goldisheavy

Damn bureaucrats have invaded every conceivable realm.

I wish that all people's wishes come true.

I've had similar experiences. Many people talk about ego, but few realize what is ego. Ego is not just you. Ego is everything you've ever known. Ego is your entire known universe. The planet Earth, the solar system, the milky way, your parents, your friends, this computer, all that is your ego. So becoming non-attached to one's ego is more tricky than it seems. Many people are willing to become non-attached to "their" bodies, or non-attached to "their" personalities, but how many can become non-attached to their brothers, sisters, parents, country, Earth, Universe, God, Gurus, matter, energy, and everything you've ever known and thought to be true?

I used to think so too. But I've had numerous dreams that became so intensely and viscerally moment-by-moment "real", that I was worried I was getting permanently stuck in another dimension. And so before I'd forget that it's just a dream, I would make myself wake up in every one of those dreams. I've learned one thing -- there are no limits. None of any kind. Everything is literally possible. It all depends on mind. Every time I have let my mind loose, amazing things happen with the same certainty as a falling rock hitting the ground on Earth. Every time the limit has only been what I am willing to tolerate and not otherwise. The manifestation is limitless and always at the ready. I feel it lapping at the shore of my sanity at all times. The only limit is not the mind per se or the power to manifest, but only my willingness to accept and live with what I can instantly manifest and its consequences. Now, since we are talking about mindset, there is a real problem here. The problem is that my mindset is not "just because". It represents my intent! So I can't just throw it away. It represents my values, my hopes, my fears, all my ideas and all my knowns. These are not worthless things by any means. Vice versa -- they are the most precious. And if I give them up authentically, it's not because I apply some rote technique to them. Hell no. It's because I contemplate them and I gradually and authentically realize that my values and my dreams are changing. Then the process of giving up my old mindset is effortless and authentic. There is no rote to it. No technique. It's a living heart. It's alive. It's not a robot. It's alive. It's not a machine. It's alive. My mind is alive. I am alive. There is nothing automatic in me. I have habits, but those are also living. They are not machines. What is this? This is me moving my identity further from the mechanistic and closer to the lively. This way is toward freedom, toward unconstrained life, toward the mastery of belief structures. When you see a picture of a woman on the screen, the screen has no woman in it. But you feel like there is a woman there. Why? Because there is a woman IN YOUR MIND. In fact, it's all like that. There are no external objects at all. It's all just mind impressions dancing around. Solidity, materiality, can only be taken on faith. If it's not taken on faith, it can never be proven. When you think you see a wise teacher, how do you know that teacher is wise? Maybe the teacher is a moron. You know it because the wisdom is always, forever, IN YOUR OWN MIND. You could never recognize wisdom in another person if you didn't first have it in you. This is why foolish people follow foolish teachers, and wise people follow wise teachers, and those with the unexcelled wisdom follow no one at all.

It's important to maintain some level of honesty with regard to phenomena. For example, relaxation as we understand it is part of the equation, but it's not the whole story. For example, can you make your arm be 3 meters long just by relaxing it more and more? The answer to that is "no". To do that you need 2 things: first you need a mindset that doesn't block such experience from occurring. Second, you need to intend for this to happen. So intention, plus absence of obstacles equals result. If you are like me, you believe at least in some level of physicality. That means you believe, either consciously or subconsciously or both, in the power of ligaments for example. So if you relax, but your ligaments are not stretched, guess what? Relaxation won't be enough. The ligament tissue can stop your limbs dead cold -- it is very very strong tissue! Trained ligaments can carry loads of thousands of pounds and probably more. There might not even be a limit to it. That's just from a mundane physical perspective. So if your ligaments are short, your range of motion will be limited no matter how relaxed you are. But, the mind does have amazing power. So for example, I believe a lot of people are not 100% physicalist in their mindset. So they really deeply believe that subtle energy can transform the physical manifestation. So it is possible that just by unblocking this energy their ligaments manifest in a longer state. I also believe that someone can manifest longer ligaments just by pure intention without using the concept of energy at all. Alternatively ligaments can be gradually stretched using the purely physical approach to stretching. And there are probably 100 other approaches. A human being is a very intricate and nuanced vision. We have bones. We have blood vessels. We have ligaments. We have muscle tissue and fat tissue and so much more. We have so many tissues and systems that I think even biologists who study human tissues do not know them all. This amazingly intricate and subtle system, which, depending on your core beliefs about reality can include spiritual energy channels and much more (or much less), it all operates interdependently. There is not a single "part" of a human being that operates in isolation. So if you relax your muscle but your ligament is short, that's a "part" by "part" approach that will likely yield only a limited result. Instead if you approach the human being in a holistic fashion and perhaps try to relax even your bones and even your idea of who you are and what you are capable of, then maybe you'll get better results. When we train we train every cell. It's not just muscles that we train. We train liver, bones, marrow, blood, phlegm, lungs, brain, cartilage, and even hair. And even the space around you. There is nothing that's not trained during training. So if you know this from the outset, your intention during training can be more all-encompassing. And then perhaps you just have to be patient. As long as you feel small improvements, maybe that's good enough, unless you're in a hurry.

