sirguessalot

thanks for taking the time to respond like you guys have i am enjoying reflecting on them and Belle...i think you have really pointed out some of the most obviously important questions and concerns (and wonderful wonderings) that arise around such an approach to modelling faith development if its ok with you...i would like to try to respond in detail from my perspective sometime very soon. Todd

well..here is an interesting and enjoyable chapter from John Armstrong's "God versus the Bible" that i think represents a near-perfect example of someone poised to reach from a rational rung (in this case, deist) to a pluralist rung (which is typically more messianic) a snip... but the common cold of this view...such as at seems with this author...is how they severely reduce their argument in order to counter an even more severely reduced position kinda like a 3rd grader who will only argue with 2nd graders...and perhaps even doubts that 4th graders exist at all the possibilites seem mostly just flattened into monolithic and dualist assumptions and i think part of were the seeming passion to save-the-world-from-fundies/save-fundies-from-the-world comes in... ...is due to how, having faith in reason, one is already raring to make a leap toward a more wide open hearted degree of pluralist "Faith" ...if the rational thinker doesnt just fall back into a new myth that tries to apply the language-set of reason (kinda like what VP seemed to do quite spastically, and what John Armstrong may even eventually end up doing) and worth mentioning again, is how..on the whole...every leap of faith seems much better off by including that vital purpose of all previous rungs ...and to try to cut off the vital lessons and reasons for those previous rungs is not rational, does not work, and seems mostly just counterproductive and all around unhelpful as we climb up and down any ladder...we would do well to make sure that we do not try to chop out the lower rungs

ha..too cool Belle and i hear ya...i work in a multimedia bookstore, manage a lending library, read a lot in my studies, with a stack of books i want to read but cant get to, as well as a stack of books others say i should read that i cant get to, as well as a stack of books people want me to carry in the bookstore that i must read and well...what i mean by "practice precision" is to allow yourself to be precise ..play at ways of being precise....brings an element of artistry and craftmanship which involves things like measurements and details and making as many severely critical distinctions as one find to make i find that greater depths and degrees of precision allows for greater depths and degrees of sophisticated understanding and one can be very precise about any given thing in life engineering, horticulture, business, writing, research...etc. also thoughts, dreams, feelings, imagination, insights, language ...etc i also think that a bigger part of being precise involves at least having the will to include as much related info as possible into the equation of course...its not hard to imagine and see how precision alone can be so sharp it is rather dull ...but one can see where precision mingled with the other 2 i mentioned becomes a whole different game i would say that curiosity allows us to imagine new ways while compassion allows us to break old ways and we sure do need new ways to navigate all this information cuz the old ways are not cutting it which has had me tinkering for awhile

for those of us who have come to boil things down to love i would have to say that that leaves us resting on yet another rung of jacob's ladder perhaps even one of the more overloaded rungs these days and tho it typically doesnt seem to feel good for us to hear such things for various reasons i can only sit on my butt with us and marvel how so many of us have made it this far at all :mellow: as it pertains to "Misquoting Jesus"..i have not read the book, but i have read many related books but as it pertains to all the books, Books, and BOOKS in the universe on the subject i suppose one could say something like this about most of our mainstream american christian english dialogues on the topic of jesus... - we do not have access to many vast swathes of relevent information on the topic - there are many vast swathes of relevent information on the topic - many vast swathes of information have been destroyed throughout history - mountains of valuable information is currently being uncovered for the first time in this era of history - we often justify not having access to all of it by declaring the vast majority of it unimportant or unneccesary ...or even downright evil .. - if we did have access to all the information...most of us would most likely not be able to comprehend it as a whole...at first - tho we often justify our fairly decent comprehension by saying greater degrees of comprehension are somehow counterproductive or perhaps even wrong or dangerous... - we often avoid or suppress the possibility that some people are actually more able to understand and explain such large bodies of information ..its parts and wholes - these kinds of freaks are often considered a) somewhat terrifying or b) quite boring - as with all traits ...greater degrees of comprehension comes with a price and other unique challenges - we really cant know how much we dont know...so "mostly ignorant" is perhaps our most useful stance to take ...in spite of how much we do know - we typically avoid and hate the very information that will help us the most - we can actually know quite clearly when someone is uninformed and does not know it - vast swathes of information created in response to the original occasions of Jesus are incredibly valuable as information even if they are not accurate or perfect - other stuff i missed... so...what i do is... practice precision practice compassion practice curiousity play at holding all 3 of them and read whatever the heck you want cuz satan IS to be transformed into an angel of light...by YOU we need not be as darkness seeking light but be can be as light and enter the darkness cuz most all radical Truth is mostly always already always hiding right there ... naked in the dark ... plz forgive for being offensive, unclear, or somehow wasteful and boring though its quite ok with me if you dont... thanks with luv +ODD

