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The first liberation

We all live in a fallen world.  It is a daily struggle for all of us to remember that something much better is possible, and of course many have given up that struggle, choosing instead a delusion which has been made easy for them in lieu of a much harder, and much more ambiguous truth.

We all participate in the continuation and daily recreation of this world.  We can’t help it.  You can’t do otherwise, until you have at least one foot in something different, which is the essence of the spiritual task.

The first step of the spiritual path is realizing you are insane, that everything, or nearly everything, you were taught as true is at best only partly true, and that nearly everyone is speaking about things they don’t really understand.  As one obvious example, when I hear someone talk about compassion, I assume that some part of them is cruel and mean.  This is not always true, of course.  Good people do walk among us.  But I would say it is nearly ALWAY true when the speaker is a political leader of some sort.

So the first liberation is realizing you are surrounded by complacent lunatics, who are overlooking nearly everything that would make logical sense, given our situation on Earth.  Nearly everything most people value is worthless.

The second liberation is finding a way to become getting a little bit less insane every day.   I think this process continues indefinitely, although there is a period where life eventually starts to feel good.