Palin: Round Two

[Nick_A]

Path

Simone never had a lover. At an early age she already knew she was born within. She wrote:

The idea of purity, with all that this word can imply for a Christian, took possession of me at the age of sixteen, after a period of several months during which I had been going through the emotional unrest natural in adolescence. This idea came to me when I was contemplating mountain landscape and little by little it was imposed upon me in an irresistible manner.

Of course I knew quite well that my conception of life was Christian. That is why it never occurred to me that I could enter the Christian community. I had the idea that I was born inside. But to add dogma to this conception of life, without being forced to do so by indisputable evidence, would have seemed to me like a lack of honesty. I should even have thought I was lacking in honesty had I considered the question of the truth of dogma as a problem for myself or even had I simply desired to reach a conclusion on this subject. I have an extremely severe standard for intellectual honesty, so severe that I never met anyone who did not seem to fall short of it in more than one respect; and I am always afraid of failing in it myself.

As a student at Ecole Normale Superieure she was ridiculed as the Red Virgin. Now those that are fond of her use it as a term of affection. She was a saint and people don't understand saints especially the New Saint or the one with a brain as well as a heart.

A compliment has to have the intent of benefiting another or it isn't a compliment. Remarks about attractiveness can either have the intent of pulling someone down or boosting them up. Each situation is different. If I met a woman that was dumped by some guy and was doubting her attractiveness I may very well tell her she's got a cute butt with a wink. It may get a growl but deep down she appreciates it, it makes her feel good at this time of self doubt. However some guy seeing a woman walking down the street shouts out "yo B---h, bring that butt over here," is not really a compliment.

All those fables about the princess and the frog or beauty and the beast are really just ancient psychology. They refer to the unification of the male and female principles uniting at a higher level of reality. The quality male can do but doesn't know what to do. The quality female feels the direction of doing but is unable to do.

The male has in one way or another devolved having lost all inner direction. The astute female becomes aware of the potential within this fallen being and kisses him. This transforms him into his rightful being and he in turn takes her for her rightful place as providing the heart. Together they produce an evolved human being. Secular unions in contrast are not transformative. This is not bad but rather the norm of adaptation. Truly transformative relationships are very rare.

The heart as opposed to our normal reactive emotions is the sacred part in us that is aware of and attracted to objective quality or the "good" The more pure the heart, the greater the attraction. Simone felt it like this:

"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©

This purity of the heart and her life was lived through this awareness.

And what does all of this mean to the supposed differences between "male" and "female"?

On the outside or through our conditioned personalities, it makes little difference since our life and death reflect social concerns. From the point of view of human conscious evolution, men and women of a certain spiritual quality and complimentary on the inside as far as human types, it can mean a great deal when they find each other looking in the same direction towards a higher level of reality they are attracted to in their own way.

[Netti-Netti]

It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good...

Simone offers a perfect description of Dukkha. But is G-d the fix for this state of affairs? According to St Aquinas, G-d allows it.

Simone also wrote: "There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath..." A true grandeur or a delusional grandeur?

One of the remarkable things about religion is that it can give people visions of perfection The irony is that such an idea can become a potentially lethal distortion. Some of Simone's admirers gloss over whether she intentionally starved herself to death. That's too bad because this keeps us from learning more about Simone's message. Her anorexia is perhaps understandable given her mistrust of the human and physical side of life and her view of the self as a little more than a shadow cast by sin.

Alas, asceticism is a modality that is sadly mistaken. G-d loves us in our physicality. Why wouldn't He? He made us physical beings. To deny our materiality is to close ourselves off to Divine Love. Moreover, a refusal to tolerate the inevitable compromises that are required of us in this earthy life has the effect of negating our potential to be of service.

Paul had it right. Our bodies belong to G-d and for us to use our bodies for selfish purposes undercuts the essential sanctification. It is bypassing an important aspect. The other option is to surrender to G-d. With that surrender, we give Him back our bodies for His use. Unless we can surrender in this way, our effort to spiritualize life is not going to amount to much more than a naive, self-centered, and incomplete vocation.

[Nick_A]

Netti

Yes God allows it but also fixes it. Involution or the process of creation itself where unity devolves into diversity is the result of God's will. Evolution or the movement of diversity back to the source at a particular place changes from a mechanical to a conscious process. This conscious process is given direction by God's love or "grace."

Grandeur can easily change into self deception. This is the main reason for a teacher; to counter the affects of self deception.

I don't believe Simone was anorexic. She began limiting herself to the rations of soldiers when she was five and it never changed.

Somehow she was aware of world hunger to a degree we are incapable of. All her social activism and attraction to communism was her participation in fighting world hunger. She would not let herself forget it so as to really feel rather than intellectualize the problem. She needed to "understand" so placed herself within the oppressed. She wrote:

"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand."

