Buy the whole book The Shadowed Soul with a chapter on how I’ve overcome ADHD, Dyslexia, Suicidal Depression, PSTD and Anxiety, Schizophrenia and Bipolar, Epilepsy and Autism, Brain Damage and Digital Dementia and the Retardation of Thoughts in the link below:
Here me speak about forgiveness in the voice recording below:
https://tusnua.eu/justin-april-4th-2023/
Chapter 3: Pseudo-Laws Pseudo Morals
Thomas Aquinas writes in Law, Question 90 of the Essence of Law, that Aristotle said, “the intention of the lawgiver is to lead all men to virtue” (Aquinas P15), yet the only true law that leads all men to virtue is the Law of Love, which is defined as: “love thy God, thy neighbor, and thy enemy as thyself.” All the laws of any government, or societies, are based on some form of RCBAs: Risk Cost Benefit Analysis. RCBAs are laws that have both virtues and vices. RCBAs are what I would take all the 613 Commandments of the Old Testament as, as well.
Different people of a society get different benefits from the laws that are passed by those societies. For hundreds of years the 613 Commandments of the Old Testament were laws that helped govern any society. These 613 Commandments still shape how our different societies function to this day such as: Thou Shal not Kill. Yet, some people do not get any benefits of laws that are passed by governing society, and some get harmed by the laws which the lawgiver creates; therefore, laws of a society, or even the Old Testament, are not laws according to Aristotle. Because any law that does not lead virtue to “all men” are pseudo-laws according to Aristotle; therefore, the laws any lawgiver creates, for any society, are RCBAs Laws.
It is a fact that not all laws lead “all men” to virtue; so, I do not see how Aquinas can truly say: “The Old Laws restrains the hand, and The New Law controls the mind” (Aquinas P26). By the Old Laws Aquinas is writing about the Laws of the Old Testament, and by the New Law Aquinas is talking about the Law of the New Testament. My whole premise of this book is: if the mind is controlled, then the hand will follow.
As I prove in the following chapter, The Power of Inaction, the Rgveda says quite clearly: “When purified by rays of intelligent discrimination, then thoughts in the mind will humbly submit to wisdom,” so when we can see our thoughts clearly through meditation, they work themselves out. When our thoughts are worked out this leads to the correction of our behaviors. Yet, this chapter will be proving that the only law that brings virtue to “all” is the Law of Love. As it will also prove that love is the root of all actions, and we all have the same two problems: ignorance and understanding. Love is everything because God is everything, and everything at its core is love. This also means any actions that anyone takes that harms another, be them encouraged by laws of a society, or even of the Old Testament, are just based on their own misunderstandings of their situation and not being able to see their thoughts clearly. The only true evil there is is ignorance. This also means that there is no reason to hate or be angry at anyone when we truly understand what controls all of us: perception. All our problems we have, with any action we take, are just a misunderstanding and the ignorance of our situation and circumstances.
Let’s first accept the premise that laws, even pseudo-laws, are based on morals. Since there is only one law that is not a pseudo-law, the Law of Love, then the only moral which a law can be based on is the only true emotion we all have: love. Since the only moral that there is, is love, and that by definition all pseudo-laws are not truly laws, then any other morals men might have would be pseudo-morals; therefore, the lawgiver creates laws based on RCBAs. These RCBAs are pseudo-laws based on the lawgiver’s pseudo-morals and the misunderstandings that we all have for ourselves in the empirical world (Maya). This is because the lawgiver himself does not base the laws of society on love but on RCBAs, which are necessary because we are all suffering from this ignorance and misunderstanding of the empirical world (Maya) around us – even the lawgiver of any society.
Jesus threw out the Old Laws of the Old Testament in The Sermon On The Mount. Such an Old Law is: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth” is not compatible with love thy enemy as thyself. This is a violent law with an angry solution. This clearly shows how the Old Laws do not bring virtue to “all men;” so, the Old Laws are pseudo-laws. If we are going to live by what Jesus preached, it would be nothing but insanity to try and reconcile laws which contradict each other; therefore, Aquinas is showing his insanity in trying to reconcile laws which are not compatible in anyway with the Law of the New Testament. Especially because Aquinas did not believe in paradoxes of an empirical world (Maya) because he was a Peripatetic. It was also these Old Laws that were used to bring about the justifications of such chaos and terror as Colonialism, which came to devastate the whole planet. We are still living those consequences of the violence of colonialism to this very day.
The problem with “The Old Law is for ruling the hand, and the New Law is for controlling the mind,” is all “voluntary” action is based in thought, then propelled by emotion. I prove determinism, and that none of us have the power of choice, even though choice is the only way any of us can live, in The Power of Inaction. The power of choice makes no logical sense because it means that someone would knowingly take what they thought was wrong out of the multiple options set in front of them in any very moment. Or does everyone just take the best action they think is possible no matter how skewed their “decision” might be? This is why I explain it through a paradox, which Aquinas denies.
This means that the only person who has the power of “choice” in my life is me, and the only person who has the power of choice in your life is you. Not because either of us has the power of choice, but because taking responsibility for our actions is the only true way any of us can learn and grow for the better and be shaped in the best possible way by the consequences of our actions. The only way to take responsibility for our actions is to live by the power of “choice” even though everything is determined. This means the only thing which needs to be “controlled,” in any way, is our own minds, and as I stated above, when the mind is “controlled,” the hand will follow. These premises are proved throughout this book in the different chapters over and over as I show how similar we all are, and how all our realities are nothing but what we think, and our minds are nothing but imagination.
