Post by rmcdra on May 10, 2015 19:10:00 GMT -5
My son, accept the education and the teaching. Do not flee from the education and the teaching, but when you are taught, accept (it) with joy. And if you are educated in any matter, do what is good. You will plait a crown of education by your guiding principle. Put on the holy teaching like a robe. Make yourself noble-minded through good conduct. Obtain the austerity of good discipline. Judge yourself like a wise judge. Do not go astray from my teaching, and do not acquire ignorance, lest you lead your people astray. Do not flee from the divine and the teaching which are within you, for he who is teaching you loves you very much. For he shall bequeath to you a worthy austerity. Cast out the animal nature which is within you, and do not allow base thought to enter you. For ... you know the way which I teach. – The Teachings of Silvanus
Part of living in the World of Forms; or as my friend, the Fox, likes to call it, the Place Where Things Happen; is that we are born ignorant. We have very crude reasoning abilities and it takes many years of trial and error before we actually learn anything. Fortunately, there is pressure to learn at the very least for just basic survival and most of us have less than a century to figure things out. The biggest hindrance to learning is not ignorance, but the willful ignorance, the pride to say “I know it all”; the arrogance to say that one do not need to examine one’s self. We all slip into this mindset at some point in our life. We all need reminders about how little we know about the world and ourselves. The lesson of Lent is showing us what need by understanding what we do not need.
As I wrote in an earlier writing, we are living in the Desert of the Real and are going through the same trials that Jesus did in the wilderness. We are tempted to believe that life is all about pleasure and comfort; that we control reality; and that faith and recklessness are one and the same. These are the basic temptations that we are all confronted with as we learn what it means to be human. If you believe any of these temptations, then you still have a lot to learn about being human, which all of us do. As I mentioned, earlier the hardest part of learning is essentially un-learning what you have been taught that was false. It is accepting that you might have learned something wrong. We have a habit, as a human animal, to cling to information we like and reject information we do not like (conformation bias). When confronted with what is true, we will cling even more so to information that is false, if the true information conflicts with what we value (backfire effect). We treat information as if it was a friend and companion, and understandably so; that is how humans operate, being the social animals we are. We evolved to support and defend what we have accepted as the pack and as a part of ourselves.
The trial of being a person is accepting that we are not all knowing gods. It is learning that information we value and build our identity around can be wrong. So if everything we learn could be wrong, then how do we know what is right? We test it. If it holds up to scrutiny then it is worth believing until something proves it false. Everything that is true will hold up to testing; even Christ was tested, not only during his fast but up until his death. Understanding that we do not know everything and that we can be wrong is key to understand ourselves and sometimes others. We do not need to know everything but we do need to recognize when we need to rethink what we believe. We need to be able to recognize when something is a lie. We need to recognize where we can place our faith.
This is just one of the many lessons we have to learn as humans and we have less than a century to understand this. This lesson follows quite nicely after the First Mystery, the Mystery that we are mortal and will perish. The First Mystery, when properly understood, should help with putting into perspective of what is important in life. As we rank things that are important, education and understanding are essential tools in figuring out what is important and what we should value. We can know what we should keep and what we should just let go. The earlier we learn this lesson, the closer we are the Fullness of the Kingdom.
Part of living in the World of Forms; or as my friend, the Fox, likes to call it, the Place Where Things Happen; is that we are born ignorant. We have very crude reasoning abilities and it takes many years of trial and error before we actually learn anything. Fortunately, there is pressure to learn at the very least for just basic survival and most of us have less than a century to figure things out. The biggest hindrance to learning is not ignorance, but the willful ignorance, the pride to say “I know it all”; the arrogance to say that one do not need to examine one’s self. We all slip into this mindset at some point in our life. We all need reminders about how little we know about the world and ourselves. The lesson of Lent is showing us what need by understanding what we do not need.
As I wrote in an earlier writing, we are living in the Desert of the Real and are going through the same trials that Jesus did in the wilderness. We are tempted to believe that life is all about pleasure and comfort; that we control reality; and that faith and recklessness are one and the same. These are the basic temptations that we are all confronted with as we learn what it means to be human. If you believe any of these temptations, then you still have a lot to learn about being human, which all of us do. As I mentioned, earlier the hardest part of learning is essentially un-learning what you have been taught that was false. It is accepting that you might have learned something wrong. We have a habit, as a human animal, to cling to information we like and reject information we do not like (conformation bias). When confronted with what is true, we will cling even more so to information that is false, if the true information conflicts with what we value (backfire effect). We treat information as if it was a friend and companion, and understandably so; that is how humans operate, being the social animals we are. We evolved to support and defend what we have accepted as the pack and as a part of ourselves.
The trial of being a person is accepting that we are not all knowing gods. It is learning that information we value and build our identity around can be wrong. So if everything we learn could be wrong, then how do we know what is right? We test it. If it holds up to scrutiny then it is worth believing until something proves it false. Everything that is true will hold up to testing; even Christ was tested, not only during his fast but up until his death. Understanding that we do not know everything and that we can be wrong is key to understand ourselves and sometimes others. We do not need to know everything but we do need to recognize when we need to rethink what we believe. We need to be able to recognize when something is a lie. We need to recognize where we can place our faith.
This is just one of the many lessons we have to learn as humans and we have less than a century to understand this. This lesson follows quite nicely after the First Mystery, the Mystery that we are mortal and will perish. The First Mystery, when properly understood, should help with putting into perspective of what is important in life. As we rank things that are important, education and understanding are essential tools in figuring out what is important and what we should value. We can know what we should keep and what we should just let go. The earlier we learn this lesson, the closer we are the Fullness of the Kingdom.
