Darlings, Pretty Lady is terribly sorry to have neglected you. But at least she has been smiling at you. The truth is, she had so many things to say all at once, she found herself unable to say any of them. Also, she has been so engrossed in dear Cintra's book that she hasn't been getting enough sleep.
Perhaps this is the reason that, although she seems to see something with startling clarity, she cannot at all communicate right now.
"You just loved crucifying me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terrorizing my heart and ripping my soul all the time...You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic, bored life you were extinguishing. ...Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and impaled upon a cross and left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life."
---that deranged young man
"The journey to the cross should be the last 'useless journey.' Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Until you do so your life is indeed wasted. It merely re-enacts the separation, the loss of power, the futile attempts of the ego at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. Such repetitions are endless until they are voluntarily given up. Do not make the pathetic error of 'clinging to the old rugged cross.' The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose."Sometimes it seems to Pretty Lady that the purpose and gift of the deranged is that they show us ourselves, in such caricature and clarity that we cannot look away or deny it. For this, on some level, and in some way, we may be grateful to them.
--A Course In Miracles
20 comments:
That is a great elucidation of what draws us so to the mentally tormented.
Really? I thought it was remarkably incoherent. Somehow I cannot seem to assemble my thoughts this week.
lady, you are nuts. or else just cynical and callous. i find it disgusting and opportunistic that you are using the words of the vt killer to illustrate some rediculous pseudo religious point. maybe youre just trying to drive up your blog traffic by mentioning the shocking event of the week. it's offensive.
Anonymous, I read that post three more times just now, looking for a reference, direct or indirect, to Cho. I really can't find one. Pretty Lady is talking about reading a book she'd been engrossed in for several weeks, since way before the VT horror.
The only offensive behavior I see here is yours. You're looking for some excuse to be nasty. And, of course, since you're a whiny little coward who can neither think nor spell, you can't even get your nastiness down accurately.
Coming here with predetermined intent to be a creepy little backstabber, you thought you found an arguably righteous reason. But your reading comprehension is so poor, so limited, you didn't even get that part right.
Can't you see yourself clearly at all? YOU were the only one who mentioned the shocking event of the week here, fool.
Musing on a book one's reading is not offensive.
Your behavior, OTOH, most certainly is.
You come from exactly the same place as CHO. He was totally looneytunes, and he lashed out at people who had nothing to do with hurting him.
Was it fun? Did it feel sooooo good to be a vicious, stupid, cowardly, sniveling idiot, trying to snipe at someone who did nothing wrong to you at all?
Geez. Get a life.
Anon, who might you be, and what was my point, exactly?
k, my dear, I DID quote directly from Cho's ramblings; he was the person I was referring to as 'that deranged young man.'
I do find it odd that mentioning the same thing that pretty much everybody else in the world has been mentioning would be seen as offensive, simply because I'm mentioning it, however.
Oh, I'm sorry "pretty lady" and "k" are not anonymous after all, are they? I don't know exactly what your point was, pretty, but I was offended. And "k,", geez, you've got a hair trigger don't you? I'm a vicious, stupid, cowardly, sniveling idiot because I don't have a monker like "k"? Okay, call me q. Is that better?
If you read that post three more times and couldn't find the reference to Cho, you're the one with poor reading comprehension. Sorry I brought it up, as clearly this isn't a place where people react rationally to criticism. If you publish things on the internet, people can respond, get it? It's not a private conversation anymore. And gosh, poor spelling in the blogosphere? Off with my head!
Don't worry, I won't be coming back to sully your tea party.
Oh, pardon me, before you go off another tirade, "k". Correction from the snively whiny just as bad as a serial killer idiot: "monker" was a typo. Meant to say moniker.
um, anonymous?
"lady, you are nuts."
"disgusting and opportunistic"
"rediculous pseudo religious point"
That's not discourse, that's opening a door and firing off a shotgun. The I and the E on the keyboard are far apart enough to question the spelling of "ridiculous".
These items aside, the quote is not psuedo, nor is it particularly religious- the crucifixion can be seen very easily as a psychological metaphor- which may be where PL was going. I don't know for sure- I think I might want to ask her.
Next time you are incensed, start by asking questions.
May I ask, by what path did you find this site?
(If someone is taking PL up on the "flame war" challenge- please get better at it. This was too easy.)
(Better yet, IMO, don't do it at all- but it's not my blog.)
On the deranged young man? My mistake. The reason I missed the reference to Cho is because I haven't been paying much attention to what exactly he said. So I misread you, PL, and thought it was a quote from the book, which I also haven't read.
That part, of course, was indeed my own reading comprehension error.
However: as for my description of ole Anonymous there? That still stands, perfectly well, on its own merits. I'm anything but a *hair trigger* type person. Anon could easily detect this if they checked out my blog, and/or ran across my comments, which I scatter pretty liberally in a relatively small circle. Makes them easy to find.
