Why practice?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
21

tent, all whose lofty sounding religious talk was summarized by me,

i dont get it, whats the difference? the poetry of others sounds better, but when i ask what the meaning of those words is, i simply would want it to be translated into about at least 2 or 3 times as many more, different words. thats what i tried. so, is there another version of another attempt to describe the poetic things, while defining words like ‘heart’ and ‘spirit’ in the same, slightly more verbose way that i have, but with different words?

22

FM,

I see the confusion. Some of the posts are just words about more words. Some posts are about understanding that has no words, even as we struggle to find a collection of words for what can’t be understood in words. If that sounds like gobblegook, it isn’t in the understanding, it is in the inadequacy of the symbols.

Jery’s posts, apart from being pleasantly poetic, stood out to me in flaming florescent red. Why? Because I understood all he was saying that wasn’t words. More gobblygook, but that’s as good as it gets. Sorry.

JT

23

What makes you think that this doesn’t fall under my personal religion?

I subscribe to a much more active religion than most… we’ll call it gobboism for lack of a better word.

I am/plan to be a writer because I feel that is the best way to create the most happiness from a singular person and thus that Utilitarianism makes me happy as I’ve raised the net quotient.

Of course in order to do do this I need to follow a tao/buddhist type path to know myself before I can know the page I’m writing on.

24

Balderdash Wisened old monkey man!!!

This is quite honestly the very first misstep I have seen from you. Ah, you are human after all, I was starting to question your validity amoungst mere mortals of flesh and sinew.

There is no “Taoist path” or “Buddhist path”, those are illusions, as pointed out a number of times by brother tenative.

There is only the path of the watercourse way, all else is, for lack of a better term … bullshit.

25

i dont know, id say he just values creativity and change because thats what he likes to see in the universe. its a fundamental property of all objects, its the only way things can get better (or worse) for brain chemical happiness, its one of the basic things that cant be described as made up of smaller parts. i just so robotically believe that everything has words for it.

anyway, if change itself is god, then thats certainly a brain bending wonder, but it just seems anally extracted. i mean, of course change is a fundamental part of the universe, but so is the continued, unchanging existence of the individual moving particles. couldnt we stretch out a metaphor from that saying that we should sit still and exist statically, buddha style?

how does this sound: if an atom travels near the speed of light, time slows down for it. theoretically, if an atom went at the speed of light, it would turn into energy and time would stand still for it. if every individual particle is travelling at the speed of light, even the slower massive atoms who are simply made up of smaller particles spinning at the speed of light, then that means time is standing still for every piece that makes up the universe. that just seems to suggest that whatever is outside of the motion of these particles doesnt go through time the same way we do. thats my kind of poetry.

but what does that have to do with life? how do i know whats good? brain chemicals. change is only good if it brings more brain chemicals. you cannot describe the word ‘good’ without evolutionarily programmed brain chemicals = all religion in four words.

edit: jerry, as im watching stephen colbert talk about how he doesnt like spring because he doesnt like the idea of changing, i realize that ive taken it for granted that change (and requisite capitalist principles) is obviously the best thing for happiness and that youre very right. thats why i stopped talking about communism. does that change that discussion?

whats the specific question? i never understood what happens with this. #-o

26

These are big questions Jerry. Creativity arises from the heart. There are different hearts the way that I see it.

There is the animal heart - when we operate at a base animal level, we operate according to our desires.

There is the human heart - we have intellect - we are able to create using various tools learned along the way, the whole world has been created this way in the sense that human beings create their own reality.

There is the spiritual heart - this heart is our Christ nature or our Buddha nature. It is the source of Creation and so is very different from the other creations. I believe it is this heart you are talking about when talking about ‘tuning’ in to what the Creator wants of us.

Our intentions are really important here. What is it that we are creating? Why are we creating this? What drives us?

