Paramahansa Yogananda, the Gita, the Bible, and even Warf from star trek...are quoted by my preacher as discussion as to how to cultivate your mind to assist you in making the changes to achieve your goals...
Metaphysics of abundance
- Thread starter wil
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That was a wonderful talk. Very inspiring.
To me the goal is God consciousness, peace, wisdom or whatever: Thy will, not my will. Even though you slay me. Still will I love thee. Show me the way.
Christ promised abundant life. But perhaps not a Mercedes Benz?
But I really resonated with this talk. Thank you
I just think we may differ here ... your word goals? I don't think I heard your guy say it like that?
To me the goal is God consciousness, peace, wisdom or whatever: Thy will, not my will. Even though you slay me. Still will I love thee. Show me the way.
Christ promised abundant life. But perhaps not a Mercedes Benz?
But I really resonated with this talk. Thank you
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Therein lies the difference between prosperity theology and what Butch teaches.
I especially liked the life line regarding how our reactions to situations, events, problems is indicative of how we have cultivated our soil (consciousness)
But yeah, the lead goal is alignment, and then other things fall into place.
The carrot is what folks are after, the path leads to the garden.
The carrot is what folks are after, the path leads to the garden.
Did you watch it? Or is that a knee jerk reaction to the title?
Lol, its not for sale, those with ears will hear.
OK.
For those who might be interested ...
This is not metaphysics, it does not address first principles, but assumes its principles as given and axiomatic. I find them somewhat contradictory, in that the premise of, 'divine ideas (seeds) are given to the mind (sower) to plant in our consciousness (soil) speaks of a kind of engagement and yet God is Impersonal Universal Law ... ?
A: It's theologically in error according to the metaphysics of the Abrahamic Tradition (God is the sower), but then it's not really about Abrahamic metaphysics, it's rather a blend of its roots in the early influencers of New thought, mesmerism, German philosophical idealism etc., ideas that have not been corrected and updated.
B: Scientifically, this makes a raft of assumptions and takes no account of the current understandings of neuroscience and psychology.
It's a given now in psychology that we position ourselves as the heroes of our own narrative. This narrative template is set pretty much when we're young, and is largely unconscious to us, and takes some shifting.
The New Thought denominations that rose in the US are indicative of the American Narrative (The American Dream), and thus the assumptions the nature of 'the seeds, the sower and the soil' are assumed without question.
Contemporary psychology however, shows that we "act from a structure of habits that are almost infinitely complicated. Most of our life is enacted without conscious awareness. Nor can it be made conscious. No degree of self-awareness can make us self-transparent" (John Grey, Straw Dogs, p69)
Anything that enters is judged according to that, and is accepted or rejected on those grounds.
(If a Catholic priest had offered this same pseudo-science and idealisms, I wonder what Wil's reaction would have been)
"The whole idea of worldbuilding is a bad idea about the world ... It’s a secularised, narcissised version of the fundamentalist Christian view that the world’s a watch and God’s the watchmaker. It reveals the bad old underpinnings of the humanist stance... And it flatters everyone further into the illusions of anthropocentric demiurgy which have already brought the real world to the edge of ecological disaster."
Written ten years ago, and surprising prescient. (M John Harrison blog.)
To paraphrase Gray again: The spiritual life "... is only the natural life lived skilfully. It has no particular purpose. It has nothing to do with the will, and it does not consist in trying to realise any idea ... Western moralists what is the purpose of such action, but for Taoists the good life has no purpose. It is like swimming in a whirlpool, responding to the currents as they come and go... " (Gray, ibid, p112.)
As was said, those with ears ... that's the way I hear it.
Well my only real problem with it is that some listeners may go away with a bit of the assumption that man can reach God, rather than the other way around: that man can only pray and ask God to come to him. The idea that God can be 'achieved' by man's own effort?
But in fact the speaker doesn't seem to be saying that. Whatever words he uses, to me his message is that someone needs to open his mind to God, for God to enter his life?
The other part that niggles is that he is careful to deny the devil as an actual force: to say that the devil is in fact some complication of human consciousness, etc.
But in the end the message I got from him was 'pray constantly and be open to God'.
I don't know if he reveals anything new? But he's a good speaker and I found nothing harmful in this talk. It didn't employ the usual new age terminology and constant reference back to the 'self' that quickly turns me off. I do think that everyone who hears it may in a sense hear only the bits they want to hear.
What surprises me most is that @wil posted it. All that talk of God and prayer doesn't seem much like his thing, lol?
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But in fact the speaker doesn't seem to be saying that. Whatever words he uses, to me his message is that someone needs to open his mind to God, for God to enter his life?
The other part that niggles is that he is careful to deny the devil as an actual force: to say that the devil is in fact some complication of human consciousness, etc.
But in the end the message I got from him was 'pray constantly and be open to God'.
I don't know if he reveals anything new? But he's a good speaker and I found nothing harmful in this talk. It didn't employ the usual new age terminology and constant reference back to the 'self' that quickly turns me off. I do think that everyone who hears it may in a sense hear only the bits they want to hear.
