SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO &
VOCAB
“I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how to solve their own difficulties... my work will be finished if I succeed in carrying the conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty.” Gandhi quote from Raghavan Iyer’s, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford University Press, New York, 1973, p. 373.
My sister, Karen, did me the favor of
puzzling through an early version of Learners
while I strove to untangle its verbiage.
She took what I wrote seriously and got upset. “None of this is my fault,” she said, or
something to that effect. “What
do you expect me to do? How can I
protect my children? Tell me what to
do!”
By choice, Learners would shun biographical reductionism and confine itself to
the weapon/peace antinomy and the politics of information. Let’s try to do the opposite.
All of us have dealt with cults of personality. Our internal monologue bombards us nonstop
with our own ego-cult. We suffer from
someone's or some other persons’ by way of the public media, (Britney Spears
and George W. Bush forever! – what a hellish obsession). I grow sick of this individual atomism that
leads nowhere but to the adulation of evil and mediocrity. We’d be better off glorifying certain atoms
in a giant molecule.
We mustn’t expect some lone hero to come
prancing in on his white charger and turn this nightmare around
single-handed. Quite often, like-minded
enthusiasts have jumped, hand in hand, into the deep end of the acid
pool, wrecked great stretches of the landscape and harmed many innocents in the
process.
Either an international consensus of Learners
will resolve these problems or no one will.
Besides, Gandhi taught us another
truth. Each of us merits respect or pity
in line with the quality of our actions.
Only the actions of the Other merit condemnation or approval. The Other, he or she, is a divine
manifestation equal to our own. As such,
they are exempt from our hatred. We come
to grief every time we set aside this sound advice.
Learner transformation will swell like a high
tide. Gradually, more and more Learners
will think their way through these ideas, discuss them in detail and change
their general heading accordingly.
No need to rely on the sole vigor of a brilliant few, the rare saintliness
of a few more or the mass suffering of the remainder. Easy does it, at first.
Listed below are a few personal priorities I
laughingly call Policies. Let’s hope they don’t induce more
control-freak errors. Pick your
favorites or go after your own. In any
case, have fun!
Policies Before and After: Celebrate More,
Sacrifice Less.
We are not
speaking of a spotless paradise, here, but of reducing sacrifice and
multiplying celebration. Pick a
celebration, pick a lot of them and celebrate!
Avoid sacrificing anyone but yourself.
Celebrate yourself and most others, do it better!
Policy the
First & the Unfirst: Do what You’re Best at and Avoid Doing what You’re Bad
at.
We cannot emphasize this policy
enough. It applies just as much to
individuals as to groups; to work, art and worship; to our institutions and social
instruments. It applies to power,
leadership and defiance: to every human activity.
The short answer? Concentrate on what you do best.
Everyone does at least one thing best. In everything we do, we occupy some point of
excellence along a relative bell curve of interest and performance. You may slam along some of these roller
coasters like no one else can. Along
others, you’d crash and burn before you worked up to a respectable speed. Focus your passion where it best fits your
talents.
Weapon managers would rather produce and
manage armies of interchangeable and expendable generalists. We’re shuffled around like playing cards and
dealt out wherever we show marginal utility but rarely our ultimate accomplishment. As our warrior companions die off, we must
assume their places by rote and seniority.
The world of ‘human resources’ (that despicable term) is a vast
replacement depot for war.
As a result, most human activities
wind up being a mediocre botch. Somehow
we muddle along – at tremendous expense
and shameful inefficiency – doing marginally useful work that bores and
disgusts us.
Jobs are broken down to their simplest component tasks. To earn our daily bread, we repeat a few infantile routines every working day for decades on end until we gag over their futility. Many personal dreams are pulped in the process. Our aspirations are mercilessly sidetracked into frustration and despair. For many, homelessness and unemployment are their only alternatives to vocational mediocrity, self-loathing and existential longing-for-the-end—nothing more.