A

27

I know why I do it OG, I was trying to enquire why you do it in order for me to self reflect and see if there is a clearer expression perhaps. It seems each of us has different reasons for our particular practice. Mine is because my conscience won’t let me rest until I have done enough, sort of the deeper I go, the more difficult it becomes - yet at the same time it gets easier - there is a desire to give up almost daily - but my conscience won’t allow me to give up. It’s this voice that knows around every turn which are the right choices. And I have this other voice, the one in my head that intellectualises and then there is another one, the one of my body - my desires…there is a constant balancing act for me. At the end of the day the reason I practice is because I have no real choice. Not in the deeper sense. And what I hope to achieve is a real understanding of who I am, how I affect others and to what extent I have power over reality. Mine and the collective and of course to implement those changes. To actualise my understanding. You know, to gain wisdom.

Maxence Fermine says that there are 10,000 ways to shape the word snow. Essentially in Chinese calligraphy, when writing words, it is known as shaping them because they are not really words, they are pictures. So, there are 10,000 ways to shape the word snow, because each and every snowflake is singularly unique, meaning there are a myriad of ways of depicting the world.

A

28

Yes, the Christ within is what I am referring to. I like to think of your different hearts idea as the ego self versus the true self.

This still leaves you and I with the question of a changing God. Do the creative manifestations that spring forth from our Christ nature become a part of God once manifested, thus resulting in a changed God? Their source is God, to be sure. Does the created become part of the Creator? Do our actions, in other words, actions resulting from our turning to our Christ nature, to our true selves, belong to God? Do they become a part thereof?

Well I would say yes, for the same reason I said in my first post here that we are part of God. And so we see a changing, dynamic God. Changing with each new Creation. That’s not to say there might not be some attributes of God that remain fixed and absolute. I can imagine a sort of eternal “framework”, if you will, acting as a kind of unifying principle, bringing forth and maintaining existence (one might even think of Tao here), but extended as space and time, i.e. the universe that we see.

And so we have a processal universe, a universe in the process of becoming rather than being. The happenings of the world become part of God’s nature. God is, in this case, far from a passive, changeless God, but one that participates through the creativity of human consciousness (which is why I say we are God), changing and turning, constantly becoming. Yet anchored, in a sense, to an unchanging framework.

I would just suggest, in other words, that there may exist a way in which to hold the two seemingly contradictory ideas together at the same time – a changeless God that encompasses change.

This is where it gets interesting, angel, and I don’t think I have a satisfactory answer for you here. I think we can do our best to turn to our Christ nature but I don’t think that’s going to necessarily give us the big picture all the time. Ever do something that just felt right but didn’t seem to make logical sense at the time, then later it turned out to be the exact right thing to do for very sensical reasons, reasons you couldn’t see at the time you were doing this right thing? In other words, I’m not sure we know at any given time just what we’re creating or why. But I’m not sure that’s important. The intentions, as you say, are what’s important.

29

This is the description of original being superceding the ego of the vessel and acting in concordance. Most often referred to as the “gut reaction” or “gut feeling”.

Sometimes, is it not the best intention to express no intention at all?

30

Yes, I would say so, apart from intending to turn towards one’s Christ nature. I see that as a choice, which implies intent.

(Say, Mas, I started a thread for you under philosophy in case you didn’t notice. :smiley: )

31

Do they become a part of God? I’m thinking that our understanding of what God is is quite different. (JT, Jerry and I have some unfinished business ok).If God created the universe (and we believe this is the case), then everything that is created by God, is of God and therefore is God. Our creations were never ours to begin with, they were always God’s. We come along with our gigantic egos thinking that (our) creations belong to us. They do not. True creativity arises from a union with the Divine. We do not own our creations, they are inspiration from the source. From my point of view, whatever we are aparently creating a new, is not really new, it is simply that we reach a new deeper place of awareness, we gain an understanding of the bigger picture. “There is nothing new under the sun”.

This does not mean that God is passive, no this means that God is continuously creating, continuously breathing life into our hearts, sustaining us on a fundamental level, where without God, we would be physically dead. I do not agree with the concept of a processual universe, I simply contend that we are ever increasing our awareness of what already exists, has always existed and will always exist. It is the human being that is processual - growing into our Christ nature/consciousness.

