This is http://www.essayz.com/b0301042.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %REVERENCE HUMANE RESPONSE LOVERS TRANSCENDENT HOLY+030104 %SACRED ESSENTIALLY MYSTERIOUS FOUNDATIONS PERSONAL+030104 %PRESENCE COMMUNAL INTEGRITY BEAUTIFUL FORBIDDEN+030104 %UNIMAGINABLE UNTHINKABLE TABOO COLLUSIVE GAMES SIN+030104 %SELF OTHER DECEPTION ARROGANT DOMINATE SYSTEM GOD+030104 %TECHNOCRAT SCIENCE MILITARIST ENGINEER DOMINATION 030104 "Reverence" is the word which points to and calls attention to the humane responses of lovers to that which is transcendent, beautiful, holy and sacred. "Reverence" is unimaginable, unthinkable, forbidden, and taboo to certain people; e.g. to: 1. People who are self-righteous and/or arrogant --- because they are playing collusive games of mutual self deception --- and so which deny that any reality can transcend them in any way which is beautiful, holy and/or sacred. People who are self-righteous and/or arrogant cannot be reverent. 2. Presumptuous people who assume, feel and/or think that they are special and/or better than other people who are imperfect, impure, and/or inferior. Presumptuous people may believe that they are special by virtue of their own accomplishments, purity, election and/or a special calling from God. Presumptuous people cannot be reverent. 3. Insecure and/or defensive people who fear any thing, person, reality, process or relationship which they cannot understand, manipulate or control: including all realities which are transcendent, beautiful, holy and sacred. Insecure and/or defensive people cannot be reverent. 4. Dishonest, addictive and pretentious people who fear authentic people who demonstrate transcendent forms of personal and/or communal integrities; because such authentic people might expose dishonesty, addictions and pretentions within the true light of open and honest discussions of their own experiences within open, honest and intimate humane relationships. Dishonest, addictive and pretentious people cannot be reverent. 5. Scientific, engineering and religious technocrats whose paradigms are narrowly based upon having well defined goals and technical means through which to achieve unilaterally their own well defined goals. The notion that any realities can transcend superior humans' well defined goals and techniques is offensive to them; and so nothing can be accepted as being beautiful, holy or sacred --- and so to them nothing can be worthy of reverence. They cannot be reverent. 6. Domineering people who have been "called" by God and/or The Devil to insure that people conform themselves to well-defined given-patterns of: assumptions, attitudes, feelings, belief, loyalty, convictions, prejudices, etc. Slaves of "The Domination System" must not acknowledge the existence of "The Domination System" nor of anything which knows of or transcends "The Domination System" --- so there is nothing which they can encounter which merits a response of reverence. To respond reverently to any reality is taboo --- because to do so would violate the ultimate commandment to faithfully worship-and-hide "The Domination System". They cannot be reverent. 7. People who are certain that they are right, and others are wrong; i.e., certain that they know the "absolute truth" and what is "absolutely right"; not only for themselves, but also for others who are different. (God did not make all Her children identical.) Such people often have been appointed (by themselves) to pass judgment upon other people who are alienated from the self-appointed judges, and so are not-well-known by the self-appointed judges. Self- appointed judges cannot be reverent. 8. People who have become overly impressed with how well they have learned more and more about less and less until they know almost-everything about almost-nothing. Such people can acknowledge encountering ONLY those realities about which they know almost-everything; so they cannot acknowledge encountering almost-everything- else which is truly real, but about which they know almost-nothing. Thus, they cannot acknowledge encountering anything which is transcendent, beautiful, holy and sacred --- worthy of a response of reverence. They cannot be reverent. From the above it should be clear that reverence is not appropriate as a response to: 1. Any FORM of: violence, coercion, domination, deception, pretentiousness, arrogance, addiction, dishonesty, collusion, conspiracy, alienation, estrangement, excommunication, chaos, disintegration, degradation, denigration, etc. 2. The CONCENTRATION of: political, economic, military, religious, academic, military, sexual, educational or other kind of POWER which enables domineering people to take advantage of vulnerable people. 3. Any cosmology, mythology, paradigm, theology, religion, profession, institution, government or system-of-beliefs that is enduringly complicit in the support of any of what is pointed to in items one or two above. 4. Any effort to achieve: purity, certainty, perfection, invulnerability, superiority, domination, control, immortality, omniscience, omnipotence, omni- presence --- or the fruits of any such effort. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================