From thelema93-l-owner@hollyfeld.org Tue Nov 11 17:13:11 1997 Received: from veracruz-gw.customer.itw.net (rhino9@veracruz-gw.customer.ITW.NET [208.211.5.42]) by bay2.bjt.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA23297 for ; Tue, 11 Nov 1997 17:13:10 -0800 Received: from www.hollyfeld.org ([204.130.199.143]) by veracruz-gw.customer.itw.net (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with ESMTP id AAA266 for ; Tue, 11 Nov 1997 20:21:09 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by www.hollyfeld.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id UAA29977 for thelema93-l-outgoing; Tue, 11 Nov 1997 20:12:28 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: www.hollyfeld.org: majordom set sender to owner-thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org using -f Received: from bay2.bjt.net (bay2.bjt.net [207.201.6.2]) by www.hollyfeld.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id UAA29970 for ; Tue, 11 Nov 1997 20:11:56 -0500 Received: from bay1.bjt.net (tyagi@bay1.bjt.net [207.201.6.1]) by bay2.bjt.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA23081 for ; Tue, 11 Nov 1997 16:58:08 -0800 Received: (from tyagi@localhost) by bay1.bjt.net (8.7.5/8.7.5) id QAA16973 for thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org; Tue, 11 Nov 1997 16:58:07 -0800 Message-Id: <199711120058.QAA16973@bay1.bjt.net> Subject: Anger at Fundies and Thelemic Response (was Channel 93) To: thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 16:58:07 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <346752A9.3F0C@popd.ix.netcom.com> from "Michael S Miller" at Nov 10, 97 06:30:02 pm From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nigris (333)) Orientation: House of Kaos, St. Joseph, Kali Fornika, US -- Kali Yuga X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25 PGP2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Precedence: bulk Reply-To: thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Status: RO 49971111 aa2 Hail Satan! Alien Angel Day! Open the Door! Beam them down! E6 Patrick Crumhorn: #> The best psychic warfare against your enemies is to erase them from #> your thoughts, utterly and completely. Anyone who professes (or even #> aspires to) Mastery ought to be able to deal with these issues of Severe #> Emotional Attachment to Things they Hate....(etc.) Michael S Miller <"us,ppp,msquare"@ix13.ix.netcom.com>: # ...loathing those organizations collectively called the 'religious right.' # This hatred DOES interfere with my tranquility, and I find I am only # able to remove it while in a 'gnostic state of mind' (i.e., meditative # or magical). Dealing with them while in 'consensual reality' strains my # nerves to the limit. I wonder what either of you mean by 'dealing with them' here. I find that most religious and occult folx typically mean 'make them go away' (that is, repress them). # How does the rest of the list deal with this? (I truly find it hard # to believe that I am the only one with this issue....) there are a number of tacks to take in response to this post. one might explain how one handles anger and what one does to channel it toward less difficult routes, how vision in the meditative state of uninvolvement and nonattachment can be a bridge to distancing oneself from those areas with which one has difficulty, or the most extreme will no doubt advise some means of changing these feelings through biofeedback, extended and inclusive studies, or psycho-maturitive ritual. I would personally rather explain how it is that I go about encountering, assimilating, absolving and opposing these (often deluded or very deceptive) fundamentalists. it has been an 'issue' for me since I first came into contact with religious (whom I've often found both fascinating and frustrating). the first method I found was encountering them within my philosophic studies. engaging a study of philosophy of religion I began to try to see how the various religious pathways took to answering the age-old questions which I found either poorly-asked or impossible to resolve. I met with divinity students, pastors, and usually the religious themselves and asked them innumerable questions, posing as strong and persuasive arguments against their presumptions as I could muster. I still do this upon occasion, but I have curtailed it once I began to notice common patterns of mental habituation in the religious culture and resistance to honest self-examination. today I will only take to this method with those broadly-read in their scripture and tempered of spirit (with whom I can respectfully disagree and we can remain cordial), decreasing my ignorance and learning new ideas. assimilation has taken me a long time, mostly because I loathe those who play at being intelligent without substance to back it up, and hypocritical often without awareness of this failing. the greatest barrier has been an understanding of what the terms conservative religious use when they mouth their standard rhetoric. I tried to ask questions which gave me insight into their motivations for adopting these memes, how what they said differed from my favorite mystics and philosophers who bothered to explain the complexities and subtleties of idea with which their origins may typically be assigned. with some I found their clarity of expression lent me easy access to identifying with their paradigm (albeit metaphorically rather than literally :>). Jehovah's Witnesses were a joy, and the range of conservatives varies considerably, usually taking to their religion in a different way than myself (not rationally but emotionally or for reasons of affiliation and security). I'm still piecing this together, though I've constructed several interpretations of the standard fundie rhetoric from which to operate in discussion with the conservative of a variety of religious pathways (it is sometimes fun to enter into conversation using these and watch the fireworks). absolution is hard for me to come by, since my values are almost 180 degrees opposite of the typical fundamentalist. usually I must pose ecumenical or relativistic philosophical questions and assertions against my own biases so as to break myself of them even temporarily. I don't always find this valuable as it interrupts my standard religious motivations and deep values, but if I want to come to an understanding of the religious right and resolve any difficulties I may be having in the area of judgement and anger, then this is one way I can do it. an example here would include acknowledging from my experience that most people are genuine and good-hearted, even if their ideas and values differ radically from my own. only occasionally do I run into truly deceptive religious, aware that they are deluding not only themselves (a common feature of religion) but others too. another would be using deconstructive philosophical approaches to assess the relative truths in coherent expressions of both my own and conservative religious perspectives. often these all point to truths without containing them wholly. a heart-based view is to see that we are all walking along our paths of development at our own pace and that some simply need what I might find to be distasteful, limiting and ignorant presumptions about the cosmos in order to feel more comfortable or secure. to another (even to me looking back at my later writing! ;>) my own will seem just as immature and ignorant. my history tells me that I am a changing and sometimes very silly person. opposition usually takes the form of political action or statement. I don't mind what you believe but I do care how this factors into the impact it has on my liberty. ignorant religious have for too long exploited wild nature, Satan, seeing Hir as a resource placed here by their glorious Creator-deity. seldom have they either delved deeply into their own hearts or scriptures to derive something more than a justification for continued tragedy. I try to take what I would call a 'respectful' (even 'Thelemic') attitude toward those whom I would oppose, whether they are Christian, Satanist, Muslim, or Thelemite conservatives: 'as brothers fight ye!'. in this way not only do I DEMONstrate my values rather than just talking about them, but I also keep the lines of communication open for channelling rays of corruption. broad-thinking can inspire broad-thinking. demonstrated compassion can inspire compassion, not only for those who exhibit it but also for the weak and fragile beings whom the conservative overlook as 'just more (often demonic) things to control, dominate and serve us'. E6/6/6 _______________________________________________________________________________ nigris (333) -- tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com -- http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi/ caution: I don't read all posts, filtering out those of < 3000 bytes. 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