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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (78115)	4/14/2000 4:23:00 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

<<I would tell you WHY I thought a given action was right or wrong.>> Before you could tell me why, you would have to build a rationalization for your self to share with me. Before you began to do that you would have an inkling that the thing seemed right or wrong. The inkling may have come from subconscious stored thought, a gut feeling, indoctrination, or some self evident instinct. During your self analysis to come up with a good justification for calling it right or wrong, you likely would discover the source of that initial inkling but not necessarily.

To: epicure who wrote (78115)	4/15/2000 6:40:00 AM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I couldn't tell you you would burn in Hell or suffer any paranormal punishment if you didn't do what I said was right, and if you chose to do what I thought was wrong. There are what I think must be a surprising number of people who believe in some sort of God who either do not believe that there is a hell or believe that the best allegorical rendition of it is something on the order of The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, in which people live with what they have made of themselves and still have a choice to reject how small the space into which they have forced themselves. Effectively, they make their own hell and still have a choice to acknowledge the mote in their own eyes and go through the pain of tearing it out. The two that I found most interesting are the Tragedian and his "puppet"--the man who needed to feel wronged and take the moral "high ground" even when it did not exist, even against real goodness--and the man whose failing was lust. For those who don't remember or who haven't read this novella, lust was depicted as a little creature (I think a lizard) whispering in his ear; when he could finally bear to throw the creature off his shoulder, it transformed into a stallion (healthy desire) that carried him to the mountains (heaven) at a gallop. The "puppet" was a man who had reduced himself to the Tragedian, depicted as an actor with a "puppet" accompanying him on a leash; the real tragedy in the novella was that the "puppet" was the real person who still could become himself, a thinking and fallible person. He was still too afraid to abandon this persona, one which had become a sin in that it made him small and blinded him to real goodness to the extent that he actually impeded goodness. Even after death, in the novella, offered yet another opportunity to grow beyond this judgemental and self-pitying persona, he cannot take the leap into this unknown and continues to shrink until he is gone into the persona. He damns himself and even his wife, whose goodness in day-to-day life has entitled her to the mountains and who has stuck around in the dismal plains to offer him a hand, cannot save him from his need to be a victim and a wronged person. Even she must eventually abandon him and go on to the mountains without him. If I had children, X, I'd give them this book to read as I have given it to friends--friends of all faiths and friends who are atheists. So far, the feedback has been wholly positive. Some of the "holy rollers" told me that they felt rocked and had to rethink themselves and were happy that they did so; no one read it and did not look into his or her soul and think. Have you read it? If not, I commend it to you and to everyone on the thread.