What
we seek for our innermost selves, is that the world might improve beyond our
ability to recognize it, unless that recollection comforted us. That
does not mean persisting at what we do today: incinerating the past to make the
future resemble as reassuring a caricature of the present as possible. It means studying the past, staring the
future in the eye and making it unrecognizably better than the
present.
So take the advice that a good doctor would give to a depressed patient: go find a hobby. If you can make a decent living at it, so much the better. Some people play a mean piano or bring us honestly to God or make killer risotto; others get children to smile.
Find
out what really turns you on and go do it.
No special talent need go to waste.
If you don’t know what you’re good at, (a failure most of us share in
this shabby civilization), it’s simple: do what’s best for others and most fun
for you.
Consider the reverse. If you have no gift for some task, don’t mess
it up. Give it up instead and let some
enthusiast take your place. If you are
not a child worshipper, don’t make, raise or teach children. If you are uncomfortable with foreign
languages, don’t bother with them. Don’t
peddle anything you don’t believe in.
Don’t compromise any field of endeavor with your incompetence and
indifference. Don’t protect selfish
employers who wouldn’t cross the street to protect you. More importantly, don’t force others to do
what they’re less than good at.
There is, in the long run, no more cowardly
or destructive act than bowing to the unforeseen consequences of incompetence –
our own and others’ – without seeking immediate amends.
The one exception to this rule is the body of socio/psycopaths.
They will no doubt seize upon these paragraphs to justify the worst
evils their talents allow. One way or
another, they must be turned away from the evil they do best and required to do
better, or nothing. May a harmless cure
be found for them and their satanic disability!
In a same way, many institutions act
like monolithic blockheads. Regardless
of their range of competence, they declare they can solve (or offer an
acceptable compromise for) any problem they encounter.
Now, every institution and system
accomplishes some things very well; it does most others remarkably
badly.
Take capitalism (take it from me,
please!). There is no better way to create and concentrate wealth. In many situations, creating and
concentrating wealth are essential activities.
Naked capitalism should reign in those cases and do what it does
best. On the other hand, capitalism
fails (has dismally failed) to reduce
misery. If the situation calls for reducing poverty,
balancing an ecosystem or discovering true faith, avowed capitalists should bow
out of those responsibilities.
The same logic applies to militarism,
communism, religious faith and every other thought process, feeling and
ideology. Where they are effective, they
should be tried with broad-minded liberality; where defective, for whatever
reason, they should be fenced off.
No methodology should be forbidden outright; it should merely be
consigned to environments that benefit the most from its interaction—and only
those environments.
Thus we cannot reject the World Trade
Organization as a whole, no matter what evils it may have committed in
the past. We will need a World Court and
a WTO (World Trade Organization) to regulate the World Bazaar. Some kind of WTO will be essential.
We have merely to persuade its members
to foster peace and suppress weapon technologies as currently conceived. For example, we should demand that the WTO
keep watch over the trade of weapons around the world. At present, there are 600 million light harms (arms) on this planet: one for
every ten people on Earth. Worse
yet, many of them are bought, operated and maintained by merciless thugs,
tyrants and gangsters. Meanwhile, decent
folk walk around unarmed and defenseless.
Then we wonder, “Why are so many of them gunned down?” WTO
leaders must halt this proliferation of loose weapons. They cannot excuse themselves from this
regulation, simply because it might infringe on national sovereignty.
National sovereignty is another heady issue
we need to tackle. Every nation should
enjoy absolute self-determination over the activities of its voluntary
members, just as long as only a few protesters dialed up the 1-800-MYRIGHTS
telephone number and complained to the World Court. Nonetheless,
no mere nation would benefit from external sovereignty: license to attack other
nations―in the same way common citizens and arrested criminals
have no sovereign right to attack their victims.
In addition, we cannot turn our back on the
rich, the way revolutionaries have attempted in the past. They should feel free to accumulate as much
wealth as they need, provided everyone else subsisted in comfort.
