Owledge

Why that rhetorical question? Everybody who knows the TTC (and educates themselves properly about politics) knows how damn far someone like Obama is away from being a leader who follows the tao. And don't confuse being limited by outside forces/interests with it being an excuse for doing what you do. When you become a leader of a nation and then even if you are surprised with learning that it's all ruled by business interests and in the stranglehold of banking, you should unveil that. If, though, you are afraid of your life, you still just try to keep things on a low flame. What you definitely don't do as a decent person in such a situation is fully give in to it and become an expert manipulator.

It shows the importance of balance. There's a reason why we have been given those two hemispheres. The Buddha nature, it is said, is not pure formless heart realm, but strong mind and strong heart in balance. Striving for feeling good and loving by any means, as much as possible, will create conditions that urge a restoring of balance. Humankind as a whole is a mixed bag of course, all kinds of more or less extreme imbalances in both directions, and, as hinted at in the video, can also fluctuate depending on the situation. If things were simple, we wouldn't have the problems we have. Get attached to the divine realm and you will eventually be told that you have to return to the world of form. Worship the form and you will eventually receive feedback urging you to open your heart to the divine.

Some more scrutiny in text comprehension, please. This is not about seeing the good in others. It's about assuming motivations and perceptions that are not supported by actions/facts. And when we start doing that, to just assume stuff regardless of what we can learn, then I could also claim that Hitler was in fact a selfless martyr-saint who played the role of the great evil in order to unite the people of the world and cause a spiritual shift. Sounds special, but neither is there any way to EVER confirm or disprove it, nor is such a belief helpful. ... On the internet this phenomenon is called "fanboydom". And this mindset also supports a bullshit self-indoctrination that such influential people like Obama could be practicing in order to make themselves feel better. With many people being fanboyish and in denial like that, it really invites the next tyrant who believes himself to be a gift to humankind and a holy crusader for virtue. Based on personal experience, I suspect an imbalance between connection to higher realms and proper grounding. Proper grounding is what helps you to separate your own lies from higher truths. I remember the words of a shaman who said: "Ayahuasca can be the greatest of liars." It can show you divine realms, but first you might have to wade through your own crap, and if you lack grounding, you will confuse the two. Politicians are schooled in rhetorics and related skills. Their speeches are designed to manipulate people by appealing to their emotions, not their intellect - for good reason. And anybody who hasn't cultivated the mind's critical thought to a sufficient degree will fall for it. On the highest level it's all just theater of course, but who in their mortal shell wants to enjoy a theater of pain?

They say that hindsight is always 20/20. Not when you are asleep! People who still worship Obama are vulnerable to abusive relationships.

I have nothing against deleting the Merkel. It doesn't matter.

Purely a matter of semitics. ^^

Sorry, I have a habit of boldly telling the truth. ^^ But you don't know whether what you see is the truth. Down-to-earth political self-education and empirical search for truth easily trumps supposed metaphysical insights. This is a spiritual confusion that I have encountered (here) before: That if someone appears wicked, we just cannot see how they're actually a saint with a grand agenda or world peace or such crap. Real truth is usually very simple. You do something wicked and it taints your soul; it is an act in the services of fear. You keep doing that and it rots your soul. You are still suffering from the indoctrination. And I won't try too hard to convince you, but when people were celebrating about Obama becoming president, I already knew what would ensue, but people would have skinned me alive for saying such. Yet those things did happen, so I called the bluff. I did lots of studying on deep psychology, marketing methods and such along with world politics and many other disciplines, putting them all together. There is no apology. If you think something is rotten, have the courage to not do it. Just as one of many examples, Obama is still spreading obvious lies about the Iranian nuclear program, repeatedly outright ignoring any solid evidence presented. If I were Obama, I could go on TV and say: "Manitou has still failed to supply sound evidence proving that she is not a pedophile." Now, would you assume I have your best interest in mind and you just cannot comprehend my enlightened agenda? Or would you go "What the hell?!"?