Roy...i love how you kick off with things like..."What if I said..." and i would have to say that you have a sense of faith that is free to play in whatever wide open field it finds, my friend curious...you ever do any painting? or drawing? .... using this thread as a sort of a notepad...heerza a little something i found that speaks of the mythic level faith... also...i find it helpful how one can certainly identify life as it looks between the rungs of faith development: - for example: ...how the mythic degree of faith seems basically what happens when those with a magic degree of faith gather in numbers and find a common language to describe their faith in magic. Such as when someone leaves survival-of-the-fittest gangland and are embraced by their first supportive family atmosphere, or when a bunch of 60s misfits and idealists where intitially drawn to TWi culture via promises of fire engine red drapes....and in our excitement, we often confuse our move from one rung to another for the whole trip up the ladder. ...or how a mythic faith may be reaching for reason, but in having more of a footing in myth than reason, basically drags the language of reason and fragments of reason down to the level of myth...such as the way VPW and ilk are often so hellbent on claiming that the PFAL myths are accurate, precise, scientific...yada yada. There seems a sense of being in a struggle between mere myth and mere reason. ...just sayin

interesting depiction by Blake

a reason i ask outloud like this... is because i have found how simply asking such things in such ways might be valuable in a number of ways and altho one may obviously read and respond however they wish... ...i especially welcome those who can bring some greater sense of curiosity...kindness...precision to the manner in which we might comment and reflect and ask further around such things ...mostly cuz it seems more efficient and effective, is all ...and another wish of mine ... is that by playing at playing in such ways...that we become more free to find more degrees of meaning and hope in what i consider to be our modern shipwreck of a christian english language and so also...having so asked ...i would also like to offer a small slice of my own perspective on the question as a primer, of sorts ...with my own voice...as an expression of my own ongoing synthesis of such things as you may discover..i have been fiddlin with this type of question for quite some time now ...i kept it to a short vignette ...please feel free to read slow if you must...plz forgive where my tongue gets clumsy if it helps, perhaps keep in mind i am just a mere visual artist and overall willful bufoon who has very likely missed something important... .... for starters...for the purposes of this playful equation, i am using the word "Faith" in a way that is that is, again...a bit more curious, kind and precise. ...and in a way that is quite specifically different than how it is commonly explicitly and implicitly used...i hope you can forgive i am using "Faith" to describe that edge of what we cant personally privately deny as the ground and basis of our sense of cause and meaning no matter what we call it...we all have such a place without having chosen to have one...where something has been somehow proven to us and/or by us...sitting right up next to the part where we really dont know squat we often mostly just wake up and find ourselves there one day, though we also reach and stretch from time to time this sense of "Faith" is how we think things work, and what causes what, and why all this is happening to me/you/us etc... it is the mostly invisible factor that determines the actual meaning of the words we use to describe things one might even call it that inner map or model we each use to explain at first to ourselves about how goodness and truth and beauty actually occur the shape of our "Faith" is made of the very substance of our souls, our visions, our hopes, our dreams, our intentions and yes...it seems ever clearer to me that these are all actual things with an actual cosmic address made of actual quantifiable stuff .... that said...it seems to me that we rather naturally unfold through an elegent bandwidth of "Faiths" in our mortal span and not only as individual/s, but as human culture/s, and other ways and our lives our typically "bedeviled" to the depth and degree we get stuck or stop too long at any given rung on this climb for example, how entire waves of culture can and do and are stuck in the earliest stages of "Faith" ...stages that we naturally personally experience as infants and children ...and that we naturally experienced in early human history a very basic way i have come to understand this very old ladder is as follows: + our faith is grounded in magic... + our faith is grounded in myth... + our faith is grounded in reason... + our faith is grounded in universal compassion... + our faith is grounded in nothing... + our