In essence, we cannot reject or embrace any
social practice as a whole. We must first see who does what well, and
encourage them to do that. Then, we
should determine who does what poorly, and shift their attention to something
they would do better. Our primary
criterion should be: is peace enhanced?
Then encourage it. Is weapon
mentality enhanced? Then watch it
carefully and be prepared to downgrade it.
According to Learners, nothing need be accepted or rejected entirely. Truth demands that every point of view be
heard and everyone’s most valid principals honored. Cooperation over competition, and celebration
over sacrifice … except where those prior would be necessary.
From the point of view of peace mentality,
our worst institutions are those that demand absolute control, uncompromising
obedience and total rejection of outside influences. Of course, those weapons institutions
turn out to be the deadliest, most persistent and powerful: the ones we revere
most, which inflict the worst harm on us.
These suggestions alone would take a lifetime
to fulfill. Each of us must accomplish
deeds we neither want to do nor are any good at; each of us obeys this
insanity implicitly. Society takes great pains to quash our basic
talents and aspirations. Until society
supports our innermost priorities, our greatest masterworks cannot take shape
without a titanic struggle.
We’ve reached the point where we welcome this struggle. This stupid, stupid waste of time and effort has become the required preliminary of any creative act. We must first suffer dreadfully in order to do what we do best. Rather, we should first accomplish it, thriving all the while with our culture’s enthusiastic support.
Once this transformation takes hold,
unheard-of abundance will shake loose.
Incredible masterpieces will roll out from every discipline:
mass-produced yet of excellence beyond compare.
Policy the 2nd:
Gather Together.
Gather with like-minded people to enjoy
collective activities, (reading, art, hobbies, charitable work, Learners, whatever). Act in concert over issues of mutual concern
or celebration. Find new recruits and
form different groups for different purposes.
Plug into computer networks and databases. Attend the house of worship of your choice
and let it reflect your spirit. Contact
Learner peers across the planet. Dispel
the pervasive sense of alienation that allows weapon mentality to thrive.
Policy the 3rd:
Become Political.
(The first part of this one is not to my
taste; only for enthusiasts).
Attend political functions. Make your opinions heard. Take up the highest leadership responsibilities you can bear. Climb the political ladder just as high as you can stand the heat. Get in touch with media workers. Write, call and visit your Representatives. Give them an earful! Contact famous individuals and corporations about the things they do well and those not.
Vote,
even when your choices seem like trivial, lose-lose alternatives. Assert your political convictions and
challenge those of your fellows.
Whenever you find official proposals unacceptable, insist on your right
to record a disgusted abstention. Political anonymity is the common refuge of
victims and tormentors alike; but that form of escapism has become too
costly. We would be far richer and safer
if we confronted our responsibilities instead of running away from them.
Every time you refuse to vote,
You approve those policies and leaders
you hate the most!
Those who proudly declare they “aren’t
political” actually are. They have just
concluded (falsely) that their needs are best met by the status quo. Those who don’t vote from sheer disgust, only
aggravate their existential nausea.
Policy
the 4th: Practice Charity.
The more funds you give to a good cause, the
less money weapon managers get. Make a
point of supporting needy individuals and worthy instruments with your time and
money. Tithe, but be picky about
it. Don’t just shovel money over to some
monolithic charity or church corporation. More than likely, their directors pervert
legitimate mandates with crooked personal or institutional agendas.
Find new ways to help specific people. Reach out beyond your circle of friends and
clients. Be good and make your
goodwill count.
Charity unlocks Miracle.
Someone once asked me, dubiously, (Actually,
he wasn't uncertain at all; he was a charity slanderer of a very common kind)
“Does that mean I should walk around town handing out change?” Within your means, yes, indeed. Give it up as if you were receiving it. It is You.
Policy the 5th:
Actualize what You Visualize.
Note the occasional bumper sticker that
reads: “Visualize World Peace.”
