radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
Yep, talk to the D!VINE directly. Any other way is academic study. However, one must keep the foundations (like the Early Church Fathers or the Talmud or the Hadith) in mind when you ask.
The Spiritual Path
- Thread starter Thomas
- Start date
or the Gita, or Upanishads, or Dharma, or don't read anything and commune with the one...
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
yes, wil, I agree 100%. I am not arguing for a monotheistic or Abrahamic solution, quite the opposite in fact.
I would add that the foundations are much simpler....faith, trust, sincerity & desire (in the "heart"). The desire is to know The Truth with no hesitance. As scripture says, The Truth can be "troubling" so it's important not to fear it.
Laus Deo
Laus Deo
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
Possible, Jake. Hui-neng or Laozi are perfect examples. But for most of us faith, trust, sincerity, and desire fall short. And Truth is really no criteria at all (what is true? how do you define it? what are the criteria a claim must have to be considered true? is truth always empirically decideable?) there are just too many conflicting Truths for that term to have much meaning (other than a belief, like "I beleive this to be True").
The Truth is very attainable and although there are some variances with each individual, the core aspects (who we are, what we're doing here, where we're going) are eternal and unchanging. That's where desire comes in. You have to seek it (esoterically) with no hesitance. You also have to be 100% sincere when you ask for guidance as His BS meter is quite perfect.
Hi Radarmark —
Once you determine there are no absolutes, you're lost, really. A 'relative' commitment is rarely effective — at best one can expect a 'relative' result. Look at the guys running the 100 metres yesterday. Bolt's victory was a foregone conclusion for many, but were any of those runners giving a relatively best effort ... or trying with every fibre of their being to outrun him?
There is a huge difference between wisdom an intellect. There's a story of a guru in his ashram who was approached by a wannabe disciple. "I've read ... " and he proceeded to list the classic texts from a wide range of sources. "Which way should I go now?" "Back the way you came," said the guru, meaning the poor guy's going to have to 'unlearn' most of what he's learnt, before he can believe in anything.
That's the dilemma facing the seeker today. There's not one path, there's many, and every other path becomes a reason not to fully commit to this one. So the seeker ends up not walking any path at all, but simply a collecting travel stories.
A whole publishing phenomena has grown up around it, from the "Rapture' nonsense at one end, to the vacuous 'Little Book of ... ' at the other. They're not handbooks for the Spiritual Seeker, they're entertainment for the tourists.
God bless,
Thomas
Well, no-one's perfect.
Is this not the problem with 'the Philosophy of Relativity'? 'Simple Faith' might appear naive in some, but utterly inspiring in another. I suggest the notion of 'naivity' may say more about us than about the believer. How 'complex' does faith need to be?
Once you determine there are no absolutes, you're lost, really. A 'relative' commitment is rarely effective — at best one can expect a 'relative' result. Look at the guys running the 100 metres yesterday. Bolt's victory was a foregone conclusion for many, but were any of those runners giving a relatively best effort ... or trying with every fibre of their being to outrun him?
There is a huge difference between wisdom an intellect. There's a story of a guru in his ashram who was approached by a wannabe disciple. "I've read ... " and he proceeded to list the classic texts from a wide range of sources. "Which way should I go now?" "Back the way you came," said the guru, meaning the poor guy's going to have to 'unlearn' most of what he's learnt, before he can believe in anything.
That's the dilemma facing the seeker today. There's not one path, there's many, and every other path becomes a reason not to fully commit to this one. So the seeker ends up not walking any path at all, but simply a collecting travel stories.
A whole publishing phenomena has grown up around it, from the "Rapture' nonsense at one end, to the vacuous 'Little Book of ... ' at the other. They're not handbooks for the Spiritual Seeker, they're entertainment for the tourists.
God bless,
Thomas
What suppose we capitalize on it Thomas and join both ends of the spectrum with Armageddon for Dummies read by the Real Housewives bookclub...
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
Jake and Thomas, you are both entitoled to your opinions. "Truth" is ususally used in a pseudo-scientific way. Scientifically truth is very relative. Perhaps the caveat should be "intellectually true" or "empirically true". In this sense there is always a caveat ("if Einstein is right" or "if M-theory is correct" or "to within a percent or two").
In the context of spirit or metaphysics or wisdom, there is what we know by experience. Truth in this realm is very complex and very general and very subtile. But this is rarely what people mean by thruth when discussing religion. Usually they are speaking about beliefs as if they were empirically testible.
Call them "the truth of the head" and "the truth of the heart".
In the context of spirit or metaphysics or wisdom, there is what we know by experience. Truth in this realm is very complex and very general and very subtile. But this is rarely what people mean by thruth when discussing religion. Usually they are speaking about beliefs as if they were empirically testible.
