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Goodbye Jesus

The Brain And Spirituality


Antlerman

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Then you must accept their premise that something came from nothing. I do not accept that premise. Perhaps there has been something all along.

 

Their? You mean christians? Not only christians believe life our universe had a starting point. However you are correct, it could have always been. Although i view it like a sine wave, or perhaps a double helix. That is, if it always was, then there's a cycle, seeing as how things are changing constantly. There either has to be a starting point that's absolute, or that comes and goes, with an "end" point which does the same.

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didn't mean to offend anyone, or imply i knew the purpose of it, just decided to post my thoughts at the moment/speculate

 

I do wish we didn't have to worry about this stuff, i get very angry because i'm not one of those people who can just let go of my questions and worries, at least not without sufficient answers. I didn't say it didn't screw us over in other places either, just that there are possible explanations for it's purpose

No offense taken, I was simply being ironic. I see unfulfilled needs as the antithesis of motivating us, just based on the hierarchy of needs ... if you are hungry then you will be preoccupied finding food and you will not create art or invent philosophies. Likewise if you are experiencing existential angst you will be relatively ineffective at focusing on being efficient and/or creative with your work or your relationships. It's when I feel that my needs are at least reasonably met that I can get in the flow and really have my actions in the world count for as much as possible and feel as good as possible in the process. That was my point.

 

Now if you meant that these yearnings motivate us to get certain needs met which then results in the above-mentioned synergy, I'd say great, except I have come to regards the search for meaning as essentially a fool's errand. As for making your own meaning ... it's hit or miss at best.

In regards to our existence having meaning. I like to feel like it does, however ... What we see as meaning only applies relative to a small window of time, if we were to compare it to a supposedly endless existence, the significance is minimal, if not virtually nonexistent.

Yes, one focuses on a small time segment, a single objective in a particular relationship, a single task in one's work day, or some other compartmentalization that allows one to have a sense of having gotten somewhere. The more you step back and look at the big picture the more overwhelming and/or empty things seem.

 

Maybe that is our problem as humans, we aspire to too much and should in all humility stick to things that have a scope we can get our arms around. We are not, after all, the size of the universe, so why should we have concerns about meaning at that level? The problem with that theory is bleed-thru. Sometimes even the little things are blocked by factors that are way bigger than you. As an extreme example, if you were, say, a simple fisherman near Puckett, Thailand in 2004, your contentment with your micro-existence would likely have been disrupted massively by the tsunami that hit there.

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shit i posted twice by accident...

 

You can delete posts. Check out that cute little "delete" button on the bottom right of it.

 

it doesn't pop up on mine... only "edit", "reply" and "multiquote"

 

Maybe it's because i'm on google chrome, idk

It may also have to do with whether you're a paying member. I can see that button now, but don't remember it being there before. But I subscribed a few days ago. May or may not be the reason.

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... we experience culture, and can see and observe culture manifest in social structures, even though it doesn't exist as a physical object. It is a manifestation of subjective realities. In fact, we can say this non-physical "force" is an object by the fact we interact with it by the fact it influences the material world, etc.

The difference is that culture is something that is, relatively speaking, universally experienced and all the individuals involved in that experience are in substantial agreement about what that experience is and what it means.

Really?? :) Your average person in utterly unaware of culture as culture. Your average person assumes that this is 'just the way it is', that what they are interfacing with is simply reality itself. People swim in culture mostly unaware of all its influences, its programming, its self-facing biases. People assume reality through it, unaware of its influences, and as such, its very existence in everything they do.

 

Same thing with Spirit. Everyone experiences it, like nature, whether they are aware of it or not. And it too is what we respond to within ourselves and the world, if we acknowledge it consciously or not. Is there evidence of this? Sure. Life, in all its movements, all its motions, all its rising and falling. Its very Being.

 

You think cultural studies is scientific in the sense of the natural sciences? But again, my comparison to spirituality with culture is only a rough example, not a direct comparison. I said that in the post you quoted from.

 

You and I can have a discussion about the movies we've seen this year and even if they are not the same movies it's still generically a shared experience about which we can both make certain assumptions.

 

With spirituality, on the other hand, your experience and mine happen to be quite different, to the point where I have difficulty even relating to your experience, which is almost entirely outside mine.

