sirguessalot

interesting theory, ckeer to add...a snippet from this article on the "axial age"

of course i applaud you for embracing a rational worldview, Seth... it certainly allows for objective re-interpretations of experiences that were once interpreted mythically and magically and i feel it is worth mentioning...(i hope you find it worth following) while rational thought is an improvement (and not a minor one) it does have its own pitfalls and dualistic idealogies to work out a kind of over-correction into gross reductionism and rejection of subjective (and inter-subjective) values, for example which disintegrates into a very non-rational position of trying to dismiss/erase valid data or a wholesale dismissal of the value and role of healthy mythic thought in history, and life ...often marked by a sour and sarcastic sense of "humor" when it comes to debunking myths the "pre/trans fallacy" is another... where one is not able to distinquish between pre-rational with post-rational values ...and so lumping them all together simply because both are non-rational others, too... but without an awareness of these kinds of pitfalls rational thought can cause as much, if not more suffering, than mythic fundamentalism or magical thinking as if rational is somehow some sort of pinnacle of human capacity when it is merely a rung on a seeming infinite ladder and too, rational language (or any level of language) can be adopted by magic (self-centered) worldviews ...as some can be firmly rational towards a narrow bandwidth of things...and quite un-rational towards a wide variety of others but every worldview we transcend has structural elements that we need to carry forward ...or our going forward will include embedded shadows of what we left behind so...we would do well to make sure we have a full experience of whatever stage we are moving through before moving on and...not that you are...but "don't get stuck at early rational thought for too long"...like so many ...just remember that there is plenty of space to keep moving as radical as the leap from myth to rational is the leap from rational to more pluralistic and social values and worldviews "preparing to leap again" is an attitude we would do well to develop at any level +ODD edited to add this link to an older thread on worldviews

location location location most old God books seem to say in a very non-mythic and literal way that "God" is simply always already here now or it aint God as if to say that if wherever we describe God to be now is not something simply obviously here now too then we are not talking about a universal God at all but an image we have of God often in the form of some magical wish, ethnocentric script, or rational experience huge differences sometimes it shows when we argue with each other over "the divine" in 3rd person voice only as if whatever HE/SHE/IT/GOD somehow aint already always here now witnessing every fool word seems clear that rejecting this "God who never seems to be here" is a natural pastime of atheists i honestly cant say i blame em but i have also come to appreciate how underneath most every old wisdom tradition there is some redeemable form of effective practice or method that "points to a God that is already always here" almost as if one could weigh the quality of a spiritual system by the quality of its "pointer" oddly enough...these methods involve a process of both subtraction and addition such as Roy's "where is God not?" this wisdom trancends any ethnic name for God or name for God's location ... of course, "where" is only one dimension of seeking God ...as who, what, when, why and how are quite wide open as well

perfect...cman yes plus indeed and too we have also forgotten how to qualify ourselves, personally, culturally, practically, socially as the western world long ago gave over much of its capacity to heal to the experts and when all along the essence of all good true and beautiful medicine, religion, science, politics, business is in quantities and qualities of friendship and quantity and quality of dialogues actually practicing compassion creates a most fertile common ground for all this

indeed the true arts of compassion can open the way to kinds of healing that happen when there is no cure what we have today in so many fields...so often we are "fixers run amok" here is a profound article on the depth of compassion barely seen in TWI

or not...which is worse but the tick tock of the clock does increase the pressure on our hearts to break wide open but these days...we dont teach our kids about such things anymore...and such lessons dont come naturally to most men and so we often dont realize all the compassion homework we have to do until the 11th hour of our lives the sad truth of how so many "uninitiated" grumpy old men find themselves unable...unequipped...and otherwise incapable of such heart-related feats crippled, really...as if "the devil's disability" is his inability to descend into the fires of hell ...leaving him trapped in a personal quest for bliss...on a crumbling mountain to the depth and degree we avoid suffering...we will lack compassion and those who seek to experience only pleasure and happiness and safety...should "repent" before its too late and by "too late," i mean "too entrenched in positions of power over others...and too old to change on their own...having caused too much hurt by acting without compassion" ...who cant understand the suffering that that causes? but "disciples" (monks and nuns and saints and such) were drawn to death, disease and suffering as saw it as the primary route to experience and practice increasing their compassion at the heart of all spiritual traditions (and effective medicine), was the call to serve the ill, aging, dying and grieving which included a call to develop a greater sense of compassion as a caregiver...developing one's capacity for greater equanamity in the face of absolute misery, loss and woe when and where this was developed...it is easily recognizable in every history on earth ...as with when and where it was not such blood red truths are shared by EVERY developed wisdom tradition on earth ...more reliable than any scripture ... to add... not that we are somehow awful or immoral for not living up to such exemplars but that we are perhaps "meaningfully and usefully humiliated," if you will, in our big bold claims of spiritual supremacy over others or in our bold claims of being the torch carriers for some historical lineage of spiritual compassion some things are hard to fake once we know what to look for

