goldisheavy

I like how NeutralWire explains it. Mostly I agree with NeutralWire, and my favorite bits are: and There is an aspect of approaching the appearances creatively with a sense of personal responsibility, rather than merely adjusting one's own psyche for a less bumpy ride. Zen is utterly missing this creative aspect. This is where something like Western Chaos Magic is much much supreme in the attitude. Unfortunately, in my opinion Chaos Magic writings lack wisdom, even if they have a perfectly good attitude toward creativity. So to my mind there is no perfect school or tradition or an author that has it all balanced out and harmonized. Everyone is wrong. Some waste their time on energy when the same effects can be attained through symbolic intention directly, without any intermediate manifestations (such as those of energies). Others spend so much time on reflection that they create a sense of passivity and of life being nothing more than a TV show where the best you can hope for is to not be depressed by what you see. Others spend all their time talking about how you can become a TV show producer, but then they tell you absolutely nothing, or even worse, wrong information about how the TV actually works and what works best for making your own films and so forth. So the wisdom traditions, from my tiny mind, are all garbage if we take them wholesale. But at the same time, if we do not take them wholesale, and if we mine them like you'd mine the gold out of the gold mine, are a source of great wealth. But I wouldn't set up my home inside a dank gold mine and live there. No way. Looking for diamonds in the middle of big piles of dung is something I do when I interact with religions and various teachers. However I don't want to live in the dung. When I relax, I don't have the dung in my mind, but only the diamond-like impressions I have gathered from all over the place. That's my attitude toward interacting with convention. The problem I have with calling what I do an exercise, is this. I actually do some real exercises, and the thing with an exercise is that I always have an ulterior motive. For example, if I do pull ups, it's not like I want to be doing pull ups for the rest of my life. I do them to feel better the next day, and to get stronger. If I could find a way to feel stronger and better without pull ups, I would, as long as it's a healthy one (no pills, no gimmicks, no synthol, and no muscle grafts for me when people learn to grow muscle tissues in a vat). If or when I learn to become strong through a more abstract kind of intent, I will dump the pull ups. So the thing with exercise is that it's not necessarily pleasant, and it is repetitive, and it's not the end goal. So for example, my pull ups are mostly the same. Sure I can throw some variety into them, like doing offset pull ups, or adding dynamic tension, or some other spices, at the end of the day, they are the mostly the same, or they are more same than they are different. On the other hand, contemplation is something that's pure joy. I don't do it for something else. I don't know anything more pleasant. I like to live my life in a contemplative state of mind, not because this will give me some other thing, but because it's natural to me and I like it a lot. It's not something I have to force myself to do. I spontaneously do it from birth. Or it can be said that I don't "do" it, but it arises effortlessly. In fact the word "arises" is wrong, because there is no beginning or end to it. So "arises" is also out. Since my contemplation is not really a period of time, and since it's not rote by any means, it's not scheduled in any way (unlike say for Franz Bardon, who wants you to do it at a certain time, etc.). From a perspective of a so-called "disciplined" person, I am a lazy non-practitioner. From my perspective, the "arduous foolhardy practitioner" is wasting his energy on the account of his spiritual or mental laziness. When I look back to the practitioner, I say to myself, "if he had the same inner discipline as me, he wouldn't need so much discipline, and he could be lazy like me". It's because people lack the spirit, they must compensate with artificial, conceptual, structured discipline. If you got the right spirit, you can be a jackass moron who does nothing special (seemingly!) and still be in bliss. This is why I am not full of praise for meditation. I won't put meditation down, but I don't get awfully excited about it either. The only time I would recommend meditation over contemplation is if the person simply cannot think on a single topic and their mind simply cannot even maintain a coherent train of thought. In that case I would recommend meditation. However people like that are extremely rare (and they are mostly in the psych wards I think). Most regular people can maintain a topic in their mind that they are interested in. And if the person is not interested in a topic, I would never recommend to fake the interest. I would try to arouse genuine interest, and if that fails, I'd not try to suggest that the interest must be faked. The main problem that a person faces in life is one's own beliefs, rather than a mind that's unable to focus. An antidote to beliefs is not an attitude of avoiding thinking! Instead an antidote is an attitude of active critical self-questioning, as I see it. At some point the person begins to see that there is power that's available. There is creativity. Then the passive living stops, and active living begins. But by active living I don't mean running around doing a lot of tasks on the conceptual level! That's what mortals do and all their activities have the flavor of passivity, since they are not creative, but are boring predictable and stifled responses to life. So active living is not the same as being a busy body. Being an American style busy body full of ambition is pretty much the opposite of active creative living.