faith is grounded in everything... + our faith is grounded in nonduality... i believe this persective can help shed light on the conflicting and contradictory behaviours surrounding arts, languages and histories of our world's traditions and beliefs and schools of thought perhaps especially as it pertains to the notion that every old line of religious history has generally been expressed and experienced across the entire spectrum of "Faith" by applying such a simple "measuring rod" to Christianity, for starters...i will loosely describe how it might come through these kinds of discernable distinctions: + selfish christianity - based on such things as "the law of believing" as a way to basically "get the stuff i want and need"... the birth of the ego + fundamentalist christianity - based on exclusive community stories and values...where we get fixated on brotherhoods, fatherhoods and specific lineages and books + rational christianity - based on a sense of being a free agent in a system...where the context of our faith moves to conventional business and science and politics + pluralistic christianity - based on a much wider sense of charity and concern...where interfaith and inter-religious dialogue begins to make more sense + contemplative christianity - the monastics of history who actually formally practice the arts of cultivating the experience of God in the ground of silence + mystic and nondual christianity - where the entire spectrum is being valuable and valid at every stage of faith...and we see the value of BOTH ascending and descending along the spectrum, more capable of consciously creating "music" with it all though ironically enough, its this hard flat monochromatic pluralism (bless its heart) that most typically and adamantly rejects associating any sense of measurable depth and degree to such things as "faith" ...and a lot can be said about that paradox these days and tho i know i have breached the topic in various ways over the years, i am ever longing to revisit refresh and see who may find value in such things, and always longing to play at way of inviting that trinity of curiosity, kindness and precision to this topic. space and grace +ODD

well...thanks for starting this interesting thread its always cool to see new faces bringing light down to the dungeon but...rather than be redundant and noise up the thread, i would also like to point to a previous thread i started almost a year ago on the topic: Body Soul and Spirit Revisited...as a path of steps ...tho i must also say that my life and views have surely moved and changed and expanded a bit since then tho..i would like to add a small rant ... and while i can't agree with some of what you wrote, Son of the Master, i do like how you are looking at the order of progession from spirit to soul to body from what i have come to understand...what it seems you have done is describe a path of descension (from spirit to soul to body) as compared to a path of ascension (from body to soul to spirit) i would have to amplify it a bit and say that both approaches have more value when seen together than apart tho many prefer one over the other in life- which is most naturally, at first, the ascension...which is natural in many schools of thought (including some christian), life is allowed to be seen as an incredible creative process that is born of the "marriage" of the two ...together, they form a singular current of sorts, or continuum that keeps the universe fresh and re-creative and such... and so the erotic, agentic, evolutionary, masculine "love" is the ascending will - which strives to move from body to soul to spirit where the communal, allowing, surrendering, agape "love" is the descending will - which does not strive at all...just falls real easy like rain from spirit to soul to body in a sense...one might say... that if one is mostly in eros...they seek only to descend to heaven and bliss and safety and perfection and nirvana...hell may simply get deeper and deeper and hotter and hotter ... and the world seems dirtier and filthier and more and more evil and if one is mostly in agape...there are most likely OK with dying and returning to the radical clarity of pure wide open invisible infinite unseen Spirit that everything arose in in the first place...tho they may become more useful and helpful as servants in the bowels of hell dare i say that VPs preference for the path of body to soul to spirit has a lot to do with his desire for a mostly erotic spiritual path...the one whose demons seemed to outnumber his angels i would go as far as to say that he had an outright loathing for most sorts of descending spirituality more and more...it seems to me that that horrible "enmity we are to be delivered from" is a way of describing BOTH the merely ascending one that rejects descension AND the merely descending one that rejects ascension all this "enmity" plays out a gazillion ways in life...great and small

