Session 24 October 2009

[Hildegarda]

great session and great news!

 

[anart]

[quote author=Marcus-Aurelius]
in my country one of the first question you are asked is "What religion are you part of?"

If someone asks me that, I say "I'm in Search of the Miraculous". Great conversation changer! I have to say I have been wearing my 'secular badge' with pride!
[/quote]

Ha! I've always said, "I'm much more interested in spirituality than religion"... usually get blank stares on that one...

 

[aragorn]

Our attorney in California tells me that we are a legal church as of September 30th and he is handling all the IRS filings too. That's one very good thing that came out of the Pepin suit: we have these great attorneys who are specialists in First Amendment issues, and they are at the ready the instant we come up against anything. And actually, though people are ranting on about how the "hate crime" legislation is going to benefit Israel, others can take advantage of it as well. Now that what we think, say, write about, consider probable, is protected as a religion, we can file against anyone who agitates hate against us as well!

After the initial shock and reading this thread several times I'm beginning to see the ingeniousness in this! However, I would like to understand more precisely what kind of protection a membership in this "religion" would provide. I mean, could someone please explain to a layman (me) in a practical way, maybe in forms of examples, in what kind of situations this protection would be useful (other than refusing vaccinations)? I'm not that good at reading this "legal stuff".

Is this protection more as a protection for us as a group, or for every individual forum member in their respective countries? Sorry if this sound totally confusing, I'm just trying to understand this more clearly

 

[RflctnOfU]

.....WOW.... Thank you Laura (and team) for investing your energy to bring this newest session. Creating a New World indeed!!!

FWIW, I really like the seven fold structure in the sections of the Statement of Principles.

Kris

 

[RyanX]

[quote author=Marcus-Aurelius]
in my country one of the first question you are asked is "What religion are you part of?"

If someone asks me that, I say "I'm in Search of the Miraculous". Great conversation changer! I have to say I have been wearing my 'secular badge' with pride!

Ha! I've always said, "I'm much more interested in spirituality than religion"... usually get blank stares on that one...
[/quote]

Same here. That is typically what I tell most people too and the reaction is similar. Sometimes I get the response "you must believe in something?" My answer to that one is typically, "Yeah, the Truth". :)

Nothing has done more than religion to turn people away from Religion. ;D

 

[shellycheval]

Amazing--my computer has been down for a couple of days and I am catching up with all this at work ASAP.
I'm looking forward to being a part of this, although it will take me a few days to digest the details. This is very exciting and inspiring!!!
shellycheval

 

[neema]

Wow!! this is amazing news. For what it's worth I have always thought the next logical step for the group has been to go big and incorporate. But a "church" is pure genius from a legal entity standpoint. For everyone who doesn't see how big this is, you will :)

This step is going to open up so many possibilities in spreading the knowledge and info of the true religion... Life!

Also if the worry is that people will get the wrong idea, or we are going in the wrong direction, may I suggest you look at it from the point of strategy!

This is a great strategy. Not only it can provide a good legal protection within the system for members, but in my opinion it can lead to practical projects that will give great publicity to the "church" plus help many people all at the same time. Remember that people will judge anything by its results. Even MR.HOPE's(obama) popularity is coming down as more and more people see him naked. Think about it, a "church" can have a budget, can do multiple fundraising events for different programs, can have an actual newspaper, can have programs for the elderly, programs for the youth, programs for single mothers, counseling and solutions for variety of family and neighborhood problems. If approved of course, maybe the "church" can organize a program where it can help families losing their homes, maybe just with educating strategies alone. The possibilities of practical, actual, and lawful help to people by the members of the "church" are endless. The help can be given as an alternative choice to many other programs being offered by other groups. All of these ideas are legal possibilities that are now open, not that they will necessarily be implemented. I guess what I am getting at is:

in our realm a "church" can have principles and can actualize those principles in life as true useful alternatives.

Unless I am way off, eventually when you are truly helping the marginalized and disfranchised, as they stabilize and grow many will seek out to better understand the source of this help and how they themselves can be a part of it. In my opinion it is only natural. One day very soon the uneasiness about this "church" will give way to a sense of great hope, from the collective achievements that the "church" as a whole will bring to people and communities around the world.

I as well cannot except the idea of if you can't get it "tough" you are fertilizer. As Laura says not only there are multitude of psy-op mind games that have been played on humanity as a whole, but also don't forget the active technological brainwashing mechanism bombarding us all. If the whole earth is a family how can we abandon any part of it, including nature itself?

As I see it, with an STO philosophy, using the principles of the work and armed with an understanding of psychopathy, the true "church" of life on earth can lead humanity to salvation.