No, Anon, I don't have a hair trigger temper. I despise trolls and cowards and people who are rude for no discernible reason, and there's nothing irrational about that. Why you think any of this has to do with my display name is beyond me - that IS an irrational statement. It's not your fault you were born stupid - that's an accident of genetics, and it's not right to hold it against you or anyone else. I don't. Truly.
I do hold your inexcusable behavior against you. That is entirely within your control. Just because this is the internet, where of course people respond to posts via comments, that doesn't mean there aren't real people involved in these discussions. Our blogs and personas are our creations, but they are created by real live people, with minds and with feelings.
Should you wish to continue to indulge in the nasty mudslinging you displayed, the 'net is full of appropriate sites for you. This house is not one of them. Here, while we do get into some pretty heated arguments sometimes, basic standards of courtesy still apply. We like it like that.
If you go on an unprovoked troll attack, anonymously, using the kind of language you did, YOU are the *hair trigger* person. We did not start this. You did. Gratuitously. To defend our own house, or that of a hostess we cherish and respect, is perfectly natural. It's as natural as someone shooting bullets back at Cho would have been.
I did not say or imply you are as bad as a serial killer [sic - Cho's a *spree* killer, not a serial killer.] You only shot words. I shot words back. Why in the world were you surprised?
While I do travel "inblognito," as do the vast majority of us, there's a difference between that and leaving anonymous comments. My blog is my house on the internet, and any old Anon can come by and make my life miserable, should he/she/it so choose. We don't have that opportunity with anonymous commenters.
That's why your behavior was cowardly. The reason you were anonymous, of course, was for precisely that reason: being a coward, you didn't want anyone to be able to shoot words back at either the *real* you, or on your blog if you have one.
You dished it out, knowing you can't take it.
That's why I detest you and your trollish ilk. Good riddance to you.
Well, drat. This will teach Pretty Lady to try to spark discussions by being vague and cryptic--evidently it only works halfway. Discussions are sparked, but not about the topic she proposes.
I don't know exactly what your point was, pretty, but I was offended.
Okay, so if you did not understand my point, why were you offended? Did you think? Did you ask a question? Or did you simply jump to a wholly uninformed conclusion about Pretty Lady's motives for juxtaposing two quotes, and take it from there?
the crucifixion can be seen very easily as a psychological metaphor- which may be where PL was going. I don't know for sure- I think I might want to ask her.
I merely found it exceedingly interesting that the deranged person used such explicit crucifixion imagery in his rant, which was so specifically addressed in the CIM text, which I have been studying. Because as far as we know, nobody was explicitly crucifying this person. Moreover, he was the one taking revenge upon the world for crucifying him, which event, if it happened, happened in the past. Thus his attack on the world was a response to a projection of his own devising, and not a legitimate self-defense at all.
According to the Course, we are all more or less doing this, all the time. My point was that the extreme case makes it evident how deranged this is.
You are right, JWYW, I do not consider 'religion' and 'spirituality' to be the same thing. ACIM interests me because is not 'religious' as we understand the word, but it is explicitly spiritual. Moreover, my bringing it up is not in order to preach or to proselytize, as religious persons tend to do, but to explore, observe and test its precepts in an open forum.
It is rather unfortunate that the person who chose to challenge me seems incapable of mounting any coherent or interesting points of discussion. Better luck next time.
Yes.
Best to spark conversation away from combustibles.
('pun my word...I couldn't help it.)
PL sez:
Discussions are sparked, but not about the topic she proposes.
Did you think you were going to start a discussion on the symbolism of the Crucifixion? Probably over half your readership considers the Crucifixion historical fact and thus cannot discuss it in symbolic terms.
I personally racked my brain for some way to discuss what you wanted, but couldn't come up with anything. That Course in Miracles is very convincing. Only my most cynical incarnation can disagree with it, and I try not to let him post here too much.
Sounds like you've scored yourself a troll, PL, one from the land of 'the eternally offended' - ones who are always offended by anyone and everything that doesn't agree with their lifeview. Sheesh.
I just did some reading online and I learned something. I didn't know that ACIM was actually dictated by Jesus! Sign me up!
Yes, an essentially Buddhist text, dictated by Jesus* to an atheist Jewish psychiatrist. Makes perfect sense to me.
I've also got these golden plates with another testament of Jesus written on them by the finger of an angel, if you're interested in buying.
Or there's that weighty sacred text called Oahspe, created via automatic writing by an American dentist, the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, or Clothed With The Sun by a British feminist doctor, both purporting to be created the same way.
Just so you know you have choices if you're looking for purportedly sacred texts written in this or similar manner.
Frankly I'll stick to eyewitness or close contemporary accounts myself.
*Jesus Hernandez?
Trying to catch up with the parade here. When I first read this, I thought you referencing the A.A. monster (sometimes I need a scorecard). And the ACIM quote and your thought fit, in my head anyway.
I didn't have time then to ponder. It was clarified for me when Anonymous made his graceful entrance, and hilarity ensued.
To your point, does the glare of the deranged show our outline, our shillouette? Does it engender a "but-for-the-grace-of-G-d" reaction? Or does it show us that we are not them. No way, no how. I chose the not them.
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