I am just not the person who ascribes to this idea about faith and belief.
Faith and belief to me are what a proper scientist has before he embarks on testing some hypothesis that he hopes might be true.
Such a person has faith in intellectual tools, and belief in the consistency of the performance or known systems and logical frameworks.
Alone in the dark, in the deep woods, again. But there is a light I see... Even so I shall stay inside these deep woods now a little longer. |
But there are also moral systems and frameworks. To be a truly social being, one simply must have some consciousness of the other, some appreciation for empathy.
When someone does some compassionate things - for others, often others they have never met and do not (yet) know - they are literally affecting the soul lives of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands not just the individuals they directly helped; they are permitting other souls to perceive the manifested existence of compassion and to feel the value of empathy. ...Through their example, through the stories of their example, through simply the unseen but spiritual field effect of their work.
As it is true that humans lose their soul through outright deliberate choices to be harmful and arrogant and exploitative, it is true that others maintain their spiritual chances by at least gaining some glimpse of the power of externalized compassion. But someone else needs to be the example.
This is the 'Buddha in the piece of wood.'
To everyone without the inner vision it is just a block of wood - to the spiritual artist the block of wood simply needs to be cut away to reveal the Buddha within.
What are the odds of a material return either in gratitude or even in some kind of real physical return or reward?
Well the Biblical odds are one-in-ten: ten beggars (or lepers, I forget) got healed and only one returned to say even 'thanks.'
But here's a better one than that though, from the Bible - 'for God made it that what is not, becomes so, to undo that which is.'
Things you want. Yes, yes, you want them. |
There is nothing that you can think of, can hold out hope for - that cannot eventuate through a Divine Power and Will.
I have a rule about that though - a sutra (means a rule/Divine Rule).
Don't hope for things that are boring.
Is it not true that your mind can devise utterly alarmingly outrageous things, things that cannot possibly be real or true in any sane person's vision?
LOL
Don't waste your time 'praying to the gods' for mediocre things. This is just 'testing the gods,' and not 'asking them' or trying to persuade them.
You have a power and force inside of you, that can overturn castles, tip over giants, cut down mountains and throw them into the sea.
You have an unlimited prospective creativity. Therefore entice and seduce the gods themselves.
This is the Vedic meaning in the Sanskrit of 'shastra' and 'astra' weapons.
One is 'written in the stars,' but the other is in your hand.
Means that it is a manifested actuality already, somehow.
One of the hidden Golden Sutras is inside your own mind.
You do not have the direct material physical power to do very much yourself - but the gods do. And yet you yourself are the one that can bend the gods, despite all of their claim to being unyielding and rigid in their rules and courses.
It's just chocolate, isn't it Bill? |
And yes you are still for a short while physically mortal and exposed to many dangers, threats, vulnerabilities, and harms of the world and from worldly creatures and un-elevated men - so we must step cautiously across the knife's edge of our own arrogance.
Again, it is written - 'be not conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is good, well-pleasing, and the perfect Will of God.'
It is not with arrogance that we approach the Temple of the God, but with the sure knowledge of our own innate power within to persuade with winning eloquence ('peitho').
Innate means gifted at birth.
You might have previously supposed you have nothing, or at least less than what you require, to get you what you want.
But it's not up to you to 'get it' (what you want); it's up to others to become persuaded that they must give it to you.
Apparently, in the UFO/Alien contact community, they say the Aliens promised them that if they were in any kind of serious trouble, that they would come and rescue them in fifteen minutes.
...King David said around twenty/thirty minutes, in the Old Testament.
Wonder why there is this hysteresis - in both of their accounts of things?