Good and God

[otherbrother]

Oh, indeed!


Well there's two things here ... and there's no evidence of direct causation.

Mindfulness and meditation is a process, and the brainwave results can be replicated, I'm told, by reading poetry, by listening to music, by simply observing nature ... they're all ways of engaging with the world.

A Zen master once observed that if you wanted to see true and authentic no-mind, then don't look at Zen masters, look at, say, a basket-weaver at work, how his hands move, how they make with almost complete detachment from what it is they're doing ...

But '"God" signals' are not part of the world, they're extraneous to it, although immanently there – in Him we live and move and have our being – but we cannot 'tap into' God like some deep-space signal source or some background quantum happening ... not God as I understand it, anyway ... there's no 'technique' which, if you get it right, obliges God to respond.

All I know is that soon after my father-in-law died (whom I routinely had spiritual discussions with), I had a powerful dream with images symbolizing the baptism of Christ, followed by a male voice (not recognized as my father-in-law’s) woke me up saying “Matthew 3:17.” I immediately looked it up: “This is my son with whom I am well pleased.” It was an affirmation of my sonship that combined earthly and heavenly fathers. And it was one of my experiences that led me to think that we are all potential messengers and amenable to spiritual empowerment. Something or someone on (what appeared to me to be) the “other side” (which I think could well be the deep inside) encouraged and inspired me.
Had my focus on spirituality during my talks with my father-in-law made this mystical experience more likely? Had it “thinned my veil?” I tend to think so.
Do you think it was all God’s initiative?

 

[otherbrother]

Suppose then that Christ, a religion of the Word, the Logos (which is a philosophia) nevertheless offers a mythopoeic vision – a un , delivered into the hands of an increasing philosophianism

I liked that, and the fact that you said that to the left brain, the right brain is like another “dimension.” But I go further into metaphysical speculation that each brain hemisphere (and various other brain functions. like the different brain waves) are like receivers and transmitters to actual different dimensions of reality itself, not just typewriter-like output functions of a stand-alone brain. We are wired for other dimensions. They can help us in this. That would explain where I got the information in a dream to look up a very pertinent Bible verse. Of course one could say I had subconsciously memorized it, but that is not in keeping with my impressionistic, more disorganized (right brain-ish) style. I take it as actual information from another dimension of overall reality. I really like Clark’s (blocking on his first name book God’s Reach. He speculates about multiple dimensions and suggests interesting possibilities as to how they might interact and/or have translation difficulties. He paints mostly developmental view in which spiritual growth taps into deeper dimensions. It is at least an interesting analogy of possible overall reality. Inspired largely by discovery of electromagnetic fields and related technologies of the modern era. What he calls fourth dimension stuff. Like me, he sees that as similar to the old notion of spirits and spiritual realities. He works his way up to (as I recall) seven dimensions! More layers than I like to think about. But the notion of multiple dimensions is quite popular now. Clark died about the time I was born, 1955.