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Jan. 30, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
45:18
626 Self Protection Part 2 - Practice

A brave listener struggles with self-defense

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Alright, so 6.25 was the theory and some illustrations of what's occurring in the real world.
And now, 6.26 this morning, we will talk about what's occurring in the unconscious realm.
Because, I guess it was last week, I think, or the week before, that Nate and I had the conversation about his female friend who had attacked him.
And then we talked about one of his dreams, and then we had this conversation very briefly about his friend yesterday, which was also an issue of self-protection.
And then he posted, because his friend had gone and listened to Podcast 600 and found him whiny and so on, he posted about that.
And then the night after, which I guess was the night before last, he...
Have this dream, which I think is very interesting, and we'll see if there's any confluence between what's going on in the external world and what's going on in the unconscious.
I sort of think that there is, but you can let me know.
So this was Nate's dream that happened the night after he posted about his friend in Podcast 600, and I guess a night after the conversation about his friend.
So he says this, he had this dream, I found myself deliberately walking into my parents' church, walking deliberately up to the pews, where they sat among familiar faces from the past.
I saw them smiling at me in a way that made me sick.
Yet I sat down next to them anyways, Feeling repulsed by them and the entire environment.
I kept thinking, I shouldn't be here.
Why am I here?
These fools, I was thinking.
They were all dripping with sentiment and false enthusiasm, smiling in, quote, approval at my being there.
I felt very uncomfortable.
Disgusting, I thought.
Where is my dignity?
I watched my little brother play some ridiculous Christian songs on a guitar band in front of the congregation.
There were two guitarists, my brother and another one, a bassist and a drummer, something that would normally never happen in a church of Christ, as they look at instruments as an insult to their God somehow.
May I use the term instruments of the devil?
That's me. Then, at some point after this was over, outside of the place, I saw Meredith, a red-headed girl I once foolishly had a crush on.
She and I had nothing in common, but was apparently married to someone.
I am aware that she was married some time ago.
I remember thinking, as I was looking around, that I'm not the same person.
I don't belong here.
Suddenly we're all at a recording studio where my little brother is playing some of the most cheesy Christian children's songs with his usual exaggerated glee.
At this point I talk to another girl shortly named Lisa, a fair-skinned blonde girl I also once had a crush on.
Nothing I did was anything I would have preferred to have been doing.
Everything was a deliberate step into a situation I was repulsed by and would rather not be in.
I woke up at this point during my conversation with Lisa.
Nothing woke me up.
I simply woke up.
Could this be a warning of some kind?
or is it just a fear I'm having?
So, sorry for the poor recording, I'm sorry.
I'm switching to my rear for a variety of technical reasons.
Sorry, to my Zen Vision M. So what can this all mean?
Well, the first thing that I would say is that this is enormous, enormous progress.
Enormous, enormous progress.
And that's why I think that it would be a good idea, an excellent idea, I would say almost a mandatory idea, to get yourself a competent, sensitive, empathetic counselor or therapist or psychologist.
Because clearly you have an enormous amount of latent wisdom and latent growth within you.
If you look at the rapidity Of the speed of change in these dreams from, what is it, two weeks ago, a week and a half ago, to this current dream, in the last dream, which is, I can't remember the podcast number, but it's called Nothing in the Church.
In that dream, you were trying to get inside a school or a church for a reunion, and you kept walking over a long period of time to try and get into this building, walking around and trying doors and so on.
And everybody was looking at you with enormous scorn and contempt.
And now, not ten days later, this is how rapid this growth can be when you work at it.
The payoff is, there's nothing else like it in life.
It dwarfs the progressions of puberty, this kind of growth, when you really put your shoulder to the wheel.
You climb here.
It feels like you're pushing up a mountain, and you are at the beginning, but at some point you go over the top, plunge down the other side, and get a real ride.
And this is, I think, where you are.
So, from a situation where you're trying to get in, and everyone's looking at you with contempt, now you're in!
You're in the church. And you're looking at everyone with contempt.
And you're trying to get out.
This is enormous progress.
This is, of course, a metaphor for family life as well.
We think there's some interior to the family that we're going to get to if we behave, if we obey, if we conform.
But there isn't any. There is no interior to this kind of family life.
