For the young toddler, the world is a place of enchantment and benevolence. It is the Garden of Eden. As the toddler explores the world, they will eventually bump up against chaos. This might be a hand on the hot fireplace glass or a strong reprimand after breaking something.

When this happens, the toddler splits. This splitting is represented in Genesis when Eve is created from Adam’s rib. Adam represents the mind and Eve represents the body. As the mind temporarily splits from the body, then the self momentarily splits from the environment. Before this, we can consider the child androgynous, non-dual, and completely engrossed in the environment.

As the child continues to explore the world and encounters chaos, this pattern of temporary splitting will repeat and eventually result in an incremental separation of mind from body (Adam from Eve) and self from environment. As the story goes in Genesis, Adam will inevitably eat the forbidden fruit, creating a separation between self and the paradise of childhood. He will naturally try to re-engross himself to the Garden of Eden, but he will gradually realize that he can’t lose his self like he used to. He has been exiled. This is the genesis story of every human being: the splitting of mind from body, of self from environment, and of our consciousness from the benevolent childhood story.

It is at this point that The Parable of the Bags of Gold becomes relevant (Matthew 25:14-30, NIV). As it goes in Genesis 3, after Adam is exiled from paradise, then he is sentenced to work. The servant who buries his bag of gold is the attempt that we all make to escape the responsibilities of the work assigned to us by the overbearing ruler and re-engross ourselves back into the childhood paradise story.

The thinking is if we can escape back into our childhood story, then we can escape from this story of work, responsibility, and punishment by a tyrannical ruler. This is our first approach since we have an evolutionary adapted impulse to expend the least amount of energy/resources in trying to solve problems. After getting thrown into the darkness of pain and judgment, we quickly realize that we probably need a new strategy which is going to require that we extend ourselves more than we have previously.

When we accept that there is no escaping from the responsibility of work expected of us from the ruler, then linear time, along with the anxiety associated with it, establishes itself in our life. In the childhood story, time only existed at most on the periphery. Now, we live in a timeline with pain and punishment nipping at our heels when we shirk our responsibilities. As long as we stay in front of the anxiety inducing, perceived threshold of expectation, then we can feel safe to ease up. At least for a short time, until we trigger our anxiety safeguards that wake us back up and back to work. This process shapes us to be more conscientious and we can call this the conscientiousness timeline.

The truth of all this is symbolized in Homer’s Odyssey when Odysseus requests that the other men bind him to the ship when they pass by the Sirens. The Sirens represent the call of the childhood paradise that seduces us into a sleep state due to our longing for it. Odysseus has learned that trying to return to that place is to neglect his duty which will eventually lead to punishment. In the same way, if we fall asleep and lose consciousness in an attempt to escape the conscientiousness timeline, then we will face unwanted consequences.

So how should we respond to the story that the parable speaks to? The obvious answer is to be like the other servants who return multiple bags of gold to the approval of the ruler. Why don’t the vast majority of human beings respond that way then? The easy, dismissive answer is to assign moral failure such as laziness, but it would be a mistake to stop at that simplistic conclusion.

I’ll pick up from here after a break.

+1
I like your text and am all ears.

Something tragic happens to us in relation to time. That’s the direction I was going with this. In our good faith effort to dig deep, aim high, and create distance between ourselves and the anxiety inducing pit of despair, we actually experience success and become euphorically hopeful. The ruler is pleased with our returns and elevates us in multiple ways.

But then, when it seems like our ascension is starting to become the new normal, something unexpected and terrifying disrupts everything. It is so inconvenient and confusing to us that we impulsively deny, suppress, deflect - whatever we can do to prevent ourselves from seeing that linear time has transformed into a circle.

The pit of despair that we were convinced was in the past is approaching once again, but this time not by catching us from the rear due to our ignorance or negligence; we are being led into it via conscientiousness, hope, meaning, and ascension. Our ascension was actually just the first half of a loop and we have reached the peak. All that is available to us at this point is descent in either direction.

The realization of this experience may not last more than a moment for most people, but the resulting nihilism, pessimism, cynicism, and fatalism endure even if mostly concealed. It trains us to keep our ambitions modest, to resign ourselves to coping as the frog in the gradually boiling water. The only way out of this is to rebel which requires that we change our relationship with nihilism, despair, and truth.

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I lost the original thread of relating this to covid as indicated by the title so disregard that.

Rebellion, Conscience, and Nihilism

We can divide the conscience into two distinct sub consciences. One conscience operates more on the surface level and prioritizes immediate psycho-emotional order, and security, over truth. When we get captured by nihilism, we are told to escape ASAP. We can call this the social conscience.

