Re: Absolute truth, the testament of truth.
Rather than try and knock you down, Bashue, I want to ask you a philosophical question. If you can provide an answer to this, then kudos in advance, because I've tried this with religious people of all stripes and none of them have even got close.
So, you say some sort of creator loves us all unconditionally.
What does that say about a six-year-old boy suffering from leukemia? Or a trans woman being beaten to death for using the wrong bathroom?
If he loves us unconditionally, he's definitely got a weird way of showing it. I very much doubt your absolute truth would ease the grieving hearts of that little boy's parents as he lay dying, or the friends and family of the trans woman in the wake of her murder.You may see it as a cheap shot, going for the emotional slam against religion, and maybe in one way it is. But when you come out deliberately trying to preach some sort of absolute truth - which, by the way, is your prerogative, and I'm not challenging your right to do it, here or elsewhere - you need to be able to deal with people who ask you questions, so I pose mine.
On a slightly different angle, your talk regarding mental health really, really concerns me. I am not specifically in the mental health field, and I do not condone medication above all other things in order to deal with mental health concerns. But to ascribe an otherworldly origin to auditory hallucinations is straight-up dangerous, as it substitutes belief in place of science. This is, understandably, not a good thing. I am hugely in favour of a multi-tool approach when it comes to mental health. This does mean behavioural intervention where possible, but it also means medication in some cases. People's brains can and do get chemically imbalanced, and sometimes it requires a rebalance of those chemicals, insofar as it's possible, to help the affected person function more normally. Telling these people that the voices in their heads are demonic or evil is not accurate, not provable and not helpful. Telling someone suffering from PTSD that it's all in their head, and they just have to find the strength to get over it, is, again, not helpful; worse by far, it's ableist, since what works for one person does not always work for others.
So I came in here mostly to warn anyone else reading this that there is no substitute for mental health advice better than what a trained professional is going to give you. If you are experiencing mental health trouble, please, please don't be tempted by frauds, preachers or evangelists. I would, instead, urge you to use your pre-existing support networks, and if that isn't working, to reach out to your mental health community in some fashion. It might be daunting, and I'm not saying everyone in the field is a saint - perish the thought, there are slimeballs everywhere - but you are likely to find much more success by talking to a therapist, a counsellor, a psychiatrist than you are by engaging in prayer or believing that the voices you hear or the trauma you face is related in any way to sin or any other religious concept. Hell, talk to your family and friends if other prospects seem like too much; sometimes they can help too. Because if it is your prerogative to preach, it is mine to do what I can, insofar as I may, to try and keep people safe from straight-up misinformation and harm.
Greetings all.
Let me elaborate on the unconditional love of our creator, not just mine or yours or theirs but everyone's creator. I am merciful with the merciful and merciless with the merciless, that's the nature of Allah Jehovah God being both the light and the dark. God is Satan, Satan is God. I'll explain more about that later on. We didn't just have this lifetime here on earth, we were all created in heaven and we were created with %99.999 light and %0.001 dark. Once we were able to grow and understand, we were told never to succumb to the darkness because if we did, our days of sorrow and suffering would begin. At that time, we were all happy and in a state of bliss and we had nothing to compare it to because we didn't know of the other nature on an emotional level. Once we became adults spiritually, we were then told where we needed to go if we wanted to venture out of heaven. Yes, Mother/Father did not want us to venture out because then the dark sovereign power would tempt us into doing wrong. No I'm not talking about a different being, I'm talking about the same being showing his/her dark nature. Naturally, we wanted to find out about this dark nature and ventured out of heaven and some of us listened to the dark sovereign power while others listened to the light sovereign power, the light side of Allah Jehovah Mother/Father God. Those who listened to the dark sovereign power experienced their seeds of darkness blossom into the fully active negative emotions of jealousy, anger, hate, pride, vanity etc. Why did this happen? Because when they listened, they harmed others and as soon as they harmed another in some way, they experienced the darkness for the first time and they became drunk with power. From that moment on, they made God their enemy because they stole some of his/her forbidden fruit and were subjected to the negative aspect of the karmic law. The more they harmed, the more powerful their negative emotions became until they fell into a lower realm where they suffered what they put other people through. It became a vicious circle and they kept doing wrong to one another in a tit for tat manor until an eternity later, they started to truly lose their sanity. Their negative emotions became bigger and stronger than their positive emotions and because they fell so far down, they also lost the ability to choose to be kind and good hence mental illness. I know this because I suffered in the way I've been describing above. Anyway, once people no longer had the freedom of choice but to be bad, they were dragged down lower and lower and their actions became even more punitive the lower down they went until they reached hell's frozen pit. They were frozen in the ground for an eternity until they were moved like you'd be moved if you were on a conveyer belt to the fire until they were in the fire and burned for another eternity. Finally, after all the negativity was burnt out of them, they shot out of the fire back into heaven and for sure they knew never to use negativity again. Indeed, they never again felt anger, hate or any negative emotions again and they live in eternal bliss, never to suffer again.