Every young Learner should be taught the art
of constructive visualization: another survival skill we are expected to
pick up by osmosis, trial and error or not at all. What a miserable education we receive!
For example, make a general wish list and stick it to your bathroom mirror. Note and cross out those wanted things that materialize. Refresh your list from time to time. Simple visualization.
Or ‘daydream’ shamelessly.
These
necessary skills include Judo and other martial arts that teach us how to fall
without breaking bones. Babies should be
taught something similar while they’re learning to walk. The same goes for learning to swim.
Transcending this nescience, however, is only
half the battle. Once you visualize your
ideals, actualize them.
Policy the 6th:
Accept Responsibility.
I refuse to consider myself a victim. This lifetime is certainly my masterpiece. By default, I must produce it, direct it and
act out its lead character. I own 100%
of everything in my life, and should be
fully accountable for it.
Let’s say something noteworthy happens to you,
for good or ill. Ask yourself, “Why did
I attract this into my life?” My
thanks to Context, Inc. for verbalizing
this subliminal conviction. Andy Revell, its founder, died in 2004; he’ll be sorely missed.
Do not mistake this as a reason to feel
guilty about living during troubled times, about being sick or in
trouble. Make it a method to attract better
times for yourself and others.
You could draw up a wish list both fantastic
and pragmatic, nothing more than a list of wishes; no need for pragmatic realism! Allow yourself to dream of nearly impossible
improvements to your and list them. Tape
this list to your bathroom mirror; review it morning and evening. After a while, contemplate what has
transpired nearly miraculously. Thank
God (or your personal equivalent) for those gifts. Renew your list at leisure. I repeat this suggestion in order to
encourage you. If you feel like it,
place World Peace at the top of your list.
Learners is my list.
Let’s change what we can for the better, and
die trying to change what we believe we can’t.
To Hell with “patience with the things we can’t change!” Don’t accept anything less than excellence in
your life and splendor in your society.
Take risks, be bold and love fearlessly.
Recall the words of Reverend
Jesse Jackson and “Keep hope alive!”
Everyone should be athirst, quenched and drunk of the Peace of God.
Policy the 6th Point Five:
Cultivate Laughter.
Masters of laughter should inaugurate every
ceremony formal and spontaneous; initiate it publicly as part of formal
ceremonial, and privately as part of personal thoughts. Ah, ha, ha!
Gandhi was so grim, despite his chronic sense of humor; you should overflow
with laughter. Laugher is perfectly
appropriate in many more settings than we admit. Promote spontaneous laughter in every
setting, no matter how “inappropriate” it may seem. Mass laugher is another key to miracle. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/08/video-laughter-yoga.html
Policy 6.75:
Cry Honest Tears when Laughter Cannot Be Summoned.
Repent and transform everything, from the
bottom of your soul out to the edge of the universe.
Policy the 7th
& 7.5th: Seize the Lead if You Will; Get Out Of The Way if You
Won’t.
Learners is largely written for future leaders. Whoever honors his or her topic of
passion shall lead in that
field.
So far, people of enormous heart,
wisdom and depth of soul have withdrawn in disgust from the running of this
world, even though that has always been their natural obligation. They should resume the struggle, lead us back
onto the straight and narrow from which we’ve strayed. We need all of them, men and women
everywhere, as good as they come and improving all the time. This need of ours demands massive
cooperation. The best leaders must gain
immediate right of way to their topics of passion. The time for saintly meditation and
non-interference has ended. It is time
for us to Climb Down from the Mountain, Astride the Ox of Wisdom (as the Tao
dictates).
Lesser (elsewhere directed) talents, gang
way! The squabbling over leadership
slots wastes too much time, precious time we can’t afford to waste. Otherwise, under the dictates of weapon
mentality, most leadership slots go to malevolent busybodies by default. Only morally bankrupt creeps could justify
the moldy contradictions of weapon mentality; only they could satisfy their
trivial needs by enforcing social mediocrity for such shabby rewards.