Sounds like you're describing culture as well! :HaHa: Do you think your experience of culture is pretty much the same as the fundamentalist's? He shares that culture with you too. Do you think its the same as someone who lives in China? Same thing with Spirit. As I said in my previous post, how someone expresses their experience of Spirit will vary from culture to culture, and from individual to individual depending on their level of growth within it. Same thing with culture. But they are all experiencing it.

 

What it seems you are looking for is some sort of common, identifiable feature that is universal. And that does exist. Some touch on this within the Perennial Philosophy, that all religion share certain deep structures upon with varying surface structures are interwoven, but I'll add that it is not just seen in religious expression but it life itself, in existence itself. Narrowing it down to religious expression, you clearly do in fact contrary to what you saying it doesn't, see culturally independent expressions that are the same in the experiences of the mystics, regardless of the language used to describe it. For myself, I can easily read what the Buddha says and nod my head knowingly, same thing with the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, same thing with Theresa of Avila, Emerson, Aurubindo, etc, etc, and they all are from differing religious traditions.

 

At a certain point, all the symbols and the experience tied to them breaks down. It seems what you are looking at it strictly surface differences and seeing no commonality. But that is simply not true, with culture, or spirituality.

 

I have not had the subjective experience of spirituality that you have; in fact, in a way, I've not had a subjective experience of spirituality at all. Whatever I had that passed for spirituality was a lot of unfounded beliefs and unwarranted hopes and expectations about how life and a presumed afterlife were supposed to function and how those things related to me and mine.

I would very much say by virtue of being a subjective individual you experience it. How aware of it we are depends. If you are told it's this over here, or that over there, it both is and is not. It gets a little difficult to explain, but the simplest is to say it is before and beyond all descriptions. So if you are trying to say "I felt inspired", that is it, but so is "I felt nothing". That is it as well. The simplest is to say find what you are before what you appear. You touch into your true Nature, before and beyond all expressions. In those expressions then, it is present in all things. You are that, in all things.

 

This is why the contemplative practices open to that nature, expressed in the simple to the infinite, all at one as all is One. It moves us before what merely appears to what is, and always is. Then, all that follows, all forms, all experiences flow from that Source.

 

My point is that people have lively and largely congenial debate about culture, art, and the like without descending into debates whether those things even exist,

I know plenty of people who look at what can be called the Divine in art forms, and absolutely see nothing, experience nothing, and simply see just lines and nothing more. Same thing with "seeing" Spirit. But the art is there.

 

because everyone experiences them in sufficiently similar and concrete ways that philosophy or metaphysics don't have to be invoked to discuss them. There are no aculturalists like there are atheists.

Oh sure there is. What do you think reductionism and determinism is?

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Really?? :) Your average person in utterly unaware of culture as culture.

Of course people bring different levels of awareness to all sorts of things, including culture, but to the extent they pay attention to it at all, I don't think there's any general serious debate about its existence or what it's like to experience it.

 

Yes, someone in, say, China will have a very different take on what's important or desirable to emphasize culturally and we may not intuit various aspects of each other's cultural experience very well without some effort, but culture manifestly does not have the ephemeral, ineffable nature of spirituality. Yes, I know you weren't drawing a perfect parallel but in all honesty I don't think it's even a very valid general parallel.

Do you think your experience of culture is pretty much the same as the fundamentalist's?

As a former fundamentalist, I can say that my experience of culture hasn't changed at all. What has changed are the conclusions I draw from culture, and how I act on them. E.g., I'm no longer uneasy about the depiction of magic or the supernatural in motion pictures, particularly when seen by children, within certain reasonable limits like not taking a six year old to see something like Rosemary's Baby. However, a fundamentalist and I would not debate the existence of that movie or its content. Philosophers would not theorize about the facts of the matter, only about the implications.

What it seems you are looking for is some sort of common, identifiable feature that is universal. And that does exist.

I recognize some common themes or threads in spiritual thought but you have to ask yourself whether these arise from a common source in the realm of spirit, or from other commonalities, such as the fact that we are all the same species living on the same planet and, broadly speaking, sharing the same history and social milieu.

 

For example, near death experiences mostly have the same out of body experience of floating above one's body, the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel, some kind of positive experience in the light, being sent back. But if this arose from an objective spiritual dimensional reality you would not have the phenomenon of Christians meeting Jesus and seeing streets paved with gold and heavenly choirs (probably singing Bill Gaither), Muslims meeting Mohammed, spiritualists meeting dead people, even the occasional guilty person having an experience of hell.

