Comment by Gail Koehler on 2nd mo. 20, 2015 at 8:14pm

I read these words and there's a resonance within me. I watch a clip of a Quaker invited to respond to the bully Bill O'Reilly and feel rattled when the ability to answer the bully evades good people ... If anyone has seen the Bill O'Reilly clip 19 Feb "Pacifists and the war against Islamic terror" that featured Kate Gould (FCNL) and Jim Wallis (Sojourners) and has suggestions of a way to respond I would love to hear them. Not to "convince" the bully, but simply to respond when someone insists "you got nothing"  --(http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html...)

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 21, 2015 at 1:22am

Hello Gail. Thank you for the clip. I've watched it over and over. I was disappointed with Kate Gould's response to O'Reilly's question on how she would stop the Isis atrocities ... her answer ... to seek a political solution. It is telling she never spoke of the inward Light and holding to, waiting upon, and faith in the Light itself as informing her unwillingness to use outward weapons against others. Instead, she turned to outward politically ideological and institutional forms as the solution. She expressed a particular political agenda to O'Reilly who has and different political agenda. Essentially, she engaged with a conscious anchored in and a conscience informed by outward intellectual forms as was O'Reilly; only he is anchored in and informed by a different set of outward intellectual forms. Gould offered no new way out; her way is just as intellectualized and flawed as is O'Reilly's.  

The response is to answer from a conscious anchored in and a conscience informed by Presence itself. Image someone responding to O'Reilly's question by saying they offer no way to stop atrocities of one person or group of persons against other persons or groups. That their only response to terror is to rest and trust in the working of the inward Light within them and to share that Light with others and let them kill them if that is their wish because the immediacy of Christ's presence within cradles us in eternity so that we have an eternal conscious and conscience filled by the inward Light itself with the promise of life and consciousness even beyond the destruction of the physical body. Wow, praise God! and Amen!

Just speak it. Surely, O'Reilly may or would denounce the message, however, at least it was spoken. Image how many people may have been opened to the inward Light of Christ. It is  ours to speak the Word, Presence, and trust in the inward Guide to work in others.

Comment by Diane Benton on 2nd mo. 21, 2015 at 10:32am

I was linked to the O’Reilly clip from QuakerQuaker and saw it just before reading here.  My first response was that we do not have a moral responsibility to stop the killing.  Our moral responsibility is to do what you have articulated, Keith. 

What Gould suggested was not pacifistic; it merely stopped short of killing.  She is okay with pressuring and forcing others, in other words, doing violence to another’s conscience.

I’m relatively certain guests are screened and if they aren’t a good foil for O’Reilly they aren’t invited on.  So I doubt anyone with our message would be given the opportunity to present it on his show.  Though, it is fun to imagine doing it.

Comment by James C Schultz on 2nd mo. 21, 2015 at 11:33am

I agree we can't offer a secular solution.  By doing so we play according to rules that do not recognize spirituality.  How can we get involved in a war without knowing if it's part of a spiritual battle as much as or more than a purely physical one?  How can we judge that innocent lives are being lost in a culture we don't understand while incarcerating so many people in our own country for not following what we believe is "morally" right?  Isn't our own Drug War our version of a "Holy War"?

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 21, 2015 at 4:15pm

Hello James. It is important to push further than highlighting her secular solution. The import is to manifest a particular way of consciousness or being as flawed and failed in regard to spiritual nature. This flawed consciousness is based upon addressing the human condition from a conscious anchored in and a conscience informed by outward forms and not by directly inspired inward Illumination and Presence ... that is, eternal life and light experienced.

This flawed consciousness is not limited to the secular, it also infects the religious. Adherence to outward forms is as pervasive in institutionalized religion (for the sake of clarity, including Christian) as institutionalized secular contexts. This conscious anchored in and informed by outward intellectualized and institutionalized forms is the flaw. 

The message is there is another consciousness, another way of being, that is anchored in and informed by the immediate experience of Presence itself ... an inspired being and existence that is not anchored to the natural faculties of the bodily nature. This renewed conscious, illuminated by the inward Light itself, experiences human being in eternal life not temporal life. Each of us has a measure of eternal consciousness and we can all realize it's increased measure by merely waiting upon and trusting in the promise of Grace; and the power of that Presence within each of us will bring victory over the darkness of a conscious anchored in and a conscience informed by outward secular, religious, traditional, ideological, philosophical, political, and institutional forms. In the power of inspired Presence, we awaken to a new life and a new consciousness and no longer look to outward secular or religious institutions and ideologies and traditions to anchor and inform. 

Our message to the world is we do not share outward peace based upon the expired notions of the natural person,  but we share inwardly experienced peace and love even when you find yourself in circumstances of outward terror and conflict. Even in those moments when another harms you with outward weapons of war or outward intellectual (secular or religious) forms imposed through outward institutional or individual coercion. This spiritualized conscious and conscience is of the spiritual person and is an existential threat to those who bind human being to outward secular and religious forms. The three speakers, in the clip, are examples of people would bind human being to outward intellectual and institutional forms.

To know eternal life experiencially is love even amongst those who would destroy your physical body and those who would bind you to their outwardly expired or institutuonalized forms, whether secular or religious.

Comment by James C Schultz on 2nd mo. 21, 2015 at 4:46pm

I think the question Keith is are we throwing pearls before swine when we try to point out there is a spiritual reality that controls, either directly or indirectly, what many people in government, in intellectual circles and in the media world perceive as reality? 

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 21, 2015 at 8:03pm

What that 'pearls before swine' expression points to here... Words about 'Presence' are just more external words (words that don't make any sense except as a person is in fact tuned into their referent.)

Actually remembering the presence of God so far as you can, in all the situations where you can, welcomes God's influence into those situations -- which produces effects beyond any words you could say. Not that we should give up words; we just need to depend on God rather than on our own minds alone to produce words appropriate for the people we're with.

And then we aren't necessarily having immediate 'effect' -- but the eventual results will be helpful rather than futile.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 21, 2015 at 11:38pm

Yogananda (1933):

"If today's world leaders were illuminated by Self-realization and worked together, they could within a few years banish war and poverty from the Earth. Only spiritual consciousness -- realization of God's presence in oneself and in every other living being -- can save the world. I see no chance for peace without it."

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 22, 2015 at 12:20am

The wonderful grace, beauty, uniqueness, and mystery, of the message of a conscious anchored in and a conscience informed by the immediacy of Presence itself is the referent is not external and expired. The referent is internal and inspired. Each person has a conscious measure of inward Presence hidden beneath the layers of outwardly expired secular and religious forms. The message is like no other message in that it points inward to that eternal anchor we all share. The pearl itself is sufficient for the salvation even of the swine who carry it within. There is no one so mired in the muck of swineness that does not know a measure of the pearl within. Presence is not an external pearl that is talked about, Presence is the inward pearl shared in the act of speaking that shines in the power and illumination of the inward Pearl itself.

When the message is heard, in the speaking, the hearer himself or herself is hearing the message crying from the core of their inward conscious and conscience. It is not the speaker that carries the message, it is the hearer that bears the inward Pearl.

It is a blessing to share this new life and consciousness to the perceived swine and witness the inward quickening through the power of inspired Christ nurturing human being even in the darkness and brokenness of swineness in others and myself.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 22, 2015 at 10:35am

In theory, God is always available and nobody is so 'swine'-ish that they aren't living as parts of God's 'body'.

On the level of immediate visible behavior, people's ideas dominate. God's felt presence enables us to plant a seed or two, but it may take a long time to show above ground. Meanwhile, they will think you are simply giving them 'another idea' -- and one they're hostile to, one they resist, at that.

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