This was a very condensed version and I put that in my own words. What people need to understand is that Mother/Father is not only absolutely good and loves unconditionally but is also absolutely evil and hates unconditionally any who dare to hurt any of his/her children. In my narrative, I didn't mention that this material universe was created so that people can incarnate and reincarnate if they choose to from any realm except of course from realms where people have only darkness within them AKA where people have been frozen to be purified in the fire of creation. So you ask about the one suffering from a disease. If you don't deserve to suffer, you will be protected by the light sovereign power; if you do suffer then it's because you caused another's suffering be it directly or indirectly. I myself suffered because there never was nor will there ever be a time when I'm not responsible for my actions be they words or deeds. I always apply such to myself and I always pooh pooh the idea that there are bad things that happen to me that are not my fault. I don't need to be a victim, nor should I embrace the victim mentality! If I suffer, I deserve it and it's my fault, no exceptions, no ifs or buts. If I'm accused of doing something that I didn't do then it's because I accused another of doing something they didn't do. I don't want to comment on someone suffering from leukaemia so I'll put myself in the firing line. If I suffered it and I only had months to live, I did in fact suffer from something potentially life threatening as a baby and my life was saved, I simply accept that fact and I don't bemoaned that life treats me unfairly. Life isn't unfair, we are unfair to one another. I take full responsibility for my being blind and I'm fully responsible for doing something about it so that I won't be a drain on anyone. If I was a trans woman and I was beaten for using the wrong bathroom, it's because I did that to another. No innocent ever suffers and as for babies, they are adult spirits who've lived for millennia and some have gone so astray that even if they incarnate and are born here, they cannot escape Allah Jehovah God's absolute justice. What so ever you do will be done unto you. Not only that but Allah Jehovah God will continue to tempt you to do wrong so that he/she can then crush you into submission before being eventually set free. God and Satan are one.
As for mental health, I went for counselling and I they were professional counsellors. One of the people I went to was a psychologist and their methods didn't work in the slightest. If anything, I felt much worse after visiting them because they kept rehashing everything and not actually giving me feedback. Yes I had to deal with depression and suicidal tendencies and again, it wasn't them who enabled me to have a complete recovery. Someone mentioned rape here and I was sodomized when I was around 12 years old and everyone I spoke to were of the let's go for blood mentality. Yes that was indeed my fault because I did it to another before I incarnated here. I should have known that instead of trying to pin the blame on another, especially on those who did unto me. They were the true victims because they succumbed to the darkness within them. I know you don't like that but they did and they should be forgiven, not punished by us. Allah Jehovah God will punish and I'm very glad to not have anything to do with it. Anyway, for the longest time, I was of the victim and the let's go for blood mentality as well until I was told exactly what I needed to know and that particular piece of knowledge didn't come from the counsellors or the psychologist but someone people even here thinks is an occult leader. Thanks to Terence Malaher, Clemencia Barnes and Allah Jehovah God the light sovereign power, I am no longer suffering in any way what so ever. That's why I'll never trust the mental health profession or the pharmaceutical industry with my mental health. I know some of you will and that's your choice. I personally find that taking responsibility for not only your actions but for how you deal with trauma to be the most effective way of curing what ails you. I never need blame any other nor do I need to accept that nobody is to blame if I only have myself to blame for what happens to me. As for my physical ailment/disability, I'm not cured of my blindness but I'm okay with that. Why shouldn't I be?
