Posted by Roberta Grimes • May 22, 2021 • 48 Comments
Death, Human Nature
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.
It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day!
– Johnny Nash (1940-2020), from “I Can See Clearly Now” (1972)
The only way for humankind to fix all that is wrong with this world is to make it common knowledge now that every human mind is eternal. No other attempt to repair a world gone so badly wrong would make a dent, when compared with the transformative power of that one bit of crucial information!
The truth about our eternal nature is far more than just peripheral knowledge. And it isn’t something we can safely ignore until our own death stares us in the face. For everyone to know the truth right now would change EVERYTHING. I used to wonder about this. Now I know it to be true.
To understand why, let’s first give some thought to what is basically wrong with humankind that has put us into our present worldwide state of misery and desperation. Opinions may differ, but it is my observation that there are two core human characteristics that feed on one another and together are the cause of everything that ever has been tragic about being a human being, and everything that has gone especially wrong since the start of the twenty-first century:
FEAR
For all of human history, to be alive and human has meant being afraid. The earliest fully human beings, a mere two hundred thousand years ago, suffered predators, hunger, disease, and the gnawing terror of the unknown that caused us to make and worship fearsome gods. And even for those earliest people, awareness of our rapidly approaching death has been our constant companion. Indeed, we may be the only species forced to live with the inescapable certainty that very soon we are going to die. And the advent of civilization reduced some fears, while it added additional fearsome layers. With civilization we acquired human overlords with the power to steal from us, force us to labor, and even take our lives; and the power to require us to carry out warfare on a scale that had hitherto not been imagined. Then eventually, of course, farming towns and fortress castles gave way to modern cities, and our lives as mere cogs in civilization’s wheel went from the plodding pace of horses to the lethal speed of cars and planes. Swords were replaced by ICBMs, and we even invented an “atomic clock” to better count down toward our certain doom. Even today, that doomsday clock stands at just one hundred seconds before midnight.
SELFISHNESS
Every one of us loves and worships the self. At the core of every human being is a deep, egoic craving for recognition, success, fame, money, and an ever-better place near the top of the heap of our fellow human beings. As with fear, that instinct toward selfishness appears to be innate in all of us. It’s a product of the ego, which is a part of the limited package with which we come to earth. The ego is hard to precisely define, but we know that its purpose is to keep us alive until we reach a chosen exit point, and then it dies when the body dies. Meanwhile, it sees every tiny infringement on even trivial status-related aspects of our lives as potential threats to its survival.
These two profoundly negative impulses are basic and innate in everyone! There is no human being who is never afraid, and no one who doesn’t strive and enjoy accumulating ever more of whatever that person most prizes in this earthly life. It is easy to see the ego’s efforts in those who are climbing the corporate ladder, working day and night to accumulate wealth, or pouring themselves into campaigning for office. But what about the beautiful, selfless people whose every impulse is to help others, and who then are given a recognition dinner, a Presidential Medal, or a Nobel Peace Prize? Just watch the ceremonies! That instinct toward self-aggrandizement is still there, even in the best of them. We all want to be important. We all want to be loved.
By way of illustration, we might consider the motivations of some of the worst people who ever have lived, the tyrants who have diminished and destroyed so many other people’s lives. We might quibble over whether humankind’s hunger to dominate others is an artifact of all our terrible fears or is more the result of a needy ego, but when we think of the worst people who ever have lived we see fear and selfishness intermingling to make the acquisition of power over others too often something that those who gain a bit of it will promptly aggrandize until they are monsters. As Sir John Dalberg-Acton so wisely wrote more than a century ago, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Adolf Eichmann was one of the organizers of the Shoah, the Holocaust that claimed six million Jewish lives. He was tried and hanged in Israel in 1962. In the title of her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, the German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt made one of the most profound observations ever made by anyone: she pointed out just how normal, how usual and boring even the greatest evildoers actually are. Eichmann looked like a mid-level clerk. Hitler smiled and patted his dog. The trains to the death-camps looked like usual trains, and perhaps they even ran on time. And if you are living in a Western country that is supposed to be run by its citizens, you are seeing elected officials now openly fighting the freedoms of others with deadly and tenacious efficiency. You see governors decreeing humiliating and business-destroying lockdowns, and police arresting churchgoers and pastors because fear of some illness that is little more than a new version of the seasonal flu has given them that power. Now, as vaccinations begin to erase whatever little threat there was, you see the most power-mad trying to make those temporary restrictions permanent, and you realize with horror how easily the egos of basically decent people, when they are further fortified by fear, can be seduced by even a little power into doing what you and I can see is cruel, self-important, and plainly wrong.
Fear and selfishness are to some limited degree useful. They keep us from stepping in front of moving cars, and they ensure that we will at least take our morning shower and try to work enough to survive. But fear is the opposite of love, so fear can make our spiritual growth impossible; and our selfish ego cares nothing for our spiritual growth, since its motivation is only its own survival. Worst of all, for the little good that they do, our impulses toward selfishness and fear tend to separate us from other people, which is why so many of us later in life live isolated and often mean-spirited lives.
