Saturday, August 25, 2018

How do people keep their consciousnesses asleep?

The perennial psychology distinguishes between the states of human consciousness as asleep and awake. Most human beings spend most of their lives with their consciousness asleep. Steve Taylor describes the sleep state of consciousness in his book, The Leap, as having four categories of signs and symptoms: affective, perceptual, conceptual and behavioral. We will be taking these categories of signs and symptoms of a sleeping consciousness one at a time. In this article we will describe the signs and symptoms of the behavioral category. 

People who are asleep, most of humanity, manage their dis-ease in two major ways: entertainment that is mood altering, and filling their internal void up with stuff, accumulating things.

President George W. Bush, who professes to be a follower of Jesus, told Americans after the 9/11 attack to "go shopping" because we can't let the terrorists defeat our American way of life. Really? 

The answer to national anxiety after being attacked by terrorists is to go shopping is the second behavioral strategy for staying asleep. Continuing to sleep, America pursues its immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which continue to this day 17 years later. These wars are evidence of the spiritual poverty of Americans. Americans are so asleep that very few people even question the fact that America is still at war in Afghanistan and has spent over one trillion dollars on this ineffective and disastrous strategy to create world peace.

The first strategy of entertaining ourselves to avoid our dis-ease is evidenced by the preoccupation with social media, drugs, and materialism in all its shapes and sordid configurations. The desire to be entertained has led to the election of a reality TV president who filled the airways during his campaign and Presidency with all kinds of sensationalized lies, cheats, and attacking behaviors. As a fan of World Wrestling Entertainment, President Trump is a cartoonish figure whose outrageous antics have aroused passions which contribute to Americans continued sleep while all kinds of immoral policies are enacted in their names from immigration, to racism, to misogyny, to "tax reform" taking from the poor to enrich the one percent.

Somnolent consciousnesses of Americans is addressed one soul at a time by the covenant of Unitarian Univeralism which affirms and promotes seven principles. The covenant of UU is a path to salvation. It is written in A Course in Miracles, “Salvation is nothing more that ‘right-mindedness,’ which is not the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit, but which must be achieved before One-mindedness is restored. Right-mindedness leads to the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, and therefore wrong-mindedness is obliterated.” T-4.II.10:1-2

The seven principles which UUs use as a compass to discern "right-mindedness" which takes us to the One-mindedness which we all yearn for. The mission of UU A Way of Life ministries is "to sanctify the world by helping people become holy." This sanctification involves becoming aware of the signs and symptoms of our somnevalence. Becoming aware we can choose to wake up.



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