There is nothing inside the church.
I sort of said that about ten days ago, whenever that last podcast was.
There's nothing inside the church.
And now that you're inside the church, I think that's all fairly clear, right?
There is in fact nothing inside the church.
There is simply empty, grinning, aping conformity.
There's no interior life.
Religious people almost always fail to develop, in my experience, and I think logically too, let me know what you think, almost always fail to develop what's called the observing ego, because they project the observing ego into the sky god.
They fail to develop the observing ego, the third eye, And so they do not develop the ability to dissociate or to detach their own emotions from occurrences within the world.
So to take an example, somebody who's paranoid, like my mother, who sleeps with a knife under her bed, feels great terror.
But she has not developed or chose not to develop or whatever.
Who knows, right? That's the soup of maternal history.
Who knows? But she definitely has not developed what would be called an observing ego, which would be a rational part of her that would say, well, I'm feeling fear, but there's no lion in the room.
I'm not getting mugged. I'm sitting here in my armchair.
I feel fear, but there's no proximate and immediate cause of that fear.
Therefore, That fear must be an interior state, not provoked by immediate external circumstances.
And that is, of course, a great leap-forwarding consciousness that very few people achieve.
And they could achieve it, but religion kills it.
Because that's the kind of self-direction that is required for a stateless society to function, and that would be the end of governments and religions, end of Callous and brutal and uncaring and exploitative parents.
So, we must always fail to develop this observing ego, this detachment of our feelings from our environment, where we can view our feelings in relation to environment.
That's called objectivity, right?
Comparing your inner state to that of the world.
That's a scientific method. And...
There's no interior to these kinds of collectivist constructs.
There's no inside. All you do is you compare your emotional state to the approval of those around you.
That's not objectivity. That's slavishness.
And so, not ten days ago, it's incredibly rapid.
That's why I wanted to do two podcasts on this.
It's incredibly rapid. Not ten days ago, You were trying to get into this church, into this school.
And you were, in a sense, cowering before the contempt of others.
Now, you're inside and you're feeling contempt towards others.
That's not the end of the journey. But it is a massive step forward.
A leap. A Superman life.
It's Matrix leaping, dude.
It's fantastic. I'd say I'm proud, but it's not me, it's you.
I'd just say I'm agog with admiration.
But there's more to go.
I mean, there's always more to go, but this one's an important one.
So, to run over the major themes within the dream, we have three elements that are put forward as great temptations.
And I know that for an age these things have in the past, and maybe in the present as well, are great temptations for false self domination, for The rejection of philosophy and idealism and reality and objectivity and so on.
And the three great temptations portrayed in the dream are the following.
Religion, the family, and women.
Oh, women.
Satans and maidens.
At least if you take them the wrong way.
And it all has to do with external validation, right?
External validation is Really, the great temptation of the false self.
When we change our physics from reality to the opinions of others, we move from the true self, from science, and from philosophy to the false self, and to obedience, and to enslavement.
And there are three mechanisms which have worked for Nate to suppress any growth in his true self.
And they work for a lot of people.
And They are very well portrayed in the dream, in my opinion.
So, he's in the church. I say there's nothing inside the church ten days ago.
He gets inside the church and there's nothing.
There's empty, aping conformity.
There's nothing in the church.
And that much is put out very clearly.
Now, the interesting thing is that the people, now that he's inside the church, he can very clearly see, Nate can very clearly see, that The show is no longer for him.
See, beforehand, when he was trying to get into the church, the show was for him.
Everybody was snarling and scorning and being snarky towards him.
Now that he's inside the church, he's like a ghost.
They don't interact with him, and he no longer exists to them.
Now that he's inside, he no longer exists to them, because there's nothing He doesn't exist in there either.
He can't interrupt.
He can't interact. He can only view it with scorn.
So, now that he's in, he's moving like Ebenezer Scrooge through his history without being able to interact, but only being able to view and judge.
Which is also a kind of objectivity, right?
Which we don't have to get into now, but it seems to me that that's the case.
So, He's in the church and he sees this band playing, which would never happen, apparently.
I don't know the emotional resonance and the personal history that Nate has with the band or his brother, but the exaggerated enthusiasm that is always occurring in these kinds of hyper-sentimental cults like Christianity and other religions.
