" Our Devilish EGO"

  Chapter 8                                             

OUR DEVILISH EGO

Most of the major bad decisions that we have made in the past or are being made today involve EGO.  Here I need you to use your imagination again.  Try and see EGO as the snake, the serpent, in the bible story found in Genesis.  Ego only cares about itself and self- preservation.  In order to survive it needs to feed on something, therefore it doesn't care about the circumstances it creates during its feeding or how it will affect the host person nor is it concerned about any innocent bystanders {neighbour} nor the future.  Feed it must and here is the ironic part, it will feed on good deeds as well as bad, it also feeds on the truth as well on lies.  It doesn't care it is only programmed to survive no matter what.      

Let me try and explain the force of Ego this way. 

One of the great mysteries of Creation is the mystery of God's judgement.  How is it that the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer?  Why do bad things happen to good people or an innocent bystander dies?  How does God balance judgement with grace?  And how can God use violence to bring to an end to the ways of violence, when we know full well that violence only begets more violence?  I find it had to believe in a God of punishment and judgment.  A God who will’s suffering or death on the innocent unborn, innocent children or innocent bystanders.  What would you say if I suggested this to you?  Suffering, judgement and punishment come as a result of bad human choices, they don’t come from a God whose nature is unconditional love and forgiveness.   I believe the bad choices I and my wife made before our children were born, have had an effect on the innocent unborn, my own children, as well as an innocent bystander now and again.   You have probably noticed some of the fallout from your own situation.  Choose poorly my friend and evil calls down judgment upon itself.  Our bad choices can and often do take innocent lives in the process.  Read the news, recall the wars, past and present.  I believe they have a new name for the innocent, they call it called collateral damage.  Whatever we invent, be it guns, gas, cars, drink, toys there is always collateral damage.   I do not want to convict anyone here, we all participate by inventing or using inventions, money and power for our own convenience now and again.  The driving force here is EGO.  I do not want you to think that some good doesn’t come from bad choices either.  Some of God’s greatest allies and workers {the tyrant Paul comes to mind} have and continue to come from damaged lives.  God and the created order have a way of bring new life out of ashes but, there are always casualties and many are innocent bystanders and Ego is always at play here.  Choose poorly and the fruit of your choice will show up somewhere now or in coming generations.   Darkness comes in many forms.  Think about it for a moment reader, those who hate, end up swallowing themselves in hatred?  Let us never forget that hatred can be contagious.  Go to any gathering where this contagious disease of hate or anger is being displayed by someone, and watch it jump from one to another until chaos has its way.  You have probably experienced this manifestation in your own family, in a neighbour, or maybe at a public function just before violence erupts.   Those who are greedy – end up being consumed themselves in the end, as they seek more than their fair share leaving the innocent impoverished.  Those who are violent - perish by the very violence they unleash, and there will always be some innocent casualties.  How then can we blame God when God commands us to be responsible and to care for our neighbour as we would care for ourselves?  How can we blame God when we are responsible for the condition of our planet?  Our world ecology and environment are presently suffering because of some very poor choices made in the past and are continuing to be made today.  I believe we are blinded by our insane search for elusive economic stability which greed will never allow. 

The Creator, God if you will, used infinite wisdom in finding a way for us to punish and judge ourselves.  ADAM and EVE opened the door to our curious and sometimes evil human nature.   Choose a path not of God, and you become your own judge and jury.   Choose poorly and you can bring havoc, not only upon yourself, but also the innocent.   Sorry for the rant but I just have to get it out at times.