Kind regards, Amin Abdullah.
Okay...so you started with a premise in one of your more recent posts, Bashue, that I almost could've bought. It looked like you were saying that every single creature has a spark of evil in them, god-figure included. If you had gone on to say that cancer and disease and natural disasters and stuff were basically that god-figure showing his evil side, and that maybe he/she/it gets a little carried away by that darkness the same way people do, I could've embraced that, albeit tentatively, for the purposes of discussion.
But then you didn't go there. Not only did you not go there, you blew up your entire premise spectacularly.
1. Your excuse for people who suffer is "in a previous incarnation/a prior part of our existence before we were on Earth, we must've earned it by our dark actions". Do you have any concept of how bogus this sounds? Literally, by that logic, I can justify anything by saying that the victim had some mysterious awful thing they did in a previous part of their life. Woman is freed after being kidnapped as a teenager and repeatedly raped and beaten for eleven years? No problem. She probably did that to someone in a past life, so it's all cool. It's her fault that she was victimized. Boy gets cancer at four years old and dies in unimaginable agony while his parents and older sister look on, helpless? Not a problem. He's clearly paying for past sins...sins nobody can explain, nobody witnessed and nobody will credit, since he's, you know, four and all. Busted. Utterly busted.
2. Mental illness means you've got to have given into the darkness within you. Uh...what? I don't even have words, that's how angry this makes me. This goes beyond insupportable and passes deep into the realm of victim blaming. Let's be clear. There are many cases where a victim of a crime or other bad fortune could have done things better and might have avoided being victimized. There is responsibility to act properly and protect oneself, most definitely. But when chemicals in your brain are not aligned properly, that is not your fault. If someone leaps out of an alley while you're walking home, drags you into the dark, beats you unconscious and rapes you, that is not your fault. If someone abducts and murders you, that is not your fault. If you have been systematically abused by caregivers and develop trauma-related neuroses or even psychoses in direct relation to that abuse, it is not your fault. I dare you to look a suicidal person in the eye, metaphorically speaking, and tell them that the reason they're mentally ill is because they gave in to their inner darkness. Tell you something though. If that person believes you and then commits harm against themselves or anyone else, you're on the hook for it, because something you did was enough to cause someone else to hurt themselves. Your "there are no victims" angle means that anything you do, you pay for, so you get to carry all the guilt associated with things that are, in truth, out of your direct control.
3. Hate an ideology. In fact, hate specific pieces of an ideology if they are demonstrably harmful. God knows I do. But I'd advise, as gently as I can here under the circumstances, that you not hate the people who espouse an ideology just because their views do not align with yours. By your own logic, Ironcross, you must hate me. And I do not hate you. I find your positions pretty much insupportable, but I don't hate you. In fact, I'm going to be honest and say that, in such clear-cut and one-sided points of view, I sort of pity you. There is little nuance to your hatred of the left, which means, to me at least, that you have ceased to think clearly on the subject. And that's fine; there's no harm you can inflict on me for so doing, so i'm not going to badger you about it beyond this point. But one of my big reasons for getting into social work is because I see inequity all around me, every day. I see people punished by systems that are supposed to help them. I see racial and gender-based bias that is still in effect despite our best efforts. I see dangerous precedents being set, and I want to work hard to undo them. You say I bleed blue? That may be true, but I'll take it as a compliment.