In The Power of Inaction I show how the only thing any of us can see clearly, and from all angles, at any time of the day, is our own mind. This is through a daily practice of single pointed concentration meditation (Trataka), then we are able to make the best “decisions” through awareness. If someone is going to live by the only law which is truly a law, the New Law, then it is also about a peaceful mind. The only emotion that will propel someone to the right action every time is a true understanding of love and what the New Law truly means. This is what Jesus meant when he preached the only true law there is the Law of Love. This shows that the purpose of living one’s life is to live only by understanding our true motives and intentions and practicing them to the best of our ability.
When people think of what they would call morals, people think of universal principles we all should live by. The only difficulty with this concept is people cannot completely agree on what is moral, or even what is virtuous. This means morals, when it comes to the individual, are relative if they are anything besides “love your God, your neighbor, and your enemy as thyself;” therefore, these relative morals are the pseudo-morals.
Relativity itself is only an empirical concept of the Maya. This is because the subjective view we all get is based on our unique standing and our unique experience in the empirical world, which is the Hindu concept of the Maya, yet if it be a universal truth, or a universal law, then it would be that of God, which God in Himself is not relative, but absolute, no matter how we define God. God in Himself is universal, yet the basic human existence of the physical body in the empirical world (Maya) is relative. A human mind is only meant for understanding limited subjective concepts in an empirical world, so it will never be able to understand the universal: God. This subjective understanding is why the pseudo-laws have been created in this empirical world (Maya) because we are all ignorant all the time.
“Thee Philosopher,” which is how Aquinas refers to Aristotle, was an empiricist. In the painting drawn in The School of Athens, by Raphael, Aristotle is signaling towards the ground to show Plato where the truth is: here in this empirical world (Maya). Plato, who was a rationalist, is signaling towards the Heavens. For Plato the truth is rational, and in the heavens, because this empirical world is full of too many contradictions, or paradoxes, which violate logic according to Plato and any logician. The Maya is not just relative but is also dual.
Duality means that everything has an opposite, so how could there be anything but paradoxes if everything is relative and everything has a opposite? Contradictions to empirical realities are shown over and over in modern science, with such things a quantum physics, and how every time we get an answer in Western Science, it just leads to more questions, not to the end of answers. So, I write this book as a Vishishtadvaitin or Neoplatonist point of view which believes in the paradoxes of the empirical world (Maya) not in the Heavens. Maya just means illusion in Sanskrit because of all the paradoxes of relativity and duality, and Plato thought that the empirical world was an illusion, which is why he is signaling to the Heavens. The empirical world (Maya) has to be an illusion if it contradicts itself everywhere, which it does!
Yet, I would argue that Aristotle did not have a good idea of what is truly virtuous either because he held himself, and all modern scientists, to that “fact” that empirical world would not contradict itself. I am doubting Aristotle’s conclusions on virtue as well as Aquinas’s in this essay.
One thing I would point out is that controlling the mind would be a rational solution as well; so, the only true problems any of us have are in our minds. The Colonialists also used Aristotle’s concepts of virtue to justify slavery and the conquering and killing of natives all over the world in the name of Christ, which is an ignorant rationalization and misunderstanding of what Christ taught.
In the book Greek Thought and the Origins of the Scientific Spirit, Leon Robin writes how Aristotle believed in two types of people: slaves and non-slaves. Even in the days of Aristotle there were those who questioned how anyone could justify slavery. Robin writes how some say we justify slavery through war. Aristotle was saying it was fine for the Athenians to conquer the barbarians and subjugate them. Aristotle thought the barbarians should be slaves because of their inferiority.
Aristotle’s justification for slavery was that the slave is nothing but a tool. Just like the “body is to the soul” (Robin P273), so the slave is to the master according to Aristotle. Aristotle was saying that there are “just” forms of slavery. “Like the ox, he has no reason, except what is valuable for his physical constitution, which is not even that of a free man” (Robin P273). Aristotle here refers to a human slave being nothing more than an animal, just like the ox is. In fact, Aristotle refers to the slave as to the master just like the plow is to the ox. This was considered a moral law by Aristotle, but Aristotle contradicts himself by saying the lawgiver “brings virtue to all men.” Slavery does not bring virtue to the slave, and what we have found in the modern day is all human DNA is 99.9% identical and such concepts of race are based on a difference of less than .1% of our genetics; so, there is no such thing as race. Sure, they did not know anything about DNA in Ancient Greece, but we can easily see how much alike we all are if we investigate and just get to know each other like any empiricists such as Aristotle would claim to do himself. The concept of race has always been an ignorance to justify power of one over another. Race has always been a false construct about money and power.
So, what Aristotle was using was nothing but the RCBA’s. All any Peripatetic is trying to do with the validation of slavery would be to justify their own dominance in their society. Slave masters just wanted power. A want and a need are nothing but desires, and desires are what controls all actions of all life because life can’t take an action unless it wants something, which means the problem of all life is understanding their desires and controlling their minds. Slavery itself, at any time, was nothing but a justification of the dominant society’s selfish desires over others. The Athenians had no need to understand or love anything but themselves, which is the problem of all life: selfishness.