Once again, we are grateful for a final key insight from the indispensable Father Richard Rohr, the head of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of his recent newsletters talks about Edith Eva Eger, who was just sixteen when her family was transported to Auschwitz. Her parents went to the gas chambers on the day they arrived, while Edith and her sister survived. Eventually she arrived in the United States, where she was educated and became a psychologist and therapist specializing in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In her recent memoir, The Choice: Embrace the Possible, she reminds us that each moment is a choice. She says, “No matter how frustrating or boring or constraining or painful or oppressive our experience, we can always choose how we respond. And I finally begin to understand that I, too, have a choice… The choice to accept myself as I am: human, imperfect. And the choice to be responsible for my own happiness. To forgive my flaws and reclaim my innocence. To stop asking why I deserved to survive. To function as well as I can, to commit myself to serve others, to do everything in my power to honor my parents, to see to it that they did not die in vain. To do my best, in my limited capacity, so future generations don’t experience what I did. To be useful, to be used up, to survive and to thrive so I can use every moment to make the world a better place. And to finally, finally stop running from the past. To do everything possible to redeem it, and then let it go. I can make the choice that all of us can make. I can’t ever change the past. But there is a life I can save: It is mine. The one I am living right now, this precious moment… And to the vast campus of death that consumed my parents and so very many others, to the classroom of horror that still had something sacred to teach me about how to live—that I was victimized but I’m not a victim, that I was hurt but not broken, that the soul never dies, that meaning and purpose can come from deep in the heart of what hurts us the most—I utter my final words. Goodbye, I say. And, Thank you. Thank you for life, and for the ability to finally accept the life that is.”
The words that follow those second ellipses are among the most profound ever written. In the end, this woman who is now in her nineties was able to surmount, forgive, and even be grateful for the death-camp that took her parents and her innocence because it helped her to learn and grow spiritually. As she puts it, she grew into accepting “the life that is.”
My weekly podcast is eight years old. I was promoting The Fun of Dying in the spring of 2013 when the kindly head of a podcasting company recruited me. We both assumed I was going to be podcasting about the afterlife, but when my new friend told me we needed a title, the Thomas within me blurted, “Seek Reality!” I hadn’t yet met Thomas in person, but I was used by then to having my unknown spirit guide unexpectedly interject his strong opinions. And soon I was glad that such an overbroad title let me entertain and learn from such a stellar range of wonderful weekly guests! It is only now that I realize that seeking and living in reality, as difficult as reality is for us even to find when both mainstream science and mainstream religions are flat-out lying to us, is the only hope left for humankind. And in seeking reality, we eventually find and begin to live in the true reality where death is not even a momentary pause. Like Edith Eger, we all can find “the life that is.” And in finding that life, we can at last do what Jesus came to earth to help us. do, which is to bring the kingdom of God on Earth. Next week we’ll look at the difference it will make when everyone knows the truth about death.
Look all around, there’s nothing but blue skies.
Look straight ahead, there’s nothing but blue skies.
I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for.
It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day!
– Johnny Nash (1940-2020), from “I Can See Clearly Now” (1972)
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! It is more than time for the next generation to take over and live with the “God’s-eye-view,” which is All Love and no fear. I read recently that something like 43% of millennials (must have been sampling the US only—actual global number may be different) don’t believe in the Biblical presentation of God. By that I think they meant OT and whatever odd idea that comes from the pulpits. I went to find the article citing this study and alas, I can’t, but maybe someone else will. The point is, the “non belief” of the younger generations doesn’t mean they are materialists. Smaller sample, but I know two Millennials very well (son and daughter) who see Mind and the infinite nature of all of us as both fundamental and awe inspiring.
The next generation coming up after Millennials is even more expanded in their view of reality.
Let’s face it, we and our Old Time Religion are already dead. I think your point here is, that is a good thing.
Oh my dear Mike, how good it is of you to comment right away! And even to hazard a guess at what I was talking about 🙂
As you know, and as others here know as well, each week’s post here is a collaborative effort. Basically, Thomas does most of the work, but I am supposed to tweak the posts before they go live, to better suit them “for this modern day” (his words). But I have had an especially hectic week, with extra work to do for legal clients (I’m still practicing law until I get it right), and there has been extra prep to do for Seek Reality and unusual personal issues as well so I didn’t give this responsibility the attention it deserves. And it shows! My attention was always on what we will be saying next week, anyway, since that is the fun part: how will things change once everyone is living in an eternal frame?
But yes, certainly, religions (especially including the no-god religion of modern science) were useful to us only when we had no better way to make sense of reality. But now we can in fact know what is true, and the truth is far more glorious than any religion’s wildest imaginings!