                                             Greed, EGO And The Innocent 
                                                 Click and take a listen: 

Chapter 9: 

Next Time:       “Thinking A Double Edge Sword” 

"A Perspective On Sin"

Chapter 7  
                                            "A Perspective On Sin"

The Bible uses only one specific word to describe living with darkness, the Biblical word is Sin.  According to the Hebrew Scriptures, the Quran, and Kitab-i-Iqan, which form the Abrahamic religions, ADAM the first human had a disagreement with God.  The result of that disagreement is described in the Genesis 2 of the Old Testament.  This disagreement was the result of ADAM and his mate Eve wanting to exercise their free will.  God allows them the freedom to choose and they chose to do what pleased themselves.   Some modern biblical scholar coined this disagreement with God, as the original sin.  Let us take note here that there is no reference to the words “original sin” in any of the early translations.  The Hebrew meaning for sin is to miss the mark.  Another way of looking at it is this.  Living in darkness can be seen as living contrary to the natural laws of creation, and this darkness traps us from seeing the truth about ourselves.  If you need a good example of this today, think about the blindness to global warming or any of our environmental issues. 

ADAM, at least according to these religious teaching, becomes the carrier of darkness into the world.  Because we are all descendants of ADAM we carry his human darkness and it can make us blinded to the sinful human nature that exists in all of us.    Some have described our sin in later writings as our curious or selfish human nature running wild.  You know the old saying “the devil made me do it.”  The paradox here would be to suggest that God made me do it.  Others see the fall from Eden as the result of God offering us our own will to choose.  From this perspective by ADAM choosing to exercise his free will, there was a price to pay and the consequences were devastating to say the least, especially for the coming generations.  In this view bad circumstances take place because our choice is out of alignment with God’s will or the creative order.  The logical thought that comes to my mind is that good circumstances take place because the choice is in alignment with God or the created order.   Either way you can see that it is our choice that brings either good or bad consequences.  I must make note here that good choices do not always give us protection from being an innocent bystanders who just happens to be in the wrong place at the time when collateral damage occurs.  We will talk about this later on. 

In this view God doesn’t judge, punish or reward.  He leaves that up to us.  A bad choice calls down its own judgment and punishment, and sometimes takes an innocent bystanders down with it.    A good choice brings with it mercy, grace and forgiveness, regardless of the circumstances.    In this view God never forsakes or leaves us and is ready to offer us unconditional love and forgiveness, even if we choose poorly.   The choice becomes ours.  It matters not what view you take as long as you can make the connection.  Check your choices out with your heart before making them, even though they may run into conflict with worldly ways of thinking, your heart will always revile to you the truth.

                     OUR HUMAN NATURES VERSES OUR SPIRITUAL

On the day of your conception you were given two natures.  One is aggressive, wanting and can be mischievous, we call this our human nature.   You might think of this nature as meaning we all have a bit of the devil in us.  The other is compassionate, humble and full of grace, we call this our spiritual nature.  You might think of this nature as the Holy in all of us.   These two natures will continue to live side by side within us until death.   You can read about their existence and their differences in the Apostle Paul’s writings to the Ephesians, found in chapter 6 of the New Testament {NIV}  One is our spiritual nature, the nature of God and the other is our human nature, the nature of man or using the Hebrew word for man, ADAM.  Here is one view on how this came about.  ADAM the first human according to the Hebrew Bible story didn’t just materialize out of thin air, nor was he just an accident.  MAN [Adam} was part of the created order brought about by God, formed from the earth and given the breath of life.  God named his creation ADAM {man}.   ADAM a Hebrew word which means when translated, man of the red earth.  The soil in Eden, according to the Hebrew story, was reddish in color.  God breathed his spirit into ADAM, giving him life and a spiritual spirit, the nature of God.   At this point ADAM only has a spiritual nature, the nature of God.  Then God creates a partner for ADAM, WOMAN and names her EVE.   God then allows ADAM and EVE the freedom to choose for themselves.  This gift of free will would give birth to our second nature, our human nature.  With the gift of free will and this selfish nature, they choose the way of the serpent {representing the way of humankind} rather than being obedient to God’s way and so they begin to feed this new nature within.  This would become our human nature.   The story tells us that their curious human nature became sinful {meaning to fully miss the mark} when ADAM and EVE choose to disobey God and did eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge in the center of the garden.  These two natures will now be from this day forth engaged in what Apostil Paul calls our spiritual warfare within and will be apart of MAN and WOMAN until death.   If you look real close at man and his accomplishments you can see that many folk of all races have perished because of the exercising of our human nature.  It is our longing to be co-creators with God or to control nature itself that feeds kayos and keeps it alive in our world.  Even when we seemingly do good things with our free will and creativeness many have suffered or died.  It seems that our human nature can justify just about anything these days regardless of the outcome.   Hence EGO, the devilish part of our human nature is given its rightful place.  