It all comes down to this... I don't like to be bullied and I don't want to bully anyone either (HONEST!). But at the same time, I do like to be touched and I like to touch people. I don't want to be distantly formal and far away. I want to be a little messy with people, at least some times. I want to play. I don't want to just stay in my room and read like a "good boy", if you know what I mean. I want to play and during playing I may push you, and I expect you to push me, but there is a reasonable limit to this. From my point of view, I am completely satisfied with our dialogue on this subject. I hope everyone else feels the same.

Thank you for this rare personal account. I treasure it, especially considering how rarely people are willing to describe events like these in public. Again, thanks for sharing. I disagree with this. We have a choice of many different ways of seeing the universe and life. I think none of these choices are more inherently true than the other. Seeing energy is a valid possibility and not seeing it is also equally valid. I think it's far better to learn to transition freely between these different realities than to become permanently entrenched in one of them. Wouldn't it be nice if you could turn on and off the energy sight at will? Wouldn't it be nice if you could move to a different universe with different rules and then back? I think so. Why should reality only be this or only be that way? Why can't there be some free movement between more alternatives? That's how I think on that subject. I like various possibilities, but I don't like the idea of becoming permanently committed to any one of them.

Ha, but this is not the whole story! I really don't like when you get a partial story that kind of twists the meaning. Let's give the full story about push hands. When you do push hands or sticky hands, you behave exactly as Stig describes in order to find an opportunity for energy input. THEN, you DO resist. You then stop following your opponents hands and become unexpectedly rigid or give your opponent a jolt in an unexpected direction, and the opponent flies off. So it's not the goal of push hands to be in that harmonious movement perpetually. The entire point of that following of your opponents hands is so that you can find an opportunity for attack, and it's not, for example, to get your opponent exhausted or to dance with your opponent in an endless dance. Push hands exercise often comes to a violent end and if you're not ready and willing to emit that violent burst, you might as well not even bother with push hands, at least not for the martial arts purpose. Maybe it would be OK for health purpose, but not OK for martial arts. In terms of martial application, there is indeed violence there. I wouldn't worry about making money. Just focus on good life and let money appear and disappear as is appropriate for the situation. An analogy for this is blood. In order to be healthy your blood must be healthy, but do you try to trick your blood or mess with it in any way? Do you go on a dialysis machine, JUST IN CASE or for "that extra edge in blood cleanliness?" HECK NO! It's absurd. When you are healthy, blood takes care of itself. You worry about moving your body and blood moves automatically. Money is like blood. You worry about living a good life, and money will move correctly automatically the same way that blood moves correctly and automatically when you lead a good and healthy life style.

I disagree. I think reason is universal. Opinions can differ, but there is common ground where all can meet if they value reason. Once the person values reason, the possibility for a discussion has been opened. Let me explain how a reasonable person operates. First, all conclusions are tentative until better or simply different reasons arrive on the scene. When a reasonable person makes some arguments for something, they fully expect REASONED dissent. That means that it's OK if you disagree, but you have to explain why in a manner that's more nuanced and more sophisticated than just saying "whatever you said is crap" or "Here's a one-liner that's irrelevant to the discussion from some book". As a reasonable person I am glad to change my opinion upon hearing a good argument. I do not change my opinion because I get told to "take my head out of my ass". For example, let's say I don't like certain extreme Koranic verses. I make an argument for why I don't like them. I don't say, "Muslims, gets your heads out of your asses and stop fucking donkeys". I don't say that. At least not unless I am angry and I don't get angry that often. Imagine if instead of what I wrote to "Creation" about thanking people I just told him "you're full of shit, get your head out of your ass" and just left it at that? Would that be a better solution? Of course most of you prefer not to be criticized EVER, EVER, not for any reason. I don't know to what extent this is true, but it seems true at least somewhat. I don't want to point any fingers to any specific people anymore, but let all of you reflect on this. As for me, I welcome criticism unlike many of you here. However, if you want to criticize me, don't try to act like a monkey and fling shit at me. Instead, make a reasoned point and discuss things with me in a civil manner. You'll be surprised what can happen if you do that. Well, why don't you tolerate criticism then? How do you explain that? Do you lack heart? Why must you always have harmony? Are you addicted to it? Perhaps you need more tolerance? Ok, so how many of you wave "good luck with that" to me? Do you eat your own medicine? Are you self-consistent? It seems like a lot of people here are hypocrites. You want others to tolerate you but you don't want to tolerate anyone else. Finally. This is the only thing you said that was actually productive and on topic. So what is your solution?

