Indulgence is part of a trinity of experience we live with. The trinity being compulsion, abstinence and indulgence. We tend to go round and round in circles on this cycle, not actually having a lot of fun.

I am a great respecter of nature, personally, and human nature I include in that. The majority of the worlds social ills that I have seen (if not all) arise not from indulgence, but from compulsion. Our social reality in my experience is a tyranny. Anything not forbidden is compulsory, and the tensions in today’s world don’t seem to be much of a mystery to me. Whenever someone can’t hang with the “proper” crowd, how do we treat them?

Where is the salvation, if salvation there is? Salvation is a necessary aspect of the whole virtue of abstinence argument. Otherwise abstinence is just empty tyranny. Thoughts?

I don’t think that what is not forbidden is compulsory? Not of a natural order, no.

I think that there is a middle ground? Indeed. But the middle ground, I would argue, doesn’t lie in abstinence or obedience.

I think there is choice. Exactly, and most of today’s institutions rely on an element of force. Either guilt or temporal influence to enforce a narrow band of choice, and damnation if you’re not able to adapt to their rules. This gives rise to the idea of inequality.

Even abstinence can be an indulgence, if it’s not instead a compulsion. But the origin of religious intolerance is not a difference in values, not in most cases. It’s in the conflict between indulgence and compulsion. Anyone take the counter view?

I think that part of conflict is struggle with power. Who’s in charge? I agree, but consider this. If your faith/spirituality is truly an indulgence for you, you are uplifted and gratified by the way you live and the peace it brings. Then why would there be any rancour if someone else chooses different?

My path does not call for abstinence, but instead moderation and temperance. Well… I would venture that we don’t actually have to practice moderation and temperance. They are sort of built into life experience. Even excessive play can cease being an indulgence and rapidly become a drudgery.

I think people who are oppressed by their belief systems exert more effort toward forcing others to conform, and feel angry and envious that another has a freedom which they themselves have sacrificed for what they consider to be the greater good. Indeed. I agree there. If one cannot indulge their own feelings, how can they indulge any other? If your path doesn’t offer you any freedom, how can you tolerate freedom in another?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~