Everything is the same distance from the Dao. The distance is 0. Even the most erratic and undisciplined idiot follows Dao 100%, without the tiniest deviation. In fact, they don't even "follow" it anymore then water follows wetness, so that language is misleading in the first place. The whole point of studying Dao is not so that you can follow it per se, but so that you can become wise. If you learn about the nature of appearances, you can have a better life, relatively speaking. From an ultimate point of view, there is no improvement at all that can be had by studying Dao. It's only in some limited and relative sense that some sort of improvement can be made, or that something good can be preserved. The ultimate truth is like a mirror, which, in itself shows nothing, but thanks to it, you can interact with the relative truth wisely, as if removing a smudge from your face with the aid of a mirror. The ultimate truth, as anything recognizable, is relative to the relative truth though. So there is a bit of a deception in the idea of an ultimate truth. But let's say there is truth that's more important and some that's less important. The nature of distinctions is always a habit of imagination that's self-possessed, alive, malleable, and the self-possesseddness of it is called intent.

I would say that Tao is not an object of any kind, but is the underlying nature of everything. Taoism can refer to one of many useless ideologies, like any other isms, concocted on top of this potentially useful idea. There are many Taoist sects who have slightly different ideas about Tao, and almost none of them (!) agree with Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu, or even Lieh Tzu. The most charitable thing I can say about Tao-ism, is that it's an attempt to become mindful of the deeper reality that underlies appearances, to learn its laws (or lack thereof!), to learn its truth, and to use that wisdom for preserving good life. Isms are ill advised. Wisdom is a good thing.

What do you mean "when we remove"? If you remove something crucial from your object of contemplation, aren't you then contemplation a delusion or a hallucination and not the original object? How is what you are suggesting different from suggesting to people to engage in ad-hoc speculation and conjecture? Is there any evidence for this? If anything I think we have evidence to the contrary. The deep past had some good qualities, but I don't think it was generally a utopia. I'd say there were islands of near-utopia where conflicts were mostly local (as opposed to wars). I don't think this is true in every case. In some Native American tribes, the kids were put into a single home, where they were raised by some women. These kids would not be associated with families as much as they belonged to the entire tribe. Then when they reached adulthood, they would receive their name from the tribe and again, the family was not that important there either. I don't think we can say that the family was always the nucleus of the ancient life. That's not a fair characterization of abuse. This makes it sound like dehumanization is only a recent phenomenon that came about from overpopulation. This seems to be rewriting the history a bit. After all, evidence seems to point toward there being such a thing as cannibalism in the ancient tribal cultures. This seems to legitimize religion. Stig, I believe you have good intentions, but I think you often like to bury your head in the sand and pretend that everything is beautiful and that you make no judgments.

I suggest you abandon Buddhism and instead take up having gay sex, but not before becoming a Muslim. Surely that's the path for you. Do it!

