My Fundy Ex-Wife

[NotBlinded]

What I mean about the now being eternal is that as long as time as been, there has only ever been "now". It's a balancing act between dualites that keeps life in harmony. As Jesus said, "I Am"...he didn't say "I Was".

 

Thanks for the reply NBBTL.

 

You wrote, "When we have memories of the past or anticipations of the future, all of that is happening right now. The thing is, is that when we do those things, our mind is not in the moment. It's okay to do those things, but to understand that their existence isn't real automatically pulls oneself back to the present moment."

 

This I understand. However, I don't see how that translates into "eternity".

 

If I experience a present moment, and then a week later, I experience another present moment, is there a difference between them? Are they not divided by time and other types of moments? Eternity is forever. For even the most enlightened humans, present moments are broken up by these other types of moments. So what is eternal about them? I am struggling to describe what I mean.

 

I think I am starting to grasp what you are saying in your Jesus quote ("I am"), but maybe you can help me clarify?

 

Phanta

I'm afraid I'm going to sound even more vague as I proceed, but I'll try.

 

Our conscious minds are as such that they view reality as coming to us in bits and pieces. These bits and pieces are linear, our language is linear, our thoughts are too. Reality comes at us all at once not in bits and pieces. Cause and effect are one, but our minds can't comprehend reality in it's totality, so we break it down to these bits and pieces (reductionism). Let me use an analogy Alan Watts used once (to paraphrase). Our minds are like a light beam that picks out information and uses it like a ship's radar. This is consciousness. Yet, we have the ability to "sense" or "feel" reality as whole. This would be a flood light. Supraconsciousness. This is why hypnosis can have you recall things that your average consciousness didn't retain. Since we can't consciously attain reality all at once, it has to be based on experiencing it. The moment we try to describe it, it becomes reduced to linear thought and language. It can't be thought about or talked about adequately. This is the problem in trying to explain it. There is no way that we could ever describe the entire box because there isn't anything to contrast it to. It's a place where no duality exists and we can't know that.

 

When these moments happen to me, almost always a flashback to childhood happens. It's not just a memory, but a feeling that I experienced then that I also feel now. It was a timeless moment.

 

Time is a tool that we use to differentiate between then and now. That doesn't mean that the tool is reality itself. Our measuring minds tells us it is, but, IMO, that is mistaking the finger for the moon.

 

Did that help? I can go on (and on and on) if you ask me to. I love this!

[NotBlinded]

Ah, I just had a breakthrough, NBBTL.

 

What I am hearing you say is that the "present" is "unceasing". I am very confused as to how this can be. I see the present as a finite thing...or, at the very least, something we as humans are only capable of experiencing in a manner that is finite.

 

Shit, now I am blowing my own mind.

 

Phanta

Yes! Blow your mind Phanta. That is the only way to experience it!

 

When you looked out your window as a child and when you look now, do you experience this reality anywhere else than now? Then was also now wasn't it?

[Guest end3]

Jhn 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

 

Compelling!

 

Serious question: what makes laying down a life for another a greater love act than every other? Again, I'm interested in people's views.

 

Phanta

 

It's a certainty, and rest, that God exists, and desparately wanting to pass that to others.

 

I'm not sure what you're pronoun "It's" is referring to...? I think you're saying that by willingly laying down your life for another person, you are making the ultimate statement of love (and trust) toward God and, in this, modeling that trust for the person you are dying for and anyone else paying attention. Is that right?

 

Phanta

 

Let me rephrase.....God is a certainty, and rest, and joy that one desparately wishes to pass to others.

 

 

 

Ok, I am clear on the sentence now. Thanks! How is the certainty of God, the rest, and the joy, passed to others through sacrificing your life? How does that work?

 

Phanta

 

Two things I think Phanta.....the physical joy is unsurpassed by anything that I have experienced. Two, and this relates to Christianity, if that joy may be realized on earth, then I can't imagine the reality of Heaven. Giving that to someone else in trade for your life would be difficult, as we cling to life so hard, but that offers even more reason to be thankful for what Christ has done.