4. Mental health experts...where do I start with this one? The issue here is not mental health, it's the intersection of the medical model with all the other bits. If you go to a counsellor, they cannot shove pills down your throat. Ditto a straight-up psychologist or psychotherapist; these people do not have medical degrees and cannot ethically write prescriptions. I'm pretty sure the only people who can do that are medical doctors, which does include psychiatrists. The sad fact is that some people really would benefit from pharmaceutical intervention, while others would benefit from more behavioural approaches. Incidentally, I happen to agree that an overreliance on any single tool in our arsenal here is a bad thing, because it usually takes multiple avenues before we find the right way to proceed. I would also agree that we are still learning about mental health. What I can tell you, from a social perspective, is that we're about as sick of the medical model (the thing which says to medicate first and not worry about the rest, basically, the system where patients turn into a list of symptoms and diagnoses) as you folks are. It has its place, but relying upon it too much dehumanizes people, and is one of the problems with the system as it stands. people are people, with very real problems that need to be treated with kindness, respect and dignity, not just a prescription pad. Speaking for myself, and for those in my profession (who are often the first line of defense for people with mental illness, I should add), we're devoted to improving our clients' lives. Whether that means behavioural therapy, psychoanalysis, trauma/crisis intervention, medication or some combination, we'll do or help facilitate whatever will work best. We listen. We try to understand even if we don't have a ton to go on sometimes. We try our best to honour the wishes of clients, because it's ultimately their life, not ours. I'm sorry if you or people you know have had bad experience either with therapists or psychiatrists, but the reality is that we are trying very hard to move away from a pure application of the medical model, and I think that if you keep a somewhat open mind, you may see more inclusive and compassionate mental health outreach and treatment as time goes by.Whew. That was longer than I intended to start out with. Sorry for the wall, guys, but I needed to get that off my chest.
As one last caution, I would like to remind each and every one of us who reads or chooses to post here that truths are rarely absolute, especially where they concern faith.
Greetings all.
I'll never accept that what happened to me in my past was not my fault. To my mind, that sounds as bogus as what you're telling me my argument sounds. Am I reading this right that there are some things I cannot and must never take responsibility for? If that's the case then why shouldn't I blame everyone around me for everything bad that happened to me? I didn't encourage those who sodomized me to go and do that did I? I did in fact acknowledge to myself that the reason why I attempted suicide at 12 years old was because I succumbed to the victim mentality and listened to the voices in my head urging me to do so. Thankfully, my attempt failed although I wasn't thankful at the time. You say that I blew my premise up spectacularly. Did I do that or did I mention that if people started harming one another for any reason then they make Allah Jehovah God their enemy? Only those without negative emotions does Allah Jehovah God love without any conditions what so ever but anger the dark side and you lose his/her favour for however long you choose to harm others and retaliate if they harm you. As for why I didn't continue with the argument with the diseases and natural disasters, that's because Mother/Father uses such to punish us. There is no such thing as just a little evil within the dark sovereign power, his/her evil is absolute and incomprehensible even to the most hardened criminals.
Kind regards, Amin Abdullah.
Sorry. Still not drinking that particular Kool-Aid, and I wish you weren't either.
If a tornado comes and destroys your house, is it anyone's fault? Is it yours because you decided to buy that house? Would the tornado have struck that house down if someone else lived there? Are we going to seriously start ascribing sentience to weather patterns?
No. The fact is simple. We are absolutely responsible for our own actions, but that goes for everyone else. If I'm walking home from work at night, I can reasonably expect not to be grabbed and beaten and mugged. If I am mugged, that is not my fault for choosing to walk home from work, it's my attacker's fault for deciding I needed to be mugged. On the other hand, if I choose to mug someone who's just minding their own business, there is absolutely no defense for me. I made the choice to attack and hurt them and steal from them, so they are a victim. They are not at fault for choosing to walk where they did. The main determinant is attempt to harm, and the legal code covers this as well. That's why there are gradations of murder, and even a lesser charge, manslaughter, used when your actions cause someone to die but you had no actual desire to kill anyone. You are held less culpable if that is the case, as well you should be, but you are still punished in some way because someone died, and that harm is at least partially or even largely your own fault.