well..i appreciate your response Sudo ...peace, Todd (who can also comes across as a know-it-all-jerk at times) and i think you are really really onto some good and useful things, T-Bone such as... "what data are we ignoring?" "are we asking the wrong questions?" ...and about how Ockham's Razor does seem to stall out at some point and i think that language itself is perhaps one of our greatest problems/solutions in such matters which seems due to the cultural restrictions and taboos that have been placed on meaning of our world's oldest names and words as if, in spite of all the advances up til this millenium, there is still something tribal about the ways we use the same old English to relate

given the evidence as i see it...i sure cant blame you for that one, ww and so i wont comment on some very interesting things in what you posted but c'mon sudo...do you honestly think your approach to the topic is intellectually honest? civil? useful? inviting? informed? :blink: kinda wonderin...cuz i cant say i see much of any of them in your writing ... your approach and i do believe there are points where it becomes quite evident to some ...when someone else does not know what they claim to know like how im sure you would know that i was talking out my a$$ in the context of dentistry... or sharing music files ...etc... well...sad to say...but it is quite increasingly evident to me that the vast fields of fields of religious thought and art and history and practice and such are a heckuva a lot deeper and wider than you are aware of and while rational thought may be steps ahead of magic and myth ... mere gross reductionism of any subject only gives a cheap illusion of providing some sort of further meaning and your typically very very broad brushstrokes are too simple to cover enough of the subject to be helpful or informative about it at all, imo there is a lot more room for thought and reason than you typically seem willing or interested to hear or investigate... although even if you are, in some strange way, looking for actual honest dialogue on the topic of the trinity ... i would think you should not be surprised or outraged or confounded how some folks around here would rather not provide references to such deeper personal sources and perspectives in your company... ...given the way you typically seem to so readily disintegrate on this topic, at least... i mostly only write this because of all that i have come to understand and care a bit about group dynamics and you seem either largely unaware of your effect on this community or simply do not care...or something else...maybe just sloppy..i dunno and so i feel the need to take this moment to QUACK about it...cuz i can a shot in the dark perhaps, i know but there is a point in community dialogue where the ole "you are free to ignore me" simply isnt practical enough it seems there plenty of easier, more direct and skillfully effective ways to communicate your feelings regarding the spirit of things no...not secret knowledge, either

nice one, E in light of the subject...i thought you guys might appreciate this: The Four Things that Matter Most by Ira Byock (an actual Doctor) funny too, cuz after having met and learned from Dr Byock (very nice guy from New Jersey, btw), as part of my studies i have created a 6-month practicum assignment that literally involves practicing finding ways to "say the 4 things" in whatever ways i can find i am calling it an experiment in basic training for being an a$$ (A Simple Spirituality...if you will ) .... a kind of spirituality, perhaps, that VP and ilk should have spent more time considering so..sorry for the derail thanks for the thread love you guys...miss you +ODD

for what its worth...and correct me if im wrong, but it seems fitting to mention... Here is a bookstore i've helped put together for the center where ive been studying with and supporting for some time now and no, i'm not posting this cuz i want gscers to buy stuff ...but to point out that there often is a lot more to any given conversation around human religious traditions and practices there are a lot of good and well-informed people from all over the world involved in the work of this center, too ...a lot of those very authors drawing from catholic roots, celtic roots, jewish roots, quaker roots, and some interesting others from the east ...a lot of atheists, too (which look more like inside out buddhists, to me) from what i have seen and done, i am convinced that there really is a whole different level of approaching the very same topics we typically rastle over ...and this skill is neither old or new news, but perennial stuff i could even go as far as to call them all arts and sciences of of ever deeper ways of friendship or some such silly thing but we often fail to believe it is possible, or kept from us in another realm or we think it would be immoral or wrong or dangerous or maybe we are offended at the notion that such things can be measured in terms of levels and degrees or we often just have never been given the tools to do such things or something else...often even tribal but regardless i have seen that it is possible and there certainly is always a lot more to the story more ways to talk about religious and philosophical stuff, culturally and there certainly is a lot more to what has been done in the name of catholicism, or christianity, or by wandering irish poets and the other radical characters of lore tho all too often...occam's hammer is used where a razor would do just fine as if we cant handle the complication and messiness of it or something and so we flatten it all out and get monochromatic about it so...not sure what else to say about it all right now ...except that i wish you all peace