[Mriana]

It's a certainty, and rest, that God exists, and desparately wanting to pass that to others.

 

I'm sorry, but I never found it to be something I desperately wanted to pass on to others. It was a source of misery and even though misery loves company, I wanted far away from it. You can keep it to yourself, if you like.

[Mriana]

the physical joy is unsurpassed by anything that I have experienced. Two, and this relates to Christianity, if that joy may be realized on earth, then I can't imagine the reality of Heaven.

 

Again, there is no joy in Xianity, but there is joy here on earth without superstition. There is no heaven for that matter either, unless you wish to say it is here on earth and humans create it.

[NotBlinded]

Two things I think Phanta.....the physical joy is unsurpassed by anything that I have experienced. Two, and this relates to Christianity, if that joy may be realized on earth, then I can't imagine the reality of Heaven. Giving that to someone else in trade for your life would be difficult, as we cling to life so hard, but that offers even more reason to be thankful for what Christ has done.

End, you can't give this away. It comes to the person, by the Grace of God if you will. I don't like to use that because it shows intent by the giver, by I think you may understand it if I do. The Grace of God is what AM speaks of when he says it never leaves and has never gone anywhere. It's the Tao given freely to all. It isn't just a Christian phenomena. What good would it do to give your life then?

 

You are experiencing heaven right now End. If Christianity did it for you, then great. But it isn't the sole property of Christianity. That is just one of many means.

 

It's like the guy looking everywhere for it, not thinking to open the box he was sitting on.

[Guest end3]

I am sorry to offend Mriana.....there is a better way to express my experience. Sorry.

[Guest end3]

Two things I think Phanta.....the physical joy is unsurpassed by anything that I have experienced. Two, and this relates to Christianity, if that joy may be realized on earth, then I can't imagine the reality of Heaven. Giving that to someone else in trade for your life would be difficult, as we cling to life so hard, but that offers even more reason to be thankful for what Christ has done.

End, you can't give this away. It comes to the person, but the Grace of God if you will. I don't like to use that, but I think you may understand it if I do. The Grace of God is what AM speaks of when he says it never leaves and has never gone anywhere. It isn't just a Christian phenomena. What good would it do to give your life then?

 

No, you are right, we cannot give it as it comes from Jesus, IMO, but you can point people towards God with all the love you can muster through Christ. I believe we can access "it" through the understanding of the relationship between God's desire/will, or choosing the alternative(s).....and these are human choices, not God's choice. The understanding of how our choices are incongruent, intentionally or unintentionally, defines this relationship. It's not His choice, but ours. The thing about it, it seems like unless you have His help, and the things He shows you about the relationship to the rules, that this congruency may never happen.....for example, Christians that don't act as Christians, which includes me. I think He "omnisciently" knows when this will happen, but let's you get there on you own. The Holy Spirit helps if you ask, but until you are ready to give up fighting out of pride, the new understanding might not show up aside from a sovereign act.

 

AM seems to have another method of access, and this is why I can't agree. Perhaps if we went slowly, step by step, we would see where the disagreement lies. It's hard to give account without hurting others, especially here.

 

Thank you for the notes.

[Mriana]

What is it, functionally, about giving one's life for another, in your view, that makes it a higher act of love than any other? In other words, How does that work? How does it work?

 

Phanta

 

A woman can do that just giving birth and some women have.

[Legion]

I'm just trying to figure out if you think we are reducible to our parts or not.

Phanta I have come to suspect that we, and all organisms in general, are not reducible to our parts.

 

If you’d like to try and wade through it, there’s an excellent thread pinned in the Coliseum started by Open Minded entitled “Reductionism and Materialism are not Scientific Givens”. The discussion is still going and I’m almost certain your participation is welcome.

[NotBlinded]

I'm afraid I'm going to sound even more vague as I proceed, but I'll try.

 

Thanks!

