Michael Crichton "environmentalism as a religion"

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Michael Crichton "environmentalism as a religion" From: Dog Subject: Philosophy Date/Time 2008-01-07 18:44:44 Remote IP: 66.57.43.56 Message -interesting read, I think it points again to a need for inner guidance of the heart and souls. Ofcourse I think he believe salvation will come through better science, but better science comes from better people, all things arise from the self thus self correction is needed(I think thats the qoute). Commonwealth Club San Francisco, CA September 15, 2003 This was not the first discussion of environmentalism as a religion, but it caught on and was widely quoted. Michael explains why religious approaches to the environment are inappropriate and cause damage to the natural world they intent to protect. I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance. We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears. As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future. I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why. I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious. Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths. There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe. Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith. And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them. Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs. There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden? And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process. And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly: the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. Generations of hatred, tribal hatreds, constant battles. The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated, or learned to build their villages high in the cliffs to attain some measure of safety. How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction. There was even an academic movement, during the latter 20th century, that claimed that cannibalism was a white man's invention to demonize the indigenous peoples. (Only academics could fight such a battle.) It was some thirty years before professors finally agreed that yes, cannibalism does indeed occur among human beings. Meanwhile, all during this time New Guinea highlanders in the 20th century continued to eat the brains of their enemies until they were finally made to understand that they risked kuru, a fatal neurological disease, when they did so. More recently still the gentle Tasaday of the Philippines turned out to be a publicity stunt, a nonexistent tribe. And African pygmies have one of the highest murder rates on the planet. In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die. And if you, even now, put yourself in nature even for a matter of days, you will quickly be disabused of all your romantic fantasies. Take a trek through the jungles of Borneo, and in short order you will have festering sores on your skin, you'll have bugs all over your body, biting in your hair, crawling up your nose and into your ears, you'll have infections and sickness and if you're not with somebody who knows what they're doing, you'll quickly starve to death. But chances are that even in the jungles of Borneo you won't experience nature so directly, because you will have covered your entire body with DEET and you will be doing everything you can to keep those bugs off you. The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk-and as the years go on, and the world population grows increasingly urban, it's uninformed talk. Farmers know what they're talking about. City people don't. It's all fantasy. One way to measure the prevalence of fantasy is to note the number of people who die because they haven't the least knowledge of how nature really is. They stand beside wild animals, like buffalo, for a picture and get trampled to death; they climb a mountain in dicey weather without proper gear, and freeze to death. They drown in the surf on holiday because they can't conceive the real power of what we blithely call "the force of nature." They have seen the ocean. But they haven't been in it. The television generation expects nature to act the way they want it to be. They think all life experiences can be tivo-ed. The notion that the natural world obeys its own rules and doesn't give a damn about your expectations comes as a massive shock. Well-to-do, educated people in an urban environment experience the ability to fashion their daily lives as they wish. They buy clothes that suit their taste, and decorate their apartments as they wish. Within limits, they can contrive a daily urban world that pleases them. But the natural world is not so malleable. On the contrary, it will demand that you adapt to it-and if you don't, you die. It is a harsh, powerful, and unforgiving world, that most urban westerners have never experienced. Many years ago I was trekking in the Karakorum mountains of northern Pakistan, when my group came to a river that we had to cross. It was a glacial river, freezing cold, and it was running very fast, but it wasn't deep---maybe three feet at most. My guide set out ropes for people to hold as they crossed the river, and everybody proceeded, one at a time, with extreme care. I asked the guide what was the big deal about crossing a three-foot river. He said, well, supposing you fell and suffered a compound fracture. We were now four days trek from the last big town, where there was a radio. Even if the guide went back double time to get help, it'd still be at least three days before he could return with a helicopter. If a helicopter were available at all. And in three days, I'd probably be dead from my injuries. So that was why everybody was crossing carefully. Because out in nature a little slip could be deadly. But let's return to religion. If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn't ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn't fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don't get down on our knees and conserve every day? Well, it's interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true. As we have moved into the future, these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert. They were never there---though they still appear, in the future. As mirages do. Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on. With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts. So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn. I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong. I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigious science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependent on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief. Most of us have had some experience interacting with religious fundamentalists, and we understand that one of the problems with fundamentalists is that they have no perspective on themselves. They never recognize that their way of thinking is just one of many other possible ways of thinking, which may be equally useful or good. On the contrary, they believe their way is the right way, everyone else is wrong; they are in the business of salvation, and they want to help you to see things the right way. They want to help you be saved. They are totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view. In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas. I want to argue that it is now time for us to make a major shift in our thinking about the environment, similar to the shift that occurred around the first Earth Day in 1970, when this awareness was first heightened. But this time around, we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead. There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism. First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It's not a good record. Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth---that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric. The effort to promote effective legislation for the environment is not helped by thinking that the Democrats will save us and the Republicans won't. Political history is more complicated than that. Never forget which president started the EPA: Richard Nixon. And never forget which president sold federal oil leases, allowing oil drilling in Santa Barbara: Lyndon Johnson. So get politics out of your thinking about the environment. The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover. We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish. We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs. Religions are good at none of these things. How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There's a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren't true. It isn't that these "facts" are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present it in the strongest way. Not at all---what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false. This trend began with the DDT campaign, and it persists to this day. At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results, that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field get honest fast. Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that. Thank you very much. Michael Crichton "environmentalism as a religion": (98) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-07 6:44 pm Another rant; criticisms of article: (78) Steven (462) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-07 8:26 pm Another rant; criticisms of article: (68) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-08 1:54 pm Another rant; criticisms of article: (69) Steven (462) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-08 4:07 pm Another rant; criticisms of article: (68) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-08 4:43 pm Here and see my post below: (65) Steven (462) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-08 5:32 pm Here and see my post below: (66) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-09 4:15 pm You can not leave everything up to individuals: (63) Steven (462) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-09 11:48 pm You can not leave everything up to individuals: (61) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-10 5:50 pm passionate discussion on both sides :) best, s (nt): (65) Steven (462) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-13 0:54 pm college environ. science WAS more like Care Bears than science: (65) Intelligence (519) - - 2008-01-07 10:33 pm Michael Crichton : (74) Dylan (81) - - 2008-01-08 11:26 am Michael Crichton : (68) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-08 2:24 pm Ignoring warning signs not wise: (68) Steven (462) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-08 5:07 pm Ignoring warning signs not wise: (69) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-08 6:26 pm Shadow government = Shadow collective - We get the leaders we deserve: (42) Dylan (81) - - 2008-01-10 2:58 pm "We get the leaders we deserve" I agree, the life force is very fair. n/t: (48) Dog (602) - (Training Log) - 2008-01-10 5:55 pm [Top of List] [Previous Thread] [Next Thread] This Forum is for posting on topics of interest to the Taoist (Daoist) community. 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We all have a decision to make. Either we belong on Planet Earth or this is not our real home. We celebrate the fact that the human body got here through the mingling of opposites or we spurn our body for some spiritual netherland out yonder.

