Greetings,

We got into the ethics of some life choices on another thread, and it got me wonderring about other life style choices---
Has your experience with the afterlife affected your ideas about ownership?

I was amazed at first to find we could create an owned area in focus 27. Puzzlement!   But, planets 'own' moons, right? Ownership teaches responsibility, right?  So it must not be 'bad,' but how do we know how much or how little to own?

Bets

Society has problems with ownership. Neither are we able to share amongst ourselves without somebody grabbing power and seeking excesses, nor are we able to administer an equable distribution without suppression and exploitation of positions of power for priviledge. These two issues are the basis for the Marxist conflict theory by which Marx and Engels finally decided to eliminate property all together - and that didn't work either in other than a very few tiny, isolated, instances. Even the average family has problems prioritizing distribution of goods, and aside from a few well-trained sports teams, and perhaps a couple monasteries, collective work for the common good with equal distrubution of benefits simply doesn't occur. Ownership, economics and governance promise job security for social scientists for another few centuries.

This does not mean that we need to worry about ownership on a personal level. So long as we treat each case as an individual instance, and resolve it in a manner which we honestly feel is the best that can be done, then we're OK. That's the moral criterion.

Karma is more pragmatic. If our judgement is inaccurate, then what happens is that we will have a chance later to see how it fails in some manner. The greedy will have a greedy setting in which to learn that generosity is useful. The frivolous, who give away the world, will have a chance to learn that there is also benefit to retaining and developing one's resources. And those who work to benefit themselves without harm to others, and to bring up the standards of living of others nearby will find that those others are supportive and helpful in maintaining a partnership by which everyone benefits.

In other words, it's a personal matter, and one in which we each have to make personal decisions. The simplest spiritual guide is perhaps to look at the world as God's house, in which we are employed to improve things for everybody. What we own is not given solely to spend and enjoy, but also is given for our stewardship in its maintenance and development.

It is tempting to look at others to criticize what we see - however, we must remember that they have a different vision, hear the sound of a different drummer, and march to a goal that we may have abandoned long ago. Nonetheless, they are doing the best that they know, and our basic task is to avoid interaction with those factors that we find distasteful. In that way, we retain a maximum of autonomy in our own lives. Thus, if you feel aggressive war to be immoral, don't become an aggressive warrior.

The Hindu culture recognizes four stages of life. In the first we are students. Next we are householders, responsible for family. The third phase allows us to assist the society as a religious renunciate or hermit accumulating wisdom. (Doubtless participation in forums like this one qualifies for that stage.)  And in the fourth stage we become wandering sunyassins, gurus and sages, neither owning property nor having a proper place. The society feeds these people and respects them as God's representatives - at least in principle. This is another approach to ownership in which property is secondary and personal growth is primary. It is very close to the actual life experiences of a devout person (although it fails miserably to feed into the desires of the greedy materialist).

I suggest that this is going to be an approximate outline for the lives of most of us.

dave

I know I 'own' one thing and that is My Word!

Hi,

Ownership should be unlimited in my view, as the universe is full of empty usable planets suitable and lovely. There is enough out there to give each human that has ever lived a billion planets and not even scratch the surface of this enormous source. However, we must mature before we inherit this kind of reward. Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely. "In my house are many mansions"

Love.

Alan

interesting thread y'all. thanks Bets, u did it again! she gets the best threads going.
if I take her thought literally and look at it again I think I wonder the same thing and I start imagining about home ownership, more on the other side than on this side.

on this side of life, in a body a home is necessary. I look at myself and I see that at first I was a renter. nobody would give me a loan to buy a house for a woman with 2 kids, divorced, and no credit, only a part time job and $100 a month child support. thank the fates, I remained friendly with ex hubby and he signed as co-owner on me a house after I was able to purchase a mobile home and have ownership for a year on that.

so moving up here, might be like moving up on the other side, u take on more responsibility in crements. as I imagine in the afterlife, its only in the astral realms we would be wanting to build something, and maintain what we are habituated to on this side.
I would not want large structure; I like cozy, less to take care of. but then on the other side, no maintenance required! such as cleaning up. wow. drop a banana peel on the floor and command it to disappear! haha!
actually, what I'm visualizing is quite different than a structure in which I would be parked. I assume we only need shelter from the weather here. unless we are creating of the weather over there, who would need shelter?
I see myself as never being home, once I get on the other side, I would be all over the universe and never need to lay down and rest. I'd always be with people, we'd be busy and happy all the time doing whatever we do, mostly as guides, training ourselves or training others in the art of living, and of course building stuff like a home even. I hear theres a trick to manifesting the home out of astral/etheric matter, we have teachers over there specifically teach this.

love, alysia

Yes Bets, "half-way-house" to the physical, could be. One of the functions of Focus 27, according to Monroe, Bruce and others is to provide a familiar surrounding for those who come back from an adventure on physical earth. Another function is to plan another travel down there. I don't know though how it is for entities who are new to the human experience. Maybe these newbies can't perceive it that well, or can't make sense of it. Following Monroe's second book, he as "AA" was attracted by the physical earth and dived into it for a short trip (which became many trips then) out of curiosity, and he didn't tell that he went to Focus 27 first to learn how to behave on earth.

Spooky