Call them "the truth of the head" and "the truth of the heart".
Very true! but only for a sections of people who are part of man-made religious communities.
Religion is part of Sipirituality. May be all the religions created are necessary in the garden of spirituality but that is not all. We find atheists and so many others also in this vastness of spirituality created and sustained by GOD.
You call him Jesus. Some call him Krishna, some others call him Allah, some others call him "unknown power" and some refute both spirituality and religion and say all as science.
My friend it is the very same Jesus who has created this garden of differences. The only difference is that you are seeing him only as Christian and limiting his role; whereas I and many others see Jesus with a much higher role in this garden of differences (extreme opposities) created by him.
Ah....another fan of the wide path...
very nice....
very nice....
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
Welcome into the Big Tent, Kenneth.
IowaGuy
Hunter-Gatherer
- Messages
- 660
- Reaction score
- 4
- Points
- 0
Why do you think Jesus claimed that the Christian path is the ONLY path to heaven/god? (John 14:6, etc.)
Why, as an enlightened individual, would he have claimed that the ONLY path excludes Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc?
I never said that. Actually Jesus spoke about Wisdom and everything else other than Christian or Christianity. It is the wrong interpratation of his words by a few that has created the "only path" thoughts.
I know ... I ten not to think of it like that. Empiricism will always be relative, but the assumption that everything therefore must be relative is false.
The more telling is the contemporary notion is that everything is relative according to me, or, indeed, that the truth is some sort of solution...
God bless,
Thomas
In the modern context yes, but then the idea of 'religion' and 'spirituality' have become so generalised and relative that the traditional meaning is lost, or at least misunderstood.
Properly understood, 'spirituality' is defined within the context of a religious tradition. Religion is prior to spirituality, and indeed under the umbrella of a given religious tradition there will be many 'spiritualities', but once you isolate spirituality from religion, then really one is talking about a personal psychism, which is why, as you say, each tends then to perceives 'It' according to themselves, rather than locate themselves according to It.
The separation of 'religion' and 'spirituality' is largely an invention of the secular West. I did not occur until the 17th century. In the Orthodox East, there is no such distinction, and any suggestion of such would receive a gentle rebuttal.
Are you not making something of a neoChristian assumption here? You've offered an all-embracing theist model, but I'm not sure an atheist would be happy being located in your theist paradigm, nor a deist, nor a ...
But when evoking the garden image, one should be mindful that although the fruit might seem "good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold" (Genesis 3:6), appearances can be deceptive.
There is a marked distinction however, between spirit, which is nothing more than personal psychism, and Spirit, which is the Indwelling of the Transcendent.
Oh, all manner of people have all manner of names ...
D'you think so? How can my notion of the Incarnate Word 'limit' His role? And what role are you suggesting? To me He is the Cause and End of all things, the Alpha and the Omega, it is He who sustains all things, and all things find their rest in Him.
If I am in some way limiting my understanding, I would be more than happy for you to point out my error.
To me, by the imposition of a wholly artificial distinction, it is you who underestimate Him.
I see Him according to 'the Tradition of the Word made flesh' (cf John 1:14), the union of Spirit and matter — you seem bent on introducing an (artificial) separation of 'religion' and 'spirituality'. It's the age-old problem of interpreting an holistic doctrine through dualist eyes — the Johannine epistles refute that position utterly.
The big problem with this distinction between religion and spirituality is that it re-introduces the body/soul or matter/spirit dichotomy. Nor, might I add, have I ever met anyone supporting this view who places religion superior to spirituality — usually the argument is deployed to explain why they don't need (that is they are superior to) religion.
A proper understanding of the Christian Tradition renders the distinction void, it's artificial. It's an import of an Hellenic philosophical outlook that distorts an essentially Hebraic inheritance.
God bless,
Thomas
Deists are just another set of people created by God. The very purpose of creating differences is to create learning and wisdom and that starts with
restleness and may be as you say unhappiness for some.
To see white better one needs to see more of black and vice-versa. For some white is an appealing colour and for them to enjoy the whiteness fully they need to see more of black and vice-versa. So even a deist need the opposites to substantiate his viewpoint. That may create a temporary unhappiness for him.
God created The Garden of Eden and created the snake, Adam and Eve to eat the fruit and experience life on earth. So Adam and Eve and none of us have made a wrong decision to have eaten the fruit. We are only experiencing. If he wished he could have stopped us or rather not created that tree.
God could have made all of us as either Christians / Hindus / Muslims with similar viewpoints and wise. But he created diversity and wanted us to experience the diversity with different viewpoints.
Before G!d created ANYTHING he created metaphor.
Sam Albion
akaFrancisKing:ViveLeRoi!
There ARE no atheists without God....
So they really are part of the theist paradigm!
So they really are part of the theist paradigm!