Try as I might, the pull towards celebration of this body always wins. Stillness is great. And all sensation and motion can only be succulent when you "fast" from movement and sensation... the first steak dinner is nice... but try eating them 7 days in a row.

So the interplay of male and female. black and white. but most importantly silence and sound... but then we have an issue. The sounds of a woman in ecstasy herald the oncoming of New Life. This is not a random sound. This is the sound of Potential New Creation.

How close are we to the big bang when a female releases those delightful peals of ecstasy upon you? I would wager we are right there, my friend.

For all 16 billion years of human kinds frolic through the living cosmos, there has been but one means to propagate this human race... in its Race Away from God or its Race to Evolve Back to God or whatever you want to call it. And so the coitus is a sacred act, but an act of the highest order as well. Direct experience of the initial explosion? Inquiring minds want to know!

Unfortunately, steadiness is a concept but reality keeps changing... i couldnt look at my hand now and again in 5 seconds and really be looking at the same thing... and thus we come to NOW where I am getting great results from the flotation tank.

personally, if I could re-experience the labyrinth walk at the unity church, I would be most happy.

And I close with words from Samael Aun Weor - "ask yourself before marrying, would you give your last drop of blood for the beloved?" -- Kunte Kinte did, it seemed like just a simple name change. And these days, well, we are all whipped along and forced to fixate on survival instead of justice and ethics... but if awareness is all there is and now is the only thing that is real, then by the time you make an ethical decision, now is gone and really doesnt matter... but that path never felt right to me... I could go on for days and days with discussions that engrave as deep as x-rays - to bite from Rakim.

i HAVE LOTS MORE to say... so lets talk? or go to the funny bone and watch some great comedians!

earlier part on a mall-like street forgotten.

Next part: I'm driving up a highway when a car comes down the highway the wrong way towards me. It doesnt hit me, so I keep going. Then an 18-wheeler is travelling towards me ... it is going backwards rapidly away from something. I am heedless.  A car in reverse falls off road to the right. Then another comes directly in my path. I veer to the right, determined to get over the hill and see what is happening. There is a huge calamity at the bottom of a very steep hill, but I cant make out what it is.

To my left in the median, there are 18-wheelers all jacknifed and wrecked. So I'm now rolling slowly down the hill looking at the trucks when I hear a number of people frantically screaming "fire!" ... "fire!"

It's about this time that I wake up. But there are these colored things making circles. Something like a kaleidoscope. Oh and then a few Falun.

And now I'm wondering when I see what is there instead of seeing a mental projection. That was just a dream, but a powerful one.

And I recall how my early Self-Clearing work did the same thing. And I think about going back to that.

My interpretation: dont rush things.

Hello, one could say that going beyond the body is achievable in a number of ways. Further, timelessness, limitless space, naturalness, and silence such as the height of orgasm offers can be had in a number of ways.

However, achievement has direction. And is a yardstick for failure or success. Directionless compassion is deeply preferred.

I have many pictures and a long spiritual resume which is nothing but the history of confused following of others.

Now is the time for rebirth as my self.

Won't you join me?

For years, I have agonized over the "mistreatment" of plants and animals. But now suddenly I see it. A rock would be stuck where it is in consciousness for 10,000 years if man did not come along and smash it to bits.

Men must thrust their penis into the most beautiful, vivacious alive female there is... for it is out goal to evolve the human race, raise the baseline! Eliminate handicaps!

Peace of mind achieved by dulling the senses is amputating yourself from LIFE ITSELF!

Drink it in ! Merge with thee !

Happy new year god-dammit!

So, I'm doing this falun dafa. and it is great. it is clearing a tremendous amount of shit out of me.

yesterday, as I was doing tranquil meditation, I began to think of Reverend Nazirmoreh and thought I should go join them. Seconds later, I persisted in the tranquility and hit pleasure unspeakable.

Today as my focus deepened, I began to think,  "you know, all I really want is peace of mind. I think I will quit this and go do Zen" and again I persisted in meditation and I cannot even speak of the revelations that occurred.

And just now, I went in for another session of the 5th exercise and am thinking. Reichian Therapy. That's for me. Constructive use of sex energy.

And oh yeah, regrets about not sticking with Charles Berner's natural yoga.

And I miss Sharyn Yulish and her Sunday satsangs. That was a great lady... Inner Light and Sound Tradition.

I realized that I really dont deserve tranquil cultivation... what right do I have to the unmatched bliss of stillness (hmm, sex comes pretty close, what am I talking about? oh yeah, you have to have skillz to get the ladies, I can get the bliss and still be the nerd that I am), when I have caused Hell for others?

when you attempt to enter tranquility, then you will get it when you deserve it... and dont forget you are supposed to be 100% alert, not drifting off into lalaland.

Let's weave a fiction story. Aliens from outer space decide that Planet Earth can no longer behave and an Intergalactic Court assumes control of Planet Earth for the Good of the Earthlings and the Universe as a Whole.

Without a doubt, these aliens find George Bush guilty of heinous crimes and he is submitted to public torture placing his body in more pain than one can imagine.

Now, what wells up within you? Why, a sense of vengeance? A sense of "you got what you deserved"? you mean to say: YOU DID WRONG TO OTHERS AND NOW YOU DESERVE TO GET IT BACK.

