A blameless life
From the Journal, 6/29/2010:
Next I am at the top of a tower, looking down at a scene on Earth. A voice tells me "The best thing is to live a blameless life. Why should you or anyone be allowed to live in a place of enduring peace unless you yourself are peaceful? Until you can become this yourself, you cannot be allowed to live in such a place."
Getting back to the interesting message mentioned earlier: I was brought up to the top of a staircase inside what felt like a tower [see illus]. From there, I was told to look out of a small window at a scene far below, on Earth. I understood then that I was separate from Earth, and the physical universe altogether.
The scene was of a little hovel. At the back of it, there is a very small fenced in porch about two to three meters square. There is a boy and some female family members there. The condition of the structure is poor, the overall impression is humble. Then I am told what I wrote before, "The best thing is to live a blameless life. Why should you or anyone be allowed to live in a place of enduring peace unless you yourself are peaceful? Until you become this yourself, you cannot be allowed to live in such a place."
My impression when he said it was that if a person who is not peaceful was put into a peaceful environment, it would no longer be peaceful. Also, he was talking about being "born into" the peaceful place, as in reincarnation. His comments were primarily directed at people who wish for a "perfect" next life but who are unprepared for the responsibilities that go with it. The humble family was an example to follow, in contrast to deluded ideas of comfort.
Something else from this was the statement "It is better to live a blameless life than to wish for, and receive, a comfortable one."
Comment:
As I write this, there are 13,446 dreams recorded in my dream diary database. There are a handful more sitting in my email, waiting to be transferred. This dream is one of a few dozen that I think of often. The importance of living a blameless life is worth reflecting on as one makes decisions throughout the day. This sometimes comes to mind when I am angry with someone, or even a video game, as I wonder, “is that blameless? Have I just shown that I am unworthy of a peaceful environment because I am not peaceful?”
The dream has two ideas, both of which are worth considering. The first is that a blameless life is superior to any level of comfort, no matter how much discomfort accompanies it. The second is that admitting a non-peaceful person to a peaceful environment would change the environment to non-peaceful. That second idea is logical but may be hard to accept for religious persons who believe that faith alone saves them, regardless of personal failings.
In that context, a criticism of this dream is that God forgives sin if there is faith. Therefore, a non-peaceful person who has faith may enter the kingdom of God, here understood to be the “peaceful environment” referred to in the dream. If the dream is correct, then “faith alone” may not be sufficient to earn a place in the kingdom of God.
I won’t pretend to understand this theological argument. All I can say is that the dream makes sense to me. It is no different from saying “if it rains, what was dry will be wet.”