Basically the point of a NDE, contact with the afterlife, looks like nothing but a projection of a person's hopes and expectations. I suppose you can (and no doubt will) argue that this, also, is spirit. Well okay ... but I don't see why you'd bother to call it that. You could just as well call it a general wish for Something More than this life, and relegate it to a psychological phenomenon as a spiritual one.

So if you are trying to say "I felt inspired", that is it, but so is "I felt nothing". That is it as well.

How convenient.

The simplest is to say find what you are before what you appear. You touch into your true Nature, before and beyond all expressions. In those expressions then, it is present in all things. You are that, in all things.

 

This is why the contemplative practices open to that nature, expressed in the simple to the infinite, all at one as all is One. It moves us before what merely appears to what is, and always is. Then, all that follows, all forms, all experiences flow from that Source.

It seems to me this is a statement of faith unless you or I personally have, if you will, a revelation of it. I am open to such an aha moment, really ... but if such a moment comes it won't come by me trying to see it. On that, I'm sure we'll agree. In the meantime, based on all you've said here, it doesn't seem to matter if I feel anything or feel nothing, it's still spirit to you, isn't it?

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Really?? :) Your average person in utterly unaware of culture as culture.

Of course people bring different levels of awareness to all sorts of things, including culture, but to the extent they pay attention to it at all, I don't think there's any general serious debate about its existence or what it's like to experience it.

I think what might help is to point out that when I'm speaking of culture, I'm not speaking of the various artifacts, such as movies, or music, or dress. I'm speaking of an entire shared space of reality that is largely, utterly invisible to your average person. I'm talking about certain assumptions of reality that are culturally shared that most people take for granted as 'the way of things'. So yes, you will get a serious debate as you start challenging people's basic assumptions of damned near everything; assumptions which are given to them via culture. They in fact don't see those as 'just culture'; they see it as a fact of nature, reality. Everyone else is just 'screwed up'.

 

but culture manifestly does not have the ephemeral, ineffable nature of spirituality. Yes, I know you weren't drawing a perfect parallel but in all honesty I don't think it's even a very valid general parallel.

It has the same sort of 'background' influence. There's a Bible verse that comes to mind that relates: "In Him we live and move and have our being". Now granted the Biblical writers are putting the face of God the Father on this, but the principle is the same. We swim in culture. It influences us, we influence it, we are part of it, it is part of us, collectively and as individuals. Culture in the simplest terms is inter-subjective space, it is subjective in nature, a shared subjective experience. (Society would be the external, objective, supporting structures, or manifestations of culture).

 

I used to say we create God in our own image, and feed God, so God can feed us. In other words, we create God, and God creates us. These are the objective symbolic expressions of the subjective and inter-subjective experience. Where the nature of spirituality differs from general culture, is as you say in its ephemeral, ineffable nature. It is of a different order, but it will in fact function within human experience in the manner culture does. Here's how I see it doing so:

 

Spirit can be experienced in three ways: first person, second person, and third person. First person is the subjective sense of Spirit, the big Self, I AM, direct, enlightenment, the Divine within. Second person is God, God the Father, Goddess, or the Holy Other; to bow before, to submit, to worship, to stagger in absolute humility before a Light to great to bear, the end of all ego before the Absolute. Third person is God as All; All is God, All is connected; I am you, you are me, indivisible Unity, God is All in All; from the Many to the One, from the One to the Many. All of these are valid experiences of the ineffable; of the Divine. Now comes the interesting part and how the comparison to culture comes in.

 

In recognizing these faces of the Divine in human experience, we see as in culture symbolic expressions of: Me, You, the World; in a subjective, experiential way. The spiritual, religion, is experienced exactly this way as well, just on a different order. It is the experience of the transcendent; the higher nature. So like those I mentioned earlier not seeing that 'invisible' space that includes the experience of individual, the other, and the objective where we "live and move and have our being", the same is true of the experience of Spirit. It is our higher nature, our prior nature, within and through all things that influences and affects the direction of our very evolution. (I can qualify that evidentially by citing biocultural feedback, for starters).

 

Do you think your experience of culture is pretty much the same as the fundamentalist's?

As a former fundamentalist, I can say that my experience of culture hasn't changed at all.

No? Then why do you participate with this culture here on this site, for one easy example. :)

 

I recognize some common themes or threads in spiritual thought but you have to ask yourself whether these arise from a common source in the realm of spirit, or from other commonalities, such as the fact that we are all the same species living on the same planet and, broadly speaking, sharing the same history and social milieu.

