Gratitude despite the odds
mariakonnikova.substack.com
mariakonnikova.substack.com
Some people treat the oppressive government as weather. Something you don't have any control over and therefore - no responsibility for. Others treat it as their responsibility. And these people are NOT grateful, when injustice is done in their names.
Compare https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48501/the-envoy-of-mr...
let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography
and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn
However, your conclusion (or at least the way I interpreted it) that the essence that drove the writing of Herbert's poem was also responsible for Polish political outcomes and Russia's current state seems a bit far-fetched and reductionist. And Brodsky's poem and quotes in the article do not imply a lack of courage/defiance to me. On the contrary, I read his poem to mean that despite being steadfast in your views, have room for gratitude.
When you talk about politics with Russians - they always talk about it like it's a force of nature. Like the only choice is fatalistic acceptance.
Józef Piłsudski (which also wasn't a great guy, but about Russia he was right)
Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelet, though, makes me vomit
All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette of yours?
>only gratitude will be gushing from it.
Bookmarking this one for sure, to return to often.
Gratitude is, indeed, difficult to keep in one's mind and heart as the loveless bastards of this world further their schemes that abuse the Earth and all her peoples. As the willfully ignorant fools denigrate the wise and extoll the life they lead sans compassion. Mining fakeass algorithmic coins as the poor can't pay for heat, as food is hard to come by, and as we cook the world's oceans.
But I know which side I am on. The side of justice has few to defend it as we creep towards this reckoning, this chaos, this utter misery, born of turning away from our best, our virtue, while revelling in the idiocy of our worst vices. On tv, in the movies, in the net's forums, in public and in private, and in the people we elect.
This Garden smells of eggfarts and petro-exhaust, of misery and deprivation, of for-profit prisons and low-income housing, ketamine-jacked apartheiders, sans loving family, not loving their family, but with enough money to help a million people, but instead supports the living devils, the cruel, lying liars, those who refuse the sweet nectar of compassion.
I'm grateful I'll not die like that, without even trying, settling into their last breath with the universe's knowing that they're only settling further down as time marches on, without a saving grace, with a bloated, stinking, albatross of their life's own choices, bearing down upon their soul.
I damn them, too, for having forsaken love, belittling and obscuring the Way, for lying about the truth, for taking what could be stolen, hating those that love, and for perverting justice. I damn them, too, for that is True Justice.
For selfishness, for money, for fucking money, for kicking the poor while we're down. All this while, they ignore the fact that the universe remembers everything, and it is not unjust, unloving, or uncaring.
No, motherfucker, Time Will Tell, I'm gonna take the Mister from out in front of your name, it's high time to take the power back, for the people of the sun, for the hopeless, for the poets, for the innocents jailed, for innocence violated, for the good men stomped out by the cruelty of unfettered capitalism.
No, Joseph Stalin died in his sleep, in his palace, having created an unjust system that beat down poets who wrote about love and gratitude and the truths of life, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. No, Joseph Stalin will meet his Maker, and he shall reap what he has sown, for the universe is just and compassionate and kind, in how it brutalizes the brutalizers, tortures the torturers, but not usually upon this Earth.
It is just, but not always while we live, unless one counts being deprived of peace. No, while we live, we all get to be as shitty as we like, with no karmic lightning bolt magically striking the evil down. No, we must wait, clinging to compassion and kindness and service and the poetry of a life lived for the goodness of the 19 virtues.
No, we must wait and work and hope and pray, and remain grateful for the little frogs, every single bee, the breeze in the bush, every laugh, every nacho and sip of coffee. And every kiss, while we await the terrible changeover at the end of this brutal set.
Thank you Maria, for Brodsky, for your gratitude.
I'm a crap poet, but my poetry is the poetry of the blunt truth, spoken to fools and wise alike, out of love for all.
Who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand?
And, so, a white guy in the projects dances to "Squabble Up", while my Trump-loving parents live within seven miles of us, full of COVID and bullshit, going to church but caring not for Jesus' teachings, dipshits that they are. They don't even know their grandkids, blessed, loving, kind teens of a rare ilk in these dark days.
I now know why Jesus said, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." That sword is the Light of Truth, the light of love and honesty and goodness.
No evil can bear the light of truth, those that jail poets and lie about the truth, and contain no love but for their own; they hide from the truth, but there is only truth in this universe, and what was hidden shall be brought into the light.
"There's God's side and the other side." --Katt Williams
"Who the fuck are you?" --The Who
Get yourselves ready, because I see lightning in the distance.
OK.
> dipshits that they are.
Um... that doesn't sound like Jesus' teachings either.
