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I have a sincere question for everyone who may find this..
If you take any child and explain the astrophysical details of the universe..
of which our knowledge grows every day..star systems spread like grains of sand on the cosmic shore.. galaxis spread seemingly endlessly across endless space, ever growing evidence of planets orbiting without count across a cosmic ocean..
they seem to get that..
now ask any adult what the chances are that the ONLY SON THAT GOD EVER HAD died on this one planet and that their whole cosmic destiny rests on him and him alone..
What happened?
If you look at all the religions across history were any so idolotrous and improbable as that?
Chi may be real, it may be a artificial creation of the subconsious or some biochemical process.. who knows?
many people have faith, but what about such imporbable premises?
especially those taken as ULTIMATE truth..
If the faith said “maybe he was just one son of god, some kindof avatar, on this planet for this age as some sort of god king” that would be far more believable
Chi may be real, it may be a artificial creation of the subconsious or some biochemical process.. who knows?
Why don’t you explore this it seems important to you?
Are you saying you are waking up to the fact that there are millions of people who have nothing going on up stairs? Yeah theres alot of sheep out there. What is interesting to me is how one views the herd, and his relationship to it.
it’s more a questioooon to me of:
is it a faith issue, an IQ issue, a hope issue, an alien brainwash issue, a true mystic issue..
what is going on?
or is it true?
If your question is: “Why are there so many adults who want to believe an absolute truth like ‘Jesus was the only son of God and he died for our sins’?” then the answer is that they need to believe that (or something like that) because they need the security of their beliefs, based on the ideas of “good” and “bad” to feel safe. They need to be “right” to ensure that they are OK and in charge. The ego dominated mass consciousness is frightened and unwilling to look at itself and to change. Hence, dogma, tyranny, and suffering. People have lost the ability to be in the Heart and instead use their thinking to move them through life.
Here’s a passage from Eckhart Tolle’s latest book, “A New Earth” which clarifies this thought:
“‘The wisdom of this world is folly with God,’ says the Bible. What
is the wisdom of this world? The movement of thought, and meaning
that is defined exclusively by thought.
“Thinking isolates a situation or event and calls it good or bad,
as if it had a separate existence. Through excessive reliance on
thinking, reality becomes fragmented. This fragmentation is an
illusion, but it seems very real while you are trapped in it. And yet
the universe is an indivisible whole in which all things are
interconnected, in which nothing exists in isolation.
“The deeper interconnectedness of all things and events
implies that the mental labels of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are ultimately
illusory. They always imply a limited perspective and so are true
only relatively and temporarily.”-Alexander
I think it is always good to be careful when discussing faith.
For instance, my grandmother is a Catholic – through and through. She believes Jesus died for all of our sins, goes to chuch as often as she can etc. She and I have often had religious/philosophical discussions and the gist of her belief (within the Catholic religion) is that Jesus died on the cross because he loved all people and because he loved all people, he made the ultimate sacrifice.
I don’t necessarily believe the same thing but I wouldn’t say I don’t believe it either. All things are possible 🙂 Perhaps Catholicism requires the same suspension of the mind that our daily training does?
Have you ever wondered whether praying with the rosary beads doesn’t enable a meditative state in the person saying the prayers?
At the heart of religions there does seem to be this concept of “love”, it is just unfortunate that this concept of “love” then has rules and exceptions attached to it…but that isn’t the “religion” or the concept of the religion but rather the people who have limited the scope of the possibilities of the religion (if you catch my meaning).
Emelgee
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” -Blaise Paschal, scientist/philosopher, 1600s.
Religions are created by people who want to control minds. No truly enlightened or immortal being would ever create a “church”. Religions are comprised of people who do not want their minds.
It is a very rare person that uses rosary beads, or any other rote form of worship, to empty their mind of normal thoughts and unite with the divine. Usually, the opposite is true. People use religion the way they use drugs, television and sex – as escapist tools. They are trying to escape their desperation and fear. That’s why they look to authorities of all kinds for “help.” It is delusional to look at the mindless, miserable condition of the world and believe that religion has contributed in a positive way.
I grew up Catholic. Catholicism is based on guilt and endless suffering which is derived from it’s essential brainwashing concept: You are born in original sin and must spend the rest of your life making up for it or when you die you will probably spend eternity burning alive. Nice thoughts to teach a young child.
In case you’ve forgotten, the Spanish Inquisition, which is responsible for untold millions of murders, was the brainchild of “Holy Mother (now there’s the ultimate insult to the Feminine) the Church”. It lasted from approximately the years 1200-1800.
The vast majority of people involved in the world’s major religions are not employing “faith” in their lives anymore than it is faith to believe that if we just elect the right person, we’ll be alright. Faith implies an insightful trust or knowing. Blind acceptance of dogma is what the Catholic Church requires.
Catholicism, like all other religions, requires suspension of actual self-exploration, questioning and insight. It requires that you suspend your belief in your Self in favor of Them. Religions are not interested in the truth but are solely invested in keeping people from it through ANY means possible. True spiritual practices depend on suspending the kinds of beliefs the Catholic Church wants you to keep, so you can think straight and see far, actually become more of who you are.
Religion is the reflection of the worst fear we have – the fear of the divine’s punishment to us for being human. We assuage our guilt in religion by our self-denials, hoping that if we can stay small enough and pay high enough, we just might escape the wrath of “the living God!” (trumpets, lightning).
Can you actually compare Daoism and it’s “Live and let live” philosophy with the Catholic Church’s M.O. of “Take their lands! Take their minds! Take their children! Take! Take! Take!”?