Contemplation is a process of deep, focused, sustained thinking on a certain topic, and then eventually on reality itself. It starts with the concepts and logic, and naturally, without artifice and without techniques arrives at transcendence of both concepts and logic. It culminates in an intimate familiarity with the non-duality between logic and the illogical and between concepts and non-conceptual. There is no such thing as "direct" perception. Nor is there an "indirect" one. Wrong. That's exactly what these are. They are nothing but ideas and concepts. But to understand why, you have to contemplate! If you meditate you will be unable to arrive and the union of conceptuality and experience. Nah, if you knew the Zen master and his life achievements, you'd not say that. Instead you'd bow down to him and probably worship him. His technique was flawless, but his wisdom was lacking. And I explained why. The reason for this is because he focused on doing, but not on "why". He never bothered to question his core beliefs. So he died with pretty much the same physicalist conception of the universe he was born with, except in the meanwhile he became an excellent meditator. This is how I know you're a meditation zealot. When I suggest that meditation is just a tool and that it may or may not give the desired results, you interpret this as a call for "doing nothing". So to you, if you don't meditate, you're wasting your time. That's a result of mindless zealotry on your part. You've obviously never questioned the meaning of meditation. You're probably not very aware, but I call for contemplation, and possible meditation. Contemplation is attending to a concern in the mind, thereby familiarizing oneself, relatively, with the core beliefs that structure the appearances in the mind in such a way as to give rise to the perceived problems. As one contemplates, it naturally subsides into a period of immersion. I don't bother distinguishing this period or giving it a name. However, that period is what true meditation is. It's not a technique. You cannot predict when and how it will arise. It is authentic in a sense that it's a natural consequence of having familiarized yourself with a concern, and results in a spontaneous mystical experience of transcendence that goes beyond explanations. It's not formal in any way and it's not a technique, but is a genuine expression of your heart. This is not "doing nothing". It's like in martial arts. You can be taught forms and then you internalize those forms into your subconscious. the advantage is, the forms are automatic. The disadvantage is: the forms are automatic. The same thing brings you the downfall! When you meet someone who is beyond form, you will produce incorrect forms as a response to spontaneous action in a fight, and this will be your downfall. So I say there is no form. But that doesn't mean there is nothing to practice! There are instead some higher principles and also sparring. So you spar, and apply the abstract principles to your learning. If someone asks you what have you learned, you'd be damned to explain what it is, because it's not anything concrete. And yet you've familiarized yourself with something. It is highly practical and you should practice it in the middle of that which gives you a problem. So in martial arts the problem is a fight. In daily life it can be other things/situations.

Your web site is not standards compliant. It doesn't work in Firefox 3, Opera 9.52, Google Chrome 1.0, or Safari 3.1 (yup, I tried all of those). That's definitely a very bad thing to do, especially when you advocate "Oneness", and yet make a website that only works only within a certain monopolist's browser.

The difference between Vimalakirti and other rich people is this (quoting Thurman's translation of the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra): "His wealth was inexhaustible for the purpose of sustaining the poor and the helpless." This is a huge, huge difference. Most worldly rich people would rather step on and spit on the poor. They disrespect them and denigrate them every chance they get. They treat them like tools, like resources, like sheep, and like annoying and bothersome mosquitoes, rather than the embodiments of Dharma. If every rich person was like Vimalakirti, we'd not have any strife or even "employment". Everyone would be working WITH someone, rather than FOR someone. It would be a huge difference in relationships and expectations that we would all have. There is no basis for saying that. If anything I believe it's more correct to say that these sages were enlightened despite being rich and not because of it. I believe there is a similar reference in Taoism with regard to the 3 kinds of Taoist immortals, the human, the earth, and the celestial kind. It is said that the celestial immortal can even slay armies of people (in other words, commit acts that would be moral violation that would block the other 2 kinds of immortals from ascending to immortality) and still ascend to immortality. The lowest kinds of immortals cannot afford any infractions, but the celestial ones can do whatever they please, pretty much. However, my understanding is that in the case of the celestial immortal, they ascend despite those things and not because. Please correct me if I am wrong. No kidding? Of course! Give awake the fake wealth to get the real wealth. The real problem with wealth in the human realm is not so much the stuff in and of itself, but how it affects the relations between people. In regions where everyone is equally poor and no one lords anything over the other, everyone tends to be happy even though they are all poor. So it's about relations and not about the stuff per se. This is what the rich consistently fail to understand. The rich say, "but the poor today are doing better than ever" -- and yea, in terms of STUFF, yes, they are (they got their cell phones after all) -- but in terms of relations, hell no! In terms of human relations today's poor are doing as bad as ever.

