John Wilson
The "God of the Bible"
Posted on: 05/31/2010 21:22
This topic/phrase came up during a profound theological discussion I was having with Chasen...and I was reading some science guy who said there is one fundiment of the Universe: the evident desire for the increase of complexity...
From a An infinitly small packet of energy...
strings, to hydrogen , more atoms, things, life, consciousness, evolution in general
And the God in charge, the God of the Bible, certsaintly, in the span of time it records, went from a punishing war-like egoist, to a god of reason, morals, ethics ...love. still permeating all of existance. Jesus, in mans development glommed on to the ever presence of God and tried to make his awareness known to everybody, with (so far) limited effect. Arm focuses in on this...
----------Immanuel. (God in us)
In the infinite number of conjectured universes...every one gets a God, we got a brand new one...
What do YOU think will be man's next evolutionary step?
That, so far and just off hand is someting that might get a comment or two...
(I am happy that there are few rocks handy....
Comments
Panentheism
Posted on: 06/03/2010 09:11
Star the essene community was before Jesus and there is no historical evidence that Jesus was an essene - Read James Robinson a leading school on the documents.
Gray Owl
Posted on: 06/03/2010 10:08
Golden nicely said about sentience - yes the universe is relational reality and ecosystem. Where sentience is found is in actual entities - animals, humans, cells ( but not rocks) The earth is a society of sentient reality. To make the earth or the universe into sentience is misplaced concreteness and it gets us to all sorts of problems intellectually. It is bad metaphysics and bad science.
I respect that line of reasoning.
Humans are molecules and energy arranged to create sentience. I'm not sure what the definition of God is in all of this logic however.
The chasm I find in the reasoning is that sentience is centered in the brain, cells, etc., something that humans can relate to on their terms. But humans are complex organisms. So is the Earth, much more complex than humans. Christians believe that there is a spiritual element to humans, a spiritual element attached to the organism but not dependent upon its arrangement of molecules and energy for its own consciousness. Our ability to perceive consciousness in such a limited arrangement of molecules and energy, humans and animals doesn't seem to take its own logic far enough.
It comes down to shared experience. Academics have a shared intellectual perception, the Church its own, shamans their own, etc. Without shared experience within community, perceptual barriers exist in communication.
Here is a problem - stones can speak is a great metaphor. However to give them sentience is to make a category mistake and makes it hard to engage materialists. They just see fuzy thinking.
Yes there is within the cell a sentience and sentience is within all living things. However it is a matter of degree and sometimes the degree is so much it feels like kind. And when we ignore this difference in complexity we give over to the materialists the idea of differenece in kind. This is the dualistic outcome of rejecting the earth as a society of living realities and making it only materialistic and thus only instrumental - it does away with intrinsic worth that each sentient reality has.
There is no difference in complexity and kind between any consciousness, because the base structure is simplicity, consciousness. Consciousness demands structure, and that structure is meaning.
Humans are the most complex organism in the seens of consciousness - a sense of self and a sense of other, and there is inter and intra subjectivity and a reflection on those relationships.
In my experience, extra-human consciousness is just as self-aware as the human. The difference is in emphasis. We choose to defer to the qualities of the mind, separate and dominant over all other faculties, and grow the muscle to ensure its success.
Where does God come in? God is an actual entity who is infinite not finite - not an exception to the metaphysical rule of relationality and inter and intra subjectivity. God can only influence by persusasion and has an agenda which is an aim toward novelty and intensity and harmony - peace beauty justice and compassion.
God has a specific and non-specific consciousness. Modern thought focuses on the non-specific consciousness to answer its questions. God chooses to influence by persuasion, but also has the ability to enact His own Will. The choice is in His judgment and wisdom.
There is a difference between energy and molecules - molecules are actual entities and thus have some level of sentience whereas energy is a process of becoming - in one sense not a thing but a proposition- it is the connecting process of related realities. This does mean we need all forms of communication and insights to respond to the possiblity of Beauty offered by God... it is through propositions ( ideas) and experience we feel the aim of God ( note here God has an aim offered persuasively)
From my understanding of science, molecules and energy are the same thing. A piece of uranium can be turned into the energy of the Sun, through a nuclear explosion. It is a constant transformational process of the same thing. God gives us a choice of how we transform, how we use the energy/molecules and consciousness within this reality.
But Paul's experience on the road to Damascus also illustrates how God can act in a forceful persuasive way, to lean the choice in His favor. We have free will, but some people have more free will than others.
Yes the mind which is more than the brain organizes the sentience in the cells and is influenced by the sentience in the cells etc. It is a both/and.
If such complex sentience is in just one human being, the modern mind's drive is to control each cell's sentience through microbiology. Such complexity simply from a materialist point of view is tremendous. The 'spiritual' components when added in contribute further to our incredible complexity as a transitory unit of consciousness, but also raises even deeper questions of identity.
Panentheism
Posted on: 06/03/2010 10:26
You make my point in your comments on transformation - energy is the process. Molecules are the form which is always becoming - moving from one form into another in each nonsecond. Yes it is an interactive world with influences internally and externally.
In respect to free will it is the concept we use for higher forms of life- where there is self consciousness about the acting. This, though, does not deny there is self determinative power in simple things - all living reality has some level of self determining power.
Spiritual experience works with our free will to lure it into more beauty - it is not a difference in levels of free will for that is constant, it is the influence from outside. In human interaction we work out free will given our context, genetics etc. It is both/and. God can influence and that influence is never force only persusaion. It is an mystical expeince and all of us have them but some of us have learned ( habit) to ignore them - religion is to open us up to that reality ( note reality)
you said If such complex sentience is in just one human being, the modern mind's drive is to control each cell's sentience through microbiology. Such complexity simply from a materialist point of view is tremendous. The 'spiritual' components when added in contribute further to our incredible complexity as a transitory unit of consciousness, but also raises even deeper questions of identity.
I am suggesting something similar if I understand you. I would add the cell does some influence. It again an interaction within the body and organized by the body and mind. Consciousness has emerged and in that sense it is what we call self reflection. There is a difference in consciousness due to self reflection ( which also includes the influence of other self reflective selves and the ideas that have been created by self reflection) So we have more than a dog - because we ask why we die?, for example
We are influenced by both material reality ( that is which is and outside us) and spiritual reality ( that which is inside us and outside us) both are real propositions and we feel them. Thus we are intersubjective ( outside influence) and intra subjective ( what we do with the influence) and all real things have this experience - true in difference of degree.
God is the supreme example of this process - interactive - feeling and being felt within the relational reality which we have named our world.
MikePaterson
Posted on: 06/03/2010 10:52
Hi Pan:
Sort of...
Where we encounter godness, in my experience, is where we allow the mystery within us (our own uncharted self) to engage with the mystery beyond us. It differs from most of our other experience (which can be expressed as narratives) in the kind of "locking" one feels -- and that doesn't fit into words because it is somehow the opposite of so many reference points (like time, place, action, reaction, cause and effect) -- it's the "I am" thing which to a great number of people is bullshit because it dissolves categories.
And categorical discussion of "godness" necessarily scatters into vagueness, contradictions and paradox. Even conflict
There are so many ways in which I've come to see that denial or acceptance of "God" has nothing to do with "God" (and I'm sure our little views do not bother "God" in the slightest: we can't make "God" go away any more than we can switch off the universe: it would erase our existence in its entirety): godness is inclusiveness because it can't be otherwise (not, at least, as far as we need concern ourselves, given our limited powers of thought, comprehension, perception and communication, and all the the influences and enculturation we take on board).
I don't see this view branding me a "mystic" --I am as rooted in materiality as anyone else. I just see no other way of making some interim space for me to live out my life. I think we all make such spaces. (And this is somehow what our freewill is about: it's not about "will I?" or "won't I" -- it's about "am I" or "aren't I"?)
Arminius
Posted on: 06/03/2010 11:56
Gray Owl : quote
"For Mother Earth loved Father so much, She agreed to sacrifice Her Creation so that the souls could grow."
AW.....this is so beautiful....I stand in awe......
.
Here is Jesus speaking in the writings of the Essenes:
The Gospel of Peace
"The blood which runs in us is born of the blood of our Earthly Mother. Her blood falls from the clouds; leaps from the womb of the earth; babbles in the brooks of the mountains; flows wide in the rivers of the plains; sleeps in the lakes; rages mightily in tempestuous seas.
"The air which we breathe is born of the breath of our Earthly Mother. Her breath is azure in the heights of t heavens; soughs in the tops of the mountains; whispers the leaves of the forest; billows over the cornfields; slumbers in the deep valleys, burns hot in the desert.
"The hardness of our bones is born of the bones of our Earthly Mother, of the rocks and of the stones. They stand naked to the heavens on the tops of mountains; are as giants that lie sleeping on the sides of the mountains, as idols set in the desert, and are hidden in the deepness of the earth.
"The tenderness of our flesh is born of the flesh of our Earthly Mother; whose flesh waxes yellow and red in the fruits of the trees, and nurtures us in the furrows of the fields.
"Our bowels are born of the bowels of our Earthly Mother, and are hid from our eyes, like the invisible depths of the earth.
"The light of our eyes, the hearing of our ears, both are born of the colors and the sounds of our Earthly Mother; which enclose us about, as the waves of the sea a fish, as the eddying air a bird.
"I tell you in very truth, Man is the Son of the Earthly Mother, and from her did the Son of Man receive his whole body, even as the body of the newborn babe is born of the womb of his mother. I tell you truly, you are one with the Earthly Mother; she is in you, and you in her. Of her were you born, in her do you live, and to her shall you return again. Keep, therefore, her laws, for none can live long, neither be happy, but he who honors his Earthly Mother and does her laws. For your breath is her breath; your blood her blood; your bone her bone; your flesh her flesh; your bowels her bowels; your eyes and your ears are her eyes and her ears.
"I tell you truly, should you fail to keep but one only of all these laws, should you harm but one only of all your body's members, you shall be utterly lost in your grievous sickness, and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I tell you, unless you follow the laws of your Mother, you can in no wise escape death. And he who clings to the laws of his Mother, to him shall his Mother cling also. She shall heal all his plagues, and he shall never become sick. She gives him long life, and protects him from all afflictions; from fire, from water, from the bite of venomous serpents. For your Mother bore you, keeps life within you. She has given you her body, and none but she heals you. Happy is he who loves his Mother and lies quietly in her bosom. For your Mother loves you, even when you turn away from her. And how much more shall she love you, if you turn to her again? I tell you truly, very great is her love, greater than the greatest of mountains, deeper than the deepest seas. And those who love their Mother, she never deserts them. As the hen protects her chickens, as the lioness her cubs, as the mother her newborn babe, so does the Earthly Mother protect the Son of Man from all danger and from all evils.
http://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/peace1.html
index
http://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/
Hi stardust:
I read the Essene Gospel of Peace for the first time about twenty years ago, and was impressed and deeply touched. What sticks out in my memory is their Lord's Prayer, which actually is a two part prayer, a Lord's Prayer and a Lady's Prayer.
Their Lord's Prayer begins in the traditional manner with "Our Father, who art in heaven..." Their Lady's Prayer begins with "Our Mother, who art on earth..."
Panentheism
Posted on: 06/03/2010 12:08
Hi Pan:
Sort of...
Where we encounter godness, in my experience, is where we allow the mystery within us (our own uncharted self) to engage with the mystery beyond us. It differs from most of our other experience (which can be expressed as narratives) in the kind of "locking" one feels -- and that doesn't fit into words because it is somehow the opposite of so many reference points (like time, place, action, reaction, cause and effect) -- it's the "I am" thing which to a great number of people is bullshit because it dissolves categories.
And categorical discussion of "godness" necessarily scatters into vagueness, contradictions and paradox. Even conflict
There are so many ways in which I've come to see that denial or acceptance of "God" has nothing to do with "God" (and I'm sure our little views do not bother "God" in the slightest: we can't make "God" go away any more than we can switch off the universe: it would erase our existence in its entirety): godness is inclusiveness because it can't be otherwise (not, at least, as far as we need concern ourselves, given our limited powers of thought, comprehension, perception and communication, and all the the influences and enculturation we take on board).
I don't see this view branding me a "mystic" --I am as rooted in materiality as anyone else. I just see no other way of making some interim space for me to live out my life. I think we all make such spaces. (And this is somehow what our freewill is about: it's not about "will I?" or "won't I" -- it's about "am I" or "aren't I"?)
Amen amen amen - I am likewise deeply rooted in material realtiy for that is where we experience godness - for there is no god forsaken place - this is what I understand mysticism to be about - your description. You have said very nicely what I believe.
stardust
Posted on: 06/03/2010 14:50
Arminius:quote
"Their Lord's Prayer begins in the traditional manner with "Our Father, who art in heaven..." Their Lady's Prayer begins with "Our Mother, who art on earth..."
Yes, I saw that. I liked it too. I read it about 6 yrs. ago but I forget because I read too much on the net. I find that after reading so much on the net over the years I'm inclined not to take the spiritual articles too seriously. "That's nice".....and then I go off and forget about it
.
Pan: Thanks. I did read some of James Robinson on the Essenes.
John Wilson
Posted on: 06/03/2010 15:36
:
I can't raise the consciousness of the world. But if humankind does not collectively raise its consciousness, then humanity is doomed.
Egocentricity, ethnocentricity, and anthropocentricity are doing us in. If we don't evolve gaiacentricity or cosmocentricity—and soon—then we are doomed as a species.
Human history has advanced due to individual action, Newton, Einstein, Jesus, Gandi --
Indvisuals in many areas...I think collective improvement is unlikely...there will always be those who lead and those who improve by following...I also think our species is too variable an entity to all be doomed. ...maybe many, maybe most...but .there will be survivors and those will be the ones who learn of life, light, love, and liberty...(And via genetic engineering , the lion (Which will be brought back...we have flesh samples and can 'produce' more lions') and the lamb will lie down together....a good future to the few that are chosen when many are called...
That's my off-hand forced optimism.
(Instant thology is fun -- I'm always surprised when I bump into agreement
)
The universe has evolved us as far as it could, into a self-creative species. Any further evolution will be an evolution of consciousness, which can't happen without the active participation of the individual psyche and and the collective human psyche....
Unless Kurtweile is correct and computer power will be so great by 2050 Artificial Intelligence will be our stepping stone...
a literal Deus ex machnia ---
Hey! I could talk myself into believing this!
If I was a lot smarter, I could even convince others! Reduce apocaliptism!
(Wiping away thoughts of doom)
Happiness on ya....
Ichthys
Posted on: 06/03/2010 19:50
Which God of the Bible? The character changes as the story is told
I disagree. It's not the God that changes. It is the way the authors write about God. The bible was "written" over a long time span.
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 06/04/2010 08:32
Are all the things that really count in irrational space (the mind/soul/psyche) that many people chose to disbelieve in? Many ministerial people even say that intellect is evil ... destroying emotions ... perhaps just filtering out the destructive from the creative side. Then who would believe there are two side to God as suggested even by the Romans as Janus (IEnous; cosmoe logical pits?) that may even be represented as Caduces ... spiritual pairs needing whetting and dampening to still the scales. Does that sound as fishy as Pisces ... or even the freat fisherman that looked on the other side of the vas sal ... salt of the cosmos? Even the devil has trouble not giggling in church when ministers talk of a one-sided God without phi L've Sophy to create balance ... justice understanding ... then PHD is the doctrine of examining thinking ... evil in church!
Go wah wit' cha ... that's firmly catatonic like:
If a man grasps the whole of the earth and controls IT .. will he not lose his soul? Perhaps there was something about the Roue's of Shar'n and light upon that dark blotch on a plain sheet ... Rorscearch Images? The sol' thing giggles as the power above love below ... driving the whole thing crazy mon! Wo wins in the end when you cross that line of ontology stuff ... pure crap to wake the dead? God is a funny devil when viewed from the other's ide ... out of bodean incident ... rape of L'creace and few know the hidden understanding of that scratch between the pages and lines of the bo'ques, or is that books ... the toungues of man shift and does the word of God shifting in the pits of the GUI hue mon experiment ... Gui'Na Pi'gi? Did you know a Pi gathered is a infinite fold on a page like Moe Bi Us stripped of all that's physical ... hyperbolic function ... where the f of unction is a Mir Reuben in far space ... the traveller in each of us ... often denied! Rub'n two dark things like irony and ONIX will start a pyre ... in the old lam blighter's ayin ... that's God's eye in old Heber ... then who would know those dead tongues ... or even care?
Then what about the command to understand by bean enlightened in the tongues of all m'n sa? Then what has the people of God ever done true to form of hommoe ... redundant at that ... recycled in hope they would learn in another loupe of the sam' thing ... devilish teaching of the ESS scent's ... ESS Cean ... the Cos of cast offs?
Das duh fall heh? What goes up comes down ... reformed ... like bruised Echo ... or is that Ego in Jungs German ... reflection in the IO nin "c"! Impossible as a wee fish ... rules are yee be swallowed up to become part of the bigger thing ... moorish sea without an ET-Ihs?
stardust
Posted on: 06/04/2010 12:19
Ichthys quote:"It's not the God that changes. It is the way the authors write about God."
I don't know but what do you think about this?
Quote:
Kabbalism is an ancient system that maps the characteristics of the creator god through a tree of sefiroths/spheres, indicating ITs disunification due to the processes in the act of creation. The purpose of ITs creation of humankind is to aid the creator god in the reunification of ITself. The impetus to this is that the creator god's mind is divided and at war on the decision of permitting humankind this partnership with god. The pro side won the debate and the con side resists that in attempts to show the pro side that it was wrong.
By using Hebrew Torah containing the original names of god in verses, we can notice there is a personality evolvement that takes place due to ITs exposure and interaction with human beings. In Genesis, at creation, the name of god is Elohim, which translates as literally "gods" referring to its most disunified and least conscious state. Much later, when god experiences closer contact with Moses, their interaction confirms ITs identity and god says, "I AM". Soon after ITs name becomes YahWeh or YHVH. In other times we see the actions of other developments of god that act in a higher way such as Eh Hey Yeh. The insight this information brings is absent in Christian bible translations which omit the names of god, that point to its developing charactistics of personality, substituting a single word; God, Jehovah, Yah.
Christians do have a primary example of personality evolvement in Jesus who was incarnated by The Christ upon his baptism. And The Christ spoke and taught at times through the man Jesus. C G Jung discusses this in detail in his book Answer to Job. That upon Job reflecting back to god ITs violent and irrational behavior, he having seen what god is truly like, was when god became aware that men were advancing morally more quickly than ITself and so seeks to "become man". Hence, Jung's statement, "the spirit of god will bring about the Christification of many".
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/The_Hebrew_scriptures_show_god_to_have_an_evolving_personality
I don't know if this link below is on topic or not. I didn't read all of this thread.
John Wilson
Posted on: 06/04/2010 15:53
Where we encounter godness, in my experience, is where we allow the mystery within us (our own uncharted self) to engage with the mystery beyond us.
When I first read your post...down to here..I misread "godness" as goodness...
It seems you can't make a mistake evenr when misread
---------
It differs from most of our other experience (which can be expressed as narratives) in the kind of "locking" one feels -- and that doesn't fit into words because it is somehow the opposite of so many reference points (like time, place, action, reaction, cause and effect) -- it's the "I am" thing which to a great number of people is bullshit because it dissolves categories.
And categorical discussion of "godness" necessarily scatters into vagueness, contradictions and paradox. Even conflict
There are so many ways in which I've come to see that denial or acceptance of "God" has nothing to do with "God" (and I'm sure our little views do not bother "God" in the slightest: we can't make "God" go away any more than we can switch off the universe: it would erase our existence in its entirety): godness is inclusiveness because it can't be otherwise (not, at least, as far as we need concern ourselves, given our limited powers of thought, comprehension, perception and communication, and all the the influences and enculturation we take on board).
I don't see this view branding me a "mystic" --I am as rooted in materiality as anyone else.
[/quote]
(pointing with index finger...rubbing with other index finger)
Nya Nya , you are a mystic, you are a mystic...
(And I am SO grown up...)
Mysticism (from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness.
There's a lot of that going around in this place
...with great regard....
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 06/05/2010 07:17
Is God, in aweness hidden in the word ... that's infinite in meaning eh?
Then there are those that cannot see the profundity of an evolving word ... unless ones digs into the abori Jinnal source of words ... right out of the blue (shamayim); as Runes?
And these stones will be torn down as physical beans drift farther away from truth in any wah, shape (hommoe), or form!
Does God have a sense of humour above all? Isn't that the devil for the long-faced , stopic, equine sorts ... Roam'n Gnu's ESS ... W/O Cos?
InannaWhimsey
Posted on: 06/05/2010 13:58
Great words, Inanna—welcome back!
New look, new profile, new life path, I can't but be involved; universe is kinda tricky that way.
Inanna the Whimsical One!
Here you are
...! I was thinking about you yesterday . I saw you rising up from the mist so I called out to you . You were so ethereal I wasn't sure you had heard me.
We missed you
.
With friends like you, who ever could keep away for too long?
Happy Genius,
another thing that ties in with your OP is try taking a long view of G_d's involvement as written in the Old to New Testament...the presence of G_d seems to gradually pull away, until G_d really isn't involved anymore but through their believers...I think that says a lot...
John Wilson
Posted on: 06/05/2010 16:43
Are all the things that really count in irrational space (the mind/soul/psyche) that many people chose to disbelieve in?
Uh...yes.
Many ministerial people even say that intellect is evil ...
Wow. Where do you go to church?
who would believe there are two side to God ...
I would....
(IEnous; cosmoe logical pits?) that may even be represented as Caduces ... spiritual pairs needing whetting and dampening to still the scales. Does that sound as fishy as Pisces ... or even the freat fisherman that looked on the other side of the vas sal ... salt of the cosmos?
I leave you to whatever your thoughts are....
A synopsis? A summary? A clue? A repair job on your typewriter keys?
How about: "Two Gods seem logical to me."?
To garner that does it really take 4000 words of obscurity? Just asking...
I know, 'if you don't like it skip over it.' Yes--- but I speak for thousands of would-be fans...
John Wilson
Posted on: 06/05/2010 17:09
... what do you think about this?
Quote:
Kabbalism is an ancient system that maps the characteristics of the creator god through a tree of sefiroths/spheres
I've been interested in plumbing the depths of that amazing --what can I say? Profound teaching of human relationships, the path of the cosmos, the future possibility of man, the relationship of basic idea to other basic ideas...
I have come far short of describing my study of this for some 40 years...
The more you ponder the more you know
The more comprehension beings to grow
Complex sepheoth, don't cha know
And 'as above, so below'
One COULD say that it is a representation, of the unity that Arm keeps talking about.(!)
Some 15 years ago I wrote a computer program about it...no longer extant. Version 2.0 would take more time than I have and C++ is beyond me.
Careful about what you read...keep saying "There's more to it than even this!"
This is the first advice I've given in Wonder Cafe.
Hopefully, my last
Kindest regards,
stardust
Posted on: 06/05/2010 23:53
Happy Genius: quote:
Careful about what you read...keep saying "There's more to it than even this!"
This is the first advice I've given in Wonder Cafe.
Hopefully, my last
Kindest regards,
LOL....no more advice? Aw....are you dying
...?
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 06/06/2010 07:52
Like God ID just goes on and on ... what can you say about IT ... just about anything and still ID is not fully encompassed ... like ominous eh?
It just is ...
Did I tell you that "nous" is an old word for sol'/mind? Then omi is like all or al in old English and that is an ominous set of words a writ in King Jaimes version of truth ... and Hei and illiterate bug'Ur of Boies. But you couldn't sae that of Kings ... could yah!
G'dis silent on that one ... non-decisive Love is chaos ... why man is sometimes referred to as second tier Gods and then there are lesser Gods and their children: Daemon by definition since God seems to be a dark mystery ... like a sole yah can't sein. Toss the net on the other side of the vessel yah dumb Ai ... outside yer's elf! And Sat'n the Maas is a bodean number that sucks it all up like a sponge ... no bottom to 'toll eh ... aura is that d'role ... of the great moderator? A medium to Saint Augustine .... old fey art in the desert druid in the san ... that's outside, beyond, myth in meta phore .... ID'll come back on yah as Echo, reflection, or Ego in German Cyrillic. One must understand the Dark Flood created by man as they wouldn't accept the aboriginal language lyon their in Runes ... then the Gods do like complexity so their enemies won't know what their doing in chaos! Mean to their own end ...
Dis you know chaos comes in two "forms", which is "hommoe" in archaic Greek; then who would understand that in an existence where the people did not want to know--- biblical syn tax ... Ma Jih eh!
Gray Owl
Posted on: 06/06/2010 08:54
Hi Pan:
Sort of...
Where we encounter godness, in my experience, is where we allow the mystery within us (our own uncharted self) to engage with the mystery beyond us. It differs from most of our other experience (which can be expressed as narratives) in the kind of "locking" one feels -- and that doesn't fit into words because it is somehow the opposite of so many reference points (like time, place, action, reaction, cause and effect) -- it's the "I am" thing which to a great number of people is bullshit because it dissolves categories.
And categorical discussion of "godness" necessarily scatters into vagueness, contradictions and paradox. Even conflict
There are so many ways in which I've come to see that denial or acceptance of "God" has nothing to do with "God" (and I'm sure our little views do not bother "God" in the slightest: we can't make "God" go away any more than we can switch off the universe: it would erase our existence in its entirety): godness is inclusiveness because it can't be otherwise (not, at least, as far as we need concern ourselves, given our limited powers of thought, comprehension, perception and communication, and all the the influences and enculturation we take on board).
I don't see this view branding me a "mystic" --I am as rooted in materiality as anyone else. I just see no other way of making some interim space for me to live out my life. I think we all make such spaces. (And this is somehow what our freewill is about: it's not about "will I?" or "won't I" -- it's about "am I" or "aren't I"?)
Amen amen amen - I am likewise deeply rooted in material realtiy for that is where we experience godness - for there is no god forsaken place - this is what I understand mysticism to be about - your description. You have said very nicely what I believe.
Mike and Pan... thank you. You've delineated some things very clearly that have helped me greatly. The resolution of the materialist perspective on the spiritual, and the benefit of appreciating categories. It explains a lot about modern spirituality.
Excellent posts.
Arminius
Posted on: 06/06/2010 11:44
Hi Pan:
Sort of...
Where we encounter godness, in my experience, is where we allow the mystery within us (our own uncharted self) to engage with the mystery beyond us. It differs from most of our other experience (which can be expressed as narratives) in the kind of "locking" one feels -- and that doesn't fit into words because it is somehow the opposite of so many reference points (like time, place, action, reaction, cause and effect) -- it's the "I am" thing which to a great number of people is bullshit because it dissolves categories.
And categorical discussion of "godness" necessarily scatters into vagueness, contradictions and paradox. Even conflict
There are so many ways in which I've come to see that denial or acceptance of "God" has nothing to do with "God" (and I'm sure our little views do not bother "God" in the slightest: we can't make "God" go away any more than we can switch off the universe: it would erase our existence in its entirety): godness is inclusiveness because it can't be otherwise (not, at least, as far as we need concern ourselves, given our limited powers of thought, comprehension, perception and communication, and all the the influences and enculturation we take on board).
I don't see this view branding me a "mystic" --I am as rooted in materiality as anyone else. I just see no other way of making some interim space for me to live out my life. I think we all make such spaces. (And this is somehow what our freewill is about: it's not about "will I?" or "won't I" -- it's about "am I" or "aren't I"?)
Amen amen amen - I am likewise deeply rooted in material realtiy for that is where we experience godness - for there is no god forsaken place - this is what I understand mysticism to be about - your description. You have said very nicely what I believe.
Mike and Pan... thank you. You've delineated some things very clearly that have helped me greatly. The resolution of the materialist perspective on the spiritual, and the benefit of appreciating categories. It explains a lot about modern spirituality.
Excellent posts.
Yes, I would like to wholeheartedly concur with Pan, Mike, and H.G.: godness is omnipresent. God as the self-creative totality of being sounds like Pantheism. But the self-creative totality of being, in a state of synthesis—although omnipresent and everpresent—is so utterly beyond analytical comprehension that we can only stand in awe of IT, even if we experience IT and feel at-one with IT. This probably is Panentheism rather than Pantheism.
In Process Theology the definition of God is constantly evolving, taking into account traditional wisdom plus all of the latest scientific and philosophical insights as well as past and present mystical experiences and insights.
Neo
Posted on: 06/06/2010 13:39
Interesting post everyone, especially the question of whether or not our Earth, sometimes known as Gaia, is a sentient being or not.
If this is the case, that our planet is a sentient being in nature, then couldn't this apply to our reference of God as "Our Father, Who art in Heaven". Earth definitely resides in the heavens. And if the physical form of the Earth was feminine, as in "Mother nature", then perhaps the life expressing itself through the Earth could be considered masculine, as in "our Father". The two together representing the One Whole.
Could it be that the author of the book of Acts was describing Gaia when he wrote the words: "For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’" - Acts 17:28
Could Gaia not be the same "Ancient of Days" as described in the book of Daniel. The term Ancient of Days, btw, seems to have been used by many religions, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_of_Days.
It's an interesting concept to think that a planet could actually be a living entity in nature. In all of nature we see the larger being made up of the smaller. i.e. sub-atomic particles in atoms, atoms in molecules, molecules in cells, cells in plants, animals and humans. Could not all the kingdoms of nature be considered as individual units within something larger? And could it be possible for any one of us, as self-aware units in nature, to raise our awareness to such of a level that we could call it God-consciousness? Imagine a cell in your body suddenly becoming aware of you as a whole?
Look up the word "hylozoism". It's a word very much associated with the concept of pantheism, which believes that God and the Universe are identical. It's also, by extension, associated with the concept of panantheism, which also believes that God and the Universe are identical but that God also transcends the Universe. Both of these concepts rely on the belief that life is inherent in all aspects of matter.
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 06/07/2010 07:35
Is what is without ... a living moving thing?
Is what is within a living moving organism?
Then there are those creatures that Make up St. Augustine's great mediator ... the fringe people between two moving activities .. what modern neuroscience would call interface between Bolean numbers of will and that outside the realms of will ... intellectual extents!
Then those down to earth, the fallen, hate the intellectual elite, or anything that resembles such thing ... they just don't wish to know. In perspective would rising to an intellectual haven be pure hell to an emotional person that stated they didn't wish to know? That seems like pure satire if you could smear such a statement in a book for those who didn't wish to know it would be a completely non-sequitire ... anon bit of sentiance ... a writ out of the pure senate of Rho-Em injustice to the bottom tiers?
""What they don't know won't hurt them!" And the WORD says have no fear ... at least 366 times and yet the world seems to operate best of chimera. Is there a calm state ... another side of this Torah? Das wizdom if you can find that in old heh-ber pools of words ... ultimate knowledge once yah make the jump into the void ... Black Pool ET-ICs? Pure allegory for something outa sight of m'n ... de Jah Vue? Invisible scene!
John Wilson
Posted on: 06/09/2010 03:53
Happy Genius: quote:
Careful about what you read...keep saying "There's more to it than even this!"
This is the first advice I've given in Wonder Cafe.
Hopefully, my last
Kindest regards,
LOL....no more advice? Aw....are you dying
...?
Oh no...I'm merely begining to commense to start thinking before typing...a new experience!
Cheers!
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 06/09/2010 07:46
Canta Libra ... earth shaking ... the th'oughts are freed ...
Wsn't that supposed to be part of the free west, with religion, believe, press, movement ... all that floating intellect you'd think we knew better ...e xcept for the fixed authorities ... can't move like Nurse Ratchet ... one has to know the whole story tho' ...
ID/IT' sin the script ...
John Wilson
Posted on: 06/10/2010 04:50
(Arm):
In Process Theology the definition of God is constantly evolving, taking into account traditional wisdom plus all of the latest scientific and philosophical insights as well as past and present mystical experiences and insights.
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Somethin else to learn about. That's the job I think Goddess has...the other one can't be botherered, being onnescient and all...
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Process theology...Hmmmm....(looking it up)------------------------------------------
Holy Moly, Batman!
Some people are as crazy as I am.!!!
INTERESTING -------------------------------------
stardust
Posted on: 06/10/2010 15:57
Happy Genius quote:
"I'm merely begining to commense to start thinking before typing...a new experience!"
Well, the net is quite a fast moving speedy place. We feel we have to be speedy although its not all that necessary on forums. ( Live chat is a different story. )
I'm also dreadfully guilty of not spending sufficient time thinking before I post. Also if my posts are too short I feel I'm open to misinterpretation so I go on these long rants. Its like snail letter writing in which many of us don't do very well. Its a lot of work and it takes a lot of patience to get my rusty brains working .....ouch! I must get some 3 in 1 oil and keep trying .......!