Christianity’s Biggest Mistake: License To Kill (Ep.8)

 And the priest actually handed over the hostages to the terrorists. Then the hostages got raped and then murdered. 

Welcome to The Meditate More Podcast where it's all about helping you to meditate more consistently so you can reap all the incredible magical benefits that meditation can bring to your life today. And here is your host, Manny Mandala.

Hey, and welcome to another episode of The Meditate More Podcast. And if you're here for the first time, make sure to subscribe because we have some power-packed content for you here.
Today we'll talk about the biggest mistake in Christianity. Last week we talked about the biggest mistake in Buddhism and how it causes a lot of suffering in the world instead of reducing suffering. Today the shoe is on the other foot, and we'll have a closer look at Christianity. Probably not what you expect at all. This isn't about the crusades. This isn't about the inquisition. But it's something I see almost nobody talk about, and it's actually a pretty huge oversight.

Next, we'll also talk about how meditation can help you to have a better life. And specifically, we'll talk about how you can use meditation to increase your attention span. Last week I told you the window to get someone's attention with a social media post has shrunken from seven seconds to three seconds in just the past few years. If you use screens, this has affected you. If you don't use screens, don't worry about it. You're not affected. And the solution isn't just meditation. Meditation is half the solution. I'll give you the other half today.

 
Third, we'll also talk about the nuts and bolts of meditation, the practical how-to stuff. And today we'll talk about how to deal with daydreaming, if it happens during your meditation or otherwise during your everyday life, and how to actually use it to your benefit to help you make progress on the spiritual path. And of course, we'll go in depth on a big mistake in Christianity, or I should say in the way most people misinterpret the real teachings of Christianity.

Very important stuff. So we'll talk about all that. Should be a pretty awesome show. Before we do, I want to recommend you listen to this podcast at 1x speed to really stay present with the content. You'll get much more out of it. All the speed listening actually does the opposite of what we're trying to achieve with meditation.

Meditation is trying to make us more present, to be more calm, and in the here and now, more focused to get our mind to stand still on one spot that is the present moment. And the speed listening does the exact opposite. It accelerates the mind. It makes the mind go faster. It makes it more frantic. 

And second, if you haven't listened to the previous episodes yet, I highly recommend you do that first because they all build on each other. And this is especially important in today's episode. The previous seven episodes have been building up to this. 1 to Episode 8, and especially Episode 1 and 7 are absolutely prerequisite knowledge for today's episode.

So if you haven't listened to the previous episodes yet, make sure to listen at least to Episode 1 and 7 before today's episode, because otherwise you will probably say, "This doesn't make sense to me. I don't get it." So pause the podcast now and go back to Episode 1 and 7 and then come back here. 

And final point before we get started, the best way to follow the podcast is on my website, mannymandala.com. That's where you find everything else. There's downloads, transcripts, all platforms I'm on, and of course the best meditation course in the world. I'm kind of biased, but it is the course I wish I had when I started 20 years ago. So go to mannymandala.com to check that out. By the way, that's Mandala, not Mandela. mannymandala.com. Or just type meditatemorepodcast.com that takes you to the same place. 

Alright, with the housekeeping out of the way, we'll get started. And I mentioned a couple of times that I'm deep in the jungles in Central America and sometimes we have to deal with noise from the rainy season, from birds, from even holler monkeys, and we're deep in the rainy season right now. 

So the biggest source of noise is frogs. There's dozens and dozens of frogs here. I hope they don't interrupt our recording. They come out mostly at night. They've officially confused our pool for lagoon and made it the permanent home, and they're actually very noisy. It's unimaginable how much noise frogs can make. 

And the other day I heard a strange noise outside our kitchen. It sounded like a cat meowing, but it was kind of a pathetic meow, like a very small cat or maybe the cub of a wildcat. So I decided to check what's going on, and it turns out it was a frog screaming for help in the mouth of a snake. So now we got snakes coming all the way up to our rooms to look for frogs. So, like, okay, we got to get rid of these frogs because they attract snakes to the house. 

So if you're ever in that situation, mix some vinegar with water, put it in a spray bottle and spray it around the house, and the frogs will go back to the jungle where they came from. Don't spray it on the frogs, just spray it on the ground and they'll avoid that area.
Anyway, let's get into the heart of the episode, into the meditation content. And I remember before my big breakthroughs with meditation when I was already interested in the topic, but not meditating seriously, I was more dabbling than really practicing.

I heard a spiritual audio and the speaker was saying something that I will never forget. He said, "When we sleep, the weirdest things happen in our dreams, but they seem totally normal, right?" Like the stream I had the other day where the waitress took the food away from our table and put it into the pockets of her pants, and that seemed totally normal in the dream. But then you wake up and you go, "Interesting. That was a dream. And now I'm no longer dreaming. Now I'm in the waking state."