Well, if the rule applies to ol' GW, then guess what:

It applies to you too my friend

Every arrogant thing you ever said

Every hateful thing you ever thought

Every person you ever beat up

Every law you ever broke

Every time you hurt someone else

You have quite a debt yourself dont you?

And many people are bitterly waiting for you to get your ass toasted in much the same way as you burn for the punishment of ol' GW.

Rejoice at your suffering!

You deserve every bit of pain in your body - it has to do with former wrongdoing. Go ahead and eat shit now... shovel it on by the boatload. Get it over with and dont ever fall back into such foolishness again.

LUST

Now we get to one thing listed as wrongdong - LUST. Now the thing about lust is that it is not wrong in the sense of hurting the other person because they may lust for you. But let's peer down into the blackest of black hearts and see what we see there --- that's right delectable adultery. No sexual act has the fire, intrigue, suspense, thrill and adventure of one you know you shouldnt be doing. Heights of pleasure and ecstasy. Pleasure you should not be having. Pleasure that everyone says is wrong is coursing through your body. Heart thudding, adrenaline flowing, hips undulating in ever-increasing frenzy...

Is there any higher judge than pleasure itself??? Is there? Is there? Who makes the laws?

Ok, I think I get it.

I cant say whether lust is right or wrong, but I can look back on just _this_ life  (forget about former lives) and I *know* that I have not atoned for my mistreatment of others.

So, you can shove that under the carpet and go seek consensual pleasure, but I BELIEVE I need to pay off my debts. I deserve to have my jaw broken and tossed in a gutter for some of my unlawful acts - not illegal but violations of THE LAW - *THE* LAW that you you know resounds in your truest of hearts.

Rectify the cosmos. Rectify the cosmos. Rectify the cosmos.

Leave the Animal Lampoon Flesh Feast act for later.

I dont like pain. Some people master their senses and view pain and pleasure as two things to be handled by sensory mastery.

I'm a little different... a little less robotic... sure I care for my body. It should feel good. And I should be here in this body.

I'm not taking the "oh I'm not this body. I'm pure consciousness approach" -- nope. I have to handle this body with responsibility.

And, as part of my prized diet, The Warrior Diet, I had my night cooked meat meal... the Admiral's Feast at Red Lobster... flounder, scallops, clam strips, shrimp, tasty sauce. And afterwards, I felt nausea and wanted a Sprite. And then another one.

And now, 6 hours later, I awake to a stomach of pain... and sense of nausea.

This is all after having absolutely no urge to eat late at night in the first place. But I did it... partly to be sociable and partly because I dont dig the starving to death thing.

But in Falun Dafa, my spiritual practice, our Master makes no bones about this path being nothing but learning to endure greater and greater hardship and pain, both physical and social. But the great thing about it is: any pain you receive is a sign of karma being burned off!!! So it's not just pain, it's a sign of IMPROVEMENT.

So this nausea this morning was an obvious attempt by my physical body to improve my situation, yet it would hurt. And yes it would be disgusting to awake face-down in my own vomit, but you know what? You have to pay and the sooner you pay the better.

So, now, it's time to get upstairs and do my Falun practice and suffer some PAIN and make some god-damned GAIN!!!!

Over and out space fans.

Four days ago I began to experience severe pains in my upper left back
and my lower rear intestinal area. Anytime I wanted to lay down or sit
down for my Falun Dafa practice, I had to deal with pain.

I have a history of problems with that part of my back and arm. But of
course it is not without reason. I have been in fights with that
arm. I have done other things too embarrassing to mention with that
arm. And Zhuan Falun speaks similarly:

  "So, usually when people have tribulations or bad things happen,
   for example, they're paying for their karma by karmic retribution."

Almost immediately, there were some brief periods of despair. I began
to think: "why did I ever get involved in Falun Gong? Now I am stuck
with an aching back. I can't even bend over to put on my clothes."

But I have read Zhuan Falun enough times that I was ready to put Dafa
to the test. I kept doing all my daily practice right through the pain
- 3 periods of SFRT and the daily exercises. Zhuan Falun prepares the
practitioner for trials. Master Li states:

  "The height you can cultivate to depends
   entirely on your ability to endure and your ability to bear
   hardships."

