Being on the side of good isn't easy.

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by FallingLeaves

It takes a lot, to sit there looking at the totality of what people are doing wrong, and just accept that God has all the bases covered even as frustrated as one might be about the status quo.

Here my 'lot' (based on the understanding I have reached regarding what the purpose of our reincarnational system - i.e. transcendental soul growth and maturation'platform' - actually is:

To reinforce the logic of this, let me first emphasize the significance of something which tends to be underappreciated by still psychospiritually immature Love and Joy seekers, sharers and bequeathers as a result of their continuing to be susceptible to being ‘tempted’ by and (so) over‑subscribing to a ‘carnal’, i.e, body based, pleasure-desirous and pain‑aversive calculus. ‘Succeeding’ (in the sense of experiencing what one ‘likes’ and not experiencing what one ‘dislikes’) in said regard does not (not in and of itself at least) lead to folks becoming unselfishly (and hence holistically, or Cosmically) loving and joyful or incline them to synergically engage with and creatively augment such sort of soul development in others. I’m sure you see this to be true in the cases of many ‘successful’ (in ‘worldly’ terms, that is) people around you. What’s more – and this is something that merits even greater concern because of the ‘negative’ consequences that stem from people enmasse aiming to ‘succeed’ so – those who primarily seek and support others’ seeking to maximize personal pleasure‑n-gain and corollarily minimize personal pain-and-loss experience(s) actually end up diminishing the chances that they and those they thus support will develop in a communion‑with-Life actualizing direction. Why? Because such ‘focus’ leads to them and such others being ‘blindly’ negligent and unconscionably usurpatory in relation to other co-related aspects of The Flow of Life which are therefore not appropriately recognized as also being important and so not befittingly (in terms of what is necessary and desirable for said other concomitants to be co-functional) related to.

There have been countless major and minor instances of such negligence and usurpation by temperospatially oriented, immediate-local pleasure and pain ‘geared’ folks (believers in ‘eternal life’ included!) over the course of history which you have probably heard and read about, as well as many I’m sure you’ve personally experienced or at least witnessed in the context of your present lifetime, some (because of your own psychospiritual immaturities) undoubtedly even perpetrated by yourself. In macroscopic consequence, as a result of large and increasing numbers of people and the organizations they subscribe to basically being pleasure-pain principle driven to feed off of and serve to amplify the growth of unsustainable (because conglomerately selfish!) socioeconomic pyramid schemes which consume and pollute more than they contribute to and nurture, they cumulatively end up drastically degrading and disrupting, the systemic health and well‑functioning of the Living Matrix, which they for the most part just give ‘lip service’ to, that is our physiosocial ‘home’. *As is clearly the case confronting us here now, notwithstanding the inherent munificence of Life’s Flow and the generous contributions and services which have historically been made and provided and continue to be made and provided by a growing number of holistically Love and Joy oriented people in It, waves of social and ecosystemic decay and destruction then metastatically ripple and richochet around our planet and climax in devastating catastrophes as the ‘negative’ effects of such mainly pleasure-desirous-n-pain-aversive choices repercussively reinforce one another in exponential escalation.

Such denouements, which periodically decimate the ranks of a dominant but still mostly selfishly motivated species, have historically often been projected to be expressions of the ‘wrath’ of a God who ‘judges’ the bulk of humanity to be inexcusably ‘sinful’ and ‘deserving’ of severe ‘punishment’ because of its, for the most part, not appropriately ‘heeding’ and ‘obeying’ His ‘edicts’ and ‘commandments’, not ‘paying’ sufficient ‘homage’ to Him, etc. But, as what I’ve said in this chapter should make clear, such devastation is just the cumulative result of many souls collectively ‘losing their balance’ and so ‘stumbling’ and ‘falling’, and (so) ‘hurting’ themselves and others around them as a group, because they haven’t yet developed to the point where they holistically understand and embrace, and so don’t conscientiously act ‘in accord’ with, the fact that they and others, including every aspect of their planetary environment, are not really ‘individually’ separate aspects of Life, but integral part-expressions of The Life of a Cosmically Unitary, self‑and-other inclusive Being!

The second point I want to be sure I get across (because it is counterintuitive to those who are still philosophically wrapped up in a body-ego based, and hence physiosocially focused, calculus) is that the pains and losses (etc.) that are suffered and shared in the course of incarnational Life, even as horrific as these will undoubtedly be experienced as being in the course of the apocalypse that is presently unfolding, are not something to be either feared or lamented (not really, that is). It is the very unavoidability of such experience that motivates souls to break out of and jettison the ego‑shells which they would otherwise ‘naturally’ not be inclined to do, because it then becomes unmistakably clear that personal pleasure-maximizing and pain-minimizing schemes and strategies amount to no more than vain attempts to climb and/or carry others up to a higher deck on a sinking physiosocial ‘ship’.