not only did vpw throw away over 2000 years of christian writings on compassion but ignored a thousand times as many writings on compassion from the rest of the world ...and taught us to do the same keeping us worlds apart from actually practicing actual compassion actually practicing leaning into the pain and the unknown and suffering of life as a way of cracking open our hardened hearts is pretty much the opposite of what we have been taught by most modern mainstream religions and sciences but perennial wisdom says that the actual breath and the actual heart is perhaps the most direct mode of practicing compassion so close...yet so far away

sounds more like 3rd to 4th perspectives...where action, behaviour, practice, objectivity, method, truthfulness are weighed in the 3rd which then can eventually open us up to greater a capacity for deeper and more authentic introspection as we move through the 4th 5th is more passively active in the background...easy to miss, easy to notice...and like a thumb, touches any and all fingers

a few things... my rewrite your description of pre-stage... (notice the words i removed (i, me, my, they, it, etc...)) discomfort, noises, giant, figures, touch, good, safe, feed, noises. when asked "where are you?" pre-egoic children often point straight out but eventually "i" starting noticing a "me" and otherwise start building a face eventually to become a wide range of "my" and "mine" all my wanting and needing my eating pooping sleeping my wishing and praying my happiness my sadness my anger my thoughts my dreams etc... my selfish ego is born the quality of this brief experience varies wildly exotic among people but embeds a specific archetypal shape at the base of our future knot of perspectives its how we first come to believe in a self the faith we have in our self will and having been the firstborn sense of self our magic wanting wishing seeking self is also always already the oldest perspective ...like the widest, deepest canyon ... big brother like the shape of our first wound...our original "sin" we each have a scar from our own blood red adam and though we may pick up and lose and change a lot of little things ...this one pattern endures through death...swallowed over and over again by higher forms of belief our experience of developing an ego are so deep and lasting ive often wondered if the gospel millstone was meant for the child offended, and not the offender as a way to make an even more important point about precious nature of infancy and youth by spoiling them....we make magic addicts...selfish adults whose wants needs and will are the rules... or by abusing them...we make magic phobia...self-abased adults who lack self will...starving for power for abundant living or etc, and otherwise

there is a perennial wisdom that says..."the dying are our greatest teachers of spirituality" if nothing else...they remind us deep thanks for spilling this, phil and posting it here ive read it a dozen times now ...almost speechless

it seems to me... that many billions of people have been killed and oppressed for their beliefs and that many billions of texts, sacred to those people, have been destroyed, and otherwise argued strongly against and otherwise demonized and dismissed ...by those who wanted it to be forgotten and otherwise erased from history buddhist muslim christian hindu jew aboriginal many more have all been on the receiving end of horrific and unimaginable degrees of extermination ...some more than others and some have dished it out more than others ... but the questions keep popping up... is one belief-system superior to the others for having been more persecuted than anyone else? or is one belief-system superior to the others for being more blessed and more protected than those who were destroyed? how can both be proof of a superior belief-system?

again... seems we can and do transform from "belief to belief" or "faith to faith" example... out of no belief we move (or not) from 1) belief in personal magic over all...which is how subjective 1st person perspectives grow... to 2) belief in cultural myth over all...which is how inter-subjective 2nd person perspectives grow... to 3) belief in rational proof over all..which is how objective 3rd person perspectives grow... to 4) belief in social process over all...which is how inter-objective 4th person perspectives grow... to 5) belief in perspectives over all...which is how we grow aperspectivally (able to notice the above 4 perspectives from a 5th perspective)... to perhaps even beyond from my perspective, i have seen and do see... ...how "belief" or "faith" is used in language by people who say they are Christians in each and all of the above ways ...and how the "the law of believing" seems valid from any of the above perspectives but most people who use the "the law of believing" in language today seem to do so from the 1st and 2nd person perspectives only where 1st alone is like "my believing/faith = my supernatural power over the universe" and 2nd alone is like "our believing/faith = our exclusive story for interpreting the universe" if nothing else it seems to me that our faith is, at least, being constantly pushed and pulled by some "law (or force) of transformation"

might as well add em all to "the list"... yeah...shhh ...its a "great mystery" yada yada yada

