Post by Rob W. Case on Jun 27, 2007 2:31:52 GMT -6
Before I post this piece, I want to introduce you to the author of it. His name is Roy Masters. I was first introduced to Roy Masters by accidentally stumbling across his radio program on Newstalk 560 WIND in Chicago. When I listened to him, I was impressed. His insights and ability to delve deep into the roots of human thought and behavior impressed me to such a degree that I wanted to tune in more and more to his radio program. Of course after tuning into his program more and more, I started visiting his website,
downloading his e-books, reading his articles, and even purchasing a couple of his books.
Now, I am going to share his insights in hopes that you too will find the same level of value and understanding that I have.
------------------------------------------------------
How to Make a Right Decision (Part 1)
By Roy Masters
Part 1
Only man kills himself trying to be something he is not
The secret of life and death is locked into the will of the prideful nature you inherit. Your ultimate death is caused by the terrible burden laid upon you to make decisions without understanding and then not facing up to the error of your ways. You literally burn yourself out willing things to happen and trying to make decisions. Life, on the other hand, comes from a special way of laying down your willful, decision- making life style and learning to live spontaneously from moment to moment without scheming, planning, and worrying.
The abode of the prideful ego is the intellect. The intellect is where the ego must live if it is to survive as a creature of will.
Immersed in a sea of swirling thoughts and ideas, the ego can continue to delude itself; there it can be what it wants to be through having what it wants to have until it dies. Descending into the knowledge realm of the mind, your ego can forget the Truth and remember only its greatness.
Pure intellectual knowledge is a lower form of ignorance than ignorance itself; it is an escape from understanding' into knowing yourself as God. Pride exists by ignoring under¬ standing; it ignores through the way the will lives in its own mental world, trying to create a sort of counter universe where all its striving is supposed to testify to the creative righteousness of its glorious creator. You know, of course, that is not what happens in the Light of Reality, and you can see, I hope, that the error arising from striving and willing is the other reason why your ego avoids understanding and why it rushes for the cover of intellectual knowledge. Involving yourself in fantasies and memories is the most effective way to ignore the truth about yourself; down there, lost in the machinery of the intellect, you can acquire the non threatening truths and knowledge tidbits with which to practice decision making, through which you hope to know yourself as God.
The thirst for knowledge often seems like a quest for Truth, but in reality it is nearly always a compulsion to discover who you are in your work, study, and even in your guilt-motivated generosity; you hope that who is God.
Deciding (to decide) things separates you from under¬ standing and leaves a meaningless void in your soul that can be filled by the kind of knowledge with which your ego can create his own meaning. Such meaning always has something to do with proving the goodness of the God who created it. Decision making demands intellectual knowledge to make the decisions that will reveal you in a good light. The intellectual void created by an ego need to make decisions draws you to knowledge, and the knowledge realm sucks you into its whirling machinery.
Wherever understanding is absent, learning is unbalanced, and so learning becomes an ego trip. The more you learn by rote, the more vain you are amid your knowing. You even think you originate that knowing, because to know is to think of (discover) yourself as a god who knows. The more self-aware you become through learning, the more you know you exist, and you might tend to believe that if you did not exist, things wouldn't exist either. The more you learn, the more learning swells your pride. Can you see why you develop either a fear of learning or a compulsion toward it? And perhaps you can see why it is that you are so hard on yourself, why you feel keenly responsible for everything that happens. I am referring, of course, to the neurotic, lopsided learning process of pride, not learning per se. However, I am sure you have already identified yourself with what I have said about pride. All of us are guilty of using learning to make judgments and decisions that puff us up with pride. Will, with its judgments and decision making, is the root of all human tragedy.
By trying to decide the course and purpose of your life, you stand in the Light, and, becoming the light, you cast a dark shadow. And as you do this, your soul become void of understanding, the intellect becomes vacant of its "intuitive" knowledge, and mental vacuums begin to fill up from the wrong side of the psyche. As you start "remembering" who you are–through learning–you develop that capacity to make decisions and judgments about everyone and every¬ thing. And at this point you begin to feel age-old conflict with God. Anxiety and terror over making decisions now develop to become the evidence a deadly flaw in your nature –will.
Now I realize that you personally have never had any choice in the matter of willing–knowing God or knowing yourself as God; only Adam had that choice. You awakened saddled with his dilemma. It was through choosing to know himself as God that made Adam's consciousness (soul) descend into the realm of his intellect, and that move brought into existence the prideful human race, inheriting ignorance with its subjectivity to temptation and a compulsive fascination and preoccupation with knowledge and goal setting. Lost in an Alice-in-Wonderland world of knowledge, each of us comes into existence struggling to discover who we are until the futility of it, the pain, and the suffering make us question where we are going.
