact?
I was merely giving a description, not an instruction.
As for how to deliberately go about losing the desire to go to the cinema, I am not sure.
I quite distinctly remember though that I lost mine in a moment. Namely, I used to go to the cinema quite a bit. Then one day, I don't know why, I calculated how many hours I need to work in order to earn the money to pay for the bus and cinema tickets. It turned out that I would need to work at least twice as long as the film is long. That seemed to me like a very bad deal and my desire was gone, in that moment. I remember that I felt an intense disgust. I haven't been to the cinema since. (In the meantime, due to prices getting higher, the ratio has gotten even higher and keeps getting higher.)
what, that you're dishonest? that doesn't come from the bible, that comes from me reading your posts for years. it's obvious.
take your meds honey.
i think lori is the epitome of the OP..
she is free to behave in a godly manner..(or not.
)
Greatest I am
Valued Senior Member
i think lori is the epitome of the OP..
she is free to behave in a godly manner..(or not.
She is behaving in a Godly way, it is her way or burn forever.
We need to remember that she is a friendly flag op.
http://imgur.com/a/451CM
Regards
DL