Many of the diseases, addictions, dysfunctions  environmental problem and human accidents that plague individuals, families, the innocent bystander even whole countries today, have come from our curious egotistic human nature.  We still believe we can top God’s creative genius and can rule over our world.  That we can in fact become just like God, create human life and know all things.   Dr. David Browning a visiting  Psychiatrist at a local mental institution,  passes a patient who is standing in the doorway of his room, he asks” Hello sir and what is your name”  the patient salutes the Dr. and replies”  “Napoleon, SIR! ”  The doctor then asks “who told you that” he answers “God did SIR”, and then a voice came from the next room “Oh no I didn't ”.  Illusions click and check it out!

Next time:          “Our Devilish Ego”

"Vision and Storage"

Chapter: 6                                 VISION AND STORAGE

Up to this point, being in the dark for 10 months or so,{in the womb}  our vision is not clear, we don’t know what it means to be in the light and it probably was startling and painful to let literally the light in at first.   At this early stage we really cannot comprehend what the eye sees either, yet we do begin to store pictures and images in our brain.  Here I would like you to begin to think of your eyes as a camcorder and your brain as its storage compartment.  Much like a computer with a built in cam and a hard drive to store what it is permitted to view, we were given this enormous computer chip the brain.  One of its unique properties is its ability to recall events and images from the past to the present.   Everything we have ever seen or hear is recorded and stored, and under the right or wrong circumstances can be recalled.  Think the computer is amazing, can’t hold a candle to our brains and its true capacity.  

Just think of the implications.  In the early stages of your development while outside the womb hearing and vision are the major influences.  Everything you have ever heard your parents say and everything you have seen your parents do is stored within you brain.  From very early on we begin to develop both healthy and unhealthy situations, feelings and emotions.  Here is an important revelation to living in the light.  We must keep in mind here that our parents, relatives, friends and ancestors could only teach what was taught to them through vision and actions, therefore, they cannot be blamed.    Forgive them Heavenly Parent for they know not what they have done.

Some therapists call this storage our parent tapes, and if they are right, every time you respond to a situation, task, or try and sort things out in your mind for yourself you recall images and information from your world vision and your parent tapes to guide you.   Yes even if what they taught you was wrong, unhealthy or destructive.  For some, what parents, other adults or their religion has taught them might not be right or the truth.  Child physiologists and therapists deal with this problem on a regular basis.  It has been proven that if you can teach children in a class the right way to deal with things or that certain actions or langue may not be appropriate but the home environment is where they have to return and under pressure, they will revert to their original teachings out of habit and conditioning.  This same analogy goes for some religious teachings to.  Many adults today who were taught as children that their Creator is a God of judgment, war and punishment is not easily converted to a God of unconditional love and forgiveness.  

At first glance of course we may not make much sense of it but believe me, watch any infant and it isn’t long before they begin to respond to touch and sound, and begin repeating what they have seen and heard.   Often parents can recall some embarrass moments when their child has displayed a habit, used the occasional bad word or an action in public, something the child had observed or heard at home, by a relative, their peers, TV or found on the internet.  

In the womb as well as outside some sounds are soothing and some sounds are startling.  If there was physical violence and shouting that involved your mother, do not be naïve enough to think that did not affect you personally, especially when there is evidence that playing soft music or reading stories can actually soothe the unborn.    

It isn’t until we become aware later in life that some of our afflictions and disease have come from our parents or our ancestral genetic family tree.  With that awareness in mind, we can begin to move towards enlightenment.  Enlightenment will then lead us from living in darkness into a new understanding, living in the light.  

