Divine Science Today Blog

Normal

2011-04-25T09:36:00.000-06:00

Foreword to Supreme Doctrine (Benoit) written by Aldus Huxley

Philosophy in the Orient is never pure speculation, but always some form of transcendental pragmatism. Its truths, like those of modern physics, are to be tested operationally. Consider, for example, the basic doctrine of Vedanta, of Mahayana Buddhism, of Taoism, of Zen. “Tat twam asi – thou art That.” Tao is the root to which we may return, and so become again That which, in fact, we have always been. ‘Samsara and Nirvana, Mind and individual minds, sentient beings and the Buddha, are one.’

Nothing could be more enormously metaphysical than such affirmations; but at the same time nothing could be less theoretical, idealistic and Pickwickian. They are known to be true because, in a super-Jamesian way, they work, because there is something that can be done with them. The doing of this something modifies the doer’s relations with reality as a whole. But knowledge is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. When transcendental pragmatists apply the operational test to their metaphysical hypotheses, the mode of their existence changes, and they know everything, including the proposition, ‘thou art That’, in an entirely new and illuminating way.

The author of this book is a psychiatrist and his thoughts about the Philosophia Perennis in general and about Zen in particular are those of a man professionally concerned with the treatment of troubled minds. The difference between Eastern philosophy, in its therapeutic aspects, and most of the systems of psychotherapy current in the modern West may be summarized in a few sentences.

The aim of Western psychiatry is to help the troubled individual to adjust himself to the society of less troubled individuals – individuals who are observed to be well adjusted to one another and the local institutions, but about whose adjustment to the fundamental Order of Things no enquiry is made. Counselling, analysis, and other methods of therapy are used to bring these troubled and maladjusted persons back to a normality, which is defined, for lack of any better criterion, in statistical terms. To be normal is to be a member of the majority party --- or in totalitarian societies, such as Calvinist Geneva, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, of the party which happens to be in power. For the exponents of the transcendental pragmatists of the Orient, statistical normality is of little or no interest. History and anthropology make it abundantly clear that societies composed of individuals who think, feel, believe and act according to the most preposterous conventions can survive for long periods of time. Statistical normality is perfectly compatible with a high degree of folly and wickedness.

But there is another kind of normality --- a normality of perfect functioning, a normality of actualized potentialities, a normality of nature in fullest flower. This normality has nothing to do with the observed behavior of the greatest number --- for the greatest number live, and have always lived, with their potentialities unrealized, their nature denied its full development. In so far as he is a psychotherapist, the Oriental philosopher tries to help statistically normal individuals to become normal in the other, more fundamental sense of the word. He begins by pointing to those who think they are sane that, in fact, they are mad, but that they do not have to remain so if they don’t want to. Even a man who is perfectly adjusted to a deranged society can prepare himself, if he so desires, to become adjusted to the Nature of Things, as it manifests in the universe at large and in his own mind-body. This preparation must be carried out on two levels simultaneously. On the psycho-physical level, there must be a letting go of the ego’s frantic clutch on the mind-body, a breaking of its bad habits of interfering with the otherwise infallible workings of the entelechy, of the obstructing the flow of life and grace and inspiration. At the same time, on the intellectual level, there must be a constant self-reminder that our all too human likes and dislikes are not absolutes, that yin and yang, negative and positive, are reconciled in the Tao, that ‘One is the denial of all denials’, that ‘the eye with which we see God (if and when we see Him) is the same as the eye with which God sees us’, and that it is the eye to which, in Matthew Arnold’s words

Each moment in its race,

Crowd as we will its neutral space,

Is but a quiet watershed,

Whence, equally, the seas of life and death are fed.

This process of intellectual and psycho-physical adjustment to the Nature of Things is necessary; but it cannot, of itself, result in the normalization (in the non-statistical sense) of the deranged individual. It will, however, prepare the way for that revolutionary event. That, when it comes, is the work not of the personal self, but of the great Not-Self, of which our personality is a partial and distorted manifestation. “God and God’s will,’ says Eckhart, ‘are one; I and my will are two.’ However, I can always use my will to will myself out of my own light, to prevent my ego from interfering with God’s will and eclipsing the Godhead manifested by that will. In theological language, we are helpless without grace, but grace cannot help us unless we choose to co-operate with it.

In the pages which follow, Dr. Benoit has discussed the ‘supreme doctrine’ of Zen Buddhism in the light of Western psychological theory and Western psychiatric practice – and in the process he offered a searching criticism of Western psychology and Western psychotherapy as they appear in the light of Zen. This is a book that should be read by everyone who aspires to know who he is and what he can do to acquire such self-knowledge.

The Totality of Love

2011-04-06T09:22:00.001-06:00

"Freedom from your trial does not consist in destroying what appears to you as an evil condition (or even an evil belief). Your freedom consists in the exercise of your realization of the totality of Love and your acceptance of that is your resurrection and ascension. In the effort to overcome evil, as if there could be a false substance, the mind is kept in constant confusion and turmoil. Our problems and their solutions rest in ourselves. Certain it is that evil will remain with us just as long as we entertain the belief that there is evil." -- Bicknell Young

The Tree of Failure???

2011-01-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

An acquaintance of mine, whom I visit on Facebook had an editorial from the New York Times, entitled The Tree of Failure (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14brooks.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=general) following President Obama's speech in Tuscon soon after the shootings by a young man.

In the article, author David Brooks, an editor of the NYTimes, says, "Civility is a tree with deep roots, and without the roots, it can’t last. So what are those roots? They are failure, sin, weakness and ignorance."

He later says, "So this is where civility comes from — from a sense of personal modesty and from the ensuing gratitude for the political process. Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation."

And later, "The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves."
And, "So, of course, you get narcissists...."

And, "Beneath all the other things that have contributed to polarization and the loss of civility, the most important is this: The roots of modesty have been carved away."

I felt as though I were back in church, confused by all the mixing of metaphors, but so all pumped up by the preacher's passionate spew that I had to write a letter to the editor. It wasn't published. So I'm publishing it here.

Dear Editor -- I would like to comment on David Brook's "Tree of Failure", January 13, 2011. Mr. Brooks, I found your opinion most exhilarating! I wonder if civility is a tree or an emotion, a feeling. Does it involve respect and maybe kindness? If it is a tree, and its roots are failure, sin, weakness and ignorance, no tree I know would grow in such a situation. If the root is no good, neither is the tree. But if civility is a feeling and intelligence, warmth, confidence and responsible cooperation might be its roots then I can see my civility in President Obama and his quiet, firm human display of composure as well as in your passionate outcry. Perhaps, the tree of civility has its roots in the idea Reinhold Niebuhr suggested: love, hope and tolerance, or, as he believed, rooted in the human spirit itself. May I invite you to try an experiment in self-civility? Re-read your opinion piece and put the word "my" in front of every noun. Notice how the naming power of words takes on new force when we take self-responsibility for them. Emotional continence, in my belief, begins in self awareness, self-sovereignty, and self-responsibility, which are its roots. All government is self-government. I like these words and their power in my mind.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so must we think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves.” - Abraham Lincoln

“But I wish to be distinctly understood on one point. Americanism is a question of spirit, convictions and purpose, not of creed or birthplace. – Theodore Roosevelt

“A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society. - Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and third U.S. president

Best to you, Rob Craig

What's Working On You Today?

2011-01-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

The Arizona shootings which killed six including a nine year old girl, and a federal Judge, with 13 others seriously injured one of whom is a Congresswoman are on my mind today as well as a conversation I had by phone two days ago with my friend Nena Spencer. Nena is metaphysical scientist (though any label, I am finding, does no justice to her) Nena introduced Dr. Dorsey to Margaret Laird. She told me that Dr. Dorsey said he was "standing on Freud's shoulders." I read in one of Mrs. Laird's later Letters that she saw herself standing on Mrs. Eddy's shoulders.

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), America's first feminist author and a member of Emerson's Transcendentalist circle, said: "If men knew how to look around them, they need not look above."

Looking around I found this wonderful article Nena submitted to the IMS newsletter in 2000 and am sharing it here. I find it very clear.

Practice

by Nena Spencer
January 2000
I have heard that "practice makes perfect," but do I remember that "Perfect makes the practice?"
Spirit is always perfect in all ways. Good is the only thing going on, even when it doesn't feel like it is.
When a person calls for support in a difficult experience, the best thing a practitioner can do is voice what he/she is living all the time--the spiritual fact that only Good is going on.
There are many ways that Good can look, many views and languages for this Good to appear in any given human situation. I have learned to release all concepts of how a situation should look or turn out because I have no idea. To venture an opinion is to impede the perfect solution always unfolding.
Sometimes it looks like our friends and clients have to experience very difficult and painful experiences and the temptation is to want to take the pain away from them. This cannot be done because actually there is no pain and what they go through is still a view, still just language for the identity of perfection present and operating.
When the problem is dropped, immediately divine help looks like it is on the way. The Truth is there is no lapse from or return to divine perfection present and operating. While we are speaking, the problem is being turned around into no problem. To concern myself at any time about anyone or thing is a waste of happiness and satisfaction.