Thanks as always, Roberta! I do think the 21st century generations are more open and closer to truth than we think! Remember the expression about “one funeral at a time”!
Oh yes. I think it was Max Planck who said that science advances by deaths, and for cultural progress that is true as well! Getting rid of the iron grip of religious fears on people’s minds has been important for preparing this next generation to learn the truth, but we still are going to have to find ways to give them the truth, and pretty soon!!
Hello.
It is fun to read your posts, but you had to know I wasn’t just going to let you sneak past the statement”…some illness that is little more than a new version of the seasonal flu…” go by without some statement from the health care worker who had to deal with a quite sizable surge in the hospital where I work as recently as January 2021.
Let’s have fun with statistics from the Texas Department of State Health Services. First, let’s look at the deaths from a seasonal flu year, from Oct. 1, 2017 to May 19, 2018.
0-4 yrs —- 40 deaths
5-17 yrs —- 22 deaths
18-49 yrs —- 568 deaths
50-64 yrs —- 1,565 deaths
65 and up —- 7,275 deaths
Total —- 9,470 deaths
Now let’s look at the Texas COVID-19 deaths. True, this is over a longer period of time, but still useful.
Up to 1 yr —- 7 deaths
1-9yrs —- 12 deaths
10-19 yrs —- 33 deaths
20-29 yrs —- 254 deaths
30-39 yrs —- 850 deaths
40-49 yrs —- 2,481 deaths
50-59yrs —- 5,646 deaths
60-64 yrs —- 4,723 deaths
65-69 yrs —- 6,082 deaths
70-74 yrs —- 6,710 deaths
75-79 yrs —- 6,615 deaths
80 and up —- 16,681 deaths
Total —- 50,094 deaths
I will fully agree with you that this is NOT 1918 flu levels of death, but is it “…some illness that is little more than a new version of the seasonal flu..”?
Saying more on that subject would start getting into politics, the land of fear, selfishness, and righteous indignation. The joke is it’s also the land where things get done, in all its messiness.
Every human mind is Eternal. However, how one interacts with the world will be quite different if one takes the standpoint of A Course in Miracles vs. the Abraham teachings, even though they both have the same starting point, every human mind is Eternal. Just my luck, my compass is having me look at both of them simultaneously. It will be fun over the next few weeks to see the direction you take the statement.
Here is a paradox. Is power in and of itself evil?
Oh my dear wonderful Jason, thank you for commenting too!
Not to respond to your Covid comment that tries to avoid politics with a political response, and certainly not to make light of your wonderful service in the trenches, but to a certain extent the Covid statistics are “garbage in means garbage out.” I haven’t much studied this issue, but from what little I have seen this is what I understand:
1) The federal government – perhaps some states as well – have rewarded a diagnosis of Covid with more funding to the hospital for each Covid patient. I don’t think they were trying to goose the statistics, but the result was apparently that anyone dying in the hospital who tested positive for Covid at death was recorded as a Covid death.
2) As a result, when the deaths behind the statistics were more closely examined, people who died of heart trouble or extreme age or in a motorcycle accident were Covid deaths. So the gross Covid death numbers really don’t mean as much as they seem to mean.
3) I have read that nearly all of those who actually died of a Covid infection, and not of something else with Covid just coincidentally there, were either (a) older than 60, (b) possessing some underlying problem (cancer, etc.), or (c) overweight (I have read that some 80% of those killed by Covid in the US were obese).
I have come to conclude that if we had (a) protected the elderly and impaired, and (b) not financially rewarded a Covid “cause of death” finding, our actual deaths from Covid would have been maybe half of the numbers that you have cited. But no one is doing the research, so we will never know!
And no, power is not evil. Neither is a gun or a knife or a bottle of strychnine evil in itself, nor is great wealth evil. All can be very useful tools! But all are rigorous spiritual lessons, and when someone fails the test that each presents they all can be used to do monstrous evil.
Hello again.
This is why I was trying to be specific about the data set used. I tried not to use the numbers of California or New York, because one could argue there was political pressure to inflate the numbers to justify the political position.
I chose Texas because it was a state more reluctant to do shutdowns, a state where if there was political pressure it would be to under report the numbers. (And yes, I did see newspaper articles that accused Texas of doing that).
I don’t want to be the guy that yells “589,000 deaths in the U.S.A.! 446,000 deaths in Brazil! 296,000 deaths and counting in India!” because I know the COVID-19 situation is more complex than a number. (Although the numbers in India are alarming. Personal note, I did x-rays about two weeks ago on a confirmed COVID-19 patient who had come back from India. Not the best looking lungs. He was on oxygen, but at least I didn’t see him later in the ICU, so I am thankful about that.)