Truly, thank you from the bottom of my heart, to you Laura and the rest of the team for creating such a potential . You guys never stop amazing and inspiring us all, well at least me anyway :)

I have only read partially the Statement of Principles of the Fellowship of the Cosmic Mind, but from what I have read I can only say that I am in awe.
By the way, LOVE THAT NAME. The Fellowship of the Cosmic Mind. It has a beautiful ring to it :D

 

[samii]

This is a really big and bold move by Laura and team. We are going to have a head on collision with forces that have unlimited resources (Christianity, Judaism, & Islam). May god help us, or should I say, may the C’s help us.

 

[Oxajil]

[quote author=Marcus-Aurelius]
in my country one of the first question you are asked is "What religion are you part of?"

If someone asks me that, I say "I'm in Search of the Miraculous". Great conversation changer! I have to say I have been wearing my 'secular badge' with pride!

Ha! I've always said, "I'm much more interested in spirituality than religion"... usually get blank stares on that one...
[/quote]

People usually already have filled an answer themselves based on the way I look. Bummer : P

 

[Joe]

Our attorney in California tells me that we are a legal church as of September 30th and he is handling all the IRS filings too. That's one very good thing that came out of the Pepin suit: we have these great attorneys who are specialists in First Amendment issues, and they are at the ready the instant we come up against anything. And actually, though people are ranting on about how the "hate crime" legislation is going to benefit Israel, others can take advantage of it as well. Now that what we think, say, write about, consider probable, is protected as a religion, we can file against anyone who agitates hate against us as well!

After the initial shock and reading this thread several times I'm beginning to see the ingeniousness in this! However, I would like to understand more precisely what kind of protection a membership in this "religion" would provide. I mean, could someone please explain to a layman (me) in a practical way, maybe in forms of examples, in what kind of situations this protection would be useful (other than refusing vaccinations)? I'm not that good at reading this "legal stuff".

Is this protection more as a protection for us as a group, or for every individual forum member in their respective countries? Sorry if this sound totally confusing, I'm just trying to understand this more clearly

'
Perhaps the most important protection is from the thought police. Any average citizen may, at some point in the future, be taken in for questioning because of his or her beliefs in conspiracy theories. This could happen as a result of being spotted at a protest march or due to government tracking of book purchases, for example. If that average citizen is just an average citizen then such activities would, by the government's definition, put him or her squarely in the "seditious behavior" camp. If however, that average citizen could prove that his or her activity was in fact not seditious but merely the practicing of his religion, then religious rights and freedom come into play. Basically, there is no law that says that a person cannot be arrested for seditious behavior, in fact, there are laws that demand that he be arrested. There ARE laws however that say that each person has a right to religious practice, however that is defined, presuming that it does not conflict with other laws. Of course, there IS a conflict in the example I gave, but that is a much better position to be in than to have no justification at all for your apparently seditious behavior.

Here are a few generally accepted religious rights. See if you can think of ways that they could be used to allow all of us continue doing what we do under most aggressive government controls

* Every person has the right to determine his or her own faith and creed according to conscience.
* Every person has the right to the privacy of his belief, to express his religious beliefs in worship, teaching, and practice, and to proclaim the implications of his beliefs for relationships in a social or political community.
* Every person has the right to associate with others and to organize with them for religious purposes.
* Every religious organization, formed or maintained by action in accordance with the rights of individual persons, has the right to determine its policies and practices for the accomplishment of its chosen purposes, which implies the right:
o to assemble for unhindered private or public worship
o to formulate its own creed
o to have an adequate ministry
o to determine its conditions of membership
o to give religious instruction to its youth, including preparation for ministry
o to preach its message publicly
o to receive into its membership those who desire to join it
o to carry on social services and to engage in missionary activity both at home and abroad
o to organize local congregations
o to publish and circulate religious literature
o to control the means necessary to its mission and to secure support for its work at home and abroad
o to cooperate and to unite with other believers at home and abroad
o to use the language of the people in worship and in religious instruction
o to determine freely the qualifications for professional leadership of religious communities, freely naming their religious leaders at all levels and designating their work assignments.

 

[Gertrudes]

As some, when I read the words Religion and Church, I was numbed by shock, honestly. And when I say numb, I mean that since yesterday I could only "replay" the cold shivers the word Church gives me... the result of deep, deep programming from childhood. I felt stuck on my endless associations with religion, and was aware of it!...
I find this statement to be at the very core of my initial rejection:

What is interesting to me is how totally and completely our minds have been taken over by pathology. At the same time, something inside us rebels against that pathology, and we become mavericks with no "home", no community, no network, all outsiders wandering around like pinballs, bouncing off the pathology in our environment; no structure, no foundation, because, of course, the ONLY structures and foundations and homes and communities we know are pathological and we reject them instinctively.

