What is the act of evasion? What is it?
The unstated premise that A THING WILL NOT EXIST if only you refuse to identify it.
(A child hiding under the covers!)
What induces evasion?
Unpreparedness. DENIAL. If you are unprepared to face the facts you are doomed to attempt to avoid acknowledging they even exist.
("Mrs. Thornton, you're husband has been killed." (Denial: "NO!")
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EVASION derails our best values!
We cannot live by values passively.
We cannot identify and measure passively.
We cannot prevent harm passively.
Thinking is an ACTIVE process. EVASION is avoiding necessary action.
Do we make our life happen....?
Or..
Is our life what happens to us? The choice is there and it requires action and not evasion.
The choice? To drive or to be driven.
Taking the steering wheel and turning it in your own life is the only way to get to where you want to go!
We live in a real world, but, we are capable of creating an alternate reality in our mind. Often, this alternate reality (fantasy) is "better" and more comfortable than the real world.
When you think in hypotheticals there is nothing wrong with using the imagination as a tool. It is when you lose track of the imaginary content of your thoughts and start believing they are real that you get into trouble.
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When people talk about the things they cannot see and use confident tones of "knowledge" they are asserting a source of information which is invisible.
Belief and Hope are not to be confused.
Hope is a positive attitude rooting for the best outcome while aware it may not happen.
Belief evades the possiblity of failure. Evasion of the possiblity of failure is DENIAL of reality!
As long as a person sees and accepts the risk.....they are not evading their responsibility.
Refusing to prepare for the worst leads to dependency on the Supernatural solution as a last resort.
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With religious matters the belief system is designed to eliminate the sense of risk. That is why it is called "Salvation".
Religion is basically beliefs. Beliefs are thoughts and thoughts are none other than -- the mind. Aren't we dancing in a circle?
What IS our LIFE if not the TIME WE SPEND?
Wasting that precious time is the same as wasting our precious life.
The best salesmen in the world pretend to sell us MORE TIME.
They are selling a bad guess and passing it off as Eternal Truth.
Healthy people don't go to a doctor. If they do they are hypochondriacs. Hypochondriacs spend their time and money on imagined illnesses. They seek out physicians who will take their money and treat them even though there is no ailment to be cured!
Now, think about what religion does. It begins with a premise. That premise in its most basic form is hypchondria.
How so? Religions offers A WAY. A way to do what? FIX YOUR PROBLEM. For you to need to fix your problem you must buy in to the illusion you have a problem and that it is fixable.
Okay? That is step one. What kind of fix are we talking about? What do the religion hucksters offer?
Religions differ; but, essentially they offer at least some of the following:
1.A way out of death
2.Enlightenment
3.A close personal relationship with deity.
4.Super powers
5.A brotherhood/sisterhood support group
6.Superior knowledge of life's purpose
7.Things to do (how to spend your time and money).
THIS MEANS THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU NEED THESE THINGS. IT MEANS YOU CANNOT FIGURE THEM OUT FOR YOUSELF. IT MEANS YOU ARE CONDEMNED TO IGNORANCE UNLESS YOU FOLLOW THE CHOSEN PATH.
What is the TRUE CHOSEN PATH?
The other fellow's lousy guess.
Religious "fact" must simply be swallowed like a placebo and then one must hope for the best while pretending all ills are cured.
Religion can only do two things:
1.Represent an answer to a question of behavior and attitude which, when followed precisely, improves your lot in life. OR....
2.Represent a state of being which requires compliance in order to avoid some disaster. Otherwise there would be no reason for allowing it into a society in the first place.
How did all this come to pass?
I can only offer my personal opinion; a theory, if you will...
Take it for what is worth. Your mileage may vary.
Over the course of thousands of years of history:
Man became conscious that he was conscious (he became aware of his identity as a "self") reflectively.
He developed a personal identity.
Man developed a useful way of making things representational: language. (And writing)
With language man could talk to himself about what his own thoughts were!
This voice inside the head became able to project concepts which did not/could not refer to actually existing things: imagination was born.
Imagination became a tool of hypothesis and problem solving by starting out with a "What if....?"
The imaginary became, at times, indistinguishable from the actual: superstition was born.
Hallucinations, fears, anthropomorphic idealizations of the unknown became a cast of characters.
Story telling embodied the imaginary as "actual" persons in time and space and served as a way of modeling "why" certain things are the way they are. The mythology became detached from knowing it was all made up.
Man projected his own attributes outward and created an ideal of himself as his own causation: GOD.
Man had many attributes that were negative and many gods were necessary to embody the various projections.
As society progressed and became more sophisticated these mythological projects became focused into just ONE GOOD GOD & ONE BAD ONE.
Leading to what? Judaism and eventually Christianity.
Other societies never went much beyond ancestor worship or appeasement of local deities.
THE FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF RELIGIOUS CONTINUATION IN A SOCIETY WOULD BE THE CON-MEN WHO JUMPED ON THE IDEA OF CONTROLLING PEOPLE THROUGH THEIR FEAR. The MYSTIC was born as a RELIGIOUS LEADER.
By setting up a ritual ceremony a priest could make a good living and use people for his own purposes.
The role of the priesthood became a useful tool in the hands of politicians.
The rest is history.
We have our own quality of life in our own hands or we turn it all over to the priests, the politicians and the salesmen who offer
what nobody can offer.
Discover what is real and true or----or what?
EVADE!
What is the act of evasion? What is it?
The unstated premise that A THING WILL NOT EXIST if only you refuse to identify it.