Garbage People Want You To Believe

I was looking at a website I like called "The Daily Grail". It has interesting writing and stories and good link to articles. Today they linked to this article from Nature News, "Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will"

Now why would scientists try to prove that you don't have free will? By the way, their test and explanation proved nothing. Bad science leads to bad results. They are basically trying to prove that you don't make your own decisions, that you don't really make your own choices.

There is something else called the Near Death Experience that scientists don't like. Worldwide the Near Death Experience is almost always the same and nobody can explain it well. One of the people associated with The Daily Grail posted this on the site, "Science Can Explain the Near Death Experience".

Psychology Today has this article promoting visualization."Visualize to Actualize", you do know what visualization is I hope. It is taught by people like the Rosicrucians and others with an occult bend.

People are always trying to prove that humans aren't that important and that we should commune with spirits. I don't believe either of those things. We experience, we feel pain, we feel love, we define ourselves by the choices we make and should take responsibility for our choices.

While these types of articles may seem silly and most people never ever read them, they are not written for the average person. This is what will be taught in school to your future leaders in these fields. The world will be designed around these types of beliefs, that is how it works.

College is where the people who will run the world are taught. You would be amazed how many important people will talk about the people who taught them and how it changed their lives. Many people become professors for just that reason. I don't like that style of teaching. I don't believe in trying to prove something to students, I think we should question them, I prefer the Socratic method of endless questioning, it frees the student's mind to find it's own answers rather than provide them.

When you send your child off to college you probably think they are going there to become "smarter", they are not. They are going there to be taught rather than learn. The methods used to teach them vary from one discipline to another. As they told us in law school, this is not about learning the law, it is about learning a way of thinking.

College, especially graduate school, is a lot like brainwashing. The first thing you do in graduate school is show them how little they know and then you begin explaining things that most people are never taught if they are not in a graduate program. Break them down and then provide them with the answers. That is why the experience is so intense for some. Law school involves reading hundreds of pages everyday and being expected to repeat it, work them hard enough and they will accept anything and no it didn't work with me.

Humans have a tendency to try and get others to agree with them, to think like them, we like conformity, comfort. We also tend to like followers. I had someone come to work for me as my personal assistant, he instead became one of my dearest friends; but, when he first came to work for me I told him that I would blow his mind and I think I did.

When he came to work for me I had to try to really make sure that the things he would see and learn would not effect his being him. I remember telling him that he would never see the world the same way again and he has told me that he never could now. He told me that he could never be me and I told him that I would never want him to. I wanted to show him behind the veil, to show him how things are really decided and how things work from the top. The guy had some real guts.

I am so very proud of who he is, he learned about things and uses his personality and strengths rather than trying to imitate me or the person who helped me teach him. I taught him how to see, understand and predict certain things, not how to be or what to think. I love it when he calls me to tell me something that he figured out and I know he is correct in his assessment. That should be the joy of a teacher.

I was asked what I am going to teach on this coming Sunday. I sure wish I knew. Last Sunday we all got to know each other and talk about why we were there, I think I set the tone and hope that it is a very open and fun tone. It is my hope that after listening to me for a bit that the people in the church learn to teach themselves. You have to teach the basics of anything; but, after that I want people to listen with discernment because they are capable of knowing the garbage from the honey.

I guess I don't so much want to teach them the bible as teach them how to read the bible. Last Sunday one young lady who had grown up in the church told me that I had shown her to think outside the box, I told her that there are no boxes. By the way, my Pastor friend reads my blog so he can always correct me if I misstate something.

That is sort of how I am when I am teaching. I don't want people to tell me that I am right, I want them to tell me that they understand that they should think about things for themselves and not just repeat what they have been told. I want the members to question me, not accept everything I say, I want them to challenge me more than I challenge them, that will be a challenge. We are not taught to constantly challenge our teachers and we should be.

This pastoring thing is hard and I never intended to do it. As I have taken it on, I take it on with intent. I didn't study it and I didn't think about it. This is very much a work in progress, a man who never felt the calling teaching people who don't like church. Somehow that makes sense.

There was someone who had come to my first "sermon" (I think of it as a conversation) and said that if they needed to have a reason to not go to church I sure gave it to them, and I did. I told them that the "church" is dying because it is and then I told them why. Religion as it is taught today is keeping people from God more than bringing them to it. It is all about putting rear ends in seats rather than focusing on what it taught in the beginning.

I am not concerned with this gathering growing, I am more afraid that it will and that is how it should be. The focus should be on telling the truth and teaching the word and showing people how to teach themselves. I think it talks about teaching a man to fish and how he is then set for life rather than giving him a fish, how is spirituality any different?

I don't want anyone to follow me, not in business and not in the church, I have never liked such things. I want people to turn their brains on, wake up to the reality around them, stop chasing the cookies and being willing trained seals and come to their conclusions in a logically consistent manner.

Life is about coming to terms with being ourselves. It is about taking responsibility for our choices and actions and modifying them to reflect our true heart and beliefs. It is about spiritual growth not spiritual death. It is about how important you are, not how unimportant you are and that is why people want to teach you the opposite. Life is not about love, love is the result of a true spiritual understanding of just how important everyone of us is and man, God created you so you matter. Love should be the life decision because we matter.

There are people who will not read my blog when I talk about spirituality, it doesn't stop me and it won't. I don't care if the viewership is one, truthfully, I will write if nobody reads it, they might tomorrow and I want what I write to reflect what I believe.

This coming Sunday I know what I want to see. I wish to see the young lady that said I had busted her boxes sitting in front of me, I need to know her more and I want to see the family of five, whose mother asked me for my blog address to be there, I will be very sad if they are not; but, I would understand. I will feel glad if those people are there because it will mean that I have been of service to them. There are others that I would like to see; but, I do understand that many did it as a favor to my Pastor friend and I am okay with that. I also deeply appreciate it to the ones who did it to be supportive of me, with all my heart.

The first Christians were not given a lesson plan, they were not given a building, they were not given too much. Well, they were given the word and he spoke to them, I didn't get that; but, I got his word and it is enough. Oh, the word was Jesus and he was God and he was with God.

A friend of the Pastor's told the pastor that the fact that I smoked showed that I didn't respect the fact that our body was a temple. Yeah, that is dangerous ground for anyone. He didn't know that I had taught on that and what I taught was discussed with him. Bad theology and legalism does not like me, never has and never will. He failed to understand the term he used or the context in which it was raised. I am a very gentle person and a pacifist, that doesn't require me to be stupid or not know my bible and I will correct people. His focus is on sin rather than redemption and that is wrong.

God is not a cookie and he is not a "reward", he is a sentient being who practices good. We should do the same while understanding what is really important and what is really important is us and God, all sentient beings. You matter and the truth is inside you, my answers don't change too often, my priorities are always us and I don't know how to or want to change that.

I have no idea what I will say on Sunday, I never know and will probably never know in advance. I say what is on my heart and think about issues that challenge me. My intent is more important in preparing than is my message, the message should just flow if my intent is right and it should work, be understood, because it is the truth.

By the way, the "evidence" that the scientists found for us making our decisions prematurely was wrong, it was evidence of intent, of our searching for a pattern, not the actual choice. Humans look for patterns every time we make a decision, it is how we make decisions, we check the odds.