Voluntary poverty defined in the right context of this case history: Is the quality and character of scarcity of personal ownership, especially personal possessions. It does not mean necessarily the absence of use of certain property, a diminished quality of life nor the absence of use of certain property. Instead, Poverty is willing austerity and the denouncement of claiming personal ownership of property, in deference to such property being claimed, owned and managed by other entities such as the Estate.
Because it was not taught in the traditional sense. It is very similar to the way monks live in monasteries. It is a process of self-emptying, a dying to the socially conditioned self that has been programmed by the Domestication Process that has occurred. It is a way to transform from a caterpillar into a butterfly through a metamorphosis type method of allowing our interior to be transformed more through the infusion of virtues rather than the acquisition of virtues and also reconfigured our interior disposition to have a right understanding of our relationship to the material world, that we have a right to use things, but not to "possess them". Effects are rather controlled by the Estate or some other entity, but not personally controlled any longer. This frees us to live a more "frugal" life. Truly, it is believed to be the only antidote to a highly dysfunctional commercial system that has convinced millions of people to buy more and more to find their primary fulfillment. It is a way to not have the soul to be wearied and tired from clinging to possessions -- because it is truly the possessions that are possessing us -- despite the world wanting us to believe otherwise. It is a complete self emptying -- that our identity is in Christ or God Alone and that by practicing dying to this socially created egoic self by recognizing the short falls in the character defects of the social self that was created as a by product of our environment, we have the opportunity to study, grow, put on and have the divine character of Christ, which has the chance to make us more fully human and more loving to those we are around. This reverse model is counter-cultural to the world, but it was what Mystics and the most highly Spiritually Enlightened people in monasteries have known for thousands of years as the primary means towards living a more peaceful and a more fulfilling life, inner freedom/liberty, and true happiness, through a rightly ordered re-ordering of our life from the old order of the world.
On one hand, we are poor and on the other hand he are the Steward of these effects. It is a conversion from an Ownership type concept to a Stewardship type vehicle.
is it believed that this may have been a leading if not only reason why many governments of many countries in the past have stormed into monasteries and wanted monasteries out of their territory -- because they were afraid the knowledge of this voluntary poverty would be a threat to their society and make it a slight bit less consumeristic? Yes
Will people around you think you are absolutely crazy if you try to explain it to them? Yes, they reject what they do not know. It has to be diagrammed on a white board for truly one to understand how this process truly is re-ordered to properly explain it to someone for them to have the chance to "get it".
Voluntary poverty is not taught in greater detail at Services at Church, because even they most likely are not living it out -- only those in monasteries and those who have chosen to live similarly and have a family, kids, etc.,
Are you saying that average people either for themselves or those that want to raise a family, following the similar model for living a life of voluntary poverty, similar to that of those living in monasteries is under attack and people are prevented from doing so? Yes
Why are you telling me this? So you, will join with us, to form a non-violence resistance movement that says this outside interference is completely unacceptable, in fact, against the very nature of who we are and that by so allowing any entity to stomp on our abilities to live this life of voluntary poverty out, we are being stripped of our truest right to practice our truest faith and our truest freedom. To truly live the poverty of the Gospel? Yes.
Major point: Voluntary poverty is the primary means of learning and being unconditional love and that model is contrary to the Collective Conditioning Training Program of Society which teaches Vengeance and Division is the best response. The latter brings the most profit to the medical, pharmaceutical and legal industries.
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