What you probably want is not a single answer in the form of "Fear is blah blah", but rather an intimate familiarity with all of the attendant issues, especially at the level of core beliefs. This familiarity involves asking yourself about fear, and then following up what you get in contemplation. For example, you get something about discomfort. Then follow it up: what is bad about discomfort? You can see more if you follow it up. You might come back to expectation, but your familiarity with just exactly what you are expecting may be deepened. What do you think you are expecting? It's not so obvious. Try to follow it up. It's like asking about smoking. Does the person quit smoking because they are too scared to die early, and are therefore a wuss who sacrifices quality of life for length? Or is the person very courageous, because they face their addiction and overcome the scary symptoms of withdrawal? You can see it either way. I don't think there is "the correct way" to see it. The society today is conventionally more prone to seeing quitting smoking as something positive. But it doesn't always have to be like that. The same action can be seen as something good, bad or neutral. I think the important question is not what it is in some absolute sense, but what it is for you? Is your own feeling important? If you believe in objective reality, then you must also believe that subjectivity impairs the perception of objective reality, and is to be eliminated as much as possible. In that case, what you think and what you feel, being subjective, are not important at all. Is that honest though? Can this be sustained without hypocrisy? Alternatively what you think and feel does matter, but then objectivity is not important. What's important is for you to become very familiar with your own mind. In that sense, other people play a role in clarifying your mind, but they don't straight up tell you what is what, as if it was objective reality.

I beg to differ. For most people convention is important. So talking makes a huge difference and is essential. You can have an experience, but then, if you respect convention, which most of us do to some extent, you have to talk with others to see how your experience fits within convention. So, for example, if you have an experience of rebirth, but live within a physicalist culture, or a culture that otherwise does not believe in rebirth, you will have no way to share that experience without being perceived as a lunatic. People have experiences that they have doubts about all the time. These are called "hallucinations". So just having an experience of something is not sufficient to make it real. An experience has to fit within your belief structure to become real. It has to conform to your validation framework, and for most people, convention is part of that framework. So talking about experiences is a way to validate them, and/or to legitimize them and/or to introduce them into convention. Talking is just as important as the experience, as long as you want to fit in. If you don't mind abandoning convention, then you don't need to talk anymore.

I can't promise you a "taoist" opinion, but I can share what I think on the subject. Excess, by its very definition, is something bad. For example, if you need to hit a nail with a force of 100 newtons and you instead whack it with a force of 100000 newtons, that's excessive. As a result, the nail will most likely break and perhaps what's under the nail will break too. If you are thirsty and you drink 1 cup of water, that's good. 2 cups are OK. But drink 30 cups and you are likely to die from water poisoning. And so on. I think you get the picture. Overabundance of wealth is like being fat. When you anticipate a period of starvation, you get a little fat, so that when the period of starvation hits, you can survive. Wealth is like that too. You put away some savings, and if economic hard times hit, you can have an easier life. But there is a healthy limit beyond witch more wealth just causes problems, same as with fat. To weigh 250lbs is to be fat, but to weigh 1000lbs is to be sick and disabled. Same with wealth. Some people think they are never safe enough, and just go into a perpetual wealth accumulation mode. Even if they have 2 billion net worth, they think it might not be enough, and 3 billion is definitely safer, so instead of relaxing and enjoying life, they go on to try to magnify their wealth. When your wealth is that high, there is no way you can magnify it by your own effort. You have to delegate it to others in many, many ways. Various investments are made on your behalf. Companies are executed by many people on your behalf, and so forth. And you expect a lot from all of them, so you make all their lives miserable. If the government is about to make a law you don't like, then you send people to bribe the legislators. If your company doesn't perform well, you ruthlessly demand it be "restructured" without the regard for human life or any kind of values. Thing is, once you go beyond a certain point of money, you cannot manage it on your own. So then not only do you stress yourself out, but you have to stress out everyone around you to make you happy. That's a very bad psychodynamic to engage in. Eventually the person gets used to this, and starts to think they are entitled to being served and weighed on hand and foot. Many people report to the wealthy person, and they do get used to it. It's like when you wear a watch every day for 20 years, if one day you take it off, your hand feels "naked", even though the watch is not clothing. That's the power of habit. Recently there was a billionaire in Germany who committed suicide because his wealth went from 2 billion the "mere" millions. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28522036/ For most people, having millions would be amazing. But for this guy, it was like having no money at all. He was nothing without his billions. The billions made him a person, but without billions he was just a stupid loser like the one's he probably hated all his life. That's why he couldn't stand it. When you can manage your wealth without involving others and without delegation, there is no problem. But as soon as you begin delegating to others, all kinds of exploitation begins, because you inevitably must collect more from people than their true worth in order to make profit for yourself. But what's at stake is more than just the monetary worth of a person. The further down the chain of delegation the person is, the less human value they seem to have. The rich often look on the poor as worthless cogs in the machinery. They have no love, no respect and no value for the poor. And how could they be otherwise? If they valued them, they'd share, and if they shared, they'd not be so wealthy. But if you can justify to yourself that the person is poor because the person is dumb, you don't need to share and it's OK for you to abuse that person. After all, if the person was smarter, they'd become rich like you. Etc. There are some rare exceptions to this, but mostly not. According to Taoism a person must retire once they reach a certain level (you can find this in Wen Tzu and probably Chuang Tzu). If you can easily retire and yet refuse to, that indicates a sickness. A huge part of the problem is that some people really are poor because they are dumb. So this gives a grain of truth for the excuses that the rich often use. The best lie is the kind that's a little true. The biggest problem with being poor is not so much having little money, but 2 things: humiliation and lack of a political voice. Even a seemingly innocuous thing like having to "clock in" at work, is humiliating. Reporting to managers, when managers are above you and not part of the team just like you, that's humiliating. Being asked in a rich person's office, "What have you done for me today? Why shouldn't I fire you?" That's humiliating. And so forth.