And in that spiritual audio, the teacher was saying, "Someday you will have the same experience with the waking state." You will wake up from that state too, and you will say, "Interesting. That was the waking state, but now I'm no longer in that state. That was just another level of dream, and I've woken up from that."

And I had no idea what he meant exactly, but it made me very curious and it was one of the driving motivators for me that kept me going because I wanted to know what he meant, right? And now I know what he meant. Now I know why Buddhists call our normal state of consciousness a dream state. Or they call it maya, which means illusion, or they call it moha, which means ignorance. But yeah, fascinating stuff. And that's why we meditate.

And like I always say, meditation is even worth it for self-serving purposes. Your life will magically transform for the better as you make progress on this path. And I gotta be honest, these days, I think meditation really isn't a luxury anymore. It's not like a spa for increasing your wellness, for feeling slightly more happy or more calm.

I think these days everyone has to meditate if they don't want their minds to get totally scrambled by the screens and the apps. They're just too damaging to our attention span, to our ability to concentrate, to our ability to stay present. They're actually engineered by brain scientists to hold our minds captive. 

You may have heard about this. Silicon Valley literally hires brains, just like the cigarette companies used to hire scientists to make cigarettes more addictive. Silicon Valley is doing the same to make screens more addictive, to get us caught in rabbit holes and dopamine chasing. It's kind of like back in the day, the liver was able to detox us just fine, right?

But these days, there are so many toxins in our environment that we actually need to proactively detox if we expect to stay healthy until an old age, which of course most people don't. Most people develop all kinds of health issues as they get older, and much of that wouldn't happen if the toxic load was lower than the liver could take care of it. And we would get to older ages in a more healthy state. 

And the same is true with the mind. There is so much toxic load now, so much toxic stuff coming at our minds from the screens that meditation has become basically a mandatory detox. And like I said, our attention span is down from seven seconds to three seconds.

That's an actual Instagram statistic published for business owners who want to reach an audience through Instagram. So that's the problem. You may have heard that a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. That's three times more than us, and you can already guess what I'm gonna tell you. Meditation is gonna help to fix that. Meditation increases our attention span, and how are you really going to be effective in the world without that? 

But the thing is, meditation is only one half of the puzzle. Just like with detox, one half is taking binders or doing chelation or killing parasites in your body. That's getting the toxins out. And meditation will do that. Meditation will clean your mind and get the toxic stuff out of your mind. 

But the other half is creating a clean environment so that you don't get more toxins in than absolutely unavoidable. So you use natural products in the kitchen and in the bathroom instead of chemicals. You filter or distill your water. You try to eat healthy and organic instead of processed junk food, right? So toxins out is half the battle. The other half is stopping more toxins from coming in. And the same is true with a mind. Meditation will clean your mind and get the mental toxins out, but you also need to stop more toxins from coming in.

And there is an onslaught of that stuff in our society today. I know one of the main reasons people cite why they're not meditating as much as they like to, right? I often hear people say, "I would like to meditate more. I just don't because..." And one of the reasons is I just don't have the time to meditate as much as I would like. 

And here's the thing, I don't know what your schedule is like. If you work two jobs, if you have final exams coming up, if you have kids to take care of all day, there are some obligations you can't get out of. But I know one thing about you. I can pretty much guarantee one thing. There are some digital distractions in your life, right?

And the reason I know that there are digital distractions in everybody's life these days. And that's where we have all our leverage. In my meditation course, The Meditate More Challenge. By the way, quick plug, meditatemorechallenge.com. 

I cite a study by DataReportal that was published two years ago and check this out. This is completely insane. The average person spends three hours and 11 minutes per day on just these five apps alone: tikTok, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. And that's average. In other words, 50% of people spend even more time on these apps than three hours and 11 minutes per day.

Do you use any of these apps? If so, we found our point of leverage already, but not how you think. I'll tell you how to fix that in a minute. But it gets worse because these five apps are far from the only ones, right? There are countless others. There's Facebook Messenger, Telegram, dating apps, Line, shopping apps, Reddit, Snapchat, games, adult sites, Netflix, email, news, and on and on and on.

The screen, the black mirror, has literally created this infinite universe of distractions that can keep us busy forever, as long as we engage with the screen. And it's addictive because it triggers our dopamine at higher levels than stuff that happens in the real world code. 

And all these apps are literally wasting our lives away. Tick tock, tick tock. And I have an interesting spiritual question for you. Do you think that app is called TikTok by accident? This reality is stranger than you think, but it's not only the time that's wasted, it's also our attention because these apps get their hooks into our brains. They pull on our minds even when we're not using them. I noticed that one day I was in the shower and I was thinking of an Instagram post. And then I realized, wow, my consciousness is on the screen, not in the shower even while I'm not using the screen. 