What surprises me most is that @wil posted it. All that talk of God and prayer doesn't seem much like his thing, lol?
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Imo: interpretations of 'the sower and the seed' and so many other sayings and parables by Jesus, are always going to be interpretations of what Christ said.
It's always going to be: 'In my opinion this is what Jesus actually meant.' But the sayings of Jesus will still be around long after all these 'teachers' are gone.
I've never encountered a human teacher whose wisdom I prefer to that of the Christ. So why not take it straight from the source?
It's always going to be: 'In my opinion this is what Jesus actually meant.' But the sayings of Jesus will still be around long after all these 'teachers' are gone.
I've never encountered a human teacher whose wisdom I prefer to that of the Christ. So why not take it straight from the source?
Surprised wil posted it? This is the preacher that has taken me to church for a couple decades, where I taught Sunday school.
Not metaphysics? Nope it is a talk on metaphysics....the underlying principles utilized are in umpteen books by Charles Fillmore including the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary and revealing word.
Don't like the parable of the sower? How does your interpretation differ than Butch's Thomas?
What would I think if a Catholic said this? I've often praised the pope and other Catholic Priests when they made sense, just as I debate with Butch when he doesn't.
Butch took some of his graduate level divinity classes from Jesuit Priests. His day job is teaching marketing at a local college. This was last Sunday's sermon and similar to what we get from him every weekend in church.
Not metaphysics? Nope it is a talk on metaphysics....the underlying principles utilized are in umpteen books by Charles Fillmore including the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary and revealing word.
Don't like the parable of the sower? How does your interpretation differ than Butch's Thomas?
What would I think if a Catholic said this? I've often praised the pope and other Catholic Priests when they made sense, just as I debate with Butch when he doesn't.
Butch took some of his graduate level divinity classes from Jesuit Priests. His day job is teaching marketing at a local college. This was last Sunday's sermon and similar to what we get from him every weekend in church.
I was not aware you never attended church.
When I go, I go to God alone. I don't go to be educated by any priest or preacher. There may be a very big difference in perception here?
It's back to the principle of the priest being the minister of God. The priest has no particular claim on wisdom. He may be a complete git. NO reason I have to believe him or agree with his opinions. Most often I do not.
But he is nevertheless granted Holy Orders to administer the sacraments of the church, including holy communion, where Christ promises to be present in the eucharist.
It's like if I go to the government office to get a stamp on my passport, it doesn't matter who actually stamps it. The stamp is guaranteed by Her Majesty's Government ...
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People may not realize: the Catholic church celebrates mass every day, not just Sundays; a Catholic can go to a church anywhere on the planet and the mass on that day will be exactly the same wherever I go: same scripture readings, same prayers and vestment colours, the exact same words in every church everywhere.
The priest may say a few words of his own, but long sermons are seldom appreciated.
It's totally not about the priest.
The priest may say a few words of his own, but long sermons are seldom appreciated.
It's totally not about the priest.
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For me, Butch explains what I have misunderstood my whole life. I went to catholic,.baptist, Episcopalian,.methodist, whatever church...there was always something missing. It drove me to look at judaism, Buddhism, taoism, atheism,.still lacking. I walked into unity with no knowledge of new thought or trans centralists....and on the walls were symbols of various religions....and I liked what I heard. I was told there was a church in my town, my twins were two years old...and I heard Butch in '95, and I found something that resonated...
We are all works in progress.
Not really, it doesn't address the questions of metaphysics at all. If one wanted to understand Unity metaphysics, there's nothing here.
Had a look, again, not really metaphysics as I understand it.
I think it's probably because I work to the traditional scholarly definition of what metaphysics is, whereas Unity seems to allow an abundant use of the term to cover just about everything.
In the dictionary, under Trinity you have:
Metaphysical meaning of Trinity
God threefold Being.
Meta. The divine Trinity is known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Metaphysically we understand these to refer to mind, idea and expression, or thinker, thought and action.
This is not metaphysics, this is a definition of the Trinity.
On the page Unity Metaphysics: 04 The Trinity, your presenter pulls a clever move on his audience by saying Unity uses a lot of the terms used in traditional Christianity, but has moved the idea on ...
Yet a theology graduate reading the Unity definition would point out it actually falls short, it's a New Agey version of the Augustinian analogy of the Trinity as memory, Intellect and Will. Unity's anthropomorphism is a definition that takes the human as the model, and projecting it onto God.
My interpretation is, as the Bible says, God is the sower. In Butch's interpretation, God gives the seeds to man, who decides whether or not to sow them. It's about the 23 minute mark.
I think you might have answered a lot of the issues you have with those who believe in other denominations.
Something resonated ... and so you find a home in the church. It's the same for many, and for many more, the place in which they find themselves by birth or whatever was always adequate, so there was no need to question nor seek elsewhere, something resonated.
I left the church in my late teens, and joined a cult when something resonated. I left that a decade later, and happened upon a book of essays on the Sophia Perennis and boy, did something resonate then! That pointed me towards Greek metaphysics (essentially Platonism) and thence to the writings of the Fathers, and something resonated...
And so it goes.