As I promised, I will share what happened to me. For the record, I haven't really been convinced of anything in life except one time. That's not to say my opinion hasn't shifted. I shift my opinion from time to time as a result of discussion. But it's never the kind of "wow" shift; it is rather moderate. I have experienced some "WOW" moments, but those were not because someone proved something to me, but because I realized that something was possible whereas previously I didn't have an opinion on the matter. One such WOW moment was when I read that life is a dream. The thing is, I never thought that life was not a dream. I just never thought about it, period. I just lived life without thinking what life might me. I was like on auto-pilot. I had all kinds of problems and I always dealt with all my problems in local manner using the local knowledge available. I never tried to take a larger view of my life and beliefs. I never tried to step back, until I was 20 or so. So when I read in "The Power of Dreams" that naguals thought of life as a dream, I thought, WOW!! I mean, it's not like I did not agree with it and now I agreed. But it was like I have now began to consider this for the first time in my life, and the implications were staggering and mind blowing. If life was a dream then....THEN I WAS LIVING LIFE WRONG. That was my thought. I thought, if it's a dream, then I have a lot more possibilities in life than I have ever previously imagined. So the first thing I did was I learned to lucid dream. In my lucid dreams I decided to test everything for myself. That's how I am. I don't "practice" anything. Instead I explore possibilities. My practice is reflective even when I actually do things, I don't do them just to get better at doing them, but I do them to find something out about myself and about my life. I only do things to find wisdom and not to actually do a thing to get it done. The one exception to this is when I play games or just aimlessly fool around, which I think is also good to do from time to time. So what do I do in my dreams? I check to see how the dreams are. I used to think that dreams were truly very different from waking experience. I used to have an extremely firm belief that there is no way anyone could ever confuse dream with reality. I don't even know why I thought that! I just did. I don't think I had any evidence to think that, because I never tested my opinion! I just thought so. So finally I couldn't "just think so" and I had to put it to the test. I checked all kinds of common beliefs about dreams like "you can tell you are dreaming is the clock is wrong", or "you can tell you are dreaming if the light switches do not work or work funny", or "you can tell you are dreaming if everything looks fuzzy or rainbow-y", or "you can tell you are dreaming if you pinch yourself and feel no pain", or "you can tell you are dreaming if you can't read books" and so on and so forth. There is a quite a big list of things that either I've heard of and thought reasonable, or that I just believed on my own without any specific reason to believe them. So I check all those. And what happens? Well some things seem to be true at first, but....then BAM, a dream happens it's no longer working! For example, I would look at a clock in my lucid dream to see if it's showing garbage information, and it does. OK, so it's true that clocks don't work in dreams. Then I try it the next night and BAM, the clock looks completely reasonable. I think UH OH... UH OH... that test is not reliable! Let's try pinching myself. Ok I pinch myself and I feel no pain... PHEW.. ok pinching is a reliable test of dreaming! Phew.... then BAM, couple nights later I can feel pain in my dreams too. UH OH!! Crap... pinching doesn't work. Turns out it's possible to dream of pain too. Let's try other things. To make a long story short, all my tests eventually failed and I began to worry. If any of you are laughing, I hope you enjoy yourself, seriously. But it was very serious for me at the time. I thought I was losing my sanity. I thought, "What if I can't tell dreams from reality?" I mean, on one hand I like the idea of having many possibilities open, but on the other hand, I didn't realize how much attached I was to the idea that there was this solid, comfortable, unchanging place I called reality where I may suffer, but I know how it works, and I know what to expect, and it exists objectively regardless of my mind and I exist there and basically "I know what's up". So if life is a dream, then while I gain many more options in terms of manifestation, but then I seemed to be losing my comfort in solidity and objectivity. All this culminated in me, one time having a totally wild experience. It happened very simply. One time I wake up. And I need to get ready for work as usual. I am taking a shower. I get dressed. I am almost ready to head out the door and then....I WAKE UP AGAIN. F****CK!!! @#$@#@@ WTF??? I was so shocked. What is this? I have to take the same shower, get dressed, etc... I did everything two times in a row and I was a little worried that I won't be able to leave for work because I might wake up one more time and have to do it all over again. Luckily I didn't wake up a 3rd time. After that experience I realized there is absolute NO WAY, none, zero, nada, zilch, nie, null, no way I can tell reality from dreams or waking from dreaming or any such thing. And this came into a serious conflict with everything I had previously believed about reality and life. And it got so uncomfortable for me, that I had to, for a while, abandon all spiritual practice. The funny thing is -- I felt intuitively that I was causing all these experiences using my intent. I felt how I was creating all that, and I felt how if I didn't like it, I could stop it easily. So I stopped and my life returned to "normal". I didn't know this, but it turns out I really had a strong belief in the difference between dreaming and waking reality, and while theoretically it sounded good on paper to think of life as a dream, when I actually manifested some consequences of that, I was very uncomfortable.

