on leaping from Faith to Faith...and back again

[sirguessalot]

sticking my neck out here with yet another attempt to paint a very simple picture of a possible bandwidth of faiths as i have come to understand them

with the hope that my GSc friends may find something useful, and perhaps good reasons to reach beyond ... always and forever

feel free to read, reflect, comment, inquire, etc...

but i ask that if you do respond, plz do so from your highest deepest truest most noble self...whatever that means to you

i recommend a blend of precision, gentleness, and curiosity

1) Faith in a magic God. Experienced as a God that exists as an imagined parental servant of our needs, wishes and wants. This is a natural way for a very young child to see God. This is the era of history where humanity first rose from the wilderness and claimed dominion. This is the God of me, Me, and ME.

2) faith in a mythic God. Experienced as a God that exists as a shared storyline and imagined parental servant of an exclusive group's needs, wishes and wants. This is a natural way for a young child to see God as a way to make friends for the first time. This is the era of history where humanity first gathered in groups around an ideal. This is the God of us, Us and US.

3) faith in a rational God. Experienced as a God that exists as the truths of the physical universe and is not subject to our imagination, but rather discovered and uncovered. This is a natural way for a growing child to learn how to think and learn for ones' self. This is the era of history where humanity first learned to prove and disprove how things are described and understood. This is the God of it, It and IT.

4) faith in a caring God. Experienced as a God that exists as the process that cares for everyone and everything and is not limited to mere magic, mere myth or mere reason. This is a natural way for a young adult to come to trust the systems of the universe. This is the era of history where humanity first learned to embrace equality for all living beings. This is the God of its, Its, and ALL OF ITS.

5) faith in a self-aware God. Experienced as a God that exists as the very nature of our own consciousness as it exists beyond death, and seen as the enduring everpresent Witness that has always simply been. This is a natural way for adults to discover the nature of grace that transcends our mortal limitations. This is the God of nothing, Nothing and NOTHING...the spacious invisible everpresent endless field of being that all other faiths occur in.

6) and 7) and beyond...faith in a non-seperate God. Experienced as a God that exists as the very marriage of form and formlessness. This is a natural way for anyone to see God at anytime. This God is ME, US, IT, ITS, NOTHING and ALL. This is the unnamable ONEness and NON-seperate God as described in all ancient wisdom. The God who is equally outside and inside, the one AND the many....where the search is over, and we realize that we are already in the home we never left in the first place...perhaps an intentional exploration of how all previous stages have more and more details and contours and textures worth exploring. Perhaps this is where we are no longer sitting on a rung of a ladder, but where we come to see all previous faiths come into play....now that we have learned all the notes, we can finally play music, and tap into the entire spectrum of faith that exists in us. This is the God of present moment that does not exist in history or the future.

note: nothing i have written here is the truth. and none of the words i used are sufficient.

...such is the nature of language.

all blessings...

Edited August 10, 2007 by sirguessalot

[Abigail]

Thank you, Sir!

And as always, it is wonderful to see you down here.

[DrtyDzn]

note: nothing i have written here is the truth. and none of the words i used are sufficient.

...such is the nature of language.

More accurately I'd say nothing you have written is The Whole Truth. Words may be inadequate, but it doesn't make everything a lie.

Jerry

[Shifra]

Fascinating. It made me think about how I understood God when I was a little girl. Wow. Sometimes I think I understood much more back then.

[ckeer]

Hey sirg-long time no see- I haven't visited GSC much for a while.

Looks like you are still growin' an glowin' ;)

You always make me think.

Where would a God of Them or That- separate and distinct from self fit in to your ordering?

Why did you not include a loving God who intensely, passionately unconditionally and completely loves every individual, creature and item of his creation. Or did you just print it in white and we could not see it because that may be the totality of those colors you used and also the totality of God?

The path that can be seen is not the true path.

[T-Bone]

sticking my neck out here with yet another attempt to paint a very simple picture of a possible bandwidth of faiths as i have come to understand them

with the hope that my GSc friends may find something useful, and perhaps good reasons to reach beyond ... always and forever...

Great post, Sirguessalot….your posts always get me thinking…feeling…I love your phrase "bandwidth of faiths" a poetic rendition of spiritual technology - just kidding…about the spiritual technology part ….but I do love the phrase. Stuff like this is one of the many reasons why I come to GSC.

….Feeling very small in a HUGE Cosmos…..Here is a simple picture of my faith back in my TWI-daze. I had a darkened dome overhead. The underside [facing me] had the stars painted on them. I used that for my navigation system on life's journey. Anybody else in a TWI-daze would have a similar darkened dome – so our reference points would often concur and offer some reassurance we're headed in the "right" direction….