My mother believes that Trump never cheated on his wives. That's a f_cking dipshit, dude.
Stupidity is the result of willful ignorance of the truth. I don't hate anyone or think people should be stoned for adultery or whatever, but the truth is the truth, and we must seek it, find it, and believe it.
She claimed that she loves the Ten Commandments, then votes for the two candidates that purposefully lied about legal-immigrant Ohio-residing Haitians eating people's pets. The 8th or 9th Commandment is "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Why? Because it's evil to sow mischief and lies in order to "rile up your base". You know who else did that shit in the late 1930s? Yup.
She has left the path of Wisdom and been fooled by selfish, corrupt liars. And it's my father's decades of FoxNews, OANN, and that other one, that has brought them down.
2 Timothy 3 speaks very clearly about whom to have nothing to do with in this world. It's sound advice, even for a non-religious person, but especially -- especially -- when choosing the leaders of the most powerful country on Earth.
But he also said to love your enemies. Those people who turn away and are at enmity with you? Love them anyway.
And it doesn't sound like you do.
(2 Timothy 3 is talking about people in the church. Jesus is talking about people outside. If you want to say that your parents don't belong in church, fine. If discernment tells you to treat them like unbelievers, fine. But the contempt and bitterness doesn't sound right coming from someone quoting Jesus.)
And you are not reading 2 Timothy 3 correctly. The first five verses are a set of qualities that the loathsome choose to manifest, and it ends with a Command, "Have nothing to do with such people."
That verse is about people, whether in a church or not. It's about people in "terrible times". And the Command is clear. It also includes -- for those whose minds have been clarified by loving God -- the implicit Command to not support their being a leader.
Was Jesus loving his enemies when he threw the moneychangers out of the Temple? He sure was, my friend. My father called it "tough love", and my love for him will save him from the fate of all cruelly ignorant hypocrites, if only he'd listen to the effing truth.
The fact is that my prayers for them carry no weight in the presense of their willful ignorance. Their free will is respected by God just as much as mine, but I don't believe Jesus will save my sins on the Judgement Day; I choose to repent now and become a better person while I live so that I might bring God's light of loving service to all the people I can reach.
Jesus even says, "That which you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me." The fakeass Christians will learn the meaning of those verses on that Day of Days, but, by then, it will be too late. We are judged for what we do here on Earth, while we live.
Yup.
> We are judged for what we do here on Earth, while we live.
Be very careful with that.
"But we did all this stuff!"
"Depart from me, for I never knew you."
Any real "knowing Him" will change us, and thereby change our actions. But be very careful of depending on the actions.
Yes, there will be a judgment for what we do, but that will be for reward, not for "in or out".
Knowing Him is to follow God's commands and to love God with all your being and then love your neighbor as yourself. And to seek and find the meaning of "Hallowed be Thy Name", and other mysteries.
Intention is the multiplier for our actions, and that product is what we are judged upon. It's how the well-intentioned act of charity is weighed differently from giving charity in order to tell people, or merely for tax breaks.
Our change comes in degrees, over time with honest self-evaluation and effort, failures with apologies and, eventually, successes, until we see Its Face, and thereafter be "pure in heart", another "servant of all" taking their place as "the greatest among us".
It starts with begging God to take Its Spirit (our Conscience) back into Itself while we live, so that our soul may be cleansed and purified of its vices. That is the meaning of the 1st Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs shall be the Kingdom of God."
Then we have to slog through and overcome our selfishnesses, to the end, as described by the 5th (IIRC) Beatitude, by learning how to choose selfless service to others over selfishness.
Most people believe Jesus will forgive them on the JD, just because they say some words; many Muslims believe the same but with different words, and many Buddhists believe we just keep getting more chances. No. Those are lies of the deceiver of man, who works on our minds and hearts.
We get one chance on this Earth, for good or ill, and everything about our choices is knowable as to whether it harmonizes with God's teachings. It is up to us to seek that truth, humbly and honestly, and without the misguided corruptions brought by generations of telephone, whereby human beings have been led away from the Truth of Love.
Peace be with you. We love you. I am at your service.
That sounds like you took the Bible and some flavor of New Age stuff, threw them in a blender, and drank whatever came out. That's something weird, but it's not Biblical theology.
> Then we have to slog through and overcome our selfishnesses, to the end, as described by the 5th (IIRC) Beatitude, by learning how to choose selfless service to others over selfishness.
If you're trying to slog through that, on your effort and self-discipline, you're never going to get there. Neither am I. I am more broken than that; sin runs deeper in me than that. And in you.
I wish you truth, but in love I have to say that I don't think you really have it.