The other conscience operates at a deeper level of our being. It prioritizes truth and indicates to us that nihilism is true. We can call this the “spirit of truth”.

The social conscience has the upper hand, so naturally, when we first encounter nihilism, we try to escape with no concern about its status in relation to truth. However, the spirit of truth has a defense against this: Each time we choose the social conscience over truth, the spirit of truth will produce a small amount of self hatred which is initially experienced as despair. The next time that we encounter nihilism we will intuitively associate the despair with our previous selection of the social conscience, and we will pause for a moment.

After going through this cycle enough times, the pauses will incrementally increase to the point that we begin to recognize the truth of nihilism. Still, the despair in combination with the idea of a meaningless existence is borderline unbearable and makes us fatalistic, so we will continue to seek escape through the social conscience. This results in more layers of despair and self hatred being produced, and we eventually begin to sense that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

However, there is a move that we can make to free ourselves from this dilemma. The next time we find ourselves in nihilism, we should hold onto the despair at the sense-experience level while also blinding ourselves to the fatalistic and nihilistic words at the thought level. As long as we are in touch with the feeling of despair, then the spirit of truth will no longer produce more despair. And blinding ourselves to the dialogue in our heads will allow us to move forward.

Logos and a New Language of Truth

The beginning of the Gospel of John goes

“The Word” is translated from “Logos”. However, it is incorrect to assume a perfect translation. The Logos is the Messianic Male, which can be thought of as an elevated level of consciousness.

The spoken word, like its ideal (Logos), differentiates order out of chaos but there is a ceiling that it can’t go beyond. It is only an approximation of elevated consciousness (Logos). It trades full actualization for simplicity. It can be thought of as an introductory course. To get unstuck, we will have to transcend the word and access the full Logos, which is the Messianic Male or elevated consciousness.

This will be reflected in how we engage sacred texts like the Bible. Instead of focusing on words and clinging to the idea of it being an inerrant text, we will be better served relating it directly to our consciousness as we develop. Stories and ideas that raise our consciousness will be seen as truthful in this framework. Patterns will begin to emerge from the fog as we become more precise and sensitive to our consciousness and to the spirit of truth.

Beginning in early childhood, our world is differentiated, and therefore created, by the word. But to get to the Kingdom, we have to blind ourselves to thoughts and words, and become born again in a new, undifferentiated world where we must rely on the real Logos.

The enemy, or the tyrant posing as God in the Bible, is a thief and a robber. He steals meaning. We have an instinct for meaning and we can develop a sense for when we are in a state of meaning deficiency.

To be clear, we interact with the tyrant in the parable mentioned previously because that’s where we will find meaning. It’s the archetypal story of the hero going to the dragon’s lair to rescue the princess. The princess represents meaning, the dragon represents the tyrant/Satan, and the dragon’s lair represents nihilism/hell.

We will always have to chase meaning. The socially reinforced version of God will inevitably lose the meaning that was associated and we will have to choose. Choose meaning.

We will try to recreate meaning and project it onto the known and familiar, but that’s not the meaning that we desire and not the meaning that I am talking about. It’s very important that we are truthful about meaning. Our instinct for meaning needs to be protected from distortion by our own doing.

Does the Bible say we have an instinct for meaning?

The Parable of the Hidden Treasure and the Parable of the Pearl are about meaning. Anything related to the Kingdom of Heaven is associated with meaning.

Nice dodge.

You think my secret motivation for starting this thread was to defend the Bible? That’s what you take from my posts here?

FellaGaga seems to often not even read the posts he's responding to.

I take it from your posts that you are incredibly mired in a hyper-cult version of Christianity that is as fantastic and convoluted as it is false. It's just made the hell up. Wild a$$ interpretations that have no basis in anything other than apology for the impossibility of the religion.

Can’t you recognize by now that I speak primarily from a phenomenological perspective? I’m not dependent on any framework. You are so captured by resentment and anti-theism that you are oblivious, aren’t you?

You speak from a self-deluded cultish perspective. You confabulate a framework and consider it ultimate truth. And yes, I've written chapters on phenomenology (as it pertains to being, Descartes, rational spirituality, and more) ... so that attempted word drop is a fail.

I have a hostile streak toward lying a$$ apologetics, admittedly. That's part vice and part virtue ... which i understand a lot more than you do about your fabricated ultimate truth crap. There is one word needed to follow a moral code. Something along the lines of either kindness, love, respect, or goodwill. All the rest of the stuff you write is soaring sophistry with zero foundation in reality. It's koolaid. You are running a koolaid stand and you are your best customer.

