Chapter V
Yos instructions
The Implications of Yo
Yo "told" us what Yo "wanted." Yo evolved into us with senses to feel (see, smell, hear, and taste) Yos manifestation as All Creation, intelligent minds to comprehend It, and hearts to feel what is right. If we ignore what Yo shows us, if we don't use our Yo-given capacity for intelligent thought, if we ignore the instructions Yo wrote into the feeling core of our being through millions of years of evolutionary shaping, then we must suffer the consequences. We ignore Yo and Yos Truths at our own peril.
What blocks our ability to use our hearts and minds to see the Truth? The answer is clear: The Devil that leads us astray is our refusal to grow up, our demand for endless childhood. We have a deep desire to deny painful truths, to use magical thinking to circumvent our need to engage unpleasant realities. The Satan that tempts us toward overly self-centered and self-indulgent greed is our wish to avoid responsibility, laziness in the face of hard work, and our refusal to acknowledge long term consequences (both personal and social) as we pursue short term pleasures. We do all this while ignoring Yos dire warnings about the price that must be paid for such short term greed and for embracing ignorance and delusions.
As we desperately cling to the fiction that evil will be punished and the downtrodden recompensed in some magical realm we call the afterlife, we push aside our need to act to oppose foolishness and evil and maintain the notion that we have no real impact in the world, "What can I, one person, do?" Instead of taking effective action, we comfort ourselves with notions like, "If I pray sincerely enough, the 'Lord [really] will buy me a Mercedes Benz,'" as Saint Janis put it.
In the US, we convince ourselves that we can ignore the environmental and political consequences of our SUV's. We clearly act as though we can ignore the human suffering all around us, as we gluttonously engorge ourselves with great globs of greasy beef (consuming fifteen mouthfuls of vegetable protein with every bite of meat). Yes, we actually believe that it is OK for those of us in the rich, industrialized world to consume the lion's share of the world's resources while ignoring the fact that much of humanity goes hungry and the population is doubling every 40-50 years. Yes, in 2030, in less time than it will take for most of today's toddlers to graduate from college, our present population of seven billion will reach 10 billion. The increase alone of almost three billion over the next 20 years is greater than the total number of people on the planet when I was born (in 1951, there were about 2.5 billion people)!
In our increasingly overpopulated, closed planetary ecosystem, we are rapidly destabilizing the biosphere upon which all life depends.
Yoan Sin
How do we plan to cope with the horror that is being generated by our ignorant refusals to face what we are doing? The answer is, we don't. This is what Yo will "punish," for as Saint Mohandas said, "God is Truth." When we ignore Reality, we ignore Truth. When we ignore Truth, we ignore the only "God" there is. When you sit on the train tracks sipping tea as the horn sounds indicating that the high speed express is coming, thou ignorest Reality, the One True God, and verily, I say, "If you commit the cardinal sin of turning your back on Reality, thou shalt be punished!"
Here We See the Rewards of Committing this Cardinal Sin against Yo
This illustration of what happens when Reality
is ignored as one pursues illusions is just sad.
Indulgence in magical thinking and turning away from Reality is the way of those who promulgate the fantasy religions. They ignore Yo, Yos Manifestation and Essence. They refuse to use their Yo given (evolved) minds and ability to think and feel clearly. They refuse to "listen" to Yo and instead listen to childish myths about one they give Yos stolen name to. They then place this false idol in front of Yo. In order to enslave others, they claim special relationships with this false "God." They even butcher one another in the name of their God. They claim holy reasons for destroyingóindeed, they claim they have a sacred right (!) to destroyóthe life sustaining fabric of Yos manifestation.
My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns . . . We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand. (James Watt, Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, i.e., the person responsible for land management and protecting the environment and our natural resources)
And the devastating impact of magical thinking is not confined to religious delusions. Other forms of turning away from the Face of Yo (Reality) can have tragic consequences. For example, whether one is following a dictator, a king, or an elected politician, war is often horrendous for those who eagerly follow their vainglorious leaders. Consider the First and the Second World Wars. In both cases, the initiators went off on suicidal, quasi-religious quests of conquest, without careful consideration of the realities entailed.
Jon Stewart & John Oliver explore the dangers of magical thinking.
In response to such destructive thinking, Saint George II declared:
I've got a word or two
To say about the things that you do.
You're telling all those lies
About the good things that we can have,
If we close our eyes.
I left you far behind
The ruins of the life that you have in mind.
And though you still can't see,
I know your mind's made up:
You're gonna cause more misery
Do what you want to do
Go where you're going to
Think for yourself . . .
Arrogant evil is assuming that we can ignore what Yo has "told" and repeatedly tells and presents to us. The childish, magic worshipers ignore Yos warnings. Global warming is a left wing/environmentalist myth. Overpopulation is of no concern states the Catholic Church as they declare that the earth can support 40 billion people. They blasphemously claim they receive their heinous pseudo-wisdom directly from God. But as Saint Paul questioned, even if 40 billion could survive on our planet in the near future, "is there any purpose served in converting the planet earth into a gigantic feed lot." New communicable and virulent diseases will inevitably evolve as their breeding ground goes from millions of human organisms to billions upon billions. And it is doubtful that the next time, the bigoted, small-minded, fundamentalists will be able to claim the new disease is being visited upon the homosexuals as punishment for their sins:
AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers . . . AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Reverend Jerry Falwell, circa 1991)
The ignorant purveyors of the false, childish religions insist that their magical thinking makes it unnecessary to heed the Word of Yo as it is unmistakably written into the very fabric of the universe. Instead, we are supposed to ignore Reality and follow the dictates of their religious inventions. Yet, not only will the ignorant, the well-intentioned deluded, the power mongers, and the shortsighted suffer. They will bring great suffering down on all of us. Help us, Yo, to find the strength and the community to fight their hideous evil. We urgently need to use our intelligence to look at ourselves squarely, face reality, and acknowledge who we are.
