People Thinking for us

People permit and pay others to think for them, maybe because of the emptiness they try to fill within themselves. "Thinking" and "asking questions" takes time, effort, tears and humility. So they choose for themselves the "most outspoken teacher" who exerts the most pride and listen to him because it will give them a false pride and "knowing" without ever thinking or questioning themselves. They are first slaves to themselves and later slaves to other men.

They are slaves to themselves in the fact that they strive to numb their souls to the emptiness they feel. In the time to fill the emptiness they then pay other men to think for them so they never have to "work out their own salvation" but another man can.
Because of their busyness of filling the "infinite abyss" (of soul) or numbing themselves to the existence of the abyss, they would rather have other hollow shells of men tell them what to do, so they can remain numb and never wake up.

How sad this realization is. That mankind is so afraid the answer to this thought (emptiness of soul) is that "it will never go away" that they would rather be numb and have other men tell them what to do than to spend time exploring and finding the answer.

This must scratch the surface of Socrates thoughts when he said, "An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all." For you are not "learning" you are being programmed like a robot of society. One must be careful to question all this for this reason, for anything true can stand against ANY question or series thereof.

Later same day 7.15.05

I am amazed at how relient people are on other to tell them what to do. Like at the coffee shop, no one will put up the umbrella, and look around at the other possibilities to put it up. Despite there being a rope that will raise it, they see holes in the pole and assume the rope will not work but they need something else to fill those holes.

I am not further advanced than others, for I still fight the same bullshit of being told what to do by others, and feeling obligated to fulfill someone else's "plan" for me. It is just hard to see it in others, and then reflect and having seen it in myself. Seen it in the education I have recieved since I was born, that life is about "doing what your supposed to" and "never questioning things that much." It is hard to see people so empty that they worry more about what others think than anything else. I am guilty of this as well.

Being offended

The effort to “not offend” has created an immature culture where mankind never grows up from their misperceptions. It (mankind/society) actually has become run by the immature and those who do not in fact see, which creates the most dangerous place, where nothing is real because it has made most of man into a continued state of lostness, with the deception of arrival at the truth. One cannot come to know that one knows nothing (which is the beginning of understanding and learning), without being offended and reduced from his perception of knowing something.

What student tells his teacher or master what to do? To be a student or learner, one accepts that he does not know and therefore goes with an openness to learn from one who does know. To be offended at all says that you have already come to a place of "learnedness" which actually shows that you know little or nothing about yourself and life itself. An offended life is the life of a student truly seeking to know the truth, for it offends the lies that he has come to believe in order that he may know the truth or reality for what it is, not for what he thinks or desires it to be.

When a person arrives at a place where they can be offended, they have arrived at a place where they “know more” or “are more enlightened” than someone else. It is at this place in one’s life when they have reached the greatest foolishness, for they have deceived themselves into the belief that they are “more right” than someone else, and when they are offended, it is (in their mind, or their own false reality) them being above someone else. For Jesus was never offended (as modern Christians are offended) by anything, for He took the lower place.

Focus

What am I fighting for?

God is interested in truth

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/issue14/God%20is%20interested%20in%20truth.mp3

God is interested in truth. A statement by Bono about Rock n Roll music.

Incredibly Free

What is my focus? Do I focus on my enemy more than my Master? Is the fact that I hate what modern Christians have made "Christianity" and "Christ" into so much that that is what I focus on the most?

If we know what we stand for with the intimate knowledge that we are invited to know, then we do not have to state what we "do not believe" or "what we oppose," because our very lives will simply oppose it and we will not have to say a word.

This is such an easy distraction for me. "Find the enemy and destroy it!" But, that is not life. That is another form of slavery for me. Life is what and who I am, regardless of what others think about me, say about me or do to me. Let me be myself and simply be that without focusing on what "I am not." For what "I am not" is defined simply by what I am. Everything outside of who I am, is what and who I am not.

As I look back at this very thought this morning, I am surprised at the fact that I have begun again to focus on what I "hate" more than what I love. As Jesus said to the church of Ephesis, "you have forsaken your first love." It is like spending all your time fighting to defend your beloved, instead of spending most of your time loving your beloved and fighting only when necessary.

Temptation of Jesus

In the temptation of Christ, the first one, the temptation is not just to fulfill His physical desire for food, if he even had one at the time. Honestly, I do not know whether He did or whether it was being taken care of by His Father.

However, the temptation was to simply take His life into His own hands. Almost every temptation recorded had this similar thing attached to it. Jesus did not do anything that He was tempted not because "he had scripture memorized" but because He did not possess the authority to make that decision for Himself. Whether he ate or drank was up to His Father. Whether He was glorified was up to His Father.

This is the beginning of the freedom of Christ, where He lives outside the will of others, and walks with His Father. To Jesus He did not have the choice to make that bread, because it was not something commission by His Father to do. He could have gone to Gethsemane then and would have had the same result.

Satan was not trying to "cause Jesus to sin" He was trying to get Him to rely on Himself. To create for Himself food, power, and He was testing to see if Jesus knew His Father would actually catch Him.

Jesus knew His Father's voice. Jesus knew His Father's heart. It had less to do with "what was written" as it did the fact that He knew His Father deep heart.

Something Good

I took my car in to get it repaired today, and got a ride home from the owner of the shop. On the trip, we exchanged some of the typical conversation, and I explained what my heart was for life and for the people of Boulder. As he got me back to my place he told me a quote that he had heard from a Black speaker back in the 70's.

"If you have something good, you do not have to force it on anyone, they will just take it from you."