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The "Collective Shadow" partaken of through the Cross with Christ

Eric B

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Just sorting out a bunch of stuff I've been thinking, trying to make sense of it all.

In a discussion with a Jungian theorist, the subejct of Job came up, who was said to symbolize Israel (didn't really realize this), who was a type of Christ (Which I did realize to some extent), in what was termed "bearing the collective shadow". The shadow is all of those things we shut out of our consciousness (which the "ego" is the seat of). Hence, this includes sin in general. we are quick to see it in others, but not in ourselves.

"Job was Israel, and he refused to give up his identity as a man who had faithfully followed God's law.

So the story ultimately tells us about the point at which Israel realized that God wasn't punishing His people for doing wrong. He was telling them that following His law would force them to carry the collective Shadow. This is when Israel began to understand itself as the suffering servant rather than a people chosen by God to rule over others. [That is, the faithful within Israel, or "spiritual Israel". The unfaithful, of course, continued to look for the "warrior messiah", leading to reject the Messiah sent to them].

Job had two options: to protest his suffering as wholly undeserved, which was his first inclination, ensuring his experience of the "dark" side of God; or to bear his suffering as a sign of faith. He chose the latter, so that he didn't become a shaman who moves between men and demons. He became a mediator who moves between men and the God whose law he kept, even though doing so would court compensation from the dark forces that had been denied. Satan, in the story, is the dark force who compensates a righteous man by trying to convince him that his righteousness does not ensure a just reward. A suffering servant accepts the pain and privation as redemptive, borne for the sake of the world.

Suffering is the inevitable outcome of being mortal. To avoid it is to avoid life itself.
We human beings are both conscious and mortal. We have no choice but to recognize our limitations, and the ego rages against them for as long as we're alive.

Jesus showed us, however, that when we suffer, we become capable of states the immortal gods will never know: the existential condition of love, which is keenly felt through a human heart; compassion for others who suffer, because we know pain in our human bodies.
"

All of this spoke to me, who has been struggling ("mid-life crisis") with God's involvement in life, and Christianity's tossing around the "suffering as tests from God; you better have a good attitude toward it or you're a bad Christian" jargon, in light of my own experiences, and fit in with the Comprehensive Grace premise I had adopted. (That the world is redeemed; not all still being held under the Law save a relative few who must make the right choice and then behave to match it).

Nobody is supposed to bear the collective shadow (sin) except for Christ. The world however does not really recognize Christ, but instead relies on a sense of human goodness, and even the religious world falls into this. So the world of people tend to pass the buck, and dump the shadow on others. Particularly whoever is in a vulnerable position and can’t pass it off on someone else.

The black race, for instance, has basically borne the shadow of much of the world. We have been made into the most evil and backward race, based on stuff like crime, morality, “civilized society” and technology. (Just look at this, especially the comments, for an example: http://www.hiphopmusicdotcom.com/why-i-hate-blacks.html) However, those who believe themselves “superior” and saying all this stuff ignore and excuse the barbarism (wars, conquest, pillaging, etc) their ancestors had often employed to become “superior” in the first place. We are blamed for the state of the US economy, and when suggested that it’s the fruit of the capitalist system, this too is turned back on us, as the rich are seen as “earning” it, and we’re just trying to “take” what’s rightly theirs. It’s all based on an attribution shift. When they took what was others’, it was “God” divinely “blessing” them.

As a "Safety sensitive" worker", we on my job are constantly under the gun regarding mistakes or rule violations, while upper management and contractors have total freedom (especially when it comes to money and efficiency). Then, when service is bad, fares go up, sometimes we are the ones the public blames.

Neither of these two groups really had any [official] identity of following God’s Law like Israel did. (Though the blacks did eventually become Christian and read their experience into Biblical stories of Israel in Egypt, and the Church under persecution). It’s whoever is more “bad” (like in the street sense) that gets to set the game and put people into these positions (while often thinking they themselves are the "chosen" ones, with "chosenness" always interpreted in terms of power and privilege over others)..

