PARANOIA PROCESS

ANATOMY OF THE PROCESS

If you seem to be going through a time of mistrust, disorganized thinking, and re-evaluation of beliefs, you could very well be experiencing the paranoia process. What is this process, and why must we pass through this dark upheaval on our way to at-one-ment?

In answer to that, I want to begin with a little background concerning the development of words so we understand the evolution of the meaning of this process.

Like everything else, the meanings of words have, through the passage of time, taken on completely different meanings from their original form. As their meanings change, many words have to be redefined.

The word radical is a great example of a word that has changed meaning over time. Today, a radical is someone who has extreme politics or who carries out violent agendas such as bombings and assassinations. But that's not what the word radical meant when it came into the English language from the Latin word radix. It’s from that Latin word radix that we get the English word radish, because the word radix in Latin means root. We named that little vegetable a radish, because it is a root/tuber plant.

In its original meaning, a radical is a person who wants to get to the root of things. It is someone who doesn't judge by appearances or by actions and effects, but is a person who says, “I know you did that, but I'd like to understand, before I judge it, why you did that." Jesus must have been radical, because He taught," Put the axe to the root of the tree." If that's being radical, I too want to be radical. In this sense, radical carries a higher, more positive meaning than what it has come to mean today.

Now, let's look at the word religion. It can be divided into two parts, the prefix re- and the rest of the word -ligion. The prefix re- suggests the action of going back or doing something again. Webster’s New World Dictionary derives the word religion from the Latin word religio meaning the sense of right, or scruples, or religion. However, it is the root of religio that is of greater interest. Religio comes from the word religare, which means to bind back. The word religare is a combination of two words: re- which we know means going back or doing again and -ligare is to bind. We can see from this, the word religion carries the meaning to bind back or to bind again.

Yoke is another word that has been translated to mean “to harness or bind” by those who are believers in the literalism of the Bible. Yoke, however, as translated from the Aramaic as well as Sanskrit, actually means to join (unite) – union with universal spirit. The word yoke is the same Greek word used for yoga. The literalist use of the word yoke (to bind),it is a digression from the word yoga (to unite). Yoga has the definition of being joined. Feel the difference? There is harshness when you say yoked together, bound together, but when you say yoga, joined together, to which there is softness to it. It's like the joining in a marriage. When Jesus said, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me..." I believe He was saying, join with Me and learn my way, (process.) Learn My yoga -yoga meaning My process that unites body, mind and spirit together again. "He who unites himself with the Lord is one spirit." (1 Cor. 6:17 KJV)

However, religion came along and took the meaning of yoga – join together – and stepped it down to yoke, bind together. That is where the word religion, to bind again, has its origin. Isn’t that what religion has done? Hasn't it BOUND together masses of people in consciousness through dogma?

In religion, we define God, and then from the premise of that definition. Jesus was saying to the people that learning is not something that binds, but rather something that eventually joins them at the top. Religion binds us to itself at the very bottom with its laws of dos and dont's.

PRECONCEIVED IDEAS

When I spoke about the word yoga recently, I could see the defensiveness of those listening. The people were thinking, “I didn't come here to hear about yoga! This is just too far out.”

I don't know much about yoga, but I do see how people are captured by particular words. Some could not hear another thing I said because I used the word yoga. Because of their preconceived definitions of yoga, they could not glean the understanding and truth contained in this word.

This is why some religious people become so difficult to communicate with, so defensive, so argumentative. It is very difficult to sit down and have an open-minded dialog. There is nothing, as far as they're concerned, to talk about. If you, in any way, present something a little new or different they take a defensive posture because it challenges their belief system.

Within religion, spiritual evolvement is not allowed to happen because the process is built upon a preconceived definition, or doctrine. Any time we delve into an area which we ourselves have not experienced yet try to define, it becomes detrimental to our spiritual progress. This is what the word orthodox means: conforming to established doctrine or opinion.

GIMME THAT OLD-TIME ORTHONOIA

Every person goes through three stages of consciousness on their way to understanding Truth. The first stage is directly related to orthodox belief. This stage is called Orthonoia, which represents the state of mind of a commonly accepted set of external beliefs imposed upon a person. This is what we started believing because it is what our parents believed and it’s what they taught us to believe. Orthodox consciousness is borrowed consciousness. No one comes to these conclusions individually, through personal enlightenment. These conclusions are received from somebody else. As handed-down thinking. Because it references previous understanding instead of present experience, it is dead thinking.

Consider this: denominations are not built by three or four million individually enlightened people who have all come to a similar wonderful revelation. In fact, great religions of the world can be traced to the revelation of one person like…. Mary Baker Eddy, Confucius, Mohammed, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith or Martin Luther around whose personal revelation a denomination is built.

Do we understand that all denominations are built upon one person's supposed encounter with God? Certainly not every follower has experienced a similar encounter. Denominations were built on one person's experience, even though most of the people in those denominations today have never had the same experience. Most major religions in the world are traced back to one person. This is not to say that the people I’ve mentioned did not have valid spiritual revelation or some kind of experience beyond the natural. I've come to the conclusion that every one of them had a personal encounter with what we call the divine, or else they could not be effective. One person cannot affect hundreds of millions of people without some spiritual substance to their teachings. Some spiritual revelations such as Islam, Buddhism and Catholicism have survived for thousands of years. A more recent example would be Swedenborg, an 18th century thinker from Sweden. Churches built on his teachings still exist as well as his books. People who still read and believe his writings are dedicated to them even though they've never met the man. There's got to be something to his teachings.

If I could sit down and talk to any one of the original thinkers about what their message has become, we would probably discover the current interpretation is not the same as their original experience because people have taken the founder’s experience and organized it into a belief system.

Here's a little story I heard concerning the devil and a friend who were talking as they walked down the road one day. They looked up and saw a man bend down, pick something up and put it in his pocket. Nobody said anything at first, but finally, the friend said to the devil, "Did you see what that guy did?" The devil said, " Oh yeah, I saw him. He just picked up a piece of the truth." The friend replied, "Aren’t you intimidated when somebody gets a hold of Truth?" Then the devil said, “No, I've learned if I leave them alone, they'll eventually organize it into a doctrine."

And that is exactly what has happened. The devil hasn't had to do a thing to anybody. People take truth and re-work it so that it can be organized to benefit the ego.