Interestingly, the initial problems went away, but then another
surfaced. It seemed like the vertebra in my upper spine had become too
lose and prone to breaking or pain. I again got worried, but at the
same time, I knew that any change of the physical body was
possible. If experiments in Taiwan and China have demonstrated the
ability to change the half-life of an element:

   http://fgmtv.org/videos1/Languages/Swedish/2006/infinite_cosmos_eng.wmv

then fixing a back issue is again not a big deal.

So, again, I just kept plowing through the pain with regular practice
and study. And now, I'm sitting here. And it's almost hard to believe
there ever was pain! There is no sign of it. I almost feel like I was
making the pain up --- dreaming it or something.

Actually, this was not a hard trial for me to withstand. Thanks to
Falun Gong, I was already a different person. I felt like I had
cleared all sorts of slime out of my body that I had carried for
years. Not only that, but I have read of other practitioners who
developed severe illnesses purely out of the blue and came through
them with no medical attention and felt crystal clear afterwards.

I've been awake for 8 hours now and only had one spoonful of Kimchee! I'm not dead!!! Sure my lust for taste has not been kindly treated, but oh well.

I realized that eating is a form of self-interest and did not eat all morning. I got to work around 12:30 and had _one_ spoonful of Sunja's Kimchee. I felt fatigue make its way over my body ... now 2 hours later it is finally starting to wear off.

It's only 15 degrees here in Columbus, OH. But this is _bad_. Bad. BAD!

My head feels funny. My body is like an ice block.

• L. Ron Hubbard - from nothing founded the Church of Scientology. In his lifetime, it grew to a membership of well over 1 million
• Mary Baker Eddy - formed Christian Science after healing herself of a terminal illness. Now an international organization in its 3rd generation
• Master Li Hongzhi - a cultivator since birth, he is the first person in our human history to go public with ancient Buddha School cultivation practice. Current international disciples number 100 million.
• Jesus Christ - well, you know how popular Christianity is
• Islam - Muhummad, and the rest is history.
• The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Formed a nation whose religion is Islam. This offshoot of traditional Islam has devotees well into the millions.
• Science of Mind - Ernest Holmes wrote this book and now there are many independant churches following his teaching. There appears to be no central body and quite a bit of distancing between the respective organizations.
• Theosophy - Madame Helena Blavatsky combined the esoteric knowledge of the east and west with her demonstrated supernormal powers to found this organization.
• ISKCON - Srila Prabuphad, with this radical re-interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita, created the Hare Krishna movement, which is still strong to this day.
• 3HO - Yogi Bhajan, taught a mix of Sikhism and Yoga, distinctive white dress with turbans which was a huge turn on to many hippies in the 70s.

just think: some religions may have had long traditions when Buddhism first hit Planet Earth. But when he was here, you could evaluate him by his teaching and join up... even though there was no tradition...

it's so hard to accept something new that doesnt have a proven history. but I like Falun Dafa so much.... so much... even the pain it hits me with. weird. cool. whatever!

I taught public school briefly a few times. Each time, it was very apparent which children were doomed and which ones would succeed.

And of course, if you try and tell them they are doomed, what do they do? They scoff at you. Just as the people scoffed at Noah while he built his ark.

Now, which sort of person am I and whose school am I in right now?

Heidi's comments

Hi Terrence,
I don't think by now I don't need to introduce myself again. I have read all your questions and concerns. Actually, many of us had many questions in the beginning, and we just kept reading Zhuan Falun and maybe at times discussed questions with practitioners in our area. But, most of the time we were told that we should continue reading Zhuan Falun and we suddenly would understand all questions we had. We were also told that we should not read to gain knowledge, as all what Mr. Li Hongzhi writes is actually meant more as a metaphor and taking in a greater context. We understand it in a certain context today, and tomorrow we might understand the same words differently.
 
It is just as when teachers teach a subject in school. They actually don't want you to memorize whatever you heard, but want you to understand that thought process and be able to apply what you had learned to different situations. The words are just examples of a theory.
 
We don't know if Mr. Li Hongzhi received a certificate, nor do we really care about such a minor issue. It is a matter of believing or not. It would be impossible for Mr. Hongzhi to sent proof of everything he said to all the millions of practitioners.
 
