Joseph Campbell: "There are a number of ways of thinking about Satan, but this is based on the question, Why was Satan thrown into hell?

The standard story is that, when God created the angels, he told them to bow to none but himself.

Then he created man, whom he regarded as a higher form than the angels, and he asked the angels to serve man. And Satan would not bow to man.

Now this is interpreted in the Christian tradition, as I recall from my boyhood instruction, as being the egotism of Satan.

He would not bow to man.

But in the Persian story, he could not bow to man because of his love for God ... he could bow only to God.

God had changed his signals, do you see?

But Satan had so committed himself to the first set of signals that he could not violate those, and in his ... I don't know if Satan has a heart or not ... but in his mind, he could not bow to anyone but God, whom he loved.

And then God says, " Get out of my sight."

Now, the worst of the pains of hell, insofar as hell has been described, is the absence of the Beloved, which is God.

So how does Satan sustain the situation in hell?

By the memory of the echo of God's voice, when God said, "Go to hell."

That is a great sign of love.

Bill Moyers: Well, it's certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love.

That's why I've liked the Persian myth. Satan is God's lover ...

Joseph Campbell: ...and he is separated from God, and that's the real pain of Satan."

~~~conversation between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers~~~

Euripides said, 'A coward turns away but a brave man's choice is danger.'

What the ancient Greeks learned, as the first truly intellectual and philosophical people, is that there is more danger to one's hope, one's mettle, one's pride, in venturing into the battle of ideas, than in murdering a man who disagrees with you ... and that doing so therefore takes proportionally more courage.

Most people tend to think of courage as a warrior virtue, as belonging typically to battle, and therefore, by analogy, to endeavor on the upper slopes of Everest, in the deep sea, and even on the sports field ... in other words, wherever endurance, grit and determination in the face of physical challenges are required.

That is true enough.

But courage is often demonstrated, because it is often needed, in greater quantities in daily life, and there are even times when 'merely to live', as Seneca put it in a letter to Lucilius, 'is itself an act of courage'.

~~~A.C. Grayling~~~

Does a given individual's religion serve to break his will, keep him at an infantile level of development, and enable him to avoid the anxiety of freedom and personal responsibility?

Or does it serve him as a basis of meaning which affirms his dignity and worth, which gives him a basis for courageous acceptance of his limitations and normal anxiety, but which aids him to develop his powers, his responsibility and his capacity to love his fellow men?

~~~Rollo May~~~

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.

I don't think that's what we're really seeking.

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

~~~Joseph Campbell~~~

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only to his friends.

He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret.

But there are other things that a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

~~~Fyodor Dostoyevsky~~~

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There is a real pain in your heart, a pain that truly belongs to you.

You know now that you cannot avoid, ignore, or repress it.

It is the pain that reveals to you how you are called to live in solidarity with the broken human race.

You must distinguish carefully, however, between your pain and the pains that have attached themselves to it but are not truly yours.

When you feel rejected, when you think of yourself as a failure and a misfit, you must be careful not to let these feelings and thoughts pierce your heart.

You are not a failure or a misfit.

Therefore, you have to disown these pains as false.

They can paralyze you and prevent you from loving the way you are called to love.

~~~Henry Nouwen~~~

There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves.

True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle.

Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy.

Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so to will the mind become still if it is allowed to become still.

Neither the water or the moon make any effort at achieving a reflection.

In the same way, meditation will be natural and immediate.

~~~Deng Ming-Dao~~~

Every age thinks it is in crisis.

Things have got worse, people say, clucking their tongues; crime is up, the quality of life down, the world in a mess.

People of religious bent are inclined to think that their personal epoch is so bad that it probably marks the end of the world.

Such sentiments are misleading because they premise a belief that somewhere or sometime the world had something which has since been lost---a cozy, chintzy, afternoon-teatime era when there was neither danger without nor unease within.

But when we begin rummaging among these myths to provide solutions to present day troubles, which is what moralizers do, we are in trouble indeed.

~~~A.C. Grayling~~~

We are not suited to be free.

We are suited still, as when we were children, to live under the protection of, and within the limits set by, loving parents.