Yet, Yo "designed" us through Natural Selection to not see ourselves clearly. Up until recently, those hominids that were designed to form nationalistic, ethnic, and religious illusions that maintain divisions for the sake of promoting and protecting their group were the ones that survived and reproduced best. Now this previously adaptive, murderous strategy threatens us with destruction. If we can use our capacity for wisdom and overcome or redirect this propensity, our species may survive. And even if we survive as a species, if we don't get control of our tendency to splinter into ethnic, violently childish religious groups, the most ugly parts of our history will be repeated; billions will die in the catastrophes we are fomenting today. With our new technologies and our increasingly powerful mastery of the matter and forces that compose the physical world, the repetitive, fractious, destructive patterns that will occur will make all previous human suffering pale by comparison. We will not only be doomed to repeat our history, but we will reach new, inconceivable heights of horror.
Our hope (and prayer):
Love & Truth, the great "gifts" of Yo
Yet as I reach the end of this talk, I proclaim that the infinite wisdom inherent in Yo has ensured that we would have a chance; that consistent with the Laws of the Universe as Yo manifests them, there would be a way out, a solution. In addition to being an ethnocentric, at times, murderous species, we are also remarkably cooperative, as Saints William and Robert II have shown us. Despite the often grossly inequitable distribution of resources, we have also shown an enormous amount of self-control and mutual care for members of our own group. May we use the Truths Yo has shown us to see that our species is now one group, the Tribe of Humanity. We are all living in a closed ecosystem hurtling through space, dubbed by Saint Buckminster, "Spaceship Earth." From now on, we are all in the same boat. If our fractious, greedy, genocidal quarrelingóthat may have been adaptive to the winners in the pastódoes not cease, the boat will sink. Yo did not spend 15 billion years becoming a peopling universe only to allow the stupid, greedy, ignorant, and deluded among us to destroy Yos Creation.
Yo! For another way of looking at this, listen to how the Wombat put it!
I know that prayer is an attempt to abrogate responsibility, an attempt to ask Yo, as "God," to magically solve our problems. So lest I be accused of the blasphemy of prayer, let it be clear that my prayer to Yo is a plea being made to Yos Manifestations in the form of the spiritual beings in this room. Before me, sit the animated, evolved forms into which Yo has shaped Yoself, and to whom I make my plea. Let Us take responsibility and face our Godhood! It is we who have the power to shape our fate upon planet earth.
It is our kindness that matters.
Let us not abrogate our responsibility, for, if we do, rest assured that there are plenty of infantile, magic worshipers who will continue to fill the breach and finish the destruction of our world. Overpopulation, disease, and fractious religious superstitions threaten us with the cataclysmic destruction of billions, and possibly the end of our species. We are in grave danger and we must unite to fight the evil of human delusion.
Bill Maher's "Religulous"
or, "When rational people are too timid to come out of the closet (and get organized)."
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. (Saint Howard)
And if and when
this all feels too
overwhelming,
remember the
wise words of
Gandalf the Grey:
Oh, Great Yo! You sit before me as You Manifest as my compatriots, human beings, each composed of unadulterated, pure Yo. Each human form you have taken on is frightened by the horrors and longs to find something to believe, something to hold up against the evil, something to light our way through the darkness. Each of us longs to find a loving way to live in community. Many of us wish we could find a Loving God to believe in, a magical being to rescue us from our predicament, a magical being in whose love all is made right. Yes, such a Loving God would heal all. But we are left without an answer, because we cannot bring ourselves to believe in the fairy tale Loving God of human infancy. Indeed, we recoil from the inhumanity carried out in the name of such a god.
Oh, Dear Yoansóyes, I am speaking to you, the human manifestations of pure Yo before meóhear my words and awaken to the Truth. You are Pure Yo. You are a manifestation of the Divine Mystery. YOUR love, YOUR longing for the Loving God, YOUR longing for a loving humanity is THE ANSWER.
As Divine Manifestations of Yo it is time to awaken and realize your birthright. YOU MUST RISE UP. AS WE JOIN TOGETHER TO CREATE HEAVEN ON EARTH, WE CAN BECOME THE FACE OF THE LOVING GOD WE SEEK! FOR IN OUR LOVE, POSSIBILITIES ABOUND. IN OUR OWN LOVING GAZES, EACH OF US CAN BASK IN THE LIGHT OF YOS LOVE. WAKE UP TO SEE THAT YOU ARE THE EYES OF THE WORLD! BECOME THE FACE OF THE LOVING GOD WE SEEK. FALL DOWN ON YOUR KNEESóor rise up dancing, or stare in wonder, or cry for joy, or giggle uncontrollably (as Yo, the choice is yours and only yours to make)óBEFORE THE ALMIGHTY YO. THE TIME OF YOUR AWAKENING IS NOW!
Oh, Dear Yoansóyes, I am speaking to you, the human manifestations of pure Yo before meóhear my words and awaken to the Truth. You are Pure Yo. You are a manifestation of the Divine Mystery. YOUR love, YOUR longing for the Loving God, YOUR longing for a loving humanity is THE ANSWER.
Sleepers awaken.
The night has gone and taken
Your darkest fears and left you here.
And the Sun it shines so clear!
And the Sun it shines so clear!
Awake for the world looks wonderful.
And I close with a prayer from Saint Thomas (sung by Saint Mike and The ISB):
You never enjoy the world aright
Till the sea itself floweth
In your veins,
Till you are clothed
With the heavens,
And crowned with the stars.
PS. Remember: You're the rainbow!