Christianity, for me, It's the strongest of these hyper-sentimental cults, more so than Islam, which is not so much sentimental as it is just brutal and crushing, or Judaism, which is not so much sentimental as it is superior and somewhat cynical.
But Christianity has this for sure.
And it's what we used to in theater school called bad children's theater, BCT. Bad children's theater is...
Where you have exaggerated movements, hyper-exaggerated facial expressions, you put your finger on your lips, your eyes are wide the whole time, you're hopping around, prancing around like some giant spider.
And it's bad children's theater because you're treating children as if they're retarded, right?
And children are not retarded.
Children are... we're all innate geniuses in my opinion.
And this occurs in the dream that everybody is no longer acting Fornate.
They are now acting for each other, which is most fundamentally to say that they're acting for themselves.
Or that you could say that they're acting for God.
That's the projection of the observing ego that you lose control of when you believe in spiritual, supernatural, superstitious type beings.
Who's observing me? Well, not me!
God! God!
I must worship the observing ego, which means I can't use the observing ego.
So I can't differentiate my emotional states from what actually occurs in reality.
So that's no good.
And now that Nate is actually inside the room, inside the church, he can see that nothing real is occurring.
That there is nothing but fakery and sham and, as he puts it, sentiment and false enthusiasm.
And they're smiling at him now.
See, before, in the last dream, they were scowling at him, snarling at him, dripping with contempt as they looked at him.
Now, they're smiling at him.
So they've gone from bullies to bullied.
They've gone from masters to slaves.
Before, they were scorning him with disapproval, and now that he's inside, they're begging him To play along.
They're begging him for approval.
Before they were attempting to wash out his ego with the acid of contempt, and now they're attempting to drown it in the lukewarm bath of sentimentality.
And it makes him sick.
And it is sickening.
And I fully, fully understand that.
And it is sickening, and you should really respect that.
I think it's a step, but it definitely is a hugely crucial step.
And they are smiling at you in a way that makes you sick because they're not smiling at you.
They're manipulating you.
They're controlling you. They're really broken souls.
Really, really broken souls.
It's sort of grinning, hand clapping, testify kind of hyper peppy, empty enthusiasm that often really passes for happiness in Christian cults.
And That really is quite fascinating.
You're trying to get into the church, and they're all looking at you with scorn.
You get into the church, and they're all looking at you with a sack.
They're not looking, they're looking through you, really into a great mirror that hides reality from themselves.
And if you've spent any time in the theater world, you know how this occurs.
There's a woman, I think her name is Donna Lipchak, she used to write for an independent magazine called I in Toronto and she was quite an entertaining writer and she had a piece once.
I just loved it. I thought she was talking about theater people and how they're addicted to the phrase that little.
In other words, they'll come up to you and say, how's that little play of yours coming along?
They'll come up to you and say, how's that little boyfriend of yours doing?
Right, and this is just teeth gritting, irritating, contemptuous superiority.
And this, in the theatre world, you see this in the art world quite a bit, and you can see this a little bit in the business world as well.
That when you approach someone in the theatre world, they will almost immediately try to impress you.
But they will impress you at your expense.
They'll be doing better than you and they'll be whatever, right?
And so they're bullying you, right?
And then if they find out that you're a director or somebody with a part to offer or somebody of any importance in the industry, They immediately become sycophantic.
They're either at your feet or they're at your throat.
There's not much in between.
And that really is the relationship of the false self.
Because it's kill or be killed in the false self world, right?
It's a win-lose proposition at all times.
What's called leveling, right?
That if you feel that somebody is superior to you, then you must either drag them down or puff yourself up or do both to equalize yourself to them.
But it's always win-lose.
It's always I get ten. I get plus 10, you get minus 20.
Height is not achieved through growth.
Height is achieved through cutting off people at the knees.
And platform shoes.
So now that you're inside, they have become sycophantic.
Before, they were scornful and contemptuous when you were trying to get in.
And now that you're inside, they're sycophantic.
And you feel sickened by it.
And I'd like you to try this on for size.
I was hoping to take a little bit longer, but I had some technical issues, so I'll accelerate this a little bit.
I'd like you to try this on for size, which is the essential aspect of this dream is enormous progress and imminent freedom.