hi Rottie long time no jibber jab pardon my assumptions what i write here is perhaps one of the hardest kinds of things i have ever found to say but i think that...until we can find a way to forgive even the devil we must also somehow find a way to forgive our selves for that tho ultimately, that line between self and other is an arbitrary one, anyway im sure there are many many who what where when whys and hows on the path of forgiveness but the wilderness is more messy and more complicated than we are often comfortable with it helps to have a reliable compass ...a map ...a pencil ...such things and perhaps some extra shoes for the long journey cuz not only does it all come up in the end of life anyway but we pass on some sense our unresolved incapacities to forgive, somehow all of it all of it all of it somehow in all of our many cults and cultures and tribes all our modern wars are mostly legacies of revenge that are thousands and thousands of years in making so its not hard to see how important it is to find a way forgive whatever and however we can not just for our sake, but for all of our sake not something we can force through, either nor can we avoid it though i think questions take us farther than answers and soft answers serve better than hard answers when in a circle of friends such as...what is the subject of forgiveness? the object of it? is it a body thing? a mind thing? a heart thing? if all of it gets burnt anyway maybe its a fire thing after all...god is god as god as fire is fire whether heaven or hell are hot or cold quite depends on whose asking and whose being asked i am sure us big-bang-believers will have to somehow have to forgive the big bang for the way it keeps on banging and banging just as we all have to somehow find a way to forgive the myths and legends for being myths and legends and too...i find it helps to keep in mind how forgiveness is only one type of spiritual pain, anyway i would even go as far as to call it an important leg of an important table, if you will hell...i dunno what to say, Rot i sometimes feel like i write like Woody Allen rambles maybe its my jewish foot or something peace

a memory as an after thought... as strange as this may sound to some.. ...perhaps even like a fart in church, im sure i sometimes wonder if perhaps the devil is our 'last enemy to be destroyed' when find our way free of our enmity with 'him' (which is not by actually destroying the devil..as if) in other words...the last being we must actually really truly forgive and 'love as our self' is more like forgiving ourselves for falling for 'his other trick' which was to believe in 'him' as 'other' in the first place i mean, when did Jesus hate or blame or accuse the old dragon for evil? ...is it possible that 'Satan' IS transformed into an angel of light? and we are not to be ignorant of this, and fooled into this endless enmity with 'him'? just saying...

a hearty welcome to the many new hypertextual voices around here ...i'll add to this here graffiti on the subject... i recall that aha-click moment upon first hearing the ole "the devil's greatest trick is to get people to disbelieve in him" schticke ...but i am pretty convinced that perhaps the ole devil story has more uses than that as if we are pretty much doomed to literally believe in him for awhile...at least til the literal devil is "done with us" ...in a sense ..."over and over again," as it were...so as not to miss a thing...where those aha-click moments are more of a string of clicks ...like the clicks of a timer for some bun in the oven cuz it seems to me "the devil" has the potential to become MORE spiritually valuable to us as a metaphor long after the "magic enemy" story served as a useful tool for gathering humanity in groups and stimulating commonality (both cult and culture) and then it seems there comes another exponential increase in the communicative value with rational thinking and then another with whatever occurs when rational thought meets its limits...so on and so forth as if the reasons for the "magic enemy" story are as increasingly as true as ever such as when it becomes a valuable metaphor for communicating just what it is that is be-deviling us tho, it seems we often fear that to move from literal devil to metaphorical devil is somehow devaluing the literal view as if the devil is somehow tricking us to do such a thing but i believe we can actually "speak of the devil" in ways that are simply MORE free, and more real, and more useful and helpful to whomever because we have widened the field of what are allowed to be talking about when we use the word "devil" almost as if we naturally 1) move from literal devil to 2) metaphorical devil then 3) back to literal devil again with a much broader meaning and intent though it seems "we" have mostly lost our tongue for talking about the devil in such a way as if it is no longer a part of most of our mainstream cultures' skillsets but i must confess...i do believe and have seen how a more radically free approach can really open the fields of possibility in how we can discuss the actual causes of who and what torments us and something most astounding, i feel, is how by merely practicing it....merely playing at it...merely leaning towards it... it can really go a long way to freeing our tongues (which are connected directly to our bodies hearts and minds, of course) as a potter, we can permit our perception of cause to move and shape in a way that includes all our previous worldviews ...but not in a way that rejects the purpose and structures of those firstborn ones we can use any ole words we like and literally breath new life into them or some such thing... :P Happy Late Brigit's Day