So that's the thing. We're not present because we can't be. And you know, just like with cigarettes where it's not the tobacco that kills people, it's the addictive chemicals that they add to the cigarettes. The same happens with the screens. Like there's no harm in chatting with a friend a bit on the screen, but it's the addictive mental engineering that really messes us up.

So here's an example. They build in those red notification icons. These icons make you feel that something is unresolved and that creates an uncomfortable open loop. Like a splinter in your mind, as Morpheus would say, right? Like a cliffhanger at the end of a TV show. And that makes the mind go crazy because the mind absolutely craves that sense of completion. And guess what? You will never get it. You will never get a sense of completion on social media. Because it's infinite. There's always more, and you will keep chasing the dragon forever.

So for example, if you reply to messages from 10 people, then by the time you're done, five of them will have written back to you already. And that creates five more of those nagging little red icons on your screen. And it may not even bother you that much consciously, but the subconscious mind feels the pull. And the more you meditate, the more you become aware of these pulls in your subconscious mind as well. And that's how we actually keep each other trapped on the screens and tethered to these devices, right?

The way I put it is, have you ever tried to get rid of a boomerang by throwing it away? Trying to get a sense of completion from apps by replying to messages? It's like trying to get rid of a boomerang by tossing it away because it keeps coming back and you're gonna get whacked in the head. So the way to get rid of the boomerang is to put it in a box.

And like I said, brain scientists and engineers designed the boomerang to keep jumping out of the box at you with these darn notifications. So here's the important realization. Some of these apps and messages are really important, but not all of them. Some really are just idle chatter, which is actually considered a sin in Buddhism. Did you know that? Because it violates the precept of right speech, which is part of the eightfold noble path in Buddhism. 

So some of the apps we can reduce or even eliminate, and nothing bad's gonna happen, right? I actually don't use almost any of these apps anymore, and I used to be majorly addicted to all the screen stuff, and I'm totally fine without it. In fact, I'm better than fine. I've regained a peace of mind and serenity that I hadn't felt since the '90s. So practically none of these apps are so urgent that they can't wait for five minutes, right? And that's enough to get your meditation started. 

And here's what I recommend you do. I recommend you install a distraction blocker app on all your devices that have a screen. On your phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, whatever it may be. Install one more app and make that a distraction blocker. And then gradually and systematically start weaning and reducing all the other apps that distract you and that trigger your mind constantly, that accelerate your mind, that have scrambled your attention span down from seven seconds to three, a third of that of a goldfish.

I don't recommend you try to go cold turkey. What I did was wean myself gradually off the digital addictions, just like I gradually built up the meditation, right? So gradually we reduce the toxins that come in and we increase the toxins that go out until we have a clear mind.

So since these apps are literally engineered by brain scientists to be addictive, it'll be difficult to just put the phone away. I don't like doing it that way. I don't like to even have to use willpower on that. I think my willpower is better spent elsewhere. So I just block all the distractions and I use the distraction blocker for that. 

The best one I've found personally is FocusMe. I've been using that since 2012. I've been recommending it since 2012. If you want to support my podcast, you can get that through my link, mannymandala.com/focus. Or you can just go to the creator's website. That's focusme.com. I don't really care either way. I'll recommend it to you regardless. It's a life changer. It's going to help you to wean the digital distractions one by one until you actually get control of your life back.

In addition to FocusMe, I also use a plugin for the browser called News Feed Eradicator that gets rid of the feed in Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. All these other platforms become much less distracting even when you use them. So my Facebook now is just like an email platform. It doesn't constantly interrupt me with all kinds of interesting stuff to get my attention and distract me from the stuff that I really need to do and that would actually improve my life.

So use a distraction blocker. I recommend FocusMe. Again, that's mannymandala.com/focus. And of course, meditate more to get your attention span back. Because without the ability to pay attention to things for a long time, you will never be able to achieve big goals. It's just not possible.

And if you want to know all the nuts and bolts of meditation, all the practical how-to meditate more, I can help you with that too. I created The Meditate More Challenge. That's still free for now. And it's a complete meditation course that picks you up where you're at, no matter what your level is. 

You can start with as little as one minute per day, and we work our way up all the way to the kind of experiences that you can't even put into words. We talk about that on Day 7. If you're not quite sure how to meditate, we talk about that on Day 3. I actually talk about some of the most popular methods that are actually harmful. There are five very popular methods that I recommend you avoid. If you've always had difficulty making your meditation practice really stick to meditating consistently every day, we solve that on Day 5. And if you're still not seeing mind blowing results, we solve that on Day 7.

