During last night’s discussion stories, beliefs and opinions were expressed regarding health, sickness and healing, because Quimby was a famous healer in his days. He had many followers and some started new movements such as Christian Science and the various ‘New Thought’ groups and churches even.
Many of these groups hold the conviction that sickness is evidence that you are holding wrong beliefs and negative thoughts you may not even know yourself. Some even go as far as saying that in case of a viral infection something in you must have ‘attracted’ such unconsciously.
This kind of reasoning feels to me as a way of blaming the victim, which is not what Christianity teaches and makes me suspect that power game attitudes play a role - unconsciously I say, in case this gets denied! How would we know what goes on unconsciously within the other, where I don’t even know as much about myself? It is presumptive in the least and can be worse, to suggest such a hidden motive about another human being.
So, last night, thinking about these contrasts and the variation in human fortunes and circumstances I put the following view together.
Over the years I have often dealt with and thought about our human situation considering the contrasts in our society, global now. So, last night, thinking about these contrasts and the variation in human fortunes and circumstances I put the following view together.
In the downtown area that I live I see the ‘suits’, the ‘bottle collectors’ and beggars almost daily. The bottle collectors work quite hard I have noticed and from talking to a beggar at times, I know that we’re talking about people who find it difficult to find their place in our society.
In contrast the purposeful business people walking on the sidewalk convince you that most people have found their spot, some even admirably so. But, we also know that not everybody can be a top executive, nor would it do to have everyone being a collector of discarded material. All human societies know levels from the highest to the lowest, without which societies could not function.
What then is the human experience about? My view is that all experience is valid experience. This does not mean that all human experience is ethical, moral or desirable, on the contrary we do have to use our good judgement. However, such judgement is based on experience and this in turn tells us from experience as to what is good, bad, beautiful or ugly.
This judgement is based on the outcome of each human experience, learned, taught, becoming tradition. In other words, I have to learn what is the ‘right action’, so all experience is valid because we can learn from its outcome as to how valuable it is.
In this reference framework we can place all human experience and this includes what we judge to be ‘less fortunate experiences’. Each person’s experience is unique to it self and this we must accept first, only then taking suitable action, but refrain from judging as to what I perceive it to be as appropriate. What the other experiences may just be what is needed for that person as life experience. I can only judge my own experience and not that of some other person.
Now this raises the question of the ‘common good’, regarding which various groups go by different rules. It is here that most rely on tradition for a guide to judge which behaviour has crossed a common line defined by the community in which the individual lives.
It is by accepting a human experience first as valid based on the touchstone that it is the experience of a human and as such adds to the collective experience of humanity.
It is by accepting a human experience first as valid based on the touchstone that it is the experience of a human and as such adds to the collective experience of humanity. Then, after this acceptance can we judge whether this valid experience is valuable and worthy of pursuit or constitutes a lesson learned and should be avoided in the future. It is in this way that we humans have accumulated our collective wisdoms of our traditions and need to continue to do so.
<1:20pm.
