i would call that ‘bliss’ and see it in quite a buddhist/druidic context, but i see no reason why it cannot be god ~ if you god is universal. mast christians argue against such a thing as it is the very basis of paganism; universal spirit manifesting in multiple ways and in all things.
Well, I never said I was answering for all or most Christians. Just answering for me.
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I know Christians that agree with me and Christians that don't.
the christian god is specifically unique and absolute with no part being of anything else - i think so anyway. maybe modern christians don’t see it like that, but no one ever says what they think so who knows.
I don't know.
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I can say that diversity in how God is conceptualized goes back to the very origins of Christianity and has continued up to the present. Christianity is not at all a homogenous religion. Modernity has not much to do with it. You see similar arguments between the Celtic Christians and Augustine, for example, and that was a long long time ago.
obviously some amount of inner and outer emotional love is a part of you, both physically and spiritually too ~ and that collectively is a major part of the whole of love in you. so its up to you to determine honestly what is god and what is you, but it would be incorrect to say ‘the love in me is of god’, at most you can only say a small part of it is.
Why? Is this substantiated by anything? Or is it just my interpretation of love versus yours? (In which case, it's kind of a moot point, really- which was partially what I was saying before.)
i see, this would mean your god is literally everything, all good things and all evil things. he is the beauty of a summer meadow and the ugliness of a sewer, a saint and a rapist. you see you have to draw line or think of god as a gradient, either way he is not the whole of you.
Do I have to draw the line? Or is it possible to think that everything does, indeed, have the light of God in it, but that by having free will and temporary consciousness, we are able to choose the darkness and blindly stumble about?
I do believe the rapist has God inside as much as me. But being consciously aware of it and choosing to act accordingly is another matter, and what separates the saints from me and me from the rapist.
As a Christian, I am called to serve Christ by serving others... by seeing the Christ within them. That is my belief. I believe that Jesus' death was the ultimate act of sacrifice that illustrated God's capacity for forgiveness for us... even the worst of us. If God still loves us that much, then how can I not love Him back by extending it (as best I can) to others?
a druid would describe everything you said so far, with caugant [divine centre] as the inner love, and the great mother as the universal expression of that. god would not be mentioned once, so here again we have to determine the natures of god? would i be entirely wrong in my thinking?
Not wrong, but certainly self-determining. You are defining god in the way that works for you, and I am defining god in how it works for me. I would say that I see nothing incompatible between the divine centre and the great mother being what I call god. Seems an issue of semantics. I say- call it what you will- I give the details of my experience the best I can and leave it at that. If someone wishes to say "that is not god," OK. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. As for determining God's nature... I don't think that's possible. We're too limited. Blind men, elephant, all that.
for example; the simplest explanation of all things would be that only nirvana or emptiness exists, there would be no reason to add anything. there is existence though and along with it all things transient, existence cannot just end leaving us with only the emptiness or many paradoxes would arise. in short we end up with the notion that even the transient is eternal [a continuum], then we would arrive at questions about transience itself! in this is where ‘you’ lay, the same universals belong to you as to god [or any such deity], what makes him eternal makes you so, i.e...
Not sure what you're looking for here. I am basing what I'm saying off my peak experiences, and you're reasoning philsophically, and I never found much luck with doing that outside of fun mental entertainment. I am not saying that I do not exist, or that my existence is transitory. I am saying my current sense of self most certainly is, and that is demonstrated through changes in myself thus far. I am neither the same in my development, consciousness, body, goals, or much of anything as I was a while ago. So what makes me, me? Obviously not my current form or thought or feeling.
The other day I was waiting for my carpool and watching a very beautiful thing. It had rained fairly hard and was still drizzling, and the sidewalk was uneven and there was a large puddle of water. A tree (that which made the sidewalk uneven with its roots) was dripping one drop at a time onto the surface of the water, which rippled over and over. And I thought... I am that ripple... my sense of self is fleeting and dependent on others and my ripple is changed by touching other ripples and them touching me. But I'm the water too... the water makes me. And I'm the prime mover too... the tree dripping water is in me. And I'm somehow held by this ground, this depression that sustains me. That makes me, me. The rest may fade away- my
sense of who I am may change (and does!)- but in the end, I am made up of God. And amazingly, I can become awake to this and transform my sense of self, bit by bit, into what I really, eternally, am.
it is the very thing of the will which contradicts oneness [amongst many other things]. it is surely the strangest thing that we can become nothing then we can become manifest, like the pheonix from the flame, yet the universe does it. i think this is the most inner nature of existence.
Strange, yes. Contradictory, possibly. But strange, contradictory things happen.
not at all, we all have the right to know and that is why truth should not be whitewashed with agreed truths or unsubstantiated truths ~ and mostly not all in one bag.
Well, I don't think my version of my truth is based on agreement and I can say it is substantiated to me by my experience. But it seems that you want me to say a certain thing as a Christian, and are unfortunately plagued by my saying something else.
mostly people don’t ever say what they mean and sometimes they don’t tell truths but vague truths, or they may fail to clarify what they mean. all credit to you as you are clarifying what you mean, truth is a journey we are both finding out more about our truths by taking this journey.
Of course- that's why I'm here at IO! In terms of people and what they say- I would add that spiritual experience is one of the most difficult things to express, and so I would say a person's vagueness and lack of clarity is in part due to the inadequacy of any language to nail down spiritual experience. The closest thing I get to adequate expression is poetry, music, and art. Tackling it through definition and so forth not only ruins its beauty, but only demonstrates linguistic inadequacy.
I think there is a lot more truth in the Buddha holding up a flower (one of his teachings) than in scores of books picking apart theology and religion.
the notion of god is in a sense the very thing you are complaining about, it puts everything in to one place and denies any other truth.
Why must this be so? I think using the concept of God as humans do, with much variety, actually points out that it is understood in myriad ways.
this is then furthered by the bible which continues along this theme, it gather some truths, historical, philosophical, moral etc, then adds them to ‘stories’ and presents the whole as the truth.
What kind of truth is debated amongst Jews, Christians, and Muslims. You present a very basic view of the Bible and one that doesn't hold up in theological circles.
thus by presenting everything at once we are adding ‘agreed truths’ which may not be true at all, or may be cultural/societal, to actual truths, along with a generous sprinkling of myth.
i think you hit the nail on the head there!
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thanks path
I'd say it's all cultural/societal. How could it not be? We are using language, for one, and that is a cultural phenomenon.
I don't understand how you think we can get "actual truths" without going through the medium of cultural conditioning, linguistic inadequacy, and so forth. And myth can contain truth. Something need not be historically true to contain the capacity to teach truth. That's the point, isn't it?
Thanks, Z.
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