In spiritual practices one is told much and one either beliefs or not, understands the underlying reason for anything said, can apply what is being said to ones life and life by the principles promulgated by the practice.
 
I see the information below as something that tells me that there is much beyond what we thought about, beyond what we understood and beyond what we can proof.  It tells me that my limited knowledge of the universe is restrained by what has been proven by our scientific community and to grow above the mere scientific proof.
 
I do not read to gain knowledge, but to open my mind to greater truths, even if I cannot at this time give proof of what I believe in.
 
Remember, many years ago, the scientific discoveries discussed below were not known as no such equipment existed.
 
If one practices a spiritual practice or religion, etc. one has to let go of the demand of proof and just believe.
 
Hope this helps.
 
Best
Heide

Reactions

• Heide referred to my question as a "minor issue" - I feel put down by this. It's almost like she's saying "boy what a stupid amateurish question." That hurts my feelings.
• I never ever read her sentence about how she read Master Li's delivery. That really is a different way to look at the whole matter!
• I've heard over and over that "proof is nothing but the analysis of belief" and
• Why did she say "nor do _we_ really care" ... it seems as if she is putting herself and her clique in one class and me another.
• In my opinion, not many people could do what Master Li did on that meter. It would be a way of setting him apart from others.

My left side hurts... down near the waste. Up near the shoulder. I can barely bend over to do my shoes... it's all this lotus posture no doubt. Even walking hurts if I move a certain way.

But I like it. I know I'm getting somewhere. And so far the theory behind this Great Way is ... well... GREAT!!! Master Li Hongzhi truly has put and cherry on top of 20 years of spiritual wandering. This guy is good.

His books , his lectures , the results of my practice , and my dreams at night.

Press on I must.

I ran into Ben at Whole Foods today. It's amazing how he got into Falun Dafa. He was already an accomplished healer and could move illness out of people's bodies. But he realized that by healing them, he was simply giving them license to go out and re-attract the same karma that caused their illness in the first place.

So now he spreads the Fa and gives people the power to do what they should be doing.

I was burrowing towards a "the real me is not the body" perspective with furious intensity. Now, I am putting all my effort into Falun dafa. And Master Li Hongzhi has a truly material and human-body based spiritual teaching.

Not only that, but he is trumping all my learning in 20 years of spiritual study.

The real me is not the body

In reverse chronological order, I can list the systems that were emphasizing this perspective. In a way, I think I am damaging my Fa study by even putting my mind on these former systems. But I have to do this. It's kind of a shame. I first encountered Falun gong in 1993 and then in 2000 and now in 2007 I am stress-testing it: i am going to hammer on it until one of us breaks or one of us is enlightened. Just think how far towards his promised achievements I would be had I started 14 years ago... but truly, only now do I see how profound and keen his teaching is. And his teaching is not _his_ teaching: he makes it clear that Qigong is prehistoric culture.

It was only by former studies in Mental Science and Buddhism, as well as Tai Chi and Qi Gong that I can see how what he is teaching is a more complete offering. So, I should not regret those pursuits: I engaged in them with an open (but critical) mind. When I stress-tested them, they snapped in one way or the other for some reason or the other. But if anyone cracks during the Falun stress-test, it will be me, not Master Li or his system. He is a scientifically proven master of matter and the universe.

Anway, back to my pursuit on non-body realization:

• Audinometry
• Scientology - you are THETA, not a body and should not need bodies
• AHAM - the only that's real is this present moment, all else is conceptual. A favorite technique of Arunachala Ramana was the question "how do you know you have a body" - the reason he did this was an attempt to direct you towards pure attention
• Buddhism(s)  - any concept of being a body is based on the skandhas (aggregates) and karma (buddhism has both good and bad).
• Fruitarianism - I never was an in-body natural hygiene type. I followed Klaus Wolfram primarily. A bit of Joshua Rainbow, but mainly I was a death to this world, death to this body type.

As above, so below...

Falun Dafa has as its primary goal the formation of an immortal human body. This is totally unlike everything else I was doing which was trying to reform myself as the things in the systems above.