Hear me please. Anybody who serves as the mouthpiece of any widespread populism, and is therefore responsible for culling the complexity and multiplicity of concepts down to a grotesque simpleness, is a fraud. They are in the business of convincing you to adopt their values as your own, and to convince you to repeat their truths for them. Marx and Engles were these kinds of frauds, and so was Jesus. This culling requires luck and skill in high quantities, so so much that it appears 'miraculous' or 'genius' (depending on what their followers call them). So high that we ascribe a magnificent agency to them -- founders, leaders, kings -- when the majority of the causes of a populism lay far outside them.
Sensations and evaluations are percolating through life all the time. They reach your fingers, toes, heart. And because you are a body of sufficient durability, they will last in your memory, and be recalled later. Reflecting, you'll organize them and then re-orgainize them -- tissues and memories in constant variation. It's amazing and unique. **** the people who tell you what your values are and should be. Hell, **** the already established words if you can. Be your own fraud, at least.
At least in the lore of the Eastern, older religious traditions, the essence of becoming "holy" consisted of personal practices especially attitudes, and in accepting the higher reality and being in harmony with it. Not exactly something you could really "boast" about, without in that very attitude losing the claim. That is what I see in the teachings of Jesus, particularly in regard to some of the exhortations towards "unity" with God.
Anyway, NAOS, when it comes to accepting the task of "being your own fraud", I'll assume you mean more like being an original questor, not an "authority" others should follow. That is the exhortation of Jesus to "Seek, and ye shall find", as distinguished from following leaders, or anyone else.
My approach to it is to accept the limitations on what I know, or am, but to keep up the quest. Truth is its own advocate, its own witness. It is what it is, without excuse or apology. Hold the truth up on it's own merits without contaminating it as being somehow your own particular possession and making yourself something great if you think you catch a glimpse of it, fleeting as that might be, in your mind.
It would be interesting to understand how a person can be "holy", or make the essential virtues of holiness your own attributes in application. Christian theory is that you can't do it without the atonement of Jesus. Other ancient traditions hold out the possibility that you can make a specific effort, and attain it, by subordinating various human vices and inculcating certain universal virtues. And, that you can do it by meditation as a principal effort.
The essential assertion of Jesus consisted of His being devoted to, and subordinate to, His Father. His doctrine was
NOT his own, he said it was His Father's, and he made an example of Himself in doing a higher will that his own, that of His Father. Because he did so, and made that example, he said we could do it by following Him, and gave himself as an atonement for our sin, for every unworthy thing in us. He said if we would follow Him, and do the things he taught, that we would become like Him, and therefore, like His Father. In that specific, he was "The Way, The Truth, and The Life".
While I get it that people have all sorts of conceptions of what Jesus was, or taught, I'd be cautious about calling Him a fraud. As far as I can judge it, He lived what he taught. And as far as I understand it, I believe he really was "The Way, The Truth, and The Life".
almost any of us, in trying to explain it, is likely to go wrong somehow, because we are pretty far from being like Him, or even understanding Him. So almost anything we say could be rightly called a "Fraud" or a misrepresentation of Jesus.
But Jesus did not teach you believe other men. He taught you to seek God directly, casting aside unworthy things in you.
And, whether there is a God or not, that idea of seeking better throughout your life is a pretty good quest.
"Good, Better, Best: Never them rest, until Good is Better, and Better is Best."
NR".