We cannot feel world hunger as she did as revealed in this classic exchange:

Weil's fellow student, the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir, wrote of Weil in her book Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter:

She intrigued me because of her great reputation for intelligence and her bizarre get-up; "A great famine had broken out in China, and I was told that when she heard the news she had wept: these tears compelled my respect much more than her gifts as a philosopher. I envied her having a heart that could beat right across the world. I managed to get near her one day. I don't know how the conversation got started; she declared in no uncertain tones that only one thing mattered in the world: the revolution which would feed all the starving people of the earth. I retorted, no less peremptorily, that the problem was not to make men happy, but to find the reason for their existence. She looked me up and down: 'It's easy to see you've never been hungry,' she snapped.

She doesn't deny the body but rather false pride and vanity did not prevent her from using it in pursuit of the experience of the "good."

My gut feeling is that Simone was a partially developed soul. I believe a person is born with the seed of a soul that can become a soul and this process of becoming a soul is really conscious evolution. When most die, the seed just perishes. With some the seed begins to grow. A partially developed soul if necessary can be reincarnated to continue its conscious evolution through the conscious experience of life on earth. I believe Simone was such a reincarnation that at one time was helping others during a famine. I simply have no other explanation for the quality of her writings. She understood things at the deep level of her being that simply cannot come through a thirty year life by itself IMO.

It is one thing to surrender our bodies but if it an expression of mental illness and self deception, it just makes matters worse. With Simone, all her efforts were in the presence of her developed conscious attention which prevents the domination of imagination while exposing her to the true intensity of the living experience. Others around her noticed as explained in this trailer to a soon to be released documentary: "An Interview with Simone Weil"

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf...load_modules=1

The bottom line is that we really cannot understand these special people like Simone Weil yet they can indicate our limitations to us and invite us to be "real" even at the expenses of our false pride and our vanity. But for those needing to experience the "pearl of great price," it is IMO what has to be.

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by Nick_A

I don't believe Simone was anorexic. She began limiting herself to the rations of soldiers when she was five and it never changed.

I read that it started in later life - ostensibly in her well-intentioned attempt at empathy with the French who were experiencing the privations of war. She did the same kind of thing by keeping the heat turned off at her residence. She was surprised to find out that many of the people she felt sorry for were keeping warmer than she was. This is an example of how abstraction can become a distortion. I believe asceticism is a distortion. I don't undertand how someone as gifted and versed in world religions as Simone could have missed that.

She needed to "understand" so placed herself within the oppressed.

Her aspiration to perfect - and hence unreal - compassion may have killed her.

[Nick_A]

Netti

I believe asceticism is a distortion. I don't undertand how someone as gifted and versed in world religions as Simone could have missed that.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom is speaking to Jacob Needleman in his book "Lost Christianity."

.........."In prayer one is vulnerable, not enthusiastic. And then these rituals have such force. They hit you like a locomotive. You must be not enthusiastic, nor rejecting-but only open. This is the whole aim of asceticism: to become open."

A Demand

Was it really so? And as if to illustrate the point, my attention wandered even while Metropolitan Anthony went on speaking. What a striking way to state the aim of asceticism, a concept that stymies all modern people even after they've shaken loose from the clichés of "self torture." As though we have really been able to pass blanket judgments on the anchorites and monks of the earliest centuries of Christianity who went into the deserts to struggle - to struggle with what? And in order to become what? Open.............................................. .....

If the body is dominant, detachment is impossible. The body can be trained to be a tool for becoming oneself rather than a master that confines us to the earth.

Her aspiration to perfect - and hence unreal - compassion may have killed her.

Or it could have been what allowed her to live. We don't know; but perhaps Thoreau is right

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. - Thoreau, Walden


The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? - Thoreau, Walden

I do believe that Simone Weil lived with the emotional purity, the quality of heart that is impossible for us. Our defense mechanisms do not allow us this freedom and deny us our potentials

[wil]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

Some might think of Ms. Palin as a bit of a tomboy given her willingness to try hunting and such. Much of her demeanor does suggest an overt attempt to be "one of the boys" - or better still, topping the good old boys. I can see why this kind of imagery would lend itself to idealization among people who are attracted to power.

I think my reaction to her is that she is too politically contrived: an attempt to hybridize stereotyped social types that aren't necessarily compatible - Beauty Queen, Tough Guy, Good Mother, and Supreme Ruler.

It's possible for someone to be fully functioning at many levels, but I don't think Ms. Palin is that person. I think a large part of her identity as a public figure is fabrication and PR.

If you grow up in a hunting family hunting females are not that uncommon. They are still rare but not as uncommon as some folks outside of the hunting community think.