Enormous progress and imminent freedom.
Because, of course, the fundamental fact, or the fundamental movement that is not occurring, This dream is you out of the church.
You away from the family.
And you're still talking to these women that you felt mere physical lust for, I'm sure.
You had crushes on them. Crush and lust are just bad rhymes there.
Quite close.
And this lust for, not for flesh fundamentally, but for status and pseudo-connection, has really been a part of your life for quite some time.
It is what your friend chose to attack you on, your neediness for feeling attractive towards women, which, hey, I understand.
I really, really do. You feel this contempt, and you see very clearly the false selves all around you, but you're still not leaving.
You're still not leaving.
And the question is why?
Why does the dream simply Ask you to wake up.
It doesn't frighten you awake.
It's not like the floor opens up or legions of bat-winged, fiery-eyed balrogs come in through the windows and startle you awake.
The dream is just asking you.
Your true self is simply asking you to wake up.
And you are. And that's what happens in the dream.
You don't get startled awake. You just, ah, wake up.
So you see all of this scorn and you see all of this contempt and you call them fools.
But you don't leave. You then go to the recording studio and this of course goes further back into childhood because now your brother is singing children's songs badly.
So there is a mild, I don't know if this is me putting it in, but for me at least there's a mild kind of children are retarded thing that's going on with this dream in the second part where your brother is really badly singing children's songs.
And then you talk to these girls that you have nothing in common with, but you have these crushes on.
And so your family, your religious upbringing, and your sexual desires, and the way in which you've used those to attempt to validate yourself, right?
These are all about external validations.
Does God love me? Does God approve of me?
Do my parents love and approve of me?
And am I attractive to women sexually?
Not spiritually. But sexually, right?
Am I hot? And these are all around external validation.
Now, the great temptation of early onset wisdom, and I'm not saying that during the early phases, but this is all coming in a big rush.
The great temptation of one's first draft of deep wisdom is the great temptation of staying stuck in the external validation phase.
Which is a primitive phase of the personality.
Am I good because I am virtuous, or am I good because I appear virtuous, or other people think I'm virtuous, or other people approve of me?
And as you're reading The Fountainhead right now, you'll know that this is quite well described through the idea of the second-hander, which Ayn Rand did not quite surmount psychologically, but brilliantly defined philosophically, I think.
So, the great temptation and the great danger, and this is where bitterness and cynicism arise, is when we see the blindness of those around us, and we stick around because we feel contempt for them.
So the contempt is still here.
The contempt is in both dreams.
It's just that it's shifted places.
And that's progress. But the great challenge of wisdom is to overcome contempt.
This Nietzsche never quite managed either.
The great challenge of wisdom and deep knowledge is to overcome contempt for others.
Contempt for those who are so unutterably blind and destructive towards others.
And you feel sickened.
You feel contempt. And this is the nausea, right?
This is the nausea that the existentialists talk about.
This is the horror that Nietzsche talks about when you really do get to see the extraordinary ugliness Of the souls that are around you and the fact that human beings are like shaved apes living in a zoo of terror, conformity, bullying and humiliation.
It is a sickening experience and the great temptation, the great danger of that experience is to fall into cynicism and superiority.
And oh, how many libertarians have fallen off this cliff.
The bodies are piled almost to the level of the cliff, yet still they fall And still they expire.
We had one come through the boards recently, Mr.
Ireland. And this problem of contempt for what are, objectively, pretty loathsome habits of the majority of people, right? To be slaves to fantasy and call it virtue and integrity I mean, it's loathsome.
Slavishness is not loathsome, but slavishness that calls itself freedom and destroys others in the name of that freedom is loathsome.
It is loathsome, and one's skin does crawl.
When you finally, when the scales fall from your eyes, and you see this squirming mass of biting humanity, this is Thackeray's Vanity Fair as well, that the world is simply a fair, or what we would now maybe call a marketplace, where everybody is attempting to be a courtier To the king of the false self and everybody is backstabbing each other to climb up one rung higher on an imaginary ladder into hellfire.
And when you see that, it is very easy to become...
...Ambrose Bierce.
Or to become...
...a sceptic.
Or to become bitter, cynical.
Disillusioned. Angry.
And that is the great curse of the Eastern religions, right?