Jason, re power, it obviously may be applied for good or ill. As God is all powerful, power itself cannot be evil. Re statistics on the Covid deaths, they simply are not reliable, and therefore lack accuracy or validity, for multiple reasons. Initially, hospitals were incentivized to report deaths as caused by Covid when they may have been more accurately attributed to other medical conditions(comorbidities). The CDC recognized that the excess of deaths attributed to Covid may be exaggerated because proper routine medical care had been interrupted, and their was a rise in deaths from despair an suicide. The CDC accounting itself was heavily biased higher for Covid by their statistical procedure. If the deaths for a reporting segment were higher than the historical average, that delta was
counted as an excess, which is valid–but if the death amount reported was less than the average, that data were tossed and the average was used, biasing the totals much higher. And by this time, the data are showing that its only the elderly with impaired immune systems that are at risk for death. Even without the new “vaccines,” their is good treatment that is available, such as Ivermectin, and the hydroxychloroquine with a zinc supplement. or just plain oxygenation that kills the virus.
Roberta here accurately described our situation in life. We have a mortal body with the fears and lusts of the Freudian Id, and an ego figuring out how to satisfy its Id, competing with its moral eternal attached soul
(I have a paper in review now by IANDS on this very topic).
Dear Jack, thank you for your always on-point thoughts! Living in Texas, having had a family member with Covid who easily got over it and having otherwise not known anyone who ever had it, and now with everyone I know immunized and being able to go anywhere without a mask, I feel pretty much as you do. Every state should have much better protected their elderly and infirm! But it has been demonstrated that the death statistics are inflated, probably by a lot; and meanwhile, at least a third of the restaurants in the United States that were forced to close reportedly now will never open again. I have also seen it estimated that half the churches in this country that were forced to close a year ago will have permanently closed by the end of this year. Half? That seems unbelievable! But these are tragedies, too :-(.
Hello.
I notice Ivermectin is now in clinical trials, and it would be nice if it succeeds, so there is another useful treatment. The two medications I know our hospital uses are Remdesivir and Dexamethasone. I would probably have doubts about the hydroxychloroquine. I noticed when Donald Trump received treatment for his COVID infection he got the zinc but not the hydroxychloroquine, even though he had earlier been an advocate for the drug.
Reportedly President Trump had taken hydroxychloroquine prophylactically for awhile – I hadn’t heard that he hadn’t taken it when he was ill. My husband is a retired physician, and a bit of a medical gadfly now; and he considers it to be a good Covid treatment when taken with zinc. Since it is relatively inexpensive, apparently it is used a lot in poorer countries.
Hi guys just a wee note from Bonny Scotland 🏴 a professor virologist working for Scottish government recorded on tv and in the paper media there has been NO recorded deaths from the flu in Scotland in the past 14 months “ incredible” and also no deaths from old age either 🥸🥸 amazeballs !!!!!….there has however been for the first time the most recorded deaths from Alzheimer’s 🥺😭….
Global FEAR pandemic tho and it worked …all those poor souls whose healthcare was neglected and put in the back burner so that hospitals were COVID run , my sister in law one died cancer 57yrs 3 weeks ago and my pal in local hospice ….
Thank goodness God is in control cos we are making a right pigs ear off it….
Roberta and friends on this blog you have no idea how you are helping me from my “iron grip of religious fear imposed on me from my youth” …thankyou for the bottom of my heart ❤️ I love reading your responses and look forward to next weeks blog.
Much love guys Louise xxxxx
Wow, dear Louise, what a ray of sunshine you are! Heh – yes, deaths from regular flu were “way down” in the U.S. last year as well, which has been another source of Covid-death over-counting.
I cannot properly express how it delights me to hear that you are enjoying being a part of our blog family! We truly have nothing to lose but our old, irrational fears, while we have everything to gain of joy and love and the peace of finally being certain that our lives really are eternal! If ever you have questions, dear, you can always ask them through the green contact block, and I will answer them. Meanwhile, we all are sending you a big intercontinental hug!!
Hello.
I want to correct an assumption stated here, that a number of deaths listed as COVID-19 deaths are actually flu deaths.
It is possible to do swab tests for both the flu and COVID-19. In January 2020 I had gotten sick, enough so I had to go to the doctor, and I got a swab test in my nose. Results came back a day later saying I had Influenza A.
Also, when this pandemic started, there were so few tests available for COVID-19 that our hospital wouldn’t even do a COVID test until they had tested negative for the flu.
Now, at our hospital, if you get admitted in the ER and you have symptoms such as shortness of breath, you will get a COVID-19 test, and then get listed as a PUI until the results get back. Actually, if you get admitted to the hospital you will get tested, even if you don’t have symptoms. The flu will not be mis-diagnosed as COVID-19.
So why are there so few people with the flu? This was actually first noticed in the summer months in Australia, the time when they would normally have their flu season. At that time it was determined that the steps being done to contain COVID-19 (masks, washing your hands, social distancing, and yes, lockdowns) work REALLY WELL at containing the flu. So, I’m not surprised that there were so few cases of the flu here in the U.S.A. Actually, I’m happy there were so few flu cases. Can you imagine the surge if people were getting double-infected with both COVID and the flu?