Good example of a propaganda apologist. When you can't cover up anymore, try to lead the movement. I already realized the intention of the commentary in the introduction. And then also providing an allegedly 'real' fake for contrast, while that's no more deception than what the media did with the march. The guy has the audacity to actually claim manipulate pictures are alright, because 'iconography matters' and the 'gesture is still sincere' (which it is not, and every sane person knows it). Another bootlicker from the liar press. Most of it is basically owned by the main political parties.

I want to point out that contrary to what the propaganda organs have been spreading by using media manipulation methods, those politicians, because they know how much they are hated for what they did, did not march with the millions of people and thus didn't actually participate in the rally. They took a stroll with a bunch of officials outside of the event, in a special setup on a closed street, with high security measures, very likely also before or after the real event. German source: https://propagandaschau.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/lugenpresse-ard-und-zdf-tauschen-und-belugen-die-zuschauer-uber-massendemo-in-paris/ This is basically on the same level as when a dictator pays people for applauding when he marches for the cameras.

The psychological marketing campaign was very successful. People really have difficulty getting rid of those mind tricks. They've been grabbed hard by their hopes. No person, not even someone willing but unable would do what Obama has done. At some point one has to realize that he disqualified himself as a decent person. He made his decisions about what path to follow. Saying he is doing the wicked, deceptive, inciting, deadly, evil things he is doing because he has no choice is massive denial. The US president has more power than ever before. Also, his opposition is actually his support in this political theater of divide-and-conquer.

http://dowlphin.deviantart.com/art/Viewpoints-507270977 (Please share if you like it.) The crazed responds to violence with more violence. The righteous responds to violence with equal violence. The just responds to violence with less violence. The tired responds to violence with no violence. The fearless responds to violence with love. The crazed views the righteous as pompous, the just as foolish, the tired as scum and the fearless as lunatics. The righteous views the crazed as competition, the just as dangerous, the tired as irrelevant and the fearless as offensive. The just views the crazed as dangerous, the righteous as extremist, the tired as naive and the fearless as delusional. The tired views the crazed as hopeless, the righteous as saddening, the just as disappointing and the fearless as powerless. The fearless views the crazed, the righteous, the just and the tired as in need of love.

I guess rock music and masturbation go hand-in-hand.

Don't forget to have fun on the path though. Tao Te Ching (Ron Hogan version): The Master, knowing all things came from Tao, recognizes what he has in common with his enemies and always tries to avoid conflict. But when there is no other choice, he uses force reluctantly. He does so with great restraint, and never celebrates a victory; to do so would be to rejoice in killing. A person who would rejoice in killing // too many people, even on The Tao Bums has completely lost touch with Tao. When you win a war, you preside over a funeral. Pay your respects to the dead.

Keep imagining yourself in other people's shoes, that will show you the way. Remember that pair of movies Clint Eastwood directed? First from US perspective and then the second movie the same events, but from Japanese side? That kind of moviemaking is extremely valuable to society. And then there is Counter-Strike, LOL.

Well, it kinda is supposed to be somewhat general and not very specific. But I can try to zoom in a little, to rephrase: When someone grows up under the right set of conditions, everything else falls into place easily. Even hardships basically become easy if sufficient motivation is there. Still hard and painful, but easy nevertheless. Some might then make the error of assuming that because they have been successful, the things they did along the path are a recipe for success. The only recipe for success I could give is "Do your best", and it doesn't include any guarantee. And people are kinda doing that anyway, although hearing those words constitutes an external stimulus and thus could help people do better. Then the use is not in the message, but in the act of conveying it. I'm playing with the idea/thesis that people can be afraid of embracing their creator power and thus refrain from consciously making a difference in other people's lives because it makes them anxious. When everything you have been given can only do so much, other people can make all the difference. In this, too, intention is everything. Who is willing to struggle with their fears in order to help someone they might not even know? Only those who have recognized it as good and thus have made it a driving purpose out of sincere conviction. You can help humankind best if you don't make it personal.

I have mixed feelings about all those things, because all the insights conveyed by successful people are not necessarily what enabled them to attain it. They pick these things up along the way, and what sets that way in motion can be much more mysterious and out of their control.

Might be better to just visit the World at War thread, otherwise this thread here might transform into another lengthy political conspiracies exposition.