The Metaphysics of the Moment

2010-12-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

I am working on the metaphysics of the moment. Another word for this work is "treatment." Treatment is always self-treatment. Reading Jan Christiaan Smut's magnificent work, Holism and Evolution in my morning reading time and Dr. John M. Dorsey's Psychology of Language in my afternoon reading time is providing interesting dymanic in the life of my ideas. An old word for this dynamism in ideas is "chemicalization," using a non-organic metaphor for a real psychic experience. Like dropping an alka-seltzer in a glass of water, a chemical transformation is triggered by the combining of two different chemical substances whose properties antagonize the moment, until one emerges as basic and the other disappears. The catalytic agent or trigger is untransformed in the event and plays only a mechanical role in the transformation. Actually it is the thing itself which is thrown into self-transformation. As this process is in high gear in my just now, I expect to be with it a while longer and not yet haver coherent results of what is precipitating within me. Also, I am far beyond the point of twoness and instead of an antagonism or struggle for survival of the aptest mental power, the concept of Holism and its holistic action in my individuation combining with the consciously solispsist oirentation toward my emotionality and hence all my life is more of a synthesis and integration, a harmonizing of cosmic visions into a single, unfied vision and a well-made languge. I keep promising my self to write and someday maybe soon I will do so. But for now I share this piece from Maragret Laird's Chrisitan Science Re-explored (now called We are The World We Walk Through), which keys with a marginal reference in Science and Health, "the true healing,":

S&H 230:27
"We think that we are healed when a disease disappears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never thoroughly healed until the liability to be ill is removed. So-called mortal mind or the mind of mortals being the remote, predisposing, and the exciting cause of all suffering, the cause of disease must be obliterated through Christ in divine Science, or the so-called physical senses will get the victory."

Margaret Laird:
There is but one way to accomplish healing. This way is the way of Science, the discernment of nothing to heal. This accords with a statement about healing in the Christian Science textbook: “We think we are healed when a disease disappears…but we are never really healed until the liability to be ill is removed.” This liability to be ill, impoverished, unhappy, lies in mistaking the material personality for man—conscious identity or Mind. In mistaking the material personality for man—conscious identity or Mind. In the material personality conscious human individuality is the personality. This fact is the cause and cure of dis-ease.

It was during my service as 2nd Reader of First Church Evanston that I became increasingly restless and began to question the validity of organized religion’s efforts to hold Truth to a stereotyped pattern. I began to see that there is no Truth for the individual but his own demonstrated understanding. As this fact broke into consciousness, I experienced a natural impatience and resistance to the habit of clinging to outworn religious concepts.

The mental gymnastics of attempting to correlate incidents or myths taken from the King James version of the Bible with passages taken from to me seemed limiting and frustrating to original thinking.

One day this contradictory passage from Science and Health appeared in the Lesson Sermon. “While we adore Jesus for what he did for mortals treading alone his loving pathway up to the throne of glory in speechless agony exploring the way for us, yet Jesus spares us not one individual experience.” Science and Health page 26 I asked myself, what did he do for mortals if he did not spare us one individual experience.” I questioned this passage and others in this Lesson Sermon on “Sacrament”. I realized that my thinking was no longer oriented to Christian theology but was taking the path of Science. I did not adore Jesus, he meant nothing to me, nor did my heart overflow with gratitude for what he did for mortals. He was not my Christ. Even at that early day I recognized that the divinity (Spirit) of each individual is his own Christ or Savior, whether named Jesus, Mary, John or James. Also,

Also I could not subscribe to the statement read each Sunday at the CS church services: “Now are we the sons of God, an it doeth not yet appear what we shall be; If now I am the son of God, now am I the appearing of that fact. The I or Ego in the now is the I or Ego appearing in the future. We know what we shall be because of what we are. The divinity of humanity is not a development. It has no future that is not now. The end is from the beginning. Reality may assume different forms, but remains Reality all the way.

The CSt who is Science has no “Jesus” to adore. His Jesus is defined by Mrs. Eddy, “The highest human corporeal concept of the divine idea.” The highest human corporeal concept of the divine idea.” His Christ speaks to him from within and as the self-unfolding Truth. I soon read my Bible as Science-fiction where the characters and circumstances portray the God-idea in the metaphorical language of that day and when I read, “I am the Way, the Truth, and Life,” I did not think of “Jesus,” but of my own divinity. Each one individually is his own I Am, his own Way, Truth and Life. In every name and concept, I am is the concept or name. Before Abraham was I Am. Every tree, every flower, every man, is continually crying out, I Am. This I is Mind. (WATW-xxxviii)

Healing in Science is education. It is the elimination of disease in the sense that sin, “missing the mark,” imperfect apprehension, is the dis-ease. The “educator” that the patient or pupil grows for help in the self-discovery of his divinity does not deny the sin or sickness. They are not his dis-ease. His disease is the ego-image he has mistaken for the Ego, his true self. One of the first steps in the educational process, therefore, is acquainting the patient with his ego-image. This confrontation with habitual thought patterns, many of which the patient may not be conscious of (W-121) holding, is of great value and must precede the understanding essential for “leaving the mortal basis of belief.” A CST will not ask himself why or how he got into trouble since what confronts him as trouble is the mistaken sense of himself. The all-knowing Mind never got into trouble and does not have to get out and the ego-image can never get out since it is the trouble.

You tell me it is your experience that healings in CS are lessening, and that more CSts are finding it necessary to have medical aid. I do not think this is surprising. CSts have rested too long with the conditioned thinking that healing means the elimination of symptoms rather than the healing of disease through awakening to the truth of being. What you call no-healing of the physical body is the spiritual fact coming to view that body is metaphysical—conscious thought. Mrs. Eddy made this point clear (132) many times in the CS textbook. She says SH150 the healing power is Science (knowing) and not a phenomenal exhibition. Also on SH230 “we think we are healed when a disease disappears though it is liable to reappear, but we are never thoroughly healed until this liability is removed.” The marginal note of this paragraph is “The true healing.” The metaphysical healing of physical disease comes with the awakening or discovery that “Mind is the source and condition of all existence.” The mythology of healing is obsolete in the Science age. In the Science age, the magic of healing is the fact of no sick to heal, no sinner to save.

Love, the divinity of humanity, supplies the human need with the magic of Science: a practitioner able to recognize that in mistaking the ego-image for the I or Ego (one’s self), we have dying in our living, and living in our dying. Science (knowledge) is Spirit. It is the dynamic Life-force, the unchanging Change apparent as new concepts of Reality, new technological discoveries, new “materialism”. A comment in the LA Times of Jan4/71, by an anthropology professor at UCLA is pertinent to our point: “Man [as conceived today] is already obsolescent.”

The man of imagination, maintaining the absolutely neutral position of Principle, with no pro-this or anti-that is the one who will discover steps and techniques for communication leading to the abolishment of war.

I was once asked by a prominent physician, “How confused can you get by reading books like the CS textbook which deny the reality (W-122) of matter?” I replied, “There need be no confusion if you do not read words but let ideas unfold from your own withinness, letting your own Mind, your own being doing the reading.”
(WATW 121)

