Isn't one of the keys to TM "letting go" , taking it as it comes? Another way
of "forgiving". TM , an excellent practice in learning how to "forgive us our
sins as we forgive others". Not holding on to the past or being anxious about
the future.
--- On Mon, 4/13/09, authfriend <jst...@panix.com> wrote:
From: authfriend <jst...@panix.com>
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Don't Throw Out the Baby with the Bathwater (Re: Have
YOU killed..?)
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, April 13, 2009, 3:07 PM
--- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, "shempmcgurk" <shempmcgurk@ ...> wrote:
<snip>
> I call this whole idea of Jesus "dying for my sins"
> as the "Free Lunch" approach to karma. That somehow
> I am forgiven my sins by an act performed by Jesus
> some 2,000 years before I was born.
>
> What happened to taking responsibility for my OWN
> actions? As ye sow so shall ye reap? Yes, certainly,
> I can eventually obtain self-realization and the
> cycle of karma will still occur to my body and life
> as I silently witness it. But I can't help thinking
> of someone like Mark David Chapman, the murderer of
> John Lennon who has, of course, "found" Jesus oh-so-
> conveniently while in prison. He snuffed out the
> life of a 40-year-old creative man with two sons yet
> now everything is a-okay on the karma front because
> he's accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior.
But he's still in jail, right?
What do you think *should* happen to him beyond
temporal punishment?
If you don't believe he's really been "saved," is
your objection to his having accepted Jesus as his
savior that he gets to *think* he's been saved,
whereas he should be wallowing in guilt, or live
the rest of his life in terror that he's going to
hell?
These aren't rhetorical questions; I'm just trying
to nail down exactly where you think the problem
lies.
Me, I don't believe in the whole substitutionary
atonement thing. I do think *belief* in it may
have a certain psychological utility.
A minister of my acquaintance used to say, "If God
forgives you, who the heck are you not to forgive
yourself?"
One element of having all your past sins forgiven is
that you're supposed to do your best not to commit
any new ones. Seems to me it's easier to make that
kind of effort if you're not weighed down by a huge
burden of guilt and convinced that you're
irredeemable, that God couldn't possibly love and
forgive you.
No idea whether or how that might apply in Chapman's
case, though. If you're genuinely psychotic, that
must change the equation.