Although one could expect such a stance from the pope. This could be seen as supporting the interest of the Church. Also it is unchristian to punch someone for words like that, so one could say he might be pandering to Islam, acting to be on the same level with them, when he's not. This calculated approach opens to all kinds of objections. Regarding exploiting of people's forgiveness: As I pointed out, nothing goes anywhere without intention. Indeed 'blunt love' doesn't work in all cases (but love might lead to skillful action). This understanding is what also makes me decide to stop conveying my insights to those who make it abundantly clear that they have no intention to learn. Marblehead just gave a very good (self-parodizing?) example for being stuck like that. Or maybe he's dabbling in the idea of "Keep repeating a simple statement often enough and people will start believing it." Not sure who said that, LOL. But I know that also works on oneself.

I wouldn't say it's pefect. It's extreme. Conditional love is usually understood as love that is felt towards a person who has a beneficial effect on you. Claiming that love has to be earned is way more creepy, because it introduces a regulatory third party to that dynamic. It implies that if someone loves me for something about me that I didn't even aim for (it being their own subjective decision), I do not deserve it, and in turn also condemning the other person's affection. I cannot remember ever having encountered a statement like "Love has to be earned." before.

Wrong or right is a moral judgment. It is not skillful and it is designed to ignore the causes for things and only deal with the reaction. It is a tool for social control and preventing empowerment of the individual through enlightenment. What the gunmen did caused fear/pain. Pretty much all humans agree that that is undesirable. Fearful action causes more fear. The wise course of action is so obvious, yet requires the will to follow it, to abandon lower virtues, at least occasionally. That is something internal, something personal; a task that cannot be offloaded to others. If you want to change the world for the better, you have to better yourself first. Establishing justice isn't problem-solving as much as it is problem management.

What do you mean, how I relate? I certainly don't make a temporal difference. People do bad things because they're controlled by fear; have pain buried deep because they didn't want to deal with it. When the pain is resolved, they stop doing bad things. When an electrical razor stops, do you condemn it for being weak or do you recharge its batteries? It's so easy to act skillfully when all that judgmental emo junk isn't in the way.

When conflicted like that, think about what the consequences of each course of action are and which one you'd rather encounter. But there might also be more options. Personally I find what people often neglect in such situations is the option of communicating. Because if you notice several things that seem like indicating a recipe for disaster, it could be that you're afraid and thus focusing on those, but it could also be justified. I can only speak for myself, but these days when I notice signs that something might be a bad idea, usually it is. Then my choice is either let it go or go with it and let a part of me die, to adapt against my nature.

Hate is just an emotional prepping of a defense reaction to a perceived fear. Hate is aggression not yet acted out. You can never hate someone if you have no fears, because there is nothing you could hate them for. No matter what they do, if it causes you to hate them for it, it means you are afraid of the things they do. If you are invulnerable, then it could still happen that you are afraid of having to live with the memory. If you hate a child munderer for what he did, it means you saw your moral values violated, without which you feel you could not maintain what you have. Confidence and fear cannot be a duality if you accept the rest of what I wrote. That love and fear are at the root is also indicated by the fact that fear of death is the ultimate motivator, death being a defining spiritual threshold, and love is something that can transcend self-preservation.

Don't choose challenges too great for you to handle, but don't indoctrinate yourself into not giving your best trying. Where attention goes, energy flows. Explore your inner psyche to find out what fear motivates you to go "yes, but...".

Only if Hitler wasn't a murderer if he never shot someone with a gun in his hands. It gets even funnier if you stop applying current norms to the past, because Hitler decided the laws, so if he shot someone, it wasn't even murder. Only by current standards. (Which seem to be dissolving again.) As you see, "murderer" is quite a problematic concept. It is a mere legal definition, based on laws that tend to change and be disobeyed by those who can afford to do so. And being able to give up justice is crucial if you want to practice higher virtues. Higher virtues don't depend on lower ones. They replace them. The war of beliefs is not about preserving justice. It is about preserving what is unjustifiedly called justice, when people know damn well it's more like a rotten corpse. People are clinging to ideas, are in denial because they want to believe everything is alright. They accomplish that by finding something else to look down on. It is so easy to forget the horrible stench of what we call justice these days when you can counter it with the taste of blood.