(ot) While it would seem reasonable to a group to expect that "good consequences" follow from "good people"
and "good places," I have found the world to be considerably more complex. Having had to grow up and serve Mass every day as a young boy and swing a thurible this way and that and say all my prayers in Latin in a smoky haze, I've had all kinds of ideas pushed into my head. The following comes from years of work on the insides ---- mostly getting all those ideas out --- and not from books. So I force my constructions on nobody. :)
1. Any God who demands fear is a greatly misinterpreted God.
2. The people who frequent churches and temples and study about such things can be as misdirected as the people who frequent football games and bars. It's nobody's fault --- only a function of mind. Mind is everybody's problem.
3. It was not Christ who said "follow your bliss" (as someone who reference your post claimed, I think). It was Joseph Campbell, who spent his life explaining to the world how to understand the language in which Christ (and the few others like him) spoke. Campbell influenced me more than anyone else I know, but for one even smarter than him. :)
4. The crux of matter is here, in my experience. Every action undertaken by every human in this world has the potential for "bad" consequence unless that action is undertaken in a certain spirit of selflessness. It would take too much for me to type, even if I was capable, to explain what that spirit of selfless entails, but I'll try in a few words. To be selfless is to know how to exist beyond the mind.
Every thought and every action has consequence. It is like an ember or a fire which brings heat to and creates a new ember or a new fire. This is the complex operation of "karma". The simple idea of "karma = if you do bad you will pay for it" is a tiny, tiny subset of what I am referring to, focused upon solely by the western mind --- which tends to be obsessed with "getting something" always, and has forgotten things about the simple joy of living.
Now to live in a way that is so selfless that every action you take and every thought you have is so pure that the potential for a negative consequence burns away at the very same instant you have the thought or take the action is to be a saint. Only one with that potential ---- and so you'll see it need not entail bible study or being afraid of bars --- can have the ability to live on the earth without disturbing anything. Such a person is set up to not even want to tread on an ant or leave his/her footprints anywhere, or have a need to be remembered, or have a need to "get anything" that equates to "taking" from anyone else --- so extraordinarily gentle will such a person be.
To meet and know such people is very, very, very hard. They live very quietly and may or may not frequent bars, study groups, churches or temples. They look so extraordinarily simple that the normal mind --- which always wants to "get something" ...... even something as as weirdly simple as "I want to get to go to Heaven" --- is not geared to seeing and recognizing them for what they are. For such people, wherever they are is a church. Or temple. Everything about them is sacred, though not in a way a normal person would easily recognize. And for them, no thought or action they take can have bad consequence. Only good.
So yes, it has little to do with bars (places) etc. Now one can say that such people are unlikely to frequent bars ---- and that may or may not be true. Who can predict what such a person may do?
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