I'm on my own journey. When I put it this way it feels extremely lonely. I think this is only a perception. Down underneath, I've known for a very long time that what I've been fleeing and why.
Being and Nothiness by Satre formulates a language for me of the inner workings of my consciousness. It's still so far over my head: A part of a part. The Look. Read it for yourself. Basically one's ability to look on self, as one looks at another person. Bad Faith: heck yea. Lived nearly 34 years this way. Thankfully over the last nine, slowly very slowly I've had the courage to look at who I am piece by piece. I probably will still be unpacking some things for a very long time to come.
On "my journey" has much positive aspects to it. I cannot imagine my life being lived much differently than in total honesty. I think this is an unusual but important observation. My commitment to what is true has always existed. In-spite of everything, even the shallow times when I was less than brutally honest with myself, I have to give myself credit for doing what I saw as the honest thing even in those moments that I look back now on and say: "I really was not being myself".
I'm growing. That's why I'm writing about my life, and my choices in life. The most important person is me. Only then may we be able to truly care more deeply for others. Egotism is not bad or harmful in the context of loving myself enough to break the don't talk rules, stand up on my own, make my own choices, not cater to the whims of others. Be my own man.
It's what every adult celebrates as they watch their children grow up and discover who they are. I'm only discovering now in my late "early adulthood" and the start of "mid-life". Most teens would probably accomplish this much by their mid-twenties.
A friend of mine, recently shared this link: http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/ENGL1311/fallacies.htm
I've been mulling over this list for only a few days. I’m 37, and have only just this week laid my eyes on this kind of information. I have a computer, internet, I read widely. I consider myself a “bright” and know that I’m intelligent. I've complained to friends that I feel like I have this awareness that I’m missing some important information, but I’m uncertain exactly what that information is or how to find it. This is one piece of the missing information that I did not know how to find.
Of course, maybe I would have got it automatically if I’d gone to secular college or university. At the ideal time when most people make the college decision. I made another. For me an accredited education was not an option. I was ACE K-12, and then layer on top of that part an extremely closed system of religious thought (in which I was born, raised, educated and trained) that was afraid of the out-side “secular world”. I stepped into the real world only about 9 years ago, when I’d finally got the courage to leave the “closed system”.
As a golden-child of my closed system, my parents were thick with the upper levels of leadership, I was unquestioning. I slowly attained recognition in my group. After High School (ACE) I went on to completed 4 years of Bible School (their version of higher education), then went on to plant a church in Belize. I had aspirations of opening an ACE Christian School in Belize. Then I had an awakening to reality. It, the whole “closed system”, was all man-made! The sacred slowly melted away, and I could find space to actually think for myself. You can imagine that I’m really learning a lot.
Education does play a vital role in setting up certain neurological connections in the brain. Thank goodness I think there is growing evidence that the brain has a lot of plasticity, and may be rewired, so to speak, if it’s been found by the individual to need some modification.
The moral of this part of my story: at the very minimum: we should, as adults take a very keen interest in insuring that our children have a chance of getting their brains wired up in the best way possible to be thinking, self-empowered individuals. My son will have his own journey. Hopefully, for him it will be an easier journey.
Maybe he'll have enough courage to join the "wide, well-traveled road" much sooner than I did. By the way this "broad road" does not lead to "damnation" it actually leads to a well-lived life. We'll have to bush-whack our way through certain situations, but really do we have to re-invent the wheel in each generation. We can stand on the shoulder of giants: something Jesus' 'submission, I in you,' jargon simply is incapable of achieving.
The narrow road is a road of selfish egotism, of irrelevant living, mostly fear-mongering, of bush-whacking one's way through life, in a self-created reality, that does nothing but land one in an isolated grave at the end of life, with the false assumption that 'I did it all to live with Jesus forever'. I don't care if there is or is not an afterlife, I wish to live the life that I do have well.
I assume correctly, that an after-life of punishment or reward requires a lot more responsible dealings of the entity in charge than a few cracks of a whip every millennium to bring people into some new alignment with the universe, or a sparse handful of threats of damnation recorded by various religions through out the eons of time.