Holism and Evolution

2010-11-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who has a friend who accused me of being just an "intellectual". I accepted the compliment, remembering that around the turn of the 20th century in heated philosophical debates over Mind and Brain, in America and in Europe, with players such as the great William James at Harvard, Borden Bowen at Boston University on "our" team, deep thinkers were dismissed as "metaphysicians." Being "too metaphysical" got you laughed out of the discussions. I filed this "compliment" away until on reading Jan Christiaan Smut's book Holism and Evolution (which launched the holistic health movement) written in 1925 contained the thoughts recorded below about the evolution of Mind, on which the greatest whole of wholes, human Personality, is built as superstructure. Without the stuff of Mind, my friend of my friend would have no stuff to work up into the language she may so thoughtlessly take for granted. My every word is an autobiography of my magnificent Yogic Self. My Atman shines most clearly in, as and through my use, misuse and abuse of myself (mind) linguistically. I reveal and conceal the most of myself (unconscious) in my most habitual talk. I cannot walk my walk, unless I talk my talk. Evolution out of the spirit of Holistic Nature will not allow it. Naming is my most powerful game. But whatever I call a thing, or person, or situation, that it is not. It is I disguised by my own self-ignoration and all my language can ever mean, or signify, or point to is its very author, Me. Whatever is, perfectly is.
Jan Smuts, was a twice-term Prime Minister of South Africa and the only Prime Minister until Nelson Mandela to stand against Apartheid. Reverencing individuality, he courageously wrote the theory of Wholes and as I read it I guessed he was subverting the old order. Haunting his prose I wonder if he is silently, brilliantly asking for Reason (Intellect) to justify the enslaving of an entire African race and in 1925 on what grounds?
I do not wish to change my friend's friend's mind only to grow consciously my own. And so I read and read and read. And noticed I the hiding res in the words real, reason and reading. Res, the thing itself is the common pool out of which all of my psychic energy and my living it comes. I read myself only in whatever I read, including my friend and my friend's friend. When I am trying to read your mind, whose mind am I really reading but mine own and how startling to discover my lack of appreciation for my own esteemed being, by my easy, quick dismissal of any part of it as if it were "only". Here is the text:
   Without Mind, the organic and regulative process of the universe, vast and magnificent in any case, would have been best but a tame affair. The universe would have moved forward, as it were in a dream, with unearthly regularity and majesty of movement. Its process would have become ever more complicated and ever more frictionless, as of some sublime animated machine, great beyond all power of conception. All elements of discord and disharmony would have passed away from its vast cosmic routine.
   But it would have gone on sublimely unconscious of itself. It would have had no soul or souls. It would have harboured no passionate exaltations; no poignant regrets or bitter sorrows would have disturbed its profound peace. For it neither the great lights not the deep shadows.
   Truth, Beauty, and Goodness would have been there, but unknown, unseen, unloved. They would have been cold and passionless like the distant stars and would never have become the great ideals thrilling and inspiring men and women to deathless action. Love would have been there, but not that immortal emotion which mortals call by that name.
   Into that great dream-garden of Eden, Mind, the Disturber has entered, and with Mind sin and sorrow, faith and love, the great vision of knowledge and the conscious effort to master all hampering conditions and to work out the great redemption.
   To the Music of the universe there has thus been added a new note, as of laughter and tears, a new undertone of the human, which transforms and enriches all the rest. It is no longer a song of the Golden Reign of the Elder Gods, but of the intertwining of the Cosmos with human Destiny, of the suffering which has become consecrated and illuminated by the great visions, of the magic power of knowledge to work out new enchantments to break the dumb routine, to set the captive spirit free, and to blaze new paths to the immortal Goal. Mind has thus added infinity of light and shade and color, of inward character and conscious content to the great process in and from which it has emerged.
   Without Mind, the universe would have been an altogether dull affair, however unimaginably grand in other respects. Even its aberrations have been woven into the new harmonies. Its eye has beheld the greater lights. And knowledge has given it the key of power and mastery over the conditions which it previously towered like an unscalable mountain escarpment athwart its path of progress." (pages 267-268)

Like someone said, "If you think education is expensive try ignorance".   Mind-growth is not optional. Refusing to grow my mind consciously, it grows unconsciously as all my symptom-formation including all my fault-finding displacement of my low self-estimate upon my others. The way I treat my mind (self) is the way I treat my all.

Black Like Me

2010-08-26T17:39:00.000-06:00

I was reminiscing today and two memories collided. An early one was when I was in elementary school. I tried out for the sixth grade play at Park Hill Elementary School (Denver). It was 1963. I was twelve. By 1969, a senior at East High School, we were featured in a Life magazine article as the only fully integrated high school in the country. East High was a model of integration in a battle over civil rights and my high school was closed and all students sent home when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I had a black girlfriend. But back in 1963 things were still quiet, I guess, I was just twelve and trying out for the school play. Years later as an adult I would recall this memory with amazement and horror and also some humor. The role I was given was of the Black porter at the train station. I had to put black-face make-up on and talk with a dialect. The script called for it.

The-years-later-recollection-as-an-adult had me realizing that I stood before an integrated audience of blacks and whites, children and adults in black face. What amazed me was - I wasn't stoned. Either by the audience or by being on drugs. I never was aware of any reverberations, no riots. It amazed me that in 1963 my teachers had a play with a black porter at the train station and a white kid in black face. I still can't quite "get my mind around it."

Black Like Me the non-fiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin was first published in 1961. Griffin was a white native of Mansfield, Texas and the book describes his six-week experience travelling on Greyhound buses (occasionally hitchhiking) throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia passing as a black man. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account first as a series of articles. Griffin kept a journal of his experiences; the 188-page diary was the genesis of the book. In 1959, at the time of the book's writing, race relations were particularly strained in America; Griffin's aim was to explain the difficulties facing black people in certain areas. Under the care of a doctor, Griffin artificially darkened his skin to pass as a black man. And a little white kid at Park Hill Elementary School (Denver) put black face on for the 6th grade play.

The other recollection that came back recently was from my 10 day intensive Centering Prayer retreat at St. Benedict's Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado. It was 1989. I was a Presbyterian minister working for the Archdiocese of Denver and my boss was a Catholic nun. One morning at 2 a.m. I was hiking up the dirt road from the farmhouse to the Monastery for Vigils. Walking beside me was a new friend, a black City-Councilwoman from Rochester, New York. As we walked along she suddenly blurted out, "My God, man, you've got rhythm!" Somehow it was a great validation for me. It was as if she said, "My God, man you've got SOUL!"
Dr. Laura Schlessinger got in big trouble for using the 'N" word recently. I have some suggestions for her.
And you?
Got Soul?

Understanding yourself

2010-07-01T12:56:00.000-06:00

"Meditation is the freedom from thought, and a movement in the ecstacy of truth."

"Belief is so unnecessary, as are ideals. Both dissipate energy which is needed to follow the unfolding of the fact, the "what is." Beliefs and ideals are escapes from the fact and in escape there is no end to sorrow. The ending of sorrow is the understanding of the fact from moment to moment. There is no system or method which will give understanding; only a choiceless awareness of a fact will do that. Meditation according to a system is the avoidance of the fact of what you are; it is far more important to understand yourself, the constant changing of the facts about yourself, than to meditate in order to find god or have visions, sensations and other forms of entertainment. - J. Krishnamurti

People! Who needs People?

2010-06-08T13:52:00.000-06:00

I office at McDonald's, some of you know; two hours twice a day everyday, for 22 years now. I read.   I also journal what I read. Sometimes I read one paragraph in two hours. I am also reading, very slowly, Metaphysics by Borden Bowne (1884), and Powers of Mind Adam Smith (1975) when I am at home. I have on my next to read shelf The Syllogistic Philosophy by Frances E. Abbott (1906). Consciousness is the theme of all my reading.

When I journal, I draw pictures to myself of what my ideas look like, so I need highlighters. At Mcdonald's I spread my highlighers and markers over a big table with my many notebooks since right now I am collating the ideas of two different scientists of consciousness. People walk by on the way to the restrooms and most ignore me. Sporadically, some one stops and makes a snide comment, a put-down. I realized it is almost always old white American males.

This morning I overheard an old lady sitting in eyeshot from me telling an old white American male that it's "time we take our country back from the 'negroes'." Not much stops me, I learned to absorb my concentration and lose sense of my surroundings about 20 years of the 22 years ago. But I stopped. Since the afternoon before she had a conversation with a young employee and they slapped each other on the back because they love Jesus and are "good Christians". I have had some experiences with these "good Christians". Some I even told it was obvious to me that they had never read the New Testament and didn't catch the ethics of Jesus. They're the ones who write books like "What Would Jesus Do?" and have bumper sticker likes "What would Jesus think, say, eat," etc?

   If we take our country back from the "negroes" do we send them back to Africa? Or do we reclaim them as our slaves? Did Jesus have slaves? And if he was Middle-Eastern and not American didn't he probably have dark skin and not the light-colored Roman-like complexion of the old lady "good Christian?"

   I read a book on the history of NewThought once that talked about the violent conflict between the theologies of John Calvin and Michael Servetus. Calvin, who had the backing of the prince in Geneva, had Servetus burned at the stake for "heresy." That was before the concept of separation of church and state. But I wondered, "Who did Jesus burn?" When Jesus said in Matthew and Luke
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26), do these Bible literalists take that literally? Everything Jesus said is open to interpretation.

   Borden P. Bowne was professor of philosophy at Boston University and a Methodist minister. He categorized his views as Kantianized Berkeleyanism, transcendental empiricism and, finally, Personalism, a philosophical branch of liberal theology, of which Bowne is the dominant figure. His masterpiece, Metaphysics, appeared in 1882 (which I think is wonderful!) and he was contemporary with the writings of Mary Baker Eddy which I use in my study of consciousness. Bowne towards the end of his life was tried for heresy by the Methodist Church, but acquitted.

   Frances Abbot was was an American philosopher and Unitarian theologian who sought to reconstruct theology in accord with scientific method. He was a contemporary of Bowne and Mrs. Eddy. His ministry proved controversial, and in 1868 New Hampshire's highest court ruled that the Dover, New Hampshire, First Unitarian Society of Christians' chosen minister was insufficiently "Christian" to serve his congregation. Abbott is was said, once preached that:

Whoever has been so fired in his own spirit by the overwhelming thought of the Divine Being as to kindle the flames of faith in the hearts of his fellow men, whether Confucius, or Zoroaster, or Moses, or Jesus, or Mohammed, has thereby proved himself to be a prophet of the living God; and thus every great historic religion dates from a genuine inspiration by the Eternal Spirit.

He was removed from his ministry.

And then there's Anthony DeMello. a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist who died in 1987. At the end of this post is a link to a you-tube presentation of his that I recommend to you. I found it when a Facebook question from a young friend showed up and I wanted to respond. Her question was

Wondering why it has to be sooooo hard sometimes to let certain people go in our lives, even when it's the "right thing to do..." - and this includes friEnds that have moved on in their lives, for whatever reason, and leave us behind.

