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Goodbye Jesus

Subservient Or Master?


PatrickG

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After reading this "rant" i thought this would make a good topic for spirituality.

 

Much thanks to wester for posting:

 

http://www.ex-christ...534-providence/

 

 

 

I think that this correlates to subservient spirituality, and mastering your own spirituality.

 

With particular providence we see a dependence that often resembles begging God for everyting.

 

With general prividence we see people who know that they have been endowed with all they need to live.

 

With general providence we learn to master our spiritual consciousness.

 

With particular providence we must always ask, and we never quite know if we are going to recieve, becaue we are subservient.

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I have a zero providence policy, personally.

 

It's just me, my brain/body connection, my environment, and my choices... And I think that is pretty damn comforting. Spiritual to me, is dancing to tribal drums and skin on skin contact.

no God required.

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Sorry, I just realized what section this is in. Hope I didn't come across as rude.

 

Spirituality is a metaphor to me now. For peace, wisdom, joy, yearning. .. and no waiting for providence to intervene.

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Spirituality is a metaphor to me now. For peace, wisdom, joy, yearning. .. and no waiting for providence to intervene.

 

I don't think that I wait for providence either.

 

I expect it to be there.

 

There are issues that I find myself ill equipped to understand because I have no experience in them. "Live and learn" fits well with the general providence model.

 

When knowledge is just outside of my grasp, I trust that I will be lead to the place of learning..........that is general provodence. There is nothing keeping it from me. All things are mine for the taking. I also believe in inspirtation. There is nothing that would keep me from recieving the inspiration in a time of need. This is a new thought principle that says that "all things are connected, and there is an 'all knowing' that can be tapped into with the believing mind". It is not a begging. It is a faith.

 

If you are going to have faith, I'd prefer it to be in general providence, rather then particular providence, wich never really knows if the thing desired will be given.

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Sorry, I just realized what section this is in. Hope I didn't come across as rude.

No problem.

 

Spirituality is a metaphor to me now. For peace, wisdom, joy, yearning. .. and no waiting for providence to intervene.

These are true, except at a point it is of state of being and these are expressions of that. It is called spiritual because it is not confined to or defined by objects or things, but is experienced as the underlying reality that all things, all states manifest from. It is beyond rationality, inaccessible through rationality because it itself is not rationality, but instead it embraces rationality, and mind, and body, and all things into itself.

 

 

I don't think that I wait for providence either.

 

 

I expect it to be there.

I very much agree that this is not a matter of providence from some outside God handing out gifts to children as they pass before "Him" in a parade. And I agree you should expect it to be there. In fact everyone already is that. It's just a matter of 'unlearning' to see what was always there all along. The Buddhists call this the Gateless Gate.

 

There are issues that I find myself ill equipped to understand because I have no experience in them. "Live and learn" fits well with the general providence model.

"Live and Learn" is valid, but how to live and how to learn, in what ways, is the real catch. Where I don't agree with the General Providence model is as follows. First, it assumes at the outset that "it" is external, that "it" is some object to understand. Secondly that it assumes that since it is an object that can be understood that using reason and rationality to understand it will grant access to it. Those are errors of reason building off an earlier mental model of Particular Providence you referenced. That earlier model was the mythic structure of a God interacting with the world as it's guardian and protector, and the General Providence model just removed that God from roles of active engagement in the world, to a principle outside it. This was the view of Deism in its formation.

 

When knowledge is just outside of my grasp, I trust that I will be lead to the place of learning..........that is general provodence.

This is good, as it is a knowledge outside the grasp of rational mind. That place of learning has to go into some other gaze to see it - somewhere not outside us.

 

There is nothing keeping it from me.

This is absolutely true.

 

All things are mine for the taking.

This is where you will fail. They are not 'yours' to take. They are all yours already, and mine, and everyone's. In fact "they" are already everything we already are. You cannot find something you already are. It is your Nature. If you want to find you don't look outside yourself for it. You simply peel back the fictions to see what already is. You unlearn. From there then, you see that 'reality' is perspectives and evolving understanding, not cold fact. It shift your entire experience of life, as life itself seeing the world in forms of knowing. It is the essence of being, of mind, of body, of all things.

 

I also believe in inspirtation. There is nothing that would keep me from recieving the inspiration in a time of need. This is a new thought principle that says that "all things are connected, and there is an 'all knowing' that can be tapped into with the believing mind". It is not a begging. It is a faith.