pardon the rant but it seems to seem to me... that regardless of where the term came from...or didnt come from and regardless as to how it might be used to describe whatever this or that person or group is being or doing to equate 'spirit' with 'death' is very a common archetypal pattern in every language 'spiritually dying,' or 'being spiritually slain,' was the bread and butter of most of the world's monks and saints and prophets and rabbis and such the capacity to transform and change our perspectives without fear... the capacity to authentically take and share our perspectives with others... all hinged on our capacity to allow a layer of our own worldview to die..."to be slain as a sacrifice on the altar of God" "dying" is the language they have and do commonly use when discussing each major step on journey of the human condition only they often also describe it as a life of 'many small deaths' we die to a layer of exclusivity with our identity...which is very easy to understate dying was considered rebirth into a higher order life after life...as it often happens during life ive seen and heard how life 'always gets spiritual' whenever we find ourselves "in the space between the rungs" ...whenever our worldview dramatically shifts...something dies and sheds ...this has already happened many times in each of our lives to 'be in transition' is to find oneself in a liminal space...like being on or near the threshhold of a wide open door i would even go as far as to describe most common trait in old spiritual practice was the "the art of playing dead" all dreaming all envisioning all meditation all contemplation all prayer ....all things you do with your eyes closed ....all things you can do naked and alone with God in the dark ...like burying yourself like a seed in the ground of God...and practice waking up all real ultra-ordinary stuff for a circle of friends to become adept at "being slain the spirit together" they might do some radical thing like spend 9 days 'playing dead as one' in a secluded temple mostly not speaking, mostly not eating, eyes mostly closed, mostly not moving for long periods of time yet...doing A LOT of work, paying very close attention to dreams, and actually practicing allowing the self liberating transformation of letting go within the one might expect...stillness is ground of this kind of dying work ...silence is the language of it the lofty goal was to 'practice dying' to our limited mortal bodily sense of self...while yet alive, by practice ...so we can get out of our own way, and then get back into it again a problem i see with modern so called spiritually...is we typically cant shut up and sit still longer than 30 seconds, let alone 40 days and nights yet so many factions among us claim to be authorities as to what those radical ancients were feeling and experiencing when they describe spiritual death i am guessing that to be 'slain in the spirit'...may be to shed an assumption of what 'spirit' means to us...to shed a perspective that has met its end, and is no longer working ...from natural accidents to sophisticated art forms, the quantity and qualities of how all our dying happens varies wildly like when a kid first realizes that its ok to flush...cuz he is not losing a piece of himself when he poops ...a small but important slaying of an old view of self...when an early layer of our reflective (spiritual) self dies ...or some such things

for what its worth...a lot of old old legends and lore point to notions like: "in the beginning" = "every present moment"..."all of this now"..."as it is becoming"...in a sense, pointing at the nature of "everpresent causality" ...as it begins in every moment fresh and new "the Word" = ALL form...The One and The Many...that which simply forms and is manifest, in all its wholes and in parts...the whole universe is more or less made of sound "God" - formlessness...that which Witnesses form...the UNmanifest...which our original and final nature and how this singular dance of form and formlessness is a cha cha cha of many subjective and objective relationships...where zero is finally a hero again and the happy couple collapses into one...and the edge of logic never stops moving away from us and ya gotta love that

