Spiritual Warfare - Personal Observations
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'Dex,
That was an amazing clip. I love TED. Some of the greatest minds of our time can be viewed there.
For me it was a serious head trauma that triggered my out of left brain experience. It took me almost twenty years to recover and I still feel the effects. It took a great deal of effort to become integrated with my body and left brain. My only motivation to do so was that I could not maintain my body without someone else's help. Feeding myself, working to afford to feed, cloth and shelter my body was almost impossible because those things were meaningless.
I spent most of my time exploring the outer reaches of space and time with only a minimal ability to have one foot on the ground. It was an easy place to stay in but when my partner decided that it was too stressful for her to do it for me, she left. I was left flailing about in a reality that made no sense and I started to die. It wasn't until my heart attack that I realized that I was not ready to go away permanently.
It has taken me nearly 15 years to learn over how to live in this society, to play by the rules. I am still struggling with it and am not completely independent yet, not fully integrated with my left brain. I don't know if I will accomplish it before my body gives out, but I can say with certainty, it has been one hell of an adventure.
Wow. That's a very personal and moving story about yourself Cliffy, as much for what you didn't say as what you did. I've seen people struggle back from serious head trauma so I can fill in some of the details. One of my dearest relatives had a major stroke last August, almost identical to what that video describes, and her indomitable fortitude continues to amaze me. I've been thinking for a long time about something wise and intelligent to say about your post, but the best I've been able to come up with is just this: thanks for sharing it, you made a difference to me today.
Dex,
This is a rather impersonal place, this forum. It is rare that people share themselves in an open way. But I felt, after watching that film clip, that perhaps it is time for us to poke our heads out of our shells and be real once in a while.
This is a rather impersonal place, this forum. It is rare that people share themselves in an open way. But I felt, after watching that film clip, that perhaps it is time for us to poke our heads out of our shells and be real once in a while.
Turning off the constant chatter in the mind, which originates in the left brain, is harder to do than it looks. The brain is used to rambling on all by itself, without the observer really noticing the content. Chanting is a great way to over ride the brains activities. The repetition of a word, any word, will keep it occupied. Eventually you may reach a point where all chatter ceases.
At that point your right brain will have a chance to go where it wants to. That is when we start to notice the oneness, the unifying stuff that makes up our reality. Native Americans talked about it as the web of life, how if we pluck one strand, the effects reverberate through every strand in the web. In the silence, the effects become very evident. It will help us see clearly that we must be conscious of the effects of every decision we make.
Again, the aboriginal people say that we should consider the next seven generations every time we make a decision, for that is how far reaching our plucking at a strand will have on the web.
For me it is simply watching something. No repeating anything. I can watch a campfire and get spaced really easily. Same with watching things in the bush, mostly watching critters in their hunt for food.
That requires foresight. Our society trains it out of us. lol
Yes, I have lost myself in many a camp fire. And we can retrain ourselves to look forward. I think it is part of our collective consciousness. We just need to reconnect to that.
If civilization dehumanizes us, doesn't that mean there is something fundamentally wrong with civilization? And why do we cling to it so desperately?
Interesting question. I don't think it's civilization itself that's dehumanizing, it's the particular way so-called "civilization" is currently implemented in the modern West that can be dehumanizing. Most of us, for instance, either live alone or in a nuclear family, which is often broken by divorce, when it's perfectly obvious from biology and anthropology that the normal way to live, the way we evolved to live, and the way most humans have lived for most of our history until approximately the Industrial Revolution, is in extended kinship groups. Imagine a young mother at home with small children, husband away at work, and she's alone with some of the most irascible, needy, demanding creatures on the planet. That's completely abnormal, for most of human history she'd have had aunts and uncles and siblings and their children, and parents and grandparents, always close to her, more or less equivalent to being just across the street. The way most of us live now reflects economic imperatives, not real human needs. The normal human social organization is the tribe.
Yup! I've been preaching that doctrine for decades but most people just look at me like I'm wacko. I have to laugh at those who think the disintegration of the nuclear family is do to the immorality of our society. They think the nuclear family is the foundation of civilization and that the tribe was to primitive to consider. I spent just about all of my life looking for my tribe. Seems to be a pipe dream.
Quite.
Consumerism, political polarisation, et al have divisive powers and people tend to be too lazy to disallow the effects. So all these interruptions tend to take us away from ourselves. hehehe Computers don't help much either.
Consumerism, political polarisation, et al have divisive powers and people tend to be too lazy to disallow the effects. So all these interruptions tend to take us away from ourselves. hehehe Computers don't help much either.
I can't believe you would come down on someone who believes in God, and the whole time you actually believe in a form of God yourself. You keep trying to have it both ways: Should we learn from the natives who believed in the "Great Creator", who created the tree? OR Do we convince ourselves that God is the tree?
Let me guess, God is the tree, AND he created the tree? Brought himself, which is absolutely everything in the universe I might add, into existence? That doesn't make sense at all because as I showed you, the 'both-and' logic you like to utilize is not the golden ticket you think it is. What does make sense is the evidence:
Hundreds of years beforehand, ancient writings foretold the coming of a man who would actually be God. This man-God, it was foretold, would be born in a particular city from a particular bloodline, suffer in a particular way, die at a particular
time, and rise from the dead to atone for the sins of the world.