The point I'm getting at here is that if you're just walking home from work, you aren't causing harm. If you're a woman wearing a short skirt and a revealing top, you aren't doing harm. If you're a trans woman just living her life, you aren't doing harm. If you're gay, you aren't doing harm. If you're a four-year-old with leukemia, probably the largest harm you've ever done is feed your peas to the dog, pull your sibling's hair or throw a temper tantrum in the grocery store. The fact that you're advocating for these people to be blamed and found wanting for the awful things that happen to them is monstrous. Straight-up, no-doubt-about-it, monstrous.When you were sodomized at age twelve - my deepest condolences, as no one should ever, ever have to go through that - it was not your fault. I don't care if you made one or more stupid decisions in order to help facilitate what happened. Maybe you trusted the person or people who assaulted you. Maybe you made a conscious choice to cause you to be alone and vulnerable with them. Maybe you knew about past harms they'd committed, and let your guard down anyway. You were freaking twelve. If I am correct in that you did not willingly tell someone to sodomize you, then you were a victim. And even if you did do that, by the way, you were not, by law, able to actually make that choice, so never mind it. Any adult who takes a twelve-year-old's word for something like that is clearly not being a responsible adult. So again: not your fault. I cannot stress this enough. Whatever choices you made, whatever things you said, what happened to you was not your fault. The fact that you have internalized it as something you must have said or done, quite bluntly, makes me sad enough that I want to cry just thinking about it. This whole victim-blaming bullshit is a plague on progress, through and through. It makes me angry. It makes me sad. It makes me want to live the rest of my life in a cave. It makes me want to take every single person who'd love to blame a victim, and victimize them somehow, and then get in their face and scream, "There! How do you like it?" Because those people often have not been victimized themselves, or if they have, they've been taught that they must've bought and paid for it. And that just sickens me on a moral level.
I, at least, can draw a line in the sand to delineate victim action and victimhood. Which is to say that I am totally behind empowering victims to avoid future abuse or harm, if I can. That doesn't mean I blame them, but it does mean I want to help them avoid those situations if I am able to do so. I think some people have a serious issue with this. They think that if you tell a victim it isn't their fault, you're robbing them of all their power. That's patently bullshit. You're simply telling them how it was. On the other hand, you're a fool not to try and teach victims better techniques to hopefully mitigate risk in the future. If your route home doesn't have a lot of streetlights, maybe there are slightly longer, more well-lit routes that will lower your chance of being accosted. If you trusted someone to drive you home on a first date and something awful happened, maybe you don't do that again. Stuff like that. But none of those precautions means that the burden of fault changes even a single whisker.
In case you haven't noticed, this topic really, really incenses me.
Greetings all.
I should have been a little calmer when I wrote that because I know that just as nobody will be able to change how I think and feel regarding certain matters, neither can I change how they think and feel regarding said matters. This next statement is not in contradiction to my previous statements regarding blame. So you all know how I feel regarding responsibility and how I'll never trust man's laws to govern me because they're subject to change. Having said that, would I actually say to someone else that what they go through is their fault? The answer to that is no. Why will I not do so? Because I am not responsible for them or how they live; indeed, I am not responsible for them going through what they go through. Having said that, I will absolutely state that what I go through is my responsibility and my fault but I will not say such to any other being. Instead, I would say unto them, regardless of who is at fault, forgiving those who attack you will lessen your burdens considerably because you'll be letting go of the hatred you feel for them in your heart. I would sit with them for as long as they want me to and simply be there if that is what they wish. If they desire my counsel then I will give it freely and tell them to look to the star of Bethlehem and pray the star prayers. What I'm trying to tell you is that I hold myself to far stricter standards than I do everyone else. When dealing with another, it's far easier for me to not even touch upon who's at fault because they're not me. I'll simply counsel them to not only forgive the enemy but to pray that their enemy will be guided to follow the right path. As for me, because I find no problem with shouldering the blame, I can easily forgive and love the enemy. As for the sodomy, did I trust them and be in a room alone with them? Absolutely. Did I ask them to do that? No I did not. Remember, I will always hold myself accountable for what I did while not applying such to any other being. I don't know them so it wouldn't be right or just for me to judge them thus. On the other, I find it to not only be okay but completely justified for me to judge myself thus; it has allowed me to not only make peace with myself, with those who have done me wrong and my creator who has set me free from suffering as a result of what I've gone through in my past. Finally, if a tornado blew my house down, am I at fault for that? Not for the tornado blowing down my house but because I caused someone to lose their house in the past and again, I do not judge others in the same way that I judge myself. I only judge others to whether or not they'd benefit from my aid or good counsel.