starbird..not trying to be a smart a$$ punk or anything...but for what its worth...i'll just pluck this one out if the pile... you wrote: ok....well, i, for one, would like to hear more about this part i mean, can you give an idea of the depth and degrees of exposure and experience with all the many many many many religions traditions and schools of thought that there are? you know... how long...how many years? what teachers...and what did they teach you? and who taught them? and what books? what arts? what stories and experiences have been involved? what practices? what disciplines? what demonstrable process for helping "cultivate spiritual fruit" have you found? ...yada yada yada..and all that kind of stuff cuz honestly...just how many different schools within schools of thought and forms of spiritual arts and practices are there to reject/consider? a dozen? a hundred? a thousand? more? cuz you seem to think you might know ...tho i wonder if you really do and i ask because i'm more or less a fool and am not sure how else to respond to the dialogues you've started since you've hypertextually arrived ...except to try and ask something useful, i guess...if you dont mind and i have found that inquiring as to how something might have happened is more valuably interesting than dead-end either/or options so i am curious as to how you can claim to have experienced enough of the human condition to make such a solid decision as to which model of the way of the universe is MOST true and reliable ...or some such thing you like....1000 years old or something? :blink: :B)

what i wonder about this comment, def, is how you can claim to know the secrets of every gnostic's intent? cuz honestly, how could you make such a statement as "the problem with gnostics is that they are always trying to..."? correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem to be claiming to know the secret/hidden intent of a general group of folks while poo-pooing the very same thing as if you yourself are claiming to "possess a better secret decoder ring than the last guy" if so (so as not to derail)...i wonder if are you interested as to why this might be? as to why you prefer the orthodox? and avoid the quirky? do you feel there is there something inherently wrong, or dangerous with the quirky? ... and on a side note...what if someone has actually studied and compared and seen patterns in all those various religions, and actually wishes to convey this learning for the benefit of mankind? should we lump them together with gnosticism simply for wanting to knowabunchostuff? and does wanting to knowabunchostuff instantly disqualify someone from being humble? i mean, scripturally, is there something wrong with a lot of knowledge? is there something wrong with comparing religions and seeing patterns? from what i have read, for example....one passage says knowledge puffs up, while another says we are destroyed from a lack of it another says there is no end to it, while another says to seek it out like a 49er on a gold rush personally...i dont have a problem with the clear and obvious contradictions...cuz it makes sense to me but like it has come in this thread...i do notice how some folks simply reject all (or most) claims of knowing spiritual things ... btw..i do not fully agree with gnosticism, in general, as far as i understand it though i can understand how and why it came about in history

i think Mark makes a good point by with the distinction between salvation and "born again" ...and as it pertains to the all-too common notion of being "born again"...something that really seems to challenge the common doctrine, is how, in Peter's Epistle, the greek is speaking not of a new birth, but of a new conception so i wonder if perhaps if after the new spiritual conception (perhaps by way of a new conceptualization...new perspective) the process of salvation is a gestation period (of becoming whole), that results in a new kind of birth/death which, of course, is merely the beginning of something much greater perhaps spiritual conception occurs after a moment of bliss while salvation (development as a whole being) is a long road of many trials and transformations and any birth that follows both of these is typically a screaming bloody mess perhaps one can see where mistaking conception for birth produces many overestimations of one's actual stage of spiritual development, resulting in gross blunders of epic proportions (lets say, should an emperor or king make such a mistake, and claim to be spiritual born again, when perhaps they have not even been spiritually conceived) reminds me of an excited and desperate sperm mistaking its orgasmic arrival for being born as a fully developed child ...doh! ... and too, whether or not we have eternal life may have nothing at all to do with conception, salvation or birth some say that we are pretty much doomed to live forever in one form or another and simply having a spiritual nature is not the same as our conceiving of it, nor development and birth of our living into it

