Joy Sters

Here is a cosmic joke if there ever was one … why make any additional pillars after this one.  To claim anything but God is to say there is something outside of God. A human obviously thinking that it is outside of God, says have no idols and yet just to have a name in this world it to have an idol. There is no god, except God. That means, there is only God (period). It’s God saying it is not god (laugh) and it is God writing the books, it is God reading this writing and it is God typing the words, God plays all parts. One can be a denial of God but even that is God being a denial of God.

Actually, this is really not about either.  There is intelligence like any other race, however, the culture has been (in a sense) held back through slavery and so it was like being at the starting line of the “race” and while everyone else was running circles the Afro-Americans were at a standstill. However even standstills have advantages and we shall see in future generations just what that actually reveals or looks like because … like a pot on slow cook … the flavors sink in and make for something very tasty … this doesn’t mean better … it just means more flavor. Once cultural “blood lines” have had time to simmer you get to see what kind of soup will be served (which you can see how great the reward is by how fast Afro-Americans have been able to assimilate from the “slavery” mentality into mainstream living).

Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with Prayer, though at it’s premise in the way most seem to use it, perpetuates two lies; one that there is something that the one praying is separate from and two, that things can be some other way than how they are. They are both actually the same thing.

TheSOCTeach:

Just remember: The "I" is the one who got you out of bed today, put your clothes on, fed you, and emailed me. 

Responded:

That is what you *think* but just because you *think* something doesn't make it so. If one takes the time to begin to watch ... become aware of what moves one ... they begin to see the lie of the "I' and begin to identify with what Truly moves them and yet has not moved all.

You have very good questions and questions are great ... the more the merrier. One day however, you will be left with only one question and it is the only question, actually, that one ever need ask, because in the discovery of the Answer is the end of all Questions and that is...

So this warning has been going out for 2000 years and everyone has been afraid of it for 2000 years and yet still are waiting for something to happen? Sounds like a giant case of "fear of fear" from here. If one can make you afraid of dying ... that one has all the power in the world ... even if it is a book.

It is almost as if you have to watch the whole thing collapse before anything new can blossom. What seems to have been won by women gaining independence is drug addiction, educational decline, divorce, everyone in the family in therapy, children under the age of 18 … even under the age of 10 on drugs you wouldn't give a 21-year-old if you had any common sense! And why are we drugging them? To get them to sit still in a boxed in class room learning man-made things that even most teachers are no longer interested in?

Jesus didn't walk around with a Bible telling people how to live their lives ... in fact, it doesn't seem he told people how to live their lives at all ... he just lived his. Those that had ears to hear were drawn to him. He didn't have to go searching for anyone or anything because he knew the saying "I am the light and the way" would draw any and all to him like a lighthouse draws a ship in the night.

The book says that a “model minority” is a stereo type that is supposedly positive. Though how can it when anytime there is an attempt to make one person or group of people look “better” than another, it ends up negative? And it is supposed to invoke images of Chinese engineers, Japanese financiers, Filipino nurses, Korean entrepreneurs and Vietnamese restaurant owners as a testimony to the possibility of color-free (how if it is based on race?), problem-free (how if you are making it seem like only these races are capable?), government-free (making those that maybe on assistance appear even less capable?) in to the U.S. Society.

Ultimately, everything that you will learn in the world is false. If you are able to loosen the grip of understanding and come from the standpoint of everything being false; then you will take what you learn much more lightly and with a much more fully open mind (which is also a lie).

If you ever plan to circumcise your child be wise to what you are doing … do not just follow the herd … educate yourself … it is not about religion or beliefs or popularity, you taking something from your child that you cannot ever return. You are changing his sexual experience for the rest of his life. You are inflicting a tremendous amount of pain as one of the first experience of life and it takes weeks to heal. If the skin was not supposed to be there … it wouldn’t be. Why are you cutting off a gift from God?

