sirguessalot

wow thats a real gem reminds me of that video, too

What gives Holocaust denial such an appeal? to add... as ive often written about around here... ...human faith unfolds along a spectrum of sequential development and to use a common basic 7 step model (such as used in the Book of Rev) those who live at the 2nd step prioritize "exclusive grouping" above all other values ...and by "prioritize"...i mean that this is most direct path to one's "death-flinch" this is NOT some secondary factor...but the primary base of one's internal value system...one's very sense of self relies on this value "practice jewish meditation?!? over my dead body...I'll die before I..." etc... mythic religions, racisms, ethnocentricities, nationalism...even strong self-identification within a sports team are indicators of this wavelength being primary in our life the group's very specific myth is considered superior to all other myths, factors, and other information and experience ...which mostly looks like control over the words and language we use to translate our experience of the universe..such as believing a specific creation story is superior and truer than others we see it all over TWI especially in this whole holocaust denial and the biblical ignorance that comes from being anti-jewish ..or going on a mission to convert india's myths to our myth in a sense...those in this place are more or less a servant to some very specific limited language set..."under the thumb" of specific words and associated mind-pictures btw...this is natural and healthy way for a person to leave early childhood and enter the family sphere ...but not always healthy for adults in this post-modern era ... with power and influence over others

language reveals very very very much which is why the fields of adult ego-development use sentence completion tests not that we say everything going on inside...but that what we choose to say (and not say) reveals very much its via the mouth that the "zipper of our heart is open"

welcome to the a.s.s. club ... a simple spirituality credo: we are all fundamentally relatively ignorant a$$es who are processing crap (or not) as it comes through the pipes "holy crap" is one of the most sacred expressions (positive, negative and neutral) one is instantly qualified simply for being alive

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

yet another way to see "who we are" ... using more of a rational language-set: - approximate self = our general subjective position at any given point in our life...our approximate "sense of" self ... the largest portion of this self-sense as we might be summarized...allows for a lot of variables of self that are outside of this portion (such as having higher intelligence and lower morals, or low charisma and high morals, etc...) - distant self - the subject that has become an object... such as when we talk about our selves in the past, or as a body, an emotion, a thought, a dream, etc.... ("carnal self," etc) - antecedent self - the witness and ground of all subjects, objects, actions, memories, etc...the ineffable experiencer of every sense of self ("Godhead" etc) - shadow - the part of the self we cant see, wont look at, are addicted to, project outward, or have somehow forgotten ("the Devil" etc) ...perhaps the most important self of them all to address (for the sake of our poor neighbors...but also for positive reasons) note: each of these "corners" of the altar of self are developing (or not) along a chain of many steps ...and depths and degrees of self vary wildly, though we tend to be attracted to friends and enemies who are alike or somehow support our current approximate position ..... heerza cool animated music video that touches a lot of this kinda stuff: "Dig" by Incubus

yeah...that's a part of one very good way to put it in my experience and opinion, the bible is as much about discovering one's own identity, ego, self and "the real you/me/us" as it is about "knowing the truth" about a mythic/rational/theoretical God (or Jesus or angels or demons, etc...) i would even go as far as to say that those 2 sections in proverbs and psalms touch an even smaller part of it all ...a very important and initial peek through a very tiny keyhole and in this sense...the "presence of the spirit of God" is NOT an object that comes and goes...but a subject that is already always right here right now in us ...and a subjective position that we can and do wake up to in stages ... though we can also sleepwalk in Spirit all our life, like a fish who does not know it is wet which is part of why i have come to appreciate and prefer practicing, talking about (and pointing to) a very direct experience of a constant present God, more than talking about a God who exists at some distance, or in some past, or in some future, or as some form or figure in the mind, etc... imo, this is perhaps the most important spiritual milk that we not only lack, culturally ...but have even come to be quite suspicious of and/or hostile to as if when we say "in God is no darkness" we actually mean "God does not exist in darkness" (?how can something be outside of an everpresent God?) while all along we weep and gnash at the darkness outside of our self...oblivious to what hides in shadows under a thin layer of dust within

more contemplative scriptures Proverbs 20:27 The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly. Psalms 18:28 For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.