Only the superior example of outstanding
leaders at every level will improve average leadership. With so many bad role models, it’s no wonder
our leaders line up to file for moral bankruptcy.
Currently, the Earth is a moral
wasteland run by warlords; humanity needs to turn into the most magnificent
tribe run by the most honorable leaders we can find. The military salute is rendered to rank, not
to the person carrying it. Political
salutes should be rendered to outstanding individuals, not to their station or
class.
A solitary leader is a little like a ship’s
prow minus its keel and hull. Learners beckons those who don’t wish to
lead just as much as those who do.
The info proletariat grows its elite on
demand, somewhat the way a honeybee colony grows new queens. While info proletarians may support their
current elite, they should also nurture an assortment of proto-elites. Raise the best leaders you can find and bear
them in triumph to City Hall!
It is but a half-measure to blame current
leaders. Anyone satisfied with doing so
little, abdicates control to some other’s flawed vision of his misfortune. If you don’t want to lead, fine. Find those who do, find out what makes them
tick and if they can love and be loved fearlessly. Then support them, propel them to
positions of responsibility. Challenge
their righteousness. Watch over them,
correct them when they stray, and insist that they do better. Or replace them.
Policies the 8th
and 8.5th: Learn Learners, Become Learners.
Read this text, become familiar with
it, argue with it and figure out where it’s gone wrong. Find better alternatives and send them to me
for inclusion or substitution. Get your
best ideas published independently. Talk
to others about the ideas in this book and find out what they think. Identify Crimestop and confront it relentlessly. Defy weapon mentality in your own thoughts
and on daily rounds of conversation and Learning.
Policy the 9th:
Practice Satyagraha.
Practice win-win. Find out what other people need, know
what you need, and make both happen.
Practice the Golden Rule with everyone including yourself. If you can’t recall the Golden rule, look it
up and memorize it. Like most peace
mentality concepts, it is shared by every language and culture. I cannot help but repeat it here:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you.
Policy not the 10th:
Don’t Have Children Unless You Must.
Unless you are one of those special
one-out-of-a-hundred people who must have
a child, don’t. Think instead of
adopting, joining a child-raising community, becoming a mentor, a Big Brother
or Sister. Like Gandhi, find better
outlets for your sexual drive.
The fewer children we have, the fewer
problems we shall have to face.
It’s very simple. Couples that have one child or none
contribute to Learners. Those who have
two, reproduce themselves. Those who
produce three or more are mass-producing warriors and warrior-breeders. Men who inseminate and run, or women who get
pregnant and sit, produce a progeny that we must nourish with PeaceWorld’s
entire strength. No infant may be abused
on PeaceWorld, unlike on WeaponWorld.
Such abuse there would be an unheard-of disgrace.
Each of us has been traumatized by weapon
mentality, intoxicated by its violence and untruth. Yet we have found these terrors perversely
satisfying. We may be able to exorcise
this collective nightmare by halving human birth rates several times within the
next few decades.
We are all Learners; we have always been
Learners and will always be, for as long as we stray here on Earth.
Airports handle airplanes and travelers. Everything at the airport revolves around
their fluid transition. Humans are built
the same way, for Learning. Every human
need, desire, aspiration and fear is centered on Learning. It
does not increase with luxury and is not decreased by dearth. Matter and Spirit absorb it equally. Doing good and suffering evil are just as
much learning scenarios; birth and death are among its most instructive
lessons. Live to learn and learn to
live.
Once we recognize that learning DNA’s Song
may be the main reason for every moment we spend on this sadly beautiful planet
(as revealed in The Cosmic Serpent,
John 1-5, and Genesis 28-12 of the Bible, among others), everything else
will assume its rightful place in the scheme of things. No matter what fate may befall us, we retain
the alternative of dying well and reincarnating into Christ’s life. Once we understand this idea, no one may take
it away from us.
Policies the 12th,
12.3rd And 12.666…th: Dig Ponds, Make Compost, Plant
Trees and Borders.
