A disease is a microscopic organism that wants to have us for dinner.–me

We are not meant to be perfect, we are meant to be whole.–Jane Fonda

Another way to say this would be that we are meant to be perfectly ourselves rather than perfect in any absolute sense. We are to be whole, wholly ourselves. We are not to bury our imperfections any more than we are to bury our talents.

Ego is the biggest impediment to wholeness. It takes us from the present moment which is the only place we can actually be whole. It buriee talents that do not suite it’s goals. It buries our imperfections lest others think less of it.

Pythagoras said, “Reason is immortal, all else is mortal.” Interesting but is it true? Sort of depends on what “true” means in this context.–me

Reason is a system, that is a formal set of rules, for manipulating symbols. Pythagoras is implying that that system and those rules exist independent of the universe (creation?). He is asserting that reason would exist in essentially the same form independent of the mind containing them. I’m not at all sure that’s realistic. To me the the set of rules, as well as the symbols, can be said to exist only in the context of the human mind. To me Pythagoras’ statement is a myth, presented in the language of logos.

Stop telling yourself who you are, who God is, whatever mental pictures you create they are most certainly wrong.–”Jesus” (from EdenDialogs.wordpress.com)

This is a very odd saying, it’s mythos speaking from the perspective of logos. It’s mythos talking about the limitations of mythos. It’s a warning that the stories the ego creates for us are most certainly wrong. That is, they are not reality and should not be treated as such. Like any myths, they can be used, to the extent that they work for us. But we must remain vigilant for stories that do not and ore for stories that we have outgrown.

Rationalization comes in many flavors from the syrupy sweet reasons I use to justify why something is okay when I know perfectly well it’s not, to the bitterly intoxicating belief that God wants what I want, loves what I love and hates what I hate. Regardless of the flavor, they are all pure poison to the soul.–me

We all rationalize, we hear the still small voice of God and make up reasons not to listen. We tell ourselves we have valid reasons for actions that we know to be indefensible. Or we tell ourselves we don’t know what to do when in fact we are afraid to do what we know. And this is the wide gate that leads to our destruction.

Elsewhere I have said that God will not judge us, but we will judge ourselves. And these rationalizations, large and small, will be the facts of the case. Who among us will judge ourselves guiltless. On what possible basis, forgiveness is our only hope, forgiveness for ourselves and for all those we used to rationalize our actions. This is our only hope.

In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity.–Konrad Adenauer

The fact is, it’s often much easier to make a bad decision that it is to make a good one. Good decisions often require personal change, courage, work, sacrifice or some combination of the four.

It takes a rare person to want to hear what they don’t want to hear.–Dick Cavett

Okay it’s an oxymoron but let’s go with it anyway. The things we have the hardest time hearing are those things that conflict with our deeply held beliefs about who we are and how the world works. Together these beliefs constitute our personal mythos. Of course we believe that our personal mythos is true, that it is real. Therefore anything that contradicts our personal mythos is nonsense. But as I’ve said elsewhere, the basis for judging a myth is whether it is effective not whether it is realistic.

The best myths help us to become the person we were meant to be, to grow to our full potential as human beings. And if our myths don’t help us do that they need to go whether they are true or not. And one of the best ways to identify myths that aren’t working for us is by listening closely to nonsense ideas. The ones that are inconsistent with our fundamental beliefs.

There are two types of people in the world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.–Woody Allen

This is one of the more pervasive myths of our society. That is, it’s a story we’ve made up about the way the world works and how we fit in. Is it true? Who knows, personally I don’t care. I don’t care because that’s the wrong question to be asking about a myth. Better questions would be: Does it work? Does it tell us something useful about who we are? To that I’d say yes. Today’s myth talks about what it’s like being human. Human beings are not good, all we can do is pretend. And pretending that we are something we are not is a mistake. It’s a sin in the original sense of the word, missing the mark.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.–George Orwell

Our egos want others to see us as good, and we want to see ourselves as good. On the other hand most of us have this suspicion that others (not us) take advantage of good people. And we certainly don’t want others to take advantage of us. In addition many of us suspect that good people have less fun. Once again we don’t want to miss out on any fun. So, good but not too good, that’s our goal.

Maybe that’s okay. The thing is that good is one pole of a polarity. Like most polarities it has more to do with language as it does with reality itself. Also like all polarities, overemphasizing one pole brings disadvantages. Being taken advantage of, and missed fun may or may not be negative consequences of over emphasizing our own goodness. The most significant disadvantages of over emphasis being good is that it leads us to pass judgment on others we perceive as bad. Worse, it causes us to mistreat those we label bad.

There’s good news and bad news from the historical Jesus. The good news: God says Caesar sucks. The bad news: God says Caesar is us.–J. Crossan

I don’t see any reason to believe that our (Christian) understand of God is a significant improvement over the that of the Pharisees in Jesus’ time. Oh yes, we’ve had a couple of thousand years of thinking and clearly at least some of us have an improved perspective. But in terms of true understanding, I doubt the improvement is significant.