Point well taken. However, in my experience, when I criticize Christianity or Judaism for this, I don't get anywhere near the pushback and the demands for "tolerance" as I do when I criticize similar aspects of Islam. It's only when you discuss Islam that there is a lot of pushback and demand for tolerance and basically a demand to shut up and stop talking about it. I am not happy about that. I also don't like that Muslims demand special accommodations from society at large. Like they request gyms where women are not allowed, or they request prayer rooms and so on. Like once there was some guy who wanted a bus driver to stop, cause he needed to pray, without regarding any of the people on the bus. That to me is a horrible trait to have. Mind you, I don't like when Hasidic Jews impose their rules on elevators in NYC either, because they don't allow sparks on Saturday or some stupid thing like that. I am against that, but having a guy in an elevator push a button for you on Saturday is not as onerous as having a special exclusive prayer room for Muslims. If there was a non-denominational prayer/meditation room, that's better, but still excessive in my opinion.

Mak Tin Si, I don't agree with most of what you say, but for some reason I don't mind you bombing me with your information. I especially disagree with how you interpret all kinds of "signs" as "evil FU" and "evil magic" and how you like to assign various health conditions to being possessed with "spirits". That's not the kind of reality validation framework that I support (and I have reasons for it too). But for you I guess it's not even a choice. You don't see any other possibilities cause you think that spirits infesting bodies of people is "just how it is". There is no other possibility. So you don't think you're structuring your experience in that way. However, you seem to be amenable to discussion and even if I don't agree with you, I don't feel like like you are completely crazy. Even if you post 100 posts per day, I don't have a problem with that, as long as I am allowed to respond with criticisms to as many of your posts as I like.

I like Zeitgeist and I don't like the neocons, however, I have my own head and I can read too. As much as I don't like the neocons I don't find it necessary to be different from them in every conceivable way. My ego is not disturbed if I happen to overlap with neocons in some opinions. Hell, I even agree with Hitler on a point or two. I am nothing even remotely similar to Hitler, but this is why I am who I am -- I can listen to any source of information impartially and because I rely on reason and not on the speaker's personal character, for example, I can benefit from just about any person, even from the most obnoxious and I can learn even from people with whom I am in 99% disagreement. And Judaism, let's say something about that. First of all, I cannot stand the conservative Jews, but they are very few and they don't have any real influence. There are something like 6-12 million Jews compared with 1.3 billion Muslims. It's not even close. Out of those Jews the number of conservatives is tiny. The progressive Jews have their own system. They gave themselves a new name, "Reformed Jews" and they have new rules. They are official about this and they take a stand. A woman can be a Rabi within "Reformed Judaism", for example. That's good. So these Jews have basically thrown the Torah out in some sense. They are changing their religion to something better. And based on my interaction with those people, their religiosity is practically non-existent. They say a prayer before dinner and they attend the synagogue on holidays, and they use that time to chit-chat and have fun and they, in my humble opinion, don't give a rat's ass about religion actually. It's more like a club / spouse pick up service. I believe that's from a Pew survey. The question was about condoning the terrorist bombings as means of self-expression. If I am wrong, please correct me.