Chapter 7: ------------------------------------------

Next Time:    “A Perspective on Sin”

"Welcome To Planet Earth"

Chapter 5:                              WELCOME TO PLANET EARTH

Up to this point, you are the innocent unborn, with no conception of good or bad, love or hate, gratitude or selfishness, generosity or greed, compassion or callousness, friend or pho, you are truly innocent.  

But here is the GOOD NEWS reader.   It doesn't have to be downhill from here.  In fact there is light at the end of the tunnel and you have been given the means to find hope, when things appear hopeless, true love, a love full of forgiveness with no conditions or strings attached, when our human conditional love fails us, but you must be a willing seeker. 

Always remember that you were also given things of the heart by your heavenly parent to help you survive in a world outside the womb.  Things such as trace memories of where you came from and to whom you really belong.  There are also trace memories of contentment and unconditional love that was breathed into you on the day of your conception.  These are not logical things, meaning matter of the mind but are inherit truths placed in your heart, a sense of knowing that will be reviled to you as you grow and learn to live in the light as was intended.   

If you can learn to accept the circumstances that surround your life and work with them rather than letting them consume you, you will learn not only how to cope with life, but you will begin to see blessings in all things.  Not just the fortunate circumstances surrounding your life but also the difficult and misguided twists and turns that we or others around us create.  This insight will cause you to trade your negative thoughts in for alms of gratitude.   There is where you will find true love, peace, contentment, hope, joy and righteous anger when it becomes necessary.       

There is not one human being on this planet that does not have to work with some sort of challenge, or affliction. Some afflictions have come from the genetic gene pool of your ancestral family.  Yes, it could even go back as far as the original seed from where all human life came, the ancestral seed of ADAM.   Other afflictions began to manifest themselves during your conception and begin their growth in the womb.  But once out of the protective shell of the womb these challenges and or affliction will have a chance to mature.  Many, will naturally overcome most or learn to live with these challenges so they do not control their lives but in some traumatic or drastic cases without proper medical attention, medication or counselling, they have been known to bankrupt you spiritually and take over one’s mind, life and future.    

I feel the need at this point to take a moment here and help you stop the blame game before it gets started, like blaming someone or something for your present condition or circumstances.   To lay blame on your parents or your ancestors will only hold you in the bondage and keep you from moving on and this book might not help you in your search from darkness to light.

May I suggest a Theological perspective here to help us understand how not to become consumed by blame.  If you follow the Christian religion as I do, try and think of it in this way.  Jesus surrendered himself to the circumstances that were facing him.  He didn't blame his captures, a religion or its authorities, or his friends whom would all abandoned Him in His hour of need.  Nor did He blame his earthly or heavenly parent.   In fact he did the exact opposite from the cross after beatings, torture, and abandonment he asks His heavenly parent to forgive them all because they truly do not understand what they were doing.  According the Christian scriptures, it was in the garden of Gethsemane, the night before he was to die that his faith was challenged.   Listen to it from the Gospel of Mark 14: 32 -36 {NIV} and I quote: 32: They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”  33: He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.  34: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”   35: Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him.  36: “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

If Jesus could ask God to forgive all those who trespassed against him by uttering these words from the cross “father forgive them for they know not what they do”.   I believe you need to extend forgiveness to yourself, your parents, your enemies and your ancestors as well before you can be set free from the bondage of blame and unforgiveness.   For I believe that none of us are completely aware of the wrongs we have committed or the harm we have caused to fall upon the innocent or a bystander because of our actions.  Every action good or bad produces a reaction and the ripple that spreads out to others.   We do not know where it goes or who it affects but we know in our heart of hearts that this is the truth.      

If I haven’t lost you at this point, I hope you will have the courage to look inward at yourself and see that it’s time to grow, it’s time to begin again and to leaving this darkness behind.   Accept who you are, being truthful with yourself seeing all your uniqueness both good and bad.  There is good psychology in this saying and I personally hold on to it:  You cannot really change anyone except yourself, but it is contagious.  You change and everything around you cannot remain as it was.  The past is gone and you cannot change things there, but you can learn from your past and change things now in the present.  Changing things now, will improve your future.  To relive the past over and over again traps your ability to see the light that can move you forward.   Tired of your trappings, hope abounds for all who seek, this is another truth of the heart. 