Immediately after the predicted time, multiple eyewitnesses proclaimed and later recorded that those predicted events had actually occurred. Those eyewitnesses endured persecution and death when they could have saved themselves by denying
the events. Thousands of people in Jerusalem were then converted after seeing or hearing of these events, and this belief swept quickly across the ancient world.
Ancient historians and writers allude to or confirm these events, and archaeology corroborates them. Christians believe these multiple lines of evidence show beyond a reasonable doubt that God had a hand in these events.
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Good for you, keep it up, you're right. One of my favourite fantasies is to buy an old school building, renovate it into apartments for all my siblings and my wife's siblings and their families, and all live together in a large extended kinship group, where we can all be mutually supportive and see each other whenever we want, and not see each other whenever we don't. I don't have the $millions it'd take, but I think it's a nice idea. But I also concede that I've been extremely fortunate with the siblings and in-laws I have, there's not a dud in the lot and I love them all and enjoy their company. I think with that group it could work, but maybe it wouldn't with a lot of similar groups. But on the other hand, maybe if we were raised to live that way, instead of in isolated nuclear families.. I dream on.
I think you're being a little too credulous there, my friend. The only evidence we have that Jesus even existed is in the New Testament and various gnostic writings the Christian churches reject, there's no independent corroboration. A few ancient writers mention his followers and their behaviour, but nobody seems to have noticed him during his purported lifetime.
Ah! Alley, you have not been paying attention. I have stated on many an occasion that I am not an atheist. I just reject the god of the bible, because like the bible, it is a work of fiction. There is no god that is separate from the universe, there is just the universe. The universe contains everything by its very definition.
My beef is with the work of fiction that christians cling to as if it were a rock. It is vapor, without substance or meaning except in the minds of the delusional. There are hundreds of holy books and there even more religions that have no books (oral tradition). Why is it that some people single out one book and say it is the only book that contains the word of god? It is illogical.
If you want to know the truth, you will not find it in books or at the feet of a "teacher" or guru. The only place you will find it is in your own experiences of life. Limiting your concept of life to the ramblings of a single book is like staring at a rock until it is the only thing you see and then declaring that the rock is all there is to reality.
The only confusion or contradiction in what I say is in your mind because you have such a limited view of reality; not because you are a christian or are young, but because you are not willing to look beyond that which has been handed to you.
If the truth was ever available to man, then it would have been available to all of humanity, in all geographical locations, in all historical time frames, not just to the Jews several thousand years ago on one tiny piece of real estate. By only looking at the bible you only get one tiny piece of the puzzle, like a blind man feeling the scrotum of an elephant and thinking that that is all there is to an elephant.
My beef is with the work of fiction that christians cling to as if it were a rock. It is vapor, without substance or meaning except in the minds of the delusional. There are hundreds of holy books and there even more religions that have no books (oral tradition). Why is it that some people single out one book and say it is the only book that contains the word of god? It is illogical.
If you want to know the truth, you will not find it in books or at the feet of a "teacher" or guru. The only place you will find it is in your own experiences of life. Limiting your concept of life to the ramblings of a single book is like staring at a rock until it is the only thing you see and then declaring that the rock is all there is to reality.
The only confusion or contradiction in what I say is in your mind because you have such a limited view of reality; not because you are a christian or are young, but because you are not willing to look beyond that which has been handed to you.
If the truth was ever available to man, then it would have been available to all of humanity, in all geographical locations, in all historical time frames, not just to the Jews several thousand years ago on one tiny piece of real estate. By only looking at the bible you only get one tiny piece of the puzzle, like a blind man feeling the scrotum of an elephant and thinking that that is all there is to an elephant.
I see why i find why I agree with you so much.
tho, one thing i don't fully agree with , that is the bible. I wouldn't call it fiction as there are reasearchable places and events. I'd say more it's a perception of why things happened. Interpretation is the wonky part .
IMO the bible caused more problems then it ever did good.
hmm theres a subject ....what good did the bible do?
People write historical fiction all the time. Anybody can cite historical times and places within any story. The reason I say it is a book of fiction is that almost all the stories are borrowed from other cultures and events with the names changes to make them look new.
Much of the OT was taken from Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian stories, plagiarized and re-marketed as Jewish history. Much of the New Testament was borrowed from India, Egypt and Persia, plagiarized and re-marketed as a new Jewish cult that eventually became a seperate religion.
Much of the OT was taken from Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian stories, plagiarized and re-marketed as Jewish history. Much of the New Testament was borrowed from India, Egypt and Persia, plagiarized and re-marketed as a new Jewish cult that eventually became a seperate religion.
..... and maybe a little bit from Puerto Rico? Otherwise how would Jews get their mitts on a name like Jesus?
Now you be silly. ;-)
Jesus is a common name in all Spanish speaking countries. I wonder if Spanish men all think the sons were immaculately conceived? From what I saw over in Spain, Spanish men all expect their wives, sisters and mothers to be virgins but they can boink anything that will stand still long enough. Strange culture.