So it seems anyone who attempts to be “good”, for any reason (including in a passive sense; just not striving to be "bad"), will have this burden fall on them. No one can be “good” enough to meet God’s requirements, but the world does not know this anyway (And even much of the Church still thinks trying to be as “good” as one can is necessary to “prove” oneself “elect”).
So they proceed to project their shadow (sin) onto those not as powerful or as good as passing the buck as they. Gaining such power often involves doing things “not good”, or “taking risks” (as they often brag).

So it seems anyone who attempts to be “good”, for any reason, will have this burden fall on them. No one can be “good” enough to meet God’s requirements, but the world does not know this anyway (And even much of the Church still thinks trying to be as “good” as one can is necessary to “prove” oneself “elect”).
So they proceed to project their shadow (sin) onto those not as powerful or as good as passing the buck as they. Gaining such power often involves doing things “not good”, or “taking risks” (as they often brag).

We with less power are taught things like the “serenity” of changing what we can, accepting what we can’t, and knowing the difference. If you don’t have the power over others to main equilibrium of respect in a relationship (if they offend you, there will be a consequence), and they “get away with it”, then we are counseled to “forgive”, get over it, and go on.
Looming over our head, from a Biblical perspective, is that God has forgiven us. This effectively becomes the “Cross” we are to bear, like Christ bearing our sin on the original Cross. Even though we are not actually bearing the other person’s sin, it does feel like it is falling on us in such a situation where we are not able to either get the person back, or take it out on someone else.

Then, in counseling, we're even told to forgive ourselves! Like we are the ones who did all this to ourselves. I guess, what it is, like in my case, if being angry at yourself for not being able to protect yourself from the pains of life more. Not being able to do more for yourself. So we basically have to forgive ourselves and the whole world. Just like (we believe) Jesus did.
So it's almost as if we really are bearing the collective sin. But I guess we aren't; it is "partaking" in Christ, who did.

Life, the way it is set up, favors the powerful; those with the drive and/or advantage to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals.
They then use that advantage to essentially place burdens on others they will not bear themselves.

The Beatitudes then come to make more sense as to why negative circumstances such as poverty seem to carry a virtue in themselves. (The immediate context was the followers of Jesus being persecuted by the religious establishment of the day).

Perfect example is forgoing the potential romantic partners of "the world" and settling on a monogamous "Christian" life. But now restricting yourself to only this one other person in the whole world, it does not stop the curiosity about what else has been "missed". Yet if you lust/desire/imagine, etc., you're "sinning". As many of the most frevent preachers have shown in their own life, no amount of "standards" is able to keep you pure, spiritually and/or physically.

It's like you just set yourself up. You've borne more sin it seems, than if you had just gone and lived out the secular "single life" of "swinging" or whatever. And for someone who trusted in this as proving they were "holier" than others; it's like a waste. You do all this, for what? You're spiritually no better off than the swingers. And heaven help if people in the "world" see your problem. They will dump on you all the guilt every preacher ever dumped on them (the world).
But we're still supposed to "obey", whether it makes us more righteous or not.

Those who do are basically taking the collective shadow on themselves. Or, again, partaking in Christ.
I've even expanded my view of the "demonic personality" archetypal complex. Not only is it an image of evil we project onto others, but also an image of a totally weak, defeated, sapped-of-life image we fear becoming if we don't fight that evil without, and maintain the ego and its anima/animus. (this is what shadows the vulnerability of the anima/inferior, in an "ego-dystonic", even more negative way). But in reality, this is really the "daimon" (what the archetype is really supposed to be) that has taken on the burden of the whole shadow. (Hence, appearing to be so pathetic and broken, and in the ego's view, "passively" evil by allowing evil to prevail). Ultimately, he becomes an "angel", if the ego allows him to.