Next Time:   "Vision and Storage"  

"Eden Comes To Its End"

 Chapter 4                                     "EDEN COMES TO ITS END"

Now think of the implications as all this can happen to us before we even leave our Eden.  Surely things are going to get better for here on in.   Not quite yet, because after 10 or so months in our Eden, we begin to get the feeling that something or someone wants to push us out.   We are not sure why, and we probably do not want to go because this is our Eden.  It is a place of comfort and warmth for us and we are not really aware yet of any of our afflictions or the world outside.  

A man is being help at gun point “your money or your life” says the robber “Take my life Sir I need my money” says the man.

I believe that most of us accept the life we are living and the way we think as normal, regardless of what others think.   Its familiar and many will not give it over regardless of their circumstances.  But, here again in the womb, we have no choice in that matter as we are at the mercy of human nature itself.   For some, complications make it impossible to leave the womb and the circumstances are unimaginable for the mother.  Others may find themselves in difficult circumstances during the birth and almost don’t make it and come into our world already bruised, battered and in pain.   In my early years as an adult, I can remember jokingly telling my friends I often felt like I was born with a cigarette in the corner of my mouth, a beer bottle in one hand a guitar in the other and a reoccurring headache I just couldn't seem to get rid of.    Little did I now then, my Mother liked to drink, smoked like a steam engine, loved music, and suffered with migraines.  Now how’s that for passed on family traits. I got it all, but there is more, because I also came from the seed of ADAM just like everyone else.  I sometimes think of my ancestor as A – DAM affliction.  Then, there are those who just seem to sail out into the world like it was their destiny.   You know the type, don’t they make you sick!  They never seem to have hills or valleys to climb, just wide open road.  But you and I both know that’s impossible, some just hide it better than we do.

I know what your thinking, hopefully everything must be going up from hear right?  Not so fast kiddo, there’s one more thing that needs to be said to bring us into the reality of life on planet earth, outside of our Eden.  There is light at the end of the tunnel but first you need your first encounter with human hands.  You are forced down a tunnel towards the light of day, still surrounded in the warm of the amniotic fluid.   In the flash of a moment you feel a pair of hands or metal tongs in some cases, grab your head and proceed to literally pull you from the Womb.  All of a sudden the temperature drops from 98.6 degrees F to about 65 degrees F, as you are exposed to the open air.   It’s cold and you feel the chill.  Then shortly thereafter your source of supply, the umbilical cord is snipped with a pair of scissors, you feel the pain and you are literally now cut off from your supply.  Now think about this for a moment reader, especially if you have been receiving trace amounts of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sugar or other chemicals of an addictive nature.  You will now begin to experience something the experts call the DDT’S or withdrawal symptoms.  Then to top it all off, you experience your first human love touch, not a cuddle with warm loving arms, you get a slap on the bottom, OUCH!!  You learn fast, human love hurts like the dickens.  Here is where things become a little confusing for some of us, especially those who accept that human love and pain go hand in hand.  We may accept that as fact but somehow deep within our soul it just doesn't seems right for them to be partners.   Some children and adults take it to the extreme not knowing which action should come first, love or hurt, or hurt then love but they believe both are required when building relationships.  So then, do I hurt and love or do I love and hurt?  Now you know why those country love and hurting songs are so popular with the masses.  This is generally the way many of us were introduced to the outside world.    