 

My stuff in red:

 

Our conscious minds are as such that they view reality as coming to us in bits and pieces. Makes sense. These bits and pieces are linear, our language is linear, our thoughts are too. Time-linear, or something else? Reality comes at us all at once not in bits and pieces. Cause and effect are one, What???? Serious mind-blowing, here. but our minds can't comprehend reality in it's totality, so we break it down to these bits and pieces (reductionism). Let me use an analogy Alan Watts used once (to paraphrase). Our minds are like a light beam that picks out information and uses it like a ship's radar. This is consciousness. I don't know enough about ships or radars to understand that. Can you try a different metaphor? Yet, we have the ability to "sense" or "feel" reality as whole. All of it? How? This would be a flood light. Supraconsciousness. This is why hypnosis can have you recall things that your average consciousness didn't retain. Since we can't consciously attain reality all at once, it has to be based on experiencing it. Ok...I think I see..."sensing" and "feeling" reality as a whole is different from "experiencing" it as a whole. Maybe you meant that we have the ability to "sense" or "feel" that reality is whole. Is that right? The moment we try to describe it, it becomes reduced to linear thought and language. This is the problem in trying to explain it. There is no way that we could ever describe the entire box because there isn't anything to contrast it to. It's a place where no duality exists and we can't know that.

 

When these moments happen to me, almost always a flashback to childhood happens. It's not just a memory, but a feeling that I experienced then that I also feel now. It was a timeless moment. But...I didn't feel it before it happened. At 3 years old, I knew not the feeling of falling in love, for instance.

 

Time is a tool that we use to differentiate between then and now. That doesn't mean that the tool is reality itself. Our measuring minds tells us it is, but, IMO, that is mistaking the finger for the moon.

 

Did that help? I can go on (and on and on) if you ask me to. I love this!

 

Yeah. And brought up more questions, of course. You could go on and on and I am a bottomless pit of inquiry. Together we are infinity in action.

 

Phanta

Okay, let me see...

 

1) Yes, time linear. As one thing after another such as reading a book.

 

2) Cause and effect are one, only separated by the tool of time (no...not Tool Time! ) This is the understanding of Karma in a real sense. Whatever you do, the results are embedded in the action already. It can be extremely fast, or very slow, but they are one.

 

3) A ship's radar is designed to pick things out of the environment that might cause harm to the ship. We are the ship. Let me use another one. We don't tend to notice things that stay the same or don't stand out in anyway, yet they are seen. There is no reason for me to notice the stop sign at the end of my street because it's safe to say that it won't cause me any harm. I might notice it if it came flying through my front door though.

 

4) Sensing and feeling reality as whole is what I meant by experiencing it. I just used different words in order to say the same thing. Yes, experiencing reality is whole.

 

5) The feeling of falling in love is an emotion that is great, but not what I'm meaning really. This is why I use different words. It's more of a reality of experiencing life in that moment. I was completely there and living, playing, crying, etc. I never have a moment of experiencing a childhood memory to where I was someplace thinking about something else. I was alive in the now...then...and now. I know how that sounds!

 

Jesus: To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, one must become as a child.

[Guest end3]

Jhn 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

 

Compelling!

 

Serious question: what makes laying down a life for another a greater love act than every other? Again, I'm interested in people's views.

 

Phanta

 

It's a certainty, and rest, that God exists, and desparately wanting to pass that to others.

 

I'm not sure what you're pronoun "It's" is referring to...? I think you're saying that by willingly laying down your life for another person, you are making the ultimate statement of love (and trust) toward God and, in this, modeling that trust for the person you are dying for and anyone else paying attention. Is that right?

 

Phanta

 

Let me rephrase.....God is a certainty, and rest, and joy that one desparately wishes to pass to others.

 

 

 

Ok, I am clear on the sentence now. Thanks! How is the certainty of God, the rest, and the joy, passed to others through sacrificing your life? How does that work?