Shallow ponds are natural magnets for
airborne topsoil, pollen and eroded sediment.
As they age and decay, dying water plants turn into perfect
fertilizer. In the same way, organic
household wastes are far more useful once they’ve been fermented into topsoil
and natural gas – provided households are kept clean and healthy – than as
incinerator ash and landfill ichor.
The ways and means of soil regeneration
are about to undergo a New Age Renaissance and overcome a thousand years of
official neglect.
It turns out that primitive slash-and-burn
farming techniques can be replaced by more thoughtful terra preta techniques during
which slash pile burns are covered with dirt and straw. This low-oxygen, partial burn bio-char traps a
lot of carbon and trace elements, turning light and poor soils into black, rich
ones almost miraculously. Get to
work! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810122030.htm
Celebrate every local festival in this manner. Plant trees, borders and shrubs hardy in your
clime and common to your locale. Join
neighbors to create new groves, parks, orchards and forests. Plant trees along the biological demarcation
lines listed in this book. Plant trees,
more trees! Get politicians to promise
to plant more trees: a promise even today’s bought and paid for politicians
could keep.
Policy the 13th
& Luckiest: Cultivate our Garden.
Let me quote the last line from Voltaire’s Candide: a masterwork of my childhood mentor and
favorite sci-fi pioneer.
<<Cela est bien dit, répondit Candide ; mais
il faut cultiver notre jardin. >>
“That’s well said,” replied Candide, “but our
garden must be tended.”
Every day, thousands of thoughtless discards
blow in off the streets of our global slum.
Our front yard is a filthy litter of broken glass and trash that’ll take
ages to clean up. Between all those
layers of trash simmer additional psychic layers of hatred, fear and pain.
SlumWorld creates its own litter: material,
cultural and behavioral. Slum dwellers
are more comfortable once they’ve surrounded themselves with comfortingly
familiar litter. Like thoughtless
insects, litterers construct their own slums around themselves. They mark the landscape with the trash
manifestations of their frustration, fear and pain. Many rich folk encourage them to set
themselves apart in this sorry manner.
No one proposes a better solution, more dignified and tidy for everyone
including the decision makers.
Once we’ve cleared away all the trash, we’ll
be left with a sterile dirt lot plus a daily refill of garbage. What
should we do? Give up? Abide in filth? Whine about lowered margins of profit? Indulge in comforting half-measures?
Not on your life. Every day, for as long as our hearts hold
out, we’ll haul the filth away. It won’t matter what the cost. We’ll regrow our garden—seed, water and tend
it lovingly. We’ll plant new trees and
shrubs, and tend them as well. With luck, our neighbors will imitate us,
drawn by our example. As local eyesores
become lovely gardens, our disastrous neighborhood will once again
become a parkland worthy of our perpetual affection.
Scaled up somewhat, this is exactly what we
must do across the planet. Weapon
mentality – dragged into the light of day like a rotten rug – will be tossed
aside as useless. Prevarications for the
sake of false economy will no longer be acceptable.
Policy XIV:
Fast when it’s Convenient.
As long as a worthy Learner of Healing would
concur, feel free to abstain from solid food for a day or so a week, a couple
days a month or just on special occasions. Drink healthy liquids and break your fast
whenever you wish, without guilt.
Learners should be intimately acquainted with
hunger. They should know it so well,
they would no more permit strangers to go hungry against their will,
than they would let their own family starve.
Fasting is a gentle exercise in the need for
less: a spiritual liberator. Your body
will thank you for fasting within reason and your meditations will improve.
Policy XV:
Reverse the Emotional Polarities of Weapons and Peace
According to Roland
N. Stromberg’s, Redemption by War: The
Intellectuals and 1914, The Regents Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas,
1982, p. 90, almost everyone in Europe was swept up by the following sensations
when warfare broke out.