Next time:   “Welcome To Planet Earth”

Chapter 3:                                               YOUR EDEN   

Now I would like to get a little more personal.  Your was placed in the darkness of a womb where your conception took place.  Let us think of this tiny womb as your own personal garden, your own Eden, the place where all ordained human life begins.  For your conception to have taken place, everything needed to be just as the creator had intended and in perfect alignment with this creative power.  If that were not so, you would not be reading this book.  For some though, the circumstances under which their conception took place may not have been as the Creator intended.   Some of us were conceived in a moment of passionate infatuation.    Unfortunately for others their conception took place during the violent act of rape.  In this instance, traces of that pain may have had a devastating effect on the fetus which could show up later in growth outside the womb.  Yet, even in the latter, in order for you to exist in human form, the process for insemination and seed fertilization must have been in perfect alignment with the created order.  Regardless of the circumstances surrounding your conception, you are now in the womb and the womb has become your own personal Eden, a place where your ordained innocent human life began.  But! Your innocence is no more, for you are now at the mercy of your mothers and fathers genetic family history.  You will be subjected to their diseases, their addictions, their habits and yes even their thoughts both good and bad.   In the early stages of life you have no control over what comes next.  Here in the womb in the moments of conception, we all start out completely innocent but at the mercy of our human gene pool and our DNA and whatever we receive from the umbilical cord that feeds and sustains us.   

WHILE IN YOUR EDEN

Everything your mother and father have in their ancestral genetic gene pool now joins together to create you as your cells begin to divide and grow.   Everything your mother takes into her body through eating, drinking, thinking or breathing, is to some degree fed to you through the ingenious invention of the umbilical feeding cord.  Every feeling and emotion, negative or positive your mother feels, you now begin to experience, to some degree.  For some the effect may be minimal but for others the consequences can be devastating.  The women who is carrying you in her womb, is now a part of you as you are a part of her.  Her DNA, the fathers DNA and you all come together as you become one with them.   Jesus expresses this oneness with his father in much the same way with this strange metaphor found in John 6: beginning at verse 56 where he says, “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I remain in him.  Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” According to Christian teachings taking Jesus into your life in this way makes you one with him and his father.   The ritual within the Christian church that illustrates this best is the service of communion.  Here the sharing of bread and wine symbolically represents become one with Jesus.   Others feel that you can take Christ in by feeding on the words and teachings of Jesus from scripture.     

Using the womb as a metaphor we can begin to imagine or image that your seed will receive through its feeding tube {the umbilical cord} both good nourishment as well as bad nourishment from the parent.  What you must remember here is that you have no control over what you will receive and are at this point in conception completely innocent.   For the moment, we will concentrate on some of the bad nourishment. The bad stuff can and does come in the form of contaminated food and poor air quality.  There are unwanted chemicals, negative thoughts and feelings, a history of genetic diseases and or deformities that you have no control over.  Theses contaminates if received in excess can play havoc with your growth and development in the womb before you were born.   Some of the common addictive contaminates would include prescription and non-prescription drugs, tobacco and alcohol.   Even mental and physical diseases can be genetically transferred from the genes of the mother, father or prior family generations to the child during this period of development.  These contaminates could also make your cells susceptible to certain diseases or addictions as you grow and mature in and out of the womb.  Let us consider just one chemical that has been confirmed as having serious adverse effect on the fetus, FAC, or “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.”  This syndrome has produced birth defects, learning, and behavioral problems affecting individuals whose mothers consumed alcohol during pregnancy for whatever the reason.  It has been stated that FAS is the most common preventable cause of mental retardation.   With drawl symptoms have also been observed in some newborns affected by FAS.   This condition was officially recognized and reported in the French medical literature of 1968 and included in the American medical literature of 1973.  It has been reported by Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA that FAS affects 2 live births in every 1000.   FAE or Fetal Alcohol Effects which is a milder form of FAS affects 3 to 5 live births in every 1000.   Alcohol is only one of the foreign substances that may have been transmitted to you through the umbilical cord feeding system. There are chemicals found in purified water, processed foods, prescription drugs, over the counter medications, tobacco, and the list goes on.

Let us remember that there is good positive nourishment happing also.  This would lead us to conclude that the unborn are completely innocent and helpless at all stages of development while in the womb.  

Next Time :                    "EDEN COMES TO ITS END"