 

Phanta

 

Two things I think Phanta.....the physical joy is unsurpassed by anything that I have experienced. Two, and this relates to Christianity, if that joy may be realized on earth, then I can't imagine the reality of Heaven. Giving that to someone else in trade for your life would be difficult, as we cling to life so hard, but that offers even more reason to be thankful for what Christ has done.

 

Ok. I hear this thing is difficult to do, but you believe it is the highest love because it is so important! I hear your passion, End. I see it comes from a place of love.

 

You are giving me an answer to this:

 

How (or why) do we find the strength to give our lives for another in the face of so much difficulty. How do we find the will? What is our motivation?

 

But I am asking:

 

What is it, functionally, about giving one's life for another, in your view, that makes it a higher act of love than any other? In other words, How does that work? How does it work?

 

Phanta

 

I think P, because our own life is the most important thing to us.....for example, we will fight with everything we have to live...to fight off an attacker....to not drown, that giving value to a life other than ours makes this love the then highest over our own.

 

edit: functionally I think the individual acts are less realative than is treating others as we would treat ourselves

[Legion]

Wouldn’t an even greater love be to live for someone else? I mean, if you really loved me End, then you would send me all of your disposable income.

[NotBlinded]

No, you are right, we cannot give it as it comes from Jesus, IMO, but you can point people towards God with all the love you can muster through Christ. I believe we can access "it" through the understanding of the relationship between God's desire/will, or choosing the alternative(s).....and these are human choices, not God's choice. The understanding of how our choices are out of congruency, intentionally or unintentionally, defines this relationship. It's not His choice, but ours. The thing about it, it seems like unless you have His help, and the things He shows you about the relationship to the rules, that this congruency may never happen.....for example, Christians that don't act as Christians, which includes me. I think He "omnisciently" knows when this will happen, but let's you get there on you own. The Holy Spirit helps if you ask, but until you are ready to give up fighting out of pride, the new understanding might not show up aside from a sovereign act.

 

AM seems to have another method of access, and this is why I can't agree. Perhaps if we went slowly, step by step, we would see where the disagreement lies. It's hard to give account without hurting others, especially here.

 

Thank you for the notes.

You are welcome and thank you for replying.

 

I am not a Christian, yet I can agree with much of what you are saying above. Yes, it is human choices and the results will determine if one's actions are for the good or not. You call it God's will, I would call it the way of the universe. (AM calls it Creativity)

 

You say the congruency may not happen without God's help, but I'll say that help is always within you as a part of you.

 

The methods may be different; the thoughts about where it comes from may be different, but the results are the same. The only difference is where you ascribe it from coming from. Inside or outside. When you ask the Holy Spirit for help, you feel it from the inside correct?

 

I think it can become a hindrance to those groups that claim that others don't have access to it by any other means except their own. By this expression alone, it limits their own access. Spirituality is hindered by self-serving ideals.

 

Anyway, I think the differences can be worked out.

[Guest end3]

Wouldn’t an even greater love be to live for someone else? I mean, if you really loved me End, then you would send me all of your disposable income.

 

I'm a repubican Christian

[Legion]

Wouldn’t an even greater love be to live for someone else? I mean, if you really loved me End, then you would send me all of your disposable income.

 

I'm a repubican Christian

Well then End, you are doubly unwelcome here.

[NotBlinded]

Wouldn’t an even greater love be to live for someone else? I mean, if you really loved me End, then you would send me all of your disposable income.

 

I'm a repubican Christian

[NotBlinded]

Wouldn’t an even greater love be to live for someone else? I mean, if you really loved me End, then you would send me all of your disposable income.

 

I'm a repubican Christian

Well then End, you are doubly unwelcome here.

Legion!

 

[Guest end3]

No, you are right, we cannot give it as it comes from Jesus, IMO, but you can point people towards God with all the love you can muster through Christ. I believe we can access "it" through the understanding of the relationship between God's desire/will, or choosing the alternative(s).....and these are human choices, not God's choice. The understanding of how our choices are out of congruency, intentionally or unintentionally, defines this relationship. It's not His choice, but ours. The thing about it, it seems like unless you have His help, and the things He shows you about the relationship to the rules, that this congruency may never happen.....for example, Christians that don't act as Christians, which includes me. I think He "omnisciently" knows when this will happen, but let's you get there on you own. The Holy Spirit helps if you ask, but until you are ready to give up fighting out of pride, the new understanding might not show up aside from a sovereign act.