As adults we strive to continue this arrangement, with kings and gods slipping into the place of parents.

~~~Allen Wheelis~~~

The Talmud expresses this subtle relationship in an apocryphal story of a dialogue between God and Abraham.

God begins by chiding Abraham, "If it wasn't for Me, you wouldn't exist."

After a moment of thoughtful reflection, Abraham respectfully replies, "Yes, Lord, and for that I am very appreciative and grateful.

However, if it wasn't for me, You wouldn't be known."

~~~Leonard Schlain~~~

Beware of those who attach great value to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in making moral distinctions.

They never forgive us once they have made a mistake in front of us (or, worse, against us): inevitably they become our instinctive slanderers and detractors, even if they should still remain our "friends".

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get over their stupidities, too.

~~~Friedrich Nietzsche~~~

We have never followed the advice of the great teachers.

Why are we likely to begin now?

Why are we more likely to follow Christ than any of the others?

Because He is the best moral teacher?

But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow Him.

If we cannot take the elementary lessons, is it likely we are going to take the most advanced one?

If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance.

There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years.

A bit more makes no difference.

~~~C.S. Lewis~~~

Free To Choose

Man, oh man, to be completely and totally free to do anything that I want to do.

And I mean absolutely anything ... all restraints lifted. No holds barred.

It has been said that a man can not choose how or where they will die but only the kind of life that they live.

I disagree with that.

If I want to, if I so chose to do it, I could choose exactly how and when I will die. I could chew the end of shotgun or take a handful of sleeping pills or crash my vehicle into a steel wall while running 150 mph or slit my wrists in a warm tub of water until I bleed out. That would be the mark of absolute freedom, would it not?

The only question presently remaining for me is this, "Why don't I do it, what am I waiting for?"

Am I waiting for the next T-bone steak to see if that one will possibly be better than the last?

Maybe it's the thought of not seeing another sunrise or sunset. Or maybe I'd miss the feeling of having my arm gently stroked by someone that loves me.

I'm not afraid of dying ... I'm just afraid of no longer having the choice to decide to live.

Maybe I had it all backwards.

Maybe choosing to live is mankind's ultimate freedom.

©2009/Lucifer-Saytan

Lucifer: "How do you tell the difference between Methodists, Pentecostals, and Baptists when you see them in a liquor store?"

Jesus: "The Methodists will at least speak to you before they leave."

Hindsight may have the benefit of 20/20 vision, but in real life the capacity to act is often greatest when the clarity to see is worse.

Conversely, by the time everything is crystal clear, freedom to act may be heavily constrained.

Adolph Hitler, for example, could easily have been stopped in his tracks early in his career; it was not until he could only be stopped at enormous cost that people knew beyond doubt why he needed to be stopped at any cost.

~~~Os Guinness~~~

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself.

You have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.

The essence of this matter is to understand that this self of ours, this other man within us, has got to be handled.

Do not listen to him; turn on him; speak to him; condemn him; upbraid him; exhort him; encourage him; remind him of what you know instead of placidly listening to him and allowing him to drag you down and depress you.

~~~Martin Lloyd-Jones~~~

"There is an underbelly of terror to all life.

It is suffering, it is hurt.

Deep within all of us are intense fears that have left few of us whole.

Life's terrors haunt us, attack us, leave ugly cuts.

To buffer ourselves, we dwell on beauty, we collect things, we fall in love, we desperately try to make something lasting in our lives.

We take beauty as the only worthwhile thing in this existence, but it cannot veil cursing, violence, randomness, and injustice.

That is why spiritual progress is slow: not because no one will tell us the secrets, but because we ourselves must overcome sentiment and fear before we can grasp it."

~~~Deng Ming-Dao~~~
Powerful life quote used at Whiskey River

Why Does Evil Lure Us So?

Why does evil excite us so?

Everyone feels its silky lure.

Most of us ... maybe just that one time ... have blown a Commandment, lost our way, gone too far in the blurry hours after midnight.

And no wonder: Evil seduces with promises of passion and excess ... of transcendence over the merely physical and rational and present.

It guarantees perfection, as the Serpent did to Eve, which is why the figures of Dracula and de Sade and Hitler and Manson not only terrify and enrage but also beckon.

"Evil" may sound like an echo from a bygone, candlelit era.

Yet it can still send shivers down a modern spine ... shivers of fear, shivers of delight.

~~~William Hart~~~

~~~~~~~

We should admit that we love evil too much to give it up.
~~~Ghandi~~~

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