DeMello's books and materials were banned by the Catholic church and his teachings called "dangerous." I guess beliefs are also so-o-o-o-o hard to let go, too. Who did Jesus ban?

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFdjBjBfPfc

Traveling Bible Teachers

2010-05-19T20:53:00.000-06:00

A friends writes:
with the bible folks that travel door to door.

A wonderful way to see/feel my growth/understanding since the last visit.
Always interesting to remain steady with that which I no longer believe with honor and respect for my visitors and their present understanding.
I remained longer than usual to see how they fielded my questions and/or responses were received.
I recommend it.
Do you all have these visitors where you now reside?

So I responded:
Friend - We have the Jehovah's Witness here and they are quite active. Also seen a few Mormon boys on bicycles. I've had several extended conversations with one or two Jehovah's. Not good. Helpful to my learning curve. Reading Dorsey helps more. Today for example - "I have grown increasing understanding of any so-called common tongue as necessitating a systematic unconscious self-belittlement in its linguist, thereby necessitating (in protest) an augmenting, systematic unconscious symptom formation in its linguist. By habitually overlooking myself in my wording I become increasingly anaesthetic to the sensation of selfness in my language." This I think is the purpose of institutional, dogmatic religious non-thinking, which Dorsey calls "self-helpfulness." I see all educational organizations, with memberships (common tongue) as self-help groups having limited value to those who join them and severly restricted value to one seeking enlightenment (self-discovery). Margaret encouraged folks to "go back to church" in the 70's as a helpful way to discover no value in the church. peace. Rob

The Trouble with Religion

2010-05-13T14:07:00.000-06:00

The Undiscovered Self

by Anthony de Mello, SJ

Somebody came up to me once during a conference and asked, "What about 'Our Lady of Fatima'?" What do you think of her? When I am asked questions like that, I am reminded of the story of the time they were taking the statue of Our Lady of Fatima on an airplane to a pilgrimage for worship, and as they were flying over the South of France the plane began to wobble and to shake and it looked like it was going to come apart. And the miraculous statue cried out, "Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!" And all was well. Wasn't it wonderful, one "Our Lady" helping another "Our Lady"?

There was also a group of a thousand people who went on a pilgrimage to Mexico City to venerate the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and sat down before the statue in protest because the Bishop of the Diocese had declared "Our Lady of Lourdes" patroness of the diocese! They were sure that Our Lady of Guadalupe felt this very much, so they were doing the protest in REPARATION for the offense. That's the trouble with religion, if you don't watch out.

WORDS

2010-04-28T20:59:00.000-06:00

From TALES OF POWER: "I told Don Juan that his explanation did not satisfy my senses, although I was in complete intellectual agreement with it." "That's the flaw with words," he said in a reassuring tone, "They always force us to feel enlightened, and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment...Whenever the dialogue stops...extraordinary facets of ourselves surface as though they had been heavily guarded b our words."

"Inscribed on The Believing Mind."

2010-04-27T13:31:00.002-06:00

"The Perfect Way knows no difficulties
Except that It refuses all preference.

If you would see the Perfect Way manifest
Take no thought either for or against It.
To oppose what you like and what you dislike,
That is the malady of the mind.

Do not try to find the truth,
Merely cease to cherish opinions,
Tarry not in dualism.

As soon as you have good and evil
Confusion follows and the mind is lost.

When the unique mind is undisturbed
The ten thousand things cannot offend it.

When no discrimination is made between this and that
How can a biased and prejudiced vision arise?

Let go, leave things as they may be.

If you wish to follow the path of the One Vehicle
Have no prejudiced against the six senses.

Whereas in the Dharma itself there is no individuation
The ignorant attach themselves to particular objects.

The enlightened have no likes and dislikes.

Gain and loss, right and wrong,
Away with them once and for all!

Everything is void, lucid, and self-illuminating
There is no strain, no effort, no wastage of energy.
To this region thought never attains.

In not being two all is the same.
All that exists is comprehended therein.

It matters not how thing are conditioned,
Whether by 'being' or by 'not being.'

That which is is the same as that which is not.
That which is not is the same as that which is.

If only this is realized,
You need not worry about not being perfect.

The Divine Oneness

2010-04-14T11:07:00.000-06:00

My physiology is not opposed to my mentality but rather is integral to it. It is able-bodied identity to be studied, trained, controlled, and made helpful in my subjective wholeness, a mental condition rather than an objective locality. This life orientation exalted and held steadily in mind invigorates my wholeness, continuing its ideality into the subsoil of my visceral subjectivity. Thus the wording of my idea does not stop at poetic imagery but unites it with the scientific discovery that all identity must be self-identity. It is vivifying to see the modern scientist finding his long sought self-sameness at last in mathematics, or in another less obscure form of metaphysics. The scientific idealist can make manifest the psychic in every discipline or interest, the idenity in thought and thew, the divine oneness in pain and pleasure, harm and help, or bad and good.
(The Psychic Nature of Physiology, Dr. John M. Dorsey, M.D., page 22-23)

March-April Newsletter is ready

2010-04-02T16:53:00.000-06:00

Friends - once again the Institute of Scientific Metaphysics printed an article of mine, entitled, "You Should Live to See This." I have published it on my website. Rob

My Sense of Wonderful Wholeness

2010-02-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

"Only my growing clearly conscious self-helpfulness can ever aid me to appreciate my wholeness-allness-oneness identity (divinity). My practice of this self-insight is the well-spring of my ideology idealizing my solipsistic or mystic nature. It is true of my solipsism as it is true of my selfishness itself: my problem cannot be that I am "too selfish", only that I am not sufficiently selfish about all of me (including my 'you'). " -- Dr. John M. Dorsey, University Professor, page 10

Earthquakes

2010-02-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

The "God-idea" (Infinity) as it evolves in consciousness, is described in Matthew 24 and Luke 21. "What shall be the sign of the Christ...ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that ye be not troubled;...nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestlilences, and great earthquakes in divers places (airplanes colliding, innumerable murders, terrorist groups, and starvation)...When ye see these things come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, and know that the Kingdom of God is nigh at hand.' This is the view of Infinity as it unfolds in the langauge of paradox: loss is gain, nothing is something, destruction is construction - 'He who would gain his life must lose it.'

   The ancient prophets were masters of Science-fiction. They had vivid imaginations and told the story of the God-idea in languge that could not fail to startle and shock. Their interpretations of the mighty power of Truth, to overthrow the "establishment" - conditioned or static thinking -- is expressed in myth that has made the Bible a best-seller. Infinity, Truth functioning in/as individual/universal consciousness to bring the Unknown into the known, the Invisible into the visible, the Unconscious into the conscious, does this so incredibly that it can only be interpreted through a remarkable story of this mighty force. 'And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison wer shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's hands were loosed." Today, Truth and Love are still seen as earthquakes, famine, and pestilience, acts of violence,-- the dying of the old in the birthing of the new order. This is the paradox of Infinity.

   'Our false views of life hide the eternal harmony and produce the ills of which we complain.' All happenings whatever the name - inform me that I consciously am, and because of this fact, my Mind, Infinity, is my own Selfconscious divinity, the source of my health, wealth and happiness.

   Science is the understanding or capacity to see that the breaking up of material belief (conditioned thinking or personal sense) seen in the language of famine, pestilence, want and woe, is literally the action of Truth. As long as matter is mistaken for the energy of Spirit, Infinity cannot be conceived except as destruction and construction, birth and death, good and evil, right and wrong. However, what is breaking up is not a material world, but the supersititious belief that there is a world outside of Mind created by 'other' than one's own Self-divinity.

   Admitting the error of identifying the I with person instead of Principle, we cannot complain or do anything about the suffering incidental to that point of view. Therefore, it is most important to let the suffering alone and live the Science, the discernment that 'whatever Is, perfectly Is.' This discernment is the conscious thought, completely satisfied and satisfying, and is the Word made flesh, - the divine body."
Margaret Laird, Laird Letters 1975, Jan/Feb.)

The little fox

2010-01-16T17:55:00.002-07:00

It was then that the fox appeared.
"Good morning," said the fox.
"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around
he saw nothing.
"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree."
"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added
"I am so unhappy."
"I cannot play with you," the fox said, "I am not tamed."
"Ah! Please excuse me, said the little prince.
But after some thought, he added
"What does that mean---'tamed'?"
"You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?"
"I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean---'tame'?"
"Men," said the fox, "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They
also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?"
"No," said the little prince, "I am looking for friends. What does that mean---
'tame'?"
It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties.
"To establish ties?"
"Just that," said the fox, "To me, you are still nothing more than
a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And
I have no need of you. And you, on your part have no need of me.
To you, I am nothing more than a hundred thousand other foxes.
But if you tame me, then we shall need each other.
To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you,
I shall be unique in all the world..."
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower...
I think she has tamed me...
:It is possible," said the fox. On the Earth one sees all sorts of things."