…..I'm not claiming to have gotten rid of the dome at this stage of my life….just trying to scratch off the paint and see more of the real sky. The more I engage folks who DO NOT THINK LIKE ME the more transparent this dome becomes….I sometimes pray, "Lord, help me to be aware of the limitations of my perspective and grant me an adventurous spirit to explore beyond it."

Edited August 15, 2007 by T-Bone

[sirguessalot]

poppin in for a sec

then i gotta get back to work

Hey sirg-long time no see- I haven't visited GSC much for a while.

Looks like you are still growin' an glowin' ;)

You always make me think.

Where would a God of Them or That- separate and distinct from self fit in to your ordering?

Why did you not include a loving God who intensely, passionately unconditionally and completely loves every individual, creature and item of his creation. Or did you just print it in white and we could not see it because that may be the totality of those colors you used and also the totality of God?

The path that can be seen is not the true path.

...like you wrote, i think...i "printed it in white"

so much of english has become so much white noise

and keep in mind: i am not describing different Gods, per se, but different perspectives of the same occasion

and all are quick summations and simpifications of a chain of expectations and assumptions we can come to make based on our experiences

and until we leave such a map and come back (i.e. "spiritually die" ) ...we tend to strongly favor one perspective over the rest

...even moreso, perhaps. is how we tend to strongly avoid and resist one or more of them ... until it shows up in the end of our lives

or at other times of trials and troubles and transitions

there are deep kinds of pains in life that correspond NOT as much to the wavelength we have come to prefer

but this pain comes from the ones we tend to avoid...because they are already always here anyway..and so they scream and smoke and squeal to get our attention

...they become things that "bedevil" us in the darkest reaches of our selves...truly holy things all tied up in knots

manifests as a loss in very real tangible things ... like: meaning, belonging, forgiveness, hope and such...

ok..crud...i really gotta get back to things

i will try and respond more as i can

but i am about to vanish for at least a week

meanwhile...i want to invite whomever to play at asking less direct questions about such things...different kinds of questions

i have discovered how the art of simply asking stuff outloud does have its own kind of significant value

[cman]

reflective questions are cool

it's like searching our own selves and heart and spirit

laying them on the table from the honesty in us

rather then directed to any one individual

it's put up for contemplation, exploration and a map of a sort

realizing of course there are more maps, questions

when these begin to connect answers start coming

in a friggin whirlwind as maps collide and line up

taking one's breath away

so breath deep and let it all out cuz there's always more that will come

questions lead to more questions, maps of the soul/spirit

a reaching or journey or quest,

with a bit of effort to see other maps and questions for what they are

reveals more answers to quest quest thru............

the answers we already have

it's the approach that is refined to see them

[sirguessalot]

bumping to add...

...i think "spiritual technology" is an apt phrase to describe what it is to be human, T-Bone

...there are certainly depths and degrees of technique to our being

...the human self being the primary instrument of this being

"spirituality and technology" is the topic of one of those many books i am dying to write ...should i ever carve out a long session in a cabin for my self

Edited September 11, 2007 by sirguessalot

[excathedra]

faith

something inside and yet so entwined with the outside

something i've known / experienced since i can remember

something which doesn't seem to be different than when i was a little girl

i think i could put God in place of the word faith

[penworks]

What a wonderful exploration here in this thread. I particularly like " This is the unnamable ONEness and NON-seperate God as described in all ancient wisdom. The God who is equally outside and inside, the one AND the many...."

Has anyone read Buddhism Without Beliefs - A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, by Stephen Batchelor?

[Bramble]

6) and 7) and beyond...faith in a non-seperate God. Experienced as a God that exists as the very marriage of form and formlessness. This is a natural way for anyone to see God at anytime. This God is ME, US, IT, ITS, NOTHING and ALL. This is the unnamable ONEness and NON-seperate God as described in all ancient wisdom. The God who is equally outside and inside, the one AND the many....where the search is over, and we realize that we are already in the home we never left in the first place...perhaps an intentional exploration of how all previous stages have more and more details and contours and textures worth exploring. Perhaps this is where we are no longer sitting on a rung of a ladder, but where we come to see all previous faiths come into play....now that we have learned all the notes, we can finally play music, and tap into the entire spectrum of faith that exists in us. This is the God of present moment that does not exist in history or the future.

note: nothing i have written here is the truth. and none of the words i used are sufficient.

...such is the nature of language.

all blessings...

I do think that this is where all faiths meet, eventually, if you follow their thread far enough, past the rules, regs, commands, past all arguable stuff and forward to the oneness.