cman, your question (and this thread) reminds me of (at least) this section from the letter to the Ephesians 3... That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. i cant help but notice that this section is describing a deeply contemplative position..and/or the results of a lifestyle of contemplation ...something which most modern mainstream bibledom is unfamiliar with ... and oftentimes taught to be downright fearful of yet, without some sort of regular contemplative type activity in life...we are much less able to dislodge our sense of self from objects ...such as bodies, feelings, thoughts, possessions, objectified others, etc... like taking steps backward without moving your body...following that path of wider, longer, deeper, higher subjective comprehension ...relaxing backwards into your deeper self ... layer by layer by layer til we are indeed at a place that is quite easily described as beyond thought ..yet sees it seems quite clear to me that phrases like "Abraham's rest" and "the Witness" are based on such experiences we are "caught up into heaven" but not because our body has moved..but because the seat from which we view our body has that "seat" from where one views creation is no longer on the surface of self...or even hidden/buried/lost in the shadows of our inward self but is rather "rooted and grounded" in that radical nested feminine motherly agape love ... were she broods on the face of the deep like a dove ... what would it be like to view the universe from Genesis 1? and what if Genesis 1 is always already still occuring within each of us? ... hm..i just came across this older thread on Inward Paths that found some decent traction

perhaps another way to point it out using cman's selection .... who are we? i am aware of being the body of a man now, having been formed of the dust and the clay... ...but if we are aware of it...then who are we? where are we? i am aware of the breath of life that moves through my nostrils, my lungs, my blood.... ...but if we are aware of this...then who are we? where are we? i am aware of the masculine and feminine energies and realities that make up my self, languages, physics... ...but if we are aware of this...then who are we? where are we? i am aware of that i am created in the imagination of God, as the imagination of God... ...but if we are aware of this...then who are we? when are we? if I AM the witness of my body of dust... if I AM the witness of my breath of life... if I AM the witness of my imagination of God... ...who is this witness i cannot find? ...what is this witness made of? ...and where is this witness located RIGHT NOW as i read this page?

hi WB. no, I havent read that one. But I am somewhat familiar with the term "radical acceptance," the author's colleagues and their practices. btw..what i posted previously is my own off-the-cuff improv version of what is known as "pointing out instructions" ...which is basically a process for self-inquiry based on what i have come to understand as being very very old art forms interesting to see how it might relate to those Genesis passages cman posted

big ditto on the Karen Armstrong stuff also..i highly suggest looking into the more contemplative christian doctrines and practices ... perhaps one of the most damaging losses in the last century of industrial strength christian thought and practice...ancient jewish and first century thought was soaking wet with contemplative understanding and activity also...interreligious and interfaith studies helps deepen christian understanding ...there have been many christians in history who have entered into fruitful dialogue (no, not "new age woo woo" stuff) with jews, muslims, buddhists, hindus, celts, physicists, etc... all blessings...

nice one, cman here it is again... who are we? we have a body, but are we our body? if so, who is Witnessing our body? if I AM witnessing my body, how can i merely be my body? are we our thoughts? if so, who is Witnessing our thoughts? if I AM witnessing my thoughts, how can i merely be my thoughts? likewise... are we our emotions? are we our memories? are we our dreams? if so, who is Witnessing all these things? who is this invisible Witness of all things? if i find a self that has form...i must ask again...who is the Witness of this me i have found? right here..right now "I AM" is one of the very oldest answers...when we see from "the other side of God's face" as Abraham might say "oh my God, you must be kidding" is a common response

yep

speaking of the Book of Job... some scholars say that the "happy ending" of the Book of Job was an add-on... and that Job simply died after "realizing the nature of God" and such just sayin

just wondering ... if there is no real concrete past or real concrete future...then God is off the hook for knowing anything about either of them but if by God I AM the Witness of this very moment...and all the possible futures and pasts that arise...why would i need any more than that? all pasts and futures exist in the present moment...i mean, where else could they be?