The way I look at it, there are several levels of results people can achieve with meditation. Some people get no results, and so they're like, "Well, I sit down, I focus on my breath. Nothing happens. Doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't seem like a good investment of my time. I just end up sitting there with a bad conscience because I could be getting things done." That's basically if your meditation has no results.

Then the next level is that your meditation could have ordinary results. You feel more present, you feel more calm, you feel more relaxed. But what we really want is extraordinary results, mind blowing results, right? So we talk about that on Day 7 of the challenge. This is very different from any other meditation course you've ever seen. I can promise you that.

And let me just give you one practical tip right now. A student recently asked me, "What do I do about daydreaming? I constantly get lost in daydreams during meditation and even during my life."

And here's the thing. If it happens during meditation, just treat it like any other mental distraction, like random thoughts that pop in your head and that distract you from the meditation. Whenever you notice that it's happening, just bring your focus back to the object of your meditation, which for beginners, that's definitely the breath. 

And very importantly, never beat yourself up about it. That's a win. Whenever you do notice that you did get lost in daydreams, that's a win. Every time you catch your mind running away to daydreams or any other thoughts, and then you bring it back to the meditation, that's like one rep in the meditation gym. So your mental muscle just got a little bit stronger.

If it happens during everyday life, I recommend you practice awareness loops. I talk about that in the meditate more challenge as well, and I talked about in Episode 7, how to stay in a meditative state 24 hours a day. So definitely check that out. And once you make progress, you can even set some time aside for daydreaming. Like set a timer like you would with meditation for 10 minutes and just literally daydream and visualize things you want to achieve.

According to one of my spiritual teachers, this is actually supposed to maintain the brain balance. Once you have balanced it with meditation, once your left and right hemispheres of your brain are in balance as per Episode 4, right? Remember Episode 4 about the alchemical wedding, about agape and satori being in balance. Once you have achieved that state, that's when some spiritual teachers say daydreaming is actually a great way to keep the brain in that balanced state. 

So, anyway, if all that sounds interesting, go to meditatemorechallenge.com and sign up for free. I think you'll really like that one. 

But I want to move on. I want to get to the most important part of the podcast: the Dhamma Discourse. And today's topic is going to be a bit of a shocker. Look, what if I told you that the nicest, most polite people you know might be complicit in mass murder? We started on this topic in Episode 7. Again, absolutely prerequisite knowledge for today's episode.

In the last episode, we talked about a big question. The common assumption is that most people are basically good, right? There's only a few people out there killing and stealing and proactively doing evil. Then why is there still so much suffering in the world?

And one reason is because while most people aren't proactively doing evil, they're also not proactively doing good. Most people's main focus is to make enough money to pay the bills, and then when that's done, their main focus is to relax and have fun, not to go out and actually help people who really need help. And that's one reason why there is a lot of suffering in this world that we could actually solve.

Imagine if most of the eight billion people right now that are just focused on themselves actually dedicated all their free time, or most their free time, or as much as they could, right, without burning themselves out, nobody's saying that's required, to make a difference in the world and to make this world a better place. I think we would see huge changes very, very quickly.

And in that context, I made the distinction about two versions of the Golden Rule, right? That's a call back to Episode 1. That's why I said it's very important to listen to at least Episode 1 and 7 before this one. In Episode 1 we talked about the Golden Rule, and in Episode 7 we talked about how there are two versions of the Golden Rule.

There is the apophatic Golden Rule. That's the negative version of the Golden Rule that tells you don't do unto others as you don't want done unto you. That's all the things you are not supposed to do. Like killing, stealing, coercing people lying, assault, and rape. All those behaviors that initiate harm to other people, they're covered in the negative version of the Golden Rule, which is called the apophatic Golden Rule. But there's another version of the Golden Rule, and that's due unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that means proactively go out and help people who need help, help people who are suffering. 

I once heard another quote that has stuck with me over the decades. I was on a bus in Belize and I met this retired guy who had been in Hollywood. He used to write for Rolling Stone magazine, and he'd been to all the big parties. He has experienced all the pleasures of the hedonistic lifestyle one can imagine. And he said, "You know, the conclusion I've come to is none of this stuff is really worthwhile. And the only thing really worth doing in this life is the alleviation of suffering of other sentient beings."

Fantastic quote. Another one of those that has stuck with me through the years. And this version of the Golden Rule, the positive Golden Rule of what we should be doing is called the cataphatic Golden Rule, right? 

So in Episode 7, we said most people pass the apophatic Golden Rule test. They don't proactively initiate harm to people. They don't steal and kill and so forth. But they fail the cataphatic Golden Rule test. They're not out there proactively doing good.

