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Getting back to the starting question, I am now convinced that sooner or later it happens to all who really want it, desire it, think it.
But how can we want something we don’t know ?
We could not ever become interested in God if there would be absolutley no knowledge about/of God in us. Hence, we just need to find and follow this lead.
For some, God is love. When love becomes enough, and not just love of something, somebody, but when love itself is enough, when we are nothing but love and not it’s subject, than we become part of the Love as God. Is there any better knowledge of God but to become part of Her ?
I use “Her” as in love God is She.
Some find other ways.
For some, will is what they ultimately become, will without an aim, will itself, the Will of/as God. In that case, God is rather Him, than Her. Not that God would have a gender … but in His/Her/It’s aspects as Will, Love(Feeling), Thought He/She/It is so.
If someone becomes pure thought, thought without color, form, sound, thought itself, the Thought of/as God, than God is It. That. Tat tvam asi.
God can appear as personified, as He, or She, but also impersonal as It, That.
Ultimate Love, Ultimate Will, Ultimate Thought, they are all the same.
[quote=InnerAthlete;13905]Work to evolve, push aside all that does not serve that evolution, and let go.
According to Aurobindo: aspiration, rejection, and surrender.[/quote]
:DI would have to agree with InnerAthlete nice one there, we all need to work for our evolution but lets admit it it is very hard.
[QUOTE=Alix;15320]Just a quick reminder to all that this is a subject fraught with emotion and to please be gentle in dealing with others. Some of these posts sound far more aggressive than one would expect to see here.
Perhaps a good rule of thumb would be that if you are feeling very passionate, hurt, incensed (choose your own adjective please) about what someone has said, then you should wait 24 hours before posting a reply to give yourself time to really think about what has made you feel so strongly.
I’m done, please continue your discussion.
[/QUOTE]
Begin in haste…repent at leisure. You have given good advice Alix.
Really most people have no problems with Christians, Atheists or Muslims. The problem arise when the Christians, Atheists or Muslims become too militant or extreme or out of balance.
The moderate theist accepts a moderate atheist, just as a moderate atheist accepts a moderate theist.
It is out of balance, extreme views that sets one apart.
Problems within society do not come from Muslims…the problems come from extreme Muslims.
Same with all the rest whether Christian or Atheist…seek balance…seek inner peace within and with all.
Ken Humphreys talks about ‘getting high’ on religion. We can also get high on hatred and other emotions, so there are many areas to look out for when the subject turns to balanced living.
Many people gravitate towards extreme views since this works magic on blinding them from the pain in their lives.
My mom is a holly roller. I sometime get short with her when she starts on her religous spiel.
But we should always remember that religion is based on faith and not fact, so we must be careful about putting our religious guesses on others that do not believe in the faith.
[QUOTE=Hubert;15611]Getting back to the starting question, I am now convinced that sooner or later it happens to all who really want it, desire it, think it.
But how can we want something we don't know ?
We could not ever become interested in God if there would be absolutley no knowledge about/of God in us. Hence, we just need to find and follow this lead.
For some, God is love. When love becomes enough, and not just love of something, somebody, but when love itself is enough, when we are nothing but love and not it's subject, than we become part of the Love as God. Is there any better knowledge of God but to become part of Her ?
I use "Her" as in love God is She.
Some find other ways.
For some, will is what they ultimately become, will without an aim, will itself, the Will of/as God. In that case, God is rather Him, than Her. Not that God would have a gender ... but in His/Her/It's aspects as Will, Love(Feeling), Thought He/She/It is so.
If someone becomes pure thought, thought without color, form, sound, thought itself, the Thought of/as God, than God is It. That. Tat tvam asi.
God can appear as personified, as He, or She, but also impersonal as It, That.
Ultimate Love, Ultimate Will, Ultimate Thought, they are all the same.[/QUOTE]
Yes, this makes sense just as the chicken or the egg story. But it is all guesses. We cannot define anything concrete. That is why I am an agnostic.
I was at a religious discussion where the group was composed of a wide spectrum of believers and non believers.
One atheist said he ran his life by the golden rule.
Another person piped up that the golden rule came from the bible, which made the atheist wince.
The atheist seemed to take pride in his self sufficiency and did not like to run his life by anything that came out of the bible.
When it came up that the concept of golden rule might be from an earlier source than the bible, the atheist was relieved.
This was a good reminder to me to examine where my guiding light resides?