Dear Jason, thank you for your diligence in pursuing this! As others have pointed out to me by email, I likely should have chosen a less contentious example than the Covid lockdowns to prove my point that power corrupts, but it’s good to have your more detailed information!
I just want to add that until and unless humans return to understanding our nature as being of Unlimited, Infinite Mind, temporarily having an Experience we perceive as incarnation—which is one means to the end of spiritual growth, although we are simultaneously having other experiences too—then humans and this planet will not move beyond the fix we’re in. This “frozen” moment of eternity is not the intent of God’s mission for us.
As I mentioned previously, I see evidence that the 21st century generations are seeing this truth more clearly than we did in the 20th, so there is hope and potential.
Dear Mike, Jesus talked about the Tribulation. I wrote about it here a few years ago, and since then my conviction that we are going through it now has increased. He said things were going to come to a head; they were going to get worse before they got better, and He was right. We see faith in all our longtime sources of truth – science, religions, and the press – being quite literally shattered. And “unidentified flying objects” (UFOs), which apparently are the various transports and motherships of the Arcturuan guardians of this planet and always have been carefully cloaked, are now suddenly letting us see them, We live in truly amazing times!
Jesus called the Tribulation “the birth pangs” of a much better life to come. And it does begin to seem that He was right.
Hi again,
I think this tribulation is an experience in a larger reality than our experience of incarnation. We are so narrowly obsessed with this little keyhole on reality that we spend our time trying to be “right” about the most insignificant events (compared to Cosmic reality, I mean). No wonder we are baffled. But I (and my guide) still have hope.
My dear Mike, hope is certainly called for! But life in this little keyhole, as you describe it, is never going to be easy because the fact that it is full of negative stressors is the entire point of its existence. As you and Arrow know! And knowing that, we can always feel confident that (a) life here will always be hard, on both the macro level of continents and the planet and the micro level of each individual life; and (b) the planet is at no existential risk, because it is so valuable to the Godhead. You can read about thousands of atomic bombs in stockpile, any one of which could at any moment blow up the world, and also of interstellar ships seen dipping into and rising out of the ocean, and you can still sleep like a baby. The Godhead lets useful and educational very bad things happen here, but the planet is always safe in everlasting arms.
I’m with Jason on this one. If you have watched what is happening in India right now, I don’t see how the Covid can be compared with the flu.
Oh dear David, it is indeed tragic that in a poor nation like India, the virus is indeed so much worse! Thank you for reminding us of that fact. It does indeed seem to be altogether a different illness as we move from country to country, doesn’t it?
Hi!
Thank you Roberta for this important post in your blog. I don’t read every post you write, but this one got my attention simply because of the introduction “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.”. This song with Jimmy Cliff is one of my favourites 🙂 I feel so uplifted and in a good mood every time I listen on it. I wonder if it has been channeled, like many other great songs?
About Covid, I agree with you. You are completely right. The whole thing has been planned since many years. I see it as a well coordinated worldwide psyop, using fear tactics. The tests (PCR) were not designed for diagnosis but they are used all over the world to create alleged cases of covid. I think the dangerous part is not the covid, the dangerous part is the alleged “cure”, the vaccines.
I am not sure if I am allowed or not to post a link here to a video. So I just want to mention that somebody who has researched this for a long time and has much information on the subject is David Icke in UK. He has a channel on Bitchute with a lot of great informative videos. I am sure it is easy to find with a search on Google.
All the best.
Timo
Dear Timo, I’m glad that you liked this one! That makes me happy, since when I first read the posted result I thought it wasn’t one of our best. But I have learned from emails and comments here each week that there are people who especially like one post or another because it speaks to them where they are personally, and that makes me happy!
I have read various things about the vaccines, but in the end since there don’t seem to be widespread negative reactions my whole family chose to be vaccinated. Perhaps my attitude is a bit different from the general view of dangers, since I see dying earlier rather than later as something like getting out of school a little early!
Whatever the number of deaths, individuals exercising concern for others (acting UNselfishly) could have made it fewer.
Oh my dear Ray, that is precisely the point! Thank you! I used the Covid crisis as just an illustration of what happens when you give low-vibration people who are living in fear and with especially needy egos a bit of power. You are absolutely right!
Morning dear Roberta,
Love your posts ! So happy I found you, the truth makes my heart feel good. Bless you.