And today we're going to take this to the next level. We're going to talk about how most people aren't quite as good as they think even in terms of the apophatic Golden Rule. And while Episode 7 was about the biggest mistake in Buddhism, because a lot of Buddhists focus on the Five Shilas and only on the apophatic Golden Rule, they miss the cataphatic Golden Rule.

Today's what I call the biggest mistake in Christianity and how a lot of Christians actually miss the cataphatic Golden Rule. The episode is called Christianity's Biggest Mistake: License to Kill. 

And as I said, this is not about the crusades. This is not about the inquisition. This is probably going to surprise and shock you, and I want to say something right upfront. This is probably more a mistake in the way Christianity is being interpreted or taught or practiced by most churches today. It's not a mistake in the true Christian teachings or in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth himself, if you believe that he was a historical figure, whether he was or was not is a topic for a different episode.

Personally, I think the Christian teachings are some of the best spiritual teachings we have. The Golden Rule, for example, is most famously taught by Christianity. And I really like that Christian churches do focus on actively doing good, right? Christianity goes straight to love thy neighbor, Christianity goes straight to do good for others, and I really appreciate that about Christianity.

In fact, if somebody put a gun to my head and said, "You have to pick one institutionalized religion. You can't go through life and say, 'I'm spiritual, but I don't buy into dogmatic religious institutions,'" I would pick Christianity. 

I've personally seen a lot of positive transformations in people's lives because of churches. People who used to be addicted to drugs, people who used to be criminals. Or even just people who had very dysfunctional lives at home, very dysfunctional family lives. I've seen people like that embrace Christianity and become much better, kinder, nicer people, and even proactively doing good in the world.

So before we get into this episode, I want to make very clear that this is not Islam against Christianity. This is about the way Christianity is commonly taught or interpreted these days by many people. And I'll go even further. What I'm about to criticize about Christianity is not something Jesus actually taught. And I'm going to prove that with Christian scripture today as well. I will prove to you that Jesus did not teach this.

So again, in Episode 7, we said, the problem is that most people aren't proactively doing good in the world. Today I'm going to take that a bit further. Today I'm going to make the claim that most people actually do actively cause massive harm without realizing it. 

And that's the cognitive bias we talked about last week, right? Moral disengagement. When people do something that's harmful and they don't realize that they're actually doing it. And that's the spiritual blindness that Jesus and the Buddha talked about. The Buddha said, "People are dreaming." Jesus said, "People are blind. They don't have eyes to see. They don't have ears to hear." This is what they're talking about. 

So after all this preamble, let's get into it. This is about the apophatic Golden Rule, the negative version, the 'don't do unto others. What you don't want done unto you' version. The apophatic Golden Rule says don't steal, don't murder, don't rape, don't assault, don't trespass. Don't force people to do things. Don't coerce people. Don't lie to people. And this is considered super basic stuff and most people agree with this. But do they truly live by this rule? 

So here's the thing. Most people think these basic laws apply and they try to follow these moral laws themselves, but the crux is most people think these rules do not apply to all people. Soldiers are allowed to murder. Police are allowed to trespass. Police are allowed to assault. Police are allowed to lie. Did you know that? In the US and in many other countries, it's perfectly legal for police to lie during interrogations to obtain confessions or information. Politicians are allowed to force people to do things, to coerce people. Politicians are even allowed to steal. We call that tariffs or we call them taxes. 

But again, remember the Buddhist principle we talked about in previous episodes. I really hope you listened to all the previous episodes before this one. One of the core teachings of Buddhism is to see reality as it really is. What's really happening is someone is taking from others by force, right? So that's theft. And that's one of the most basic teachings of all religions. Thou shalt not steal. 

So here's the big criticism, and this is not just a criticism of Christianity. Actually all religions fail to call this out. All religions try to teach morality, but they all fail to call out this particular moral failing.

And again, quick side note here. When I talk about morality, I don't mean dogmatic rules about vices like don't drink, don't wear a short skirt. What I'm talking about is the difference between right and wrong. How to be a good person. One way that's been summed up is to say that it's all about love. Jesus himself said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." He even said, "This is the highest of all commandments." So we can say it's all about love, right? 

That's one way to summarize spiritual moral teachings. And people have mistaken that for being nice and polite and being pleasant to everyone. But that's not real morality because even many psychopaths and mass murderers are very nice and kind and polite to everyone. Some of the worst politicians you've ever seen are very nice and polite. They go around shaking hands and kissing babies. And being nice is a very small moral failing compared to things like theft and murder. 

So in our society, it's very important that everybody's nice and polite. That's considered to be a good person, to be in harmony with a spiritual concept of love. But theft and murder are completely normalized in our society. As long as someone holds public office, they can steal. As long as somebody wears a uniform, they can kill. They're even allowed to murder as long as they call it war. 