I leave you the last word if you want it.
It's called Hidayat, and it comes from Sufism.
When Jesus says, in John 16:12-13, that:
"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come."
That is Jesus pointing the way, because God knew that Jesus' book would be perverted by the liars and ignorant and haughty, in the same way that many translators and "explainers" of the Quran have distorted key concepts, such as Hidayat, which is the Spirit's journey back to its Creator (1st Beatitude), thus allowing our soul to be cleansed and purified of its vices ("to love God with all your soul").
The only purpose of religion is to maximize our selfless loving kindness to those around us so that we all can live in peace and happiness and prosperity on this Garden.
The Catholic Church left that path a long time ago, which is why they persecuted a true lover of God, St. Francis of Assisi, and also why they (and many other "faiths") sexually abuse so many children, and are now declaring bankruptcy instead of paying the settlements meant to help those whose lives they severely damaged. But their love of money (gotta keep those coffers full!) is more important than children to them, and we know what Jesus says about that, right? I mean, that's why they kept it under wraps, kept shuffling the abusers around, and have now paid over $4B to attorneys (I don't believe that even counts the settlements, but I could be wrong about that).
As to Biblical theology, I take it with the same grain of salt as mainsteam Islamic teaching. They have been confused by the enemy of man, and woe is the result for them, their followers, and the people they harm through their selfish ignorance. That doesn't mean individuals of those faiths can't connect with God and rise above their leaders' or teachings' hypcocrisy, ignorance, oppression, pride and all the other vices that go with it.
[Side note: The first judoka who has ever won the European Championships, Worlds, and Olympics in the same year (2024) is an Azeri named "Hidayat Heyderov" -- check out his smile. His ascension was not anything like a sure bet, but his name and smile are just part of God's Mysterious Ways. But so is my name, for that matter, though not as important has Hidayat's.]
> If you're trying to slog through that, on your effort and self-discipline ...
Yes, we do have to exert an enormous effort to defeat our selfish weaknesses, but you are right: we cannot do this on our own, though our inital efforts are important as spoken of in Matthew 7:7:
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you"
Ridding ourselves of our selfish vices of the soul is only accomplished with the help of our Creator, and utilizes the meaning of "Hallowed be Thy Name", which for Jesus and his followers would be Yah-weh. In Arabic, it's Al-lah, in other languages: Di-os, De-us, Brah-man, Nn-guy, etc. Each language having their own two-syllable Name of God, to sync with our heartbeat.
You can recognize the person who has made a bit of progress along the Way because they have been humbled by our needing so much grace to get anywhere against this terrible enemy, that is both an external force of temptation and an internal susceptibility (our soul's vices). Along the way, we develop our compassion, gratitude, mercy, kindness, generosity, gentleness, and truthfulness, to name but a few of the 19 virtues of the soul that each have a corresponding vice, everything in the universe having been created in pairs. The role of Wishing to Reach Yahweh with One's Spirit (Conscience) and the practice of Zikr (described below) are to literally "enlighten" our soul's heart with Glories to reduce and ultimately completely remove the conduit within our souls that facilitates the communication of selfish impulses from our enemy. This is the literal, physical (in our soul's parallel dimension) definition of "transmutation of the soul".
We are to repeat our chosen Name of God throughout the day, as much as possible, until we "Love God with all our [being]". That is what helps us to be able to "love our neighbors as ourself", in degrees as we progress over time. It is called Zikr in the Quran. It is not counted as a requirement (farz) by mainstream Islam, but is commanded three separate times, with differing amounts per day: some, a lot (over half the day), and continuously (that coincides with fully submitting our soul to the Divine Will, "with all your soul"). That Grace of soul purification happens a short-ish time before we actually see "God's Face". That person then becomes an Annointed Teacher (Murshid), is then "pure of heart", having thus submitted not only their soul, but their free will, too. I've met two such Muslim Sufi men and the student of a Christian man whose teacher was also such a one.
Such men are a sublime combination of the innocence of a child and the deepest Wisdom, which is actually the case, in both dimensions.
> I wish you truth, but in love I have to say that I don't think you really have it.
I already knew that, my friend, both that that's what you believed and that you are not evil-minded or -hearted, and that this is your compassionately honest initial reaction to this new information after your lifetime of really, really trying. That is why we are having this conversaion.
But you can find no fault with what I say (though likely in how I say it, for I am not a fully submitted person, so another vice of the soul, pride, is still at work in me, to some extent; I apologize for my coarseness) for the logic is unassailable, as it is the absolute Truth.