Toni
Dear Antoinette, your kind words make me smile. Thank you, and thank you for joining us here 🙂
Dear Dorothy, As your fan and avid follower, today’s reading really upset me. You say that this virus which has killed thousands the world over, is nothing more the flu, not needed to be feared, and your mocking of lockdowns and the importance of vaccinations is so detrimental to our struggle for a relief from the pain and death of our loved ones; and, finally putting science as the perpetrator of the same false information in the category as religious falsehoods is shocking. My friends and I are all so surprised. Science may err at times but it is part of plan to make our lives safer, so denying that is denying reality– love saves but respect and gratitude for sciences reminds us the beauty of creation. We owe the source of creation our duty to care for all creation including humans and their bodies.
Oh my dear Barbara, you likely don’t realize that Dorothy is my sainted mother’s name. To see you use it to refer to me makes me smile!
And as others have pointed out to me by email, my using Covid as an example of how a little fear combined with the needy egos of people who have a little power can create tyrants! By my observations, that has certainly been true during the Covid crisis. We see a third of the restaurants in the United States now projected to close for good; we see as many as half of the church buildings in the United States now projected to be closed forever by the end of the year; and we note that nearly all the actual Covid fatalities were over sixty and/or had some preexisting health problem, and 80% were obese, and we say that more sensitive and respectful actions on the part of those in power could have both saved more victims and created far less long-term harm. That was my only point.
And I’m sorry, my dear friend, but mainstream science at this point is fully as dogma-driven, and therefore fully as dangerous, as any religion ever has been. When it insists on perpetuating the lies that consciousness is produced by the brain and that all that exists in the universe is random – there is no “un-caused cause” – then science is perpetuating gigantic unnecessary suffering on a scale hitherto unimaginable!
But I didn’t mock vaccinations. I have been vaccinated, as has been my whole family. I didn’t “mock” lockdowns either, but rather I see them as the use of a club when perhaps a carefully-wielded rapier could have had the same positive effect while doing far less harm.
I’m sorry you are upset with me! I hope that you will at least accept my hug?
Dearest Roberta,
Oy Vey! What an interesting reply thread we are flowing through this week. There are so many important points raised by everyone that I am gifted by each & every response; by the enjoyment of each responder’s perspective, knowledge, hard won experience and yes, by each person’s passion to do good in the world. (Hello everyone and thank you. 🙏🏼)
As an Australian 🇦🇺 ensconced in Sydney, I could talk about our Covid story to add another perspective to this worldwide experience but I don’t think I will, other than to say that we’ve managed to keep coronavirus (mostly) off our shores by sealing our borders to all but limited numbers of Aussie returnees who must endure strict quarantine once home. And that after successive statewide lockdowns, we are now getting vaccinated (rather slowly) and opening up interstate travel, tourism and the economy. Although we have allowed certain freedoms to lapse during lockdown and we are wary – watching and waiting – to have them fully restored in the immediate future. (There’s the rub, of course.)
Roberta, I understand that COVID was your example of human fear, selfishness and egoism, including the ego’s grab for power using the fear of COVID as a means… Hence there is the matter of evil, isn’t there? The result of collective fear is all too often mass domination by the egoists in power, who strip away freedoms in the name of safety and security. (Anyone been to Hong Kong lately? 😣)
And your (well chosen) example of evil was Adolf Eichmann; the architect of the Holocaust. This middle level bureaucrat was given special powers by his Fuehrer to design and run the Nazi system of human extermination:
Interestingly, Eichmann always maintained that he was not responsible for any evil deed, even for the trains that he ran to the death camps. He was simply doing his duty, according the the job description set out for him. Eichmann was just following his orders, as we all do at work. We all follow correct procedure efficiently in our jobs, do we not? That’s all he did, according to Eichmann himself. The decision of what cargo to deliver by rail was made much higher up. Hence Eichmann saw himself as not responsible for his crimes against humanity. His own ego had rationalized its way out of accepting any responsibility for the extermination of millions of people.
You know it occurred to me, Roberta, that for all the precise and pedantic banality that Eichmann’s vast evil work entailed – it succeeded because the victims of the Nazi transportation system had been thoroughly dehumanized over many years beforehand. There is a banality to something long normalized, isn’t there? Why would we think about the house cleaning that we must do every week? In fact, we don’t want to think about it – we just want to get it over with…
It seems that the necessary, active ingredient in the demonic brew served up by the Nazis was the absence of empathy. By denying empathy to the victims, the state propagandist Joseph Goebbels could dehumanize so many types of non Aryans over so many years before the Final Solution was initiated. By the time Auschwitz was up and running the Jewish ‘subhumans’ were actually seen as ‘non humans’. First the quality of empathy was denied them and, over time, Jewish people and other non Aryans were seen as non humans. (Over ten million souls were killed in the Holocaust; over four million were non Jews.) So in terms of Adolf Eichmann, why would he fret over the cargo of the rail transport system if he had no empathy? Those victims, both Jewish and non Jewish, were not worth more than the cattle said trains normally carried anyway! (According to Eichmann’s thinking that is.)
And now I’m wondering how empathy will work as more people become aware of their eternal soul?