Exaltation, spiritual awakening,
transformation, salvation from narrowness and pettiness, above all a surge of
unity reuniting people of all kinds … plain folk with intellectuals, leftists
with rightists, etc. The mysticism of
sacred union, ecstasy over a recovered community, a union of hearts, the
rally cry of Empire, a quickened pulse, new strength and courage, a sense of
brotherhood, a spirit of discipline and sacrifice, revolutionary ecstasy aiming
at purifying the corrupt world by means of a great consuming fire, revolt
against a rationalized, mechanized society, escape from some unhappy personal
situation, joining something monumental and of historic import, the sexual
emancipation of warriors, the temporary silence and permanent silencing of
those opposed to war, a fever, the salvation of Christianity (pick your
favorite religion). Physical force
charged with moral energy becomes like love.
War brings out a religious feeling, even in the anti-religious; it is an
apocalypse. The abandonment of
scientific internationalism and objectivity, the triumph of emotion over
reason; a search for heroism, nobility, unselfishness as well as adventure,
danger and even death. The urge toward
group solidarity and kinship, a newly felt connection between the individual
and the entire nation, comradeship of the trenches. War hammers the world into new shapes; it is
existentially real: the enemy and the danger of war are very real, while peace
is so abstract as to make the individual lose his identity. Unity based on something simple, the common
enemy. An ingathering of patriotic
minorities into the mainstream, social harmony, solidarity, distributive
justice, and salvation through suffering.
The old rationales for war were necessity, duty and justice; in 1914,
the “new” ones became renewal, adventure and apocalypse.
Every American citizen felt something like
this, after 9/11. Stromberg states that
frontline soldiers retain these sentiments a lot longer than rear-area
civilians who soak up standard peacetime alienation much more
quickly. This may explain why veterans
have such a hard time reintegrating into the civilian world, of which they’ve lost
touch.
It will be up to Learners to turn the construction
of PeaceWorld into this same kind of moral crusade for which humans seem to be
hard-wired; up to them to enlist and swell these passions in the
furtherance of World Peace. They will
pronounce the basis of war selfish, spiritually deadening and divisive for any
people. In other words, they will exalt
Peace with perfect sincerity and reveal the whole truth about war.
This spiritual value exercise will be very
challenging. Learners must convince
themselves of the righteousness of their cause, then confirm this conviction
through their studies and convert the remainder of the world population through
the purity of their concerted action.
The least trace of hypocrisy, weakness and hesitation in the reversal of
these sentiments will shrink the benefits of World Peace.
Policy XVI and Especially for the Young:
Protect Your Eyes sand Skin!
As you read these words,
the ozone layer is unraveling and the sun itself bears a lethal frown. Once-healthy outdoor lifestyles offer nothing
more than skin cancer and premature blindness.
Please, get your kids to
wear sunglasses and shaded hats when they go outdoors! Slather them in good sun-block cream at every
opportunity. They will thank you for
this annoyance later, once their contemporaries have gone prematurely blind or
gotten skin cancers during middle age.
Policy XVI and then Some: The Nose Is for
Breathing; the Mouth, To Converse.
Oxygen is a 100% lethal addictive drug: the waste product of plants and cyanobacteria. The human body was designed to consume an absolute minimum of it by breathing sparingly through the nose. Short of foot racing or some more vigorous activity, we take too much of this stuff in when we breathe through the mouth, which results in a cumulative decrease in our vitality.
If you catch yourself breathing through the mouth, make a conscious effort to breathe through your nose, instantly and at all times. If every Learner followed this simple rule, a lot more foolishness would cease, as well as a lot of premature aging of body parts; especially those in direct contact with the air: the lungs and digestive tract, also the eyes and the brain that reflexively take in more oxygen than they need when given the opportunity. After all, you would be breathing through your mouth (which would only be necessary during an emergency in a state of nature), so more concentration might be required on their part. In the long run, too much oxygen can be almost as bad as not enough.
The nose passages of Caucasian faces are narrower and occasionally compel breathing through the mouth. This disability should be resisted.