Is it ego based or truth based?
When the guiding light of this atheist was not grounded in the bible he was happy. But when it came from an area that he did not like, he was upset. How can the same material be used to build a palace by one man, yet only build a hovel for another?
By one spiritual practitioner seeing truth and applying it to live a life at peace. And the other person only seeing prejudice and problems and doing nothing.
Every religion was made by man and as such every religion is imperfect as it is run by man.
Despite these imperfections, each religion also has many "perfection's" within it as well.
We can still be open to peace generating tools from any of the religions and spiritual traditions that are available to us if we are serious about being at peace.
This requires us to run our life by truth and not by prejudice.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: ?Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them? (Matthew 7:12). Nowadays this verse is commonly referred to as ?The Golden Rule,? and is more commonly quoted as: ?Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.? Here are some of the earliest sources for this concept of reciprocity
~1970-1640 BCE "Do for one who may do for you, / That you may cause him thus to do." - The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant 109-110, Ancient Egypt, tr. R.B. Parkinson.
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~700 BCE "That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self." - Dadistan-i-Dinik 94:5, Zoroastrianism.
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? BCE "Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others." - Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29, Zoroastrianism.
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~550 BCE "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself: I am the LORD." - Tanakh, new JPS translation, Leviticus 19:18, Judaism.
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~500 BCE "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." - Udana-Varga 5:18, Buddhism.
Now, whether you believe in God or believe in Jesus or are an atheist or Buddhist does this wisdom not apply to you? This truth is universal in nature as it is based not on being of a certain religion, other than that of the religion of humanity.
In this case, you can adopt a peace generating tool and apply it to your life irrespective of your religious beliefs or lack thereof. I had to chuckle one time when an atheists argued that the golden rule is not perfect, so he said he does not follow it. When I questioned him about what he does follow as well as the state of perfection that applied to his life, all he could do was reply with ad hominem attacks.
If we are waiting for perfection when it comes to spiritual studies we will always be disappointed. Before applying perfection to anything outside of us, we should examine the perfection within us. The nature of humans is that of imperfection, so we must always look towards direction and forget perfection.
I heard a story one time in a Yoga lecture that illustrates this point. "Range is of the ego - Form is of the soul." The only thing we need to be concerned with is how is our form when it comes to our spiritual practice and our life.
Regarding the golden rule? It is more perfect than imperfect, so it is a most useful tool to live a life at peace by. And when we combine it with other tools such as universality, natural law, contrast the greater good with the greater right, etc the synergistic effect is close to perfection as humans can get with this subject. But it takes some thinking and one will not see it without an open mind.
Wisdom for living a life at peace is all around us for the taking. But many of us get blinded with labels and personal prejudices. Whenever we take it upon ourselves to beat down, we are headed in a direction of destroying peace. We destroy our own peace as well as others peace.
As such, I practice from many religious and spiritual traditions without problems or prejudices and readily look for such gifts irrespective of what label they come under - on the contrary I am most grateful wherever I find them. If I am not able to use a concept, I leave it alone, but do not spend my time or energies to beat others down. Do we like to be beaten down?
I saw some paintings in a Japanese museum that showed a cousin of the Buddha being of great power and to show his strength he went up to a baby elephant and pushed it down to the ground. A second painting showed the Buddha helping this baby elephant back up to his feet and the Buddha lifted the elephant high up over his head and said, "It is much better to uplift - than to tear down."
Whether this is a true story or not I do not know. But we can all benefit from uplifting rather than destroying.
I see this predisposition to destruction many times in responses I receive from my posts.
The critiques offer much in the line of 'no goods' but they seldom do they offer any substantive tools to finding peace.
Maybe I do not have it '100% right' but I have it 'right enough' to be able to be at peace if I apply these principles. If I waited for perfection, I would never act. I use the tools at hand.
Aristotle ~ "It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible."
This being able to 'rest satisfied' is something the perfectionists lack and why they will never be at peace until they stop collecting concepts and start using the concepts of peace generations.
The atheist I mentioned above demonstrated this with his blanket dismissal of the golden rule since it is not 100% perfect.
He could offer no substitutes for the golden rule, all he could do was succumb to personal attacks on me.
We can examine our writing to see what useful tools for finding peace we offer to others it also says a lot about our own practice of generating inner peace.
When you practice peace promotion with others you will reap inner peace promotion. When you practice destroying others peace, you will reap self destruction of inner peace. Goes back to what Alix wrote.