Kind regards, Amin Abdullah.
So not only do you first make a statement regarding fault that applied to everyone, but when challenged you now only apply it to you.
And that's great on paper, since it lets you neatly dodge bullets that would otherwise shred your platform. But it also brings up another point.
You are either holding yourself to impossibly high standards because of the trauma you've faced and the means by which you have tried to come to terms with it, or you really, really wish you could judge everyone else, but you know it won't fly. Maybe both. I'm not sure. All I know is that I can't stand it. Shouldering blame for something that is well and truly your fault is one thing. Taking responsibility for the heinous acts of others is damn near martyr-ish. And I don't know about you, but I don't see any pyres or adoring multitudes handy.
Greetings Jayde.
Did I in any way in my previous posts apportion blame to any other? If I did then I assure you that such was never my intent. Did I not in fact express and imply in every single statement that I made that I put myself in the firing line because I do not like to comment on others? Please read back and let me know whether or not I said: if I were a transwoman or if I suffered from leukaemia. I definitely think you need to go back and read more carefully what I wrote regarding that. If you do, I think you'll change your mind about stating that I am trying to dodge bullets. As for me wishing to blame others for what they go through or me wishing to blame them, that will never fly with me either. Yes in my earlier explanation, I told of how each soul evolves but did I in any way express or imply that I directly or indirectly hold others to account in any way? You will find that I did not because nobody will ever answer to me for anything at all, nor will I answer to anyone except the dark sovereign power if I still have karma to pay off. I do have some to pay off and this very topic is proof that I must never allow my negative dark sinful emotions to get the better of me. If I did that then I would be responsible for hurting you and then I would have to suffer for that.
Kind regards, Amin Abdullah.
Bashue, what I said is that your story changed when I challenged it, which I find convenient. Because now you can hide behind the "it's only me I'm judging this way" shield, which is a lot more protective. After all, if I continue to challenge that assertion when it no longer affects others, I'm sort of a jerk, right?
Except...well, here's the thing. You made a topic about it. You purported to give advice to at least one other user about how they should live their life. So the instant you start spreading your philosophy around, there is a question as to why you're doing it. Is it literally just to hear the click of keys or the chatter of your chosen speech synth as you pour out meaningless words? I doubt it. Is it to hopefully spark discussion and synchrony of thought with your audience? I suspect that's closer to the truth. That's usually how these things run. So while I accept your defense, as a defense, I also repudiate it in the sense that you don't just get to sweep in, make pronouncements, then run and hide when it gets too hot for you and you don't have the answers.
If you're only applying the whole issue of fault and culpability to yourself, and if you would never presume to judge others for falling short of your own personal standards, then why offer advice and guidance in the first place? I think you've just neatly torpedoed your own agenda here.
Greetings Jayde.
Am I really trying to run and hide because I'm finding the topic too hot to handle? If I were doing that then I would be trying to retract all my previous statements and trying to state that I never meant any of it. This I am not doing, nor do I need to run and hide behind anyone. I do in fact stand alone. Why did I offer advice to another? It isn't because I'm judging them punitively; I only judged that they would benefit from my counsel. This is what you did and this is what you need to do about it is in no way implying that I personally hold them accountable because their very own actions do that. I did say that they succumbed to their darkness and allowed it to take them over at times. Is that in any way blaming them or is that simply stating a fact? Also, when I gave advise to Cameron, was I actually judging him or was I in my long winded way trying to give him tools to deal with his persecution? If you can prove that my statement has changed after you challenged me, then and only then will I retract my argument. I will now prove that I in fact did not change my argument; what I did was progress to the next point in my argument in my next post. This will be very long because I'm quoting both you and me.
Kind regards, Amin Abdullah.
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