thanks for responding, guys and i'm especially grateful to see your post, Too Gray, my friend ...for more reasons than i can count, as you know ... and i like how Belle mentioned the "seeing through a glass darkly" in the context of this thread though, rather than expressing our general state of lack of knowing what causes what (which is a basic notion of spiritual truth...causality) i think the fact that "glass" means "mirror" points to the importance of examining our own inner darknesses (as our first and highest priority) ...almost as if Saint Paul and Carl Jung were getting at the same kinds of things perhaps it could be said that our priority should NOT be to save our self from the outer darkness so that we are somehow free from the darkness of the world (which is merely selfish) ...but to save the world from darkness by shining light (as light) in the dark place that is personally ours...which is a more direct and immediate path to darkness as if paradoxically, the darkest part of our self can be our greatest ally and teacher ("the shadow is golden" is an old saying along these lines) and aiming for darkness (ignorance, fear, etc...), more than anyting, is what helps us navigate more truly and faithfully than anything cuz this is what light does...it aims for darkness, in order to fill it (not remove it, or kill it, or hate it) cuz the darkness was really merely clear all along, and full of amazing things waiting to "be colored" by way of illumination and so...if our habit becomes that our own weakest link is the most important factor in our quest for truth, goodness, beauty, etc... then our greatest enemy becomes our greatest friend, and we are free ...and of course...we are not as much of a pain in the arse to our neighbors and the world at large this, i believe, was a major shift in being for those first century folks we like to talk about in how they repented, by turning completely around...which was to practice the art of introspection as an important aspect of service to the outside world where, inside of the tribal crusading against the evil outside of themselves (often only stirring more and more evil reactions) they saw the much greater leverage of the interior path for "peace on earth and good will towards men" cuz the deeper we go inside...the deeper from which we view all the same stuff as before ...nothing changes except the quality of view from which we are "seated" and "resting" inside ...but to NOT repent (as i have described it)...or even worse...to institutionalize NOT repenting (like VPs "5 tricks of satan" doctrine seems to have done) is basically to instill a program of remaining ignorant of self, by making us afraid to trust our own experiences of who we are where most all our behaviour is driven by thoughts, feelings and impulses that we've never even seen...nor are we even interested in looking at them almost as if to say, without knowing it... "avoid the mirror at all costs...and avoid shining light in dark places" ... and so...the original kind of question...what cant we look at? and what can that tell us about our self? and to add...is what we are drawn to merely the flip side of what we avoid?

i think the idea of some sort of graphic tree representation of the TWi family would definitely be helpful, interesting, educational, groovy and all that ...but even more so, perhaps, would be to graft TWI into its even greater family tree in order to represent its siblings and parents and grandparents and whatnot ...fer sure an ambitious project, either way.

edited because i am an idiot carry on sweet dreams

now, that is great wisdom, imho like saying "let us find the fountainhead together, rather than jump in midstream" ok, so...where is the fountainhead? i really dunno this time...cuz the fountainhead seems to move a lot ...but i am almost always game for the adventure..again

i think those are good questions Roy though i am going to have to say that i really dont know though it seems likely to me that there is some strange level of sentient awareness in things like planets and stars and minerals and atmosphere and while i have my own experiences around such notions and there has been plenty written and said about such things but that is pretty far out and difficult to discuss without sounding quite bonkers to most conventional thinkers i feel that keeping it very playful and childlike seems the best approach to that level of thing ...makes great poetry and song, ya know? ... also, something i want to add to the previous notions on this thread in regards to that vast pool of spiritual literature and doctrine of world history... - it seems natural and honest for one to admit there is too much to digest, and live a happy whole life without attempting to do so - it seems natural and less honest for one to claim supremacy over them all without ever having looked into them all - there is nothing wrong with specializing in one (or a few) spiritual traditions, as long as one can respect other traditions. - there is also nothing wrong with trying to study and compare them all (or as many as one wishes), if one is so inclined. but back to original line of inquiry...is there personal value in seeing what we refuse to look at...even if we never dare to look?