2010-01-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Thought is the "whole dignity of man," according to Pascal. We must be free to doubt, to search, to prove all things. Abstract reason is not enough. Art escapes -- from the sterility of mere intellect. Through imagination and passion, Art enhances our consciousness of Life. But individual Soul seeks it own substance (Spirit) beyond the pageantry of Art. Both intellect and Art point to the necessity of faith, yet the myths, dogmas and rituals of the organized religions hinder thought and warp action. All systems, religious as well as economic or aesthetic, are intricate devices for arresting the flow of thought and dimming the splendor of Love. (paraphrased from "Bottle in the Sea" by Albert Guerard)

The DSW Newsletter

2010-01-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

I keep promising a new Newsletter but haven't gotten to it yet. I was invited to submit an article for the Jan.-Mar. Newsletter for the Institute of Metaphysical Science and did so. It is to be published now and will be exerpted in the print version, with the full version on their web-site. I did a kind of "story of my life" retrospective/introspective which you may find interesting. You can find the full article on my website, under Newsletter. Have a happy January. Rob.

Science

2009-11-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

"The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson

November-December Newsletter

2009-11-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

While on my way to writing the November-December Newsletter for the DSW web-site I was asked to write some words to two inquirers. One was a friend from my old Georgetown days when we were doing Centering Prayer meditation groups, and Joel Goldsmith study groups. The other was from a scientist friend who sent me a couple of pages from a book by a scientist trying to present an opposing view to the "global warming" excitement, but who has been shouted down in scientific and political circles. My response to the first friend is being edited and is 12 pages. The second response is seven pages and is on the DSW web-site. You might find it interesting. It's where the Nov.-Dec. Newsletter was going to be.

Miracle Max Wisdom

2009-11-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

Miracle Max: "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."

"Rabbi - what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

2009-11-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

"Not long ago Rabbi Gittleson wrote in the Saturday Review: 'We live at a time when knowledge is increasing with frightening rapidity...we must therefore rethink our ideas of God in a context that includes at once the biological discoveries of Darwin, the physical insight of Einstein, the psychological imperatives of Freud and who knows what new comprehension tomorrow. This does not mean we have outgrown God or are abandoning Him. Quite the contrary; it is those who insist on constraining God within a conceptual framework that is rapidly becoming meaningless, whom history will adjudge as abandoning Him.'"
-Christian Science Re-Explored (1965), pg. 20 - Margaret Laird

Re-explore

2009-11-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

"You are ill: your natural instinct is to be well. As we shall say many times in this book, you have this desire because Health, Wholeness is the Nature of Being. In the recognition that if you are sick you are well, the wellness aspect of you will appear. Sickness and wellness are not really contradictory states of being but are the Reality, Health, simultaneously being and not-being in the man-image. The natural instinct of the seed is to be the flower. It has this instinct because the flower is its seed. The self-concept, because the Self or I-ness is its existence, instinctively builds itself up and tears itself down. As we cease to work against what we call evil or error, and work from the standpoint of the infinitude of Good, we shall find the Good to be the All of all." - Margaret Laird, Christian Science Re-Explored, pg 6

from "Living Consciously: The Science of Self" -Dorsey/Seegers

2009-11-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

"From the works of men who have studied human individuality, notably those of Freud, we have evolved for ourselves the following hypothesis which we have been subjecting to every conceivable test for its particular applicability: Everyone is grieviously ill on acccount of his limited self-appreciation and can become well only by extending the scope of his self-tolerance with self-love. This hyposthesis passes every test. It works. It does not work only where it is not tried. Its practicality and utility for everyday living is demonstrable in every instance of its application. It is offered as the chief desideratum of a world constantly troubled by hot, or cold, warfare. In the opposite direction, efforts at self-ignoration would reverse the life order and are helpfully signalized by inharmonious living, which leads to the misprision of life itself. In view of its being a common addiction, self-disesteem is rated as being natural or healthy, but as anyone grows a fuller view of his wonderful creative power his life's all-precious worth becomes constantly self-evident."

Meanwhile

2009-10-28T10:41:00.000-06:00

As you may see the October Newsletter is soon to be re-named the November newsletter. Names, just names. Anyway, if you're chomping at the bit, here's something to chomp on in the meantime. An old friend e-mailed me and asked if I was teaching. My first response was koan: "I teach only myself." Which, of course is verifiable fact. I do not learn from teaching, but as if teaching confronts me with the necessity to teach myself. Experience is my only teacher. But as if teaching asks me questions I may wish to block from my awareness. So being the product of my own learning, I decided a more amplified response was warranted and so I wrote the expanded response. You will find it on my website where the October Newsletter was intended to be.

The October Divine Science Today Newsletter is on the way...

2009-10-08T20:58:00.000-06:00

... but is not quite ready. I hope to have it available by the third week in October. Rob

IMS Newsletter

2009-09-16T20:22:00.000-06:00

I was invited by Bruce Manuel, the editor of the Newsletter of the Institute of Metaphysical Science (Oct-Dec 2009) to submit an article on the topic of Truth. If you don't subscribe to the IMS you will find my article printed on the Divine Science Website in early October.

Pooh!

2009-09-16T20:16:00.001-06:00

I'm reading Pooh and The Philosophers by John Tyerman Williams, "in which it is shown that all of Western Philosophy is merely a preamble to Winnie-the-Pooh." Alfred N. Whitehead said once that the European philosophical tradition "consists in a series of footnotes to Plato." The Pooh Perplex (1979) by Frederick C. Crew and The Tao of Pooh (1982) by Benjamin Hoff all challenge their readers to bring new meaning to their reading. You will remember that we read, not to discover what the writer is thinking, but what we are thinking. Are you a stoic? A rationalist or empiricist? An existentialist? You might see yourself in the Pooh stories or someone you know in the characters of Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, or Pooh. It's a fun, informative read.

Newsletter is ready

2009-08-31T22:49:00.002-06:00

The September Newsletter is now available on the Divine Science Today web-site. Hope you enjoy it. Rob

September Newsletter

2009-08-13T21:20:00.007-06:00

Friends -- as you may know I have revamped the Divine Science website to reflect recent influx in my reading and a shift in my thinking. The Website was renamed: Divine Science Today. As I returned to reading the work of Margaret Laird, via the Laird Letters I was struck by the value to today in the Margaret Laird, John M. Dorsey collaboration. It was as if two currents of high voltage thought-energy connected and lights went on for me. Dr. Dorsey was Dean of the Department of Psychiatry, Wayne State University, Detroit. As a medical doctor and psychiatrist he evolved a conceptual view of individuality that is very refreshing. Margaret Laird was (in my opinion) the clearest articulator of Christian Science or scientific metaphysics of our day. Her paraphrase of the writings of Mary Baker Eddy is very valuable. A friend introduced Mrs. Laird to the book, Living Consciously: The Science of Self, co-authored by Dr. Dorsey and Dr. Walter Seegers, Dean of the Department of Physiology, Wayne State and on reading it Mrs. Laird felt they were voicing the same idea, each in their own language. She sent him a copy of her book, Christian Science Re-Explored and thus began a long and fruitful association between a Christian Science teacher and a medical doctor educator. You might find the words of Dr. Dorsey describing his discovery of Christian Science, which I have reprinted on the front page of the website, astonishing.

As I came to appreciate what this association means, I felt it spoke to "today." I am at work writing a newsletter for the website for September, entitled "Today." My plan is to write an October newsletter on "Science" and a November newsletter on "Divine." This will amplify the new name: Divine Science Today. I hope you will read these and share comments.

The Circle of Life

2009-08-06T13:19:00.027-06:00

In the Disney movie, "The Lion King", there comes the song by Elton John "The Circle of Life." One line goes: "Some say 'eat or be eaten', some say 'live and let live'.

What say you? Your view of Life (Mind) will determine your will, which in turn will determine your life. My friend Margaret Laird says, "If we knew better, we would do better." We can't do better than we know. This is a principle of any enlightened view of Life and Mindful living.

Now all of these words you are reading just now can have only the meaning you are giving them to give to yourself. If your vision expands so does your view, just like a telescope, or a zoom lens on your camera. Consciousness is such that it can and does expand and contract just like the iris of your eyeball does and just like you eyeball, consciousness is by nature flexible, adaptable, creative, original and free to the one who has it. Good news! You have it. If you KNOW how it works, it works FOR you and you do better. Doing is always in proportion to knowing. If you don't know how it works, it seems to work against you -- it doesn't really, but it seems to. When you start up self-learning (infancy? pre-natal?) it expands. Training, which socialization requires tends to contract it. Training and self-learning are not synonyms in the context of Science understanding today. When you lay aside self-learning for the "goods" of your training (conditioned thinking), these "goods" (gods) that are not the Good, are the devils of your own making which hide the Good-being you are being. If on top of this ignorance (immaturity of view) you believe that your devils are coming from outside you, from someone else, and you aren't yet prepared to be self-responsible for all of your self-creations, you set for yourself an impossible task in living. The task of trying to get rid of "them" or trying to avoid "them" is impossible because there's one of you and 3 billion of "them." "To agree with your adversary," writes Margaret Laird, using the old quotation from the Gospels, "means to not be one."