What do I think? I agree 100%! Once you live even a few years without any religion and yet you live on a committed and deep spiritual path, you'll never look back. Perhaps it's unfortunate, or perhaps it's how it should be anyway, but people are people, and even in the most "open-minded" religion such as Buddhism, you can encounter some really dumb statements and attitudes. Looks like you've encountered some of them already. Doubts can be resolved, but they cannot be "just put aside". If you can "just put aside" your doubt, it means it was just something superficial and not quite a doubt in the first place. If you have a serious doubt about something, you can transcend it, but to do so authentically, you cannot just use mental brute force, which is what an attempt to simply ignoring your doubt would be. You have to investigate your doubt, its basis, and the structure of beliefs that supports your doubt, and so forth. Eventually the doubt may melt away. Buddhism often presents a mere caricature of the truth about mind. It has some eminently useful principles and good topics for contemplation. But there is no need to be a Buddhist. Buddhist doctrine is just a tool, like a broom. And you don't want to marry your broom, do you? Brooms can be useful, but you don't sleep with one in bed. That's the sanest relationship to have with any spiritual teaching or technique.

NeutralWire, I like how you put it. I think there are various possibilities for magic moments. One is to have no goals. Another is to have goals of an ornamental nature -- that is to say, these are not perceived to be necessary, "must haves", essential, life sustaining, or anything like that. I believe that's what you were saying. However, I don't often see people talk about goals or intent in an ornamental capacity. Usually people really want something, but the more you want it, the more the possibility of not having it is disturbing to the mind. I sometimes like to look at mind as a deep cake with many layers. So way down near the bottom you have the ground of being, then the core beliefs (these are unquestionable, seen as facts), basic/fundamental distinctions, then important beliefs (these are seen as a waste of time to question, because you've never seen one of these be false, but maybe you've read there is a possibility and were able to consider it for a moment) and more detailed distinctions, and so on. Somewhere in the middle or maybe even closer to the bottom is also a layer of beliefs about beliefs. This reflects your current understanding of the meaning, power, and other properties of beliefs themselves. Amazing experiences happen when something relaxes/changes at a very deep level of mind. However, people normally have direct conscious control of only the superficial layers. The superficial layers are amenable to direct intent without the need for restructuring beliefs on the lower levels of mind. However in order to gain direct intent access to a lower level, the level below the one you want to influence via intent needs to have its beliefs restructured. Once beliefs on some level no longer act as blockers, then the level of mind above can be freely changed via intent. This is a very rough picture and not something I take literally. It's hard to tinker with the deeper layers without feeling like you're toying with insanity. Part of the problem with ordinary meditation instructions is that they often casually suggest making a shift at the deepest level of mind, without having any kind of respect for what it means to do so. For example, erasing the self-other boundary, when fully done, is the deepest level. If you can do so consciously at any time, it means you're not really a human being and you don't live "here" anymore. It means laws of physics do not apply to you and so forth, because all the beliefs on higher levels are also under your command. And yet I see many people believing that they have the ability to casually transcend self/other fundamental duality and yet they have no power over even minor manifestations. This signifies a delusion to my mind. I've barely scratched the surface here. It's best, in my opinion, to live day by day and move step by step and not worry about recreating any experiences, or at least, not right away.