hi Dot for one...i can assume that God is never not being manifested and we are all already always spirit being manifest in the flesh now ...and perhaps Mel was of the first 'kind' (or 'order') to have simply 'been found of himself' in this condition and Jesus could not have embodied Christ in the new way that he did without Mel having laid down some tracks to follow and like the phrase, "son of man"... ... "princeness" seems to hint at an improved "product" that came out of some "first order" of God in manifestation ...like how we hope that our children are improved versions of our self...not inferior versions even in physics, there is a notion that from the collapse (from the natural limit) of any system (including 'a way of being') there always arises a higher order after the previous order and without that collapse... there would be no higher order like how at one point, Spirit only manifested as mineral ...and then vegetable...etc... we have all already come such a long long way together

a few things.. melchizadek could not have been a jew and was obviously wiser than abraham melchizadek may not have been his only name and there is no clear record of where he came from and an obvious difference between a king of peace and a prince of peace is that one came from the other...one is the offspring and result of the other and if the way of the king or prince of peace is some actual behaviour, or action, or lifestyle then i would say that we can see it and recognize it...in any language or race... as a specific method, or pattern, or discipline, or modality, or otherwise WAY of doing things how did Mel bring peace? how did Jesus bring peace?

for what its worth... …a few notes on dialogue as ive often written about before there seem to be broad bandwidths of dialogue techniques and we are always speaking on some frequency or other regardless of whether we are very aware of our own techniques these patterns exist in ALL languages which includes all religious histories and are often occurring at the same time in other words...just as every religious system has had people who were speaking/writing from various stages ...every religious text can be understood and discussed from an entire spectrum of perspectives. a very simple example of how i have come to notice a range of dialogue... 1) 'Selfish magic' seeks dialogue on their terms only. "Me and my experience are the ultimate guide for the meaning and use of words." Other meanings and words and ways of dialogue are primarily resisted as wrong or evil for simply "being bad to me." Peace can only be found with those who agree with my selfish needs, and the way i want to talk about them. Divinity serves me. The devil is out to get me. Language is simple and repetitious. 2) 'Group myth' seeks dialogue on their perceived group's terms only. "We have the only correct meaning to words. All other ways of explaining reality are inferior to ours." Meaning is only allowed to found and experiences of divinity can only be interpreted along strict ethnic lines. Divinity serves us. The devil is out to get us. This can be in the context of business, religion, sports, politics, etc... Cliches are common. 3) 'Rational reason’ seeks dialogue in terms of what can be proven or demonstrated. Meaning is not as important as truth. Facts and experts are important. “I have got to see IT for my self. IT has got to be proven among a group of peers.” Reductionism to some IT is a common downfall. 4) ‘Social pluralism’ seeks dialogue in terms of the common good. Everyone’s meaning of words counts, and so everyone’s story and manner of telling their story is important. And while this is a wonderful step in a better direction, it often does not know what to do when the previous frequencies of dialogue are employed, as the previous frequencies more or less shut down social pluralism. 5) ‘Contemplative silence’ seeks to listen well, most of all. Words and language is seen for what they are...very very limited and useful as temporary labels at best. Never the same as that which they describe. 6) 'Invitational nondual' is how i might describe the dialogical ways of old saints and sages and elders found common ground. And there seem to be others, even "higher." As well as others "lower" than selfish. But no matter what the religious textual background, lower frequencies are what can almost immediately effectively shut down any higher dialogue. As if, when we are talking about spiritual matters together (or whatever is ultimate to us), we are climbing a mountain, all roped together, and when someone reaches their uppermost limit and stops…we all have to stop…or we try to drag them up the mountain with us…which doesn’t seem to work very well, either. The group’s needs does little to sway a person who is selfish. They simply cant see values outside of their personal values. Just as rational thought does little to sway one who identifies strongly with a specific ethnic myth. They simply cant be rational. Just as ‘social pluralism’ does little to sway one who is solidly rational. They simply don’t see the value of shared interiors. It can take a long time for one to come to “play a different note.” And often, such dramatic change will not come unless something else breaks, or some tragedy befalls us, and the level of dialogue we are used to finally utterly fails to meet the need any more. Technique is key. The technology of the human heart, as it relates to HOW we are with each other...with our tongues. ... to add...it seems that, because the most progressive leading edge of our mainstream methods of discourse are grounded in 'social pluralism' we have naturally come to reject any notions of technique or structure (such as levels or layers), perhaps for fear that any such thing is simply more of the same ole 1, 2 and 3. some of you may notice this in your self as you read this post. am i being arrogant? am i starting another metaphysical cult? am i lost in my own rationalizations? am i using the language of 'social pluralism' like everyone else? (for the record...i feel i am mostly writing from both rational and pluralist voices...and if i were writing from anywhere higher...there would at least be more question marks) but it seems likely that dialogue higher than 'social pluralism' was originally discovered, practiced and developed during pre-modern times not only by many of those who penned the scriptures, but by many of those whom scriptures were penned about. ...but the language of the day was still pre-modern but when our 'social pluralism' does not think there is anything higher than 'social pluralism' there is nowhere for us to go...and the conversation does quickly disintegrate into the same ole 1, 2 and 3 and we cant always tell the difference between an abusive cult and a devoted order of contemplatives terrorists (group myth and selfish magic), for example, use social pluralist language to justify their actions. the technique of social pluralism can mostly only talk to social pluralism (cocktail parties and coffee houses, for example) but does not have a technique for facilitating a dialogue among an entire bandwidth of worldviews (such as when someone wants to selfishly control the conversation at a coffee house)