 

AM seems to have another method of access, and this is why I can't agree. Perhaps if we went slowly, step by step, we would see where the disagreement lies. It's hard to give account without hurting others, especially here.

 

Thank you for the notes.

You are welcome and thank you for replying.

 

I am not a Christian, yet I can agree with much of what you are saying above. Yes, it is human choices and the results will determine if one's actions are for the good or not. You call it God's will, I would call it the way of the universe.

 

You say the congruency may not happen without God's help, but I'll say that help is always within you as a part of you.

 

The methods may be different; the thoughts about where it comes from may be different, but the results are the same. The only difference is where you ascribe it from coming from. Inside or outside. When you ask the Holy Spirit for help, you feel it from the inside correct?

 

Anyway, I think the differences can be worked out.

 

To be true to my original thoughts before entering orthodoxy, I believe the HS can be inside from birth. I think most consider the HS to come upon asking God to enter your life.

 

I think it can become a hindurance to those groups that claim that others don't have access to it by any other means except their own. By this expression alone, it limits their own access. Spirituality is hindered by self-serving ideals.

 

I see this as a very possible statement NBB, but the biblical story agrees so much for me, that your statement would be true except for my own belief in the bible. Not meant to strike at you, just stating in honesty.

[NotBlinded]

 

To be true to my original thoughts before entering orthodoxy, I believe the HS can be inside from birth. I think most consider the HS to come upon asking God to enter your life.

 

I think it can become a hindurance to those groups that claim that others don't have access to it by any other means except their own. By this expression alone, it limits their own access. Spirituality is hindered by self-serving ideals.

 

I see this as a very possible statement NBB, but the biblical story agrees so much for me, that your statement would be true except for my own belief in the bible. Not meant to strike at you, just stating in honesty.

There is no harm in any of what you said to me. You are honest in admitting that to me and to yourself.

[NotBlinded]

2) Cause and effect are one, only separated by the tool of time (no...not Tool Time! )

 

That's it! You get one, too!

 

 

I'm pooped, guys. Will return to the conversation later.

 

 

Phanta

HA!

[Legion]

I think the hint of cleavage is one of the best parts about NBBTB's photo. And you didn't retouch that Phanta.

 

So we're cool.

[agnosticator]

She also said that I could know all this stuff about the Bible, history, writing books, etc and still not be a witness to Christ because I smoke.

 

I'm behind in reading many threads, and just now read yours. I suggest you tell your wife that Jesus smoked a bong. Challenge her to prove this wrong, since all the boys back then used the sacred weed in more ways than one...(source) Maybe you should switch from tobacco to cannabis?

[Mriana]

What is it, functionally, about giving one's life for another, in your view, that makes it a higher act of love than any other? In other words, How does that work? How does it work?

 

Phanta

 

A woman can do that just giving birth and some women have.

 

That's a great example, Mriana. Now what makes giving one's life in childbirth for one's child the greatest act of love? (This question is for End and anyone else who holds this view. I realize you may not hold this view, Mriana. I do appreciate the concrete example you offered!)

 

Phanta

 

You're welcome. Glad I could help with that much, but I shall leave the second part for others because when the dr asked us who he should save if push came to shove, I chose myself. So I can't answer this one. (No worries End, the drs managed to save us both and no one died that day, though it was close)

[Legion]

Abiyoyo, I finally just read through the testimony you wrote here. I thought it was pretty good man. I think I understand why you come here now. I think you come here to anneal your faith, to sharpen it in the face of criticism. And I have to admit, I have some admiration for that. I think far too many Christians are more interested in entering the echo chamber of their own circles.