To have a statement such as this is to lead one out of one house of bondage right into another. Rules of any kind are a bondage from God. Religion is a bondage from God … no matter how good it feels … it is limiting in that God is not limiting and if one can only believe what is written then how can it hear what comes from what cannot be wrote? How can you be used by God ... if you are using “god” to keep God out?

Recently it has come up about poor wages paid and child labor being used in regards to the things we buy. Spent a bit of time looking at this and the feelings that come up around the possibility that a product being purchases was made by a child and the “guilt” that seems to arise around that thought. There is no interest in going into a store and feeling guilty … which lead to the idea of taking the time to be grateful instead. Instead of looking at the product(s) as a form of child abuse … to instead send the children of the world Gratitude for their work and effort to make things, which supposedly make a more convenient life for us all.

It is a catch 22 on the Mascots … where one can see that it is a form of disrespect and yet at the same time a gift for those like me growing up on the east coast there was not much shared about Native Americans and the history and so the Washington Redskins were almost the first revealing or reminder of the Native way … it was not seen like a joke … it was seen as a symbol or reminder of a history that was not being taught anywhere else. There are so few reminders around the world of Native Americans that one (this one) will take all that they can get (even if it is a Mascot) to remind one of the Native way. Because once the reminder appears … the Inner begins to reveal itSelf. It doesn’t matter that some people see the Mascots as a joke or mean-spirited … let the ignorant see what they see.

The Vegan Picnic was odd. The whole thing came together around eating habits leaving us not much else in common. I was able to see a few interesting things. One; it came up to look at “control” as it appeared when a few members noticed that the information that was sent out said the meeting was for both Vegan and Vegetarian. I thought, “Shit it also said vegetarian … does that mean there will be cheese and dairy!” And then I realized I did not want to be one of “those kinds of people” that doesn’t go because of it and realized the only way not to be that way is to only eat what I bring. Although that is control too! It’s not having to “sound” like “one of those” but still being one. I didn’t realize that there are different reasons that people don’t eat animals. It seems insane here now that one would want to continue the insanity of mass slaughter, but most don’t even see the knife in their hands. They think someone else is the killer. Some people don’t care about the animals at all and only stop eating meat because it is not good for their bodies. I guess whatever gets you in the door … gets you in.

I worked for a company that was all Jewish except for me and one other girl ... they were all Hasidic Jews and wore wigs to cover their hair which was consider "sacred" for only the husband and G-d to see ... however when I asked them what their real hair looked like ... they said "exactly like the wig" and the wig was made of someone else’s real hair! That just seemed like the funniest freaking thing! Why bother wearing the damn wig!

Minority Groups are formed usually for some kind of social structure and belonging. People tend to not want to stand-alone and so they go and attempt to find others that share similar interests or cultural identities. Doing this makes them stand out more and tends to give them a sense of Group Power (which does not usually lead to good things). It is becoming more and more obvious that a “group” anything is to the exclusion of another and a “group mentality” seems to form that causes more problems than solutions.

This life that is in front of us will one day just disappear like your favorite TV show ending and it will be as if it didn’t ever happen … similar to the many Great Books that will not ever be read by you or anyone else … through time … they become dust and dirt on this giant composter we call “Earth,” which devours everything and will one day be devoured itself.

I honestly don’t know if cellphones are killing the BEES. I only know it is what my GUT tells me and there was energy and pressure to get rid of the cellphone and anytime I would ask why … it would come up that it was from the BEEs. You will find in life that you can’t always seek validation from the “outside” for what you begin to discover on the “inside” you just have to begin to Trust yourself … it’s like a “training program” and the training is in “faith” that you don’t have proof but you don’t need it and Faith grows from following the things that your “gut” or “intuition” or “whatever you want to call it” tell you.

Before one is born there is a casting of the Soul (Empty Space) into the body. Then from birth every choice that is seemingly made in life becomes a tighter and tighter casting around You/Soul/Empty Space Full of ItSelf. You “temporarily” become what you believe.

When you believe you are the body and you begin to see that you are not the body, the question ... "if I am not the body, then who am I?" appears. At first, that thought can be scary because you do not know who you are and who has been there all along … looking out of you; you only “think” you do.