I don't believe it is round 2 for her any more than this election was round 2 for Obama. She is a youngin on the political scene and just graduating from local to state politics she just made her foray on the national scene.

If she is teachable she soon be tempering her beliefs and moving more to the middle and be a force to be reckoned with in the future. If she maintains her nature she'll stay where she is or backslide some. I think her ego will win out and we'll see her temper her rhetoric.

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by wil

If you grow up in a hunting family hunting females are not that uncommon. They are still rare but not as uncommon as some folks outside of the hunting community think.

I was referring to the attempt to pass her off as a good shot. I once walked within 20 feet of a moose and it was not in the least bit afraid of me. I don't see shooting such a big, unmoving target with a gun that'll blow half the animal's side off as evidence of prowess. It's just an example of the PR imagery.

[wil]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

I was referring to the attempt to pass her off as a good shot. I once walked within 20 feet of a moose and it was not in the least bit afraid of me. I don't see shooting such a big, unmoving target with a gun that'll blow half the animal's side off as evidence of prowess. It's just an example of the PR imagery.

It is actually usually quite a bit different during season, those animals are smarter than most give them credit for. I had meese (multiple moose) eating off my porch in Alaska. But also know that during bird season geese and pheasant know where the red zones are...they move away from the guns.

I can't defend her marksmanship, I don't know. But many of the pictures weren't PR pictures, they were taken like any other hunter proud of their kill. (note all this from one who doesn't eat meat) (but one that does find funny folks that hire assasins to kill, gut, skin, butcher, wrap in plastic so they can buy stuff at the grocery store looking down their collective noses at folks who partake in the whole process, not saying that is you but I do find that more than a might hypocritical)

[Netti-Netti]

Nick,

Originally Posted by Nick_A

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom speaking to Jacob Needleman ...."This is the whole aim of asceticism: to become open."

If the body is dominant, detachment is impossible. The body can be trained to be a tool for becoming oneself rather than a master that confines us to the earth.

I differentiate ascetic practices from Asceticism. To my way of thinking, Asceticism is a distortion in the sense of being a freestanding system dedicated to perpetuating it's own premises and goals. That's how it interferes with divinity attainment through a sacramental transformation of self within the context of G-d's world.

Most any practice has the potential to become an end itself, in which case it becomes detached from the true goals of worship and service. That is, it becomes the idolatry of self-mastery. Asceticism is just one example of getting sidetracked in this way.

Simone Weil commented on the cult of -isms of her time and she questioned the lethal logic of dying for abstraction. Ironically, Simone's her own alternative to destructive propaganda may have been another blindly self-propelled -ism, namely, an unswerving conviction about the importance of a personal gesture of purity, even when it's pathological and and blindly self righteous.

A gesture of purity can reduce an individual to the status of sacrificial victim and potentially can be just as destructive as a violent crime. While invoking a kind of mock saintliness, such gestures are actually dehumanizing in the sense of ascribing greater value to an idea than to a human life. The more extreme forms of gesture in the form of severe asceticism defy what we know: G-d never said anyone should neglect our body to affirm our faith.

What might look like an effort to achieve openness toward The Divine through ascetic practice might actually be something quite different: It might actually be a way to effectuate certain ideals of sacrifice/loyalty/ideological commitment. We see this in cases of political prisoners who go on hunger strike to make a gesture of protest. A dualistic view of matter vs spirit could lead to a rejection of the material world as a protest against the imperfection/incompleteness of the human condition.

In this context we note Simone's idea of religious commitment, in particular her puzzling idea of becoming "perfectly obedient" so as to make oneself "altogether like the Almighty." That's quite different from the G-d dependence and humility we see in religious traditions that emphasize openness to G-d's workings in the world.

I have no way of making any inferences about the quality of Simone's experience. Some speculate that despair about her inability to overcome the duality between matter and spirit and her inability to reconcile this life and a desire for the Absolute may have been a factor in her early death at age 34.

[Nick_A]

John 12:

23Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

Netti

Most any practice has the potential to become an end itself, in which case it becomes detached from the true goals of worship and service. That is, it becomes the idolatry of self-mastery. Asceticism is just one example of getting sidetracked in this way.

The true goal of Christianity is not worship and service but re-birth - to become oneself. But before becoming oneself one must sacrifice their imagination. This is only possible through the practice of conscious attention. What you call asceticism is the ego's appeal to an imaginary god. The definition of a Man as opposed to an automatan is one who is "master of himself." Only such a person can truly make a choice between serving God or serving the Beast

Luke 4:

5The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7So if you worship me, it will all be yours." 8Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'[b]"

Jesus became master of himself so was given the choice to rule on earth or serve the Father. We are fallen man and creatures of reaction so do not have such a choice.

