| [BEGINNING OF PART 2 OF 2] > Moreover, framing those who do not embrace your "Path of Love" as ignorant or complicit in evil undermines the diversity of human experience and the validity of alternative ethical frameworks. There is no higher ethical framework than that which espouses universal compassion. And, yes, each of us who remains ignorant of the truth of the importance of compassionate service to mankind, is themselves harming the education of humanity, which is a form of evil, albeit small in comparison to the brutality of dictators. The key understanding here is that we each sit on the knife's edge, and we are each choosing compassion or one of the myriad opposites, each of which involves a degradation of the whole, even if it's in a small area of influence, or even without malice. You can't wipe your ass with your hand, not wash it, and then traipse all over the mall touching stuff. That ignorance will cause real harm, however unintentional. > Finally, your analogy comparing spiritual transformation to testing fire conflates subjective spiritual experiences with objective physical phenomena. No, you refuse to understand that the spiritual path is the same for every human being, even though there are different forms that get us there. We must transmute our soul's 19 vices into their corresponding virtues, by degrees, over time, with the help of our Creator, in order to become vehicles for compassion. This is a universal human developmental potential. > The former is deeply personal and cannot be universally measured or validated. It can be, but only by the person who has begun the transformation, as well as their teacher or other persons of high attainment. Just as our bodies have a developmental progression where different stages entail different abilities, so, too, does the spiritual progression towards love. Before we begin it, we have "eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear, and hearts that do not understand". We all have souls that start out with some combo of the 19 vices operant, per our personal predilections. We all start out equal in sum, but with a different bar chart of the different weights. Sum any person's weights together and they will be equal, but one person will have more hate, another more greed. With 19 pairs of vices and virtues, that's a lot of possible combos. That's why it's so easy for our lower selves to be able to point our finger at another person and think, "I'm better than that other person. Look at their X." It's the multi-spiderman theme, but one spidey has a different vice in just as great a quantity as the one our internal voice points out in others. > Not everyone will, or should, approach spirituality or self-evolution in the way you propose. Well, we have to contact or Creator to begin the process. There's no escaping that any more than saying a person can graduate from college without matriculating first. Like I said, it's our universal spiritual developmental progression. There are different forms, different prayers, different practices, but beyond those trifling, unimportant differences, we all have to connect to our Creator, find our path, and then do the work required to self-evolve our ideals, attitudes, and behaviors, in order to transmute our souls' vices into their corresponding virtues. The key is that each person's path is determined by the Creator. Upon contacting it, we will be guided to whatever path is required. It's never for another person to determine. Rumi says, "The Way goes in." > Placing the burden of moral alignment on individuals rather than acknowledging the role of collective and systemic forces risks perpetuating a kind of spiritual elitism. A culture can only level-up by its members leveling-up; that's just systems analysis. I'm not placing any kind of burden on anyone any more than Watson and Crick placed a limit on the shape of DNA. Elitism wasn't the reason for or effect of Einstein explaining how mass and the time are interrelated. The spiritual path is simply our complex reality, just one that cannot be verified by our physical sciences, just as it fails to explain Dark Matter or Energy. [It just sounds like your inner voice doesn't want anything to do with your self-evolving yourself beyond its ignorance. And that is exactly the case. It's defending itself from the ego-death that results from the spiritual path, and it's doing it like hell. That's precisely why the world is the way it is, and also why mis- and disinformation is so deadly, because until one enters the Path of Love one cannot clearly comprehend reality, much less "know thyself". "Their minds are confused with confusion," as Bob Marley said.] > In summary, while your call for self-awareness, compassion, and transformation is compelling, it oversimplifies human complexity and diversity. We are not all on the same path, nor should we be. True respect for the plurality of human experience requires acknowledging that there are many ways to navigate existence—each as valid as your own. All our ways to navigate are valid, because we can choose to live and believe however and whatever we want, because we all have an unfettered free will, and we must each respect each others' choices, so long as they aren't harming/oppressing others. But most people's beliefs are simply based on bad information and assumptions. We live in an objective reality and there is truth and half-truth and utter bullsh_t. And the fact of the matter is that I know flat-earthers have some just plain incorrect beliefs. Like my explaining this to you, though, those of use who know can try to explain the truth, but it's your choice to accept it or not. If you prayed about it, you would get the answer, but you don't pray, do you? Or believe in prayer, right? Or am I wrong about that. I doubt it. You are intelligent about the physical world, but don't you want to know where the Dark Matter is or the purpose of Dark Energy? You can't find those answers by studying the physical universe, you can only find hints like the anomalous galactic momenta. To find the answers, you must follow Rumi's Wisdom and follow the trail, "The Way goes in." I love you. Thanks for your detailed, intelligent response, but your arguments are no different than a flat-earther arguing with Galileo. [END OF PART 2 OF 2] |