The thing for me now, becomes how true is all this? I'm finding a lot of understanding (things fitting together), but understanding does not always equate to incentive. It still comes down to a matter of "faith", as as we've discussed elsewhere, this sort of faith is often very hard for NT's.
For me, when I begin feeling bound with need to "take on" such a burden like that which means to possibly have to forego the ego's goals or way of seeing things, then Trickster Se comes and demands hard, tangible "proof" before I will make such a concession. Senex Ni envisions just "giving in", and after all is said and done, it will prove to have been wrong, and I was just a "sucker" for letting go of ego's wishes.

So this is the "struggle" for me, in life at this point.
 

AphroditeGoneAwry

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Yeah, I think intellectualizing can just take you away from giving in to God, and is just another way to exert control over your life.

I've come to realize true power, if there is such a thing, probably [paradoxically] comes from letting go of all Will to Power, which can even be followed by our Wills to Life and Love, if you want to take it that far. Which is also essentially letting go of being human....leading into the archetypal concepts you referred to, such as going into the daimon and 'allowing' evil to exist.

So suffering is the key to entering new realms whereby you are forced to let go, or remain suffering. The conflict being control versus succumbing which is so antithesis to being human because it actually makes us more Godly, in the end.

I guess this is what the Buddhists refer to when they speak to letting go of desire. I guess if you whittle away human Will, you are left with the most Godly form of humanity. ?
 

Eric B

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You're saying that "letting go" is letting go of being human? Funny, as what I was told, was that letting go, by accepting our limitations, was being truly human (at least, as God designed us, and I guess as opposed to trying to be God, or something like that).
 
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Do you understand that faith is a gift from God?

(Romans 12:3) For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.
 

Eric B

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That appears to be the Calvinist reading of passages like that, but the point is not God giving someone the ability to believe (which is then presumed to be "withheld" from those who don't believe), but that they are "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think" as if their salvation was of their own will and not grace. (Eph. 2:8 also)
 
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Job isn't a metaphor at all. Job was a man just like the Bible said, and exactly what was written was what happened to him.

Temptation must come. Even the most righteous man on earth had to be tempted. How Job was tempted starts right at the very begenning with his wife saying "why are you holding on to your integrity? curse God and die!" (and put an end to your suffering) but Job wouldnt (in case your wondering it is no coincidence it starts this way just as it did in the garden of Eden).

Eventually God had to put an end to Jobs suffering and remind him to remember his Creator. (this is the conclusion of Ecclesiates, the collective end of wisdom about the suffering, toil, and meaninglessness of life).
 

Eric B

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I wasn't saying he was a metaphor; just a type of Israel/Christ (a type basically serves as both a literal figure and a metaphor at the same time).
 

Mole

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Our collective shadow is Original Sin, paid for by Jesus on the Cross.

But we now know there was no Adam and Eve and so no Original Sin, and so no collective shadow either partaken by Jesus on Cross or redeemed by Him.
 

Eric B

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And how do you say we know that?
 

Mole

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And how do you say we know that?

We know that through evidence and reason, exemplified in Charles Darwin's, "Origin of Species", and confirmed in Watson and Crick's, "The Double Helix", and the sequencing of the genome.

Yes, we arrived here by non random natural selection over vast unimaginable eons of time. And at no point was there a homo sapiens Adam and Eve, so no Original Sin and no need for Redemption.
 
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That appears to be the Calvinist reading of passages like that, but the point is not God giving someone the ability to believe (which is then presumed to be "withheld" from those who don't believe), but that they are "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think" as if their salvation was of their own will and not grace. (Eph. 2:8 also)

I'm not sure what Calvinist means. The passage came from King James.

In response to your original post, we wash and renew our minds with the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
 

Eric B

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We know that through evidence and reason, exemplified in Charles Darwin's, "Origin of Species", and confirmed in Watson and Crick's, "The Double Helix", and the sequencing of the genome.