Simone was not an act but rather an expression of what she was. Sex energy in her was used to develop her conscious attention. Normally we use it to further our defense mechanisms and negative emotions. Her being was such that it needed help from above and was open enough to receive it.

Also, whenever we have sex partners we establish essence relationships with them. For a person trying to develop their essential qualities as opposed to conditioned qualities, these relationships when negative can make it very difficult. Simone felt this danger so avoided sexual contact. Perhaps if she had met a man of similar development it may have been possible. Don't forget that she didn't have anyone around that understood at her level so who could she really communicate with?

I agree that virtue is very dangerous since it surpresses sex energy and allows it to be used to further negative emotions which is a real spirit killer.

In this context we note Simone's idea of religious commitment, in particular her puzzling idea of becoming "perfectly obedient" so as to make oneself "altogether like the Almighty." That's quite different from the G-d dependence and humility we see in religious traditions that emphasize openness to G-d's workings in the world.

We forget that we are as St. Paul described in Romans 7:

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

We forget that we are subject to the Law of our Parts. We see that we are a slave to sin with a choice of becoming a slave to help from above. It becomes our choice. It is only through the power of atention that we can begin to discriminate between inner reality and self deception simply because self deception cannot survive in the presence of the light of attention. Since we lack conscious attention, we just turn in circles.

The secular traditions that emphasize working in the world do not admit their nature so cannot see that everything turns in circles regardless of good intentions. The esoteric level of reality that begins through self knowledge to understand the nature of energies within Man and how everything is as a result of forces strives consciously to become more than a cog in the Great Beast. This requires becoming a slave to "God's law." Simone felt this with incredible conscious purity:

"Purity is the power to contemplate defilement." Simone Weil

For us this is a potential. We lack the attention and openness to consciously experience our inner lives in this way. Our personalities will never allow it so we turn in circles.

I have no way of making any inferences about the quality of Simone's experience. Some speculate that despair about her inability to overcome the duality between matter and spirit and her inability to reconcile this life and a desire for the Absolute may have been a factor in her early death at age 34.

Who is to say she didn't atain a life for a life as indicated in John 12? She is considered a saint because in her words Christ took possession of her. We simply don't know.

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by Nick_A

The true goal of Christianity is not worship and service but re-birth - to become oneself.

Hi Nick,

Do you have some choice verses in mind here?

[Nick_A]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

Hi Nick,

Do you have some choice verses in mind here?
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Sure, just read in the beginning of this article

Esoteric Christianity

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by Nick_A

Sure, just read in the beginning of this article

Esoteric Christianity

Nick,

The OT has very few references to being reborn. I found three. I'm surprised you contend that "the true goal of Christianity is not worship and service but re-birth - to become oneself."

The concept of obedience is very prominent throughout the Bible. Jesus' life and mission can be seen as being one of obedience.

[Nick_A]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

Nick,

The OT has very few references to being reborn. I found three. I'm surprised you contend that "the true goal of Christianity is not worship and service but re-birth - to become oneself."

The concept of obedience is very prominent throughout the Bible. Jesus' life and mission can be seen as being one of obedience.

But obedience to what and how to be obedient? Secularism is obedient to the Great Beast.

To recognize our slavery is to recognize the human condition. Paul did so in Romans 7:

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

One way or another we are a slave. We can be a slave to the mechanics of universal laws as is the rest of organic life on earth or become open to the help of Grace by consciously opening to it. We can either only serve the mechanical universal processes or begin also to serve a conscious purpose that sin keeps us oblivious of. Simone describes it in a truly extraordinary manner:

“The sea is not less beautiful to our eye because we know that sometimes ships sink in it. On the contrary, it is more beautiful still. If the sea modified the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a being possessing discernment and choice, and not this fluid that is perfectly obedient to all external pressures. It is this perfect obedience that is its beauty.”

“All the horrors that are produced in this world are like the folds imprinted on the waves by gravity. This is why they contain beauty. Sometimes a poem, like the Iliad, renders this beauty.”

“Man can never escape obedience to God. A creature cannot not obey. The only choice offered to man as an intelligent and free creature, is to desire obedience or not to desire it. If he does not desire it, he perpetually obeys nevertheless, as a thing subject to mechanical necessity. If he does desire obedience, he remains subject to mechanical necessity, but a new necessity is added on, a necessity constituted by the laws that are proper to supernatural things. Certain actions become impossible for him, while others happen through him, sometimes despite him.”

Excerpt from: Thoughts without order concerning the love of God, in an essay entitled L'amour de Dieu et le malheur (The Love of God and affliction). Simone Weil

[bob x]

Sarah Palin is so glad to be back in Alaska doing governor-y things