Well, perhaps believing in material atheism leaves empathy as kind of optional. That is, you can empathize or not but it doesn’t really matter because we all die anyway, then it’s ‘lights out’. However if one knows that the human soul is deathless and there is an entire, bright afterlife that awaits – then empathy becomes essential. If empathy grows love and understanding and we ourselves wish to grow spiritually, seeing others as part of ourselves is the way to go. The worst evil, as Hannah Arendt accurately said, may be an incremental accumulation of everyday tasks by boring people. But nowadays we can counter the evil in the world. 🌎 At any time any one of us can ask: ‘Wait a minute, how did that thing make that person feel?’ ‘How would you or I feel if it happened to us?’ Or we may simply ask now and then, ‘Are you okay?’ 🌅❣️🕊
My dear Efrem, your thoughts today are especially deep and enlightening. Thank you! In reading your comment, it for the first time has occurred to me that this making a class of lesser humans out of a group of people just because of their ancestry is precisely what is being attempted right now in the United States.
It was done before in the American South, where people who had been imported for use as slaves in a more benighted time were treated as other and lesser, a permanently different class of inferior people who were easily identified by their darker skin color. But the plain fact is that everyone with any European ancestry is descended from east Africans with darker skin, and VERY RECENTLY. As researchers begin to find analyzable DNA in European skeletons, some of them less than five thousand years old, they are finding that most of them were east Africans with dark skin (although, oddly, often they had blue eyes). There is in fact ZERO difference between people with different shades of skin in any modern country, just as at the time of the Holocaust there was zero difference between Jews and Gentiles.
And now, in the United States, as we at last are really defeating racism and the notion that there is any difference between people based on physical characteristics, the 1619 project of the New York Times is being introduced in our public schools in an effort to return to the idea of racial differences and to make that false notion permanent. People who think they have the best of intentions are actually modern-day Hitlers. This literally never occurred to me until now, and it horrifies me! No matter how pure we might believe our intentions are, unless we always are careful to trace our ideas to their possible horrendous results, we all risk being Eichmanns 🙁
Dear Efrem and Roberta: I just had to tell you that I have read so many well put together posts on this blog and at other sites that I have lost count of how many. However, what the 2 of you wrote above far surpassed any I have seen before. I just had to compliment you, as they are both so well written. And yes, dehumanizing people makes it very easy to destroy them or use them as slaves.
I have always admired Oskar Schindler who was a Nazi, but turned things around by saving thousands of Jews and others by somehow intercepting the train that was due to go to Auswich. Eichmann would have been in an even better position to do this but he didn’t. so his excuse doesn’t impress me.
My dear Lola, thank you for putting me in Efrem’s category – he so often writes such wonderful things!
And yes, Oskar Schindler was a man who saw evil and could so easily have looked the other way, but instead he did something powerful and amazingly courageous. Would that all of us had the strength to see evil and call it by its name and work selflessly to fight it!!
Dear Lola,
You are so kind to me, as is Roberta. However I am honored to be in this blog family with such deep thinking, spiritual people like yourself. This blog is very special to me. And I just tag along, trying to understand the uniquely insightful and often surprising perspective of Thomas and Roberta.
I am grateful to be amongst people who I believe have done much to help human beings and the planet in their own lives. I can feel the benevolent authenticity of people who write here. 🙂
As to Oskar Schindler, was he not amazing? Something awoke inside this successful and popular industrialist, that made him turn from self interest to save the lives of so many dehumanized and endangered victims of the Third Reich. I believe Oskar’s only regret was that he was not able to save more lives. 🌅
Efrem: You are correct about Schindler. When he was honored after the war by thousands of surviving Jews, his only regret was not saving more/ What “awoke” in him was a 14 year old Jewish girl who made herself up to be as sexy looking as possible. She told him that if he would spare her parents, she would make it worth his while. Of course, her voice was quivering, and it was clear that she was not the seductress she was pretending to be. He thought of his own young daughter and how he would feel if she was in the same situation, and his story began.
Heck Roberta, what a thought! It is necessary to trace out all the trajectories of our ideas to their possible consequences, thus foreseeing their possible bad ends, and then deciding if these ideas are worth expounding. True, as with our actions, Love demands that we check ideas carefully to make sure they are accurate and not unkind or dangerous in any way.
I’ve heard of the 1619 Project and I can’t help being wary of the rewriting of history to serve an ideology. Personally I feel that you guys should keep 1776 as the recognized founding date of the USA. Saying that America started with the first slave imports in 1619 is a bit of a reach. Also, I’m wary of anything initiated by a newspaper, NYT included. Print media is known for bias of one kind or another, often to serve an undisclosed agenda.
Nonetheless I do believe that African American history and experience are a central part of being American. (I cannot but feel for our African American brothers and sisters and I respect their struggles and how far they have come.) It is important to acknowledge this and help to bring justice and economic enfranchisement to everyone. However one doesn’t need to skew historical emphasis to serve a particular ideology or reduce historical statues to scrap metal.