And this is the point. If it's about morality, then theft and murder are much greater moral failings than not being nice and polite. And nobody really talks about this. There are practically no religious institutions calling this out. There are almost no spiritual teachers calling this out. They're all talking about meditation and being present and being loving, be nice and kind to everyone, but they don't talk about the murder and the theft that is happening all around us all the time in our whole society, of every country on earth.

And then people ask, "Why is all this bad stuff happening in the world? Why are there all these wars and all this suffering?" Well, let's go deeper. Let's find out. By the way, this is another way you can size up spiritual teachers, right? I gave you one way to size up spiritual teachers in Episode 7.

Here's another way. When you look at a spiritual teacher, does he call out all the theft and murder that is going on around us, or does he just talk about being present, be nice, and be kind? So if this is a criticism of most religions and most spiritual teachers, then why did I call this episode Christianity's biggest mistake?

Because in the case of Christianity, it's not just that they don't call it out. It's not just that they say, "We pray for our troops" instead of telling soldiers, "Stop murdering people." At best, many Christian churches actually actively endorse this moral failing. 

And I'll just give you one example, the most famous example. I've cited Christian Scriptures before in other episodes, and there are some great passages that I really like and that I think we can learn a lot from. Here's a passage from the Bible that I question very seriously, at least if taken literally, which unfortunately many churches and many Christians do.

And it's Romans 13, "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They're God's servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities not only because of possible punishment, but also as a matter of conscience."

When I first came across this passage, I thought, 'Wow, this is in the Bible? I didn't know that's in the Bible. Is this some kind of strange version of the Bible maybe? Or is this a fake quote? That looks like a fake quote to me.' So I looked it up, and not only is it in the Bible, this particular wording is from the most common version in the Bible, the NIV, the New International Version.

So the idea here is that the government is from God and it's only there to keep bad people in check, right? That's what this Bible passage says. Government is from God, and if you're a good person, you need not fear it. It's only there to take care of bad people and to make sure that they don't cause any harm.

Now, again, spiritual practice is really all about seeing reality as it is, and what we see in reality is many times the worst people, the biggest psychopaths, go into government and get control of the whole machine. And then instead of killing a few people, they end up starting wars, committing genocides and killing tens of millions of people, and that actually happens all the time.

This is not a rare thing. I'm not talking about some hypothetical spiritual moral dilemma. This is happening right now. This is on the news today. It's just happening in some other countries where we're not. And that's another huge moral failing that most people are guilty of.

If it doesn't affect me right here, right now, then it's none of my business. But it's happening in North Korea. It's happening in Venezuela. It's happening in the Middle East. It's happening in Africa. It's happening in Eastern Europe. It's happening right now in many places, and it's one of the greatest causes of suffering in our world today.

I want to tell you a quick personal story that really opened my eyes to this one. I was invited to a Christian getaway weekend. It was a three-day role play where some people were assigned the roles of terrorists and some people were assigned the roles of missionaries that were kidnapped by the terrorists.

And there was one scene where a priest, he's a real priest in real life, he had just rescued some of the refugees who were being tortured and mistreated and raped and were bloody all over. And then the terrorists found him with the refugees that he had freed and that he was trying to rescue.

And the terrorists confronted him and told him, "Hey, I'm the authority here, so you have to hand over these hostages to me because it says in your Bible that governing authorities comes from God, and so you have to obey me according to your Bible." And the priest actually handed over the hostages to the terrorists then the hostages got raped and then murdered.

So I've seen with my own eyes that many Christians do take this passage literally. And they will actually defer to any authority, even if it's a terrorist who's requesting to be handed over people so that he can rape and torture and kill them. I've seen with my own eyes that there are Christian priests who interpret it that way. And I'm not here to take sides in any international conflict, but I'm sure you've seen on TV or on the internet some of the suffering in just the recent wars.

And then we hear things like Netanyahu is going to hit Palestine or Nasrallah attacked Israel, or Putin attacked Ukraine, or Zelensky did a strike on Russia. Let me tell you something. Netanyahu, Nasrallah, Putin and Zelensky didn't hit or strike or attack anyone. They just told people to do it and then those people obeyed and that's what's causing all those deaths.

But I'll take it a step further. Hitler didn't invade Poland. Hitler didn't kill many people we know of. People just obeyed when he told them to do that. Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Genis Khan. And this is a very long list. These people killed hundreds of millions of people, except they didn't. They just told other people to go and commit mass murder and everyone just obeyed because of this belief that authority is legitimate, even if it's evil.

So the worst thing you can be in our society, like the most evil people are considered to be mass murderers, right? That's if you see a documentary on true crime, like the worst episodes are usually about mass murderers. But if somebody's in authority and tells you to commit mass murder, then most people obey.