Yes, we arrived here by non random natural selection over vast unimaginable eons of time. And at no point was there a homo sapiens Adam and Eve, so no Original Sin and no need for Redemption.
That does not disprove sin. There are other views of Genesis that are not as literal with the apparent timeline, that do not throw it all away.

I'm not sure what Calvinist means. The passage came from King James.

In response to your original post, we wash and renew our minds with the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
Calvinists are those who assume these passages mean that God selects those who will believe, and deliberately "passes over" the rest.

I need to understand what else could be your point. I mention the difficulty of faith (for me), so are you suggesting God has just "passed me over" or something? Or, "don't worry about such questions; if God has elected you, you'll have no problem with these things"?

Even people who claim to have such a solid faith that God "gave" to them (or they got "just from reading" and being renewed by the Word of God, are fallible, and don't know as much as they think they do (evidenced by some of their interpretations of scripture, and the "traditions" they follow, apart from scripture even, and that they don't even agree with each other on a lot things; and God isn't going to "give" different people different "faiths", or something that turns out to be wrong, or not scriptural).
 

Mole

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That does not disprove sin. There are other views of Genesis that are not as literal with the apparent timeline, that do not throw it all away.

Well, if Genesis is merely a metaphor for the human condition, then Original Sin is also a metaphor, along with the Cross, Resurrection and Redemption.

And then we need to ask, are they good metaphors?

Is blood sacrifice for sin a good metaphor?

Is it a good metaphor that the Father tortured his Son to death in order to forgive us Original Sin?

Are these the metaphors we want to teach our children?
 
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I need to understand what else could be your point. I mention the difficulty of faith (for me), so are you suggesting God has just "passed me over" or something? Or, "don't worry about such questions; if God has elected you, you'll have no problem with these things"?

Even people who claim to have such a solid faith that God "gave" to them (or they got "just from reading" and being renewed by the Word of God, are fallible, and don't know as much as they think they do (evidenced by some of their interpretations of scripture, and the "traditions" they follow, apart from scripture even, and that they don't even agree with each other on a lot things; and God isn't going to "give" different people different "faiths", or something that turns out to be wrong, or not scriptural).

No, I'm not suggesting God has passed you over. Not at all. In fact, I think the opposite is true, and you may be experiencing a supernatural phenomenon. I think God is right where you are and has a lot compassion for you because he made you a very logical man, which requires much greater effort on your part in letting go of *you* to hear from Him. From what I've seen, you already have a solid understanding of the gospel.

Admittedly, I don't completely understand the technical details about the collective shadow that you mentioned, so I may be reaffirming high level things you already know. I just wanted to share what is on my heart after reading your post and throw out some ideas, based on scripture that might help you.

In summary:

Do you receive that God has given you a measure of faith?
(I don't know how this measure of faith manifests in each person. I would guess it varies from person to person. It may start out as a curiousity or an inkling that there's something out there greater, which would lead to a spiritual journey to greater faith.

Do you receive that by reading the Word of God, which is alive & powerful, that your faith will grow (Romans 10:17)?
(I understand that you've already answered this question, but I'm including it again because I think it's significant and maybe you haven't fully experienced the power of the Holy Spirit working in you. Ask God to reveal the true meaning of Romans 10:17 to you and he will.)

EDIT: Knock and the door will open. Seek and you will find. That is a powerful truth that I can attest to. When I faithfully seek, God faithfully answers. It may not happen as quickly as I would like, as God's timing is not our timing, and sometimes he's grooming us for something more, but he does answer!
 
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From what I've seen, some of the confusion Christians have is that they have not embraced the truth of the totality of the Bible.

If people would come to understand that the Bible is a spiritual phenomenon and literally the living, breathing Word of God, they might look at it differently. There are several scriptures that support this.

And to prove how powerful God's words are: God actually created the world with the spoken word; meaning, he spoke it into existence.

