29 May 2006 @ 03:46, by Nigel Best
true spirituality is practical interaction with reality with the aim of happiness - true spirituality is developing realism - overcoming the prejudices that keep us in misery - conquering the ego that keeps saying that it knows the truth, that keeps us closedminded - true spirituality is developing openmindedness, getting the ego under control that insists that it knows everything correctly, that it is a true guide to your happiness - the ego keeps us locked into our prejudices - keeps us unrealistic, keeps us not looking and seeing realistically - the ego blinds us to the blindingly obvious - keeps bossing us around telling us not to bother to check out new things fairly and soberly and impartially - the ego says: you know all you need to know - close your mind and heart to everything new - dont think freely and fearlessly - rely on what you have, on what you think you know - the ego says: dont look and see if your life is perfect or not, dont look for ways you can be happier, just stick with where you are at now, dont grow, dont leave your mind open, you know everything, your way is perfect, cannot be improved
and the ego is so successful in preventing us from seeing realisitically, so successful in burying ourselves in complacency with our present level, that we do not know how miserable we are, we do not know how dangerous we are being, how flawed our way is
the greatest sentence of wisdom, the greatest statement of spirituality, is 'it is good to let lie before one, and thus take to heart, what is, the reality' - which can be expressed this way: 'the beginning of wisdom is respect for reality' - it is easy to fall in love with a theory and get attached to it, so that you stop looking, stop seeing
the greatest optimist is the one who faces up to the biggest probelm - problems can be removed only by seeing them, facing their existence - and the ego is very very good at getting us to refuse to look at things candidly fearlessly - the ego says that we can be happy without facing reality, by living in our ideas of reality - we stop testing our theories against reality - we should be testing every theory against reality all the time, trying to get as close to reality as we can, despite the ego, because our happiness is totally dependent on our realism - all happiness is inside reality - there is zero happiness in dreamland - there is false happiness in dreamland/unrealism, but false happiness is not happiness
the big thing that we are not facing is that we have super hyper extreme injustice - and that causes violence, which destroys happiness - the good news is that therefore we can be super hyper extremely happier - our life has the realistic potential to be much much much better - because we have such extreme injustice, which causes such extreme misery - and that injustice can be dealt with simply by a return to the principles of the american dream - tyranny is totally dependent on swollen fortunes, far greater than anyone could have earned - limit fortunes to the most a person can earn, as the founding fathers intended, and a million problems will disappear - the extremes of overpay [tyranny, undemocracy, state terrorism] and underpay [poverty, anger, war, terrorism] will disappear - nigel@orcon.net.nz - if we move closer to equal pay for equal work, by moving the greatest overpay to the greatest underpay, we can be like 100-fold happier - but we have to doubt the universal prejudice-wisdom of everyone just going for as much as they can get - and we have to doubt the prejudice-wisdom that true spirituality has nothing to do with money - money buys all necessities and most pleasures and powers, ie, most happiness, and true spirituality is pursuit of maximum happiness, so we must get rid of the prejudice that spirituality and material concerns like money have no connection -
we have to open up to the idea that spirituality and justice have some connection - what would spirituality be without happiness?
|
|