And you may want to look into the Milgram experiment. Of course, that's a famous one that has proven this in a psychological study that it applies to the vast majority of people. It's not a rare thing.

And this takes us back to Episode 7 and the cognitive bias called moral disengagement. How most people aren't as good as they think they are. And this is an even bigger way than the one we talked about in Episode 7, isn't it? I did some research into this. And the number of deaths caused by dictatorships, by genocides, and by wars in the past 100 years, the estimates vary between 150 million and 300 million, but the best estimate I was able to find was 270 million people dead.

Because people think following orders is a virtue. And a lot of churches are saying, "This is what God wants." It says right there in Romans 13. Let me quote that passage again real quick. It says here, "Rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong." So the 270 million dead, they were all killed because they did something wrong, they committed crimes and so the government had to punish them? You see, I called this episode License to Kill, but it's really License to Kill Hundreds of Millions of People.

Now, that's a pretty big oversight. Doesn't seem very Christ-like to me. Don't know about you. And it's important to note that this passage from the Bible wasn't written by Jesus or even attributed to Jesus. It was written by Paul. And I even question if it was really written by Paul. Because again, these scriptures were handed down to us by various councils over thousands of years.

There are three things that are worth looking into in this context. The Pisa family, the Council of Nicaea and Emperor Constantine, who have formed Christianity as we know it today. And I know that some people say the Bible wasn't modified. The thing is, in the English language alone, which isn't even the original language or the only language, there are over 100 versions. So how could there not be any modifications if even one version to another within the same language, within the same century has modifications?

And here's the punchline. Are you ready for this? All the atrocities committed by various governments throughout history, by rulers, by dictators, by wars, by genocides, weren't really committed by these dictators, but by the people themselves. Because the people believed that it's righteous to obey. Even if a command is not moral, it's still moral to obey the immoral command.

So in this context, we need to make a distinction between what's legal and what's moral. For example, helping political dissidents to escape from the KGB was illegal in the Soviet Union, but it was obviously the moral thing to do. On the other hand, denouncing family members to the KGB was legal in the Soviet Union, but obviously that would be an extremely immoral thing to do.

So sometimes what's legal is immoral and what's illegal is moral. So it's really about, as the Buddha said, seeing reality as it is. So, for example, I can look at a tree, and the tree is 10 feet tall. It's right in front of me, outside my window. Now, if I write on a piece of paper that the tree is really 100 feet tall, does that change how tall the tree is? Of course it does not. 

Writing something on a piece of paper does not change reality. And the difference between right and wrong is as objective as the height of the tree, as we talked about in Episode 1. So it can also not be changed by writing something on a piece of paper. Murder is wrong. If I write on a piece of paper, murder is now legal, legalized murder, that's a meme going around the internet, that doesn't make it right. That doesn't change the reality of the situation. If I write on a piece of paper, we declare war, that also doesn't make murder, right? 

Writing something on a piece of paper does not change reality, and writing something on a piece of paper does not change morality. Thinking that writing something on a piece of paper can change either reality or morality, that is maya. That is what the Buddha talked about, the mind illusion, because something written on a paper is just a thought that's from the mind.

So there are basically four realizations here. The first realization is that reality is about spirituality. I think anyone who follows my podcast has already come to this realization. It's not about belief, it's not about faith. This reality is objectively a spiritual reality that we exist in. We live in a spiritual reality.

The second realization is that spirituality in turn is about morality as per Episode 1. That's what all religions attempt to teach, how to be a good person. That's what all the big spiritual teachers have taught over the ages. It's the core teaching of the Buddha when he summarizes his teachings in the Dhammapada in three tenets. Don't do harm, do good. It's the core teaching of Jesus when he says the Golden Rule and says, "This is all the law and all the prophets." And we can find a variation of that in all the religions of the world, right, as per Episode 1.

So, again, the first realization is that reality is spiritual. The second realization is that spirituality is about morality. And the third realization is that writing something on a piece of paper does not change that because it's objective. It's true in reality. You cannot change what's true in reality by writing something on a piece of paper. You can't change the height of a tree by writing something on a piece of paper.

And that means that human laws do not change morality. So when a man made law matches objective morality, then it's just extra, right? If I write on a piece of paper that it's illegal to murder, it's redundant because that's already common sense, or conscience tells us that. And when a man made law is different from objective morality, if I write on a piece of paper legalized murder, then it's invalid.

And that raises a huge question in situations when governments or armies fire bomb or even nuke cities with millions of civilians. And again, this isn't a moral dilemma hypothetical, this happens all the time. Nuclear weapons have been dropped on cities with civilians twice already. And it's being talked about right now. This is currently in discussion.