all grace, penworks i cant help but write and say like ive been writing and saying is that it seems that times like your family's are closest to the biggest reasons why all those sacred books were originally written anyway not so we can possess a pure perfect permanent interpretation of any one true experience but that we might retain some hard won ink to stir our pure memory...if nothing else medicine for those dark nights of the soul and yeah brideofjc...very much like mother teresa and the mother teresa in all of us

thanks brideofjc i just have to say..that i like the way you described how you use the psalms in prayer reminds me of how egyptians jews celts muslims catholics protestants africans asians others have all used those very same psalms the very same way you do over the millenia in many different languages ...all over the world usually by nuns, nurses, caregivers and other "saints in hell" im sure you can relate i tell ya...the more i see of it all the more world religious history seems intimately related to world hospital history where the common ground that was found...whenever it was was found in a field beyond accurate or correct interpretations of meanings of old stories discovered by way of the most undeniables, if you will at times when all else seemed lost once there it was hard to object in any language if one cared at all ... thanks again pen

me too thanks again for the thread having recently spent a few years working, practicing and studying as an artist with a large interfaith group of monks, nuns, rabbis, ministers, pastors, counselors, chaplains, psychologists, doctors, nurses, educators, elders, administrators, authors, artists, musicians, yada yada... ...i have to agree with the concern penworks is pointing towards and add my opinion... ...that functional effective interfaith and interdisciplinary dialogue is urgently needed in the world today as sadly, it seems much of all world scripture was penned for purposes quite divorced from most all of our contemporary mainstream interpretations and applications medicine and science and art and religion can co-exist...ive seen it and ive seen the waves in history of it happening before...peacemaking, advocating, mediating, reconciling...etc... but it seems our attention spans have become way shorter than those of the sacred scripture writers, for one thing and even our hi-tech contemporary english seems to too rushed, private, tribal and/or fragmented to get us anywhere near anything resembling the great eras and revolutions in discourse even the pre-modern mentallity of violent terrorism (whether islamic, christian, buddhist, atheist...) uses the same flat post-modern language to justify those kinds of violent distorted applications of sacred scripture hard to blame anyone for rejecting any opinions associated with entire canons of books and the long long histories around them if all one has ever seen are such rotten examples...and a narrow sliver of even their own lineage and as if in reaction to generations and histories of mostly disfunctional models and methods of "doing religion" we reject anything related to religious history that requires discipline, practice, ritual, structure so we miss most of the time-tested lineages of effective spiritual thought and practices... ...often simply by not wanting to look we need some sort of renaissance of the tongue and perhaps as a way to the heart it is connected to

in other words...if my eye (of contemplation...not "eyeball") is able to see the whole, together, sound, being grounded and settled then the interior of my whole body can be revealed to me our entire body is also our mind ...we think with our heart ...we remember with our hands ...we feel with our memory ...we dream throughout our entire body i can be insightful as to my own nature as well insightful as to human nature but if my eye (of contemplation) is distracted, deluded, picky, choosy, and otherwise "monkey-minded" then my whole body (and all that is inside of it and me) ...while good, true and beautiful...is hidden in darkness or otherwise unknown to me i am unaware of how much of my own interior i am unaware of but am quite driven by my interior anyway ...which is not very good for my neighbors also reminds me of this quote... which reminds me of this... the "kingdom" is not a mythical, faraway or future place but the oceanic realm we touch via the pupil of the eye at the center of our very own body and soul to be cast into outer darkness is to be cut-off from one's own interior contours when we are so trapped outside of our own depths we have no choice but to be terrorized so often we try to rid the darkness from the world by looking for it in other people instead, other religions, and generally places outside of our selves we dont even know what makes us tick or why we do all the crazy things we do we are yet asleep to who we our selves are while trying to wake others up ...fixers run amok ...prematurely prying open cacoons