You have no reason to doubt my being the person presenting the logic I present here, for I ask for nothing for myself, and only wish you and the entire world to be happy. We would never ask you to accept Islam (or any other religion, for that matter); we only suggest that you go within yourself and ask God to point your way forward, perhaps even asking God if what I have shared with everyone today is, indeed, the Truth. That is all any of us is required to do in order to begin becoming a better human manifestation of God's Loving Wisdom. This why Rumi (a fully submitted person and a rather vulgar poet at times) said, "The Way goes in."
The only argument you will find will appear in your mind and heart from the enemy of mankind, the enemy of happiness, who ever seeks to derail us from the happiness we are capable of when we submit our beings to the Divine Will. It defends the ignorance it convinces us to choose with its deceits, because its very destructively active existence in our being and in our cultures depends on our willful ignorance (another vice of the soul). That negative entity only manifests itself in our Earthly plane within our hearts and minds and, physically, via willfully ignorant human beings acting on its behalf, by their misguided use of their free will.
If you ever have questions, you can find me. Peace be with you. We love you. Thank you very much for inspiring me this day. And thank you, dang et al, for allowing this "Sufi Science of the Soul's Perfection" to be communicated here. You are receiving blessings for allowing your boxen to facilitate me speaking of our humanity's highest potential: the journey to and personal arrival at selfless loving kindness in service to all mankind, and the Earth herself, where all human beings are respected, even if their actions deserve righteous criticism for the benefit of the whole.
[And, Mr. Muppet, please feel free to ask more questions, going back on a questionable promise is the best course of action. The amount of joy I feel today is even better than the day I missed my exit to our house-based masjid, but then offered a ride to a woman walking home in the rain, whereby she showed me the bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol she had just bought and swallowed half of. I asked her if she would let me take her to the fire station, and she let me, Praise be to God! We spent some hours at the hospital together; she was an extraordinary person in a difficult situation.
The enemy of man tries to convince every single human being to commit suicide; it's just one way that evil bastard works on us all. Thank God I resisted his reasons those many years ago when he put me to his screws, but my resistance and being saved was solely through the Grace of God!]
Everything I say on HN (from this to tech commentary to history to jokes) is truthfully communicated knowing that I shall face my words' veracity on the JD. I love you all! And thank you very much.
There are thousands of varieties of christianity or Christ-followers, all with different understanding of Jesus' teachings. Many of which are mutually incompatible.
What is important is that I love everyone in the purest sense of the word, in that I want everyone to be happy. I'm also a lifetime hardcore software engineer (or at least trying to be), so I see things from a systems analysis and integration perspective, so I see our world's problems as solvable, should everyone work together cooperatively, instead of wreaking destruction competitively.
Happiness for one and all is possible, but we have to try, each one of us. The future is not having a single form of religion, but understanding that God's Will for us is to love one another, from within all our different cultures and paths.
Compassion is the only viable and sustainable path forward for the human race, but it's gonna get bumpier before it gets smoother. Steel youselves while there's still a relative peace.
"The Way goes in." --Rumi
That sounds an awfully lot like your understanding. What Christian would your above statement not apply to?
> What is important is that I love everyone in the purest sense of the word
> ...
> Compassion is the only viable and sustainable path forward for the human
I guess I'm just having a hard time squaring these statements with you calling other people "vultures", "dipshits that they are", "lying motherfucker", "I damn them, too",
Most Christians I have met or read about would not learn from an Islamic Sufi Murshid, or Guru Nanak, or Buddhism's 8-fold path, or Taoism, or Judaic thought, or the Gita, or the history of WWII.
> I guess I'm just having a hard time squaring these statements with you calling other people "vultures", "dipshits that they are", "lying motherfucker", "I damn them, too",
I've done no harm so long as I'm being honest and only wish them to get their heads out of their asses so that they will stop hurting others. That is for their benefit, too, tho those aholes tend to ignore all recommendations to fix their sh_t and, by doing so, stop inflicting misguided, selfish misery on others.
Jesus said he "did not come to bring peace but a sword". Maybe my middling level of spiritual development includes my using unsavory language (and, therefore, I should, myself, level-up in that respect; I'm not convinced I shouldn't speak more gently), or maybe I am a product of the times we live in, and I am merely speaking in the way that motherf_ckers will understand :-) because this sh_t is serious!
How should the Allied forces have spoken about Axis sympathizers (who lived in Allied countries) when those Axis powers were causing so much misery and devastation?
Every day, we are all choosing one of the three sides in this world:
1) The side of universal compassion.
2) The side of animalistic brutality.
3) The side of selfish ignorance that doesn't take a side and just says, "It's not my problem."
There is no fourth option, my friend.