Realizing this to be the truth about your error, all that remains is to find a way to shrink from the abyss of the intellect, from the machinery of decision making: to shrink from being proud. Drawing back from the state of pride has to do with finding the way out of the maze of intellect. The sincerity of your seeking is the "be" attitude that renders you objective to your memories. In that objective state you discover the other way of knowing. You understand in the Light; you experience humility. In that state where under¬ standing is also knowledge, you know perfectly that you cannot know by striving with knowledge, and with that special kind of deep knowing you no longer are tempted to study, to plan, or worry. Here you find a natural resistance to the temptation to analyze and decide.
To realize in a perfect way that your soul cannot know by knowing is the basis of true knowledge. To understand that you cannot know by knowing IS knowing; it is primal wisdom. You stand at the threshold of boundless wisdom by realizing this truth. There are two truths here: the Truth and the truth about yourself.
God is omniscient: that is to say He knows everything at one time; but in your consciousness of God, you will only know when you need to know it and when it serves His secret plan. When you discover that truth about your nothingness, you will have discovered the Truth greater than you; being the no-thing of which God is the Some-thing is the basis of humility, of truly knowing and truly being.
In order to realize the All-Knowing One, you must leave the refuge of your intellect; you must come up into the state of consciousness where you realize that you know nothing. Coming to know as you need to know is the same as living by Faith.
Prideful ego cannot have faith, because faith comes only through understanding, which is the kind of knowing that can abandon the conceit of pride and planning. Blind pride, seeing no other purpose or plan, is inspired to scheme its own plan. Planning–dreaming–is the way your ego stimulates its own false hope. Remember, in your pride you think nothing will happen unless you make it happen and that there is no motivation without dreaming. Because of its attitude, your ego is blind, cut off from life's meaning and purpose, and that state of meaninglessness calls on you to create meaning. Alas, in trying to create it, you discover more meaningless¬ness.
Meaninglessness is incontrovertible evidence that there is meaning, which you cannot create and decide. Were there no meaning and purpose to find other than yours, then it would logically follow that you could never feel futility, because there would be no such thing as futility.
It is the presence of the other purpose, the other meaning, that contrasts with and makes you know that your meaning is meaningless. Meaninglessness is how you first come to know that true meaning exists and that meaning yours—is wrong.
The link to the article you just read is...
fhu.com/enewsletter/right_descision_1.html
If you want to learn more about Roy Masters, read his articles, or find out where to listen to his radio program internationally, visit www.fhu.com/.
downloading his e-books, reading his articles, and even purchasing a couple of his books.
Now, I am going to share his insights in hopes that you too will find the same level of value and understanding that I have.
------------------------------------------------------
How to Make a Right Decision (Part 1)
By Roy Masters
Part 1
Only man kills himself trying to be something he is not
The secret of life and death is locked into the will of the prideful nature you inherit. Your ultimate death is caused by the terrible burden laid upon you to make decisions without understanding and then not facing up to the error of your ways. You literally burn yourself out willing things to happen and trying to make decisions. Life, on the other hand, comes from a special way of laying down your willful, decision- making life style and learning to live spontaneously from moment to moment without scheming, planning, and worrying.
The abode of the prideful ego is the intellect. The intellect is where the ego must live if it is to survive as a creature of will.
Immersed in a sea of swirling thoughts and ideas, the ego can continue to delude itself; there it can be what it wants to be through having what it wants to have until it dies. Descending into the knowledge realm of the mind, your ego can forget the Truth and remember only its greatness.
Pure intellectual knowledge is a lower form of ignorance than ignorance itself; it is an escape from understanding' into knowing yourself as God. Pride exists by ignoring under¬ standing; it ignores through the way the will lives in its own mental world, trying to create a sort of counter universe where all its striving is supposed to testify to the creative righteousness of its glorious creator. You know, of course, that is not what happens in the Light of Reality, and you can see, I hope, that the error arising from striving and willing is the other reason why your ego avoids understanding and why it rushes for the cover of intellectual knowledge. Involving yourself in fantasies and memories is the most effective way to ignore the truth about yourself; down there, lost in the machinery of the intellect, you can acquire the non threatening truths and knowledge tidbits with which to practice decision making, through which you hope to know yourself as God.
The thirst for knowledge often seems like a quest for Truth, but in reality it is nearly always a compulsion to discover who you are in your work, study, and even in your guilt-motivated generosity; you hope that who is God.