Some aspects of it are indeed shared cultures. Others are in fact the experience of just being; our nature. It seems insane to suggest that the soup we were bred from isn't in all of us, don't you think? That seems to be my point in all this. We are all One.

 

For example, near death experiences mostly have the same out of body experience of floating above one's body, the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel, some kind of positive experience in the light, being sent back. But if this arose from an objective spiritual dimensional reality you would not have the phenomenon of Christians meeting Jesus and seeing streets paved with gold and heavenly choirs (probably singing Bill Gaither), Muslims meeting Mohammed, spiritualists meeting dead people, even the occasional guilty person having an experience of hell.

Gahh.... :banghead: It is error number one to think that we are looking laterally at some sort of other plane of reality. Nonsense. We interpret a transcendent experience, and extraordinary experience though cultural symbols. And that is all they are! Can I say that clearly enough? They are not "what it is 'over there'". Nonsense. Our brains try to supply symbolic language, a language derived from that unseen, invisible thing called culture, in order to differentiate it from other things. We have to call it something. We have to try to identify it. But you cannot, categorically speaking, define it. God, the instant you even call it that, ceases to actually be that. But the point is, it is utterly non-literal in description. It is metaphorical, poetic, at best, and that falls utterly short of the actual experience of 'that'.

 

Our experience of life as humans is dualistic. We start with raw experience and it then separates into subject and objective descriptions. It's how we process. So in trying to take NDE's or other mystical experience, as some sort of science is absurd! Nonsense. Of course a Muslim sees Mohammad, of course a Christian sees Christ/Mary, of course a Hindu sees Krisha. Duh. :)

 

 

 

Basically the point of a NDE, contact with the afterlife, looks like nothing but a projection of a person's hopes and expectations.

That's a mighty strong assumption and speculation on your part. A projection of hope? I don't think so. I've experienced this. Many have. It's experienced on an entirely different level, a different order that what we try to just "tell ourselves" It's not comparable. It's not about that at all. They are infinite magnitudes of order beyond any sort of 'wishful thinking' or hope projections. :) I smile knowingly.

 

 

I'll break from response here.

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It is error number one to think that we are looking laterally at some sort of other plane of reality. Nonsense. We interpret a transcendent experience, and extraordinary experience though cultural symbols. And that is all they are! Can I say that clearly enough? They are not "what it is 'over there'". Nonsense. Our brains try to supply symbolic language, a language derived from that unseen, invisible thing called culture, in order to differentiate it from other things. We have to call it something. We have to try to identify it. But you cannot, categorically speaking, define it. God, the instant you even call it that, ceases to actually be that. But the point is, it is utterly non-literal in description. It is metaphorical, poetic, at best, and that falls utterly short of the actual experience of 'that'.

NDEs are invariably described as lucid, vivid experiences. People aren't gumming around the edges trying to describe something that they don't have words for. They very eagerly provide detailed descriptions of literal things and they are led to believe, almost to a person, that they literally experienced those literal things.

 

If the divine can't be described or defined, and if, as you said before, the experience of god could equally be described as feeling profound things or feeling nothing, then conversing about the topic can serve no useful purpose. The realm of spirit is whatever people say it is, apparently.

 

And it's always been that way, really. Man has concocted theories and cosmologies since the beginning. Because speculation is all he has. Personally, I'm tired of speculating, and I have tried to remain open to simply experiencing whatever there might be to experience. At the end of the day, life just is what it is. The divine for me at the moment is a large hot carmel latte from Dunkin Donuts. It isn't what I would have chosen or aspired to, but it suffices.

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It is error number one to think that we are looking laterally at some sort of other plane of reality. Nonsense. We interpret a transcendent experience, and extraordinary experience though cultural symbols. And that is all they are! Can I say that clearly enough? They are not "what it is 'over there'". Nonsense. Our brains try to supply symbolic language, a language derived from that unseen, invisible thing called culture, in order to differentiate it from other things. We have to call it something. We have to try to identify it. But you cannot, categorically speaking, define it. God, the instant you even call it that, ceases to actually be that. But the point is, it is utterly non-literal in description. It is metaphorical, poetic, at best, and that falls utterly short of the actual experience of 'that'.