I don't know if I have done anything to help, but if you ask me what have I done to attempt to help, then I can answer that. My primary focus is on the core beliefs and the mindset of a person, and the influence these have on one's life. So I like to discuss the formation and the dissolution of core beliefs, their effects on experience, how to become aware of the presence of core beliefs in your life, and so forth. In order to accomplish this I promote a primary virtue of contemplation, or reflectiveness, as opposed to say "doing", like moving energy or meditating, which is a subtle form of doing. I do recognize pragmatic and ornamental usefulness of doing and I am not dogmatically against doing at all. Doing is wonderful, but reflection is supreme. My secondary focus is on the quality and rigor of thinking. I pay attention to cogency. So if I notice someone posting something that simply makes no sense, I make sure to point it out, if I believe it is especially grievous/harmful. Many of you here do not understand the power of reason. Many of you believe that reason is related solely to what some of you call "conceptual mind" and is responsible for blocking spiritual perception. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reason is one whole with that which is beyond reason. It's not something that blocks anything, but it is one of the two arms of the ultimate mind. The other arm is "beyond reason". It is one whole. So I like to take any available opportunity to point it out. My third focus is on healing and health. So I've shared my own experience with healing. I also don't like physical brutality and I am interested in harmony. I don't think you can harmonize with people who believe in physical brutality as a solution to problems, for example people who believe in brutal punishments as a way to hold society "together". I believe brutality goes against the celestial harmony of Tao in the relative sense, while in an ultimate sense, of course Tao embraces everything. Well, I posted a detailed, well reasoned explanation, didn't I? I haven't seen any of those reasons addressed. Instead I am being told to ignore reason and follow heart, as if heart is anti-reason or has nothing to do with reason! That's completely wrong. If you want to abandon reason as a harmonizing medium (which is what it is!), then you choose force and raw unstructured influence as your option. Be careful if that's what you choose, because I am the strongest of any of you here, and I'd hate to compete with any of you. If you want to put reason down and enter into a contest of will, you will lose, and you'll create nothing but pain while you are losing. Reason is what leads people to peace. Reason is associated with reflectiveness and presence and not with doing. Force, or raw influence is associated with doing.

The obvious good news is that a whopping 75% of Muslims are neither radical nor sympathizers. Like I said many times before, I tend to resonate with Sufism based on what I've read about it. I believe there are many wise Sufis out there in the world whose words and actions are worth including into anyone's field of consideration. I do wish Sufis could teach their truths without converting people into Islam first though. Do any Sufis do that? I think traditionally Sufis had no choice but to struggle to fit in, and I think they've always had hard time with it. To give anyone who is curious an idea, just go to youtube and look for Sufism videos, and just watch some of the comments below. It's not uncommon to find Muslims who berate Sufis for not being "true Muslims", for being immodest, wild, crazy, heretical and you name it. This is not something that's only recorded in some dusty history books. You can find this kind of dynamic today on the web. One of my concerns is that because Sufis had to play along to survive, that perhaps many of them are seriously impacted by that kind of lifestyle. What I mean is, if you pretend something long enough, it may become internalized and become true. I myself had 2 Muslim friends. One in high school who has shared some very cool computer games with me. And one time there was a Muslim girl who liked me. Unfortunately she was a little crazy from my point of view, but her craziness had nothing to do with religion, it was a 100% girl thing, so I had to say bye bye to her in short order right after meeting her. LOL. On one hand I want to give hugs to all the Muslims as people. I mean I recognize there is a person there who is suffering and who wants a better life, like any of us. But on the other hand, I also want to ask all the Muslims, "how do you deal with the fact that Koran is so very brutal in many regards? Sharia is brutal. Killing apostates is simply a no-no in the modern world. Having sex with slave girls is OK? Yes according to Koran and so on... how do you deal with it?" I know that if I ask a Christian the same thing, they can always tell me, "Well, Jesus overrode all that." Fine. But Mohammed has killed many people himself and has had sex with a 9 year old (I believe that's what it means to consummate a marriage) who has been married at 6. How can Muslims deal with these things? So, as people, I love them. But as far as doctrines go, I think formal Islam is antiquated and needs to enter the halls of history as something that's no longer done. The spiritual wisdom of Sufis is, on the other hand, a very interesting and wonderful thing in my opinion, and that I would like to stay.