Aristotle says there are three types of government, and when used correctly, they bring virtue to its constituents: kingship, aristocratic oligarchy, and republic (Robin). The problem with his thinking is no government has ever been shown to bring virtue to “all” its constituents. Winston Churchill famously said, “Democracy is the best of the worst forms of government.” Churchill meant that there are problems with every form of government, and this is because no matter which society, everyone has problems with their selfishness and their moral relativity.
No society is completely free of this selfish conflict that we all have with each other because with all forms of life, life does not exist without desire. All life just wants to feel good. This need to feel good is a selfishness. Selfishness is why we all fight with each other all the time instead of working to find the common good. This fighting is something that even happens in societies with specific court rulings.
Roe vs. Wade is a good example of a moral relativity that causes all types of conflict in America. In the FindLaw Career Center, there is a paper that gives the specific details of Roe vs. Wade, and how the Supreme Court came to the conclusions that it did. FindLaw Career Center writes how the Supreme Court said that to restrict people from having abortions violates both the 9th and the 14th Amendments. The Supreme Court even goes on to overrule the Laws of the States which criminalized abortion. The ruling had to do with the right to privacy, and women being able to make that decision with their doctor in the 9th and 14th Amendments. I would argue, which I have told several Christians on Facebook through conversation, if you are a Christian, it does not matter what anyone does, even a woman who is wanting an abortion, the only thing Christ commands them to do to anyone, no matter what they do, is love them, which, in this case, these fundamentalist Christians are clearly not doing. They don’t want to have their tax money to go to any of these under privileged mothers and children once they have the kids either. To feed them or take care of them. They just don’t want white populations going down, so they claim it is about their “morality.” That is why they like the Dobs decision that puts abortion rights back to the states.
The Bible also writes over and over how “the breath of life” is how we define life. So, there is relativity in the interpretations of the Biblical Scriptures as well, which is why Jewish people have no problem with abortion. Abortion is more about white populations decreasing and people not wanting minorities from other countries than it is about any “right to life.”
These rulings have resulted in all kinds of conflicts in America. There have been acts of violence taken out on the women, the doctors, and the clinics that facilitate the abortions. Now Doctors are scared to perform abortions when a woman’s life is clearly at risk because of Dobs, and there have been several cases of the woman dying because doctors won’t perform abortions, which can be medically necessary to save a mother’s life. OBGYN’s are leaving state like Texas as well because of Texas’ support of the Dobs ruling, so the average women in Texas won’t be able to get basic prenatal care.
All Acts of violence have to be based on pseudo-morals. It is the Christians themselves which are the perpetrators of these violent acts on the abortion facilities in America. Christians are supposed to be about the This Universal Law, The Law of The New Testament: The Law of Love, but to attack a woman for choosing to terminate a pregnancy is obviously not love and not loving their enemy. When they vote for people like Herschel Walker, we can all tell they don’t care about abortion so much as they care about race. None of Herschel Walk’s voters, who claim to care about abortion, cared that he got a women pregnant who was an African American who had an abortion. They just were thrilled that he was pro-life so they might not lose another white baby.
These Christians have a problem with the woman that does not love their unborn and let the fetus live, yet they do not love the woman, accept her, and forgive her for any sins they think she commits by terminating her pregnancy; therefore, since neither of these acts are about love, if one has an abortion, or one judges or attacks a woman for having an abortion, they are both stuck in the pseudo-morals. Neither action is a loving outcome. Roe vs. Wade is an RCBA because one claims it is hurting the unborn, and the other says their freedom should not be restricted. If we restrict the freedom of a woman, we are not showing love towards her and the understanding of her circumstances. The complications that are brought up in a woman’s life with any pregnancy can be beyond what lots of us can understand without the direct experience in that financial situation with those medical conditions. To not allow each mother their own rights over their own bodies, is to not show love for that mother, and if a mother is not able to provide a loving life for a new born, that is not love for the new born child, so the most loving thing any of us can do is allow a woman to have “control” over her own body, and if they truly were about love and wanting the baby to survive, they would be for social programs to help the mother and child, instead of voting to take those social programs away. How can the Christians claim to be about love when they don’t want to make sure the youth in America are fed and taken care of?
Another law that has to do with pseudo-morals is Michigan vs. EPA. In Michigan vs. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled based on RCBA. Michigan vs. EPA was about greenhouse gas emissions and how they pollute the environment and cause people harm. The Harvard Law Review wrote a perfect description of this ruling, and it was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who wrote the majority opinion.
Harvard Law Review writes how Scalia said in the majority opinion that the restrictions that the EPA puts on power plant emissions have to be “appropriate and necessary.” The EPA wanted to restrict greenhouse gases that come out of power plants to protect both people and the environment. It was the States that took the EPA to court because the States said that the restrictions that the EPA were putting on the power plants were too costly. The States wanted to save billions of dollars at the expense of the health of the citizens and the environment. Scalia agreed with the States writing the EPA was not “appropriate and necessary” with its restrictions that it imposed at the cost of the States. This ruling, either way, would either cost more money, or it would pollute the environment, which is an RCBA in either circumstantial outcome.