NDEs are invariably described as lucid, vivid experiences. People aren't gumming around the edges trying to describe something that they don't have words for. They very eagerly provide detailed descriptions of literal things and they are led to believe, almost to a person, that they literally experienced those literal things.

I didn't say things like NDE's are not lucid, vivid experiences, nor does my description above of things beyond description come off as "gumming around the edges". You are conflating the two and distorting the one. First, yes people try to eagerly provide detailed descriptions of what they experienced, but to my point they are in fact supplying culturally derived symbols to describe this vivid, literal experiences. But the descriptions are not scientific descriptions of some actual world full of their dead relatives, Mother Mary, Jesus, Mohamed, Krishna, etc. The experience literally happened. The descriptions are symbolic.

 

As for 'gumming around the edges', where that might come in is in trying to actual explain it conceptually. It quite literally is 'not this, not that', since it goes beyond ordinary definitions. Add to this, there are various degrees of experience, degrees of conscious awareness, that go higher and higher up that ladder, so to speak, that become increasingly less capable of even symbolic expressions. It moves into pure essence, which simply is and is undefinable. It's not that it's gumming around the edges, but rather it is simply impossible to describe the indescribable. The best you get is 'not this, not that'.

 

So at the NDE experience as in your example, that would be describable as a Subtle level experience. It is still approached with the mind in symbolic terms, it is still represented as objective realities, i.e., you 'see' Krishna or your dead relatives, hear their voice, etc. It is perhaps even taking the world and understanding through the mind through archetypes, which is also symbolic but of deeply connected forms. But these sorts of symbols are not literal, scientific descriptions. As I said, even though someone may enthusiastically describe in vivid detail what they experienced using all sorts of words, what is real is the experience. To get hung up on the literalness of the symbols completely misses what they point to.

 

If the divine can't be described or defined, and if, as you said before, the experience of god could equally be described as feeling profound things or feeling nothing, then conversing about the topic can serve no useful purpose. The realm of spirit is whatever people say it is, apparently.

By saying it can't be defined that is true. But I shouldn't be saying that you can't attempt to describe the experience of it, and that that description in fact is a shared description by others who have. It's just that that description is of the experience, not a definition of what the Divine is. The Divine is not like a Yeti, where you would say it has a harry body, limbs, and teeth. But the point is that to talk about ones experience of the Divine, to give a word to it, does in fact serve a useful purpose. The purpose is to talk about what being human is about, to talk about the nature of who we are, to hopefully possibly realize something in ourselves and thus as a result to affect every aspect of ourselves. It's no different than why we talk about life with others in the ordinary, everyday sort of expericence of living.

 

We are communal beings, and as such its is how we interact with the world; through the subjective, inter-subjective, and objective. We are not just the subjective, but other subjective beings as part of us, and the world outside us as well. There is no separation, except only in our minds, in how we perceive the world through the symbols we use. To talk about life above and beyond those limits, in fact does reflect the reality of what is actually going on in the Universe of which we are part. As we talk about these things, as we break down the literalness of our symbolic 'realities', it affords a realization of reality that breaks free from the symbols as Reality itself. Reality is an unfolding awareness, just as it is to us today compared to what is was to us 10,000 years ago.

 

So to your other point asking if we don't do anything then why do anything, why look at all and not just do exactly nothing and just live life? This is where it gets somewhat paradoxical. I did state that at the "end" of it it is the realization or act of opening a window that was never actually there. The Buddhists call it the 'gateless gate'. In essence you actually don't find it. You can't look for something that was never not already fully there. It's not that you go and find it 'out there'. It was here, it was fully present all along.

 

That said however, to be apathetic is to be simply stuck in exactly where you are, in exactly seeing things as they appear, though your symbol sets, through your own understanding built up and reinforced through your language and culture. If we are never seeking growth, we will in fact never be more than at the moment we withdrew from reaching for more within ourselves. The paradox is that in searching you are busy looking for what you already have, but in not searching you are also simply accepting things as they appear. The search is in effect to break down all the facades to reveal what was already there. For now, we are looking at facades. To search and fail, is to break down one more facade of what it is not.

 

Now, it's not necessarily for everyone to feel compelled enough to look, and that's fine. I believe in the parts of the whole and the whole together. It takes many different minds, many different motions to affect the whole and the whole the parts. Where we really are in there is a matter of living sincerely. Living sincerely is something we always have to examine in ourselves, which is actually not very easy at times.

