Alex Jacob wrote: I don't have any problem with labels. Labels are good and desirable. It is calling a thing what it is. What I react to, and have since the beginning, is a closed-system that you seem to operate within. Your mental system is too limited, and for this reason I don't think you really grasp spiritual life. It is a loop: your mental system is too restrictive, and for this reason don't seem to have a grasp of the very wide nature of spritual life.
Okay, so we have a situation where you think I am too narrow and restrictive, and I think you are too broad and indiscriminate.
I am "narrow" and "restrictive" because I tend to focus almost exclusively on the rare attainment of enlightenment. By contrast, you barely give such an attainment a second thought, which means that your mind is in the habit of roaming around without discrimination or understanding.
When Jesus said, "Make every effort to enter through that narrow gate, for few find it", or when Buddha said, "Only one in a thousand seek enlightenment and, of those, only one in a thousand attain it", what do you think is happening there? Were they being too restrictive out of a lack of spiritual understanding?
But I never said that you do not understand spiritual life in some ways and I never said that yours is 'invalid'. So, just for the sake of conversation and not because I am trying to focus on Skip, I have no problem describing what he is living and learning as part of spiritual life, his spiritual life.
Is there any action at all that you would describe as not being spiritual?
But you, you see, find it necessary (because of your limited mental system) to come out and brand it as 'perversion' and God knows what else. It is not that I would attempt to defend something (certain activities, or a life-style) that I did not believe in, and so take up Skip's area of interest spitefully, it is that I have discovered that each life has certain areas that can be isolted in it that are the areas that person is destined to work in. That is where there 'spiritual life' is.
Well, according to my narrow viewpoint, spirituality refers specifically to the conscious connection to Truth. If a person isn't doing his utmost to forge this conscious connection, then in no way can he be described as engaging in spiritual life. Not without making a mockery of spirituality.
You make it abundantly clear that you have no interest in Truth. You even actively speak against the kind of mental extremes which are needed to realize Truth, going so far as to label them "restrictive". Even worse, you then bastardize the term "spirituality" by applying it to all sorts of areas that have nothing to do with the process of realizing Truth.
And you wonder why I have a problem with you.
Also, you refer to Ranakrishna quite often. But you don't seem to really understand the Hindu spiritual conception. You have a limited perception of it, and maybe that is why you seem only to be able to conceive of the absolutes and the extremes in the lives of some of the mystics.
Those absolutes and extremes form the very heart and soul of these men. They had the wisdom to place the realization of Brahman at the very centre of their lives. They didn't leave it languishing on the sidelines while splashing about in a broad sea of mediocrity.
Ramakrishna, I venture to say, would have understood this, and he would have 'blessed' and emphasized someone's spiritual activity, but never condemned it, never put a burden of shame on it, as you do.
Well, he did shame people, in his own way. His constant praising of God-realization translates as a shaming of those who either don't have this attainment or don't want it. And of course, he always had lots of fun mocking the worldly mentality.
No, he was very much in the shaming business, as he should be. Anything that prods people out of their lazy mentality and sparks them upwards in the direction of God-realization - whether it be through shaming, or shocking, or reasoning, or humour, or ego-stroking, or whatever - is a noble, spiritual activity.
You see yourselves as these amazing 'truth seekers' and so feel that you can make all sorts of judgments of what other people are doing, the area they are working in, and it is this I take issue with. The main reason is just because you are nowhere near as qualified as you think and so you ASK to be taken down a few notches.
Yes, that's perfectly understandable. People have been trying to do that for many years now. But they have been no more inspired in their attempts than you have.
You're not going to win me over by parading the banner of mediocrity in my face. It needs to be far more interesting and Zennish for me to start feeling vulnerable.
If you had some humility, of course, all sorts of people could converse with you, you would BUILD UPON understanding and, I think, have more success.
Oh God, I can think of better ways to waste my life.
I behave the way I do for a specific reason. I wonder if you can work out what it is.
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