If someone would ask Scalia: was he a moral man? Scalia would have said that he was. He would say that he is moral even though Scalia is putting a price on the poor people’s heads that are living around these power plants because the people who are most affected by pollution are poor people. It has to do with where these people’s living spaces are. This shows that even when people are being selfish or making a law at the expense of people’s health in a society, they still think they are being moral because most people never want to do the loving thing of questioning their own thinking and conclusions that they come to. It is amazing to me that it is these Southern America States that continually get devastated by these hurricanes. These Southern Christians just have too much of what they call the greatest of all sins in their doctrine because none of them want to admit Global Warming. This is why pride is the greatest of all sins, because pride tells us we are right when we are wrong. Pride tells us we are right when all we have is a limited, subjective, and relative understanding of the empirical world! We are all wrong all the time because all we have is relativity and duality. We have “truths” to what we believe, but those “truths” can always be improved upon, and most people have no desire for that effort of their life! It is the love of money above the environment and health of the people that is the motivation of Scalia’s majority opinion, and he had no ability to truly acknowledge it, or he would not have ruled in that way!
Scalia put the love of money above the love of thy neighbor, and either ruling would have been at either the expense of the State or the health of the American Citizens. Scalia should have known that in Timothy 6:10 it clearly states: “the love of money is the cause of all calamities. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from their faith and pierced themselves with many griefs,” which is fossil fuel consumption and the love of money that is the main driving factor of global warming. These companies want the money produced by the sales of fossil fuels, and the rest of us have our selfish desires being fulfilled when it produces electricity and the power for our cars and other transportation.
Another court case that showed that not everyone loves their neighbor and their enemy is Matal vs. Tam. Matal vs. Tam is about the contrast between hate speech and free speech. Supreme Court Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion for Matal vs. Tam. The majority opinion states the First Amendment does not allow hate speech. Alito writes about how the First Amendment uses the word “persons,” and this goes to the protection of any racial minority. Alito was stating that hate speech is not free speech.
Matal vs. Tam ruled quite contrary to the 2016, 2020 and 2024 election and what Donald Trump ran on. Trump clearly ran on ostracizing minorities, specifically Muslims. This clearly goes against the ruling of Matal vs. Tam, but it did not stop the supporters of Donald Trump and the message he ran on. Trump, when he came into office in 2016, tried to get a Muslim ban for certain countries based on his bigotry, and his justification for that was RCBA because he was stating that terrorists are from the Muslim countries. This was not true. Most terrorist in America are home grown white supremacists, but it was still an RCBA because the people who elected Trump took the Muslims as a threat to their country. Trump was the lawgiver in this case. The Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of the Muslim ban and stated restricting immigrants is within the executive power. They also said it was not discriminatory when Trump clearly stated over and over what he was doing and why. It was the Christians of America who wanted this Law, which clearly is not love thy neighbor, and if the Christians took Muslims as their enemies, all they should do is love them if they are going to live up to what Jesus preached.
The reason for Roe vs. Wade, Dobs, Michigan vs. EPA, and Matal vs. Tam had to do with the RCBA is that there is a risk involved with each one of these decisions against the benefits people would get out of enacting them. An RCBA says, according to K. S. Shrader-Frechette in The Conceptual Risk of Risk Assessment, that we weigh the pros and cons of each decision and say what is right for society and ourselves. Shrader-Frechette says we do not do this with personal decisions, but Shrader-Frechette is wrong. We do, do this with personal decisions.
Shrader-Frechette says there is no way for a human to sit and calculate in each decision what is RCBA, but people are constantly thinking to themselves before they take an action: “which action should I take?” Even if people do not stop and ponder that question, they are still going to be taking the action which their mind tells them is the best decision for that moment, no matter how flawed it might be. They take that action of what they think will benefit them the most and harm them the least. We all do this. This is what Socrates meant when he said, “The passionate man and the vicious man are men who do not know their own good, who have not perceived the essence of man in themselves: No one is wicked willingly. Reciprocally, the virtues are branches of knowledge; to know is to do.” (Robin p139). We all just do what we think is best, and when we truly see and understand what is virtuous, and see our minds clearly, we take the right action. We all just have the same two problems: ignorance and understanding. Why does anyone take any action besides what they think is best in the moment? Sure, it may be dishonest, or mean, or some other misgiving, but we all take what we think is best in any given moment, usually for our own selfish needs, so we all have the same two issues: ignorance and understanding. This is why there is usually some form of pro and con in each action we take in this empirical illusion (Maya); so, most actions are nothing but RCBA for the average person as well. But with these decisions, what does it mean to make the right decision? What is love, and how can people live by that?
The most universal definition of love I have come up with would be: wanting the best for someone and taking the necessary steps to carry that out. The New Law is about caring for everyone including God because we are all One with God. This means no matter who they are, or what they did, we do our best to take the best action for everyone. This is what it would mean to let the selfishness of human behavior go. It is this selfishness which destroys all of us. That is all global warming is about. Global Warming is nothing but the desire for energy and the money, and this selfishness could kill us all, but the only way for everyone to have virtue in any society would be to have everyone in that society practice love and selflessness. We all can agree that love is the universal moral; so, it should not be these pseudo-morals that so many of us live by.
It is also the pseudo-laws of a societies which are meant to control the hand, but people in societies need their hands controlled in order for people to live with each other because a lot of people will not take the right actions because all life suffers from this selfishness and very few of us even look at our own minds through daily meditation. This is the problem of the human psyche, and in fact the psyche of all life, but it is the humans that are the “rational” ones on this planet, so we have the biggest problem. Most humans do not live by New Law, even if they claim they do, and very few in history have been able to live by the New Law; therefore, everyone who is made of flesh has their “sins.”