 

And it's always been that way, really. Man has concocted theories and cosmologies since the beginning. Because speculation is all he has.

...that and direct experience. He has that as well, and through that which all the theories and speculations ensue.

 

 

Personally, I'm tired of speculating, and I have tried to remain open to simply experiencing whatever there might be to experience. At the end of the day, life just is what it is...

...which is limitless. You're right don't build your experience on definitions. Don't lean to your own 'understanding', so to speak. ;)

 

The divine for me at the moment is a large hot carmel latte from Dunkin Donuts. It isn't what I would have chosen or aspired to, but it suffices.

The Divine in fact can be experienced in all things... but not limited to those things. Where else in life isn't it?

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... to be apathetic is to be simply stuck in exactly where you are... if we are never seeking growth, we will in fact never be more than at the moment we withdrew from reaching for more within ourselves.

It depends on the person, I think. Sometimes it is ceasing from all striving that causes you to make progress, because it's the very striving that is getting in the way of progress. That tends to be a pattern for me; I just say fuck it and suddenly within a short time I have some kind of breakthrough. Other people's mileage may vary, etc.

The paradox is that in searching you are busy looking for what you already have, but in not searching you are also simply accepting things as they appear. The search is in effect to break down all the facades to reveal what was already there. For now, we are looking at facades. To search and fail, is to break down one more facade of what it is not.

Again to my point, I think if you are aware you are looking at facades and you just live with that belief, you can save an awful lot of energy. If I know that the answer is neither here nor there, then it's a fool's errand to look for it either her or there. For you, searching may break down facades, as you put it; for me it seems to have the opposite effect. It's a little like fundies running around talking about Satan all the time. Pretty soon Satan is running the show. They are purging their living space of innocuous objects like teacup coasters with images of frogs on them, doing exorcisms, and so forth, and giving reality and power to the thing they are trying to rid themselves of. There's a church up the road from me that does little else but "deliverance ministry". They're obsessed with demons being in them and influencing them, and in my view it amounts to them worshiping Satan despite having "Baptist" on the name plate out front.

 

So it goes with our illusions, for some of us anyway. The only way I can make my lingering illusion that my life is in any way about me and what I want from it is to stand down, even if there's a certain amount of resignation or apathy required to make that happen. For me, looking at, behind and around facades is not a way to satisfy myself that they are just facades; they give reality to the facades.

 

Besides, it's not like I'm a total cynic. I still managed to get into a relationship with a woman and by extension her children and extended family and all the drama and interaction that implies. I've moved from a place it's sunny 320 days a year back to the frigging midwest and I'm probably moving again in the next year or two and probably not back to paradise. God help me, I'm even thinking of buying a fucking snowblower. I have plenty of stuff to keep me moving, more than I want or need really, but it's the price you pay to have something, however imperfect and tenuous, to look forward to.

Now, it's not necessarily for everyone to feel compelled enough to look, and that's fine. I believe in the parts of the whole and the whole together. It takes many different minds, many different motions to affect the whole and the whole the parts. Where we really are in there is a matter of living sincerely. Living sincerely is something we always have to examine in ourselves, which is actually not very easy at times.

Agree. There are things I'd do very differently, knowing what I know now. But at the time I didn't know what I know now, and I only got to knowing what I know by figuring out that I was wrong. So I always ask myself, was I always true to the light I had? And the answer is yes. That allows me to live with myself, and to have compassion on fellow travelers who do Stoopid things to themselves and others, possibly including me.

Personally, I'm tired of speculating, and I have tried to remain open to simply experiencing whatever there might be to experience. At the end of the day, life just is what it is...

...which is limitless. You're right don't build your experience on definitions. Don't lean to your own 'understanding', so to speak. ;)

You exult that it's limitless; I say, wearily, that there's no end to it. Different sides of the same coin.

 

I recognize of course that we're both right. I also am probably inching my way toward seeing it more as you do. I had shit go down for me in the past week that would have had me swinging from the rafters ten years ago and now I just shrug and am unsurprised and in some perverse way, even energized. Because even though I'm now obliged to shift my entire plan and strategy and hopes and expectations for the next few years of my life, at least it moved a bunch of stuff from the realm of the inexplicable and puzzling to the Land Where Things Make Half-Assed Sense and Can be Dealt With, aka "out in the open", and that means I am dealing in reality and have a fighting chance. Also since I know WTF I need to do, that provides purpose, a commodity that tends to be in short supply for me.