There are different levels of relaxation and openness. When you relax spontaneously, it is authentic. When you relax on purpose, you have a goal in mind. If you have a goal in mind, you cannot match the spontaneous relaxation. This is why meditation is often/always a miserable failure. When you contrive to do something, you create more tension and activity. A state of lordliness is not having to do anything or to feel anything in particular. There is no wish to relax or to achieve any experience. It comes about naturally as the person runs out of things to do in the world. If you have many goals and ambitions and run around trying to achieve this and that, you won't be experiencing lordliness. You'll be more like a little rat in a rat race. And as a rat, even if you relax, you'll have nothing but superficial relaxation. If you pay attention to yourself over many years, you'll eventually understand the intricacies of your own heart. The kinds and the character of concerns that dominate the mind determine the kind of being you are. Should you want to be immortal, you may not have the concerns of a mortal.

If by practical you mean "concretely and tangibly achievable in the short term", then depending on your point of view, there may not be anything practical that can be done if we conflict with a definition of practicality as something that people have to change. So if some people call for change, that can be seen as a call for practicality in a sense that change is often concrete and tangible, and is recognized as something practical. On the other hand, if everyone believes that there is no way anyone will want to change anything, and the only realistic thing is to just get people with conflicting points of view to talk to each other, that can be seen as practical in a sense of being achievable, but not practical in a sense of something significantly changing. This is subtle point I am trying to make and I worry that I am getting lost in the words here. If what I am saying here makes no sense, please ignore it. I hope not. For example, if I deem attacking people to be bad, and I refrain from attacking them, then I don't think I am a hypocrite just because I don't get a job as a cop. Similarly, if I believe that greed is bad, and I refrain from accumulating a vast mountain of material treasure, I don't believe I am a hypocrite just because I don't donate or I don't work for Salvation Army or Red Cross. On the other hand, those who do work in Red Cross, are often, or perhaps even always, wonderful people and I have nothing against them. Not only that, but I sometimes like support them in various, but perhaps small ways. I have this silly belief that leading a virtuous life is easy and organic and doesn't require a lot of strain or doing. That doesn't mean that those who engage in strenuous doing are lacking in virtue! The key phrase there is "does not require" (and not for example something like "necessitates avoiding strain and doing" -- I don't take this position). I wholeheartedly agree. Of course! That's why I have a problem with political activism and religions in the first place -- it seems like those activities are coercive in nature. I also hope that intelligencia is not getting a bum rep of being "holier-than-thou" just because of its penchant for reasoning. Not everyone who loves reason takes a "holier-than-thou" attitude. But at the same time, I do think some modest level tension between those who love reason and those who disdain reason is ineliminable. If you have a solution for this, please let me know. I also love mystery. In my view mystery and reason are one whole and are not in conflict. I think the best we can do is to turn down the fire a notch or five. I don't think we can completely eliminate heat from the equation of life. Maybe we can eliminate 2nd and 3rd degree burns. I don't know. On some days I think nothing can ever change no matter what. On others I am very optimistic that the suffering can be tangibly reduced in the world.

I've had similar experiences. I think you've answered your own question though about "inducing" it: I might be wrong, but this does look like your answer from my point of view.

Do you know why? Have you observed the psychodynamic that causes these reactions and behaviors you described?

Well said. However this does depend on your goal. For example, if you discovered some kind of limitation in Windows, you may need to either hack Windows or to wipe it and replace it with an operating system that doesn't have that limitation. But if you just want to use Paint, replacing or even understanding the operating system is completely beside the point. So it depends on the level of your problem.