I think that when a murderer murders, he is unconscious of his creations, I think that every time we argue with our loved ones, we are unconscious of our creations - these are our creations, they belong to us. When Jesus said: “You reap what you sew”, I believe he was talking about this. I think that everytime we use our wisdom to grow out of our psychological patterns, everytime the murderer decides that it is against his conscience to kill, or everytime we see through our psychology when relating with others, then we begin to grow into an awareness of what belongs to God and what indeed belongs to us. Better that we own our own mental actions (karma = action) and attribute our wisdom to God - then our wisdom will grow by the grace of God. It is not the situation of sitting passively waiting for it all to become (processual). When we reach out to touch the face of existance, it is because the face of existance has been calling to us…

A

32

"In Chinese Calligraphy there are 18 ways to write the word ‘sword’. On that day I asked Broken Sword to write it a 19th way. "

33

Bravo. And exactly!

A

34

One either believes that we are partners in God’s creation, or we are mere instruments. If the latter, then the purpose of our being, so it seems to me, is nothing more than to bring to life that which “has always existed” for…what exactly? Let’s say that anything that is, or will be, currently exists (as a potentiality I suppose if nothing else). Mankind’s purpose, presumably, would be to provide the manifestation of the potentiality. Hmm. Maybe purpose is too strong. We can say though that that would be the end result. But why the neccessity of manifesting in time and space that which already exists, but merely absent time-and-space reality? And for whom?

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with this approach, nor am I prepared to disagree with the idea that anything that can exist already does so at least as a potentiality. But this mankind-as-instrument idea smacks of a sort of determinism I’m not real comfortable with. Leaves me with kind of an empty feeling. A universe with precisely one creative act, namely its beginning. All potentialities then come into existence with it and all that remains is for us to manifest them in space-time. And for what reason?

Taking the approach that we are partners in God’s creation, on the other hand, opens the door for some randomness, some creativity. A script that writes itself as it goes along with the actors accorded some lattitude and ability to improvise. And the result? Who knows. And therein lies the subtle beauty of existence, and my empty feeling goes away.

Now, is it simply ego to take this approach? Well, maybe. But purpose and reason seem to be so hard-wired into us, and such a part of what we experience, that I am convinced we have parts to play other than bringing forth that which doesn’t seem to have a need to be brought forth in the first place. There has to be more. There has to be. God needs us every bit as much as we need God.

And so therefore I would agree with this:

I wouldn’t, however, characterize my position as a “situation of sitting passively waiting for it all to become (processual).” Instead, I would say we are making it become.

35

Because I believe there is something greater to the universe that we cannot see or describe. Religion is the metaphor for that which cannot be understood. Within myth and religion is the ultimate truth.

36

Why does there have to be an either or scenario? Why can we not be both partners and instruments? It seems to me that man is unable to live without God. I imagine that God carries on regardless and therein lies the answer. We are answerable to God, God is not answerable to us. So while it is true that we are co-creators, it is also true that we are God’s children. God created us. I believe that one has to turn one’s mind here – to say that we are ‘mere’ instruments is to misunderstand the magnificent role of being God’s instrument. God would not give us an opportunity to do his work unless we were worthy, to be worthy one would need to demonstrate, humbly our ability – one would need to have the virtue of Heaven.

For God. It already exists but it is not yet actualised. We are here; I believe in order to grow into who we really are, to learn that we are gods and goddesses in God’s image and thus hold the power of creation in our hearts (not yet actualised). We are here to create our world, but we are here to create it in harmony with the universal principle (the Word/Tao – “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”). If one wishes to understand physics, one first has to understand the fundamental laws of physics. They are unchanging, they are constant. Every scientific breakthrough that has ever occurred has occurred in accordance with the principles of nature. [If I look back as far as I can I can see a pattern in my own life, that whenever I have learned something significant in my life it is when I have suffered greatly, so I can deduce that tremendous growth comes out of tremendous struggle.] The body allows us to feel pain both physically and emotionally and this makes for the best school spiritually. We learn. The Christ/Buddha/True nature I believe exists outside of the realm of duality because it is made of the very same stuff that God is made of (we are created in His image), yet we have much to understand before we can begin to manifest our true nature. We must manifest it according to the principles of Heaven.