That they see some of this and then they retreat into superior aloofment.
Let me just see if I can make up a word of data.
But that's not the end of the journey, right?
Fundamentally, I believe that the reason that we feel this Hostility and contempt towards others when we see how they not only don't see, but willingly put out their own eyes and call it sight.
The great temptation and the great salvation, I think, of that abyss is the withdrawal of projection, which means nothing, of course.
I'll explain it a little bit more.
Dream is very clearly giving you the emotions or giving you the impulse and the experience of calling these people fools.
Yes, I would say that that is projection.
Are they fools? Well, it's possible.
I mean, I'm not going to answer that just now.
But certainly the person with the greatest knowledge or the greater knowledge is the greater fool if he fails to follow that knowledge.
A two-year-old is not incorrect.
Or foolish. Let's just say, if a two-year-old is not incorrect for getting 2 plus 2 equals 4 wrong, a mathematician would be checked for his cognitive faculties if he said 2 plus 2 is 5.
So greater knowledge carries a greater burden of integrity, right?
I mean, that's pretty clear, right?
So, who are the greater fools?
Those who are trapped, and utterly and completely and totally trapped, In the witness illusion of collectivism and fantasy that is called religion or cults.
Or the person who sees them for who they are and stays.
So, there definitely is a fool in the room.
And I use this in a light-hearted way.
There is a fool in the room, Nate, and that fool is you.
And there's nothing wrong with that, but You are not leaving.
You are looking at them with scorn and contempt.
And because we're so used to defining our value through comparison to others, we're so used to that.
It's what is a self, pretty much.
Because we're so used to defining our value in relation to others, when we see them for what they are, for what's missing, when we really begin to see who they are, Then the great temptation is to feel superior.
And I'm not saying that you're not superior.
It is superior to process truth rather than fantasy, to be individuated and to judge reality and your identity and your value for yourself in relation to reality rather than through the approval of others.
It is superior. It is better.
But it's not better in comparison to those who are worse off.
It would be good to be where we are, even if everybody else was with us as well.
You don't want to feel superior to people who are blind, because that's comparing yourself again, not to reality, but to other people.
The only way out of the abyss of contempt and nausea that accompanies seeing the actual Stage of development of the human race, which is pitifully primitive.
No matter how sophisticated, Norman Mailer stabs his wife and writes a poem where he says, as long as you use only a knife, there's still some love left.
And he becomes a famous and respected writer.
This is where we are.
This is where we are. But the only way out of the nausea is To avoid the false self vanity, which now says, I do not conform with the herd, I reject the herd.
You're still then defining yourself in relation to the herd.
I am superior.
If you are born in the land of the blind, and at the age of 35 your eyes erupt with new stalks of vision, I don't think it's worthwhile breakdancing around your fellow blind people saying, ha ha, you're blind, I'm not.
I'm not saying you are, but I'm just exaggerating here.
Or, oh, you contemptible people, you're so blind, you're such fools.
Is that really the way to use your new eyesight?
I would argue not.
I would also argue that it's not the right way to use your eyesight to try and see for your fellow man.
Because you can't. You get to use your eyes.
They don't. You can teach them how to see if they're willing to go through the pain of new eyes, or for most people, first eyes.
If they don't mind the pain of minute-by-minute evolution, then you can tell them how to do that, but you can't see for them.
You can't see for them, and you can't force them to see.
So, I would argue that it's also not the right thing to try to have those around you come with.
Because you can't. You can't.
There is no way to bring people with us.
There's no way to bring people with us.
You cannot bring people with you.
I can't say that often enough, so I'll say it one more time.
You cannot bring people with you.
There are no second seats in these rockets.
You cannot bring people with you.
You cannot save them.
You cannot force them to see. You cannot force them to learn.
You cannot force them to grow. You cannot force them to understand.
You cannot force them to confront their families.
You cannot force them to give up their gods and their goblins and their governments and their families.
You cannot force them to do that.
Because you weren't forced.
You just wanted to. And you cannot create desire in other people.
I mean, you can if it's deal or no deal, but you can't for wisdom or truth or virtue, knowledge, rationality, courage, integrity.
You can't create that in people. You are as likely to be able to create a desire for rationality amongst the people in your dream as they are to get you to rejoin the church and clap and sing along with everyone else.
