[Written in 2008.]
“Primitive” people throughout history have had a tendency to blame themselves when things go wrong in their world. They struggled to appease angry gods for times of drought and disease and accident and famine, thinking their own moral imperfections and behavioral errors to be the cause. Yet all too often they, with their “self-centered” worldview, were blaming themselves for things which had nothing do with them. The irony is, our modern world, with its global warming, melting polar ice caps, radical loss of species, and massive pollution, is falling apart directly BECAUSE of humanity’s sick actions – and yet now we deny it!
I find this fascinating. Perhaps our genius culture is a lot more primitive than we realize – just the flip side of our Stone Age counterparts. Perhaps a little appeasing of the angry gods would do us well. Allow me to compile a list of some potential sacrifices we could make for the sake of our world – and for the future of our species.
Actually, no need to make a new list. I already made one in a different essay, “Eighteen Ways To Speed Up The Path To Enlightenment,” and those eighteen ways apply perfectly well here. So, here’s a list of…eighteen sacrifices we can make:
Here is a short list of ways to speed up your path to enlightenment:
- Stop using drugs.
- Stop drinking alcohol.
- Stop smoking cigarettes.
- Stop having sex.
- Do not masturbate.
- Discontinue other addictive behaviors.
- Eat a healthy, reasonable diet.
- Take a reasonable amount of exercise.
- Set aside time for a good night’s sleep each night.
- Do not reproduce.
- Be single.
- Study your personal history.
- Keep a journal in which you honestly express yourself.
- Write down your dreams at night and study them – and analyze them – carefully in the morning.
- Study your motives.
- Simplify your life to the extreme.
- Take distance from your family of origin.
- Take distance from people who do not follow the things on this list
If you can follow this list, chances are it will add a great degree of stress to your life – perhaps too much to handle at any given time – but it will certainly provoke some degree of healing reaction…
Hey Daniel,
Thought i would start a thread here since there is no comments and it relates to God in someways…I’ve read it before and cant remember what it says but I’m trying to resist reading it now as i think it will start too many other thoughts in my head that may get me off track.
So….anyway I enjoyed reading your response:
“cool sarah. i just have a moment now, but i did read the wikipedia page on salvation (the christian part) and what jumped out at me while reading it is that metaphorically i write about the concept throughout my entire website, but i don’t call it salvation: i call it healing or grieving. and i also write about sin metaphorically throughout my website, but i believe i call it by it’s proper name in such a way that it doesn’t blame the person: i call it trauma. when i refer to immature or bad behavior or acting out, these are just expressions of unresolved trauma, and i think the christian world refers to them also as sin…. so, my guess is that is the framework by which i’ll be considering these concepts if we discuss it more. greetings! daniel”
I was quite surprised to read it actually as i had thought that you already saw the connection between what you wrote and the christian concept of salvation. It stood out to me so clearly when I read your stuff…especially aspects of your book towards truth. To me you emphasise the importance of true healing and show up the false healing for what it is…it has actually been really humbling and powerful for me because it has convicted me of a lot of stuff i need to work on in my life that i thought i had already dealt with. So thank you.
Yes you do use the words healing and grieving instead of salvation…but to me they are one and the same. The process of salvation IS healing and that requires grieving. Healing and restoration cannot happen without it. Grieving to the depths that you describe in your writings. Grieving over the ways that we have been traumatized by others because if this isn’t fully grieved any forgiveness and healing is false. And also fully grieving the things we do to traumatise ourselves others and our world because with out this true forgiveness of ourselves isn’t possible and neither is true repentance (the christian concept of turning away from what we are doing that is wrong and making a conscious effort to do what is right)
Yes you also use the word trauma instead of sin but again i see them as the same. “Sin” “Trauma” two different words for the same thing. I am curious to know how you see them as being different? I get the picture from your writings that you see the idea of sin as blaming the person for “willful disobedience” by a “bad” person whereas trauma is natural response to being badly treated by parents. Is that accurate?
Am enjoying ths conversation, thanks again Daniel.
look forward to reading your response 🙂
ugh…sorry for terrible grammar…hope this makes sense to read…