this voice...just flowing today... stillness and silence are universally recognizable to all languages...all times and it is only by sitting still within that the mountain of noise and motion is climbed every voice within must have its say and then rest and there are thousands of voices with something to say its gonna take "9 days" he said before Spirit 'comes' if there is a voice that is not allowed to be heard it will carry on anyway and manifest however it can but to sit with each of them...to touch them ...and to say hello...and to say goodbye is pure love every hope every grief every rage every joy every longing every want every desire every hurt every memory is simply arising in the space we find ...a space which may truly be called Spirit of grace when we find that we are this very space that all voices and feelings and thoughts arise in ..we are free indeed and there is no need to keep looking elsewhere for rest both God and Christ are within and we are One...literally this is the form of doctrine and theology that is shared by all scriptures this is the root and ground of actual spiritual practice this is how the mind of Christ is found and recognized ...that name beyond names "shhh" ...its a great mystery

if there is any such eye of God...or eye on the "mind of Christ" within and it "overcomes darkness by shedding light on truth" and such we each have a personal mountain of shadow to move one that can only be moved by climbing it one that can only be climbed by noticing it and as we ascend to the peaks our hell simply gets ever lower and deeper and as we descend into the valleys our heaven gets ever deeper and higher some part of our journey goes from being a pot of clay to being in the potter's seat actually touching and tasting and handling the substance of our faith always alone...and sometimes together and whether within or without a temple is merely a decorative frame for Spirit like how we decorate a window to hold a space or decorate a pot to hold water the substance is always already here in that original dust castle after castle faith reshaping geographically darkness is where mountains of truth hides waiting for the lamp of our attention to start sketching the lines

... i find that the "higher" (deeper?) we "climb" whether by meditation, aging, fasting, illness, coma, dying, sleeping, etc... the more vibrant and real our dreams become to us, in general overall, we can expect to experience a significant change in our dreamlife and sleeplife scripture also seems to indicate this ...Peter on Pentecost, for example ...or how so many of the prophets experienced their most profound visions while being lost in the desert, or while in slavery or prison, reduced to almost nothing visions and dreams become more disturbing, more troubling, more rattling as well as more wonderful, more telling, more informative ...to the depth and degree of worth being called awesome and extraordinary the archetypes exaggerate even more the associations and lessons we glean from them present stronger riddles that simply make more sense becoming more useful dreams last longer our recall is fresher not because they were ever less real but because we are simply closer to them more in touch with that finer older sense of self ringing in background of our waking life a jewel just under the thinnest layer of dust becomes a flowering soul from the simple light of attention ... and while i could not write to say that one must somehow be a profound dreamer to be beautiful, good or true i can say that the bulk of ancient wisdom we revere seems to come from these very same kinds of ways from some who entered eyes wide open and from others who were simply snatched and plunged and from others who got lucky while trying to do something else entirely

yeah...written conversations are hard enough as it is without put-downs i feel i could have asked that question a lot better, btw...asked more about depths and degrees...or "how much?" "what kind?" etc... but i find its hard for any of us to guage language in such large anonymous spaces easy to come across like we are interrogating each other or on some sort of trial for truthiness as if...

yeah if sitting silently is somehow proof of nothing happening the mind has certainly been tricked by the surface of the body takes lifetimes for all our gazillions of things in motion to come to rest if they ever do but hours and days and weeks and months and years to explore the territory which can be terrifying to our hyper worldviews or useless...threatening...weak...foolish...boring...etc 9 days, for example is one very famous prescription/recipe doing nothing but sitting fasting, sleeping, dreaming, waking nothing but breaths and pulses practicing mere feeling compassion singing prayers and hymns at times takes practice "doing" the impossible "doing" the opposite balancing being we will face a gazillion temptations to come down from the pinnacle of this kind of temple and the longer we sit...the more likely it is that we will face our demons and eventually our ultimate demons...trying to make us flinch as well as meet our angels/angles...then our over-arching angle once the choirs of voices are out of the way coming back down to earth ...to the mainstream is going to be yet another journey much like being newborn..having already come so far and then having been so radically uncovered hearts and minds and bodies cracked wide open returning to the sleeping world as the saints seem to say in their writings... once we taste such serenity we cant forget we will never be the same as we have been changed we witnessed something unforgettable and the view lingers very well having left a thumb print in clay sustains us reminds us of future rest as we garden as we celebrate as we fix our machines one good taste is a whole lot not hard to tell who has touched and who has not sometimes we forget for generations until something horrible happens hopefully we are paying attention and remember well