This is very good. I very much agree with this. One thing to share with you in regard to this, in practicing meditation, that inward journey, frequently for me I experience mental imagery that rises to my mind. They can take archetypal forms, or simple mental images that flood my conscious state - not thoughts themselves, but what I witness as observer. What they are is what arise from my own subconscious mind to my fully awake mind in a state of stillness that will move me to understandings, openings within myself. What I am coming to learn is that these as you say things that come to you in a time of need, they are what I tell myself, through access to those higher and lower levels, that bring awareness to my conscious waking mind. They open myself as I go out from there into the world. In a word, they 'teach' if you wish to look at it metaphorically. But these are not things you learn by trying to understand them through observation. You experience them within yourself, and bring them into harmony with the rest of your life in this body.

 

If you are going to have faith, I'd prefer it to be in general providence, rather then particular providence, wich never really knows if the thing desired will be given.

Something that might help you, I don't call it faith. Experience replaces faith. Faith is valid, to be sure, because it is listening to a 'sense' or an intuition of something higher, something beyond our grasp. That is valid as it is that spiritual nature in ourselves which draws and pulls us towards its Realization to the conscious mind. But as you access it, as you expose your mind to it, it is no longer a faith but a direct knowing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you are going to have faith, I'd prefer it to be in general providence, rather then particular providence, which never really knows if the thing desired will be given.

It seems to me that providence, whether particular or general, is the belief that what one needs is somehow readily accessible. Based on personal experience and simple observation, I don't buy that. Certainly, the fact that life generally and humanity in particular muddle along tells us that enough is readily available to guarantee that enough people reproduce to keep the whole picture show running, but this doesn't speak to quality of life issues at all. Evolution doesn't care about quality of life, it just cares about keeping the ball rolling any old way that it can. The criteria for evolutionary success is survival, not joy, peace, or contentment. It's a little like the success criteria for curing cancer -- if you survive five years and then die one day later, it's a success. If you survive, period, minus a colon or a leg, it's still a success. If you survive but are permanently scarred in your inmost being by a soul-crushing multi-year survival slog plus have a permanently disregulated immune system due to the side effects of chemo, that's success, too. All you have to do is not die of something you would have died of, when you would have died of it, even if the alternative is worse than death.

 

Many of us have been very ill-served by thought-systems that suggest that if you are good enough / have enough faith / try hard enough / are positive enough that it's basically inevitable that the world is your oyster, either in particular or in general. I would be ever so much further ahead in life if I had understood from the start that the world is not a friendly place, that most people's experience of life is as if it were begrudging and capricious in what it yields to your best efforts. I would have been much less idealistic, expected much less, and budgeted for a lot more effort and patience. It is much easier to adjust your thinking in such major ways when you are still in your formative stages. One has the very devil of a time doing it late in life.

 

So I say, bugger all to providence of any kind. It is like drugs: pleasant at first, maladaptive in the end. The most eloquent way I heard it put once is, "hope is not your friend". Hope is the belief that you can influence things beyond the scope of your actual powers. It leads to magical thinking and/or bitter disappointment. Understanding your limitations and operating within them is the only facsimile of actual freedom we can know.

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If you are going to have faith, I'd prefer it to be in general providence, rather then particular providence, which never really knows if the thing desired will be given.

It seems to me that providence, whether particular or general, is the belief that what one needs is somehow readily accessible. Based on personal experience and simple observation, I don't buy that. Certainly, the fact that life generally and humanity in particular muddle along tells us that enough is readily available to guarantee that enough people reproduce to keep the whole picture show running, but this doesn't speak to quality of life issues at all. Evolution doesn't care about quality of life, it just cares about keeping the ball rolling any old way that it can. The criteria for evolutionary success is survival, not joy, peace, or contentment. It's a little like the success criteria for curing cancer -- if you survive five years and then die one day later, it's a success. If you survive, period, minus a colon or a leg, it's still a success. If you survive but are permanently scarred in your inmost being by a soul-crushing multi-year survival slog plus have a permanently disregulated immune system due to the side effects of chemo, that's success, too. It's even a success if you have an actual instant cure that costs so much it leaves you in penury. All you have to do is not die of something you would have died of, when you would have died of it, even if the alternative is worse than death.

 

Many of us have been very ill-served by thought-systems that suggest that if you are good enough / have enough faith / try hard enough / are positive enough that it's basically inevitable that the world is your oyster, either in particular or in general. I would be ever so much further ahead in life if I had understood from the start that the world is not a friendly place, that most people's experience of life is as if it were begrudging and capricious in what it yields to your best efforts. I would have been much less idealistic, expected much less, and budgeted for a lot more effort and patience. It is much easier to adjust your thinking in such major ways when you are still in your formative stages. One has the very devil of a time doing it late in life.

 

So I say, bugger all to providence of any kind. It is like drugs: pleasant at first, maladaptive in the end. The most eloquent way I heard it put once is, "hope is not your friend". Hope is the belief that you can influence things beyond the scope of your actual powers. It leads to magical thinking and/or bitter disappointment. Understanding your limitations and operating within them is the only facsimile of actual freedom we can know.

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