Thursday, January 23, 2014

Metaphysics 101

"Life exists in the mind.  If your mind is no good, neither is your life."

WARNING:  For the purposes of this blog, think death of the mind, not death of the body.

I watched an incredible story today of an ex-police officer turned animal trainer.  After working with people for some time, he found his niche with exotic animals.  I was amazed as I watched elephants, zebra, leopards, and lions approach him as though he were one of them.  But I've always wondered about the intelligence of animals, especially primates.  Apes and gorillas in particular.  No, seriously. Disney's Chimpanze changed the way I see life.  I worked with people for many years and decided it was time for me to do something else when I began to wonder what had happened to the intelligence of man.  I mean people do some really dumb stuff!  Anyway...

The animal trainer mentioned above said in the interview that what he liked most about animals was their honesty.  I was feeling him until he said they were honest because they weren't intelligent enough to lie.  WHAT????  When did intelligence become a criteria for lying?  As a matter of fact, it's the total opposite: a liar lies because he's NOT intelligent enough not to.  He may be clever, but that doesn't make him intelligent.  He may even be intelligent to some degree, but his intelligence is NOT why he lies!  It's the unintelligent side (a.k.a. the dark side) of him that lies.

Intelligent beings are honest because they don't feel the need to lie; to them it's stupid to do so. Intelligence means "higher order thinking."  Liars are certainly not that, therefore, they don't need intelligence to do what they do.  The only thing they need is someone dumb enough to believe them. I know, I know.  Dumb seems a little harsh, but the fact of the matter is that in our desire to keep relationships, we tend to go dumb.  Actually, we become selfish, and the selfishness is what makes us do and believe dumb stuff.  For example, the high profile executive man bamboozled by the bombshell who left him for the pool guy probably realizes that he was dumb for having paid more attention to her boobs than her being.  The woman conned out of all her money by the dreamy playboy probably realizes how dumb it was to NOT have paid attention to more of his movements than the ones that he made when they were in her bed.  The child (over or under the age of 18) on the other end of the addicted or deadbeat parent's promises should have been slower to believe him/her again after the first few broken ones.  But when we desperately or selfishly want a relationship with another person, we tend to make them what we want them to be in order for them to fit perfectly inside the lie we've created for them in our minds and lives--even though it is dumb to do that!  It's selfish on our parts because once we've decided who we want them to be, it no longer matters to us who they really are because we've decided what role they are going to play in our fantasy and if they are not that, we can change them.  Don't be fooled into believing that your victim won't quickly pick up on your need for them to be who you want them to be.  That's why it's so easy for them to lie to us, and so easy for us to believe their lies.  In that situation, can we really be mad at them for lying to us?  They are only doing to us what we've done to ourselves!  It's like playing Follow the Leader.  Either we led the lie about who we wanted them to be, and they followed, or they lied to us first and, because we wanted to believe whatever we were telling ourselves and others about them, we followed.

The fact of the matter is that it DOES NOT take intelligence to lie; just a dumb/selfish believer.  And it's important to state here that lying and dying go hand in hand.  Intelligence is required to live, for life and death exist first in the mind.  It takes a lack of intelligence to die or to begin the process of dying.   Let's look at how that works.   At the end of every lie told and every lie believed is death of some sort.  Let me say that again:  AT THE END OF EVERY LIE TOLD AND EVERY LIE BELIEVED IS DEATH OF SOME SORT.  It may not be a physical death; it may be emotional, mental or spiritual, but a lie is definitely necessary for death, for life is in the mind and the mind cannot die unless a lie is present.  Remember the garden of Eden.  The serpent had to lie to Eve to get her to eat of the forbidden fruit, which caused man to die or to fall from grace...but that's another story.  Or maybe I should say it's another aspect of this equation that we'll get to at a later date, but for now, let's do today's math:

Life is intelligence and exists in the mind.   In order to die, one must be lured by and follow a lie, which requires selfishness and/or stupidity.   Intelligence will alert you when someone is lying, and will not allow you to follow a liar.  Intelligence protects us from the liar's lair where death exists by not allowing us to believe a lie.  Therefore, the mind without a lie doesn't die because it's protected from death by intelligence.  If you believe the lie that there is no life after the death of the body, it will cause your mind to deteriorate and ultimately you will die.  Life truly exists in the mind...

Side note: For animal lovers or haters, there are lower life forms or animals that aren't as intelligent as others.  Remember, each animal has been given the right amount of intelligence necessary for him to be the that animal he is.  Any more than that would make him a different animal.  A dalmatian, for example, doesn't have to hunt food to survive so he doesn't need the intelligence of an eagle.  A sheep can trust his shepherd to feed him or to lead him to a pasture to graze safely, so he doesn't have to be as intelligent as the goat who likes to chew on and eat whatever he can.  If a sheep did that, he would no longer be a sheep.  He'd be a goat!

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