thanks for reposting that "shot in the dark," abi...and thanks especially for telling us about your mom's passing to briefly add...from what i have seen studying over the years of histories of religions, medicine, hospice, dying, etc...it seems everclearer to me that the depths and degrees of quality with which any group approaches those occasions of dying (doctrinally and practically) is perhaps one of the singlemost telling factors in how "christian" we "really" are...or how "jewish" we "really" are...or how "buddhist" we "really" are...or how "rational" we "really" are...or how "spiritual," how "loving," how "wise," etc... imo, what is often described as "the law of believing" is very similar to what is described as "the law of attraction" ... and both are as valid and valuable as "the laws of eating and pooping" .... perhaps better described as art forms, rather than laws ...just sayin :blink:

a shot in the dark, i know not everyone is interested or can follow...but here i go posting it anyway...in my own words... as ive often mentioned around here our faith can be described as unfolding along a spectrum of "leaps" and in general, this adventure lasts from womb to tomb there is ample scripture to support this...just throw a rock at your favorite bible books...and look for sections you typically didnt read in twi...especially the epistles and book of rev 1) from what i have come to understand, "the law of believing" is the same kind of faith we acquire at 2 years old..or so. ...and for an adult to remain at this level of faith is a severe case of arrested faith development...and there are a billion adults in this very situation...a tyrant is an adult acting like a 2 yr old. As is our narcissistic boomeritus. From here, one does not like ANY other levels of faith...self-preservation and victory-mindedness are likely. Anti-social behaviour is also common here. Terrorism comes from here. 2) the next step of faith is when we bring our self-centered magic selves to a group and bond around a shared myth...or storyline. Like when we join a cult and insist that our small interpretation of Bible texts is the best...and "EVERYONE else is more wrong about it than us." This should happen at maybe 5-8 yrs old or so...when we bond with family and friends...but its not hard to see what trouble happens when this stage of faith lasts til late adulthood and gets into the CEOs and Politicians and power-brokers of the world. Severely metaphorically challenged. Language itself is more of a liability than a tool. But this stage of faith does NOT like the previous stage. Much as TWI did not like lone wolves..."your application of the law of believing had better serve our group before it serves your individual self." 3) so the next stage of "faith" is not called "faith" at all. Although it IS a faith in reason. And as with all levels of faith..one does NOT like previous levels of faith. Thus, the enmity between religion and science. This stage of faith is very "darwinian." We should be picking this up in our teens. It is the level of faith where we question the heck out of the myths we used to believe. and so on and so forth...the line of faith development is akin (but not identical to) to adult ego development..or cognitive development...or moral development...each level of faith carries us beyond the previous faith, but includes positive and useful aspects of it. 4) the next is more related to pluralism and compassion and a faith in equality and communal love. again...does not like previous stages at all. cant stand mere reason most of all, cant stand myth, but blindly tolerates self-centeredness. And while this level of faith is most caring and compassionate of the previous...it still cannot stand the idea of levels at all. This level of faith most often mistakes talking about levels with how earlier stages asserted dominance. 5) the next and beyond are more related to death and higher ("thinner?") states of consciousness...where all the saints and sages and wise ones we revere played here and beyond. This is where the previous stages suddnely make sense again as necessary steps. note: even though we may live near one of these levels more than the others...we are almost always on the move between two of them. If i am at 2), both 1) and 3) are tugging at me. if i am at 3), both 2) and 4) are tugging at me, etc... such as TWi mostly struggling being between 1) and 2) (thus, all the stories of being saved from self-centered oblivion based on magic..only to enter group-centered oblivion based on magic) and Bill O'Reilly being in the struggle between 2) and 3) (thus, his bible based darwinian business mentality) the struggle is often quite evident in language, in one's chief concerns, and especially what insults and offends and disturbs a person most often. again...i am only talking about a single line of growth in humans...that path of moving from faith to faith to faith....as strange as it may sound, one can have a magic degree of faith that is served by a highly developed cognitive line. One may have a high degree of faith but have a warped sexual line, etc... but when one's faith no longer works...one must make a leap to something new...and that daring journey through the space between rungs (maybe think flying trapeze) is where we are most spiritually engaged...that space is perhaps more important than the rungs themselves...that space is where "God" exists at ALL levels.

no...it was a slip...typing quite rapidly i do like floo the coo better, tho i'll read your quote now