The people “at the top” of these spiritual corporations are not the ones to blame for the lack of love or the rules in the world. It is the result of people’s inability to be the truth themselves that has allowed insidious forces to rule earth, kill out the feminine and create in it’s place the nightmare we have now. It is not the fault of the few, but of the many.
I cry and rage when I think about this. And the only “escape” is into the state the Catholic Church has tried to disallow since Day 1: Cosmic Union through meditation.-Alexander
Sorry Alexander but I don’t agree with your views or the anger you hold for them, but I sense the anger arises from the passion you hold for your views. However, I do respect your right to have these views; the same way I respect any person’s right to their religious faith. Each person’s path is their own. If a person approaches me and says “I wish to move away from Catholicism, tell me what you do?” I will gladly share but otherwise I leave well enough alone.
Also I would suggest you would want to be careful making such sweeping statements as “The vast majority of people involved in the world’s major religions are not employing “faith” in their lives” – unless you know every single Catholic person in the world?
It is very important to be careful and discrete in conversations about religion as the chances of converting anyone to your view point are very slim 🙂
Emelgee
Or, otherwise said, what I am saying here is that, if you are a staunch Christian in the US Bible Belt sense..
you live in a very strange dream like world if you really believe any of it..
some might call it schitzo.. but, being open minded..you think that the creator of the universe is anthropomorphic and has one son who was born on your planet..
Now, all things considered..
if we said “there’s a field of magnanimous consciousness at the center of the universe that chooses to project itself as a divine father with numerous varied faces fit for the various species upon numerous planets across the the universe..” then we might think that this was because of the warmth and expansiveness of the universal nucleus..
even then thought, which universe? what if each field was peculiar? whose to say their core consciousness field is the right one?
even then, we are left with the question of what business does GOD have here on our planet alone? surely we are not so uniquely needing of help in such a vast cosmos..
which once again leads back to.. what if some divine consciousness does emanate from some sort of omnipresent universal core.. projecting various images to communicate..
perhaps it exudes avatarts as teachers.. but surely then this would occur on multiple worlds and in various times
You’re missing the point, Emelgee. The way the world is, how things ARE, is the evidence of how people are thinking and believing, the evidence for what I said. The proof is the pudding. This is not my opinion. It is a fact of our existence. One that is obviously difficult to stomach. One does not have to know every single participant in a major religion to understand that. Why do you think someone created that T-shirt that says: “I survived Catholic school”?
For a person to ask of you: “I wish to move away from Catholicism, tell me what you do?” would mean they would have to want to come out of denial and receive themselves. En masse, people just don’t have the spiritual will for that, which is why things don’t seem to change over long periods of time, and things have had to get as bad as they are before people are literally forced to look at what they desperately don’t want to see. It’s why most people still go to western medical doctors for “treatment” a decade after the AMA itself has declared that that is the single largest cause of death in America (iatrogenic illness, they’ve named it). Denial is the biggest disease on this planet. You may not want to recognize that but it’s right here in your face all the time.
This does not mean I have no “faith” that things will change. I do. But that is because I know that the lifeforce will win the “war on imbalance”, in the end. The changes are upon us. The fact that we are not moving fast, as a group, to participate in these changes shows that we are resistant to them. It will happen anyway, but unless there is divine intervention it probably will take some time and be pretty difficult. People don’t like change even when it gives them more of what they really want. Accepting how people are means being honest about how they are first. You can’t change what you’re not looking eye-to-eye with. After that, it’s a matter of loving what you see that you can’t stand and cooking yourself till it doesn’t hurt anymore so that the lifeforce has a place to come through in balance on earth and correct things, starting with your own life.
The most difficult thing for us to do is to honestly feel our feelings around these extremely painful human issues. Not wanting to see things for what they are is counterproductive to the actual healing of them and is the major reason why bad persists on earth. While there is still some residual anger left in me when I address this subject, I am committed to achieving a daoist neutrality on it.
-Alexander
There are some good thought-questions in your words.
We “think” all kinds of things about the way it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that IT is all one big thing speaking with itself all the time, and that that speaking is the vibration of loving light. That is the true nature of our universe and ourselves.
Humans are only semi-conscious and therefore cannot think right. We have forgotten who/what we really are and make up a lot of nonsense to satisfy the ego demon mind which has taken over in our absence. The job of all spiritual cultivators is to cultivate Presence. Therein lies the answer to our problems. When the little mind ceases its selfish, conquest-oriented jabbering and we have shifted into Presence, what’s left is the knowing that:
“Sitting still, doing nothing, spring comes and grass grows.”
-Alexander
iatrogenic illness
A disorder precipitated, aggravated, or induced by the physician’s attitude, examination, comments, or treatmentOver the years, I’ve heard varying statistics from various sources on how many actual deaths and from which parts of the medical treatments they have come from. The last figure I read is in a recent book called The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, biologist. He states that 300,000 people die yearly from only the side effects of drugs given to them by doctors. This doesn’t include all the other things that are doctor-related causes of death (bad anesthesia, bad surgeries,…)
The standard figure that I have heard over the last 10 years which is taken as accurate is one that Michael Winn also has repeated and, I assume, believes to be true. A minimum of 500,000 overall deaths a year, and possibly as high as over 1 million. Anything in this ball park figure, in my mind, constitutes crimes against humanity in the face of treatment systems which not only don’t kill people but actually help to facilitate healing, like Chinese medicine. -AGoodness Alexander! Do you *want* to have words with me? Is that what you are trying to achieve?
I meant exactly what I said “Good luck”.
The long version, if you prefer…
I don’t agree with you but I respect your view. I realise nothing I say is doing to dissuade you as you have set your course (there is nothing wrong with that!). Good luck on your course. You have my best wishes.
Emelgee
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