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You, yeah you, sitting there looking at a computer screen. When is the last time you felt a sense of community? I can't remember the last time I felt it.

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You, yeah you, sitting there looking at a computer screen. When is the last time you felt a sense of community? I can't remember the last time I felt it.

 

Sunday morning, with a circle of friends who gather each week for cooking and eating and talking and sharing ideas and experiences. The kids play and fuss all around us. We just pulled another family into the group last week. I need a bigger home...

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You, yeah you, sitting there looking at a computer screen. When is the last time you felt a sense of community? I can't remember the last time I felt it.

This past weekend. We had friends and family over.

 

Our (or my) problem is that it's hard to get alone-time. We have people (friends, family, workers for the house, pool, garden, etc) around us almost all the time.

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You, yeah you, sitting there looking at a computer screen. When is the last time you felt a sense of community? I can't remember the last time I felt it.

 

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in life. It's not easy, but well worth it.

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You, yeah you, sitting there looking at a computer screen. When is the last time you felt a sense of community? I can't remember the last time I felt it.

What's the point of the question?

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You, yeah you, sitting there looking at a computer screen. When is the last time you felt a sense of community? I can't remember the last time I felt it.

What's the point of the question?

 

I think he was just being cute with a rhetorical question. It's a good question for everyone to ask themselves, though.

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So are a lot of questions. How does it pertain?

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I used to say we create God in our own image, and feed God, so God can feed us. In other words, we create God, and God creates us. These are the objective symbolic expressions of the subjective and inter-subjective experience. Where the nature of spirituality differs from general culture, is as you say in its ephemeral, ineffable nature. It is of a different order, but it will in fact function within human experience in the manner culture does. Here's how I see it doing so:

 

Spirit can be experienced in three ways: first person, second person, and third person. First person is the subjective sense of Spirit, the big Self, I AM, direct, enlightenment, the Divine within. Second person is God, God the Father, Goddess, or the Holy Other; to bow before, to submit, to worship, to stagger in absolute humility before a Light to great to bear, the end of all ego before the Absolute. Third person is God as All; All is God, All is connected; I am you, you are me, indivisible Unity, God is All in All; from the Many to the One, from the One to the Many. All of these are valid experiences of the ineffable; of the Divine. Now comes the interesting part and how the comparison to culture comes in.

 

 

That's really interesting. Would you describe yourself as a pantheist? I've been looking at different spiritual things lately, and from what you say you seem to be in line with a lot of pantheism. Or perhaps more closely panentheism.

 

 

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I used to say we create God in our own image, and feed God, so God can feed us. In other words, we create God, and God creates us. These are the objective symbolic expressions of the subjective and inter-subjective experience. Where the nature of spirituality differs from general culture, is as you say in its ephemeral, ineffable nature. It is of a different order, but it will in fact function within human experience in the manner culture does. Here's how I see it doing so:

 

Spirit can be experienced in three ways: first person, second person, and third person. First person is the subjective sense of Spirit, the big Self, I AM, direct, enlightenment, the Divine within. Second person is God, God the Father, Goddess, or the Holy Other; to bow before, to submit, to worship, to stagger in absolute humility before a Light to great to bear, the end of all ego before the Absolute. Third person is God as All; All is God, All is connected; I am you, you are me, indivisible Unity, God is All in All; from the Many to the One, from the One to the Many. All of these are valid experiences of the ineffable; of the Divine. Now comes the interesting part and how the comparison to culture comes in.

 

That's really interesting. Would you describe yourself as a pantheist? I've been looking at different spiritual things lately, and from what you say you seem to be in line with a lot of pantheism. Or perhaps more closely panentheism.

 

Definitely more in line with Panentheism, not Pantheism. I see it in both transcendence and imminence. This article here on Standford's site give a good description of it: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panentheism/ Here's a little snippet from article:

From Plato to Schelling (1775–1854 CE), various theologians and philosophers developed ideas that are similar to themes in contemporary panentheism. These ideas developed as expressions of traditional theism. Proclus (412–485 CE) and Pseudo-Dionysus (late Fifth to early Sixth century) drawing upon Plotinus developed perspectives that included the world in God and understood the relationship between God and the world as a dialectical relationship (Cooper 2006, 42–46). In the Middle Ages, the influence of Neoplatonism continued in the thought of Eriugena (815–877), Eckhart (1260–1328), Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), and Boehme (1575–1624).