Do the kumbaya idiot empty grin False self-enthusiasm thing.
Because you see them for who they are, but guess what?
They see you for who you are.
But you don't want that. Yet.
Because you want to bring them along with you.
This dream is clearly showing that you can't.
And you don't try. And that's good.
You're not trying to get into the church.
You're in the church. And the dream is very clearly saying, I'm sorry, but there's nobody on this ship that you can save.
And that's a very true and basic fact about the exploration or examination of the truth of philosophy.
And it's a tale as old as Socrates.
It's a tale as old as Diogenes and Democritus.
It's a tale as old as Plato and Aristotle and John Galtz and Howard Rourke and Ayn Rand.
And all these people who go or who attempt to go to the very root of things.
Because when you go to the root of things, you're of use to almost nobody.
Right? When you go to the very truth of things, you're of use to almost nobody.
And if you're a priest, you're of use to the church, and you're of use to the rulers, and you're of use to the parents.
So you have a place in society.
Because you help this false virus of fantasy replicate.
Even Socrates...
Whose words have stayed alive because of his slavish and gutlessly cowardly praise of the laws of Athens.
That's the only way the story survived.
If he actually told the truth, or...
let's not get into that, that's a whole other story.
But that story is of use to the rulers.
Christianity, public school education, the state, patriotism, Talk radio.
I mean, these are all of use to the rulers, right?
I mean, they're of use to parents, like Santa Claus.
But you're never supposed to outgrow it.
So, when you really become a philosopher, though, when you really become somebody who's deeply bound into the truth of things, then you move beyond people like Kant and Locke, who were of value to the people around them.
Kant was of value to the Church, and Locke was of value to monarchists who were setting up their new states.
Those who burned for political power and the desire to wield it themselves, and then loved the Second Treatise on Government because it said that we should change our governments, which is wonderful news to those waiting in the wings.
You're of use to someone then.
You're saying, well, we need a government. We need a different government.
And so all the people who are obeying to get their hands on the bloody reins of political power pump you up.
The sickness of the 60s was replicated in writers like Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, a pure description of sociopathic lifestyles.
And even Salinger, when the only person who tries to help Holton Caulfield turns out to want to molest him.
I mean, that's how the sickness of that time was reflected in the art.
So, the grave danger is the danger of contempt, and the only salvation is to recognize that it's you and the truth.
And I know that that seems horribly lonely, and I know that detaching ourselves, it's like ripping a serrated tentacle off our own chest, off our own heart, it feels like.
But peeling away the desire for the approval, Peeling away the desire to judge ourselves in relation to others, not in relation to the truth, not in relation to reality, not in relation to logic, empiricism, science, but peeling away this mad desire that we all have, that we're all inflicted with, or is inflicted upon us.
Peeling away that desire to judge ourselves relative to others is agony.
It is sheer agony.
It is the only way out of the prison.
Because now that you have eyes to see, you will want, I think, should want, to gaze on more healthy sights than the Christian soul.
Soullessness. If you have new eyes at the age of 35, you don't want to stare at sewage and offal.
You don't want to stare at disease.
You want to stare at beauty.
You want to stare from the vantage points of high mountains.
You want to stare at beautiful sunsets, and you want to stare at towering cities.
You don't want to stare at self-mutilation and enslavement.
That is the existentialist curse, which is that man is doomed to be free and doomed to have knowledge.
That's because the existentialists grew eyes and saw their fellow man.
And could not tear their eyes away from the morbid horror of seeing the state of the human soul.
And, of course, in many ways, we're further in mind now than at any time in history.
So, this is...
It's not necessarily that we're becoming stronger, it's just that the sight of the human soul is becoming less wretched.
But it's still pretty wretched, and it's very wretched in some areas.
So... In this dream, you feel this yourself as well, right?
So you say, why? I shouldn't be here.
Why am I here? These fools!
And then you say, disgusting!
I thought, where is my dignity?
Now, that is a very telling statement.
I'm sorry for giving your ear a cold.
But that is a very telling statement.
And I think this ties in, and I'll just sort of end this up here, but I think this ties into what I'm talking about.
The dream... I think quite purposefully, or your recollection of it, or your writing down of it, doesn't really matter.