Policy XVII: When You Die, Look Up Jesus for
Me.
Me, I’m a closet Christian. In Matthew 6, Jesus taught us exactly how to pray to God. It
doesn’t involve churches or priests at all; just you by yourself in a closed
closet. Go see for yourself in the
Bible.
When we die, I believe we reincarnate back
onto the Wheel of Desire, Pain and Death.
We’ve done so blindly, through endless incarnations and various
ecologies, since Life began. I’m beginning to suspect that every one of
our consciences (or that single conscience we share) must run the full gauntlet
and penetrate every life-bubble of the universe’s DNA chain, at the
speed of death.
Jesus left us many confusing parables in the
Bible. I believe He invited us to
reincarnate into the Christ’s lifeline and be saved.
We believe, perhaps falsely, that our prophets taught us different things (different cults and practices in conflict with each other) with the same objective in mind (salvation). On the contrary, they taught us the same thing with different objectives in mind.
There is Christ’s lifeline and Mohammed’s,
the prophets’ and all the great seers’; and the lifelines of those
famous names that have drawn massive attention from their fans and fellow
reincarnators whose eyes shined outward and inward with the charisma of
millions of admirers (Napoleon, Cleopatra and all those people reincarnated
into by their fans). Among all these,
let’s concentrate on Jesus’ humble pilgrimage.
Mohammed preached (without knowing it) the
best worldly preparation for rebirth; Moses and Abraham, the Law of God;
Buddha, how to live and reincarnate among a near-infinite number of equal
choices; Zoroaster, the intimate combat between Good and Evil, whose
energy animates this universe.
Meanwhile, Jesus preached how to escape the material plane and save
one’s soul. With that in mind, His
parables become perfectly clear.
When I die, this time around, I intend to
haunt the dark void that contains every material conception and let my
soul seek Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Christ’s Resurrection from the
dead. They’d be psychic beacons that
would stand out brilliantly from every other incarnation in the Universe,
marking out a flare-strobed heavy runway in a universe consisting otherwise of
furtive couplings in the heaving darkness, along with others a little better
lit, into which we may choose to be reborn for the millionth time.
This time around, I intend to let my soul be
‘born again’ into Jesus’ life and thus make His eyes brighter by a
fraction. This, assuming I have the guts
to volunteer for His agony (or perhaps be dispensed from it by the grace of His
sacrifice). My way through life has
always seemed to me less arduous than it could have been (touch wood);
providing me with the peace and quiet to assemble Learners. I thus intend to
be saved, to escape from the Wheel of Life and go directly to Heaven—if He so
wills. As He promised, as would suit the
Son of God and his playmates.
I may have to come back and repeat this
message. Enough people may not have
grasped it and repeated it this time around.
I would rather everyone understood it completely, turned it into a
racial memory and spared me another of these appalling returns. Me or someone else, we will have to return
here, dream it up again and repeat it as often as necessary; as long as this
world refuses to preserve this memory consciously for those to come (themselves,
once again).
Once you have understood this message, no one will be able to extract it from you, by force or by persuasion. Either it will work for you and you will be saved by it, or not. Once you’ve determined to use it, no one can stop you. For the first time in your many imperfect lives, you will be perfectly free.
When you die, I invite your soul to wrestle
open the same narrow escape hatch through whose porthole I caught a momentary
glimpse of Salvation. What a tight
squeeze! Let’s hope this message spreads
to enough people and eventually to everyone―the only way to expand
this passage to the dimensions of DNA, even greater than death.
Thus armored in life and no longer afraid of
anything, we should construct PeaceWorld.
Well, sister mine, that about sums things up, for the time being. You've accomplished so many wonderful things so spontaneously, without anyone’s encouragement or say-so! Your achievements surpass most others’ I’ve witnessed. You take the best care you can of your children and, as a result, they will grow up as best they can. Let’s hope our descendants – spiritual and genetic – flourish in ways we cannot imagine.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld