Author: Interfaith

“To say ‘I am God’ does indeed sound arrogant. It feels like blasphemy. But in fact, what is blasphemy is not to say ‘I am God’, what is really blasphemous is to say ‘I am a person’.

Because in saying ‘I am a person’, what we’re saying is that I am a being with my own independent existence.

We’re saying that my being must be separate from God’s being. And if my being is separate from God’s being, then God’s being must be limited.

In other words, to say ‘I am a person’ is to deny the (omni)presence of God. That is blasphemy.

If infinite being is infinite, it must be the nature of all.

But if we are setting ourselves up as a separate, temporary, finite being, we are denying the infinite being, we are denying God’s presence.

That’s why it’s not arrogant to say, ‘I am God.’

To say, ‘I am a person.’ – that is arrogant.”

~ Rupert Spira

“The person is not God, the body is not God, but you are God. The reason you will not accept the fact that you are God is because of your orthodox upbringing. If I tell you you’re God, you think it’s blasphemy. That only shows me that you are identifying with your body. You believe you are a body, and there is a God somewhere up in the sky that you’ve got to pray to, and if he is in a good mood, he’ll give you a boon. If he’s not feeling too good that day, he will throw a lightning bolt at you. People still believe that. God is consciousness. And that is not outside of yourself. It is you. You are that.”

~ Robert Adams

 

wil Dec 3, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20919/

 

 

The bible tells us love comes from God, but what type of love is true love. Is true love from God? The true love God says is what needs in the heart to find it? Is his True love as a father, the love a women and men must have to find true love? The love of a couple of men and women the love he wants us to love so we can love the universe like him or love like Jesus? Love comes from him a father loves, a mother loves, and love of siblings is love and the bible verses says all love is his creation. What is your experience in true love? What bible verse you found tell true love or other love God says in the bible.

We will look at verses and find proverbs 31 the women God wants and psalms a place where true love is and verses.

 

davidsheep88 Nov 9, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20895/

 

 

Like many of you, I suspect, I have been mulling over the purpose of terrorism in the process of reality and evolution.

The best I have, is that the purpose of the terrorist is to inspire hatred. Once a person allows themselves to hate, they are blocked from spiritual development – the aim of evil forces. It’s a devilish trick.

I would be interested in other views, and also in recommended spiritual technologies to extricate ourselves from this kind of trap.

 

Aerist Nov 11, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20899/

 

 

This brave soul, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, chose Christ after 50+ years as a Muslim & then an Atheist:

https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/

 

Nicholas Weeks Nov 13, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20901/

 

 

I would like to pose a philosophical question to everyone.

If I do not believe in external deities, but I do believe in my GodSelf (i.e. Higher Self/Psyche/Soul) as the one and only God that we can ever come to know.

Do you consider me a Theist or an Atheist?
[ATTACH type=”full”]3880[/ATTACH]

 

Amir Alzzalam  Oct 1, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20824/

What surprises and saddens me, among people of all faiths, is the idea of this earth, this life, being utterly disposable, a place to escape from without further delay.

I agree with the Buddhist idea of the transient and ephemeral, I agree with the teaching of Atma and Maya, I agree with all those teachings that suggest this condition is merely temporary … but then there is this:

Isaiah 65:17 – “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.” (65:17) and “‘As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,’ declares the Lord, ‘so will your name and descendants endure.’” (66:22)

2 Peter 3:13 – “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.”

Revelation 21:1 – “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” (21:1) and “Behold, I am making all things new.” (21:5).

St Paul goes on at length – “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again … and we shall be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)

And St John: “We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is.”

+++

On solid metaphysics, my belief is that should this earth ‘pass away’ – then the Infinite will be to some infinitesimal degree, lesser than what it was, which it cannot be.

Ergo my belief is that the Mystery of which St Paul speaks is that the world will endure, but it shall be changed – that whereas now the spirit lives according to the material, that state will be reversed, and the correct hierarchy will be the material appears according to the will of the spiritual.

It’s not so much that we shall go somewhere else, rather that our eyes will be opened where we are, to speak in Quantum analogy, we will not be as insects caught in the web of some infinite and eternal entanglement, we shall be the Quantum itself, the place from when miracles are by no means impossible.

“AUM is the sound of the radiance of God. This is the most mysterious and important thing to understand, but once you get the idea, it’s very simple.”
“The secret to having a spiritual life as you move in the world is to hear the AUM is all things all the time.”
“‘OM…OM…OM…’ OM is the sound nature makes when it’s pleased with itself.”
(from Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living)

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”
(Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, 13th Revelation, Chapter 27)

 

 

Thomas 17/11/2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20904/

 

 

From another thread

[QUOTE=”_Hermes_, post: 381960, member: 21275″]

realisation that I had autism spectrum disorder. Sometimes I wonder if it was because of all of that meditation that I just suddenly ended, or if it was due to work?

[/QUOTE]

Simply contemplating life changes, situational changes and brain changes.

 

Are we stuck with our diagnosis?

 

Are these brain variances fluid?

 

wil Oct 10, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20833/

 

 

I am new here, and finding it hard to find a place in this interfaith wilderness to find rest and respite. I’m not sure where to post as going through the threads I do not see open doors but locked gates. To be honest it saddens me, because I have been enslaved behind such gates before, and my experiences almost broke my spirit and cost my soul. It is such locked gates that bar entry to paradise, they bar ascension to heaven, they stifle progress to enlightenment, limit achievement of selflessness, the locks render superior intellect worthless, and over spiritualization meaningless. But mostly, these locked doors deny any hope of unity.

These are the locks and our cages:

1. When faith becomes an intellectual pursuit. I see here that people are so intelligent that they write at length complicated theories and deductions in the pursuit of truth, quoting scholars and writing like professors; caught up in their own minds, so much so that they do not realize that if faith is an intellectual truth, it would bar heaven to people of even average intellect by such standards. In the same there is risk of feeling special, and standing as a teacher of lower ones, the roots of pride. I have no interest in what is behind those doors, and the spirit becomes troubled.

2. Defining and naming. Here are clever definitions of god, names and explanations, and many are unswayed because of those defined truths. The sadness here is that our names and definitions of god are blemished and ultimately corrupted by our inferiority and lowly position, thus limiting god, chaining him to our needs and desires, molding him or it for our purposes, actually confining him/her/it to the area of the earth. Once again those under such well defined gods run risk of feeling special, to stand as teachers, all also the roots of pride. I have no interest in what is behind such doors, and the spirit becomes troubled.

3. Over spiritualization (truth without foundation in reality). Like a boat without an anchor thrust about by the waves are those that overspiritualize god. It is a tumultuous ocean seen in prophetic words (pardon my biblical references, it is my base but the symbolism is part of many interfaith concepts) such as the creation account where the dry land was formed by gathering the water so there could be a firm foundation, Jonah, also the flood accounts and Revalation’s ‘sea’. It is an unstable place far from reality and practicality where anything goes, and anyone can be special, even a teacher, all roots of pride. I have no interest in what is behind such doors, and the spirit becomes troubled.

This was written as a statement, but is in essence a question: If the truth binds us in chains, is it truth? The truth should set us free.

Maybe the first step to such a place is silence; in an attempt to stop lying from my inferior and selfish position, so all I will say is I dont think I can contribute here, as I have only questions and no answers.

 

 

Spiritear  Nov 10, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20897/

 

 

A new document issued today by Pope Frances, “Ad Theologiam Promovendam (‘to promote theology’), revises the statutes of the Pontifical Academy of Theology (PATH) “to make them more suitable for the mission that our time imposes on theology.”

Pope Francis has called for a “paradigm shift” in Catholic theology that takes widespread engagement with contemporary science, culture, and people’s lived experience as an essential starting point, citing the need to deal with “profound cultural transformations”.

“Theology can only develop in a culture of dialogue and encounter between different traditions and different knowledge, between different Christian confessions and different religions, openly engaging with everyone, believers and nonbelievers,” he writes.

He says Catholic theology must experience a “courageous cultural revolution” in order to become a “fundamentally contextual theology.” Guided by Christ’s incarnation into time and space, theology must be capable of reading and interpreting “the Gospel in the conditions in which men and women live daily, in different geographical, social, and cultural environments.”

The pope contrasted this approach with a theology that is limited to “abstractly re-proposing formulas and schemes from the past” and repeated his long-standing criticism of “desk bound theology.” Instead, he emphasised that theological studies must be open to the world, not as a “‘tactical’ attitude” but as a profound “turning point” in their method, which he said must be “inductive.”

Pope Francis said that this “pastoral stamp” must be placed upon all of Catholic theology. Described as “popular theology,” by starting from “the different contexts and concrete situations in which people are inserted” and allowing itself “to be seriously challenged by reality,” theological reflection can aid in the discernment of the “signs of the times.”

To achieve this “‘outgoing’ theology,” Pope Francis wrote that theology must become “transdisciplinary,” part of a “web of relationships, first of all with other disciplines and other knowledge.” This engagement, he wrote, leads to “the arduous task” of theologians making use of “new categories developed by other knowledge” in order to “penetrate and communicate the truths of faith and transmit the teaching of Jesus in today’s languages, with originality and critical awareness.”

Pope Francis also wrote that priority must be given to “the knowledge of people’s ‘common sense,’” which he described as a “theological source in which many images of God live, often not corresponding to the Christian face of God, only and always love.”

(English version of the document not available yet … )

+++

At the root of this, I think Pope Francis has an issue with ‘clerical conservatism’ by which the clergy regards itself as superior to the laity, who should be quiet and do what they’re told. This conservatism has played, and continues to play, its part in the scandals that have dome so much damage to the Church.

 

Thomas  Nov 2, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20877/

 

 

I understand that the Eucharist is an important ceremony for Christians, installed by Jesus himself on the last supper with his disciples, probably on Seder evening.

What I don’t understand is why there is a difference in interpretation.

Catholic dogmatics insist that it is an essential Catholic belief that the bread and the wine REALLY become the Blood and Body of Jesus.

I don’t get this: Just imagine it REALLY became human blood, would you drink it? And the bread, if it REALLY became raw human meat, would you eat it?

Now, the Reformed say, it’s a symbol. I don’t think that anyone in the Roman Catholic Church would say that it REALLY transforms in the way I said above. But if not, what is the difference to those who say, it’s a symbol?

 

talib-al-kalim  Friday at 5:25 PM

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20905/#post-385800