Oblivious to what? Let's hear it. You've got me wide open and vulnerable. So let's hear it. If it's not the talking snake and the mass murderer of love, let's hear what it is.

This is the foundation and as far as many people want to go, which is fine. The foundation can always use strengthening. This is externally focused morality - relationship and service.

Still, from another perspective, morality is so much more than that when focus flips internally. Despair and meaning deficiency are universal problems. For people who use the strategy of blinding themselves to those internal issues because they either don’t want to face them or they have decided that there is no solution, what I share will be annoying at the very least.

When morality gets over-simplified to “be kind”, that will eventually lead to frustration when the shallowness of that gets exposed by reality. That frustration inevitably brings forth the shadow side in distorted and destructive ways. Addiction, suicide, polarization, etc are symptoms of an over-simplified morality.

I agree with much of that. I would also say that when focus "flips internally" kindness, self-compassion, is still the moral way and that which leads to more moral human beings. This idea we are born evil and committing unpardonable sins and being threatened by loving torture in hell is destructive to our sense-of-self and to our morality. Addiction and suicide, as I see it, are about lack of connection, about alienation and its great pain.

The external, social world — and the more feminine traits like kindness and compassion — are the foundation. However, the social world is not reality. When we turn inward, we are making a move away from the social world toward reality.

I would rarely describe my experiences of reality checks as compassionate. Mostly, they are insulting and offensive. There are layers and depth to the inner world with each level increasing the amount of insult and pain as we close the distance to reality. Unless we access the more masculine part of ourselves and open ourselves up to insult, then we will lose our connection to the truth that guides us toward reality. The feminine traits are essential in the inner world as well, but the male has to lead.

If we close ourselves off to reality checks and attach entirely to the external world, trying to make the feminine morality total, then despair and meaning deficit will take more and more territory in our lives right under our nose. When that monster grows unfettered in the dark, it becomes more unpredictable, uncontrollable, and destructive. The only lasting, durable antidote to despair and meaning deficit is reality.

The mythological stories are to aid our navigation through the inner world. The inner journey is extreme, dramatic, and difficult, so the most truthful stories will reflect that also.

How old are you?

I sense an Argumentum ad hominem coming.

Maybe what you should have sensed is a refusal to answer ... this from a guy who is extremely loquacious on all that concocted cultish lingo. The fact that he can't see it at all for what it is is often a measure of being a greenhorn trying to sound like he's wielding utter certainty and the ultimate truth straight from god. And though that doesn't warrant a personal attack, it does warrant exposure for what it is: a personal pipe dream. So you stand corrected. Same old, same old.

See now, you’re the one who is overstepping his level of certainty, not me. Time will tell..

Important to remember that FellaGaga doesn't typically engage what anybody specifically says.

I’ve talked about this idea more broadly when I explained self sabotage. Self sabotage can be thought of as life fanning the flames of the fire within. Saying 10 in the Gospel of Thomas has Christ saying, “I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am watching over it until it blazes."

I’ve also talked about how there are evolutionary filters, which are requirements for selection. Filters linked to the environment are the ones associated with Darwinism that we are most familiar with. We are less familiar with filters linked to reality. One example of the latter that I’ve previously mentioned is that groups which did not have a version of God uniting them were either outcompeted by or integrated into groups that did.

Presently, humanity has basically evolved beyond the environment based filters of Darwinism and is firmly within the filters of reality, or in theological language, the filters of God. With each filter that we pass through, time speeds up from a subjective and developmental perspective. The flames of the fire blaze more and more. We can see evidence of this in the significant rise of mood disorders, substance abuse, and “deaths of despair”.

My intuition is that this collective self sabotage is distributed among the population as a bell curve and we are just beginning to hit the slope of the curve. Our solutions and coping mechanisms that have worked in the past will soon enough no longer be viable, just like how they are insufficient for those of us on the front end of the bell curve.

The flood story with Noah in Genesis is about this phenomenon of self sabotage. It’s a warning about what happens if we continually blind ourselves to the spirit of truth, or the Holy Spirit, and the blazing fire. When the fire is blazing, we are susceptible to various ways of triggering the flood. At the individual level, it is the person who relapses after years of drug recovery, or it can be something beyond our own control like the death of a loved one.

However, even when the flood comes, we are capable of overcoming it as individuals. Consciousness is the solution. The entire point of self sabotage is to corner humanity into consciousness, which is where we can reestablish our connection to truth and follow it toward reality.

At the collective level, time has sped up rapidly. That seems pretty apparent to most people. The fire is beginning to blaze and we don’t want to trigger the flood. Not at the collective level.