One must be if we are sincere cautious of projecting our desires (our very human desires – our fantasies) onto creation. It is possible to cultivate incorrectly, it is important to align our concepts with truth. To cultivate according to conscience and not opinion.

I don’t believe this smacks of determinism at all, that there is always choice, there has always been a choice, the deterministic aspect is simply the effects of our past causes. Whether we believe in re-incarnation or not is not really relevant, we can turn to the truths of science to see that every action has an equal and opposite reaction – there is your determinism, yet within that there is a choice, how do we choose to view the situations and relationships we encounter and what heart we are going to use to conduct ourselves with. Are we going to create more causes in the human realm or are we going to create more causes in the spiritual realm? Heaven and hell exist within our own hearts – every time we choose not to react to situations we encounter – we move outside of hell within our hearts into Heaven. Heaven exists within our hearts, it is not a place outside in the future, up in the sky somewhere, it is right here right now, it is a frequency.

A

37

Here’s where I think we disagree, but we’re oh so close perhaps. I’m not sure God carries on regardless. We are God. There is no God without us, there is no us without God. God is - based on my concept of God - first and foremost, above all else, Creativity herself. But a creativity that is unable to manifest herself in reality, unable to actualize herself, without her human counterpart. God is an underlying intelligence, a grounding or framework for space-time reality, but dormant and sleeping, non-existent really if you separate out her human consciousness. Not that there are adequate ways to contemplate such a thing, let alone describe it by mere language. It becomes ridiculous to make the attempt. And so I’ll stop.

My point, really, is that human consciousness is of God, not somehow separate and apart.

Now, it’s a jump here to postulate free will and the possibility of operating outside of God, but a jump I am willing to make. Experience teaches that there appears to be “right ways” and “wrong ways” to live one’s life and I am consequently struck by the idea that there must, therefore, be “God-like” ways and “unGod-like” ways to proceed in life. I am struck by how there appears to be purpose in everything. We all feel purpose and experience purpose in our everyday lives even if our purpose is nothing more than surviving the day. There are reasons behind the things that we do. But what can be the purpose of Creativity? To create, simply. Not as a means to an end, but as an end in and of itself. Because that’s what the universe is. And we are an inseparable part of her.

You and I agree on free will. But what reason for it, if not creativity? To contemplate us as instruments is to contemplate us as mechanisms for actualizing something already (on some level) in existence. Yet creativity, by definition, is the process of generating something completely new. And so here is where, rather than being instruments, we find ourselves being Creators, part and parcel of Creativity, partners with her. Necessary partners.

With this I think I agree. This is the God-like and the unGod-like way that I imagine our choices to be. But there is creativity and freedom within the God-like way and it is here where our human, creative consciousness is allowed (is required in fact) to generate the “something completely new.” As there is freedom to choose the God-like way, there is freedom within that way to choose the method. We listen to our hearts, we’re given a direction, a path of sorts. How we choose to go down the path is what produces and sustains Creativity. We can walk, we can run, we can skip, we can tango. It’s up to us. This is what feeds the universe. This is what feeds God.

38

Mine is very similar to yours though.

Paul Glee once said, “I paint in order not to cry”, I share a similar sentiment when it comes to writing.

I aspire to transcribe my story the best I can, to bring strangers the closest to my life as possible, while at the same time presenting a life that is humorous, insightful, thought provoking, and progressive.

By sending mail via my mouth and fingers from deep within the confines of my own consciousness I seem to find a life that is worth pursuing with every fibre of my being because it involves an investigation of such.

This may manifest slightly askewed as I, like most people, will likely have to work for a living and thus whatever literary path I choose, I will have to sell out to a certain degree but such is life, and ILP will always be here for my unadulterated baths in the transient waters of collective spiritual understanding that you my friends, seem to be a catalyst for.