 

...

 

The awareness of panentheism as an alternative to theism and pantheism developed out of a complex of approaches. Philosophical idealism and philosophical adaptation of the scientific concept of evolution provided the basic sources of the explicit position of panentheism. Idealistic understandings of God in the thought of Hegel (1770–1831) and Schelling who sought to unify reality by means of dialectic thought.

 

Names like Whitehead, Plotinus, Schelling, etc are those that express what I feel about it. Traditional theism is too separate from the Divine in the world, and Pantheism is too impersonal, too non-transcendent to resonate with me.

 

Good observation on your part.

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From Plato to Schelling (1775–1854 CE), various theologians and philosophers developed ideas that are similar to themes in contemporary panentheism. These ideas developed as expressions of traditional theism. Proclus (412–485 CE) and Pseudo-Dionysus (late Fifth to early Sixth century) drawing upon Plotinus developed perspectives that included the world in God and understood the relationship between God and the world as a dialectical relationship (Cooper 2006, 42–46). In the Middle Ages, the influence of Neoplatonism continued in the thought of Eriugena (815–877), Eckhart (1260–1328), Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), and Boehme (1575–1624).

 

...

 

The awareness of panentheism as an alternative to theism and pantheism developed out of a complex of approaches. Philosophical idealism and philosophical adaptation of the scientific concept of evolution provided the basic sources of the explicit position of panentheism. Idealistic understandings of God in the thought of Hegel (1770–1831) and Schelling who sought to unify reality by means of dialectic thought.

 

Names like Whitehead, Plotinus, Shelling, etc are those that express what I feel about it. Traditional theism is too separate from the Divine in the world, and Pantheism is too impersonal, too non-transcendent to resonate with me.

 

Good observation on your part.

 

I've been leaning toward that path too. It seems like Buddha and such was onto something when they said everything is "connected". I really like reading Spinoza as well. It seems to make a lot of sense to me. I'm not really sure how to pursue it, though.

 

 

 

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You, yeah you, sitting there looking at a computer screen. When is the last time you felt a sense of community? I can't remember the last time I felt it.

 

I feel a sense of community on this forum. I love reading about all your lives on here, and how I face similar situations. I love getting to know you all. Even though we are all on opposite sides of the world, I still feel a part of something in here. :P

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I've been leaning toward that path too. It seems like Buddha and such was onto something when they said everything is "connected". I really like reading Spinoza as well. It seems to make a lot of sense to me. I'm not really sure how to pursue it, though.

Well, since you say you are leaning, then you do have that something to look to. :) As far as how to pursue it, that really becomes an individual thing. Try various things, but with one understanding: there is no single right way. The key is what works for you. The various 'means to the end', are not the end in themselves, and in religion the means often become the end itself, in a substitute sort of way. The means are about you exposing and developing that 'something' inside of you and giving it space to grow. It's about creating spaces on the internal landscape, in order to come to a deeper understanding, a deeper relationship if you will of that aspect of ourselves.

 

Reading inspiring material can help to set the mind in a place you can explore that. Music, nature, chant, dance, etc, all these things are about creating that space. That in essence is all that religion does in this regard for the spiritual. It creates a space for meditation. Additionally, in the social aspects of it, it creates support for the individual in the pursuit of that interior development. But the negative of course is that in any group, group dynamics come into play and power struggles and whatnot work contrary to support.

 

You ask for a place to start? Just go find some quite space, if possible out in nature alone somewhere, and just set aside all other thoughts to the world and just experience that 'something' in you in that space. Don't think about it, or anything at all, except for that one moment. Be in that moment. Start there.

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+1

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Oh, you meant the post explaining Panentheism. :) You identify with that as well?

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Oh, you meant the post explaining Panentheism. :) You identify with that as well?

I have. For quite some time. I know have have expressed that directly in several posts in the past, and in many other posts I have hinted to it by referencing Nature/Reality as "God" (as a concept of something larger, more impressive and more powerful than I).

 

And our consciousness was "given" to us by this World, or Universe (not the universe as in the finite sphere as a result of big bang, but the Universe, as in the infinite series of universes within a multi-verse or planes or whatever).

 

I started to identify with panentheism after reading an article that explained that atheists are a form of pantheists. I thought it was too limiting with just seeing this world/universe as everything, and accept that very likely possibility of a World/Universe beyond this one, and encapsulating this one.

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