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Roy Quasi-Infallible Egocentric Tyrant

| Joined: | Mon Apr 4th, 2005 |
| Location: | Washington USA |
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Posted: Thu Nov 27th, 2008 06:02 pm |
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Happy Thanksgiving, members of the Grove.
A very strange time in world history is before us, and if this ain't a tribulation of sorts, then nothing will be.
At the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, you can be thankful and even outright glad that our own members here are not at the center of one or another of the various maelstroms about us in the world.
Don't remember Pollyanna! In the film by the same name, Pollyanna plays the thankfulness game. The character lives in Midwestern town at the end of the 19th century, if I am not mistaken.
When challenged as to what to be thankful for in the case of the town's extremely boring and tedious Sundays, she replies, "We can be thankful that it is seven whole days to the next Sunday!"
I remember the expression of the housekeepers and cooks to that one.
But, that is one of the things that we have to be thankful about: that we have the wherewithal to deal with these problems.
But the second thing to be thankful about is not obvious, at least not at the start of whatever the tribulation is. That will be: dealing with these problems will yield tremendous spiritual benefits, insights into the nature of ourselves and humanity at large while goading us into dropping useless and harmful aspects of our own nature, making us better healers and wise men, true conduits of Spirit.
I remember watching TV one day when the show was about AIDS. A panel of AIDS victims was speaking of their experiences.
One man spoke of the enormous number of things he had learned that he could have never learned without his suffering and how thankful he was. I was a bit shocked.
And, yet, I knew from my own trials and tribulations that they provide enormous insight and even grace. Grace would be, in my own patented version of the complementation of the esoteric and the rational, the change in your emotional body that carries light, the change brought about by embodying some aspect of the Christ-within so that you become a conduit of that grace.
Normal success evades us when confronted by such great obstacles that the word tribulation is meaningful, but that is precisely why we are in the world: to be conduits of the Spirit and finish the spiritualization of humanity, out of mechanicalness, out of its possession by unbalance forces, its demonic lack of grace, lack of psyche.
That way we go from Abram to Abraham, the added -ha being the representation of the pneuma of Spirit in ourselves, an infusion of what takes us to being the Second Adam.
Yeah, yeah, but it does suck!
____________________ "The force and degree of a man's inner benevolence evokes in others a proportionate degree of ill-will" - Gurdjieff
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." — George Orwell
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Roy Quasi-Infallible Egocentric Tyrant

| Joined: | Mon Apr 4th, 2005 |
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Posted: Thu Nov 27th, 2008 06:24 pm |
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I do remind the members of the Grove that the turkey, as we see here in our Grove, is a guest, and to insure that he reappears, be sure to set a place for him at the table and offer him something to eat as well.

____________________ "The force and degree of a man's inner benevolence evokes in others a proportionate degree of ill-will" - Gurdjieff
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." — George Orwell
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Nocturne Honored Fellow Grover

| Joined: | Wed Apr 6th, 2005 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
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Posted: Mon Dec 8th, 2008 09:36 pm |
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Spare a thought for us Brits, alas all we can do is mourn the loss of our former colony...
it's always about money, to hell with wanting to be free
Adam Smith's argument for American independence:
In addition to the writing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776 also saw the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Writing just a few months before the Declaration, the founder of modern economics and a key influence on modern libertarianism and conservatism endorsed American independence for somewhat different reasons than Jefferson & Co. did:
It is not contrary to justice that both Ireland and America should contribute towards the discharge of the public debt of Great Britain. That debt has been contracted in support of the government established by the Revolution [of 1688], . . . a government to which several of the colonies of America owe their present charters, and consequently their present constitution and to which all the colonies of America owe the liberty, security, and property which they have ever since enjoyed. That public debt has been contracted in the defence, not of Great Britain alone, but of all the different provinces of the empire; the immense debt contracted in the late [French and Indian] war in particular, and a great part of that contracted in the war before, were both properly contracted in defence of America . . .
If the colonies, notwithstanding their refusal to submit to British taxes, are still to be considered as provinces of the British empire, their defence in some future war may cost Great Britain as great an expence as it ever has done in any former war . . .
If any of the provinces of the British empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expence of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace . . .
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapt. III (1776).
but then, conspiracies abound...

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and I do like your turkey!
p.s
any sign of old PG?
____________________ when will all this end?
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Nocturne Honored Fellow Grover

| Joined: | Wed Apr 6th, 2005 |
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Posted: Mon Dec 8th, 2008 09:40 pm |
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damn, just noticed your turkey has vanished 
here is a British turk

____________________ when will all this end?
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