I would say it is my desire to practice the New Law that has been able to get me to be at peace with myself and everything which happened in my life at a young age. I have come to see what happened to me as a child happened. It is over. I explained it in the poems I opened the book with, such as That Might Be Me i Hate. I wrote those poems locked up as a suicidal child because of all the hatred I had for one man. Because of him, I took that hate out on everyone around me for years. Not just the man I wanted to kill, but everyone. That man I wanted to kill was my father. That desire, I would argue, was just a cry for help that I did not understand in any way at the time, and I was angry at my mother for keeping me in the middle of it.
I was an extremely angry child, but I do not think, looking back, I would have killed anyone because I reach out to a teacher to show him a letter I wrote. It was about being judged and abused as a kid. Both my parents judged me for my disabilities, and I hated my mother for sending me to that detentionary boarding school in the middle of Provo Utah. Today, I see she had no option because I was so out of control. She did the best she could just like my father did, as in the Socratic quote above: “no one is willingly wicked.” My mother is also why people have said I can be the most loving person they have met at time. I show caring for anyone who is suffering and have an amazing ability to connect even with strangers who are suffering. Being extremely empathic can be a characteristic of a neurodivergent person, which I am on the autism spectrum. I don’t just walk past homeless people on the street in San Francisco. I feed them all the time. I call 911 for them when I see them overdosing on fentanyl instead of just stepping over them, which I see so many people do.
I saw a man collapse from across the street one time when I was at Van Ness and Eddy Street in San Francisco. I walked through the intersection and pointed him out to the bus driver. I was watching all these people just step over him. The bus driver just wanted me out of the way, and none of the other pedestrians cared either. I started to see him turn blue, and as he did, I called 911. Some other homeless people finally saw him and started to shoot Narcan up his nose and perform CPR like it was another day of the week. I waved down the fire truck as it came, then I realized I could not do anything else, so I left.
I cried for hours that day, and the thing I cried about was how many people just stepped over him. I was saying to myself out loud in tear in repetition for hours “Everybody just walkin’ by like it doesn’t mean S____!” That is all I could say for hours. I felt that homeless person’s pain, and it hurt me so much to see so many people just steped over him as he collapsed right in front of them. I got that type of caring through my mother and how much love she showed me as a little kid, but in that school, Discovery Academy, that I was sent to because of my father, I got screwed up even more than I already was. It was at Discovery Academy that I began to truly hate everyone! Discovery Academy was where I learned to be the bully my father was with me, and I did it all with my words! I protected myself from the world with my mouth! I wrote about that in A Vicious Cycle.
Today I do not blame either of my parents for anything and am grateful my mother taught me how to love so well as a young child. She truly cared more than anyone. More so than most mothers I would say. I see today we all just have the same two problems: ignorance and understanding, and if you are the only person with the power of “choice” in your life there is nobody to resent. If there is nobody to resent, you are not a miserable person. This Maya (empirical world) is just our perfect teacher. I have come to believe in the power of metaphysics and can see such things as the Law of Karma and the Theory of Evolution both tell the same thing: the only thing that remains constant is change and we either learn or we suffer. We adapt or we die.
Karma just means action is Sanskrit, and this whole world is just causality of constant action, and I am just here to adapt and learn in this blessing of life. We can always be filled with love for our teacher if we want to grow for the better. We learn in two ways: one is pleasure and the other is pain in this empirical world of duality, but I was someone who could not see this for a very long time and did not talk to my father for about 18 years because I couldn’t see this solution.
When I decided to get in contact with my father, I had moved up to Portland to live with my mother for a little bit. I was sober for about 4 years at the time and had let go of a lot of my anger. People in 12 Step Recovery showed me what the solution was. That solution was love and forgiveness, and in my first book, A Vicious Cycle, I end with the prayer of Saint Francis, which I truly believe gives me the right action for every situation of my life if I want true happiness: “to understand is to be understood,” “by self-forgetting one finds,” “to love is to be loved,” and “to forgive is to be forgiven.” It was the people in recovery that showed me what I needed, and what I needed was their solution of love, forgiveness, and self-improvement, each one of these quotes got me to acknowledge how evil truly exists in the world.
The greatest Catholic philosopher Pseudo-Dionysius wrote quite well how evil can exists in a world created by a perfect being: “So far as they are, they are both from the Good and are good, and aspire to the Beautiful and the Good, by aspiring to the realities of Being and Life and Thought, and by privation, departure and declension of the good things befitting them they are evil, and are evil with regards to what they are not: and by aspiring to the non-existent, they aspire to the evil.” So, evil doesn’t exist. It is just an ignorance, and ignorance is just a lack of knowledge. This is how there can be such a thing as evil with a Perfect Being because it does not exist!
Some people in recovery are so hell bent on the fact that the Big Book is not the Bible, but the one thing I realized is the Big Book came from the Bible. Bill W. based all his arguments on the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group based everything on the Bible, and in the 1930s in America I would not think there would be any other spiritual books of reference that were that handy anyways. There’s nothing wrong with a text which preaches love to everyone. I enjoy reading parts of the Bible today. I am a Hindu today, and one of the premises of Hinduism is all religions have “truths” to them. I find parts of Hinduism I disagree with too, like any form of caste system or being a vegetarian. We need to eat meat and other animal products for our health, and I am against all forms of racial discrimination as well because I do not believe in race. Race is an ignorance. Race does not exists so we can all see the evil that comes from something people believe in that does not exist. Just like money! Money is just a piece of paper that we all agree means something, and we all crave more of it because we all say it means something. Money is just a figment of our imagination. It doesn’t exists but is the “cause of all calamities!”
