Mankind Isn't Damned, He Slumbers. And All Of Life Is But A Damned Dream.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country...

...Unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work."

--- from Walden Pond, by Henry David Thoreau

Our beloved English word "damned" carries alot of weight. The very word itself is a curse. In English, it means "condemned to eternal punishment or ruin." Even the tense of the word itself (past tense, for those in Rio Linda) implies finality. Absolute. It also implies a divine judgement or innate state of having been judged already. It is finished. The word carries the undertone of divine origin because, well, that idea has been with us a very long time. They damned us, in our telling. That is why we are damned. The word "damned" and its divine association is almost as old as the word "man" itself. So...is it true? Are we damned by our Gods? Can the threads of the idea, woven so tightly over so much time and experience, be unwound? Let's first look to the word itself...

Is there a Hebrew word for "damned"? Yes, of course...numerous. The earliest and most often used in the Torah and the Old Testament is "arur". This word means literally "damned or cursed" in English. The word itself was used to describe something or someone under a divine curse.

• English: "condemned, eternally." Past tense reveals past act, finished. The punishment is rendered and eternal- unbound from time.

• Hebrew: "put under curse." Past tense reveals past act and active present condition, ongoing. This idea exists in time and continues forward.

Damned in English means Damned in Hebrew. But the ideas that drive them are very different. Language exists on a timeline, so what we see is the evolution of the word. Over time, the word remained while the meaning intensified and morphed. Not surprising. I quoted Thoreau out the outset above. I'll do it again from the same page of the same book:

"The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits,

can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.

Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."

The creeping, sinking, surging fear of humanity that our gods are mad at us and are out to get us because we Existentially Suck is seen in the morphing of this word: from cursed to condemned. From "a state which can be transcended" to "there is nothing we can do". This is a linguistic example of inertia. Newton's First Law in action. Every object preserves its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. In this case, the "forces impressed" upon our initial understanding of our cursed state ARE OUR OWN guilt and shame and fear. And over time, those forces dragged our understanding down to what we now hold to be an unsolvable predicament: we are damned, period. So we ignore our gods and fall full tilt into our dull and debaucherous slumber. The evolution of the idea behind this word is a measure of that slumber.

The Hebrews had other words for Damned as well. "Sheol" describes the "realm of the damned" which wasn't necessarily permanant. Other languages have their own Damned words. I asked Google's AI the following question:

Of all of known words for "damned" which language best conveys the idea that "being damned" is a temporary divine state that humans can transcend?

Not surprisingly, the Greeks came through. According to AI, "the term apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις), found in Acts 3:21, refers to the "restoration of all things," implying that the separation from God is temporary. Furthermore, the Greek term aionios (αἰώνιος), often translated as "eternal" in phrases like "eternal damnation" (Matthew 25:46), actually signifies "age-abiding" or a specific "eon" of time. This implies a temporal, corrective punishment (chastening) rather than an endless torture chamber."

Even the Catholics get in on this one. While the Latin damnation implies divine punishment, "it is often interpreted in Catholic theology as a state that can be remedied in purgatory, which is a temporary state of purification rather than ultimate condemnation, thus allowing for transcendence."

So the point is that this idea of being damned was never meant to be permanent. We made it that way over time. So the next logical thought is, why do we believe it?

I suppose the belief is a natural, guilty extension of our curse. In fact, our gods DID curse humanity in nearly ALL telling available on Earth. It helps to apply RealPolitik (a viewing lense that allows circumstances to be what they are, rather than trying to fit them into a box to explain them using things we already know). We were cursed. The "why", here, isn't important...only that we were. In the Bible, which is chiefly our reference here, was the curse the end of the story? No. Therefore, Rio Linda, our curse is not permanent. That the gods interacted with us AT ALL after the curse, is proof that it wasn't eternal. You can wrap this fact in however many "thee's", "thou's", "do's", "don't's", "must's", shalt's, and "begats" as you want, and it will never alter the fact.

You can read the Curse in Genesis 3:14-20. what was our curse? For men, Pain, Mortality, and Toil as we work. For women? Add to that, extreme difficulty in childbirth. These are our plight. As humans, we must face them. All of them. They are the marked path of transcendence, or salvation. The Way is set, and it is Narrow.

In this story, what is very first consequence of our curse? Aside, of course, from the grieved Spirit of Enlil, which no one wishes to conjure. Second, guilt. Third, a small animal such as a deer or goat or calf- something large enough to clothe a human being- was killed for its skin. The gods themselves covered Adamu and Eve in animal skins. In Genesis, this act is attributed to YHWH Elohim: Enlil and Enki. What did they say to the animal before they broke its neck? How did they explain that it must die because of what Adamu did? Regardless, that's what happened in the story. At the story's end, Enlil placed a physical guard at the gates of their garden to keep their dirty pets out. Cursed. Or so that's how we see it.

In doling out the curse, Enlil also placed humanity at odds with the Serpent, who was fooled first by Enki, before Eve. It was the Serpent's curse to become our Tempter...our devil. Or so that's how we see it.

We Are Looking In The Wrong Place

Our curse isn't the end for us. It is rendered at the BEGINNING of our story. Not the end. The curse is part of our beginning. Whatever our purpose here on Earth, we are meant to achieve it by walking the path of our curse. Only through toil and pain and hardship do we succeed. Only "by the sweat of [our] brow will we eat our food." Mankind's reward is tied to his toil. We will not appreciate Truth without Pain. The siren call of comfort and its eternal distractions are loud, but we must learn to ignore them and focus through them. This is our curse, and it is really that simple.

