It's a sin - Don't do it

How many of us can put a hand up and remember being told - Don't do that, Do not go here, don't go there. Don't eat this, don't eat that.

Then the visit to the Sunday School, church, temple or meeting house. It is a sin in this world to lust after... to covet another's whatever... to tell lies... to skip school...take that illicit kiss behind the bicycle sheds or worse the dreaded weed, tobacco or other.

Sound familiar in some shade or other.

What if I were to suggest that this sort of mind control is the perfect way to set up a malleable mind with the fear of God as well as Mammon. To inculcate a sense of less and subservience. To learn the ways of the negative vein in life. I am certain that in many cases the intention was to educate, yet educatoin is that of bringing forth, not ramming down into....

Of course this does not apply to us as we are enlightened beings who have cleared the dross from the proverbial cupboard and are now well on the way to Nirvana.

Really? So where does the anger, frustration, criticism of others and generally nose in the air attitudes come from and still color our lives?

We are all fallible human beings and thus swayed by our emotional boat, sometimes able to steer calmly through troubled waters and at other times at the mercy of the waves and winds of life.

So where is the sin? Aha! does that word take you to a place of religious imperative and guilt?

The word itself has such a color to it that it is hard to separate it from fundamental thinking.

Yet it is not all that it is made out to be. It is in translation - a travesty.

The original Greek word that got its translation by the good clerics of yesteryear into sin was so very different.

Tolerance, compassion and understanding the weaknesses of the human condition were all part of the great bank of knowledge handed down by the sages and none more so than the word that the religious power brokers translated as sin.

So what was the original meaning of this misguided translation and use?

The Greek word was Hermatia.

Hermatia is a term used in archery to describe the act of missing the mark, missing the target of aim.

Now if I had been told when a young lad that I had actually missed the point, not got it spot on and been encouraged to try again and aim straighter, do you suppose that my personal weight of self imposed guilt and lesser esteem might have been salvaged to a degree that I would have had time to study more and hone other qualities in me that would have hastened my road to enlightenment?

Good thought, eh?

Still everything is given for our betterment and nothing is given more than we are able to handle so you could say that everything is a win, win situation, no matter how circuitous the route.

It still makes you wonder who thinks they run the show and to what ends.

Still that is for another note, but if you cannot wait I suggest that you trip on over to The Freedom Cycle Blog and await a response to this thought.

For now though just be good girls and boys and be seen but not heard!