A: God Is. God is playing all the roles. No one likes to hear this ... because they like to believe they are the one in control (talk about usurping the power of God). However that is done in thought only and even then that is God ...

God's Cosmic Gift to itSelf! The trick of “other.”

Being “Home” School’d is being School’d by what is already innate in you. First it has to be tapped into. This discovery can be made through the investigation and interrogation into the “self” that one thinks they are (body, personality, race, gender) to the Core of who they actually Are.  The tool that works best in making this discovery is the question “Who am I?”

The more that is read about the different religions the more it is heard that at the core of them it is the same message and that the people are “called” in a sense to the same kind of yearning to go deeper … that this yearning to discover more is what leads them to begin to know who they Are. This is where all the Great Teachings and Teacher have pointed.  One must do the work for themselves. The only difference that seems to be there … is in the words used to describe that calling/yearning.

At one time, both myMother and myFather knew how deeply indebted they were to the optimal functioning of the planet, the animals, the water and the land that supported them. All the creatures of Earth brought sustenance, joy and amusement into their Home (Earth). The animals (including humans, cows, chickens and pigs) lived in harmony with the planet’s balance. All the creatures intuitively knew of their dependence on one another … all the animals of the planet made up one Family; dependent on each other for existence.

It is absolutely possible to not only minimize the impact of prejudice in society and discrimination on the individual. It is so simple that the odds are against it, because the mind (people) does/do not like simplicity (so that would be the first step … begin to welcome simplicity).

I have watched as friends get out of prison and there is no where for them to go...society holds it against you and makes it very challenging to come out with any self-esteem or ability to get work after you have spent so much time being labeled worthless.

SABOTAGE is a gift. You sabotage yourself to be free. Most think that when you push the ones you love or the ones that love you … away … that it is something bad or unhealthy … but what if it is Life’s way of keeping it so you are not boxed in … contained and frozen into the image of how others see you and not who and what you Are.

Took the path that goes by the railroad tracks under the bridge on the walk over to the YMCA this morning and came to find that a huge fence is now blocking most of the portion that provides shelter from the elements and a man was there putting up signs to prevent people from hopping over.

He said to me “how’s it going” and I said “it was going good until I saw this fence.” He said it was being put up to keep people from going up under the bridge and starting fires (which destroy the concrete over time). Maybe I would have accepted this at a valid excuse or answer at some other point in time, however I have spent time with people under this exact bridge/underpass when it has been cold and rainy outside and there is no where to go and so I asked him “that is all well and good but where to the people now go?” He didn’t have an answer.

David West came to visit our classroom 9 days ago; he works at Southern Oregon University as the director of the Native American Studies Program and first spoke to us in Anishinaabe. He is a fourth generation Oregonian whose family came from Idaho. He spoke to us about a different time, one in which the people of coastal Oregon would drive their cars on the beaches as there were no roads at the time. When you first get a glimpse of a past you haven’t seen before, it can appear fascinating and glamorous. He explained that the cars would drive in unison with the tides of the ocean and how amazing it would be to see the synchronicity of it all, including the incidents where the tide would pull vehicles out into the ocean! It was a time he remembered fondly. However, he went on to inform the class that the reason people no longer drive along the ocean is because it was polluting the water and causing severe erosion on the beaches. One generation’s bliss is the next generation’s nightmare.

Up until today, it had never crossed the mind that Native Americans might be on the streets, yet it also did not cross the mind that Native Americans make good writers. Yes, I have met plenty of people that live without shelter and have spent days and nights listening to the stories of what it is like to keep on moving from place to place, not staying long enough to become familiar and unwanted. Then I read the story by Sherman Alexie, “What You Pawn, I Redeem” and realized there is still so much I don’t know about Native American people because this mind wants to keep them in tee-pees, drumming and speaking with the land and its creatures. I want the fairytale. However, Native American people are evolving and assimilating and becoming writers as well as living on the street and so this mind must evolve and assimilate them into a much broader view of a people that once were one thing and are now becoming another.

