Sentimentality

Sentimentality is a podcast with the title Mistaking Sentimentality for Spirituality.

Sentimentality:

Hostess Lisa Winton and Swami Jayananda will talk about the meaning of sin as the archery term “missing the mark” or avidya in Yoga which is “mistaking the impermanent for the permanent and how judging righteously overcomes the sin. In this podcast they will discuss the pitfall of accepting human satisfaction as an indicator for Spiritual progress. Listen as they explore the difference between mortal sense and the Divine Idea.  Welcome to the Voice of Yoga; we are talking consciousness! Join the Kriya Yoga Spiritual Advance to get the Light in your soul and be Real.

Notes:

1. It is true– all the good, beautiful, and true qualities belong to the Divine however finite good is never Divine. The heart of mysticism is Truth and the seat of wisdom which must never be mistaken for the seat of human feelings, also called the heart. The entire mental-material concept is separate and apart from Spirit. What is called sin is when this mistake is made and accepted. A classic example of this mistake is the statement, “if it feels good do it.”
2. To set the table we have something from Gilbert Carpenter, Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Footsteps, chapter 5, “Mrs. Eddy reserved her strongest rebukes, not for the evidence of fear and disturbance in the students, but for those phases of human thought which produced a quiet feeling of satisfaction, that all was well with the world. She fought this apathy, called it mental drunkenness, a peace, peace, where there was no peace, and insisted upon the students fighting it, insisted with more persistence than she did when it came to the aggressive and disturbing phases of experience and thought. Undoubtedly, she knew that the students needed no prodding to persuade them to fight that which produces discomfort and fear, whereas it was necessary for her to waken them from the false comfort of a false peace, a human peace not based on a triumphant sense of good, but a sympathy with error.”
3. To help prevent mistaking human sentiment for Spiritual Truth, let’s begin by separating mental-material from Spiritual. Mrs. Eddy called this process impersonalization by practicing never fearing, loving, or hating anything appearing in the corporeal senses, primarily, because it isn’t there; this is affirming the Omnipresence of Absolute Goodness, God.
4. We have an AI soundbite for a Gilbert Carpenter 500 Watching Points #6 to help us understand the problem with human satisfaction in the pursuit of Divine Truth.
5. Finding comfort, success, and satisfaction outside Divine Consciousness leaves little or no incentive to “leave your nets.” Sowing to the flesh instead of sowing to the Spirit attaches awareness to the mental-material illusion. Like attracts like, where your heart is where your treasure lies. Accepting finite good instead of holding out for Absolute Goodness.
6. To help with the why and how to we have a soundbite from Herb Fitch Realization of Oneness class 25A. “Now the world has a letter of truth. The world has truth as the human mind knows truth. And we’re being told here that the way the human mind knows truth is insufficient. The human concept of truth is not the Spirit of Truth. The Comforter is the Spirit of Truth.”
7. Gilbert Carpenter 500 Watching Points, “474 — WATCH lest you cherish the desire to throw off the outward practice of sin, so that you may look at your human selfhood with satisfaction, feeling that it is acceptable to God and man. Such a desire may start a worker on the right path, but it must be outgrown, since a human sense is never acceptable to God, no matter how purified it may be.
   We desire purity in Science only that we may reflect God. We overcome sin so that we may have a constant consciousness of man’s unity with God. If mortal man through Science is able to reach the point, where he can begin to regard his belief in material selfhood with satisfaction because it is so well-behaved and good, he is liable to indulge in self-righteousness, which in God’s sight is worse than what the world calls outward sin, because it suggests a false achievement.”