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Moral nonsense

Human imagination, which comes out of human memory, is incredibly powerful when it is used properly. But it has one serious flaw. It cannot create actual reality or make anything really real. It can only create concepts. One of these concepts is morality and moral reasoning - the root cause of human suffering and out of which a great deal of nonsense is generated.

It's often the case that when there is an issue, instead of seeking to resolve that issue, people use their imaginations to create further different issues rather than seeking resolution of the original issue. This is how we get morality and moral reasoning, with its different ideas of virtue and sin. All this is done to avoid doing the one thing that really matters and that is to connect to the divine and to one's environment through the consciousness which exists within us. Without that connection people try to compensate and fill the space with so many different things.

What is virtue? What is sin?

This is where we get to the root of pretty much all human conflict. Everyone has their own ideas about what is good and what is bad, what is good, what is evil, and what is virtue and what is sin. Which is which, obviously, is a matter of convenience.

This is all a circus and those of you who do base your choices on moral reasoning, you are all clowns in that circus. Oh sure you will see this differently and call it real life, but the simple fact of the matter is that you're all merely playing at life and it's just role play. Well at least until someone gets hurt, right?

Let me be very clear here just so nobody gets upset or offended by what I'm writing. Consciousness is the basis of all existence and is thus the basis of everything in your environment, including you. When consciousness is environmental we perceive it as space or emptiness and call it reality. But when we experience this consciousness, which we perceive as space, out in the environment through the felt sense of immediate experience, and that consciousness gets recorded into our memory, we call it truth.

What this means is that truth is consciousness and is never manifest. Consciousness and space are one and the same thing - consciousness. This is why there's a relationship between reality and truth because they are the same thing. You call it truth only when you can recall it from memory and the felt sense of immediate experience. But what is the felt sense of immediate experience if it's not your individual experience of an environment. This is why truth is always relative to individual perception and individual perspective. If you have experienced something or witnessed it first hand, if you have felt it, seen it, or heard it, then your experience is real and your memory of that experience is truth.

Now if you care to take a look around you, everything you see will be surrounded by empty space. Space and emptiness isn't nothing, it's what connects everything in existence which is physical. Now do you see why consciousness is the basis of all existence? Remember here that space and consciousness are one and the same thing. Morality and moral reasoning therefore is what you resort to when you don't have a connection to your environment, and by environment here I'm not just referring to the natural environment or the planet. I'm also referring to the social environment and other people.

Morality is imaginary. It's not real.

Morality is just you making value judgments and putting made up labels on everything. This is good. This is bad. This is a virtue. This is a sin. This is good. This is evil. Morality is just you expressing an opinion and following an ideology or a belief system. You calling it the truth doesn't make it the truth, because belief is not the truth, truth is not belief, and all human values are a matter of individual opinion.

All moral reasoning arises out of separateness. Separateness between you and your environment. Separateness between you and other people. Separateness between being and doing. Separateness between who you are and what you do. A good example of this is the political issue of immigration. You will hear all sorts of different opinions, and also a great deal of othering where whoever is expressing an opinion will rarely ever perceive someone wishing to enter their country as a fellow human being just like them. Labels always seem to matter in any debate about immigration.

My point here is that you cannot engage in moral reasoning without engaging in moral relativism. No two people share the same values, or the same moral compass. This is something we all do. I've done it myself. We twist and turn and employ mental gymnastics to justify our reasoning so the good seems virtuous and better than the evil and the bad. But none of this makes you any better at the end of the day. Most of what we perceive as evil started out with good intentions and throughout history much of human suffering, conflict, misery, war and even genocide is perpetrated by people who believe that they are good people and doing what they do out of a love of God.

If you employ moral reasoning in any way, then you are not spiritual, but only pretending to be spiritual (or religious).

Carl Jung said it best back in the 1930's. He was heavily criticized for refusing to condemn the Nazis. But he also stated that, "To the degree that you condemn someone for their wrongdoings and darkness, you are ignorant to the same degree of your own dark side." He was very clear throughout his work that condemnation doesn't liberate, it oppresses.

Morality and karma are two entirely different things

It's important to understand that the key difference between karma and morality is the same difference between real and imaginary. Karma is real and is directly relative to trauma, which is also real. We die, we get sick, we get hurt, we experience conflict, many people during the course of their lives experience abuse in some form, all of this is trauma. Karma is what happens afterwards when you experience trauma. Far from being some divine force or system for retributive justice or punishment, karma is about healing, growth, recovery, and the natural progression back towards equilibrium, balance, harmony, flow and mindfulness.

This confusion between karma and morality is a very real Asian problem and often occurs as a result of cultural changes when those in the east try to somehow westernize themselves and embrace western values, which thanks to moralistic undertones in the three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) have reinforced moral values in Western culture and social thinking. This is what ultimately crippled the work and philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner, a leading theosophist, never quite understood that the notions of karma and morality were incompatible. Even today in Buddhist, Hindu and even Taoist communities many believe in the notion of good karma and bad karma, which can often turn practices such as meditation and yoga into nothing more than an Ego trip.

But it's important that the Kabbalah and Jewish mystics talk about the 'yetzer hara' which Jehovah (God) breathed into Man with 'ruah' or breath. The yetzer hara is the wayward or contrary spirit, the capacity to go astray, to make mistakes, to get into trouble, to create issues, or in modern, popular Western convention to be a bit of a cunt. It's important to understand, and to accept, that we all share the ability to be a right cunt in certain situations.

You see excessively moral people who are always focussed on being right, doing right and conforming all share the same characteristic - nobody enjoys being around them. This is why you should never try to be a good person all the time, because you will end up lonely and isolated. People will feel it, sense it, and avoid you. You've got to be prepared to break rules, make mischief, have your periods of non-conformity, fail, make mistakes, get things wrong, because not only does this make you more interesting, it also makes you more human. Understand that it's your imperfections and your honesty which others will find most attractive about you.

I remember when I was street homeless and destitute. Sure I was looked down upon, shunned, and avoided by many people. But the really interesting thing was that, when push came to shove and I was at my very worst, complete strangers appeared out of nowhere to help me out and came up with random acts of kindness and compassion, never really wanting anything in return. This is an important lesson which I feel many people need to take on board. Society doesn't function on people being good or bad. That's irrelevant. What keeps society running and flowing are the random acts of dispassionate kindness and compassion between different people.

This is something that many people seem to have forgotten about.