Ok, I was looking up this Master and guess what I found? I found that he has a blog. So far I like what I see there! This guy seems to be really sharing! So I thought I would put a link to his blog here: http://wudangtao.org/wudangblog/ I love the 03/04/09 post. I can't wait to read the rest. EDIT: Oh well, I guess it was too good to be true. I found plenty to disagree with on the 02/04/09 post. This is why I don't follow any Master. Still, I have to say even with some foobars like on 02/04/09, I really like this guy. He seems genuine and passionate and not a wuss.

Bullshit. I was not dogmatic. I gave what I believe were very good reasons, well explained. I didn't just say "you should do this" and leave it at that. That would be dogmatic had I said it like that. I've also invited criticisms, but instead of criticisms I got responses ranging from dogma to ridicule. Not a single person who disagreed with me has demonstrated an ability to think in this thread.

I'll show you how, not just theoretically. Tomorrow I am going to share my experiences and analysis on this matter and you'll get your answer in a form of an example. I just thought other people might want to take a stab at it first. So far I see mostly dodging. No one has approached the question in a face-to-face toe-to-toe manner.

NW, Your reply makes me want to yawn. You're kind of saying, "yo guys, I'll talk, but I won't join the discussion". I asked to discuss the process of proving and I didn't ask anyone to actually prove anything to me or to anyone. The question was "Was anything ever proven to you? How was that accomplished? Can you recount the experience and offer some analytical insight into it?" The question was not "prove to me you can fly" or "prove to me you can make your hands glow" (those are more like demands anyway). If you don't want to discuss anything, it's better to just shut up than to pretend like you are discussing while not actually discussing anything. The goal is not to get me or anyone else sold on some belief or experience. The goal, as I see it and suggest it, is to gain insight into what happens during "proving". That's the spirit of what I am saying. NW, so you are being cheap. No questions about it. You refuse to share deeply.

Stig, I am all about tolerance and inclusiveness. However, if someone is ready to kill their own children in order to get me to believe what that person believes, then all tolerance goes out the window, because I don't think a person who is ready to kill her own children is open to discussion. So rather than pretend it's not there and it's not happening, I see it for what it is. 25% of 1.3 billion is a lot of people. If any information in the video is not true, it should be proven wrong with good evidence. Further, I don't think we should foster an atmosphere where there are taboos. Do you believe taboos lead to peace and happiness? Is critiquing religion a taboo? It shouldn't be. If you close people's mouths -- that's against the natural flow of Tao. Just read Lieh Tzu if you don't believe me. Let's put an end to taboos, and let's talk about our concerns. Now I am concerned about radical Islam. I have read many passages from Koran, and they are outright disturbing. Whereas Christians can claim to only follow what Jesus said (esp. the "red letter Christians") and ignore the Old Testament (where most ugliness is contained in the Bible), the Muslims have no such escape with the Koran, because the entire Koran is attributable to Mohammed, and there are some truly horrible things in it.

I think the problem is that I put too many questions and people are choosing to answer the most silliest of questions and in the most superficial way possible. Why not try to answer this one: "Has anything ever been proven to you that you didn't believe in prior to the proof? What did it take to change your mind? What does it mean 'to prove'? What is involved in the process of 'proving'?" And please, don't put cheap one word answers like "experience". That's just a catch all for anything. You can answer "experience" to any question. Let your answer demonstrate that you have contemplated the issue on your own time and not just read about it in a book. If you haven't contemplated it in the past, it's not too late now! When you answer the question, please give an example of something concrete that has been proven to you that you didn't believe prior to proof. So please give a detailed description of your experience and then please offer your contemplative analysis of the beliefs that have structured and informed that experience all throughout. Please let's not quote anyone either. Let's just speak our minds as we understand things. I'd rather get a less eloquent answer that I can trust is genuine than get a very clever quotation that I believe the person doesn't truly understand.

Ha, you're right. I have bigger fish to fry. I wasn't planning on a big thread about it. I just wanted to make a small note, but you know how that goes sometimes.

First of all, the Bible is not the word of God (and neither is Koran, or any other book). Secondly, Matthew 6:3-4 says absolutely NOTHING about shouting your gratitude to the world. I gave you clear reasons explaining why thanking people publicly for something they've done for you privately is bad. Do not attempt to address reason with dogma. Reason shall be addressed only with reason.

The inner meaning of my name is a reminder that materiality, while shiny and seemingly valuable, is an anchor that weighs us down and limits our experiential freedom. Think of it as lovingly putting on the golden jewelry and having lots of gold coins in your pockets that you believe bring you security and good life and then being unable to move, or moving only with great struggle, sweating and straining greatly against all that weight. So my name is a call to renunciation.