hm interesting example i can relate permit a tad rant... so here you are...speaking of how you speak, anotherdan which, in a sense... is to use language to speak of the nature of language seems to provide a certain positive generative redundancy... not just moving from the floor to a chair but getting on the roof of things "a whole nuther level" as they say and all this speaking of tongues and sex and the spirit of God and such reminds me of how it is to discover this slippery flame of an erotic viper that lives and breaths in the mouths and minds of our hearts this alluring one how it just climbs and climbs and climbs til the end as thought as feeling as language as memory as dream this is all territory for higher levels of eroticism the bible is soaking wet with sexuality and sensuality and mystique in its meaning some of the richness of the entire span of ancient jewish and middle eastern wisdom is saturated in such contexts and lyrical allowings our modern christianity is WAY OFF in this regard science is WAY OFF in helping in that regard in terms of linguistic and literary taboos and other tongue tied habits and not even just from what we refuse to look at but perhaps more from the mountains of possible meaning we tend to disallow and avoid its like...2007 and we are trapped in communication babylon without the keys to the kingdom we grab onto language like shipwreck victims grabbing for liferafts in the flotsam and jetsam yep...we need new languages and we are already doing it...right here, right now cuz we need to gsc reminds me of an island weve found to rest after we flew the coup on a lil CULTure we are qualified simply for having shown up simply for having arrived to help rethink language and find meaning again some of those old meanings have got many words scratched into us like a wound hard to find deeper meaning with some words and there a thousands thousand streams and waves of esoteric jargons in the world today not a single one of them without meaning to those who are using them not a single one of them unrelated to the vast tree of human and animal languages so...there seems to be a need for a compass something that is NOT limited to some language-set so we can trust so we can re-enter the waters and navigate the sea of real meaning that exists as it is as it is something to loosens our tongues to even freer degree and access shared meaning like friends share bread and bread recipes how might we play at ways of finding such a thing? how may we already be doing such things? neat stuff, imo something worth adding to all our earlier freedoms

some have said that there are a thousand thousand distinct voices within each and every one of us including those over-arching archetypal voices that conduct and speak for entire segments a thousand thousand roles and reasons and relationships not that we are so fragmented and schtizo but that we are that radically detailed and contoured and that radically directly nakedly in touch with that kind of truth at all times like we are mostly like fish who do not know how wet we are...inside and out with amazing patterns and intricate strands of knowing and being and completely innocent as a babe about such things as if we are already always in the throneroom of God surrounded by angels sitting silent in the dark waiting for us to wake up and light all our candles and discover we are already home and each of us is a doorway in a vast vast mansion right here...right now in one way perhaps speaking in tongues is to speak in colors to speak in numbers, to speak in symbols to speak in tones and hues and shades and degrees to speak in waves, streams and lines but and not mistake the language for the thing being described tongues = flames = candles = a bandwidth of insights and illuminations and discoveries on the journey of life an inward menora of flickering flames of our own naked awareness when this much heavier metaphor than we've ever believed ceases to be a metaphor at all...and often becomes useful as the only way we can speak of certain such things just sayin...

hm well...i think its at least triplespeak...perhaps even leaning into quadruple-speak but even then, its no where near the chromatics of the holy bible itself..which is at least octagaspeak to decaspeak..or whatever you wanna call it but i dunno...how in tune do some of us think these guys really were? how many tongues do angels have, anyway? :blink:

hi Abi good to see you too here is another interesting page of doctrines that seem to me to follow the theme of this thread

DWW...your curiousity is quite sparkly to me im guessing you might find some answers googling around things like "ego development" and "adult ego development" and such though its not typically thought of in biblical spiritual doctrinal contexts (i my self cant seperate them so easily) seems the quintessential "ego trip" is a sort of long and windy road of many steps we must all must traverse in life as we head from birth to death and so compasses and maps and geographying skills and such come in handy ... which is why we look for people like that... such as why many were drawn to VPs PFAL holy spirit charts and such...and found elements of meaning we naturally reach for meaning-making when reason has failed us deeper introspection as we age...a period of deconstructing our own ego finding deeper, wider layers of subjectivity...and intersubjectivity as well as deeper, wider layers of objectivity ... and interobjectivity this is the beginnings of a more deeply contemplative stance that helps carry us into being of wise old age...or wise old sage...whatever the time, race or tradition and well...i know there are strong anti-ego feelings among us here at times... its common in our post-modern culture ... egos running around hypocritically pretending like we have killed our selves ...which is perhaps amplified as many many of us enter into the same natural deconstructive stages of life together in a way...we are in a sort of double whammy of transformation until we make it through to the other side ...perhaps even rescue the use and meaning of the ego in unexpected ways i would go as far as to say that that many of our most revered and remembered saints and saviors of history demonstrated those very kinds of things here is an interesting example of an eastern epistemology here is a quote from Jain Epistemology imagine applying that to one's 'sense of self'

poppin in for a sec then i gotta get back to work ...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