Humanity's response, in hindsight, is sad and tragic. In Western culture, particularly, we have used the might of our technology and innovation- NOT to further the spiritual development of our species- but to create an endless array of balms, salves, gels, potions, elixirs, pills, and therapies to SOOTHE our pains rather than accept them. Consumption drives comfort and comfort compels the Curse. The cycle creates a slumber, and boy, does humanity love its sleep.

We are looking in the wrong place. Peace lies still under Pain. We are meant to transcend THROUGH it. Not around it...we do not go to a healed place to then begin. We begin where we are...in a cursed state, from which we must work. We don't because we have convinced ourselves that we can't, or, worse, that we shouldn't because we are shameful. As a species- we have forgotten who we are, what we are, and what we are capable of. The deafening, blinding, all-consuming effect of pain and discomfort are our stupor. Our slumber. Our beginning involves "waking up" or "coming to" from that state...that place within.

In The Course In Miracles, we learn that Man's "curse" is referred to as "a dream". Consider:

*Every silo'd religion has the element of unrest with the accompanying effects, and a

belief that we are here on this planet to remember who and Whose we really are, to

remember and wake up from our dream of separation from God (our Source), and to

return once again to our true state. And if that is true, we take life seriously, for we are,

after all, here. But we know that this is not all there is; that we are a loving thought, an

idea of God; that ideas leave not their source; that we never did split off from God; that,

therefore, what happens in this world at either our own hands or at the hands of another, while effecting us, really doesn’t matter, for we are the cause we made up, then

forgot, and came to believe something else altogether. “A timelessness in which is time

made real; a part of God that can attack itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind within a body all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at

its cause. The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now

you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams and thinks your thoughts instead of you” (A Course in Miracles, Combined Volume, Second Edition, text, page 587, 1992). Our salvation from this “damned dream” is so simple that it alone has become the single most difficult event in our collective lives; namely, to remember and then allow our loving Father to gently awaken us to where we never left.

What does this mean? It means that we create our own reality and, because we feel guilty and shameful, the reality we create holds our punishment, and that feels like fate. It means that, because we can choose at any time to begin transcending our pain, then the fact that we don't means WE are the ones actively imagining, or creating, our suffering. It is our own choice. We can stop or change our creation at any moment. We just have to remember that we can and then grasp and apply that we are welcomed.

Where should we look for that memory? It is intended that we look beneath a serious-minded acceptance and daily transmutation of our pain and suffering. In other words, don't numb the pain. Instead, transmute it. That is the key.

How To Tell The Real From The Dream?

Knowing what is real and what is not is a futile exercise for a human that has not accepted his or her pain as part of the journey. To a man or woman still obsessed with numbing discomforts, there is neither explanation nor understanding...it must be experienced. Those remain in slumber. We cannot imagine that a thing is both joyful and painful. Childbirth, perhaps, is an exception. A fundamental aspect of the curse of the female is pain in childbirth. A woman is never closer to death than she is while giving birth. For females, this example is the model. Childbirth is the most pain a woman will experience. Simultaneously, it is the also her greatest joy.

Men don't get the same model. Our reward isn't reproduction. It is simply that we get to "eat our food". Simultaneously, men spend our waking hours working and toiling against ground that argues with growing. Our curse is that nothing is given to us. We have to work and fight for it. So, for men, a full belly is a stark achievement. It's a reward. A sign we've done it right. Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that "there is nothing greater under the sun than for a man to enjoy his work." Why? Because full bellies means we succeeded even though even though we were cursed. It means we wrestled with God and won.

What does "real" look like? "Real" hurts like hell but is slightly more joyful than the hurt...all at once. Sink into your curse. Feel fully what you do not have. Allow the trappings of comfort to fall away...don't fight to keep them. Does this sound extreme? It is. The Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. We gloss over this, but this matters deeply. He called his followers with two words: Follow me. They left everything to do so. Like...everything. Just walked off the job and followed this dude into the countryside. The pain and discomfort was accepted and that's what it looked like for them. They followed. Their questions were stronger than their desire to escape discomfort.

There is a tangible cause and effect in this process. As we strip away the trappings of comfort, we recognize the intricate relationship between pain and peace. Once we become accustomed to our pain, when we try to replace small comforts, we can immediately see how that comfort causes our path, our enlightenment, to become dull. Our eyes are opened when we recognize our efforts to soothe over instead of learn from our pain. This is why it is said that it is easier for a wealthy man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven. Wealth buys a lot of comfort.

We have conflated the ideas of pain and suffering with discomfort and inconvenience. Let's be clear: discomfort is not pain and inconvenience is not suffering. We have lied to ourselves about the very nature of our curse. We see the flickers of pain in discomfort and the dancing shadow of suffering in inconvenience and we lament our condition.

To wake up is to see flickers of truth in pain and shadows of light in suffering. When we see this, Damnation begins to become irrelevant and is replaced by hope. Transcendence. We see this all the time in people who are facing extreme adversity. It changes them. It alters how they carry themselves. Those that push for light hold an air of quiet humility in their acceptance. Those that don't become angry and work harder to fill the holes in their lives. They never realize that the only ones damning them are themselves. The very effort to reduce consequences of the curse IS the act of damnation- it is a denial of the realness and the necessity of pain and suffering and a replacement of those things with a belief that we can make ourselves feel better if we give ourselves things that make the pain stop if but for a little while. This describes the stupor- the fog- of the Damned Dream.

Pinch yourself to wake up, it is said. Indeed...

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* Thanks to my Dad for providing his commentary on Course in Miracles for this entry. Still out front shining the light, down to the last mile. Infinite respect.