Only if you learn to master yourself.
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No one can serve two masters
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
I'm not aware of a wrong path. As I see it, all paths lead to the same destination. Some are just longer than others.
What destination is that?
The picture confuses me as a polytheist. The roads I see look more like a plate of spaghetti - tons of individual strands, all criss-crossing and mixed up in one another, and when you eat spaghetti you don't just eat it one strand a time. That's weird. You spool up several strands nice and neat and then eat it. Who eats just one strand at a time? Weirdos!
osgart
Nothing my eye, Something for sure
Contrary masters cannot be served. Otherwise a person can have many masters.
Yes it is quite possible to serve no master. More importantly where would that take a person. Without mastery there is only the unknown with danger and death lurking.
It's best to serve masters who are wise and true to their word, otherwise one will end up trying to reinvent the wheel, or worse. To become a master entirely on your own may be the hardest road.
I call it moksha. Others may call it something else.
You believe that everybody achieves this or something similar in their life?
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
You bet it is - for a period of time. Those of us who went down a criminal path were, in effect, serving two masters. The first was the master of our own desire. The second one was the master of appearance, so that we could continue with our pursuits while giving the impression of conformance, while hiding in plain sight.
Granted, it is a juggling trick and eventually, one will start dropping the plates.
So, what I believe I have discovered is that I can do this for a while, but life has taught me that doing so is not an especially good idea.
Tell me about it, LOL.
Edit: While reading this, I realized I misread the question, LOL.
(Old people. Jeez.)
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I'm reminded of an interview question I was asked many years ago. The question was: "if two people come to you and say that their projects are really urgent and I need to drop everything else, what do I do?" My answer "ask my boss" helped get me the job.
The point is that when faced by competing demands, "masters", which do you serve because serving one, responding to one's demands, mean you can't serve/respond to the other. Of course this is an extreme case and often in real life we can juggle requests, but the question was put in a binary way - pick one.
In political terms, if a religious person believes in some scripture but is asked/told be someone else to do something opposite to what the scripture says, what does the person do? Follow scripture or what someone else says? This also applies to atheists with a strong humanistic idea of proper behavior or those who have any sort of moral or ethical framework.
The point is that when faced by competing demands, "masters", which do you serve because serving one, responding to one's demands, mean you can't serve/respond to the other. Of course this is an extreme case and often in real life we can juggle requests, but the question was put in a binary way - pick one.
In political terms, if a religious person believes in some scripture but is asked/told be someone else to do something opposite to what the scripture says, what does the person do? Follow scripture or what someone else says? This also applies to atheists with a strong humanistic idea of proper behavior or those who have any sort of moral or ethical framework.
Ultimately no. If you serve no one but yourself, you are still serving a master who happens to be yourself.
lukethethird
unknown member
You are only serving yourself if you serve God because it is ultimately you that decides what God is or isn't.
In a sense this is true, and in a sense it isn't. It's true in the sense that God represents our higher self, the angles of our better nature. But we also have the selfish, self-destructive side of ourselves that when we follow that it leads us to unfavorable outcomes.
So it depends which of our two natures we are placing in front of us and choosing to follow that either leads to happiness or ruin. If we call our self-destructive side "God", then it will become self-evident that God in our minds did not represent our higher selves.
Sure... But why serve none, when I can serve a dozen?
lukethethird
unknown member
That might make some sort of sense to you but I don't think in terms of God.
But you were when you said, "You are only serving yourself if you serve God because it is ultimately you that decides what God is or isn't." It should have made sense to you based on what you just said.
I'll ask you this though, do you believe you have a higher self and a lower self?
What about the Buddhist idea of non-self?
If the self is an illusion and one is self-serving, then who are what is one serving?
I always sucked at hiding my guilt so ended up deciding not to do anything I felt guilty for.
If they had been around, I'm sure I would have been.