I also do agree with Mother Nature and there needs to be rights for animals as well. We need to have respect for our whole planet if we are to survive, but it is in the book of Matthew which made me realize the only Law there truly is, is the Law of Love.
In The Sermon On The Mount Jesus states:
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The Pharisees were the Jewish ruling class that worked with the Romans to keep the Jewish people subjugated in their society. It was these laws of the Pharisees Jesus has come to abolish. These laws in themselves are pseudo-laws because they were not the laws based on The Sermon On The Mount. The Pharisees were given this power by the Romans. The Pharisees’ laws were RCBA; therefore, pseudo-laws. They benefited the Pharisees because the Pharisees imposed them to benefit the Romans, so the Romans gave the Pharisees special rights and privileges, these privileges even harmed other Jewish people, and that is why the Pharisees got Jesus crucified.
Just like the laws of the Pharisees, the pseudo-laws of a society are based on the RCBA. Laws of any society are specific to their constituents. The laws of Roe vs. Wade, Dobs, Michigan vs. EPA, and Matal vs. Tam are meant to rule the hand. Pseudo-laws are meant for people in a society. But the pseudo-laws will not lead “all” to happiness and will not lead to the “Kingdom of Heaven.” Heaven, for me, is here on earth when the New Law is practiced. It is in the moment because Consciousness is all there truly is, and it is the law of the New Testament that shows anyone what they need to do to get to Heaven and be happy here on earth, and that is: “Love thy God, thy Neighbor, and thy Enemy as thyself.” It is this law which is the only true law, and this law is the law that has led to my happiness.
I have found my peace in finally being able to love my enemy. That man I wanted to kill, as I stated, was my father, and my father was my greatest enemy by far for a large part of my life. Hating him made it so I hated myself most of all, and I took that anger out on the world as a child. I fought the whole world because of him. That man taught me two things extremely well when I was a child: I was worthless and how to feel superior to anyone. Those two character defects were perfected at Discovery Academy, and Discovery Academy was what perfected those character defects in my adult life.
When I moved up to Portland back in 2009, I got curious to see my father, just to meet him and get to know him. I had let all of that anger go because of the love I had gotten from other people who suffered from their addictions. I had no expectations of what he would be like. I admitted I truly would not know until it happened.
I met him at a restaurant. I still recognized him. When I got to the restaurant, he was waiting for me at the bar. He had a beer in his hand. It did not bother me because it does not bother me if anyone drinks or does drugs. Their drinking and drug use is about them, not me, and I can be around drinking and drug use with no problem because my sobriety is not contingent on anything except my God. If I rely on God, I should not have a problem facing anything. If I rely on God, I do not need to have any anger or any problems because the Law of Love is the key to happiness in any circumstance.
He was there drinking, I met him, and we talked. We had a great dinner because of the conversation and food. I just got to let him know a little bit about myself, and since I set all expectations or judgments aside, I enjoyed it.
After that dinner I would see him quite often when I was living in Portland, and when I moved back down to San Francisco I would call him all the time. He showed a genuine interest in me. He wanted to know what I was doing with my life and what it was that made me happy. I impressed him with my education, and he thought it was great what I was doing. He had no expectations or judgments about me at all. He even told me how intelligent I was all the time. He said once to me “you seem to be smarter than I am.” That man would never say that to anyone unless he meant it too.
He was about 65 when I got to know him. He did drugs, drank, and smoked for about 50 years, so he was not long for this planet. I moved back to San Francisco to marry my wife after about nine months in Portland, and it was about 10 years of staying in touch with him before he died.
When he got sick, it was at that time in my life I started to tell him I loved him over the phone every time I talked with him, and I would call him every day. He would even tell me he loved me. “I love you” were three words that took most of my life to say to anyone after my childhood, but I went up to Portland during spring break to see him one last time and tell him to his face I loved him. I even had no problem hugging him. That was nothing I thought I would have ever said or done to that man, but I forgave him completely and was showing love for him while he passed.
When I got to recovery, I could not even give anyone a hug for a very long time. People would try and give me a hug, and I would lash out with my tongue at them. After coming to recovery for 15 years I eventually started to be able to give people hugs. After going to recovery for 15 years I could say I love you to a select few people, then, after a little while, I could say it to anyone. I could not say I love you to anyone without me needing to hear it back, or without the fear that I might not hear it back. I was always so scared of people rejecting me, and that is why I could not say it to people even if I felt it. Not being able to tell anyone I loved them was because of the abuse I suffered as a child and that detentionary boarding school Discovery Academy. If I told someone I loved them, and I did not hear it back, I felt so worthless that it terrified me completely, so I just couldn’t say it for a large part of my life.
People in my family do not say “I love you” to each other too often. I have noticed love was the only thing I ever wanted from anyone. I believe love is all any of us truly want from the people in our lives. Admitting that all we want is love also scares lots of people because it exposes us and makes us all vulnerable. It is the fear of getting hurt which kept me from giving what I wanted away, and like Jesus taught, love is the only thing which will cure us all. Love is the basis for the only True Law, and laws of a society are meant for controlling the hand; so, if someone lives by the only law there truly is: The Law of Love, then the hand is controlled quite easily by the mind. The pseudo-laws of a society are not needed if the mind is controlled, but the Law of Love is an extremely difficult law to practice perfectly. To perfect the Law of Love would be for all of us to understand all our thoughts at every single moment. I would argue the reason most do not do it too well is because most of us are not even paying attention to what we are truly thinking. Yet doing the right thing does not need to be a struggle when the Law of Love is understood and practiced. Like Socrates stated, virtues need to be in the actions we take. When we do this, the conflicts in our lives disappear.