Tribes around the United States and Canada are working to bring back some of these lost languages through a revitalization process that began in the 1960s. It has restored pride in the children to learn their Native tongue and culture without shame or threat. It would seem that a whole people went into hibernation, until the long winter of fear and attack on their culture began to end and they are now opening up to the spring time that lay before them, where they can plant their seeds of language, story telling, ceremonies and practices once again, in an environment that is no longer afraid of their ways, but genuinely interested.

The Ojibwe view all of life as the “Spiritual World” and have been speaking this simple truth, through out all of their plights, to any one who would and will listen and hear the truth of their words, not as words, but as a reality. They ask, “Where did you come from if not from your Mother (earth)?” And yet rarely are they heard. Time and again, they have been moved from place to place, with the claims of papers (treaties) stating that land can be owned and that they must move on. Meanwhile, they watch as those papers (treaties) eat up and destroy the only home that all have been gifted to live on from the Mother … earth.

If I see things of failure in this life around my person … it is in being a Mother. Not because either of my children are failure’s, they are both good men, however, I would say that they are good men in spite of me, in spite of how they were raised. In fact, I would say they are great works of Art.

Q:  When we look at a religion or participate in it as an adherent, we tend to accept its present form as the form of the religion, but an historical study will show that not only are there varying forms of it existing today, but that its form has changed considerably over time.  How might the terms explained in the lecture (lectures are posted every week in Modules) throw light on the changing form of God?

If we do not begin to set the example for living as a natural and nurturing part of the environment, then life will remove us from it. If the Natives of planet Earth (which we all are) are sick with suicide and drugs and cancer, then we have not been living the way nature intends us too and Nature is a much greater force than any human, even all of them combined, will ever be and it will reveal that when necessary.

India philosophy is often denigrated in the West because the West’s mentality depends on material and physical form and senses and to not denigrate the awareness of the world being an “illusion” would make every belief and everything they do and work for meaningless (to those that would wish to keep it real).    But just because you want to keep something real, doesn’t make it real.

You weren't raised to believe that you are a Math problem and yet Words are just another language like Math.  However, most people believe they can be described with words and that is like saying a Math equation can describe who you are.  Both Math and Words are man-made; who you are is not. 

"You are not a Math equation and you are not a Word."
(Which includes your name, you are not that either.)

Discover this and then point everyone, including children, to what both Math and Words appear In ... the Stillness that is You.

No story ... no emotion ... no you. When importance isn't given to the story ... a story ... any story ... it simply drops ... it is the same with emotion ... when both drop there is nothing that remains. However, it is not nothing like deadness ... it is simply nothing that can be referenced with the mind and yet you begin to discover by dropping the stories that what they were hiding is actually the True You.

Q&A:

Q:  According to Siddhartha's perspective at the end of his life, how is human love considered Samsara?

A:  Because it is a love that is in the world, and is settled for as real love.  However, real love is not between two but what two are IN.  It is not dependent on time or space or whether one stays together or leaves, it is not dependent on anything in this world to be and so "love" of a human is Samsara because it is not real.  It is limited by beliefs and making sure that one does what the other wants or they with hold the love.  True Love cannot be withheld, it does not change or move or alter.  This is the difference and why he said human love is Samsara.

It is absolutely possible to not only minimize the impact of prejudice in society and discrimination on an individual.  It is so simple that the odds are against it because the mind (people) does(do) not like simplicity (so that would be the first step … begin to welcome simplicity).  Once simplicity is welcomed, then all one need do is let go of categorization.  Take everyone … every one … out of the boxes “you” have put them in. Then leave them out of the boxes.  No more race, no more gender, no more nationality, no more.  Begin to see everyone naked of themselves … of the personality … of the identity.

Those thoughts you have that go by all the time, one after another, bringing all kinds of other thoughts and reactions and sensations, have nothing to do with Reality.  This is not something that you can take someone’s word for (although taking someone’s word for it, at first, is a great helping hand in beginning to see for yourself).