Though self-gratifying physiological and social support systems as well as imaginative projections which lead people to hope and emotionally anticipate that they will, even if not right away, at least experience relief, ease, fulfillment, happiness, etc. in the future may indeed be Love and Joy sustaining up to a point, the fact remains that soulfully encountering and experiencing the kinds of ‘troubles’ that are, in the final analysis, inescapable aspects of being ensconced ‘in’ a physically limited, temporally transient personal body that is subject to frustration, pain, loss, ego‑defeat, death, etc. is necessary for the kind of self‑transcendental ‘i’dentity expansion and psychospiritual growth spoken of in this chapter to be situationally ‘called’ for and stimulated to ‘come’ forth. A soul’s capacity for psychospiritual fortitude and interpersonal empathy (stemming from cognition and appreciation of the ubiquitousness and transcendency of the Presence and Power of Life Itself), for instance, would never develop otherwise; albeit these are just a couple of a whole host of psychospiritual awareness and adeptitude based capabilities which must be conscientiously directed and devotionally deployed in service of Life Itself for a nodal soul to transcendentally e‧merge from the ‘womb’ of its embryonic other-dependency[/u] and infantile selfishness (note: I use the word 'must' here only to state what is functionally necessary for such outcome, not to assert any kind of moralistic ‘should’ in this completely free-choice regard.)

What many think of as a 'curse' is actually a 'blessing', potentially at least (meaning that, because of the intransigence of their selfishness, many don't 'benefit' from said 'blessing': "To him who has conquered his lower nature by Its help, the Self is a friend, but to him who has not done so, It is an enemy!" yada yada - The bhagavad Gita, Ch.6).

[davidsun]

It occurs to me that the following closing paragraphs of Mihaly's book might intrigue some readers enough for them give it a full look-see (note - I am not saying that my view is exactly the same as his):

"These days we occasionally still meet people whose lives reveal an inner order based on the spiritual insights of the great religions of the past. Despite what we read every day about the amorality of the stock market, the corruption of defense contractors, and the lack of principles in politicians, examples to the contrary do exist. Thus there are also successful businessmen who spend some of their free time in hospitals keeping company with dying patients because they believe that reaching out to people who suffer is a necessary part of a meaningful life. And many people continue to derive strength and serenity from prayer, people for whom a personally meaningful belief system provides goals and rules for intense flow experiences. But it seems clear that an increasing majority are not being helped by traditional religions and belief systems. Many are unable to separate the truth in the old doctrines from the distortions and degradations that time has added, and since they cannot accept error, they reject the truth as well.

Others are so desperate for some order that they cling rigidly to whatever belief happens to be at hand—warts and all—and become fundamentalist Christians, or Muslims, or communists. Is there any possibility that a new system of goals and means will arise to help give meaning to the lives of our children in the next century? Some people are confident that Christianity restored to its former glory will answer that need. Some still believe that communism will solve the problem of chaos in human experience and that its order will spread across the world. At present, neither of these outcomes seems likely.

If a new faith is to capture our imagination, it must be one that will account rationally for the things we know, the things we feel, the things we hope for, and the ones we dread. It must be a system of beliefs that will marshal our psychic energy toward meaningful goals, a system that provides rules for a way of life that can provide flow.

It is difficult to imagine that a system of beliefs such as this will not be based, at least to some degree, on what science has revealed about humanity and about the universe. Without such a foundation, our consciousness would remain split between faith and knowledge. But if science is to be of real help, it will have to transform itself. In addition to the various specialized disciplines aimed at describing and controlling isolated aspects of reality, it will have to develop an integrated interpretation of all that is known, and relate it to humankind and its destiny.

One way to accomplish this is through the concept of evolution. Everything that matters most to us—such questions as: Where did we come from? Where are we going? What powers shape our lives? What is good and bad? How are we related to one another, and to the rest of the universe? What are the consequences of our actions?—could be discussed in a systematic way in terms of what we now know about evolution and even more in terms of what we are going to know about it in the future.

The obvious critique of this scenario is that science in general, and the science of evolution in particular, deals with what is, not with what ought to be. Faiths and beliefs, on the other hand, are not limited by actuality; they deal with what is right, what is desirable. But one of the consequences of an evolutionary faith might be precisely a closer integration between the is and the ought. When we understand better why we are as we are, when we appreciate more fully the origins of instinctual drives, social controls, cultural expressions—all the elements that contribute to the formation of consciousness—it will become easier to direct our energies where they ought to go.

And the evolutionary perspective also points to a goal worthy of our energies. There seems to be no question about the fact that over the billions of years of activity on the earth, more and more complex life forms have made their appearance, culminating in the intricacies of the human nervous system. In turn, the cerebral cortex has evolved consciousness, which now envelops the earth as thoroughly as the atmosphere does. The reality of complexification is both an is and an ought: it has happened—given the conditions ruling the earth, it was bound to happen—but it might not continue unless we wish it to go on. The future of evolution is now in our hands.

In the past few thousand years—a mere split second in evolutionary time—humanity has achieved incredible advances in the differentiation of consciousness. We have developed a realization that mankind is separate from other forms of life. We have conceived of individual human beings as separate from one another. We have invented abstraction and analysis—the ability to separate dimensions of objects and processes from each other, such as the velocity of a falling object from its weight and its mass. It is this differentiation that has produced science, technology, and the unprecedented power of mankind to build up and to destroy its environment.

But complexity consists of integration as well as differentiation. The task of the next decades and centuries is to realize this under-developed component of the mind. Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality.

The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account. Recognizing the limitations of human will, accepting a cooperative rather than a ruling role in the universe, we should feel the relief of the exile who is finally returning home. The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual’s purpose merges with the universal flow."

A free pdf copy of the book may be downloaded and saved to your computer from: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/authen...alyi-Flow1.pdf

[Ewwerrin]

The difficulty is simply a result of self contradiction. That isn't bad, but it does indicate a lackful thinking, which again is simply indicating the very thing you are lacking in your thinking. Which would be more natural and effortless and joyous and simple. Like All is Well. Being and becoming evermore naturally and effortlessly and joyously here and now.