I am no longer a miserable suicidal person. I no longer live in my father’s shadow or am plagued with the torture and the shackles of my mind. I am free and happy because I can love anyone today, even my father, without resentment. Loving others freely allows me to love myself. I do not need to be scared of anyone when I live by love. I live my life quite freely today. I no longer need to ruin my life and the lives of others around me because I feel like I will never get love or be accepted. To be free of fear and hate is an amazing experience. Especially when it has controlled you and destroyed everything in your life at one time. I can be happy no matter what because of the Law of Love.
The best way I have found to look at human motivation is through the book I Am That, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. He opened my eyes to the only true motivation we all have: love, and how to forgive anyone:
“Life is love and love is life. What keeps the body together but love? What is desire but love of self? What is fear but the urge to protect? What is knowledge but the love of truth? The means and form may be wrong, but the motive behind is always love – love of the me and the mine. The me and the mine may be small and insignificant, or may explode and embrace the universe, but love remains” (Nisargadatta P68).
It was this quote that enabled me to see what everyone’s motivations are at their core is love; even my father’s. As a child my father had a desire for alcohol, and as Nisargadatta points out, all desire is nothing but a love of self. That love of alcohol was nothing but a misguided form of the love because “the means and the form maybe wrong,” and is a selfish desire. That desire for alcohol was an ignorance. All desires are based on a love of self, or a love of the few. Instead of the Love of All. If you want to forgive someone just realize that their motive behind all actions is nothing but the wrong form of love, that wrong form of love is a misunderstanding. It is an ignorance just like Socrates said.
I met a girl in a meeting who sexually abused her younger half-brother. That girl sexual abused him because she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. She told me that she left the house because her stepmother kept strangling her unconscious over and over because her stepmother found out, and she broke the rules of her stepmother’s house. She was a kid at the time and only did to the brother what was done to her. That is nothing but the Law of Karma, which is nothing but the Law of Cause and Effect, or Newton’s Law of Reciprocity: for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. She was only doing to him what was done to her. Understanding another is the key to letting go of any of our resentments. Take the power of “choice” out of the other person’s hands and just realize people only do what they know, and what they know was what was done to them.
There are amazing articles I have read that show everyone that the Law of Love and the Law of Karma are basically the same thing. The only difference is the Law of Karma does not judge. With the Law of Karma, I take an action, these are the consequences for my action. Every action just has a result, which is nothing but reciprocity, but both the Law of Karma and the Law of Love tell us that if we act out of anger more, anger will be created. If someone acts out of love, more love will be created, and the only way to fight anger is with love. This was the same message as Thoreau, Gandhi, and Dr. King, which they all based on the Book of Matthew.
There was a movie that was released in 2017 that got best picture that made this same argument as The Law of Love. Everyone I talked to seemed to think it was some new retackle argument. The movie was Three Billboards. In this movie this mother loses her child to a murderer. She blames the town sharif for not being able to capture the murderer of her child. This is a very violent movie, and you see how her daughter getting killed just creates more and more anger and violence throughout the movie. It wasn’t a new argument. It is the oldest of all arguments and is even shown in ancient scriptures that originated on different continents. Anger creates more anger, yet when you realize love is everyone’s constant motivation, be it a misguided or misunderstood form of love, and that understanding is all our problems, you can forgive anyone, and your anger will slowly weaken and disappear.
Not understanding others is where the mother in the movie Three Billboards went wrong and was my biggest problem my whole life as well. It is amazing what awareness will do for anyone. Awareness is 99.9% of the problem for all of us and that is why I meditate daily for 45 minutes as shown in my chapter on ADHD. The reason that girl got strangled unconscious by her stepmother, is her stepmother had a love for her son, and wanted to be able to control and protect the other child. Just like in the movie Three Billboards. Both were mothers that loved their child and did not know how to respond to the Maya (Empirical World). The stepmother of the girl who molested her little half-brother had love for her son, yet the stepmother lost all control because her fear did not let her understand the situation. This is what Nisargadatta meant when he stated above: “what is fear but the urge to protect?” Fear is a natural emotion we all misuse because we want to protect ourselves, something, or someone, so the root of fear is love. She strangled her stepdaughter unconscious because we was controlled by the fear of her son getting harmed.
This is the same thing that is happening in the Middle East. There are those who love Israel and those who love Palestine. How it manifests is nothing but fear and anger. One has a fear they will lose something; one has a fear that they will not get it back: the Holy Land. Not getting something one desires, or losing something someone has, are the two types of fears; how those two types of fear manifest is anger, so the root of anger is love.
I have had a couple of people say I have saved their lives, and I’m the reason they believe in God. It was not that difficult. Anyone can do it. There is this one lady who has had a lot of brain damage from strokes. I did not really know her too well before the strokes at all, but one day I saw her suffering. She was in a wheelchair saying she just wanted to die. I went up and said hi to her. It was at that moment I started to spend time with her. Not a lot of time, but I just made an effort to see her once a week. All I do today is talk to her and say hi on the phone. I text her and tell her I love her throughout the week. It is so simple. Anyone can do it. I have found it is the only thing any of us truly want. Anyone can make a difference in someone else’s life: Anyone! It also feels wonderful to make a positive difference in someone’s life.