I'm getting closer to being honestly able to say: I don't care what anyone else thinks, and most importantly nor should I in any way feel ashamed of myself for saying so.
Being and Nothiness by Satre formulates a language for me of the inner workings of my consciousness. It's still so far over my head: A part of a part. The Look. Read it for yourself. Basically one's ability to look on self, as one looks at another person. Bad Faith: heck yea. Lived nearly 34 years this way. Thankfully over the last nine, slowly very slowly I've had the courage to look at who I am piece by piece. I probably will still be unpacking some things for a very long time to come.
On "my journey" has much positive aspects to it. I cannot imagine my life being lived much differently than in total honesty. I think this is an unusual but important observation. My commitment to what is true has always existed. In-spite of everything, even the shallow times when I was less than brutally honest with myself, I have to give myself credit for doing what I saw as the honest thing even in those moments that I look back now on and say: "I really was not being myself".
I'm growing. That's why I'm writing about my life, and my choices in life. The most important person is me. Only then may we be able to truly care more deeply for others. Egotism is not bad or harmful in the context of loving myself enough to break the don't talk rules, stand up on my own, make my own choices, not cater to the whims of others. Be my own man.
It's what every adult celebrates as they watch their children grow up and discover who they are. I'm only discovering now in my late "early adulthood" and the start of "mid-life". Most teens would probably accomplish this much by their mid-twenties.
A friend of mine, recently shared this link: http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/ENGL1311/fallacies.htm
I've been mulling over this list for only a few days. I’m 37, and have only just this week laid my eyes on this kind of information. I have a computer, internet, I read widely. I consider myself a “bright” and know that I’m intelligent. I've complained to friends that I feel like I have this awareness that I’m missing some important information, but I’m uncertain exactly what that information is or how to find it. This is one piece of the missing information that I did not know how to find.
Of course, maybe I would have got it automatically if I’d gone to secular college or university. At the ideal time when most people make the college decision. I made another. For me an accredited education was not an option. I was ACE K-12, and then layer on top of that part an extremely closed system of religious thought (in which I was born, raised, educated and trained) that was afraid of the out-side “secular world”. I stepped into the real world only about 9 years ago, when I’d finally got the courage to leave the “closed system”.
As a golden-child of my closed system, my parents were thick with the upper levels of leadership, I was unquestioning. I slowly attained recognition in my group. After High School (ACE) I went on to completed 4 years of Bible School (their version of higher education), then went on to plant a church in Belize. I had aspirations of opening an ACE Christian School in Belize. Then I had an awakening to reality. It, the whole “closed system”, was all man-made! The sacred slowly melted away, and I could find space to actually think for myself. You can imagine that I’m really learning a lot.
Education does play a vital role in setting up certain neurological connections in the brain. Thank goodness I think there is growing evidence that the brain has a lot of plasticity, and may be rewired, so to speak, if it’s been found by the individual to need some modification.
The moral of this part of my story: at the very minimum: we should, as adults take a very keen interest in insuring that our children have a chance of getting their brains wired up in the best way possible to be thinking, self-empowered individuals. My son will have his own journey. Hopefully, for him it will be an easier journey.
Maybe he'll have enough courage to join the "wide, well-traveled road" much sooner than I did. By the way this "broad road" does not lead to "damnation" it actually leads to a well-lived life. We'll have to bush-whack our way through certain situations, but really do we have to re-invent the wheel in each generation. We can stand on the shoulder of giants: something Jesus' 'submission, I in you,' jargon simply is incapable of achieving.
The narrow road is a road of selfish egotism, of irrelevant living, mostly fear-mongering, of bush-whacking one's way through life, in a self-created reality, that does nothing but land one in an isolated grave at the end of life, with the false assumption that 'I did it all to live with Jesus forever'. I don't care if there is or is not an afterlife, I wish to live the life that I do have well.
I assume correctly, that an after-life of punishment or reward requires a lot more responsible dealings of the entity in charge than a few cracks of a whip every millennium to bring people into some new alignment with the universe, or a sparse handful of threats of damnation recorded by various religions through out the eons of time.
I'm getting closer to being honestly able to say: I don't care what anyone else thinks, and most importantly nor should I in any way feel ashamed of myself for saying so.
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