[sirguessalot]

Has anyone read Buddhism Without Beliefs - A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, by Stephen Batchelor?

hi penworks... welcome to the cafe :)

and thanks for the feedback

and no, i havent read that book...but i have studied a bit of some of the Buddhist schools of thought

and i think i can imagine why you might have mentioned it given what you quoted of me

in fact, as strange as it may sound...i'll go as far to say that some Buddhist thought helped me understand the Gospels even more deeply than Christian thought did...though much more has also happened to me since then

i would also venture to say that most posters here are either

a) mostly unfamiliar with Buddhism, and/or b) disapprove of it to various degrees

...ive never had (or seen) much happen by way of a threaded conversation around the topic

anyway...i look forward to seeing you around

Todd

[sirguessalot]

I do think that this is where all faiths meet, eventually, if you follow their thread far enough, past the rules, regs, commands, past all arguable stuff and forward to the oneness.

reminds me, bramble...

of how there was a movement in europe, starting about 1000 ad and lasting til about 1500,

where many christians, jews, muslims and others collaborated to develop europe's first hospice system

it seems that all religions can meet and find their common ground in the context of end-of-life care

which is one end of where all religions seemed to have served in the first place

...sometimes languages just get in the way

Edited September 14, 2007 by sirguessalot

[Shifra]

Sir Guess,

It happens at the other end of life too. At the beginning. When a baby is born, all souls in the room blend into one praying unity. It doesn't matter who they are, not their tattoos or their rosaries or their eagle feathers. Their longing runs to each other like magnets, wanting only to hear the little one cry and turn pink. And nobody cares which kind of prayer you bring to this potluck of hope.

I have often said that our culture misses out on so much, because we have placed the passages of death and birth into the hands of technology, professionals, disinfectants and plastic tubing.

But

When we look these events right in the eye, and grab on, then we can (and do) walk through the fire and the sea together, like the long braid of generations before us, seeing LIFE - that sacredness between the passages - in the way it was intended.

We all get born and we all die, so of course these events are is the epitome of common ground.

[sirguessalot]

awesome, yes, the epitome of some universal ground of being

there is indeed a need for midwifery at both ends of lifes' labyrinths

like the old ways of having babies napping happily on the chests of ones who are aging and dying well

...surely the original two spiritual fields of play for us upright human monkey angel thingies

..."spiritual" perhaps, for being everyone's ultimate and unavoidable concern

and for the unshakable not-dual groundedness we can find there

...for always being there...

like a holy inner compass for when we get lost in and explore middle earth along the way

..."holy" perhaps, for keeping us in tune to a more whole frame for how we picture life

remembering...we are reminded of what it was/will be like to leap through space from one crumbling position to a more mysterious one

...which then helps us make all those other little kinds of leaps we make in between

Edited September 20, 2007 by sirguessalot

[sirguessalot]

pasted from another thread...cuz it seems to fit better here

my attempt at a complete summary of a picture ive been painting around here regarding my view of discerning of spirits...

- being human is already always a body/soul/spirit manifestation of a "staff" and "spectrum" of discernable frequencies ("chakras" + many other names in world's spiritual traditions and literature).

- the contents of our whole "staff" is also a unique manifestation of a specific discernable "personality type," based on our entry point on a matrix of 9 "orienting coordinates"

- there are 9+ discernable interwoven "branches" (maybe think "lines of intelligence") that develop from that entry point, and up through the scaffolding of this whole "staff" we were born with...which is how we start discovering the nature of this "staff" that we already always are

- each of these "branches" develops (and gets lost) along a spectrum in their own ways, giving us plenty of discernable variables, values and textures, allowing a kind of "cartography of the spirit of our self"

- the average stages of development of all our "branches" generates a discernable overall personal "center of gravity," even though we also have branches that have developed above or below the gravity of this main knot

- society and culture are collective gatherings of such radically detailed individuals and their centers of gravity...generating cultural "waves" and "fields" with their own discernable overall centers of gravity (the collective average of all the individual averages)

- the dynamics of how different cultural and individual centers of gravity interact with each other are discernable, not only in present day, but in historical records, as well as in forecasting the future

- the capacity to at least speak in terms of a spectrum of frequencies and development is necessary for spiritual discernment...maybe think of speaking in "tongues" as speaking (and thinking) in terms of "waves" or "wavelengths"...a very practical way to apply such discernments is by being able to communicate what is discerned.

- And maybe think of "spirit" as "the spirit of a thing" ...or "quality and quantity of a thing" ...or "attitudes and altitudes" of a thing ...or "composition and contours" of a thing. And maybe think of "discernment" as "measurement"...which involves all our lines of intelligence, including intuition.

- all of which is very different from what i learned and believed from pfal...in how pfal taught that spirit is basically an IT that we GET, which equals "getting born again," which gives us 9 supernatural powers, and the power to "discern spirits" basically only allows us to discern good types of supernatural entities, bad types of supernatural entities, good spiritual "seeds" in people, and bad spiritual "seeds" in people.

Edited November 4, 2007 by sirguessalot