Of course. That's how I see it too. So do I.

I disagree. It all depends on your mind, doesn't it? Maybe I am special. Or maybe I see that the situation is similar to being caught in a fire. You do what's necessary to get out. If the house is burning, you don't go around looking for qualified firemen. You get out ASAP, firemen or no, unless you are trapped by fire, in which case you can't do anything anyway. But if you are not completely trapped by the fire, it is the height of folly to sit around waiting for a fire engine while the fire is quickly encircling you and the gas fills the room. I show something that I believe is an empowering story, but you've managed to find a single disempowering sentence there and to latch onto it. Congratulations. It's not like teachers have never screwed their students in the past. Teachers provide a 100% guaranteed success. (not)

Since this is a discussion about practical things we can do to facilitate harmony, I have a suggestion. I believe that a huge part of the problem lies in the fact that many doctrines (faiths) do not limit themselves with the spiritual teachings, and instead delve into the legal matters, the matters of running the state and so forth. This applies to at least Judaism and Islam, where in Talmud and in Koran a legal system that has to do with governance is outlined. In Judaism the system is never practiced to my knowledge. In Islam it sometimes is, and we even hear for calls for Sharia in places like the UK. On the other hand, I've never heard of the calls to institute a Talmudic court anywhere, but that's beside the point. This is just to set up some background. Please correct me if I am wrong in any of the facts. Since advising people against organizing themselves into leader/followers groups is a slow process that, while useful, does not achieve quick results, a more practical approach might be to advise people to abandon the legalistic aspects of religions. I believe religion has no place in determining the laws of society. Let religion be a path toward enlightenment and let religion stay away from the legalities and the laws of men. How about it? Consider this. Mystics of many big religions are constantly at odds with their respective religions. Why do you think that is? Christian mystics are at odds and are disliked by the Christians. Sufis have been traditionally at odds and disliked by the scholarly/traditional Muslims. Kabbalists have tension with the formal Judaism. Why? Mystics tend to be less dogmatic and more open minded. At the same time, mystics have to at least pretend to get along with their "parent" religion in order to avoid being wiped out, or alternatively they have to go underground. And the mystics have done both of these, depending on how radical of an open-mindedness they advocated. I think we should understand that generally mystics work to transform religion from something rigid, dogmatic and literally interpreted to something more flexible, open-minded and non-literal. However, part of the problem with a lot of mystics, is that even as they do this, they play with fire, because some of the doctrines are violent, especially should the mystic manage to get oneself labeled as a heretic/infidel by his more rabid brothers in the community. And the reason I say it's a problem, is that I think there is a bit of dishonesty among many mystics in that they are reticent to admit that religion is just useless baggage, and that their purely spiritual paths have very little to do with organized religion. Even in Buddhism this has been a problem, for example in Tibet. For example, Milarepa was poisoned by a more traditional/conservative Buddhist. At one time the doctrine beyond cause and effect, Dzogchen, was seen as heretical among the conservative Buddhists in Tibet. So the mystics took some heat all over the map. One thing I notice though, is that the mystics always focus on spiritual development alone and never on the gory details of societal laws and punishments. They tend to be open-minded and willing to try new things. Those are the people that could get along, if they met, even if they were from different "religious" backgrounds. And many of them openly declare that religion outright blocks one's spiritual development. For example, Rav Laitman said that in order to understand Kabbalah you must NOT be religious. (Sorry I don't have the link off the top of my head). He doesn't accept religious people as his students at all. Still even someone like Rav Laitman seems pretty dogmatic. Like one time I was watching a video lecture, and someone asked him about Buddhism. His answer was, paraphrased, "Buddhism gets you ready for Kabbalah, and Kabbalah is the real deal while Buddhism is like the kindergarten". LOL. BUT, I am 100% certain that someone like Rav Laitman would never order or even suggest that the heretics be burned or stoned or killed or anything even slightly similar to this! On the other hand, non-mystical religionists are often caught saying things exactly like that. The reason, I believe, is because religions often depart from the task of spiritual evolution and meddle with mundane issues such as governance. So if the religious people have the good sense to override and cancel the governance related sections of their religions, I think we can move toward peace. For example, let the Judaism abandon Talmud and let the Muslims abandon Sharia, and I think we can get closer to peace. After all, I've never read a single word about Sharia from Rumi, or from any other Sufi. Sufis are mostly concerned with loving God and not with whose hands should be cut off and for what infraction, and who should be stoned. I believe that's a very reasonable and peace-loving approach.

