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Thank You, Cyd. This is a practical self-check to-do-list, and with each of the traits to "mortify" or "put away", examples come readily to mind, even from my bike ride last evening.

;-)

Indeed, I was climbing the hill on my loop, on my fixed-gear bike, and somebody started to back out just in front of me.

"Hello", I called...

Still backing out... "HELLO", I called louder ..

About to back-right-into-me: "HELLO!!!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Stopped ... No comment or open window from the driver...

I was seething somewhat and mulled it over in a negative and vengeful way.

Immature. Really immature.

I have an excuse. I have been hit 5 times. I'm doing a bit better and I only shout "hello" these days. That really is better. Usually I let it go faster than I did last evening ... The couple who live in that house always avoid eye contact, and so on...

I noticed right away in the first quoted excerpt that there should probably be a comma where I put 3:

"If therefore you were raised together with the Anointed, seek the things above ,,, where the Anointed is sitting at God’s right hand."

This is applicable insight in our current hierarchical world, where power is jealous:

"And then it says in verse 11,

'where there is no Greek and Judean, no circumcised or those with foreskin, no barbarian, Scythian, slave or free man. Rather, the Anointed is all things and is in all.'

Now, I believe that this goes directly against the diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI, that’s such a focus nowadays. It’s a false focus. The DEI agenda is not really meant to make everyone equal. In the end, it winds up privileging those in power, because it brings everyone down to the level of the slave, basically."

As a former vacuum-tube designer-builder hobbyist, I would say that a matching-transformer is the better analogy here than a (voltage-dropping) "resistor" It really is ;-)

"The Son is the only one that can approach the Father, because anyone else that would attempt to is annihilated because of the Father’s greatness. There’s too much of a power differential. Christ is like a resistor to the energy of the Father."

I think this is a specific instance of "magnanimity", as "you know how boys are"...

'Wives, station yourselves under your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.'

And this really, really gets easier in time, especially as one develops a little completely-appropriate humility:

'Husbands, love your wives, and do not be bitter toward them.'

This either IS or it AIN'T, in my experience, and I faked it, myself, though fakes break down in time...

'Children, obey your parents regarding all things, for this delights the Lord.'

I did start trying to turn it around at a point in childhood, but it was like one of those giant oil tankers, really slow to turn...

One of my goals by age 12 was to be a better father than my (USMC: Korea + Vietnam) Dad.

I have been that.

"Fathers, do not provoke your children so that they may not be dispirited."

There is now mainly "Debt Slavery", which is actually a More-Efficient form of slavery for the "owners", hardly a virtue, but less bad overall, it seems...

There is forced-prostitution, and there is hidden sadism wrought upon "lost children", which is hard to consider, but appears to actually be pervasive in our world, and hidden by the powerful.

This made me think of "slavish" virtue-signaling, too:

'The passage says not to “affect slavishness.” Affect means to pretend.'

It should better not ever come to this, but you were in the military; you know what, "Payback is..."

'For the one acting unjustly will suffer the wrong he has done, and there is no respecting of persons.'

When I have been stolen-from, I have had occasion to think back to my petty thievery as a child...

;-(

I hope that those who have been instrumental in causing great-suffering repent, because I can't imagine having to live through what they caused, and somebody would have to do things to them, then live through the consequences. I really get tired just thinking about it...

;-(

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Thanks for the correction from "resistor" to "matching transformer." Hadn't heard of that one before, but I like it so much better. Even the words, apart from the electrical engineering aspect of them, sound more fitting. Indeed, the Son would not be a resistor of anything but a facilitator, a transformer if you will.

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Great comment, as usual. I can relate to the quick anger with difficult neighbors. I had a man shout at me in my front yard the other day that I should sell my house and get the hell out of the neighborhood. I was puzzled by his unprovoked attack, until I remembered having berated random neighbors in the past for things like masking out of doors, or flicking a lit cigarette down on the sidewalk, or shaking my head at disgust in the lies told by political lawn signs. I guess I deserved it.

Maybe shouting, "STOP!" would be more efficient than HELLO!

The way I think about paying for unrepentant past wrongs isn't through the process of reincarnation, which as you say requires others to do wrong and thus continues the wrongdoing cycle. It is my hope that people are able to discharge their karmic debts in the "in between" place between incarnations, by realizing and reliving their wrongs through the akashic memory from the others' points of view. This then is a one-for-one realization and replacement with repentance, rather than a facsimile of the wrong in another lifetime. Although I will admit to thinking about lab torture scientists waking up to find themselves reincarnated as lab rats. A mean and petty thought on my part...

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