Richard Lloyd Jones: I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and welcome to this week's excerpt from Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. It's the Christmas season, bringing with it the annual debate in the hearts of the thoughtful. How to be true to the true spirit of Christmas. Well, here in the midst of the hectic running around, a reminder. Here's an excerpt from A Study of the Divine, our latest Thinking with Somebody Else's Head program with Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco and Susan Berkley.
Talking about the 99%, Cláudia, because this is the time of the 99%. Because the 99% before now have been waiting for a solution to come from the state, from the company, from the boss, and even perhaps from religion, but they became disappointed with what had happened.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: So this is the time where we, the people, must depend on our own strength. We must go within, and God's connection, the God that lives within us, that the temple within, the church within, and this work helps us do that.
So I thought this is a very special Christmas in that sense because it's the time for all peoples, all religions to go back to the Christ or whatever the Moses within or that God's connection. Oh, or even Muhammad that had many, many right things to teach.
Of course, we can't forget Islam. I mean, billions of people
Cláudia: are following that. Buddha, Confucius, that were very
much spiritual.
Even if you're not religious, you have that inner guidance, that inner connection with God. And you need to find that as the 99% to be able to now is the time to sustain yourself through that link with God. You will never do it through the link with the power, through the link with, you know.
Cláudia: With the theomaniac people. Exactly. The God-like people.
Who think they're God. Because the powerful took the place. And those people who are starving for power, they want to take the place of God in our lives.
And then, of course, in their lives, but mostly in our lives. To be the rulers, dictating orders. But those orders are very much upside down in relation to God. And this confusion is very much important to understand. Because one of the unpleasant impressions we have from those God's representatives in churches is because they suffer from a severe inversion. They understand that if we are following God, we are kind of in the wrong side because we are in the side of suffering, restriction,
Richard: censorship,
Cláudia: pain, meekness, disease, and sacrifice.
And that suffering is the way, is like the correct and the only way to be with God in the future. But you cannot interact really with this world because this world is the world of the devil And so you just forget about this. And God is only after life. But the true understanding of Jesus' words doesn't mean this.
He said that "he brings to this life abundance of everything that is good. Everything in abundance, like happiness and goods and health and progress. If we would follow his words and his teachings."
Richard: Someone once said "the problem with life is that we weren't given an operating manual." Not quite true, is it? This holiday season, we'd do well to remember.
I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