So maybe another way to look at faith is simply believing what God says is true and that he is not a man that he should lie.

I know I'm rambling to the choir here. This is an interesting topic to brainstorm.
 

wildflower

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i'm going to try to post more later as you've brought up some interesting things here. i just wondered if you've read on job: God-talk and the suffering of the innocent by gustavo gutierrez who is a liberation theologist. it's a brief commentary on the book of job and while i haven't finished it i found what i've read to be a great help in understanding how christ identifies with us in the role of suffering. i've only read a few books on trying to understand why God allows so much suffering in the world but this one is by far the best.
 

wildflower

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Well, if Genesis is merely a metaphor for the human condition, then Original Sin is also a metaphor, along with the Cross, Resurrection and Redemption.

And then we need to ask, are they good metaphors?

Is blood sacrifice for sin a good metaphor?

Is it a good metaphor that the Father tortured his Son to death in order to forgive us Original Sin?

Are these the metaphors we want to teach our children?

hey victor. the bible has been read in various ways over time and among differing traditions and places. there are many more ways than just literal or metaphorical and those seem to be extremes and personally not ones that are great. reading the bible literally renders it nonsensical and reading it metaphorically removes its power for transformation. e.g. if we read the verse where it says "jesus is the gate" literally that means jesus is a slab of wood. haha. if we think jesus didn't physically rise from the dead then it's all a big scam really. one thing to remember is that the various books of the bible need to be read according to their genre: some are wisdom literature (proverbs, song of solomon), some apocalyptic (revelation, ezekiel), etc. when we try to interpret each book, or even various passages within the same book, using only one interpretive method for everything it doesn't work at all. we have to respect the various biblical genres and use the appropriate interpretive method for each genre of the book or passage of the biblical literature. there is plenty of info out there instructing us how to do this too so we are not flying blind or have to make it up. of course, there will still be differing interpretations because we are only human but at least we won't come up with some of the nonsense interpretations we see in the modern era.

another thing is imposing modern interpretive methods on an ancient book also render it contradictory and inaccurate. for example, in biblical times they didn't tell their stories from a chronological perspective so sometimes things are out of order and to our modern ears this seems inaccurate, but it isn't by their standards. we have to interpret this ancient book using ancient--rather than modern--interpretive methods. i've read there is something similar in how they accounted for numbers too. it's just not done in the same way as in our modern western world. for an interesting read how the interpretive approaches have changed over time and place go here. really, that whole site is excellent.
 

Eric B

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More thoughts on this:

Man does not like pain, and tries to avoid it at any cost.

He devises a system of Law, where we can presumably control how much pain or pleasure he receives, based on an assumption that “pain” is the result of being “bad”, and thus pleasure, convenience, or other favor (connected with an overdriven "survival" instinct) is earned by “good” works.
This in theory places "fate" all under our control. We can determine how much we "deserve", and if we get what we think we deserve, we are justified in having more than others, and thus get all the more "honor" (it proves were "worked hard" to "earn it", and are thus "better" than others) at the same time! If we don't get it, we can appeal to the Law, and cast blame on scapegoats we belive are responsible. Even if it doesn't work in getting us what we want, we still get some satisfaction in placing ourselves on the moral "higher ground".

This was likely the “knowledge of 'good and evil'” that plunged man into an existence of sensing “pain” in everything in nature.
Hence, this is how I would understand "the Law being at the request of man", and not God.
God may have uttered "the soul that sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4, 20), and "do this and live" (Lev. 18:5, Ezekiel 18:5-9, 20:11, 13, Luke 10:28), but this was because man had taken that fruit that put him under this knowledge of sin and its need to be compensated by righteousness in the first place, and to show that this was a bondage that rendered him incapable of doing it.