Deciding (to decide) things separates you from under¬ standing and leaves a meaningless void in your soul that can be filled by the kind of knowledge with which your ego can create his own meaning. Such meaning always has something to do with proving the goodness of the God who created it. Decision making demands intellectual knowledge to make the decisions that will reveal you in a good light. The intellectual void created by an ego need to make decisions draws you to knowledge, and the knowledge realm sucks you into its whirling machinery.
Wherever understanding is absent, learning is unbalanced, and so learning becomes an ego trip. The more you learn by rote, the more vain you are amid your knowing. You even think you originate that knowing, because to know is to think of (discover) yourself as a god who knows. The more self-aware you become through learning, the more you know you exist, and you might tend to believe that if you did not exist, things wouldn't exist either. The more you learn, the more learning swells your pride. Can you see why you develop either a fear of learning or a compulsion toward it? And perhaps you can see why it is that you are so hard on yourself, why you feel keenly responsible for everything that happens. I am referring, of course, to the neurotic, lopsided learning process of pride, not learning per se. However, I am sure you have already identified yourself with what I have said about pride. All of us are guilty of using learning to make judgments and decisions that puff us up with pride. Will, with its judgments and decision making, is the root of all human tragedy.
By trying to decide the course and purpose of your life, you stand in the Light, and, becoming the light, you cast a dark shadow. And as you do this, your soul become void of understanding, the intellect becomes vacant of its "intuitive" knowledge, and mental vacuums begin to fill up from the wrong side of the psyche. As you start "remembering" who you are–through learning–you develop that capacity to make decisions and judgments about everyone and every¬ thing. And at this point you begin to feel age-old conflict with God. Anxiety and terror over making decisions now develop to become the evidence a deadly flaw in your nature –will.
Now I realize that you personally have never had any choice in the matter of willing–knowing God or knowing yourself as God; only Adam had that choice. You awakened saddled with his dilemma. It was through choosing to know himself as God that made Adam's consciousness (soul) descend into the realm of his intellect, and that move brought into existence the prideful human race, inheriting ignorance with its subjectivity to temptation and a compulsive fascination and preoccupation with knowledge and goal setting. Lost in an Alice-in-Wonderland world of knowledge, each of us comes into existence struggling to discover who we are until the futility of it, the pain, and the suffering make us question where we are going.
Realizing this to be the truth about your error, all that remains is to find a way to shrink from the abyss of the intellect, from the machinery of decision making: to shrink from being proud. Drawing back from the state of pride has to do with finding the way out of the maze of intellect. The sincerity of your seeking is the "be" attitude that renders you objective to your memories. In that objective state you discover the other way of knowing. You understand in the Light; you experience humility. In that state where under¬ standing is also knowledge, you know perfectly that you cannot know by striving with knowledge, and with that special kind of deep knowing you no longer are tempted to study, to plan, or worry. Here you find a natural resistance to the temptation to analyze and decide.
To realize in a perfect way that your soul cannot know by knowing is the basis of true knowledge. To understand that you cannot know by knowing IS knowing; it is primal wisdom. You stand at the threshold of boundless wisdom by realizing this truth. There are two truths here: the Truth and the truth about yourself.
God is omniscient: that is to say He knows everything at one time; but in your consciousness of God, you will only know when you need to know it and when it serves His secret plan. When you discover that truth about your nothingness, you will have discovered the Truth greater than you; being the no-thing of which God is the Some-thing is the basis of humility, of truly knowing and truly being.
In order to realize the All-Knowing One, you must leave the refuge of your intellect; you must come up into the state of consciousness where you realize that you know nothing. Coming to know as you need to know is the same as living by Faith.
Prideful ego cannot have faith, because faith comes only through understanding, which is the kind of knowing that can abandon the conceit of pride and planning. Blind pride, seeing no other purpose or plan, is inspired to scheme its own plan. Planning–dreaming–is the way your ego stimulates its own false hope. Remember, in your pride you think nothing will happen unless you make it happen and that there is no motivation without dreaming. Because of its attitude, your ego is blind, cut off from life's meaning and purpose, and that state of meaninglessness calls on you to create meaning. Alas, in trying to create it, you discover more meaningless¬ness.
Meaninglessness is incontrovertible evidence that there is meaning, which you cannot create and decide. Were there no meaning and purpose to find other than yours, then it would logically follow that you could never feel futility, because there would be no such thing as futility.
It is the presence of the other purpose, the other meaning, that contrasts with and makes you know that your meaning is meaningless. Meaninglessness is how you first come to know that true meaning exists and that meaning yours—is wrong.
The link to the article you just read is...
fhu.com/enewsletter/right_descision_1.html
If you want to learn more about Roy Masters, read his articles, or find out where to listen to his radio program internationally, visit www.fhu.com/.