If we understand the scientific metaphysical distinction between Reality and our views of Reality, we are free to expand our Awareness infinitely. If we telescope our zoom-lens attentiveness to our personal view of Reality at this moment and try to resist its changing, this "dis-ease" will make trouble for us beyond our concept, though we are always the maker of our own experience and always free to free ourselves.

Once you are free of mistaking your view of Realitly for Reality as it is, and in Science living this comes from practicing the "discernment of the FACTS of being," there comes an ability to appreciate ALL points of view as nothing but views with no Truth in them, no matter how "gross" or "wicked" your old Sunday School teacher trained your judgment to react. "Try it out, dude!"

Do you know where the phrases "eat or be eaten," "live and let live" and "know better, do better" probably originated? These are all old views of Reality still in popular use as mottos. You can check your real view of things by your emotional reaction to suggestions offered in words. What you say your view is, may not actually be so. This is good practice, since discovering your old childish emotional training secretly influencing your thinking in work-situations or love-situations is bound to be unhappiness-making for everyone.

Let's start with the easy one, "Live and let live." Do a Google. I did and this came up as the first "hit." Which amazed me.

abufares said...the world according to a tartoussi
"A man walking alone on a deserted beach, brandishing a lantern in his outstretched hand might be a fool. But, for a ship that went astray on a stormy night, the same man is a savior."
Saturday, March 07, 2009

Live and Let Live
In response to the latest bigoted outcry on the Syrian Blogsphere against Homosexuality.

Next - "If we knew better, we would do better" goes back to Socrates and Aristotle, Greek philosophers in the 3rd century B.C. Socrates, a most brilliant self-learner, in fact the first in Western thought to declare himself so, did not know Aristotle. Aristotle hadn't been born when Socrates died. Please notice the operative words "know" and "would". Aristotle did know Socrates from reading Plato and others and being a most brilliant self-learner himself, Aristotle decided that Socrates theory of will-weakness ("When I say "no" I feel guilty) indicated a lack of knowledge or enlightenment. Agnosia or mental blindness as cause, is will-weakness (vice -lack of skill in one's living) as the effect. But Aristotle rejected Socrate's view of Self-reality and emphasized instead "weakness of will" as the cause and ignorance or stupidity as the effect. This debate goes on today. When a metaphysical scientist says: "Know better, do better," they are advocating enlightement, or self-discovery, self-learning in the tradition of Socrates, the first "non-Aristotelian" thought-systemer.

And now for the fun one. "Eat or be eaten." This did not start with business strategists. Accoring to the book, "Ideas That Changed The World, " by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, the very fist recorded IDEA THAT CHANGED THE WORLD WAS -- drum-roll --"We can eat each other!" The idea of cannibalism indicates the first "thinking" animals -- homo sapiens. He says: "Some of the earliest evidence of human thought lies among the detrius (feces) of a cannibal feast eaten nearly half a million years ago. (Isn't science fun?)..."We have trained ourselves to recoil from cannibalism and to see it as treason against our species: a form of sub-human savagery. The evidence, however, suggests the opposite: cannibalism is typically -- you might almost say peculiarly -- human and cultural." No other mammals snap in two the bones of their prey, he says, and dig out the marrow to eat. All others tend to avoid any practice of cannibalism except in extreme circumstances and feasts and rituals are not extreme circumstances. "Which suggests that it did not come "naturally" to our ancestors, they had to THINK about it." (italics mine).

Now to complete the thought if you are a student of modern metaphysical science, it did not come "naturally" "humanly" it came "divinely." Human nature is human, because it is divinely Natural and not human for the same reason. Inspiration! Love meeting the human need for -- food and food for thinking. What an interesting view of the "two roads diverged in a wood, and I..." and how it does shoot to hell the two old creation stories of Genesis of how man becomes man in the eyes of himself and God. Science has a different view of everything (the universe).

If there was no divinity of HUMANITY, there would be no feasts, no rituals, animals would be animals. But the time came because the IDEA came, the inspiration came to be divine, to be immortal -- which 500,000 years ago meant living to tomorrow, maybe next week, depending on the food supply -- Hey! I've got a great idea! Let's eat people! And the human race was born, born in inspiration and a new idea. Fortunately for you and me, the unfolding God-idea pushing itself out from the depths within us, pressuring us to identify it more clearly and correctly had more than that one old 500,000 year old idea up its sleeve.

Reality is demanding us to give up the old concepts of the God-idea as fast as we can. Or -- we might just have to eat you.

Silly

2009-07-17T21:25:00.002-06:00

You might be interested to hear that my article on Love was accepted and published by the IMS in their latest newsletter. The title is "Silly" and so is the article. You will find it on my web-site.

I was snipped

2009-07-17T21:05:00.003-06:00

Hanging by a very thin thread, I was maintaining a connection with the officialdom calling itself "Divine Science." This last little bit of old hope in me manifested as my web-site address included in a list on the Wikipedia page entitled: Divine Science. I had inserted it into the wiki page in the hope that it might catch some recognition and prove to be a door into association with others of like mind. Recent inspirations led me to revise my web-site and so I thought I should update my link with Wikipedia. But I found I had been edited out. My thread had been snipped. My link was removed by some editor. You wil notice that I've changed the headings on this blog and on my web-site. "Divine Science Today" -- what do these words mean? This is the inspiration, the idea revising my web-site and the writing I am looking forward to doing. Divine Science, the Omniscience of the one Mind, Truth is infinite and continuously demands "new paraphrase from the world of letters." Since Truth, Science is infinite it can't possibly be confined to an organization with a history and a dogma. Mistaking an old organization with the Science of one Ego is ended and I'm thrilled that my last thread of attachment to the old organization is snipped. It frees me to write about Divine Science Today.

Margaret Laird and John Dorsey

2009-07-01T14:55:00.004-06:00

From my research into Scientific Metaphysics I have learned that Margaret Laird became acquainted with John Dorsey through a mutual friend. Their collaboration over many years evolved some interesting material. In my current view, Margaret Laird is the clearest voice of teaching the Science of metaphysics as the psychology of Spirit and John Dorsey represents to me a clear voice of psychology which evolved into profound spirituality. As I read them together, I keep finding in both of their work what Dorsey calls in his introduction to Illness or Allness: a "deep reverence for individuality." I think that is the premise of practice for today as it was in their day.

Greater Works

2009-06-09T17:36:00.009-06:00

Lillian DeWaters writing in 1946 published a book entitled, Greater Works. The title refers to John 14:12 which has Jesus saying to his disciples:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater [works] than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. "

Those of you who know Greek know the English word "I" translates the Greek word "ego." Lillian speaks in her later writings of the fact that many of her correspondents were experiencing the "law of diminishing returns" on their investments of time and energy in "treatment" work. The law of diminishing returns is "the tendency for a continuing application of effort or skill toward a particular project or goal to decline in effectiveness after a certain level of result has been achieved." (Answers.com) It seems that when one has devoted considerable time and energy to the study and practice of metaphysics there comes a growing sense of recycling "healings". It is understandable to take the healing principles out of context, isolate them and magnify them and unmindfully make them the All-in-all. And this impasse in the growth and progress of the practitioner is seen as patients coming for healings until the practitioner finds him or herself in the "empty space" Love provides for the discovery of "nothing to heal and no one to do healing." Lillian indicates that this is a transition into the "greater works" demanded of Truth's conscious identity (Man) and asks what could be a greater miracle than all of Jesus' miracles including his resurrection?

Margaret Laird in her Laird Letter of Jan./Feb1980 answers: "Divine Intelligence is the unthinkable thought-force that intuitively becomes the perception of each individual in the knowledge that whatever is happening is happening perfectly. The Science that I am as conscious identity disposes of the intellectual perception of being something I am not. In this process the "conscientious me" full of re-volution, likes and dislikes,---becomes the "conscious I" with no complaints --- rejoicing always in the divinity of humanity. ..What disappears in the context of being Mind, in love with everything and everyone, is not the disappearance of anything but the appearance of everything as it is. In being my Self consciously, with no externality to dull vision, the sick, complaining, unhappy individual that I am not disappears."

This is the miracle of today.

Truly it is a greater work than all the miracles of Jesus even his resurrection.

2009-05-13T20:22:00.001-06:00

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans. --Woody Allen

2009-04-28T20:31:00.012-06:00

My wife Laura and I moved to the mountains. Here we are in 3 feet of Spring snow. Down in the left hand corner of this picture is our dog, Maddie. The day after we took this picture, Maddie died. She was 12 years old and had been the mascot of our blended family. Observing grief is interesting experience. I had been reading Lillian DeWater's book God is All (1928) in which she relates how she healed her dying canary by receiving illumination and inspiration. I wanted to do the same for my dog. With three feet of snow, I had lots of tiime for reflection and reading. Since I'm reading all of Lillian DeWaters writings, I found that she changed her position somewhere about 1940. She wrote "Light" (1950) as a companion to "God is All." Here she says: "The answer to the world's problems is not to be found in the healing of diseases or in the overcoming of wars. The deep significance of this hour is that we turn ou hearts from all else to God for direct light, vision and revelation." "To be at all we must be this One." "Spiirit -- the One I Am - the I or Identity of all---is Here and Now always the same - invincible, unchangeable, absolute."

