Saturday, August 16, 2008

Jail


  • Listen only to God.

  • I (Jesus) will substitute for your ego if you wish...I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance.

I learned a lesson this week in what really makes me insane; situations and institutions which are my projection of parental authority. Religion is for me an authority figure and I cannot stand it because it feels stifling, confining, like being in a paper bag, controlled, judged and censored. Any management system set up for the promotion of a spiritual theory makes the theory into a set of religious rules and social regulation; which utterly kills the direct action of Jesus in anyone's life.


Here is a picture of a fancy jail; but still prison none the less:






In the house where I grew up, the kid's rooms had lock bolts on the outside of the door, above kid height. I don't know how often I was locked in; but I remember one time vividly. In this case, my parents weren't home and it was my brother who had locked me in. I went berzerk. I went totally berzerk with throwing furniture and slamming my body into the door. Of course, this didn't help so I had to just sit quietly and wait. What a thing to learn at the age of 5; stay away from the restraint because it is not moving and anything short of silent sitting makes the situation worse.

This is how control authorities feel to me. So...all of civilized life is to me a big prison. If you have money, you can pretend to be comfortable. If you stay away from the walls, you can pretend they are not there. This doesn't work for me because I am a person who withdrew from society and worked spiritually on re-programming my brain. So I clearly see that this world is a big prison. I see the walls. I feel like I am in a straight jacket.

My choices are to learn extreme patience, never moving against the restraints in order to avoid becoming berzerk. Or, I learn that this world is an illusion; that there is a world of the spirit which is accessible to anyone if they do the work of deflating their ego and seeking spiritual help.

Spiritual help does not come from an earthly spiritual director, guru, teacher or minister. Nothing short of Spirit can give spiritual help. Any indirect contact is necessarily corrupted.

Listen only to God.