"Confessing one's sins publicly is no doubt a form of exhibitionism. But not to worry about that: today people do not confess their sins openly: they broadcast them for all to see and attempt to emulate. Sin is in."
What is it like to be Crazy?
[voice from the other side - Sha'Tara]
First to define crazy. I don't mean stupid, or out of control. I mean possessed of a permanent alternate viewpoint to everything. Living in an alternate "universe" completely outside of time, from which one forays out here and there to sample life as it struggles in the inter-tidal zones of space-time. When in one's alternate persona rules become fluid and impossibility barriers topple.
Of course none of that is new. All "beliefs" are based on alternate perception to what passes for reality. To "believe" is to have a different view of all things, not just some different ideas about some things. A true belief system will present an alternative to every aspect of "the way things are" no matter what is offered. For example, greed as a belief system: offer "love" to a greedy man and he will immediately calculate its benefits and costs in terms of money. This guy knows his system and lives by it.
Have you ever wondered why religious people earn the label of hypocrites more readily than anyone else? It is not that they are more evil than other people. The problem is they broadcast a particular universal and absolutist belief system but they don't allow it to colour all aspects of their life, just some of it and that mostly when it's convenient. If one lives by an absolutist belief -- "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and if not you go to hell" -- that's pretty clear -- then one is solidly bound by all of that system's rules! And as a System cannot change, neither can the rules.
Here's an example of a rule for living the Christian life: "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law." (Romans 13:8) That rule is not an option.
Now the people of the world are pretty smart in their own little ways and can figure out when a religious person is just full of it. And mostly they are. When it comes to borrowing money and living in debt, well... not only individual Christians are as deep in it as the rest but their churches are also in debt up to their leaking eaves. Yet it has been said: "A church's debt is the Devil's salary." So go figure, huh?
Anyway, in my crazy place where time does not enter I can visualize a doorway into any room (world) where there is space measured by time. Where chaos and order thrash it out, back and forth.
What is time, stripped of its outworn, obsolete power? A convenience to measure distance in space. Imagine standing in a place where there is no distance between yourself and anyplace? There is no longer any "when" but only a choice of where... in an infinite number of directions. So you are faced with an infinite array of doors into infinite worlds, infinite dimensions, infinite universes. Behind each door is just another where, anywhere you choose.
Does that mean you're standing in a place you call "now"? No. Now is a time concept between past and future, which are also time concepts. "Now" implies that you are stuck between two extremes: past and future. If you're the type who likes to cheat you will think, ah, but my "now" incorporates the past and the future. But that's a lie and you know it. Can you recall all of the past, can you see all of the future? Then your "now" becomes a meaningless illusion. No need for "now" - throw it out along with everything else connected to time.
Given this is so, why do we continue to "move forward into the future" rather than into the "past"? We are not. We are living an illusion of moving forward in time, but as we remain basically in the same place then our concept of time is meaningless. Time allows us to believe we are always moving into the future but like all absolutist belief systems it is an illusion.
By wearing time's blinders we can repeat the past's follies ad nauseam and still believe we are moving ahead, becoming better, smarter, faster, more educated, more skilled, more understanding and compassionate or whatever else we want to believe we are accomplishing. But reality says different.
If we repeat a single death from oppression; a single bloody confrontation; a single act of vandalism; a single crime against the weak or helpless, start another war, tell another lie, we should immediately be jolted by the fact we have not moved forward at all. If we are truly moving into the future it will not contain any of the things we have heretofore condemned. It will be made strictly of that new being we have determined to be.
As long as we insist on living within the bounds of time we become increasingly entropic. We waste our store of available energy repeating pointless moves. However much we indulge in political correctness or dabble in various methods of "salvation" we remain "sinners" on the treadmill of death.
Let me close with this WindWalker saying:
"Religious faith is the endless ritual of re-creating a circular God who can only be found in another's faith. A merry-go-round that traps the mind, hardens the heart and shuts the door to the power of the Spirit."
I would add that all belief systems perform the same function.
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