The dream quite purposefully uses the term disgusting in an ambiguous manner.
Because you're looking at all of these people, you're feeling contempt for them, and you're feeling that they're fools.
And then you feel or think, disgusting, why am I here?
Now, which is disgusting?
What you're looking upon or the fact that you continue to look upon it.
If you can imagine somebody flipping over a dead fish by a sea bank and seeing squirming maggots burrowing through its innards.
Flies and, you know, horrible stuff.
Perhaps not to a biologist, but to most.
And this person stares at these writhing, biting maggots.
Chewing their way through the rotten flesh of the fish, laying their eggs.
And this person stares at it minute after minute and keeps whispering, disgusting.
Well, that would be rather an ambiguous situation, would it not?
And what are they saying disgusting about?
Are they saying disgusting about the maggots in the fish's innards?
Well, sure, yes, and their own fascination with wanting to keep staring at it.
And I think that's portrayed very nicely in the dream.
Because you also then follow your family and these Christian nuts to the recording studio where your brother is inflicting, is creating horrible, false self children's songs.
Now, this may well tie into what we were talking about in the last, and I'm pretty sure that it does.
What we were talking about in the last podcast with regards to Sorry about that.
Phone call. So, your friend who has friends who have Christian children, I think that is something that is more immediate, right?
So, in the first instance, you're more in the past, and then in the second instance, you're both in the present and the past, insofar as it's children's songs and you were younger.
But it's also...
The fact that what's come up recently is that you gave Podcast 600 to a friend of yours who has friends who have Christian children.
So the mutilation of those children is occurring, as it is occurring for billions of children around the world.
This sickening horror that makes a brisk look like a fingernail cuff.
Fingernail buff? Buff! That's what I'm thinking.
So... Funny, usually the word buff comes to mind very quickly.
So... That aspect of things, I think, is quite important.
That you are seeing that there's lots of evidence, of course, somebody who's got Christian children, who's raising children to be Christians, who's mutilating them in that manner, is somebody who is going to be a pretty horrifying human being.
And they're not going to be horrifying relative to anyone except you and reality, right?
Those two little fact checkers, right?
You and reality, to everyone else, they're going to be warm, encouraging, loving parents, right?
This is where we are as a species, which is a long way from anywhere.
That is true and real.
So, relative only to reality, in that there is no God, and relative only to you, in that you have knowledge of this now, those people are horrible abusers, mutilators of their children's minds and souls.
But to everyone else, they are wonderful, right?
To everyone else, these gulags of child education or child indoctrination are happy singing snappy camps, right?
They're happy camps of the Red God.
They are Christ camp, or Jesus camp, or whatever the hell it was.
And we see it with the true eyes of horror, and that makes sense.
But you still want to stay, and that's because you still want to feel that you have some definition relative to other people.
That's how we keep this fantasy of connection alive, these fantasy of relationships alive.
Really, relating to people can only occur through reality, right?
There is no relating to people in any way, shape, or form.
Through comparison of yourself to others, through comparison, through subjugation, through mutual fantasy, through hand-clapping sing-alongs with mad, cultish, nut-job belief systems like Christianity, there is no connection, right?
So we all hold on to this because we don't want to see that.
We really, really don't want to see that.
We don't want to see that there's no connection.
Why? Because we don't want to feel lonely?
No. It's because we don't want to recognize that for our whole lives we have been lonely.
It's not the loneliness of the future we fear when we break from comparing ourselves to others, from judging and defining ourselves in relation to others.
It's not the loneliness of the future we fear.
I mean, I know that's what it feels like, but that's not what it is.
It's the loneliness of the past that we fear to feel.
Because we never had any relationships with these people.
Nobody ever has a relationship with a Christian.
Or a statist, or a racist, or a bigot, or whoever.
Any of these crazy people.
There's no relationships with them.
No relationships are possible.
And it's the 35 years of accumulated loneliness and emptiness that we fear.
Feeling not, oh gee, well if I break with this fantasy, I'm not going to be, I'm going to be lonely.
In the future, well that's not the case at all.
It's not the future that you're scared of, right?
It's not the future that is going to be painful, it's the past.
But we mistake that and so stay trapped there.
I hope this helps. Thank you so much.
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