It was the Saints, like Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, which got me back to Catholicism. I wrote how I am basically a Neoplatonist too. Vishishtadvaita and Neoplatonism have lots and lots in common. They are both qualified-nondualist, and Neoplatonism is what all the Catholic Saints were in the Middle Ages too. It was these Saints which got me to see the only law, which is truly a law, is the same law that works for everyone: the Law of Love.
When my father was dying, I got to hug him and tell him I loved him over and over. I have said it to my sisters and all my family members, and sometimes they do not even say it back to me. They do not need to. It is fine. I have no need for the fear of rejection, so I just let it all go. Today I try and live by the only true moral there is: love. This only true moral is what makes the only true law there is. With this law there are no RCBA’s because there are no winners and losers. Anyone who practices this law will win, and every life that person touches wins as well because when the mind is controlled the hand will follow. Other lives are not damaged by another people’s hands when the Law of Love is practiced.
Jesus showed love for the Pharisees who were nailing him to the cross. If I am going to be happy, then just like Jesus, it does not matter what anyone else does. It only matters what I do, and no matter what they do, the only thing I should try and do is love them. I am not a Saint, and I still have a long way to go. I mess up all the time at this, but through awareness, and daily practice, I am able to change my habits by responding to my consequences. Most of what we all do is nothing but habitual, as I prove through the rest of this book, so I still have a hard time loving everyone in all circumstances. I will tell anyone it has gotten easier the more I have practiced it. The rest of this book is about developing new thinking and behaviors to overcome one’s mental illness; so, the Law of Love will work for anyone, be you a Christian or not because all religions have “truths” to them.
I also point out to Christians in America all the time that I do not see how the 2nd Amendment and the Law of Love are compatible. They seem shocked and confused. It seems quite obvious and simple to me. But none of them want to even see it. I have terrified them just pointing out this simple truth to them. One of the greatest persons to practice the Law of Love of the 20th century was not even a Christian. It was Gandhi. Gandhi studied Thoreau, and Thoreau himself was pro-Christ and anti-Christian, because Thoreau saw the Christians themselves had never practiced the principles of Christ. Gandhi said it best, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Modern Christians are still trying to reconcile the Old Law and the New Law, which leads to nothing but insanity in an empirical world (Maya). Most humans also have no desire to look at their own minds or their own actions, which is what pride keeps us all from doing.
If one looks at modern non-violent peaceful protest in America it is based on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King based it on Gandhi; So, when one thinks about it, even gay rights are based on the spirit of Christ. They are based on the abolitionist interpretation of the Book of Matthew: All non-violent peaceful protest is about showing love for your enemy because anger only breeds more anger. This is nothing but a radical interpretation of the Book of Matthew, and it is nothing but a simple logical conclusion, which most of us refuse to acknowledge.
The Letters of Birmingham Jail, written by Dr. King, was the most amazing piece of literature I have ever read, knowing the content. It is Neoplatonic in its form and quotes Augustine, Plato’s Apology, and the Phaedo from memory in a jail cell. Dr. King knows he is going to get killed when he refers to himself as “Socrates drinking the hemlock!” and at the end of that 21 handwritten letter from jail he asks them for their love and forgiveness even though he is doing what is just and right! What Dr. King did is still way beyond me, but it gives me ideals to stive for!I could only wish to be so articulate and live to that level or morality!
The most articulate of the 2020 Presidential candidates, Mayor Pete Buttigeig has stated, “Christians in this country hide behind the clock of religion. They claim to praise the principles of loving your God and your enemy just as themselves, but they don’t live by it,” and Karl Marx basically said the same thing about the colonialists.
Lots of people get pride and humility confused, and that is because they get fear and faith confused. The reason for this is that people want the impossible: certainty in an uncertain world. That would be the only reason one would try to reconcile the Old and New Laws and would be the only reason anyone takes a literal interpretation of their scriptures. These people are not after what is true, but they are after holding what they have believed their whole lives to be true and trying to hold onto certainty which is not possible in the Maya (empirical world). What Fundamentalist Christians do in America is nothing but pride.
If someone wants what is true, they need to always admit when they are wrong, and we are all wrong constantly about the conclusions we come to. It is only through acknowledging our error that we learn, which is what the Law of Karma is all about: learning, and I either learn or I suffer by the results of the actions I take, and as Gandhi stated: “if everyone did an eye for an eye, the whole world would be blind.”
Today I take all religions as having “truths.” Some speak the “truth” more than others, but most are not practiced very well. Most of the followers of every religion get things like fear and faith confused. There is a lack of understanding about their principles that they preach because most people do not want to put forth the effort to truly understand their religion and to truly practice it.
According to Pope Francis, the Kingdom of Heaven is open to anyone no matter their God or their religion. All you have to do is have a rational mind and love your neighbor and your enemy as yourself, and if we truly want that then, when the mind is controlled, then the hand will follow. When someone does that, then happiness will follow because God is everything and we are all One. This also means the root of everything, in every action we all take, is nothing but love. As Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “Wisdom tells me I am Nothing. Love tells me I am everything. In between the two my life flows.” So, I am here to prove to you: Love is all there is, and that is quite Logical.
Here me speak about forgiveness in the voice recording below:
https://tusnua.eu/justin-april-4th-2023/
read the rest of this book at the link below:
