a parable…

perhaps you’ve heard this story…..

When I was 16 I walked 5 miles to and 5 miles from school each day.
Once, heading home, the violent urge to defecate began its
screaming. Too late to turn back! Now how to turn this to my
advantage?

Shit in the woods! Be a natural man, careless of society’s grid!
Too easy. Time to pull together and give some commands to the
flesh. After all — who could doubt the need for strength of
Intentionality?

Still 3 miles to go, but I would make it without so much as a tremor
in my stride. It quaked & shivered. I held on.

Then the awful thought: How proud I was of my little self-
overcoming! Yet this deed was totally understandable to everyone,
totally acceptable. What was I really overcoming? The sensible
options – both civilised and bestial – occurred in me with reactive
automaticity.

I thought of Jesus saying "If you love those who love you — what
more do you do than anyone else?" I was just making the same little
attempt at self-control that every half-wit self-evolver tries.
What a miniscule victory to do this utterly acceptable act of self-
overcoming.

I resolved to shit in my pants as I walked. This was a truly
difficult task and took many rounds of "command" before body & mind
would obey. In this way I gained a first small insight into the
insidious way that the efficacy of our efforts is limited by the
social fabric in which we’re embedded. Perhaps you can sympathize
with the difficulty of this deed. If not, then: god bless ye,
savage.

Here is what I have learned therefore:

A person will gladly surrender chemical addiction before
surrendering the habit of toe-tapping. The entire society applauds
the first deed and dismisses the second. The viability of the self-
efforts involved reflects this. A person will wear himself into the
ground before giving up tipping waitresses (or not tipping them —
as the case may be). He or she will be nailed to the cross rather
than resolve to stop automatically duplicating catchy music in their
minds. A person will sacrifice a lover long before sacrificing
casual conversations. They will live out in the wilderness like
animals before they make the slightest effort to stop chuckling at
things.

We hide from sacrifice by imagining the great deeds of surrender.
All the while we keep eating our candies and watching bad sitcoms,
alternating this behaviour with fasts, retreats and adventures. The
one justifies the other. We are leaking away our developmental
energy everyday, every hour, in small, innocent ways. We must learn
a new instinct against this innocence. We must grow to condemn it
with a good conscience. I don’t mean our bad habits, I mean our
innocent habits. Anyone will automatically feel "against" their bad
habits. Most smokers will tell you they know it’s bad for them.
These are things we like. Things that are easy. Things that
everyone does and thus takes for granted as the basic and natural
stuff of life. This is where the limited self hides out — in
little enjoyment, little discharges, even in understandable,
obviously true "ideas" about the comprehensive nature of evolution.

True ideas that come easily to mind and flow easily into internet
forums – these are no better than utterly wrong & false ideas.

discuss amongst yourselves……hahahahahahahahaha