Sorry Leo. Just got back to this thread.
do you believe that man has a God-given spirit that connects us to God or are we all just "meat puppets"?
As an agnostic I don't "believe" either. My sense of reality pivots around my understanding of God and sense of God in my life, but I also doubt all subjective experience, including that which relates to God. As I view the world, the division between spirit and body may very well be more-or-less illusory and the dichotomy between spirit and body damaging if anything by rendering the body less than spirit. I work with the soul myth myself, because it can be a helpful construct, but I don't assume for a minute I'm doing anything more than what Jung did with his archetypes and Freud did with the id, ego, and supergo. For my personal understanding of the world, you might see this recent thread, not the first part, but the two or three posts in where I respond to Dondi (posts 3-6):
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/beit-binah-virtual-intentional-community-7052.html
if you are caught in a life or death situation, do you listen to your heart or do you listen to logic?
I take both into account. I don't think it's smart to rely too heavily on either. There's a balance between the two that can be quite helpful. Depending on what you're referring to as heart, on the important things they're often in agreement, or at least reach a position they can each be satisfied with. The heart speaks in generalities and logic then in the specific road to take. Logic is good sometimes for challenging heart when it goes in a dangerous direction, but in those case logic can often redirect heart to something more affirming and helpful. For example maybe at first I feel like I should act a certain way and then I think of what the result would be. My heart doesn't like the result any more than my logic does, and I do something else.
i ask this because your responses are based more on fleshly indulgences and not with Spirit.
That's a straw man if I ever heard one. They're actually based entirely on spirit and affirming spirit. The difference between what I say and what you say is that I see spirit as affirming the physical world, and not denying it. It is then our role to find that affirmation of the holy and sacred in our daily lives, use that as a way to grow closer to God, instead of seeing it as something to push us away from God and create a greater distance between us. Everything is a part of God. If my ideas were truly as you say about flesh indulgence and not about God, then I wouldn't give suggestions for making God a part of it, growing closer to God through it and making God the focus, transforming it into sacred practice, prayer, worship. Rather, my suggestions are for ways to make God a part of all of the holy parts of life. These things I have suggested are not harmful to anyone, only affirming of the Divine.
i can't tell if this is a mentallity that jewish people accept or if it is a mankind mentallity.
Judaism's very this-worldly. It generally doesn't see God as a distant Other and often those things that some might consider mundane it sees as a way to get closer to God. It does traditionally understand the soul to be something distinct from body, but sometimes also that all of the physical world is a part of God. And when that is not the case, it still generally sees the whole physical world as filled with God. There are certain activities that have traditionally been understood as not being okay, masturbation for example, however as Judaism continues to evolve as it has all these centuries, that ceases to be the case for most of us. There are many who would simply allow things like masturbation without finding a way to then transform them into something sacred. I think that's holdoff from the enlightenment, which generally saw spirituality as less rational, and why then would someone want to incorporate more spirituality, bring God into something, where He isn't already? But then there are others like myself who fully embrace God and only wish to bring Him into every moment. That is why, for example, in Renewal there are people who would see all consensual adult sexual expression as a potential home for the Divine.
we can't give in to all of our fleshly desires, dauer.
Well, we absolutely can't give into all of our desires. Sometimes it hurt other people. Like if someone says something to you that hurts and you just want to hurt them back in some way. It's also good to maintain a degree of discipline, but that discipline need not be about denying things, only structuring them and limiting over-indulgence, like for example you could save masturbation for only on Shabbat, the Sabbath, when it can be a special time for communion between yourself and God, to grow closer to Him. For a Jew that makes perfect sense, as there is a tradition for married couples to take some time for a little of that on Shabbat. We should enjoy all of life. It's a blessing from God. Couldn't the denial of joy in God's gift really be seen as a form of blaspheme?
u know what i mean? we have to listen to our heart as well, no?
Ah, I understand what you mean by heart now. I should read entire posts before responding.
![Big Grin :D :D](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
The difference here is that to me, heart is something found within and not determined by a book. Our sacred traditions may structure the way in which we give our sense of the Divine expression, but they don't determine the heart. And heart for me is God saying, "Find me everywhere, in everything that you do. Affirm me. I am here always."
I think heart for you probably says something similar, except for you in order to make God a part of something, your sense is that you need to exclude more of the other stuff.
There was an episode of Stargate: Atlantis were Col. Shepherd was stranded in this place where there was a whole community. They spent most of their time sitting in meditation, preparing for ascension. But in doing so, they missed out on life. Not only that but they saw the "negative" parts of htemselves as Other, and that created a monster that would attack their village. In the end, in order to ascend, they had to face the monster they'd created and own that it is a part of them too, not some separate evil. When they saw it as something separate from their sacred selves it became deadweight and even harmful. Once they were able to fully own and integrate it into their being, they were able to soar. The only reason it became an evil monster is because they labelled it as such.
Dauer