QuakerQuaker

Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

The Line You Shall Not Cross

There is a line set down by other people relative to a person’s relationship with and participation in immanent Presence. This line or wall is heavily guarded and fortified by the protectorate of outward forms. The outward weapons of this protectorate are religious and political ideology, theology, tradition, similitudes, practices, etc. The nuclear weapon of the protectorate is the abstracted “God” who speaks to them and tells them how to direct and lead others so that to not follow the protectorate’s direction is to not follow God; for it is not the protectorate you are turning against but God who the protectorate mediates. “And after all” says the protectorate, we love you and we only want what is good for you and what God tells us is good for you.” This is the weapon they use when all else fails against those who just will not come to heel and have crossed the line and speak to such participation in and identification with immanent Presence that they experience their being as immanent Presence itself in itself and no longer look to outward constructs and other people to guide and direct. The protectorate and the weapons they use to bring others to heel becomes of no consequence. This interpenetration between and oneness with immanent Presence itself in itself and human being is the line that the protectorate will not abide crossing but have no power to repress once the Life itself in itself is known and embraced in human being.

I am the Life itself in itself to the measure that this Life is in me anchoring my conscious and informing my conscience. I declare to have crossed line. I have breached the wall and stand on the raggedy edge and I intend to misbehave.

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Comment by Kirby Urner on 5th mo. 26, 2017 at 1:55am: The outward weapons of this protectorate are religious and political ideology, theology, tradition, similitudes, practices, etc.

Keith and I tend to end up with different meanings for inward versus outward weapons. I consider the latter to be aimed at creating literal physical mayhem. Bombs dropped from airplanes. Grenades. Sarin. Guns. Swords. Those be outward weapons.

Then come the inward weapons, including persuasion, leading perhaps to convincement [add to dictionary]. In today's parlance, we might call those "psychological weapons" and rate them as to their lethality. You've got the "guilt trip" and so on. Motivational psychology teaches us how to prey on one another's vulnerabilities and insecurities.

But that's not where the line gets drawn in the above essay. Even those psychological tools of persuasion, such as advertising, religion, are 100% outward by this other reckoning.

I don't claim to be expert in all Quaker dialects, so if I sound ignorant and uncomprehending at times ("clueless"), so be it.

When Jesus wrestled with Satan [per translation] regarding whether he should test his theories about his relationship with his Father, that was "inward wrestling" as I see it (unlike in Star Wars, wherein light sabers get used).

But then to be free of Satanic temptations is perhaps to make outward what had previously been inward? To cast out is to make outward. What does it mean to "cast out the devil" anyway? Do we propose to deprive evil of all root in the heart of man? Don't we just end up with projection then?

As Maurice Nicoll points out, the Scottish Jungian: a first mistake we all make is thinking we need to identify with every inward thought crossing one's mind, simply because of one's awareness of those thoughts. With greater practice comes the capacity to distinguish oneself from all that thoughty chatter that bedevils us. Be discriminating. Don't take all that message traffic to heart, just because it goes by on your radar.

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