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Everything posted by Thunder_Gooch
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What Happens To The Communion If There Is No God?
Thunder_Gooch replied to silas's topic in General Discussion
I had a nightmare the other night, with a Giant JesusZilla, he was saying now you must let me eat your soul so that you may become apart of me, and I was running around trying to get away of JesusZilla. Reverse communion? -
They Thought They Were Free The Germans, 1933-45 Milton Mayer But Then It Was Too Late "What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesnât make people close to their government to be told that this is a peopleâs government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing. "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. "This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. "You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was âexpected toâ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all oneâs energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time." "Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. âOne had no time to think. There was so much going on.â" "Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your âlittle men,â your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think aboutâwe were decent peopleâand kept us so busy with continuous changes and âcrisesâ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ânational enemies,â without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think? "To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice itâplease try to believe meâunless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, âregretted,â that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these âlittle measuresâ that no âpatriotic Germanâ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head. "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respiceââResist the beginningsâ and âConsider the end.â But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might. "Your âlittle men,â your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did somethingâbut then it was too late." "Yes," I said. "You see," my colleague went on, "one doesnât see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You donât want to act, or even talk, alone; you donât want to âgo out of your way to make trouble.â Why not?âWell, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. "Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, âeveryoneâ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, âItâs not so badâ or âYouâre seeing thingsâ or âYouâre an alarmist.â "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you canât prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you donât know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. "But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent toâto what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait. "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. Thatâs the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shockedâif, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in â43 had come immediately after the âGerman Firmâ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in â33. But of course this isnât the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying âJewish swine,â collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live inâyour nation, your peopleâis not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. "You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined. "Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you havenât done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. "What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or âadjustâ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know." I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say. "I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasnât an anti-Nazi. He was justâa judge. In â42 or â43, early â43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an âAryanâ woman. This was ârace injury,â something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ânonracialâ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party âprocessingâ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ânonracialâ charge, in the judgeâs opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom." "And the judge?" "Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscienceâa case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (Thatâs how I heard about it.) After the â44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I donât know." I said nothing. "Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was âdefeatism.â You assumed that there were lists of those who would be âdealt withâ later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a âvictory orgyâ to âtake care ofâ those who thought that their âtreasonable attitudeâ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty. "Once the war began, the government could do anything ânecessaryâ to win it; so it was with the âfinal solution of the Jewish problem,â which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ânecessitiesâ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germanyâs losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."
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I've been so wrong, I am so sorry. Please forgive me.
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Man seriously who is this guy, I've got to seek him out and become a student!
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HOLY S***BALLS BATMAN!
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Don't forget the longmen pai sect released a text of their practices as well for like $28.00, I believe that it is a great buy as well.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-privilege-scrutiny-data US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining Officials use little-known 'military and state secrets privilege' as civil liberties lawyers try to hold administration to account
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It's worse than you could ever imagine, you have absolutely no rights or freedoms any more. You can be killed or tortured for any reason, your private property can be seized without warrant or due process or compensation, you have no privacy of any sort, you are force medicated with chemicals to make you docile and lower intelligence. It's been this way since 2001, and continues to get worse. Both republicans and democrats support these policies and programs. We are no longer a free people.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVgAebxMmcM
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http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/06/glenn-greenwald-on-the-nsa-and-prism-its-well-past-time-that-we-have-a-debate-about-whether-thats-the-kind-of-country-and-world-in-which-we-want-to-live/
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How you should meditate depends on your goal, there are thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands maybe even millions of types of meditation, each with different goals and purposes. What is it you hope to accomplish via meditation? Answer that first then find a system which caters to that.
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7417-Next-Gen-Buyers-Guide
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http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-we-do-straight-talk-about-the-next-american-revolution/ The United States now ranks lowest or close to lowest among advanced âaffluentâ nations in connection with inequality (21st out of 21), poverty (21st out of 21), life expectancy (21st out of 21), infant mortality (21st out of 21), mental health (18th out of 20), obesity (18th out of 18), public spending on social programs as a percentage of GDP (19th out of 21), maternity leave (21st out of 21), paid annual leave (20th out of 20), the âmaterial well-being of childrenâ (19th out of 21), and overall environmental performance (21st out of 21). Add in low scores for student performance in math (17th out of 21), one of the highest school dropout rates (14th out of 16), the second-highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions (2nd out of 21), and the third-highest ecological footprint (3rd out of 20). Also for the record: We have the worst score on the UNâs gender inequality index (21st out of 21), one of the highest rates of failing to ratify international agreements, the highest military spending as a portion of GDP (1st out of 21), and among the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP.
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Supernormal Powers from Internal arts?
Thunder_Gooch replied to Wun Yuen Gong's topic in General Discussion
My perspective on this is everyone seriously has some sour grapes with the whole "supernatural" abilities thing. They are part and parcel with true spiritual development. It would be like saying you want to want to understand how to cook food, but making fire is a side track to this goal to be avoided. This is as preposterous as asking for a cheeseburger, except without the cheese and without the burger. You cannot have one with out the other, if you believe yourself to be enlightened and can't walk through a wall your delusional at best. Yes the end goal is not the powers themselves, but they cannot be separated from true spiritual development. It would be like saying oh I just want to be a Godlike being, but without any of the Godlike powers and knowledge. -
Supernormal Powers from Internal arts?
Thunder_Gooch replied to Wun Yuen Gong's topic in General Discussion
Bull**** spotless. Now I will concede it may indeed be a detour for the end goal of the systems you practice, but not mine. Also no trance state work doesn't make you go off the deep end, any more than sleeping does. Most people who go off the deep end have been working with practices to open their third eye, bring energy into the brain, psychedelic drugs, sleep deprivation etc. -
Leaving Hope - Nine Inch Nails