The US has become a great, multicultural republic and is growing into a living expression of the human family. You guys are definitely dealing with injustices along the way. My own country 🇦🇺 has followed the same multicultural path and is reaping significant benefits because of this change. I believe we were mainly influenced by the US in this area.
However Roberta, as a non American I shouldn’t talk more about how things are in the good ol’ US of A. I don’t want to talk of what I personally haven’t experienced.
I don’t want to sound like say, a foreign royal married to an American girl, who has been in your country for but a brief time and proceeds to criticize and disparage the First Amendment of the US Constitution. All while admitting that he doesn’t really understand it! 👑 😅😆
Hi Roberta. Based on the passions it brought out, the Covid example turned out to be perfect, because whatever one’s take on the various theories, it shows how something can be taken advantage of to advance a particular agenda. On one side or the other we have seen tribalism and extremes. The Nazis were masters at using that. Would that more people could put aside fear and the ego, to align in each moment with higher guidance and the greater good, and to acknowledge each other’s unique perspectives, and rhat nobody has the whole picture or we wouldn’t be here in Earth school. We could see so much more peace, humility, patience, compassion, and clarity, both individually and collectively. I hope Mike is right. I worry about the fascination with AI, technology, and materialism as the end all and be all that also seems on the rise.
That qoute you gave from Edith Eva Egar was one of the most moving and profound examples of maintaining a gratitude practice and keeping the bigger spiritual picture in mind that I’ve ever read. She must have been an advanced soul to plan and put herself in the path of the horrendous WW II experience she lived and still maintain that outlook. I will be forever inspired by her her example.
Dear Scott, I agree with your thoughts on Edith Egar! What she wrote is massively moving and powerful, and almost an actual catalogue of spiritual growth and how it happens. It is truly amazing. It seems clear that she didn’t always have and maintain that outlook, but rather she was driven to the depths of spiritual negativity by what happened in her life when she was still just a child. As we all would have been! But she lived it, she studied it, she sought to understand it, and she forgave it. She gained from it the sort of understanding that only terrible earth-lessons can give us. It is often said that forgiving bad things done to us is a gift that we give to ourselves, and her life is a perfect illustration of that! She is spiritual growth, personified, and my guess is that now this is probably her last necessary earth-lifetine.
(Believe it or not, when something like the Holocaust is being considered as a life-planning option, people take pre-birth classes to help them prepare to get the most out of such rough lives. And they do that eagerly!)
That is not hard to believe, as pre birth classes would seem to be essential for getting through these difficult lives, although the word “difficult” seems to be an understatement. Maybe I was too hasty in bashing Eichmann. After all, if life is a play like they say it is, not all the characters are meant to be “Mary Poppins” types.
No, dear Lola, we are not all meant to be Mary Poppins. True enough! But neither are we to be excused if we facilitate the murder of millions of people. It’s astonishing that some people actually can find ways to feel justified in doing such horrendous things.
This just in (at least for me): it was learned that globally renowned and beloved “children’s author” Eric Carl died last Sunday at the age of 91. To anyone who had children and read to them after 1969, his Very Hungry Caterpillar was a staple.
I put children’s author in quotes because his books had as much meaning for adults as children, if looked at properly. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a metaphor that resonates truly for this experience we perceive as incarnation.
We are hungry for everything and devour it all in order to transform fundamentally. Let’s all read this book again!
Hey 👋 Mike,
I remember that book from decades ago ; it’s about metamorphosis isn’t it? It has long been a staple for kids Down Under too. You know, I will read it again and see what resonates…
Thanks for the suggestion, sometimes the simplest things have the deepest messages. 👍🕊🌅
Sounds lovely, Mike!
A similar type of story that I enjoyed when I was a child was The Ugly Duckling, by Hans Christian Andersen. We all have the ability and potential to transform ourselves as we learn and integrate the reality of our spiritual natures.
Hey Scott 👋
You are right. This was a beautiful story about transformation to beauty.
Maybe we could well read these tales again in adulthood to remind us of the wonder of personal transformation.
Great suggestion Scott!
🙏🏼🕊🌅
Good idea to re-read these books from an adult perspective. My favorite is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Though not meant for really young kids, it was about expanding our awareness and letting go of the tired old beliefs that keep us tied down. It’s a bit like what we are doing here.
Two apropos quotes that I just now (by coincidence?) came across from Allen Roland (.com):
Think of the ego as a protective COCOON that is eventually meant to be shed.
There is no such thing as an UGLY soul – we all come from a place of love, joy, and soul consciousness.
All true! But in fact, many people have trouble actually shedding the ego – they too often confuse it with themselves. I have come to think that one of the best things about reallyb growing spiritually is that the process itself lessens the hold on the ego until it eventually just shreds away.