We can see this everywhere, from the Job story, to the Pharisees' belief that calamities others suffered were judgment for sin (Luke 13), to the modern political rhetoric that says that the poor are just lazy, and the rich deserved it all (an no matter how much they gain, the state of the economy can't ever be partly their fault; it's just the liberal "do gooders" violating the LAW by taking all the money from the "hard workers" and giving it to the "undeserving". I can even see it in my struggles for "fairness" in life, and compensation for past pains.

Also, continuing to try to understand tha anima concept, and what exactly it is that I'm supposed to "come to terms with" and "accept" regarding this complex, so that it doesn't keep getting projected onto the opposite gender, as someone explained to me.

On one hand, it's something within us we desire, but see in the opposite gender:
http://aisling-ireland.suite101.com/understanding-the-jungian-anima-archetype-a207606
A man seeking the soul mate that will "complete" him is not actually seeking an authentic woman. Instead, he is looking for an imaginary woman in every sense of the word-an image, a projection, a mirror of his own inner self manifested in the outer, waking world.

This, we see as containing "life-giving energy".
So I wondered what was the negative part of this we repress.

Michael Anthony Corey Male Fraud: Understanding Sexual Harassment, Date Rape, and Other Forms of Male Hostility Towards Women
http://books.google.com/books?id=EU...AEwAw#v=onepage&q=accepting the anima&f=false
discusses the anima regarding "male machismo", and this gave me a clue. One of the things I as a male associate with femininity (and the antithesis of my ideal of masculinity) is both "submission" and "nurturing". Those I definitely try to avoid. (though I do sense a desire to nurture, but the problem is, the world is "not safe" to make onesself so vulnerable like that. So the "knowledge and mastery" desire of iNtuition and Thinking is what is the most safe for survival.
Yet the frustration of this need is making life very difficult.

This would go along with what the whole "partaking of the Cross" concept has been leading to.

http://www.lessons4living.com/moving_towards_wholeness.htm
Ultimately, midlife is taking you to a new and deeper level of meaning. What meaning will work for you? What is a truly workable meaning for life? Spiritual and psychological traditions all agree. It is to become a generative person. In the simplest language it mean to fully, "Love you neighbor as yourself." It is to follow the "Golden Rule." It is to Be of service to others. Midlife is taking you to your true Self and challenging you to the creative journey of making "That Which is Greater" manifest the world.

So now, the task is finding out how to go about this, and also learning to cope with a universe I can't "master".
 

Mole

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hey victor. the bible has been read in various ways over time and among differing traditions and places. there are many more ways than just literal or metaphorical and those seem to be extremes and personally not ones that are great. reading the bible literally renders it nonsensical and reading it metaphorically removes its power for transformation. e.g. if we read the verse where it says "jesus is the gate" literally that means jesus is a slab of wood. haha. if we think jesus didn't physically rise from the dead then it's all a big scam really. one thing to remember is that the various books of the bible need to be read according to their genre: some are wisdom literature (proverbs, song of solomon), some apocalyptic (revelation, ezekiel), etc. when we try to interpret each book, or even various passages within the same book, using only one interpretive method for everything it doesn't work at all. we have to respect the various biblical genres and use the appropriate interpretive method for each genre of the book or passage of the biblical literature. there is plenty of info out there instructing us how to do this too so we are not flying blind or have to make it up. of course, there will still be differing interpretations because we are only human but at least we won't come up with some of the nonsense interpretations we see in the modern era.

another thing is imposing modern interpretive methods on an ancient book also render it contradictory and inaccurate. for example, in biblical times they didn't tell their stories from a chronological perspective so sometimes things are out of order and to our modern ears this seems inaccurate, but it isn't by their standards. we have to interpret this ancient book using ancient--rather than modern--interpretive methods. i've read there is something similar in how they accounted for numbers too. it's just not done in the same way as in our modern western world. for an interesting read how the interpretive approaches have changed over time and place go here. really, that whole site is excellent.

In short, the Bible teaches theology.
 

Mole

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Jesus did not condemn institutional slavery, and so cast our collective shadow.
 
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