Maddie the dog was more than appeared to human eyes. She was the result of work I did with Joel Goldsmith. I had a "mortal" fear of dogs since paperboy days. And reading Joel's message one cannot escape his theme of "there are not two powers, good and evil. Good is the one power." Gradually I overcame my fear of dogs and Maddie was my first dog. She introduced me to the wonderful world of love appearing as animals.

We decided to plant trees on our new property in her memory.

Across the Unknown

2009-04-28T20:24:00.002-06:00

I took a couple of weeks off to read S.I. Hayakawa’s book, Language in Thought and Action. I think this is a very important book. My brother asked me once, “Don’t you ever read books newer than 1950?” Being a product of 1950’s to 1970’s American education when I read the pioneering works on scientific metaphysics I feel as though there’s a huge gap in my learning. Much of my research has been reading old books to fill that gap. One such book was Across the Unknown, by Stewart Edward White. According to Amazon, Stewart Edward White was a beloved author of Western adventure stories who devoted the last 30 years of his life to writing accounts of his wife's mediumistic explorations of the inner dimensions of life. His books are rightly regarded as classics in the field of spiritual growth.
When I read a book, only a few ideas really stick with me. Here is one from White’s book:
“The struggle of each generation is the interpretation of the whispered allotment of wisdom into the current vernacular. You are at a turning point of a great tide. Who is there to offer guidance in the age-proven technique of living, and yet point ahead to the regions we are appointed to explore? We arraign your generation for its failure to establish faith in the proven laws of living.” - The Invisibles

The Attenuation of Truth

2009-03-11T11:51:00.039-06:00

Sunday, we went to a New Thought church service in a town near our new home, mainly out of curiosity since it was historical. The congregation was very small like its building and very old, like its building. We were easy to spot as “new” folks. They were very cordial. During the message from the minister my mind wandered to a question: How is it that the American Amish hit on 18th century Pennsylvania and their peculiar way of living as the true Way (orthodoxy)? Standing still in time, resistant to all social change surrounding them, their religious tradition's ideas, language and habits have given their community members an impervious and permanent sense of inner stability, of timeless personality. Preserving their religious beliefs they hand down their way of life from generation to generation and so from a scientific view fulfill the first law of nature --- self-preservation. Their way of life seems peaceful, happy and productive, especially in contrast to the paroxysms of social upheaval surrounding them. In fact, according to Wikipedia the Amish church membership is growing because mothers are having more children! The word tradition, incidentally, means in its original meaning: “handing down.” From the point of view of the majority of American society the Amish tradition has succeeded only in making the Amish themselves an “anachronism.”
As the "scientific Christian" minister went on with her talk, I wondered if I was witnessing the same phenomenon going on here. The congregation was “primarily for old women and their mothers” as my preaching professor had tagged a Presbyterian congregation near our seminar once. I wondered what my daughter, a bright, sensitive and caring career woman would find helpful in the old “scientific Christian” organizations. Are the ideas in these teachings helpful for her and of value to hand down to her daughters and is the goal of making them impervious to time, change and social upheaval what the pioneers of New Thought called the immunity of Spirit? Is that Divine Science? It seemed that the minister was answering questions that no one is asking.

The questions coming at my daughter arise from her environment which is highly production oriented. Her inner instinct urging her too see perfection within her is Truth, her divinity (Spirit) laying its claim on her, demanding a permanent perspective from which to view her now world, to discover "she is the world she walks through." Truth is no longer a "still small voice" as it was in the times of her great-grandmothers whispering to them when they went into their closets. When she goes into her closet it is to find the fortification needed to stand as a woman in her world. I wondered, is the public language the attenuation of Truth? Attenuation, not a word she would recognize, means the gradual weakening and disappearance of the catalytic agent in a homeopathic medicine. Is Truth, the catalyst, buried in today's indifference as the philosophers of today's language are claiming? If so, is meaninglessness inevitable?

But suppose the reverse is true and it is Truth attenuating the public language? Then what if "anachronism" means one who stands squarely in the now of today, but with vision coming out of the wide-open future and the Gospel of Truth today is science fiction instead of sentimental journey? What if the relics and artifacts of Truth are born into our environment as our children's children bringing with them the question of "Who Am I NOW?" "Who will live Me NOW?" "Who will hear Me NOW?" demanding that we answer them. Will my daughter hear her daughter's daughter giving her grandmother the eternal words of Truth out of the pure heartedness of her Spirit to speak to her daughter the Science of Oneness, the Circle of All before she is "born" so that her granddaughter's friends will exclaim, "Wow! Your grandmother was way ahead of her times."

Today, the word "sin" in the popular language means little more than eating something chocolate when one is on a diet. The religious organizations which perpetuate "sin" are crumbling away. Truth's attentuating power has reduced the concept of sin to near absurdity, an old trivial mistake, a primitive attempt to state a profound spiritual fact. Soon the meanings "sickness" and "death" will also be as silly because my daughter listening within herself, hearing her heart only, will hear her granddaughter laughing within at beliefs like sickness and death.

The Gold Standard

2009-02-27T12:08:00.037-07:00

At the gym this morning I was watching an informercial on "six-pack abs". Having been a personal trainer in a fitness center, I wondered: when did "six-pack abs" become the "gold standard of physical fitness? When I was a scrawny kid in elementary school the national gold standard was The Presidential Physical Fitness Award which I never won. But it was the local gold standard that mattered more to me since this was the prize in the eyes of my peers. This involved climbing ropes suspended from the gym ceiling, climbing up from the floor to the ceiling. I struggled all through elementary school to make this great achievement, watching other athletic kids scramble up and down while I just hung there trying to figure out how to make this rope climbing thing work. I can still hear the strains of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" in my mind. It wasn't until late in the 6th grade that I actually made it all the way to the top. But --- to my horror instead of proud satisfaction, I looked down from this unnatural and dizzying height wondering about the newly discovered "other side" of this "ropes" paradox: now, how do I get down?

Somehow I did. It didn't take me years, but only minutes. I decided then that there might be other gold standards I could aspire to, so I went into a life of Art instead of Sports. 25 years later I was a personal trainer in a fitness center training folks to climb "fourteeners".

Today, in science, the gold standard is not "results" like six-pack abs nor information in infomercials. (And besides, did it ever occur to you that those fitness models pictured in the ads had the abs BEFORE they had the program or device claiming it bestowed perfect abs on them?) The gold standard in science is the double-blind (placebo) peer-reviewed journal published experiment. In science, failure is as illuminating as is success. As many experiments are constructed in order to "disprove" an hypothesis as there are those designed to "prove" one. A genuine scientist does not go to television and its "results" for his or her best data but to the scientific community.
This all made me wonder, "What is the gold standard of Scientific Spirituality?" For me, the word "scientific" means that I cannot entirely discount the role of intellect or reason in the unfolding of my understanding. I read books. Reading is not just about awareness. My awareness alone doesn't read the book, reason is involved and acting. My trained intellect interprets the books I read as I read them, but I am aware that my reason is always overshadowed and foreshadowed by my intuition which is listening and watching and waiting to insert itself at unexpected and surprising moments. What is the genuine interpolation (insertion) of intuition and what is spurious? How is the spiritual fact discerned unless its meaning bestowing power enlightens reason which unfolds from "faith" (doubt) to "understanding." When an understanding unfolds, a doubt is put permanently behind me.

"Faith" is the rear guard of reason, that is, it is the commitment I myself make to the Truth of Being as my primary fact. It is also my goal of living to live freely the I am that I am. For my reason to become "correct" my intuition must be "clear". Science is a standard which includes both --clear AND correct. Divine Mind speaks the language, the dialect or dialectic of my own understanding; it is recognition and acknowledgement, insight and intellect functioning in unison (harmony). I cannot make sense of Reality or Truth in any other way. So "faith" is a promise I make to myself and I myself keep. Just like "six pack abs".

When I discover that I have been had by the infomercials and realize that my closet full of fgadgets, formulas, packages, programs, recipes, mantras, and rituals will never produce "results" unless I produce them, if I am not committed to myself, The Whole, then I will not see my way clearly enough to follow it. Becoming aware as God-- as Being fully aware of Itself alone I feel the built-in Reason for reason. This Insight or Light within me enables my reason to steer my own inner tendency of "projecting". When I am into a not possible project of becoming that which I can never be, giving all my energy to making it seem so, my intuition deserts me. I may gain the world but I forfeit the Soul. Suffering tells me I cannot get "there" without all of me --imagination or reason to make sense of my experience and intuition or insight - which alone satisfies reason. Considering a bird flying, which wing can it do without?

Talking the talk, walking the walk, are no longer standards of spirituality --- flying is.

