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jprussellSorry for going a bit without a substantive post. This time, I share my thoughts on David Spangler's Blessing: the Art and the Practice, and as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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Jeff Russell
[Main Blog Post] [Book] Blessing: the Art and the Practice
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Date: 2025-01-27 07:54 am (UTC)1. it reminded me that the Odinic concept that learning is a sacrifice has its other side in that learning is also not a one and done.The choice is between continuously living - sacrificing a part of the old self in order to recreate the self anew - and ossifying.
2. excellence is relative and not fixed. There are many stories of athletes who at one stage in their careers were far from being the best in their bracket, but kept developing whereas those above them stopped (chose to stop?) developing and were overtaken. (The canonical example is Michael Jordan as a high school playet, though an argument could be made for Brady as well.) I saw this in my own high school teaching (past-life ;-) with an average student who chose to put the work in and within a year had overtaken the previous top student. I also saw this in my own early sporting career, and have seen it many times. The human is a supreme learning organism if we choose to make use of its powers.
3. Tolstoy's War and Peace is possibly the greatest discussion of the 'big man' view of history vs the weltgeist view - in many ways I interpret him as being for the middle path: the weltgeist is important, but it requires the great individual who is able to sense that spirit and work with it instead of against it (Kutusov being the great example in the book).
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Date: 2025-01-27 03:53 pm (UTC)Cheers,
Jeff
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Date: 2025-01-27 12:55 pm (UTC)Thanks for the new blog! I always wonder about statements like "everyone around you is a little better off because you are kinder". What would the world look like if Zeus was kind?
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Date: 2025-01-27 03:55 pm (UTC)Cheers,
Jeff
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Date: 2025-01-27 09:47 pm (UTC)Thanks for your reply. Both your definitions imply good will come to the recipient of the blessing. To me "May the Gods give you what you deserve" feels like a blessing, but not necessarily nice or good for the recipient.
I guess it depends on how far you stretch a "holistic view of what's good for them". Does the recipient have to agree that it's good for them? What does it mean if you bless someone who happens to be a thief?
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Date: 2025-01-27 10:47 pm (UTC)Which gets us to your second point/questions - what does "good for them" mean? If you accept the teachings that JMG shares, that each of us are "really" a divine spark, a true self, coming into and going out of incarnation, does "good for them" ground out at that level, or at the level of the personality (this incarnation)? If, in either case, we accept the idea of "good for someone, but not seen as good by that person," then we are implying some outside standard of goodness - a more extreme example featuring reincarnation might be, say, that my current incarnation is utterly miserable and I hate every minute of it, but that this is "good" for my soul, as it works off a lot of karma that will help it get where it's going. A more grounded example might be an addict taken against his will to rehab and kept there for the rest of his life. He's living healthy and drug free, and maybe everyone around him sees this as better, but every day he wants to go back to drugs and making his own choices.
To call either of these good, and therefore to make wishing for it a "blessing" in the sense I'm using it, would require that there's a standard of evaluation outside of the (at least current) perception of the folks involved. I won't say that such can't be done, but it strikes me as likely very thorny and difficult and prone to getting wrong, which is one reason the weight JMG (and Spangler) put on consent strikes me as a good idea.
So, I might perhaps amend your proposed blessing to "May the Gods give you what you deserve, when you're ready for it" if I were going to offer it.
But yeah, it's difficult (and interesting!) so thanks for prompting some exploration.
Cheers,
Jeff
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Date: 2025-01-28 03:02 pm (UTC)Thanks, that's food for fought. When defining what is good scope is important. One could look at what's good from the point of view of the blesser, the blessed, humanity, the world, and so on. And then it depends on who the authority is: my view of what is good for humanity will not be the same as your view.
Obviously God approves of herons eating ducklings, big fish eating smaller fish, and time eating us all. I would not call any of these things nice, yet to me it seems that is the way the world is meant to be.
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Date: 2025-01-28 05:51 pm (UTC)Cheers,
Jeff
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Date: 2025-02-12 02:06 am (UTC)Thanks for recommending Spangler's book. I'm very much enjoying it. Two thoughts so far:
1) Int his current thread about what is good for one person may be different for another, I hear you alluding to the concept of healthy separation, i.e. I can ask myself the question "how is it for me to experience difference with another person, particularly someone who matters to me?" This is a complex capacity that I find is compromised for many people these days.
2) Spangler frequently makes a distinction between kindness N blessing, something I am grappling with. It seems to me that a kindness that offers grace to another can be equivalent to a blessing while an apparent kindness that is misattuned such as offering a candy bar to someone trying not to eat sugar is a misattunement. Thoughts?
Thanks!
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Date: 2025-02-12 04:07 am (UTC)1) Yeah, I think that's a good way of looking at it, and definitely one of the facets involved. I tend to think of it more in terms that what is good for any one person may or may not be visible to others, for a variety of reasons, including a failure to separate our own wants and needs from those of another, to say nothing of our own perceptions of separateness. For example, what is best for my daughters at any given moment may or may not be what I would like, or they would like, or either of us would like, and there are situations that bring those into stark relief, both because of the a lack of actual/perceived separateness (my happiness is largely dependent on theirs), but also differences in knowledge, perspective, and judgment - like when my 6 year old asks me for help on something, and I have to make the call between offering it, showing that I love her and want to help her do the things she wants to do, and denying it, pushing her to do it on her own and develop her capacities. In any one case of that, I might offer the help (or not) due to any one of a. over- or under- appreciating our separateness vis-a-vis that task, b. having good intentions misapplied (like, say, trying to push her when she needs support more), c. having bad intentions that nevertheless work out (I'm tired and don't want to do it, but that forced her to develop her independence), d. a good or bad judgment on which is called for, or e. lots of other things!
2) Responding to the follow-on comment here as well. I think that your follow-on gets closer to the distinction Spangler is trying to make - a kindness is a good intentioned act, whereas a blessing has a further spiritual component to it. My reading of him is that kindnesses and blessings can and do often come together - offering you a home-cooked meal with love might be both, even if, say, it included dessert when you're trying to lay off the sweets, but they don't necessarily have to. A blessing might not include an accompanying kind act, and sometimes kind acts are just "mundanely nice" without any spiritual "oomph." It gets more complicated with misattunements like you suggest, especially since a kindness can be recognized as such, even when done poorly - if I'm laying off sweets and someone offers me a chocolate bar, even if I'm annoyed at the extra willpower it takes not to eat it, I'm likely still appreciative that the other person was trying to be nice, but it'd be less likely to have the weight of a spiritual blessing to it, though I suppose it's possible (maybe that extra practice with my willpower was just what I needed, or the blessing comes through in other ways).
Cheers,
Jeff
states versus behaviors
Date: 2025-02-12 02:22 am (UTC)