In those situations, if we look at Romans 13 again, in the context of a government dropping a nuclear weapon on a city full of millions of civilians, is that government really punishing the bad people like it says in that Bible passage? Is that government really being God's representative on Earth? 

Is that really God's work or is that Satan's work? Is that the devil's work, or is that our work? Is that our madness and God just lets it happen because he has given us free will to create as much suffering as we want for ourselves if we choose to break the most basic moral rules like thou shalt not murder, which is even in the Old Testament, you don't even need Christianity for that. And we drop an atom bomb and murder millions of people in a second because someone told us to, right?

So here's the crux. There's this spiritual teaching that all our suffering is self-inflicted, and one way we create is by our belief in these ideas. And that again takes us back to Episode 2 and Episode 5, right? That's why it's important to listen to these episodes in order.

Interesting side note, and this is actually foreshadowing Episode 9. Do you know what's the highest military declaration of the US military? It's the Medal of Honor, right? Pause the podcast right now before you listen further and look up what it looks like if you haven't done that yet. Okay. Did you pause it? Are you back? Did you look it up? The highest military decoration in the world is an inverted pentagram, which is also the symbol of Satanism. Is that a coincidence?

Is it a coincidence that the app is called TikTok, TikTok and it wastes your time? I touched on Satanism briefly last episode, and I'll go in real depth on Satanism in Episode 9. It'll be a whole episode about this topic, but I'll just say this. This is part of the human mental and spiritual illness.

I've said previously that humanity is suffering from a spiritual illness. This is it. We switch on the TV and we see murder every day, and we still think we're civilized people. Does that compute? So this was long and this was heavy, but here's the good news. Once you see this, you can't unsee it. And once you can't unsee it, you can start making different choices.

You can realize that the Golden Rule, don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you doesn't change because someone writes something on a piece of paper. It doesn't change because someone holds public office. It doesn't change because someone wears a uniform. And by agreeing that it does and condoning that it does, we are actually the ones who are really causing all this suffering that is taking place. And with this realization, we can actually start creating the world that we actually want to live in. And that's what real spirituality is all about.

And there's a lot more we still need to talk about. But first, I have a few more very important points. Make sure you stick around for these because we have some absolutely life-changing killer content coming up next week, and I'll tell you all about that in a second.
First, if you like this episode, you'll probably love The Meditate More Challenge. That's my complete meditation course and it's absolutely free for now. Go check that out at meditatemorechallenge.com.

And I'd like to also ask you a quick favor. If you know someone who's interested in spirituality and meditation, in today's topic, send them to meditatemorepodcast.com. And if you haven't listened to the other episodes yet, it's time to catch up. Go over the archives, start with Episode 1 and go in order. I really think it's going to change your life.

And subscribe to the podcast, of course, because next week we'll talk about how meditation can make you happier. We'll talk about specifically what you can do with your meditation to actually increase your perceived levels of happiness in your everyday life. Second, we'll talk about how to really get started for real and how to build your meditation up to higher levels.

And as I announced, we'll talk about the religion of Satanism. I touched on that briefly in Episode 7. It's also known as a spiritual path as the left-hand path. So we'll go in depth next time. I know a man personally, who was once a priest in the Church of Satan, so I've learned a lot about that religion from him, and I read some of their books as well, Know Thy Enemy.

Here's the hint. Satanism is actually not about worshiping the devil and it's not about animal sacrifice. So what is it really about and why are so many powerful people involved in it?
By the way, speaking of Satan, I haven't forgotten that I still owe you a discussion on the question of what is God. I promised that topic for this episode. I started to make an outline for that episode and I should have known this, but it's way too big for a quick side note. I'm going to make a whole episode about this question soon too.

So all that and more in the next episodes of The Meditate More Podcast. Subscribe if you want to be notified when that episode is ready. And the best way to subscribe is to hit the big yellow button on my website, mannymandala.com. Or just go to meditatemorepodcast.com. 

By the way, since you're still here, let me wrap up a question I asked at the end of the previous episode. What about the girl at airport security who stole my stuff? Where is the line? What kind of rights does a uniform bestow upon a person? Does it bestow the right to steal? If you're at airport security, can you just steal someone's cologne? Does it bestow the right to stop a car in the street? Does it bestow the right to put people in a camp?

I think we've thoroughly answered this question in today's episode as the Buddha thought, see reality as it is. What is the actual behavior? What is really taking place in reality? And does that behavior initiate harm or does it not? I'll leave you with that to think about. So thanks so much for listening. I'll see you on the next episode, so make sure to subscribe to the podcast now.

And special thanks as always to Mariano Roguin of Mantra Tonic and Lex Van Someren for providing some of their music for the podcast. Thank you for the music, guys. I really appreciate it. And remember to meditate more, meditate more, meditate more, because it is so, so worth it.