"Mind must have conscious identity to be Mind. This is the Reason for man and is the Principle by which he lives, moves, breathes. Originality, wit, humor, versatility, spontaneity, joy are characteristics of Mind. They are Mind Itself and not mere qualities. The substance of Mind is Spirit, and Spirit is Love and Love is Infinity—omnipresent perfection. “Being is infinity, freedom, harmony and boundless bliss. This is the Science and the Reason we say, “Be and by being heal the sick." --Bicknell Young

"You are radically relying on Truth when you believe only what you find within yourself as understanding. The night of dualism is far spent. We are learning to know ourselves and to demonstrate the human and divine coincidence as the individual perception of Truth. This is the reason for the writing, as well as the reading, of this book. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears. All doctrine and dogma for the identity of Truth are constantly being outmoded by Truth unfolding form the withinness of consciousness. The evolution of consciousness does make the dogma wrong for the identity of Truth in the age in which it appeared, but makes it obsolete for the succeeding age. Consciousness or conscious (37) being is Mind—a ceaseless disclosing of Reality. This is the Reason that I am. In an earlier age Meister Eckhart said it this way: “Everything that is has the fact of its being through being and from being.” Being is ceaseless awakening to Reality. It is the discovery that nothing exits external to our being, either to gain or lose.
Mrs. Eddy was not the first to identify Mind as the ordering Principle of the Universe, original and individual. Plato regarded Mind as including the forms, the universal ideas which are the Reality (structure) of all things. He, however, considered Mind transcendental, and its ideas as ideals separate from sense phenomena. What made Mrs. Eddy’s vision unique was her recognition of the indivisibility of consciousness and her identification of Mind as the all-pervading substance or energy which constitutes existence. “One infinite God (Mind, Good) unifies men and nations constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars;" --Margaret Laird

Today -- healing is no longer the gold standard of scientific metaphysics and mysticism. Stopping wars is.

2009-02-24T19:29:00.016-07:00

I pulled a book off my shelf called, A Brief History of the Paradox, by Roy Sorensen who is professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College. In the frontispiece were these two quotes: "There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray: one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary, above all the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists to the discussion of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements
thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. The first perplexes almost all the human race; the other exercises philosophers only." --Gottfried Liebniz, Theodicy

"Here and elsewhere we shall not obtain the best insight into things until we actually see them growing from the beginning." ---Aristotle, Politics

In the unfolding understanding that we are, we find ourselves confronted by a series of paradoxes. Paradoxes are riddles seducing us into attempting to solve them. The oldest recorded paradox is presented by the Greek Philosopher Anaximander and is the riddle of origin. Most popular version: "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?"
Intellectually, the problem can be solved by taking one side or the other. Chickenism or Eggism, let's start a new movement, maybe an institute. While this may seem to be a solution to the problem and ends the impasse and we proceed, it is no solution, our understanding-level recycles itself behind intellect's back and reappears "in fairer form". Now we are confronted by The old Paradox in a new form. Paradoxes can be "dissolved."
Of course, Margaret Laird's presentation is: "The human is human because it is divine and not human." We are the Paradox living our own divinity unself-consciously as another as understanding unfolds to us that we are our own divinity self-consciously living our Self.

"Understanding is the Lord that takes care of everything. Let understanding—the Truth of being—your own divinity or God-self, deal with the problem and it becomes no problem. This understanding is the Lord building your world in complete command of every situation. The all-knowing Mind is the intelligence, the Love, that disposes of the need for a problem or catalyst. The name which conditioned thinking or ignorance gives to Reality, the Good, is the Reality in finite form. The attempt through human effort to make conditions better and mankind happier, proves abortive and frustrating since the human is human because it already is divine. Treat sickness with 'the right apprehension of the truth of being' and you treat it with Love, which evaluates it as a Health experience."

"We cannot imagine what life will be like as the idea comes into clearer focus that everything seen, heard, felt is functioning Intelligence—one’s own Self-fulfillment or actualization. In all destruction, construction is the destruction, in matter, Mind is the matter; in body, Soul is the body. These paradoxes state the Absolute or Science. Since the human is human because it is divine, my divinity makes all decisions for my humanity. The CSt, therefore, is unafraid even when what he calls himself and his world is threatened with destruction. He realizes that such appearance is simply not seeing clearly and that in reality a new world of peace and plenty is forever in the making. CS lived as Science, as discernment, translates matter into Mind and error into the language of Truth. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote “Matter and Spirit are two distinct aspects of one single cosmic stuff.” The truly religious man is the man whose daily living is his religion. Everything he does, he does by being conscious identity, and therefore everything he does, he enjoys and appreciates. He does not consider that going to church, praying, or reading a holy book are any more religious in nature than going to his office, doing housework, playing tennis or enjoying the theatre." - Margaret Laird, Christian Science Re-explored.

I would revise de Chardin's statement to read: "Matter and Spirit are and are not simultaneously two distinct aspects of one single cosmic stuff." When we think "we have it" we don't and it has us.

2009-02-21T10:00:00.010-07:00

The intellectual world was rocked when natural scientist Charles Darwin published his book, The Origin of Species in 1859. In his biography of Darwin, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, author David Quammen, shares an intimate portrait of the man behind the scientist. Darwin was the wealthy son of a British aristocrat and attended Oxford, studying theology. Bored with and unconvinced by the natural theology of his day he entered biology instead of medicine as had his brother. As he developed his views of the origin of new species arising in response to the environments on isolated islands, his conflict with theology grew. His final break with theology came when his beloved little daughter died in agony. It was at this point that Darwin, like many sensitive thinkers, put the question of theodicy to himself and coming to no conclusion turned his back on the God-idea.
The question of theodicy was most clearly formulated by the philosopher Leibniz who introduced the term in his 1710 work "Theodicic Essays on the Benevolence of God, the Free Will of man, and the Origin of Evil". The problem of evil had been tossed around since Epicurus, who is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called "the Epicurean paradox" or "the riddle of Epicurus."
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?" — Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief .
What Darwin did for the intellectual community of his day was to demote theology's man-idea from its standing in its own eyes as just slightly below God and accountable for becoming perfect through sacramental religion, to a new man-idea just slightly above the higher primates. This demotion from angel to animal brought outrage then and can do so now. We are nothing more than a fancy animal with a slightly modified brain evolved under natural selection pressures determined by the local environment. The brain of a human is not much different than other animal brains, has more similarities with them than differences and may conceivably be replaceable one day with an artificial brain instead. Darwin's discovery of the mechanism (law) of natural selection did wonders for natural science, gave a new respect for animals, even microscopic ones, in the scientific community and opened the way for science to free itself from religion and to evolve into today's neurological and DNA investigations. The new view into the mechanics of the brain and body also gave rise to such science fiction predictions as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Orwell's, Animal Farm, and today's quest for higher forms of artificial intelligence (robots) which challenge our use of the word "human." What exactly does it signify? Where is the line between animal and human? Human and machine?
What Darwin didn't do was to see himself standing facing his greatest discovery presented in the devastation of his daughter's death. For this he had no vision and he turned away from it. Although he helped to liberate science from old theology, he was himself no giant of metaphysics, or of self-understanding, no profound listener to the Voice within us all. Quammen tells us that Darwin called his wife, "mommie" and would run and hide in her breasts when he was disturbed When confronted by the problem of evil so personally his brilliance did not speak to him but was silent.
What do you hear when the question of evil is put to you? As an academic exercise it is trivial and you may hear nothing. I travelled through seminary and 20 years of professional ministry and never really thought about the Epicurian Riddle, until the question was put to me so profoundly personally in several experiences in close sequence that brought me to the point where I imagine Darwin stood that day his little daughter died and drove me into the search for truth called metaphysics.
Scientific Metaphysics was emerging into its own mainstream discussion about the time of Darwin, taking as its premise and platform the opposite view of life, that life is Spirit and not matter. Metaphysical scientist Mary Baker Eddy in her textbook, Science and Health with Key to Scriptures wrote:

"Christian Science goes to the bottom of mental action, and reveals the theodicy which indicates the rightness of all divine action, as the emanation of divine Mind, and the consequent wrongness of the opposite so-called action,--evil...." S&H 104:13

Fifty years later metaphysician Margaret Laird wrote: "In the effort to overcome evil, as if there could be a false substance, the mind is kept in constant confusion and turmoil. Our problems and their solutions rest in ourselves. Certain it is that evil will remain with us just as long as we entertain the belief that there is evil."

2009-02-19T10:37:00.003-07:00

In his book Up from Eden, Ken Wilber writes on transpersonal psychology. He makes mention of the fact that young children passing through the "typhonic" stage of evolving consciousness dream about animals. It occurred to me yesterday that maybe middle-aged adults also dream in "stage-appropriate" terms. Why is it that we can't just will ourselves to have happy, sexy, fun dreams at night, but instead seem to have mainly frustrating dreams of vain efforting to fulfill some impossible task? Is it that we are stuck in a stage of an evolving consciousness? What would the transition/transformation into the new, more expansive, more inclusive stage of consciousness involve? Would we see dreams representing and validating the fact that we had made the transition? Do dreams of frustration and despair arise only in one discrete stage and not in another, say self-consciousness but not Cosmic Consciousness? Do we play these night dreams out in our waking experiences of "living lives of quiet desperation"?