Yes, I do see it. I'm glad you notice it. I don't make anyone pray 5 times in my direction because I have such an immaculate doctrine. I don't propose you latch onto my doctrine. In fact, I structure my doctrine in such a way as to show the problem with other doctrines while not allowing the person to take my doctrine seriously either. In other words, it's like using a thorn to extract another thorn, and when you're done, you throw it away, so that you are free of both thorns. For example? Learning from something and following something are two distinct and different kinds of relationships. In particular, conventionally speaking, if you want to follow something, doubt, critical thinking, and analysis just get in the way. But if you want to learn from something, then doubt, critical thinking and analysis are essential. Ultimately you cannot even follow something you don't understand, so you still need to understand first, even if you want to follow. Socially, leading/following sets up group dynamics that cause suffering, because the mistakes of the leader are echoed by the followers. Having followers is like buying stock on a margin. If you are right, you win a lot of money. If you are wrong, you lose everything and are in huge debt. I find this to be hugely problematic, because such a setup is custom made for catastrophic failure, considering the fallibility of human beings. I am not sure if you're familiar with it or not, but there is something called "a closed door student". My friend was a "closed door student" of many teachers and he sincerely told me that basically what these teachers teach to the masses is bullshit that ranges between useless and outright lies that are designed to cater to stereotypes (like, they feed to the students whatever the students expect, regardless that it's a lie). This is done to collect money from a wide base of "students". Then when the class is over and the 30 morons leave the room, your real student shows up at your home or somewhere in the park or outside the city limits, and you do your real teaching there. That's the "closed door student". Needless to say I find this practice to be very objectionable and I believe that people who engage in it go to hell (both teachers and students). I believe you might right about this. Indeed. There is much to be criticized in Christianity. However, at least Jesus was not a warlord. So I count my blessings too. It could be worse.

The best thing my dad did for me was that he taught me to never be 100% sure about anything and to always leave at least 1% for doubt and questioning. This later lead me to question everything and to not take anything as a given. I would never change this quality for the world. It's like having the eyes to see. The second best thing my parents did, was to allow me to go play wherever I wanted without the fear of "predators" catching me or anything like that. When I was as young as 5, I already traveled all across my city, alone and with friends. No excuses. Don't say "but we can't do it in my country, etc." Just let your kids go. You guide and teach them at home, but then set them loose and let them be. Even if it means they have to die, it's better to die free than to grow up in confinement. Just make sure you answer all the kids' concerns and questions and talk proactively about important topics like sex and drugs. The third best thing my parents did for me was to give me thought-provoking books as gifts (they also gave me toys like plastic trucks, model airplanes, kites and so forth, so please don't think I got nothing but books all my life). The fourth best thing my parents did was to encourage me to join clubs like tennis, swimming, judo and so forth, when I was little. I didn't end up staying in any of them, but I did develop a strong liking for exercise which I have till this day. I got my share of beatings as a kid. There was one time when I was beaten almost daily. So the fifth great thing my parents did, is instead of going to school to deal with the bully, they taught me how to be a man and to stand up for myself. I have since had all kinds of blood and bruises fights with bullies, and gained respect and was left alone. It's unfortunate that some people can only respect your fist, but I am glad my parents didn't saddle me with bullshit, but just gave me the ugly truth in all it's beauty. I grew up in a very peaceful family and I am myself very peaceful as a general rule, but I also know how to fight when necessary and can kill if I must. And I am glad. This makes those times when I choose to be consciously non-violent meaningful. Otherwise, if I am non-violent simply because I am afraid of violence, it's not really a choice and is meaningless. So think about it. Don't rip off your kids.

I believe this simple and down to earth answer is also the most correct one and the best.