Seeing difficult things in yourself, like sin and sleep

Archiving a post from Parthenon_Agora:

A theme running through this thread is how difficult it is to see things in ourselves that higher teachings make us aware of and guide us into seeing in ourselves. Things like sin. Or sleep.

For sin, we are told not to compare ourselves to other human beings, because in our minds we will always kind of come out on top in comparison to *other* sinful people. So we're directed to compare ourselves to God. But that hardly produces crystalline epiphanies.

That's like comparing yourself to a galaxy.

Then there is the rather easy justification that we didn't apparently ask to be born in flesh bodies, with genitalia, weak and ignorant, surrounded by violence and vast illusion.

And also: the recitation "I am a sinner" never really strikes deeply. It's like saying: "I am a wheel."

So how do we get at it? How do we, to change it, 'see' awakening? By seeing its opposite. By observing our waking sleep. I.e. by making an aim to be awake for a determined amount of time, inevitably falling into waking sleep, eventually waking up and *remembering* our aim, and so seeing how in the interim we were in what is called *sleep.*

So apply that to sin. Instead of awakening and sleep change it to holiness and sin.

How do we 'see' holiness? By seeing its opposite. By observing sin. I can't see the Kingdom of God around me, or in me, but I *can* see sin as it is played out in real life all over the world. Especially these days with information technology numbing us to it regularly.

Of course, this just makes me feel less sinful, considering I'm not engaging in cutting people's heads off and things like that.

The mistake I made was looking outward towards other people's behaviour for sin rather than seeing it in myself. The example of seeing awakening, above, was achieved by seeing sleep *in myself*. Not in others. So instead of seeing sin in head hackers in the middle east I have to observe it in myself.

So I need a standard, first of all. So here is introduced the subject of valuation. Do I value the standard for what sin is? There is only one: the Word of God. If I don't value it, then I won't see sin in myself. If I value it, then I have to use it to see what sin is, and so be able to see it in myself.

The Ten Commandments and Jesus' Two Great Commandments are pretty good summations of the standard in the Word of God.

I have to value them though. So that is the first thing to grapple with, honestly. Before saying "I am a sinner, huh?" you have to ask yourself, what is the standard for sin, if any exists, and do I value it. If you decide it is the Word of God and that you do indeed value it then you still have work to do to apply the standard to yourself and use it to see your own sin and your own status as a sinner.

(I feel like a philosopher! I'm walking myself through this rationally! Can I keep it up? I don't know!)

~:/

So where was I...

Jesus summed up the law as: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

Do I?

To love God I have to recognize something higher than *me.* Always an effort in progress. And of course I rarely love my neighbor as myself, though sometimes I'm very thoughtful. But I have to observe that in myself. It's hard though. It's like when you say: "Everybody is scowling at me! People are mean!" Then you realize *some* way that you yourself have been scowling at people all the while. USE THE WORLD AS A MIRROR! That's a good method of seeing in yourself what is difficult to see. See in yourself what you dislike in others.

But for actual sin(s), like...codified and put in a list (finger-wagging, staring at people, dangling your fingers over the sneeze-guard at the salad bar) you have to comb through Scripture... Or: just memorize the Ten Commandments and give them a broad reading (Thou shalt not kill...that probably also means don't punch somebody in the nose while they're sleeping)...

OK, I've reverted to my meandering style of writing. I'm no Locke or Euclid. - C.