I have never, ever, in all my life conceived of the possibility of religion, in our current world, to be anything but soul destructing. The word Church was (still is, tough a lot less) profoundly ominous for me, something I would immediately reject, no space for even a second thought... Unexpectedly, I find myself shifting gears...I thought a lot about it since yesterday, read the Statement of Principles and read this thread twice. As Corto Maltese, understanding how it all emerged started to give it a whole new light. The Statement of Principles..well, I need to read it again but so far, frankly, there isn't a single word that does not make sense. It is indeed something I would wish many, many people to read.

This is being for me a lesson, of which I am not sure where it will take me. I feel confused because I am PROFOUNDLY scared of religion. I always had it at the depth of what I thought to be my core, as the very nemesis of this world. I could go on but then this post would more likely fit he Swamp.
I am aware tat this "shocked" feeling has already been discussed in this thread, and I must say that the suggestions given to the "shocked" ones of us made things a lot clearer for me, it maybe is indeed a matter of words, and deep conditioned programming in my case.

I appreciate, trust and most of all profoundly respect the work of all involved in the creation of this forum, and I am almost holding my breath at the curiosity of how this immense task will unfold from their hands...I think it can turn out to be something truly extraordinary

Ha! I've always said, "I'm much more interested in spirituality than religion"... usually get blank stares on that one...

yep, same here!

EDIT: added sentences below
also interesting to note that I have been reading the C's quote "life is religion" as: life is spirituality...talk about seeing what you want to see
It puts into perspective what religion is after all...

As the information in this session settled in, I experienced a shift in my perspective of this entire Work. I thought I understood the idea "Life is Religion",

 

[Sonrisa]

Quote from truth seeker, reply #109 on 10/24:

I think one of the reasons that the initial focus is on the US is because even though negative feelings are growing towards the US, it's still an incredibly influential country. As America goes so goes the world... You can see how the US's influences reaches most corners of the world - most people want to learn english, most people listen to or watch "American" music, films and television programs. It's the same with laws that are passed: When we passed the new restrictions on flight travel, most other countries followed suit. This also occurred with the swine flu and current economic crisis.

Truth Seeker: What are the restrictions on flight travel that the US has recently passed that you are referring to? I must have missed that!

 

[Jacques]

fwiw: This past year has been a very emotional tiring year. I had no work, and that really kept me from doing the WORK -all the worries about supporting my family, also including my Commitment (monetary donations as well) that I wanted to materialize in support for the forum -but I had a feeling that all will be alright -patience is one of my Work. I hope that I will not sound discombobulated on the following feeling that I want to express here in the forum -I have luckily gained employment, but I work the midnight shift, and that has kept me from the wonderful Breathing Program. I expect a month or two to get my timing sequenced to a point where I can do the very much missed Meditation and Breathing again.

Hi SMA,

Just in case you do not know it, you can do the breathing program at any moment during the day.

 

[pirataloko]

Well, i have to say that this session really shocked me, I started to read the session this morning ...and i Had to leave in the critical moment when the words CHURCH and RELIGION were there. I'm all the day thinking about it and waiting for arriving home. I guess that this extended reaction to these words is not a logical reaction... perhaps a conditional reaction.

In fact i have to say that in my mind the idea to stablish a religion or a church haven't nothing to do with C's.

I discovered strong "prejudices and rebelion" in me.

But anyway, we have to think... we have to be guided by our thought.... and thinking, this could be THE IDEA (personally this idea has broken my schemes...... and probably there will be more to be broken). Only the fact to protect other people makes it terrific !!

I'll assume these changes ASAP. :P

Greetings !

 

[Mrs. Peel]

Wow, that's a huge step!
However, I'm quite concerned, and can be quite ignorant, but if it is an official and legal "religion" what about the current "religion" somebody is "signed in". You can't follow two religions right? So, for example, in order for myself to participate I would need to resign from the former resulting in apostasy ( so excommunication, loss of rights for a catholic marriage) etc ? Or am I misleading myself here? It's just so exciting but overwhelms me as well.

If you're posting here and are familiar with Laura's work and the Cs, I can't imagine that you still "believe" in the teachings of Catholicism.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it sounds like you are still a "participating" Catholic and are worried about having to leave that church. If that's the case, I'm kinda surprised to see you *here*...

P.S. I bailed from Catholicism about 12 years ago. And I don't believe those words from "Hotel California" either. :P