Faith and Reason: The Philosophy of Religion [AUDIOBOOK] (Audio CD)
by Professor Peter Kreeft is a good series that debates the issue on both sides. Get it from your library.
I was tought that at our current state, we cannot find, comprehend, experience ultimate truths. That’s why I said in a former post, that God is indefinable. In this way, being an agnostic, is a correct postion. But this does not mean that one is totally shut to the spiritual, or Gods, manifestation, or aspects of Him.
My former post is about how we can expereince God, in form of our thinking, willing, and feeling.
I was an atheist until the age of 22, than I slowly started to admit that there are spiritual things even though the God of judeo-christian tradition was still alien to me, than, at around the age fo 30 I gained enough information, expereince and open mindness that I somewhow intuited that something more exist than this little me.
Surely, it is foolish to talk about God. Yet, here, I give you a definition of what God is:
God is who is and who isn’t, or if one prefers a less personal approcah, God is what is and what isn’t. But this is juts playing with words. 
Or for some, it might become a koan.
I do not try to convert you, but I clearly tell you that I am strongly convinced that the achievements of the natural sciences and a true spirituality can coexist, not juts coexist, but become one. The theories of materialist science are mainly wrong, even though their work is not usless as their findings, achievments are real and useflul. You see, what science produces is not based on the theories it creates about genesis, or human evolution, but the experiments they conclude. The main strenght of scince is that is very pragmatic. On the level of theories, though it is greatly restricted by the minds and souls of it’s practicants. Even the most hardcore scientific reasonings present gaps in ther logic, gaps what are not based on facts or expereiments, but are resting on the assumptions od some theory. They have the pieces, and they try to make it whole, but because they dare not admit that there might be causes beyond the self accepted limits of their domain, they are like dogs chasing their tails. Part of natural science always was fiction, in form of creative imaginations of brilliant minds.
Spirituality can reach the level of pragmatism of science, and than there will be repeatable resulst. But because spirituality concerns the soul, the tool used is the soul of the seeker, not an external tool.
Nevertheless, the existance of God cannot be proved to another being.
What I clearly see in case of atheist, agnostics, and the kind, that while they “preach” their ultimate adherence for truth, they are clearly biased towards accepting anything that does not fit their own belief system. Because atheism, and the world view of natural science is just another belief system. Remember the gaps and theories I mentioned above. Few people have the time, strenght and mental ability to really churn everything truth their own personal reasoning, and life expereince. We all borrow ideas, and imaginations form others.
You fail to resonate with my above post because in your mind, the words I used are dead ones, they have a meaning in your vocabulary, but . You do not get their vibes. You still live in your thinking machine, where a word is just a word. Most people do this to less or more extent, me included. But in this particular case, there are people who will resonate with it, because they are open and free enough, and they have grown to the Ideas what these words represent, and for those people these are not just words, but living forces in their souls, and there is no need for proving them, as they are true as when you see a squirrel on a tree, a living beautiful being acting and doing it’s thing, you don’t doubt their existence.
But stating this I am of little use. Rather, I am convinced that through an objective reasonig we need to approach our own lives, and start from the little, evryday things, like … what is our consciousness, why it gets dim at nighttime, why do we need to sleep, what resonates with us, and why, who are we, and so on. The question of God is unanswerable in a satisfying way, so let’s leave that for now. Of course, one can still beleive in His/Her/Its Existence, by the power of tradition or the path one practices.
Forgot to mention that I really enjoyed your last post, keepitlow.
Remembers me to be more grounded.
[QUOTE=Hubert;15638]Forgot to mention that I really enjoyed your last post, keepitlow.
Remembers me to be more grounded. :)[/QUOTE]
Thanks. Glad you liked it.
RE: ultimate truths Hubert
Yes, hard to pinpoint ULTIMATE TRUTHS. Just got to do best we can finding some truths.
o my
look at all the fundamental differences
how to know God ?
Energy,
the more energy you can receive, the more pure you can be ,
but then of course, we run into the question or angle of deity
personality of God, as someone other than self
guru
or
Ganesha
or Shiva
or Krishna
but
why not just live simply ?
Be still and you will know God.
By doing nothing you are doing everything.
Note: I remember these phrases from my yoga instructor but am not able to pinpoint
their author.
I think first one should know himself before he can try to know God.
-Gagandeep Kaur
www.piousyoga.com